Growing Pains

Hazel is 9 months old! I can scarcely believe it! She is much too gung ho about this whole growing up thing - she isn't very much my little baby any more. Not only has she developed four new teeth, she has also decided to start walking and talking!! And while it's super cute when she says "uh-oh" and "go," it's also quite distressing. This week she got her bangs cut to keep them out of her eyes, and has started wearing little piglet-tails (her hair is still too short for full scale pig-tails) - so sophisticated!

This is her new do before and after naptime.
Isn't she the queen of funny faces?!

Oh, my little cutie-patootie, I sure do love you! I guess I'll just have to be extra careful about cherishing what fleeting time I have left of my little Hazel-baby.

An Outing in the Park

Zion had a free day on Saturday and the Farnsworths were kind enough to invite us to join them on their trek to Emerald Pools. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity to spend the day with Levi and other adults, but perhaps I should have checked the weather forecast before jumping so quickly as it was HOTTER THAN HOT! I think we narrowly avoided frying our brains!

These pictures were taken as we rested at the middle pool. Unfortunately, Tomy's smile didn't last much longer as we started the last leg to the upper pool. I think the .3 mile marker was put there as a cruel joke! If it weren't for the promise of the cool wading pool, I think we might have curled up in one of the few square feet of shade afforded on the sandy last leg and died!


=

Luckily the upper pool was as blessedly chilly as my sun-bleached brain imagined and we had so much fun splashing around, we didn't manage to take any pictures. Scenery was taken in, sand castles were built, logs were ridden, poliwogs were chased, and enough water was soaked up to take us back down the trail. Wisely, we returned via the shady route and managed to preserve the majority of our remaining gray matter. The ice cream also helped erase the negative effects of the blazing sun - that three dollar cone was worth EVERY CENT!


All in all, as this smile attests, we a had a very fun time. Tomy LOVED riding the "bus," Hazel appreciated all the "oh, she's so cute!" comments, Levi enjoyed the banter, and I welcomed all the sweet smiles Eli sent my way. Wrap it all up with a nice picnic at the park and we had a perfect summer day! Thanks Kevin, Paulette, and fam!

P.S. Isn't that little boy just cuter-than-cute?! I'm glad this picture is what will be remembered and not so much his incessant, three-year-old, whining. :o)

ramblings of a crazy woman

So... compared to many, I tend to blog a lot. It's my way to stay sane. No, really - I'd have to merit finally getting over a major hump in depression recovery to the blogosphere. I was still really struggling with not feeling like I had a supportive network of friends or a needed best friend. Of course, I had friends, but not like I needed - all the best candidates either lived far far away, had busy lives of their own, and/or couldn't quite give me what my crazy self craved. And frankly, I wasn't in the kind of space that made making friends very easy - desperate, unstable, closed-in, hypersensative, and incapable of taking the kinds of risk necessary to building healthy relationships and open lines of communication.

Then along came the blog - my own personal miracle - it was exactly what I needed. I could have a social life without necessarily having to be social. I could see family and find old friends. I could put whatever I wanted out there without any real risks or expectations (okay, so I really like comments and I wait for them like Christmas morning - but my world doesn't crumble around me if the comment box stays empty.) I could work at having a life again while living vicariously through the lives of others. I could slowly practice at being relatively normal in an atmosphere where people are almost always positive.

Meanwhile, it put me in a position to focus on the positives in my life as I framed my world for others to see. It provided me a chance to write and to feel the accompanying edge-of-your-seat, mind-tingling, confident sensation that was my almost constant companion through the school years. It gave me the chance to complete a small task well in a world where the thought of cleaning the kitchen well was too daunting a task to even start and hence even more defeating. Yes, it brought me a much needed measure of accomplishment and gratitude.

Yeah, I could go on and on about how blogging has saved my sanity... but I'll stop here because I CAN! and still feel happy about myself and life in general. What a lovely thing to be able to say honestly! Thanks again blogosphere and all you who venture therein for giving me the space I needed to recover a large measure of my happy, confident self!

"warn!"

This post has nothing to do with a notification of danger, potential harm, or risk. No, this is my son's way of telling me he wants something *warm* or microwaved. The real quandary is - why would he want me to microwave his mandarin oranges for breakfast this morning? Perhaps he knows something that I don't about the culinary wonder of warm oranges? I'll probably never know.

Pearly Whites

We've been having all sorts of dental adventures these days: I finished getting my root canal reworked last month, Hazel busted out her second tooth on Thursday and the third tooth today (with a couple more on the way), and Tomy got put under to get his teeth worked on Friday. Woo hoo!


As indicated by these charts, Hazel is a one-sided snagglepuss (a very cute one, at that!) and Tomy had something fixed on EVERY SINGLE TOOTH (including 3 pulpotomies and 4 shiny caps.) They've both been pretty brave about all the pain and have cute little smiles to show for it. Let's all pray that Hazel's teeth have more enamel than Tomy's!

Who Sees These in Trees?

Our trees are full of many things: pecans, hummingbirds, robins, doves, etc. but our neighbor's tree takes the cake!
They've got goats in their tree! (Is this anything like having bats in one's belfry?)

We've been the goats' neighbors for four years now, and this is the first year I've seen them climbing the tree. It has been so FUNNY to watch the little teeny kids figure it out and try to best each other.

The tree climbing goats are much older now. I've been trying to get a picture of them playing in the tree since they were first born this Spring, but they keep running away from my camera! I finally captured the white goat doing her "king of the mountain" routine, but it took a drive-by camera phone shot to get one actually climbing in the tree!.

Now, I don't know about you, but the tree goats never fail to bring this Sesame Street classic to mind.



It also makes me think of the rare and graceful push-me-pull-you, who, according to Dr. Doolittle, has very nimble feet from climbing up and down Mount Everest. Random, I know, but that's just how my mind works.

And Then There Were None

Our babies hatched and grew and grew.

Then came June and the largest flew.

The smallest didn't want to be all alone
so within the week, he too was gone.

Oh empty nest, I've the bittersweet blues!
But wait, here comes some happy news!

A brand new nest with eggs therein,
and within a month we have new twins!!

I wanted to post these pictures since early June, but the month was CRAZY busy fun. It all worked out in the end though, 'cause now we have cute new birds to show. We just noticed their sweet little beaks poking out of their nest yesterday! What fun!

A Camping We Will Go

Our trip with the Darrington Family to Panguitch Lake was ever so much fun. We only made it up for 24 hrs. but that was enough to refresh my spirits and enjoy some family bonding.


The mountain was beautiful, cool, and green - a nice change from the triple digit weather in La Verkin. These were both taken in the meadow behind our campsite.



Tomas was in seventh heaven having cousins to traipse about with, and thanks to Taya's mothering instincts, I was in seventh heaven too! She took very good care of Tomas and Hazel, and made one excellent (not to mention cute) scout leader.

Hazel loved all the attention and dirt. She also appreciated that Brother was being occupied by others. This freed mom up to hold Hazel exclusively and also served to keep Hazel safe from Tomy's rambunctious attentions (that was the nice way to say pestering.) What a cute little goofy girl!



Thanks family for feeding us, loving us, and fixing our Jeep after I managed to mess up the front bumper! In other words, thank you all for a great day! It was wonderful to see you!

Tomas Turns Three

Tomas' birthday was on Friday and what a wonderful day it was!

The day found us camping near Panguitch Lake where Tomy got to spend the morning adventuring with cousins, riding 4-wheelers, and fixing the "brokden" Jeep.


Naptime magically transported us from the mountain to our home so we could be with Daddy. Daddy took us to BK where Tomy got a kids meal with TWO orders of CHICKEN NUGGETS! After dinner we went to Grandma & Grandpa Stratton's house to ride the tractor and visit.



At the last minute, Mommy and Daddy got called to help clean the temple, so Tomy got to stay up late watching his recent favorite - Brer Rabbit. All the excitement made for a difficult Independence Day morning - but he managed to have a good holiday too, but that's a different post.

proud to be an american!

At church on Sunday, someone brought up the idea that even though we're not supposed to be proud, she was proud to be an American. Someone else then suggested that instead of being proud we should be grateful. What a great insight! Surely the word pride denotes and connotes a number of things other than a sinful type of pride, but I feel that I personally have little right to be proud to be an American. I have done little, besides being birthed in the USA, to merit such a feeling of superiority or achievement, especially compared to the many other people who have worked and fought to create and preserve this nation.

So today I wholeheartedly say I am THANKFUL! I am thankful to be born a citizen of the United States of America with all the freedoms, opportunities, rights, privileges, and comforts said citizenship affords. I am thankful for the people who served and now serve this country - whether it be in the armed forces, the government, or public works. I am thankful to my ancestors for coming to this land and building a precious heritage of faith and freedom. I am thankful for God's sustaining and sanctifying hand (even if some citizens try to brush that hand aside.) And lastly, I am thankful to be able to raise my children in this beautiful and bounteous home of the free and the brave.

How much better our lovely country would be if its people could all be a little less proud and a little more grateful!

PS Another personal insight I gathered on Sunday is that many of our country's patriotic hymns are fundamentally prayers asking for God's grace, protection, etc. Just check out the lyrics to America the Beautiful.