Travelogue Post #1

My heavens, where to begin.  Sometimes I feel more inclined to just do one liners with pictures, let your imaginations take you where they will...and yet, when I come look at my blog entries in five years, or let's be more realistic, in two weeks I will have forgotten all the nitty gritty details myself.  It would be a twisted reminiscence in my case.  But is that really a bad thing sometimes?
Yep.  The one liners sounds like a good idea.
We left Connecticut.  The girls finished school (almost) and we said goodbye to friends for a bit.
We flew on two airplanes, didn't spill any drinks, got no dirty looks from people sitting in front of us and only sat on one hot tarmac for an hour because of a maintenance issue.  We arrived in Utah and into the arms of our hostess Carrie Ann.
Then we fell asleep, because we were very tired.

 This is Hazel on the plane.  We had a lesson on how to hold things between our nose and upper lip.  She is very talented in this arena.

 And this is the girlies with Carrie the next morning, all wearing their adorable matching ice cream jammies that were in their very own welcome baskets.

 On our first day here the girls got to go to a "Fairy party girls' camp" put on by one of my sister's huband's nieces...got that? It was adorable and the girls had so much fun making flower crowns, searching for fairy treasures in the garden and making little fairy houses.

 We may or may not have run across a busy street just so I could take my picture in front of the sign.  I have a degree from this place, I figured it was worth Carrie almost getting hit by a car, almost...nope, maybe if it were a more flattering picture of myself, but it ain't.

Then, the second day we were here, one of us got really really sick...I put it in my top three sickest that I have ever been in my life.  I chalk it up to being completely exhausted and finally being around other adults that could care for my kids while I die just a little bit.  My sister and her husband have been lifesavers, and done things that they should never have to do, namely cleaning up things they shouldn't have to clean up.  Because while I was trying to recover and get out of bed, two of the kids got sick.  I just got out of pajamas yesterday, things are looking up......
Now jump ahead a few days folks because that paragraph right up there was written back when I thought the worst was behind us...and who knows, the worst may still NOT be behind us but I sure hope it is.  Since I wrote that, the last two daughters have passed through that nastiness AND our delightful hostess has been bedridden all day.  I keep picturing us as little plague carrying rats infecting all we come in contact with.  Which is precisely why, upon picking my brother and his wife up from the airport today I drove them straight to a hotel.  I cannot expose them to this...mostly because I like them a lot but also because my brother is the official photographer the wedding that has brought us all to Utah in the first place.  This house needs to be fumigated and the kids all Clorox dipped before we bring anyone else here.

 We did get out to see the Kennecott Copper Mine yesterday between known illnesses.  It was quite impressive.  And have I mentioned how gorgeous the weather here is? It is.

 This beauty had absolutely nothing to do with causing illness, though it surely didn't help, I'm sure...mmm, JCW's shakes.

 We also were able to squeeze in a trip to the pool between people dropping like flies.  This summer's discovery - Hazel does not like the water.  So we played a game, "how many times can I take off my diaper at the pool before Mom notices" between "I wonder how many times I have to push all these buttons before something comes out".  Both were fun games.

So needless to say, this has not been the vacation thus far that I had envisioned.  I was looking forward to a trip that was not overscheduled with things to do and places to go...I just had hoped that meant maybe more than sitting on the couch and watching Shark Tales 500 times (why do they keep choosing this one? It is a horrible movie...and why do I keep letting them? Well, it is vacation afterall.)  I am dying to spend more time with siblings and cousins and maybe a Grandparent or two...I just don't want to strike them all down with the plague while we are at it.  This part of the trip is passing way too fast...maybe sometime soon we will all be healthy simultaneously and get to hang out...at the very least be able to attend the wedding and festivities that hopefully will be featured on the blog next week--may our faces all be rosy and glowy, and not green and gaunt.
Here's to your health.

click. click. click

That clicking is the sound of our roller coaster...I feel as though we have been coming up an incline for the last several weeks.  We are nearing the top of what I anticipate to be a crazy, fun and fast ride down. So busy.  Mostly good busy but busy nonetheless.  We have had so many end of the year celebrations.  I love this school and I will be so sad to leave the amazing teachers and staff that they have had here.  Amazing.

We are about to go on a trip, and then more stuff, lots of fun, more stuff and more fun, then some other things, then some other stuff and then a move at the end of it all.
We finally received our orders.  Clark got the job in Washington DC that he really wanted so we are headed to the Nation's capital in another couple of months.  Hopefully we will be settled by the time school starts and on our way to new adjustments.
It's not over yet, but this has been such a fun ride.
What awesome friends we have had and what amazing things we have gotten to do.
I'll try to keep posting while on our trip but I make no promises except to eat all the delicious food I can manage between now and the time we get back.



*Abby at her field day...digging in and being adorable.

Haley at her field day (I helped run the soccer station all day long...it was fun to see all the kids...so cute, so fun.)  I adore her green shoes.  I will be so sad when she grows out of them...as will she.

Mia's preschool "graduation".  This year has been wonderful for Mia.  She attended an integrated peer program at the elementary school.  I love the experience that she has had, not to mention the kids that she has gotten to be friends with and the most amazing teacher ever.  Amanda, if you by chance are reading this, we love you!!

Haley's special extra curricular program had their final field trip with their pen pals last week.  They got to meet at a beach and be taught how to build a real sand castle by a real live professional sand sculptor...man, Clark is in the wrong profession.  It was so fun.  And now, I know how to really make a real sand castle, fool proof.  The kids had to split into 21 teams and use the tools set out to build a fortress that met certain requirements, ie 25 stairs, 5 turrets, 18 windows, etc.  The kids were amazing.  The adults' job was to fetch water.  My pants were really wet by the time I went home.

This was what the sculptor had thrown together in an hour that morning to show the kids.

We have begun harvesting the fruits of our garden.  I cannot get enough basil.  I sit and crave it at night.  The strawberries have been pretty nice too.

The girls finished another round of swim lessons and did awesome.  I am so proud of them and what they can accomplish, especially when they have fears that they overcome.  This also brought an end to our post-swim lessons dinner at Five Guys.  It was a fun tradition.

Mia had field day too.  She is adorable to watch because she is endlessly enthusiastic.  She was the only one in her team that wanted to keep doing the obstacle course so she just kept going and going and going until they blew the whistle to go to the next station.

A little of this, a little of that.

Bullet points of the utmost importance in the last week of life here in our busy little household.  I'm both afraid and delighted that the future of our little household will continue to become increasingly busy in the weeks and month to come.  I will have to do my best to appropriately document so I can remember someday what in the world was keeping us all so busy.  (Even though I must note that those things represented here are mainly just the fun ones.)

Haley was a firefly in her play about equal rights for bugs, as part of their unit in social studies.  Let me tell you, it has not been easy to deal with a certain ant infestation that we have had as of late, with "equal rights for bugs" propaganda  floating around the house.

She did amazing and was adorable, and vital to the third grade play.  After all, without her, they wouldn't have presented their buggy Bill of Rights to the President in Washington.  I believe what she said was "and now, without further adieu, we present our bill of rights to you."

Then of course we have all the fun "theme" days leading up to the last day of school...which is still kinda far away.  This is our attempt at "Crazy Hair Day"...you see, because Mia's normal hair looks kinda crazy, we thought we'd take it in a different direction.

Mia brought home a little yearbook that her class put together where they wrote things about each other.  Mia's page said: "Things we know and love about Mia - She's my girlfriend.  She helps take care of Alex and Ryan.  She has lots of sisters! She smells like cupcakes and wears pretty clothes.  She loves to play on the computer."
All I'm saying is, where can I get me some cupcake perfume?

Then we got a membership at a cool place with cool things, that happens to be conveniently close to our house...and it has a splashpad where I can watch all four of my children play simultaneously for hours without getting myself wet or having anyone drown.

The place has dinosaurs hidden throughout the woods.  You learn things and have fun.  And sometimes you turn around and a dinosaur is staring at you and it might make you feel temporarily uncomfortable.

And then the kids might get as close to the dinosaurs as possible without actually breaking the rules and climbing on them.

That dinosaur tried to steal my kids. (said in the voice of Brian Fellow's "that bird's trying to steal my credit card.")

Hazel really knows nothing about throwing fits.  They are way too calm and far too adorable.

"You want me to go where?! I don't think so."

Dino boogers never looked so cute.

And my favorite picture of the week.

Hazel had her little evaluation done by the early intervention program today.  The women were wonderfully sweet and nice.  It was a two hour long assessment and very thorough.  Their conclusion was that Hazel is adorable, amazingly talented in her fine motor skills, but has a "significant expressive communication delay"meaning that her numbers in that particular area fall significantly under what would be considered the average range.  Her scores for a couple other various areas fell under "mild delay", mostly ones that related to this particular facet of communication.  I would love to take advantage of this in-home speech therapy.  I believe in early intervention and know the value of it.  I don't think that this is a huge stumbling block but I also believe in taking advantage of the help and talent that is out there.  It is a wonderful program because it is nationwide, so it's easy to transfer from one case worker to a case worker in another state.  They help provide tools that are so wonderful and helpful to all kids, we're gonna go for it.

My sweet girl.