Winds Of Change

Oh goody gumdrops....
Fall is coming and shelves are getting stacked with spooky stuff.

Hooray for Halloween!

New School

The time has come, people.
The twins started all day Kindergarten and Elliet is in 2nd grade SO! I do not have kids at home during the day anymore. Now, don't get me wrong, I love my kids. But I was not hesitant to send them off to school. Perhaps I should be one of those sweet Mom's who tears up at their growing up to fast or something, but having twins dissolved those feelings long ago. I feel like I've had triplets at home for years (As Elliet is so close to them in age) and I have been looking forward to this season for a looong time. But I did start to wonder during this last week of summer... will I come home to my empty house and actually be sad? I thought I would sing, but maybe the reality of it will hit me differently? As these thoughts were on my brain, I decided to put off getting school supplies/backpacks and smart preps to just keep playing with my clan. We hit the museum, went swimming, played the Wii and made forts.
Well, as usual they are in tow as we ran errands throughout the week...and it was like this:
-We stopped for lunch one day and I would get all sentimental and think... Wow- this won't happen anymore. They'll be eating lunch at school and I'll be all alone. So I then tell the kids these thoughts as they looked at me with mouths full of fries and spilling chocolate milk in the car....I tell them I'll miss them and that school will be fun and we'll have other good times.
Then we go into Target and they are running off in three different directions, hiding in the clothing racks, touching everything, shoving each other... and that's when I can't wait for them to be in school all day.

So here I am. At home in the peace and quiet and the time has filled up so far with lots of catching up things so I haven't had many moments of stillness to be too aware of the vacancy, but those moments come and I get excited to pick them up at 3:11.
Then they are shouting in the car, making messes in the house and interrupting my phone calls.... and life is as it was. Hooray for school! :)

Summer Fading

I am behind on the events of the past two weeks so I'll try to catch up in the next couple of days...

The last week of summer was probably supposed to be more full of preparation than I put into it. I was a little conflicted this year about school beginning again. I love the routine and it was time to get back into the swing of things, but it's also been such a great summer and I am a little hesitant to let it go. As a result, I spent the first week school (i.e. my open time with kids gone all day) catching up on what I put off. More on this to come, though....
Quick posts of a beautiful summer evening storm that blew through here last weekend. It was SO sosososo pretty. Calm temps and a gorgeous sky. I took the kids for a walk to the neighbors house and we decided to stop at the park on the way home where it rained on us a bit. It smelled great and the sky yielded some rainbows.


















Also, wanted to share a lazy treat if you're up for something fattening (aren't we all?). Was grocery shopping in the frozen aisle, saw the box of frozen puff pastry dough and remembered I had a jar of lemon curd from Trader Joe's sitting in my cupboard. See? Easy. Let it thaw, rolled it out, cut into squares, filled with lemon curd, ricotta and some fresh grated nutmeg (um... that was because I don't know what I was doing and it sounded fancy). Folded corners together, pressed closed, brushed with butter and cinnamon sugar and baked. They were geeeoood. Scott gave his official lemony seal of approval. Great desserts. And maybe for breakfast. Ok, and lunch, too. Whatever, just go make some.

Um, Yeah. I Think I Do

Oh dear....
Ohdearohdearohdear.....
Have you heard of this new home screen printer toy by Provo Craft called the Yudu?
I have wanted to screen print again for years but not sure where at home I could spread out the mess....this may be a nicely packaged answer.

I may need this before the next Girl Next Door show.

Lake Powell Pt. 2

While hanging at ThatTharLakePal, we did some exploring.
Jess suggested a little hike to the Wahweap Windows. It was a large pair of big boulders that were naturally hollowed from years of wind and rain erosion. My pictures are a lame representation but hopefully you get an idea and can see the variety of line directions that carved the walls. Lots of carved names from past visitors- the oldest dates I could find were early seventies. A cool place.



This was a cool old restored boat that we passed on our way out from the hike. It had white rib-stitched seats which I loved.

Makin' rockets with the rocket miester, which would be my Dad. Don't suppose you remember this rocket launcher our neighbors had but my Dad was so interested in it he bought one himself and brought the materials for us to have our own night of Space Camp. We sat on the top of the boat cutting and gluing fins and blew those puppies in de skies. Scott was on the ground retrieving for a while so we eventually made a toilet paper target on said 'dir bich'.
NASA, no copying.



My Dad on a rescue mission, which was futile...the little guys just didn't make it if they got wet.



On to WeatherHill Canyon, Ho! Another great day of excursion was one of the best memories I'll have of this trip. We drove the boat down a very beautiful and swervy canyon that narrowed gradually for a couple of miles. These are the things that make these trips so incredible.

This is what the first little bit looked like. Calm, flat, green.

The further in we go, the glassier the water surface gets.


Here is Rich looking majestic (mostly I loved the comparison of the rock right behind him and the height of the canyon above. That, and his pocket square.)

Then spots would open back up again to keep going... keep going.....



More beautiful clean emerald green water.

It is just beautiful to see the white washed rock disappear beneath the edges of the water. We kept asking my Dad, "What is the depth now? How about here?" because it would seriously be 130 feet, 57 feet, 84 feet, etc. SOO deep and yet the walls are right next to us.

Now, one thing I don't have pictures of, but want to remember, is we didn't get much further before the boat would get stuck. And the spirit of adventure was too much to leave unanswered so Scott, Jess and I put on life vests and decided to swim further up and see if it either opened up more or ended. We would swim a about 100 yards and the end would turn, so we'd go. Then another 100 yards would go on to another turn. So we did that, too. I think we did this about 5 or 6 times and, yes- I was wondering if we'd made a mistake when I could hear Marty, Rich and Randi following up behind. Fun! Friends in our foolishness. And soon after Scott announced an ending which didn't amount to much after all that work. We only walked up the sandy path a little while before we turned back. Ugh- and had to swim allthewayback. Us Patches are not great swimmers- Marty, Rich and I took up the rear and were laughing at how pathetic we were. My poor parents and Julia did not think we'd be so long (neither did we!) so I felt bad they had to wait all that time but they were great about it. Really cool day. Love this place.

Lake Powell 2009

We returned a week ago from our Annual family trip at Lake Powell. This is something I look forward to every year as I am really close to my siblings and parents. The trip was just us- no kids- just my brothers, sister + spouses and parents. A total of ten (cuz Rich finally got married- woot!). Soon our kids will be old enough to bring to the boat (parents rules), but until then I am more than happy to just relax with adults and act like children. Nine of my best friends were there and the fun never stopped. I have decided to just slop on a bunch of pictures so be prepared to scroll down a bit. I've also added commentary/journaling which may bore you but hey- pictures alone don't explain much... which in some cases may be a good thing, eh? I've only got half of them contained in this post. More to come soon.
*PS- I tried a different format for this post so hopefully the commentary will line up properly with the pics. Cross your teeth, peeps...

As we took the houseboat out to beach, the clouds kept opening and closing which created great shadows everywhere. It would turn the top of the boat bright white and the water dark green. One of my favorite things to observe in the clouds here is how the sun reflects off the orange/red rocks making the cloud shadows orange, not the normal purple or grey. See that? Do yeh?! Mighty purdy, me says.

We all pitched in with the menu and everything we ate was SO GOOD. A typical dinner prep atmosphere complete with fun music. Embarassing dance moves were had as we are all old and out of practice. Who needs alcohol for good times? Not when you watch me try to do the "reverse running man". I promise.

We had wind the first two days which kinda stinks for boat goofing. But when you have lemons- you make fruit punch! We flew kites and the boys made some sophisticated water games. It's not as easy as it looks, folks... those mats sink pretty fast before you can get to the end.


Our trip is not complete without some Guitar Hero. Oh boy! The best memories this time were:
1) Sweet, innocent Jessica.... who does not know the Beastie Boys very well, had to sing "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" while Julia & I were, like, tearing it up on the gee-tars. Oh man- I haven't laughed that hard in ages after listening to her sing about "money in a stack and classy ho's".
2) And the best was watching these three here... Marty, Rich and Julia go for "Livin' On A Prayer". Rich and Marty* were close, and yet so far, from completing the song. One of them always kept getting boo'd off the stage for missing the notes (in their defence, Juls and I did hand them over still in the "hard" setting) so they would have to re-do the song. By the 3rd or 4th time, we were all yelling the chorus trying to encourage their victory and when it wouldn't happen, we'd all "OHHHHHH!!!" and do it again. There was a peaceful, older couple beached not too far away from where we were. Poor sweet folks probably expected a nice, quiet night on the lake. That full moon was serenaded by us shouting JB Jovi. As Gilly would say, "........sarry."
*Look at how hard he is concentrating in every picture. So funny.


Ah. Some boat fun. It's a serious matter as demonstrated by Scott and Randi here. Go Jess! She was hands free by the end of the week.


Rich is a show off.

So is my Dad.

So I tried it one upsies with my eyes closed to boot!

...and drifted too far back and sunk like a dumb rock. Nice.

Finding little pets is easy on der bich (inside joke- careful saying that one out loud).

Last year Rich had a lizard on his head. He did it again.

We went on some cool hikes on the hills around. It's so fun to go in the warm twilight and look for vampires. I mean, views. Sorry for the fuzzy pics- I'm bad at adult photography (Not that kind..... shame on you!).


At the end of the day it feels darn nice to jump in the lake and wash off the sun block and such. That is, if you don't have a dead body reach up from the depths and grab your ankle! (Whatliesbeneath!) I love memories of this and tried to get a good image of what it's like. Jewel dark green water, warm light and crazy dare dives from the top into the darkness (and dead bodies. Srsly).