Sunday, August 24, 2008

This post shall be entitled...

"The one in which Melissa Attempts to overview the major summer events in pictures..."

Well, I just spent twenty minutes fighting my own blog because it was underlining everything, a problem which I clearly solved because now it is not underlining, and I must say, I am feeling pretty proud of myself about now. I've been called a lot of things in my life, but computer literate was never one of them.

Back to business...

Ruthie had a fantastic birthday party a few days after her birthday. Because of little Lucy's arrival, I scaled back the birthday parties this year a lot. In fact, the girls only got to invite four friends each. Pretty different from the 18-20 we usually invite. But the parties were awesome. Ruthie and her friends had pizza and cupcakes in the park, and then went to the movies. What a cute group, huh? The best part of the movie was listening to them laugh hysterically through the whole thing.


Meredith had a swimming party for her birthday. (I am a little shocked looking at these pictures, as I am sure her swimsuit covered much more torso at the beginning of the summer.) They had a lot of fun, too, and after swimming and going out for shaved ice (did I mention that our shaved ice budget has been around $60 a month- again, I was a little shocked when I added that up) the girls were having so much fun that we decided to take everyone home with us and had a barbecue and fashion show. We are so blessed that the girls have such good friends. We really enjoy having them in our home.

As I mentioned briefly, Meredith was baptized on August 2nd. We had many family members who came to support her, which is because we have the best family ever! It was a great day. Meredith had a beautiful dress that Grandma Styler made for her and was able to wear the same dress Grandma made for me to be baptized in. It is even more special because all the girls in my family have worn it. She looked so beautiful and was so excited. We are really proud of her. She is a good girl, and always tries to do what is right. (She won't even read the word "hell" in the scriptures!)

Meredith and Dad- in their baptism clothes.

We spent way too much time at the Res this summer. I am not overly fond of the Res (should that be capitalized?), but we went with friends, so the grown-ups could visit while the kids mostly didn't have any near drowning incidents. Lucy was a babe in her swimsuit. It was funny, because in this picture she is 2 1/2 months old, and her fat rolls were totally spilling over this size 6-9 month swimsuit. It was the only time she got to wear it, in fact.

Meredith, Ruthie, Isaac, and Brinley were super swimmers! We miss Brinley (and her mom and dad), but we're planning a trip to Wyoming to visit this fall. I've never been to Wyoming. I hear there's a great quilt shop in Lyman on the way....


Here's our smiley girl. Lucy smiles so big she has to wiggle all over like an excited puppy. She is the most ticklish baby ever, and laughs out loud when you tickle her feet, her sides, or her neck. It's way too fun. She continues to be the easiest kid a mom could ask for.


The girls got MP3 players for their birthdays, and Isaac has been feeling left out, so I dug out my old Walkman for him to use. He was listening to the Pocahontas soundtrack on this particular day, and got so excited. He called me into the room and said, "Mom! They're singing my favorite song! Want me to sing it to you?" I told him yes, and he started singing, "Samwiches, Samwiches, Barely even human..." Yup, it was the "Savages" song about indians- just his own version. I wonder if he ever thinks it's weird that they are singing about slightly human sandwiches...

Whew, that's all the typing my fingers want to do today. I'll have to save back to school stuff for another night... not that I've uploaded those pictures yet...

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Well, then....

I realize I haven't yet posted pictures or words about Meredith's baptism. I will get around to that, I promise. For some reason I have a mental block that prevents me from uploading pictures from my camera. Something about possibly losing them in the transition, although that has never happened. It's the same thing that compels me to store them on my computer hard drive, and external hard drive, a DVD, and three CD copies. Just in case. Sometimes I think it was easier when all I had to do was file and label my negatives...

That said, I just realized there are only six days left until school starts. And I am sad about that. I like having my kids home all day. I would homeschool them to keep them home longer except that: A) They would turn into social rejects, and B) I'm way too lazy. We'd never get around to doing math, or some equally spectacular failure due to negligence.

The upside to this six days till school starting thing is that it just happens to start on the same day that I get to go to a Jack Johnson concert with Zane and Lucy. Mer and Ruth will stay with Grandma Draper, Isaac will stay with Aunt Mandy, and Lucy will get her first concert experience. Mandy offered to keep Lucy too, but Zane says she needs to come with us because at the last concert we went to (Damian Marley and Ben Harper) "all the other hippies brought their babies." Heaven forbid we don't fit in with the other hippies. I'm so excited I can hardly wait. Zane always wants to go to concerts and I never want to spend the money, so for years now I've been telling him, "We'll go when Jack Johnson comes." It seemed fitting that it would be on my birthday weekend. If anything will lessen the sting of sending kids back to school, this will be it!

Monday, August 11, 2008

More Olympic joy...

Men pulling their legs to their chest while diving in speedos. I think that's all I need to say there. Some things are just wrong.

I baked bread today. My favorite cracked wheat bread, in fact. And it turned out well, which isn't always the case when I bake. I'm inordinately proud of myself. Proud, and full of warm bread and butter. Yum. I'll have to work on dance stuff extra hard tomorrow to burn off todays food indiscretions. I should probably get going on the dance stuff anyway. We're down to two weeks.

Well, I better run upstairs to see what fantastic event I might be missing. Please let it be more volleyball! Maybe beach volleyball, where women wear the equivalent of the diver's speedos, are also built like stocky ten year old boys, and grunt- just with more sand thrown into the equation. That sounds fantastic!

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Well, THAT'S just great...

Volleyball. Flat chested women. Grunting. My living room. Can I predict these things or what?

Friday, August 8, 2008

I hate the Olympics.

Really. I do. I don't know if that makes me a bad American, or a bad world citizen, or a bad person in general. But I dread the Olympics. For one thing, it takes a perfectly good television station and converts it into what is basically another ESPN. And not even a normal ESPN, but one that only carries sports no one cares about. Have you ever noticed that we go years without any pressing need to watch people on our television swimming endless laps, or paddling canoes, or running around a track, and then suddenly that's all there is to watch?

That said, I dig the opening ceremonies. What's not to love about a long line of Chinese women hopping up and down in white tennis costumes with no apparent point to all the hopping? And why are the Americans wearing old man driving hats and sailor suits? And the French team were all in Fedoras- were they out of berets? And where the heck is Tuvalu? Do the countries who only send six people feel silly? I love the pointless pageantry. That is good television. Almost as good as Bob Murray... Unfortunately tomorrow it will be over, and I'll be expected to watch freakishly flat chested women grunt and smack at volleyballs. I can hardly wait.

In the meantime, I am birthday shopping for myself. I want an iron. It turns out that I don't dislike ironing after all- just my old, crappy iron. I want a big, heavy, serious iron. Nothing, after all, says "Happy Birthday!" quite like a good appliance.

Today we visited the good old county fair. I am afraid if entries continue to drop at the rate they have been the last few years there won't be a fair for much longer. Linda Payne entered a beautiful picture of Ruthie that she took when we had our Styler family pictures taken. It was fun to see her up there on the wall. I think she felt quite like a celebrity. Zane took Ruthie for her birthday date (we are running super late with those this year) so Meredith, Isaac, and I ate at the fair before coming home. Mer and Isaac had scones with honey and then Isaac discovered the portable hand washing stations. He loved them. He actually came and rubbed his hand in a drip of honey on the table on purpose at one point and said, "Oh, no. I guess I better wash my hands four more times." I don't know what the final hand washing count was, but I'm guessing his hands were cleaner than they've been in a good long while.

Well, I'm tired. We went out to dinner with Zane's parents, and I ate too much, and I'm tired. It's a good feeling, really. Long fun day, and nothing to wake up early for tomorrow. Life's pretty good. Even with the Olympics...