Not quite a haiku

I remember doing these kinds of poems all of the time in Elementary school. What they're called, I couldn't tell you, but here one is describing what we've been up to lately:

S- Sunshine (finally!), Swimming at Grandma's, Sprinklers in the backyard, Strep throat (poor Jono), So many friends to invite over, Staying up late, Sleeping in,
and, Smiles from Logan U- Uncles (and aunts, cousins, great-grandparents) all in Utah. The kids saw all of the cousins they have all in the same week last week. Good times. Thanks for coming, everybody. Unfortunately, we didn't have the camera with us most of the time we were with them.

M- Mischief, mayhem, mood swings, and missing school (mostly mom).


M- movies. Lots of movies. And meetings. Pack meetings, Den meetings, Planning meetings, weekly meetings, and even taking the 11-year-olds camping. (Taylor, Jef, and Julie are all involved in the scouting program right now.)

E- Eating. Judging by how much food I've had to purchase lately to fill our fridge and pantry, it is the cure for boredom on a hot summer day. Also, this little guy likes it too. He's almost doubled his weight since birth...

R- Relaxing, recreation, rolling down the hill at the park.
Reading. After being convinced by the kids that they would like to do the summer reading program at the library, I've dragged them to the library every monday so that they can run away (Jono), request leaving after 1 minutes (Taylor), refuse to get out of the car and go in (Hannah), and really enjoy it (Jane).
Rest. Or lack thereof. Realizing that the summer's already a third over, so wanting to enjoy it while it lasts.

Random List #2

WORDS I HAVE EATEN:

1. I'll never, ever, wipe my kids' noses with my hand.

2. No matter how busy I get, I'll always find time to stay in shape.

3. I won't let my kids watch TV and play video games all day.

4. I'll never be married long enough that my husband and I feel comfortable burping and farting in front of each other.

5. If I keep at it long enough, eventually I'll become a good cook.

6. I'll always make sure I wear clothes that are in style this decade.

7. I'll never talk myself into cutting bangs again.

8. I'm not going to breastfeed in public, that's disgusting. (I do cover up, by the way.)

9. I'll never offer to give one of my children to someone else, even jokingly.

10. My house will never be so dirty that I'm embarrassed to let people in the front door.

Ahh, young Julie, how naive you were...

Summertime... and the living's easy (ish)

I'm a little behind on blogging. Okay, I'm a big behind. Ha ha, and I have one too. Anyway, May is long gone and I'm not sure where it went, but summer is here now and there is no turning back.

I was worried about the kids being bored once they got out of school. Taylor has informed me that it's all my fault when he gets bored because I never let him do ANYthing fun or go ANYwhere fun. This has put a lot of pressure on me. Fortunately, the first week of summer went very well (thanks largely due to the lots of nice kids in our neighborhood and Taylor's new bike).

Here are the highlights of some stuff we've been up to since last I posted:
Jane's Kindergarten graduation. She's in there somewhere. Wearing a pink shirt (does that really help if I tell you that?) The award that she got from her teacher was the "hardest worker" award. I thought that was a good compliment. My award to Jane is the "most quotable" award.

Example: Jane had a friend over playing the other day and I heard her inform her friend that Hannah doesn't need to wear sunscreen because she is Chinese. No, I corrected, she is not Chinese, she just has dark skin. To which Jane replied, I know she is Chinese because she speaks Spanish really well. I guess I could have given her the "most culturally aware" award.It was really warm one day, so I told the kids they could run through the sprinkler. Did you know you need swim goggles for that? Unfortunatley, by the time we got properly equipped and set things up outside, it was cloudy and cool. I actually like this sunny and rainy weather mix we've been having, but it does put a damper on the water sports. (And obviously has still not helped out our lawn all that much - except to make the weeds grow taller.)The rain won't bother you at all if you are Jonathan and you like drinking water from rain gutters. I'm sure this water is full of minerals and who knows what else. I'm not sure if this is better or worse than seeing him get down on all fours and lap up water from a puddle a few days before. He does own a sippy cup, just for the record.

We all took a trip to the Bingham copper mine last Saturday to celebrate school being out. It was really cool. I've lived in Utah all this time and never new that there was a hole as big as an entire mountain over there west of Salt Lake. Utah doesn't have a Grand Canyon so we made our own.Jane learned to ride her bike with no training wheels after I offered to buy her a pack of bubble gum. It was a good investment. It also provided us with another great quote from her. Apparently, riding a bike causes her a bit of discomfort in the seating area. I was trying to get her to hold still while I was tightening the straps on her bike helmet when she very calmly and seriously informed me that, "It's hard to be patient when you've got a wedgie." I can't argue with that.


The second year we've been able to attend the Pony Express Days parade. This year we lived closer to the very start of the parade, whereas last year we were at the very end. We quickly discovered that the start is much cooler and the kids got a whole bag of candy each, a frisbee, several toothbrushes, some shirts, otter pops, balloons, a pen, and a lanyard. Please come and join us for next year's parade - you won't regret it. And best of all, you don't even have to get up at 5 am to get good seats - we just walked on over about 5 minutes before it started yesterday morning. Hannah especially liked waving to all of the "Princesses" in the parade.Last but not least, we had a very special afternoon yesterday. Taylor got baptized and Logan got blessed. Jef always says that he loves seeing our kids in white clothes, and I agree. We are proud of both of these guys. Thanks to all of the family who came and made them feel like celebrities. Sadly, our camera has not been working very well lately and a bunch of the pictures I took did not turn out. Phew, imagine if it had happened on a really important day or something like that.

Who do we appreciate?

In the midst of all of the new baby excitement, Taylor celebrated his very momentous eighth birthday. We wanted to make sure he was getting enough attention on this milestone of accountability, so we hosted our first ever "friend" party. Usually, we just have all of the relatives over.

The "theme" (which basically just means what kind of paper plates and hats he got to pick out) was Spongebob Squarepants. This can be attributed to the 2 months we spent at my parents this winter, enjoying their large variety of TV channels, as my kids had never actually watched an episode before that time. Anyway, we had a pinata (I originally tried making one myself, but that's another story - lesson learned: no, you don't get points for trying, you should've known yourself better than that and just gone to Walmart in the first place.) and pizza and cake (don't worry, I just put yellow frosting on and didn't even attempt to decorate). I even had some games planned, but the kids opted to just play soccer instead.

Soccer. Just so you know, our lawn hasn't been cared for since sometime last June. We're working on it.

Wii and Mariocart.

Pizza and Pop. Lots of pop.

Taylor got a new bike and I don't think anyone has even been so excited about a present. It is kind of hard to hide an entire bike, and he found it a few times before we actually gave it to him. This only served to heighten his excitement, and he was little ticked we didn't give it to him sooner.
Now that the Captain is 8, we are very excited for people to ask us the ages of our children. What are they? Why, I thought you'd never ask. Our children are 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8. How cool is that? It would have come in handy a few months ago when we had to introduce ourselves to lots of people in our new ward. Of course, we planned this as part of our master plan when we first got married, along with everything that's happened along the way. We are just very organized people. And never sarcastic.


Yes, this is Tayor's post, but Logan is growing so fast we just can't leave him out. So far, no nicknames have really stuck except Logachugasasa, which Taylor came up with many month ago. It is a little dissappointing that we actually call him this, but even Jono does it from time to time. We are hoping something else pops up. Also, we keep calling him Jono and Rocky by mistake, which are actually Jonathan's nicknames and makes Jonathan a little irritated.

Mama Mia

I put these pictures on an unpublished post over a week ago. I was going to write a really nice tribute to mothers day, how much I appreciate being a mother, how much I appreciate my mother and Jef's mother, grandmothers, etc. It was going to be spectacular. I was even going to mention primary and school teachers and how glad I am that my kids have such good ones. But I couldn't seem to get the post done because my dang kids kept interruppting. Go figure.

April Showers

This has been such a great month for us -

First, we got an express bus in Eagle Mountain. This means that instead of driving to Lehi every morning to catch the bus, Jef only has to WALK around the corner to the new bus stop. We couldn't have picked to move into a better neighborhood! The bus goes straight to SLC from here, so his trip is shorter than it was; and, best of all, the bus is less crowded, so he never has to stand up the whole way to work. Take that, stinky bums.

Second, our new Wal-mart opened this week. Enough said - you all know how I've been looking forward to it.

Third, What was the other good thing that happened this month? Oh yeah - I remember...





Logan Joseph is home and adjusting well. After his post-delivery scare in the hospital, he's been doing super. He sleeps all day and sometimes at night too. We just love having him here - he is way more fun out of the uterus, that's for sure.

It feels a little like the day after Christmas because the awesome Relief Society meals have stopped and Jef has gone back to work, but life has to move on at some point. At least we don't have to exchange our gift - we think the one we got is perfect.
Jono is taking the dethroning rather well, considering. This morning Logan started crying and I wasn't able to get to him right away and I heard Jono in there saying in his angry voice, "Stop it baby Logan, stop it!" He likes Logan best when he's in his swing or his bed and asks me to put him in one of the two frequently. Not only does this open up a space on Mom's lap, but he thinks it is fun to push the swing. I was alerted the other day when I heard the words, "ready, set, go." Hopefully he doesn't try any underdogs.

System.out.println("Hello World!")

I once had a goal to learn how to write the "hello world" program in as many programming languages possible (it is just a simple program meant to get a novice familiar with a programming language). Well, I only learned how to do it in Java, C, Perl, R, Splus, and SAS. Not to impressive from my original lofty goal. But I don't care because the "hello world" program is just a bunch characters compiled into a bunch of 0s and 1s which in turn tells a computer to do something insignificant.

Well, something significant happened today. We had a REAL "hello world" experience. And this is the real deal. Behold:

The boy gave us quite a scare this morning. When he arrived, the umbilical cord was tightly wrapped around his neck and body. He took his first breath just fine, but for some reason his body remained very pale and his breathing was erratic, shallow, and fast. He was rushed to the nursery and given an IV, blood tests, and a chest x-ray. I guess when an umbilical cord is wrapped around a baby during his/her leisurely stroll down the birth canal the blood supply to the baby can be crimped leaving the baby with low blood pressure. And stuff. Yeah, I've worked in healthcare for the last 7 years but I really have no idea what was being explained. Please consult someone smart for a better explanation. Anyway, I was too worried about the boy to be concerned about these minor details. To make a long story short, the boy was monitored closely in the nursery for 5 or 6 hours before the docs said that he could leave to be reunited with his mother. That much time for a mom to be separated from her newborn is an eternity! By the time Julie was finally permitted to see the boy, he had pretty much grown up and was eager to have a conversation about the theory of special relativity.

Here are a few more pictures for your enjoyment.




P.S. Julie is doing great! The baby was birthed at 2:00 am on April 25th weighing 7lbs and stretching 18in long. He has already filled his diaper 4 times with substance similar to that of the La Brea Tar Pits. And he has been held in the loving arms of many aunts, uncles, grandpas, grandmas, and cousins. He knows he will be loved. That is for sure.