Farmer's Market and garage barbecues

This Saturday, we went to the Farmer's Market downtown, just to check it out. We were amazed at the variety of foods and art that were there. It was fun to wander and gander at the people and things there. I don't know if we'll be going every week, but it was fun anyway. Lear and Ella got balloon animals - above is a picture of Lear with his zebra, but Ella's elephant popped before we even left. She was good about it - about all she did was tell everyone she saw that day that "My e-fant boke."

Later that day, we had a barbecue at our house for Pioneer Day. We couldn't celebrate it on Pioneer Day because Cory didn't get the day off. We had our usual crowd - the great-grandmas, Cory's parents, and Karen, as well and Cory's cousin Brindy,  who is not one of our usuals, but we were happy to have her. We always invite more people, but they're the only ones who ever come for some reason. Anyway, after the kids ate we let them swim in our little mini pool. Lear can get his swim suit by himself, but Ella refused to wait for me to get hers, and got in the pool as is. I decided that it would be better to let her have her way this time, but we took off her diaper after a few minutes because it had ballooned to about ten times it's normal size. So, she was just running around in her tank top, until mommy decided enough was enough and got her swim suit for her. (She has the cutest little cottage cheese butt, and it's hard to resist letting her show it off - or taking blackmail pictures for later down the road.) We had to move the party into our garage when it started pouring. We just sat in there on our lawn chairs, chatting and eating Cory's apple crisp (the apples were from the Farmer's Market). Karen entertained the kids with chalk drawings on the floor, which is what she's doing in the picture above. We had a great day, and we're glad that we got to spend it with the special people we had there.

Lear quote: "I don't have an onion, I have a butt." (We had harvested our onion plants, and Cory told Lear in his usual joking manner that he was an onion.)

Ella quote: Nana: "Ella, did you know that Aunt Kelly has a baby in her belly?"

Ella: "Ooo, baby?" Then pointing at Richard, "Papa baby belly!"

I took the kids to the West Jordan Conservation Gardens to take pictures of Ella for her second birthday. I just realized that I hadn't had pictures of her done yet, and I thought I'd give it a try. These are a few samples - I thought they turned out pretty well, considering that Lear wouldn't stay out of the frame, Ella wouldn't do anything but sit on benches to pose, and I couldn't get many pictures of them except for walking-away pictures... but hey, I still got a few good ones.

We went bowling with Nana and Papa last Wednesday for Papa's birthday - all of us. You should've seen the cute little bowling shoes that they had for the kids. Ella's were especially cute, I thought. Who knew they made them so small? In fact, Ella was kicking all our butts for a while. She would lug her six-pound ball to the ramp and give it a little shove down the lane - and then start clapping and screaming before her ball even got halfway down the lane. The journey is more important than the destination, right? Maybe that's why she did so well... Lear decided to stop using the ramp about halfway through the game, and watching him throw the ball down the lane, only to have it go about 0.0056 miles per hour while zig-zagging agonizingly slowly toward the two pins he would hit was hilarious. I think we might have to do the bowling thing more often. It was pretty fun. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera that night, and I couldn't get good picture with my phone camera. Phooey.

 

Balloon Wars

Catching up on the last few weeks

I hadn't realized that it's been so long... I'd like to say I have just been busy (which is actually true) but more likely, I'm just on the lazy side. SO, sorry. On to the news!

We had my parents here for the Fourth of July weekend, which was great. It's especially great for me, because the kids spend all their time with Grandma and Grandpa, that I just sort of drift along in this dreamy child-free daze. I sometimes lose my temper with my mother, I'm ashamed to say. This is my problem, not hers, I know - my problem that I allow myself to be bugged and annoyed, and not my mother's problem, because she's usually just being herself and not doing anything wrong. I have great hopes that someday I will grow up (Maturity is a social disease that I somehow have not caught), but in the mean time, my mother puts up with me like an angel. She often reminds me that she feels the same way about me that I do about my children, which is a powerful rejoinder. We always have things to learn from our parents, don't we? 

Anyway, we took my parents on a trip on the Heber Creeper, and I'm not sure who had more fun, Lear or my father. I didn't have a good time, because I was having a terrible allergy attack the whole time - although it went away when we were driving the Alpine Loop. Then it came back as soon as we got home. 

After my parents left, we had about five days of normalcy, then we went camping - kids get DIRTY when camping! I knew it was going to happen, but I wasn't ready for the grand scale of it all. Dang! It's a good time they had fun getting dirty, because I'm not sure all the soaking and scrubbing were worth it otherwise. We had a big group there - Nana, Papa, Kevin and Shari, Karen and Grams, Devin and Kelly, and us. We took up two campsites. We met a fun family there with a couple kids that Lear and Ella had a blast playing with in the little stream that went by the campsite. We saw some deer go through the camp, and I personally enjoyed all the wildflowers - especially wild columbine, which I can't grow at home for some reason. (I've tried a couple times, but they always die.)

Since then, Cory has gone to a four-ten-hour-day work week. I think he's had a harder time than he thought, because he's going to work very early in the mornings so he won't have to work later at night. Having Mondays off will be good, though - I hope good enough to make up for the early mornings and long days. 

Ella quote: "Sunbee! Sunbee! Jeeja wammee, sunbee!" 

We had a fun but difficult week last week - fun, because every branch and twig of the Stoker family tree was in town, so we got to visit with a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles, and difficult because we were gathering for Gramp's funeral. I had such a hard time playing "Going Home" aka the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony as Grandpa's casket was leaving the funeral. We were supposed to repeat it until everyone left the chapel, but after the third time, I had to tell the pianist to stop, because I couldn't play anymore. Nothing hits me harder than music. If I don't cry during a eulogy or talk, you depend upon me crying during the musical number. You'd think that after 20+ years of playing music that I'd be over that, but I'm not. Go figure.

The picture above is from our Family Night at Leatherby's. I know that it is blurry (sorry) but I thought it was a cute picture regardless. We've just been trying to get the children on a normal schedule for the last couple days, since the last week has been so crazy. My parents are coming this week to visit, which we are all looking forward to. The kids love it when they're here.

Finally, we had to buy a new freezer. Our old one was a hand-me-down from Cory's grandparents, and has never worked well. It freezer burnt everything, and ALWAYS had frost build up to the point that we couldn't close it sometimes. So, I was ready for a new one when we found out that most of the stuff in it was thawing, and that the Otter Pops we put in it two weeks ago were STILL not frozen. 

Lear quote of week: Karen: "Gramps went to sleep in his house, and woke up in Heavenly Father's house."

Lear, looking confused: "You mean he woke up at church?"

Ella Quote: Bronson: "Ella, who is coming to visit you this week?"

Ella: "uh.... Two!"