Bike riding

Kids must ride bikes to school for the next few weeks.
Great! Next time, I'll ride with them.
Get on bike and fasten helmet. Roll bike out. Flat tire.
Visit bike store and buy innertube.
Drag bike out to lawn, flip upside down.
Pry off tire, innertube.
Open brand new innertube and try to mount. Won't stretch far enough! Realize it's for my 4-year-old's bike.
Find correct innertube. Mount on wheel. Replace tire.
Attach pump as 4-year-old holds tire in place. Inflate tire.
Decide to oil chain while bike is upside-down. Apply WD-40. Feel very responsible!
Read online that WD-40 REMOVES oil from chains. Oops. Console self that 22 year old bike probably didn't have any oil to be removed.
Try bike. Tire too flat--pump up full.
Time to ride! Get 4-year-old on her bike, fasten helmet, mount up.
Seat is killing me! Try to stand and lean on handlebars as I ride.
Wrists are killing me! Debate turning back, but 4-year-old is way ahead. Too late to stop!
Get kids from school, coast back to house.
Tumble onto grass. Sore seat, sore wrists. Carefully park bike.
Next time, I'll walk.

Dark House

New film camera
New developing solution
New developing jugs and canisters
and trays (actually old Maggiano's takeout cartons)
BUT
No darkroom
SO
Commandeered bathroom, occupied by film developer
Dark hallway
Dark bedroom
Dark kitchen (kill the oven light, the microwave light, the porch light--anybody ever see Wait Until Dark?)
Dark study with a towel under the door
One lit computer screen
and me

Rebecca tells Katie

Periwinkle

On Strength

R, as she carries a 10 pound bag of onions inside:
"I'm strong. I have a lot of strongness."

Celery Dinners

My daughter refused dinner, munching only on celery. If she were ten years older, I might be contacting a psychiatrist about eating disorders. But since she'd eaten a large after-school snack, and since she really, really likes celery (being a soft-hearted mother, I indulge her when she begs for it at the grocery store), and since she's only four, I will save body-issue fears until she hits pre-adolescence, at least.

On priorities

At the mall, I had the choice of buying books for my daughter's birthday, or buying nail polish. I chose the nail polish. Since I have my priorities in order. (And since, with her, the nail polish will last longer!)

On sharing

When I bought pistachios for Rebecca, but told her not to eat them all
"I'm not! I'm going to share with everybody except Alex..."
Wait! Favoritism? Time for a lecture?
"...who doesn't like nuts."

Our Utah February Trip

Highlights

• Leaving our house at 6:45 AM to make it to Utah before bedtime! (but only because it took so long to get packed the day before we couldn't leave until night. Did that make us early or late?)
• Appearing on TV, on Good Things Utah! Super nice staff and hostesses.
• Taking kids to temple square (can you believe this was the first time?) Seeing the conference center with all the original art (those pictures in the Book of Mormon? On the conference center walls.) and the chairs being set up for the next conference (that's early!)
• Brick oven pizza, where the late root beer was free and the pizza is still yummy
• Amano chocolate, where my kids tasted everything and (at least it felt like) Lar bought everything
• Seeing cousins at Ed and Maria's house, where the adults eventually collaborated in serving up quesadillas and fruit--my kind of meal! Also admiring Noah's science fair project, in which they'd compared various types of highlighter ink in UV light (hey, we have to do a science fair project too! better start thinking)
• Watching Lar and his dad work together to brand cows. It's a little like ballet, except with lots of mooing, gate slamming, yelling, and burnt hair smoke. (Apparently you have to wear clothes for cattle branding that you never actually want to wear again.) While my girls, safe inside the hay paddock, dropped handfuls of hay out to all the cows outside, who, lured together into a mob, knocked the license plate nearly off the front of our car. Lucky that ominous "clunk" didn't mean anything worse.
• The sale at Gary's shoe store! At 75% off, I think we bought half the store. But we saved a lot of money. And those shoes I wore today to church were super comfy as well as super cute.
• Snowmobiling up to the cabin. (Oh, wait, I actually pretty much hate that part. But I liked being there.)
• Ice crystals and icicle stalagmites adorning the nearby gold mine cave, until the Becca Godzilla monster went on a rampage
• Snowmobile driving practice (oh, wait, I hated that part too. But I didn't crash into anything, and when I nearly tipped us off the hillside Lar took over and saved us)
• Attending LTUE, where I was a guest panelist, and where I participated in the signing (thanks, Uncle Bill and Professor Tate, for showing up and buying books!)
• Traveling to Salt Lake City to do a book signing at the King's English bookstore, where we sold and signed a bunch of groups (in part because we were lucky enough to attract a group of homeschool families)
• more time with friends and family
• Dry erase crayons for drawing on window.
• Photographing old farmhouses while we drove. And granaries. Snowmobile tracks. And competing in Lar's contest for best I-84 sign photo. (As the only contestant, I must have won!)
• Discussion of body language. How exasperated sighs are perceived by parents.
• Trader joes wasabi almonds and juicy grape tomatoes.
• Drawing strawberries on window to pick and pass out
• New notebooks for drawing animals out of book, practicing Piggy, dot game
• Blokus--like a Tetris board game. Lar and Alex got very intense.
• Lar's flashlight tag

Frozen Yogurt

After my book signing at the Secret Garden, we went with some friends (good friends! we used to swap art and piano lessons for kids, and since they finally bought the house of their dreams we hadn't seen them in months! it was so sweet of them to come all the way into Ballard!) AHEM to frozen yogurt, the kind where you serve yourself. So each kid got to choose favorite flavors.
Katherine got pineapple and coconut.
Alex got pineapple and vanilla.
Rebecca got chocolate. And cake batter. And pineapple. And coconut. And vanilla. And dulce de leche. And white chocolate. And raspberry. And strawberry-banana. And tropical fruit.
Then she mixed them all together.

(And boy, did the onion rings at Red Mill Burgers taste good, too, found because Lar didn't feel like driving south on the freeway right then, and searched for hamburgers instead. Just goes to show that these sell-five-books, buy-books-plus-dinner events will never make us rich!)