Timpano cave

While Lucy was getting her portrait taken, Eric took Haley and Ruby on a hike up to the Timpanogos cave cave. It was a long hike for the girls so they got really hot and sweaty until they got inside.
Once inside they were freezing! They took turns wearing Eric's jacket but still thought they were going to die they were so cold. They all had a great time and came home talking about all the cool stuff they saw.

Tradition

We have a tradition that you have a formal portrait taken when you turn five years old.

Why 5?
So you are old enough that you look like yourself but generally you have not lost any teeth yet.

My Mom's portrait when she was 5.

My portrait when I was 5.

Here are my Mom's copies of 6 of her grandkids 5 year portraits.

Where is Lucy's????

We had it taken while in SLC, but have not ordered it yet. You can see some of the shots here if you enter our last name at the end of the address:

http:my.busath.com/ourlastname

Lucy's 5th Birthday

I realized about 2 hours after we left that I forgot to pack the birthday quilt and there was nothing I could do about it... sort of. Eric and I went to the party store the night before and bought a large plastic banner and a dozen balloons and a crown to put in her room.




I'm not even sure if she noticed the difference as she asked to have her picture taken in frount of "the birthday quilt"
How old is she?


After picking up Haley from camp, we spent the day swimming with the cousins. In the evening we headed to their house for dinner and cake and ice cream.

I love how accommodating Eric was when cutting the cake.

1st stop Utah

While driving through Utah we stopped in Richfield to see Eric's Grandfather who is 96 years old. He is amazing. Other then not being able to hear he is doing really well. I can't believe that I didn't get a photo with him!

We drove from Richfield to Salt Lake City where we stayed with my Mom for a week. We drove Haley to softball camp at BYU. This was terrifying for me. The camp is for girls 10-17 and she will be 10 in July. As we were standing in the line to pick up the housing assignment (yes she slept in the dorms for 5 days!) I could not but help notice that all the girls in line for the camp were SOOO much older and taller then her. Most of the girls were taller then me and looked strong enough to throw a 10 year old across a field. I was seriously questioning our judgment to send her when I heard the group of 5 older girls in line talking about how small and little Haley was.... then one of them said "I would never send my little kid to a camp like this- that's crazy"

After Eric was done catching Ruby and Lucy and encouraging them not to hang off the railings and run through all the lines, he came and stood by me. I told him what I overheard and said that I was officially the worst Mom and we just needed to just take her home. He said, let's just wait and see. The amazing thing was that at no time did Haley comment about being a shrimp among the sharks, she was just so excited to be there.

Thank heavens when we took Haley to the dorm I saw several girls her age. Her roommate was a cute 10 year old from West Jordon.

After we unpacked all her stuff we took her to lunch at the cafeteria (the Cannon Center) and both Haley and her roommate headed to the dessert island 1st thing. Again I questioned my parental judgment as I realized I had no control over her eating habits over the 5 days of the camp.

Overall Haley had a great time at the camp. Although one night she called on a cell phone (we loaned her) from the closet of her dorm to complain about her roommate letting too many girls in the dorm.

Ruby especially missed Haley terribly while she was gone. After we picked her up Ruby and Lucy gave her the longest sweetest hug as she was getting in the car. If only everyday was like this!

Check out Haley's clothes. I could not believe how dirty all her clothes were!

While Haley was at camp Ruby and Lucy were in heaven at Grandma Bonnie's house. I need to explain that in the past it has been exhausting and stressful to take my kids to my Mom's house. She lives on the top floor of a super cool old building. So there is no backyard to send them too and the house is full of stuff that is antique and breakable not to mention she has candy all over the house so you need to monitor the consumption. As a kid my Dad used to tell me "We can replace you... but we cannot replace that" when referring to antiques.

Anyway this time was different. The girls are old enough to know how to behave around nice things. When I started stressing about the candy Eric said:

"We are on vacation, I am going with the WWTD philosophy" he explained that was "What would Tiffany do". Tiffany, my Sister is famous with my kids because she lets them eat cake and ice cream for breakfast.

So we did not intervene at all on the candy.
The kids were in heaven and I was much more relaxed.

We got to visit with the Bowmans. Ms Dori actually watched Lucy and Ruby all day so we could go around to quilt stores all over SLC. Later that night we had dinner with the Bowman's and we ended up staying way to late because no one wanted to leave.


The next day we went to Temple Square. The girls were so excited that they saw a REAL bride!

We went to the Church Museum that had a great exhibit for kids an exhibit on The Relief Sociey with some beautiful quilts.

THE BIG ROAD TRIP

After traveling 2,485 miles through 7 states and spending 36 1/2 hours in the car driving over 15 days we are finally home!  

I am currently downloading 462 photos and will post soon, but here are a few quick things I learned on this trip:

I love Quiznos and never need to eat at Subway again.

When you pack for your husband (because he is working late), don't forget to pack his underwear.

I love whoever created DVD players for cars with headphones. 

Gas is cheeper everywhere else than Southern California.

Road trips can actually be really fun! 

Technically school is out

...but not at our house!

She's gone

I drove Haley out to the Burbank airport to fly to Utah as an "unaccompanied minor". 

This is the airport that I flew out of as a kid and I have not been back there for about 20 years. 

On the way there I was telling the girls how when I was a kid the airport was really small and you had to walk outside to get on the planes.  I knew that it was going to be completely updated, expanded and now referred to as the Bob Hope airport.  

It was actually exactly the same as I remembered it. Even down to the tile arch as you walk in the main entrance.  And just like when I was a kid Haley walked outside to get on the airplane.

She was so excited and not nervous at all. I was really proud of myself because this time I did not cry when she got on the plane. 

When we got to the top of the parking garage we could see her plane leaving gate and waited to watch it take off. 
I had a horrible sick feeling in my stomach as I watched my 9 year old fly thousands of feet into the air- without me.
She arrived safely and Grandma Bonnie picked her up for her 3 days with the Bowman's and her much anticipated "Melaina time".  Since she is going to be in a softball camp the whole time we are in Utah we flew her out early to visit her best friend Melaina!

When Mom's away

and Dad's in charge

sick things happen

but the girls have fun!

Happy Birthday Grace

We went out to Laguna Beach for Grace's birthday (our niece, my girls cousin).  Since they live at the beach it was the ultimate beach party complete with a treasure hunt, limbo, beach games and rain sticks.

My girls love to be at the beach. Haley boogie boarded the entire time we were there. When it got dark, I had to force her out of the water.

Ruby got her 1st bee sting within minutes after we got there so she was pretty sad for a while, but once the pain and swelling went away she was back to her normal fun loving self.

Lucy dug in the sand all day and acquired staggering amounts of sand crabs.

Since Eric got his board results this morning he just walked around with a perma-smile all day.

O happy day!

Eric passed his Oral Board has has officially become the happiest person on earth!

Dad's at work

I love this paper Ruby brought home, she has been campaigning to go see Wicked. 

I think it's funny that everyone is there but Eric is at work. Especially over the past 6 month with him studying for his board he has been gone a lot.  

Eric has off 23 days in June. He has a bunch of projects he's put off until after his test and we have planned a big road trip....  although with gas prices we may end up walking it. 

I can't wait to have him around so much!

Look what I got for $5 today

A bran-spanking new Trek 820 mountain bike.

On Saturday at our school carnival they were selling raffle tickets to win this bike. I purchased 6 tickets for $5 just thinking of it as a donation to the PTA.   I got a call this morning that my name was drawn and the bike was in the office waiting for me to pick it up!  We can keep it or exchange it for another bike at our local bike shop. Eric has been wanting a bike for a while, so when he called after his test I was so excited to tell him that I got him a new bike for $5.00! 

The big day

Today Eric is taking his oral board examination to complete his residency. He has been studying for this exam for the past 6 months.

Crochet lessons

Haley wanted to take crochet lessons so our friend Adam came over 2 times a week for 2 months. She started a scarf but half way through decided that she wanted to do a hat. Haley would crochet during her lesson but then not pick it up until Adam came back over.

Finally Adam got tired of her lack of progress and said that he was not going to come back until she did some serious work on her own. This was just what she needed to hear. She finally became determined to finish it.

Several times I found her crocheting and reading at the same time.

The closer she got to finishing the harder she worked and finally (3 weeks later), she finished it. She could not wait to call Adam to come see.

Clearly Lucy's thrilled to model it.

As soon as she finished the yellow hat she wanted to start another one with thicker yarn and she finished her 2nd hat in 2 days!


She has already started her 3rd hat!

What can you get for $5

After several unsuccessful attempts to get Lucy to ride her bike without training wheels, Eric offered her $5 if she could ride 40 feet without help.  Suddenly her fear morphed into determination and she did it!  We are headed to the $ store, per her request. 

School Carnival

I was in charge of the silent auction giftbasket for Ruby's class.  We had so many donations that I ended up using a large storage tub as the basket and had my friend make a vinyl sticker to turn it into a game storage box.  It is HUGE! Ruby was so proud she asked if she could carry it into the office... but I could barely lift it.  

Quilt show/ Art In The Park

Today was our local Historical home tour/ quilt show / art in the park. I really wanted to go and knew that the girls would rather die then go walk around looking at quilts. So when we got up and the girls were watching cartoons, I said:

"Ok it's Saturday morning, time to do your cleaning chores"

Of course this was met with a chorus of "Oh man, do we have to?" to which I replied:

"I guess we can skip our chores if you would like to go to the quilt show downtown" they all suddenly became very excited about going to see quilts!

I think they actually enjoyed it. Haley loved learning how to do traditional rug hooking, she has informed me that she wants to be a hooker. When we got home she went right to the computer to Google information about rug hooking. I told her that she has to finish one of her 2 crochet projects before she can start hooking.

This is a classic portrait of my girls. All girls subconsciously lined up in order of age. Lucy wearing one of her favorite skirts, Ruby wearing platform heals, a mini skirt and purse and Haley wearing softball shorts and tennis shoes. I love that they each beat to their own drum!

At Art In The Park there was one lady that paints all the local historical homes in bright loud colors. Her work is very recognizable. When I saw this painting in her booth I just loved it. It's our mountain! My girls gauge everything by the R on the mountain like how low the snow level is and how bad the smog is. I even made a quilt block of the R on our mountain here.

Even though it was 1,000 degrees today we had a great softball free day at the park and ended with some nuclear colored cotton candy ice cream from Rite Aid.

Eric sat at the hospital library studying for his Board test from 7:30am- 6pm. I am thankful that he is so dedicated and focused but I can't wait for him to rejoin our family after his test is over in June.

The Quilt Police

I recently finished piecing my Civil War quilt top from our quilt exchange and was so excited to finally have it all done.  

When Eric came home and I showed him the quilt top he said "That looks good" ... but then he stood there staring at it for a long time without saying a word.  

Finally I asked him what was wrong and he said "How hard would it be to unpick these two blocks and switch them?" 

What the heck? I just finished it, there was no way I was going to unpick it! 

Eric is less then passionate about most of the quilts I have made, but every now and then there is something he doesn't like and he becomes very outspoken.  He looks at a quilts like a math equation instead of art.  

He kept pleading his case and trying to get me to unpick it, finally I said "You can unpick it if you want to".  

The next morning the quilt was on my sewing table with the bottom row and sashing completely unpicked.  Holy cow he was serious!

I re-sewed it with the two blocks switched.  I will admit that it looks a little better, but not enough to justify unpicking it.

When he saw it re-sewn with the two blocks switched he very sincerely said "Thank you so much for doing that, it looks so much better now".  

****I am THINKING about hand quilting this quilt, does anyone have any suggestions about what kind of batting and thread to use? I have never really hand quilted anything except a very small doll quilt.