Is It Naptime Yet

Th girls both had ideas of what they wanted to be earlier this year. Soon after Eden’s birthday she had been beading anklets and decided she would be an Indian and wear all these anklets and bracelets she was making. Unfortunately she couldn’t find them, but decided glow bracelets would work well. She color coordinated the glow bracelets to her outfit, and I got to wear purple and pink on Halloween night. Eden was often mistaken for Pocahontas, but the girls have never seen that movie. I think at one point we just started saying, yes, she’s Pocahontas.

Lilah went back and forth a little more. She was thinking of being a princess, if Eden changed her mind to also be a princess, she has wanted to be a bird since last year, but the fabric for bird costumes is pretty expensive, not to mention stuffing it, so she finally settled on being a mummy. A friend had posted his mummy costume on Facebook and told me what he did, so I was able to make Lilah an pretty cool mummy costume. It was time consuming, but it worked out well and lots of people liked it on Halloween night.

We brought Britta to Carolyn’s Annual Halloween work party, and had her spend the night since she didn’t have school and next day.

Britta as Rapunzel, Eden as an Indian, and Lilah as a mummy.
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The girls checking out their goods after the party.
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Lilah carved this pumpkin at achievement days all by herself, with a little help for scooping out the guts. Because she did it all on her own, she decided she would carve her pumpkin for Halloween also. She drew out the design and figured it all out on her own. I really did very little except give directions on what to do.

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We were carving our pumpkins in our pajamas, with an old shirt over them. Hence the marvelous fashion statements.
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Lilah is actually posing likes she’s carving her pumpkin, because I forgot to get any action shots of her carving the face.
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Eden choose the Bat Cat from our pumpkin carving book, and so I carved hers for her. I’m not ready for both of them to grow up just yet.
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Lilah wanted the traditional Jack O’ Lantern. She did an awesome job on her pumpkin.

I’ll admit it is fun to see them grow up and see them enjoy holiday traditions on a new level of involvement.

This is our front window. Lilah made the decorations on the left, and Eden made the ones on the right. I made the BOO! and the skeleton is from a Science Saturday project. It was headless and missing one foot, and cut out and put together by Eden. Eden colored her ghost light green, so it would look like it would glow in the dark.
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The cousins got to see one another after we trick or treated separately.

Kristi got to my parents before me, and I had told my mom to let her go on without us. We both went over to the popular streets that go all out, but with the crowd it was c.r.a.z.y. My parents never get a lot of trick or treaters, but this year it was dead on their street and area surrounding them. Usually you see a few groups, but this year it was nothing until we crossed over to the popular blocks. Lilah and Eden wanted to go over there, so we did, and they enjoyed themselves and loved seeing all the decorations. I did not let them in the haunted house, but that was mostly because it was a crazy long line and I didn’t want to be out too late.

My dad said Henderson had made rule that trick or treating was just from 6-8pm, because of it being a school night, and I thought that was totally lame. Parents should be able to decide how late to be out with their kids and teenagers will always be out late no matter what. We were in just after 8, and the couple doors we knocked on after 8 gave the girls a lot of candy because they were my parents neighbors and I’m sure wanted to get rid of some candy with the night coming to an end.

We came home and Jon had given out all our candy by 9 pm. We get a fair amount of trick or treaters in our neighborhood. It was also fun because our nice neighbors have moved back, and they decorated and dressed up, because they were having a party, and gave out candy too.

I just love Halloween.

We had our family pictures taken way back in September, and I posted most of them on Facebook, but have added a few for the viewing pleasure of my three readers. I had Eve cut off my hair the day of pictures. I was just so tired of long hair and not being able to do anything with it.

I always send the link out to family, so they can let me know which ones they like best. This might also influence our Christmas Card.
Let me know which pictures you like. You can click on them to see a slightly bigger size.

Family 1
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Family 2
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Family 3
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Family 4
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Girls 1
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Girls 2
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Girls 3
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Couple 1
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Couple 2
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Couple 3
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Lilah 1
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Lilah 2
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Lilah 3
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Lilah 4
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Eden 1
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Eden 2
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Eden 3
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Eden 4

To read the blog post that goes with these pictures visit Family Vacation 2011- Part 3.

Click on any image to see a larger version.

Lilah looking over Yellowstone Lake on a stormy day. (Fishing Bridge Visitor’s Center.)
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One of the first bison we saw. We soon realized they loved to hang out by Mud Volcano, especially since we had to drive by the place 4 times on our visit.
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Lilah with Mud Geyser behind her.
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Mommy, Eden and Lilah in front of Mud Geyser.
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Jonathan and I in front of Mud Volcano.
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This is what it looks like when we’re not blocking it.
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Some cool geyser off the side of the river.
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Artists Paintpots.
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Eden inspecting the pink mud pot/ mud geyser.
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This white mud pot made the coolest sound. Gloppy, boiling mud is really cool.
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Lilah near a hot spring at Artists Paintpots.
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Hot spring at Artists Paintpots.
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Me being silly. I had no idea the sucker I had just finished had turned my tongue green.
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The girls and me in front of Gibbon Falls.
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Firehole Falls, one of the small detour, one way scenic sites in the park.
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A cute ground squirrel while we were walking around at Old Faithful. (It’s a ground squirrel because chipmunks have stripes on their face and back.)
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Whoa little squirrel! He decided to groom himself right there.
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A pretty hot spring. (According to Wikipedia, this is the Blue Star Spring.)
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The girls near a small geyser spring.
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It’s official, we saw Old Faithful Geyser, but Eden and I don’t look too pleased about it.
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The main attraction, Old Faithful! This eruption was a shorter one, but it was still really cool.

Here’s where I start mostly listing off what we did, if I can remember correctly and the picture posts will get really long from all our picture taking.

Tuesday July 12, was our first full day in Yellowstone. It was nice blue sky when we woke up, but it got cloudy as we departed and started on our trip.

Our first stop was at the Fishing Bridge Visitor’s Center in the park. It was close to our camping site and it looked like it might rain, so we wanted some shelter. We looked around, visited the lake, got some information and started on our way.

We decided to drive the lower loop this day. Our first scenic stop was at Mud Volcano. My dad had mentioned how Yellowstone smelled like rotten eggs, so I expected the whole place to smell that way, but fortunately it was only around the volcanic activity that you really smelled the sulfur smell. The hardest part was getting caught in the steam that was leaving the earth. That was hot, moist and you got big ‘ole breaths of the sulfur in your lungs. Lilah like it, she said it smelled like boiled eggs, and in some cases it smelled more like boiled than rotten eggs, but it still wasn’t something you’d want to inhale.

There were a lot of little things at Mud Volcano, my favorite was Dragon’s Mouth, which we only got a video of because it sounded so cool. Some of this area is actually relatively new at the park, with some activity being there for a while, and others only surfacing in the 1960’s and then 1970’s after different earth quakes. It reminds you how every changing the park is, and how you are walking on an active Super Volcano just below the surface, that just hasn’t erupted in 40,000 years. With some of the activity we joked that it should have been called the “Bogs of Eternal Stench”, which is from a favorite childhood movie, Labyrinth.

Soon after Leaving Mud Volcano it started to rain, then it rained some more. It delayed some of our site seeing that included hiking, and kept us in the car. Mostly we’d just head to the next site and if it wasn’t rainy we’d get out. Fortunately, it did clear up so the rest of the day went smoothly.

My favorite stop of the day was Artists Paintpots. The colors there were amazing and it had mud pots that made the best sound of glopping, boiling mud. Jon and I both loved it, and the girls thought we were a little odd.

We continued to stop at different sites off the road. Gibbon Falls, Beryl Spring, Firehole Falls, plus some no name little things. Then since the day was slipping away quickly, we decided to skip some things and head straight to Old Faithful.

We must have arrived soon after one of the eruptions, because we had over an hour to wait till next one. We walked around looking at the different geysers and hot springs in the area. Lilah and I went to the visitor’s center while Eden and Jon saved our front row spots on a bench. The timing for Old Faithful is all approximate. They have the time for eruption, but then it’s + or – 10 minutes. So you’re waiting around for at least half an hour if it decides to erupt on the later part, which it did. For the eruption we saw, there were lots of premature little spouts of water, so the girls started to call the geyser, “Old Tease.”

How to guess when Old Faithful’s next eruption will be. You begin timing the length of the eruption after water as been continuously coming out for about 7 seconds, and time till only steam is coming out. If the eruptions is less than 2.5 minutes, the next eruption will happen around 60 minutes later, if the eruption is longer than 2.5 minutes it will happen around 93 minutes later. They repeatedly remind you that it’s hard to know exactly when the next eruption will happen for any geyser, but they are able to come up with estimated times for Old Faithful because of his steadiness.

Since it was late after the eruption, sometime around 7 pm, we ordered some food at a snack cafe and then headed towards camp. As we left we were able to see a coyote on the road, which was rather exciting, but the camera was on video, so we only got a video of him leaving.

It was exciting to see some of our first wild life this day. We had seen a young elk on our way in, but today we caught glimpse of our first bison, mule deer, and lots of ground squirrels. Bison by far are what we saw most in the park, but mostly in small herds and off by themselves. We also saw one swimming in a river, which was new since we didn’t know they could swim.

This night we built a small fire once back and enjoyed s’mores. Then we quickly cleaned up because it looked like rain, then it started to rain, then hail. Fortunately, the girls were ready for bed and we were able to get ready before it got too bad. I remember waking up in the night so I think it rained and stormed for at least half the night. We were able to stay dry and warm, so we had no worries, except for what the next day would look like, and if we’d get to go visit all the sites we wanted to.

To see the pictures that go with this post visit Family Vacation 2011 Pictures- Part 3.

Here are the pictures that go with the Family Vacation 2011- Part 2 post.

Our tired travel companions.
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Eden admiring the beauty around her. (Grand Teton NP, Lakeshore Trail near Colter Bay’s Visitor’s Center)
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This is what she was looking at. It was breath-taking.
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Capture the moment on film…I mean on a memory chip, and now a blog.
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A small field of flowers we went through on the hike.
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The obligatory picture in front of the sign.
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The second park of the day. (We spent 3 full days at Yellowstone though.)
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The view from our campsite at Bridge Bay inside of Yellowstone. That is Yellowstone Lake.
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Some pretty purple flowers by our camp site. (Picture taken by Eden)
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Give a little girl a camera and there will be at least one self portrait.

To read the long entry that goes along with these pictures visit this post.

You can click on all the pictures to see a larger version.
Many of the beautiful landscapes were just to beautiful to keep at the smaller image size that I usually post.

What we saw at the end of our little hike.
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The girls and I at the end of the hike.
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Our official picture by the sign for Zion National Park.
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Sunset on a mountain of Zion.
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Ice cream is meant to be worn as well as eaten.
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The classic cars at our hotel in Cedar.
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My Great Aunt Margaret’s grave. My mother was named after her, my grandmother’s sister.
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Lilah being silly.
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Apparently she gets it from her mom.
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The girls drawing pictures of Lake Utah, which was right by our hotel in Orem. They were also rolling down this hill a little earlier, don’t let their cute smiles fool you into thinking they’re always this sweet and demur.
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DeEtte’s youngest daughter, Drea. (Pronounced Dray-uh.) There’s just something about messy faces.
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Jonathan, Rawlin, Eden and Lilah.

Easter was a little odd for us this year. As I look at the pictures I took, I think of all the pictures I didn’t take. Like the eggs we dyed, or the girl’s baskets, the girls as they looked through their baskets, wait I wasn’t awake for that, or even one of the girls after the egg hunt. Yeah, it was an odd year for us, but I had a sinus infection and Lilah was sick, so I’ll use those as my excuses for why it was so off.

Saturday we went to my parents house to dye eggs. This year Glenn had his daughters so we were able to dye eggs with most of the cousins. (Minus Zarina and new baby Poppy.) Ajay is eleven, I think, and Kaycee is 8, but just barely. She gets her height from both parents, and is super tall for her age. She’s about the same height as Howie, who is 10 1/2, and if you look in the pictures and see how tall Howie is compared Lilah and Eden, you’ll get an idea of how tall Kaycee is, and she’s only 2 months older than Lilah, though Lilah gets her height from her short parents. (We’re both the shortest of our families.)

Eden waiting to dye some eggs, and those eggs in the cartoon have not been dyed. We were given some green eggs from Jon’s boss, and decided to try dying them. They turned out pretty cool. If only I had taken a picture…..

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Sorry it’s dark, but that’s just the lighting. (Howie, Lilah, Adrienne, and then Kaitlyn.)

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Kaycee, AJay, Eden and half of Howie.

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Kaycee and AJay.

It was a fun little afternoon and I wish we had arrived earlier, or stayed later, but only because we weren’t able to be there on Sunday, but we wouldn’t know that till Sunday afternoon rolled around.

So on Saturday I was not feeling well. I was getting a sinus infection, and both girls were suffering from allergies. I slept on the couch that night because my head hurt, and wanted to be propped up. Lilah woke me up twice in the night, complaining of her stuffy nose and needing to use the bathroom. (I had a weird dream where I yelled at Lilah because she had gotten up like 4 times and I wasn’t getting any rest.) Some time in the early morning Jon came out and I moved to the bedroom.

So Easter morning both girls wondered out and checked out their baskets, I guess, because I wasn’t there! I was a little upset about this, but Jon wanted me to get my rest since I was feeling terrible. I’m thinking I’m going to make an Easter curtain, so they have to wait for me next year.

The girls were both suffering allergy like symptoms that morning and Lilah was not feeling well, so we had oatmeal for breakfast instead of cinnamon rolls. Jon went on a hike, and I had to teach a class, so the girls went to church that day. Lilah was not feeling well, but I thought it was just allergies, so after some convincing, she went to her primary class. I checked in on Lilah after that hour and she looked terrible and she was then running a low fever, so she was experiencing something more than allergies, and we all went home.

Once home we had the egg hunt right away, then lunch. Lilah got sick after eating an egg and since I wasn’t feeling well with my sinus infection, we decided to stay home rather than go to my parent’s for dinner and another egg hunt. We watched Tangled, which the girls got in their baskets, for the second time that day, and Lilah and I took naps on the couch, so really Jon and Eden watched Tangled. Cereal was our grand Easter dinner. Jon ate lots of candy, while the rest of us ate very little.

Eden poses for the camera.

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Lilah charges out.

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Ignore the dead bush and tall weeds. Just look at the cute girls.
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Like I said, it was a very odd Easter.

(Monday I went to the doctor and got a z-pack, so my sinus infection is clearing up nicely. It was bad and tonight I might finely sleep in my own bed. Lilah felt better by Monday, though both girls had terrible runny noses and coughs that continued till Tuesday. Today we were finally able to join the land of the living and venture out, though we still have some stuffiness.)

I let my girls fold and put away their own laundry. This is a good and bad thing. One, it’s good because I don’t have to do it. Two their clothes aren’t really folded nicely, so they always look like they’re wearing wrinkled clothes from the clothes hamper. And three, even though we have the drawers somewhat organized, they can still never seem to find what they need at times, like a matched pair of socks or even underwear on some occasions.

The girls each have two large drawers. One drawer is the regular clothes, shirts and pants, not a big deal, the other drawer is the underwear, socks, tights, undershirts, and pajama drawer. Lets just say socks and underwear get lost and it becomes a really big jumbled mess.

With my bringing out of the Spring clothes, just in time for it to get cold again might I add, I wanted to get things a little more organized and into actual compartments in their drawers. I thought I might buy some plastic containers to put in the drawers, for socks and underwear, then my friend Sam mentioned I could buy some drawer things to split the area, or make compartments. I thought I’d buy some, if I knew where to get them since I hadn’t seen them before, and mentioned it to Jon. Of course being the thrifty, waste not want not, kind of guy he mentioned that I should just use cardboard.

Cardboard?

I wasn’t too hot on this idea, but then I figured it was in their drawer, which only we see, I did have a big vacuum box I needed to recycle, and the final nail in the coffin, for two things, it was $20 at Bed Bath and Beyond. I needed 3 sets for the four drawers, so I would have needed to spend $60, and that seems silly when I got the dresser for free.

So I went to work making my ghetto fabulous drawer compartments, and I’m hoping it helps keep things a little more in order. Sure, they look cheesy, but hey, they get the job done and it only took a couple hours of cutting cardboard and taping them so they’d stay together, and not get cardboard bits everywhere.

So am I cheap or inventive? I think a little of both.

What I could have done for $60:

What I did for pennies, since the tape did cost me something.:

Dear Jonathan,

I feel like I should write some long love note telling you how the years have been wonderful, and how happy I am to have you be the father of my children, and how cute and sexy I think you are, etc. etc. But all I have to say is, “I love you, and thanks for being married to me.”

Love,
Lacey

With all the things that had been going on in her life, the absence of her period didn’t hit until Sunday. It was that morning that she realized she was three days late, and when your body runs like clockwork, she was almost sure she was pregnant, but how could she be when she has an IUD? This was a little nerve racking to her. She sat through church wondering and calculating when this baby, if there was a baby, would be due. It would be the end of June, very beginning of July. It would be perfect to happen right before their medical plan changes took affect, and maybe, just maybe, she was suppose to become a parent at this time in her life. Maybe Heavenly Father had a plan for her, because he knows that there is a part of her that says she will never have another child, at least if it was left to her completely.

Lets back up a little bit. Earlier in the year they found out that their medical insurance would be changing to a Health Savings Account and the deductible would sky rocket beginning July of 2011, so having a baby would be something they would have to save for, and would become a huge expense, medically. She tried to convince her husband that they should get pregnant right away, but he wasn’t going for it. It’s not that he didn’t want another baby, though he kinda doesn’t, but he didn’t want one right now just because their health insurance would be changing, and would like to wait till they are in another house.

So her dream of having a baby anytime soon died.

She once again consoled herself with the thoughts of how much work a child is. How much time they take, and how she would have to change her lifestyle completely if they were to have a baby.

She decided waiting was for the better, but she also has days where a baby was something she decided she never wanted. Those days are the days she’s trying to organize and all the baby stuff gets in the way, or all the clothes her youngest can’t wear continue to pile up, or the days she just wants order and to get rid of every damn thing in her house.

So there are days she doesn’t want another baby.

This Sunday her baby hunger came back. As she sat through sacrament and they blessed a one week old little girl, she wanted to so badly be pregnant. She wanted so badly to have a baby, but the thoughts of it also scared her. How would she and her husband raise this baby religiously? How would they make room in their tiny house? How would they be able to save and buy a larger house? How would they move with a baby if they bought a house?

She worried and ached for the baby at the same time.

She talked to her husband after church. She was so anxious, and he could see how it was affecting her, so he told her to go buy a pregnancy test.

After buying the test, she took it at home while her husband was with their older daughter. The test quickly came back negative, but silently she wished for it to be positive. She waited for that second blue line to appear, but it never did. Her younger daughter came knocking on the door, she wanted to play Uno. The mother asked her to wait and go play a little longer.

The blue line never appeared and that physical confirmation came just 24 hours later.

She was just late.