How Summer Ended, or Crash And Burn

It sucked, that's how it ended. It was a miasma of bickering and whining and moping and had a two-week no-electronics grounding grande finale. Egad.

The good stuff was getting school supplies, because that is always fun; meeting the teacher, because that is exciting; and having the Wolfs come spend one last day with us, which included my daughters screaming at crying at each other, so not fun at all. Egad. Again.

However, school has now begun, and THAT is good stuff. It is a busy year because Charlotte is in fifth grade - her final year in elementary school - and, boy, is she making it count! She signed up to be on the flag guard, so I take her half an hour early each day to put up the flag. She signed up for hand chimes, so I will pick her up an hour late once a week. She also signed up for book club, so that is two other late pick-ups a month. She submitted a drawing for the yearbook cover. She volunteered to be Zero the Hero for the kindergartners. She is living the dream.

Claire also signed up for hand-chimes. She will go early with Charlotte once a week. She is happy happy happy with her classmates and her teachers and her backpack and her sporty-school-self (that is her own identification. Apparently she just feels sportier at school). She already attended a fun swim birthday party with about half the fourth grade in attendance. She, along with Charlotte, is deeply into reading, and they both work on two or three novels at a time.

Gabe is handling first grade as well as can be expected. He whines about the work, but then he easily completes it and brags that it was so dang easy. He informed Liz he has been mad at Coach Hall in P.E. "since kindergarten," and he keeps getting nonfiction books about animals from the library and making me read them. Ugh.

OH - here's the other big news...

WE GOT A BUNNY! His name is George. Craig and Jess got him for the kids' combined 2013 birthday and Christmas present. We love that little guy. He's a dwarf Holland lop eared brown and white little funny bunny of cuteness. He's litterbox trained and learning to come on command (with strawberries). The kids are bonkers for him. Me too. The kids call him my furry baby. I can't help it. He's really adorable and fun. He hates to be picked up but he loves to snuggle and play. He eats all sorts of veggies and hay and pellets which Charlotte has taken to feeding him twice a day. I am the only one who cleans his cage, but once back-to-school settles down, they will get the pleasure of that chore as well. Thank goodness it isn't hard. I'll post pix some time when I actually take pix. OH - I can post the video of the kids receiving George. It's short and very sweet, with me (according to Sarah very rudely) telling Andy to get out of the way, so ignore that part. I was just trying to work my camera video thing on my phone.

Summer - Part Deux: Claire turned nine

Well, we had Claire's ninth birthday. Her daddy was out of town that day, a Tuesday, but our friends the Wolfs were staying over (which happened a couple times this summer and which we loved the most). So, she actually had a week-long birthday extravaganza. My brother-in-law Jared would tell you that is not any different from a regular Grover birthday, but whatev. On her actual-factual birthday, Claire chose all the places we ate. I believe it was donuts for breakfast and McDonald's AT the pool for lunch, and Chili's for dinner. Then when her daddy got home the next day, she chose Cheddar's for another celebratory dinner. Then on Sunday we had her family party at Mom's and Dad's, so more birthday. She wanted a My Little Pony cake. I picked a fabulous rainbow design with rainbow colored layers. It was a massive fail of epic proportions. Although she said it would be fine and would probably taste better than it looked (thanks, babe), I didn't feel ok about it at all. So, I left a huge mess in my parents' kitchen (they were out of town) and went home to sleep off the anger and disappointment I felt. I got up early the next morning to bake a much less adventurous cake. Then I went to my folks early before the party to clean up, but GUESS WHAT: Whittney and Jon had already cleaned the whole thing!!!! I was ridiculously grateful. So, I made subpar frosting and let Claire and her siblings decorate the plain old 13x9 cake themselves with M&Ms and tiny My Little Pony figures.

Cake Fail. This was supposed to be a half-round cake standing on it's cut edge, you know, like a rainbow. And the ponies were all along the top. But then it slumped. And slumped and slumped. And ran off the edges of the plate. And the ponies slid down down down. It was a disaster. And after all the time I spent making seven different rainbow cake layers. Including indigo. INDIGO, PEOPLE!

Here is the plain vanilla cake in a pan that these kids decorated with rainbow colored M&Ms. You can see how much more they prefer this particular version. I'll try to do better next year, Claire :(

And now summer is over...part one of I don't know because I am a sucky blogger.

Here's a recap:
We went on a lovely road trip to Utah at the end of July. Our end goal was my brother-in-law's wedding in Manti, Utah, but we went via a few waypoints.

First off, we drove up to Dallas for Andy to work at a weekend conference on Friday, July 19th. I was able to see TWO great family friends (thanks to Ally Black and family for letting us crash in your gorgeous home; thanks to the Stephens for a fab dinner and great visiting).

On Sunday, the 21st, we had our furthest drive of the whole trip: from Dallas to Tucson Arizona. Fortunately, I am a KILLER AWESOME roadtrip packer, plus also my kids are fantastic road-trippers, and including the fact that Andy can drive like a trucker which is great because I fall asleep in the car after about 30 minutes, so it was a GREAT day. I had the car stocked up with library books, books on CD (which all but Andy loved, but he graciously let us have a few hours of listening every day), washable markers and paper and coloring books, and toys that all fit into these handy lap trays with storage in the sides that the kids were in love with. I got them from Walmart for $6 each, and they were worth triple that for this trip alone. I told them they could take whatever they could fit in the little bins on the sides, so that both limited the amount of stuff to bring (and potentially lose) as well as gave them freedom to choose what they loved most. I also bought them each a pillow pet to serve as both, well, a pillow and, um, a pet. A stuffie. A toy and friend, you know how it is. My kids love stuffies. THIS IS THE FIRST EVER TRIP THAT CLAIRE DID NOT BRING BIG PUPPY, so thank you to Pillow Pets! Okay, and we also had snacks and a trash bin and a map that Charlotte hauls on every trip for the past two years and follows along, and a custom cd made by moi of all my kids fave songs on the radio. That was genius, I say.

We loved the huge cacti of Arizona! We actually pulled over on the side of the highway to take this picture.

After spending a night in Tucson, we headed the couple hours up to Phoenix to spend Monday with my dear Amanda from college and her family. It was great to break up the long days of driving with a day of rest and play and swimming and talkingtalkingtalkingtalkingtalking like old times when we were single and childless and used to try to imagine the day when we would be married and our kids would play together and we would still hang out AND IT WAS ACTUALLY HAPPENING! We spent that night with Amanda in her home, and then we left the next morning to head on the last leg of our trip straight up to Salem, UT. I sobbed when we pulled away from Amanda's house. Sobbed. Put my head down on my lap, shoulders shaking, scaring the kids sobbed. Who knows when I'll get to see Amanda and her family again? Argh.

Anyway, that reminds me that Claire also did a lot of crying on this trip. It seems that she loves her cousins in Texas and her cousins in Utah/DC so much that her heart is always missing half no matter who she's with. I had to introduce her to the concept that your heart can be in two places at the same time when you love people who are far apart, and it hurts, baby, I know. We cried some more.

ANYWAY again, our drive up to Salem to stay with my cousin Kate was fine. I always find it hard to enter Utah, but this trip was the best by far. Kate's home and family are SO fun and SO nice and SO full of good food (thanks for all the hot breakfasts!). Seeing my aunt and uncle close by there was great. Driving up to North Salt Lake every day to where my bro-in-law Brian lives wasn't even hard after all the hours upon hours of driving we'd done (plus, as I mentioned, Andy did all the driving and I did all the sleeping), which is what we did in order to hang out with Andy's whole family. We did lots of fun stuff, like hike 2 waterfalls, make the wedding cake, visit and visit and visit, get to know my new sister-in-law who is fantastic, watch the cousins (all girls except Gabe, who was a little glum about it) play with Darling Lady who is Brian's and Carrie's girls' hamster, attend the lovely wedding in Manti, throw the reception in Provo, and then meet up with two more girlfriends from college which was a total and unexpected treaty surprise! What a trip! Here are some pictures:

The happy couple exiting the temple to the cheers of the family and some strangers.

Setting up the reception at this green gorgeous park with a mountain in the background that was actually a, wait for it..... shooting range. Super-secure feeling, right?

The coconut wedding cake made by me and Gabe. He was a little hurt that all the cousins were flower girls and he was nothing. This job totally made him feel better about it.

The first waterfall adventure. Apparently Andy took this at the top just after Charlotte looked down and realized how far up she had gotten. I stayed at the bottom in a lawn chair for this one. Thank goodness.

As you can see, it was steep going. Bridalveil Falls

Hiking to Stewart Falls, the second waterfall adventure. These are the famous aspen trees of Aspen Grove up at Sundance. My grandparents' names were carved on one of these trees many moons ago, but I don't know if the tree is still standing.

Stewart Falls. Freezing. Flesh-slicing rocks. We didn't care. We totally ran behind the falls and got soaked and sliced. Andy and his brothers climbed up to the upper falls as well. Crazies.

Totally awesome double rainbow in New Mexico that spanned the entire sky. And you know pictures of rainbows are never as vivid as the real thing, so clearly this thing was incredible.

The kids at Hoover Dam. We ate lunch there on the way up, and it was HOT. You can see the dam in the background.