Big Weekend

We apologize collectively as a family for a whole week in between posts. Especially since Mommy did not include adorable photos of us girls in any of her guest posts. I have been trying to give Daddy some time to blog about his Hood to Coast race for posterity but he's been busy. Actually we've all been busy. We went to Oma and Apa's house in Salt Lake City for Labor Day weekend. It was a major bummer that they were not actually at their house (apparently they are some place called "Alaskan Cruise" or at least that's what Daddy kept saying) but we played with our cousins A LOT.

On Friday, Mommy and Daddy were lucky enough to go eat lunch with a bunch of Daddy's friends because Braden got married to an awesome girl named Stephanie! They also got to go to the SLC Temple and see them get sealed for all eternity. Mommy had never been to a sealing in Salt Lake so she was very excited and loved it. Then my friend Ruby's mom (who married Daddy's friend Darren) had a surprise birthday party and I got to run around and look at chickens and play with little kids and eat pizza. FUN STUFF. Sorry no pictures of this party day.

Saturday, Daddy ran another 10k! We went up to Midway and he ran in the Swiss Days 10k Run.

It was COLD in the morning (43 degrees) and they got us up at 5:00 a.m. to get in the car. I was actually okay with being awake and was telling stories. However during the run, Mommy just wandered around and pushed us both (in a single stroller) around the streets of Midway to keep warm.

Mommy's cousins Bry and Tasha both ran also so it was fun to see Aunt Lisa waiting at the finish line.

Daddy set a good pace and averaged 8 minute miles. YEA DADDY! After that I got to jump around in a Princess Castle bounce house and go by myself down a HUGE slide..twice! Of course Mommy made us wander around the booths a little bit and we got some awesome Halloween decorations. The best part, in my opinion, was playing at Grandpa Great's house. We sat on the pony and pet the goat and he had a whole litter of brand new puppies.

SO CUTE. Sadie had two blonde puppies with smidges of white places, three (I think) black ones with white patches, and two chocolate ones again with just random white patches. It was nice to sit in the summer breeze and then jump on the tramp.

Oh and how could I forget to mention the parade? Grandma and Grandpa Great were the Honored Citizens of the Year in Midway and got to be in it!

And here is what lunch was for all of us. A loaf of DELICIOUS Swiss Bread. Mmmm.

We also got to go the zoo twice over the weekend. Labor Day we went right when the zoo opened and we got lucky and the tiger cubs (who are HUGE now) were playing in the water and dunking each other. I also got to watch the bird show for the last time this season. Cara seemed to really love the animals this time and understand what was going on.

Cara and I got to take baths with Romney and Emma and then I fell asleep cuddle up to Romney in her bed which was so much fun. We loved spending time with our cousins and had such a good time just hanging out. We missed Smith, Lainie, and Rosie. So there you have it...our big weekend. Sorry about the photo OVERLOAD but we took so many cute pictures.

Memory Lane

Another guest post from Mommy:

Sorry to do back to back guest posts but Pete is gone on his Hood to Coast relay weekend and I'm done thinking in kid talk. I need some adult time. Plus in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed I started tackling a project that I've been meaning to do since we first moved back to Utah..TWO YEARS AGO.

When I moved out of my parents house to go to the University of Utah (GO UTES!), I had to pack up my entire room. I had a brother who had already picked out new sheets for my bed before I could hug anybody good bye. This was actually quite the feat because I am not a "pack rat" per say but I am sentimental and have a hard time deciding what I really want to hang on to or what will matter in five years. I am good with getting rid of trash so I have that in my favor. To make a long story short, I had two big black garbage bags, one HUGE storage container, a medium sized paper box, and I think five shallow storage containers full of my "keepsakes" in my parents' storage room. Flash forward to September 2008 and living with my parents again, I kept saying how I should go through all those boxes and condense and show Pete my supposedly very important "keepsakes."

And now here we are...the end of August 2010...I finally have my own house which those boxes had to come to. They really do take up quite a bit of space. However there was good news. When we first moved in, I noticed that the garbage bags were full of my teddy bear collection. At one time I had over 50+ bears. This meant decorating the girls room and making them feel like they had toys was a cinch....oh dear...I just remembered that there is on more big storage container that I forgot to count in my tally...that's just sad. Anyway, I seriously saved everything! I have been enjoying watching Siena play with some of my favorite teddy bears and in another bin I discovered my favorite baby dolls..Sheribeari and Sally and Patchy and she actually shrieked the other morning when she woke up and saw one of the "new" dolls on the couch, "OH! My birthday! Mommy thank you!" I finally had to give a huge bag full of stuffed animals to the DI because I just had so many and I figured if they didn't have true sentimental value they had to go. (I could actually tell you who gave each one to me so I had to start using different criteria...like if I could remember the name I gave it or if it was cuter than the others it got to stay.)

Well during these five evenings that I have had to myself, I dove in to the other boxes that contained yearbooks and newspaper clippings and EVERY NOTE I HAVE EVER RECEIVED. I'm not kidding. I have notes from middle school, high school, I even have these notebooks that I cleverly did with two separate friends. We would each take turns taking the notebook to class and just leave the paper in it. So I even have notes that I wrote. One of these notebooks went with an ex boyfriend who went to another school so it is almost beyond embarrassing to read what I wrote in it. I haven't even had time to really read any of it. I still have three boxes to go through! On the plus side, I've made $22. I thought I had thrown out all the birthday cards I had gotten from my grandparents...turns out I didn't. Good thing too because there was forgotten money in one.

In truth, I have put a lot of paper in my recycle bin and I did throw out all my corsages from high school dances finally but it has been so much fun reliving the moments from my middle school/high school years. (I have not even touched the box with all my finger paintings and papers from elementary school.) I was a happy teenager. I loved high school. Yes I took things too seriously, of course I wasted my time worrying about boyfriends and thinking I would marry them, but I really enjoyed those years. I was a drama geek and I found the playbills and programs from the plays I did and for a moment I felt like I was 16 and ready to do 12 shows as Cesario/Viola in 12th Night..itchy wig and all. I have all my things from church! I have two separate lists of "the man I want to marry"...and you know what, shockingly, I wrote down all the right things! I did marry that man!

I had forgotten some of the awards I had gotten or pictures I had taken. The only thing that has been a real bummer has been not having Pete here to show him all my treasures. Of course in all reality, he would have been majorly overwhelmed and not experienced the joy and nostalgia I was experiencing and honestly he probably would have been annoyed by the end of it. I'm glad I saved these things even if piece by piece I am weeding some things out. Having several years separation has helped me keep sight of what is really nostalgic or important versus just taking up space. Someday, my great great grandchildren could quite possibly have a very clear view of who I was. Of course with the internet and technology and all that we are getting better at journaling (thus the very blog I am typing on) but there is still something about holding a letter from an old boyfriend or missionary. I read somewhere in high school that you should save your old love letters and I just took it to heart.

Kids today are missing out. Everything is on text. My brother (Missionary Marty) sent sweet texts to his girlfriend and vice versa but when Marty left he had to erase all the embarrassingly mushy ones that she had sent so that Eric the younger brother wouldn't have to read them because Eric inherited the phone. And his girlfriend got a new phone and so she has to hang on to her old one and keep it charged occasionally so she can read the sweet texts from him! I don't have that problem. Of course, mine are taking up space but I love it. And you get to see the handwriting which I always love because I like what it shows about you.

Anyway, sorry for the length of this post but I needed to write down the nostalgic high I was experiencing. Slightly ironic that it is in the electronic form but I do intend to put it on paper...not in my own handwriting but hopefully my voice comes through enough.

Thanks for listening!

A One Night Get Away

Guest post by Mommy:
Tuesday night, Pete and I had the opportunity to steal away to Vegas for a night. Awhile back, my Mom's brother David had come to Vegas for a work convention. He stayed at the new hotel The Palazzo. It is "attached" to The Venetian but it is AMAZING. My mom had been to his hotel room so she recommended we get a room there. SO WORTH IT. It is not "cheap" as in not under a hundred dollars but it was under two hundred and you get your monies worth. Of course we did get a killer deal through promotional goodness. The suite (which is their base room) was incredible. A huge bed and a separate little "living room" with a wrap around couch. A massive bathroom with separate shower and tub and a little separate room for the commode (and when I say little it was actually huge.) Marble floors, three separate flat screen TVs, one of which was in the bathroom!

We had the most wonderful time being a couple. We went and swam, laid in the sun, got all glammed up and walked down to the MGM for the Cirque Du Soleil show, KA. That also was unbelievable. It was very story oriented as opposed to just constant acrobatics but so cool. Fire on stage, fireworks at the end...it just took your breath away and made you wish you could move like them. I did get uncontrollable giggles at a male love interest in the show. He was a sparkling Tarzan figure. Unfortunately, he looked just like all the caricature Edwards you see just with long hair. It kind of ruined his amazing acrobatics because all I could focus on was the glitter and the sparkling loin cloth.

It was some much needed alone time and I can't wait to do it again. It was nice to feel inseparable again.

Really these pictures don't do it justice but we didn't get many pictures of the room. Actually, we only took like three pictures the whole time and I forgot to download them before I sent Pete off on his Mt. Hood to Coast relay. So these stock photos will have to work. We had a king size bed instead of two queens.

Awesome talk...

I don't want to fully embarrass my Aunt Rachel by copying and pasting her whole talk but I am going to post a link because I think you all should read her wonderful words on parenting. My Aunt Rachel is the best.

http://preslarfamily.blogspot.com/2010/08/wrong-wrinkles.html

Second Official Hair Cut

That's right I got only my SECOND hair cut ever. Monday night, Mommy was combing my hair after a bath and apparently she got it just so nice and straight and so on impulse she ran and grabbed a pair of scissor and chopped before I could even figure out what she was doing! All she really did was even it up (okay let's be honest I didn't hold still, she used kitchen scissors, and I have curly hair so it's not even) but she thought it looked awfully short. Kind of like her hair cut. So now I have hair just like Mommy!

A Maiden Camping Voyage

Mommy and Daddy decided to try us out on an over nighter in the back country! Last night we headed up on the Kolob Mountain/Mesa/much higher elevation thingy than St. George, and we camped at Lava Point which is in Zion National Park's back country, up near where you start infamous canyons such as The Subway, and Kolob, and Boundary.
It was so much fun. We played in the dirt, ate hot dogs, went for a hike, got all cozy in the tent. Oh and we ate marshmallows. It was a great time.





Mommy's Note:
It must be confessed that we drove out of the campsite at 10 pm due to the fact that neither girl was falling asleep in the tent. They weren't crying and Siena kept insisting that she did NOT want to go home, she wanted to sleep in the tent, but Mommy couldn't stand 8 hours of fidgeting Cara. So we'll blame it on me. I pulled the plug, but really both Daddy and I agree that we call the trip a complete success. The girlies loved it and neither one was screaming and disrupting the other campers' experiences.

Oh and Daddy and I made up a list of favorite Sienese phrases:
"Let's Ride!" (this would be from her new favorite movie, known to her as Ants but in the real world "A Bug's Life".)
"I'm making a hot. And I cook one for Mommy" (She was pretending to make a fire off on our little hike..very big in to pretending lately.)
"Don't follow me! Stay right here." (She wanted to go back and get more marshmallows but insisted on doing it herself with no grown up help. Too bad Cara insisted on following her in typical fashion which is with a parent in tow holding on to one specific finger while she walks and controls the direction of forward motion.)

P.S. We had a fantastic time reading stories in the tent. We were reading a family favorite, Sandra Boynton's book "Blue Hat Green Hat", and Cara and Siena kept giggling at every oops and then we were all laughing. It was a great moment.

An unusual summer weekend...

So last weekend, St. George was finally experiencing it's monsoon weather. The rainstorms were actually dropping some rain IN town. This made for an opportunity to go to the long forgotten park after 10 in the morning. During the summer, you can't go during the day because not only is it hot, but you can get third degree burns from the playground equipment. Because of this, Cara really hasn't spent as much time at the park as me. I love the swings and I don't think Cara even remembered what they were. Looks like she remembered really quick! (As a bonus, it was a Saturday so Daddy got to come!)




It was actually really windy and it would sprinkle little tiny drops of rain on us and Daddy kept wishing for a down pour that would send everyone racing for cover. He got his wish later that afternoon when we checking in on Grandma's doggy. It was so much fun! He actually got his wish probably 4 more times in the next 48 hours!


Look! You can still see our blue skies!

Later after we assumed the rain had calmed down (we ended up being wrong and there was a huge thunder storm that night), we set up a tent outside for the first time! I loved it. Of course, I couldn't calm down in the tent at bedtime since it's still light outside so I opted to sleep in my bed. It was a good thing we had the rain fly on though because our stuff would have been wet!



The dogs really loved the tent and when it would rain, Mommy would let them in the grassy area of the yard and they would curl up in the vestibule under the rain fly.

Or when the tent wasn't up, they would use my house as a dog house. They normally get kicked out in the dirt patch because Roxie tends to destroy things by digging holes in the middle of grass areas. Of course, she's eaten the insulation off the piping that goes from the AC unit into the house because that's left out in the dirt patch too but hey it's all about choices!