Over the Mountain

230.
That’s how many picture I have from our trip to Denver this summer. In trying not to overwhelm you, I am going to split this trip into four different posts:
Day 1 – Over the Mountain
Day 2 – Jars of Clay
Day 3 – I Love to See the Temple
Day 4 – Jiggety Jig
A high school friend of mine and her husband had a job hunting trip in Denver in August. Russ was gone on some military trip or another (I think to Kenya this time), and I had not seen said friend in over a year (basically since her wedding in 2010), so I decided to take the kiddos on a little trip over the mountains and into Denver – just because we deserve a vacation, too!
It was not really my first road trip alone with the kids – when you are an army wife, especially with a husband who travels a lot, you do a lot of things solo. Driving is one of them. It was actually a pretty good trip. Before the trip I had brand spanking new tires put on Russ’ car (which I took instead of the van to save gas) and made sure to buy a new movie for the kids (Rio!). Between the movie, naps, and stopping in Little America for $.50 cones and to play on the playground, the drive wasn’t too bad at all. It felt like we stopped a million times for potty breaks.
We got into Denver on Thursday afternoon and checked in at the hotel. Mostly we just hung around that night at the hotel and ate Wendy’s for dinner in the hotel.
Friday was a big day. We spent the morning hanging around at the hotel, and then around noon we met our friend Grant for lunch in downtown Denver. He was doing an internship for the summer and was spending a few days in Denver in a very, very tall building. We got to go up to his office (on the very top floor!) and see almost all of Denver. Then we got the kids hot dogs at a corner hot dog stand – Vince had been asking for one ever since we got downtown, how could we deny him? Grant and I got sandwiches at a local salad and sandwich joint. The name eludes me right now – but it was definitely tastey. I had a BLT with avocado. Delish. There was a little folk band playing some music in a grassy area just outside the restaurant, so we sat in the shade of a big clock tower, listened to the music, ate food, and caught up. It was really good to see our old friend and catch up.
After our lunch time meet up, we rode the bus back to the parking lot and headed back to the hotel where we met up with Meg and Geoff to drive up to the top of Mt. Evans – a mountain near Denver that is over 14,000 feet tall. Whoa.
The drive was long and the traffic was bad for a little (I think there ended up being an accident along the highway), but the kids were relatively sane for the whole drive. Thankfully Meg and Geoff had rented a Jeep with four wheel drive. It did a pretty good job of getting us up the mountain.
Our first stop was for snacks at a little lake at the base of Mt. Evans. It was a cute little lodge and restaurant. The kids needed to stretch their legs, and everyone needed a potty break. I bought Joseline some new sunglasses because she had been complaining about the sun in her eyes as we climbed the mountains. I think they were pretty stylish.
Back on the road again, driving up the side of that big ‘ol mountain.
 
The next stop was at a little glacier lake farther up the mountains. A herd of mountain goats was grazing nearby and liked to stand in the area between the restrooms. They seemed to be rather unalarmed at the presence of so many humans.  Until Vincente ran past them back to the car when we were getting ready to leave (he was just running because that’s what little boys do – not because he was afraid or anything). The mountain goats took off. Geoff (who had been herding Vincente back to the car) said the goats seemed to give him a “look” as he walked by – as if to say, “Was that thing yours?” Ha ha. Silly goats.

While we were looking at the lake, the goats, and the view, Megann and Geoff wanted a few pictures taken, and I happily obliged. As I was snapping away, playing photographer, Vince came up to me and asked if we could go down to the water. I told him to wait just a minute because I was taking pictures. Well, we finished taking pictures, and we turned around to find Vince. He was nowhere to be seen. After freaking out thinking maybe the mountain goats had eaten him, we looked down toward the water, and there was my little four year old adventurer – high tailing it down to the water’s edge. Not knowing how deep the water was at the edge, I left Joss in Meg and Geoff’s care and took off after Vince. I caught up to him right at the water’s edge where he was happily throwing rocks in the water. Thankfully the water was not deep, just cold. Very cold.
Back on the trip to the summit we started seeing a lot more mountain goats. They were everywhere, and sometimes perched in the most precarious spots.
By this time the kids (mine, not the goats’) were getting pretty bored in the car, and they’d finished their snacks (or crumbled them all over the car – I had to convince Meg and Geoff that rental car companies don’t care if there are crumbs on the seat. They have to vacuum it out anyway. Which is what I love about rental cars and children… because children always make messes in the car). To entertain them for a while they got to take turns taking pictures with the camera. Mostly they took pictures of the inside of the car. Or their shoes.






Other than the subject matter being a little boring (although I have to say I love those shoes of Joseline’s), the photos were pretty clear. I think Vince even got a few of the scenery. At one point we opened the windows for some fresh air but Vince didn’t like the air blowing him so he put up his hands in the window. As if he was going to block the air. Ha!
At last we made it to the top! The lack of oxygen actually felt invigorating to me (although there were lots of signs warning about altitude sickness).








Apparently it was invigorating for Vincente, too, and he hadn’t learned his lesson about running away from Mamae on the side of a very big mountain. He loved all the rocks everywhere at the summit and really wanted to climb all over them. Including the ones that were on the other side of this sign and were basically a cliff. He took off, but this time I was prepared and I grabbed him. Crazy child just about threw himself off the top of a 14,000 foot mountain. Seriously.
I told him we could climb over some rocks on the other side of the summit that were farther away from the edge. That seemed to please him.
I’m pretty sure the kids fell asleep on the way down the mountain, and then we went out to eat at Chili’s. I’m not usually one to eat at a chain restaurant when I am traveling (I must get that from my dad – we like to discover new places. Especially local joints), but we were all tired, and the kids ate, so I won’t complain.

Liberty Legacy

When we were kids, we came up to Utah all the time (for those of you who don’t know how long it takes to drive from Little Rock, AR to Salt Lake City, UT – it takes about 24 hours. Our family made that trek about once a year from about the time I was 8 or 9).

On one such trip, I have the distinct memory of playing in a these little concrete rivers.

I remember having a blast, and I remember it being a Liberty Park, so when Russ and I had some spare time and were in Salt Lake City, we took the kids over to Liberty Park. I couldn’t remember where in the park the rivers were, so we just walked around and eventually found a playground with a water play area. It was newer, and not rivers, but the kids had fun, got wet, and wore themselves out.

A few months later, I was talking to my friend Michelle about going to Liberty Park and she mentioned going to the little rivers. I was so excited! So we packed a lunch and headed to Liberty Park with Michelle and Ethan. It was so nostalgic for me. Lots of memories came rushing back. We were a lot older when we played there, but Vince had a blast (Joseline mostly just sat on the edge of the water and played with the little red boat).

Even Doc had a good time – we tied him to a tree just out of reach of people, but everyone wanted to come say hi. Good thing he is such a sociable dog! He loved the attention, but I know what he really wanted was to go splash around in that water. What dog (or kid) wouldn’t?

 

 

I promise Ethan had a good time, too. He just saw me taking pictures and decided that he would rather stare me down than play while I was trying to take his picture. Punk.

By the way, in order to get to the “Seven Canyons” (apparently the water feature is supposed to be some kind of replica of the Jordan River and its tributaries) you park on the southwest side of the park, just south of the swimming pool. Then follow the sidewalks west (on the North side of the Aviary). Walk northeast past the green houses, then follow the sidewalk north and you’ll see the water fountains on the east side of the sidewalk.

In this screen shot of a google map of the area you can see the swimming pool and the parking lot. The “rivers” are just south of where the “A” marker is.

Who wants to go next summer?

Finally, It Works

If you’re like me, you like to budget.

But if you have a husband like mine, you know that the budget thing has to be really simple, fool-proof, and funds have to be protected. I’m not saying Russ is a frivolous spender, because he isn’t, but his idea of budgeting is “Do we have  money in our account? Okay, then let’s go spend it.”

We have tried every method of budgeting (it seems like it, anyway!).

Don’t believe me? Since we got married we’ve tried:

- a paper spreadsheet printed out each month
- this book, Debt-Free on Any Income (which came with a CD rom of lots of fun spreadsheets)
- The Church’s “One for the Money” book complete with budgets, get-out-of-debt plans, etc.
- Quicken (too complicated, and too many features)
- Budget Map (actually a really cool idea, but it wouldn’t work with one checking account and one spouse who would never write anything down…)
- mvelopes (an online envelope system that really worked for a while, but cost us every month… how’s that for counter productive!)
- Budget (a program from Snowmint CS, which was actually pretty useful, too, but not as “automated” as mvelopes, and since we were moving from mvelopes to this program, it was just too much work).
- Dave Ramsey’s “Deluxe Envelope System” – which would be great if Russ was doing the shopping, but I spend cash way too easily (easier than using my debit card, if you can believe it)

All the trial and error was actually pretty good because we discovered a lot of things about our money habits:
1.) We don’t like to keep track of every single tiny purchase. We are not normally frivolous spenders, we have a pretty good grasp of “need” and “want” and we don’t spend emotionally. We get what we need, and leave what we don’t. We eat whole, natural foods, so we don’t buy crap at the grocery store. We don’t like keeping pieces of paper around, and we don’t like writing stuff down.
2.) I am not good at using cash. Russ is really great at it. If I give him a bunch of cash, he’ll end up with almost as much cash a month later. He seriously doesn’t spend cash. If you give me cash, I’ll spend it all at once instead of rationing. And then I don’t have any more cash, and I can’t get the things we need, because I spent all my cash. I guess I feel like because cash is “untraceable” I can spend it on whatever, instead of on things we actually need.
3.) We like to have all our bills automated.
4.) When we have less money, we spend less money.
5.) I like to plan out every dollar for the month, but Russ likes to have a large “slush” fund (which he usually does not use).

So, after trying every different budgeting method under the sun, we’ve finally found a process we think will work for us:

First, we use my own budget I made up (based off the mvelopes budget that I absolute LOVED). It is just a spreadsheet, but it is crazy powerful and really helps us give every dollar a name. It checks our sums in three different ways, so we can always tell how we need to move things around to make the budget work. In one document, we can do our monthly budget, and budget each paycheck. It’s pretty awesome, if you ask me.

Second, we added a feature to our budget (which isn’t in the one I posted publicly, but I will update it soon) – we’ve color coded the line items. Bills that need to be paid are highlighted in yellow. Bills that have been paid or are pending in the checking account are marked with green. Once the money clears our checking account, we change the color to red. That way, if we’re wondering why there is extra money in our account, we can usually just check the budget. This is a great recording system for us.

Third, we recently added yet another feature to the budget because when our discretionary spending is mixed in the same checking account as our “bills” money, we sometimes end up spending that money.

Remember Russ’ method of “budgeting”? If there’s money in the account, we can spend it! So we decided to open a second checking account for our “discretionary” spending. This is all spending that isn’t programmed, automatic, or regular. Grocery money goes in this account, gas money, spending money, etc (it all goes in there because half the time we are “stealing” money from one category to use in another, which doesn’t bug us, as long as we eat and Russ can get to work). The only drawback to this was that we would probably spend all the money in the account right up front (remember me with the cash? I’m not that much better with the debit card). So instead of putting all the money from each paycheck in there, we set the budget spreadsheet up to calculate all the “descretionary” items each month, and divide that by 30, then multiply by 7, and that is how much money we transfer to the second checking account each Monday for four Mondays.

We’re still working out the math, but the idea behind this system is that we create “artificial scarcity” with our money. We “have” less money, so we spend less money.

It has taken five long years, but we finally have a budget system that is going to work for our family. And it doesn’t involve me spending several hours a day recording bank transactions, balancing checkbooks, and checking online accounts. It should be seamless and only require us to address the budget twice a month before pay day, and any time we need an emergency budget meeting.

Which means more time to hang out with the babies, blog, and live life.

That’s what I’m talking about.

Conversations with a 4 year old

Russ was laying with Vincente tonight at bedtime. Here’s how the conversation went:

Vincente: “Papai, you’re superly awesome.”
Papai: “You’re superly awesome, too.”
…
Papai: “Papai’s going to the other side of the world for a little bit.”
Vincente: “There’s lots of water over there so you can’t go over there.”
Papai: “Papai’s going to fly over the water in an airplane to some more land.”
Vincente: “Oh.”
(Joseline makes a ruckus)
Vincente: “Joseline’s really silly, huh?”
Papai: “Yeah, she’s like Mamãe.”
Vincente: “Yeah, Mamãe’s silly, but a little smart, too.”
Papai: “Like you.”
Vincente: “No. I’m a lot smart. I’m a lot of smart than you. I’m superly smart.”
Papai: “You are superly smart.” (trying to suppress the laughter)

Earlier Vincente and Joseline had been coloring in a Portuguese preschool workbook. Russ mentioned that Vincente doing the workbook pages must have boosted his confidence a little.

Ha. Just a little.

Lightbulbs

I had an epiphany the other day. Let me catch you up on a few things, first.

Things have been crazy here. Sometimes good crazy, sometimes bad crazy. I feel like I’m always writing that on here – my life is crazy. Well, it is.

And I have been struggling a lot with feeling like I am doing a much as possible in the day. Most days I get to bedtime and I wonder where on earth the day went, and how on earth I didn’t get the laundry done, the dishes washed, and the bathrooms spotless. Because I stay home all day, and don’t have any obligations outside of my family, I feel like I should be able to be super mom at home – super spotless house, great meals cooked, clean laundry folded and put away, not to mention spending hours playing with my children, reading to them, and going places with them.

Well, here was my epiphany. There are not that many hours in a day, and when most of them are punctuated by unexpected messes, potty accidents, and children fighting, they seem to get used up a lot faster.

I have always tried not to have too high of expectations for a clean house and home cooked meals because two small, very high energy children (if you know my kids, you know what I mean – touch touch touch touch, fight fight fight, talk talk talk talk talk, sound effects sound effects sound effects… it never ends. Seriously) make doing all that very hard, and I don’t want to spend my children’s entire childhood cleaning the house. I’d rather play with them, and the other stuff can wait. Sure I can teach them to clean with me – but honestly, that doesn’t really get stuff any cleaner because they make a bigger mess than they fix. But like I said, I’d rather do things with them and have a little bit dirty house because “babies don’t keep.”

  Back to my epiphany (that was only part of it) – I went though in my head what my day looks like. I wake up around 5:30 or 6 (on good mornings – i.e., when Russ hasn’t kept me up all night watching TV shows or movies or talking), so that I can have a few hours (usually only one) to myself to prepare for the day – I usually spend this time reading the scriptures and writing on my scripture blog. Then the kids wake up and I feed them breakfast around 7:30 or 8. By 9am I have cleaned up breakfast, and have the kids dressed and ready for the day. Then around noon, we eat lunch, then we read together and I put the kids down for naps around 2pm. By the time Joseline wakes up (and Vincente, if he even napped) we eat dinner, and then it’s time for bed. So, If you look at things this way, the only time I have to do much of anything is in the morning, for about 3 hours. Sure I have nap time, and I do a few things, but I don’t really like to spend my kids’ down time doing things I could do when they are awake, like cleaning. I prefer to do things I can’t do when they are awake – like reading a good book, writing, or taking a quick nap, myself.

Sure, things will change as my children (and our family) grow, but right now this is how it is, and I think that if I can keep realistic expectations – that is, be okay with only having essentially 3 hours in the day to get things done, then I should be fine. In fact, the reason I’ve been doing so much better the past several days is because I have been okay with it, and I’ve been planning my days better to take advantage of those few hours. And I’m much happier.

When I am feeling down for not keeping the house spotless, my dad reminds me of this poem:

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

(“Song for a Fifth Child” by Ruth Hulbert Hamilton, Ladies’ Home Journal October 1985)

I Love to See the Temple

This year the Primary is singing “I Love to See the Temple” for the Sacrament Meeting Program.

Vincente didn’t like to sit with his class in Primary. He much preferred to sit with me at the piano (I am the Primary pianist in our Portuguese ward). So one Sunday as I was playing “I Love to See the Temple,” I looked down to see Vincente taking everything out of my bags and stacking things up. I asked him what on earth he was doing.

“I’m building a temple!”

Look – Lightening McQueen is even going to the temple!

Captain Moroni and the Standard of Liberty

In preparation for Independence Day (and because Vince love swords and fighting and armies and war…. son of a solider? I think so) we talked about Captain Moroni for Family Home Evening a few weeks ago. We even made our own standard of liberty. 

We re-enacted the scene of Moroni tearing his cloak and fastening it to a pole and talked about why he did it, and why they fought.

Then we talked about the founders of our country, what they did, and why they fought. We recited the Declaration of Independence (well, this part: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”) and talked about George Washington and what the American flag means, and how it is like the standard of liberty that Captain Moroni made. We hung our standard of liberty and an American flag on the wall for a little while (until the tape failed and they fell down).

Playing soldiers wouldn’t be complete without making helmets and having swords. Russ has a super cool sword he got for Christmas when we were first married, and Vincente has his little foam sword Grandpa Victor got for him last summer (because Vince kept trying to use the knife sharpener for a sword…) and we made helmets out of boxes and tinfoil. They were awesome.

I’m glad we got to talk to Vincente about both the standard of liberty and the American flag and what they stand for. The kids love pointing out American flags (almost as much as they love pointing out the temple) and always tell me when they see one. We’re trying to teach our kids that there are times when fighting is okay – but it is only when we are protecting our freedom, our families, and our religion.

I am so grateful for the example of Captain Moroni – especially for my children because we are a military family. We can help them understand that their Papai is fighting for a reason – that we don’t just fight because we want to, we fight to preserve freedom – and freedom is indeed a very important thing to fight for.

4th of July

We enjoyed our first Independence Day in Utah! We live really close to the West Jordan city park so the city festivities were near by.
The city had a carnival of sorts at the park. There were little roller coasters, a bunch of kid rides, and of course a Ferris wheel (the horrible kind with the bucket seats instead of the bench seats. I hated it…)
The kids loved being there, though. And we even brought Doc. He loved being out and about with us. The kids went on a pony ride. They liked learning the names of the horses. I think Vincente was riding on “Rocky.” (that’s right, like Rocky Balboa – he got a kick out of that).
Later we had a BBQ with a bunch of friends and family. My sister and her husband were there, along with Russ’ grandma Carolyn and his Uncle Logan and his wife Vicky and their baby Valentino. Also in attendance was our good friends from BYU, Jorge and Rebecca Rosello. We love those guys so much and we were so excited to see them! (it’s been a while!) They brought their little munchkins Bella and Lessa (and one in the oven).
After the BBQ, we did some little fire crackers and fountains that we had bought. We let the kids do sparklers, too. We bought a huge pack of sparklers from Sam’s – we should have plenty for the next three or four Independence Days…
And of course we had glo-sticks! I think those were the biggest hits, especially after it got dark. We even put a bunch of them on Doc, who didn’t seem to mind the fireworks (apparently that is unusual for a dog – but he seemed to like them as much as the kids did!)

Since we live so close to the city park we had a pretty good view of the fireworks just sitting in our driveway. It was really fun to be able to just sit in our driveway and enjoy the fireworks. We avoided traffic and everything! It was awesome. The display was pretty good. If I had a better camera I would have better pictures, but you’ll just have to accept and iPhone shot and a shot with my point-and-shoot for now. Someday  I’ll  have a DSLR and I’ll learn how to take photographs of fireworks. That will be cool.
     Thanks for coming, everyone! We had a blast and we’re so grateful for such good friends and family!!

Good Men and a Great Country

 

I wanted to write something about Independence Day this year, but I couldn’t really think of anything eloquent, so I’m including a picture of the kids so that this post isn’t a complete waste.

I am proud to be an American, and I am proud to be an Army wife.

People say that our country doesn’t have any business fighting in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries. I do agree with those who say there are things we need to fix inside our own country first, but really, our problems, serious as they may be, are not even close to the problems people face in other countries.

Some people are losing faith in the “American Dream” but I think what we have really lost is work ethic, determination, and personal accountability. As a people, we have forgotten what is important, we have forgotten how to get what is important, and we have forgotten that the best part of having something is sharing it.

I hope this year, on this Independence Day, we can re-evaluate our “American Dream” and what we  are doing, not only to achieve our dream, but to share it with others – all around the world.

And I also hope that we will continue to fight to protect our freedoms that we enjoy in this country, particularly religious freedom.

I feel so blessed to live in this, the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Bricked

Playing Legos with the kids...


Don't touch the outlet, Superman!!

I love these days. There won't be nearly enough of them. I am re-learning how to appreciate my children and every moment with them - being amazed by each thing they do and learn.




And then Rocky beat up Superman. Apparently Rocky is more than just an amazing boxer. Ha ha.


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Potty Training Volume 2 Issue 3 - well, that was easy

Potty training is (almost) officially done. In basically one day. She still hasn’t pooped in the potty (she’s done it twice in her undies) but I think that is just a matter of me paying better attention, and her getting used to doing it on the potty. It’s a lot of new stuff for one stinker to learn! And she’s done SO well!

We’re doing the potty-every-half-hour routine, and so far she’ll go right away by herself to the potty and go pee. Her diaper was dry when she woke up this morning, and she went pee right away in the potty. She’s been dry all day (she doesn’t pee when she poops, and I think that is part of why it’s hard for her to learn to poo in the potty – she used to poop in a perfectly dry diaper before we started potty training).

I’m so grateful that it was so easy. I feel like I can go back to life as normal again. Things are going to get better. I know it.

PS – the kids are so entertained in this picture because I took it with the webcam and they could see themselves on the computer screen. They thought that was hilarious. I LOVE these babies!!

Potty Training Vol 2 Issue 2

Why do I feel like I've done this before?




We originally started with Joseline back in February, but she was too stubborn (and I too impatient) for it to work. Maybe if had been more patient.... Anyway, the important part is that we had brains enough to stop. And then life happened (a LOT) and we had brains enough to know we should wait until things got a little less crazy (that is, we waited until I got a little less crazy - but that is another story entirely).

Now we're back at it - and we decided to do it kind of randomly yesterday.



So far (about and hour and a half) we're already to the timer phase - I set the timer for 10 min (I started with 15, but after she went to the potty herself(!) once before the timer rang I shortened the intervals to 10 min just to make sure it wasn't a fluke). I think she just wanted a cookie...

No accidents (yet - I'm prepared for it to happen, but crossing my fingers that it doesn't).

This second time around has been easier than Vincente ever was!

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