Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Memorial Day trip to Temple Square
On Memorial Day we went to visit Amy's grandmother's grave in downtown Salt Lake City. It is near to Temple Square, home of the Tabernacle, which has lots of nice gardens, flowers, displays and two visitors centers. The kids have only been there at Christmastime. So we walked around for a little while. The building behind us is the Conference Center, which holds about 20,000 people for the twice-yearly meetings that are broadcast worldwide. We decided this was a fine portrait of part of our family right now because it depicts them as they really are at this stage of life.
Spencer's time-out accomplice
Spencer was throwing his food so he got sent to the time-out chair, around the corner from the kitchen where we eat. A few minutes later we look and see that his sensitive sister (and fellow frequent visitor to the time-out chair) had gathered lots of blankies for him and even snuck him some contraband snacks (see the empty little snack cup in his hand). He didn't come back for dinner even when he was allowed.
Catherine's Daddy Dinner at school
Sorry we don't have very many with Amy. I need to do a better job of taking pictures with her in them. Catherine has a great teacher who put on a potluck dinner for the kids and their dads. We ate and then did a tug of war and played wiffle ball. Then the big sprinklers came on and soaked everyone (there's usually no one at the school at 7 p.m.!), much to the kids' delight. It was fun to meet the kids she talks about and their parents. It was also sweet how pleased all the little kids were to be with their dads.
Walking on daddy's back
One of our new games. They like it and I love it because I can just lay there and don't have to do anything.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Grouchy Spencer
Spencer ignoring calls for him to come back into the house one morning. He is purposefully standing sideways so he can appear to be ignoring us while at the same time being secretly comforted that we are still outside.
The Smart family pizza kitchen
One day recently the girls joined me in my tradition of making pizzas. Only this time each member of the family got to have their own pizza with whatever they wanted on it. Catherine was the waitress -- she made a menu that allowed choices of sauce, cheese and toppings. She took orders from Mom and Spencer and then joined Emma in helping prepare everyone's. We cut up all the toppings and allotted the dough put each person's ingredients on a separate plate. Then we started to assemble the pizzas. . .
Emma's dough
The girls got to help with everything from mixing up the dough to tossing their own crusts.
Spencer looks on
We can never predict it, but sometimes Spencer climbs up into his chair and sits patiently while we cook. We just have to toss him a few pretzels now and then and he's fine.
Cath's pizza
Catherine did hers entirely by herself. She did the pepperonis in the shape of a smiley face.
Me and my meat lover's
I made myself a meat lover's pizza with italian sausage, pepperoni, salami and onions.
Cath and Spencer happy together
One fun memory I have from my childhood is all of us piling onto our parents' bed. Must have been on Saturdays. Sometimes we do that with our family now.
A visit from "Uncle Paul"
If you didn't see Amy's email, this is Cristian, a friend from BYU who visited us. Spencer called him Uncle Paul and had a great time with him the whole night.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Emma graduates from elite preschool in lovely backyard ceremony.
Emma's preschool graduation. She was really cute singing her songs and saying the different poems they'd learned during the year. The first half of the program she played with a little flower that she's picked right before she sat down, so that affected her hand movements a little. Spencer was not really cute during the program.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Spencer goes camping!
This weekend was the church fathers' and sons' campout in a canyon near Mapleton, south of here. Spencer had been asking to go camping every day for the previous three weeks. We still don't know if he knew what he meant. We were trying to get a nice "going away" photo but he was really excited to get going. His car seat was in daddy's car (a novelty) and he wanted to be in it, not getting his picture taken.
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