Back home and Logan's lost tooth!

I started this week out at Laurie and Chris's in Holladay! It's been years since I last slept overnight at their place, so it was fun to do it again. I worked from their place on Monday and was treated to an all-you-can eat buffet of potato salad and Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets! Actually, as I was preparing to leave Monday night after saying goodbye to Jordan, Laurie remembered that there might have been more nuggets from the evening before, still in the oven where they were staying warm after we turned it off but while waiting for the guests to eat the chicken that had already been served. So... we opened the oven and sure enough! There were two more trays of chicken nuggets in there! Good thing she remembered right then because Tuesday morning was garbage day, and those two trays were already starting to smell not-so-good.

Potato salad and chicken nuggets, anyone?

I was really glad to hear from Mom that she was doing much better today and that she had been eating and feeling okay. She texted me this picture of another Share a Coke bottle that she was enjoying with her dinner at UVRMC (the hospital) where she volunteers on Monday nights in the gift shop. It made me smile to see that she had found another special bottle!

Mom sharing a picture of a Share a Coke with Luke

Before I left Holladay, I helped Chris get their hot tub back in place on the patio. They had been going back and forth about whether to bring it back to the house after moving it away for the farewell receptions. The heat pump has had perennial issues, so they were considered selling it, but when Chris found some affordable replacement parts for the whole system, he decided to bring it back and give it another go.

He backed the trailer right up to the patio, and the two of us pushed and shimmied the thing back into place on the patio, a feat that Jordan would have been proud of.

Mimi and Jack would have loved having a hot tub, I'm sure!

Laurie, Jemma, and I went out for an In-n-Out burger (another one for the burger blog!) cause we were all chicken'ed out! We decided to sit outside because the weather was so nice. Chris was back at home, "detailing" the hot tub, so we took him a burger when we were done.

Laurie and little Laurie (Jemma)

When it was time to go, Laurie drove me to the SLC airport and dropped me at the curb. Traveling solo almost feels like a pleasure after having done most of my recent traveling with kids.

Big sister, little brother.

It was great to be home after a few days away, and it was especially great to see the kids! There were a number of other fun events that happened this week, including Luke's Kindergarten Open House evening on Thursday! We stopped by Harmony Elementary and got to see his classroom. We got a letter last week with the teacher/classroom assignments. He had told us from the Kindergarten round up a few months ago that there was a Kindergarten teacher called Mrs. "Broccoli." We thought that was funny and weren't sure if he was being serious. So we were pleased and surprised to see that Luke's teacher would indeed be Mrs. "Broccoli" this year, though she spells it "Brockley." He seemed pretty excited about getting to go into his classroom and see where he'd spend his first full year of public education.

Luke in his Kindergarten classroom

It was only a few months ago that Luke lost his first tooth. Well, this week Logan lost HIS first tooth! Though it wasn't in the same or usual way for loosing a tooth. He and Luke were sort of rough-housing upstairs, playing in the play room on the guest bed we had put in there for visitors. Well, we're not sure totally how it all went down, but Logan and Luke had been jumping on the mattress that was partially on the bed, partially on the floor. They may have been sliding or jumping down. But we heard some commotion, followed by Luke yelling, "Logan lost a tooth! Logan lost a tooth!"

I came out of my office to find a teary-eyed Logan coming down the stairs, holding both hands up to his bloody mouth. Suzanna was very concerned and a little scared, but I quickly took Logan into the bathroom to clean the blood out of his mouth and assess the damage. Sure enough, there was a gaping hole on the bottom where a tooth had come out. At that point I was more concerned that maybe he had swallowed the tooth or it had broken into pieces.

A quick search of the playroom turned up the tooth, situated somehow underneath the part of the mattress that was resting on the floor. I was shocked to see the size of the tooth, as it including the roots and all! Turns out (and I just learned this from this experience), baby teeth roots dissolve and get absorbed by the permanent teeth as they grow in. No wonder baby teeth usually fall out so easy when the time is right! No more root to hold it in place!

Logan's first lost tooth, root and all!

Logan wasn't much worse for the wear. He got nervous about having to go to the dentist, but it was an easy visit, and the dentist was surprised/shocked that the tooth came out so cleanly and that no other teeth were injured in any way. What a fortunate kid! So he'll have a gap now for a couple years til the adult tooth grows in! We'll always be able to tell now from the pictures of Logan as a kid whether the picture was "before" or "after" the tooth getting knocked out shortly after he turned four!

Logan proudly displaying his 19-tooth grin

While in Utah, I picked up some new BYU t-shirts from Macey's. They were on sale for a decent price, and just last week, Luke had been asking me if I had a solid white shirt with a white Y and a blue oval on it. I said, "no" because I hadn't seen a shirt like that before. At the time, I was wearing my solid blue shirt with a white oval and blue Y. I was excited when, at Macey's, I found two little versions of the shirt I already had and one big version of the shirt Luke had described! So I bought them and brought them home to share with the kids. They were very excited to get the BYU shirts and to be matching!

The BYU football season started this week!

Logan being cheesy

We had a family night lesson about Noah's ark. It was after this lesson that we gave Luke and Logan the new animals I had purchased from Blickenstaff's last week in Utah. They were super excited, but not wanting to lose the animals, Suzanna and I told the boys they needed to find their own "arks" for the animals to stay in. They found these little green soap boxes that they've used for a variety of things. They worked perfectly for the animals, so now we've got a couple of arks full of animals floating around the house.

Logan's animals and his "ark."

Now that we've got our family portraits in hand, I copied the files to my work computer and set up my desktop to be a continual slideshow, randomly changing the picture every 10 minutes. I love it because at any point in the workday, I can look at my second monitor which often doesn't have many windows open, and I can see one of our great, recent family photos.

My second monitor

Oh, I also found out this week that Logan seems to know where nearly every kitchen item belongs! He helped me unload the dishwasher and did a great job! He did it all with a great attitude as well! That gives me an idea for the future, seeing as I seem to be on permanent dish duty!

Logan helping put the dishes away

msh

Sending Jordan off!

Downtown PDX on a warm summer afternoon.

On Thursday I went into the Portland office for an in-person meeting. With a flight to Utah scheduled for Thursday after work, I decided to take my weekend bag with me and travel straight to the airport on MAX after work. On my way, I decided to take a picture of the beautiful late summer day. I love this view of the Keller Fountain with the Wells Fargo tower in the background.

It was sad to leave Suzanna and the kids for the weekend, but I was excited to head back to Utah to spend a few days with Mom and with Jordan and co. in Holladay as he spoke in church prior to leaving on his mission to Peru!

Traveling without kids is kind of a breeze! Despite arriving at the airport much later than expected due to some backed up MAX trains from an earlier train malfunction, I flew threw security and still had time to grab a bite for dinner before boarding and taking my window seat. Departing in full light was unusual as well, so I got a few cool pictures as we took off.

Vancouver and the Columbia River from the sky.

Pearson Air Field in Vancouver.

Looking at Oregon from high above.

I sat next to a nice guy on the airplane who reminded me a bit of Dad in some ways. We got into a great conversation and before I knew it, we were landing in SLC! Mom picked me up from the airport and let me drive "home" to Provo. It was a strange feeling, being back in Utah but without Suzanna and the kids. I realized that this was the first time I had gone "back" to or been in Utah alone since getting married seven and a half years ago. Mom and I got to talk as long as we wanted without worrying about sleeping children.

The next morning, Mom headed off to work, and I stuck around at the house to work from there. I opened the fridge and saw that she had found a couple of Cokes with Kristin's and my name! Kris came over around lunch to do a little project for Mom, so we got to talk and catch up for a while. It was fun!

Share a Coke with Mark and Kris. Thanks Mom!

I Skype'd with Suzanna and the kids so I could see the kiddos. Emmie was really cute and started saying, "Dada dada!" when she saw me on the screen. It made me really happy!

Emmie talking to me on Skype

She was so excited!

Friday evening when Mom got home from Westridge, we went to an Italian place by University Mall for dinner. The food was a little underwhelming and somewhat forgettable, but just like the night before, the company and conversation was great. We sat there after finishing our food for a while and just talked. No place to rush to and nobody to meet or worry about. We just sat there chatting about work and family and people Mom knew from Italy in the Stake.

On Saturday morning, I was supposed to do my longest training run of my entire marathon program, a 22-miler! Since I knew Mom wanted my help around the house and I didn't want to get stranded far away in case my right IT band injury flared up, I decided that I'd just do a bunch of mile laps from her place up to Westridge and back. It's just under a mile, so each time around, I'd have to go just a little further on the next lap to hit the next mile mark. I was only about 5-6 miles in when the pain flared up, and I decided I needed to stop for a quick rest and some stretching. When I went inside for some electrolytes and stretching, Ben had come over and was talking to Mom about moving some of the stuff from Dad's dark room.

I never really got going on my run again, but I did jog over to Kristin and Ben's to use their foam roller. While there, I got some pictures of Hayley and Alyssa in their PHS Spirit shirts. But actually, these photos were actually from the night before when Mom and I stopped by after dinner. The girls were there with some friends watching a movie while Kris and Ben were out. But that's beside the point. Cool shirt.

Hayley the Senior

Alyssa the Freshman

Once back and Mom's, we got busy cleaning out the dark room. So much of Dad's art equipment and supplies are just so outdated that we didn't think there was much opportunity to re-sell any of it. I did have to take a few pictures of some of the more significant or sentimental items.

Old sliding desk.

This old desk used to be in Brian's and my room upstairs. I remember Brian hiding all sorts of things in the back compartments of this desk. I remember baseball and basketball cards, coin banks and even those Fudge stripped cookies that I used to put on my fingers and pretend like they were little sombreros.

There was also a heavier desk that Jack had built. I didn't put a picture of it here, but it was the one that Dad used specifically for his artograph. It had a small rectangular section cut out where the vertical artograph post was situated. I remember climbing under that desk one time when I was little and squirming up through the hole so it looked like I was a living bust, sitting on his table. I know Mom has a picture somewhere, so I should find it sometime.

Getting the artograph down and out of the dark room proved to be pretty challenging. Fortunately, Steven, Steve Chipman, and Brad Wakefield were all around at the moment and were able to help pull it from the spot where it must have been for the past 20+ years and haul it out to the "car wash" where we set it down until Mom could get it down to the dumpsters. Ooooh, I wonder what Dad would say or think if he saw us pulling the artograph out and sending it packing. Hopefully he'd approve, but all day it seemed like I could hear him saying, "Be careful with that when you move it! Watch out for that heavy/expensive part!"

The artograph

Dad's dark room without the desks and artograph.

We eventually finished up our work for the day and headed out to do some errands. The first was a stop at Blickenstaff's where I picked up a bunch of these little animal figurines that Mom bought Logan for his birthday. On that day she took him, he picked out a small number and was content with them. After we brought them home, we could tell he loved them so much that I decided to buy a bunch more when back in Utah. So I picked up 38 more!

2 each of 19 different animals

One of Mom's friends recommended Sammy's Burgers & Fries to her a while back, so we decided to give it a try this afternoon after the other errands. It was so good! More on my burger blog about that, but for the third day in a row, Mom and I got to sit and chat for a while without chasing kids around or worrying about rushing off to the next thing. we sat at a table on the sidewalk outside and got to enjoy the warm afternoon weather.

Sammy's Burgers & Fries; a 4 or 4.5 fry burger in my book!

Once back at Mom's, I took a quick rest before getting ready to head up to SLC to meet up with a coworker (Travis) to go rock climbing at an indoor bouldering gym. Mom got busy in the kitchen, prepping a bunch of dishes to take up to Jordan's post-church-talk luncheon in Laurie's backyard. She was so busy and prepared so many dishes that she was still working when I got home! I had to take a picture of the aftermath in the kitchen!

Mom's kitchen in the midst of preparing many dishes

In Salt Lake, I met up with Travis at the Front Climbing Club, a relatively new gym with lots of great routes and an interesting set up. I liked the lawn chairs lining the crash pads, where climbers would sit back in between climbs and study the next route.

The Front Climbing Club bouldering gym in Salt Lake

Just like last time, I started tearing my skin pretty after a few attempts, so I quickly taped up my finger

The Front

It's amazing. We didn't even climb for two whole hours, but I was so thoroughly exhausted and felt like my core and arm muscles had been worked harder than they had in a LONG time in that short amount of time! Good stuff though, and I wouldn't mind getting into rock climbing on an ongoing basis.

Unfortunately, on Sunday morning as Mom and I were preparing to leave, she told me that she wasn't feeling so well and was having some serious nausea. She told me I'd better go up to Holladay without her, but I insisted that she come along since I didn't want to leave her alone, and I was hopeful that she would get feeling better. This has happened to her almost predictably once a month for each of the last four months, and we can't figure out what's causing her nausea!

Once we got into the car, we were a bit behind schedule, but we hurried up and made it in time for me to head over to the church. Mom stayed back, so I recorded Jordan's talk so that Mom could listen to it later. Laurie got an even better recording from her location, so it was nice that Mom got to listen. Jordan's talk was really good, and I'm confident he'll be an effective and hard-working missionary!

Jordan and Hayley, grandkids one and two

Mom, Alyssa, and Kristin

Mom camped out across the street, on the couch of a couple of neighbors who are serving a mission in Palmyra. It was fortunate to have that couch and living room available to her because she didn't want to be around a ton of people while feeling so crummy. David, Brian, and I gave her a blessing around noon, and it wasn't much longer before she started feeling noticeably better. By later in the afternoon, she was feeling well enough to come over to Laurie's to help out with preparations for the second after-church reception (this one for friends and neighbors, while the first was for family). She headed back to Provo with Chris's dad, so I was glad she had somebody to accompany her. I stayed in Holladay to help out for the evening and then to spend Monday working there before heading back home to Washington.

A few pictures of the spread at Jordan's after-church family luncheon.

Desserts!

Fruits and vegetables

Salads and sandwiches

It was good that I stuck around because I got to help prepare for the friend/neighbor reception by helping reheat tray after tray of Chick-fil-a chicken nuggets and biscuit sandwiches. It was quite the process! I then got to help eat a ton of the chicken because they may have over-ordered a little bit! Part way through the evening reception, I borrowed Laurie's VW diesel Passat to head over to Daybreak to meet up with Erica (Sara Lenz's sister) who had been our family portrait photographer earlier this summer. She had finished making edits to our photos and was ready to deliver a DVD with the photos, so it was convenient that I was up in the area when they were available!

msh

Family camping trip to Paradise Point state park

Another week in the books! We had the missionaries over for dinner, and, wanting to be little teasers and performers, Luke and Logan put the missionaries' shoes on their own feet! Look closely, and you'll see they put one of each on their feet. Silly boys!

Luke and Logan wearing missionary shoes. Someday they'll have their own mission shoes!

Emmie has her own shoes on in this picture. She's so sweet. I love it when she wants to go somewhere because she'll go over by the door, pick up her shoes, bring them to me or Suzanna and then give them to us and motion toward the door, all the while babbling and pointing, as though she's telling us, "Let's go!"

Emmie and Suzanna (in the mirror).

The highlight of this week was our FAMILY camping trip to Paradise Point State Park just off I-5 near Woodland. I had been telling Suzanna that since we're back, I needed to take the boys camping. Somehow the idea of the whole family going came up, and fortunately, Suzanna was tentatively on board. We watched the weather and gathered supplies during the week. Sadly, there was a burn ban in effect due to the recent dry weather, so we took out the propane camp grill (which we bought in Texas but hadn't used yet!) and figured out how to set it up. Then, Friday morning, I checked the Washington State Parks website again and saw that the burn ban had just been lifted for campfires only! We scrambled and found some firewood and set out to go camping as a family once I was done with work.

We stopped at Shari's for dinner. We figured it would be significantly less complicated to do dinner this way instead of trying to make something at the campsite. The kids all filled their bellies and were happy by the time we left, so it was money and time well spent. Suzanna and I shared an apple-pie-in-a-jar for dessert as well. Mmm... maybe not quite as good as the s'mores, though!

Emmie at Shari's. Look at those blue eyes!

Logan, Luke, and Suzanna, waiting for their food.

Despite rush hour traffic, we made it out to our camping site without much trouble and in decent time. We stopped at the ranger's station to figure out where our site was and what the protocol was for unloading/setting up. Turns out, our campsite was the closest one to the unloading area where we parked the van for a bit to get our gear out and start setting up. The picture below is of our site shortly after we arrived.

Campsite at Paradise Point Park

After setting up, we took the kids on a little hike to explore the area. Heading east from our site, through the rest of the walk-in sites and beyond, we followed a trail a half mile or so as it snaked around through the thick trees and ended up emerging by the slow-moving lazy Lewis River. We played there for a few minutes before deciding to go get our swimming suits on and finding a better place for swimming.

We heard there was a legitimate "beach" about a half mile up the road from the campground, so we jumped in the van and headed to the area were I-5 crosses the river. It turns out, there was quite a bit of good sand next to the very calm river. The water was a bit chilly, but we waded anyway and had fun.

Playing in the river

Luke checking out the informational sign.

Where I-5 crosses the river.

Bravely wading in the cold weather!

Luke making a "sand angel"

Emmie playing it safe in the sand where it's not so cold!

I love where we live. It's beautiful!

Sun setting behind the freeway overpass.

Smiling for the camera in the cold water!

We headed back to the campsite after getting dried and changed. As I prepared to star the fire, Logan seemed really interested and asked if he could light the match. On his very first try, he lit the match, but when it started to burn too hot by his fingers, he dropped it into the fire. Fortunately, we had lots of good kindling and a little "log house" that lit up quickly and produced a nice warm fire. After some tasty s'mores and getting dressed in pajamas, the kids went off to bed, one by one. Surprisingly, Suzanna was able to get Emmelise in bed and asleep (in a pack-n-play) without any trouble at about 9:00 p.m. as it was getting dark. The boys were a little more reluctant to go to sleep, as they were used to me going to sleep at the same time as them in the past. But eventually, they were all tucked in, so Suzanna and I got to enjoy some quiet time by the dying fire before we climbed in our own sleeping bags for the night.

Fire and headlamps

It was a warm night, and we slept relatively well for a camping trip. Most importantly, we all stayed warm enough (maybe it was the fact that five of us were packed into a four-man tent!) but Logan was up by the time the sun had lit up the sky by about 6:00 a.m. Emmie was still sleeping soundly, so I hurried and got him out of the tent.

Emmie snoozing in her pack-n-play.

Suzanna spoiled us all with a tasty hot breakfast! It was way better than cold cereal and granola bars like we've done on the last couple trips. We had french toast, sausage, and hot chocolate! Good stuff!

Breakfast in progress

Suzanna hard at work while the kids sit around the fire.

Mmm, enjoying french toast with whipped cream and cinnamon/sugar.

A few more fun pics from the morning, including more s'mores and brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts.

Emmie loved the headlamp!

Suzanna taking a selfie.

Cute kids!

Logan enjoying a s'more on the Home Depot bucket.

Maybe my favorite picture of the trip. A s'more in focus in the foreground with my family around the family in the background.

It was a fun trip, and hopefully we'll make family camping an annual tradition!

msh