Not quite how I remembered it...

Don't they look so "relaxed" as they are "enjoying" themselves, soaking up the sun?

We're still alive.

Unplanned matching, unplanned photo shoot during an unplanned trip to the park. Living life unplanned works out really well sometimes.

Yellowstone in a day

All National Park Service signs make me think we're about to travel back in time to the 1950s.

I love it.

Bison and calves (isn't that what you call baby bison?)


Steamboat Geyser


Emerald Lake


"We are here, and we are enjoying ourselves."


The kids were a little more impressed by this view.


Or maybe just happy that we saw a waterfall and a chipmunk in the same stop.


A collapsed mud volcano. Just the word "volcano" alone was enough to get the kids to walk up to take a look and spend some time taking that look.


A lake and mountains


Old Faithful, just in time.


See? Jack really did come on the trip.


Elijah had enough, and was ready to move on.


And that's our trip to Yellowstone in a day! It was just a sliver of the vastness we could have seen, had we endless days and an extra large supply of allergy medication for me.

It's about time!

Yea!! A child who loves swinging!


Who doesn't scream after one push and beg to get out.


Who want to be pushed again and again and again.



And smiles and laughs the whole time. Yea!

Spray park fun

We recently went with friends to a different spray park. I love spray parks because I'm usually on my own with the kids, and they can get in all the water fun they like without the stress of going to the pool.

Before our friends arrived, I caught the kids with the camera.

Ellen loves the water.

Rose was really excited that she figured out how to successfully negotiate the waterfall.

And she loved the water, too. It feels good in super humid super hot weather. At 9:30 a.m.

Jack wasn't really feeling it.

I'm happy to report that soon after this photo was taken, and with some encouragement from Mom, getting wet was the right thing to do. I even got wet, and I was completely dressed. Those holes in the ground? Yeah, water sprays out of there, too.

Alien arms: update

I started doing the hundred push ups training program at the end of January. I'm happy to report that I am such a weakling with alien arms that even though I made it through week four, I couldn't do enough push ups in an exhaustion test to move to week five, so I went all the way back to repeat weeks three and four.

Somewhere along the way, I hurt my neck and shoulders (either sleeping scrunched up on a kid bed or doing incorrect push ups) and had to take about a week off. I'm completely recovered (I know you were all concerned) and took my post-week-four exhaustion test again yesterday. I am also happy to report that I successfully completed my remedial work and am ready to progress to week five! And I am now seven weeks into the six week program!

Don't worry, I can still only do 35 girl push ups, so technically I guess I'm still doing remedial work. It's kind of nice to be at a remedial level. This way I can have really, really low expectations for myself. In fact, I fully expect to have to repeat week five, and then do week six twice as well before I'll actually be able to do the promised hundred push ups. I mean, girl push ups.

The long-term plan is to then repeat the entire program doing real push ups. Realistically speaking, this could very well take the rest of my life.

In my post life, I think I'll take up the hundred squats program. Do you think I have alien legs, too?

Castle Park

The Legacy Play Village is one of my kids' favorite parks in Lubbock. I haven't taken them there very often because it is a bit of a drive and it's a big place. However, there is only one way in and out, there's shade, I can take the stroller up in the castle, and Ellen can go down the big slide all by herself now. Plus, it's fun for adults, too. Jack and I took the kids with David, Chelsea, Bentley, Mary, and Luke over Easter weekend.

The two-story curly slide:


Rose loves going outside:


You can see the Lubbock temple spire on the horizon just to the left of the swing in this picture as well as the "recliner swings."


Jack Jack is all about action shots these days:

Going to the playground with Daddy

Jack Jack is rocking Ellen's tricycle.


Look how far he went! I'm pretty sure he was just pushing the ground with his feet instead of pedaling.


Let's pause a moment for the graffiti.


Ellen's hanging out at the top of the big curvy tube slide. Sorry about the graffiti right by her head. I don't know why I'm apologizing, though. It's not like we can do much about the pre-teen punks who live around here. As PW says, we're just keeping it real here.

Ready to roll!

Lately Ellen has been very insistent on carrying the keys for me when we go out to the car. Insistent here means if I don't hand over the keys, she may scream, cry, stamp her feet, stand in front of the door so we can't leave, refuse to walk, or run down the hall to her bed and bury her face in her pillow. I know that doesn't sound like my model-citizen child at all, but it has been known to happen.

So I usually let her carry the keys. Then one day she walked over to the car, unlocked the doors, opened the front driver's side door, popped the trunk, went around to the trunk, opened the trunk, got out a bottle of water, carried it around to the driver's side and dropped it into the cup holder, inserted the keys in the ignition . . .

And at this point I was finished buckling Jack into his car seat and realized what she was doing. Ellen doesn't know how to start the car yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. Maybe I won't let her carry the keys so often. Talk about 2 going on 16!

Jack likes to carry the keys, too. He likes the way they jingle when he shakes them, and how they jingle in the wind that still surprises him and takes his breath away. He also likes it if, when we get to the car, I hold him even with the lock so he can insert the car key (yes, he knows which one it is) into the lock . . .

And just a side note about the photo from our day at the park: yes, Ellen is wearing a dress and pants. Note how well the pastel purple and flowered pants go with the larger floral print and brighter colors of the dress. She carefully selected and put the pants on herself. It was a little chilly that day, so that shows some real foresight on her part.

An afternoon at the park

March 2007: We went to Frank Higinbotham Park in Lubbock shortly after Jack was born to (1) get out of the house, (2) feed the ducks, (3) get out of the house, and (4) fly kites.

Although we normally have plenty of wind in Lubbock, that does not necessarily equate to a successful kite-flying experience. We (I'm using the royal we here) spent most of the time running around trying to get the kite in the air. My running around did entertain Ellen and make me feel that I was out of the house.

The consensus was that we needed a better quality kite. The two-for-a-dollar style I picked up at the dollar store proved severely inferior to the models I could have bought for a whole dollar each.

We had gotten a lot of rain, so the lake was pretty high and the ducks came right to us and our bread crumbs. And the trees are supposed to be growing in the water like that.

We have Jack with us, but he's sleeping in the stroller, and I'm taking the picture.

March 2008: Fast forward one year.

We decided to go to the park to (1) feed the ducks, (2) get out of the house, (3) play on the playground, and (4) take lots of fun park pictures. We went back to Frank Higinbotham Park because they have the closest and safest ducks.

I decided against the double stroller, an almost unsteerable monstrosity, in favor of the much lighter umbrella stroller. It's so much lighter that almost anyone can push it, even with a 20 pound baby in it.

Yes, that is Ellen taking care of business. Not quite tall enough to see over the sun shade, but as you can see, she's managing just fine. In fact, she protested loudly if I even set a foot in her direction to assist in steering. "No Mommy empuja. Ellen empuja." (No Mommy pushing. Ellen is pushing.)

By the way, I actually do take the kids to a park at least once a week during warmer months. Lubbock has a park or a church on every other corner. And we have a playground at our apartment complex, so it's not like my kids are really park deprived.