Abundant Recompense Copy

Remember that time when our kitchen flooded? Well we officially have it all back together again! Finally! We only lack one cute little decoration I'm working on (also, I need to mop) and then we'll post pictures like crazy. I wanted to take a second before we did that to document a few creative breakthroughs we had during the process. Call them white trash, call them genius, here they are, in no particular order. Patents pending. Backyard Soaking Step 1: Burn dinner Step 2: Take pots outside Step 3: Fill with hose water Step 4: Wait (Overnight for best results) Step 5: Scrub and dump dirty water in the grass Step 6: Throw away the middle pot because really there's just no hope for that kind of charrage. Breakfast in Bed. Step 1: Grow way, way too much zucchini and have no place to put it. Step 2: Be addicted to (and experiencing withdrawals from) baked goods.     Step 3: Put down a towel on the bedroom floor and put yourself (and not your helpers) in charge of the honey. St...

I couldn't have guessed when I decided it was just time to man up and clean out the fridge today that I would end up with a mopped floor as a bonus. Love my big helpers.

When I get the itch to go canyoneering, Michelle is often a good enough sport to come along . This year we planned to go down Birch Hollow with our friends Mike (who did Pine Creek with me last year) and Stephanie. The canyon is a technical (meaning it requires rappelling) side canyon of Orderville Gulch, which empties into the Zion Narrows. We planned to take about 12 hours. As the trip drew nearer, Michelle began dreading the trip, and her dreams started featuring falling off cliffs and getting washed away in flash floods and our children growing up orphans. Still, she didn't back out, even when the news reported accident after accident in Birch Hollow. We drove down to St. George on a Thursday afternoon in August, and my mom was kind enough to watch our kids on her birthday. I watched the weather and the chance of rain jumped from 0% to 40% a few days before, then settled at 30%. We set our alarm clocks for 4:00 am. And we all woke up about 3:15 to thunder and lightning. Not th...

Hello there. I've been doing a bit of scrapbooking in preparation for a holiday that will not be named that is fast approaching, and while I've been doing it I've had the chance to look back at lots of old blog posts. It has been so fun to stroll down memory lane and remember my joys and struggles as I read what we've written and look back at old pictures. I've actually really enjoyed the posts labeled, "philosophical musings," perhaps most of all. They're just me. My brain working through things. I realized that those posts are pretty much nonexistent these days. I feel more like the family reporter than anything, which is better than nothing. But I'm mourning the loss of brain and wit and self lately as I drown in tomato sauce and casts and kindergarten and toddlerhood. So I wanted to try my hand at it once again to prove to myself that I am, in fact, capable of musing. Perhaps even philosophically. I don't remember where my fall decorations ...

Here is our cute little girl in her cute not-so-little cast. Things went well at the surgeon. It was very straightforward. They didn't have to set anything, which I was relieved about. They said the crookedness of her arm will straighten out as it heals and totally fix itself because she's so young. She is thrilled about the color. They had a poster of all the colors you could choose from and we talked about all of them and she deliberated for a while but she thought the blue one was so pretty. So that was the one for her. All three of the people helping put on the cast were extremely surprised that it wasn't pink. That's our girl! She'll wear the cast for three weeks, if all goes well. I think it's because she needs to be able to move her elbow so the tendons don't shorten and give her troubles. She's in pretty good spirits and doesn't seem to be in pain, although she's been up in the night for the past two nights. Unfortunately though, no sport...

We play hard around here. It is, indeed broken. It happened this afternoon when she decided she wanted to practice riding on Addison's bike. So we did. And I gave the bike a little shove on her second try and over she went. She cried and cried. The arm looked crooked and I asked her to wiggle her fingers, which she couldn't do because they were "so easy." (A Bryn-ism for "asleep," as in, "My foot is asleep.") I called a friend who took Addison and Leah for me, called Nate to give him a heads up, and we headed to the doctor where she cried and cried and wanted to "get out of here!" and absolutely did not want x-rays or a cast because it hurt too bad. But luckily the right people (and green suckers and Sleeping Beauty stickers) were in the right places and we somehow got it done, bless her heart. And bless the x-ray lady's heart who simply brought me a box of tissues and stood there like it was the most natural thing in the world when I...

Addison started kindergarten this past Tuesday! Here are some "first day" pictures. He's just so cute. To say that he was excited for the first day would be a major understatement. The hardest part for me was putting him on the bus in the morning with kids from kindergarten to 6th grade on it. He's just so little! But a sweet little nine-year-old girl in Primary promised me that she'd sit with him and make sure he was okay. The first day I put him on the bus and the girls and I hopped in the car to follow him to school and help him find his classroom. We got there and he was standing in front of the school with all the other kids and there was sweet little Haley, standing right next to him. I wanted to cry. He loved the first week. Let's hope it lasts! The girlies blowing bubbles and waiting for the bus to get home. Triumphant return from day 1!