Heart

Guest post by Mommy:

I kind of don't know where to begin or how to properly organize my thoughts. To say my heart is full would be somewhat of an understatement. Yesterday was a GREAT day. I bought fabulous new shoes that were supposed to be for my mom but look too good on my feet! My little girls shrieked and giggled and said "Again! Again!" with huge grins on their faces and I felt like I didn't stop smiling. We had a wonderful day at the pool and finished it off with dinner at my favorite restaurant with my littlest er youngest brother, Eric, who can be an amazingly engaging teenage boy. Simply terrific.

And yet, that's not exactly why my heart is full. My heart is full because of all the emotions I have been experiencing lately. Happiness was a big one yesterday. And gratitude. But also sorrow and heartache. If you'll notice on my so aptly titled "Blogs we stalk" links we had to add a blog. Together For Taleah. Taleah is my high school friends' little 2 and a half year old. She was just diagnosed with cancer a week ago. Her mom was my sister Angie's best friend through high school and I grew up down the street from her dad. They have another little boy who is not even a year old yet and life just handed them this card. My heart broke for them. She has cancer with a very high cure rate (ALL which is a form of leukemia) but their lives have been forever altered. They have to be germaphobic and overly cautious and endure watching their daughter handle poison being forced into her body. My worst nightmare.

And that's not all. I also recently found out that one of my very best friends from middle school has her only son battling his own tumors in his brain. He hasn't even hit his 2nd birthday! He's been undergoing chemo just to keep from going blind from the two NF1 (neurofibromatosis) tumors on his optic nerves and has already had one debulking procedure done on the main tumor which doesn't have a treatment that makes it so he almost can't open his eye! GAAAA! This isn't supposed to be happening to MY friends. And I mean that in I don't feel old enough to have to deal with very real issues of this magnitude.

I have been on dozens of blogs in the last week of families with little cancer cuties as they call them. All young families who's lives have been flipped upside down. Some have lost their little fighters. Others have had to endure unimaginable setbacks over and over but do eventually come out on top. Some have no answers and no way of knowing which treatment will work. And yet all of them speak so optimistically and have plenty of good to say.

So since September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month I thought I would take the time to post about my new found sense of gratitude for my healthy girls and give a shout out to all those little families of fighters. My girls try my patience daily and sometimes I am just so dang excited for bedtime and I don't say the nicest things to them or in the kindest tone. But right now, I am acutely aware of how that can change in an instant. (As I sit here typing, I can hear Siena singing "There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly" to Cara and has now moved on to singing "I Am A Child of God". They are supposed to be sleeping. Heart melting.)

Girls, I love you and your healthy little bodies. May you continue to squirm and wiggle your way onto my lap for a long time.

How did you usher in September?

(We were simply going to post the videos but it just needs to be said because it sounds like I'm screaming with terror...really it was screaming with joy. Cara LOVED the big green slide too.)

Status Quo

Not much has been going on here. We're pretty much doing our thing. Mommy works. Daddy works. And we get to play with Miss Michelle two days a week and Grandma one day a week. Uncle Eric has started playing football and so now we get to go play on bleachers and say Go Uncle Eric! and I see number 6! Oh and the first Utah football game is on TV right now. GO UTES!

Lava Point Camping Trip

Well I don't expect you to remember this but last August, Mommy and Daddy took us car camping for the very first time up at the top of Zion National Park (near Kolob Reservoir) at a great site called Lava Point. We didn't last through the night. Well I went on a back trip in March and LOVED sleeping in the tent with Mommy. So they decided to give it a go again. We considered trying another camping spot since this one is pretty far away if you are afraid you are going to have to pack up in the night but turns out, this is the only spot they could remember how to get to!

Unfortunately, we got off to a late start yesterday evening. We didn't pull out of town until almost 6 pm. And the sky was pretty murky over Zion. We pushed on. We arrived to a nearly empty campsite and ended up with two neighbors before the night was through! There was lightening in the distance and the occasional thunder. Mommy started setting up the giant tent borrowed from Grandpa while Daddy lit our fire. (Good thing we ended up with neighbors, Mommy hadn't packed ANYTHING to start a fire..oh except we bought firewood just in case it was all damp up on the plateau.) Cara and I played around on the rocks and helped Daddy with the fire. I was so EXCITED to go camping. I talked non stop about roasting hot dogs and marshmallows and sleeping in a tent.

We managed to eat some hot dogs and roast a couple marshmallows when the thunder storms came directly overhead and started raining. We all scrambled in to our cozy tent and read stories and sang songs and then laid down together listening to the rain. It took Cara and I a little while to settle down enough to zonk out but eventually we were OUT. Mommy and Daddy had fairly uncomfortable night because of odd sleeping positions and Mommy constantly worrying about the rain leaking in to the tent. The rain stopped about midnight and it really was a pleasant evening. It felt good to be up where you needed a jacket. We packed up really early and were headed down the mountain by about 7:30 am. We dropped Daddy and his bike off in Hurricane and then went home and cleaned up. All in all, a successful first family overnighter in the woods!

Here are the highlights (our battery died on the camera and I think the low battery effected the quality of these pictures..grrrr):

My Mommy has a problem

and it's called DIGITAL PHOTOS. Seriously. She just started working on the third volume of our blog book (through blurb.com's software, called Booksmart. Love it!) and found that when just the year of 2010 was slurped over it contained 438 pictures posted!!! That's more than one photo per DAY! Also, our beloved Mac sometimes runs a little slow and Daddy pointed out to Mommy that we must be coming close to filling the hard drive seeing as we have so many photos. She thought about it and looked at some numbers and we're probably averaging 1200 photos a year saved in Iphoto. 100 photos a month. And could some be deleted? Heavens yes! Will Mommy delete them? Heavens no! Why? Because all of them have some minute detail she couldn't possibly delete. (Have you noticed all the mosaics lately as her attempt to not look like she's posting as many?)

I told you. She has a problem. Oh and our camera isn't even that fantastic! You have to know how to caress it properly and press the button just right (I'm not kidding) to have it really be in focus. (It's great though because it goes underwater and can be dropped and frozen and it's still suppose to work!) Imagine if we had a NICE camera like Grandpa's or Aunt Rachel and Uncle Troy's or Aunt Whitley's? Well maybe we'd have less photos because they are kind of big and bulky...but they'd be beautiful and would have the capability of shooting 6 photos a second!

And to brag about my Mommy and kind of show of the technical difficulties we seem to have with the camera...look at this GORGEOUS wedding dress my Mommy got to wear last night at a Wedding Dress Fashion show with her Young Women's group. The picture is blurry because it was snapped hurriedly. But this dress was designed by the gal who wore it when she got married last year and then it was hand made for her! Mommy loved being in it. I think the black and white photo is better...you can't quite tell how blurry it is!

My Oma

Can I take a minute and tell you about my Oma? I think this post has been long overdue. I LOVE my Oma. She's the best sport. She will play tea party with me, swing with me, read to me...you name it...she'll do it. (Remember the water slides from the last post?) She's actually the one who introduced me to the zoo for the first time and is always willing to make a trek up there.



Everything I know about Oma is happy. Her house is filled with love and all kinds of unusual knick knacks that she lets me play with. I love her Russian wood eggs that she lets us pour out all over her floor by what feels like the hundreds. This last time up there she let me play with all these great rag dolls that she has. She is the first to pull out art stuff for us to play with. I don't think any of us cousins can think of AquaDoodle without thinking of Oma! (Actually I don't know if we'd even know what AquaDoodle was without her!) She also got these great tunnels for us to play with and always lets us take them outside and rough house in them. She goes out of her way to show us interesting things and make sure we learn about culture. All of her kids (the grown ups) know about art and musicals and classical music. She keeps making sure we get exposed to it too! I think she makes sure to be silly every day though to make sure there are still giggles in her and Apa's house!

Oh and my Oma loves to dance. Apa takes her dancing all the time. But she also loves to just move to the music and help us just move to the music. She's the first to sing or hum along or just stand up and start dancing.

I've been thinking about my Oma a lot lately because well, things are changing. Clear back when we were living in Oma and Apa's house, Oma and Apa came home early from their church assignment. Mommy and Daddy told me that it was because my Oma is sick. I don't really understand because she's still my same Oma at least to me. She has what the grown ups call "Alzheimer's". She's been really incredible during these last two years though. She's gone EVERYWHERE talking about how she is sick but that she still has a lot of life left. And it's true. We've done SO MUCH since she's supposedly been sick which has been my whole life! I love her and I'm glad that she's got a lot of "life after diagnosis". We're not done making memories but I just wanted everyone else to know that I have the best Oma in the world.

Water Parks and Tour of Utah Fun

We had a crazy fun weekend!! Mommy decided we needed to cross off one more thing on a summer to do list and that was going to a water park. (She debated for a long time whether that also included an amusement park, meaning we would go to Lagoon.) She finally decided on going to Seven Peaks, SLC formerly known as Raging Waters because she got a killer deal on ksl.com for two adult admissions, two tubes, two meal vouchers (with drinks!) and free parking all for $40. Basically a two for one type thing! So up we headed on Thursday night after work.

Before we went to the water park, we snuck in a quick trip to the zoo early in the morning with Aunt Rachel and cousins. (Hey the zoo opens at 9 am and the water park were losers and didn't open until 11 am!) That was fun but this time it felt like all the animals were hiding or their cages were being cleaned...boo! Anyway, we finished Friday out on a high note with the water park! We were so lucky because Oma came with us which was good because turns out she doesn't have to pay because she's such an awesome Grandma!



She even did water slides with us. She went down a couple with me and even one BIG one with Daddy and the tube!




However, Mommy was the craziest...she went down the two REALLY big slides. She didn't quite make it up and over the second hump on the the yellow one and had to go down backwards and crawl out of the middle!



Although I REALLY loved the water slides too. The water was a little cold sometimes but I still went down this red slide over and over even though every time I came out the bottom like this:



So much fun. We went to the zoo every day we were there actually. And so here is one picture from the zoo as a representation and mostly to show off Cara's cute new hairstyle. (Mommy says quick shout out to her friend Iva who always does this cute hairstyle with her little girls.)



And of course Daddy will tell you that the real reason we went up to SLC this weekend was to watch one of the stages of The Tour of Utah. It was really incredible to sit and watch these cyclists fly by. Daddy actually went up next to The Capitol Building where they would be going slower. We'll try and post a video here that will show A. How cute Cara and Emma are and B. How dang fast these bikers were going!