The Punkin Patch

So yeah, I'm trying to catch up on blogging. Things have just been sooo crazy in the three months since we've been home, so I've been a blogging slacker. I'm trying to be better. These pics are clear back from October, dude. But I need to include them, because I've been slowly printing out my blog as our family photo album/my journal.

My friend, Megs, and I wanted to go to the pumpkin patch that's near my house. I had heard that they had some fun things for kiddos there, and they did. They had a little train ride around the patch - the kids loved it:

That's Megs's son Brynnan on the right:

At the little "train station" after their ride:

This was back when Micah let us do his hair cute:

Now he wears Dylan's green jammie shirt on his head, as his "hair":

Yep, he's back to doing that. I think it's because Ben is in China. Micah started doing it the very day Ben left last week. The poor kid. I don't think he deals well with change.

You may wonder what he's doing in that pic. He's using a piece from Sadie's Littlest Pet Shop collection - it's two carrots - to pretend he has one extra-long tooth.

Back to the punkin patch. Meggie's husband, Mark, in a contemplative mood:

And little Meggie:

They also had a hay bale maze for the kids. They loved that, too. I think they went through it about ten times or so, over and over and over:

Meggie's son, Jonas:

Unfortunately, the pumpkins at the patch were wayyyy too rich for our blood. We all decided to head over to the Scoresby Farm stand to buy 'em. They're just as cheap as Wal-Mart's pumpkins, but easier to carve. I find that Wal-Mart usually only has that kind of pumpkin with spaghetti innards - way too hard to carve.

So, um, basically, we just used the pumpkin patch for its free entertainment - sorry, Pumpkin Patch Guys.

Various Applesauce Adventures

While we were staying at my parents' house, Mom, Nat, and I made a whoooooole bunch of applesauce. My gramps had picked hundreds of apples from his friend's apple trees, so we got all Becky Home Eckey. We set ourselves up in the garage - it's a sticky mess to make applesauce, so we cut down on some of the mess by making it in the garage, where there is a hose we can spray the floor with.

Nat's kids love cranking the applesauce maker thingey:

Mom has an old camp stove that we use to boil the apples:

Nat and I were having so much fun. We kept singing that song from the Disney Johnny Appleseed cartoon, the one where they list all of the things you can make with apples:

"There's apple pickles
Oh so tasty
Apple tarts and apple pastry..."

Sometimes the apples would boil over, and one or two apples would fall on the garage floor and get all smooshed. We called it Apple Carnage. And then we added it to the song:

"There's Apple Carnage, nice and tasty,
Apple tarts and apple pastry..."

It was funny. I love hanging out with Nat. It felt so good to be together again.

Just some of the billions of jars of applesauce we made:

It took several hours, honestly. My dad came home at lunch and saw us slaving away, and then, when he came home after work, there we still were, cranking the applesauce thingey. He said, "I have a good idea. Why don't we just BUY applesauce at the store to put in food storage? Then it won't be so much work."

"But Dad," I said, "This applesauce is practically free!"

"I promise you that I will buy you all the applesauce you could ever want for your food storage. It won't cost you a cent. So that we can forego this awful mess next year."

Sounds good to me.

Speaking of applesauce, my dear 84-year-old across-the-street neighbor, Nephi, was getting his applesauceing on at the same time my family was. He brought some over. He comes up with interesting add-ins:

I think he had put, like, raisins and coconut in it, maybe? I just....couldn't bring myself to eat it. Call me a snob.

He also brought some over that he had made three years ago. He bragged that it still tasted as fresh as the day he made it:

Um, I doubt that. Very much. That just looks like a tub of poop. I didn't taste that stuff, either. Ya gotta be careful with the stuff Nephi brings over. He often brings over gallons of store-bought juice - pomegranate, cranberry, pineapple, etc. It's so sweet of him. But, um, usually, they have expired. We just graciously accept his gifts and don't tell him that most of them are inedible or undrinkable. He really means well. He's such a sweetheart.

Gagey Lately

Awww. He's so cute. Just when I think he's reached his pinnacle of cuteness, more cuteness ensues. He really is such a blessing in our family. Very easy-going and sweet. Except for when he's tired or thirsty. Then watch out! Haha! When he cries, he does as our other kids have done - he cries in vowel sounds: "Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyy...... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah......ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh....."

He started walking within a week or so of getting home. Oh, how I love watching him toddle around. He kind of leans back, with his huge belly leading the way, and takes steps with his little toes turned out like a ballerina. I've seriously never seen such a huge belly on a kid, and I love it.

Gage's bedroom is pretty cold, so we keep a space heater on in there. Ben forgot to put on the heater one night when he put Gage down, and when I got him up the next morning, his poor little lips were BLUE:

I took that picture and sent it to Ben's e-mail to make him feel bad. But did Gage complain any? Nope.

Just today, he started pretending to talk on my cell phone. He'd put it up to his ear and say, "Aoh?" Adorable.

Gage loves to give smooches. He hasn't figured out how to kind of purse his lips to do it, so when he wants to give you a smooch, you get an open mouth slobber kiss. But it's so cute that you don't mind. After he kisses you, he says, "Dank you!" Every time.

He's started saying, "Uh-oh," too.

He loves throwing stuff. He especially likes to get into my tupperware lids and chuck them down the stairs. And he's learning to go up the stairs. He hasn't yet figured going down yet.

Luckily, he hasn't figured out how to open the toilet seat, but if it's left open, he throws things in there. Last week, when Ben and I were on our cruise, he threw in a couple of DVD's when my mom wasn't looking. :)

He really, really hates when I change his diaper. It takes away from his play time, and he's not okay with that. He kicks my boobs over and over, and it hurts.

He thinks Sadie is the bee's knees. They're good, good buddies. I love that. He knows to be wary of Micah. Micah just adores him, but through sheer evil compulsion, he often bullies Gage. I think he's jealous of Gage and is kind of fighting for his place in our family. So poor Gage sometimes gets shoved or pushed. It makes me SOOOO mad.

His gigantic lips are always chapped, poor thing. And he got a bloody lip yesterday when Micah shoved him. Micah is Satan. He has sucking blisters often, as well, because he sucks on his right pointer finger all the time.

Gage is very, very brave. When Ben swings him around and throws him up in the air, he laughs and laughs and squeals in delight. (Very different from Micah, who gets really scared when Ben does that stuff.) Another difference between the two is their appetites. Gage can really "put away the groceries," as my friend's husband says. He eats as much as Ben or I at mealtimes, which is amazing.

He hates apples and loves bananas. He loves bean burritos, like his dear old mom.

He still can't figure out the concept of tilting his sippy cup up to make liquid come out of it. All of my kids have had a weird time with that. I'm considering getting the straw kind of sippy cup, because I'm tired of helping him with it. His favorite drink is chocolate milk. When I give him water at naptime and bedtime, he looks at me like, "What IS this crap??"

He still is needing two naps a day, which is weird. I've been trying to wean him to one, and he just can't hack it. So I'm going with the two naps for now. I guess some kids need more sleep than others.

He adores sleeping in. Sometimes he'll sleep until 10 or 10:30 if I let him. (And when I'm particularly tired some mornings, yeah. I let him.)

Example of Jet Lag.

We had hired a shuttle to take us from our hotel in Beijing to the airport. Beijing is just so enormous that it was going to take maybe an hour or two on the freeway to get there, so we left extremely early to be on the safe side. To our delight, the freeways were free and clear and we were making excellent time. And then.... the shuttle quit on us. Just shivered and clunked and...coasted to a stop. Our driver didn't speak one single word of English. We didn't know if he had forgotten to fill up his gas tank, or if there was something else wrong. I'm pretty sure he was swearing like a sailor. Chinese swear words are really funny. It just sounded like a lot of "ShhhhhhUH! ShUH!! ChaichuhshUH!!"

I had a horrible moment where I thought to myself, "This is it for me. I'm going to be stuck in China for the rest of my life." Irrational thought? Yeah. But for reals. I was panic-stricken. Luckily, he called a different shuttle. They came to the freeway, loaded our luggage up, and whisked us away to the airport. Phew. We made it in plenty of time.

Ben and I went on a Caribbean cruise last week (I promise to write a post on it later), which entailed us flying across the country to Florida. After listening to a screaming toddler all the way there, and a different screaming toddler all the way back, I've gotta say that my kids did really well on our flight back to the states. Gage didn't want to sit still, so we had to do lots of walking up and down the aisles. There was no sleeping to be had for Ben or I on the plane, with four needy kids. But we made it. With no screaming.

My family came to pick us up at the airport, and when I went down that escalator and saw my dad standing there, I started crying. I was so relieved to be home. So. Relieved. He was soon joined by my mom and my sis, Nat. Mom was freaking out when she saw Dylan. She said he looked really, really skinny. I hadn't really noticed. Nat's daughter, Ivy, was so funny. When she feels awkward in a situation, she puts one hand on her hip. So she was all about the hip that morning.

Jet lag is an interesting thing. When I went to London for a semester in college, I was horribly jet lagged when we arrived. I slept for, like, three days straight. Princess Diana died, like, the day we arrived, and we all wanted to go watch the funeral procession, but I just could not get up and go. But when I returned to the states after four months, I didn't struggle at all.

I felt like, for all of us, when we got to China in July, we adjusted pretty well and pretty quickly to the time change. But coming home was a different story. Maybe it's traveling East that's harder? Who knows. I should write a paper on it. Or not.

We had to stay with my parents for about one week while my friend, Lindsey, was moving out of our house and into an apartment (she and her hubby rented it while we were gone). My parents kept waking me up in the morning and saying, "Do you want to go work out?" And I'd be like, "Umhphhhhhhhhsheooooooooooophhhhhhhh." I just couldn't get up.

Micah struggled the most. Well, maybe he and Ben tied for biggest jet lag struggle. It took both of them about a week to get into the swing of things. Ben flew immediately down to Vegas after we got into Idaho Falls to visit his dad, who had just had emergency surgery (he's doing much better now). And he basically spent his whole time down there sleeping. I think he slept for 20 hours straight one day. Silly guy.

So I was at my parents' house with my kids, and Micah and I were sharing a room. The kid would just NOT sleep. It was to the point where I was swearing at him and throwing pillows at him - "JUST GO TO SLEEP, YOU FREAK!!" Not my best mother moment.

One time, my folks offered to take me and the kids to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Oh, baby. I was excited. But then I fell asleep on the couch. When they gently jostled me and asked if I still wanted to go, I said, "Ohmspphhhhhhhhhhhhhewoooooooooooiphhhhhhh." So they went and brought some food back for us. It was tough.

Speaking of jet lag, my Main Man just left this morning to go back to China. Sighhhhhhhhh. I'm very, very sad. Most likely, he'll be there for one month, and then come back, and then have to return there at the beginning of April for five or six months. Woe is me. I'll miss him terribly, but I just couldn't rip the kids out of school and take them over there again. It was too hard on them. And on me, honestly. I was really struggling over there. So depressed. So this is how it has to be for now. I just keep telling myself that I'm so grateful that Ben has a job that pays the bills. That is a huge blessing.

Sadie Lately

Sadie actually went through a tough time transitioning back to life in the States. Which was weird. She didn't necessarily love living in China. But I think it was hard coming back to school for her, first of all, because anything that cuts into her playing time is NOT okay with her, and secondly, because I think a lot of the girls in her grade and class had already established friendships, and she had a hard time finding her niche again.

She had been pretty good friends with a girl named Daisy last year. When I took Sades back to school that first day, she was nervous, so I stood in line outside with her while they waited to go in to their class. Some kids said hi to Sadie, some kids stared, some kids didn't care. Whatevs. But I'll never forget the look on Daisy's face. It wasn't curiosity. It wasn't happiness. It was absolute, unequivocal dismay. She was NOT happy that Sadie was back. And I thought that was so weird.

On Halloween, the kids had a little Halloween parade at school. Sadie was talking to a little girl "with orange hair," as she puts it. She told the orange-haired girl that she would like to maybe have a play-date with her sometime. Daisy had overheard their conversation, grabbed the orange-haired girl's hand, yelled, "YOU WILL NOT HAVE A PLAY DATE TOGETHER!! SHE IS MY FRIEND!!!" and dragged the girl away.

Dylan actually heard Daisy yelling at Sadie, from inside his classroom. It was that loud.

Sadie also said that Daisy would give her mean looks on the bus. I try to stay out of a lot of things - I don't want to be one of those "helicopter parents." And I think it's important for kiddos to learn to deal with difficult social situations. However, when I heard about the screaming incident, I was like, okay, that's enough. So I called the school counselor, explained the situation, and asked him to maybe pull in both girls and have them talk it out. I mean, who knows - maybe Sadie did something to really offend Daisy. I know from my own experience as a teacher that there are two sides to every story. And sometimes Sadie can be a stinker. If I knew her mom, I would have talked to her myself and gotten her input, for sure. But I don't, so this was the next best thing.

I had talked to the school counselor at the beginning of November, and has he pulled the girls in for a talk? Nope. I guess maybe he thought it would blow over. I ask Sadie about Daisy from time to time. She says Daisy still gives her mean looks, but there haven't been any more screaming incidents. So maybe everything is okay for now...

Sadie's teacher told me that she had a hard time in the class with being back. She kind of stayed by her teacher's side at all times, and was sullen and frowny and pouty a lot. Sounds familiar. Like I said, she can be a stinker sometimes. I guess some kid came to school with a new mohawk, and it fa-reaked Sadie out. She couldn't even look at the kid. Weird. But her teacher, at parent-teacher conference time, said that Sadie seemed to be more at ease, more like the "old Sadie" she used to know. (Sadie's teacher taught her in kindergarten last year. She took the 1st grade position that became available when a teacher retired at the end of the year last year.)

Sades is really, really, really forgetful (the poor girl has two forgetful parents - she was doomed from the get-go). She often forgets to bring her homework home, or forgets to turn it in when she gets to school. It drives me berzerk. I keep telling her how embarrassed she'll be if she flunks 1st grade and has to repeat it again...

Her teacher says she's right there in the average, as far as reading and math skills go. Which is good. Dylan does so well in school that it's hard not to compare and worry. But as long as she's not behind, that's good.

Her dance teacher (my cousin, Kort), moved back to California last summer, so Sadie hasn't been doing anything extracurricular since we've been back. We just don't really have the fundage. Or the time. Maybe we'll sign her up for something once we get our feet under us a little more. She says she wants to learn to play golf. Which I think is adorable.

When Dylan got baptized, like two days before we left for China, Sadie stared at him in horror as he was immersed in the water, and then brought back up. She leaned over to me and said, "When it's time for me to be baptized, do I have to go all the way in the water like that?"

"Well, yeah, hon."

She frowned, folded her arms, and said, "Well, then I'm NOT going to do it."

One-on-one time with me is really important to her. She insists upon us spending time together quite often. Which is cute. She's always saying, "Mom, when can you and me do something together?" She loves to play games with me. Her favorite is "Bonopoly." She likes to build houses and hotels on her property. That's her favorite. My mom had two different Aggravation board games, so she gave me one, and now Sades likes to play that with me a lot.

Sadie still isn't much of a girly-girl. When her friends come over to play, they are always saying, "Where are your dress-ups? Let's play dress-up." We don't have any. Sadie couldn't care less about playing dress-ups. She prefers to run around and hide and jump out and yell at people. I guess it comes from having all brothers.

I just love this girl. I worry about her a lot. I worry about all my kids. It comes with the territory when you're a parent.

The Great Wall of China - Marked.

The whole second day of touring, Charles, our tour guide, kept going over our itinerary, and whenever he mentioned seeing the Great Wall of China, he would say, "And then, your dreams will finally come true - you will see the Great Wall." He said that, like, five times. It was really cute.

We were going to go to a popular section of the wall, called Badaling, but then our bus driver told Charles that there was horrible, horrible traffic on the freeway. Charles was worried that we wouldn't get to the Great Wall until nightfall, and he wanted us to be able to see it in daylight. So he got permission from his boss to take us to a different section of the wall, a little more toward the east of the Badaling section. I guess it usually costs more to get in to this part, for some reason. But they didn't charge us extra, which is nice.

It still took us a good two hours to get to this section, I'd say. Lots of winding roads. Sadie, Dylan, and I all got carsick and had to move to the front of the bus. We were glad to finally get there.

So, after you get off the bus, you walk up this little path to get to the chairlift that takes you up to the wall. The path was packed with vendors selling their wares:

It was the most fun atmosphere. For reals. And I wanted to do some shopping, but our time was so limited, so we were forced to kind of march past everyone. One guy was like, "Pretty American lady! Buy t-shirts! Only one dollar each!!" T-shirts for only one dollar??? A good deal, but for reals, we had to get the heck up that mountain.

There's this little area where you wait in line for the chairlift - Ben took some pics of the kids. These pics crack me up:

Micah was in a FABULOUS mood. :) The Pakistani guys were laughing at him so hard. I loved those guys. They were so funny.

Here is little Sades:

And me, riding in the chairlift!:

I was FLIPPING out. And I don't know why. Chairlifts are very, very familiar to me. I'm trying to figure out why I was so nervous. Was it because I had two kids with me? It was my first time riding on one with my kids. And I was scared of them falling. Was it higher than other chairlifts? Was it because there wasn't this nice, powdery snow you could fall into if you slipped??? No idea. I just couldn't wait to get off.

I adored our time on the wall. It was just amazing.

More Micah Fun:

I think he had HAD it with pictures. Three months of constant picture-taking by strangers had done him in.

Dylan was holding his panda stuffed animal in his black bag. He loooooves that thing.

Look at how tiltey the stairs are - it's not easy walking along:

Micah and I are in there, toward the left:

Can you see the wall snaking up the mountain and then, at the top, going to the right? I'm amazed at how much work and time and struggle it must have been to build this thing:

So, there are little stations on the wall, not too far apart. I think Charles told us that they were an arrow's shot away from each other. So there were guards at each little station. Some of them are dilapidated:

Some of them were bigger than others:

I love this picture Ben took. I don't know much about photography, but to me, this picture might have good "composition"? You'll have to tell me if I'm right, Megs:

Mike and me:

So. Funny story about Mike. He decided he had to pee. Of course. So, there are all of these little holes near the walkway that would help drain water when it rained, right? I had no choice. I had to help Mikey pee through one of the holes. Several Chinese people stopped and stared. When we finished up, one guy says, in muddled English, "Good job!" It was hilarious. So now Micah can always say that he once peed off the Great Wall of China.

I so wanted this picture to turn out better so we could send it in our Christmas cards, but Gage wouldn't turn around and face the camera, dang it:

Gage had HAD it:

Two days straight stuck in a backpack - I don't blame him.

Another amazing photograph by Ben:

Isn't it gorgeous? This is with no photoshopping or touchups. Not kidding. The view was breathtaking.

Such tiltey stairs:

More Micah Fun:

Some more Chinese paparazzi:

Ah, here we are inside of one of those station thingeys:

And here are Ben, Dylan, and Gage on the way down the mountain:

This is a sad part of the story. Charles was like, "If you don't meet at the bus at 4:20, we will leave without you." And Ben and I didn't keep good track of time. All of the sudden, it was 4:10, and we were like, crap!!! We have to get down there!! You can ride an alpine slide down the mountain to that little path and parking lot, which would have been so much fun. Sadie had so been looking forward to riding the alpine slide. She couldn't care less that we were standing on one of the wonders of the world. Nope. She wanted to ride that alpine slide. We could see people sliding as we rode up in the chairlift.

However, the line to slide was really, really long, and there is no way we would have made it to the bus in time if we had ridden it down. So we had to ride the chairlift down. Sadie was heartbroken. She seriously cried for like an hour. I promised her that, this next summer, we'll go over to Jackson and ride the alpine slide. Poor girl. Life is hard when you're six. :)

It took another two hours to get back into Beijing. We were supposed to visit a silk-painting factory and the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium thingey, but our time was up. I wasn't heartbroken. Ben had seen the Bird's Nest a couple of weeks before and said it was already crumbling and in disrepair. Which is sad.

So that was that for our touring in Beijing! I seriously had so much fun. I'm convinced that, for a somewhat-finicky American woman, it's better to TOUR in China than to LIVE in China. :) We had such interesting adventures, but boy, are we glad to be home.