Flags

Thing 1 was born 11 years ago today.  Someone told her it was her golden birthday.  She turned eleven on the eleventh.

The boy scouts came by last night and put a flag in our yard.   I was momentarily baffled.  I was on the phone with Hubby when they drove up, and he reminded me that the next day, today, was Patriot's Day in addition to being our daughter's birthday.

I commented to Thing 2 that as long as we live in Utah, both girls will get flags in our yard on their birthdays.  "Yeah," she said, "but her's is a bigger deal.  And people don't really remember my birthday.  Everyone remembers hers."

"She doesn't get a parade, though..." I told her.

They had a good day.  I dropped off mini mechanical pencils for her to pass out to her classmates.  The school going "no treats" cramps my style.  I spent quite a bit of time searching the closeout aisle in the office supply store trying to find something I could afford that wouldn't make my kid a pariah of uncoolness.  "Tape?  You passed out rolls of scotch tape on your birthday?"  I felt I'd scored with the brightly decorated mini mechanicals, and Thing 1 reported later everyone thought they were great.

I offered to take the girls to the State Fair, after school, but Thing 1 opted to come home and do her homework and just hang out here, and have pizza and a movie night instead.  Maybe we'll go to the fair on Friday.

She went to bed happy.  

July is history, and we're marching through August

The suggestion I heard about writing down on the calendar what we did each day is proving beneficial.  For me, more so than for the girls.  I feel like I've been totally busy and it's nice to know why.  


It took me an extra week to get the new garage door.  I PAID for the garage door toward the middle of June, and was told it would take two weeks.  Two weeks later I got a call for final measurements, not to schedule an installation.  Two more weeks, I was told.  When those two weeks came and went I started calling, and was told it was scheduled to be delivered to their offices the last part of July, and could be installed some time after that.
The installation was scheduled for last week.  The garage door guy came and told me the opening of my garage door was screwy, the cement foundation is in the way of the track, and there's a trim piece missing on my wall that will be easier to install before the door goes up.  I called the contractor, who came over and ended up being kind of nasty to the garage door guy.  He said he had deliberately not installed the trim piece, would do that after to give them wiggle room on the door.  He insisted there was enough room on the cement foundation to lay the tracks for the door.  He called into question the installer's experience.  Repeatedly.  With increasing volume and vehemence.  It started getting a little tense.  The garage door guy insisted he couldn't install the door until he had his boss's approval of the opening.  The contractor told him to stop giving us excuses and either install the door or go away.  He left.  I asked the contractor what was eating him and he again insisted everything was fine with the wall, the guy should just put up the door.  Anything that was wrong could have been fixed while he was unloading.  Whatever.


The middle of the next week the manager himself came and installed the garage door.  I apologized for my cantankerous contractor, who was there when the installer guy got there but left.  The garage door went up and it is beautiful!  There is so much light now in the garage! !

  And the windows are so pretty! 

Other than that, we've been having a good summer.

We saw the fireworks on July 3rd at Bountiful.  They were amazing!  We've gone every year since we moved back here, they're great!
Thing 2 was invited to walk in the local 4th of July parade with the other Spelling Bee participants.  We ended up on the wrong side of the street, but she had a lot of fun and we learned how to go to the parade:  
1) don't bother with the boy scout pancake breakfast - eat before you go, or bring something to eat there.
2) arrive early, and stake out your spot for the parade. If you bought tickets to the breakfast (See #1), unless you get there super early, chances are you won't want to fight the crowd anyway. 
We ended up sitting behind someone else, with people kind of pushing by behind us through the parade.  It was fine, but next time we'll do it different.
 
One of the highlights of the summer was being invited to my brother's wife's family lake lot.  We got to ride in the boat, the girls got to ride the tube, 

and we all went wake surfing.  My oldest niece can get up on the surfboard with someone else in front of her, she took Thing 1 and 2.  It was fabulous!    Look at that smile!

It was too windy to get any good skiing in, but we did do a little sailing.  My brother and I took out my two girls and his youngest, and they got to hang out on the trapezes, and ride the pontoons.  Not a really strong wind, but perfect for three little girls who don't need a really wild ride to have a ball.  I didn't get any pictures, though.  The only down sides of the day were 1) Hubby was out of town 2) Thing 1 got sunburned.  I swear I put on sunscreen repeatedly, but the tops of her legs got kind of fried.  So the next day when we were going to go horseback riding, she would whimper when I tried to rub lotion on her, and I figured she was too uncomfortable to go riding.  So she had to stay home.  Thing 2 had a marvelous time, though, we went on a trail up the mountain and went for longer than we normally have before.

Thing 2 had a summer camp, catching frogs and bugs and lots of activities, she had a ball.  It was run by our favorite babysitter, who has been living in Hubby's office for the summer, to be closer to this eco center where the camp was held.  Thing 1 has a robotics camp there next week.
She had a pop-up book class this week that went pretty well.
One of the neighborhood moms has set up a schedule of things for the moms and kids to do once a week.  We made it to a couple, not a lot of people come but that's fine with me because I feel it gives my girls more face time with the kids who are there.  And I like the mom who arranged it and enjoy talking with her.  One that was a big hit was the Hill Air Museum.  I thought the girls might find it less interesting, but they loved it.  I enjoyed seeing some of the planes I used to work with.

We've been driving down to my brother's house (30 minutes away) for swimming lessons from one of my nieces, because their pool is salt water and doesn't turn Thing 2's hair green, and the girls get the bonus of being able to play with their favorite person in the world, their cousin who is right between them in age.  They've been taking Spanish lessons from my cousin, but she's moving to Spain in a week so we had to stop the lessons.  I'm sad the Spanish lessons are over, but it will make it easier to have that one day a week back to ourselves.
Still two and a half weeks left of summer, but I wanted to catch up.

Sleeping Buddies

Thing 1 became attached to a stuffed Eeyore beanie baby when she was little.  She slept with it until it became sad looking and abused, very Velveteen Rabbit real.  She has since adopted other special stuffed animals.  Not every one that passes through her hands makes the cut, but enough do that she has a sizable pile that sit on the top bunk who are possible sleeping companions.
In order to not offend anyone, Thing 1 started keeping track in a little log she drew up and kept by her bed.  She listed the name of each stuffed animal and gave it a tick mark on the grid each night she slept with it.  She faithfully noted and rotated and the stuffed animals for a couple of years.

I haven't seen the log lately, and she seems to be choosing her sleeping companions based on the mood of the evening.

Thing 2 goes in phases.  She picks an animal and sleeps almost exclusively with it and only it for a couple of months.  For a long time now it has been Princess, a stuffed horse my sister gave her when she turned two. Horses have always held a special place in her heart, and I think she feels the largeness of the stuffed horse provides a sort of barrier between her and any intruders who might pose a threat to her at night.

June is in the bag

It's hard to draw a good line between keeping the kids from getting bored, and letting them have enough time to goof off.  If I totally let them go, they end up feeling their summer is wasted.  If I schedule and monitor them, they haven't had enough free time and are mad that they didn't get to relax.

I was going to write down what we did each day, so I can wave it in their faces when the tears come for "Back To School" night that "The whole summer is GONE and I didn't do ANYTHING!!!"  I haven't kept up with this, either.


I vowed we'd go through the multiplication and division flash cards every weekday morning.  We started really well, but have been slacking off.  In fact, I should break to go do that this minute...

There are two weeks in the middle of June that I can't exactly account for...  I do remember that we met with the weekly playgroup at Chuckee Cheese, just my girls and the girls of the mother who's been arranging things, all of whom I like, so I was fine it worked out that way.  We spent a weekend at my mother's while Hubby had a conference, and celebrated Father's Day at my brother's with a big pool party.  Between Spanish lessons (see below) and birthday parties for their four summer born daughters we've spent quite a bit of time at my brother's, often playing in their pool.  The real bonus here is it doesn't use chlorine in the filter and so it doesn't turn the girls' hair into straw.

The first week of July was pretty busy.  My cousin is teaching the girls and their two cousins Spanish on Mondays at my brother's house (it's roughly halfway between her house and my house), and my mother arranged to take all the girls who could go to the new Natural History Museum.  So after Spanish we went over to the museum, and had a nice time looking around there.  Thing 1 got very excited and wants to make some Native American crafts of her own.  Then we met the dads (my brother and Hubby) at the Old Spaghetti factory for dinner.  
Tuesday was fireworks!  My brother lives right by some of the best fireworks in the valley, and walking from his house means we can avoid parking and traffic nightmare.  He hosts a party in his back yard, which is a little hard for the girls since all the other participants are neighbors, and they all know each other.  But it all turned out okay when the cherished cousin came and snuggled between them to watch the fireworks.
Wednesday was the 4th of July parade.  Thing 2 got to walk down main street with the other spellers from the spelling bee.  It was a busy day, and Thing 2 had a great time waving to people and spelling out words like "PARADE!" that they'd shout at her.  The only problem came when Hubby's cell phone died after he walked to the end of the parade to meet Thing 2 while I stayed with Thing 1 and watched the parade, we hadn't made plans on where to meet, and I ended up walking to the end of the parade where I thought he'd be while he walked back up to the top of the street where we'd been...  Finally he stopped in a boutique and borrowed their phone to call me.
Thursday... Hubby fixed the mower and mowed the lawn.
Friday we went to a matinee.  Tomorrow my folks will come down and we'll celebrate Hubby's birthday.  We celebrated Father's Day last Saturday by having breakfast downtown, then going to Costco where Hubby picked out a bigger TV that will just fit the space in the redone basement. I hadn't really planned that, but kind of half expected it.  So his father's day and birthday presents are combined.  I feel it's fair that I can fall back on electronics for presents for him, since he's so hard to shop for, and he falls back on jewelry for me.  And he doesn't just buy department store jewelry... he buys jewelry store jewelry.  The really nice stuff.  Not that I am complaining, it's just that I can never match him for dollars spent, the best I can do is something like this, let him buy a major electrical whatever for the house and tell him it's his.  But I feel like it's cheating because we all use it.  Not like the jewelry he buys me, which I don't share.


And while it's just a boring recounting of last week, it is an entry, and I'm looking to rack up accomplishments, so there's one.  Boring yes, but done?  YES!!

Palazzo VS Caesar

I have not scheduled the girls for much this summer.  This is pretty normal for us.  But I do not want this summer to slip by and have them look at me all sad and whiny come September and have them say "But we didn't DO ANYTHING all SUMMER!!!"
Last summer, with Thing 2's broken arm, and our selling the house and moving, it was what Judy Moody would call a total bummer summer.  But this year I am willing to expend a little energy to try and keep it from being bummer-ish.

The first week after school was out we went to Vegas.  Hubby has had a conference in Vegas nearly the same week for several years.  We've skipped it once or twice in order for the girls to attend the "end of year festival" at school, but this year they bumped the conference to the week after school let out, so we were able to attend both the end of year festival at our old school, and the Vegas conference.
We have been to Las Vegas several times now, know our way around the area we stay in, and have gotten to enjoy Vegas.  The girls and I sleep in, lounge by the pool, wander the hotels and the area and laze around the hotel room.  When the conference is done for the day and Hubby comes back we wander around the hotels or the shops and find somewhere to eat.  Each trip we take the girls to one show - The Mystere Cirque du Soleil show one year, the Jousting Knights in shining armor dinner one year...  There might have been a couple years the girls were just too little to take anywhere... I have a memory of carrying a sleeping girl on my back all the way back to the hotel from the movie theater on the opposite end of Las Vegas Avenue.

The conference has always been held at the Palazzo hotel.  I have developed a deep love for the Palazzo.  Because:
1)  I like the Venetian hotel canal and shops, which connect the two hotels.  (not that I could ever in my wildest dreams afford anything there, it's just a nice place to walk)
2)  Denny's is right on the other side of the Venetian.
3)  There is a nice mall kitty-corner across from the Palazzo.
4)  The room is massive - a large TV in the bathroom, one at the foot of the two queen beds, and one in the adjoining sunken living room with the sectional sofa and huge coffee table.  That's right, THREE TVs.  Large ones.  The room was so much bigger and more spacious than our cute little 100 year old house, it was a real change for us.  The girls could spend an hour just jumping from the coffee table, to the couch, to the short wall room divider (covered with marble and about three feet tall), to the first bed, to the 2nd bed... and back again.  (Not that I would ever condone jumping around on the furniture like wild Indians... but...  If it keeps them happy while I can cruise the internet for a while, I'm inclined to overlook a lot of normally marginal behavior.)
This is a picture off the internet of the Palazzo hotel room.  Looking from the beds into the living room area.  It is a mirror image room of the next picture, but it's like the ones we've stayed in before.

 This is looking from the other direction.  Note the terribly handy benches at the foot of the beds.

 The bathroom was bigger than my TV room at our old house.  The huge tub and shower are off to your left out of the picture.  The door in the middle goes to the toilet.

I realize the "ooh poor me I used to be able to stay in the lap of luxury shown here" angle is pretty weak... but this is as much a diary as a blog, so there it is.
5)  The rooms on one side of the Palazzo overlook the Treasure Island hotel, where the pirate ship battle goes on every half hour or so.  The last time we stayed at the Palazzo, we had a great view of the pirate battle.  We watched it several times, the girls in their pajamas sitting on the window ledge looking out over the city.
6)  There was a little mini-market right near the elevators at ground level.  It was ridiculously overpriced, but I could get some fruit or a bagel or a cup of cereal and a container of milk.  It was workable.


So.  We loved the Palazzo.


However we learned that our love for the Palazzo will have to go unrequited.  Because the conference has moved to Caesar's Palace two years ago, and due to some financial kerfuffle and lots of shouting and hurt feelings (on the part of the conference management that Hubby talked to) they won't be going back.


Ceasar's Palace is great.
But it isn't the Palazzo.
There wasn't a sunken living room.  There wasn't sprawl out seating, there was one little sofa, and two rather small arm chairs.  The bathroom was big, but not as big.  Denny's was a longer walk away.  The pool was closer, but the big padded couches right in front of the pool were all reserved and you get chased off by the drink girls in the skimpy costumes if you sit on them without checking with the cabana boys first.  The walk from our room to ANYWHERE was about seven minutes or longer.  There was no market, nowhere to buy any little things you'd forgotten, or a piece of fruit.  The closest food I found was a little food court. Breakfast selections were extremely limited.  But it was the most likely thing I could find without leaving the hotel, or having to sit down and have a formal breakfast. To get there I had to go down the elevators, by the pool, cut through a corner of the casino, though the hall by some shops, past a reproduction of the David, past three or very pricey restaurants, cut through another corner of the casino, and up a ramp.  Then, back, with my arms full of paper bags and a cardboard drink caddy of juices.
The first night we couldn't find a good restaurant and it was getting late, so we broke down and went back to the hotel room and ordered room service for the girls.  YIKES!!!  Won't be doing that again!
While I took care of the room service order and waited with the girls for it to come, Hubby went out roaming to find some food for me and himself.  He picked up a take out salad for me, and a burger for himself, and returned about the time the girls were wrapping up their meal.  He forgot to get me a fork.  He nearly cried.  Lucky for him, I had noticed that there was a very very limited Starbucks not too far from the elevators, and I ran down and got one.  Though of course I could have just used the room service fork... Didn't think about that until I was already back.
Too much detail.  Sorry.  This is what a $73 room service meal looks like.

We still had a lovely time, spent a lot more time at the pool than we usually do during our Vegas vacations, but I brought a lot of sunscreen, and like usual, only sunburned myself. We took the girls to the Blue Man show, they absolutely loved it.

We watched the Bellagio fountain, which we hadn't seen before.  We even waited through the break in between to see a couple of the fountain shows.

We spent quite a bit of time at the pool.

We had to walk around the Venetian to get the Blue Man tickets.

 

Of course one of the big things about Vegas is the food.  This is one of my problems with Vegas.  There is often good food, but so much more than you really want, and you pay so much for it than you'd expect.  That's why the girls and I often sneak off to Denny's for some regular food.  But you get what you pay for, I suppose.  This was my lunch at Denny's.  I swear this was the plate I was handed.  Just like this.

Compare that to breakfast I had at my new favorite Vegas eatery, Hash House a Go Go.  This is some sort of chicken eggs benedict, just as it was handed to me. It might not look like the overwhelmingly delicious dish it was, but it was Absolutely Divine. My only frustration was that we'd eaten at the Cheesecake Factory the night before and I was still mostly full from that. I didn't get to eat much of this wonderful delicacy before I was just ready to pop.
  We stopped at the Hoover Dam on the way out of Vegas.  It was pretty interesting.  We hung out in the Dam snack store and had some Dam ice cream before we left because it was so darned hot.  We looked at buying a Dam tee-shirt in the Dam gift shop, but couldn't find any we liked.  Hubby showed Thing 2 the bottom of the Dam "DON'T LET GO OF ME DADDY!!!"  Thing 1 backed away quick when she saw him turn to her with that big smile on his face. Then we got back on the Dam road and headed home. 

Of course anyone who's read all the Percy Jackson novels (like we have) knows these Dam angels are just hanging out until they can fly off to San Francisco to party with some angel statues there... I forget exactly where.

We had a darned fine time.
 

School's out, and We Have Dirt!

Last night we attended the "end of school" festival from our old school.  Stupid me took no pictures.  Thing 2 was just totally excited for the festival, but Thing 1 was a little worried that she'd be sad to see her old friends.  When we got there, the kids ran off and played and talked to all their old friends.  I saw all my old friends, and surprised myself by launching into my own melancholy.  The girls had a great time, and I enjoyed seeing everyone, but it was sad to see how much of a life we gave up to move here.  Having spent ten years down there, very heavily involved in the school, and church, there were lots of people I left behind too.  You don't realize what you're losing until it's lost.  Sigh.

Today I showed up to pick up the girls from their last day of school to find every parking space full, and cars all along the road in all directions.  I've never seen it so crowded!  What am I missing?  What is it all the other parents know is going on that I don't?
They have a tradition at the school to "clap out" the fifth graders, who are going on to the 6-7 grade school next year.  All the other kids and teachers line up and the outgoing fifth graders, dressed in wild wigs and apparently the most colorful, outrageous clothing they could find, run between the clappers.  It was kind of cute, I wish I had taken my phone so I'd have a picture.


The girls wanted to do something special after school.  I agreed to take them out for pizza for dinner, which has recently been redecided to just go get a pizza and come back and eat in front of a movie on the TV.  That's our idea of a celebration.  One woman I was standing with said she's going to take her kids to the amusement park, about an hour away.  Oooh, good idea!  Wish I'd thought of that!  Hmmm, not too excited about going, though, and the girls wouldn't want to go without Hubby.


SO glad school's out, this has been a really hard year for Thing 1.  Thing 2 is planning on having twice as much fun as normal, to make up for having a broken arm/no fun last year.

Instead of starting a new post, I'm just going to throw in some pictures of the garage deconstruction.
In order to take some of the slope off the horribly sloped driveway, we're digging down to lower the garage floor, then will slope it out to the road.  The cement was horribly pocked and pitted and needed to go anyway.  As soon as they took off the cement in the garage, they hit very hard rock that had to be jackhammered out.  A one day scoop job turned into a week of jackhammering and dragging rocks out.  You can see the lowered garage floor under the garage door.

The funny thing is that Hubby and I simultaneously and independently both came to the conclusion that we can use the rocks pulled out of the garage to build a rock wall in front of the house, to the right, to make a place to put some trees.  The excavator, a very nice little retired guy who's been finding every way he can to save us money, said he's built a couple of rock walls and will be happy to put the rocks aside, then move them over where we want to, and put the dirt on top of it.  The rock wall will be off to the right.

We just finish the basement and moved to the garage, before the basement even stopped smelling like new paint.  We must be gluttons for punishment.  My bank account is totally crippled.  I'm so looking forward to this being all over with.  The kitchen, which we knew when we moved in needed to be remodeled, is probably pushed back five years.  Sigh. 

Photo stalker

We went downtown for Hubby to see Thing 1's art at the exhibit.
We were walking toward the gallery, and I happened to turn around and see a very old little man on the street motioning in our general direction.  Some people were coming the other way, and I thought surely he's with them.  We walked a little farther, and I noticed he was still following us, with a little smile on his face, and he motioned to me again.  He seemed pretty harmless so I went back and talked to him.

Turns out he lived just up the street, and saw us and thought we were a cute family.  He offered to take our picture. I think people in town see so many out of towners, they have been conditioned to be "tourist friendly."  


I let him take a picture of us with my phone.
Several people we talked to that evening talked to us like we were tourists, we quickly learned to smile and nod and accept their hospitality, and not tell them we are actually locals unless they asked specifically where we were from. 

In any event I got a picture of myself out of it, since I'm usually the one behind the camera, and consider myself less photogenic than the rest of my cute family, it is kind of rare.