January was filled with lots of great experiences. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.
Jeremy took the boys on a bus ride downtown.
They went to the big library and 7-11.
We set up the swing that we gave the boys for Xmas. This tree is right outside our front room.
Dallin did some drawing one afternoon on the swing.
This is the view from our swing. Beautiful!!
People still trash the bike lane on garbage day.
Tanner lost his 3rd tooth!
Two silly kids in Jeremy’s pants.
Three Kings Day, I stuffed the boys’ shoes with some treats they rarely get.
Dallin lost his 5th tooth!! Got knocked out by Jeremy again. This time Jeremy was waving his hand in Dallin’s face, gently bonked his cheek. Dallin felt the tooth on his tongue and spit it out. So he had 3 teeth in a row on top that were all missing. Eating was pretty hard for a bit there.
My Grandma Robertson passed away. I was feeling pretty melancholy, but also relieved for her. I came to peace with everything before she passed, which I felt very grateful for. Tanner was very sad and had several good cries about it. (Death and goodbyes are really hard for him). I let the boys stay home from school cuz it was easier than trying to rush them to calm down and get dressed for school. We laid low throughout the morning and then I felt really drawn to the idea of going to Golden Corral Buffet for lunch. Grandma loved buffets and this was one of her favorites. The nearest one was pretty far from where we live, but it was worth it. The boys loved it (they hadn’t been in years) and it was a great time to think about her. It turned out that many of my cousins and their kids also went to Grandma’s favorite buffets that day!
Jeremy’s city league basketball games are usually late at night, so when this one was around dinner time, we took the chance to watch him play. The boys ate a sack lunch and watched their daddy.
This kid during church is just too adorable! What a goof. He wanted to wear his Sunday hat inside-out for a different look.
Did I ever mention that Jeremy is serving on the High Council for our church? This means he is among 12 other priesthood holders that assist the stake president with overseeing 8 different church congregations in our area. Jeremy was called and set apart in September, the same weekend that Tanner was baptised. He gets to speaks once a month in one of the congregations. He also has the assignment to oversee the stake public affairs, self-reliance program, and emergency preparedness program. Like all leadership in our church, the position is volunteer based. He really enjoys it because it is far less time consuming than other church positions.
This is the bike ramp he takes to church when he has early mornig meetings.
We were blessed with some very special visitors from Jan 16-18!! Cammie and her family came to visit! She is my dear friend and Music Ed colleague that went to Thailand with me in 2005. We launched a project to teach English with music, specifically using American children’s folk songs. From our experience together, we co-authored a teacher’s resource called Sing Me English.
I’ve been able to catch Cammie for some quick visits when we’ve been in Utah, but this was the first time we’ve had a visit longer than a couple of hours in over 10 years. Her family crashed at our place for a couple days and we took them to as many beaches as we could.
Torrey Pines Beach and trails were gorgeous. I got to have the guests all to myself on this outing because the boys were at school and Jeremy was at work.
Cammie’s oldest and my oldest played on the swing.
Dallin loved playing with the baby.
We took them to our favorite Thai place, which is a hole in the wall type place in the back of a liquor store. Everyone, including the kids, loved the food.
Dallin and the big sisters are crowding around the baby. Dallin loved trying to make her smile and watch what she does.
Cammie introduced us to Children’s Pool Beach in La Jolla. We loved seeing the seals, bright green mossy cliffs, rocks, crabs and feeling the sand, which Tanner pointed out had the consistency of brown sugar!
At Coronado Beach, the kids played so well throughout the afternoon together. They built a play area in the sand for the baby, and she crawled and dug, absolutely loving it. She managed to escape from her play pit a couple of times and surprised us at how far she got away! She also loved the ocean waves.
We parked in one of our favorite spots, but we got tickets for not being parrallel. Boo.
Dinner at Barrio Dog’s was a hit!
We had such an AWESOME time with the Clark family. I am so grateful our kids got to play together, that our husbands got to meet each other, that my kids could hear Cammie’s stories about our college years and our time in Thailand. Those experiences years ago were so special, so life changing. It was incredible to remember them and to share where we’ve come since then. As you can imagine, we were chatting nonstop about life, parenting, teaching, multiculturalism, our faith, and on and on! This woman is so inspiring to me. The things she has taught and experienced with me are great life treasures that have shaped a huge part of who I am. It’s been an amazing blessing to have Cammie (aka Malee) in my life!!!
Jeremy caught this sillouette of Tanner one morning. Tanner is still our early bird in the family, waking up an hour or more before Jeremy. It seems to be a toss up on whether he will wake up the whole family in very annoying ways or quietly slip into the library and work on projects. This was one of those days where he got fully engaged in a project. He will make spreadsheets and calendars, play with legos, make his own comics, or write coded messages to his neighbor friend.
Tanner and Jeremy had some special time relaxing in the swing together one Sunday afternoon. They took a ton of pictures of the things around them. This is just a small collection.
Looking in the house through the window by the swing.
I had a successful first day of teaching an after-school enrichment class at the boy’s elementary school. I wore African clothes! I also began my first legit session of private lessons with 9 students!
Cheetos, PB and minecraft videos for dinner? Yep.
Jeremy was able to take the boys to a Pioneer Day at the Mormon Batallion in Old San Diego. (I wasn’t feeling well enough to go. Sciatica flare up.) The boys had a lot of fun!!
Dallin wanted a picture of this track he made.
Dallin fell asleep on my bed. I can’t remember if he was sick or just tired.
At the end of January, we all flew out to Colorado to see family and attend my grandma’s graveside dedication. This is us arriving in Denver, shivering in the shuttle because there was snow on the ground!
The boys were really excited to be at Papa and Nana’s house.
Our baby niece was there!! The boys and Jeremy got to meet her for the first time. We were enamored by her!
Tanner was really excited to be able to hold her.
The graveside dedication took place on Friday morning in Fort Collins. Grandma didn’t want a funeral, just a graveside dedication. I think she sent in cold, windy weather to insure that the dedication didn’t drag on. Owen gave a prayer, Dave said some brief kind words about Grandma, and then my dad dedicated the grave. It was short, sweet and simple, just like she wanted it. All the grandkids and great-grandchildren were given a rose to keep or lay on her casket. Me, Tanya and Desha placed ours together in a little clump. Tanner put his on the casket and Dallin kept his. There were beautiful flowers all around.
Desha’s flower
My flower
Our sister clump.
All the grandchildren flowers.
Papa showing the headstones to Tanner and one of the cousins.
These little cousins were so cute bundeling up!
After the dedication, we all warmed up at the house. There was a beautiful spread of Greek food for everyone. We watched a slide show, shared stories, explored the shed, and were able to walk around the home to choose momentos to take home with us. I was able to find some cute trinkets for our world collection and some cute skirts. But the thing I was most excited about was digging through grandma’s collection of scarves!!
This is my favorite picture of my Grandma and Grandpa. Great smiles, great colors, and a great occassion- my wedding!
We got some cousin photos!
We tried to remake this photo. The big joke with this shot is that everyone is looking off to the side like a kid that can’t focus on the camera:
So we had fun with it:
Here’s most of the great-grand babies!
On Saturday, we came up to Fort Collins to visit the family in between lunch and the Open House at the church. There wasn’t much in Grandma’s house now except… all the food storage that Grandma and Grandpa had in the basement! One unique item was water. For years on end, whatever kind of container or jar they emptied in their kitchen – from applesauce to peaches to ketchup – they filled it with water and stored it in the basement. They accrued quite an impressive collection of water. Literally, THOUSANDS of jars of water were taking up every possible nook and cranny of their storage room.
Even more interesting than the amount of water was how old and yucky the water appeared. It seems that as Grandpa’s Parkinson’s got worse, the water and other food storage items got neglected. Although the water was completely undrinkable now, each jar spoke of an important lesson to me. Their collection stood as a testament to their amazing dedication to self sufficiency and planning ahead. I was impressed that they took time, when they were strong and able, to store something up for a rainy day. A really neat example to me that I won’t forget!
I knew that at some point, the water and jars would have to be discarded. Thinking of the time it would take for my dad and his brother to get all those jars out of the basement made me want to help out. With Dad’s permission, we formed a water brigade with our boys and several cousins. We emptied out a good portion of the water supply (maybe 500 jars?) during the next hour, saving one or two people a few hours of work.
We had a lot of fun discovering the different containers that were used and the strategies for sealing and storing the jars. We also found some interesting specimans inside several jars–definitely not drinkable water! The boys enjoyed leaning the milk tubs of water against the roots of the tree and watching it drain on its own into the grass. They ran back and forth bringing us empty bottles and taking new ones to go dump.
At the Open House for the community, we kept the kids entertained with games in small classrooms. I sang songs with the littles in one room for awhile. During Jeremy’s shift, he played with his slow motion camera, and the boys loved taking shots of them jumping over trash cans.
I had fun visiting with my cousins! Looking forward to a time when we can visit again!
Before leaving, we were able to have a fun birthday celebration for Grandma Nana. It was fun to see these little cousins together with their grandparents!
