My Annual Ode To Summer

Guest Post by Mommy:

I have not yet made my offering to summer time on the blog so far this year. And some of you are new readers to the blog who have not had the pleasure of one of my glorifications of summer. So let me just say...I LOVE SUMMER!!!!!! I think that the 4th of July might be my favorite holiday simply because of where it falls during our Earth's rotation! Christmas, I might be a bigger fan if we lived in Australia or Argentina! (Don't get me wrong, I actually do love Christmas and the cozy fire scenes that come with it.)

I have long wanted to adopt the ritual of my sister-in-law's friends of having a major summer solstice party every year but so far I have not been able to pull it off. In truth it might be because subconsciously I recognize that the solstice actually begins the decreasing of day time and the increasing of night time! Which conversely means I probably should hold a winter solstice party! Anyway, I digress.

There are very few things that I dislike about summer. I don't like higher gas prices and I don't love paying my energy bill! But that's about it. I love the heat. I enjoy walking out a building and being hot instantly. Water parks and swimming pools are probably my happy place. (Too bad I tend to have allergic reactions to their chemical filled water.....) Okay we all know that Disneyland is my happy place but I'm not really allowed to go there as often as I liked.

I tried hard this summer to make sure my girls swam whenever it was available and I think we've done well! SIena has really mastered the art of swimming with floaties and loves to go underwater. We're still just working on that propulsion thing! She BEGS to go swimming now. She especially loves the pool at our gym. Cara isn't super afraid and will walk in water up to her chest. Of course neither girl appreciates swimming in the lake with their life jackets but maybe we'll make that our goal NEXT year. I think we've done well embracing summer. We've had plenty of snow cones and slurpees. The one thing the girls haven't done yet is camping and luckily St. George heat means we've still got plenty of nights left and actually it's smarter to wait until the cool down is happening! We're actually headed this weekend to a water park to further solidify our enjoyment of summer. I LOVE IT. My girls white bums are so dang cute! I love their tan lines which I know is terrible since I've just aged their skin and increased their risk for skin cancer but gah!

And now to close this blog which has felt a little disjointed, I will post pictures from our girls first rides on the St. George City Carousel. They've been begging to go on it and we kept having the worst luck with closures! We tried to go on it the day after something on it broke and another time it was being cleaned. But finally! We did it! And we even did it in 100 degree heat so I think it's appropriate to post here!



Excitement is just eeking out of her!


In this one if you look closely, you can see how cute I had managed to do Cara's hair...Siena's is done the same way. I kept seeing it on two little girls at church and finally just tried it on them!


Please pay no attention to me in this photo, I don't know what kind of face I thought I was making!


Oh and just to write it down for posterity purposes, Siena quickly named both the horses she rode on "Quincy" and Cara named her horse (all on her own after hearing Siena name hers) "Max". They even pretended to race them! They kill me!

Girls Camp, Get Togethers, and Good Byes

So it's been a full week and Mommy never got around to posting about what she did all last week. I think I better take charge and mention it for her.

Mommy got to spend last week camping with the girls in our ward. She came back smiling and smelly. I think it must have been so much fun and so worth being away from us. Maybe....:)

Of course the trip involved a few hiccups for them including a geyser at their water source and a literally exploding tire.







Ah good times.

And while Mommy was on a mountain smelling like campfire. I got to go up to Oma and Apa's house and see ALL my cousins. That's right...ALL of them. Aunt Whitley and Uncle Adam were in town on their way to moving to Seattle and of course that called for a get together. We got to spend time at a cool condo in the mountains swimming and having a quick birthday party for Cara and cousin Rosey who are only three days apart in age! We also played at Aunt Rachel's house and Oma and Apa's house and had SO much fun. However, Mommy had the camera on Cedar Mountain so I will have to refer you to Aunt Rachel's post for photographic evidence of all 11 grandchildren in the same room! Mommy really wishes she could have been there but it was a last minute get together and she was the only one who could go to Girls Camp!

Finally, last week Cara and I had to say good bye to one of our favorite ladies. Our day care lady for a year had to go back to work outside of her house! So last Thursday Miss Rubi had a party and we said good bye. Mommy and Daddy were pretty bummed and you know what? So were us girls. (Mommy is currently fighting with Daddy's phone in an attempt to get a picture of us and Miss Rubi off of the phone but with NO luck. Grrrrr.) We will miss her but we really enjoyed the last two days we spent at our new lady, Miss Michelle. She even painted our toe nails and she has a dog! We'll survive I guess!

Oh and a quick shout out to Mommy and Daddy.......HAPPY 6TH ANNIVERSARY!!! Which also means we need to shout out to Oma and Apa....HAPPY 46TH ANNIVERSARY!

It's a lot of cereal.....

Guest post by Mommy:



I think it's been two years since I posted my first "look at how much I bought for this price" post. And I think I've only done like two. I am pretty sure it was just after Cara was born. Anyway, I just made a quick trip to Harmon's and was impressed with my booty.

That's:
14 boxes of cereal
4 boxes of Pop Tarts
2 packages of little cracker thingys

For a grand total of $25.00.

Not bad. It was supposed to be better but a very specific type of Special K was not on sale and I had kick butt coupons for that kind. Oh well. I still think I did really great! :)

Happy 2nd Birthday!

And today Cara is officially a TWO YEAR OLD! And boy is she feisty.

She started here:


Got to here last year:


And now look at her! She actually has HAIR!


Of course that's not all that makes her so neat to have as a little sister according to me:

Favorite Movie: Susan (Monsters vs. Aliens)
Favorite Food: Grapes
For fun Cara likes to : Play Games
What color is her hair: White
What game do I like play with her: Chips (meaning chess)
She likes to jump in the pool and use her floaties (Mommy has never seen her do this however so maybe I'm talking about me)

That's a pretty good list but Mommy says she'll help me talk about more stuff now.
-Cara is our eater. If she likes it, she will eat it and lots of it. She tries anything we put in front of her. Recently she has quit eating hot dogs though and doesn't always care for bananas which used to be her favorite food. Mommy thinks Cara's favorite food might be chicken nuggets or "Chick Nugs" because she frequently requests them (and gets them) for breakfast. Oh and she loves lettuce! Go figure.
-She likes to talk and tell you stories. You can understand maybe 3/4 of what she says. She also frequently sings songs. Any song that comes to her head. She knows two verses to "I Am A Child of God"
-She's still signing and likes to do it.
-She knows her colors and gets them mixed up only once in a while
-Still loves her diapers
-Has an okay handle on her letters. She does pretty good but still sometimes sounds like she's guessing.
-She LOVES to be outside and will wander out into the backyard and just stay out there, doing who knows what and singing and talking to herself.
-She is also an animal lover. She will play shy to an animal for about two minutes after first meeting but will then proceed to love and pet and snuggle and try and feed said animal. I never really warmed up to animals like Cara did.
-She re-warmed up to Grandpa. She took a little break from preferring him and now is starting to go right to him again.
-More of a tantrum thrower than I ever was. She can yell and scream and kick her legs...and the strangest things seem to set her off. (However she doesn't whine quite as much as me! :P )
-She has the funniest habit of needing to touch your skin with her feet. She will just push and nudge and press those little bare feet in to any bare skin you have. (Even if the only skin she can find is your face!)

There are a hundred more things that we love about Cara but it is really hard to put it all in to words. So instead we'll end here and just yell:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CARA! WE LOVE YOU!

As an update to this post, Cara had her 2 year well check with Dr. Clark on Monday August 15. She is now a whopping 24 lbs and 31.5 inches! (Yeah..just plugged that in to the growth chart: we are 12% for weight which is awesome for her and a very tall 3% for height. She's such a shrimp!)

24th Goings on...

Well yesterday was Utah's big state holiday but since it was a Sunday there sure was a lot of celebrating going on today instead. However, yesterday we celebrated Cara's birthday a week early! Mommy even made a cake.


Editor's Note by Mommy: This is the first birthday cake I have ever made for my girls...and it's for Cara's 2nd! We always had other things going on that warranted a huge Costco cake. I tried making a birthday cake for one of my Young Women and it was what I would call a disaster. Yummy but disastrous. I modified the recipe slightly and got this wonderful cake. I don't do homemaking. Seriously. So please keep in mind that even though it looks like a CareBear cake (not my intention) this is a HUGE achievement for me and took me more time than I normally spend on anything!

Grandpa has all the pictures of Cara opening her presents but Mommy was busy doing other stuff on the computer and didn't have the patience to upload them while we were there YESTERDAY. Anyway, she fell asleep on the ride over to Grandma's house and so Sleeping Beauty took forever to awake and when she did she was a little groggy and didn't really get in to the present opening. It took her until her LAST present to kind of understand. And let's not talk about trying to get her to blow out her candle. Maybe we'll try again on her ACTUAL birthday. (Sure hope I get to celebrate MY birthday twice.)



This is a portrait I did of Cara at preschool...I think I gave her too much hair.


I think the favorite present (and I voted on this too) has to be the book Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes. I have it memorized and Cara almost does. The best part is that you can LISTEN to it on the internet and hear the song. We have read it 50 times since we got it!

Anyway...today we had a lot of fun too! We got to be in our first ever BIKE PARADE! Our neighborhood organized it and Mommy didn't have any streamers but I still rode my little tricycle with all the kids anyway. Cara wanted to join in too but wasn't happy to just walk so Daddy ended up being in the parade as well! Then we enjoyed yummy watermelon and popsicles.







(Can you tell it was a little HOT?!)


This is my "boyfriend" Matt. Mommy used to keep hearing about how I would kiss him during primary. We just kept riding in circles and shamelessly flirting in front of our parents.


I finally let Cara try to ride. Her legs are still just a little too short.

Um busy anyone?

We failed to mention that last Sunday's post was our 350th post! Wow. That's a big milestone to just ignore. However it feels like we don't have enough time to blog lately and we can feel summer slowly slipping through our fingertips! So many last minute trips to cram in.

Last Friday Mommy and Daddy ran in The Chelsi Petersen Fun Run/Walk 5k. We did it last year too if you want to look up that post. Last year was Mommy's first ever race. This year was her second ever race and she beat her time by 3 minutes! She ran it in 28:28! And let me tell you, that's impressive because for the first two minutes all Cara did was scream and try and bail out of our stroller head first. So Mommy and Daddy spent that time taking Cara out and getting frustrated by having to hold a 22lb child and then she'd scream harder because she actually wanted to run in the race and have all of us stay together. So they'd put her back in the stroller or pass her to the other person, none of which was making Cara happy. This probably went on for like 3 minutes actually and finally Mommy told Cara "If you want to run, you have to get in the stroller!" To which Cara, sniffed and said in her quiet little voice, "okay" and stuck her thumb in her mouth and sat down contentedly. Daddy, pushing our stroller and with our start delay, still kicked Aunt Becca's hiney with a 25:40. She still kicked everyone else's butt though by a full two minutes or more. :)





(The run STARTS at 10 pm. WAY past our bedtime.)


And today we spent a delightful day up in Veyo with Grandma and Grandpa. I LOVE TO SWIM NOW! I had so much fun using my goggles to swim underwater (I still need to work on actually getting forward momentum and self propulsion!) I also had fun with my floaties in the DEEP end. Cara was pretty brave too jumping off the side into Mommy's arms. We couldn't say no to yummy food and watching Daddy climb either. We even went and played down by the creek, aptly named Crawdad Creek because of it's favorite inhabitant. It was a perfect day up there. And Cara was the only one who through a tantrum and it was because Mommy and Daddy wouldn't let her keep going over the rickety log bridge over the creek and up the metal ladder up the side of the rock. Parents. If they just would have let her, we might have had NO screaming at all this trip!

As an editor's note, there will be pictures posted tomorrow...they are all just on Grandpa's computer!

Sun Sun Sun

Our little monsoon season seems to be over. We had what felt like two weeks of constant thunder clouds accompanied by the very fun actual thunderstorms. It was nice because everything seemed to stay a lot cooler but I'm glad the crystal clear blue skies are back. We've been playing in Grandma and Grandpa's spa. I even figured out floaties which has opened up a whole new world of swimming for me. I jump off their waterfall now by myself and even go under water!



We also did a rare thing with Grandpa and that was go to the lake on a Saturday! Actually, Mommy drove Cara and I to the day use beaches at the lake, Daddy rode his bike and met us there, and Grandpa and Grandma rode up on their boat. They forgot the little kid lifejackets so only Daddy actually got on the boat and took his turn wake boarding but we had A LOT of fun in the sand. Thanks for playing with us Uncle Eric!



P.S. Mommy just wants to say that she LOVES that her camera is small and can be dropped or taken underwater but lately she has been very frustrated by the quality of photos. Of course maybe the fact that I've been stealing it and taking pictures with it and smudging the lens with my fingers has something to do with it.