A Science Experiment

So where have I been for the past 2+ years?  Well, certainly not blogging.  But, during those 2 years I have had the nagging feeling that I really, REALLY should be writing.  Frankly, for awhile I was just a bit unhappy with where my life was (nothing to do with you, family) after making the move here to Utah from my beloved MD/DC area.  Despite spending a few years living in Logan, Utah near or with Andy while we were engaged and newly married (that was like, over a DECADE ago... crazy), I didn't know much about this middle part of Utah.  I was getting my bearings and just taking a break.  I missed my family back east and my life there, and all that the area there had to offer.

But, Utah has so much to love too.

And the scenery!

And all of the things here that I love to do.

I'm back in the groove now, ready to write so that I (and you too kids) will remember some of the adventures that we have had.

Tonight is finally the night that updating the blog climbs to the top of the practically insurmountable to-do list.

There are so many things that I should write about, but I'm gonna start simple:

This summer, we had a cross country trekking road trip camping adventure.  I will be writing all about it in chunks.  But one day, not too long ago we were at my Mom's house and Matt comes up to me looking like this:

Have you ever played the game "I am a fuzzy bunny" where you stuff as many marshmallows into your mouth as possible and repeat "I am a fuzzy bunny" until you can't talk anymore?  Well, Matt was using that voice and came up to me and said

"I ave a science expermint mom..."

He found these high powered magnets on my mom's fridge and wondered if they worked through his skin, so two went in the mouth, and two went on his cheeks.  The cool thing was it totally worked!  I agreed that it was a cool experiment, but didn't think that magnets in the mouth was a habit that we should mess around with more than once.

So the moral of the story is... Matt is my inspiration for completing his science experiment.  Now my experiment (however un-scientific) is to see if I can actually follow through on regularly updating this thing by mixing what we are up to recently, with some of my favorite stuff from the past 2 years.  Let's see if this experiment works as well as his!

Thoughts of Grandma

 
Thoughts of Grandma, 2:55 am September 2, 2011




She never did get the chance to come up to my new house in Utah, but as I look around, I see signs of her everywhere. The painting that she made in college many years ago of Mt. Timpanogas hangs above my computer where I type this. I see the book of family history that she compiled and wrote, the culmination of many years of investigation and work. A postcard that she sent from Death Valley in February is on my refrigerator. Even though her handwriting is a little shakier than it used to be, it is still neat and beautiful cursive that says “A strange, beautiful, and interesting area to visit. I love you all. Gram”. Maybe most telling of all is the envelope that is in my inbox with a birthday card, and a check for $35 dollars in it…a birthday gift that she sent 2 months early, just in case, knowing that her body was wearing out finally.



I received the call from my mom about 45 minutes ago, when I was deep in sleep… Grandma passed away. Although I knew this call would come, all I feel at first is disbelief. A world without my Grandma in it just doesn’t seem possible. I lay in bed for awhile trying to process it, and my head is swimming with things that I want to remember. So I am here, typing away and letting the tears flow as I write and think of her.



I have been told that we are alike in many ways. I think that she is much classier, of course but I do think that my love and admiration for the beauty that is everywhere comes from her.  I like to think that I am like her. 



Many years ago, when I was a (young) teenager, my grandma was distributing most of her treasured things among her grandkids. She had the china cabinet full of sparkling crystal and china sets, and the table had various pieces of silver and jewelry, and a few other things passed down from her mother, and her painting. One by one, and in age order the grandkids picked an item. I immediately loved the painting… an impressionistic landscape of rural Utah, with the mountain glowing violet at the peak of the deep blue mountain. There are trees scattered about on the landscape in the foreground, and fields of pale green and gold, with a dirt road winding off into the distance. Utah in the spring, at sunset. I know the scene especially well now because I live here, and ski on the back side of that same mountain in the winter. When my turn to select something came, I felt really lucky to pick the painting. It was fitting, I thought, not just because it was beautiful, but because she was the one who taught me as a kid how to paint mountains, and how as the mountains recede behind one another they fade from vivid colors to purple. The painting has brought me much more happiness than any china ever could, because love of art was one of her gifts to me.



Some things will forever remind me of her, like the taste of a fresh sugar snap pea, picked from the garden in the summer. I loved helping her in her garden as a kid, and she would let us kids pick and eat as many peas as we wanted. It was funny, because as any of my family could tell you, I loathed peas. But hers were totally different from the sad, shriveled peas in a can. I never knew that peas could taste good. It is still really the only way that I eat peas. She liked to tell the story of how I hated peas so much that I wouldn’t swallow them, and one morning my mother came to wake me up, I had a mouthful of green mush that had been my peas from the night before. So she let me eat her snap peas.



The reminders go on as I walk around my house. There is the book that is on my nightstand, which when I went on a visit to her house in St. George about a year ago she had the exact book lying with bookmark in place on her nightstand. What are the chances that we would both be reading the very same edition of “Great American Short Stories” before bed at night at the same time?



In my garden, the Siberian Irises are doing well. I was surprised that they bloomed earlier in the summer after being dug out of my garden in Maryland in the fall, put in a trash bag and making a 4 day journey in a moving truck across the country. They sat for a few more days then Andy was able to plant them in the garden, until I arrived at our new home a few weeks later and moved them yet again to a place where they were less likely to be stepped on. The plant began its life decades earlier, probably around the time that my father and uncle were born. My grandma planted it in what she later told me was a rental house in Riverdale, or across from University Park and then she moved a cutting to her College Park house where it lived happily for many years. I always admired the Irises, so when I had my own yard to take care of next door in College Park, I took a chunk which really thrived. I wanted to keep it going in Utah, and I am so glad that it can remind me of Grandma every early summer when the beautiful blue flowers are in bloom. She always had a beautiful garden, and still does in St. George.



Other memories:



Cowboy cookies

Vanilla/ orange sherbet mix

No tv, because she always had other more fun or educational choices

Making gingerbread cookies every Christmas time

Her homemade pickles on thanksgiving

Road trips

Amish country with shoo fly pie, apple fritters and picnicking at the old church with the hand pump out back.

Sandy Spring

Flash cards

My image of her in her older years is standing on a red rock overlooking the beautiful Snow Canyon.



Her sleeping under the stars on camping trips





It feels good to write this. As long as her stories are alive, so is she. I feel like I have so much to learn from her still, and of course I have regrets of questions that I never got to ask, and letters that I never sent. Hopefully though, she knows that I will always remember her and will pass her stories on to another generation who will feel blessed to be her ancestors. I know I am.

(photo: reading a story to Karen and my kids, Sydney shown.  December 2010)

Drew's First Pinewood Derby

Drew recently had his first Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. He was excited to be able to build this project, since he has always liked that kind of thing. The same night that he got his box of parts, he sat down and sketched out a few different options of how he might want the car to look. He settled on a dragster looking design, and that was the car that he ended up building.


Andy helped him get the shape cut out and gave guidance as to how the process works. This was another instance when I was glad that we all live together again, since these two had a good time working on this together.


On the night before the race, Drew finished getting it painted and we took it to get weighed at his leaders' house. It was too light, so we had to come up with a plan to make it exactly 5 ounces. I got out my painters tape, which fortunately is the same color blue that he painted his car, and Drew ended up taping on 10 quarters to get it up to exactly 5 ounces.


On the day of the derby, there were a lot of cars.


And a lot of cub scouts... 3 packs racing together.


Drew's car took the lead in his first race. Of the three times that his car ran, he came in first, second, and first.


Drew jumps for joy at the finish line. The photos are blurry, but you get the idea, right?


A Dad even had the results and stats posted on the screen... pretty fancy compared to other pinewood derbies that I have been to.


In the end, out of all of those scouts, Drew came in third place and got this really cool plaque made by the lady holding the microphone in our ward. It's funny, because before the derby I was giving him all of these pep-talks about how he did such a great job on his car and not to be disappointed if his doesn't win. Hopefully this doesn't set the bar too high in years to come, but we were happy for the results and proud of him, not just for the 3rd place but because he was a really good sport with his friends and because he worked hard on it.


Here's a better photo of the plaque. Now I need to find a nice place to display it in his room, since it's the first "real" trophy that he has earned (as opposed to the participation ones that he got for being on sports teams).

Sydney's 6th Birthday

Sydney loves to sleep in... especially on school days. So as usual Drew, Matt and I were all awake before she was on Friday. We wanted to wake her up by singing "Happy Birthday" to her, and by showing her the especially nice surprise... that Yarrow (our cat who she adores) who had gone out several nights before and hadn't come back had finally made it home late the night before while I was finishing the flower pinata for her party. I had decorated the house with streamers, balloons, and a birthday banner the night before (which has become a tradition for birthdays since Drew turned 2). Like every morning that Sydney has school, she was buried deep in her blankets with crazy hair and hesitant to wake up. But we sang the birthday song and she perked right up, and went right to hugging and playing with Yarrow.


For breakfast, I made her some pancakes with buttermilk sauce, drizzled with maple syrup and sprinkles. The buttermilk sauce tastes like caramel, and it's awesome on scones, pancakes, french toast, or probably just about anything. Anyway, I'm getting hungry, so I'd better get back on the birthday topic.


After Sydney was finished with school (am kindergarten), she and I headed up to Sundance ski resort to catch a few hours on the mountain while Andy's mom was nice enough to keep an eye on the boys. Sydney is the best snowboard partner... but I'll save that for another post. Suffice it to say, we had a blast.


Of all of the things that I can cook, for her birthday dinner Sydney chose canned chicken noodle soup. Maybe that speaks volumes of my abilities in the kitchen, or hopefully it's just that she's really liked that canned soup lately. I defrosted some homemade chicken soup for the rest of us that I made with leftover rotisserie chicken a week or so earlier. She helped me decorate the birthday cake (she loves to do that) and she wrote her name on the cake. Because really, how many times do you get to write your own name on a flower cake with sparkle y pink frosting. According to spell check, the y is not attached to sparkle in order to be correct... so I learned something new today.


We sang the song and she blew out her candles. Matt was very sad that he couldn't blow them out, so I tried to reassure him that he would have a turn soon (in less than 2 weeks).


Then it was present time. She got a dress and book from her Watson grandparents and some toy hamsters (Zu-Zu pets) from the Kelley grandparents that she has wanted for awhile. From us she got a unicorn pillow pet and some rollerblades. She is still in her skiing under layer here, complete with $17 socks that I had to buy at Sundance because she forgot hers. She did need some real ski socks anyway, so I guess those were a birthday present too. It was a happy birthday.

On Neglect

I am guilty of neglecting my blog lately. Over a year ago, I reluctantly jumped into the blogging world feeling as if I really didn't need another obligation taking up more space in my life. Still, I have enjoyed it much more than I thought I would... both looking back and reading about certain events or feelings that I had, and keeping up with friends who blog. Since I made the decision to keep a blog, I should lovingly care for it like a garden. Sadly, when I garden I get all excited about it in the winter and work hard all spring but once the lazy days of summer set in and the weeds go crazy, and there are adventures to be had and pools to swim in, things get let go more than they should. I am re-focusing my efforts to give the attention to blogging that it deserves... and gardening.

So I have a lot to catch up on.

The question is always the same.... Do I do posts of all of the things that I thought I should write about, or just start from now? We'll see I guess.

The photo above is the indoor garden of lettuces, spinach, and green onion and it's doing quite well on my kitchen window ledge.... and the photo below is of Matt because I think that he's cute.

Sydney's Roller Coaster

This is one of the many ways that Sydney is spending her extra time now that she only has half day Kindergarten.

Another Reason to Love Legos

Drew first fell in love with Legos in Kindergarten. Since then, he has asked for Legos for probably 95% of his birthday or Christmas presents. When he earns money for good grades he saves up for the Lego set that his little heart most desires, and in his spare time there is not much that he loves to do more than.... you guessed it, build cool things out of Legos. Sometimes, I get tired of the tiny pieces scattered in places where I don't think that they belong. But mostly, I think they are one of the very best toy type things out there. In September he even took a class with his 2 cousins David and Greg about Lego robotics at the Lego store in MD... and had a great time of course (his cousins being his other favorite thing).



So, the other day when I got ready to put together a bench for my mud area that I got at Ikea, I had an idea. It came with a booklet that pretty much looked like lego instructions, with step by step instructions and pictures of which parts are needed. I handed the project right over to Drew, and his assistant Sydney, then I went in the kitchen to chop veggies for some corn chowder (which was fabulous and I should post the recipe) and I stayed out of his hair.


So I was thrilled when after an hour or so, and a break to play with one of the new neighbor kids, the project was pretty much done with zero help from me. I did pound together some of the pieces with a rubber mallet and tighten the screws that were more difficult at the end, but that was it. Drew was proud of himself, and I was glad not to do it myself. A win win... all thanks to hours and hours of putting together Legos.