I See a Pattern

Technically, we still have about three more weeks until the autumnal equinox, which will mark the first day of Fall.  However, with the sun setting now at 8:00 p.m., a new crispness in the evening air, and the Halloween and Christmas displays already making their way into Wal-Mart, Labor Day is the day that officially marks the end of summer for me.  Today is the last day to visit the water park (if you like to slide in the rain).  It's the last time this year to sleep in with the windows open, only to be awakened by the buzz of lawn mowers and the scent of freshly cut grass.  It's also the last day that I would consider camping for the year.

I woke, this morning, thankful for a comfy mattress and squishy pillow to snuggle into as I pulled my down comforter back over my shoulder.  I thought about last Labor Day when I was awoken by the rocking of my air mattress as Kent shifted his weight.  The morning light was filtering through the tent fabric, and I pulled my sock hat lower over my eyes in a futile attempt to get more sleep.  I do love waking on camping mornings to peek around and see which of my children are also peeking around, and which ended up huddled in the bottom of their sleeping bags as their unconscious bodies crept toward warmth.  #5 is almost always curled at his sisters' feet in the bags we zip together for them.

Last Labor Day I was grateful for a modern tent with a waterproof fly.  I was also grateful for bloomers and a petticoat to dress into.  Sandy, Kent's mom, had outfitted us well.  When Kent and I were teenagers, his family went to rendezvous every year, and I tagged along with them twice.  After almost two decades' absence, it was time to take the kids back in time to the Mountain Man Rendezvous in Fort Bridger, Wyoming.  Grammy was all in, and Pappy came up for Saturday. While our modern conveniences of car camping kept us out of sleeping in the fort itself, our period clothing at least waived our entrance fee for the weekend's activities.

We watched a blacksmith at work, applauded the Native American dancers, and shopped at the many tents selling jewelry, toys, leather works, clothes, pottery, and food.  We refilled our glass sarsaparilla bottles repeatedly, which you can see #3 chugging as she viewed the competition at the rifle range.  The kids especially had a "blast" with the candy canon where #5's strategy was to simply hold his cap and collect the falling treats.

I've always enjoyed the early morning Church service where nearly one thousand campers gather to take the Sacrament and bear their testimonies.  Back in our little camp, Grammy shared stories of the handcart pioneers and we took turns sharing our own thoughts and testimonies.  We stayed away from the shopping on Sunday and entertained ourselves instead with #5's bull whip, Grammy's lace making, and cooking stew for the Dutch oven pot luck meal with Grammy's friends and neighbors that afternoon.  When it rained, which it did off and on all weekend, we took cover to play games in the tent.









We usually only have energy for one camping trip per year.  In 2011, we went to Moab with our friends, the Petersons.  In July of 2012, we wanted to see another national park, so we invited our friends Matt & Jenny Spadafora and their kids for a weekend in Zion National Park.  One of the great things about camping with friends is discovering new camp foods.  The Spadaforas' fried-egg-and-bacon breakfast sandwiches, where everything is cooked into a hole in the bread, were a hit!  Arriving on Thursday, we were lucky enough to get two of the few remaining first-come campsites in the park, right near the Virgin river.  Besides playing in the water and playing card games at camp, we also visited the nearby ghost town of Grafton with its cemetery marking stories of hardship for the pioneers and Native Americans who first settled the area.

I fell in love with Zion as a college student in 1996 when I hiked all over southern Utah and northern Arizona throughout that summer.  It was satisfying 16 years later to see my children gain that same love for Utah's natural beauty.  Even #4 learned to embrace the nature, which was a big step after her 2011 declaration on our way to Moab, in a grumbly New Jersey accent, "I hate the nate-chuh!"

#3 took more than 200 photos of the park.  Half of those pictures were of this deer that didn't mind eating around our campsite with her two fawns.  Some of the other photos, though, were truly stunning, which isn't hard to do in Zion's grand scenery.

Notice anything ominous?  Yes, we camped in the rain--again.  Really, though, each afternoon's rain shower was sweet refreshment from the hikes in the noon heat.  When the rain became wearisome, we simply hopped on a shuttle and headed back to enjoy the sound of sprinkling from inside our tent.

                             

For 2013, we decided to do real camping and took the family backpacking to Notch Lake in Utah's High Uintahs.  Kent and I scouted out the trail over our anniversary weekend in July and planned our trip for the weekend before the Labor Day rush.  When I mentioned our plans to our cousins, the Eddingtons, they jumped at the opportunity for a backpacking trail that would work for young children.  Their friends, the Wests, also came along, and we all enjoyed a day of camping in the rain.

Let's get a better look at #3's ponchoed packing outfit, because it simply cracks me up!

I admit to being a little intimidated at the prospect of back packing with the Eddingtons.  They are pretty serious campers, known to scale mountains and karate chop wood with their bare hands.

Luckily, my kids proved to be up to the challenge.

They drank fresh water straight from streams coming out of the mountain.  (Lest you think we lost our minds, we also filtered and boiled most of our water.)

They even stepped it up a notch and brought some comfort to the duty of taking care of nature in nature.  #4 dug the latrine and built the stick-and-duct-tape toilet paper holder herself.

Kent spent his Scouting years back packing through the Uintah Mountains, and he's been back many times as an adult with his dad and brothers and friends.  This was the first time our family has been there.  The scenery was absolutely breathtaking.

As I mentioned, this was another camping trip in the rain.  This time we had planned for it, convinced that the rain would enhance the trip.  After all, the reason camping is always the most memorable and unifying vacation is because you can count on things going wrong.  We pitched our tent in the drizzly dark, finishing just ten minutes before a downpour.  While the girls and I laid out bedding, the boys miraculously started a fire in the wet, which the kids kept stoked throughout the next day.  We hiked and played between scattered showers, and took down camp between downpours.  In total we spent four hours shopping, collecting gear, and packing, and five hours back home running laundry, wiping mud out of the tent (yes, we took this HUGE ten-person tent on our BACKS!), and airing out sleeping bags.  Was nine hours of prep and cleanup worth 24 hours of adventure?  Let me refer you once again to the scenery:

The accomplishment that accompanies a back packing trip was also great for our family.  We know we can do hard things, and it is more fun to do them together. 

We thought we had learned this lesson pretty well, but we had one more challenge ahead of us.  After stuffing our packs into the van and watching the sun set beyond the forest, we climbed in to discover an almost-dead car battery.  We probably should have expected this.  Did you notice the title of this post?  You may have thought I was referring to a pattern of rain every time we sleep in a tent.  Or maybe you noticed that we like to camp with friends, which is now our favorite way to go camping.  This is not just because it makes for interesting adult conversation and fewer complaints from our kids.  The other benefit of camping with friends is that they have car batteries that work!  The Spadas even had a battery charger when they came to Zion with us.  On that trip, we killed our battery by inflating air mattresses using our van's charger, but not pausing to restart the engine once in awhile.  At Fort Bridger, we were dumb enough to repeat that mistake, and then had to jump the van a second time on that trip after the cold weather discouraged our already weak battery.  This year, we had not inflated air mattresses at the van, so the dead battery took us by surprise.  I guess it just didn't like the overnight cold.  Unfortunately, we had left our friends back at camp to contemplate whether they wanted to sleep another night in the rain, so no immediate help was available.  We said a prayer, mustered our muscle, pushed the van backward out of it's parking space and forward through the parking lot to the main road.  #1 was happy to put her new driving steering skills to use, while #4 was generally freaked out by that and by the fact that night had fallen and she saw no vehicles.  Luckily, the first driver to see us waving for help had jumper cables, and we were on our way.  Our prayer was answered again when we stopped at a gas station halfway home and the van restarted after refueling.  However, the prayer was over when we reached home safely.  After backing halfway into the garage and unpacking the equipment, the engine again refused to start.  A quick check of our maintenance records proved the battery to be completely dead at 5 1/2 years old.  Our hope is that our new battery will survive next year's camping trip to Yosemite and this part of our memorable pattern will be over!

Sleep Stressed

No sleep stress at all here.  I just like pics of kids sleeping in the car.

Yep, I'm writing this after waking at quarter-to-four this morning and lying around for 20 min. trying unsuccessfully to get back to sleep.  This happens way too often, but at least I get my bank statements balanced and even write a blog post occasionally.  Why do I wake up in the middle of the night a couple times per week?  Probably stress.  I've been doing so since my college days. Sometimes I'm stressed about friends or finances; more often it's stress about the extra three hours I need each day to get my to-do list done.  This time it was a dream, and surprisingly not a boring one.  Usually it's the dreams about watering houseplants or sorting laundry that bore me awake.  Tonight, for the first--and hopefully only--time, I murdered someone with my bare hands in my dream.  It was self-defense, but still, creepy.

We are a mixed bunch of dreamers in the White house.  #5 ran upstairs two days ago to tell me about his sleepy-time adventure, which started like this: "I had a dream that the herbivores were all being hunted by the T-Rexes...".  He was pretty ecstatic when I told him that our friends had invited us to go to the dinosaur museum that day!

#1 is the infrequent sleepwalker, which is way easier to deal with than the night terrors she had as a preschooler.

#2 frequently talks in her sleep.  It's actually pretty fun to wake her up and try to decipher the gibberish that ensues.  Last week, when I was shaking her awake for an early road trip, her eyes popped open, her arm shot out of her quilt, and her rigid pointer finger gestured to the window: "Shabba eez shaw jo gray."  "What?" I asked, chuckling to myself.  She gazed confusedly around the room, trying to scrutinize what was going on.  She managed to groggily explain, "But it's still gray."  Obviously, she was pointing out to me that the noon sun wasn't blazing down through her window yet, so it must be too early for her teenage body to wake up.  I just laughed and shook her some more.  She's going to have a tough time catching the school bus in the dark this year.

#3's dreams crack me up the most.  Several months ago when Kent was telling someone about my dreams that bore me awake, which he finds amusing as most of his dreams feature him as a 007-esque action hero, #3 piped up: "I don't ever sleep long enough to get to my dreams."  "What do you mean?" I asked.  "Well, all I remember from my dreams is standing around waiting for the dream to start, but it never does because you wake me up for school before anything happens."  !!!  Those of you who know my dilatory eleven-year-old are not at all surprised at her stagnant sleep state.

This morning, after giving up on any more than five hours of snoozing, I dropped my feet over the side of the bed to head to the office and found #4 sprawled under a blanket on my floor.  Her stressful sleep, or rather, lack of sleep, has recently been caused by scary sounds that no one else can hear.  She went to bed crying four nights ago because she was too scared to be in her room.  She had slept the previous night in a cardboard box in her closet after being awakened by noises that sounded like footsteps to her.  Her over-active imagination had convinced her that someone was sneaking into the house to attack the family, so she took shelter in her dark closet, which only served to add to her fears.  She told me she had heard scary news reports on the radio and wanted to know how her dad and I would defend the family if someone broke in.  I told her I had thought about that a lot.  I actually started keeping a steel pipe under my bed a few years ago when Kent began his week-long trips with the foundation.  My preference would be a handgun in a fingerprint quick-access gun safe.  This is one of my favorite commercials, even though the sound track is a bit too dramatic:

Kent doesn't want a gun in the house, but maybe I'll pick up some pepper spray to help #4 sleep.  She and I talked about her fears and I told her I used to hear scary sounds that kept me awake as a kid, too.  I wasn't worried about intruders; my fear centered around ghosts, as I was convinced that several old homes in our neighborhood were haunted.  It took about three years before I realized that the "footsteps" I heard on the concrete floor of our basement was actually my pulse echoing in my ears.  So apparently I've been waking up at night since before college.  It probably began in second grade with our school's Christmas movie.

After our talk, #4 woke up at 2 a.m. and came straight to my bedside.  This was one of those rare times that I felt motherly empathy in the middle of the night.  I took her downstairs and we sat in silence listening for the sounds that had her nervous.  Every few minutes she would ask, "Did you hear that?!", to which I had to say that I had not.  When it was clear that she hears things I don't, I suggested that she find a book, as reading sometimes helps me drift back to sleep.  I found a flashlight for her, put her to bed, and headed for the office.  An hour later she came looking for me, saying the flashlight was keeping #2 awake.  Two hours after that, I turned in my chair (from writing a blog post--yeah!) to see her finally asleep.

Whether Kent's sleep stress is caused by trying to save the world or more mundane heroism such as providing for his family, it is taking a toll on our bed--literally.  I started noticing chips in the paint of our headboard about a year ago.  See all those little, white dots?

As with most damage in our house, I chalked it up to something the kids were doing.  One night, though, while I was lying awake at 3:00 a.m., I heard tapping noises on the headboard.  With elbows bent, Kent had his hands resting at the sides of his head.  The tips of his fingers were nervously tapping backwards against the headboard, and chipping the paint.  I've also learned that whiskers are as problematic as fingernails.  Either Kent spends too much time with his pillow, or he tosses and turns A LOT.  Just look at how his face has shredded the pillowcase.  I keep this photo as evidence for why I don't like kissing him with stubble.  Ouch!

A kid in our neighborhood posted the following on Facebook:
"It's been said that if you can't sleep it's because you're awake in someone else's dream. Girls I ask just this once that you let me sleep tonight and you can dream again tomorrow."  Ha!
If he's right, though, I just wish my hubby and kids didn't love me so much!

Sweet sleepy siblings in a nest they built one weekend.
Sleeping kids are seriously so cute!
(You're welcome, alliteration fans.)

Out and About Uno

There are a lot of wacky things out there in the wide wide world...of Utah County.  Almost weekly when I'm running errands, I see something that strikes my funny bone.  Luckily for both of my blog's readers, I've started taking pictures of the humor in life.  (I use the word "started" loosely.  I've been doing so for about a year, but I'm just now posting about it.  Yeah yeah, I know I've been neglecting writing on this blog...but everything is still there in my brain--maybe.  I guess I can't remember what I've already forgotten!)

Anyway, here are a few snapshots from when I've been out and about and thought, "I should share that funny/cool/weird thing on my blog!"  Let's start with a few photos in the wide world outside Utah County:

#1     No Neck

Pelicans are just funny looking birds.


#2     Travelers Beware

When we take groups to Mexico with A Child's Hope Foundation, some of the volunteers are tentative about crossing the border.  Between the foreign language and the hawkers swarming the line of crawling vehicles waiting to enter the U.S., I understand being tentative.  My experience has been that getting into Mexico is pretty straightforward; but getting out is more...well, curvy.  I do appreciate the road sign in this picture, though.  At least Tijuana warns you that you're about to go on a dizzy ride, whereas Utah's "spaghetti bowl" on I-15 usually catches travelers unaware.


#3     Just...ahhhh

#4     Travelers-Who-Want-to-Keep-Their-Thoughts-Pure Beware

This is probably the best way to photograph the Strip in Las Vegas.


#5     Glowing Mountain

I saw this coming home one day and snapped the picture from my driveway.  Not great composition, but I still like the play of light and shadow.


#6     January 10, 2013: 30-ft. Snowman in Orem Creates Traffic Mess for Neighbors

This one made the news.  In fact, that's how I knew to go looking for it.  I had all the kids in the van with me and thought it would be shocking to them to suddenly drive past a snowman towering over the surrounding houses.  As I started our little detour, they were on to me.  (Since when do children pay attention to the road?!)  "Where are we going?"  "This isn't how we get to the store."  I answered that I wanted to show them something.  "What is it?  Are you going to show us a big snowman or something?" #2 asked.  (That girl may have a future as a psychic reader.)  Even though they guessed it before I opened the surprise to guesses, they were still pretty impressed at the size of this frozen Cougar fan!


#7     Motor Bike

As the weather warmed, drivers switched to vehicles with better fuel economy and more natural air conditioning.  If I didn't have five kids to drive around, I'd probably get myself a motorbike of some sort, too.  But I've never thought of simply turning a bicycle into such a vehicle!  (If you click on the photo, you'll be able to see the little motor and gas tank this guy added.)  You can tell he's probably some smart college student, because not only is he an inventor, but he also remembered his helmet.  I wish his bullet-bike friend followed his example.


#8     Spell Check

Vanity license plate puzzles are always fun to figure out.  This one, though, probably wasn't supposed to be too puzzling.  Still, I'm left wondering why someone who can afford a BMW can't also afford a dictionary.  At least, I'm assuming they meant to communicate a fun ride (whee) and not instead suggest that their car is peeing (wee) on the other drivers as it "whizzes" past.  (I can't ever resist a good pun!)