Wards' Words: Bargains, Messes, and Baby Love

Dear Family,

Now that the kiddos are in bed I'll flush out my outline and look at this week's photos to remind myself of the memories. It's been a week filled with finding bargains, making messes, and having fun with all four of my babies (and with some friends too). Here is one of our photos from last night. We had some fun hanging around with my friend Katie Bachman who snapped some pictures of our family around our neighborhood lake.

Do you see the blurry hands and feet? Emmeline and Cordelia
were wiggling around so hard and so fast that I swear they were about to
jump out of our arms into the lake. We had to get off of the dock ASAP

Last Sunday for Family Home Evening I taught a lesson on real life responsibility. I think that the kids had fun with it. I know that I did :) We started the lesson by building a big obsticle course in our basement. Thomas and Matthew brought the slide, couches, swing, and rocking toys into it, as obstacles, to make it extra tricky. We timed each other one at a time going on a practice run through the course. Everybody had a pretty fast time. Then we started having each person carry wooden blocks through the course, starting with one block, and then progressing to more blocks all the way up to as many blocks as we each could carry. Going through the obstacle course was much harder, and went more slowly with blocks in our hands. After figuring out ways to handle more blocks and how many blocks we could each handle without dropping them, we had a enlightening discussion about how we each have to carry own own responsiblitites, like the blocks, through our lives, represented by the obstacle course. We talked about how adults (and teenagers) have a lot of "blocks" that they have to carry just because they are adults and that childhood is the time to practice working our way up to handling the responsibilites that children will someday face. For example, some kids go to college not knowing how to do their own laundry or how to manage money or how to study and it makes the learning curve very difficult when they are dropped into adulthood. That route makes it much harder to feel successful in life. We talked about how it's much more rewarding to learn these responsibilities bit by bit so that we will be able to comfortably carry our necessary responsibilites when the time comes. Being prepared to handle the responsibilites of the next step makes life much happier and more enjoyable.

Nursing Cordelia and teaching the others about personal responsibility with the kids' "life" obstacle course and "responsibility" blocks to carry in the background

On Monday morning, after chores, some summer "stay sharp" packet work, and piano practice, The kids had some school friends over: Dakota Lijinquist, David Nelson, Jordan Hansen, Bleddyn and Rowen Hartung. Pia, our mother's helper, took some of them to the nearby sandy playground by the lake to play for a while and then to the neighborhood pool. When they came home the others arrived and we made personal pizzas for lunch. After lunch they played games all afternoon.

Thomas and his neighbor buddies Jordan Hansen and Bleddyn Hartung strike a pose

During the girls' afternoon nap I stepped out for a birthday spa pedicure, etc and to buy the groceries for this week's "Relish Relish" recipes. This year I'm using an online menu planning service to help me plan our dinner menus (different ones almost everyday) and it compiles organized shopping lists. This week the dinners were ones I probably never would have made on my own, such as Asian lettuce wraps and Mexican tostadas, but trying new recipes makes dinner more of an adventure and keeps mealtime interesting :)

Emmy begins to taste test each ear of raw corn to be sure that none is poisonous

Emmy likes to help me make dinner. On this particular night, as I was chopping up a red onion in the chopper, Emmy asked to taste some. I told her that she wouldn't like it. She insisted. I gave her a small piece. She loved it! She ate several more pieces of raw onion before she stopped! That surprised me.

Emmy carefully adds the onions to the mixture before stirring and tasting

Salsa Turkey Burgers

These Tofu Lettuce Wraps had to be supplemented with Dino Nuggets and Grapes :)

Thomas loved these "Mexican Pizzas"

On Tuesday morning I woke up to five adorable people, in their pajamas, carrying battery powered candles and singing "Happy Birthday" to me in the dark. I followed them downstairs and sat down in front of a pan of delicious cinnamon rolls with #36 candles on top of them and several pinkly wrapped presents. I got to wear the legendary felt birthday cake hat with velcro candles, while Ron, Thomas, Matthew, and Emmy sang Happy Birthday. Then came the presents: After about 30 years of regularly wearing plastic "pearl" necklaces and ear rings, Ron and our children gave me a real pearl necklace and pair of pearl earrings. They remind me of my wedding day because of a poem that my friend wrote about me that day. Here it is:

Summer Solstice

By Danielle Beazer Dubrasky

A pearl of a girl, the bride--

a dozen white roses balanced on her arm

she steps into nights blue haze,

a breath from the boxwood.

O beautiful girl and boy set in music and light.

I see her and remember myself,

a girl dreaming to be where she is--

thick summer evening,

The meadow so dewy

the grass soaks my feet,

blossoms of Queen Anne's Lace over my arm,

white filgree of joy.

Pajama-ed Erika trying on her new pearls before the break of dawn on her 36th birthday

Later that morning, we met up with Jeana, Stephen, and family at Thanksgiving Point for "Two Dollar Tuesday" at the dinosaur museum. The boys marveled at the size of the Apatosaurus bones and Emmy couldn't get enough of the hands-on sand and water play area. We'll have to go there again sometime before school starts. When we returned home there were boys on our street ready and waiting to play with Thomas and Matthew.

Ron came home from work early. Our neighbors hosted a BBQ and afterwards I went on a walk with some neighbor friends up to the temple to enjoy the valley lights. It is so beautiful up there.

We did our chores all morning on Wednesday. Matthew almost won the laundry race this time. It was so close. Thomas pulled ahead in the last minute and won the treat.

With Matthew ahead for most of the race, dark horse Thomas
sneaks ahead during the last minute for the win!

After all of the chores were done, Thomas asked to make some ice cream. I said okay and handed him the recipe book to choose one for which we had all of the ingredients. We had all of the ingredients for vanilla or chocolate ice cream with nut variations or several fruit ice creams. His choice kind of surprised me. He chose peach frozen yogurt over all of the super sweet choices.

Would you like some of Thomas's homemade peach frozen yogurt?

Thomas has been pretty health concious lately -- a child after my own heart. I helped him find all of the ingredients and blend them up. Once the mixture was in the ice cream maker, he put on his helmet, hopped onto his motor scooter, and went to find some friends to come over and share his delicious creation with him. It was so good! Here is the recipe:

Peach Frozen Yogurt

1 can 14 oz. of peaches

2 cups low-fat vanilla yogurt

1/3 cup sugar

Drain peaches, reserving 1/2 cup of the juice. In a blender or food processer chop up the peaches.

Add the vanilla yogurt, sugar, and reserved peach juice. Process until smooth and the sugar is dissolved, about one minute. Turn on the Cuisinart ice cream maker on pour peach yogurt mixture in to freezer bowl and let mix until thickened, about 30 minutes.

After Thomas and I finished making the yogurt, my friends Kathy Miller and Amy Rich came over to take me out for a fun birthday lunch. We went to San Gelato Cafe, up by the lake. It was delicious and we told lots of funny stories about the unspoken rules for girls in junior high, high school, and college. I'm happy to be past those stages :)

On Thursday morning while the "Ecky's" were here doing a deep cleaning, I played cars on the road mat with Emmy and held Cora on our shady deck, The boys were nearby, playing in the backyard. Our trees have gotten so tall, so quickly. I love having a shady, pretty place for the kids to play. For our outing we picked up Thomas's school friend, Matthew Entwistle, from Sandy and headed down to Ikea to play in the play areas and to have free kids' meals for lunch. Ikea has my favorite kids' meals of all restaurants and they give them away for free during various holidays and this week, for some reason.

Thomas and Matthew Entwistle chillin' on the IKEA Swings

Emmy colored herself green and blue with marker ink on Friday.

What sometimes happens when Mommies go to the bathroom by themselves (or Emmy came back from the crayola factory.... and it exploded)

After a good scrub down, she went to have her "swimming lessons" with our helper, Pia. Thomas and Matthew brought their neighbor friends Ethan and Issac Ancell to join in on the swimming pool fun. After lunch, they played board games and built blanket tents all afternoon together.

I rested with Cora in the morning and then I ran a couple of errands, in the late afternoon, Later, I joined up with Sweet Ron, up at his work friend, Rick Gilmore's house for a cookout. He and a bunch of colleagues had been golfing all afternoon (18 holes). Ron's firm got the tab, so it was free :) Ron's friend, Dave Jones e-mailed me this photo from his phone camera, while they were golfing:

Ron celebrates being out of his office for an afternoon

Ron went golfing again on Saturday morning with a couple of our neighbors, David Ancell and Chris Blake. They golfed 18 holes and Ron wasn't able to make it home to tend the girls for the boys and my golf lesson, so I loaded the girls into their stroller and began the boys' and my golf lesson. Ron met us there on the driving range shortly after and then he and the girls watched our lesson from underneath a nice big shade tree.

Golf lessons with Felton Lancaster are about to begin

Ron doesn't usually get to play so much golf. He usually works very difficult, grueling hours at work, in what he refers to as his "golden handcuffs." He does it with a smile though and comes home to relax and unwind. Here he is relaxing with his Coco Bean: