Cheerful Valley Campground

"It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent."
- Dave Barry


Well, we just broke camp -- literally a couple hours ago -- and we're on the road to the Norman Rockwell museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. So this post is brought to you from 65 mph on the US I-90. Aircards are awesome!
As the above quote indicates, a huge thunderstorm woke us up in the middle of the night. Scared, Seth hopped on the air mattress and decided to keep snuggling up to dad unitl he basically forced dad off the edge of the mattress with his dragon breath and nuclear-power-plant-level body heat. Luckily, that's the first rain we've had so far.

Hope you enjoy the pictures. We'll do a post of our trips to Niagara, Palmyra, and the Hill Cumorah Pageant a bit later.

You'll see from the pics that Jessica lost her tooth on our trip. It was loose already, but she lost it in dramatic fashion playing on the teeter-totters. Let's just say, in today's safety conscious, over-protective, teeter-totter-scarce society our kids don't have the basic playground skills they used to. The accident occurred when Nate (73 lbs) took a turn with Jessica (45 lbs). As Nate came slamming down, you guessed it, Jessica came off her seat. As she returned, her head came down and SMACK! Her front teeth hit the metal grab bar. We're just glad she only lost her loose tooth.

Overall the kids have been great travelers and great campers. Nate and Jessica both cooked pancakes and everyone is making helpful contributions (at least sometimes in short spurts).

Dave

Две недели в Москве ...

Just returned from a two week business trip to Moscow. Although it's tough being gone from the family that long, the trip was a success and we did have time to see some sites. The weather was unusually warm -- particularly for Moscow -- and the food was terrific. We ate everything from Russian, Georgian, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Italian, Japanese ... you name it, but I mostly stuck with the Russian food. I was a big fan of the Russian Okroshka (cold yogurt soup), which is similiar to Bulgarian Tarator, Borsch, Morse, Vareniki, Shashlik, etc. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.
Metro station in Moscow. Stalin in particular constructed some pretty elaborate metro stations. Many of them are done in marble with ornate columns, ceilings, chandeliers, statutes of the proletariat, etc.	St. Basil's Cathedral at night (Red Square)
Red Square at night. Gum shopping center to the left. St. Basil's in the middle. The Kremlin on the far right.	St. Basil's during the day.
	Sergev Posad. A monestary town north of Moscow. It was formerly the headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Jessica's first dance recital

On June 26th, Jessica had her first dance recital! The theme for the whole recital was "It's a Small World" and Jessica's class performed a ballet number to a song from "Aladdin," "I Can Show You the World." The girls got to dress up as Jasmine!

She was beautiful and did a fabulous job. She didn't even look nervous at all! Way to go, Jessica.

I was video recording the performance for Dave so the only pictures I got were at the end of the dance. I'll have to post the dance when I figure out how to add video. :-)

Jessica was in the class with two of her best friends, Audrey and Lizzie.

Cute girls!

Family Survival Kit

Dave had to go to Russia for work and has been gone for 2 weeks. He left just as the kids were getting out of school and I dreaded him leaving. To help me out and help the kids deal with his leaving, he came up with the greatest idea and gave a big present to the kids the night before he left. They opened it and found it was a "Family Survival Kit" for us while he was away. Here were his instructions:
"This box contains 13 different "packets"-o-fun that are designed to help the family survive while Dad is gone on his trip to Russia. Starting this evening, you get to open one packet per day. You must all agree on who will open the packet on each particular day otherwise you can't open it!

By opening the packet, you agree to abide by the rules of this box! That means:

-Tomorrow you must do the activity!
-There can be no whining or fighting!
-Mom gets two "trump" cards taht allow her to move the activity to a different day if it will conflict with current plans
-At least every other day, you must post a picture to our blog of the activity you did. This way I can see the fun things you are doing!
(We followed every rule but the last one and I was so busy I totally failed on that one! Sorry Dave!)

He then gave the kids clues for each day so they could be thinking ahead and see if they could figure out what we would be doing. The box has been a lifesaver and it has been a countdown for the kids. We have loved it and I have so appreciated Dave's thoughtfulness to prepare such a wonderful surprise for us! It was also a great way for Dave to show the kids he loved them even while he was halfway around the world. So here are all the fun things we did while Dave was away.

Day 1: Trotter and Redenbacher
We got to watch "James (Trotter) and the Giant Peach" and eat popcorn the first night.

Day 2: Glowing tails and golden arches
I didn't have to make dinner! We had a gift certificate for McDonald's and then came home to catch fireflies in our backyard.

Here are some firefly catching pictures!

Nate, the expert catcher

Look Seth, isn't it cool?!

I got one!

Seth was sad he couldn't catch one himself so we made him the official spotter and he did a great job of spotting and tracking all the fireflies for Jessica!

Day 3: Upside down rain

We got a new bendable sprinkler in the mail this day so the kids could run around and cool off without breaking it (we just lost a rainbow sprinkler last week because they accidentally fell on it while jumping). Not only is it a fun toy, it also works great for directing the water on my flowers.

Day 4: Tome time

We got to unwrap a box of Whoppers and then eat them while we had a read-a-thon! So fun!

Day 5: "If you change your mind" time with frosty sweetness

Dance party! Our family loves to have dance parties so we turned on our favorite songs and everyone danced then we had rootbeer floats after. Dave had hidden rootbeer and ice cream in the basement.

Day 6: Epistle to the Isles ala mode

We got packets of really fun stickers in the mail this day and then the kids got to use them to make pictures for their grandparents serving a mission on the isle of Scotland. Then we had ice cream after!

Here are some pictures of the sticker fun:

Day 7: Cold and Set

Today we got to have smoothies and a game night (we like to play the game Set). I got us a new game so we broke it out today - Sequence for Kids. We had a great time.

Day 8: Ahhhhh! They're trying to eat me.

There was a bag of Skittles attached to this envelope and we got to play "Don't Eat Pete" with our cousins that night! It was hilarious.

Day 9: Dirty Little Secret with pepperoni

This was my kids' favorite clue and they are still repeating it. Dave arranged for us to go to Katie and Mike's house and play rockband and order out pizza. One of my kids' favorite songs on rockband (much to my chagrin) is "Dirty Little Secret." It's a very catchy song and they all love it. It just isn't the best thing for your kid to start singing during church when the sacrament is being passed (which has happened more than once!). Oh well, what are you going to do, huh? :-)

This was on last Friday night and it was such great weather that we decided to make a whole night out of it so we took our tent up and slept out in Katie's backyard, played rockband, swam, had pizza, had a campfire in her firepit, did smores and looked at the stars late into the night. It was such a fun night. Sadly, in my packing, the one thing I forgot was my camera so I'll have to get some pictures from Katie. Shockingly, I was even a little cold, in July, in my tent! It was awesome weather and a great start to our 4th of July weekend.

Day 10: Arhhhh - Where's me ship?

An awesome 100 piece floor puzzle was delivered to our house for the kids to put together. They put it together with their cousins then we all had dinner and went off to see the fireworks. Lucky for us, we also had my cousin, Laura, and her husband Marty who drove up to visit us for the 4th of July, as well. So we had a real party and the fireworks were great!

Waiting for the fireworks to start! Seth was quite nervous about them and very scared as they started but after he got on my lap he enjoyed them more.

The aftermath! We really wore these boys out and the drive home from the fireworks put them all to sleep.

Day 11: C is for . . .

We got to make cookies for ourselves and take a plate to someone who could use some that day. Dave had bought a tub of cookie dough at Costco so we just scooped some out and made cookies the easy way! No mess! The kids thought about who to take cookies to and Jessica made a list of possible families for us. After they all talked about it, they decided to take it to our primary chorister's family. It was very fun for them to deliver the cookies to an unsuspecting family just because!

Day 12: That makes my lips pucker!

Inside this envelope was a Chick-fil-A giftcard so we could all go get some fresh squeezed lemonade! Dave knows it's my favorite. We were heading up to another 4th (now 5th) of July barbecue with our cousins - are you noticing a theme? - so we opted to defer this one and use it in conjunction with the last day's activity.

Here are pictures from our 5th of July swim party and barbecue:

Day 13: Like the Metro on Dixie plates

Inside this envelope was a giftcard for Subway! Do we didn't have to make lunch. We were supposed to have a picnic with it but today we had a very hot day so after we picked up lemonade and Subway sandwiches, we had a picnic inside in our basement! It was delicious!

And now we have made it! We survived 2 weeks without a dad and he comes home tomorrow! None of us can wait! Thanks, Dave, for making our time without you not only bearable but fun, too. I also can't thank Katie and Mike enough for letting us crash at their house so much while Dave has been gone (and even when he's around!). It's great to have family close.

Welcome home Dave!

Seth Is Three!

It was so fun to celebrate Seth's third birthday with our cousins. We had a great party with a yummy dinner, lots of presents and a Diego pinata. Then we all went out to see the new Toy Story 3 in 3D movie at the theater!

I think all the kids are as excited as Seth to open the presents!

The wind up . . .

He blew them all out in one try!

He loved his castle cake! He wanted it to be his favorite color, red, but I told him that in frosting red usually looks pink so he went with his second favorite color, orange. He also requested a castle cake decorated with candy just like Jessica had. Luckily, we had some creative girls to decorate it and it turned out great! Thanks Jessica, Brooke and Megan!

Happy Birthday Seth! You are growing up too fast!

Boys will be boys!

So, on Father's Day, the boys decided to see how many steps they could jump down. They laid out cushions at the bottom landing of our basement steps and started jumping. Well, long story short, Nate won the competition and the prize was a trip to the urgent care/ER. Seth was jumping up to 5 steps, Caleb jumped 7 and Nate jumped all 11. He made it a few times but when he showed Dave and I, he was a little distracted and landed with one foot a bit on top of the other. We waited a few hours but when he was still in a lot of pain before bedtime we decided we'd better check it out to make sure it wasn't broken.



An ER visit and x-ray later, the radiologist said it was just badly bruised and the pediatrician said it was broken. So we had to take him to a specialist in a few days to see who was right. He went to the last week of school on crutches and was quite the celebrity.

Luckily, the specialist said it was not broken so he could go to cub camp the next week and enjoy a full summer of swimming and fun!

Needless to say, we've opted not to have any more jumping competitions down our stairs!