A Slice of Everyday Life

To begin my blog entry this week I wanted to post a picture of a birthday present my youngest daughter made for me. This is a picture of something called a "Talkie" (my kids sew them sometimes). She spent the entire afternoon and evening sewing it and then came to me at night and gave it to me. I thought it was really sweet of her to go to so much effort, and it's currently sitting on my piano where I can see it on a regular basis:


For the rest of this entry I thought I'd talk a little about my house and post some photos I took last week. Whenever we have visitors, even family members, we go out of our way to clean the house (at least, the parts of it that people will see), but for this blog post I decided to just take pictures "as-is."

This is a picture of my youngest daughter's bedroom (upstairs):



And the same bedroom from a different angle:


This is a "bookshelf" in my son's room (upstairs) that he uses as a toy box (actually I think the entire room is just one big toy box):


And this is a picture of my son's bed and desk:


This is a picture of my piano (in our basement). It's a 1914 Kimball upright grand. I spend a lot of time at the piano whenever I'm at home:


This is a picture of my oldest daughter's bedroom (in the basement):


This is a picture of my music studio downstairs where I teach lessons. There is also a wood stove in this room:


This is a picture of my bed (upstairs). I love the mural on the wall behind it:


This is a picture of our living room (main level):


And a close-up of the temple picture hanging on the wall (I have always loved this picture):


Another picture of the living room:


This is a picture of the kitchen. The brown drop-leaf desk in front is where I'm sitting as I'm writing this:

This is a picture of our kitchen table where we keep my daughter's bird during the day:

This is a picture of my downstairs bathroom (romantic Italian phrases are written on the walls):


And this is the bathtub in that same bathroom:

This is a picture of a Hawaiian waterfall that hangs above our stairs:


This is a picture of the ping-pong table and other assorted junk in our garage:

Another garage picture:

And another:


This is my computer desk (with a picture of George Washington hanging on the wall):

Photo Session

On Labor Day this year my wife decided to take my kids to a park in Mapleton for a photo session. We usually get pictures at Target but wanted to try something different this year, and it worked out pretty well. We borrowed a nice digital camera from a friend and the weather cooperated (it was overcast but not raining).

We chose the Mapleton location because there is an old museum (and a cabin and a falling apart wagon) and we wanted the pictures to have kind of a rustic/old-fashioned feel. She and I both took pictures (I used my iPhone) and hers turned out much better than mine because she had a higher quality camera.

In this picture the wind happened to kick up and it made the girls looks like they were in a modeling session with a fan blowing on them:


It wasn't easy to get my son to have a nice natural smile (I think he inherited my non-photogenicness (yes, I just made up that word). At one point I asked his sisters to tickle him, but then he looked more surprised than happy so I decided to make jokes instead to try to get him to laugh and smile naturally.






When my oldest daughter was younger she didn't think much about her appearance, but that all changed last Easter when I was sitting next to her at my grandpa's house and she asked if she could dye her hair. I told her it was fine with me as long as she didn't dye it blue. She decided to dye it red, which I think is a great look for her. Now she spends a LOT of time brushing and curling her hair every day, which is fine as long as we're not in a hurry to get somewhere :) In these pictures she's wearing a whale tale necklace made of glass that we bought at Sea World. She also has a Stargate necklace (in the shape of the Stargate from the movie/TV show) that she likes to wear sometimes.






My youngest daughter has a perfect camera-ready smile that she can bring out any time. In between pictures the smile would disappear and she would look almost said, but when the camera was in front of her the smile would instantly come back. In these pictures she is wearing a necklace with "The One Ring" from Lord of the Rings, which is her favorite movie series.






I have been truly blessed with great kids, and they are growing up WAY too fast. I've tried to talk to them about slowing things down a little, but they don't seem to be listening. I was always in a hurry to grow up, too, but now that I'm older I wish I'd taken the time to enjoy my childhood a little more.

Lagoon

Last Friday Nu Skin had their employee summer party at Lagoon. I took my wife and kids, but we had an extra ticket we weren't sure what to do with it. I tried to call my mom to see if she wanted to join us, but she didn't answer her phone. Then I called my sister, but she didn't think her almost 1-year-old baby could stay very late (we were planning to stay until they closed) My sister was able to get a hold of my mom, and we worked it out that my mom would babysit while my sister came to Lagoon with us.



Traffic in I-15 in Utah County was awful, and it took us a couple of hours to get to Lagoon (we stopped in Provo to pick up my mom, and we also stopped in Bountiful to drop off my mom and pick up my sister). When we got to Lagoon I realized I had neglected to pick up the tickets that had been handed out for employees, so I had to go to the Guest Services office and plead my cause. They photocopied my drivers license and let us in. We ate dinner (provided by Nu Skin) and then started going on rides.



I have an extremely weak stomach, and most rides leave me feeling pretty nauseated. But I go on them anyway, because I enjoy them (even if I don't enjoy the after-effects). However, there are a few rides I refuse to do on. One is the Space Scrambler (which made me feel quite ill the last time I rode it) and now there is another ride on my list: the Centennial Screamer. Aubrey wanted to go on it, and no one else was willing to go with her. So, even though I was feeling pretty dizzy from some of the rides I had already been on, I agreed to go on it (and then regretted it). I felt sick the entire way home and didn't recover until the next morning.

One of my favorite rides is "The Rocket," which is basically a really long free fall with a soft landing. I went on it with my sister, and she was casually commenting on the beautiful view at the top while I was sitting in my seat petrified with fear. As soon as I began to fall I screamed so loud that my oldest daughter heard me (she was watching from the ground). According to her I screamed "like a girl," but I'd have to see the video footage to be sure.



Just before the park closed we were in an area with little kid rides, and we saw one that I thought looked kind of fun. There were some very young children riding it, and Gail asked Zach if he wanted to try it. I told Zach I would ride it with him if he wanted to go. He thought about it for a few minutes and then decided that he wanted to do it. The moment the ride began he became paralyzed with fear. I felt bad for him, but at that point there was nothing he could do but try to endure it. I reassured him as best I could, but at one point during the ride he screamed, "I can't believe this is a little kid ride!!!" The ride operator looked at us when he said that (we were the only ones on the ride) and I could tell she was trying not to laugh.



We were pretty tired when we left, and I was still feeling pretty sick from the Centennial Screamer. Unfortunately there was some construction work going on and the freeway narrowed to one lane, which caused a pretty serious traffic jam. We got home at 1:20 a.m. and I went straight to bed. The next day was a Saturday, and everyone was still so tired from our trip to Lagoon that they laid around the house all day, trying to recover. It was a pretty fun trip overall, but between traffic and nausea it definitely left me feeling glad that the next employee summer party is a year away!

Stargazing

I have always loved stargazing, so when my wife asked me if I wanted to take a day off and go on a field trip to the planetarium with my 4th-grade son, I jumped at the chance. We were going to a planetarium in Salt Lake, and I had planned to drive my own car instead of riding the bus with the other kids because my nerves typically can't handle so many young ... and loud ... children in a such small space for that long. But parking in downtown Salt Lake can be difficult, so I decided at the last minute to take the bus. When one of the teachers told the kids that there was no singing allowed on the bus I could have hugged him. I also had my iPod with me and was quite effectively able to tune out everything and everyone around me. My son had his own way of tuning out the noise by falling asleep in what looked like a particularly uncomfortable position.


We arrived at the Gateway and spent a half hour playing at the "splash pad" water fountain. My son wasn't in a swimsuit and didn't want to get his clothes wet, so he wandered around while I read a book on the lawn. Then we ate lunch. I had decided to eat school lunch, but my son brought his lunch from home. My lunch was better than expected, especially since my son traded his juice box for my milk and gave me the rest of his turkey-bacon sandwich. I especially enjoyed the carrots and ranch dressing.




I was assigned to keep an eye on three other boys, and my son helped me round them up as we got ready to walk to the planetarium. Finding them, gathering them in one place and keeping them there proved to be quite difficult. While we were walking they kept getting spread out, and it felt a little like herding cats. There were moments where I longed for the quiet independence I take for granted when I'm at work, but somehow my son and I managed to keep the group together and we soon arrived at the planetarium. We spent about 45 minutes looking at the various exhibits, including a giant "kinetic art" contraption that captured the complete attention of everyone in the group for several minutes (which is no small feat with 9 and 10 year old boys). Then we went to the theater and watched "Incredible Universe," which is a show featuring beautiful images of stars and galaxies and a quiet, soothing explanation of how the universe began and the stars and galaxies formed. It was so quiet and soothing, in fact, that I feel asleep.

After the movie I disappointed my son by not buying him a souvenir at the gift shop (he kept asking if we could go back the next day). Other than not getting an overpriced souvenir, I think he enjoyed the field trip. We both stayed awake on the drive home because we had already had our naps, but several of the other kids fell asleep. The noise level was much less than it had been on the drive up, so I didn't have to turn up my music quite as loud to drown out the sound. When we got back I checked my son out early (there was only about a half hour of school left) and enjoyed the rest of my afternoon. Overall I enjoyed the experience and am grateful for the opportunity it gave me to spend time with my son.