A girl's got to have her shoes...

Noelle has discovered shoes. She has dragged a few pairs into the living room so that she can try them on and walk around in them. You'll notice her carrying her "purse" which is also her bucket. However what you can't see is that she has her comb in the bucket as well as the shovels. I couldn't help but to laugh a little as she continually tried to get the one shoe on. What a persistent child, that's why we love her.

Utah Wrap Up

Phew! That's right, I said it. We survived, all three of us. Three weeks and one day. We returned from Utah today to the hot and steamy bum hole of Boston, but actually we're happy to be home. I can't wait to weed the garden, which by the way, Boo did a great job taking care of. We only had one plant fatality. Boo survived the NH bar exam and Noelle was a dream on the flights home.
I've thought of a list of things that make me glad to be home:
1. Boo
2. My bed
3. No need to borrow a car
4. My garden
5. Jelly Bean in her own room

Ok so this list is lame but really I'm happy to be home.
We did do some fun stuff while in Utah. In chronilogical order:

Fourth of July - Cooling off on Independence Day '07
Grandma Nay's birthday at the zoo
High school reunion, twice
Lunch with old friends - Noelle and R at the Fowles'
Water skiing at Bear Lake

Pickleville Playhouse
Golfing at Sweetwater
BBQs - Noelle with Great Grandma and Grandpa Grow
Settlers of Catan
Basket Loft
Swimming in Grammy's pool
Playing with cousins - the "little lady" swinging with Maddy and Bud
Herding cats at Target Portrait Studio
Deseret News 10K - no I didn't run it! (Vic, Reb and Kate after the 10K)
Pioneer Day

Thanks to those who drove us around or lending us their cars, for feeding us, and for the extremely cheap entertainment, new clothes and good company. We love you and can't wait for those of you to come and visit in the next few months or to see you on the web cam.

Week at Bear Lake

I haven't posted anything about our week in Bear Lake, mostly because I am afraid of leaving my pictures on my parents archaic computer and never getting them back in a format I find suitable. So I've linked to The Gold's blog for their version of the same thing. "Bear Lake" - plus I probably couldn't have said it better.

Shame on us all... you know who you are.

62%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Free Online Dating from Mingle²

So thanks to my great friend (who I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with recently) I took a quiz on blogging and what I thought was a minor addiction. I know I'm a blog stalker. I think anything over 50% needs adjusting in one way or the other. This leaves me a couple of choices. I can either ramp up my blogging so that I can achieve a crazy high percentage or I can be more focused and blog less but about more. We'll have to see what I come up with.
This brings me to another thought, which is there are people who I know are looking at my blog and I'm not sure if I should thank them for publicizing it or not. You know who you are (M Lowe, J Andersen, you blog stalkers.) I would most love for people to leave comments. I know, I know my posts might be lame, but at least give me something to look forward to when I check to see if anyone has looked at my blog. Maybe I'll put a hit tracker on here. Hmm...the possibilities.
PS - I expect this to have a home on Jen's Blog of Random Thoughts because I know she thinks about her blog a lot during the day.

But it's a dry heat!

So we have been in Utah now for just about a week, and my word is it so blasted hot. I've lived in New England long enough to know that it gets hot there too, but its not 105 degrees (Fahrenheit of course.) Just standing on the curb at the airport I could feel the desert breeze, drying out my contacts.

Then as we celebrated the Fourth of July the temps crept up on us. We luckily were done with the neighborhood parade early enough to not have been cooked by the sun and by the time we were at grandma's for a BBQ there was enough shade to seek shelter.

Noelle wasn't fond of the heat and so I finally stripped her down and filled a bucket with water and let her play in it to cool off.

But the worst was the 5th of July. What in our right minds would have possessed us to go to the Hogle Zoo when it was 100+ degrees? Well we were celebrating Grandma Nay's birthday with all the grand kids. It was fun, no one complained and we saw the "Ghost of the Bayou" - or a rare white alligator. Noelle had fun and was great as were the other kids. She was so exhilarated that she zonked out waiting to be put in her car seat to go home. It could have just been heat exhaustion though. The misting contraptions at the zoo helped but really they should open at 8:00am and then close for a siesta and reopen in the evening.

But really it is hot and there is just no escaping the burning hot steering wheel, hot car seat buckles and air conditioning that just doesn't get cold until you've finally arrived at your destination. I think the heat is getting to the car too. It doesn't want to start for some reason. Today I had to pull out the jumper cables. I'm sure the scene was odd to the neighbors, one actually said something to me but I was in a hurry and was concentrating on the task at hand so that I didn't short out the batteries on both cars. I was just trying to run a couple errands and then have lunch with some old friends. I got all packed up and ready to go but when I went to start the car it just clicked. It had done this a day prior and Bear and D helped me charge it, but I guess some light or something was on because it still didn't work. So luckily one of my parents other cars was home and I could use it to jump start my car. However nothing can ever be easy. I had to figure out how to open the darn doors since none of the locks seem to work. And since luck never seems to be my companion at the right time, I happened to have on white pants and it was a 100 degrees out. The good thing was though that I have always had a half crappy car, or at least for most of my teenage years. I drove cars that were on the brink of being put out to pasture or at least in a junk yard and my skills were such that I didn't worry about putting the cables on the wrong place. Crappy cars can teach you a lot in life. Good thing for hindsight.

Camp Joseph - Sharon, VT

Rather than preparing to spend three weeks in Utah, we decided our time would be better spent with some friends camping in Vermont. I'm glad to say we were right! Camp Joseph is situated next to the monument that commemorates where Joseph Smith was born. Its a nice place even just to go and ride bikes around. We drove up Saturday morning and spent the night in a cute, very little, cabin. By little I mean probably an 8' x 10' space that has two bunk beds and a chair. We managed to put our port-a-crib in between the two bunks, but that's about all the space you have. In total we had nine families, 29 kids. It was amazing to see people rally together to feed that many people, put kids to bed, help find frogs and salamanders, clean up and many other things. I think it was a true sign of being part of a church that teaches us to help one another and also to rely on one another. We were so glad to have gone and on the way home we made mental notes of the things we'll be better at for next year. Here are some of the things we came up with:

1. We will pack more food and beverage. - Once again relying on others for a meal or two.

2. I will bring shoes and socks. - It got a lot cooler than I anticipated. Socks and flip flops are so yesteryear.

3. Remember our camping chairs that we've never really used because in the eight years we've been married I only recall camping maybe twice.

I'm sure there is more but I can't think of them, maybe I should add pen and paper so I can write it down.

It was so much fun to watch the kids play together. They were able to roam free and play and just be kids. I think its a hard thing to be in this day and age of modern conveniences and electronics. I think that kids really forget how to be creative with sticks and dirt. I also loved the "play" that some of the kids performed right before we left.