florida.alabama.tennessee.arkansas.missouri.kansas.nebraska.wyoming.utah.nevada.california.arizona.new mexico.texas.louisiana.missisippi.alabama

and back to florida. we just got back a week ago from a month-and-a-week-long journey. and boy, does it feel good to be home!!!!!!!!!! except that we picked up a nasty virus in texas and liesel's had a fever/mouth sores/swollen gums/ear infection/nausea since we got home. but that's a story for another day. (we're still glad we visited you, joanne).

in order to keep your sanity and my sanity intact, i will only do a very brief rundown of the trip. followed by approximately one million pictures. give or take a few. it depends on how my sanity's holding up at that point.

day 1: drove 3 hours to kissimee, florida to give ourselves a bit of a head start on the trip. loren and i had a goal of working out every morning of the trip to utah, so we woke up early the next morning and went on a walk with pace, who rode his strider bike.

day 2: drove to somewhere in white-trash alabama. swam in the hotel pool. decided we do not like driving in alabama.

day 3: made it the "boy" allen home in arkansas (no relation to us--friends from california who had 3 boys when we had 4 girls--since then they've had a girl, and we've had a boy). had a fabulous dinner of homemade veggie burgers. did some crazy fireworks for the 4th of july. the dads loved the fireworks. the moms were nervous.

day 4: drove to marian and chad's house in kansas. had a thoroughly good time recovering from driving. got to watch a terrific fireworks show from their driveway. people in kansas are serious about their fireworks! played in the pool, went barefoot walking (it's all the rage now, didn't you know?), and watched the cousins play together. stayed in kansas for days 5 and 6.

day 7: drove to wyoming and stayed in a hotel.

day 8: drove to utah. stopped at maggie's house on our way to orem. loren's mom, dad, and sister came up for a visit, too.

days 9-15: stayed in orem. had a lot of fun seeing both sides of the family. we snuck in a trip to 7 peaks water park. i also got to meet up with some roommates of mine from byu. my big sadness of the trip was having to cancel a visit with kari and rochelle (friends from virginia). the logistics of packing and organizing a week-long camping trip proved to be complicated, to say the least, and i ran out of play time.

day 16: drove to tonopah, nevada. stayed there for a night on our way to the family reunion in yosemite.

day 17: drove into yosemite national park! hooray! went on the best roller coaster road ever. also went through lots of tunnels (or igloos, if you're pace). got to the campsite and set up camp. LET THE PARTY BEGIN!!!!!!

days 18-23: family reunion in yosemite. best fun ever. highlights: valley sightseeing, ponderosa grove, half dome hike (loren, liesel, gwyneth), swimming at the swinging bridge and hole-in-the-rock, policing the strider bike gang.....

day 24: drove to simi valley, california to karalee's house. had a happy reunion with liesel and gwyneth bffs kelsey and amelia. day 25: loren flew back to florida. the kids and i stayed there through day 26: went to church at our old ward, had a swim party with long-time friends........

day 27: drove to liza's house in arizona. played in the pool and the sun for 3 days. i could live in arizona, for sure. pace perfected his swimming techniques.

day 30: drove to poppy's house in new mexico. this was like a california reunion trip for me! went to a fabulous park and had a great time catching up with each other!

day 32: drove to joanne's house in texas. swam and played, swam and played, swam and played for the next 3 days. cousins are the best.

day 36: drove to louisiana for the night. swam in hotel pool. wished loren was there.

day 37: scrapped original plan of taking 3 days to get home from texas, and decided to drive all the way home. MADE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

end of trip.

random things i noticed on this trip: 4 wild pigs running along the side of the freeway (florida), a man doing pushups by his car on the side of the freeway (california), a town named "bangs" in texas, a huge mongo snake on the freeway (HUGE, seriously--like national geographic worthy) (louisiana), the ugliest swamp ever (louisiana), LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF EPIC RAINSTORMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (every state we drove in after california--it made for some very tense driving and lots of praying)

other side note: florida definitely has the craziest drivers of all the states we drove through. it also has the most highway patrol cars. hmmmmmmmmm. something's not right here.

oh, and it's a boy

so, i realize i've been neglecting to share many important things on this blog. such as the sex of the new baby. IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!! (in case you missed the giveaway title of this post.) we are very excited about it. i just forgot to tell everyone, because after i found out i forgot that i didn't just use my telepathy to instantly beam this information around the world, and then it became old news to me, and life just moved on without me telling anyone. so, consider yourselves told. better late than never.

also, pace's birthday has come and gone without any mention whatsoever. he did have a birthday, and he did turn 3, and we do love him. here are some shots of him getting his new strider bike (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you are looking for a bike for your 2-5 year old). pace can zoom around like crazy on this thing.
he requested chocolate pie for his birthday. it's what i had on my birthday, and i guess he thought it was pretty great. he is not a big fan of cake. i love watching kids open their presents.
and here are some pictures of a trip the kids and i went on with another family. we headed to the beaches a few hours north of here to explore them before the oil spill ruins them. i had to type it small because i'm hoping it won't really happen and i didn't want to jinx it by writing it big.

we went to 3 different beaches while we were there--all totally different from each other, and different from the beaches down here. we looked for fossilized shark teeth at one (and tried not to think about non-fossilized shark teeth finding us instead. the water was not as clear as we are used to and there were largish fish swimming around our feet, so it was harder than you might think to keep our imaginations in check. i might have even screamed a few times myself.) our hotel was right on a beach, and also had a swimming pool, which was heavenly, even though it was so warm it was borderline hot tub temperature. to give you an idea of the water temperatures there, even the ocean was 87 degrees. which is VERY WARM for water. we also went to a white-sand beach. heaven. the kids found some really fun shells and we had a great time.

now we are busy (BUSY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) getting ready to go on a 6-week long vacation that will take us (driving--ack!) all the way across the country to california (yosemite) and back. we leave this thursday. wish us luck! and if any of you are going to be in utah july 8th through the 15th let me know and maybe we can get together!

swim safety lesson

i've been getting nervous about living by all this water here in south florida so i've been doing "swim lessons" with pace every day in our pool. he's been doing really well (more videos of that to come later) and LOVES swimming. last night we decided to have a family lesson on pool safety. the main goal of the lesson was to help pace know what to do if he accidently fell in to a pool. he does really well swimming around with me in the water, but i was worried he'd panic if he fell in with his clothes on and everything without me there. i had all the other kids get dressed in real clothes and shoes and pretend to fall in the pool, then turn around and grab the side and go back to the steps. when it was pace's turn to "fall in" i got him dressed in clothes and a diaper and flip flops and helped him fall in to the pool. he was very pleased that he remembered everything he was supposed to do. he watched this video of it about 100 times today. the next water-safety step is getting him to be able to go from swimming on his stomach to floating on his back--he can almost do it, but it needs a little fine-tuning. anyway, that was a long explanation for a short video, but i promised pace i would put it on the blog and write all about it. he's standing right by me waiting for me to finish so he can watch the video again.

mother's day weekend

i am lucky enough to move to a different state every couple of years. which also means i'm lucky enough to meet great friends in all the different states!

this year i got to celebrate mother's day weekend by going to virginia for a girls' get-a-way at betsy's cabin. i also got to spend one night each at kari's house (she's the best hostess ever!!! even though she denies it) and ellie's house (also the best hostess, plus she taught me how to make duct tape flower hair accessories, which scored me lots of points when i came home and taught liesel and gwyneth how to make them). hooray for good friends and good times.

this is where i spent most of my time. i think my true inner-most self would sit in a chair and talk with friends and eat all day every day if she could.

this is just a sampling of the great food we had. none of it was prepared by me (i was truly lazy the entire trip, i tell you), which made it taste even better!
this is the gang. some of my best friends ever. i will love them forever. sappy, but true!

this picture is taken right before (i think?) a hilarious game of "celebrity", in which i confirmed that i chose wisely to become a stay-at-home mom and not an actress. you girls can thank me later for not including any of the pictures taken during that game in this post.
none of these feet are actually mine, but i really like feet pictures for some reason.
some people (juliette) talked some of us in to doing some yoga. what could be more perfect than doing yoga on the deck of a mountain cabin? i guess nothing.
what a great weekend! i came home ready to be a mom and a wife again. i am lucky to have such great and inspiring friends. i know, two sappy moments in one post. yikes.

family scripture study and some tangents

last night we were reading about the olive branches being grafted. this somehow segwayed into a discussion of arms being grafted back onto bodies if they'd been cut off. which prompted me to remember that my mom had once gotten a skin graft when the tip of her finger had been snipped off by a door. which prompted liesel to suddenly remember that she'd gotten a skin graft on her finger once (a fact i had totally forgotten). i have no idea how liesel remembered this or even knew this in the first place, since i don't ever remember discussing it with her. me saying so prompted a whole other discussion on things we could or could not remember. we finally finished reading the chapter. during all of this, pace was jumping around on the couch with some shorts on his head. which prompted loren to say, when he was helping pace say the family prayer, that we were "thankful for the clothes on our backs and on our heads". which sent all the girls (including me) into fits of (reverent) giggles. please tell me the kids are getting something out of family scripture study.

p.s. i have no idea how to spell "segway" and spell check was no help whatsoever. anybody know how to spell it?

tea party--boy style

the other day i came in to the kitchen and found pace all set up in his booster with a little cup and spoon in front of him. he told me he was having a party with indiana jones. that's when i noticed the other cup set up across the table from him. that's where indiana jones was sitting.

pace asked me if i would buckle indiana in to his booster. i obliged. i asked pace if he was having a tea party. he said "no, a shake party." i guess the water in the cups was really shakes. i asked pace if i could take a picture of his party. he said "yes" and made sure i got a picture of indiana jones.

real life

i'm easing back in to my real life (after spending THE BEST WEEKEND EVER in virginia with friends--pictures and details to come later, since the picture of the snakeskin above is the only one i took before my camera batteries died) by spending the morning blogging. i say the day after mother's day is still sort of like mother's day, and should be spent doing what i want to do. i don't want to shock my system by working too hard after such a leisurely weekend.

now that the pool water temperature is approaching that of bath water, i will finally get in. pace and i have been having a great time doing "swim lessons" every day.
loren plays games with the kids on sundays. and this was not even a quality i knew he had when i married him! it's so fun to discover surprise good qualities in your husband. (he has a lot of other non-surprise good qualities, too).
we went camping a week ago. the only pictures i got were of the kids eating s'mores. at least i captured the most important moments, right?
this is as far as we've gotten with potty training. hmmm.

gwyneth broke her arm a couple of weeks ago and has been waiting patiently for me to blog about it, so here it is. she broke it doing the high jump on field day at school. very exciting for all of us. her cast is waterproof (worth the extra money) so she's still been doing swim team and everything else. she gets it off this wednesday. woohoo!
i walked in from my trip yesterday to a whole table covered in flowers. this is just a small sampling. happy mother's day!

i knew pace was being suspiciously quiet while i was blogging just now. i went to check on him and found him playing with cars in the wheat bucket. i left him playing happily and came back to finish blogging. sometimes the rules are allowed to be broken. i'm pretty sure cleaning up some spilled wheat will be worth the alone time on the computer!