Sick babies

A couple of weeks ago we took him with us to the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City where I was reminded of why I hate traveling with this kid. He only wants to sleep is his own crib in his own room in his own house. We both came home exhausted and Will's nose immediately started running. A few days later he started burning a fever and was one super unhappy baby. Finally took him to the pediatrician where they diagnosed him with a virus and an ear infection. Three doses of medicine later we saw the tell-tale rash and realized he must be allergic to the same antibiotic as John. 

Sick babies are no fun. When they're unhappy everybody knows it and it pretty much rules your life.

Will's been such a sweet and easy-going baby he almost fools Peter and I into occasionally thinking we could do this again. Ha. Fleeting thought. Occasions like this are good reminders of why we are too old for this.

Mercifully he began to recover this weekend and is now feeling lots better and is back to toddling and babbling about the house.

Enjoy these pictures Rebecca took for me. I was trying to get a cute picture of he and I together.

(It wasn't working out so good.)

Sunday afternoon

When I had Will I anticipated Sarah would be my prime babysitter. She was for a while, then kind of fizzled out when she turned a teen on me. 
Rebecca stepped in and is now Will's second mama. She's extremely helpful and plays with him a lot.

He's into her.

Fearless One

This summer Sarah has been learning to drive. She is picking up much more quickly than Nathaniel did (shh-- don't tell him that.)
Sarah is my fearless one. She was the one walking at 9 months, the first one climbing up the furniture, the earliest one to ride a bike, and the one willing to try out any sport.

She does hard things. She practices piano relentlessly and plays for seminary, ward and sometimes stake events. Soon she'll be playing the organ in Sacrament meeting.

She doesn't care about what people think because she figures if they don't like it "they are stupid." This means that she always tucks her t-shirts into her athletic shorts and wears long wool socks with her tennis shoes even when it makes me cringe.

She eats no sugar, no soda, no juice, no milk. She doesn't eat fast food or potato chips or white bread. I make chocolate cake she drinks a protein shake. I make cookies she eats carrots. She got up every morning of the summer at 6am to run with her friend until they could run six miles at a stretch.
This is not her mother's daughter.
We are all unworthy.
(Sometimes she lets us know that.)
She loves her friends, she loves to try new things, and she loves the gospel.
I love her.

Hosting for Folk Fest

We hosted two girls from Folkfest this year.

Springville World Folkfest is really cool and is even more so to us because it was started by family on my mother's side. 

We've hosted once before as you may remember, with four boys that came from the Czech Republic. That was a good experience.

This one not so much.

Here you see one of the better experiences.

We roasted marshmallows (their first time making smores) in our backyard at 11:30 pm one night after the show (and the after-show-party party) with six of the Taiwan girls and several of Sarah's boy "friends" who unabashedly flirted with the foreign girls who in turn thought those boys were incredibly good looking and giggled and had themselves a grand ol' time.

They were particularly fond of Sarah's waffles, which was great because I didn't have to make it.

Having had several Japanese exchange students over the years we eagerly anticipated something more along the super-respectful, ever-fasinated, and genuine sweetness and humble nature of the Japanese. These girls were not so much. I was disappointed to find that they came equipped with phones they spent most of their time on and could be very dismissive of my presence. They were a bit demanding and a little high-and-mighty, and well, just a little too much like American teens.
I have two teens and a tween thank-you-very-much and when everyone else in the family became disenchanted with these rather ungrateful and aloof girls I got left with the lot of it.
It was a long week.
We will not be doing this again for some time.

Hobbes

This summer John has been into reading Calvin and Hobbes. 

Like a lot. Like hours a day a lot. 

He started searching online for a Hobbes doll and began hounding me to buy him one. With John there is something new to obsess over every week so I was thinking it was just another passing fancy and determined to wait it out.

It didn't pass. Eventually I looked into how much it would cost to buy one one and discovered, evidently as many had before me, that they cannot be bought because they are not commercially made. If he wanted one I had to make it myself. 

If you are interested in making your own somebody went to a whole lot of work to make the pattern available to the world and you can see that here. 

Just know that it took me like 20 hours to make, which for me means a week and a half of sewing nights. It was about more than  John could stand waiting for me to finish that thing.

Say hello to John's new best friend. 

(He washes up nicely doesn't he?)

With all the Calvin and Hobbes books lying around the house this summer Peter and I have enjoyed reading some of it. Now that we have been parents, especially parents of a certain terror of a 9-year-old, we are seeing there is way more than a bit of truth to some of the comedy-- which makes it even funnier to us.

(Sometimes I think this is who I really live with.)

Even Will appreciates it:)