Dad's Socks

Oh the joys of Daddy's socks! When Michael is gone all day on Sunday, Evelyn and I have to entertain ourselves somehow, so we sneak into Daddy's sock drawer, pick out some dress socks and get creative. I think I need to buy him some more socks soon. Here are some of our creations:

 

Meet Peggy the Platypus and Saundra Snake!

And this one is Queenie Quail.

This is Felicity Fawn.

 

Here are all her little sock animals  lined up on her bed.

Millions of Fall Pictures

During the two hours between General Conference we went to the Thanksgiving point gardens and got a photo pass to take advantage of the beautiful fall landscaping they have there. I was especially excited to get cute pictures of Evelyn since her school ones didn't turn out the greatest (I knew she remembered how to smile in pictures--it just took Michael or I subtly poking her in the armpits for a while!)

 

Summer School of Adventure!!!

I had to add those exclamation points to make this post look more exciting.

 

We are having so much fun this year with summer school! When I tell you what we're doing, you'll be like, "Oh, yeah. That sounds totally thrilling." But we really are having fun! Evelyn has such a good attitude about all the junk I make her do. Here's the basic outline for Evelyn:

 

1. Piano for 30 minutes a day

2. Daily Chores

3. Homework workbook--5 pages a day

4. 30 minutes of reading a day

5. Daily good deed

6. Exercise

7. Weekly report on a nonfiction book of Evelyn's choice

8. Weekly science experiment

 

Aren't you glad you aren't my kid? Oh, and I also forgot:

 

Evelyn tracks how obedient she is to her parents and gets stickers for good behavior and extra chores for lack of obedience.

 

K, before you call child welfare,  let me let you in on our secret. To quote Megamind, what makes a villain super is "PRESENTATION!"

 

We picked a Summer School theme of going on Adventures. Her work chart is cleverly disguised as a passport. Her chores bear aliases. For instance: Piano is hidden under "Cultural Music," and Chores are also known as "Setting up and Breaking camp." Every explorer knows that adventure takes a lot of work. It takes study, building good relationships with the natives, being in good physical condition and documenting the findings.

 

We turned our boring living room that looks the same year to year into *drumroll* The Enchanted Tiki room!--with an Adams' twist. It took us days to complete. We also made a compilation of adventurous music to set the mood we wanted.

 

To finish off Evelyn's motivation, I added prizes that she has to earn with her hard work throughout the summer. In other words, I spent over $50 in a toy store to bribe my child to obey. But it's totally working!

The seahorse is Evelyn's prize to do her piano WITH a happy attitude. She has to do her piano anyway, but if I don't have to hear any whining, I'll take it!

 

The octopus is Evelyn's prize for doing chores 5 times a week.

The giant blue rattlesnake is Evelyn's prize for being obedient. It's difficult to not abuse this strange feeling of power I suddenly have...

 This is LAGIKIWA!!! He is the Tiki of Adventure! Every week he carries notes to Evelyn with special assignments, including her science experiments. He has a bit of a temper, and we try not to say things to offend him or he yells at us in rhyme.

 This is the baby Tiki MaAniAni. LAGIKIWA heard her crying in that block of wood and Evelyn found her and painted her. She spends most her time kissing her pet tiger and sleeping.

 

This was one of Evelyn's science experiments. She had to create an island, and we all know an island is made by volcanoes. So we let Evelyn form one out of salt dough and then set it off with baking soda, vinegar and red food coloring. I love how she made her volcano look like the one on Pixar's new short, "Lava".

 

In her other experiments, Evelyn has had to play with gravity by dropping a 5 gallon jug of water from her nose in a baby swing and hold still while it swung back toward her face. She also has played with carbon dioxide by blowing up a balloon and blowing out a candle with the gasses created from mixing vinegar and b. soda. The science experiments are Evelyn's favorite.

 

She also has loved studying for and writing her reports. She picks the subjects, as I mentioned before, and we have studied snakes, seahorses, octopuses (which are totally awesome, by the way), rainforests, and volcanoes. I think we will be making a trip to the aquarium sometime this summer.

Impulse and "Satan George"

With Michael as busy as he is, being a bishop and everything, it is really hard to make or keep schedules. Quite often, our scheduling goes somewhat as follows:

 

Michael: I have a meeting tonight.

Me: Okay. What time do you think you'll be home?

Michael: It should be quick: probably about 8.

Then he usually gets home at 9:30-10 PM.

 

Also, we get a lot of these:

Michael:  I don't have any bishop responsibilities tonight! We can just have a quiet night at home.

Phone: Rings the rest the night.

 

It's pretty funny.This portrays an interesting challenge when it comes to working around him. We still get a lot of time together as a family, it is just not always at the times that we expect it to be.

   Last week was Evelyn's last week of school. Michael wanted to do something to celebrate the kickoff of summer: especially since Evelyn was dreading school ending so much (she is such a different kid!). We tried to come up with  ideas of what we could do, but mostly it was the same things that we do all the time. On Thursday, Michael came up with the idea that we should get a hotel and go on a mini-vacation. It turns out we could get a free hotel in St. George with Michael's hotel points.

  Friday morning we got up and took Evelyn to her last day of school. While she was gone for that last hour and a half, we packed up overnight bags for all of us and  then we picked Evelyn up and started driving. She had no idea where we were going. We had snacks, books, games, and we had rented a movie at the library for her to watch to make the drive go more quickly.



 

 We got to Saint George at about 1:30 or 2:00. We ate lunch at the Black Bear Café. We love experiencing all the different atmospheres at the ma and pa kind of restaurants. We tried to avoid chain restaurants like the plague--because we can go to those anytime up here. We also ate at the Bear Paw Café and a little pizza shop called Riggatti's. That was particularly fun because they throw the pizza dough in the air and they involved Evelyn; they let here come behind the counter to look in their big wood-fire oven and taught her how they turn the pizzas to cook them evenly. I think she came home with a major crush on one of their workers. She even dared him to throw the pizza with his eyes closed. He almost got a face full of pizza dough.

  Another aspect of our trip that was memorable was going to the Red Cliffs. We don't get out camping or hiking much (I don't love uneven ground with my arthritis) and so it was very special to be out seeing those beautiful creations. Michael has never camped around the red rock, and Evelyn has never played in sand dunes. It was very nostalgic for me as my family growing up used to camp all the time and climb those cliffs like nine little mountain goats: making up stories about a wild man that lived in the cliffs and feasted on lizards. 

It was a beautiful day and perfect for Southern Utah: we had a lot of cloud cover, and wind that was gentle enough to not stir up the sand and blow it in our eyes--most the time. 

Evelyn tried to slide down this rock and discovered it wasn't slippery enough.

Evelyn was hunting for lizards the whole time. We were lucky enough to see three pretty big ones, but they were too fast to catch. She wanted to catch one and make a friend of it. Luckily, I knew my daughter pretty well and I brought her own lizards from home. (Yes, they're plastic.) Evelyn had fun burying them in the sand and playing around with them.

 The sand got probably 5 feet deep in some spots. It had blown into drifts, and Evelyn loved climbing them and rolling down them.

Here is her little sand angel.

Saint George (Or "Satan George" as Evelyn used to call it,) is also where some of my ancestors are from. In fact, one of my ancestors, Hans Ulrich Bryner, was the first person buried in the Saint George Cemetery. We went to visit their graves. Evelyn loved hearing some of our pioneer stories. If you would like to hear one of my ancestor's stories, visit this blog: here . 

 

We swam. We stayed up late eating way too much junk food. It was a blast!