Emergency Preparedness and General Conference

I heard an idea recently and decided to try it out for a General Conference tradition. We ate the old food in our 72 hour kits, to rotate in new food. Most of it was expired, but edible (we're all still alive, so that's good). Most of it was bought when Elise was allergic to dairy, so that's quite a while ago.

We had:
Pop tarts ("Brown Sugar Cinnamon" held up better than "Frosted Strawberry")
Canned pineapple and mandarin oranges (both were a hit with the kids)
Vienna Sausages (surprisingly they ate these!)
Quaker chewy granola bars (I thought they tasted stale, but the girls ate them)
Chicken noodle soup (still good)
Shelf stable soy milk drink boxes (yuck!)

There wasn't nearly enough for 3 days of good eating. We pretty much had it all for lunch between sessions.

Down on the Farm

These pictures are from a random picnic we had at Wheeler Farm with some of our neighbors. We really love that place, because it's free, educational, it doesn't take a lot of planning to go there, and I always feel like I'm being a good mom when I take my kids on outings!

I wish I knew what Elise was thinking while making that face. Something like "Ew, do you know where that grass has been?"

Elise is so fond of this cute kid who lives in our ward and is in her preschool class. I try not to make a big deal or call it a crush because she's only 4, but aww how cute.

Lydia and the pigs.

What a fun group!

Mike's Knee Surgery

Four surgeons were discussing their work.
The first said, "I think accountants are the easiest to operate on. You open them up and everything inside is numbered."
The second said, "I think librarians are the easiest. You open them up and everything inside is in alphabetical order."
The third said, "I like to operate on electricians. You open them up and everything inside is color-coded."
The fourth surgeon said, "I like Engineers. . . they always understand when you have a few parts left over at the end. . . "


As I explained in this entry a while back, Mike tore his ACL and had to have surgery.

The surgery went well (no left-over parts, ha ha), and his recovery is going well too. He had the operation at the very end of August, just before Labor Day weekend so he would have to take fewer days off.

He was supposed to spend a whole week off his feet with his leg elevated before going back to work, and he really was a good patient for all the pain he was in, but it was one heck of a week. I felt like I was going up and down the stairs fifty times a day. We got a trial Netflix membership so he would have lots of movies to keep him occupied, and most of his time was spent in the basement.

The surgeon and physical therapist have told him that everything should be back to normal by about February.

First Day of School

Shuffle Ball Change, Princess Twirls

Elise is back in dance, and this year she and McKenna are taking a tap class. Cindy is their teacher. All of a sudden one day, Elise informed me (as she held up her right hand) "This is my right hand." I thought, wow, where did she learn that? I certainly didn't teach it (sometimes I have to think really hard myself about which is which!) Apparently she picked it up from tap class, cool. Now I can give real directions about stuff like which button to push on the cd player if she wants to skip to the next song.

Lydia just started her first ballet class, with Savannah. It is so funny watching their teacher interact with the little 2 year olds. She talks in this enthusiastic high voice, and everything has a cute name, like "Princess twirls".

I feel really lucky that my girls can have this experience. When I was little I took one ballet-type class, and a clogging class, and I always wished I could have done more. Cindy is kind enough to trade us tuition at her studio for babysitting McKenna and Savannah 2 afternoons a month.

Swimming Lessons

After putting it off all summer, I enrolled Elise in the last available week of swimming lessons at the local middle school pool (1/2 session for 1/2 price!). Her friends Maddie and Emilie took the class with her.

Last summer I put Elise in these same lessons (a whole 2-week session), and they recommended last year that she complete the beginner level again. Same thing happened this year! But she loved it, so it's all good. I think next year I'll just go ahead and move her up a level regardless.

Hanging Out with Cousins

In August we visited the Thanksgiving Point Children's Garden with Krista and her kids. It was our first time there, and it was pretty neat, if a little crowded (we went on a discounted day).

Owen helping Lydia down the lighthouse ladder

Krista and cute little Eliza

The rest of the kids
By the way, that little door in the picture below Elise and Watson is totally fake, but Owen convinced Elise that he had seen it open before, and that there was treasure inside. (So fun to have older boy cousins so she can experience this kind of big brother teasing. Reminds me of Dave.) Elise began crying on the way home that we needed to go back because she never got to see inside.

Afterward, I took the girls to Cabelas because everyone keeps telling me how neat the store is, and we're not in Lehi all that often. They have displays of stuffed animals (like the real kind, stuffed by a taxidermist, not like this moose). Elise and Lydia were fascinated.

The Big Ultrasound

Well, our baby looks healthy, is still a boy, and was so cute during the ultrasound! I've never gotten such good profile pictures from an ultrasound. The tech was so funny, she kept commenting on how people would kill for such a beautiful scan, so easy to see, cooperative baby etc. At one point she called him "ripped" and pointed out his bicep, lol.
He is a thumbsucker!

DC Trip

Sometimes for work, Mike has to travel to Virginia, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, either for meetings that can't be conducted long distance, or to test his projects. We've always thought it would be fun if I could go along sometime, and I finally got the chance a couple weeks ago. We used a $99 companion airfare thing, and the company paid for car and hotel, plus a little of the food, so it was pretty affordable. Mike's mom and stepdad were wonderful about taking the girls for the 4 days.
Mike and his coworker, Ron, were needed at their company's main office in Virginia. It's close enough to Washington DC that Ron's wife Mary and I were able to take the bus and metro in to sightsee for the 2 days our husbands were working. Here are pics of some of the neat things I saw. I had only been to DC once before, and I was only 7 at the time.

The Washington Monument, on my first morning there. That day Mary and I also went to the National Art Gallery, the Native American History Museum, the cafeteria in the Department of Agriculture (a real find), and the Air and Space Museum.

This waterfall is part of the Native American History Museum. I should have taken some pictures of the exhibit we looked at. It was awesome, they had all these beaded and buckskin dresses and descriptions of how and why they were made.
That night after dinner, we got caught driving in the wettest rainstorm I've ever seen. The windshield wipers were on as fast as they could go, but it was impossible to see. When we got back to our hotel, the power was out. In the lobby they were passing out free glowsticks, sodas, and snacks.

On our second morning, we went to the National Arboretum. I took a picture of this flower because it's named Dahlia 'Classic Elise'. I thought she would like that. After the Arboretum, we went back to the Air and Space Museum to see a few more things (like the Wright Brothers exhibit - amazing stuff!), had lunch at that cafeteria again, and then went on a tour of the U.S. Capitol Building. Senator Hatch's office was kind enough to let us come on the private tour, on very short notice. As we were waiting for the tour to begin, the Senator himself came down the hallway and greeted us all. He doesn't shake hands, because he hurt his wrist, so he does "bones". How cool is that? Even if his wrist was not injured, it's an awesome idea for avoiding germs.On the tour (which was on Pioneer Day, incidentally) I got my picture taken with Brother Brigham.I also got to stand in the exact center of Washington DC!

After the tour, Mary and I went to the National Museum of Natural History, where we saw the Hope Diamond. I tried to take a picture of it, but that darn glass case made it difficult!

That evening, our husbands joined us and we saw a few more sights with them. Mary and I had already walked our feet off, but we decided to walk down the mall and see the Washington Monument, World War II memorial, Lincoln Memorial, and Korean War Memorial.

Mike and I in front of the Smithsonian "Castle"Mary and I with President LincolnThe monuments were so beautiful after dark.On our last day, before our flight, we visited Arlington National Cemetery.The tomb of the Unknown Soldier is one of the things I remembered from when I was 7. It was neat to come back and learn about it from an adult perspective.Here is Mike in front of the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial (aka Iwo Jima Memorial). If he looks a little grumpy it's because I was trying to squeeze in this one last thing before heading to the airport, and he was sure I'd make us miss our flight. :)

Introducing the newest member of our family

No, not that one, he won't be here for another 4 months.
This one's a girl I think (her name is Sienna), and she's 200 inches long and 4,120 lbs.

Yes, that's right, I can now sign my kids up for soccer, because I have a soccer mom vehicle. :) We had been contemplating buying a bigger car sometime before the new baby comes, but the decision was forced upon us when our second car became undriveable. A really easy repair turned into a total loss because one of the bolts on the thermostat housing was completely stuck, and broke while Mike was unscrewing it. So he got a bolt extractor, and that broke inside the bolt!
We took that as a sign that it was time to buy a new car.