Happy Apple Day!

No, I'm not going crazy declaring random fruit holidays. Today is a sacred elementary school day-- the day we celebrate Johnny Appleseed's birthday and turn everything possible into an apple activity. It's a wonderful excuse to do math games with apples, read stories about apples, make graphs out of which apples are your favorites, drink apple juice, eat apple pie, make applesauce in the classroom, do apple art projects . . .  you get the idea. Because I have school off today, we celebrated Apple Day on Friday. Just thought I'd share a little taste of it with you. Enjoy your apple day!

And Happy Birthday to Dawnia-- my lucky little sis who gets to share a bday with Johnny Appleseed. ;) I swear it's totally coincidence that I'm making her apple pancakes for her bday breakfast today!

Artist

Once upon a time, I wished that Porter would show some interest in drawing or coloring. I bought him twistable crayons, put a special notebook full of paper permanently on his playroom table, and carried coloring supplies to and from church each week. But he never cared to even try. On the rare occasions when he would humor me, I would watch painfully as he would drag the capped end of a pen across the paper, then give up because nothing came from it.

Now fast-forward a couple months-- the crayons are put on a high shelf and pens/pencils left within reaching distance cause a big debate over who is at fault for being so careless.

Yes, Porter now loves to color. The walls, the furniture, the mirrors, our clothing, his skin; everything shows evidence that Mommy's wish came true. Yikes!

change of address

it happened! we're thanking our lucky stars. here's how last week went for us . . .

Saturday: guy calls, interested in renting our condo
Sunday: guy sees condo, signs contract, asks to move in Saturday
Monday: search Utah County for a new house, submit application to rent
Tuesday: sign contract, move 1st load into new house
Wednesday: pack & move, pack & move
Thursday: pack & move, pack & move
Friday: in-laws come to help move big furniture, clean, clean, clean, sleep at new house
Saturday: renter moves into our condo, we drive back to get last item: vacuum (woops!)


yes, it was all done in 1 week! one crazy week. but we are so grateful. we now live close to school and work and won't have to start commuting an hour back & forth each day. phew!

So goodbye 3rd floor condo! We'll miss the clean wood floors and painted walls and pretty black doorknobs we recently replaced. But we won't miss the 3 flights of stairs and 1-hr drive to Utah County.

And hello, new home from the '70's. We love your backyard and kid-friendly neighborhood and lots of extra space. And whatever we don't love, we'll patiently endure. It's only temporary!

Is this normal?

Porter is a hoarder. I hate to say it, but he is. He collects things from all around the house and stashes them behind the subwoofer (did you know that's how it's spelled? I had to look it up just now-- never written that word before. interesting.).

Brian and I slowly started noticing that things were disappearing, then one day Brian caught Porter throwing something back there. When he looked, there was a whole mound of objects. Since then, we've been cleaning out his "stash" every couple days. We find all sorts of things: goldfish crackers, remote controls, toothbrushes, toys, keys, shoes . . . basically, anything that Porter finds interesting and small enough to fit. From now on, if we can't find something, that's usually the first place we look.

As I was taking this picture, he took the Nikon lens cover and threw it into his pile. Sneaky kid!

Sadly, though, I'm pretty sure he has another "stash" somewhere that we haven't found yet. There are LOTS of things disappearing around here.

Park City

Just got back from a week in Park City. Why are we not living there? Seriously, it's so much greener . . . and there's good food and the shopping is wonderful. I loved it there!

Chocolate Raspberries

While we were at Bear Lake, we bought a bunch of chocolate-covered raspberries (I don't think Brian's family ever goes there without buying them). They were delicious . . . but Brian still had some ideas on how they could improve. So as soon as we got home, he decided to make his own. And, of course, I was in full support of this idea! Since we've been back (for about a week & a half now), I think I've eaten close to 100 chocolate-covered raspberries. Oh my goodness! They are so good!

If you want to make some, here's what you do:

First, buy some yummy raspberries.

Second, melt some chocolate. We already had a bag of melting chocolate for fondue that happened to have microwave melting directions-- pretty simple.

Third, using a fondue stick, dip the raspberries in the melted chocolate and set them on wax paper to harden.

Last, put them in the fridge to harden them up even more. Then eat them!

In case you were wondering, Brian's only problem with the Bear Lake raspberries were that they had too much chocolate around them. These new ones have a perfect chocolate-to-raspberry ratio.

Richfield Week

During the last week of June, I did a workshop in Richfield and Brian & Porter got to come with me. Where is Richfield, you might ask? I honestly had no idea before we actually went there. It's a tiny little town off the beaten path, about halfway between Provo & St. George. Although the small-town setting left us trying hard to come up with things to do, it was absolutely beautiful. I have a weakness for small towns. Here's why Richfield won me over:

Reason #1: Richfield has some BEAUTIFUL parks. (Brian & Porter spent a GREAT deal of time at the parks while I was in workshops all day.)

Reason #2: Wouldn't you just love to live in a town where this was your public library?

Reason #3: Beautiful scenery

Reason #4: Small diners with good, old-fashioned, homestyle cookin'. The plaque behind our heads says that Stephen King sat at that booth behind us. Man, we should've sat there!

Oh, and while we were there, Porter took his first picture with a camera- we're so proud of our budding photographer!

The biggest downside (yet again) was staying in a hotel for a week. Porter made various attempts to escape our tiny room!

We'll definitely have to visit Richfield again sometime!

Bear Lake

For the 4th of July we went to Bear Lake with Brian's parents and his sis & bro-in-law. They all stayed in cabins and we camped. It was our first time camping with Porter, and oh my goodness, it was an adventure.

First of all, Porter is not fun to sleep next to in a tent. He's a cutie, but he's also quite loud when he wakes up at 5 am. But it had its good sides too- he is stinkin' cute when he puts his face next to mine, smiling really big, waiting for me to open my eyes in the morning. Also, it's fun seeing him experiencing new things.

We stayed at a KOA campground. They had this amazing Jumping Pillow thing that Porter absolutely adored. We seriously need to find a way to get one of those in our backyard. Well, maybe we should work on getting a backyard first.

We went on bike rides; both on normal bikes . . .

and not-so-normal bikes. . .

On the night of the 4th, we did sparklers and pop-its with Porter, then put him to bed to the sounds of loud fireworks. Luckily, he was tired enough to sleep through it all.

My favorite part of the entire trip, though, was playing on the beach with Porter. The lake was actually much higher than it normally is, so it was a little tricky finding a beach at all. But it was well worth the search. Apparently Porter LOVES water. He seriously loves it. So cute!

Independence

Happy Independence Day! . . . a few days late. Brian and I celebrated early by going to Stadium of Fire in Provo on Saturday. We loved it!

A few of the highlights were . . .

Parachutes:

David Archuleta (he's the little tiny guy wearing white in the center of the stage):

BRAD PAISLEY!!!

And lots & lots of fireworks:

Of course, we also celebrated on July 4th with Porter- that post is coming soon.