Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

(I'm experimenting in this post with putting the pictures before what I'm talking about in the text.  Let me know what you think.  I'm not sure I'm a fan.)

We camped.  And let me tell you, if you want to go camping, then the Upper Penninsula is your place!  There are more places to camp than places not to camp, I swear.  Pick a spot.  Just don't assume it'll have indoor plumbing, electric hook-ups, or running water.  I was actually really impressed with Miciah, who used the bathroom facilities first.  She came back and excitedly declared that the bathroom was actually pretty nice!  "I can do this," she said.  I assumed, then, that it was actually pretty nice.  No, it was a permanent shack built over a port-a-potty.  On my first visit to that same facility, I smiled and said out loud to myself, "I love my daughter."

We fished.  I was previously unaware that Rob actually knew how to fish.  He'd told me so before, but I assumed he meant, like, he can put a hook in the water just like I can.  No, no.  The man has fishing skills.  He knows how to do things related to fishing that I didn't even know were things you'd need to know how to do.  I was impressed.  (And also surprised that 13 years into marriage I'm still finding out new things about my husband.)  

We ate some fish.  The kids insisted that they keep a few fish to cook and eat.  This was funny because the fish they caught were best measured in millimeters.  And when it came right down to it, they had a hard time stomaching the actual killing and eating process.  Still, Rob cleaned and cooked two microscopic blue gill.  Everyone got a taste.  I just died laughing.  All that work for a few bites of average-tasting fish?  In fact, the whole fishing thing was hilarious to me.  I kept saying to Rob, "You think this is worth it, right?  ...  Okay, then."  Fishing is kinda fun and relaxing.  Fishing with kids is markedly less so.  But they all loved it.

We chased waterfalls.  On a day-long voyage that included singing that waterfall song while our kids listened perplexedly, we went to as many local waterfalls as we could shove in.  We saw a lot of the area that way, and it was all gorgeous.  By the end of the day, we were pretty exhausted.  We visited 6 or 7 waterfalls in just a few hours.  On the way back to the campsite, we convinced the kids to stop by one last place(s):

Worth it.

We went on a boat tour.  It's pretty clearly stated that the best way to see the rocks was from a boat, and not from the hiking trails or lookouts.  This was our big ticket item and man, was it worth it!  If you ever go, DON'T SKIP OUT ON THIS ONE!  Well worth the $20 a piece ticket price.  (We have lots more pictures of the boat tour, but you can find better pictures with a Google image search.  Which I suggest you do.  Because the place is amazing.)

We hiked.  After the boat tour, I convinced the family that we should take a hike down to the beach where a stream ran into Lake Superior.  I had seen people playing in it, having fun.  No one was playing in Lake Superior, but they were playing in the mouth of this stream.  Plus, the captain of the boat said that we HAD TO go wade in Lake Superior.  He declared the water warm at this time of year.  He is smoking crack.  The water was 65 degrees.  We touched it, just to say we had.  Then we played in the mouth of the stream because it was really warm - like bath water.  Perfect.

We almost got eaten alive by mosquitoes.  On the hike back (3 miles each way), we hiked fast fast fast.  We had, of course, brought bug spray: 25% Deet.  We left the 99% Deet in the car because, don't be silly, we won't need it.  Well, when you're hiking beside a place called Mosquito River, here's a hint:  There might be a lot of mosquitoes.  I was at the front of the pack, hiking super fast.  Every time we stopped, the mosquitoes swarmed.  We re-applied when they were nestling into Teancom's hair while he was walking top speed.  I was super proud of the kids, though, they kept pace with me and didn't complain.  The hike in had taken us a few hours (we stopped for pictures, etc.).  The hike out took 45 minutes.

Here's an after shot:  

Miciah in particular wasn't happy.  "But it was worth it, right?  The beach was awesome?!"  ...  "Suuurre."  They'll thank me later.

We brought home contraband rocks.  You aren't supposed to take these out of the park, and I had intended to give the kids a speech about how we are law-abiding citizens who follow rules and protect our parks, and that's why these rocks will stay right where they are.  And then we got to the beach and saw the rocks.  The pretty, pretty rocks.  They were mesmerizing.  We all found ourselves with our pockets full in about 3 minutes flat.  Those rocks are like The One Ring.  I swear it was impossible not to pick them up.  We all picked our 5 favorite to bring home.

We ate pasties.  As we drove into the U.P., we kept seeing signs saying, "Fresh Hot Pasties."  At first I thought it was a typo - a missing 'r'.  They must be advertising cream puffs and danishes.  After the 3rd sign, I decided that pasties must actually be a thing and that we ought to try them.  (For the record, you don't pronounce it like 'pastries' without the r, but like 'past' with a -y stuck on the end.  Also for the record, you sound like an idiot to the locals when you can't pronounce it right.)  They were pretty good; we went back for seconds.

We ate wild blueberries.  They were everywhere and they were delicious.  Surprisingly so.  We didn't eat the wild mushrooms, though.  It's a shame we didn't know which ones were edible.  You could live off them, there were so many!

We touched Lake Michigan.  On the way back home, we stopped at a rest area that was inches away from the shore of Lake Michigan.  Which means we had to touch the water.  Holy cow, it was like 20 degrees warmer than Lake Superior!  I don't really know how much warmer it is, but the water was really pleasant.  Like, I would have gotten in if we'd had the time, and if you know me, that's really saying something.

We didn't shower for a week.  Sunday - Friday.  When we arrived at Rob's parents' house on Friday night, the kids were ready to just hop in bed.  We forced them all to take a shower first.  Us, too.  It was kinda funny to me because for a few days after that I kept saying to Rob, "What's wrong with my hair?  It just feels wrong.  It's all bouncy and stuff."  And that's when you know you've been camping too long.  :)

Still, I immediately started trying to figure out how to get the Upper Penninsula into my future.  It was kind of magical up there.  We will definitely be going back.

And that's it!  That was all our trip taking for the summer.  We went to the Southern and then the Northern extreme of our country.  Fun!

Camping

Don't worry, this one is mostly pictures.

For a week we were lucky enough to have 2 of our nieces, Maddie and Alexa, come stay with us.  (Must be a theme this summer - nieces at our house.)  Their 3 younger siblings all battled e Coli, which was horrible for them, but Maddie and Alexa were fine.  So we had a great time playing at the museum and playing with friends and going to the Y to swim.  Their favorite part of the whole week was camping, even though the camping trip was a mild disaster.  Turns out that they'd never been camping before.  So it was a treat for them.

Tin foil dinners:

 Cuteness:

Craziness:

Here's Rob the Amazing:

I would like you to note the van in the background.  Turns out that if you leave it with the doors open for an entire evening, which makes the interior lights stay on, then the battery will be dead in the morning.  Rob tried to blame this on the kids.  Pretty sure it was all of us.

Hiking:

Rob sprained his ankle while chasing away a cat.  Yep.  Super manly, right?  But he wrapped it up and toughed it out and despite my objections, he went hiking with the family.  "I'm not going to spoil the fun for everyone," he said.  By the end of the day his ankle was swollen to double the normal size.  It was gross.  I'm a bruise-lover, but this one was outrageously disgusting.  He stayed off it for weeks, and it's still tender. 

The dog loved hiking:

All the kids on the trail:

Swimming in the river:

It started raining while the kids were in the river, so we went home and finished the rest of the camping-like things there.  And mild disaster or not, it was fun!  Good memories.

An Update - No Stress Involved

Believe it or not, we have been involved in things other than just taking strolls through Stressland.  I'm going to take a moment and report on those things.

The House

Tomorrow we are closing on our refinance!  When we bought this house, we acquired 2 lousy loans.  We knew they were lousy at the time, but I'm not sure we realized just HOW lousy.  ...  Anyway, the interest rates are low right now, and one of our 2 lousy loans will go variable in November, so we thought that now would be a good time to try to refinance.

The trick, of course, was to get our house to appraise for something manageable.  Because our 2 loans were lousy, we've essentially paid off nothing in 5 years.  Which is ... depressing.  And since we've paid off nothing, and the housing market has dropped since we bought the house, it was nowhere close to a sure bet that the house would appraise for what we needed it to appraise for.  ...  So we painted a little.  Made things look a little nicer.  And then prayed and hoped for the best.

And our house appraised $2,000 higher than we needed!  Hurray!  We passed the other tests, the credit scores and background checks and drug histories and Algebra tests.  ...  Tomorrow we sign our lives away AGAIN, but at least we'll be paying off the house.  Which is something we haven't done before.

Rob's Calling

Last weekend Rob was released from the Bishopric.  This has been coming for a while, and Rob and I knew it.  Rob has been pretty unavailable to the Bishop, since he's been working Tuesday nights since August 2009 (Tuesday is Bishopric meeting night), and is going to be working them through December 2010.

A month or two back, Rob came home from a Sunday afternoon Bishopric meeting and said, "Today we discussed the fact that it's time to release Brother E. as Ward Mission Leader."  Okay.  "Tim kind of half-jokingly mentioned my name."  And then it hit me.  It was sure knowledge.  I said, "Rob, that's your new calling."  Rob said, "Yeah, I was thinking that, too."  "So, did you tell the Bishop that?  Did you tell him that's your new calling?"  Rob said something to me about how it's not really his decision, but that he had hinted to the Bishop that he would be willing, if that call was issued.

A week or two later Bishop Tim called me for something unrelated.  We're good friends, and so when he finished talking about the unrelated subject, I said, "Tim, the calling you discussed a few weeks ago, you know that's Rob's new calling."  "What calling are you talking about?" he said.  As if he didn't know.  I told him that Rob and I both knew that Rob was supposed to be the new Ward Mission Leader, and that I thought Tim knew, too.  Tim said, "Tamra, it's going to be a busy calling.  Busier than the Bishopric."  And I shrugged and said, "When the Lord says "go and do," you do it."

Rob's excited about the new calling, and I'm excited that he gets to sit with us at church again!  The kids are also way excited about that.  Miciah shouted, "FINALLY!"  I guess 2 years is a long time.

Also, Rob will be able to grow his beard again.  ...  Actually, I haven't okayed that with Tim yet.  But if he doesn't okay at least SOME beard time, he's going to have a fight on his hands. 

Family Campout

The last of our Friday Family Nights in April was a family campout in the backyard.  It was a perfect night for camping, but Rob said, "It's supposed to storm."  I thought, "Whatever.  It's gorgeous!"

Here's our backyard set up:

Notice the log on the fire.  It's bigger than our fire pit!

Elijah brought it over to the fire pit all by himself, rolling it end-over-end.  So we had to burn it.  It burned for 6 hours.

Here's the kids, calmly getting ready for bed:

And, of course, it stormed in the middle of the night.  Starting about midnight it got gusty, but not awful.  Then, around 3 am it started getting REALLY gusty.  And at 6 am it started pouring down rain!  We ran with the kids, and all the bedding, into the house.  The kids finished the morning in sleeping bags on the living room floor.  And I took a nap later that day to make up for not sleeping much from 3 - 6:30 am.  

Miciah

marathon
Miciah ran the Kids' Flying Pig Marathon last weekend, for the 2nd year in a row.  They run 25 miles in the months coming up to the race, and then do the last mile at the marathon.  It was a little weird this time, because the day of the Flying Pig was when Miciah broke her arm.  Hard to believe it was a year ago.  Miciah will still not jump off the swings (can you blame her?), but Elijah will!  We'll tell Elijah to be careful (whatever.  Like we were careful as kids), and that Miciah broke her arm that way, and he'll come back at us with, "Yeah, but I didn't break my arm."  Good point.

bike
Miciah has officially learned to ride a 2-wheeler bike!  She wouldn't try for a long time because she was scared.  She is definitely like me:  not a daredevil.  It may surprise you to hear that, since I was a tomboy, but I am not, and have never been an adrenaline junkie.   Danger is for idiots, i.e. boys.

Shortly after learning to ride without training wheels, she rode her bike into the dust.  It was a beat-up, er, well-loved hand-me-down bike (thank you SO MUCH, Chiara!) that was really too small for her this year anyway.  So we bought her a new bike. 

bedroom
Also, we rearranged Miciah's room last night.  I've been frustrated with her room because it's always a mess, and that's partly my fault.  Her room has been 1/2 her room and 1/2 my room (it's a woodworking room turned craft room turned bedroom).  I decided it was time to change that.  So we moved her bed, gave her more wall space and another bookshelf.  Gave her the shoe bin so she could organize her shoes (she has lots of hand-me-down shoes) (and now we have no shoe bin upstairs.  But it's worth it).  Put up permanent hooks so she can hang up her jackets and hats.  And then cleaned.

And cleaned.

And cleaned.

About a million times she said, "Oh!  THAT'S where that was!"  Socks.  Toys.  Papers.  Books.  It was pathetic.

But it looks great now and I'm so happy with it!

(If you're thinking, "It doesn't actually look that great," then you obviously didn't see it before.  I'm sorry I don't have a Before picture for you.  Suffice it to say that I felt like throwing up every time I entered her room.  And no, that's not an exaggeration.)

Elijah

reading
Elijah is reading.  I'm still not sure when you can say a kid is officially Reading, but he's doing really good, so I'm going to call it official.

wii
He also is very proud of himself because he beat New Super Mario Brothers wii.  He did the last level all by himself because Miciah and Tank wouldn't help him.  They get scared and bubble (which means they're just along for the ride, and don't help).  He's been telling everyone he can all about it.

He also frequently gets grounded from the wii because he throws fits when I ask him to turn it off, etc.  Surprisingly, he doesn't complain about not playing while he's grounded.  

Jesus stories
A funny story about Elijah.  He was at Pen's house with Tank.  The 3 of them were dancing in the dust specks that you can see in the sun, when suddenly Elijah said, "Wait, guys!  The dust is good.  It's faith.  It's Jesus."

He's been really into Jesus lately, which is great, but can get a little weird.  He'll say funny things about what Jesus is or where he is or whatever.  ...  But sometimes he's so in touch with the goodness that is Jesus Christ, and it's inspiring to me.  He went to a Primary activity focused on Jesus Christ and prophets and when he came home I said, "Did you like the activity, Elijah?"  He said, in an awe-filled voice, "I LOVED it.  We learned about Jesus Christ."

His latest question about Jesus Christ is, "How can he be alive if he died?  And how is he alive if he's in Heaven?"  Good, good questions.  Most people, after all, are dead when they die, and if they're in Heaven, that means they're dead, too.  I'm glad he's asking the questions.

Tank

Tank is ... grumpy lately.  And hasn't been eating much of anything.  I don't know what that's about, but whatever.

bike
He graduated to a new bike at the same time Miciah did.  He only had a little trike (also a hand-me-down.  Thank you, generous people who love us!), and he was too big for it, but we were pretending not to notice.  But when we went to the store to get Miciah her new bike, he saw a bike just his size and Rob let him ride it in the store.  Which means you have to buy it.  Is there a parent who lets their kid ride the bike at the store and then walks out of said store without said bike?  Tank kept saying, "Look!  I can ride it!"  "It fits me!"  and "Look at me ride my bike!"

It was late when we got home, so the next morning he got up and said, "Put on my shoes, Mom.  I'm ready to ride my bike!"  He loves it.

Oh.  If you're wondering how it worked to take 3 kids to the store and give 2 kids a bike, ...  At the store Elijah said, "What do I get?"  I told him that he didn't need a bike, and that's true.  He has a great little bike that fits him perfectly.  He was okay with not getting a bike.  He proposed getting a $25 Hot Wheels set instead.  I said no.  Then I saw a bubble wand for the perfect price of $1.  I said, "What about this bubble wand?!"  And Elijah was thrilled.  Love the boy.  He really doesn't keep tally.  If it had been 6-year-old Miciah walking out without a bike, we would have had a MAJOR fit on our hands.

Rob is Home!

Rob came home last night to find 3 hyper-excited children.  They jumped all over him and talked non-stop.  You'd think he was gone for weeks.  But it's cute how much they love their daddy.

He came home with gifts for all of them.  None were Baltimore-centered because, ... it's Baltimore, blah.  At first he pulled out his Immunology conference book and said, "This is for Teancom!" and Tank lowered his head and groaned.  It was hilarious!  Actually Tank got a bath toy.  It's a battery-operated motor boat.  It's pretty cool.  AND it got Tank to take a bath.  That's something he hasn't been keen on doing lately.

Elijah got a boomerang.  After playing with it outside, and even though he didn't get it to come back to him, he ran inside and said, "Mom!  It's awesome!"

Miciah and I got these itty-bitty shirts:

Seriously, don't those look like doll shirts?  They're called Popcorn shirts.  ...

 When I first had the bag in my hands, and I couldn't tell what it was, and the outside said, "I love popcorn," I thought to myself, "Rob has seriously misjudged how much I like popcorn."  ...  But the shirts are actually pretty cool.  Here's Miciah with the shirt on:

They're fun shirts.

And it's good to have Rob home.

Announcements and an update

Rob's Class

Rob just called me after teaching his first class at NKU. So it's official. ... The class is a Basics of Biology lab for non-biology majors. Plus, they're taking this in an accelerated, 5-week format, so probably most of the students wouldn't be there if they didn't have to be (it's a required course). But Rob's excited about teaching it, nonetheless. It's a 2-hour class, 3 times a week, and Rob gets the first 10 minutes or so to introduce material for the day. So it's not lecture-heavy, which is probably good, since he has little time to prep.

We're gearing up for 12 hour days, and lots of weekends worked. ... At least we only have the next 5 weeks to worry about.

Vacation Plans

And then we're going on vacation!! For those of you who don't know and who are interested (which might be a whole 3 of you), this is our rough outline for the trip (note that these days are NOT set in stone, but it should go down pretty close to like this):

July 3rd - leave for Yellowstone

July 5th - 11th - Family Reunion in Yellowstone

July 11th - July 20th (or so) - Time in Utah

July 20th - mid-August some time - Rob leaves us. Time in California

mid-August some time - leave CA for a long, leisurely trip back to Cinci, including a longer stay in St. Louis, where I grew up. Hopefully Rob will re-join us for that part.

August 16th or so - arrive back in Cinci

Yes, we are driving.

Rob will leave us after Utah and fly back home. Then me and the kids will head to CA for some time at the beach, etc. After that my mother will drive back across the country with me and the kids (plus cousin D). This was my MOTHER'S idea, I will have everyone know. She's the crazy one. But it'll be fun. Definitely a summer to remember and never repeat.

I'm excited to show my kids Yellowstone. It's one of my favorite places in the world. Not that I've been a ton of places in the world, but of the places I've been, it's one of my favorites. There's just nowhere else like it. We will be camping in Yellowstone that whole week, so it'll be an adventure.

Graduation - Ceremony and Party

Rob graduates next Friday, June 12th. For those of you who are sad to miss the ceremony (yeah, right), Rob has informed me that you can watch it live on the internet. So here's the link:

http://www.uc.edu/ucvision/event.aspx?eventid=223

The doctorates are awarded in a ceremony that starts at 10:30 am.

For those of you who are happy to skip the ceremony but who would like to help Rob celebrate his achievement, there will be a party that evening at our house. 5:00 pm - midnight (or whenever you'd like to leave). It's a potluck. We'll be providing meat: hamburgers, hotdogs, and brats and mets. And all the fixings for hamburgers. Everything else is potluck. So bring stuff you like to eat. :)

Our Spontaneuos Weekend

We had a fabulous weekend. Rob was pre-feeling the crunch of a busy June, so we did lots of fun stuff this weekend to pre-make up for it. For the second weekend in a row, we camped out in our backyard on Friday night. Had a tin foil dinner. Stayed up late talking by the fire. It was great. We had invited people to join us for a spontaneous camp out in our backyard. No one ended up showing, which is totally fine. It was just fun to be spontaneous.

The next day we took a drive to test the car top carrier that we'll use for our vacation. We borrowed the carrier from someone who hasn't used it for years, so we checked it for water-proof-ness, and then took a drive on the highway to check the straps and stuff. Took the kids with us. Driving to nowhere in particular. We decided to turn around at an exit near Indiana that just happens to be the same place you'd exit to go to a fun park.

So we took the kids to the park. Ended up staying for a few hours. Rob got all spontaneous on us (I LOVE when he's spontaneous, so he tries hard to be spontaneous at least once a year) and we rented a paddle boat. Paddled around this cute little pond. Saw lots of ducks, including about 20 baby ducks, and baby ducks are adorable. All 20 baby ducks were with one female duck. We wondered if she was babysitting.

We ended the weekend by attending a spontaneous pot luck picnic dinner. Met some new friends and hung out with old friends, too.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, full of fun and spontaneity. The spontaneity wasn't on purpose. It just happened that way.

(Yes, I was trying to be funny with the last comments.)

Pictures

Now that that's all out of the way, I'll post some random pictures from May.

We babysat a baby, and Teancom thought the portacrib looked inviting. So for a few nights he went to sleep in it. I thought it was cute, and I had to take a picture:

My lilacs in full bloom, early May:

Rob's little brother got the lead in a play. He'll be portraying Nephi. So, in a late-night moment, Rob made these Nephi faces: (You're welcome, Garrett.)

(And, yes, that's Rob's belt around his head.)
Teancom, all ready to play outside in the rain:

I just loved that it was warm enough out that he could go outside without pants. Him in no pants, a jacket with hood on, and bright green crocs. What's cuter than that? And you can be jealous of my outfit-picking abilities. It's okay.

The kids have been playing outside a lot. We brought out the kiddie pool and by the end of the first day, a week ago, they were both lobsters. Teancom was a red and brown lobster, and Elijah was a red and white monster. The boys have been taking turns wearing the floaty stuff, too:

And wearing it backwards. Totally funny.

No taxation without representation! (an update)

This is from a series and was by far the best photo of the group. He looks like such a T in these pictures! I can see some of my brothers in his face.

Work for Rob

Rob has been working in Dr. J's lab now for 3 weeks and he's still coming home saying, "I'm stupid." :) Dr. J's lab is an immunology lab, and Rob hasn't been working in an immunology lab for the last 4 years, so he feels pretty far behind in terms of knowledge base. He's been on a mad dash to learn all he needs to know so he can run experiments well, and there's been a lot of time spent learning how things run in the lab.

Of course, Rob is not really stupid. I told him that if he were to start talking to Dr. J about the ins and outs of fibrinogen, Dr. J would be the one feeling "stupid". Plus, every lab does things a little differently, so there has to be some expected learning time. ... Pretty soon Rob will come home talking about his new knowledge and the experiments he's running, and he'll sound dang impressive.

... And it's been a transition to the word "work." The answer to "Where's Daddy?" has been, for years, "At school." And so my response now is usually, "At school.work," about that fast. Spit out 'school' and then correct with 'work'. :) It's nice that he's done with school. And Miciah likes to call him Dr. Thacker, which I think is cute.

Girls Camp

I went to Girls Camp for 2 days, which was fun. I love camping. Not that Girls Camp is really anything like Scout Camp (for you people out there who don't know that, I'm telling you now. Girls Camp and Scout Camp are NOT comparable), but it's fun anyways. Though I could do without the cheers every 3 seconds. Anyways. One of our jobs on set up day was to make sure the little bank of the river by the "water hole" was safe. I checked out this small piece of tin sticking out of the sand. I figured we needed to cover it up or dig it out. And digging it out sounded much more fun. So I started digging. And digging. And digging. Half an hour later, we pulled out a piece of tin that was a few feet wide and 8 feet long! So somewhere upstream is a shed missing a piece of roof.

Family Camp Out

After we got home from Carter Caves, Elijah asked where we went. I told him we went camping. He wanted to know where. To keep it simple, I told him, "In the woods." He said, "I want to go camping in the woods, too!" Then Rob went on a camp out with the Scouts. And then I went to Girls Camp. He was feeling terribly left out. I looked at Rob and said, "You are not allowed to go on a camp out with the Scouts until you take this boy camping!" I would LOVE if Rob were able to take Elijah on the Scouting outings (tee hee: Scouting outing. Say that 10 times fast), but alas it's not allowed.

So we went on a family camp out. Just one night at Miami Whitewater, a campground about 20 minutes from our house. It's in a nice park and the kids loved it. On Saturday, as we were prepping to go back home, Elijah said he wanted to stay another night. Camping 2 nights in a row! Crazy fun! I told him we had to go home. Camping out on Saturday night and then getting ready for church on Sunday morning? No thank you. And then it hit me. I asked him what camping was to him. He said, "A tent and marshmallows." :) I told him we could do that 2 nights in a row in our backyard. So that's on the schedule for sometime in the near future.

I really do love camping. This weekend we're going down to Mammoth Cave and we'll be camping overnight Saturday to Sunday. I asked Rob it if it would be okay if we took a break from church for one Sunday. :) Sometimes his calling feels like a job. ... The other thing Elijah wanted to do, when he heard about our fun trip to Carter Caves, is go inside a cave. Rob and I have wanted to take the kids to Mammoth Cave for 2 summers now, and we're finally going to do it when C, my brother, comes in town. That'll be an adult per child, and that sounds totally managable. So C comes in town on Friday, and we'll leave early Saturday morning for Mammoth. ... We figured it'll be a fun trip, and relatively inexpensive. Mammoth is only a 3 1/2 hour drive from Cincinnati. And the camp site we found is an out-of-the-way place. I think it's just some guy who owns land near Mammoth and lets people come camp on it. Our choices were this nifty backwoods place or Jellystone. If you've ever stayed at Jellystone and enjoyed it, I'm sorry. Jellystone goes against everything I think is good and right in this world. :) Okay, not quite, but close.

You can't take baby backpacks inside the cave. Which is a bummer, cause we had one lined up for Teancom. As it is, I guess we'll be carrying him most of the time, and Elijah some of the time. Fun!

A Swingin' Good Time!

For my belated birthday gift, my Mom sent us money for a swing set. She said she figured it was as much a gift for me as it was for the kids. Perfect! We found the set we wanted on-line and had it shipped to our house. It arrived last Wednesday and the kids were excited. I asked Elijah, "Elijah, what is it?" With excitement in his voice he said, "It's a big box!" :) Guess we could have paid a lot less for just a box and he'd have been happy.

Elijah and Miciah playing in the box and with the paper that came in it:

It just so happened that Wednesday our Home Teacher called and asked if he could come by that night. I told him that was fine, so long as he wanted to help put up a swing set. I lured his wife into coming, too, with the promise of ice cream (which we forgot about in the end--we'll have to make up for that), and they were tremendously helpful! The directions were pretty lousy, so D had a full-time job interpreting them (seriously, the directions weren't even in the right order. Our first directions went from step 1 to step 6 and then backwards from 6 to 1) and arranging the hardware. The rest of us put it together. B came home and walked out to the back to help saying, "I walked in the house and the kids said, "You might want to go back there, B. They need help."" I thought that was funny. So the 5 of us worked and got it together in one night! By the end Rob and B were out with a lantern, finishing the last of it, until 10 p.m.

Teancom "helping" with the wrench.

The kids have been super happy to have a swing set. And it's way nice to say, "Go outside and play on the swing set" and to have them answer, "Okay!" and then run outside to play. The first day, Teancom stayed out there for almost the whole day. He gets on the lawn swing and he'll prop his feet up on the seat across from him and sit that way for a long time. That day he had a bowl of cereal that he ate at a leisurely pace while he sat on the lawn swing. ...

Teancom on the lawn swing.

Otherwise, he'll get on a swing and ask me to push him. I have a low endurance for swinging my kids, unfortunately for Teancom. I'll push him for a while and then go do something else. Then, when the swing comes to a stop, he'll say, "I'm done." Then he'll take a few steps over to the other swing and demand to be pushed on THAT one. :) I try to tell him that it's the same thing, but he doesn't believe me.
Miciah hanging from the trapeze bar. The other day Miciah said, "Mom, was I meant for the circus?" I told her I didn't think she was, but I didn't know. She said she felt like she was, because of all the acrobatic stuff she could do on the swing set. Funny, I remember thinking that when I was her age.

And since the swing set is outside now, we moved the smaller slide thing downstairs. It required us to take away some toys from downstairs. We decided to rotate them through. Our toy room just isn't large enough to keep all their toys. ... It's funny. I suggested to Rob that we could just get rid of most of those toys. And even though he's always bugging me to get rid of more toys, he wasn't okay with getting rid of them on a large scale. They're still good toys, sure, but do they need so many? No. The rotation thing, though, sounds great. And they think having a slide inside is really cool.

Cleaning and Scrubbing

The whole swing set venture prompted a huge organizing and cleaning effort by me and Rob. On Saturday we cleaned out the garage, the back shed, the downstairs play room. Plus we did all the laundry and dishes. We did several small projects that have been on our list for months--mulch rings around our bush and tree, the pipe under the kitchen sink. It feels NICE to have these things done. I've gone through almost every corner of my house, throwing away or giving away things that aren't needed or useful, and then re-organizing the things that are left. It's amazing what we don't need but that we've kept around anyways. :) And Rob finally replaced the serpentine belt on our van. Though the guy that helped him do it said we should get a tune-up on the van as soon as possible. Figures.

And that's life here.

Rob and I have been working hard to make things run smoothly around here. His calling, though lovely, is time-consuming and stressful at times. It's interesting the process we're going through to make everything go right. We have different expectations and we're having to compromise. Someone compared it to marriage, and I think that analogy is dead on. You compromise and work together towards a common goal to keep each other happy. So we're working on that with his calling in particular. We've come a long way in just identifying what it is that's not working and coming up with a game plan to make it better. So far it's working nicely. So we'll hold our breath a little and pray it continues in that direction.

Miciah

This is from a reading time night in July. It was late-ish and Rob told Miciah that, even though she's a night owl, she wouldn't be able to have that much reading time because it was late. And she wrote us this note:

She has written us several other notes during reading time, which she takes on our bed (3 kids in 1 bedroom means we put our kids to bed in shifts, and using our bedroom, too). She isn't allowed to come out of the room once she's in there unless she has to go potty or get a drink. (She routinely breaks all bedtime rules or abuses all bedtime priveleges we give her.) One night there were 2 notes waiting for us.

The first:

On the front of the card: "To Mom and Dad"

On the inside of the card: "I went in the dinning room last nitte to get the pappr." Then in a box: "Sorry" signed "Miciah"

The second note:

On the front of the card: "You'r loved giis. Miciah"

On the inside of the card: "nuthing to say"

Miciah is bored out of her mind and SO ready for school to start. She'll have a friend over almost all day and then fall to pieces when the friend has to go home. I told her one day that she should take some quiet time to cool down. She replied, "I want to take quiet time with a friend!" :) She's lonely and ready to see her friends again. I remember feeling like that at the end of summer when I was a kid. ... I'm happy that C is coming to help her be happy for a week plus. It'll really be a blessing to our end of summer.

I got her a 1st Grade workbook to try to help her be less bored. I brought it home and for a moment I was the best mom ever! It's amazing to me how much she likes to learn. And she wants to do things perfectly and hates making mistakes.

I've been working on getting a lot of Miciah's artwork scanned in to the computer. I'll post some of the best stuff eventually.

Miciah recently lost her other front tooth! So she's now got the cutest smile ever. Here are 2 pictures of her with the tooth so loose it was almost gross. I remember when I was a kid, being able to gross out girls at school by turning my loose tooth in circles and pushing it so far and then making it stick that way. That's what Miciah's tooth was like.

Miciah, unprompted, did that face. She called it her pirate face. Arrr!

And the side view.

The day after these pictures were taken, the tooth fell out. Thank goodness. It was driving me crazy!!

Elijah

Elijah is a good kid. He is still into clothes. I swear I wash all of his clothes in a week and a half. :) And he's funny about what he wears. He'll insist on wearing pajamas all day (and sometimes want to stay in the same pee-soaked pull-up, and that's just gross). Or just underwear and a T-shirt. Or it'll be blazing hot and he'll be in a sweatshirt. Don't ask why. There is no reason that I can tell. It does crack me up, though, cause people will think that I dressed him that way. And I'll say something like, "Yes. In 95 degree weather I thought he might be a little cold." :)

He is learning a lot of his letters and actually repeating them correctly to us. On the camp out, for instance, I put EZ cheese on their Ritz crackers. I spelled out their names, one letter per cracker. Elijah recognized all the letters of his name, which kind of surprised me. I think he knows more than he lets on. Same with counting. I KNOW he can count to at least 12 because I've heard him do it. But if you ask him to count to 10, it'll usually be something like, "1, 2, 3, 7, 5, 1, 10!" I don't get it. I am certain he is not stupid, though, so I don't worry much about it.

The other day Miciah asked how to spell Elijah's name. Before I could answer, Elijah said, "E-I-P-T." And that cracked me up.

Teancom

Teancom is still the world's happiest, easiest child. I count my blessings every day. He's a cuddle bug and needs a lot of down time, which is really really nice. He's not the off-the-wall 2-year-old that he should be, and I love the calmness. He listens when I speak, and that's just weird. He does what I ask him to, and that's even weirder. ... I should sing that song. You know, the one from Sound of Music: "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could. So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good." Probably not, though. God is just a very very very merciful God.

Teancom is a very sensitive soul. He still cries when Rob raises his voice, even if it's directed at the other children. He also cries at any ogre or giant in any movie. Even in Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus where the giant is funny. Or the ogre at the start of Enchanted: animated, kind of cute-ish. And he cries hysterically. Cute, cute sensitive child.

No taxation without representation!

We've been paid for 4 years through non-taxed means. We have forgotten what it feels like to have the government take your money before it's even in your hands. :) The first instance felt like a punch in the gut. But we're recovering. Slowly. And without much bitterness.