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Showing posts from June, 2012

Alpine Water Slide

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While Rob's sister and family was in town from Idaho, we went up to Alpine to a natural water slide. Rob had been here years and years before, but I'd never heard of it. We had to drive to the end of civilization and then had to hike 20-30 minutes from there in the heat. When we arrived at the slide, there were dozens and dozens of people and barely a spot to put your shoes. Kathy hiked up above and found that no one was in the pools up there, so we brought the whole crowd up here and had three pools all to ourselves. We took turns dunking in the glacial water. Aunt Heather leads the waterfall meditation Nearly the whole crazy clan. Once the slide had cleared out, the bigger kids and some adults went down the water slide which was about 10-15 feet long and dumped you into another pool about like this. Maddie tried it, which didn't surprise me, but Will was the first one down and that did! The kids all  had cousins to hang out with and Tyler even brought his u

Jossisms

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One of the worst sins committed by not keeping up with the blog has been missing out on several of Joss's fun linguistic stages. Here are just a few snippets that I can still remember: "I can do it by me own!" Now this has morphed into "-- by my own" "Actually" He has sprinkled this in at the beginning of any declaration he can think of and ditto "By the way" which he put in for several weeks. Now they just come into the conversation occasionally. "If you would be kind to me if I could have squeezle cheese on my cracker?" This one happened after my father came to town with all of his diverse and assorted junque foods used to delight and amaze the kids. So polite, though! Grandma really worked with him on his "please" and "thank you". singing all 13 Articles of Faith in the style of the Swedish Chef . Rob sings with the kids at our congregation in church and when he wants to mix it up, he throws down a

Maddie at the G.R.O.W Conference

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[click to enlarge] As soon as Maddie came back from San Francisco, she attended UVU for four days with her friend Frances at the G.R.O.W. conference (Girls Retreat On Wisdom) which was sponsored by WISTEM (Women In Science Technology Engineering & Math). They toured large parts of campus and had lectures and classes on everything from crime forensics to zoology to photoshop, geogebra, and aeronautics. I'm guessing that the idea was just to get girls into those classrooms and familiar with the subjects before they get scared off. Maddie and Lucy came out jazzed about something each day and got a load of s.w.a.g. too. A week later she said "I miss G.R.O.W.  I wish I could go back."  I'd definitely sign her up again! Thanks Lois and Frances for the great time!

Maddie and Grandma do S.F

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(A guest post by Maddie) After Grandpa came to town, I had the good fortune to get to return with him to California and stay for the weekend. The drive from Provo to Piedmont was filled with lots of Beach Boys hits, pasties, and conversation about cars, construction, and, well, all sorts of things. Grandma and I stayed overnight at a hotel in San Francisco. The weather was abnormally sunny and clear, as you can see from the pictures. Everyone was outside enjoying the beautiful "hot" weather (it was only about 80 degrees) Here I am with the Palace of Fine Arts. This pavilion was originally made out of paper for the World Fair when it was held in San Francisco, but it was so well loved that it became a permanent building. You can't really tell from this picture, but there was a wedding being set up inside of the pavilion. And while my dear father the professor would be gushing about the neoclassical architecture, I'll just say it was beautiful and leave it at th

Devil Rays Swim Meet

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On Friday and Saturday Rob took the three older kids up to Draper for the Devil Rays meet. It was nice because none of them had any long course times (measured in meters instead of yards, I think), so they were all in early heats and there was no time to beat. Rob used a Sharpie to give them tattoos like Sebi's here. Maddie beginning her backstroke She's been working so hard in swimming and was excited to show off all of her improvement. She came in first in every heat and got a squirt gun each time.  She said it was great to hear the announcer  calling " . . . and winning the heat in lane 7, Maddie McFarland of Utah Valley Aquatics!" Will has improved a lot, too. This dive is miles ahead of his last year. Here he is doing a 100 freestyle. He has shot upwards and thinned out in the last year, and all of this despite snarfing down any junk food (or junk like- or food like- substances) in the house. We signed up Sebastian for the meet too,

Flaming Gorge Dam

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[click to enlarge] One of the things we learned on this trip is that it's more fun to camp with a destination. In the past the camping has been the point -- set up a tent, smoke your clothes and roll around in the dirt. Here there was more to do than we could pack in (especially with all of the great eating we were doing -- we camped with experienced foodies and we ate well ). Day three of our adventure we drove down and went on the tour of the Flaming Gorge Dam. Looking down from the top. (I kept thinking of Queen Latifah in Last Holiday when she went base jumping off a dam . I'm not to that point yet.) Looking back across the reservoir. It was pretty fun, and the kids got to feed all the trout waiting for us at the bottom. And we saw more marmots -- little ones almost like squirrels.  We returned to the campsite and walked next door to the Red Canyon Lodge where we rented two paddle boats and a canoe for an hour. The boys' boat The girls' boat

Murmeltieren and More

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 Our whole crazy crew, after a long, wild night!  We took Fabigail with us to keep Maddie company -- we'd take her again tonight. Before some of our own children. These two set up camp before the rest of us, slept more than the rest of us, wowed all the little girls and even spent their hour in a canoe rowing kids around.  All of us in and Flaming Gorge too  There were oodles of butterflies of all sizes, shapes and colors  Maddie and Fabs took a swim in the lake. Then we asked them to go pick up a cup that we'd dropped in there. They were pretty cold by the time they came out.  Sebi found a mama robin guarding these beauties  We saw several deer like this one at dusk  More of Flaming Gorge. It was really beautiful  We ran into two groups of big horn sheep, this one at night, and a much younger group the next morning  And we saw more than two dozen marmots (or murmeltier in German). In a few weeks they would have been completely camouflage