Great News!

WE have the greatest news to announce, just in!!!

Boo passed the New Hampshire bar exam.

We're so excited we poohed our pants! ha ha ha

But really we're so proud of him for letting us spend a long time in Utah so he could study even though he missed us so, so much. He's so smart and doing such a great job as an attorney. (he even went to Federal Court for the first time yesterday!) We sure think he's swell.

Princess Playgroup

Yesterday was the beginning of something new at our house...Princess Playgroup! Yep, that's right folks, one day a week for 2 1/2 hours I get to drop my Jelly Bean off for a little time with her gal pals and I get to do whatever the heck I want. Then every fourth week they come to my house to check out our books and toys and music while the other mommies ditch out. What a great system.

They even got to watch the popcorn shoot out of the popper!

Annielle, Noelle, Buddha (Lauren), Bea Bea

Playing with the jewelry and getting their hair done.

What is that face my baby is making?

I love Craigslist!

We were recently given a new table! Hooray, it will not only fit our small family around it, but if we were to ever be so kind to invite more people besides the missionaries over for dinner we can now expand it to fit a few more. It will add 24 more inches of hosting love may we ever need it. However, the very best part is that I sold our old table that we've had for as long as we've been married, which- let's be honest is a long time now, and it only took 24 hours!! Thank you Craigslist.com! Rock on Shockacon!

Now if only we could replace our floor, how's that for ugly?

Don't worry, driving with us is safe.

So Boo and I are officially the coolest people in the whole world. If you haven't been out to visit for a while then you probably haven't seen our "new" car. Yes its just a couple of steps up from good ol' Rusty, the Ford truck that I drove for five months before moving east. Even a little newer. But our 1990 Honda Accord aint nothing to shake no sticks at. It cost us less than a new TV and works fine. For a few bucks more we scored a fix it yourself book on Amazon. The first project was the air conditioning, which I mentioned a while back. Now tonight we got to tackle the bumper. It came to us mangled so we just had to make sure it didn't fall off. However some unkind person who will have their day in you know where, backed into or clipped or whatever to add a few more scratches, a new crack and made it so the bumper would come off in a strong wind. How it managed to stay on while driving on the freeway is a mystery to us. Any how, Boo and I managed to re-secure the bumper, figured out how to take the turn signal lamp off, and figured out that the light was in fact not broken, just burned out. How smart are we? And we are even still friends! So needless to say with some wire and a few odds and ends screws that I found the bumper should be just fine for the time being and we'll even fix the light. So come and visit anytime and if you're lucky we might even give you a ride in our "new" car.

7th Annual Family Fun Days and Labor Day Weekend

This past Labor Day weekend we went to Maine to compete in the Mitchell Family Fun Day event. I'm sure many of you perked up and said to yourselves, "family fun day, what is that? I bet it was fun?"
Well basically its a weekend of planned events which over the weekend help to proclaim one family as the overall winners. The events were as follows (in order of play):
badminton - which we played wrong according to Dictionary.com - too many players at once. Next year I'm looking up the rules for every event so that we don't get cheated out of a win. This would also have helped since we could have rotated in players instead of needing all four representatives to play at once. One family member was none too excited for badminton and decided to loose the game for us, not once but twice (it was double elimination.)
Horse Shoes - I'm a weakling. I couldn't throw to the pit or else they would go all crazy and nearly kill a spectator. Next year the above mentioned family member will sit out badminton and only play horse shoes. He was actually very good at this one. Boo was also pretty good.
Wiffle Ball - Ok so we did girls against boys and got spanked. Luckily it was scored by number bases touched and then divided by number of players for each family. We didn't do so bad at this considering two played and one was designated pitcher. Boo had some great hits and I only hit pop flies. I had however been practicing with some of the kids in the 'hood' and realized that wiffle ball was easier to hit with only one hand.
Archery - For the most part our family did really good at archery. We each got four tries to hit the targets to earn points for our family. I only went once considering that I nearly lost my elbow and now have an ugly bruise to show for it. I even cried a little because it hurt so bad. Grammy Albertsen got some good bruises too.
Mormon Cranium - This was our game to organize. It was hard to compete when you typed up all the questions. The little kids couldn't have cared less about this game, however in a small group it will be a great FHE activity. We did ok.
Scavenger Hunt - This was a relay event and we had to find certain items from around Grammy M's yard or shed or garage. We actually won. We happened to get the longest green bean to knock the Mitchell's out of first place. I thought it was a lot of fun.
This year it was decided that the winners would take home a poking stick, to be used with camp fires and such. Only Papa Mitchell would have saved a branch from a tree that was hit by lightening during hurricane Bob in 1991. The stick will have the winner's names carved on it and they get to keep it until the next Family Fun Days.
You might be wondering where Noelle was during all the fun? She was everywhere. Climbing, escaping, napping, playing with Grammy A or the cousins. It will be a few years before she's competing.
Hopefully next year we'll be able to get more of the Albertsens out here to help represent.
Also while we were not laboring, Boo and I got to get in a game of golf. He did really well. Now when I say well, its relative to the number of times we actually get out and play each year. Bogey golf is great! I on the other hand chose not to keep my score. However, we did have a great 9th hole. Thanks Boo.

Martha Stewart Can Kiss My Grits

Last night we went to our friends, the Sundahl's, for a "tree house party." Throughout this summer they have been working on a very impressive tree house in their back yard. So with Indian food on the menu, I offered to make the dessert. I'm sure by my title you can already sense my demise.

Yesterday happened to be one of, if not the hottest day of August 2007. I believe that my commentator friend on NPR said that the heat index was 104. That means that with the humidity it felt like "the inside of a mouth." Terrible day to try a new recipe, especially one that involves a ton of butter.

Not thinking I printed out the three recipes, with a total 20 steps that were supposed to produce a great cake. I even watched the video from her show so I would do it all exactly the way she did. During my production I realized that this was also a two person operation. (well three actually because they have a kitchen aid mixer which counts in our kitchen as another person, which we don't have.)

This is what it was going to look like!

All was workable until the frosting portion of the experiment. Our house was just too hot. The butter was too soft and my whipped butter cream frosting looked terrible. Boo and I conjured up a solution however once we got the frosting on the cake it wouldn't stick, also because it was too hot. It wanted to melt and slide off. We tried to put it in the fridge to cool it down but every time we took it out we had the same surprise, a huge pile of frosting at the bottom of the cake. We needed cake suspenders to hold it up. We learned that more in this case is not better and that patching up the sides where it had slid down didn't help. So needless to say our cake was a flop. It tasted fine, but looked awful.

Maybe I should have taken my sissy's advice and gone and bought the chocolate cake at the Costco. It would have looked a million times better. Also, I have learned that Martha's recipes are not for the faint of heart and she should put a disclaimer on the recipe that says in extreme heat and humidity this recipe is sure to fail.

Thanks to our friends who actually ate the cake.

Oh me of little faith

Last night we went to the baptism of a new friend Luis. I was thinking that he is incredibly wise for his years. Before the baptism we had him over for dinner with the missionaries. This wasn't the first time he'd been to our house as Boo had participated in the discussions with him before. But he's only 17, lives with some relatives but takes care of himself while his mother has left to take work somewhere, he doesn't know. Doesn't know his father at all either. We got talking about school and his plans for after graduation. I told him that if it was me, I'd be freaking out and that I thought he was really calm for his situation. I commend his decision for being baptized. I know that he thought through it very carefully. It was a really nice event to be part of.

Cape Cod Day

So one of these years we will indeed make a trip to Cape Cod for more than just a day's worth of activities. Maybe we'll get smart and go in the middle of the week and stay through a weekend?

We were invited to go to Nickerson State Park to do some camping with friends from the hood (neighborhood). Boo and I packed up our beach gear the night before and decided we'd head out early Saturday morning, as to beat the crazy end of summer beach goers. For those of you who have never driven to the Cape on a Saturday in the summer, it really only has two ways on, Bourne and Sagamore bridges. We haven't ever gone over the Bourne bridge, but the Sagamore creates a serious bottle neck for getting on and off the Cape. But if you leave early enough like we did you will avoid all of that nonsense.

Noelle eating some spilled Fruitloops out of the dirt. Ah, I love my scavenger baby!

We hung out at the camp ground for a while before heading out to Marconi Beach. Boo and I tried some boogie boarding.

Noelle just played in the sand and made new friends on the beach, as she wandered off while I was snapping pics of Boo in the water. I think they group she was hanging out with was laying bets on how long it would be before someone in our group noticed she was gone. (disclaimer - no we're not bad parents, its just that the baby sensors were turned off for those who agreed to watch her for us, and its ok, we can still be friends.)

After the beach we went back to the campground and went on a nice bike ride just before dark. Seeing how I was on a tiny little bike the workout was a little more intense than I had planned on. But it was still a really beautiful ride.

- We'll just call this picture "WIFE" the ultimate ball and chain

We ended the night with a tasty dinner compliments of Papa Bokovoy. He even made his own ketchup.

Thanks for a fun day on the Cape. Next time I go to Nickerson I plan on bringing my bike and sleeping in a yurt. Yes three state parks in Massachusetts offer yurt camping, I bet you're jealous.

Blueberry Picking Dejavu

We went blueberry picking again, but this time we went for the smaller more tedious berries to pick. I don't know blueberries very well, but Jen says they're better to cook with. I'll take her word for it. However I'm so smart I put two boxes full of berries on the top of the stroller and then tried to do some four wheeling and dumped my hard to pick berries into the crab grass. It made me swear. Poor Ian's virgin ears. We scooped up as many as we could and then had to go back and pick some of the fat berries to top it off. Good enough for me. When I rinsed them I found a bunch of sticks and grass in the strainer.

We thought maybe the babies would like to just hang out in the stroller, but they didn't fit as well as we would have liked them to.

The Freedom Trail for the Millionth Time

Riley and Tate win the prize. I think I just did the Freedom Trail for the millionth time. We didn't get going until later in the day so we weren't able to complete the whole thing, but we saw some good stuff and and did the Bunker Hill Memorial at the beginning of their Boston tour. It has a new visitor's center that just opened this summer. Pretty cool.

They also saw Fenway Park (which Tate had never heard of, duh), the Museum of Science, and the aforementioned Six Flags. No beach though. We like to go to the beach, but I couldn't convince those boys. I guess three days really isn't enough time to do it all. And its kind of an expensive journey if you try to do it all.

Roller Coasters and White Trash

This summer seems to be a summer of firsts. Blueberry picking and now Six Flags! My brother Riley and his friend Tate skipped on over to Boston after their week at EFY in Palmyra, NY. We made the venture out to western Massachusetts to experience its major attraction of Six Flags New England. I wasn't sure if we were going to the Massachusetts version of Lagoon or if we were going to the Warner Bros version of Disneyland. Needless to say all of these places have one thing in common; the common definition, in demonstration of white trash. Yeah, I said it. Honestly folks, I realize there is a water park attached to the theme park, but is it really necessary to pretend that your swimsuit is part of your roller coaster riding attire? Absolutely not! Not only did I see things I didn't ever want to imagine, but I guess I had no idea that body shape versus swimsuit really doesn't matter to the general theme park population. One word: scary. Maybe I only noticed because we were standing in line for long periods of time and I had a lot of time to evaluate the fashions.

Despite our neighbors in line we got to ride some awesome roller coasters. Superman was so fantastic that I honestly couldn't say or scream a single word. I thought my tongue might fall out. Seriously. It was crazy scary/fun/pee your pants cool. Another fun one was Batman, hence our picture.

L to R: Tate, Riley, Boo (with flamboyant hand pose), Rach

Noelle unfortunately didn't get to come, however we are so indebted to the Jackson's for letting her pretend she was Ian's twin sister for the day.

A very New England thing to do

Last Friday we participated in one of the classic New England activities of the summer. Fruit picking!!! Yes folks, there are many places around where you can go and pick your own fruit. Common varieties would be raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and of course apples. Ryan and I have gone with the youth in our ward to pick apples for the annual apple pie making night at the church, but that seems so limited with such a large variety of produce to choose from.

Rachel with Noelle and cousin Ian

So Noelle, Ian, Jen, Lindsay, and Spencer all got our pick on. (sounds like something you'd say about the guy in the car next to you who is picking his nose.) I digress. We found a lovely orchard for picking and with the rainy conditions and cool summer air it was one of the most spectacular things my Utah native eyes had ever seen. I wasn't exactly sure what a blueberry patch looked like and much to my amazement there were loads of berries. I decided that there aren't too many things much more beautiful than a loaded up, ripened blueberry bush. Be still my heart.

Needless to say we ate our fill of berries and took a bunch home too! Definitely a tedious task, but worth the experience and money.

Something to blog about

So we haven't been doing too much in the past week besides pretending to be hermits and staying in our house because its too damn hot to be outside and chances are that it might just be so humid it will rain. I played the inside outside and back inside game while trying to rid our garden of some weeds. I won't be playing that one again.

Besides being completely perplexed about returning to the working world versus raising my child, we've just really been reinforcing that bond between mama and Jelly. However she does put on a good show when Boo leaves in the morning. I even think it makes him feel better about himself to know that she's sad to see him go and so happy when he returns.

Noelle got some more immunization shots today and she totally knew they were coming. Poor girl. But she did get some super-fly band aids that sparkle. But besides the shots, our doc said she seems so much older than she really is and its not because her head is the size of a three year old either, or that she's a little bit tall for her age. Its really because she wanted to chat the head off the doctor with her baby gibberish. Does that sound like anyone we know? Guess not. We're so lucky.

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.

Does this resemble anyone we know?

So I've been going through some pictures and scanning ones that are relevant to the upcoming high school reunion, aforementioned. And I came across this picture and thought I would post it on our blog. We have this hanging in our house and as I was getting ready to put it on the wall a friend of ours was over and asked if I was hanging some pictures of Noelle. Clearly after looking at it she realized it was not in fact Noelle, but indeed I told her it was Boo. Wasn't he cute?

They do look a lot alike. This picture was taken by Uncle Len.