Wildflowers and Walks

In the last few weeks we've gone to a few fun places...fun for me especially because I got some good pictures! First, we went on a little walk not too far from our home.



It was a steep little hike, and while Elora loved it, Joseph wasn't happy about having to push the stroller up the incline, or being "tricked" into exercise, as he described it. (Oh, and he hates this picture. I can't imagine why ;))




But we really didn't go that far, and at the top of the hill we had a great view of the University and the town. (Joseph took this picture, I just brightened it up a bit.)



Then Joseph took about a dozen pictures of Joshua standing in the grass, where he was waving around pieces and being a silly little boy. This was deemed the cutest one by his mother. (Me).



After thoroughly exploring the top of the hill (where we thankfully had a bench to sit on!) Elora led the way back down, running and skidding all the way.



At the bottom is a man made little pool, where the kids enjoy throwing rocks...Josh especially! The water levels are really low right now, bu they didn't let that deter them from all their hunting and throwing.




Okay, this picture is totally weird, but I love it. Doesn't it look like something bizarre is going on, like a nuclear explosion or an alien abduction? Really, Josh just fell down and hurt his foot, and I think I told Elora to yell something.



Josh doing his balancing act... when I look at these pictures, he looks so big to me!



Jonah got set on this rock by daddy, and he couldn't be more thrilled. Of course, we had to hurry and take the pictures before he tumbled off!




Then last weekend, we drove up to Tony Grove Lake. We've been near the turn-off several times, but this is the first time we drove all the way up; I didn't realize it was so high up the mountian! While it was in the mid nineties at home, we were in heaven in the low seventies. Unfortunately, when we got to the lake (which was beautiful), we realized you had to pay to park there and we hadn't brought any cash or checks. Darn it.
I was pretty bummed, but we were able to drive back down the road to a turn off with beautiful wildflowers all around!

We had brought picnic stuff, and we set up to eat.



In photos it looks ideal, but there was one problem. We were very near a horse trail (recently used) and that meant flies and bugs- lots of them. Giant flies were buzzing around our heads, insects were instantly getting mired in our salad, and Elora kept screaming about it. This was scaring Joshua, and Joseph was overreacting to the buzzing insects to a ridiculous degree. Needless to say, within five minutes this little picnic was over...



and we adjourned to the car to finish our meal. We finished quickly and hiked around for a little bit. Without our food, we were much less of a draw for all of the insect life, and it was much more pleasant out! Still, my whiny children all said they had to go to the bathroom and their legs were tired, (really, after five minutes of walking?) so it didn't last too long.

We did get some pretty pictures before we left though. This is the best one I've taken of myself so far this summer, don't you agree?


Joseph carrying his youngest, who was elated at the elevated view (though I had to try really hard to get him to smile for the picture) :




We hadn't brought any shoes for Jonah, but we did let him down just this once so I could get a fun picture. Of course, no matter what I did he wouldn't look up at the camera!



Josh was ready to go back to the car so we didn't get many pictures of him, but Elora was more than willing to pose with all the flowers:



After this we trundled back up to the lake so everyone could use their bathrooms (and Joseph got slightly reprimanded by the forest ranger for sitting in the car while we were inside: "What if everyone thought they could come park here for just a minute to use the bathrooms? We can't have people doing that.") Then we headed back down to the oppressive heat in Cache Valley.

Hopefully we'll have time to go again (with parking money) before we're outta here!

Happy Birthday Jonah!

This cool dude is turning one today, can you believe it? Its crazy to think it was a year a go today that I was sitting outside talking to a neighbor when my water broke, and I wasn't even in labor. Seven hours later, this little guy came into the world.



He's changed a bit in a year...for one thing, he was born with dark brown hair,

and now its long and blonde! We're trying to decide if it might even be strawberry blonde! His pretty blue eyes are often squinted in his serious face......



but just as often you can see him with a big smile (and his tongue sticking out of his mouth.) He loves playing with his big brother and sister, even though they knock him down all the time and Josh thinks its funny to put his feet (and other things) on Jonah's face. I guess he is getting the typical third child treatment.



This big boy has been walking for at least two weeks now! Neither of his siblings was walking this early, but I guess he has to if he wants to keep up with them. He also likes to climb on things, and we will often find him up on the couch, a chair, or a kids' bed where he climbed all on his own.



He's quite the adventurer! The other day we went to the park, and he decided he was leaving. He got this far before he started heading back toward us, silly boy.



Jonah loves when we go outside, he always talks about the trees, clouds, birds, and everything else we see. (Really, he's happy here.)



He still loves "leading" music; even when he's almost asleep if he hears music from somewhere, his arm will shoot up in the air and he'll start conducting. He was fascinated by the marching bands when we went to the parade on the Fourth.



This cute little guy has been growing all of his teeth the last few weeks so he could catch up to Elora and Josh. He had two just a few weeks ago, now he has six, with two more about to burst through! This doesn't make for a happy baby at bedtime, but he's still just as sweet during the day.


We hope you have a great day, birthday boy!

In All Seriousness

So I assume most of you remember that we're waiting to see where Joseph gets a teaching job this fall. While he graduated in December, there weren't really any job listings until mid May, at which point we began applying to all the places we thought looked like great places to live. Places in Oregon like Astoria, Hood River, Coos Bay and others. We applied to positions in Wyoming like Riverton or the Star Valley area, places I'd visited before and which payed really well! We looked in Colorado, and a handful in Utah, Idaho, Texas and other surrounding states.

With each place we applied to I would do research, so I could feel like I was accomplishing something instead of just waiting. We'd look at street views of each town on google maps, check prices on moving trucks, even look up houses for sale and pick out neighborhoods that look good. There are several towns now with which I feel familiar enough that I could give you a guided tour, even though I've never been there in the flesh!

Unfortunately, one by one these jobs closed and we weren't chosen for the position. So we started applying to teaching positions in less ideal locales: smaller towns, harsher climates, further from family. We got all excited about one close by in Idaho, then we learned that this one too has been filled, just this week.

This has been especially frustrating for Joseph, as he was told that as a male educator in Elementary Education, he should get a job right away with no problems. Not to mention that he had good grades and was loved by all the teachers he substituted for all last semester!

But still we're waiting! I think a big problem is all the unemployed teachers out there right now. One site Joseph uses seems to be showing how many people are applying for each job, and if its accurate then each place is getting over 100 applications!

Every day there are a few more positions available, and Joseph is diligently applying to them. Meanwhile, I have started packing our belongings a little at a time and we have turned in our "Intent to Vacate" form 30 days in advance like we're supposed to. They probably would've let us stay longer, but I don't want to get in trouble if we have to move at the last minute, plus its really not fair for us to live here anymore when they really need the room for new student families.

With many of our most recent options, I honestly am not too excited about living in any of those places, but I'd still be excited if we found anything, even if we just stayed there for a year! Just hopefully someplace with something bigger than a two-bedroom apartment please.

On Tuesday Joseph has an interview with a tutoring facility here in town. Its not really what he's looking to do, but he might as well keep his mind open! One of the reasons he hadn't been trying to stay here, is the horrible pollution in the Winter always makes Joseph very sick, as he has asthma, so even if he was offered the job, we don't know what we'll do about it.

So anyway, there's an update for those of you looking for some gossip. I promise I'll post as soon as we know something!

outside stuff

Hope everyone had a great Independence Day weekend!

As for June...
Did I mention that we've been going to swimming lessons for four weeks at the Aquatic Center in town? We had never even been there until the housing party there last summer, and didn't realize we could do free lessons until all of our neighbors told us about it this year. (No, they're not free for everyone, just us special people who are poor, sorry.)

We should have done this years ago, because it took most of the first week just to get Josh to stop crying at having to be in the water, and he wouldn't put his face in the water or try to float until the second week of the second session. Now he'll probably forget it all, since class is over and it costs too much to go there and free swim.

The only way his instructors could get him to come in the water and be happy, was to give him one of the baby squirt toys...and let him squirt his teachers in the face. Repeatedly.


The one day I had Joseph bring the camera, there happened to be a substitute teaching his class. She actually got him to try a lot of things, but still had to endure his maniacal squirtings! But look- he's letting her lay him on his back in the water! Really, this was the last week of class, and the first time this had happened.



Elora had absolutely no problems. She kind of pretended that she was afraid to jump in the water (a lot) but she loved it. She was so proud that she could dunk her head completely underwater and move around too! This was her teacher for the second session. All the classes were about this size, three to five kids.




A funny story about Elora's class. There was a boy named Jackson in her class. The first week, he asked her to be his friend but she said "no" because she was embarrassed. When she told me this story a week later, she said he had looked down and acted very sad when she didn't say she'd be his friend. I suggested that she should ask him to be her friend, and she was worried about this for days, before she finally did it.
She was soooo excited to tell me that he had answered her query, "Will you be my friend?" with, "Sure!"
After that, she often stood in front of him grinning and not saying anything. I told his mom this story on the last day of class, and she said he hadn't told her that story, but he had said he " liked Elora in his class because she was cool and not mean."
Four-year-olds are so funny.

Jonah got to have swimming lessons too! We did the waterbabies class together. The first session there were only three moms, but the second class had about ten. He loved scooting off the edge of the pool into my arms, and while he didn't like dunking, he didn't usually cry either! What a big boy!


The first two weeks, he wouldn't kick his feet no matter how I held him. He would just hold perfectly still while I moved him through the water, kind of like he was superman gliding through the sky. But the second session, he suddenly caught on and was kicking like mad! He liked swimming after a toy, but his very favorite day was when daddy came in the water with us because we were learning to pass the baby underwater. He was kicking his legs like mad, "swimming" between his mommy and daddy and squealing with delight.


So we went swimming almost every morning throughout June. I think July will be pretty boring without it! Here are some other fun things we did in June.

Josh got a kite for his birthday, and we got that to fly finally, after I figured out the string was coming through the wrong side of the kite (it only took me an hour).


We also made some kites at a housing activity. They were fun to make, but keep falling apart and the tempura paint is flaking off everywhere, so I'm discretely throwing them away one by one. Hey, at least we flew them once first, right?

Elora roasted her first marshmallow all by herself this month. We had some of our own, but she preferred the gigantic pink marshmallows provided by our neighbors for her first foray into roasting. Yum!



Josh and Elora tried out their first slip-and-slide, a birthday gift our neighbor friends were kind enough to share. What's funny about this picture is that Josh had his swimming suit on earlier. He got soaking wet and wanted to go in and change. As expected, after he was fully dressed, it wasn't too long before he was sliding again and even wetter than before! This isn't Elora with him, its his favorite friend, Audra.



Jonah has enjoyed some time in the swing set out back...



and wanted out a few times too.



Elora has enjoyed walking Jonah around (as well as carrying him) even though she's told not to do so every five minutes or so. He can take 3-4 steps on his own now, but Elora still insists that he needs her help to get anywhere. Doesn't she look so big next to him?


Summer is just going by so quickly at our house!