greed

we had all the kids with us in the car on the way somewhere and ryan was meeting someone from craigslist to sell something. he did the hand-off and was coming back to the car, jefferson said, "look dad has $40, maybe he'll give us some! act good!"

Kiss Your Brain

So today I've been totally accomplishing stuff. I did dishes, laundry, went hiking with Pete and Tess who is home from school today, swept the pool, swam with kids, and made bread. While I was waiting for it to rise I sat down at the computer and for some reason or another went back and read old blog entries then I couldn't stop reading them. I just love that I've kept this blog up for the past three and a half years, I love the pictures and the videos and the stories that I would have absolutely forgotten about had I not written them down. But while I was reliving the past I forgot about the bread, it rose too much and now it will be all kind of flat-ish and ugly. Boo.

Tessa and Alana's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Pulido, used to have the kids "kiss their brains" when they did a good job on something. They would kiss their hand and pat their own heads. Too adorable. So today I kiss my brain for doing the blog all these years and also I kick my brain (figuratively, not enough yoga for that maneuver) for allowing me to become distracted and forgetting the bread. Argh.

Dr. Coconut

We are pleased to introduce Dr. Coconut, our new parakeet, thanks to Pat. Thanks Pat! He is very nice and the kids have enjoyed looking at him and introducing themselves to him.

Please show some respect people, he didn't attend eight years of Coconut Medical School to be called Mr. Coconut.

No More Loaners!

So last week there were a couple of fun events. Amanda took Alana home with her and Oliver after school to play one day and they stopped off at Walmart on the way home. Pretty soon I got a text from Amanda that she had broken Alana and she was returning her. Apparently the girl got into a fight with a shopping cart and lost.

There was blood, tears, a band aid and now her nickname is Scarface.

Then the very next day Ryan went over to help his brother with some roofing. A couple of hours later I got a text from Lindsey saying that Ryan had fallen off the roof but that nothing was broken. I called right away of course, all these dumb alarming texts were beginning to get on my nerves. What had happened was, it was quite warm outside and as they were finishing Ryan realized that asphalt singles heat up a lot and he was in a hurry to not be on the roof anymore, so he quickly and unsafely tried to climb down the ladder without touching anything, became unbalanced, knocked the ladder down, tried to grab hold of the roof, scraped off lots of skin and landed on his side on the ground. He is fine, just a bit scraped up.

But I told my sisters that they aren't allowed to borrow my people any more unless they can keep them in the same condition they were received.

Idaho Trip

Last week my sisters and I drove up to Idaho for my uncle's funeral. It was about thirty hours of driving packed into three days and it was a little too much fun.

We laughed and laughed all the way there. For some reason it was way funnier taking a wrong turn and ending up in California and adding about two hours to the trip than it normally would have been. And almost running out of gas in the middle of nowhere was hilarious, it was okay, there was a town right over the next hill after we realized our mistake. We were mostly laughing thinking how displeased our husbands would have been with us and we were giddy thinking about how we didn't have to worry about it, ha! Everything worked out fine, we got there and we had, well, lots of fun.

Here is a video of Whitny's attempt to climb over the seat to take a nap in the back. There were all three boys strung across the middle seat making it difficult to get over them without stepping on people. They yelled a lot when you stepped on them. I would put video up of Amanda climbing over the seat but Peter was trying to help her over by pushing on her bum and it gets a little uncomfortable with his hand placement. So that one is just going to have to remain unseen by the masses. But you can take my word for it, it is fun times.



The funeral was very nice. We got to see cousins and family that we hadn't seen in about five years. Everyone loved my Uncle a lot, he was a good man. Whitny and I sang a couple of songs and my great uncle George sang a song which I secretly recorded part of, I wonder if I could figure out how to put it on here. . .

Nope, can't. That is sad. Maybe I'll have Ryan take a crack at it sometime.

Daddy spoke about Uncle Steve, so did Aunt Sandee and they did a great job. They really liked their big brother. It was good to see Mom and Dad, they've been hiding up in Idaho and Utah for the past month or so, escaping from the heat down here and I don't blame them. It is icky.

We spent about seven hours total in Idaho, about four of them were spent at the funeral and cemetery but we managed to play with some new found third cousins who let us ride their quads. Amanda, Whit and I drove around for about 20 minutes and in the first minute of my drive I was stung viciously by a murderous horse fly on the neck. It hurt real bad and I grabbed my neck thinking I'd been stung by a bee or something and begged Amanda to fix it (she was on the quad with me) but she couldn't stop laughing at me long enough to fix me properly before the dang thing stung me five times. I made her drive after that while I nursed my wounds. We didn't turn back though, we drove on and had fun. My neck still has big itchy welts on it.

Here's what it looked like where we rode around.

On the way up we stayed with a dear friend in Layton, we've known the family since they lived around the corner from us when I was a little little kid, they moved when I was 4 or something and we've been staying with them on our way to Idaho ever since :). Amanda and I shared a queen sized bed and had an interesting experience involving a touch lamp that was right above the bed and I kept accidentally turning on in the night. I was sleepy and disoriented and couldn't turn it back off without a lot of struggles and difficulty. But don't worry, it only happened about five times thru out the night. Also, at one point Amanda grabbed my hands, then let go and went back to sleep. In the morning she asked if she saved me from falling out of bed. I told her she did but I was lying. I felt like she needed a win. It was fun at Marcy's house. She fed us a delicious breakfast, her monkey bread is to die for and I think I ate half of it. We also had tomatoes out of her garden and they were heavenly, seriously, so good.

On the way home we stayed at Kate's in Spanish Fork. Dear Kate is always such a gracious hostess and seems honestly happy to see us and let us mess up her house. There were 11 of us at her house that night and we were littered all over the place. Amanda ended up on the blow up bed with Peter and she got soaked in the middle of the night, and it wasn't by water, if you know what I mean. I was grateful that I chose the couch. Good times! Amanda was a good sport and Kate and Kent were wonderful to let us stay with them. It was so nice to get to see them and Justin and Bailey too.

Here are some more pictures I took on the way up there. I used my HDR app on my phone. I totally won the photography contest I was in with my photography nerd sister Whit! Also, they were taken out the window of a speeding car. It was hard to get an ugly picture up there though, it was lovely out.


If you look closely you can see a tiny little rainbow in this one. So pretty.

Brothers Don't Shake Hands...

I have been thinking about brothers a lot lately. You know, I didn't get to grow up with my brother around, he lived far away as long as I can remember. It was always fun when he came to visit because he would toss us around, I love him a lot. We always used to bug Mom for a little brother. I don't think we fully grasped what a pain he would have been. My first real experience with brothers was going and playing at my friend Margie's house. She had seven brothers. The one close to my age threw me in the pool and the one older than that teased me. I was pretty sure they hated me and I remember crying about it but then Margie told me that they did it because they liked me and that confused me even more. Why would they do and say mean things to me if they liked me? Turns out, they did like me and we are still friends (I actually got to see four of those seven boys last weekend, good times). I am thankful for the experience they gave me because when I met my Ryan and he threw me in the pool every time I went to his house, I knew it was love.

I love my brother Nathan who got to marry my big sister Whit. He has the driest sense of humor and he balances my wacky sister really well. He is a lot of fun to hang out with. It is one of my goals to make him genuinely laugh some day. He is cool and he is a great dad to all those boys.

I am so glad I married my Ryan because he has a full set of brothers that are mine now. I love Chris, quiet kind Chris who has wonderful stories to tell if you push the right buttons.

I love Jake. You know I worried for a long time that Jake was just too weird to find a wife but then he met Cory and about two minutes later they were married and it has turned out perfectly. She is exactly the right girl for him. They are here in town now, he is on leave from the Army, he has been in Afghanistan living in a cave and growing a horrific beard. He looks like a homeless person but the Army told him not to shave or cut his hair so that he blends in with the natives and they will be more likely to trust him. He doesn't look particularly trust worthy to me at first glance but I am not a goat herder so that's that. I am grateful for what he is doing over there. He is good at it and it needs to be done. I am amazed at the strength of Cory and how she handles him being gone all of the time, leaving her with their four small boys. Again, perfect for each other.

I love David. I love how much he loves food and getting together as a family to eat the aforementioned food. He is a wonderful husband to my dear sister Lindsey. Plus they are wonderful parents.

I love Kent and Mitchell, my newest brothers. Kate and Jess did a great job finding them. They are the right men for the job and they fit beautifully into the family. I love it when Mitch sends me texts just because my phone buzzes during church and he thinks it's funny that I'm being irreverent but he is the only one who notices because I'm too busy listening to the lesson and I don't hear it, but I read them all after church and he is silly.

I love Justy. When I met him he was 7 and sort of obnoxious but it turns out that was just how 7 year olds naturally are. Now he is technically all grown up and he has brought home a girl from the Y. A beautiful girl named Bailey and he plans to make her my sister. She is staying with us while they are here visiting and we like her. She just woke up and is watching Word World with Pete. He is in love with her too.

A couple of days ago my Dad's big brother died. Whit, Amanda and I are going to Idaho for the funeral next week. What with all the saturation I've had with brothers being around for the past week, I'm especially sad for my Dad. He loved his brother a lot too. Uncle Steve shot him in the forehead with an arrow when they were kids and playing Cowboys and Indians. He still has the scar. What's not to love? That is one of my favorite stories, by the way. Daddy was on the roof of the garage, ducked down on the other side of the peak. Uncle Steve was on the ground and knew Dad was up there, he shot a warning arrow over the garage and just as it was clearing the peak, Daddy peeked over to see where Uncle Steve was. Head and arrow met. Blood, trying to explain it to their Mom, good times.

Now both of my parents have lost a brother and it is sad. Now that I've finally got loads of brothers I would be very sad to loose any of them. My biggest brother far away recently had a heart attack, Nate likes to golf and we all know how dangerous that can be, especially if Whit thinks he is gone too long... Chris does fairly dangerous work, Jake does very dangerous work, David is a magnet for car accidents and house fires, Kent lives in Utah where it is cold a lot (he could wander out in the night and freeze to death, you don't know), Mitch wants to take up quad racing again and wind up a smear on the track, Justy has to drive back to Utah soon and last time he did that he slid off the road and crashed a little, this time he'll be distracted by beautiful Bailey...

Morbid. They will be fine I am just too much of a worrywart. Life is good and happy. I am grateful for the blessings I have and my wonderful, big, noisy family is a huge blessing :)

So, who knows what the rest of the quote from the title is? And what movie is it from?

Conversations

We were kneeling down for family prayer the other night;
Peter: We made a good circle!
Ryan: It's a semi-circle.
Peter: No! It's my circle!

(If you say Ryan's part with sort of an Italian accent it makes sense.)