Rewind: Tree House Museum Field Trip

Tonight is the lunar eclipse and "blood moon".  I've been sitting here doing a few things:

 

1) trying to decide if I want to stay up until 1:45 to see the eclipse at its peak or go to bed and set my alarm to get up when its time to go outside and take a gander

2) thinking about the Outshine fruit bars that I bought today...I really want one right now but am I more in the mood for coconut or pineapple?

3) surfing the internet, reading the news, and trying to figure out how else I can fill my time while attempting to make decisions on numbers 1 and 2

 

Whilst mulling these things over in my mind and wasting perfectly good laundry-folding time as I sit here in my office, it occurred to me that I haven't posted here since that amazing week in March when I knocked out something like four posts.  It was crazy.  When I pulled up my blog a minute ago, I thought it was strange that I had only gotten as far as Christmas in my catch-up posts.  Didn't I post about Claire's field trip that I went on in January?  Nope.  I made a picture collage for it over a month ago but didn't exactly follow through on getting it up here.  I guess it's about time I got going on that...

 

In January, I threw my name in the proverbial hat as a possible parent chaperone for Claire's field trip to the Tree House Museum up in Ogden.  Luckily my name was drawn (my girl would have had an impressive meltdown and crying fit of unimaginable proportions had this not happened) and off we went on the given day.  Words cannot express how I felt when I heard that there was plenty of room on the buses for parents to ride along and they wouldn't need me to drive or carpool with another parent.  I hate riding on the school bus.  They're made for little people...not tall people with long legs and I cringe just thinking about trying to force my knees into the given space.  It's been months since that day and my legs still feel cramped.  Anywhoooo...enough about me.

 

At the museum, we were escorted into a small theater with a stage where our guides gave us the rundown of our time there and entertained all of us with their child-friendly stand-up comedy and silly antics.  Our class then went on to another area of the museum with the funniest guide of them all to hear him tell us a couple of fairy tales from different parts of the world. Much to their delight, he involved a few of the kids in the story telling and kept everyone laughing as he told us foreign versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella (one of them was a Chinese variation).

 

After our stint with the story teller, we went upstairs where the kids had a little class on how to make magic wands.  It was really cute and each of the kids got to make their own wand to take home.

 

Our final stop was back in the theater room where another guide walked our kids through a performance of Blanca Flores (Mexican version of Snow White).  Wanting to be sure that every child who wanted to be in the play could be, there were parts galore.  I was asked to help with "casting" and being ever-so-slightly biased and favoring my own child, I selected Claire to be Blanca Flores.  Other characters were an evil queen and mirror, a handsome prince and his cousin, guards, bandits (we know them as the dwarves), and a handful of other characters, too.  The speaking parts were fed to the kids as they went along and while the acting may have left something to be desired (like when my "sleeping" daughter wouldn't close her eyes and kept playing with and looking at her magic necklace), it was totally entertaining and once again, everyone had plenty of good laughs as funny things happened, mistakes were made, and general chaos ensued during some parts.  It was absolutely darling!

After our play was over, the kids had a little bit of free time to explore and play around the rest of the museum.  We were then lured back to our glorious chariot with the offer of fruit snacks.  Who could possibly resist?!

 

In spite of the less than comfortable transportation, it really was a fun day with my girl and her classmates.  I love helping in my kids' classes and going on field trips whenever possible and this time was no different.  Besides, I'm sure one day I'll wish that my kids were back in elementary school so that I could ride on the school bus with them just one more time.

Rewind: Christmastime 2013

I'd like to start by pointing out that the post for Christmas 2012 didn't make it up until early April of 2013...this time around, I'm beating time by about 3 weeks. We're talking real progress here, folks!

 

We'll just go in order and start with my trip to Zoo Lights with the kids.  The kids and I bundled up one weeknight and headed into SLC, arriving at the zoo just after the gates opened for the evening.  To say that we were in the middle of a cold snap would be putting it nicely.  We were all bundled up head-to-toe...and completely freezing the entire time we were there.  We arrived just as Santa was headed to get his reindeer and got a quick picture with him before going to a nearby building where Mr. and Mrs. Claus would be available for visiting.  We were only 2nd or 3rd in line to see them and even though we'd only been at the zoo for less than 15 minutes, we welcomed the chance to warm up inside while we waited. After hanging out with the Clauses for a few minutes, we went on to see the light displays and animal exhibits, take a few rides on the carousel (unlimited rides on my pass...awesome), and duck into buildings for warmth whenever we could.  When we were good and close to being frostbitten, we left the zoo and went out to dinner at The Olive Garden (one of the kids' favorites - the basically inhale the salad there).

Sub-freezing fun at Zoo Lights! 

About a week after going to Zoo Lights, we took another jaunt into SLC to visit Temple Square.  Going in the late afternoon/early evening, traffic and parking were great and we actually arrived prior to the lights turning on for the evening.  We started out with a stop to see the candy window displays at Macy's and walked up the block just in time for the lights to turn on.  It was bit chilly but NOTHING like the temperatures we had braved at the zoo the week before.  It was nice to be able to take our time and enjoy the displays.  We started at the Reflection Pool and then went on through Temple Square, making a stop at one of the sets of big east facing doors (a real thrill for the kids).  It was so nice to be there before the big evening crowds.  Afterwards was another dinner at The Olive Garden.  I tired for Blue Lemon and a couple of other places but they begged and I'm a sucker.  At least I knew the kids were getting their vegetables.

Temple Square and the candy windows at Macy's (top and bottom corners on the right).

 

Last - but not least - was Christmas.  We had a very quiet Christmas Eve at home.  The kids received their traditional Christmas pajamas - dog/puppy themed this year - and new slippers.  We sang Christmas carols and hymns, read the nativity story from the Bible, and sent the kids off to bed where they struggled to fall asleep.  For the first time in years, I got almost everything done earlier in the day and evening (final wrapping, baking cookies, making our Christmas morning pastry, etc.) and Max and I actually made it to bed before midnight.  It was a miracle and it felt so good!  Christmas day was also very laid back.  We enjoyed the morning and early afternoon with just the four of us and then had my little brother and his family over for Christmas dinner.  It really was a wonderful day.

Top four pics are from Christmas Eve (kids insisted on silly-faced pictures) and bottom pics are from the big day.

Well, there you go...our Christmas season in a nutshell.  I'm already looking forward to the holidays this year - less than 9 months away!

Rewind: Thanksgiving 2013

I've posted before about how much I love the Thanksgiving holiday and I would love to write more about it now but it's kind of off-season and for the sake of getting a bunch of posts knocked out, I'm going to try to forgo my usual wordiness. This year, Thanksgiving gets its own post for one reason alone: a family snapshot.

My hubby is not a big fan of the camera and we very rarely have our picture taken together as a family. As we were getting ready to leave his parents' place after Thanksgiving dinner, I made a quick move to have a picture taken. Max didn't know it but I was hoping to get something that we could use for our family Christmas card as we usually just do pics of the kids. While the background wasn't ideal, Claire had undone her cute hairdo, and Hudson had a fever (we found out the next day that he had a raging sinus infection), I was overall very happy with how it turned out. I ordered our cards from Shutterfly that night and didn't tell Max until I showed one to him when they came in the mail....and he liked them. Hallelujah!!

 

Sneaky move. Good results. Thankful wife/mom.

The Low Family - Please Read & Help If You Can

Several months ago, I started following the Low family blog. The wife, Leslie, is the sister of a great girl who once took my kids' pictures (she's married to a guy/friend I went to church with growing up). When I started reading the blog, Leslie and her husband had recently found out that they were expecting triplet boys (no invitro or fertility treatments). These darling boys were born in December and in late February, the triplets were all diagnosed with Retinoblastoma, a rare childhood eye cancer. Within days the parents and infant boys (they have another son who is 2 or 3) flew to Toronto where the triplets have already undergone various treatments and one of them has had an eye removed. It is a remarkable, heartbreaking, and faith-promoting story. If you'd like to read more about it, here's the link to their blog:

 

Low Family Blog

 

Every once in a while, something that someone is going through hits close to home, and having some sort of a connection (by whatever degree) makes it that much more real. What the Low family is experiencing right now hits close to home for me. I hurt for the parents and get emotional thinking about what they must be feeling. I worry about the babies and what they're experiencing and I think about their older brother, how his world has changed with everything that is going on. I am reminded of what a blessing good health his and I am grateful that my children are healthy. I wish I had a magic wand that I could wave to cure the boys and make everything better but there is no such thing.

 

Emily, the sister that I know, set up a site for fundraising to help the family.  All funds received will be used for expenses as they have to travel for the boys' treatments and pay for food, lodging, airfare, etc. and anything else that comes their way as they care for all four of their boys. If you'd like to help out financially, you can click below:

 

Low Triplets Fundraising Site

 

If nothing else, please pray for this family and keep them in your thoughts. They need every ounce of support they can get whether it be spiritual, emotional, financial or otherwise. Everyone has an hour or time of need...this is theirs.

 

 

Happy March...1st Post of 2014!

Happy New Year, Happy Valentine's Day, and Happy St. Patrick's Day (tomorrow)! I seriously cannot believe that I haven't posted since November and that this is my first post of the year.  Okay, with my amazing procrastination skills, it's totally believable. But when I last wrote, I sure didn't think that it'd take until now for me to post again. Here I am, though, and I'm hoping (for the billionth time) to be back in the swing of things.

 

Right now I'm just knocking this out really fast before I get on to bigger and better things. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be cranking out posts for things we did at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. I wouldn't mind getting back to some actual writing/musing like the lists I used to write and such. We'll see what my sometimes-functioning brain comes up with.

 

That being said, I already know that tomorrow's post is the most important one that I will write this week (possibly this month, this year, etc.).  Today's writing is really just what I hope will be an attention getter for people to come back tomorrow.  Please tune in and read...