Bring it on! (an update)

A fuzzy ultra-close-up of Teancom. I LOVE fuzzy shots. Heaven only knows why.

I haven't written a real update for quite a while now. It seems like life has been less celebrating and more strictly survival. Updates don't fit in survival mode. :)

Our June. Iv'e decided that June was just about a wasted month. I would have preferred falling asleep in mid-May and waking up again for the last 3 days of June. :) But, it's past us, so that can only be good!

We'll go through updates in the order I remember them.

About 2 weeks before Rob's defense Rob's sister, C, called and asked if it would be helpful if she took Miciah and Elijah for a while. Since Rob was pulling late nights, I told her that would be helpful indeed. She ended up taking Miciah only and Miciah had a GREAT time playing with her cousins for the week. She came home dark, dark, dark after playing in the sun and water all week. Here's a thank you to M and C for thinking of me and my family during that time.

Father's Day

Rob's parents came down for the defense and they showed up on Sunday evening. On Saturday Rob and I had spent all day making his father's real Italian lasagna to surprise V (all day is not an exaggeration--we made the sauce for about 10 hours). V loved the surprise and I think Rob really liked being able to do that for his father on Father's Day. It was a lovely evening.

D-Day

The next day was the defense. Some lovely friends of ours, the S's, took the kids all day, which was super swell of them. So, while JS was watching the kids at their house, DS kept me and Rob's parents company during the downtime following the defense but before the reception. And that was actually VERY nice of him. At the reception D offered to watch the kids overnight, too. So, really, the S's are the best friends ever!!!

The highlight of the reception for me was asking Dr. R if he would come to dinner at my house. :) Got a good laugh about that. I've been trying to invite him over for years, but he "doesn't do that", apparently. I don't get it. Someone suggested that he wouldn't come because Rob was his grad student. So I used the reception as an opportunity to test that theory. :) Dr. R was quick to say, "That's very kind of you, but no." I told him as we were leaving that if he ever wanted to jump into the new waters of Eating Dinner at Other People's Houses, we would be happy to have them over.

We got home and had about an hour and a half to kill before dinner. So we took a nap. And that's a real nap, by the way. I was EXHAUSTED from the day. Then, for dinner, we celebrated with R & C, B, and A at Walt's Barbeque, just down the street, B's treat for us. We went to that restaraunt in particular hesitantly. R said their ribs were good, but Rob and I aren't really rib people. Well, we WEREN'T until we had the ribs at Walt's! SOOOOOO good. Yummy! I ate half a rack. ... It was nice to be out celebrating and hearing Rob talk like a normal person in conversation and laugh like a normal person. :) Then we went home and played a game with B and just talked like normal people do until 10:30 or so. It was lovely. Halfway through talking with him, I said, "I feel like I need to go turn on the TV and the radio and start jumping on the stairs!" :) It's sure different without kids around.

To The Beach!

We woke up the next morning, Tuesday, and went to gather our kids from the S's house. We headed over to The Beach Waterpark. Someone in our ward gave us free tickets. Rob originally wasn't going to take the day off (need to get the work done!), but I figured it must have been fate. How often does someone call you up and offer you and your family free tickets to a waterpark the day after your husband defends his dissertation? Right. So we went and had a GREAT time. There were several other people from our ward there, including the S's, C's, and R's, and we had a good time hanging out with them all day.

Dead cicadas. So cute.

Oh! One of the highlights of the waterpark was at lunch time. We were all sitting down for lunch when the friend who got us in to the park came over to say hi. Miciah was freaking out about the cicadas everywhere. They'd fly all over you, run into you mid-flight, stuff like that. It was craziness. The friend, a long-time Cincinnatian, said, "We eat cicadas." Then he picked up a live cicada and put it in his mouth! He hid it in the pocket of his cheek and said, "That's how we do it in Cincinnati." Miciah FREAKED. She hid behind me and looked just completely shocked. One of those, can't look but can't look away things. He then took the cicada out of his mouth and let him fly away. Wow. It was pretty cool.

It was SO nice to have a day off with the family. Miciah looked at Rob and said, "Daddy, will you be off all the time now?" :) I wish.

Out to Eat

Thursday night was funny. T & M C took us out to dinner to surprise Rob. Keeping it a surprise was hard, and involved some lying on my part. :) It was funny when T showed up at our house and Rob looked at him like, "What? Is there a bishopric meeting I forgot about?" I had told Rob we were going out to watch a late movie. He said dinner with good friends was better (I agree!). They took us to Don Pablos because Rob digs Mexican. T even had the waiters come over and congratulate Rob for earning his doctorate. The one waiter yelled over everyone talking, "Hey! This guy just earned his doctorate! Let's hear it!" and everyone cheered for Rob. T loves surprises, apparently. :) Rob turned about 50 shades of red, but it was cute. I told T that he was not allowed to come to any party of mine. ... It's nice to have friends who care.

Scout Camp

Then Rob headed off to Scout Camp. :) The week went by pretty quickly. We had friends over to play on Monday, then Miciah and the boys played at another friend's house on Tuesday and Wednesday, and that made the week go by really well. I was totally fine until Rob came home and then wanted to take a lengthy nap. I lost my mind about halfway through his nap. But we all survived.

the beard

The best part of Scout Camp is that I convinced Rob to keep his week-long beard for church on Sunday morning. :) This is happiness. He didn't want to do it cause he's amazingly obedient and that's cute. I made a special call to a member of the Stake Presidency in our ward whom I love and adore. I told him my marital happiness hinged on him telling Rob he could keep his beard for this one Sunday. He laughed at me, but he said yes. I then convinced Rob to not shave for Tuesday night (we had agreed when he wouldn't shave, but we hadn't talked about when he WOULD shave, I reasoned). So he had it almost a full 2 weeks, and it was gorgeous. I took a picture of him Saturday night (last night) before he shaved it off. I then printed off the picture and included it inside a thank you note to the Stake Presidency member who okayed the beard. ... If it were up to me, Rob would have his beard full-time right now. I LOVE the beard.


If the saddest part of Rob's calling is that he can't grow a beard, ... I can live with that.

Scout Camp went really well, especially compared to some years previous that were fairly disastrous. Rob made me a cute leather bracelet that I love. Some guy at camp made fun of Rob for making me the bracelet. And, undeterred, he replied, "You don't know my wife." What a wise husband he is! :) I'll have to take a picture of it. It's pretty neat.

top of the bracelet:

bottom of the bracelet:

caving

A fun Scout Camp story. Rob went caving at Carter Caves, KY. He called me that night to tell me the story of how he got stuck. His first problem: trying to go through a passage called "the birth canal". But, he's lost weight and he thought he could do it. They crawled through the whole passage till they got to the section for which it was named. And his shoulders wouldn't fit through. So he decided to breathe all of his air out and then wriggle his way through. ... He told me right to there and I said, "Rob, this is how people DIE in caves." :) I think this is a basic caving rule: don't go through a passage if you have to breathe all your air out to fit!!! Anyways, he got his shoulders through, then his chest and his waist. He figured his shoulders should be the widest part, so he'd be fine. Wrong. His butt got stuck. Can't blow much air out from that area (no comments on that, please). Luckily a leader was behind him still, so the leader pulled on his feet from the back and Rob blew all the air out and pushed from his side. They got Rob free and then they crawled all the way back through the passage. :) No born again experience for Rob.

Camping in the Backyard

The Monday after Rob got home the kids wanted to camp out in our backyard. Every time Rob leaves on a camp out, Elijah wants to go, too. So I thought camping out in the backyard was a good compromise, and a fun thing to do as a family. We got out 2 tents and made a camp fire and had s'mores. Totally cute. Of course, no one slept particularly well, and everyone was awake with the sun at 6 am. But at least it didn't rain and the weather was PERFECT for it. It's the simple things.

4th of July

We spent our 4th of July at a friend's house. Their neighbors had spent, they said, about $2000 on fireworks. Crazy! But it was awesome. They had these cool ones that would go up, and then explode into parachutes dropping with trailing purple smoke or American flags hanging down from them. They were wicked cool. ... Of course Elijah thought the fireworks were really cool and wanted to touch all of them. My mind went back to years and years of my father saying, "NO FIREWORKS!" ... I did get injured, actually. A pretty good burn. There was a smoke candle that the adults had been carrying around. No explosions, just smoke. Then they gave the second candle to a kid who flicked it a few times. No problem, except whatever was making the smoke inside of that candle flicked out and got on my foot. It HURT. It's the smallest blister known to man. It's rather cute, actually.

We were there with the R's, and CR is doing his plastic surgery rotation for his 3rd year of medical school. When we started the evening he said, "I'm going to be called in, there's just no way around that." Someone ALWAYS gets hurt on the 4th. Sure enough, before the evening was over, he got a call. He didn't leave the party for it, but C told us what had happened. The guy was holding a mortar that a friend had made him for his birthday. They lit it, something went wrong, and both of his hands were blown off. Woah. C went in later and said that they had him on the operating table for 4 hours trying to salvage any part of his hands at all, but in the end, they had to amputate both hands. That's crazy. Again, my father's voice in my head, "NO FIREWORKS!" ... To this day, the only thing I've ever purchased is sparklers and those little pop-it things (which are actually dang fun). I'm hoping to instill in my own children that voice of sanity, "NO FIREWORKS!"

Double in Stupid, Stupid in Double

One of the funniest kid stories for the last little bit involves a piece of paper that is now taped up on my wall. I'll include the picture. ... Elijah just started crying really hard and I knew that Miciah had taken this piece of paper off the wall and crumbled it up. I told her that wasn't nice, and what if Elijah had done that to her papers that she put up. She said, "Yeah, but it says I'm stupid!" Granted, it DOES say stupid on it. It says "stupid in double" and "double in stupid", "to Miciah" , "from Elijah". The funny part about this story is that MICIAH WROTE IT! She said, "Yeah, but he told me what to write!" I just laughed. You didn't have to write it, silly goose. :) I've kept the paper up cause it just cracks me up. I keep repeating in my head, "Elijah called me stupid!" You wrote it, sweetie.

Babies in the Crusher

Oh. Another thing that's been cracking me up. Elijah watched the video of Teancom being born that I posted to the blog. Since then he's been saying that we all were babies once. The doctors took us, put us in a crusher, and that's how we got inside our mommy's belly. I'll have to watch the video with him again and have him identify the "crusher". ... I suppose it makes sense, really. How ELSE could we become small enough to fit in there?

Miciah

And a heart-warming Miciah story. When Rob got called into the Bishopric months ago, he told Miciah that she needed to be a really big girl and help me on Sunday mornings. She's been a brilliant helper ever since. Like this morning. Rob and I had stayed up too late reading scriptures (honest), so I was zonked. Miciah got up on her own. She fed herself breakfast (after asking me if that was okay). She got dressed, including her tights and shoes. Then she came in at 9:00 am, an hour before church, and said, "Mom, you need to get up." :) She then got Teancom dressed all by herself, including tying his shoes. She's amazing.

Related to that. I was frustrated at Miciah and was having a hard time not yelling at her (this was before Barbie Mariposa). I wrote her a note saying that I was sorry that I wasn't perfect and that she was a wonderful girl, even if I do yell too much sometimes. I thanked her for being patient with me and for helping out so much. ... Rob talked to her later about that and other things. Rob told her that sometimes I need some help around the house and that sometimes it's hard to be patient, etc. She said, "Dad, when you got called to the Bishopric, I said I'd help on Sunday mornings. And then I thought, "If I can help Mom on Sunday morning, I can help her out on every other day, too."" So thoughtful. It was one of those moments when you think, "I am the worst person in the world!" :) Here's this amazing little girl who's trying so hard to help out and be a big girl. And I'm getting frustrated at her for what reason? Sometimes she's a wiser soul than I am.

And that's life here.

Rob's Re-Write

Rob's re-write is going great. He should be done in the next few days. Retzinger will read it, sign it, and then it will be signed by all the neccessary people, and we'll be done! The mandatory week off, the 14th - the 21st, will be spent, Rob and I, at Carter Caves, caving. :) I told him I'd like to pretend that we like each other enough to spend time together without the kids around. So we'll pass the kids off to their surrogate grandparents, the W's, for almost 3 days, 2 nights. Exciting! ... I told Rob that if he has to work till midnight every night to ensure that we can take that trip, it'd be worth it!

Catch Phrase, Too Late at Night

Here are some funny things I wrote down from playing Catch Phrase too late at night. I play with Rob late at night sometimes, just to hear the silly things he'll say when I give him clues. These are not all G-rated, but they're not dirty, either:

clue: "This person takes a certain instrument and makes all the keys sound the same."
real answer: piano tuner
Rob's answer: Darth Vader!

clue: "This is what we should be doing right now."
Rob: Sex
Me with clue #2: "No. You sleep in...?"Rob: a hammock!
real answer: Go to bed

clue: "This is something you wear in the winter."Rob: A sweater.
Me with clue #2: "Yes. This is a type of sweater that comes to a point."
Rob: "Cleavage sweater!"
real answer: V-neck sweater

Clue: "People do this down a mountain and I think they're insane."
Rob: Have sex!
real answer: skiing

(I guess you can tell where Rob's mind was. What a cute man.)

Teancom in a car seat, with binky.

We've been watching N, my cousin's son. My kids LOVE N. They paw all over him and feed him M&M's and shove toys on him and all that good, loving stuff. When N is out of the car seat (mostly to save him from the over-love), Teancom grabs the binky, shoves it in his mouth, and climbs into the car seat. It's cute. I had to take a picture. Elijah, too, found a way to get into the car seat for the baby doll! It's got to be near-impossible for that to happen. He got himself in the other day, strapped himself in, and then couldn't get out. If I had thought about it, I would have taken a picture of that, cause it was hilarious. If it happens again, I promise a picture.

And this picture of Teancom would have been the fabulous picture I was trying to get, if half his face wasn't off the picture. :) Oh well.

Tamra and family