Here's another guest post! Well, kind of. While we were at my parents' house, Kaylie took like a billion videos of Joseph. So since they're not my videos, I count this as a guest post.
If we ask him a question, he answers. In another language, but he answers. (Incidentally, this morning, he talked for more than a minute straight, looking down at his feet for the most part but occasionally looking up and giving us a big smile. When Kevin reached for the camera, Joseph suddenly burst out into tears and stopped his soliloquy. We were sad, too.)
He's got moves.
We just love his sniffing. And can you blame us?
Don't worry -- we changed his very wet diaper soon after making this video. (And for the record, he does like to walk backwards too, just not when prompted.)
Hey, look guys! A guest post! I feel like a real blogger now that I've outsourced my work! Thanks Lezl. Sorry it took me a few days to post it.
Kyra asked me to guest post and suggested I blog about a good quote from the family.
I can never think of anything but our family motto: There's always more dishes than you think.
That motto was especially apt this past weekend as we prepared for Kaylie's wedding. There are a lot of dishes that go into a wedding.
To the point that we thought maybe we should use the dishwasher just this once.
There's always something overlooked at a wedding (for example, handing out the corsages) and one of the things we overlooked was providing disposable dishes for the hordes of family eating food at our house. Cups, especially. We have washed so many cups!
Dishes provide a great opportunity for service. My aunts did the dishes for us the afternoon of the wedding (appalled, as usual, that they couldn't just stick them in the dishwasher), which we greatly appreciated.
But by the next morning enough dishes had accumulated again that we filled the drainer several times before we even got to the washing of the vases. It was a whole-family endeavor, with Dad at the sink and the rest of us standing by with dishtowels to dry.
This is just one example of all the work that goes into events, behind the scenes. Kaylie had a beautiful fairy-tale wedding
and we were happy to make it happen!
And I was happy I left for Duchesne before I had to help with dishes.
Hey, remember Jennie? She's doing well over in Athens, Georgia right now. Talking to everyone, teaching tons of discussions, etc. It's amazing to hear about the miracles she's experiencing and feel the love and light in her letters.
Only downside is, she wasn't there for Kaylie's wedding and reception last Friday. We missed her.
So, like many other Mormon families, we opted to include a cardboard cutout version of her at the reception, even wearing the right bridesmaid outfit.
However, the fun began long before the wedding. In the days leading up to it, we found several good storage places for her such as:
-in the living room, so that when neighbors stopped by to drop off decorations they saw her and tried to talk to her
-in front of Spencer's bedroom door after he had gone to sleep
-in front of Kiana's bedroom door as soon as Spencer woke up and yelped
-in front of our bedroom door (though Kevin warned me she might be there so I didn't get startled)
-in Kaylie's closet, just in time for her to change into her pajamas for the night
-in front of my parents' bathroom door
-back in front of Spencer's door after he had put her in front of the bathroom door (making him thoroughly confused as to how she got there)
-at the front window to surprise FedEx guys and neighobrs
-on the porch right against the door, switched just in time for Kaylie to pick up a FedEx package
-in Leslie's closet
-right next to Spencer's bed while he slept
And so on. Interestingly enough, no matter which storage location was chosen, she always seemed positioned to startle people. It was almost as if we were doing it on purpose. Whodathunk that a silent, not-full-height Jennie could induce such heart attacks?
After all of this fun, we wouldn't have even had to take her to the reception to feel like we had gotten our money's worth (well, okay, my Mom might disagree with that since it was rather expensive for a piece of cardboard, but still . . .). However, she still was a big hit at the reception.
This is the first time in like 8 years that I've been taller than her.
Katy's really not that short.
Especially when we brought her out to the dance floor and started bodysurfing her. I hope she's okay with that, since it's probably against mission rules.
Also, I hope that she continues to have fun storage locations. I think neighbors' doorsteps are a good place to start. Or maybe their cars.
It's been a year now since we moved from Provo to Michigan.
It's been a lot of fun. It's also been really hard.
Not the being pregnant, starting grad school, making it to 8 o' clock class with morning sickness, doing three projects over Thanksgiving break, having tests upon tests and projects upon projects all the time, writing a masters thesis, finishing grad school, giving birth, learning to breastfeed, taking care of a newborn, moving across the country kind of hard that August 2011-August 2012 was.
But still hard in its own way. The taking care of a baby, trying to get a nap schedule going (ha), dealing with sickness and teething, being bored and lonely yet not able to get out, feeling homesick kind of hard. The kind of hard that every parent gets to deal with. The kind of hard that seems more difficult than the crazy busy kind of hard if only because I didn't really have time to think about how hard life was when I was crazy busy.
Anyway, if I could impart advice on 2012 me to make it a little less hard, here is what I would say:
1. You can always choose to be lonely. You can also choose not to be lonely, though that one is a little harder.
2. Count on getting the music callings. Choose to enjoy them.
3. Don't be afraid of womenfolk. They make good friends.
4. Go outside as much as possible.
5. Make sure the dishes are done every night unless you are planning on not doing anything the next day.
6. Teach your baby to nap on the go. Ooh, that one would have been really nice.
7. Take full advantage of the library.
8. When you are feeling down, service is a better antidote than psychoanalysis of yourself. In general, the less you think about yourself, the better. Although, it probably is good to analyze yourself every now and then just so toxic thoughts don't build up.
9. Try to structure your days as much as possible. Read scriptures every day. Exercise every day. Pray lots and lots.
10. Count your blessings! This will be the best year of your life yet!
Even though this year has been hard, it has also been really rewarding. It's been fun to have a little bit more free time and do things that I may not have much time for in the future, like family history, experimenting in cooking, and obsessing over every wonderful milestone Joseph has had. I've loved exploring lots of parks in the area, getting to know our ward, learning from people who don't see the world quite the same way, and just being the wife of a grad student.
All my life, I've wanted to like blueberries. I remember trying a stray blueberry once when we were making muffins for Achievement Days that tasted like it came straight from heaven. Sweet and flavorful and healthy and wonderful . . .
And I could never find more like it. Every time I've gotten blueberries, I've just had to hide them in pancakes or muffins because they were just too sour or bland for my liking.
So when I learned that Michigan has farms where you can pick your own blueberries, I didn't see what the big deal was. Now strawberries, ooh, those would have been good if we had been around during the first weeks of June.
But blueberries? Meh. We buy them because they are in season and healthy, but I just never wanted to eat them plain.
Luckily for us, we heard from friends that blueberries were actually amazing when you picked them yourself. So we decided to put it to the test. We invited the Roberts, who barely got a chance to breathe after driving here from our old ward in Provo before I called them and invited them to partake in a true "Michigan experience."
And, oh, it was worth it. We found a patch down in Milan* less than 15 minutes from their place and began our adventure.
I love Michigan
The fun started as we drove up to the house. A bunny scurried past us, and chickens and little dogs surrounded our car. Our favorite was the duck that thought it was a chicken. And of course Joseph had to chase all of them around. Luckily they were the kind that ran instead of pecked.
After getting some instructions from the owner (or the owner's son? never figured that out), we drove a few hundred yards over to the blueberry patch in the middle of the woods.
We grabbed some buckets, and then for the next few hours . . . we picked blueberries!
I never knew that dark, shiny blueberries could taste so much better than the weak sauce light blue ones at the store.
Pretty sure he's dropping a stick into the bucket
Kelsie and her haul
Kevin at work
Dropping a beautiful berry in
The weather was beautiful, the company was great, the blueberries were delicious . . . everything was perfect except for one small detail -- Joseph was tired.
What kind of mean parents keep a child up through a morning nap, even if he skips it every now and then?
That said, he still was pretty pleasant through it all. However, he got mad when I wouldn't let him squish my blueberries with a stick.
Then he helped me pick for a while, but he wanted to squish all of them with another bucket and I wouldn't let him. So that was sad.
He wasn't as selective about his blueberries as the rest of us.
But we eventually found a way to keep him happy.
This trick also works at church sometimes.
Dropping sticks and grass through the cracks
Once Kevin and I had a 6-pint bucket full of blueberries and Kelsie had half a bucket full, we felt like we had accomplished enough for one morning and were ready to come home with our spoils.
Jared, Kelsie, and Kevin (and Joseph)
yummmmmmmmm
Tired boy
Jared made it a point to only pick the darkest, biggest, shiniest blueberries. This was his haul.
We went back to the owners' house, paid for our berries, and got to listen to a delightful 87-year-old woman reminisce about WWII for several minutes. And Joseph got to chase more chickens. And then we went home.
And that is the story of how I now love to eat blueberries plain and have done so in abundance the past few days. The end.
*For my Ann Arbor friends who read this, we recommend it. I know there's one up near Dexter that's forever away, but this one is so close and a bit cheaper and the blueberries are divine. They don't have much info online, but there is this.
Happy birthday, Dad! I can hardly believe you're 50! It seems like just a few years ago that we were eating cupcakes to celebrate your 30th birthday. Actually, it feels like a long time ago, and I'm not even sure that happened.
I've been debating how best to spotlight my dad today. Since I spotlighted my mom for my birthday (since she's the one who went through labor), I feel like I should spotlight my dad. Problem is, 50 is a much bigger number than 23, and since I'm still busy doing an engineery project (which is going along well, though editing can be tedious), I didn't know if I'd have time for that.
But then I thought about the number 50, and why it is dear to me. And the main reason it is dear to me is because it really kind of is the top of the hill.
Allow me to explain.
Once upon a time I used to memorize square numbers (1, 4, 9, 16, etc) while mowing the lawn to keep my mind occupied. The lawn suffered that summer, but the numbers have stayed. The reason I did that instead of something heinous like memorizing pi was that square numbers are methodical and orderly. The pattern that I discovered thrilled me so much that once I knew 1 to 50, memorizing numbers from 51 to 100 really wasn't that hard.
You see, there are only so many unique endings that a square number can take. 22, to be precise, since numbers that end in a 5 or a 0 always square to some kind of 25 or 00. If you look at the last two digits of any square number, they are:
1
4
9
16
25
36
49
64
81
00
21
44
69
96
56
89
24
61
41
84
29
76
And then what happens is that once you hit 25^2 (625), you start going back down that list. 24^2 is 576. 26^2 is 676. 23^2 is 529. 27^2 is 729.
And when do you get to the top or the bottom of that list? At 50! 51^2 is 2601, which ends in a 1 again. 52^2 is 2704, which ends in a 4 again. And so on.
So Dad, by turning 50, you really are over the hill.
And how many unique endings are there? 22! So instead of 50 things, I really only need to say 22 things about Dad. And maybe since I said 23 things about Mom, I'll find one more thing.
Without further ado (because that was a lot of ado to begin with), here are 23 reasons my dad is great:
1. He has made sure that we are good at math. So far he has managed to get his 4 oldest daughters through calculus, and we all earned 5s on the AP test.
2. He gave me a Barry Manilow CD for my 10th birthday. He and my mom deliberated about whether to get me a Broadway Kids CD or Barry Manilow CD. He was convinced that I would be better off in life with a Barry Manilow CD, so she gave in. I actually would have preferred the Broadway CD, and I don't think I ever even listened to the Barry Manilow CD because he borrowed it indefinitely, but it was a really nice gesture.
3. He taught me how to say "voy a lavar mi ropa en mi primera lavadora" so when I own my very own washing machine I can have a profound phrase to say about it.
4. He has taken the family on many, many hikes, and none of us have died.
Always has a hat
5. One time when he was Scoutmaster, they were playing king of the hill and it got messy and my dad's pinky finger shattered and it has never looked quite the same, and he still agreed to be YM president a few years later to those boys. And they remember him fondly, even though he didn't try to be fun and cool.
6. He makes good scrambled eggs. And waffles, even though I haven't liked waffles since about a week after I got a waffle iron for my 5th birthday. (We have rejected the wicked waffle traditions of our fathers and eat pancakes in this household.)
7. He has watched more Disney Channel than any of his kids because sometimes he would work alone in New Jersey and that was the only channel he felt comfortable watching in the evenings. He never did like Miley Cyrus.
8. He doesn't care about sports except when USU beats BYU.
9. He has always been very considerate, even as a teenager. He made it a point to be very friendly and outgoing at dances and to ask lots of girls to dance, even the homely ones who turned out to be boys with scraggly hair.
10. He would incorporate treasure hunts into asking girls out for dances. They still do that in high school these days, but he did it even in college. Now I know where I get it from.
11. He sat through a lot of performances that we would put on. And he managed to do this without pulling out his phone and getting work done. This is probably because we put these performances on before smartphones were invented.
12. He was a good older brother to Shawn and made sure Shawn had the opportunity to really grow and develop. Like when they were escaping out the window because Jackie and Kelly were being too bossy and had sent them to their room, he let Shawn climb out the window first instead of testing it himself.
13. He let us put hair clips in his hair during General Conference. He always looked fantastic.
14. He is the only person I have ever met who has shown remorse about killing a mouse as a missionary.
15. Sometimes his puns are funny, or at least groan-worthy. For example, Leslie recorded this conversation:
Kyra (on a hike): Wow. I get a total workout. On the way up the back of my calves were killing. Now on the way down the front of my calves are killing.
Dad: I feel vealy, vealy sorry for you.
Dad: Are these puns just udderly awful?
Dad: Kyra, you should milk it for all its worth.
Dad: To pun is human, to forgive, bovine.
16. Ooh! 16! That reminds me of something! He pinned the boutonniere on my date's vest for every single date dance I went to in high school. I just could never figure it out and he got impatient.
17. He read the Harry Potter books to Kaylie, Jennie, Kiana, and Spencer. So he's read the first five books like four times, and the others at least once or twice.
18. He and my mom promise that they read to me, too, even though I don't remember it.
19. When we went to Home Depot, he would always say things like, "Isn't it amazing that the workers know where everything is in this store? How do they learn all that?" and then he would make sure and tell them so when we needed to find something. (See also: pizza delivery guys.)
20. I have never heard him sing out of tune.
21. He is a master at four-square.
22. He made sure we always learned a lot in Family Home Evening, like that Gadianton Robbers were bad.
23. He likes to wash dishes and is the fastest dishes washer I've ever seen. And he does it basically every night.
Okay, so those were mostly silly, unsentimental reasons why my dad is great, but he really is great. I'm so glad he's my dad!
Oh, and as one more little present, here's a video of Joseph that has nothing to do with anything I've talked about.
Note: this post is mostly me apologizing and rationalizing to myself. and maybe my parents.
So, this year I've done a pretty good job of keeping this blog going. I've managed to keep my New Year's resolution of 8 blog posts a month rather well.
But I might slip this month. I've got an engineery project going on for the next few weeks and then a trip to visit family, and blogging might fall by the wayside. To make matters worse, I haven't even been particularly diligent at taking pictures of Joseph lately. All he ever does is grab the camera from me when I try.
So . . . on the off chance that you are bored and you've already read everything else you care to read in the universe, I apologize for not giving you something else to look at. For what it's worth, I feel like I had a string of strong posts back in fall 2012 and summer 2011 so I guess you could go look at those.
But who knows? This might be my most prolific month yet.
And if not, then you get to enjoy this ultra-attractive ultra-pixelated picture of Joseph and me sniffing for the next little while.
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