Reading the sign

For MLK day we took the girls on their first hike/trail run. I taught Macy to read the sign on the Huckleberry Trail- she reinterpreted the Huckleberry marker to mean "No grapes"- resulting in "No bike, no horse, no doggie, no grapes." Sorry it is sideways.

Hugs at the Beach

I stole this from Kate's blog- I love it!

And I'm borrowing this from Charlie & AM

Life in Caifornia

Our blogging has suffered at the cost of having way too many distractions in our new homeland!

With the pick up in the economy Johnny (John's West coast name) is back to long hours at the office- he leaves around 4:30 am and is usually home by 6 pm or so.

I am still home full-time with the girls, but I also picked up a part-time job that I do from home while the girls are asleep- I LOVE it! I have always loved working, and this allows me to still work a little and not miss out on being home for my daugthers. I've also found other projects that I am excited about that allow me to feel like I accomplish something and, again, give me some sort of "work".

And the girls! They are growing up, and they are huge fans of their grandparents who conveniently live about 10 minutes up the highway. They love to "'nuggle", dance, cook, and read stories. In February they began their diaper-free life and I love seeing the confidence and sense of independence this gives them. We've also met lots of wonderful moms and kids to play with in California. Our social skills need work, but we are making progress!

PICTURES:

Crazy things happen during naps. Here is some aftermath.

We tried keeping a printer/ copier in their closet until this happened

Macy loves clothes, and she knows what she likes. Here are some of her staples- ball hat (worn daily), purple dress, dance shoes, and a headband.

And Camy continues to be as accident prone as ever. Since moving she has chipped a tooth and badly cut her lip, run into a wall corner leaving a gash in her forehead, cut (possibly completely through) the middle of her tongue after a dance move gone wrong, endured a block to the eye resulting in her first black eye, run into a filing cabinet resulting in her second black eye (2 days after the first), and many other less notable injuries.

Most of these are due to her love of running (I can't get more than a few seconds at a time), and she is sometimes cross-eyed- we are looking into that.

Stake Conference Announcement

This morning in stake conference the stake president repeated the stake business that had been conducted the night before. The announcement made over the pulpit went something like this:

Stake President: "As second counselor in the stake presidency we have called John H. M. III- not to be confused with John H. M. IV, who is also in our congregation. And I hear there could someday be a John H. M. V?"

JHM III: "Talk to Edna."

To clarify- no, we are not expecting. I'm wondering if Uncle Mike put him up to this. I thought it was hilarious.

It also reminded me that John sent me this head line earlier in the week. Bill Clinton Says Wife Wants Grandchild More Than Presidency. I wish Chelsea Clinton luck.

Camy kneading bread

Or as she likes to call it "squishing" the bread:

A day with dad

Last Tuesday, Edna went to her sisters wedding in UT. I stayed home with the girls and these are a few of the pictures that resulted.

One of the first things we did was feed the blue jays. My grandpa had trained jays to eat peanuts out of his hand. Right now we are lucky enough if the girls don't bang on the glass window and scare the jay away. But they enjoy throwing peanuts out the back door, and have a surprising amount of patience to wait and see the bird come by.

As we got ready to go to the park, we ended up pulling out hats while we searched for coats.

First we headed to the bank. Over hundreds of years of experience the banks have learned that children have no tolerance for waiting in line, but if they provide suckers, the kids might manage 10 minutes or so. The blue mouths are just a side effect.

Once at the park, Macy had a great time sliding down the slide - head first, which I thought was rather bold. She seemed pretty pleased with herself.

Camy was also willing to take a try at the two-story slide, but was a little less headstrong than her sister. She was more content to walk along the structures.

I tried in various shots to try to capture Macy's perpetual forward momentum. This is the closest I got.

The girls have also enjoy playing "simon says". We haven't added the simon says part yet. The video is a little bigger than our site allows, so you will have to travel over to YouTube.

Hugs

Prancer

Macy got some tap shoes from her cousin Hailey. She was pretty tickled with them...

Statute of Limitations

I have watched this video many times. Its short. Its a blooper. I probably shouldn't admit to laughing about it as much as I have, but it has been long enough since taken, maybe I will be ok.

Its a quick snap shot of life. Cam is fishing for a wooden spoon. She's pinned down her one leg by sitting on it and is precariously perched on the other, but a steadying hand makes the position feasible. Then just as she conquers the wooden spoon, she lets her want to share with Macy distract her steadying hand. Its not until she is about a third of the way down does she realize that her leg is pinned. You can see it try to kick out for balance, but no dice. No where to go but down. Thud. I wonder how much kids cry because they are hurt, and how much is just frustration with all the different things you have to keep track of just to stay on your feet. It doesn't seem fair sometimes.

Picture dump

Every once in a while I get this crazy idea that if I were to go through and just delete all the 25MB photos that are blury, I would get half my hard drive back. But then I run across pictures like this, and the blur just seems to work.

And then you get to looking and you get stuck looking at a few pictures a little longer than the 1 second you can spend on each one to cover all you pictures in something rediculous - like 4 hours. And you realize you will never be done.

And then you give up and are happy that at least if you go looking, you can find some pictures worth looking at again.

But lots of time has been put into organizing and classfying photos automatically, but if camera makers really want a killer app that will help improve their customers lives, they need to create cameras that will either keep you from taking photos you will never want to look at again or offer to delete the blurry, overexposed, bad photos. Then I wouldn't be in this position in the first place.