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| With his helper |
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| "Do it again, Dad!" |
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| Fall fun |
Monday, October 22, 2012
You call that a leaf pile?!
After years of bagging insane amounts of leaves every fall, Jeff was a bit giddy that this pile he raked up in 60 seconds was the extent of the leaves to be dealt with at the new house.
Garden After Dark
We went to Garden After Dark up at Red Butte Friday night. It's cool to see the garden lit up at night and the kids love all the crafts and madness. They were both excited to wear their costumes. Beware the Red Ninja and the Feisty Fairy!
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| Iris 2, Miles 5 |
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| A bit of a ninja/vampire combination. He requested extra blood when he got his face painted! |
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| Cutest fairy ever in my totally biased opinion |
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| Getting seriously ninja on the peaceful garden lizard! |
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| Pretty shot of the floating lanterns that the kids made and sent across the pond |
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| Guess who?! Sporting one of the homemade werewolf masks! |
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| Even ninjas need sleep :) |
Fall school pictures
We just received another round of cheesy pictures from school. Here are pics of the pics, so they are a bit blurry...
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| My kindergartener |
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| Doesn't she look thrilled for her ride in Mater?! |
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| My babies! |
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| This one just cracks me up :) |
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Fall odds and ends
Tis' the season of beautiful trees. One of the reasons I was sad to leave our old house behind was knowing how I would miss the big Box Elder tree. I can say that because I usually wasn't the one bagging a gazillion bags of wet leaves every fall. I was really happy to discover that the tree in front of our new house is a maple that turns an awesome shade of red!
Obviously this last picture has nothing to do with trees, but those are fall decorations on the cupcakes we made last week. Jeff gets all worked up because the kids are just like me...dinking the icing off a treat any chance we get!
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| Wish it was this color all summer long |
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| Aspens over Boulder Mountain |
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| Dirty dinker! |
Fall Stay-cation
We spent the weekend up at Snowbird. Jeff and I were fortunate enough to have Friday night up there all by ourselves for the KUER donor party. Thank you very much Grandma and Grandpa! I may grumble about my husband insisting on NPR on the radio at all times, but I benefited from his love of the station on Friday night :) It was a treat to roll over at 8 AM and just lounge. We went back up Saturday night with the kids. They liked the pool and hot tub, of course. I loved the Sunday morning yoga class looking out at the mountains covered with yellow aspens. We also took the tram to the top of Hidden Peak, which has become a bit of a tradition for us each fall. This year there was snow up there waiting for us!
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| We were greeted with this amazing rainbow when we pulled into the parking lot. |
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| Kids under the rainbow! |
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| Me with one happy child and one cranky child on the top of the tram |
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| Snowball fight! |
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| The icicle became the ninja sword, of course! |
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| All bundled up |
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| Family shot |
Sunday, October 7, 2012
A blog entry I really liked
I recently read this blog entry by Allison Tate out of the Huffington Post. It really resonated with me. Perhaps you will be seeing more pictures of me on here.
Last weekend, my family traveled to attend my oldest niece's Sweet Sixteen party. My brother and sister-in-law planned this party for many months and intended it to be a big surprise, and it included a photo booth for the guests.
I showed up to the party a bit late and, as usual, slightly askew from trying to dress myself and all my little people for such a special night out. I'm still carrying a fair amount of baby weight and wearing a nursing bra, and I don't fit into my cute clothes. I felt awkward and tired and rumpled.
I was leaning my aching back against the bar, my now 5-month-old baby sleeping in a carrier on my chest (despite the pounding bass and dulcet tones of LMFAO blasting through the room) when my 5-year-old son ran up to me.
"Come take pictures with me, Mommy," he yelled over the music, "in the photo booth!"
I hesitated. I avoid photographic evidence of my existence these days. To be honest, I avoid even mirrors. When I see myself in pictures, it makes me wince. I know I am far from alone; I know that many of my friends also avoid the camera.
It seems logical. We're sporting mama bodies and we're not as young as we used to be. We don't always have time to blow dry our hair, apply make-up, perhaps even bathe. The kids are so much cuter than we are; better to just take their pictures, we think.
But we really need to make an effort to get in the picture. Our sons need to see how young and beautiful and human their mamas were. Our daughters need to see us vulnerable and open and just being ourselves -- women, mamas, people living lives. Avoiding the camera because we don't like to see our own pictures? How can that be okay?
Too much of a mama's life goes undocumented and unseen. People, including my children, don't see the way I make sure my kids' favorite stuffed animals are on their beds at night. They don't know how I walk the grocery store aisles looking for treats that will thrill them for a special day. They don't know that I saved their side-snap, paper-thin baby shirts from the hospital where they were born or their little hospital bracelets in keepsake boxes high on the top shelves of their closets. They don't see me tossing and turning in bed wondering if I am doing an okay job as a mother, if they are okay in their schools, where we should take them for a vacation, what we should do for their birthdays. I'm up long past the news on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and eating cookies and milk, and I spend hours hunting the Internet and the local Targets for specially-requested Halloween costumes and birthday presents. They don't see any of that.
Someday, I want them to see me, documented, sitting right there beside them: me, the woman who gave birth to them, whom they can thank for their ample thighs and their pretty hair; me, the woman who nursed them all for the first years of their lives, enduring porn star-sized boobs and leaking through her shirts for months on end; me, who ran around gathering snacks to be the week's parent reader or planning the class Valentine's Day party; me, who cried when I dropped them off at preschool, breathed in the smell of their post-bath hair when I read them bedtime stories, and defied speeding laws when I had to rush them to the pediatric ER in the middle of the night for fill-in-the-blank (ear infections, croup, rotavirus).
I'm everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won't be here -- and I don't know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now -- but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.
When I look at pictures of my own mother, I don't look at cellulite or hair debacles. I just see her -- her kind eyes, her open-mouthed, joyful smile, her familiar clothes. That's the mother I remember. My mother's body is the vessel that carries all the memories of my childhood. I always loved that her stomach was soft, her skin freckled, her fingers long. I didn't care that she didn't look like a model. She was my mama.
So when all is said and done, if I can't do it for myself, I want to do it for my kids. I want to be in the picture, to give them that visual memory of me. I want them to see how much I am here, how my body looks wrapped around them in a hug, how loved they are.
I will save the little printed page with four squares of pictures on it and the words "Morgan's Sweet Sixteen" scrawled across the top with the date. There I am, hair not quite coiffed, make-up minimal, face fuller than I would like -- one hand holding a sleeping baby's head, and the other wrapped around my sweet littlest guy, who could not care less what I look like.
Last weekend, my family traveled to attend my oldest niece's Sweet Sixteen party. My brother and sister-in-law planned this party for many months and intended it to be a big surprise, and it included a photo booth for the guests.
I showed up to the party a bit late and, as usual, slightly askew from trying to dress myself and all my little people for such a special night out. I'm still carrying a fair amount of baby weight and wearing a nursing bra, and I don't fit into my cute clothes. I felt awkward and tired and rumpled.
I was leaning my aching back against the bar, my now 5-month-old baby sleeping in a carrier on my chest (despite the pounding bass and dulcet tones of LMFAO blasting through the room) when my 5-year-old son ran up to me.
"Come take pictures with me, Mommy," he yelled over the music, "in the photo booth!"
I hesitated. I avoid photographic evidence of my existence these days. To be honest, I avoid even mirrors. When I see myself in pictures, it makes me wince. I know I am far from alone; I know that many of my friends also avoid the camera.
It seems logical. We're sporting mama bodies and we're not as young as we used to be. We don't always have time to blow dry our hair, apply make-up, perhaps even bathe. The kids are so much cuter than we are; better to just take their pictures, we think.
But we really need to make an effort to get in the picture. Our sons need to see how young and beautiful and human their mamas were. Our daughters need to see us vulnerable and open and just being ourselves -- women, mamas, people living lives. Avoiding the camera because we don't like to see our own pictures? How can that be okay?
Too much of a mama's life goes undocumented and unseen. People, including my children, don't see the way I make sure my kids' favorite stuffed animals are on their beds at night. They don't know how I walk the grocery store aisles looking for treats that will thrill them for a special day. They don't know that I saved their side-snap, paper-thin baby shirts from the hospital where they were born or their little hospital bracelets in keepsake boxes high on the top shelves of their closets. They don't see me tossing and turning in bed wondering if I am doing an okay job as a mother, if they are okay in their schools, where we should take them for a vacation, what we should do for their birthdays. I'm up long past the news on Christmas Eve wrapping presents and eating cookies and milk, and I spend hours hunting the Internet and the local Targets for specially-requested Halloween costumes and birthday presents. They don't see any of that.
Someday, I want them to see me, documented, sitting right there beside them: me, the woman who gave birth to them, whom they can thank for their ample thighs and their pretty hair; me, the woman who nursed them all for the first years of their lives, enduring porn star-sized boobs and leaking through her shirts for months on end; me, who ran around gathering snacks to be the week's parent reader or planning the class Valentine's Day party; me, who cried when I dropped them off at preschool, breathed in the smell of their post-bath hair when I read them bedtime stories, and defied speeding laws when I had to rush them to the pediatric ER in the middle of the night for fill-in-the-blank (ear infections, croup, rotavirus).
I'm everywhere in their young lives, and yet I have very few pictures of me with them. Someday I won't be here -- and I don't know if that someday is tomorrow or thirty or forty or fifty years from now -- but I want them to have pictures of me. I want them to see the way I looked at them, see how much I loved them. I am not perfect to look at and I am not perfect to love, but I am perfectly their mother.
When I look at pictures of my own mother, I don't look at cellulite or hair debacles. I just see her -- her kind eyes, her open-mouthed, joyful smile, her familiar clothes. That's the mother I remember. My mother's body is the vessel that carries all the memories of my childhood. I always loved that her stomach was soft, her skin freckled, her fingers long. I didn't care that she didn't look like a model. She was my mama.
So when all is said and done, if I can't do it for myself, I want to do it for my kids. I want to be in the picture, to give them that visual memory of me. I want them to see how much I am here, how my body looks wrapped around them in a hug, how loved they are.
I will save the little printed page with four squares of pictures on it and the words "Morgan's Sweet Sixteen" scrawled across the top with the date. There I am, hair not quite coiffed, make-up minimal, face fuller than I would like -- one hand holding a sleeping baby's head, and the other wrapped around my sweet littlest guy, who could not care less what I look like.
Last Camping Trip of the Season
Fall is officially upon us. The leaves are changing, we need jackets on in the morning and the big quilt hit the bed today. We managed to get in one final camping trip for the season last weekend. We went to the San Rafael Swell with some new friends. It's always a chore to get packed up and to shop and get out of town at a decent hour, but once we are there it's so worth it. No distractions, no house to clean, no phone to check, no TV to stare at. Just a weekend of having fun with each other.
That's Jessica and Daniel. He and Jeff work together. He is from Australia and she is from Canada, so it was fun to show them one of our favorite places.
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| Our home for the weekend. That's Wild Horse Butte in the background. |
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| Someone was kind enough to hang a swing from the cottonwood tree. It was a hit, of course! |
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| First things first...coffee! |
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| Why not eat your breakfast up in the tree?! |
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| Fueling up the kids before hiking Little Wild Horse Canyon. That's Sam in red and that's his beagle Leroy. |
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| Enjoying the hike |
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| Desert Rat #1 |
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| Desert Rat #2 with Leroy trying to keep up |
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| Beautiful boy in a beautiful place |
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| Wandering |
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| That's Tinkerbell and her fairy friend cruising in the dump truck. At one point during the weekend Tink got buried in the sand. Thanks to watching Toy Story I literally could not relax until we all went on a search and rescue mission and found her. |
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| The flower he made for me from cottonwood leaves and a twig. I spent the day hiking with it tucked in my camelback strap. So sweet! |
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| A family shot I love! |
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| Can you guess who was sad to get in the car and head home?! |
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| Happy kids, happy Mom, happy day! |
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