There's nothing like ....

losing your first tooth ....and your first visit from the tooth fairy.That would be fairy dust and a dollar bill folded into a tiny little airplane. Pretty awesome little tooth fairy, huh? Would have been really sad if she had forgotten to come to our house and this little girl woke up, excitedly looked under her pillow to discover the stash only to see that the tooth fairy had forgotten to come and her little tooth was still there all alone. Would have been so sad to see this little girl run upstairs to her parents room, totally in tears, thinking the tooth fairy had forgotten her. I can just imagine that tooth fairy hearing her tears and flying quickly back to this little girl's room to hurriedly right the wrong that had occured. Then maybe one of this cute girl's parents sensed a fairy visitation had occurred and took the crying little girl by the hand back down to her room to search and see if the tooth fairy had maybe left her a little treasure somewhere else in her room. I'm so glad that didn't happen.

All's well that ends well, right?

Out with the old, in with the new

This past week at our house was spent moving. Moving all of our stuff into boxes and into the garage, laundry room, kitchen, bathrooms ... any room that didn't have carpet in it so that we could make way for the carpet guys to lay new, fresh, clean carpet .... new carpet instead of our old, sun-faded, stained, frayed, worn carpet. It felt like Christmas in June.

We had one major mishap in the process. The kids were playing inside the moving boxes -- hiding from each other and making forts. I decided to get in on the action, so I hid inside one of the boxes and then lifted it up over my head and yelled, "Surprise!" The box hit the ceiling light, which then fell and crashed into our glass coffee table. Everything shattered. Surprise indeed! The kids froze and stared up at me with tear-filled eyes, waiting for my reaction. I looked at the shards of glass everywhere (thankfully the only injury was a tiny scrape on my foot), looked at my scared kids and then busted up laughing. Haley tearfully asked, "How can you laugh at a time like this?" I said, "Well guys, in life you can either cry or you can laugh. I would rather laugh, wouldn't you?" None of them laughed with me but at least it stopped the tears.On the eve of getting the new carpet, I gave our kids markers and told them to go for it on the old carpet. They looked at me like I was crazy but happily grabbed the markers and went to town. (Thanks, Steph, for the idea!)

I love the smell and look of new carpet. So do the kids, apparently.The only problem now is trying to clear out the chaos from the nooks and crannies where we had to shove everything. It was like moving, but without going anywhere. See what I mean?It's a good chance to weed out and clean up, though. At least, that's what I'm telling myself as I look at the mountains of stuff.

San Francisco, part 2

I went back to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago to get my teeth finished up. This time, though, I took Haley so she could pal around with Holland. Let me just say how easy it is to travel with only one child, especially an 8 year old who can pack her own bag and cart it around the airport.She spent most of the flight doing this....We stayed in a nice downtown hotel on the 26th floor, which gave us a great view of the city. On the first morning, Haley and I had killer banana and blueberry pancakes in bed.
Pretty cool just hanging out with each other and having someone else do the cooking. :)

We went down to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf with Jamie & Holland to see the sights and hang out. First priority for the girls was to see the sea lions. It's almost like watching a Sea World show -- they bark and push each other off of the piers. The city finally decided to stop fighting having the sea lions there and just let them take over the area. We walked past a bike shack that advertised, "Ride across Golden Gate Bridge and ferry back." I casually said, "That looks like fun." Jaime, who is an avid road biker, immediately said, "Ooohh! That would be so fun. Let's do it!" I have to admit that I actually thought that the people would drive us to the bridge, we'd get out with our bikes, ride across it and down into Sausalito and then ferry back. I didn't for a second think that we'd be riding from Pier 39 to the Golden Gate Bridge and down to Sausalito, which ended up taking us about an hour and a half. The minute I saw the actual map of our pending adventure, I knew immediately that I'd made a huge mistake. There I was, in my jeans and cute little sandals, getting ready to bike with Jaime, in her exercise clothes and tennis shoes and who rides her bike in 100 mile races. Hi. I look happy here but I was thinking, "Oh crap! What have I done??" Miracle of miracles, though, Haley and I did just fine and we had a great time! Here's the route we took -- from the land on the far left of the 1st picture, followed the water all the way to the bridge, walked our bike up to the bridge (the hill was more than I could do at that point) up and over Golden Gate and then coasted downhill into the beautiful town of Sausalito.Gorgeous views along the way.Haley was awesome during the ride. When I was dying on a hill, I'd shout, "Help me, Haley!" and I'd feel her kick in and get an instant boost.Taking pictures one-handed while crossing the bridge. Yeah, I'm not the safest biker.We ate at a quaint little place on the water in Sausalito and then hopped on a ferry with our bikes (and about 100 other bikers) to head back to the city. I never, ever, ever, would have done it without Jaime encouraging me and knowing that I couldn't let them all down. It was so worth it.

Haley and Holland clicked right away. With the famous Bush Man. According to Wikipedia, this guy makes 60k/year for just hiding behind these branches and jumping out at people.Haley with her turtle bread from Boudin Bakery.Another highlight for Haley and Holland was getting wax molds of their hands at the Wax Museum.The only downside to the trip was getting my ATM card stolen and having $500 charged up in the 30 minutes it took me to figure it was missing. But it's all good now.

And then the purpose of both trips ... I now have these pearly whites and a beautiful smile, especially with the clear mouth guard-things in there. :)

Mythical Creature Camp

Christian is known (in our neighborhood anyway) for his kids' camps every summer. For the past two years, he has planned, organized, advertised and taught Spy Camp. The smaller boys in the neighborhood would come and Christian would spend a couple of hours teaching them how to be spies. I'd look off the balcony and see him teaching the kids how to tuck and roll and hide behind things. They had target practice with fake guns, learned how to eavesdrop effectively .... top quality stuff. :) The parents in our neighborhood would chuckle but were happy to send their kids to our house for a couple of hours.

Christian took the summer camp thing to a new level this year. He held Mythical Creature Camp for 5 kids this summer (4 school friends and Haley, who begged to be included). He wrote his own invitation, printed them on nice paper and hand-delivered, mailed or e-mailed them to everyone. The invitation began "The fate of all mythical creatures is in your hands... Join one of the best camps in the entire world. Use what you know to help you save the rest of magic creatures. Learn about things you never thought were real." It went on to say that the cost was $2 per kid, that they must bring a notebook and then listed the dates & times.

The funny part about all of this was that he did it without my knowledge or help. He had mentioned wanting to have this camp but we never discussed it past that. Not until he said, "Hey mom, my camp is in the morning." Ummm, excuse me? What camp? Who is coming? What are you going to do at the camp? You're charging them what? Only then did I see what he had planned.

He had written up an agenda for each day, including learning about different creatures (dragons, elves, etc.), making a Field Guide, drawing the creatures and having a test at the end. Notice the time set apart for sit-ups and push-ups on Day 3. I'm sure that's what all of the kids thought would be included in their $2 fee.The test made me chuckle ....I fed the kids snacks at the end, let them play for awhile longer and that was it. He planned and carried it all out on his own. Totally blew me away. And cracked me up, too.Can't wait to see what he comes up with next. If anyone wants to pay $2 to come over and do push-ups and sit-ups, let me know. I know a 10 yr. old that would be happy to arrange it.

What the hail?

A few days ago (yes, in mid-June) we were pelted with this stuff. Hello! What happened to summer? That's no small hail, my friends. Trust me -- we ventured outside and took a minor beating from the stuff.

So whatcha doin'?

Summer has begun and we've been off and running. A couple of Fridays ago was the last day of school, Saturday was Haley's big day and then we left early the next morning for our annual trip with the Fetzer sisters in St. George. Such an awesome tradition for the last 3 years running. How I managed to go on vacation and not bring a camera is still a mystery to me but it's unfortunately true. We crammed 5 moms, 7 teenagers and 8 kids into the house and had a great time. Swimming and shopping are always top on our list of things to do but we also squeezed in home manicures & pedicures, movie watching, late nights, frog catching, bat watching/avoiding, musical beds, golfer heckling, group meals, Diet Coke runs to Maverick, an In 'N Out visit, Kodak moments at the sand dunes (had I only had my Kodak or Nikon or anything!) .... Great trip. Thank you Krista & Kate for letting me be your adopted sister every summer!

Christian spent the week home with dad so he could go to the UofU's basketball camp (aka Jimmyball Camp for Coach Jim Boylen). Mike remembers going as a kid and I think he was probably more excited for Christian to go than Christian was himself. But he ended up having a great time. My favorite part was the group picture where Christian slung his arm around Coach Boylen's shoulders. Best of friends, you'd think.

I turned around from St. George and flew back to San Francisco 24 hours later to have my teeth finished. That deserves its own post, but suffice it to say that I've gotten any kind of travelling bug out of my system and am happy to be home just doing the mom thing. Back to laundry, painting, shuttling kids around, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house .... yeah, it's all good.

Rock star

Haley's birthday ended up being full of non-stop activities. Party in the morning, baptism in the afternoon and a mini-concert that night. Mike's firm had tickets to the Salt Lake Real soccer game where none other than American Idol's and Utah's own David Archuleta would be singing the National Anthem and giving a small concert afterward. We decided to surprise Haley as part of her birthday so we told her about it during her party.

"Haley, we have a surprise for you.""We're going to see David Archuleta in concert tonight!""Paige, guess what??"Just a little excited.After a surprisingly nice dinner before the game........ and a little pre-game excitement,we headed outside to watch the game.My kids have never been so excited to hear the National Anthem.After the game, we rushed out onto the field and were right up close to the stage.Mike put Haley up on his shoulders.......which put her pretty much eye level with David. At one point, he pointed at her and smiled. Absolutely made her entire day.Quite the exciting end to her birthday. Christian acted all, "I'm too mature for this kind of stuff" but I think he enjoyed himself, too.