The last week of summer

First of all, I want to thank all of you for all your wonderful comments on my last post, either in the comment section or in person.  It looks like I am certainly not alone in many respects!  You guys are so sweet, and appreciate your votes of confidence.  Things are going well in that department.  I think I am just about out of the nausea stage - something I had actually never experienced before.  The part that always gets me is the irrational exhaustion of the first trimester.  My husband has been working out an hour or more a day, putting in a full day at work, and sometimes coming home to a mess because I was too tired to get off the couch the whole afternoon.  And then he will stay up an hour or two later than me every night.  It would be funny, except my house is a mess.

In the meantime, we have been cramming a few last things into our summer lately.  School started for everyone else this week - but Kindergarteners start a week late, so we had one last chance.  But first, a picture or two from a while ago.  We went to a wedding for Christopher's cousin up in Idaho, and I didn't have my camera with me for the reception.  But I had to post a couple of these pictures, despite the terrible, iPhone quality.

Kaitlyn made friends with Christine when we went to Lagoon, and I think it only took her a couple of seconds to remember her when they saw each other again.  Christine is such a sweetheart.  She spent the whole day letting Kaitlyn doddle on her notebook and tell her stories, and then when she caught the bouquet she gave it to Kaitlyn (who refused to set it down the rest of the night).  And since there was dancing that night at the reception, Kaitlyn ditched her shrug and shoes and spend the rest of the night prancing with her best friend.

So cute.    Anyway, we had a ward swim party one week, and a company swim party the next week, both of which the kids enjoyed until we got kicked out at 10pm.  In fact, we were out so late the second time that we missed Daddy running a half marathon the next morning, since he was basically done by the time the kids woke up and the race was 45 minutes away.  I still feel guilty about that.  But we did get to go to an awesome birthday party for Christopher's cousin's son.  They had it at Thanksgiving point and when she said it was cowboy themed, I figured we would give the old costumes one last go.  "I am WOODY!" 

Kaitlyn wasn't entirely sure about the pony eating from her hand, but Tyler must have done five or six handfuls.  He thought that was awesome.

And of course, the pony rides are always a huge hit.  We were hoping Kaitlyn would raise her hat in a "Yee-haw!" like she did on the carousel, but she was much too serious about this task.

This was my Photoshop fun picture for the day.  Christopher wanted to know why it is all faded, but that's how all Old West photos are, silly!

After pizza, a pinata, and cake, it was time for the water fight.  Here is Kaitlyn, running around shooting other people - and Tyler, seeing what sort of designs he could make on the concrete.

This week we had a very special treat.  One of my brothers came to visit!  Well, really, he came to visit our Grandfather in Salt Lake, who keeps bouncing back from illness but at 96 really won't last much longer.  But we got to have them up at our cabin for the last day or so they were in town.  Unfortunately, it was pretty hot even at the cabin, the bugs were out, and their family is "city folk" as Kathy put it.  Mostly they panicked at the bugs and spent the day down in the cool basement.  But Kaitlyn was sure happy to have a new friend.  Megan, despite being a head taller than her, is only 5 months older.  So they had a blast with the water balloons, or chasing each other around, or playing "house" upstairs.

And there weren't many bugs out once the breeze picked up in the evening, so we had a great campfire.

These girls were so cute on the swing!

Another thing on my "to-do" list was helping out Christopher's sister with some family pictures.  They didn't want any fancy outfits or studio shots, but they wanted to get a picture while Christian's twin girls were in town (they live overseas with Mom the rest of the year).  Their littlest one is notorious for not paying any attention in pictures, and Kathy has an amazing talent for having her eyes shut in every picture ever taken of her.  But we actually got this shot - on my second try!  They didn't care that there are fruit snacks in the shot - everyone is smiling, and that is what counted.  I still don't think I will ever do portraits for people professionally, but it was fun to play around with it all morning and get pictures of each of them.

And then today, Christopher pulled off a major feat.  This triathalon was a half-IronMan distance one.  That means he swam 1.2 miles, biked 56 miles, and then finished it off with a half-Marathon.  Each segment blows my mind.  I mean, who measures a swim in miles?  Most people swim a few hundred meters for a workout!  It took him just about 6 hours to complete this task, and while I don't think he was thrilled with the time (the bike felt great, so he pushed it a little, and then ended up walking quite a bit of the run), today he was just proud of himself for finishing the beast.

Of course, I once again missed him on the bike, and then every single picture I took of him running was out of focus.  Seriously, camera, we don't get many shots at this, so if you could not focus on the car behind him, that would be helpful.  But I am posting this last one anyway.

I have always seen people run with their kids into the finish line, and Christopher usually isn't up for that because he tries to leave a little umph and "finish strong" - much faster than toddlers.  But when I saw how dead he was halfway through the run, I figured a few extra seconds would be okay today.  Both Tyler and Daddy were ecstatic to have a running mate at the end.  If there wasn't a bright, in-focus orange pole in the way, this would be one of my favorite shots ever.

And now, time to start school!  Tyler starts on Tuesday (bus comes at 7:45am!), and then Kaitlyn will start after Labor Day.

More honesty than you will see all year.

One day a few of us were discussing family blogs and the honesty thereof. There are some people who are bluntly honest as they write about their struggles in life, and other people seem to write what we entitled a "year-long Christmas card", filled with nothing but "look with how wonderful my life is!" I have to admit that my blog probably sides toward the latter most of the time. I mean, I try to be real here, but I also want to record the things that I want to look back and remember. That doesn't include things like "I yelled at my kids this morning and had a meltdown".


But today, you are getting honesty. 'Ya ready? Because this will be long. But I promise it is worth it at the end.  (I can practically hear most of you scrolling, saying "oh, that's nice", and moving on.  Don't worry, I won't take it personally.)

There are things I love about living in Utah, but I have to also admit there are parts of the Mormon culture that I struggle with. (Culture is not the same as doctrine. Let's get that out of the way.) My mother can tell you, complete with examples she finds funny now, that I have a rather independent streak in me. That might surprise some of you, as it only comes up once in a while, but really kicks in when it comes. When I was growing up, that worked out just fine. I was different from anyone else in my high school because I didn't drink, swear, sleep around, or whatever else. I liked being different. Sometimes my independent streak got the best of me, and I rejected doing something I otherwise would have done because the wrong person told me to - and I didn't want to feel like I was doing it because they said so. But otherwise, it worked out okay.

But here, I don't have a clear way to be different from the expected. I think every culture or neighborhood or clique has things "everyone" should be, whether that is wearing the right name brand clothing as a status symbol, or eating the right thing, or whatever else. Utah is no exception, to be sure. Women, in particular, are somehow all supposed to be crafty, thrifty, obsessed with gardening and canning everything that comes from their garden, madly in love with staying home with their kids to play preschool games all day, supporting their husband in whatever they do, kind, giving, modest, devoutly religious, have 5 or so kids, be an immaculate housekeeper . . . I'm probably even missing a few. But I can tell you that each of those have been pushed specifically in our culture. I'm pretty sure every single one of those has been part of Relief Society meetings in my memory. And none of those characteristics are bad things.  So rebelling against them and being different doesn't seem right.

But . . . some of those are not me.

Sure, I'm crafty. I adore my husband. I think I do pretty well at some of the others. But gardening? Ugh. I tried a garden this year. I planted 6 strawberry plants and half of them died within a week, no matter what water or compost I gave them. The rest gave off berries the size of my pinky nail. The corn never grew, and even the cucumber withered and died. I think my entire produce will consist of the tomatoes that Kaitlyn didn't pick three weeks ago (she gave me a ziploc bag full of little green ones) and one pumpkin I can't remember why I planted. And you know what? That's okay. It would have been nice to have some organic produce of my own here, but we will live and I will still be a good person.

And over the last few years I have had to similarly accept some other things about me. One in particular has been hard to swallow. Ever since I was little, I heard people tearfully talk about how much they loved being a mom. There was nothing greater in the world than being a mom. People always said that they were overwhelmed by how much they loved the little tiny being from the moment it was placed in their arms in the hospital. And so, when I was pregnant with Tyler, I figured the same thing would happen to me. I was a bit distracted by the hectic job that I adored, but assumed that by the time I ended up holding a little baby in a hospital, it would be all I ever wanted the rest of my life.

I think many other people actually do have that life-altering moment. But I have to tell you, I didn't. I remember, very clearly, waking up early before they brought Tyler back from the nursery to be fed. I remember looking around the room and thinking that it seemed like a very odd dream yesterday. And I knew that if I never saw that little being again, I wouldn't really miss him. However, I looked down at my watch and knew I really should have been at work in a few minutes. I was missing that.

For years I felt that this made me a rather terrible person. Or at least it must mean I am a bad mother. I have grown to love both of my kids over the years, because spending this much time with them and serving them will do that pretty automatically. But I am still not the mom who cries because she wants to go home early from a vacation with her husband because she misses her kids. I have no problem leaving them with a babysitter or other person that I know I can trust. I've never been "baby hungry" in my life. And I spent a lot of time praying for all of that to be changed. I would pray, I would fast, and I would feel guilty about it.

I think it is only in the last year I have come to realize that perhaps I need to accept this about me, just like accepting that I am a terrible gardener. It doesn't mean I am going to give up growing plants or taking care of the ones in my yard, but it does mean I'm going to stop feeling guilty because I can't brag about how many pounds I canned from my garden today. And in this case, I think lacking that inward "I love my kids more than life itself and can't wait to have as many as possible" feeling doesn't mean I can't be a good mom to my adorable little people. Sure, I'm not a perfect mom. In fact, writing this post has been broken up by an emergency bath because Tyler decided to change his own pull-up to get rid of the poop, but only managed to spread it. (Oh, how I love potty training.) I might not be the mom who loves playing preschool games and making craft projects all day long. In fact, I can't say I even feel very comfortable in my church role with 8 year old girls. They can be fun, but . . . whoa. Not my thing, really. I felt quite at home in a high school classroom, and like a fish out of water with a group of little kids. But I think that overall, I am a fairly good mamma.

In this process, we have also had to take stock in what we really wanted for our family. When we started out, Christopher and I talked about liking the idea of three kids. It just seemed . . . like a good size to us. Three is small enough to be manageable, but large enough to have siblings to play with. But once we had two, we realized we really, really, liked two. I have two hands, there are two of us, and we felt quite evenly matched to the task most days. The real kicker was Tyler. When we first started getting help at Kids on the Move, it helped right away. And then he didn't make it into the district preschool, and we spent the next six months trying to find a preschool that would help. Once he did make it into the district preschool, I spent the next year agonizing because it wasn't helping. I kept thinking that he just needed more time to settle into it, or I needed to try and do it all myself at home, but in the end it just wasn't the right fit for what he needed. All of my emotions were drained into this endless well of helplessness and guilt, and so even though it would have been the right timing to have another child, it just wasn't even on our radar. And I wasn't sure it ever would be. I slowly got used to telling people that we were probably done, because I couldn't imagine the stress of adding a newborn on top of figuring out how to help Tyler.

Thankfully, this last year has been exactly what Tyler needed. And what I needed! Suddenly I felt like a capable person again. I could go help out in his classroom and see what can be done with these kiddos to try things at home. I was going on summer outings and seeing actual ways to use these ideas in my real life. Tyler had a teacher this year that would call me in her spare time just to find out what I had tried at home, and tell me how things she was trying were working for her. I was learning how to help my little guy. I cannot tell you the burden that lifted from me in all of this.

Through all of this, I have been feeling the guilt of "are we done?" In this Mormon culture, I had to honestly ask myself, "are people allowed to stop at two?" The only people I know who finished with two kids were actually unable to have more, for one reason or another. Does accepting that I have not and never will be "baby hungry" mean I shouldn't have more kids? In the end, since I didn't have the emotions tied into it, we ended up looking at it logically. And all of my logical reasons to stick with two kids boiled down to "two is easier than three".

My illogical reason, unfortunately, is my stubborn independence. Part of me wanted to prove that a normal, good person could stop at two children in this culture on their very own decision and still be a good mom. Part of me got really angry at people I know that push the idea that everyone should have as many kids as their body can crank out, regardless of their emotional or physical ability to care for them. (That frustration may have been born out of the jealousy that I had no such inclination, but it was still there.) To me, every kid should be actively wanted, not just brought here out of habit or peer pressure. And did I actively want another kid? On the other hand, was I resisting the norm because I honestly didn't want another child, or because I wanted to prove something?

In terms of logical reasons to add another to our count, one of the biggest helps we have for Tyler is . . . Kaitlyn. She is a second mother and teacher to that guy. In fact, just today she sat him down and quizzed him on colors in a book. She is a wonderful "peer model" for him to follow, which is huge. The other logical issue we saw has to do with my sister-in-law (who has no idea I am saying this). She is an only child, and over the last year or two nearly every relative she has had major medical issues - on the other side of the country from her full time job and her little girl. She has spent countless "vacations" flying back and forth to set up nursing homes and funerals and wills and everything in-between. And we looked at our family and thought - what if that happens to Kaitlyn? We hope that Tyler will be able to support himself just fine in life, but honestly right now we can't say for sure. What if we support Tyler to some extent until we need support ourselves, and then it is all up to Kaitlyn to sort out?

And, since our initial gut feeling was three, did we actually have a good reason for not doing that?

And so with all of that in mind, we came to a decision.

For those of you untrained in grey dots, that's the little wiggle bean baby in my tummy.

Obviously, we made the decision a long time ago. And now I am to the point where, thanks to a stretchy stomach from previous kids, I don't think I can hide this from people at the multiple upcoming swim parties we have in the next couple of weeks.  After the previous January mishaps we were very careful this time.  (Out of my mother's 13 grandchildren, 7 of them were born in January - and that makes 3 out of the 4 people in my little family at the moment, with only Christopher born in October.)  And so I can now say that we are due early in March.  I'm shooting for pi day, actually, because I am just that nerdy.

I have to say that I was still pretty nervous about the idea at first, but just felt like it was what our family needed.  It will be more work and more chaos, for sure, but it is the right step.  I think I am starting to look forward to it all though.  Seeing the ultrasound helped quite a bit actually - I know the picture looks like nothing, but seeing all the wiggles in person made it a lot more real to me.

Some of you may wonder why on earth I didn't just say "Look! We're pregnant!" and instead bogged this post down with pages of babbling.  The thing is, over the years a lot of my close friends have asked about if we were going to have another child.  And I have answered with bits and pieces of all of this, in some cases.  In fact, I had told many people without a doubt that I was done.  So I wanted everyone to know why this decision was right for us and how we came to it.  For those of you who skimmed past it all, you probably didn't miss much.  But this is easier than explaining it individually over and over and hoping it came out right.  I apologize that it is more impersonal than the alternative, but there we are.  More honesty than you might get on my blog in a year.

Potty training. Ugh.

I potty trained Kaitlyn almost exactly a year ago.  At the time, I was very optomistic.  She had been interested in the idea for nearly 6 months, and is such an independant sort of girl that I figured it would only take a couple of weeks.

A year later, she still has accidents every single day.  Usually, she pees a tablespoon or two, stops herself, and then walks around with wet pants unconcerned until someone notices her and makes her go to the bathroom and change.

I have now decided that one of the most important components to potty training is that the kid needs to NOT like the feel of wet underwear.  Of course, both of my kids lack this.

So this time there was no optimism.  There are no happy thoughts about diaper free days on the horizon.  The thing is, Tyler doesn't tell us when he is hungry, usually.  He just waits around hopes we will feed him.  But sometimes he just bypasses us and gets the food himself.  That is my only hope for potty training - that he just decides to do it himself when he wants to go.

So far I am on day two.  For a kiddo that takes five times as long to learn anything, that is absolutely nothing.  I have weeks and months to go.  Thankfully, he is coming into this quite adept at going.  If you put him on the potty, he will push out anything he's got.  He knows how to wipe and wash his hands.  So if you take him often enough, he doesn't even have time to have an accident in-between, in general.  We're working on expanding that from the half an hour limit we are at now.  But I did have two good moments today.

First of all, I was folding the laundry when I heard him start to explode a bit in the underwear.  So I nervously called out "Tyler, what's going on?"  And he said "I need a diaper!  I need a diaper!"  When I hurried to him, he was quite concerned about this.  I was glad he recognized that it was something that didn't belong in his underwear!  Unfortunately, he continued to hold in the rest of that explosion until much much later, somehow. 

I went to the gym tonight, and put him in a diaper while we were there so the staff didn't have to deal with it.  Not consistent, but that's life.  If I thought it would only take a week, I would clear my schedule, but . . . I do what I can.  While we were eating at Subway on the way home, he suddenly got very concerned again.  "Oh no!  My diaper is all wet!"  Apparently the rest of the explosion had come out.  But hey!  He knew that stuff didn't belong in his underwear that morning, and now he knew that didn't go in his diaper either!  Hopefully someday we will get it where it belongs. And even if he doesn't mind wet underwear, maybe he does mind stinkyness. 

Baby steps.  If there is one thing that being Tyler's mommy has taught me, it is to not expect results, and just keep persisting while enjoying any progress you do see.  You just keep doing the right thing, day after day, and even if it doesn't appear to be making any difference, one day he will suprise me.

Spudman

First of all, there are a couple of pictures that I apparently forgot to download from my camera.  Tyler's class went to visit a fire station a couple of weeks ago, and these pictures are too cute to not put up here.

Tyler got to try on a fireman's coat!  He thought that was rather interesting.  They also got to see all the firetrucks and listen to a fireman tell them about his job for a while.  Tyler's teacher had asked them to bring a thank you note for the firemen, so afterward I gave Tyler the "Thank You!" picture he colored and told him to go give it to the fireman.  He didn't stick around long once he did his job, so this picture is of him running away instead of talking to the fireman.  But he was sure proud of himself for doing what I asked him to do!

With that out of the way, on to current events.  We spent the weekend up in Idaho to watch Daddy run the Spudman triathalon.  It was his longest triathalon yet, and he did great!  When I asked him where I should be at what times so I could watch him, he said that he expected that it would take him about three hours.  But his final time was under 2.5 hours!

Now, in theory, I should have pictures of him swimming, biking and running.  But waking up the kids that early was tough, and the swim started so early that even he barely made it in time.  In fact, I should tell that story.  They left with plenty of time, but got stuck in traffic.  So when he was jogging in, he heard them send off the first wave of people.  The waves are 5 minutes apart, and he only needed to drop off his bag in the transition area and walk down to the dock, so he figured he could make it just fine.  But somehow they didn't actually wait 5 minutes, because they sent off his wave while he was still on the dock!  He had to rush past everybody, struggling to get his swim cap on as he went, and then when he finally dove into the water a minute behind his time the water was so cold he had to backstroke for 30 seconds while he caught his breath.  Needless to say, he was quite the entertainment for everyone standing ready for their start times.  But he was rather pleased when he started to catch up to his wave before they even finished the swim.

Anyway, I tried to get us set up to see him as he started out on the bike route.  I stood there with the kids examining everyone that zoomed by for a half an hour before finally giving up.  I had missed him.  So we headed down to the waterfront where he would come in to transition into running.  Thankfully, there was a playground for the kids.  It wasn't much - slide, teeter totter and jungle gym - but they didn't care.  Heaven.

I made sure I was in place to watch Christopher bike past in plenty of time, since I figured I just missed him the first time.  But once again, I never found him!  This time, we figure I missed him as he came in with a big group, because I really was there at the right time.  But since I didn't know that, I walked to the finish line trying to decide if he was having the race of his life or if he had crashed and would finish with the 60 year olds in a few hours.

I was so glad when I found him running into the finish line!

Two of Christopher's co-workers ran as well, and all three of them were very happy with their times.

The race was in Burley, but the closest hotel we found was an hour away in Twin Falls.  And I have to say, we were quite impressed by Twin Falls.  My expectations were somewhere along the Rawlins, Wyoming level - I expected a nothin' town in the middle of nowhere.  But our hotel was beautiful, we were three minutes from Costco, Wal-mart, Target and Macy's, and we saw all kinds of restaurants we wanted to try out.  We went to the hotel pool twice, where Daddy could soak in the hot tub and the kids could have an absolute blast playing around.  And we also figured we would check out the Shoshone falls.  Once again, I was expecting a tiny waterfall.

Wow!  Not bad!  There was a spot up the river a bit where all the locals were swimming, cliff diving, and having some weekend barbeques.  Our kids loved the playground in that park.

As we headed out of town, we went to a lookout point near our hotel.  The huge canyon was beautiful!

What a great trip!  Christopher is so hooked on triathalons now that he is signed up for a Half IronMan in a month.  If you have never heard of an IronMan before, they are insane.  It is a triathalon where the run portion alone is a full Marathon.  The swim is 2.4 miles, and the bike is 112 miles.  Each portion is insane, so why not do them all right in a row?  And of course, this is Christopher's new goal in life.  He is hoping to be in shape for one at the end of next year.

Lagoon and Roller Skating

Normally, I am a rather picture-heavy blogger.  But unfortunately, sometimes I would rather enjoy what is going on and play with my kiddos than drag along a big honkin camera.  And these last two activities fell under that category.  I have a feeling that means everyone will skim right over this post, but in the end, I did want to write down what we did this week, even without pictures.


First of all, last Saturday we got to go to Lagoon as a family.  Christopher's Aunt had some discount tickets for the day.  Not only was this the first time the kids had gone, but the first time for me as well!  I have to say, it was a really awesome day.  They have a "Kiddieland" with about 10 or so little rides for the kids, and they were grinning from ear to ear.  The park was busy, but they could still just walk on almost every ride.  In some ways, that was even better than Disneyland for them - much less downtime between it all. 


We met up with Christopher's family for lunch and then hung out with them for a while.  Christopher's Aunt even offered to watch the kids while we rode a big ride with his cousins.  I felt bad, since the ride broke while we were in line for Wicked, so we were gone quite a while waiting for it to start back up - but I think Aunt Janette seemed genuinely happy with our little ones.  They are at a really fun age for the park - all she had to do was help them get from one ride to another, and they were as happy as they could be.


After separating from family, we went to the water park area so the kids could swim.  Once again, the kiddie area was awesome, and all we had to do was wander around and keep an eye on them as they ran around as happy as can be.  Kaitlyn said that was one of her favorite parts of the day, and cried when we tried to get her to leave hours later.


But the true moment to remember came as we were packing up to leave the swim area. When we got there, we changed clothes and put everything at our stroller. But I was still wearing my shoes, since they were water shoes. But when we got to the swim area, Kaitlyn told me to take them off - she had to take hers off, after all! And I thought, might as well. I saw some other people's things around a utility box off to the side, and hid my shoes and watch behind it. But when I went back for them afterward, my stuff was gone. Keep in mind, the shoes were $5 from Wal-Mart, and the watch was $10 at Target. So I figured no one in their right mind would steal them. And yet, the lost and found had nothing. Great. Seriously, who steals shoes? Crappy, dirty shoes, no less?



So we head to the exit. The entrance to Lagoon-a-beach from Lagoon proper is actually a store with swimsuits, sunscreen, flip-flops and such in case you didn't have everything you needed. So at least this was a solvable problem. But the teenage girl at the exit stopped us. "You have to have your shoes on to leave."


"Well, I would love to, but they are stolen. So we're just going to buy some more right now."


"I'm sorry, you aren't allowed. He'll have to go buy some for you and bring them back," pointing to my husband.


This stopped us both in our tracks. "Um, my shoes were stolen. It's not like I'm doing this on purpose. And they are right there!"


My husband, on the other hand, went with "and what if I don't?" which is a question I would still like answered. What if I had been alone? What would have been this girl's plan then? Keep me there until the park closed and I get escorted out by security?


It was a lousy end to an awesome day. Thankfully, my husband did a decent job of picking out flip-flops for me that were only four times the price of the ones that were stolen. I'm sure the teenage girl was just following her instructions, but . . . ugh.






Anyway, this week was Tyler's last week of Summer School. I have loved having him there, but I must say I am happy to not make that 20 minute drive each way again for a while! Their last outing was going roller skating. When I heard that, I really wasn't sure what to think. Of all the things we do with our kids, I never would have thought they were ready for that! But you know what, Tyler thought it was honestly the best activity ever. He was giggling and smiling for an hour and a half straight as he flopped around his feet and tried to balance. "I am roller skating!" Since I spent most of my time holding him up, I only got a couple of pictures, and my point and shoot couldn't handle the lighting well. But rest assured, he was absolutely in heaven.

He kept on giggling and laughing long after the other kiddos quit and wandered off, and then suddenly said "I am ALLL done!" in his same happy voice, and sat down.

 
And now, we will just have to go back again soon, because Kaitlyn has been incredibly jealous about the whole thing.  Who knew?

Busy summer

Many of the blogs I read talk about how they are enjoying their summer freedom- all the adventures they are taking with their kids and their lack of schedule.  And I have to say, we don't really have that over here.  Between Daddy's races and our events up at the cabin, my weekends are mostly gone.  And Tyler has summer school most of the week.  I will have three weeks in August in-between schools, and I will be spending as much of that time as possible outside at the cabin to potty train Tyler.  For now, we are just running back and forth all day, it seems.

So here are some catch-up pictures.

Tyler is really enjoying summer school.  He goes to school in the mornings three times a week, and then every Wednesday afternoon we go out and do something fun with his little group.  One of my favorite things about this group is our leader and how goal oriented she is.  On the first outing, we all got balloons to hold as we walked up to a waterfall area and back.  The kids jostled a bit over taking other balloons or protecting their own, but towards the end of the activity I still hadn't figured out the significance of why we had balloons with us.  "Oh, that's [so-and-sos] goal," she said.  "He is practicing sharing, and balloons and balls are his favorite things.  So we all got them so he can practice asking to trade balloons, or understanding that some of the balloons don't belong to him."  Awesome.

One of Tyler's goals is to recall past events.  While we have seen progress on some goals, this is one we have never gotten anywhere on.  So she had me take pictures so we can show him at the end what he did and ask him about it. I've done this before a few times - sometimes I print out pictures after vacations and make books to review things with him.  But I certainly don't do it enough.  So the next time we went and painted ceramics.  Tyler LOVED this.  He has been really into drawing and art stuff lately, so he was very serious about this task.

The first time she quizzed him as we were walking back to school, he didn't remember what we had done.  But the second time, she asked him what we did today and he said "plate"!  That might be just one word, but I can honestly tell you it was the first time he had said anything about a prior event.  Fantastic.  And when he got the plate back from being fired the next week, he spent days carrying it around the house. 

Now, most of the pictures I have taken are just terrible shots with my .7 meg iPod camera so that Tyler can see things and get his memory jogged.  But we have gone to the Dinosaur museum, he went to the Bean museum with Daddy, and we also went to his favorite restaurant- Pirate Island.  Land of the pizza buffet (he ate four slices), arcade games, and blue candy he got from his tickets.  He talked about this blue candy like it was the best prize in the universe.

Last weekend we had some friends up for a lovely day at the cabin.  But before they got here, Kaitlyn and I found a little baby bird learning to hop around and fly.  He was so adorable!  I mostly kept Kaitlyn away, but I couldn't resist letting her hold him for a minute and getting a cute picture of them.

Once our friends got here, Kaitlyn declared she wanted to hold the baby.  This always makes me laugh, because Kaitlyn is so skinny the babies she wants to hold are sometimes the same weight as her.  But she adores sitting on a couch and having a baby placed on her lap anyway.  In fact, last week I tended a cute little guy and she insisted on feeding him.  She even did a pretty good job with the spoon, putting just a little baby food on each time.

But nothing that day could top playing with baby Samantha's older brother Cody.  Cody is only six months older than Kaitlyn, and they get along fabulously.  They both have enough of a strong will that they don't let the other one take over, but they really are great friends.

Melissa said that if they get married someday, we are going to have an awesome wedding slideshow for them :)

The day after they went home, we headed down to watch Christopher run a half marathon.  This one starts about two miles from our cabin, actually - so we didn't have to go far!  Christopher was really pleased with his time, too.

And the highlight of my day was at the finish line.  They had a bounce house for the kids and a true hot air balloon!  Unfortunately, in the spirit of packing lightly I just had my camera and my 100mm prime lens on me, since I zoom in to get shots of Christopher running.  But that made it very hard to get a picture of us and the balloon at the same time.  Rest assured, the Remax balloon took us up 50 feet and brought us back down.  For free! 

We have also been working on some updates to the cabin while it is summertime.  We can only bring up necessities in the winter by snowmobile, so now is the time.  I added some scenery to my big wall upstairs.

And this weekend we brought up a "new" washing machine and this sail shade.  The washing machine we bought used, but we are very happy about this.  The old one at the cabin was such an energy hog that it would chug and sputter on the big, loud generator.  But this new front-loading one ran just fine on the solar panels alone! 

As for the sail shade, this was Christopher's answer to the dead canopy.  This way there is no metal to break.  The reviews online said they just keep it up all summer, and the material weathers through wind and rain just fine.  We shall see!

This weekend we hosted Christopher's co-workers up for dinner, and had an absolute blast.  The only sad part was that I was so busy running around, filling dishes and chatting with people, that I didn't take a single picture.  But trust me, we had 30 people over for dinner yesterday.  On a funny note, I wanted to make brownies to go with the homemade strawberry ice cream, but the brownie mix at the cabin was bug-eaten.  So I attempted brownies from scratch with hot cocoa powder replacing the sugar and cocoa.  Amazingly, they weren't awful!  They were odd - they really did taste like hot cocoa somehow - but they truly made brownies.  Who knew?

Fourth of July

We have hosted Christopher's family for lunch at our cabin the last few years, and I was a bit worried about this year.  I decided to really decorate the place this year - we host for this holiday every year, so I can certainly purchase decorations and know I will use them again.  The first thing I set out that morning was wrapping streamers around the deck railings.

It started drizzling within seconds.  Thankfully it never went to actual rain, but it kept trying for a while.  And then I was sweeping the porch when the canopy we set up the night before blew over in a slight gust of wind.  I spent an hour crying and trying to duct tape it back together before giving up and calling it a $100 loss.

Thank heavens everything went smoothly after that.  I repurposed the paper stars I made for the canopy and draped them from the deck.

I showed Tyler and Kaitlyn how to make their hats so the cousins could see the idea when they got there.  I'm glad I had my little craft table - we have a lot of toddler cousins, and they all thought it was great to make their own festive hat.  And Tyler found a catapillar (which Kaitlyn refused to touch.)

And then everybody finally made it - we only had a couple of people get lost this time.

After lunch wound down, the brothers started to break out the dirt bikes and three-wheelers and head down to the track.  As I talked to my sister-in-law that just barely moved here from Ohio, I mentioned that the four-wheeler is "mine" because it is the only automatic one so that I can drive it.  And she just lit up when I told her she could drive it on the roads.  Pretty soon she gave her kids rides . . . and their oldest son even took his sister for a spin.

I loved how excited they were about it.  I mean, I love driving around on that thing with the kids!  The serious four-wheelers we get at our cabin are dissapointed because the serious trails are a few miles away, and all we have in our neighborhood are gravel roads the cars drive on.  But I loved that they thought that was a fun time as much as I do!

One of the other big hits for the day was this water balloon maker.  You can fill the container with water, fit a balloon on the spout, and then just pull the trigger to fill the balloon.  The fabulous part was that the kids could all do this themselves, and the only adult help needed was to tie them off for the littlest ones.  All of the moms were really happy that the kids could have a grand time with no help needed.  The older ones had fun chasing each other around, and the littlest ones just carried them around like they were precious treasures.

Also on the craft table were some foam glasses to decorate.  And my favorite moment of the day was later on, when Tyler noticed other kids making them, and did this all by himself.  He picked out the glasses, peeled the backing off the stickers, and put them on as I got over there.  "Mommy, I made glasses!"

(I don't care if it is out of focus.  It is still my favorite picture from the entire day.)

Kaitlyn made some glasses too.  They just weren't quite as useful . . .

I hope you all had a great day as well!  I know we certainly had a wonderful day with family.