Vacation

Well, we made it to Utah in the evening, Anna's girls were all asleep so we got a tour of their new beautiful home and then got our boys to sleep, and the big boys totally lucked out and got to sleep in a playhouse. We got a room in the basement with carpet and artwork on the walls. It was the perfect Armenian room! The next morning when we came upstairs, Miles was awake along with some of the girls. They were already playing so nicely. We ate breakfast then let them play freely. It's like they had been friends for years. haha, and they actually have but none of them remember each other very well since the last couple visits have been without the kids. (Last year Buck and Anna came up to Oregon with just their baby, Rose, and the year before that it was just me and Anna going to Armenia.) Once it was quiet time for the babies, we set out on a walk along the lake. My boys were thrilled that June and Hazel were so willing to share their scooters. (FYI, the majority of these photos are from Anna)

Once we got back from our walk, we got ready to head to the lake with Buck's new Father's day kayaks. 

 

We made our way to Tibble's Fork Reservoir where the crowds were starting to to thin out. Once the boats were all set up, Max rowed out with the 4 year olds (Miles and Hazel) and Buck rowed with the 6 year olds (Charlie and June) Rose and Edwin stayed on the shore playing in the water and with borrowed (stolen) sand toys.

 

 He was pretty proud of the rocks he collected in the water.

 

I was pleased he didn't go out too far in the water and only fell in once!

 
 

After a long time of exploring, Buck and Max rowed back and exchanged the big kids for their babies so Edwin and Rose got a little ride

 

It was getting late and the kids were getting hungry so we made our way down the canyon a bit and started a fire for a weenie and s'mores roast 

 

 

 
I don't know why I'm making this stink face...probably because I dropped multiple hot dogs into the fire...Max was kind enough to eat one of them so we didn't waste.
 Rosie loved that chair....

 

We got home late and threw all the boys into the big tub then put them to bed. 

The next morning we had a gourmet breakfast!And played around the house for awhile. 

 Once it was nap time, we decided to make our way to Provo and show our kids our old college. Anna and Buck stayed behind and got some Home Depot shopping done!

 We planned to walk the grounds of the new Provo city Center temple but it was closed for maintenance. Back when we were students, we had some conferences in this building before a fire burned it down, it has since been rebuilt as a beautiful temple!

We got to BYU and made the boys climb the many stairs, which they did with ease!

 

We took our kids to the BYU library, and they now have a family study area where kids can play while parents study. Brilliant! Luckily I got my degree a couple months before Charlie was born. But my kids loved it and it convinced them that they want to go to BYU! haha!

 

 
We grabbed some ice cream and cones from the BYU creamery and made our way back to Anna and Buck's house to have a quick dinner then get ready to go to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens!

Miles and Edwin passed out in the car. Miles sleeps likes a rock once he is out so it was a pretty good struggle to wake him up.

Pretty much all of these photos are from Anna since she was doing our family photos and  I put my camera away!

Is it not the coolest thing that we have kids the same age?!??!

 Except now Anna is expecting her 4th very soon (a boy!) and there is no sign of a fourth for us anytime soon!

 

 Stay tuned for our family photos!
When we got back, Anna and I ran to the store leaving the men to put the kids to bed. (The store is a madhouse on a Saturday night in Utah!) When we came back, after long good chats, the house was quiet, the kids were asleep, the kitchen was clean, (and counters buffed). Good men right?! So then Max and Buck went out to check out his electric car, and once again we were up super late...but really how often to you get to have uninterupted conversations with other adults? Seemed like a good reason to stay up late, plus we were still on Oregon time so it didn't seem that weird to be awake at 1am!
The next day was Sunday. We went to church with the Harrisons, the boys got to go to primary with June and Hazel. Edwin and Rose struggled in nursery (but thankfully their dads took care of that!)

The afternoon had mac and cheese with hotdogs and some quiet restful time! Until everyone was awake, then it was wild wrestling, dance parties, dress up and skits!

And there was also the Armenian bread and Dolma for dinner! So good, And I may finally be brave enough to recreate it!

  

We stayed up late once again but finally called it a night because we needed to start our long drive back in the morning. 

We woke up and finished packing up, ate breakfast, and waved our goodbyes. We were on the road by 9:15. The boys did surprisingly well again. Thanks to some good audio books and the occasional ipad time. The were doing so well that I didn't want to stop until I needed to and we emptied our gas tank to "1 Miles to empty"

 We made a dinner stop in Boise at Chili's because we had a Chili's gift card and there are no Chili's in Portland anymore! So that was exciting!

We finally made it home around 10pm. We absolutely loved our time in Utah and with the Harrisons. They took good care of us and we are so pleased with how well our kids got along. Hopefully they won't hit the awkward stages for awhile and they will continue to be good friends! hooray!

Traveling to Utah

It had been years since we went to Utah. The last time was when Miles was 6 months old. We don't have any family there but we certainly have amazing friends living there. Our dear friends Buck and Anna Harrison served in Armenia with me. I got to be companions with Anna twice and then we got to return to Armenia together 2 years ago. So basically, we are lifelong friends (and she is our life photographer) and the most wonderful thing is that she has 3 girls the same age as my three boys. (I'm pretty sure my 3 blog readers know all this information but I gotta write it down anyway) So they just built their new home and we got to be some of the first guests. They even had an excellent Armenian room with carpeted walls for us to stay in!
But I'm getting ahead of myself! We hadn't done many road trips with our boys and Max needed to work a half day on the Wednesday we left so we only drove halfway and stopped in Boise. We planned for our drive to take awhile with needed stops, our stops were pretty quick and minimal (thatnks to having all boys that can stop and pee anywhere.) We got pulled over for speeding a bit by the friendliest cop around and got away with a warning and stickers for the kids.
We eventually had dinner at a little diner 2 hours outside Boise. Edwin trying to entertain us. This kid has been busting with personality these days!

 We were able to stay with the Pews (Anna's parents) while we were there. We've stayed with them multiple times and they are always such hospitable people. We got in late and put the kids in bed (who did great in the car!) Sidenote, Edwin got bored in the car and when that happens, he takes off his glasses and pops out the lenses. When we arrived we couldn't find one of the lenses anywhere and searched the whole car, multiple times. So we just decided to look in the morning when it was light out, so we all went to bed.

 Also at Casa Pew there is a trampoline and amazing pool so we decided to stay there all morning and make more memories.

 Worn out!

After a good couple hours of swimming, we cleaned up, packed up and Max tore apart the car looking for that silly little lens, we also searched our diaper bag,  clothes duffel bag and everything Edwin was wearing, I then remembered he had played in the music room right when we came in the night before so I was on my hands and knees looking all over for the lens in there. As we were cleaning up lunch, Liz had stepped into the music room just to do a quick check and in less than a minute...she came out showing us that SHE FOUND THE LENS. What?!? I was so relieved and grateful and surprised I was about to cry. This may seem like not that big of deal, I'm sure we could have replaced his glasses when we got back home but it would be at a cost and he would have gone the whole vacation with no glasses which may have been straining on his eyes. Anyway, that was our eventful and memorrable first day of vacation and we are so grateful to the Pews for opening their home to our circus of a family. 

Oh and my boys found this secret hideout just before leaving. 

Things you can't do in Oregon....

 So we set off on our way, stopped in Ogden for some Cafe Rio and found out kids eat quesidillas for free which was great because that's probably the only thing my kids would eat and then finally made it to Anna and Bucks brand new lake front home by 10pm!

To be continued...

Father's Day 2018

I love Father's day. Probably because we get to do extra special things for Max and he really is so easy to please. Generally I just plan on cooking some of his favorite food. This year, I had a pretty exciting gift that I started months in advance...but more on that in a second.

In preparation for church, Max wrote his talk. He spoke this year on Father's Day and I spoke last year on Fathers day. I also baked a pie as we were going to pass out pie to all the men at the end of church. Max requested Lemon Meringue!
On Father's day morning we pulled our kids out of bed nice and early which has been more of a struggle since they are already used to sleeping in since school ended.

Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed church and listening to Max's talk. He shared some stories of his dad, two of which I should share here.

1. His dad was always up early in the morning (old farming habit) and would often bring Max breakfast in bed, it was always the same breakfast, toast, scrambled eggs, and hot chocolate. As he brought the breakfast to Max he would sing "For he's a jolly good fellow..."

2. Max's dad was in his 50s when Max was born, so much older than all his friends' dads. One day in Max's PE class, they were working on climbing the rope, no one in the class could do it. And for some reason, Max's dad was visiting that day, and he showed all the kids how he could climb the rope, all the way to the top, without using his legs, while in his 60s. Max was so proud!

It was a beautiful and uplifting talk. At the end of church the pie was passed out and it turned out that there were so many pies that every single person at church could have some and there were still leftovers.

In the afternoon, we got our house ready for Father's day dinner. We invited my Dad and brothers this year. We had lasagna, steak (Grilled up by my brothers), salad, Martenellis and a dutch oven lava cake. (My little brothers gave me the dutch oven 1.5 years ago so I had to show them I use it! haha!) There were zero photos taken at this event except for 1 cell phone photo of my lava cake that looked like tar, yet tasted pretty good. So, I'm just gonna leave the photos out of this.

So for Max's gift... Remember how a couple years ago we stumbled upon some notebooks that we thought were high school homework and we realized they were Max's journals that he kept pretty much all through high school. These journals are absolutely priceless because it was at that time when we started to become close friends, started dating, and had our first kiss. But more importantly, at that time, Max was deciding what kind of person he wanted to be, he was discovering his relationship with his Heavenly Father and learning to recognize promptings from the Holy spirit, he realized he needed to make his own choices to build the life he wanted, he worked to align his life with the choices he believed were right. Well, As I'm reading his journals I'm thinking of all the valuable insights that our boys can have when they go through those teenage years. So I wanted to go through the journals and highlight or write down the "things I want my teenage boys to know coming from their teenage father" (If I was a real blogger, I could probably think of a better title) So I started by just reading the journals and writing down the things I wanted my boys to know, but then I ended up transcribing it. It is written in fancy (and sometimes sleepy) cursive, in a shoddy spiral bound notebook, so I realized we would want this better preserved. As I was typing it out, I highlighted some portions that we would love to share with our boys, some  funny, some informative, some spiritual, and others showing major struggles. It turns out that this is a really big project and I'm not even 25% of the way done, but I certainly am enjoying myself as I go through his journals and remind myself over and over of what and amazing person he is.

Since his journal is quite personal, I'm only going to share a couple of the silly things written like...

11-2-01

Some people would argue that I’m too old to go trick or treating. I don’t ever think you’re too old. I mean when it comes to free candy. There is no age limit.

5-11-02

I wish I didn't give up piano.

6-20-02

We are going horseback riding, kayaking, and eat corndogs. I think I’m really excited.

(I just like that corndogs are in the same category of horseback riding)

The first time Max mentions me in his journal is when he is 15 and we went with a group of friends to the hot air balloon festival, he said...

6-15-02

I’m really tired because Tammy, Rebecca, Jeffery, and I went to the Tigard Festival of balloons. It was great! Although we didn’t get to do very much because it was already late, plus we were poor. We wandered around the place getting all the free samples that we could, It was all really good fun.

This made me laugh so hard because it kind of is a theme for our marriage...always doing what we can to get the best discount and save the most money....haha

Anyway, it was kind of an awkward gift because who would really want to go into their 15 year old mind, but Max is grateful and excited about the idea and hopes our boys don't justify doing stupid things because "dad did it" 
I, on the other hand, believe that my boys would be amazing if they ended up just like their dad. Obviosuly each of my boys is their own person and will have their own struggles and make their own choices. But how often is it that a kid gets a glimpse into his father's teenage head?

Maybe more of the personal parts of the journal will end up in the future book we write. haha!

So the point is, kids need fathers and my kids are super blessed to have Max as a father. He works so hard for his family and has incredible energy and drive to create the best environment for our family.
 
 And is totally an everyday hero!