Close to home adventures: Happy 4th of July

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Happy 4th of July

I was so proud of Ian at church on Sunday when he stood up, placed his hand on his heart and sang the Star Spangled Banner (closing hymn) with much gusto and passion. Sophie even joined in after awhile.

For our 4th of July treats, we had red, white, and blue waffles (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and whipped cream) and with dinner we had strawberries dipped 2/3's in white chocolate and 1/3 in blue sprinkles. They were a huge hit.

Now I'm lying peacefully in a hammock next to the lovely Bear Lake. My kids are sleeping in (knock on wood) after a late night of lighting off fireworks and watching an outdoor movie in the big screen (at our friends' cabin). Brian's family happened to be having their family reunion here the same week, so it's off to the beach to play with cousins today.

Why was I nervous for summer break (thoughts of being outnumbered by all these kids)? It has been the loveliest of times.

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83 Things About Me: A Novel

1. I completed a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Communications in 1998.
2. I then moved from my college town in Logan, Utah to Washington D.C. to begin an internship with Senator Hatch.
3. The internship soon turned into a full-time staff position, my first job with benefits. I got to give tours of the Capitol, write letters and (some) speeches and RSVP the Senator's regrets, which occasionally resulted in a chance to swing by a fancy schmancy party myself.
4. I absolutely loved everything about my life in D.C. and planned to stay for a few years or forever.
5. Photoguy and I met a few months before I moved. He persuaded me with his sweet talk and a diamond ring to move back to Utah. We were married in January 1999.
6. I loved that he was a photographer at the local newspaper and I had always loved to write. We plotted our world travel adventures and book publishing future.
7. In the meantime, I took a job working as an Employment Counselor at a University near our home, and in November, 1999 I launched my freelance writing career covering city council meetings and community stories for the local newspaper.
8. One month before our 1-year anniversary, we purchased a 1916 bungalow and began remodeling it. We spent our first anniversary sitting on a blanket on our newly re-finished hardwood floors eating the chocolate cake we'd saved from our wedding day.
9. Eight years later, we're still living in our "starter home" we only planned to keep for 1-2 years. And, we're still remodeling.
10. In March, 2001 I quit my full time job at the University to become a stay-at-home mom to my first daughter, Soph.
11. I fully embrace my feminine role as a wife, mother and homemaker. I can't imagine not being home with my kids, even though some days they drive me nuts.
12. I've kept up my freelance writing gig with the newspaper all these years, moving from city council meetings to business profiles to arts and entertainment to my own travel column to my current work writing for the Life editor and doing the restaurant reviews.
13. Restaurant reviews are fun, but, I don't get free food.
14. I do get paid well and reimbursed for milage. So it's good. The dream is just always better than the reality.
15. The best writing gig was my travel column while we lived in China. I basically got paid for submitting my journal. A total dream fulfilled. It rocked!
16. I write for a daily newspaper with a circulation of over 60,000.
17. Even though I am a journalist and my husband is in photojournalism, I don't like to read or watch the news very often. I find it too depressing.
18. I love to eat healthy food and work out at the gym every day. I have to go in the pre-dawn hours before the rest of my family wakes up.
19. I also love to do yoga when I can squeeze it in. 2-4 times per month if I'm lucky.
20. I also love to eat (everything), and sometimes do it in excess. Especially when it involves chocolate, popcorn or rice crispy treats.
21. In February, 2002 Photoguy worked around the clock covering the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. In March, 2002 our daughter turned one and we headed to the California coast for an impromptu vacation (his work mandated that he take time off so they wouldn't have to pay so much overtime). That is when we found out, unexpectedly, that we were expecting baby #2.
22. Ironically, it was while we were on a west coast vacation a few years before that we took the pregnancy test and found out about baby #1.
23. I love to travel. I always thought I would love to travel. My senior year in high school, I saved up every dime from my minimum wage job and then blew it all on a summer long study abroad traveling through Western Europe. I can never get enough of seeing the world since this experience.
24. A year later, in the fall of 1995, I spent 6 months teaching English in Moscow, Russia with a volunteer organization.
25. In the fall of 1997, I spent 6 months doing a study abroad in Israel and the Middle East.
26. In 1998, I returned to Moscow, Russia to visit the family I had lived with when I taught English. I traveled by myself on a standby ticket. I flew first class next to the band members from Run DMC on the way home. The whole experience was an adventure.
27. Speaking of meeting famous musicians, when I was in high school I liked to go to concerts and met the band "They Might be Giants" and Peter, Paul and Mary. I also saw Ziggy Marley, The Cure, Aerosmith, U-2 and about a dozen other bands live in concert.
28. Speaking of travel, my husband and I took several killer road trips when it was just the two of us. The one where we got the good news about our first baby involved traveling from Utah to Reno, NV to San Francisco, CA, up the California coast to the Red Woods, up the entire Oregon coast with stops at beaches and sight-seeing in Portland, finally culminating with several days in Seattle, WA.
29. In November, 2002 my first son was born just 20-months after our daughter. I went through labor and delivery without drugs.
30. I was a very accident prone child and my mom always accused me of having a low tolerance for pain. She had to take it back after being with me for the delivery.
31. Photoguy said he didn't believe that I could run a half-marathon because I had despised running my entire life. He had been in the delivery room too so he should have known better.
32. After his remarks, I trained for and ran the Moab, Utah half-marathon in Spring, 2003 when my kids were 2 and 1.
33. One month later, I ran another half-marathon followed by the first leg of a marathon relay. I became so addicted to running that I started training for a full-marathon in the fall.
34. During the summer, when I had already completed a 17 mile training run, I injured my knee. It has never healed enough for me to run again.
35. It took a long time for my daughter to adjust to sharing me with her brother. She was jealous the first time she laid eyes on him. I am convinced that he had digestive issues, though we never conclusively identified them. He screamed for several hours each day and never slept through the night for the first 14-months.
36. The stress of this resulted in anxiety and depression. Running helped me to stay sane. After my injury, I had to take 6 months of low dose anti-depressants to get back to normal.
37. In the fall of 2004, we found out that we were expecting baby #3. Our other two kids were 3 1/2 and 2. About that same time, my husband, the sole bread-winner for the family lost his full-time job.
38. The past 3+ years have been a good exercise in faith for me.
39. I've seen the Hand of God working in our lives regularly.
40. In August, 2005 my second son was born. I was in active labor for weeks. I spent 12 hours in the hospital on a pitocin drip three days before he was born. Against my Doctor's wishes, I returned to my home dilated to a 6.
41. I got an epidural 15 minutes before he was born.
42. I love that my daughter has the same eyes as Photoguy and I -- green hazel with a blue rim and a yellow sunflower in the middle.
43. I love that she loves words, reading, decorating and planning parties.
44. I love that my first son has brown eyes, stick straight blonde hair and dimples.
45. I also love that he is a serious minded math wiz (he doesn't even start Kindergarten until next year).
46. I can get lost in son #2's sky blue eyes and I am head over heels for his crazy curls.
47. I think it is the best that he thinks everything in life is funny. Everything except naptime and rules that is.
48. While I was writing this, that fun-loving 2-year-old put a whole role of toilet paper in the potty.
49. Thankfully, he didn't flush. I can't stand cleaning up toilet water.
50. But, the very worst is vomit. I'm the person who hurls at the sight or smell of throw-up. And, no, it isn't better if it came from my own child. It's always just awful.
51. Before I had kids, I had probably thrown up less than 10 times in my entire life. I would go to great lengths to avoid it. Even as a young adult, I would wake my parents up in the night to tell them when I had thrown up.
52. Among other unpleasant things, I throw up during all three trimesters. I love, love, love my kids, but I view pregnancy as a difficult means to an extremely rewarding end.
53. When I was younger, I loved to babysit for everyone in the neighborhood.
54. You would think I would have known something about babies, yet when my first was born I thought she would enjoy swimming at 10-weeks-old and I took her to an amusement park when she was three-months-old because I thought she would like riding the carousel and the kiddie train. I had a lot to learn about infants.
55. I still love to take my kids to parks, museums, the mountains, the farmer's market and any events that come to town.
56. When they were 5, almost 4 and 1, Photoguy and I decided to take them to China. To live.
57. There is a long story behind this, but sufficeth to say, in our early years of marriage we planned many adventures to the Middle East, Russia, South America, etc. We never actually accomplished living abroad, and when our oldest was about to start Kindergarten, we felt our time was running out.
58. It was a life changing experience.
59. The worst part about the whole adventure was feeling like my mom would never forgive me for moving her grandchildren away.
60. If my husband and I could lead two lives at the same time, we would live one life seeing the world with our kids and the other life in our gorgeous mountain town in the warm embraces of awesome family and amazing friends.
61. I've always been good with money and enjoyed earning my own income.
62. When I was 10 or 11 I started doing a lot of babysitting to make money.
63. By the time I was in the 6th grade I was buying my own school clothes and paying my way to the skating rink.
64. When I was 14, I started cleaning a neighbor's house twice a week in addition to my "babysitting career."
65. As soon as I turned 15, I got a full-time job at Lagoon, an amusement park not too far from my home. I had to ride the bus one-hour each way five days a week and I got paid $3.15/hour, $1 less than the minimum wage at the time (the park had a waiver from paying underage employees min. wage).
66. I worked in the games department and I was very enthusiastic about asking people to spend money.
67. This earned me a fat bonus and the "Rookie of the Year" award which was like "Employee of the Year" for first-year workers. Now, I think I was really dorky back then :)
68. As soon as I turned 16, I started working at a movie theater 30-35 hours per week.
69. Looking back on life, I wish that I had not worked so hard and spent more time being young and less responsible.
70. On the other hand, if I hadn't worked so hard and saved my money, I couldn't have traveled to Europe the summer after high school graduation which changed my life and set me up for a life of world travel adventures.
71. When I got to college, I signed up for every volunteer and student organization I could get my hands on to make up for what I felt were missed opportunities to get more involved in high school.
72. Among my many adventures in college, I read to first-graders, visited adopted "grandparents," lobbied the legislature, and helped organize more than a dozen campus parties and shin-digs.
73. Besides all the volunteer stuff, I also worked for the University as a New Student Orientation coordinator and a Resident Life assistant with the on-campus housing.
74. I also attended every concert, symphony, party, event and lecture I could possibly fit in.
75. I thought my life was busy. Then, I had three kids and learned the true meaning of "busy."
76. I once got to take a ride in a hot air balloon for a story I wrote for the newspaper.
77. One of my favorite places to be is the beach.
78. We visit the beach approximately once per year. It's usually on the West Coast, though we've done our fair share of East Coast travel and took one trip to Maui.
79. My favorite beach was the powder white sand and bathtub warm water of the Mediterranean when I visited Tel Aviv.
80. I've missed two opportunities to travel to Italy, back when I thought opportunities were endless. Now, I don't know if I'll ever get to go. Photoguy has no desire since his cameras were stolen in Italy when he was younger.
81. I plan to continue my education someday.
82. I homeschooled my oldest for the first half of her Kindergarten year while we were in China.
83. I'm still considering homeschool as a lifestyle choice, but haven't committed to it yet.