I Love the Rolling Hills

So I love Utah. I have had wonderful experiences for the last five years or so that I've been here. Utah will always hold a special place in my heart -- it's the location of my alma mater, it's where I made some important friendships, it's where my husband and I courted, it's where our first two apartments were, it's where our first child was born.

But I adore Wisconsin. Wisconsin is where Patrick and I both have roots. In some ways I'm not a deep-rooted Wisconsinite since my parents are both from Arizona and I wasn't born there. But I now have deep-rooted connections through my husband's family and I lived my childhood and teenage years there so I feel like I'm truly a Wisconsinite. Wisconsin sunsets take my breath away. Wisconsin food puts meat (read "fat") on my bones. Wisconsin green is like a comforter to me. Wisconsin people make me feel like I'm home.

So I loved going back! We just spent two weeks there with our parents, most of our siblings, and a good deal of extended family. Among other things, we went to Six Flags, barbecued (three or four times), rode the ATV, played Wii, ate at the Cheesecake Factory, went to the local Deaf club, and filled ourselves up with FAMILY lovin'!

A Quick Glance from Caleb's Perspective
(There aren't many pictures of me because I'm always behind the camera.)

We celebrated the 4th of July at a lake party. The lake was cold-- that explains Caleb's look: "Grandpa, this is nuts!"

Nap times were irregular but frequent. They often took place cuddled up to someone. I'm not firm enough to make him go to sleep on his own in unfamiliar surroundings.

Loads of attention from admiring fans like grandpa (which may explain his fussiness since getting back).

Cuddling up to and playing with Grandma.

Taking a walk with Grandma.

And generally feeling very loved and cherished. Okay, let's be honest the family is a big part of our love for Wisconsin. But, hey, that's not a small thing.

Flagstaff

All right, I know everyone is fed up with our pictures and Caleb is dying for a change of pace so we are nearly done and then he and I are going for a walk. Finally, we headed up to Flagstaff. And we had a wonderful time there!

. . . after the first night, which was slightly exhausting. This is me and Caleb taking a morning nap since he had been awake since 3:30 that morning.

Later, we went walking around Mt. Elden. This is the coolest tree ever, don't you think?

I'm not really into geology (unlike my uncle who's posing as king of the mountain here), but I think this is one very cool rock.

Dad and two of his "kids" -- one by birth, one by marriage

Peekaboo! While we were gone, great-grandma Billie bonded with Caleb.

Later, we met up with the rest of my dad's family that's in the area. Here's my dad's older brother with their younger brother's older daughter. Does that make sense?

This is funny because we have an engagement picture where I'm giving Patrick a piggy-back too. Three years later and not much has changed. Although, to be perfectly honest, there was quite a while where I wouldn't do this. To carry something in your belly and something on your back? Even I'm not silly enough to try it.

Here we are playing ball with Caleb. Who has the ball? Petra has the ball! He's good at this game.

There will be more updates soon, I'm sure, but for now we're caught up on our latest adventures. Our next destination? Wisconsin. And there we will convince Patrick's older brother that we do, in fact, have a child and he is, in fact, an uncle, which apparently he doubted. And between this adventure and that adventure? Anniversary, birthday, a possible writer's conference, a sleepover, a family home evening, a missionary farewell, and who knows what else!

Phoenix

For our latest trip, we headed to see my brother and his daughter in Phoenix. Originally, the "Arizona trip" was focused on doing a rim-to-rim hike across the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, our request for a permit was denied. Still, my grandparents had offered my parents their '86 Bounder-- a huge moterhome--and so my parents needed to make the trip to get it from Arizona to Wisconsin and we had already planned on going to Arizona and particularly on visiting my brother, so we all met up. First, we spent the night at my grandparents' in Flagstaff and on Friday morning made the trip down to the hot, hot valley. The weather was around 101 degrees the whole time, but the family bonding was good even if the weather wasn't my favorite.

Phoenix was Caleb's first experience in a pool. He was a little tentative and thoughtful about it at first, but he seemed to enjoy it after awhile. Here he is hiding from the sun in his floating crab.

Family photo at the home of some of my brother's friends. This family was wonderful and I would like our family to be like theirs. Happily, I love my family as it is too. Aren't we adorable?

Another family photo. This one is at the Mesa Temple.

Grandma and Caleb.

We went to a cool (speaking in slang of course) animal park while in the area. Here's Caleb, Dad, and crocodile.

So far Caleb only has the one cousin. She was wonderful with him and loved to carry him around.

Here's our darling family playing in the pool.

Besides the animal park and the pool, we also enjoyed watching my niece at her Karate class and going out to eat at a cool pizza parlor with an organist playing requests on a raised platform in the room. I'd recommend the pizza parlor to anyone in the area. Though we loved seeing my brother and his daughter, we both agreed that we'd never want to live in Phoenix. So sue us, we're not into oven-baking heat that starts in May. We were content to head back "up the hill" to Flagstaff.

Disneyland

We begin with a view of our personal California adventure, during which we experienced for the first time California Adventure and In and Out (which is good, but not amazing) and we experienced for the second time Disneyland and we experienced it with children for the first time. I was very, very impressed by how kid-friendly Disneyland is. When I went I was the youngest at twelve years old, so I didn't have any idea how great it was for families with little kids, but Caleb could go on many of the rides (even asleep). Also, they have this amazing thing called a "stroller pass" so that we didn't have to wait for two hours for each ride. And all the bathrooms (mens' and womens') had changing tables. I suspect it is the best amusement park for people with babies. Still, we do look forward to making a trip someday when our youngest is about ten. It would be a totally different experience! In any case, this was a wonderful vacation and we enjoyed all the time we got to spend with our friends Dan and Michelle and their daughter as well as the family time we got playing and talking.

Pleasure Island: Disneyland itself was very pleasurable. (The food not so much for the cost, but the rides were fantastic.)

Dan, Michelle, and Cosette on the circus train.

Keegan, Patrick, and Caleb on the circus train. It seems to have been his favorite ride (or else he was just enjoying the cup).

On the carousel. Caleb's first time on a "horse."

Patrick got a wild one. Who knew those even existed on these things!

The magic of the Disneyland castle and of friendship (aaahhh!). We are sorry to say that we will be way too far away from these friends come fall. Happily for them, they will be near some of our other good friends. And, well, I guess we'll just have to make new ones.

Caleb somehow got cut out of this picture, but it's a nice picture of me and Patrick. How romantic (or something).

This sweet boy is smiling under that pacifier. This is on the jungle cruise. The guide is obnoxious but also funny.

Patrick shooting in a graveyard.

Water ride #1: Meet Brer Rabbit and his pals.

And into California Adventure. Caleb had a good time climbing around on these ropes, though it turns out you're not really supposed to linger.

Water ride #2: California Adventure's bear ride thing. It took two tries to get so wet and we only got the opportunity because people on the first ride gave us their fast passes. Thanks to them! I love nice people.

After all the fun, exhaustion set in. Home is such a wonderful place! It took a bit of adjustment to be home after this trip actually and this day was a bit stressful, but we could hardly blame him.

So, happiness is when somebody else's somewhat shy two-year-old plops down on your lap and starts chatting with you about all the interesting things in life (balloons and things like that). After five straight days together, she was right at home with me (though we were fairly chummy before this too) and I was happy to have these two little munchkins in my life.

April Fun and Progress

Caleb

Caleb is now seven months old, and what a good last month he's had developmentally! For the last week or so he has slept anywhere from seven to nine hours straight every night (except once when he woke up at 2:00 am and cried for an hour). This is especially nice for me since I am fighting a cold . . . again. Though it hasn't been the miracle worker I hoped for, I think it has prevented me from getting any more sickly.

In his first month of eating solids, he has improved so that he's actually consuming quite a bit of what I feed him now. This month we have focused on vegetables (except for avocado, which was his first food and is actually a fruit): peas, carrots, sweet potato, green beans, squash, zuchini, broccoli, and red and green bell pepper. He's also had rice cereal, and he liked Gerber's cereal better than my homemade stuff, but I did home prepare the avocado, peas, zuchini, broccoli, and bell peppers. The avocado I just mashed up, but everything else I steamed, then blended, and then froze the extra in ice cube trays. It makes me feel very domestic. A good website about feeding babies I came across is called wholesomebabyfood.com. I haven't followed everything religiously, but I think it has good information and good ideas for baby food "recipes." This month, we are introducing Caleb to fruits. There is no real reason for waiting until he was seven months old, except that our theory is that we'll expose him to lots of vegetables before doing fruit. Why a whole month? Just because Patrick decided it was a good idea. I thought it was silly, but I realized since then that it is fun to look forward to a simple way to celebrate the smaller milestones. I think we'll start with apple sauce and then a pear.

Also, Caleb has learned to sit up. At his last doctor's appointment, the doctor asked if he was sitting up and we said, "Well, no. He doesn't really like it. He would rather stand." It's funny because our perception of what he thought seems to have limited our child's growth. The doctor recommended we help him sit up a little every day and once I started doing that, he picked up on it so fast! Let that be a lesson to us.

The Parents

As far as schools go, Patrick has heard back from more than half of the schools now. He was waitlisted at two of the ones he was most interested in and hasn't yet heard back from the third, so he's now looking at the three that interest him most who have accepted him: William & Mary, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Illinois. The first offered a pretty good financial package and has showed a lot of interest in him. They have also been very professional in getting notices and other information to us quickly and often. And a big plus for me is that it's in historic America, so I anticipate that there will be lots of things to see and do. Madison, of course, is closest to our families which is a draw for both of us. Patrick hasn't heard what they are offering financially yet, but it comes with in-state tuition, so that's nice. They have also been really good about responding to emails Patrick has sent, though their standard notifications via the postal service or emails (including notice of acceptance to their school) are ridiculously slow and irregular. And Illinois is nice because they have offered a good financial package, are the highest of the three in rankings, are not far from family, and might be closest to our friends who are going to Michigan.

While we are waiting for the next stage of our lives, we are not sitting around twiddling our thumbs. No, we are making the most of our summer. Okay, we don't get to hike the Grand Canyon as planned, but we still have a trip planned to Arizona to visit my brother, my niece, her mom, as well as my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. And before that, we are headed to . . . DISNEYLAND! That's right, Disneyland. This took heavy deliberation and debate, but we have decided to go for it. We are going with our friends Dan and Michelle and their little girl. We hope this means we can all get the most out of the roller coaster experience by taking turns watching the kids while we go on rides. We also calculate that this will save each family money in some respects. This is the first vacation we've taken so far (besides single night camping trips) that didn't involve family. And while we love our families, there's something to be said for a different kind of vacation every once in a while. Don't worry: I'm sure there will be lots of pictures to follow.

Miller Reunion

Just this weekend, we attended a big family reunion. It's the first one in my memory. The last one was when I was around 1-3 years old (I can't remember exactly). These were the descendants of my great-grandparents, Leroy and Kate Miller. Grandpa Leroy passed away when I was about 12-years-old, but Grandma Kate just passed away in December of 2007. She was waiting to go pretty much since the time of her husband's passing. I don't mean "waiting" in the sense of not doing anything, but she did wonder why she was still here after Grandpa Leroy died. These were two really good people, and--if I do say so myself--they produced some fantastic descendants. It was fun to see these family members again (as I had met most of them at some point) and to catch up on their lives.

My Grandma Billie planned the weekend and it went great. We had all sorts of fun activities to help people play together and get acquainted. There was also enough down time to rest and relax.

One of the activities Grandma arranged for was a scavenger hunt. Susan (the woman to my right in the picture and one of my mom's cousins) commented that it wasn't exactly a fair arrangement since she had four kids and a pregnant woman in her group. That being the case, I think we were a fun group even if we didn't win. Albeit the kids were saying, "We'll just leave the adults to do this. We're just kids" sometime after the second clue. This coming from an eight-year-old (one of the oldest in the group), I said pishposh and made them stay until we all thought we were done.

My oldest brother doesn't care for the high altitude near Flagstaff and didn't think he would make it, but his daughter was sad about that, so he made arrangements to come at the last minute after all. This is a picture of them together.



This is my dad. There are real-life cowboys in our family, but my dad doesn't qualify. That's why I thought it was funny that he's wearing a sort of cowboy hat. I didn't even notice it at the family reunion, probably because he was out-shone by Matt, who had an authentic cowboy hat and looked the part a bit more. Of course, we made two movies and I was in the western, but I didn't have any right to that either. My dad looks more the part than I did wearing Patrick's basketball shorts and my baggy T-shirt.

My mom brought her parrots. One is an African Grey (named Isaac) and one is a Cockatoo (named Asimov). Asimov was in heaven with all the attention. He just stood there, grinding his beak and fluffing out his feathers. My mom's cousin Erin is in the picture below. She is an animal person like my mom and got along famously with Asimov (who Patrick doesn't care for very much at all, but he doesn't claim to be an animal person in the first place). Also below are Jamie, Erin's daughter, and her fiance.

This is my sweet niece. I got to spend almost the entire weekend with her. Well, she stayed in my parents' cabin, but we played during the day. This is soon before she left to go home with her mom.

Patrick's favorite day was the last, Sunday. By then, people had loosened up so everyone had become familiar with each other , and those who were already comfortable with each other had visited out all the missing years. The first group included the teenagers and kids and the second group included the adults; that meant that everyone was in the mood to play, which Patrick enjoys much more than visiting. Plus, it rained off and on all day so it was much cooler than it had been. Below, Patrick is playing dominoes with my cousins Dana and Toby, while my niece and her mom are looking on. All three of the players talk a lot of smack so it was entertaining to watch/listen to.

This is my dad acting like a scarry gorilla, chasing after one of the kids. (She's on the side of the picture running away while looking back at him.) The best part of this exchange was when my dad paused in the middle of the chase to pet Dana's dog, T-Bone. If the girl had seen him do it, she probably wouldn't have been so scared. Patrick and I were amused watching from afar, I guess because he plays the part so well it was funny to see it switch off briefly and for such a trivial but nice reason.

Another fun event was "the hayride." We weren't sure we'd participate in that one. For one thing, I am not big into bumpy rides these days, and for another Patrick's allergies probably would have gone crazy from the hay. However, there wasn't actually any hay on the ride, and I decided I'd hate to miss out (especially since Patrick wanted to go and thought I ought to come), so we went. It wasn't really too bumpy most of the time and it was fun visiting time while we rode around. We went on the second ride with the my parents' and grandparents' generation. This first ride was my generation and the one below me.

Below is a picture of me and Patrick (framed by a hula hoop (don't know why)). I think this is a funny pregnancy picture because my stomach looks so bubbled up.

I had to put in a nicer picture of us where we don't look so lazy and exhausted and (in my case) big. Plus, one of the nicest things about the vacation was all the time we got to spend together. With Patrick doing work and school right now, there are times that we don't seem to spend a lot of time together, so this was a nice break from the everyday busy-ness of life.