frights, farms, and family

Another week, another post. Sounds pretty mundane, no? (But then, I suppose those readers who are thoroughly bored with our mundane posts stopped reading long ago, so there's no problem there). Actually, this week was anything but boring--most of the time. For your readerly delectation, we'll give you the high--and low--points of the week.

Most of the low points, for some reason, happened on Tuesday. The day began auspiciously with our usual morning walk (Dan has taken to walking to work, so we walk him to the edge of the hill and then take a roundabout way back). However, it turns out that it was colder than usual, and Andrew had lost one of his gloves (which, of course, we didn't realize until we were already out of the house). So, we encouraged Andrew to put his hands in his pockets while I pushed the stroller. Inevitably, Andrew decides to assert his toddler independence and insists that he wants to walk. Since part of the purpose for our walks is for me to get some exercise, letting Andrew walk with me would kind of defeat the purpose (he has a habit of stopping every three or four feet for inexplicable reasons). However, I usually let him walk the length of the cul-de-sac where we live. In one of my less-than-brilliant moments, I got him out of the stroller to let him walk, but failed to foresee what would inevitably happen if I let Andrew walk anywhere with his hands in his pockets. You can probably guess what happened. Andrew went maybe five yards before completely biffing it, catching himself on his chin and scraping it up pretty good. Luckily, we were within sight of home, but it was a pretty unhappy few minutes before I could get him in the house, get him cleaned up, and put a bandaid on. (Incidentally, Andrew has recently become fascinated with bandaids. I think that's partly b/c everyone in the house got flu shots this week, and Andrew insisted on being shown their bandaids--repeatedly). The rest of the day Andrew seemed particularly accident prone--acquiring several more bruises to add to his scabby chin.

That same day, I took Andrew to the library after his nap. We picked up a few items and then went to check out the books. The Provo library has a neat self-scanner that lets you scan several items at the same time--however, you still have to have both hands free to scan your card and place the books on the appropriate spot. Andrew, of course, refused to stay by me, but since he stayed in the general vicinity, I wasn't too worried. I was pretty sure I could catch him before he went too far. Unfortunately, something was wrong with one of the books I had, so the computer screen had to ask me a question. When I looked away from the screen to see where my son was, I discovered, to my horror, that he was across the lobby, inside the elevator. Before I could move more than a few steps, the elevator doors had closed, and Andrew disappeared. I ran across the foyer, pushed the elevator button repeatedly, and waited tensely for the lift to return. (I toyed with, and discarded, the idea of running up the stairs, since I wasn't sure if Andrew would actually have gotten off the elevator. I think I hoped he would just come right back). Of course, when the doors finally opened, an older woman stepped out, but there was no sign of Andrew. Beginning to panic, I asked the woman if she'd seen a toddler, and she said yes, he'd gotten off upstairs. I ran toward the stairs, but was (luckily) intercepted by one of the library workers, who asked if I was missing a toddler (how could she tell? The look of frantic horror on my face?). When I said yes, she said that the desk person from upstairs was bringing him down on the elevator. So I suppose that all's well that ends well, but I'm pretty sure that from now on I will be bringing the stroller into the library, no matter how much Andrew protests!

On Thursday, Andrew and I took advantage of our employee dependent status at BYU to get free flu shots at the health center (Dan, incidentally, was rather disgruntled to discover that the health center "on campus" is actually closer to the MTC than to BYU main campus). On the drive over, I told Andrew that he was going to get a shot, and then asked brightly, "do you want a flu shot?" To which Andrew responded enthusiastically, "need a shot!" I think he was less excited with the actual shot, but since they offered him a dum-dum immediately afterward, he never even got to the stage of tears. And that pretty much sums up the "low" points of the week.

Friday, Jeni and Samuel and their assembled brood picked us up in their minivan and drove us to Thanksgiving point, where we went to the Cornbelly's farm and maze. It was admittedly a little pricey, but the kids seemed to thoroughly enjoy it (even if it occasionally took them some time to figure out what was going on, as with the images below).

Among other things, the site had some great slides for little kids, and these giant inflatable mats for jumping (I think they were called jumping pillows or something). Andrew and Jacob loved them, though Emi refused to try it. Andrew stood in the center bouncing up and down (he still hasn't quite figured out how to jump) repeating, "jump, jump, jump" as he bounced.

They also had a little train with cow-shaped cars (ours appears to be missing its head), attached to the back of a tractor. The tractor pulled as around a pumpkin patch and through part of the fair--not much of a ride, and excessively bumpy at that (I had no idea there were so many ridges in a pumpkin patch). But the kids seemed to get a kick out of it. Andrew wanted his own seat, but since past experience has taught me that he doesn't always stay in his seat without adult supervision, he was overruled.

Probably the main attraction (for adults, anyway) are the corn mazes on the site. They have an elaborate Pirates of the "Cornibbean" maze (which we didn't attempt, with four children age four and under), that at night becomes a kind of terror maze. They also had a couple of smaller mazes for children. The first of the "mazes" (which really didn't deserve that name) was pretty simple--a couple of nested circles, with a sign in the center.

The second maze we attempted--the so-called children's maze, didn't even have a center. Jacob, our fearless leader, led us in circles for a while before we branched out and let someone else lead. Jeni wanted to see how far it went, so she went one direction while Jacob ran off toward what looked like the exit. I followed Jeni for a while, but then Andrew decided he wanted Jacob, and we turned around to find them. By some inexplicable means, we managed to miss Samuel and Jacob, who had meanwhile found Jeni, leaving us--albeit temporarily--"lost" in the children's maze. By this time, however, people were starting to get a little tired and hungry, so we quickly wound up our little adventure.

On Saturday, we planned a little family Halloween party. In theory, we were going to put the kids in costume, but that never really materialized (except for Jeni's kids, who arrived in costume. All, that is, but Jacob, who had to stay home with Samuel because he had been unusually disobedient). Here is the baby, Enoch, looking (if I do say it myself) quite adorable.

I somehow ended up in charge of the afternoon's festivities for the kids: we did a treasure hunt (I had no idea that the simple task of finding a piece of paper could be so hard. In the picture below, the piece of paper bearing the clue was in plain sight on one of the raspberry bushes, but we finally had to point directly at it before any of the children could find it); played pin the hat on the witch (which the children did, naturally, with their eyes wide open. And still didn't quite manage to get the hat in the right place); did a "cake" walk (where the prizes were things like little balls and Count Chocula cereal); and decorated cookies. I think the cake walk was probably the biggest hit--so I would definitely recommend something like that for future family parties involving small children. It's pretty uncomplicated, and I think they liked the idea of randomly winning prizes.

(Andrew, incidentally, wasn't really interested in eating his cookie--just the reeces pieces that were on top of it).

That pretty much concludes our report for the week. I ended up helping out in nursery today (they were short one or two grown-ups), and was pleased to see that Andrew is finally picking up on the hand movements for some of the songs, and that he was all over "Once there was a snowman," which they did for the first time in nursery today (I guess it helps that he's been practicing at home!). Dan continues to enjoy his job (aside from complaints with the computer lab, but you'll have to ask him about those), and I'm still working on my dissertation. On the plus side, my advisor has told me that the chapters I've already sent her look good to go, so I've just got to finish this one chapter, write a conclusion, and survive my defense . . . (and best wishes to my brother, Jared, who finally gets to defend his master's thesis this Friday after . . . how many years has it been again? He's been working for at least four years, I think, since he left BYU, so you do the math. I think they finally threatened him that if he didn't get it done this month, he would have to retake all his classes. Nothing like a little ultimatum to inspire one. Still, I'm sure he'll be relieved to finally be finished).

Jesus wants me for a "sun-beep"

Today was the ward primary program, and among other interesting things about faith, the gospel, the Savior, etc., we learned that the Sunbeam class doesn't really know their class anthem (for the last line, the kids were divided between "I'll be a sunbeam for him" and repeating "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam"). But after they finished, Andrew puttered around in our pew repeating, "sunbeep," "sunbeep," so we can only assume that he thinks he is meant to be a "sunbeep," not a sunbeam.

This week was a little more activity-filled than most weeks, which means, of course, that we got virtually no pictures of all of our different activities. On Monday, my sister called me (I think she was either bored or desperate to get out of the house) and suggested that we take our kids up to the new IKEA store that opened in south Salt Lake City (I think technically it's in Sandy, but I'm not so good on SLC geography, so I could be wrong). We had fun browsing the store, the kids had fun looking at the toys and trying out some of the kids furniture, and we managed to escape with our wallets mostly intact. In fact, aside from what we spent on lunch at the little cafeteria in the store (Andrew did some serious damage to his macaroni and cheese and ate several of Emi's french fries to boot), the only thing we bought was a set of plastic silverware for Andrew.

Tuesday and Wednesday I don't remember much, so I can only assume that we didn't do anything extraordinary. I did finally manage to get my committee to agree on a date and time for my (tentative) dissertation defense (December 18, 11 am, not that most of you really care about that!). So, assuming that I can actually finish writing in the next few weeks (barring major disasters I think I can), this means that I will actually be able to graduate in the spring.

On Thursday, I met up with my old friend Stephanie Sturgeon, who used to watch Andrew for me in State College. Andrew was pretty excited to see her daughter, Gaby, who was his first real playmate. We agreed to meet at the new aquarium in Sandy, but as the aquarium didn't open until 11 a.m., and was just down the street from one of the nicer malls in Salt Lake, I took Andrew up a little early to go shopping. Before you pity my son too much, let me just say that he did have a chance to ride on a dragon at the carousel, so he was pretty well rewarded for his patience. The aquarium was fun--definitely not as spectacular as the one in Boston, which was the aquarium I'd visited most recently previous to this visit, but it was about the right size for a pair of toddlers. We saw a variety of fish, a giant octopus, some jellyfish, sharks, etc. They even had a little petting tank with some kind of rays in them (I'm not sure if they were manta rays or sting rays or what). Generally, they stayed a little too low in the water for Andrew to reach them, but while we were standing at the side of the pool, one came up out of the water and draped itself over the side, so Andrew was able to feel its sleek back. He was pretty excited about that and kept trying to run back to the pool, even after we had moved on to other exhibits. In fact, Andrew pretty much tried to run all over the place, and I had to run after him several times before he got out of sight. Stephanie (and you have to remember that she watched him twice a week for almost a year, so she's pretty familiar with him) asked me if he was always like this--i.e. so active--and I said yes. It's pretty clear that even in the three months since we left PA, he's changed quite a bit. The jury is still out on whether this change is positive! (It's mostly positive--he's certainly a lot of fun now that he can talk, although his tendency to parrot back everything that he hears come out of our mouths is a little alarming. For instance, while my mom and I were stopped at a red light, Andrew said in this insistent little voice, "Come on!" Clearly, he's been the beneficiary of entirely too many of my driving comments.)

On Friday, a minor miracle occurred: Dan went shopping with me! And mostly of his own free will. (Of course, it helped that I called him that morning to warn him of my plans, so he had all day to mentally prep himself. It also helped that we tried to limit our shopping to two things: suits and shoes). Since Dan's last new suit was when he graduated from college, over six years ago, it was clearly time for a new suit, and Penney's was having a big sale. We found a suit that looks nice on him, that we got for a fraction of the original price. Of course, of the dozen or suits he tried, he eventually settled on the first suit he tried on! Poor Dan. At least he has the consolation of knowing I won't be able to drag him out for the same errand for some time now.

Saturday morning we went up to Alpine to spend some time with friends of ours. Andrew and I spent the morning with my friend Karin and her son, Ezra (who' s about eight months older than Andrew), while Dan braved the cold, wet elements in pursuit of Karin's husband's current obsession: paint-balling. (Mat apparently owns enough paintball equipment to fully outfit four or so people). Several of Mat's friends came up--most of them with their own equipment--so Dan was probably the only one there who had never played before, although at least one of the other guys wasn't really experienced. We eventually deserted Dan (one of the other players had offered him a ride home) so that Andrew could get a nap (which, of course, he refused to take, under the mistaken impression that the ten minutes he slept at the end of our ride home were enough). They played for a couple of hours, before finally conceding defeat b/c of the cold. I think they had fun, although it doubtless would have been more enjoyable in better weather. Dan came home with a nice welt where one of the paint balls had hit him--we tried to take a picture for your delectation, but it didn't turn out well, so you'll have to use your imaginations.

After Dan came home, we had a changing of the guard ceremony: I left Andrew with his dad to go to Salt Lake with my mom, two of her sisters, my sister-in-law Mitcee, her sister, my aunt's daughter-in-law, and her daughter-in-law's aunt, where we attended the Witchapalooza show at Gardner village (a dinner and show). It was a pretty amazing spectacle (not for the first time that week, I wished I had my camera with me!). It was Witches Night Out at the Gardner Village shops, which meant that we were surrounded by women in elaborate witches costumes (sometimes with spouses also decked out as warlocks or other mystical creatures. We saw one man decked out as a female fortune teller, which was a little frightening). Many of these women also attended the show with us. The show itself was a lot of fun--a group of musicians performed some classic songs (several selections from the musical Wicked, a spoof of Phantom of the Opera: Phantom of the Oprah, and some pumpkin carols written by the staff). They also had a dramatic reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," which was pretty good. I think the audience had the most fun with a Halloween-themed name that tune (and artist), the conga line to "Monster Mash," and the limbo. The food was pretty good, too, which meant that between the company, the food, and the entertainment, we had an enjoyable evening out.

(Dan, unfortunately, can't say the same about his evening, as he was literally stuck at home. He had given me his wallet for safekeeping while he went paintballing, and his wallet was still in my purse when I went to Salt Lake. To make matters worse, we found his keys locked inside the car this morning, so he really had no options for leaving the house).

I taught Relief Society today as part of my new calling, and I think the lesson went pretty well. Although I'm never sure how to take much credit, as it's hard to go wrong if you follow the manual!

Our final note of the evening is a request for some opinions: Andrew has two Halloween costumes (both, of course, yard-sale finds), and I'm trying to decide which option to go with. (Andrew's opinion doesn't really count, as it changes by the hour). So we thought we'd open it up to you, our few faithful readers: Should Andrew be the Lady (I mean Fireman) or the Tiger?

Snatched from the jaws of death

Actually, this title has nothing to do with our post--we just thought a catchy title might help make up for the lack of substantive content!

There's not a lot to report from this week--and perhaps more importantly, in the excitement of celebrating my dad's birthday (i.e. playing games with Jared and Mitcee), we delayed posting until way past our usual time, which leaves me with a few scant minutes before bedtime. So, we'll try to keep this brief (and not, hopefully, Polonius style).

Monday evening we had family home evening with Jeni and Samuel. After a brief lesson on the proclamation to the family, we frosted sugar cookies. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera to the actual frosting of the cookies, but we brought the frosting (Andrew "helped" me make it--meaning he tried to get into as much of it as possible and he licked the beaters off), so I do have a couple of pictures of Andrew enjoying some ill-gotten gains (i.e. graham crackers with frosting).





I've been trying in the last couple of weeks (particularly after last week's conference talks on making better use of our time) to do more improving activities with Andrew, rather than just taking him shopping as an excuse to get out of the house! So, this week he's been to the library twice: once with me, once with Dan. Our experience ended a little disastrously--while Andrew enjoyed the first five minutes of story time, he quickly lost interest. As long as he could select some books and movies, he was perfectly happy to wander around. But when we tried to look at grown up books for me, he was less cooperative. (Actually, it turns out that he was filling his diaper). When I finally gave up and went to check out his books, he refused to stay near me (I should probably explain that he refused to let me put him in his stroller when we first arrived, and since we were going to story time I capitulated). I finally gave up, put the books back in the children's section, and we left. And of course, Andrew spent the rest of the way home telling me that he "wan' check out books." I failed to warn Dan, however, about the need to strap Andrew into a stroller or something if he wanted him to stay put long enough for Dan to get a library card; Dan took Andrew on Saturday morning, and I guess he had his work cut out for him to get Andrew to stay in one place long enough to fill out the form for a new library card. There's a handy little half door near the check-out stand that Andrew loves to push, run through, and make a large circle around the lobby.

Saturday was a big day for us: Dan graciously offered to take Andrew so I could work on my dissertation (I went up to the BYU library and tried to do research). So he and Andrew went, as mentioned, to the library. Just before they left, however, Jeni called to invite them to go to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake. So, shortly after their return from the library, they headed north to enjoy the zoo in the mildly rainy and overcast fall weather. I was home well before their return, and again, pretended to do some work. Meanwhile, my parents were having a mini open house to showcase some of the jewelry my dad has been making (if you're curious, you can see some at this website: http://www.shoppalstores.com/collings_handcr/index.cfm). My friend Karin and her husband came down for the open house, and, after letting our sons play for a while (Karin's son, Ezra, is about 2 1/2), we went out to dinner at Bombay house. The food was okay--not the best Indian food we've had--but the company was excellent, so we had a good time.




Today, as mentioned, we celebrated my dad's birthday. All of the kids and grandkids (3 and 6, respectively, plus spouses) who live within driving distance came, so it was pretty crazy. As usual, there was too much food (my mom always worries that someone might actually starve, although it hasn't happened yet). When dinner was over, we put the boy to bed, and then my dad opened presents with the "help" of his other grandkids. (I felt kind of bad that Andrew missed the excitement, but he was tuckered out--and asleep before we were done with presents). Jeni and I had taken our four kids to the dollar store on Friday to get presents for grandpa (which the kids picked out), so he ended up with useful things like mini-frisbees, maracas, scented mini highlighters, and a carebear puzzle.

celebrity look-alikes

This update is courtesy of my brother, Justin, whose celebrity look-alikes were so stellar that we had to imitate them. (Who doesn't want to look like Jessica Simpson or Dean Cane?). (Personally, I think Dan looks better with a beard--I mean, come on, David Boreanaz? Maybe I can start calling him "My Angel" . . . On second thought, probably better not. I do want him to speak to me again later).

a cornucopia of clan

This week has been marked primarily by the diversity of relatives passing through my parents' home. (I toyed with titling the blog "a redundancy of relatives" but decided that didn't reflect so well on my relatives.) The cause of such familial felicity? Well, some were passing through town because of the church's General Conference; others were here because my Grandma Collings has been in the hospital this week--she was due for surgery earlier in the week, but from one cause or another, the surgery has been postponed.

My aunt Judy and uncle Michael (my dad's brother) were the first to arrive, late Monday night. As my aunt Judy is generally one of the happiest people I know, it's always a pleasure to have them around. Unfortunately, their stay was of short duration: by Wednesday morning they had set off for Idaho again. My dad's sister, Valerie, showed up on Thursday and left this morning: she spent the bulk of her time here in the hospital with her mother (who, we're glad to report, seemed to be doing a little better this morning).

Friday afternoon we had lunch with my cousins Gwen and Lauriann (sp?), from my mother's side of the family. Since they were staying with my aunt Tera in Salt Lake, they also brought two of Tera's boys, Nolan and Traven. Since Gwen and Lauriann are reasonably tall, and Nolan and Traven are huge (at sixteen, Traven is about 6'7), I was easily the shortest grown-up there. Thank goodness for all the little kids we brought with us (between my one and Jeni's three, we had quite a collection), otherwise I would definitely have been the shortest in the group. With all those people--me, my mom, Jeni, my cousins, Gwen's friend Mary, and the munchkins--lunch was pretty chaotic. But fun, on the whole.

Saturday morning, Dan's parents showed up bright and early (around 7:45 a.m.) to take Dan and I to the Saturday morning session of Conference, which they generously provided tickets for. Andrew stayed with my parents (and apparently didn't miss us at all--when I tried to get a hug when we got home, I was ruthlessly denied). Conference was a wonderful experience--it's pretty amazing to be in that huge conference hall (half the size of Yankee stadium, Dan tells me), with people who share your faith. Probably one of the funniest things that happened (which no one watching the broadcast on TV would have seen), happened just after the newly-called President Eyring took his place on the stand. President Hinckley, who had announced the callings, took his cane and "knighted" President Eyring as he went back to his own seat.

After Conference, we had lunch at a wonderful Italian deli (whose name I can't remember at the moment). The cheese and the bread were incredibly fresh, and the sandwiches were enormous. (The ciabatta bread sandwiches were all made from half a loaf of bread!). And of course, we had to take a few canoli for the ride home. Full as we were, we still managed to find room for a few bites of desert. As always, with the Eves family, the food was wonderful.

We still had one more stop to make before heading back down to Provo: Trisha, in search of the Dutch chocolate letters that helped define her childhood, insisted that we make a stop at the Dutch store in Salt Lake. Unfortunately, the only address we had didn't help us much (27 Highland drive isn't very useful when you're not familiar with Salt Lake and don't know where Highland drive is!). We had a nice scenic drive around Sugarhouse, though, and admired the old houses. We finally found the store--of course, this was scant seconds after we had decided that the cause was lost and might as well head back to the freeway. Dan and I splurged and bought some Milka chocolate (some of the best Swiss chocolate, I think) to share with everyone; it wasn't until we were in the car passing the chocolate around that I realized that we'd picked up the sugar-free version for diabetics! It was still pretty good.

Robert, Trisha, and Sarah (who had come to Salt Lake with them to visit her boss, who had been in a car accident and was in the U of U hospital) stayed for dinner at our place. Then, while the boys were at the priesthood session, we packed Andrew into the car and embarked on a round of shopping: Gymboree (for Sarah), Williams and Sonoma (for Trisha), and the Deseret Book store, for it's semi-annual conference sale. The mall was crazy--I've never seen it that busy or spent so much time looking for a parking spot (except, possibly, right before Christmas or Black Friday, but I usually make it a rule to avoid the mall then). We had a good time, but, possibly in a mark of divine displeasure with our hedonistic consumerism, I lost my car key. We had to wait until the guys returned from priesthood so they could come rescue us.

The only other things of note concern Andrew, who seems to have developed a distinct preference for being "naked" (as he calls any state without shirt and pants, even if he's still wearing a diaper). He's also discovered that he can take his pants off. Monday, after putting him down for his nap, I could hear him playing in his crib instead of sleeping. Then, I heard a peculiar ripping sound, followed, a few moments later, by another. Curious and somewhat annoyed, I picked through a crack in the door to discover that my son had pulled his pants and his diaper off, and was sitting, naked bum and all, in the middle of his blankets. He was quite proud of himself, and tried to repeat the feat that night. Luckily, I stopped him before he got his diaper off. The next night, we tried to put him in footie pajamas, thinking that would prevent the pulling off of the pants. Instead, this meant that when I checked on Andrew about 10 pm, just before retiring, I found him in no pajamas at all, just his diaper. He'd apparently figured out how to unzip the footie pajamas and take them off. Since the basement can be rather cool, I then spent a rather breathless five minutes trying to put pajamas on him without waking him (I never realized how hard it was to put a shirt over his head when he's limp!). We finally figured out a temporary cure, thanks to a tip from my sister: we put the footie pajamas on backwards, so the zipper runs down the back and out of his reach.

Andrew has also, in the waxing spirit of fall, become fascinated with pumpkins. Thus, he has learned a new color: orange. (So now everything is either orange or blue). My mom has been growing some baby pumpkins in her garden, and Andrew loves to help her harvest them. Earlier this week, he came into the house and announced proudly: "pick a punk." It took us all a while to figure out that he meant "pick a pumpkin." Now, he points out pumpkins wherever he sees them. Maybe we'll have to introduce him to the Great Pumpkin.