Happy Autumn!

We had a great time celebrating the first day of autumn last week.



Lydia and I went for a walk around Silver Lake, a most beauteous place. (There really is a lake. This picture just doesn't show it.)



Luckily, I hadn't cleaned out the car in a while and there was a sweater in there for Lydia because it was about 20 degrees colder in the mountains than it was at our house. I, on the other hand, got to run around the lake in flip flops and short sleeves because there was nothing warm for me in the car. I wasn't the only one who forgot something warm to wear, though. One kid was wearing a bathrobe. Who carries around a bathrobe in their car?

Lydia now has strep throat and when I look back at these pictures of dazed eyes, I wonder if she may have been starting to get sick that day. Poor girl.

Happy autumn!

Summer Vacation

Our foreign exchange student from Germany has arrived! We're having a fabulous time. You can read about it on my other blog, www.thrilledbythethought.com

For here and now, I'm going to catch up on summertime.

We got back from a fabulous trip to Lake Almanor in California with Ryan's family. There was fun all around.

There was time for fairy dancing on the lawn,

snuggling with Daddy/Uncle Ryan,

swimming in the warm lake (it's actually blue, but looks brown here),

dressing up,

eating popcorn and watching movies with cousins,

lounging in the hammock with cousins (they started out loving it but were all screaming bloody murder by the time I got there with the camera.),

and stealing all of cousin Luci's stuffed animals for some snuggle time.

Then it was off to Tracy for a short weekend with my family. We spent an entire day in the pool with cousins. And Lydia learned that she needs to keep a close eye on her food when Great Grandpa Middleton is around. (a lesson I, myself, learned at about her age.)

Oh how we love...

...messy summer days!

Happy 4th!

Ok. I don't even deserve to have this blog anymore. It is receiving no attention from me, poor thing. Too much has happened in the past 2 months to sum up here, so I'm just going to skip it and start with July.

Our Independence Day was a blast. We got to ride on a float, go to a festival and get VIP seating at the Sugar House fireworks. All in all, a very satisfying, American day.

Happy birthday America!

In other news, we are having a foreign exchange student from Germany come live with us. She will be here next month. We adore her to pieces already and can't wait to meet her in person.

I will try to update more often than every two months, but if you feel like it, you can always come check out my other blog, www.thrilledbythethought.com. It gets more attention than this poor, pathetic red headed stepchild blog right here.

California Trip Part 2

We left Lydia with willing (I think) grandparents for a night and wandered down to Monterey to celebrate our 5th anniversary.

We explored downtown Monterey, turning corners to find gardens and meandering through historical buildings we didn't know existed.



We spent some lovely time on the beach, but found that the sun does not set on the horizon there, much to our dismay. Monterey's ocean is a bay, not the end of the world, so the sun sets over a hill dotted with obscenely large houses. Not very romantic.




We walked a couple miles through the canning, fishing and shopping districts.




And we got up close and personal with some seals or sea lions (I don't know the difference) on a glass bottom boat tour. We aren't sure what the purpose of the glass bottom was. We didn't see anything through the glass except seaweed. Did you know you can also see seaweed on the beach? We're really happy we paid to see it through a murky glass bottom boat.

This seal/sea lion had just battled two other seal/sea lions and gained the title of "King (or Queen) of the Buoy" for a moment.

Trip to California Part 1

We had a fabulous time in California 2 weeks ago. The trip began like this:



But quickly turned into this:

These were Lydia's very first rides. We thought she would get nervous, so Ryan went with her on the first ride (what a good sport- he barely fit). She didn't need him at all, so we set her free on a few others. She was a natural!

Happy Anniversary

I posted this on my other blog, www.thrilledbythethought.com as well. Sorry if you already read it. But this blog is sort of a "record the family history for posterity" blog, so I think this post fits here as well.

The courtship, engagement and marriage of my husband and me would be an awfully boring movie. Our courtship was uneventful as far as Hollywood standards go. You could not create a romantic comedy, a heroic tale, or even a Disney movie out of what we had.

We didn’t hate each other at first and suddenly realize that we were actually meant to be together forever, with that realization culminating in an airport run.

He didn’t have to go away to war or come rescue me from some awful predicament.



There was no break up period, in which we realized how much we missed each other, thereby propelling us back into each other's arms.

There wasn’t even an evil stepmother to contend with.

We simply met, fell in love and got married 6 months later. Yes, 6 months later. There were no arguments, strifes, awkward situations, mistrust, jealousy, doubts or anything of the sort.

The first 2 or 3 years of our marriage were much the same. We lived in pure, obnoxious, make out in public bliss.

A child and the expenses and lifestyle change that came with her certainly gave us our fair share of challenges and real world experiences. But you know what? 5 years later, I am still as giddy as a school girl when I see my sweetheart. I still snuggle up to him, hold his hand in public, kiss him whenever I darn well feel like it, cherish our date nights, miss him like crazy while he is at work, and look forward to spending forever with him.

Happy 5 Years, Ryan.

Pigtails

Somehow, Lydia got it in her head that her pigtails are not safe outside. Maybe we made a silly comment sometime on a windy day about how the wind will blow us away. We don't really know. But for several weeks, Lydia held on to a fear that her pigtails would blow away if we were out of doors. At first it was cute. Then, her fear began turning into hysterics if she couldn't get her hands up to protect her precious pigtails fast enough.

I needed to take pictures of her for an article I was writing, but most of the pictures were unusable because she would not let go of those pigtails!

Oh well. Even if her weird obsession ruined my article pictures, at least they make for a good story to laugh about.

I lost my camera disk. And found it again. And was so happy to find this picture of Lydia driving a fire truck last December.

This balloon might possibly be the love of Lydia's life.

Happy Birthday

Ryan's mom's birthday is this week. And my little brother Darren's 21st birthday is also this week! Since Ryan's mom is in California and Darren is in Ohio (for only 1 more month!), we did some of our own celebrating in their honor. We love to celebrate. Happy birthday Grandma Diamond and Uncka Dennen!

Sugar House

I had to do some work in Sugar House, our favorite little community in Salt Lake City. So I decided to make a day of it and take the fam.

We wandered through Hidden Hollow, a little nature reserve with a river, trees, dirt and everything smack dab in the middle of a shopping center. It's a great walk. It's much better in the springtime when there are leaves on the trees, but Lydia was so excited for a semi-warm day with sunshine and Daddy that she didn't mind the lack of foliage.



We grabbed a little booklet about Salt Lake City businesses while we were there and Lydia walked up and down the street like this. It took a really really really long time to get anywhere.



Lydia and I pretended to be models.

The sunglasses never came off and that stick travelled home with us.

A successful day. Oh, and I got my work done too.

What a mess...

But at least they didn't find the scissors.

Dressing Up

We were invited to a princess dress up party at a fancy spa. Little girls ran around trying on princess dresses and jewelry, then pranced along the catwalk and watched themselves in the TV.

Lydia was more interested in the tea set, play cupcakes and child size chairs. She finally consented to dress up a little bit, and this is what she chose.



Really? Of all the things she could have chosen?

I admire her individuality, but I'm not so sure about her fashion sense.