Some funny messes

Teig is a picky non- eater.  I only successfully get a few bites in him each meal, so I was surprised one Sunday when Teig ate all of his half banana.  I congratulated him and took him right to the car.  Little did I know but his banana was in the pocket of his church pants and when we got to church it was smashed in a big sloppy mess down to his knees.  He looked at me and made a face like he does when his diaper is stinky and pointed his pants.  Then he made the baby sign for banana.  Ha!

The other day I was sleeping a bit later than the kids and they ran into my room to tell me that Teig had killed baby eggwin.  I found that Eirik had hidden an egg behind the couch the day before as he played baby eggwin with him.  Teig found him in the morning and broke him all over the floor, couch and draperies.  It was lovely.

The Summer Begins

The fireflies are out in MI.  It is magical.  I was worried how our days would go, so I have over prepared and it has been paying off.  We have had a wonderful, and somewhat high raising, transitional first week of summer vacation.  I found a ton of ideas of fun things to do on Pinterest and made a shopping list including things like ivory soap, water balloons, shaving cream, pool noodles, glow in the dark paint etc.  We went out and loaded up on the goods yesterday morning.  I also bought sand toys and a slip and slide.  The Myrabo sisters; Lizzy and Abby came over and helped the boys blow up water balloons and then helped them throw them at each other in the afternoon.

 

Then we got the squirt guns out and had another water battle.  Later, Dee came over bringing a huge load of decorations for a beach party.  I told her about Joren's obsession with drinking coconut milk on a beach and that we were planning to throw a beach party.  She brought a blow up palm tree, hula skirts, leis, and straw hats.  I never imagined a blow up palm tree could elicit such excitement with anyone, but it had the right effect on my kids.  It was the first thing they wanted to do when they woke up and after our 1.5 hours of table time that I am going to insist on every day for the summer, we got right to work inviting friends for an impromptu beach party today.  We got three kids to come, which was a little less than ideal, but we drank coconut smoothies out of coconut glasses, had pop cycles and slid down the slide with the hose on it into the pool.  The best part was that I found some Hawaiian steel drums music on a new app on my iPhone.  It really set the mood.  We had a great afternoon, which we followed by a night at the movies seeing the new show Brave.  Paul and I loved it, but the boys were too scared,  Teig stayed at Lizzy's.  The bears were pretty scary, but Paul and I got to snuggle our kids tight and cover their little eyes.  Paul cried a little, he later told me, because our little guys won't always let us snuggle them like that.

 

Eirik braved the tropical storm after our beach party bringing in the last of our goods.

 

I got this great picture of Joren eating a turkey leg from the Father/ Son stake campout they went to last week.  Joren delights in being a "man"!

  

Tonight we had fish sticks for dinner and he said, "mom, that's not fish, it's coyote meat, and I killed it!" I also found him chopping wood in the backyard with the axe he made me lash for him with the wood and twine he brought to me.

 

He had it pretty rough today because the big boys kept making him be the bad guy or the zombie in all the games and they kept destroying him.  He also did not enjoy getting squirted with the water and he got hurt a bunch of times.  Then Tor knocked him off the porch onto his face and made him drop his soda.  He's been a really good sport about being Eirik's "minion" most of the time, but I think it might have caught up with him today. 

 Joren has some reading and writing goals for the summer.  He was very positive this morning, even encouraging Eirik who was not.  It was fun to see them reverse rolls for a minute.

 This happened just after table time when I turned my back for a minute.   I let him keep it in his hair all day.  I knew he was pretty proud.  It's his punk rock look.

  

This is the face Teig makes when you tell him to smile. :)

Today was all about Teig because it seems like he gets the short straw pretty often.  I could tell our extra attention helped and he had a better day because he didn't throw quite as many of his sensational tantrums.  He takes after Eirik in his talent for tantrums.  Impressive.  The kid will throw his head back on anything at 20 mph if he is mad.  I look forward to him being able to form a few more consonants!  He really understands us, but we sure can't understand him!  He sure is cute though!

Also, Paul covered for Grekin today by himself with 97 patients scheduled this morning.  82 showed up and he saw them all by himself.  That was just in the morning.  At lunch he went to the hospital for some paperwork and then up to Dr. Manz clinic where he did 4 surgeries.  Does that impress anyone else as much as it does me???

Miami 2012

Global Pathology labs in Miami invited Paul down to study slides for a week with them and guess who got to come along? :)  Paul was in Miami Sun to Sat and I met him Wed through Sat.  This felt like a real vacation. We sat in a hot tub, had a midnight dip in the pool.  We got to go out to nice restaurants like Sushi Siam where I had the best Thai dish I have ever eaten. I could not get enough.  Paul's sushi was amazing too. 

We got to walk up and down Lincoln street in Miami Beach shopping and enjoying the sights and people watching.  Thursday I spent 6 hours at the mall shopping.  I can't remember ever doing that before but it was great.  I found some great deals and I love my new clothes.  That night we went with Jesse to a restaurant called Nexxt on Lincoln street. 

We all ordered wonderful fish tacos and as we were finishing it started to rain.  A slight rain turned into a heavy rain which quickly became a howling torrential tropical storm.  We were more than 15 blocks from our car and we decided to run.  We were completely drenched and at one point we were running through puddles up to our calves.  It was a run we won't soon forget.  The next morning we spent a good 1/2 hour trying to find out the session times for the new Ft. Lauderdale temple, only to finally realize we could not find a phone number because it is still under construction!  It is not yet open, so instead we drove to Biscane Bay and rented a kayak. 

We layed in the 7" hot water on the sandbar that felt like it was in the middle of the ocean for a long while as the gentle waves lapped over us.  It was sensational.  We went to Coconut Grove shopping district for lunch and had Gyros and walked around for a bit.  An antique store there was quite interesting.
Our next adventure was awesome!  We stopped at Vizcaya, a mansion built by James Deering in 1916.  We got to tour the house and gardens.  It was incredible!  It was an amazing mix of my favorite Spanish Colonial style with a Miami/ tropical twist along with strict period rooms like neoclassic and rococo.  It was captivating to learn the history of the house and gardens and to imagine what it might have been like to be around when it was being built.  When we went into the dining room Paul said, "It feels a little weird in here."  We went out of the room and Paul repeated his statement to one of the tour guides and she said, "oh yes, it is haunted in there."  Paul went back in and the hairs on the back of his neck lifted again and he said he could definitely feel a strange feeling.  He left the room and it went away and went back in just to have it return 3 times.  We later looked it up and the website we visited said Vizcaya is like the holy grail of haunted houses.  Many sighting shave happened there.  It was an amazing place.  We bought a book about it because we wanted to learn more and we want to model our gardens after parts of the gardens there.  They were so stunning!  (I found these pictures on travel websites.)

 

That night we got to eat the meal I have been craving for 10 years- authentic Cuban food, shredded pork, yellow rice, black beans, caramelized onions and sweet plantains.  It was perfect!  Afterward we got Cold Stone Ice cream and watched TV in the room.  It was such a perfect weekend.  I love my Paul and it was a very nice way to celebrate Father's Day with him.

Playing Survivor

When my sister Amy was in town three weeks ago we watched Season 1 of a show called "Out of the Wild" about 9 people who volunteered to be dropped off in the middle of Venezuela and backpack out with no assistance.  The goal was to survive and find civilization. It made a great impression on me.  I think I spend an excessive amount of time thinking about survival and preparedness, even though I would not consider myself a very eligible candidate for one who would actually survive some kind of disaster.  Anyway, I told the kids about the show and they decided they wanted to watch it so we turned on season two about surviving in Alaska.  After 3 episodes they decided they needed to play Survivor so we had to dig up the winter clothes (because Alaska is cold, right?) and get out Paul's hiking backpacks, which I made heavy by secretly adding gallons of Apple juice, and we set off to survive in the wilderness. The woods behind our house has become a great sanctuary.  It is magical back there.  We have built a pretty impressive little stick fort.  On our expedition we hunted moose and bear and hung them up to make jerky and we foraged for berries and nuts and made a stew over a "fire" we built.  I made a snare and taught the kids how to make their own too.  Then Paul gave us a Survivor 101 class.  It was a lot of fun and we made plans as a family to go on lots of real outdoor adventures.

Can I drink out of a coconut shell when I grow up?

For months now Joren has been asking me the same question: "When I grow up, can I go to a beach and drink coconut milk out of a coconut shell and lay in a hammock?"  The kids remembered the one I made for them in the old house so they asked me for a sheet.  I told them we did not have any trees close enough together but I challenged them to try to come up with something anyway.  They went outside and thought of hanging it on the swing set!  Brilliant.  It worked great.  It's awesome when the ideas don't all have to come from me!  Of course I felt guilty being in Miami last weekend laying on a beach looking up at coconut trees above us so when we got home I did my best to try to make a bit of his dreams come true.  I made some coconut/ lime smoothy and encouraged him to lay in his  hammock in our backyard and turned on some Hawiian music and let him relax for as long as he wanted.  I think he really liked it.  You can see here, he is winking at me!  What a little charmer.