I came around the corner the other day and found Joseline climbing all the way out to the door! Crazy child.
She is a little daredevil. Which is kind of ironic because she’s never been to the emergency room or had any kind of accident really. Whereas Vince, who would be scared snotless of climbing across there, has had several ER visits and other sundry accidents…
So we want our kids to be daredevils?
Russ would say she’s just cautious.
This is my last post for tonight. I got strep throat somehow (my hunch is there is a little guy running around my house with sores on his face that are quite likely strep themselves. We shall see). Anyway, I should be sleeping, but I really wanted to make good on my promise to get the blog a little more caught up. I sill have so much catching up to do it’s ridiculous. But I can spend all day tomorrow doing that because… well, I have strep. So I’m going nowhere. With nobody, which means the kids will probably watch a lot of TV. And jump on the trampoline.
And there just might be a little bit of this goofiness -
Scratch that.
There will definitely be lots of this goofiness.
One of my greatest challenges as a mother? Teaching my children how to actually take some things seriously. At least.
The Salt Lake County Libraries just finished building a brand new, huge library right here in West Jordan. The old library was small and kind of ghetto. The new library is spunky, big, and clean.
We went to the grand opening where we checked out some new books (it looked like they spend a lot of money on new books), watched a puppet show of Peter Pan, saw a giant snake poop in front of the audience, saw a tarantula, held a cockroach, and played on some blow up slides.
I love West Jordan, and the fancy new library makes me love it even more. I also love that we’re within walking distance of all these things to do – the rec center, the library, the big park. It’s all right here basically in front of our house.
Last Spring Vincente played T-ball and had fun, but this year we decided to try out soccer.
I’m pretty sure Vincente has found his favorite sport. I definitely found mind!
When we signed Vincente up for soccer with his best friend Nicky (one of his friends from preschool/the ward) I put down that I would volunteer to be a coach if they needed one. Apparently they needed one, because I became the coach.
I actually found that I really enjoy coaching. And what I lacked in soccer skills and knowledge was made up by my “assistant coach”, Nicky’s dad (a native Egyptian – i.e., he lives, breathes, and bleeds soccer – there is just an accent barrier – the kids had a hard time understanding him). We made a great team, and I am excited to get the team together again in the fall for more great soccer.
We’re just Rec league soccer folks – not too competitive, mostly for fun and learning soccer.
Speaking of learning soccer – our “division” was 5-6 year olds (technically, Kindergarteners and “just before” Kindergarteners). Seven of our twelve players were preschoolers. Which means that we were often playing games against whole teams of kindergarteners!
I am pretty sure we were the most improved team in the division. Our kids started out in a “cluster”, not really knowing what to do with the ball, and ended up being able to steal, block, defend, and dribble. They still have a lot to work on, but they improved so much. It was really rewarding as a coach.
And all the parents want me to coach again this fall! I’m pretty excited. It’s always nice to have a community – no matter where that community is.
On top of that, Vince and Nicky’s other best friend from Kindergarten has decided that he wants to play with them on their team this fall.
Although I have done P90x videos before (my favorite is the plyometric DVD. Wow, now that’s a good workout) I’m not super into them. But Michelle was working out to one in the morning, and Vince decided that he needed a little bit of a workout, too.
Remember how Joseline wasn’t super excited about her bike that she got for her birthday?
If you don’t, here’s a picture to remind you -
A few weeks later, we got her on the bike (happily!) and with a little help from Vincente she even got down the driveway!
She’s got a lot of room for improvement, but I’m sure she’ll pick it up.
Meanwhile, Vincente is getting pretty good at riding without training wheels! No pictures or videos of that phenomenon, but hopefully we’ll do a lot more bike riding this summer and I’ll try to remember to take pictures and videos.
When we lived in California and had a nice open backyard, we bought a 15’ trampoline with an enclosure. It was a lot of fun and we were excited to put it up in our backyard. Until we realized that it took over almost all of the open space in our yard.
So at the end of last summer, we sold it. We weren’t horribly sad to see it go – Doc had jumped on it a few times (who knew he loves jumping on a trampoline almost as much as our kids do) and got caught in the net once and tore a hole in the enclosure.
This spring I found a trampoline at Sam’s that was just the right size for our little concrete pad. So I bought it, and with Michelle’s help (I think Russ was out of the country when we got it), we put it together and the kids have loved it.
Now we just need sod on that side yard. Soon. Very soon.
One of my goals as a mother is to provide my kids with high quality toys that encourage independent pretend play. (that is, the kids can have fun without me directing their play).
Vincente loves dress up, and when we lived 
with my parents in Arkansas for a summer his favorite dress up costume included fairy wings. I had mentioned that I wanted to make him some dragon wings, but I never really got around to it.
Well, my entire immediate family came to Utah for Christmas 2011, so my mom was here to help me put together some dragon wings. Due to all the festivities (and craziness!) of having 15 people and 5 dogs in our house almost all the time, the dragon wings got postponed until Christmas Eve. I was up until about 4am working on the dragon wings, and my mom was up with me working on a gift for my sister.
They are now one of the favorite costumes in the dress up box -
The kids’ favorite thing to do when they were dressing up was having Grandma Pam play “dragon music” and then Vince would chase them around. Then they would say “Play princess music!” Grandma would happily oblige, and the little girls (there were three of them!) would spin happily around the living room. Then there was “bunny music” and “pirate music”. They are so lucky to have such an amazingly talented grandma! Now she just needs to record a CD for them so they have have her “dragon music” and “princess music” even when she’s 2000 miles away.
One of our favorite things about living in Salt Lake County is the recreation facilities. Our local Rec center here in West Jordan has an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, an indoor track, basketball court, weight room, and a daycare (the kids absolute favorite). With our pass we can get into any county facility – ice skating rinks included, which is another favorite pastime.
The indoor pool is nice, especially in the winter when we’ve got a hankering for splashing around and the snow is falling outside.
The last time we went, however, was right after the outdoor pool closed (and it was still super warm outside, but oh well).
We went with our friends Gabe and Noah and their mama who were staying with us for a while. It was loads of fun, and we miss those cuties! 
And going to the pool is always more fun when Papai comes along!
Every few years, the descendents of my grandmother and grandfather (Joseph Theron Smith and Neva Almira Harper) get together for a huge family reunion. There are 10 living children of Joseph and Neva, all with spouses, and somewhere around 40 grandkids (with the number of great-grandkids skyrocketing).
This summer we had a little “mini” reunion (I put mini in quotes because even our “small” reunions are still big…) Because the weather was horribly hot this summer we went up to the little fountain pools at Nelson’s Grove park in Orem. We had actually had a potluck picnic behind my aunt’s stake center and the kids needed an escape from the heat, so we walked over to the park. The kids (and some of the older “kids”) got in the water and splashed around.
I always love being with my Smith family. I think every single one of my Smith relatives is a kind hearted, loving, decent person who wants to help each other in every way they possibly can. Sure, as with every family there are miscommunications, mix-ups, and disagreements, but I feel like everyone tries to handle them pretty civilly, and no one really holds any grudges.
One of the nights we had a “girl cousin’s sleepover” – we’ve really gotta come up with a better name! Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed getting to know my girl cousins better, especially the somewhat younger ones (like these two lovely ladies here). It’s really fun that we can all be so close and have so much fun together. I feel like I have instant friends in my cousins, even if we don’t see each other very frequently.
Some of the younger kiddos having a blast in the water.
We got everyone to run around the wading pool in a line. This is the beginning of it. The picture at the top is the middle. I wish I had a better camera so we could have got a better shot – but it was still fun.
Even though we weren’t officially attending our English ward at the time, we still went on our ward campout out in Spanish Fork Canyon.
Our friend Jenna had just got into town with her two boys, so we offered to take them with us. Vince loved having some other boys to play with, and Gabe and Noah loved being outdoors and exploring (basically all the boys in the ward wandered around finding sticks and playing whatever games little boys like to play – warriors, army men, etc). Russ’ little brother Jordan also came down with us. We were super surprised that his mom let him come – but it was so awesome to have him with us! He’s an awesome kid and was really helpful with the younger kids and with keeping the campsite clean and pitching tents – and really anything that we needed him to help with.
The recreation area had a zipline that our ward got to monopolize for the most part on Friday afternoon. Gabe loved it, and to our surprise (and delight!) Vincente went on it, too! Twice! He is such a little stud. It might have helped that his friend Nick went down several times as well. I even went down once. It was pretty crazy.
Joseline had a good time playing with Nick’s little sister Miriam. The camp area was great for the kids – it wasn’t near any water or cliffs or anything, so we could just let the kids play without having to worry too much. And the older kids in the ward helped keep an eye out on all the little ones. We even brought Doc (apparently dogs weren’t allowed, we found out later, but we kept him on his leash for the most part and he really enjoyed being in the great outdoors! And everyone was really sweet to him).
We built a bonfire down by our campsite, and our wonderful neighbors (our real neighbors who live behind us) were also our neighbors at the campout and they shared some really yummy dinner with us – BBQ pork and funeral potatoes all in dutch ovens. There’s something about cooking food in a dutch oven when you’re camping that is just right. In the morning the ward did pancakes, eggs, bacon, the works for breakfast.
As you can see, these two really enjoyed the trip. It was fun to get to know more of the ward members, and I think going on this campout helped us decide to switch wards. So far we haven’t regretted it!
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig
Home again, home again, jiggety jig.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog
Home again, home again, jiggety jog.
(this is the final post in a four post series about our trip to Denver)
All good vacations must come to an end, but this trip’s end was a little drawn out (in a good way). We had to take Megann to the airport in the afternoon, but we had to check out of the hotel in the morning, so we found a park near the hotel with a water fountain and all sorts of fun for the kids. 
Since it was nice and warm outside, the kids had a blast in the water. Some of the other kids at the park had water guns, so I had to find a water bottle for Vincente to use for a “water gun” – there were some other kids doing the same thing, so he wasn’t totally weird, I promise.
There was a field on the other side of the hotel parking lot that was inhabited by many little prairie dogs. Every time we left the hotel we saw the little guys standing watch at their holes, and sometimes scurrying around looking for food. On our way out after checking out of the hotel, we stopped to take some pictures and I got this cool video of one of them chirping at me like I was going to steal their babies!
We were happy to be home, even if we didn’t get there until about two in the morning. The kids were relatively good on the drive home, but they didn’t really enjoy having to fall asleep in their car seats. But we all survived, and we loved spending time with Megann and her husband and seeing a new place.
I love to travel. I love to see new places, and I’m grateful for the opportunities I have had. And grateful that I got to share them with my kiddos!
(this is the second in a four part series about our trip to Denver)
Saturday was another adventure filled day. We decided to explore downtown Denver and then meet up for dinner at the Aquarium. We had heard about the restaurant at the aquarium where you eat with the fish, basically. It was a little pricey, but we thought it might be worth the experience. Meg and Geoff actually went through the aquarium while I took the kids to the Denver Art Museum’s free day and to a little gelato place on the 16th street mall. I’m pretty sure I took the kids back to the hotel for naps, and then we met up with Meg and Geoff for dinner.
We rode the bus down the 16th street mall, and then walked the rest of the way to the art museum. I was kicking myself for not bringing a stroller with me, but Joss kept up pretty well (on the way there – the way back was a different story). The area was really pretty and we walked through a really neat park with lots of shady trees (thank goodness – because it was kind of warm).
The museum had a fun hands-on area where the kids got to make their own something out of clay. After putting some lace on a piece of clay to make a pretty design, Joss and I ended up with a snake that we textured with the lace. After stabbing his piece of clay repeatedly, Vincente finally ended up with a “waffle” (a flattened piece of clay that he cut in two directions multiple times). We left our clay creations to dry while we looked at the rest of the museum.
There were lots of fun exhibits, including one where you make shapes with your body, and the computer would fill in the holes with a piece of “stained glass” which would shatter when you “let go” of it. I hope the picture helps that make a little more sense. It was really fun. The little kids were having a rough time though because adults and older kids kept standing behind the little ones and blocking them. Eventually I went “mom” on them and asked them all to let the little ones have a chance. The littler ones weren’t as good as it, but they had fun anyway.
There were a lot of places with big building blocks and things to color and dress up clothes. I liked that instead of the “kids” area being just one area of the museum there were several different areas, so I got to see a few cool things as we walked from one place to the next. The kids enjoyed making Jaguar masks and “stealing cheese” (big foam blocks where Vince played with some big kids like mice or rats or something and stole the blocks from each other, calling it their “cheese”).
We had a sack lunch on a rooftop of the museum, which reminded me of the numerous trips we made to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and how we ate our sack lunches out by the ocean.
On the roof there were some fun pieces of art. This one above that Vince is staring intently at is a stage coach or something. I think the firing gun was what fascinated Vincente the most.
You could see the Denver skyline behind Joseline. I think that we were up in the shiny black building the day before when we were visiting Grant.
Dinner at the aquarium was kind of disappointing. The atmosphere was cheesy, not like the nice restaurant at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the tanks were itsy bitsy and only on one wall, so we didn’t even get to sit next to the fish. The food was all really rich, and not nearly worth the price. But it was fun to experience something new, and the kids got a shark and sting ray from the gift shop. They enjoyed the whole thing. Especially getting their picture taken next to this shark.