Pinterest and me

Pinterest makes me want to do funny things. Like buy lots of bobby pins and try elaborate updos for my hair, or sew my own striped maxi dress with a ruffle on the bottom.

Look what it made me do recently -- a watermelon cake!

UPDATE: I forgot to mention earlier that it tasted like watermelon, too.  I pureed watermelon to put inside the cake and the frosting.

It wasn't bad, but not my favorite. Probably because I like chocolate better.

And with all the fancy, do-it-yourself, elaborate holiday decorating ideas on Pinterest and on the blogs I still slog through everyday, this is all I could come up with for our whole house for the Fourth of July:

I found both in the street after our neighborhood parade. I love America.

Millcreek Canyon

A couple weeks ago we had dinner up Millcreek Canyon with friends. It's funny how my mommy brain works. JB says, "Let's go roast hot dogs with the Lindquists in the canyon!" I say, "Fun!" My brain starts ticking off the dangers: a river, a fire, mosquitos....

But thankfully we had some bug spray, and the runoff is abysmal this year, so the boys were able to play without me worrying they would be swept away. They loved it.

 

I followed Andrew everywhere as he looked at dirts and rocks, and thankfully he stayed well away from the fire. He loved the smores. He wanted some more! (ha ha) 

 

Americana

We love our neighborhood parade for the 4th of July.

We decorated bikes the night before with friends.

And then we were ready to go!

I love this yearly tradition. Hundreds of people parade down the middle of the road for several blocks, and at the end the firefighers sometimes even give us a water shower. Then we have to drag ourselves and bikes and scooters all the way back up all those blocks to our house.

 This year we rested for a while, then went swimming with the Thorntons, then rested for a while, then had a barbecue with the Richards, then rested for a while, then went to fireworks at 10! A long, fun day.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes

Andrew is picky about his shoes. He howled before church when I tried to put a different pair on his chubby feet. He loves one pair of blue sandals and he wears them every day, flap-flap-flap clap-clap-clapping his feet around the house and outside.

Behold the summer sandal tan line:

All shy about it.

The strap on one of the sandals broke on Saturday. Hopefully we can gorilla glue it!

Softball, baseball and T-ball

JB is on a community softball team again this season, and whenever he has a game at 6:30 PM we all can go (sometimes they are scheduled at 9:30 PM, which I know isn't late for some people, but, we are not some people.)

My three-peats, watching through the fence for daddy, and for any fly balls to come their way.  I spend a lot of time chasing Andrew instead of watching the game.  He loves to climb on the stands.

They posed that way themselves. I think one then sucker punched the other after I took the picture.

JB in action.

Then, this week, Max and Ben started playing on their own teams!  Benny is on his first T-ball team, and Max is doing coach pitch baseball for the first time.  All their nervousness went away when they got their new uniforms and met their teammates.

I LOVE that Max was assigned to the Cardinals.  I find it funny that Benny is on the Cubs, because in real life those teams are rivals.

Just like after they got their soccer uniforms, they wanted to sleep in these shirts and hats.  Why not.  Then they wanted to wear them in the 4th of July parade, so I insisted they at least get washed first.

Thoughts

I've kept this post in draft form and just added to it for 2 weeks. These all could be Facebook status updates, but who needs to hear from me that often?  So here you go in list form.


-Max and Ben is becoming one word, as in "MaxnBen get up here!"  and "MaxnBen, dinner time!"

-Why must my children insist on occupying the same space and then try to poke each other out of that space?

-Andrew loves to poke. My nose, my gum and my eye have all been poked in the last week.  He poked my eye in church and I panicked that he had ruined the Lasik.  They warned me about avoiding anything that could dislodge the flap for the first few weeks.  After a second I realized I could still see. Panic averted.


-A fly is stuck in our kitchen. Little stinker is too fast to smack. But every summer I thank the stars above that the bugs in Utah are no where near as bad as the bugs in Missouri.  Shiver.  ("MaxnBen close the door when you go outside!")

-JB and I like Food Network Star this season. And I get sucked in to anything he's watching with auction, storage, barter, or lobster in it. And I'm loving So You Think You Can Dance. I so think I can dance.  In my sleep.

-When I'm trying to fall asleep, I have a little trick to calm my brain down.  In college I used to run a song through my head to tune out loud roommates and such:  Adagio, from my Classics Go to the Movies CD from Humanities 101.   That still works, but now I like to imagine cakes.  Cakes with lots of frosting that I have impeccably decorated myself.  Caaaakkkkeeee......

-Sometimes JB and I mentally pat ourselves on the back if we ever find an aspect of parenting we feel we are doing well.  Then it turns around and smacks us in the face, mwahahahaha!  Case in point: last Monday I was telling my older sister Bekah on the phone that we never have a problem with our boys getting out of bed at night.  But that night and the next night we had both boys up in the middle of the night. They weren't feeling well.  Weird timing, huh. 

-Speaking of, Max's primary teacher told us a few weeks ago that he told her he never gets out of bed because his parents would yell at him.  (What? Nervous laugh)

-Legos have seeped into every corner of our house. ("MaxnBen pick up these Legos!")

-I love recording old movies to watch on TCM and watch in bits and pieces when I have time. Except Finian's Rainbow was weird. Not you, Fred Astaire, you are perfect. 

-I have been trying to put my iphone up on a shelf in the kitchen so I'm not staring at it in the afternoons around my boys.  But instead, I've been sucked into amazing books. I love a page turner -- Matched, Crossed, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Thirteenth Tale.  "Just one sec, MaxnBen, let me finish this chapter...."

One decade

(I giggled throughout that photo shoot. I kept hearing Tyra Banks in my head)

I've been working for KSL Newsradio now for one decade. 10 years on July 1. Here's a post from last year where I talked about some of the big and cool stories I've done.

But lately, I've had random and interesting assignments. People ask me, "How's work going?" and I say, "You know what, despite going to bed when it's still light outside, it's not bad."  In the past month, I've done stories on barefoot running,  mommy bloggers, orienteering competitions, hit the gym if you want a raise, homeschooling, unique summer camps, a teen chess champion, and Instagram.  Much less stressful than crime and grime headlines, that's for sure.

Last month I won two second place awards at this year's Society of Professional Journalists event. Aw shucks. If you are so inclined, here they are:

Dirty Band Instruments (I even did a TV version)
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=15607931

Bringing Out the Bully parts one and two:
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=15140435&s_cid=article-related-1
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=15156131
 


Ten years ago I was a bright-eyed, bushy tailed, one-year out of college girl who loved living downtown and working in a newsroom.  Now I'm a married mom of three who loves living in a brick house and still loves working in a newsroom.

Sometimes I feel tired and burned out of the news, but for now, I'm still going strong.  The main reason? My amazing family who is patient with me -- and my incredible husband JB.  He cooks and grocery shops better than I can, he irons, he cares for our boys in the morning while still working as a mortgage loan officer (or as I tell the boys, "Daddy helps people know how to pay for their homes.")

Everything is good for now!