Summer Activities

Here are a few of our recent summer adventures.  We've kept what I feel is a busy summer schedule of adventures.  By this I mean we've had about one fun outing a day.  To me that's a lot and much more than I've done some other years.  Here we are at the bowling alley.  This was on a day Scott was in town and my parents watched Emma which made it all less crazy.

Anna and I made cupcakes and ran out of powdered sugar to make the frosting.  In desperation, I added a little granulated, which was a bad decision.  Hope you like crunchy frosting.  Live and learn.

Running in the sprinklers at the park.  It's gotten HOT in Utah.

Father's Day card made by Anna for Grandpa.

She made one for Scott as well.

My mom was involved in a massive cinnamon roll undertaking for church for Father's Day.

Matthew wanted to eat some so my mom made some more, just for us.  Yummy!

More trips to the splash pad and lots to the pool

And speaking of the pool here are some photos from Snorkel Gate 2016.  Matthew and Anna had a big blow out fight about the use of the snorkel, which got taken away because of the fighting.  It eventually all got worked out.

See!  We need to learn to share.

Anna lost another tooth.  She was excited about that.  She lost it the day I left to go to California to sign papers and was impressed that the tooth fairy still came.  :)

As we get closer to our move I've been packing things up and throwing things out.  I went through all the school papers and found some interesting reading in there.    Matthew and Anna both wrote about things I didn't think they cared about at all.  Matthew wrote a lot about Anna's broken arm - he was very worried about her.  I thought that was sweet.  And he wrote fondly about the Santa Claus run, which I thought they all hated.

Here was a paper Matthew wrote - I liked this one 'cause he said nice things about me:

My Family

My sister is weird.  She wears mismatched socks a lot and gets really mad about tiny things.

My mom does lovely cooking and is very nice.

My dad works in California and is not here.

Matthew does artwork too.

John wrote his name all on his own (without even asking for help with which letters to use).  This is big for him since he has had gross and fine motor skill problems.  I think he's making good progress though.  He still isn't sure how many up and down bumps to do for the N.  He just keeps going until he runs out of space. JOHNNN

Not to be outdone Grant had to draw something too

I think he wrote Hello

He also made a Minecraft man for me.

After the sad demise of my hard drive and all my photos, video, documents and music, I went straight to backing up the photos I have on my phone.  I got this phone in October and already have over 4000 photos on it.  And now they are all backed up.  Luckily most of the data I lost on my computer is saved somewhere else so I should be able to get back most of what was lost.  But its a good wake up call.  Back up your data often!

And after closing on the house we got serious about ordering some appliances.  We need a fridge and a few other things.  I took all the kids to look at appliances.  Anna liked this fridge - she thought it looked futuristic...that is until she saw the one with the big LCD screen on it.  Scott and I eventually decided on a winner (neither of those ones) and ordered it for the new house.

Five kids at Lowe's.  Sigh.  Lots of trips to the bathroom and drinking fountain.  They need to make those race car shopping carts big enough to hold five kids...or at least four (Matthew has no more interest in riding in there - and his legs wouldn't fit).  Nah, they are already too hard to maneuver around.  Guess I will have to deal with all the fighting that goes along with sharing the race car shopping cart (sometimes called the "Runny Race Car" in our family).  I think Emma screamed the loudest when she had to give up the steering wheel.

The kids found a "tiny house" at Lowe's.  

Bonus points if you can spot John (you can always tell a Milford man).

Moving to California in about 6 days.  Must finish packing.

Closed!

It's official.  Yesterday we closed on the house!!  It's been a long time coming and we're glad its finally here.  Scott will head down in a few days and the rest of us move in next weekend.  Hooray!!  I don't have any new pictures of the house (more to come) but we're all excited.  In some ways it still feels a little abstract to me, even though I was just there and saw the house.  I'm still a bit mired in the details of packing things up here and I'm sure it will all sink in a little more once we actually move in.

In other news my computer is back from the Apple Store, working better than ever and with a new (and empty) hard drive.  I'll gradually be able to load my stuff back on there.  I'm glad its back.  Commence happy dance!!

Rough Reentry

It is pretty common for Emma (almost 20 months) to wake up from her nap in a bad mood.   It isn't always like that, but it happens a lot.  Somedays she just wakes up grumpy and nothing seems to make it right.  This was one of those days.  We offer her snacks and snuggles, drinks and distractions.  But nothing seems to work.  At least not consistently.  Sometimes she just has to cry and be mad for a little while and then she gradually gets back to her usual happy self.  Sometimes I don't like waking up either.  Once in a while I just have to document the sadness.  You know.  For posterity.

After a while of being sad she usually gets back to feeling normal and will accept snacks and other things.

Here Grant helps her forget her troubles.  

She likes all the kids but finds Grant (age 5) particularly diverting.  Maybe we'll figure out how to better help her reenter after her nap time, but for now it just seems to take time.  Waking up can be so unpleasant sometimes.

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

I flew out to California this week to sign the closing papers for the house and do a final walk through.  We've had a few hiccups with the closing - mostly paperwork issues.  And it was a little touch and go at the end there - there was a real danger of our closing being pushed back a few days and messing up the plans in place with the movers and moving in etc.  Plus it would require me to fly back out to sign in California.  But luckily everything miraculously came together and we were able to sign the papers before I had to head back to Utah.  I feel like I've seen the property before but I actually haven't.  I saw the empty lot back in October.  Back then the street wasn't even a street.  Just a field of dirt.  So a lot has changed.  Scott has gone down there almost every other weekend to monitor the progress and take care of little odds and ends.  Here I am at the house for our final walk through.  Since our house is literally one of the last houses in the development to be completed the neighborhood is essentially up and running at the this point.  So we won't have to be living with construction.  They are pretty much done.  The walk through was helpful - we learned all about the ins and outs of our new house.  There were a few things that were done incorrectly and needed to be fixed, but they were relatively minor and the builder is going to fix them as soon as possible.

I didn't take many pictures.  Here is Scott in our kitchen.

View from kitchen/living room to front door.

I saw a few interior pictures from the appraisal last week and I didn't like the flooring/cabinets and countertop choices that much (the ones we picked out), but I was happy to find it all looked much better in person (at least I thought so) and it will look better with stuff in the house too.  In the photos it seemed like the flooring didn't go with the cabinets, but I liked it in person.

Close up of kitchen counters and backsplash.  Very white.  The countertops are a cream colored quartz with small cream colored detail, but it looks all white in a photograph.  The backsplash is off white subway tile.  I like a very clean and simple look.  We went with one of the two default cabinet colors (for which you pay no additional fee) and they are pretty good looking I think.

Stove top.  Can't wait to use it!! The oven is so clean inside.  It will never be that clean again.  :)

Back door slider.  You can see our dirt backyard.  I was pleasantly surprised because our backyard was bigger than I was expecting.  Bigger than on the model home.  Still small, but I'm happy with it.  We plan to put in some sprinklers and a little grass after we move in. 

Living Room.

This was after I had turned off all the lights.

Kinda dark

One way down the street

The other way down the street

A slightly wider house view. you can kinda see our close neighbors.  So the way they do closing in California (at least how this new sale house was done) is that we sign the closing papers and then wait three days for the loan to be funded, and on the third day, when the loan is funded you can take possession of the house.  So we actually close on Friday (in two days), as long as there are no problems.  Scott should be able to get the keys on Friday.  Exciting!!

But I flew back to Utah to pack a few more things and get ready to move in a week and a half (after our household goods have been delivered to the house).  The kids are excited to see the house.  Emma is all ready to move to Northern California.  Fingers cross that we can finish up this move smoothly.

Tech Troubles

or Back Up Your Stuff...I mean it!

Normally I'm pretty good to back up the data on my computer.  However when we moved from Illinois I didn't bring my external hard drive with me (with which I back up most of my stuff) because I thought we'd only be away from our stuff a couple months at most.  We weren't planning to build a house.  So I backed up just before we moved but haven't since.  I didn't want to buy a new external hard drive when I have one in storage.   Well, my trusty Mac's hard drive bit the dust hard this week.  I spent a painful four hours at the Apple Store trying to recover data yesterday.  We didn't get much.

Now my Mac is having the old hard drive swapped out for a new working one and my data is gone, most notably a huge photo library and music collection.  The good news is I have a year old back up that I will be able to access in a matter of weeks and I backed up most of my photos to shutter fly.  Also most of the photos I have taken in the past year are still on my devices.   Music is similarly not  so bleak.  I have a backup from a year ago and most new songs I have purchased are through my  apple account so I should be able to load the onto my computer again once it is repaired.  But I have lost videos (except for those I have posted to my blog or Vimeo account) and some photos and documents that I can't get back unless I pay a lot (over $1000) for clean room hard drive data recovery.  So, back up your data kids.  I wished I had a more recent back up, then this would all be a lot more painless.

So I'm going to remember this lesson and back up more frequently. My laptop was 4 1/2 years old and starting to show signs of age (death throes) so I should have known.  

My computer had been getting slower and slower until a few days ago it just froze up. I tried restarting it and it wouldn't boot up.  It never booted up again (gentle sobbing).  I'm very attached to my beloved MacBook in case you haven't guessed.

I tried booting up in some different diagnostic modes.  It appeared the hard drive was bad.  My worst fear.  

Finally I took it to the Apple Store.  I checked out some new MacBooks while waiting for my service appointment with the Genius Bar geniuses.  Matthew went with me and was able to find games on every device he encountered.  The geniuses determined that my hard drive was indeed bad.  They got me into a triage mode where it looked like we would be able to salvage all the data.  We could see the data and even navigate the folders.  However, after several hours attempting to transfer it unsuccessfully we had to mutually declare failure (more gentle sobbing).  The good news is they could replace my hard drive for only $150 (parts and labor) a significant savings over buying a whole new machine.  Matthew also played games on a tablet there at the Apple Store for the duration of our long visit, without batting an eye.  After we left Apple he asked if we could go in the Microsoft store.  :)  Uh, no.

 

Earlier in the year my iPad (which I've also had for quite some time) got a small crack in the screen when a certain 5 year old stood on it.  I took it to a local place to repair the screen.  They completely broke it during the repair.  It was totally inoperable after.  I wished I had either just used it with the screen cracked or taken it straight to Apple.  I was pretty upset about it and asked the company to pay me something for breaking my device, which they did.  But I'm never going there again.  I kept the broken device even though they wanted to farm it for parts (without giving me anything for it).   I let Matthew take it apart.  Inside, behind the touch screen its almost all battery.  The ICs are so small.  And yet it can do so much.  This was soon after Matthew took apart an older computer with a large motherboard.   Moore's Law in action.

So, be sure to back up your important stuff.  And please forgive all the mistakes in this blog post.  Blogging from my iPad or phone is not easy.

The Alpine Slide

We went to Park City this weekend to ride the alpine slide.   We were glad it wasn't rainy or windy and not too hot (or cold) or crowded.  Everything is very green in Utah these days and Park City was just beautiful.

Here we  are waiting to ride the lift to the top of the alpine slide.  Emma was too small to ride the lift and the alpine slide so she stayed at the bottom with Grandpa.   

Here are Anna and Grandma on the ski lift.  Anna was a little nervous.

Matthew, Grant and I on the ski lift.  Grant wiggled a lot and made me nervous on the lift.  I had an arm around him the whole time.  

John and Scott rode the lift behind us.

Here's part of the alpine slide we could see while going up

Once we got to the top we got our sleds and walked over to the top of the alpine slide.

Here we are waiting in line for our turn.

Almost there!

Anna was still nervous and wanted to ride with Scott.

Matthew was tall enough to go by himself.  Anna was right on the line (of being able to ride alone) but wanted to go with someone else this time.

Anna and Scott

Grant rode with my mom

John and I rode together.  

Right from the start John wanted to push the lever all the way forward.

Still waiting our turn but almost there.

Matthew raced John and I down.  He was ahead most of the time but John and I won in the end.  Here comes Scott and Anna.  She looked terrified but she said she loved it and wanted to go again.

Here comes Grandma and Grant.  Grant loved it too and said he wanted to go again.

Matthew, Anna, Scott and I also went on the Alpine Coaster.   That was a lot of fun.  You could control your speed and braking going down and I was glad to know I couldn't fall off the track there.

Here's a ski lift view of the alpine coaster.

We had a fun time at the alpine slide, the first time my kids had been on one!  We also drove through historic downtown Park City and then headed back down the mountain to go to our ward pool party.  It was a busy day!