Early to Rise

My Elinor.  She and I have been spending a lot of time together lately.  We meet in the kitchen at about 4:43 a.m. each weekday morning.  I sit on the stairs and put on my shoes.  She fills her water bottle at the sink and we ask each other how the other slept.  Then we say, "Okay, let's go."  We leave home in the pitch dark and head out to Herriman for swim team and/or water polo practice.  It is the joy of Elinor's life and, if you can believe this, not only do I not mind getting up at that hour.  There is a part of me that actually enjoys it.  Things I would not have thought possible!  But mostly I am so proud of her dedication and discipline and hard work.  She almost never misses practice and she has gotten so much stronger. 

She is quite bummed today because it is the last day of doing preseason workouts with Herriman.  Swim team tryouts are this coming week and she'll be doing tryouts with Riverton.  She can still go to water polo practice a couple of days week for the next month, but it won't be the same as everyday.  It did make her happy that the Herriman coach said she was an honorary Herriman swim team member.   At the Riverton/Herriman swim meet I fear Elinor will be a total traitor to her team!

Another favorite thing about Elinor lately is when she nails an algebra or chemistry problem she pumps her fists and cheers and yells things like, "YES!  I LOVE ALGEBRA!  100%!"  She's pretty much adorable in every way.

 Bethany's' violin teacher comes to our house early in on Thursday mornings.  The kids are sequestered in my room during the lesson.  They are perfectly content with the arrangement.  Cartoons in the morning-- thank you very much.

She had attempted to paint her nails bright orange a couple of times before, but we had caught her before she got the nail polish open.  This time she quietly hid under the kitchen table and had her way with "Traffic Cone" orange.  To be honest, for a two year-old I think she did a pretty good job.

The cowboy-ninja baby.  Complete with orange painted nails-- repainted by Elinor. 

Though she be but little, she is fierce!

  Homecoming dress shopping with the girls.  When Bethany took this picture Elinor said, "Oh, I think I blinked!"  Ha ha ha!  They are too much fun.  The truth is, I enjoy being a mom to teenage girls so much more than I enjoyed actually being a teenager.

Okay, happy, happy news of the day:  

I successfully got two critical carpools set up today.  

The first one is for Elinor's daily afternoon swim team pick up.  That's important.

But even more important is a three family carpool to Nutcracker rehearsals for the boys.  Now we only need to drive downtown once a week rather than three times a week.  HALLELUJAH!!!  We are saved!

Copper Hills Homecoming 2018

Connor and Bethany went to Copper Hills homecoming dance on Saturday.  Here's the thing-- they have been "dating" for almost nine months and due to various circumstances, they haven't been able to go to a dance together until now.  To say they were excited would be a major understatement!

The day date was Airborne and an escape room and a game at a park.  Then dinner and pictures and the dance.  Bethany said it was the perfect day.

Gorgeous corsage.

The group doing pictures at the Daybreak Lake

So happy for them to finally have their perfect date.

BYU Game Day

We scored 4 tickets to the BYU football game in Provo last weekend.  Abe and Faith invited another daddy-daughter duo to join them.

How cute are they?! 

I don't think they girls cared too much about the actual football game, but that wasn't really the point of the outing anyway.

Meanwhile, Elinor, Savannah, and Enoch got together for a movie night.  These three are perhaps the most adorable trio I've ever seen.  Their birthdays are all within about two weeks of each other in February and they were all baptized on the same day when they were 8.  Now, at fifteen, they are looking so grown up, but still so much fun. 

Trampoline goblins.

Happenings

For as much as I love doing this blog, I have been falling behind on my posts.  I like to think I'm just so busy living life that I haven't had time to write about it.  Which, is true, but still.  I really enjoy writing about it, so today I'll try to get caught up.  I tend to process life better when I write. 

A couple weeks back we joined family for Abe's brother Phil's 40th birthday celebration.  Phil is a great guy and and as you can see, he wasn't altogether comfortable with the family doting on him and telling him how wonderful he is. 

Phil is two brothers younger than Abe.

For a school project Faith made this one-of-a-kind, custom made tiger rug.  I am not an "artsy-craftsy kind of mom".  I could feel any degree of guilt over this, but I swear, they come up with better stuff than I could every think to do with them.  So, my homeschooling art method is pretty much, "Get the heck out of their way and allow the mess".  It has served us well thus far.

Abe and I played pickle ball with some friends recently.  Despite our my trash talking...

... we lost 2 out of 3 games.  I love pickle ball.  I'm not good, but I love it.

Life is so full that I am losing track of time.  I think this was a couple weekends back-- Abe took Bethany and Faith on an all day Daddy-Daughter Date out to Vernal, UT to go watch Connor (Bethany's Connor) in a big mountain bike race. 
Abe's mom grew up in Vernal and he has very fond childhood memories of visiting Vernal. 

Connor is a very good mountain biker.  If I understand correctly, he is ranked 8th in the state, and he got 8th place out of about 2000 racers this weekend.   And frankly, we really like the guy and now I'm bragging about him as if he is one of my kids.  So there you have it.

After the race, Abe, Bethany, and Faith hung out in Connor's family's trailer with the Copper Hills Mountain Biking Team.   Seeing as how we know pretty much nothing about mountain biking, I'm sure it was quite the education for them.

Before they headed home they stopped by the Jolley Mortuary (since renamed) where Abe's grandpa was a mortician and where his mom grew up. 

They also did a little family history stop to visit the grave sites of his Jolley grandparents.

They all quite enjoyed the day.

The night before the Vernal outing we had a little hen party at our house.  We watched Austenland, which if you love Jane Austen I can highly recommend.  If you don't love Jane Austen then I don't know why you are even reading this, because we aren't actual friends.
KIDDING.  I'm kidding.  But seriously, go read or watch some Jane Austen.

She is Abe's daughter-- she is, no joke, dancing to Michael Jackson. 

Abe Has Troubles

Last weekend Bethany went to Herriman High School's homecoming dance with Hyrum, a really fun guy she life guarded with this summer.  He, and the other two kids in the picture, are swimmers and water polo players-- along with Elinor.  So that was kind of fun connection. 

Bethany had a great time and said one of the best parts was belting Broadway tunes together in the car driving around to all the activities they did during the day.  

I don't know the whole story of this picture, but it's funny and this is what happened when they said, "Let's take a silly picture."

It was fun in the afternoon to all meet up at the guys and girls water polo games to watch the dance goers and Elinor (who wished she was going to the dance with another water polo player, but sadly neither are old enough) play their games.  

I adore water polo games.  I do not adore taking the little kids to the games.  Note to self:  DON'T TAKE THE LITTLES TO THE GAMES.

It was so great when he came to the door-- Abe and I were like, "YES!  She is going to homecoming with Kevin Bacon!"   

Bethany looked beautiful and had a really enjoyable time-- it's pretty fun to see her having these experiences.

Poor Abe.  He is suffering the burden of a father of beautiful teenage daughters.   On this particular evening, his troubles sort of doubled.  I'll just leave it there. 

I think he deserves our sympathy.

Summer Hiking Awards

As the saying goes, "All good things must come to an end."  This hike was probably our last one of the season.  It was a very enjoyable family project this summer and although the weather is still gorgeous, the calendar and the schedule is not favorable to big chunks of time to allow for family hikes.  Sadness.

It's been wonderful to do this together-- just the two of us sometimes, but more often, working together to haul a sometimes more, sometimes less cooperative hoard of children through the mountains.  Now for a few awards I wish to give out.  Abe gets the award of "Hottest Pack Mule".  He agreed and has appreciated the nicer baby backpack carrier I insisted we get.  He carried Greta for many many hours this summer-- only to let me carry her so that he could carry Peter on his shoulders.  I'm telling you-- I find that very attractive!

Elinor has never been a fan of hiking.  Period.  She doesn't like it.  I tried to tell her that if she did it  more, then she might like it more.  NO SALE.
Her award is "That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It."
She doesn't like hiking.  She loathed it as a kid, and while she will come along and humor me, there are many other things she'd rather be doing.  And it's not because she isn't in good shape.  She's super strong and fit from all her swimming and water polo.  But it's not her thing.  I'm almost ready to respect that.

Peter receives the "Silence is Golden" award.  For the love of Pete!  Would you please just hike in silence!  He talks, complains, rages, cries, laughs, tells jokes, and cannot be quiet to save his life.
In his defense, we pushed him pretty hard to hike pretty far and besides the occasionally piggy back rides and long shoulder rides, he did it.  The lack of volume control was the price we paid.

Bethany gets the "Missing in Action" award.  I think she made it to exactly ONE family hike this whole summer.  She worked a lot.  She played a lot.  She is 17.  I think we missed the hiking boat with her.  Oh well.  We have other children.
Kidding.  Not kidding.

Greta is awarded the "Enjoy the Ride" award.  She was happily toted wherever we wanted to go for however long we wanted to go.  Rarely a peep of discomfort as long as we gave her her own water bottle to drink and play with.

I give George the "Tough Guy-Hawk Eye" award.  He is T-O-U-G-H stuff and he doesn't complain and he was the lizard spotter!  He has Clark's .gift for noticing the details and hearing and spotting the wild life.  George is a great hiker.  I foresee Clark and George hiking together a lot in the years to come.

Cannon gets the "I'm a DANCER, not a PACK MULE!" award.  Meaning, he'd come.  He'd be pleasant.  He'd catch lizards with the best of them.  But don't expect him to carry the back packs!
I'm giving him a hard time...he wasn't that bad, but it did seem like he got out of back duty fairly regularly.   In his defense, we often dragged him on a hike after a couple hours of ballet class, so he was probably pretty worn out before we even began.

Faith is given the "Little Miss Queen of the Trail" award.  She rocked every single hike we went on.  She never ran out of steam.  Never ran out of enthusiasm.  She was always up for any hike without any complaint and she and I even got in a couple of hikes just the two of of.  She was hiking perfection! 

Clark gets the "You're the Inspiration" award.  I think the summer of hiking was largely inspired by Clark's hiking expeditions before he left.  We very much enjoyed thinking of and talking about Clark while we hiked some of his favorite trails. 

Cannon (10) and George (8)

I feel as though I should give myself some sort of award for my summer of hiking.   So often I have something I want to improve on, but for various reason I find myself distracted, or said goal doesn't move high enough on the priority list to actually do it.  So I award myself the "Way to Make it Happen" award.  Hopefully next summer will be filled with even more hiking and the great outdoors, but I feel certain I will always look back at this summer with much gratitude and fondness for the grand little adventures we shared.