get well soon, my sweet niece

hope you are feeling better, m. we love you!

"blue skies" by noah and the whale

for a limited time, (i'm not sure how limited,) you can download the "blue skies" single from noah and the whale's new album called the first days of spring for free. just click here! i've only listened once but so far i'm really liking this song a lot!

albums i'm excited for: volume 1, devendra banhart's "what will be"

devendra banhart is really strange. and i love it. i love his freakiness, i love his folkiness. i guess that's why his stuff is called freak folk. anyway, he has a new album coming out on october 27th called "what will be" and you can hear two songs from it already. the first one is called "baby" and you can listen to it on his myspace page.

the second song is called "walillamdzi" and you can watch a video of devendra and his band recording the new album that is set to this song over here on stereogum.

p.s. i'm really liking "baby" a lot. check it out!

back in the U.S. of A.

ok, so it's been a couple of months since we moved back to the States. i guess i kind of turned the blogging over to jo because she's been doing such a great job. but we had an experience today that's worth writing about.

this afternoon we went to a pumpkin patch.


we paid 5 bucks per person and got on a trailer hayride, pulled by an extremely old-fashioned tractor.

this wasn't even the tractor. the tractor that pulled us was even OLDER.

then we got out to the pumpkin patch.

more pumpkins than i have ever seen before! we got to each pick our own pumpkin out, and they had some HUGE ones.

i know that this might not be blog-worthy to some people. but, to us, it was the perfect afternoon.

here's the reason. we are just thrilled to be here. we love the mountains, love the friendly people, love the way people get into the holidays here.

we LOVE halloween. we used to celebrate it in australia, but it just wasn't the same. a lot of our friends there consider it an "american" holiday (which i guess makes it unworthy of celebrating :). i used to pray i would find an orange pumpkin in the grocery store for us to carve. last year i actually talked to the produce manager and he special ordered me a couple from queensland. guess how much they cost . . . $19.99 each! therefore, we only bought one. so when we sat on our hay bale and came within sight of the pumpkin field, i actually felt like crying. to be back here, with family and friends, and get to experience autumn and halloween simultaneously this year, it's just THE BEST!

brushing aside waves to look for water

home life. it doesn't offer many surprises. there are so many chores. it's easy to get discouraged (for me at least.) i get frustrated with my children a lot. i let them watch too much t.v. i feel like there are too many improvements that i need to make.

luckily i get reminders, almost daily sometimes, of how lucky and blessed i am. seeing nie-nie on oprah, conference, capturing a moment with one of my children in photo form, or reading a really good quote.

like this one that my friend kat put up as her facebook status a few days ago, "If you seek some special life outside of daily activities, that is like brushing aside waves to look for water."

little c. at 2 and 3/4ths years old

***these pictures and this post are from a long time ago, for some reason i never published them.

favorite song: "tell it to the volcano" by miniature tigers

favorite primary song: "i am a child of God"

favorite color: blue

favorite meal: cheesy tortillas

favorite outfit: anything involving a yo gabba gabba! t-shirt

favorite thing to do while millie's at school: throw ball with mom

favorite t.v. show: yo gabba gabba!

sweet m. at 6 years and some odd months of age

this is how i will always think of you looking at 6: bangs always slightly askew, top front tooth missing,that tiny scar on your cheek from when you fell off your bike a few months ago,and always mixing patterns in your clothing, always dressing yourself exactly how you want.

a couple of weeks ago i asked the kids a few questions about themselves and wrote them in my journal. here's what millie said:

favorite song: "winter white hymnal" by the fleet foxes

favorite primary song: "i love to see the temple"

favorite color: tie between pink and red

favorite smell: the way my hands smell after i wash them with lots of soap (no joke this is exactly what she said.)

favorite meal: mac and cheese or mashed potatoes

favorite outfit: red tanktop that has white and blue butterflies on it, with white shirt underneath, and jean cut-offs

favorite book: goodnight gorilla

favorite thing to do at school: go to lunch

favorite t.v. show: the electric company

vampire weekend's drinking horchata

if you enjoy both "free" and "good music" you should definitely get yourself over to vampire weekend's website, where you can currently download a single from their album that won't be out till january 2010. it's called "horchata" and it's sounding pretty good to me.

keep on trying

"my brothers and sisters, don't ever get discouraged if you stumble at times. don't feel downcast and despair if you don't feel worthy to be a disciple of Christ at all times. the first step to walking in righteousness is simply to try. we must try to believe, try to learn of God, read the scriptures, study the words of His latter-day prophets, choose to listen to the Father, and do the things He asks of us.

TRY, and KEEP ON TRYING, until that which seems difficult becomes possible, and that which seems only possible becomes a habit, and a real part of you."

-president dieter f. uchtdorf

i was in a pretty dark place when conference started this weekend. i felt another depression coming on and i was feeling guilty and terrible about that. facing another major episode of depression was wearing me out and i didn't feel like i could do it anymore. so many of the words and songs at conference uplifted me and restored my spirit. especially these words of president uchtdorf's. i feel like if i can just keep trying, someday i will be the person that i want to be.

husbands and wives

old married couple, originally uploaded by AnguSung Photography.

one of my favorite quotes from conference so far:

"First, I give counsel to husbands and wives: pray for the love which allows you to see the good in your companion, pray for the love that makes their weaknesses and mistakes seem small, pray for the love to make your companion's joy your own, pray for the love to want to lessen the load and soften the sorrows of your companion."

-President Henry B. Eyring

*photo via flickr

turning 30

last saturday the twinster and i turned 30. i have to admit i was a little freaked out by that number, but mostly happy to be spending our first birthday together in four years. 

we went out to dinner with our husbands, hung out with family, drove the alpine loop around timpanogos to enjoy the absolutely amazing autumnal glory, and had a family dinner.

nene put together a slide show of pictures of us from baby to recent and set it to beautiful music--it had me bawling. it was the best birthday present ever. here are some images from our weekend together:

nene took these pictures of my kids and i turned them into polaroid-style images using rollip.com

let the wild rumpus begin!

i don't know if any of you are as ecstatically crazy to see where the wild things are as i am, but just in case you are, here's some stuff for you:

you can watch the awesome official trailer here (complete with one of my favorite songs by the arcade fire.)

you can listen to the entire (fabulous) soundtrack here. 

paste magazine did a great article about the movie version, the book version, and maurice sendak that you can read here.

there's a blog devoted to all things "wild" called "we love you so" here.

* p.s. the movie opens october 16th, in case you were wondering.

blind pilot

i haven't done a music post in a long while, but i just re-discovered this band blind pilot and i'm really taken with them. falling in love, actually. their sound is folksy and mellow and perfect for fall. (maybe i'll include them on my fall playlist --coming soon!)

you can download a few of their songs for free from their daytrotter session at daytrotter.com

image from daytrotter.com

bananas

whenever my kids are feeling grumpy and i want everyone to perk up a little, i put on this clip of the aggrolites on yo gabba gabba. works every time.
The Aggrolites - Banana (Yo Gabba Gabba!)

do you have a song that always makes you/your kids happy dance fools, no matter what?

milk teeth

sweet m.'s tooth was really, disgustingly, loose last week.

then it came out. this is her fourth baby tooth gone, but her first on the top row. i think missing one from the top makes a lot bigger difference.

i'll follow the sun

i love taking photos into the setting sun. it gives the kids a kind of halo effect around their hair and i think it looks so pretty.

flip flop, part 2

so you'll remember that last week the flip house (sometimes we call it the bungalow in fond remembrance of our first tiny basement apartment together) looked like this:

one week later and a lot of hard work on the hubs' part, it looks like this: (that's him up on the roof, don't worry, he's a pro.)

it may be the gorgeous people standing in front, but i think the place is starting to look TONS better! (also, it may be hard to tell in this picture but they are each holding a toy tool from little c.'s tool box. he brought it to help daddy work.)

just doing his part!

i know where the summer goes

today might have been the last swimsuit-wearing, playing in the water day of the season. 

sometimes don't you wish you had a camera on your kids twenty-four hours a day so none of the precious moments would be missed? that's how i felt today. so i apologize for the abundance of pictures.

p.s. i'm having trouble getting my images to look right in blogger, sorry.

i'll see you at home

this is one determined young man. and yes, that corn dog is roughly the size of his head. this was taken at the state fair on monday.

i was thinking about what to write about our experience at the fair, and what pictures to put along with the post. (the only pictures i got were of the kids eating their corn dogs.) i thought about all the fun little day trips we've taken with the kids this summer, sometimes impromptu and sometimes an outline of a plan in place.  each trip has had its own unexpected turn, its own small adventure, with some good music and snacks thrown in.

but other than that all of them have had something else in common. no matter how much fun we had i was always excited to get home.

when we reached the point in each trip where someone said, "let's go home," or "it's time to head home," i felt a little thrill of happiness.

i have a home.

and it's with these people.

how lucky can one girl be?

dorothy was so right. i'm going to print out that line and cross-stitch it or something. and then frame it. there really is no place like home.

flip flop flim flam

the hubs and his family have purchased a house to flip. boy, is it in need of some t.l.c. but we can  see the potential:

the porch that was closed in will be turned back into a real porch. the fake ugly stone will be gone. hooray.

a whole new kitchen please. thank you.

look at this beauty of a front door! imagine it all sanded down and re-finished! (or if i can persuade everyone, maybe we could paint it some delightful hue.)

please don't gag when you see the only part of the bathroom i could safely show you:

whaddya think? imagine with me restored hard wood floors, repainted moldings and original doors, maybe some nice historically accurate subway tiles in the bathroom? it's going to be nice, right? right?