Independence! (And Yes, I Realize I Used an Exclamation Point in My Last Title Too!)

Example of Independence #1:

Elise portrayed "The Son of Liberty" in the 5th Grade Play. And yes, many girls played boys--we're depicting early American history after all, and our recollection of notable women is in short supply. Although--aside--I just finished reading Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates AND Forrest and I have been watching the John Adams miniseries and I think both Ann Hutchinson and Abigail Adams are pretty fascinating members of the fairer sex, and neither of them made an appearance in Monte Vista Elementary's production of The American Dream. Sojourner Truth did, though. Love that "Aint I a Woman?" speech.

Here's Elise in all her Pilgrimy glory:

(We decided that even though her shoes from Justice had sparkles on the toes, most audience members wouldn't notice. The buckles seemed kinda pilgrimy to me--pilgrimy with pizzaz!)

And here she is singing away. And being tall.



After the 5th grade play and a hot hot HOT field day (where photos were not taken because I was too covered in Otter Pop juice and focused on wrangling 10 rotations of 25 6 to 8 year olds into even groups on either side of the tug of war rope to take pictures) . . . school ended!

So Example of Independence #2? No more classrooms, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks! (Such a mean rhyme.)

Jonas holding his excellent report card aloft. I also took a picture of Elise with her report card . . . but her friend Hailey signed Elise's FOREHEAD as a passionate gesture of goodbye and it just looks too silly to post on the internet. Sorry. I'm controlling that way. Needless to say, Elise had a great report card too. Onward and upward to 3rd and 6th grades!

And now the obvious example of Independence, July 4th:

Andrew and Andrea and their family arrived from North Carolina just in time to join in the festivities. Okay, quick rewind: They got here on July 3rd and we went to the temple open house and Boondocks to celebrate Brandon's 8th birthday. Forrest couldn't come to the temple open house because he was helping a family in the ward move (and lest you think he's too noble, he also golfed in the morning, so half the time he was golfing, half moving--so the noblesse evens out). Wyatt was in even rarer form than the first time we went to the open house. The major differences this time was the absence of dad and the vast throngs of people who had the day off on Friday the 3rd and decided to visit the open house just like we did and stand packed together on the stairs in a manner which the Fire Marshall would most certainly disapprove. Wyatt was--shall we say--feeling a little "hemmed in"? He desperately wanted to get in the baptismal font, yelling "I go swimming!" at the top of his lungs. But my favorite stunt was when he wiggled out of my arms and darted underneath the velvet rope in the celestial room and went and sat in one of the chairs. Ahhh, parenting toddlers. Especially parenting toddlers while hundreds of people look on. Keeps a girl humble.

And Boondocks was really fun. Go carts, video games, all that good stuff. But I didn't bring the camera to either. You'll have to check out Andi's blog for that!

So. Anyway. The 4th of July.

Brandon's baptism was a great way to start the morning. So nice of his parents to travel thousands of miles so we could all be a part of it! Then afterward we descended on Grandma and Grandpa's house, had some good food, then turned the kids loose in the backyard. Just because they're cute, here's a picture of each of the cousins enjoying the slip n slide:

Eli making a run for it

Wyatt, who had a hard time understanding he was supposed to wait in line--but the kids were patient with him. That's the advantage of being one of the younger cousins.

Elise, rock star slip n slider with dangly silver earrings, purple cast, and wind machine hair.

How cute is this picture of Whitney?

Ethan: Attacking the slide.

Brandon, master of Slip n Slide form.

Jane, with a classic Slip n Slide expression.

Cute Lauren.

Jonas, riding the slide to the very end.

Reagan, expert knee slider!

And darling Emma, who chose to abstain from slip and sliding (at least while I was outside with the camera!).

This picture is just pure cute. Almost makes up for the temple open house(s).

Mmmm . . . ice cream and a porch swing

More cute ice cream pictures

And a gaggle of gangly cousins.

That night everybody came over to our place and we did fireworks. Some cool pics:
Cool nighttime setting on the camera, isn't it?

You can see the taillights of a car passing by. Sorry, traffic!

The ghost of Forrest, fireworks-lighter-extraordinaire

Vivi and Caroline, enjoying the action from their box seat.

And Wyatt with Grandpa. NOT too happy about the explosions, the loud noises, the "fire." ("I no like that fire Mom!" he kept telling me. It's got to be so confusing to be two, wondering why in the world we've all decided to congregate on the front lawn after his bed time and watch things explode.)

It was a great night, no Follow My Leader style accidents (did anybody else read that book in elementary school?) and so fun to have family in town. And now it's hot, hot, hot, and summer is officially here: otter pops, swimming suits left (wet) on the floor, sleeping in, boat trips. Looking forward to it.

Video!

I've been pretty bad about making video of almost anything over the last little while. Our regular video camera has "issues," and I've been so enamored of my Nikon D40 (sans video) that I haven't been using my junky (yet video capable) Nikon Coolpix. This week, I remedied the situation.

First, a funny video conversation with a two year old who had some alone time with a couple of Crayola markers:




And now, a race to the finish: Jonas at his Cub Scout rain gutter regatta.





Jonas won 2 out of his 4 races . . . not too bad considering we didn't engage in any regatta rigging. (Who knew what you could do with those sails? We just stuck ours on the pole like they told us to in the instructions.)

Jonas after a win:



Jonas showing off this boat, "The Flame":



Jonas also had his big 2nd Grade puppet show production last week. He and his friends wrote the script, made the puppets and the backdrop, and performed their version of The Emporer's New Clothes (or, in their case, "The Monster's New Clothes") to much applause:



Elise also had her 5th Grade "State Fair," where she got to show off the shoebox "float" she (we?) made about the state of Montana. I forgot to take a picture, but rest assured that much thought went into the addition of a little treasure chest filled with fake jewels representing the "Treasure State" (thank you, Hobby Lobby), and choosing Phil Jackson as the "famous person" about whom one had to write a short report. Not a lot of famous people from Montana, I'm just sayin.

And can I also say I'm ready for school to be out for a while? Mom's pretty much done with the school projects. I have the hot glue burns to prove it.

And, lastly, I (along with 40% of the population of the south end of Salt Lake County--see Grandpa Hiatt's blog for proof) took a picture from our back yard of the most glorious rainbow the other day. Wyatt saw it out our window and it was one of the biggest, brightest rainbows I've ever seen. This picture doesn't really do its gloriosity justice. You'll just have to trust me.



And next week? Last week of school. Field Day. Visits from family (and Boondocks! the kids are so excited). 4th of July. Swimming. Finishing the DVD of HBO's John Adams series. Good times.

Holy Heck It Won't Stop Raining

Have you noticed the precipitation? Unless you live in the Midwest or India, that is. (Although maybe it's been rainy in India. I haven't been checking.) But man, it's been a rainy week. Also a pretty slow week--which has been nice--EXCEPT for the one little bit of excitement, namely:


Elise broke her arm! Last Sunday night, Tony's house, playing tag with the cousins, ran into Jane and, in Elise's words, "before I knew it I was going down!" After overcoming the initial (justified) screams of pain, she was a brave little trouper at the Instacare (and, yes, the same Instacare where, two Sundays previously, we'd taken Ethan after the Nalley's Chili Incident.) We've been, until now, such an injury-free family. The lady at the Instacare says these things often come in threes, but I'm counting Forrest's Handlebar Palsy, so we're good.

(The Handlebar Palsy is almost gone, btw. Forrest says he's 95%. Just has a hard time sticking his pinkie in his ear and really wiggling things around in there.)

Elise was a double-trouper because she also performed in the 5th grade talent show, broken arm and all. She sang the Miley Cyrus song "The Climb" (kind of a good little song, actually) and purportedly did a great job. I say purportedly because they wouldn't let parents come! I know! Lame! She sounded great practicing at home, though, and she came home pretty pleased with herself. At the Instacare she was trying to think positive thoughts about her broken arm, and the fact that she's a "singer and not a gymnast" and could still perform in the talent show was top on her list. I'm glad that my "singer and not a gymnast" genes could come in handy for once. :-)

So other than Elise's "buckle fracture" and talent show success, it's been a pretty leisurely week. Lots of rain (did I mention?). I dragged Ethan and Wyatt to Ikea and bought myself a new bookcase so I could dive in head first to the "Great Hallstrom Family Book Project," which essentially meant dumping out all the books that had gathered in the kids' rooms--the hundreds, nay THOUSANDS of books, it seemed--and organize them in some kind of reasonable fashion. I ended up moving my books out of the downstairs bookcase and moving a bunch of the kids' books into it (easy readers, early chapter books, books they won't reread anytime soon), then moved my paperback fiction into the new bookcase and put it in my room. I was afraid it would make my bedroom look too cluttery, but you know what? People who own lots of books are going to have books in their shelves, and books are cluttery-looking things. It actually makes me really happy to walk up stairs and see my new bookshelf, design be darned:



So now we have the basement bookcase (kids' books, explained above); Forrest's office bookcase (Forrest-type books: businessy titles, true-life-adventure and history, occasional biography, some Malcolm Gladwells); entertainment center bookcase (church books, hardback fiction); my office bookcase (writing books, teaching books, poetry, short fiction, memoir, lit mags); kids' rooms bookshelves (self-explanatory); and my new bedroom bookcase (paperback fiction--mostly). I also have a couple of boxes of books in the storage room that I don't particularly like or want. If you enlarge the picture and see any title you'd like to borrow, let me know. It's a regular library around here.

Oh! One last thing. A friend of mine posted this on Facebook and the part of me that loves movies, combined with the part of me that spends too much time online, combined with the part of me that's slightly sentimentally cheesy, really liked it. If your week is kinda slow and you have thirteen minutes, enjoy:

A Reel Transformation
Uploaded by theschu. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

And now it's raining again. No, not raining. Hailing! Here's a picture of Dad and Daughter on Father's Day, watching the hail:



Which brings me to . . . Happy Father's Day to my Dad and Grandpas and the father of my own chitlins, the best father any mother could ask for. Love you all!

My Husband is Cool

He really is. And gets cooler with age, wouldn't ya know. This week I'm finding him particularly impressive because he rode his bike to St. George, 300+ miles, up more hills and down fewer dales than he'd anticipated, then decided to cap it off by running in a triathlon the next day.

Here's some pictorial evidence, so you don't assume I'm just making stuff up:


Okay, so this isn't Forrest. This is our neighbor Cody. I know Forrest's undergone a physical transformation over the last year and a half, but not THAT dramatic a transformation. Although one of the clerks at the hotel though Forrest and Cody were twins, which Forrest thought was AWESOME since Cody's like eight years younger than him and also Captain America. (That's what Forrest and I called him when he moved into the ward and we couldn't remember his name.) The reason I put his picture here is because Cody is the wonderfully-nice-but-crazy person who comes up with ideas like riding one's bike to St. George and then convinces Forrest to do it too. He's also probably a robot sent here from the future. Evidence: He's training to run a 100 mile race later this year. (He did NOT talk Forrest into that one, although Forrest is pacing him for part of it.) Anyway, I told Cody he'd better not kill my husband on this trip . . . and he didn't! And Forrest even kept up with him (and was often grateful to be riding behind him so he could take advantage of the draft).

Cody's friend Brad, Forrest, and Cody taking in the Zion Canyon views. I'm sure the scenery is even more beautiful when you earn it by busting your behind riding to the tippy top of some mountain.


Saturday morning, Utah Summer Games triathlon. Forrest did pretty well considering his energy stores were gonzo and his knee felt like "somebody had stuck a nail underneath [his] kneecap and was repeatedly jamming it into the bone." He assures me that his knee pain is temporary. As is his "handlebar palsy," which he self-diagnosed after discovering that he can't move his left pinkie.

Cody, Forrest, and Brad after the triathlon.

I really should have Forrest do a "guest post" on my blog and tell you all about the ride. It's quite a story. He had a great time--some ups and some downs (what a metaphor!)--and proved to me (again) how strong he is, in all sorts of ways. Good job hon!

I drove down on Friday to pick Forrest up. Can I just say when you're driving to St. George all by yourself, listening to podcasts of This American Life and singing Journey songs at the top of your lungs and eating Twizzler's Pull-Aparts time FLIES? (And thanks to my mom and dad and Forrest's mom and dad and Chelle and also Mindy and Peter for helping out with the kids while I was away!) Solo driving is also much more comfortable and climate controlled than riding one's bike, I'm sure. But I got there Friday night and we had some nice Asian food, did some outlet shopping, then Sat. morning did the triathlon (and when I say "we" did the triathlon, I of course mean that I woke up really early and brought my folding chair and cheered), then headed back home to South Jordan Saturday afternoon.

We got home just in time to head to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house with the Wilkeys. It's been so fun to see the temple emerging on the top of a hill just a few miles away from our house. It's a beautiful temple. See?




Aren't those some pretty pictures? The inside is beautiful too. I love the staircase and the murals on the walls in the endowment rooms. It was fun to tell the kids that this is going to be "their" temple--where they do their baptisms for the dead, maybe even where they get married.

The weather was beautiful that evening, but it had been stormy in the afternoon. Turns out the Angel Moroni had been struck by lightning just a few hours before we got there. Can you see how the statue's all black on one arm? I'm sure they'll be fixing that right away.



The temple's so prominent there on the hill, I wonder if it'll be getting more lightning strikes? And if it does, do you think the residents of South Jordan should be taking this as a warning of some kind? Perhaps God is tired of our beige stucco McMansions and gas guzzling vehicles and unnecessary consumer debt and inexplicable adoration of Glenn Beck? (Guilty, guilty, guilty, not guilty. :-).

Aaaaannnyway, it was fun to go with the Wilkeys. Because it's fun to do all SORTS of things with the Wilkeys, and besides Katie brought these AMAZING brownie/s'more creations for which she should win some kind of dessert award.

Who would have thought 17 years ago when newly-married Forrest and me rented the apartment directly adjacent to newly-married Darrin and Katie in the Lincoln Park Apartments ($330 a month, those were the days) we'd end up with all these other human beings tagging along in our lives?? Well, technically, I guess we could have suspected as much, since both couples intended to obey that "multiply and replenish the earth" commandment--but still! That's a LOT of people! And some of them are already taller than their parents!

This is a shot of Wyatt letting off some steam. Parental abandonment + weird nap schedule = crazy toddler boy at the temple. Needles to say, he wasn't very interested in using his "inside voice." Love you Wyatt! Now SHUSSHH!

Cute Elise and cute Jane.


And Handsome Jonas and Max and Ethan and Ian.

Ack! Did I forget to tell you? Ethan got a haircut. And wonder of wonders, he LIKES it!


He looked very handsome passing the sacrament today. Although I thought the floppy look was very hip, I missed my boy's good lookin forehead.

And that's our weekend in a nutshell. I think I'm going to go eat one of those brownies Katie left behind in a tupperware. Guests who leave you with extra dessert are my FAVORITE.

A Tale of Four Kiddies

Updates are in order concerning the four kids living in my house:

Ethan

Ethan's had an eventful few weeks. Big event number one? Finishing up 7th grade. Quite a feat, especially considering he managed to complete the year with a combined total of, hmm, maybe 15 hours of homework done at home, and still didn't get a grade below an A-. (We were worried the homework would sink us both. Little did we know how little we had to worry about. Do you like how I'm referring to his concerns/accomplishments in the plural? Yes, I'm working on the whole parental hovering/identity glomming thing.)

In the last few weeks of school he had a band concert:
His band teacher is really great, and I think Ethan's had a good time with the trumpet this year (even though he reaaaaaallly wanted to do percussion but didn't get in. I keep trying to tell him all the REALLY cool kids, the ones who aren't so obvious about it, play the trumpet instead of the drums.)




I imagine that kid beside him with his hand on Ethan's shoulder saying, "Dude!" The secret password of all things manly. I hear it all the time when boys are together: "Dude!" "Hey, Dude." "Seriously Dude?" but the funny thing is, Ethan never says it unless he's with other guys his age. Kind of like how in my heart I'm not the type to say "kick my trash" and then, somehow, I found myself saying it when I was in the company of a group of cooler and more stylish barely-or-just-past 30 year olds in my ward and it somehow popped out of my mouth. Oh, the pressures of conformity. Conversely, I also remember a cheerleading meeting when I was a junior in high school and a lowly JV cheerleader, and the head varsity cheerleader was berating us in that cooly sweet-yet-evil way only a head varsity cheerleader can and I couldn't take it any more and said, "Don't patronize us," and a whole bunch of varsity cheerleaders got really mad at me for using uppity vocabulary words in an arrogant fashion. I felt unjustly attacked because, after all, "patronize" was the exactly perfect word to describe what she was doing, and why use common but not-quite-right terminology when the precisely perfect word is there for the taking?

But it's true: in adolescence, you've gotta talk the talk.

And I'm digressing.

Ethan also finished up his baseball season. There last game was a lot of fun--Ethan made some good plays at second base, had a nice hit--and the team came from behind in the last inning to tie it. Would have been nice to WIN it, but we were happy with the tie.

Swing!

Although it's kind of nice to have our schedule slow back down some, I think he (and we) will miss the games. They were fun.

And to round out the Ethan section of this post in a dramatic fashion, last Sunday Ethan had a run-in with a can of Nalley's chili:



Forrest and I had stayed behind after church to help clean up the RS room, so the kids (sans Wyatt) walked home without us. As we were crossing the street we see Jonas come running toward us, shoeless and sockless but in his church clothes, yelling, "Ethan cut his finger!!" And cut it he did. If the can itself isn't evidence enough that a really hungry 12 year old shouldn't be left home alone with a can opener and some Nalley's, then the big ol' gash on his finger was enough to convince us that we needed to have a little family meeting about dealing with sharp objects. We took him to the Instacare where they proceeded to give him a bunch of shots inside the wound (fun!!! poor kid) and he got 10 stitches on the tip of his finger. Here's the after shots, one right after he got home from the Dr., and the other the next day when we unwrapped the bandages (and warning--it's gross):




But he's healing nicely, he's done with school, and he's looking forward to a summer of chore doing, video game playing, reading, swimming, hanging with friends, and babysitting Wyatt for me. (Actually, the first and last on that list are things I'm looking forward to more than he is, and his ability to enjoy everything in the middle of the list is dependent on his cheerful accomplishment on the first and last items :-).

Elise

Elise is in the thick of school stuff. (And so, a picture of her, looking scholarly and darling with her pink backpack over her shoulders):



Her teacher this year isn't the most organized--kind of blowsy, scatterbrained, nice enough but planning is not one of her better qualities--anyway, I think she's left about half of the core curriculum requirements to the final weeks of school. We've had months and months of hardly any homework--I wanted Elise to have MORE homework--and now, blamo! This last week they were doing the math standardized testing, which is stressful enough for us (there I go again with the parental glomming), and we had to take all these practice tests on the computer. Which is good. Glad to do it. But on TOP of it, Elise comes home with this geography packet and she has a week to memorize all the states' locations and abbreviations AND the physical features (rivers, mountain ranges, etc.) of North America. They'll let the kids retake the test until they pass it, but the first test was Friday. So it has been a week of homework, that's for sure. She did really well with the memorizing, though. I told her some of my tricks: how "Wisconsin" looks like a toilet (get it? Wis?), how "Kentucky" looks like a drumstick from Kentucky friend chicken, how "Kansas" looks like a "can of sauce" with a little nick in the top to pour the sauce out. (Isn't it amazing what you remember from elementary school?).

The other big Elise-related news is she got her hair cut shorter. She's been veeerrrry resistant to the idea of cutting her hair but I finally talked her into it after one too many "I went swimming and then ran around in the wind" hairbrushing/screaming sessions. And she really likes her new look. She's been walking around with a smile on her face all day. Before:



And after:



Don't the roses behind her look pretty? Some of our rose bushes are GAR-geous right now. (And others are way too unwieldy and clumpy and not making me nearly as happy.)

Elise also got student of the week in her class a few weeks back. Oh, and finished up with her Riverton Children's Choir (but unfortunately missed her final performance because we were in St. George.) It's fun singing alto with her in church, though.

Jonas

Jonas has been busy playing stuff: playing with friends, yes, and playing both soccer and baseball. Soccer is almost done. Jonas usually plays goalie and has gotten pretty good at it. He's on a team with a lot of kids from our neighborhood which is fun for him (and us) because having other people you like to hang out with makes all sporting events more enjoyable. Here's some shots of Joe in action (with props going out, once again, to the Nikon D40):

Attacking the ball. (And yes, his shoelace is untied. And he's wearing blue socks. For the life of me I can't find the black socks with white stripes that go with his uniform. They have disappeared in the the laundry maw that exists in an alternate dimension at my house.)

Looking focused (and dashing)

I love this pic. It's Jonas and his four good friends in our neighborhood (Ethan, Cade, Brennan) all in such a symmetrical line!

He also just finished up baseball. It was a good year for him. He didn't really know anybody on his team (they do this drafting thing that makes it hard to get on a team w/ somebody you know unless your dad's the coach) but he made some friends and learned a lot. The best thing about his final game is that his coach let him pitch. His coach this year happened to be the president of Bingham Baseball, and I really appreciated his philosophy. He was competitive, yes, BUT was also really focused on the boys' learning. By the time we got to the final two games, it was clear we weren't in contention for a trophy (only 1st and 2nd place teams in each division get a trophy, and we were like 4th or something) so he decided to give all the kids who wanted to a chance to pitch. Both games we could have probably won, but ended up losing because the final couple innings he let these boys pitch. There's one mom on the team who drove me nearly batty (hey, good pun!) all year long. She's your sterotypical screamy, ultra-competitive, call-out-somebody -else's-kid kind of mom, and she wasn't happy with it at all. Kept saying things like "Well, I guess we're giving it away! Let's just give it away!" She finally shut up when it became clear the coach wasn't going to change his mind. And it was SO FUN to see those kids who were usually in the outfield pitching. Yes, we DID give it away, but it was worth it for sights like this:


Jonas, beaming on the pitcher's mound.

I never really minded much that he played mostly outfield. After all, many of the kids on his team have been playing hard since they were four, not to mention playing on Superleague teams and all that, and Jonas has only been playing since last year. But when he got up to pitch and threw some strikes (and okay, some pretty obvious balls, too) it did my mom-heart good. His hitting also really improved this year. In fact, his coach said Jonas was by far the "most improved" player on the team.


(But yes, his eyes are closed. He swears he was probably just blinking. :-).

Good job, Most Improved Joe!

Wyatt

Wyatt is getting BIG. Physically and mentally. He talks constantly and loves to play. Luckily he's still napping (in his crib! I know! He hasn't tried to climb out even once. Shhhh . . .). He spends the bulk of his day thinking/talking about his favorite things: chocolate milk, "shows," "friends' house," Dad, chips, outside, warm be be (his blanket), dinosaurs, dinosaur books, and dinosaur shows. (If only there was a show starring his dad fighting dinosaurs that he could watch outside while having some chocolate milk and chips. Heaven!)

So I give you Wyatt's favorite things:


Looking like a Bedouin with Warm Be Be wrapped around his head


Being cute "outside" in our back yard.


And being cute outside again, at a soccer game. Outside + Juice Box = Good times.


And this, my friends, is what I have to step over in the family room all day long. I put it away, it reappears in seconds. You know that scene in Potergeist when the put the chairs away then turn around and--shazam!--they're all on top of the table? This is kind of like that. Except Wyatt does it, not ghosts. I've gotten accustomed to his lineup of dinosaurs, though. (They're usually diagonal, and lately facing the television).

And that's about it for the kids. And better be about it for this post. Sorry for the length. I will forgive you if you skimmed :-). (But you didn't skim, did you?)