Manic Monday

We slept in my aunt Suzanne's basement while we were stayed with them.  They have a playset with a slide and castle down there.  We put a sleeping bag and pillow in the castle for Tom to give him a contained bed area.  He loved it so much!  Every morning and the fews naps he got there, he'd wake up with a smile and stretch and tell me, "Mom! Seep. Castle. Fun!"  We miss Tom's castle.

 

 

Monday was our Salt Lake day.  Not that any other day wasn't, but this was specifically for hanging out in the city.  We went to Temple Square and toured the LDS Conference Center while we waited for Ryan Nelson to arrive and join us.  He had served his mission in Kansas and was in our ward for 6 months.  This painting hangs on one of the walls in the conference center.  It depicts Joseph in Egypt interpreting the dreams of the Pharaoh's butler and baker while in jail.  The painting itself holds an interesting history, aside from the uniquenss of the art.  It came to America in the possession of Napoleon Bonaparte's brother, and if I remember correctly, he had commissioned it.

 

On Sunday at church and again at the conference center, Katie saw portraits of Henry B. Eyring, the first counselor in the church presidency.  She got so excited and flapped her arms and patted all over the portraits when she saw him.  She cordially said hi to the portraits of President Thomas S. Monson, and Dieter F. Uchtdorf (second counselor), but it was Eyring she cared about.

 

Ryan joined us at the end of the tour and we went to Chick-fil-A for a midafternoon meal.  It was so nice to see him and catch up on life.  He took a picture of us in front of the Salt Lake temple while we walked to our cars together.

Of all the missionaries we've gotten to know, Ryan reigns as our favorite.

 

We reparked the van in another 2 hour parking spot and returned to Temple Square to take pictures on the temple grounds.

 

Tommy was so excited to see the temple.  He wanted to hug the temple.

 

Tom and Katie at the doors of the temple.

I love this sequence of pictures.  They really need no explanation.

 



 

Together at the temple.

 

At the cornerstone.

 

Tom loves walking on retaining walls.

 

What a ham!  He kept turning to hide his face in the wall, then turn out to make this face with a sound to go with it.  Katie loved it and laughed every time, so he kept doing it.  Those two are great friends:)

 

Cool tree.

 

I love my family:)

 

We stopped a pedestrian and asked if he'd take a picture of us in front of the conference center by the waterfall (that Tom, naturally, was fascinated with).  He was French.  We might joke about the French and make fun of them less now.  Because he was a nice French guy.

 

On our way from Temple Square to see Shad's mission president, Tommy entertained Katie.  He'd bite the straw on his water bottle and pull on it until it snapped out of his teeth and Katie shrieked and laughed in delight.  He also pulled on her seat belt and let it snap back, and tickled her feet.

 

Shad and Katie with his mission president, Richard Ellsworth and his wife Peggy.

 

We saw a Cabella's on the way to the Ellsworths', so we stopped at it on our way back to Suzanne's.  Though Tommy is saving his birthday and Christmas money for a swing set, Shad reasoned with me that if Tom knew he had that money, he'd choose to buy this pop gun.  I couldn't argue with that.  He loved playing with it in the store and still loves it.  Shad squatted down to take this picture of Tom and his gun in the parking lot, so Tom squatted down, too.  Shad asked Tommy to smile and show Nana his teeth, so he's literally pointing and showing Nana his teeth.

Howes Family Gathering

 We left home on Thursday evening after Shad got off work.  We made it to Colby, an hour and a half away, just fine to meet up with Jimmy and his boyfriend, Kerry.  It was five minutes AFTER leaving Colby that we had to pull over because the belt on our van had frayed a bit.  All the auto shops were closed in Colby.  Walmart didn't carry the part we needed.  We were just going to all pile into Jimmy's car and head back to try and figure something out, when Kerry found a spare belt in the car.  So Shad went to work to replace it.  It wasn't the right size.  But since he had it all taken apart, he realized that he could just peel the frayed part off and it would still work.  We decided to call my parents and have them pick up a spare belt for us to replace it before going to Utah.  My parents are awesome and went through a bit of effort for us to get that belt and didn't have us pay them back for it.  Unfortunately, all that time being pulled over made us an hour late getting into Denver after 10, so we the kids were asleep when we got to my parents' house and we couldn't play.  Besides the fact that the folks themselves were about to go to bed.  It was disappointing all around, though Tom still doesn't know what he missed.

 

We left for Utah Friday morning at 6 and arrived just after 3.  We went through Wyoming and it was pretty enjoyable.  The kids travelled well.  They slept a lot, were entertained by Jimmy and Kerry, who rode with us, and we have a portable DVD player.  Tom now has a larger variety he likes to rotate between: Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood, Hercules, Mulan, and Cars.  We still have more we're working on introducing to him.  He's slowly coming around to The Emperor's New Groove.  He was also happy to watch all the cars, semis (they're called Mack, because that's the name of the semi in Cars), cows, sheep, horses, and windmills.  He had hardly a fuss the whole drive.

 

 

After spending some time with Grandma Howes, all the grandkids went to the bowling alley so that we could enjoy each others' company and not overwhelm her.  Tom loved racing cars in the arcade with Ruth.  In fact, when we started bowling, he booked it to the arcade after every turn.  Our lane was on the complete opposite end of the alley as the arcade.  Shad and I got quite the workout taking turns running after Tom for 2 hours.

 

Saturday was our "memorial day" for Grandpa Howes.  He had donated his body to science (University of Utah) and didn't want a funeral.  He loved the outdoors and so that's what his family decided to do for him--spend the day outdoors.  After Shad and I had a successful morning of garage saling all along our way from American Fork to Salt Lake City, we went up to Big Cottonwood Campground with the family.  While waiting for lunch, we went with his sister Ruth and cousins, Alex and Arielle to Silver Lake, Alex's sanctuary.  It afforded gorgeous views of mountain, lake and meadow, as well as some ducks for Tom.

 

 

We spent all day at the campground barbequeing and then hiking up a long, steep trail that we never found the end of.  We called it quits and shot down the mountain for smores.  Tom and Katie loved it; Katie took a nice nap in my arms.  We estimated that it was about 6 miles round trip.  Our legs paid dearly for it on Sunday.

 

Sunday.  Oh, it was so nice to just sit and enjoy church and not have to run off to teach a lesson or play a piano or talk to people before they went home.  It was also nice to sit in a gospel doctrine Sunday School class, since I haven't been in one in about a year and a half, yet I'm teaching it now.  After talking to the teacher, I came back with some good resources to use and ideas for teaching.  We spent the whole day with my aunt Suzanne's family, who was our hotel in American Fork.  Shad got to nap, I got to rest, Tom got to walk and play with all of his boy cousins, and Katie just did her thing.  It was a needed recoup after the chaos and lack of sleep.

 

We went up to Salt Lake to see Grandma Howes nearly every day the week we were there.  We wanted to spend as much time with her as we could, yet not overwhelm her by staying for more than an hour at a time.  We sure loved every minute we had with her.  She is a wonderful lady and we love her dearly.

 

Here's Tom, drinking from a Slurpee cup that's bigger than him, on our way to see "Gama Howes."

 

 

Shirley Howes, Shad, Katie, Megan, and Tom Kendell

 

Tom found a mirror in a bedroom at Grandma's house.  He had a nice Narcissus moment.

Grandma asked us to please take pears from her overloaded tree, so we did.

 



 

We picked a bag for us, and a bag for Suzanne...and still left more than we took.

 

Miss Katie is getting so grown up all the time.

Oh, August!

I've got a lot of work ahead of me in making up for the whole month, and I give up trying to figure out the funkiness of this post's layout. It is what it is.  It looks weird. Shad's grandpa died Sunday, August 5, and our lives have been chaos since then with preparing for an impromptu 10 day vacation, and then trying to put our house back together afterwards.  Here's the "before Utah" bit of August.

 

Tom likes shoes.  He particularly likes boots.  I struggle to find a complete pair of shoes any time they're needed.  Luckily, all I have to do is ask Tom to get my shoes, and he'll do it.

 

 

 

My neighbor has given me several boxes of clothes she's getting rid of. Shad put one of the bras on Tom, which he happily wore the whole day.  The bar across the picture is due to my memory card being damaged.  We've since replaced it.

 

 

 

Poor kid was wiped out!  He was being so good and watching his youtube videos while Katie napped and I worked to get the house ready for vacation.  He told me he wasn't ready for bed, but I found him asleep doing the head bob not 15 minutes later.  I moved him to a lying down position and let him be.

 

 

We love using our borrowed bike trailer, despite Tom's "I just woke up" face.

 

 

Shad and I enjoyed a grand 2 days of biking together.  We went out to Prairie Dog State Park one Saturday morning and biked 6ish miles.  Tom and Katie cuddled.  We hit up the Pizza Hut lunch buffet on the way home.  Awesome day.

 

 

Katie practiced her musician skills.

 

She loves any chance she gets to be included in what Tom does.  Good thing he has two hard hats:)

 

Katie climbed into the bookshelf at the library.

 

 

 

She's got the whole "relax, take it easy" thing down.

 

 

Being the sweetie that she is, this is how she entertained herself while I prepped the house for vacation.

 

 

 

One day a cat wandered into our yard while we were playing.

 

 

He/she hung out with us for a good half hour.

 

I named him Stuart.  Stuart's a good name for a cat.

 

The kids loved playing with him.

He was very friendly and initiated a lot of affection with Tom and Katie.  He had a collar on, so I figured he'd have his shots, so I didn't worry.  That, and his complete lack of aggression made him a delightful morning playmate.

 



 

Tom and Stuart.  I had to tell Tom not to poke Stuart with his stick.

 

We also went "to yake!"  Tom thought it was a good idea to put sand in his hair.

 

He was real proud of himself.

 

He gets more and more adventurous every time we go.

 

So much fun:)

 

We found this cool tree stump.  Pretty cool to see how tree roots look with all the soil erroded away.

 

Katie with her beloved Dada.



County Fair

One Saturday while Shad went out to mow the lawn...the kids pinned me to the couch in a sweaty nap.  I enjoyed the cuddles, but it was a bit too hot for me.

The last week of July in Norton always means the County Fair.  Shad had to run one of the kiddy rides Wednesday night as an assignment from work.  Each ride or attraction is assigned to a business in the county, and that business is responsible for having employees signed up for shifts to operate the rides.  I took Tom and Katie to see what we might be able to do while Shad worked and we waited for Pris, Ruth and Levi to arrive from Utah.  I rode the spinning buckets with Tom and Katie, and then Tommy discovered the tractor ride.  All it does is run in circles, but Tom has this new obsession with tractors.  I couldn't pull him away from the ride for half an hour.  He showed off by lifting both hands in the air, or yelling "boo!" at me a couple times as his tractor came around to where I was standing.  When Nana, Ruth and Levi arrived, they came and joined me to watch Tommy.  The double take he did was precious.  He was so surprised to see them suddenly standing with me (I didn't tell him they were coming), that he started standing up (still buckled), and immediately began frantically signing "all done."

Then he rode the buckets with Levi,

and the merry-go-round with Ruth.

He didn't like the moving horse so much, so he and Ruth moved to the stationary ones on the floor of the merry-go-round.

Then he wanted a rest and sat on the bench, motioned to Shad and said, "Dada seat."

We went again the next night and Tommy rode the tractor again for 20 minutes while Shad, Katie and I shared a funnel cake.  Tommy didn't want anything to do with it, given the option of the tractors.  He and I rode the merry-go-round again, and he got tired of me standing next to him, so he pointed to a horse and told me it was my turn to ride.  He's a nice boy.  When we ran out of tickets, we went to play on the playground.  Tommy ran away from us THREE TIMES to book it as fast as he could back to the tractors, just 50 yards away.  He was sneaky about it, too.  He'd wait until we were distracted pushing Katie on the swing, or he'd casually walk to the edge of the playground, act innocent like he wasn't doing anything, then run as fast as he could.  He even discovered that looking behind him to see if we were chasing him slowed him down, so he stopped looking and just kept running.  Maybe Forrest Gump should be the next movie we seriously introduce him to.  Currently he's enjoying Harry Potter (there's glasses, snakes, and owls), and A League of Their Own (he loves baseball).