Generation 1.5

In March our family made a quick weekend trip to Salt Lake City, Utah. We went for a temple sealing, but instead ended up in the emergency room at LDS Hospital up in the Avenues.  Happily, it wasn't one of the girls, but it was one of the relatives, and she had to deal with a dislocated shoulder. Not at all fun for her.

While we waited, we took the girls to B Street Park. This tiny park is on a lot that I think once held a Victorian house. It's a ten minute walk from where I used to live and I took my older children there many times. It's hard to explain how much I loved taking my second set of children to the same place my first set enjoyed so much.

New Year's surprise!

New Year's Day the kids came running in to my room to tell me it had snowed overnight.  Not so strange, right?  Wrong, because we live in Arizona in an area where it snows only every couple of years and no more than 0.25" when it does.

We had about an inch and it stayed until early afternoon.  The children loved it!

Sophia's getting into the family fudge tradition

I bought a couple containers of marshmallow cream and apparently they kept calling out to Sophia.  I couldn't hear it, but she could.  I told her I was planning to make fudge some time in December, but she couldn't wait.

Here is her first-ever batch of fudge--grainy, but delicious!  It was also chock-full of pecans, so how can you go wrong with that?  It was gone in 24 hours, of course, but there will be more.  Next time she should try Bill's family recipe (no marshmallow) and see which she likes better.  Grandpa Andy would be proud of her.

First day of school--yes, it's still July

Our girls get out of school early (middle-end of May) and have several 1-2 week vacations which all lead to a very early start to the school year.

The girls had to be to the bus stops at almost the same time and going in opposite directions from the house, so Bill took the older girls and I took Sophia.  Doesn't she look cute in her pink, pink, pink outfit?  (She LOVES pink.)

And here is Sophia and her friendly bus driver:

It's her last year of elementary school as her school goes from Kindergarten to fifth grade.  Wow.

Summer party!

Our ward (church congregation) has parties . . . just because, and plenty of them.  This was the first time we've ever had a large water feature for a party and it was a huge hit with all the kids and some of the adults as well.

We love our zoo!

This trip certainly seemed to be for the birds . . . .

 

There were a couple of good looking girls in the same area and you can see one of them in the background above.

 

This was another peacock.  Such beautiful feathers!  The bird below let me get that close to it (no telephoto lens).  It does not have an aviary but flies free.  However, I've seen it there many times, so it knows the zoo is a good home.

 

This crane got spooked by something and gave a really loud squawk that startled us!

 

There were a number of duck with their teenagers.

The girls wore their swim suits in hopes of playing in the water area, but it was closed due to an infestation of bees.  Water + heat, of course the bees like it!

 

And of course we always take a picture by the sculpture.  It's almost as good for watching growth as the marks on the back of the kitchen door.

My sweet girl

Thursdays are the day the cleaning ladies come to make our house look sharp.  One of them came to me with a delighted smile on her face and asked if I had a minute to see something.  This is what she found on the desk next to Sophia's bed:

She is my child who put one of her vacation dollars into a tip jar in a small Utah mom-n-pop diner and another time offered some money to the men who delivered our refridgerator. 

:-)

The trail into Sophias bedroom

Last night dh and I went out to a Church meeting.  When I went to go check on the sleeping girls, I found these notes taped to the wall going down the hall to her bedroom.

What on earth had happened while we were away?

Had someone been invading her space? (she is the only girl who doesn't share a bedroom)

I wondered if Sophia had had a very hard evening being the youngest child.

In the morning I asked Sophia how her evening had gone and she delightedly told me she had been pretending to be an ogre and had made lots of signs!  Whew.  I was relieved to hear that.  It means Bill and I can go out alone again soon.

Sophia's exciting letter

A month or two ago Sophia wrote a letter to President Obama.  I didn't see the letter before she sent it, but afterward she said she told him he should stop smoking.  LOL  I hoped that wouldn't get us put on a "watch list"!

Today Bill brought in the mail and showed me what Sophia received today.

She was delighted beyond belief!  In it was a "Dear Student" letter, two pamphlets with information about the White House, and an "autographed" picture of the president.  She was really pleased and her sisters were jealous.

Their program of sending letters back to children made a fan of my daughter.

A sort-of trip to the temple

Our ward has been sponsoring a trip to the LDS temple 2 hours away twice a year as long as we've been living here and we haven't missed one yet.  We provide our own transportation, but they provide babysitting near the temple, along with lunch after our temple session of worship.

In all this time Bill and I have never been asked to babysit, but today was finally our turn.  We were assigned to watch the children for the first half of the time the parents would be gone, then we would go to the temple and do some faster-than-normal things there due to the shortened time.

But!  There was a wreck on the way to the big city that didn't hold *us* up because we passed it only about 10 minutes after it happend and the freeway wasn't closed yet, but almost everyone else behind us got caught in the traffic jam as they rerouted traffic off the freeway and then back on.  And then the temple apparently was PACKED!  There were weddings!  There were guests!  There were photographers!  There were bridesmaids in their pretty, matching dresses!  There were more regular temple attendees than normal, even for an August Saturday because of some internal changes!  We decided to just stay at the babysitting place and skip the extreme hustle and bustle of the temple today!

Honestly, one reason I go to the temple is to feel the peace of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  I wanted to feel that today and I feared I wouldn't, or at least not to the extent I usually do.

So the picture is of the girls as we got ready to leave.  You can see how excited Elizabeth was to leave.  The girls really love this semi-annual activity and guess what?  Our ward juuuust changed it to a quarterly activity, so we'll be going at least four times a year from now on.  So happy about that!

Sophia's first birthday?

Sophia was wondering what it was like on her first birthday when she got to eat her birthday cupcake with her fingers and make a real mess.  Don't you wish you could remember being picked up and carried around or pushed in a stroller?  She decided to find out about the cake, so she made a cake for the family and a small one for herself and frosted them.

Funny, huh?

Sophia's first day of school

No matter how you look at it, Sophia is an "upper classman" now. Her school is a K-5 school, so last year in 3rd grade it could have been argued that she was in the upper half of the school, but since most elementary schools are K-6, I really think 4th grade is the first upper grade.

All that aside . . . she wouldn't let us take her to the bus on the first day or even go along with her, so here she is ready to roll:

And she's off!

And I must say, I really thought this patio picture was cute too:

Like brother, like sister?

Years ago Kevin was kind of obsessed with "altering" things.  One of my favorites was finding a Barbie out on the balcony hanging from a length of blue yarn by her ankles. 

Look what I found hanging from Sophia's bedroom door frame:

First one generation, then another play the same game

My brothers and I played hundreds of games of Mastermind when we were kids, and I still have the same game my parents had.

I was very surpised today to find out Sophia is a good player.  I hadn't ever seen her play it, but she was fast and accurate in her guesses when there were four color possibilities with no more than one peg of each color allowed.  We played a number of games that way, never taking more than 4 rows to get the right answer.  Then we tried it with double colors allowed.  It's a lot harder that way and we didn't play enough games with that variation to really start figuring out the strategy.  We have plenty of time to do that though!

Great low-tech library activity

Several Saturdays a month our library had a good kids' activity.  Here is the prep for it:

 Put up some tables, including one lying flat on the floor with its legs still folded up.

Put out lots of bins FULL of Lego pieces. 

Let the kids create.

After the children make their pieces, they put them on that library cart behind Caroline and they go into a display case.  The next time we go to the library we'll be able to see the girls' creations.  And although we will be going back on Thursday anyway, you can bet the girls will not let me forget!

The girl with things on her face!

Last December I blogged about Sophia and things on her face.  Tonight she was doctoring up a Papa Murphy's S'mores dessert pizza and the next thing I know, this is what she looks like:

I can't wait to use these pictures as blackmail some time in the future.  Hehe.  Just kidding.  I think.

Musical instrument petting zoo

One of our local orchestras puts on a petting zoo.  Animals?  No, musical instruments!

They had two kinds of brass instruments (a big hit with the girls), a xylophone, and three of the four orchestra instruments.  That's our orchestra friend at the back left of the picture below.

Both of my twins have taken orchestra at school for the past two years.  Caroline, below, plays the viola.  All three girls are interested in the cello, mostly, I think, because their beloved original piano teacher is also an accomplished cellist.

Sophia's teacher has already been assigned for 4th grade and I know from last year that he'll sign his entire class up for orchestra, despite its being an optional activity. ;-)  Works for me.  There is at least one school-owned cello that I'm hoping Sophia can snag next year to avoid the rental fees, if she does decide to learn to play the cello.

Here they are with the younger brother of the piano teacher.  He's also the son of our orchestra friend.

This event was sponsored by Bookmans, a great used-book store in our city.

New old things

Did you remember these little footies from when you were a child?  I guess I should clarify, "If you were a child in the 1950s or 1960s?"  I remember my mom wore them all the time.  She called them "sockies."

Now that bare legs are in fashion, low socks or foot liners are in fashion again.  Here is the display at Walmart today:

The ones right in the middle that look like bikini bottoms are ones you can wear if you're wearing open-toed shoes.  They think of everything, don't they?  I bought some fairly straightforward cotton ones with a little padding at the ball of the foot.  They are the proper size for my feet instead of the hand-me-down ones I've been wearing for awhile that threaten to cut off the circulation in my heels. :-)

These two little girls love to play a game in just about any store.  It's called, "Hide from Mom, but make sure we're not very far away from her."

I know, I'm a lucky girl.

Camp Laffalotta 2013

I'm tentatively dipping my toe in again this summer.  The girls are out of school and I want to give a little structure to the summer.  It works best for us to have our week go Thursday to Wednesday, so for this half week, we are doing some sewing.

Only Elizabeth has done any sewing, so they are making little pillows with funny faces on them.  I had some quilted material from the edges of my most recent quilt.  It was the extra fabric that extended past the edges of the top when it was machine quilted.  So the girls are using a lightly printed muslin with batting quilted to it--very nice, actually.

They got the basics of the faces hand-sewn on today.  Tomorrow they'll add the decorations such as fringe, "hair," bows, and so forth, then I'll show them how to use the sewing machine to sew on the backs.  A little stuffing from Elizabeth's Christmas sewing project and they'll each have a cute little pillow.

This is the life!

I want this life!

They're waiting for a delicious bbq dinner that is on the grill.  Ribs, Hebrew National hot dogs, corn on the cob, potato salad, YUM.