You're in luck!

I was just working on a video/photo montage for our 10th wedding anniversary (that I will post on Monday), when a friend asked to see the "construction zone" picture up close. Well, here it is. (Click on photo to see the full-size version.) The quality isn't that terrific, because it's an old photo and our scanner doesn't work too well. What I remember about that day was that it was hot, and we had to walk around all the construction to get to the area where we took some of the photos - Temple Square was a total mess, and we were both sweating bullets!

Family Reunion

We got home yesterday, after a (long) week on the road, camping and attending the Bake Family Reunion. I'll write more on the reunion and all our escapades later, but I wanted to send out a great big "THANK YOU!!" to all the brothers that shared their horses, 4-wheelers, time and patience with all the little kids to make the reunion so much fun for them. Speaking for our little ones, at least, riding the horses and 4-wheelers was the hit of the weekend, next to getting to play with all their cousins.
As always, those of you that are interested in seeing all the pictures from the past week, feel free to check out this link to the web album:

Bake Family Reunion July 2009 and Stanley, ID

Help me!!

Maybe our family blog isn't quite the right forum for this kind of a post, but I'm having issues with Sophie and thought I'd write about it and see if anyone out there has any valuable advice or feedback.

My six year old little girl is obsessed with death and dying, and I do mean obsessed. She talks about it all the time, things like she wonders how many different ways people can die, and her ideas range from falling asleep on the floor and never getting up, to having your heart break and you die, to getting shot, to natural disasters, and on and on. If it rains or thunderstorms, she thinks her dad and I are going to die, and she says, "if a child dies, they are a littlest angel, and if a grown-up dies, they are a big angel". It's gotten to the point where, for about the past two to three weeks, she refuses to sleep because, as she said (with tears and sadness in her voice): "When I'm asleep it feels like I'm dead!!" She thinks if she sees a bug in her room, it's going to crawl on her while she sleeps and she'll die. She says she thinks raccoons are going to come in through the attic and kill her while she's in bed. Any sound she hears, the wind, the neighbors, a bump or scuffle outside, and she's out her bedroom door screaming for help. She now has to have a nightlight, the door open and someone sleeping in her room with her for her to be able to fall asleep. She sometimes talks about it with a paralyzing fear that she, or someone in our family is going to die, and other times she just brings it up like casual conversation, as though she just has a morbid curiosity about the subject. The other day she was asking me all kinds of questions like whether or not your spirit feels hungry or thirsty after you're dead, or if she'll have to sleep when she's dead. We have to be really careful about what we say around her because she picks up on everything and even the smallest things add to her unrealistic fears, and that includes talking about when anyone in our family is sick (because in her mind, they might die), or something we saw on the news or read in the paper, or if something happens to someone we know, she will talk about it for weeks, as though she's afraid the same thing is going to happen to her. One day recently her brothers were watching a show on Animal Planet about dangerous sea creatures. She came to me crying that they just "have to change the channel because it's scaring me!" Apparently there's some kind of flat fish out there that "if you don't watch your step in the water and you land your foot on one, it may be your last!" (At least that's what she kept repeating to me for days afterward.)

I'm starting to get a little worried, and just plain frustrated, because though I'm trying to be patient and explain things to her the best I can, understanding her sensitivity to the subject, I'm frankly tired of her crying every night about going to bed because she's scared and waking me up 2 or 3 times a night to tell me she's scared. I feel at my wit's end. I've tried giving her a special necklace to wear only at night, which she calls her "Jesus necklace", because I told her that when she puts it on she will remember that Jesus is always protecting her. I've also tried letting her listen to some of her favorite music when she goes to bed, hoping it will help her relax, and we've started not letting her watch any t.v. right before bed, to see if that helps. So far, none of those things have been the solution.

Chris keeps saying it's just a phase, but I want to make sure she gets through this "phase" unscathed. What do you other moms think? Anyone else's kids talk about "death" all the time??

More family fun.

I know I post a lot of camping pictures, particularly in the summer, but also at other times of the year. I guess it's just something we do a lot of, and I have so much fun capturing moments of the kids enjoying just being kids. I overheard them talking to each other this morning saying: "Being a kid is way better than being a grown-up, I bet. All we have to do is play." I actually really do hope that my kids feel that is their reality. So on that note, here are some pictures from our most recent campout to a place called Big Springs, just on the other side of the mountains south of us. When we arrived at the campground, the camp host came to let us know that there had been two recent black bear sitings right in the campground. We were on the lookout the whole time. In fact, the second night we were all sitting by the fire when Chris was startled by a sound he heard, and it was "all he wrote", as they say. The kids jumped up and ran into the trailer, and it took us about an hour, maybe more, to get Sophie to settle into sleep.Another highlight, sort of as an addendum to my previous post, we had another tooth loss incident. Noah was outside at the picnic table eating his scrambled eggs in the morning, Chris and I were in the camper, when he came up to the screen door and announced, with his mouth still full of food: "My tooth is in my eggs, my tooth is in my eggs!!" As he said this, a tooth plopped out of his mouth onto his paper plate; so gross!

Toothlessness

It seems that with three kids between the ages of 6 and 9, the Toothfairy is a frequent visitor to our home. Tonight she shall be making an appearance for the benefit of two, both Sam and Sophie have teeth stealthily placed under their pillows. Now if they would just go to sleep...

Happy Birthday, Zipper!

Today is (approximately) Zipper's first birthday. We're not sure of the exact date, we just know it's in July, so the kids decided a while ago that July 10th would be the day to celebrate from now on. He was not too happy with me for making him wear this hat, but he kept it on long enough for me to get a picture at least! Happy B-day, Zipper-doo!

I love summer!

The past few days have been a little busy. Yesterday my Activity Days co-leader and I had our little 8-11 year old girls do some work in town to help out with the cleanup after our recent flooding problems. It was a hot, laborious effort, and it didn't seem like we accomplished a whole lot in the time we spent, considering what a muddy, smelly mess the flooding left behind.

In the meantime I had a realtor call saying he had some folks who wanted to see our house, so I had to hurry and get things cleaned and straightened. I guess it worked out perfectly, timing wise, because we had decided on an impromptu trip down to SLC, so I was able to get the house ready, then get the kids out of the way for the showing.

So when I got back from Activity Days, Chris and I packed up the car and the kids and headed to Utah to see a friend of mine from Michigan that I haven't seen in ages. I found out she was going to be there for a wedding and it was so great that it just worked out that we were able to make the short trip at the last minute. One of the things I just love about summertime is the flexibility in our schedule. I had the BEST time visiting with her and laughing just like old times. We went to the park at Bridal Veil Falls in Provo, which also brought back some memories of when Chris and I were first engaged and spent time there as young "lovebirds"! ;)

"Weird, wild stuff!"

As you can see from these photos, we've had some crazy weather around here lately. This morning it was 80 degrees and sunny, but this afternoon a strong storm moved in and caused some serious hail and wind. Chris was on duty and I figured he was busy as I heard sirens up and down our road all afternoon. Apparently the bursts of hail and rain caused some major flash flooding here in our town and along the Rapid Creek area. When he came home from work (late) this evening, he showed us some of the footage from his dash cam. The flooding caused a bridge to collapse, the creek to overflow, rock slides, washing out the roads, flooding in town, including the only grocery store, and several homes were flooded. He even got video of a little boy standing in the flooded street after the hail had stopped, swoop down and pull a fish up out of the water with his bare hands! Crazy! We, of course, felt the drama here in our home as well. Though, thankfully we didn't experience any flooding into the house, we did have some on our back porch area, and at one point when the hail was pounding the glass in all the windows, Sammy and Sophie started crying with fear that the windows would break and the hail would fill the house. More of this weather predicted for tomorrow, uh oh....right about now I'm sort of wishing I was back in southern California...

Royal Steve

This morning while the kids were biding their time waiting for the July 4th parade to begin, they decided to play "Star Wars". At some point, Sophie came to me, with a light saber on her hip and the dog in her arms and said: "Mom, hear this and remember it: I am Princess Leia, and Zipper is my Royal Steve!" (I assume she meant "loyal steed", but maybe I missed something in the Star Wars movies?!)Here are some pictures of the kids making a killing at the Inkom Candy Parade. (And yes, that's really what they call it.) Happy Independence Day, everyone!

Our first big summer trip.

We survived our 7 day long road trip to California, via Las Vegas, and we had a lot of fun. First of all, I have to say that the kids did amazingly well during all the driving and travel. I was surprised and expected a lot more whining and complaining than occurred. I think it helped that they were all so happy just to get to do so many new and exciting things, and to get to spend time with our loved ones.
We began the first part of the trip by driving through to Las Vegas, about 8 hours from our house. We stayed two nights in the Excalibur hotel, and while in Vegas I was able to visit with a friend of mine that I haven't seen in over 12 years. It was so great to see her and meet her two babies; it was definitely a highlight of our trip, at least for me.
While we were in Las Vegas, we also did a few of the other family-friendly activities, like watching the fountain show at the Bellagio hotel, and seeing the lion exhibit at the MGM Grand. Mostly the kids just wanted to spend their time at the pool at the Excalibur. As hotel pools go, it was definitely above and beyond average. There were actually 3 separate pools, two with waterfalls and slides.
After leaving Vegas, we headed to southern California. Our final destination was Corona Del Mar, but we made a few stops on the way there. Since Chris and I both served our missions in that area, we wanted to see a few of the places that brought back memories for each of us. The kids were a little less enthused about this part of the trip, and more eager to get to "grandma and grandpa's house", where they would get to spend time at the beach!We then spent 4 days enjoying time in California, where the weather was perfect and there were flowers and palm trees everywhere, which made me very happy! We did spend almost an entire day on the beach, where the kids never seemed to tire of playing in the sand or trying to "catch a wave"! Unfortunately, that much time in the sun, despite multiple applications of sunblock, left Chris and the three older kids with horrible sunburns. Chris and Sophie both had some blistering, and they were all in some pain the next day. We decided to stay out of the sun for the most part, after that, and went to an awesome children's museum called the Science and Discovery Center. We were able to occupy several hours there.On the drive home, we took one last detour through Apple Valley, California, in the desert. Apple Valley was where Chris and I were both serving when he was my zone leader for a few months, and being there made us both wax nostalgic. It felt great to be in that area again.
Finally we were on the road again and headed home, but by the time we got to St. George, UT after driving about 6 hours, we felt too worn out to drive the remaining 6 hours and decided to stay the night at a hotel. It was a relaxing respite before ending our trip back in Idaho.
By the time we got home, we had over 500 pictures on our camera. After editing and deleting duplicates, etc., I've narrowed it down to 239 photos. I'll post a few of my favorites with this blog, but for those of you that may be interested, click on the following link to go to the web album with all the pictures from our trip:

VegasCalitripJune2009

Now it's time to start preparing for over a week of camping and a family reunion in a couple of weeks!