August

I am an admitted Olypifile. I love them! Can't get enough. I have been staying up late way too many nights in a row to watch. This year has been the Olympics of women for me. So many amazing stories of incredible feats by women from around the world! Age in elite athletic competition is being redefined before our eyes. I wonder if men can continue to compete at an elite level in their 30's and even 40's or if it is just women? Wouldn't it be nice if there was finally something physical women get to do that men can't? Well, besides having babies and the incredible feat of cleaning up your child's bodily fluids without pausing a beat.

I admit I got choked up when I watched Constantina Tomescu win the marathon. She ran such a gutsy race. She wasn't even expected to medal but saw a chance, took a huge risk and ended up winning a gold medal. I thought she was going to fall over every step past mile 20. Obviously that wasn't the case as she ran several victory laps when the race was over. The woman is 38 years old and has a teenage son! How incredible is that?

So many other women in these Olympics have inspired me. The look on Shalane Flanagan's face when she finally realized that she finished 3rd in the 10,000 was amazing. 4 days earlier she had food poisoning so badly she couldn't get out of bed. She couldn't even jog until the day before the race!

Flanagan was in 10th place half way through the race and just kept passing runners. She set a new American record and a personal best. She said, " I just found my happy place and thought of my favorite run at home: 'What am I holding it back for? There's nothing to hold it back for, forever. I'm just going to let it go.' "

So cool! And inspiring. An interesting note, Shalane Flanagan's mom is a former world record holder in the marathon from before women were allowed to run more then 1500m in the Olympics.

 Sophie and Grace got big girl bikes!

 These oompa loompas crack me up!

Emilee and Ben came to visit for Em's Bday! We camped at this nasty campground by Carolina Beach. It was actually a trailer park and was pretty gross. But the beach was a blast!

The boys spent all their time digging in the sand.

Cold Hearted Snake

What do a stick, a piece of trash, a bunch of leaves, a tree root, a piece of tire all have in common? At 6 o'clock in the morning while running they all look like a copperhead snake just waiting to sink it's fangs into my juicy, mosquito bitten leg. This is the land of snakes and bugs and it makes me so uncomfortable to not know anything about the local deadly animals. My running companions tell me that copperheads have a triangle shaped head. Other wise they look similar to the other 290 kinds of snakes that live in North Carolina. I don't think I will be pausing to look closely at anything that can kill me, if not by venom, then by fear. I am working really hard to keep my fear of snakes rational so I can keep enjoying running. My favorite trail was snake-free until just a little while ago. My friend was running there alone and saw a small copperhead. She is not paranoid like me and stopped to take a good look. I guess they are not aggressive snakes unless you scare them, like if you were running and just happened upon one. The really yucky thing, copperheads live in nests all cozied up together!!!!! So if you see one, you can bet his lovely family is close at hand. I am freaking myself out now, so I am going to stop. Just for the record, I saw the hugest, biggest, ugliest spider I have ever seen (besides a tarantula) this morning ON MY FRONT DOOR.

July Stuff

Jason and I just returned from our first vacation by ourselves for a few years. It was wonderful! Who knew traveling was so fun and relaxing? I think I did know pre-children and had just forgotten. On our drive up to Washington DC we stopped a few times, each time was much less then 20 minutes. It was amazing!

My parents were so nice and flew out from CA to watch our kiddos. Once I was actually out the door, it was a lot of fun. I have so much anxiety leaving my kids. I know some of you don't, you should be glad! We don't get to pick what we worry about in life it seems.

We stopped at Monticello on the way up. I had never been before and it was really different then I expected. The home is beautiful, but not ornate at all. The floors and all the decorative work are all wood, no stone, marble or anything like that. It has working clocks that Thomas Jefferson designed and built. He was obsessed with time. The design of the entire estate is pretty amazing. The one thing that he did splurge on was glass. It had to be imported and he had floor to ceiling doors and windows. The whole house if full of light and air, definitely not what you see in other homes of the period. I am now pretty interested in Jefferson, especially his views on slavery. He was the largest slave owner in Virginia, mostly inherited slaves. He did allow his slaves to earn money when their "hours" to him were completed. I'm wondering how he was able to believe and write so eloquently of the freedom and rights of all men, yet own slaves. So, if you know a good biography of Thomas Jefferson that does not mythologize him, let me know.



Jason and I have both been to DC several times, so this trip we just went to the places we like best. We had to save time for the luxury of sleeping in!!!!! We spent most of our time at the the Air & Space museum and several art museums. There is an enormous new annex to the A&S museum out by Dulles airport. It was amazing, even had one of the space shuttles. When we were there we met a former astronaut who was doing a book signing. He is the one in the blue shirt.

I was impressed with the memorials more this trip then ever before. This sounds a little dorky, I even chocked up in the Lincoln. We went to all the memorials at night. They are beautiful all lit up and it was much cooler. My favorite quote of the trip is from Franklin D. Roosevelt inscribed in his memorial: "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.Let us move forward with strong and active faith."

All in all, a great trip. My mom mentioned that maybe they should make a summer tradition of this. I'm all for it!

 First trip to the NC Zoo

 Lindsey and Dan came to visit! We went mining for gem stones. Girls had tons of fun. Boys not as much although there was a lot of dirt to play with!

Happy Fourth

Luke, Noah, Grace (she really is having fun, honest), Sophie and I parading

I love Fourth of July! To be honest, I really love holidays in general, but the Fourth is fun, fun, fun. We went to a parade and festival in downtown Greensboro. The parade was fun, much smaller then I am used to.

There were some striking differences to a Utah parade. Interestingly there was not a single horse and only 1 beauty queen. There were several entries of Revolutionary War Soldiers and colonial reaenactors that gave the celebration great historical flavor. The campaigning politicians were there but also people protesting/politicking for local social issues. No better way to celebrate the freedom of our country then by letting your voice be heard.

This was my favorite part of the parade.





If you are wondering what this is, so was I! At first we thought maybe these cars were advertising for a demolition derby. But the kind people next to us told us they are dirt track race cars. The people in them were hilarious, no waves, smiles or Happy Fourth of July. Just driving down the parade route. The red shirt one guy has one says, "Purpose?" hand painted. I laughed so hard I could take pictures of most of them.

By the way, one of Jason's colleagues told him that her pastor had preached the previous Sunday about how great Utah's Fourth of July celebrations were, that they were the most patriotic she had ever been too, etc.

Happy Fourth of July!

I tried a new Southern food this week, sweet potato fries. They are deep fried, of course, sliced sweet potatoes sprinkled with salt and pepper. So good! A lot of things are fried here that I have never heard of. Say...Oreos and candy bars to name a few. They dip them in sweet breading and fry them. I haven't had an opportunity to try either yet but every teenager I ask says they are delicious. How can an Oreo not be delicious?

My favorite new southern saying is "red hot minute." Like, that bread needs to come out of the oven this red hot minute! (Overheard at a church activity.) Or, you get back in time out this red hot minute! (Overheard in my kitchen.)

Our funniest adventure this week involved a trip to Wal Mart and some ice cream sandwiches. I let all of my kids have a small sample while we were shopping. I thought it would help to distract them and I could get what I needed as fast as possible. I don't know how he did it, but Luke was able to take a 2 inch piece of ice cream sandwich and cover every centimeter of exposed skin on his face and hands with chocolate. Noah was almost as bad, the girls just had really messy faces. Not being a total newbie at this mom thing I had predicted this and grabbed a handful of napkins from the sample lady. Well, sticky ice cream sandwich does not come off at all with a dry crusty napkin. So we shopped and I was the lady with the snotty nosed, dirty kids. I had to laugh, even while I was pushing one cart fulled of said kids and pulling another full of groceries.

 Cute Lukie and Grace cracking me up as she paints...not sure if the mustache was intentional or not, but it makes me laugh!

We adopted a sweet kitten from some people in our neighborhood. The kids named him Leo and he is a trooper so far with all the attention he gets. He has good instincts of where to hide so little fingers can't get him too.  He is a well loved kitty!

Church Stories

Everyone's kids do funny things at church now and again. I just had to record today's adventures because they make me laugh. We are Mormon (LDS) and during our services bread and water is passed around as Sacrament. This part of our meeting is always a challenge for Luke and Noah. They are too young to understand at all what it going on but they see bread broken up into little pieces and cool baby size cups of water. Of course they assume this food is for them. Today as the tray of bread went by Luke got his little piece and promptly popped it in his mouth. But then the buffet just kept going and he shouted, "No, no, no!!!" all the while trying to grab the tray with his little hand. Of course everyone else's children were completely quiet at just that moment and the whole room heard. A mouth full of cheese helped him calm down thankfully and I just chuckled, didn't laugh out loud.

Later Luke was banished to the foyer with his Dad for making undignified noises and I had the other 3 kids in the meeting. The girls were doing great looking at books, quietly coloring and doing stickers. I had my hands full helping Noah climb repeatedly on and off his chair while hearing about 1 out of every 3 words the speaker said. One of the things you learn in elementary school is that if you are really quiet, you can get away with almost anything. Looking over to check on my oh so quiet girls, I heard the young couple behind me snickering. Grace had stickers all over her face! Well, specifically down her forehead to her nose and across both cheeks. This time I'm afraid I did laugh out loud, thankfully it was a quiet laugh. She is such a sweet girl and was just looking at me smiling her sweet smile. For those of you out there astounded by my lack of disciplined parenting, the natural consequence of this experiment did come. Each little sticker was quite sticky and hurt just a bit coming off. Lesson learned...I hope.

Who Gets the Back?

Our family drove to Williamsburg last month on a short vacation. Craig and Dessa were here so we wanted to do some exploring with them.  The world needs to come up with another word for traveling anywhere with small children. Vacation creates visions of sleeping in, eating good food, fun and rest and adventures. We definitely have adventures and some fun with our kids, but no rest at all and eating goldfish crackers and raisins is no better on vacation then at home. (We did try one restaurant on this trip. Luke was screaming and had to be taken outside by one of us the whole time and Grace threw up from drinking too much root beer. But, I digress…)

So, we are cruising along the freeway blissfully enjoying listening to adult music as our kids are all silent in the back watching a dvd with headphones. Who ever designed this feature of our new car should apply for sainthood. Up ahead there was a truck pulled off on the shoulder. Jason changed to the center lane and of course we look over as we pass. Just as we go by, up pops Grandma from the bed of the truck! Grey hair totally frazzled and wind blown, sunglasses on. We were both roaring and Jason says, “Only in the south does Grandma ride in the back of the pickup.” To be fair, I did answer that maybe great-grandma was driving the truck with a baby in the passenger seat. It was pretty funny though. I used the endorphins from 15 minutes of belly laughter well that day.

 

 

The kids were too young to enjoy Williamsburg. Mostly I stayed outside while the boys played with rocks, the girls lasted a bit longer but outside was more fun for them too. I'm not sure what Sophie is wishing for, but I hope she got it!

We stopped at the Jamestown settlement on the way, it was really interesting. So much to learn about history here.

 

The family vacation/playing saga continued this weekend. We went camping with all our kids for the first time. I was hoping it would be 50/50 with work and fun. It wasn't. But the fun was still fun. We went to Greystone Highlands to celebrate Father's Day.

 

Wild Rhododendrons, so beautiful!