Caving Pictures

Us in all our caving gear. Head lamps and bike helmets (mine is a kid's helmet--adult sizes were too big).

The pictures we took while caving didn't turn out great, but they didn't turn out horrible, either. Definitely was worth the $10 spent for the camera and developing. Some of the pictures are really blurry. There are a few reasons for that:

1 it was misty inside some of the caves we were in.

2 it was a throw-away camera to start with.

3 the camera got muddy. By the end our fingers, shirts, and everything were muddy. So we were wiping off the camera with our muddy hands and shirts, and I shouldn't have to tell you how well THAT worked.

4 The camera even got misty on the INSIDE of the camera. It was sad that it made the pictures blurry, but there was no way that I would have allowed that to happen to my good camera. So really, that's the best we were getting.

5 These are scanned images from the prints.

So enjoy the pictures of us caving, as good as it's going to get.

...

Me, as we started caving. We tried to capture some of the depth of the cave, but turns out caves don't turn out well in pictures taken with crappy throw-away cameras. Anyways, behind me a few feet is about a 4-foot drop. The outcropping of rock that you can see by my shoulder is really like 12-foot tall.

Rob, as we started caving. Look how clear the picture is (our camera was still clean), and how clean Rob is.

This is my Tamra actually went caving action shot! Rob was trying to crawl down into this itty bitty hole. He stopped and then sent me through to see if it opened up again. No, not so much. That was the answer almost every time he sent me ahead!

Rob at the waterfall inside the cave. It was gorgeous, though it didn't capture well on film.

Me at the waterfall inside the cave. This is looking back at the passage we took to get into the waterfall area.

Rob posing at the entrance to the Birth Canal where he got stuck last caving trip. Remember, this entrance is a whopping 9 1/2 inches from top to bottom. Insanity!

Pretty sure this picture was taken right before we slithered through the last cave. I took every opportunity I could to take that helmet off. Though with our crazy, messy hair, maybe we should have left them on!

Me sitting at the edge of the cave. This is where it ended in a 5-foot drop down to the waterfall. It was a gently sloping waterfall and was very pretty. Of course we took pictures, but you can't see anything at all. Figures.

This is a picture of Rob after we were done caving. It's from the perspective of me, at the end of the cave (where I was in the previous picture), looking back into the cave we just came through. Check out how covered in mud Rob is! Head-to-toe mud.

And They All Lived Happily Ever After...

July Happenings (an update)

Teancom as he normally is: sucking his fingers, holding his ear, and tilting his head.

D's Baby Blessing

Last Sunday we were able to be there when DT was blessed. The T's defected to Kentucky and so are no longer in our ward. So we made the short trip down there. Thankfully we were able to attend the blessing and be back for our own meetings. Not that I'm a glutton for punishment (more church, really?), but Rob was conducting our meeting, and I was teaching Primary.

Which brings up something interesting. I team teach the Primary kids with a friend. She is a much better teacher than I am, no question. I feel like I get absolutely nothing taught to these girls. They're 10 and 11-year-olds and they are squirmy and I'm not sure they hear anything I say. :) But one of the girls said I was her favorite teacher ever. So I'm thinking either that she doesn't remember any other teachers, or there has to be some other criteria for making a good teacher. Because CERTAINLY it's not that she's learning a lot from me. :) I haven't figured it out quite, though.

That same Sunday of D's blessing was the baptism of KC. Rob was able to conduct that meeting, too, which was an honor for him to be able to do. Usually it's the Bishop who does that, but in this case he was filling his role as father, so Rob got to conduct. It was great to be able to participate and be there. The 2 youngest don't really get much out of stuff like this yet, but Miciah did. There was another baptism that was announced for this last Sunday and Miciah arranged to be able to be there for that one, too (I told her I had to take the boys home and wouldn't be able to stay). That was completely unprompted by us. It's nice to have such a thoughtful daughter.

5 Signatures

Rob came home last Tuesday with a piece of paper that has 5 signatures on it. That's the 5 people on his committee that had to approve his earning his doctorate. Rob came home and showed it to me. Then he remarked about how strange it is that after 4 years of hard work, it all came down to 5 signatures on a piece of paper. Rob is now Dr. Thacker, and that feels really nice for him.

The re-write ended up equalling about 5 more pages for his dissertation. We'll get it bound soon. I almost don't want to do it, since it's not cheap. But someone looked at him and said, "When else in your life are you going to write a book?" :) We'll get it bound.

Carter Caves Trip

Bodies: the Exhibit

Wednesday morning we set off on our mini-vacation, just me and Rob. We dropped the kids off and went off to the Museum Center to go see Bodies. We watched the imax movie that went with it. The movie was fantastic!! It showed stuff ultra-close up and in different ways. They showed food going down the esophagus and entering the stomach (seriously gross). Then followed the mush of stuff as it went down the intestines, met with bile (truly, it made me not want to eat for weeks). They showed the inside of the lungs (how do they do that?), and that was really really cool. Then they went inside the heart and it was so amazing that I cried. Wow. At the very end of the movie they showed a birth scene, very tactfully done. You didn't see any woman parts, and when the baby was born the doctor wiped it off a ton before you even saw her, so she looked like a human instead of a purple-grey gross thing. It was so amazing to watch the birthing process that again I cried. The movie was moving and amazing. I suggest everyone go see it.

Bodies: the Exhibit was pretty good, too. My favorite part was the baby room. They showed tiny, tiny 4-week-old fetuses (you could hardly even see them!), up to near-full term babies. It was amazing to see them. Other pretty cool things:

1 They had the digestive tract all laid out on a wall.

2 The blood vessel specimens were dang sweet! Seeing an entire body in just blood vessels. Cool.

3 Looking at the cross section of a non-pregnant woman's female parts. Holy smokes, babies should NOT have to fit down a hole that small!! Amazing.

4 They did an anti-smoking campaign. Showed some nasty smokers' lungs and then said, "Each pack of cigarettes takes 3 minutes 40 seconds off your life. Leave your cigarettes here and never smoke again!" Then they had a big clear box with a slit on the top for people to leave their packs. The box wasn't very full, and I wondered if the box was just a display. At the end of the tour, the lady said they'd emptied the box 3 times already since the show opened.

5 It was neat to go with Rob. For him, this was like a refresher course. I didn't realize he knows all the stuff he does. It was fun to ask him random questions about the human body and have him know the answers.

Carter Caves

After leaving the museum center, we drove down to Carter Caves State Resort Park. We were there around 7:30 p.m. and set up camp. The site we first got was a lousy, lousy site in the middle of everything. Close to the bathrooms, people walking through or right by the site every few minutes. No good. Rob went back and asked if there were any other sites we could have. The lady at the desk said that one of their most popular sites, 102, was open. It was set back into the trees a little and was pretty out of the way. On Thursday our immediate neighbors left, so we felt like we were camping all alone, and that was cool.

Thursday morning we woke up and went caving! I told Rob that caving wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be, but I'm not sure what I was expecting, either. We went first through a cave where you could walk, mostly. The next one we did some crawling and it was a little wet, but then opened up into a cool "waterfall" (meaning, water was falling from the cave ceiling).

Then we walked to the cave called "The Birth Canal" where Rob got stuck during Scout Camp. I told him I wanted to crawl through and take a picture of him at the opening. First off, we were at the mouth of the cave and to the right was a large opening that you could walk into. I started walking towards it and Rob says, "No, that's not the right way." He points to the left and there's an opening barely big enough to crawl through. I looked at him like, "Yeah, right." He was serious. I asked him if it was an tighter than the cave we'd just been through. He said no. He is a liar! It was not only tight in places (Rob was belly-crawling, and I almost was. Probably should have, but come to find out I have mental issues with belly-crawling), but in other places you had to crawl through cold water and/or at least 6 inches of muck. Rob had told me about the water and the muck. But until you experience it, you have no real idea.

I took the pictures of Rob at the opening. We took a throw-away camera with us, and who knows if it survived. It wasn't waterproof (we could choose either waterproof or flash, but not both, and what good would it have done to be waterproof but not flash inside a cave?), and we abused it pretty good. I'm taking it in today to get the pics developed, and if they turned out, I'll post them here.

I also measured the opening that he got stuck in. The hole he was trying to get through was 9.5 inches high! Insane. It was small enough that I didn't even want to go through it. Though the idea of going through the hole was more appealing than crawling back through the water and muck. Water on bare hands is painful.

The last cave we went through ended us up at a waterfall, and that was cool. It was about a 5-foot drop off the ledge to get down, so I'm glad Rob was with me. It would have been scary to do on my own. Dropping almost my entire body-length onto a surface that is not only uneven, it has running water on it? No thank you.

Funny things I found out about myself from caving:

1 I already said this, but I learned that I have mental issues with belly crawling. For any reason at all. During the part where I probably should have belly crawled, I instead stretched out my body a really long ways and sang a song to myself with the lyrics of, "I don't want to belly crawl. I don't want to do it."

2 I had forgotten how fun it is to get dirty! I was a tomboy growing up and I got dirty and wet and gross all the time. I laughed at girls who thought it was awful to do those things. At the first spot where I encountered the muck, I looked at Rob like, "I don't think so." But by the end, we were both covered in water and muck, head-to-toe. And as we were walking back, it all came back to me. The freedom of allowing yourself to get so yucky. It was awesome.

3 I am now a wuss. Flat out. Rob took me through a good progression of caves there. Had he started me out on the cave we ended with, I would have not been happy at all.

4 I am not uber-adventurous when it comes to caving. We would come to a part of the cave that got pretty tight. Rob would say, "Why don't you squeeze through and see if it goes somewhere." I'd look at him like, "And, WHY?" No thank you. I don't have to be the person who amazingly fits through a 3-inch opening. I'll let someone else have those treasured moments.

Camping

We spent the rest of the day relaxing. We ate lunch, which was a mini-adventure because we forgot all 3 of our camping-dedicated can openers. Rob opened a can with his pocket knife, and I'm probably retarded, but I was not even aware that you could open a whole can that way.

We took naps. We read books. We talked and talked and talked. I kept looking at Rob and telling him, "It's nice to know that I like you!" We knew we liked each other, of course. But it was nice to have moments that were just about me and him. No kids. No obligations. We know that we like each other as parents. We know that we like each other in a crunch. But it's nice to know we like each other just for who we are without any of the other stuff that makes up life. We still like being together. We still like talking. It was therapeutic.

Ripley, OH

On our way home Friday we stopped by Ripley, OH, which is a town famous for it's involvement in the Underground Railroad. We parked down by the river in the old section of town, on Front Street. I wouldn't mind retiring in a place like Ripley. It's beautiful. Anyways, the John Parker house wasn't open (due to illness, the sign said). So we read the sign outside the house, then took off from there to find the staircase up the hill to the Rankin house. Holy smokes! The hill was awful. :) We were tired before we'd even reached the start of the staircase. Then the last part of the hill, up at the top, was super-steep. A wooden staircase that kept weaving back on itself. Wow. I kept thinking, "We are healthy, young people. We aren't barefoot. We aren't being chased. We don't have a small child with us. It's mid-day. This isn't life and death." It was hard enough to do without any of those things! Rob kept saying, "They probably were in much better shape than we are, though." Probably true. But still.
We didn't realize that the Rankin house would cost money (we should have, of course), and Rob didn't bring his wallet. So we turned around and walked back down the stairs. We would have had to do that anyways, to get back to our car. But it was a bit disappointing. ... My calves were burning before getting down the wooden part of the staircase. We had to stop a lot. It's a huge hill. We drove back up to the Rankin house, paid our $3 a piece and took a look around the house. It was a pretty small house and the Rankins had like 13 kids in there! Craziness.

The history wasn't new to me, since I've read Beyond the River (everyone should read this book. It's a fascinating history). But it was fun to walk around there with all that history around you.

The funniest part, to me, was this: The staircase was not well marked. In fact, it wasn't marked at all. We walked up the hill to a spot that seemed likely to be where the staircase would start, but couldn't see it and weren't sure which way to go to find it. We asked directions from a man sitting on his front porch. ... So here we are, two white folks trying to get up Rankin's Stairway to Freedom, and we have to stop and ask directions from a black man. Something about that made me want to giggle. It seemed perfect.

I love Rev. John Rankin and his family. If we were ever to have another boy, I would name him Adam Lowry. Adam Lowry was Rankin's eldest son and his "conversion" to the cause of abolitionism is a fabulous story. And his involvement in the movement, wow. ... In fact, had I read the book 3 months earlier than I did (Teancom was just born when I read it), Teancom would probably be named Adam Lowry.

Home

Back to life! The kids loved staying at the W's house. Miciah swam and swam and swam. The kids picked blackberries. Elijah got to finally watch Spider-Man 3. :)

Teancom's Birthday

We had Teancom's 2nd Birthday party on Sunday with R & C and the B family. L and Teancom are bestest buds (L will hug him around the neck from behind and Teancom will look at me, smile, and say, "Hug me." Totally cute). We had cake and ice cream and celebrated the life of a cute little boy. He's growing up!

Here's Teancom checking out his cake, right before we cut into it:


Miciah and Elijah in a pretty good picture of the both of them. Elijah is actually smiling, that's a plus. The red box he's in is the toy box that R & C have at their house specifically for my kids. Elijah got in it and told Teancom that it was a present for him. Teancom came over and "unwrapped" the present. The present was Elijah.


Elijah makes funny faces for pictures usually. This was my favorite of the series for the night.


The fabulous R & C.


Elijah and his best bud, A, watching TV. R turned on "cool cars": drag racing. The boys thought it was awesome. I just kept watching it thinking, "Who is insane enough to do this?"


This is baby N. I watch him for a few hours a few days a week. He's an excellent baby.

Rob's New Job

Rob had his first day as a Children's Hospital employee. Monday and today were orientation days. Tomorrow will be his first day actually in the lab. ... Rob came home and proudly showed me his new work badge. The first thing I noticed is that his picture showed him with facial hair! It was the Monday after Scout Camp. He didn't know they were going to take his picture, and if he did, he probably would have shaved for it. :) But what Rob was trying to get me to notice is that under his name is listed 3 little letters: PhD.

Congrats, Dr. Thacker!

We love you all. Thank you for all your support and love and patience during the last few months. We needed it.

Rob, Tamra, Miciah, Elijah, and Teancom

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

Fun Update

Things are still the same here since I wrote last. But I have some fun stories to share.

Miciah

Last week we went to eat at McDonald's. Miciah always wants a milkshake with her meal. So we got her a milkshake and she was downing that instead of eating her other food. Finally I took the milkshake from her and said, "You have to eat something else before you can have more. You haven't even TOUCHED your hamburger." She looked at me, reached over, and put her hand on top of her hamburger. I turned to Rob and said, "I'm going to pretend I don't see that." She then said, "Did you mean touch it with my MOUTH?" :)

Miciah has been very into asking what things mean, especially phrases that don't really mean what they say. For instance, the above story--I didn't really want her to touch her hamburger. I wanted her to eat it. The other day Uncle B said, "Twist my arm" when I offered him a cookie. Miciah looked at him really strangely and wanted to know why I would want to hurt him. So he explained what the phrase meant and why he used it at that time. ... What a fun stage.

The other story about Miciah involves our cat and our neighbor, C. Ceasar has decided that their yard is his property. Well, their granddaughter, E, who is 7 (I think) is afraid of the cat, apparently. Ceasar was following her (she thought chasing her), so E ran screaming behind the screen door. Ceasar then plopped down on the porch waiting for her to come out (or just claiming the space as his, whichever). So C opened the door and tried to shoo him away. It wasn't working, so she got some water and sprinkled some on him to get him to move. ... Well, apparently E told this to Miciah because a few days later, Miciah went up to C and said, very seriously and slowly, "I don't like water on my cat." :) C told this to me and I just laughed. Oh, my Miciah.

Miciah did have an ear infection a while ago. We took her in to the doctor after being up half the night with a hurting Miciah. They put her on amoxicillan. Well, about a week later she woke up saying her pajamas were itchy. I ignored the comment cause "itchy" is code-word around here for "I don't want to wear it." She was having trouble with the zipper, so I undid it for her and was shocked at what I saw. Her entire torso was red with hives! But then I thought for a moment and remembered Elijah's amoxicillan reaction. And the next few days went exactly how Elijah's experience had. All over her torso, changing places, on her head, especially behind her ears. She was pretty miserable for a while, but Benadryl helped, thankfully. And it was nice to have had one kid already go through it, cause I knew what it was and what to expect. So no more amoxicillan for Miciah or Elijah. ... Makes me wonder what Teancom's experience will be.

(I wrote some of this e-mail about a week ago, and now I'm finishing it.) Miciah's ear infection was back full force on Sunday. She was miserable. We couldn't do anything about it cause we were up north visiting family. So we got a pillow out of our car and she slept on the floor of the church for a few hours. We came back home and had JR (our medical student/will-be-official-doctor-in-2-weeks friend) look in her ears. Definitely an ear infection. We thought we'd try to wait out the infection, since we'd already been through the hard day, right? Well, Monday wasn't any better. Rob was trying to reason with her, which she does quite well usually, and I looked at him and said, "She's not a 5-year-old today. She's a 3-year-old. Remember that." But we got tired of toughing it out and went to the doctor today. Of course the infection was still there. They prescribed her something else and within 4 hours we had Miciah back. And that was nice. Hurray for medicine!

Elijah

And then there's Elijah. Elijah is so full of energy and fun! He's jumping and dancing and running around crazy! It's fun to watch (makes me tired just watching him, but I love it). He jumps down out of the van now, and then he'll hop halfway across the parking lot (which makes things a little difficult when I'm trying to go fast), just loving it. It's fun to watch him learn to master his body and learn what it can do. So this morning he was getting himself dressed, which he does all the time now. He was very insistent that he wanted to wear swim trunks with a collared shirt. The kid's already got style! :) Anyways, he came to me so I could help him put on his underwear, but then he wouldn't stand still. He was hopping around everywhere. I finally was getting his underwear on and he said, "Mom, let go. Gotta dance!" It made me smile.

We did have Elijah's 3-year check-up, and the doc told us Elijah is healthy and right on track with everything. We already knew that, but it's always nice to hear it validated.

Elijah's new phrase is now, "I don't WANT TO!" He's wanting to be more and more independent, which is great. He's picking out all his clothes (which I mentioned above), changing them about 3 times a day, insisting on what to eat or watch on TV or what to play with. It's great to see him become a person instead of just my baby boy. And he's still cuddly and sweet, so I don't lose that part.

Today at dinner I was talking to Miciah about school. She said she'd go to Kindergarten, then 1st grade, then 2nd, etc., etc., all the way up to 12th grade. Then she said, "What will I do after that?" I told her then she could go to college if she wanted. At the sound of that, Elijah started nodding vigorously. I turned to him and said, "Do you want to go to college?" He said, "No, not yet." Okay, good answer, I thought. Then he finished, "I eat first." I laughed.

With summer almost upon us, the kids are playing hard during the day. Elijah is needing naps during the day, which is weird to be back to nap time, but it's better than dealing with monster Elijah when he's too tired. ... But because of all the extra sleep, I think, he was up today at 4 a.m. thinking it was morning. Ick. We set him on the couch with a movie and went back to bed. I don't know if he slept more or not. But I did! :)

Teancom

Teancom is trying hard to crawl. He does this get on his tip toes thing and try to scoot/crawl/army crawl. It's cute. Not quite crawling, but he'll make it there soon, I think. He's still just as cute and charming as ever. A healthy, happy kid with 2 fingers in his mouth.

Rob and Tamra

Rob went on a campout this past weekend with P, our nephew, and the scout troop Rob is over. They went caving in Carter Caves, if anyone knows where that is--somewhere in KY. He said it was fun. The best part of the trip is that it took them 2 1/2 hours to get there and the way home took them almost 4 hours because they took a "shortcut" home. ... I think I'm going to buy the scoutmaster a map and lecture him about being prepared. :)

We also entertained B, Rob's little brother, who is out here in Ohio for a little while. He was supposed to already be home, but he had knee surgery on Monday (yesterday) instead. So last week we brought him down to our house where we played Nintendo a lot and kept him from being too bored out of his mind. Then we sent him home with the Nintendo so he could play that while recovering.

We went up Friday to M's house and hung out there for 2 days. We went to a little lake by their house for the kids to play. That was fun. We had half a scary moment when Elijah tripped in the water and kersplatted into it. The water was only maybe a foot and a half deep. It was comical to watch him face plant in the water, but then he wasn't getting up, and suddenly it wasn't comical. It hadn't occured to me that it would be hard to get up out of the water like that. Luckily B was standing right there and pulled Elijah up. Elijah was scared and the second day he wouldn't get any further in than getting his toes wet. :) At this point of his life, being a little afraid of the water is just not a bad thing.

... And it's been really hard to focus this week for many reasons, not the least of which is our trip on Thursday. We have babysitters lined up and Rob and I are going to hang out at Miami Beach for a few days. Rob has a scientific convention there, and I'm tagging along. So it's not all pleasure, but there will be time to play. ... I'm excited, more than anything, to be on the plane and be able to read a book! :)

Then we'll come back next week, and the kids and I will turn around on June 1st and fly out to California. We'll come back July 4th. Somewhere in that time I'll be driving out to Utah with my Mom and the kids and we'll get to see lots of people, I'm sure. That will be fun.

Okay, that's the update. Hope all is going well for you all!

Tamra and family