Sweet Baby Ray

Happy 36th Birthday!

From camera shy...
...to all-out fun.
That's my babe, Ray. Thanks for making the last six years the best of my life!! You are one of a kind, and you are all mine.

Love, Me

North Carolina

We went to North Carolina last week for Tamara (Ray's sister) and David's wedding. The truck pictured was sitting on the side of the road, looking so picture-worthy. I don't know a thing about it, but Ray could probably tell you the year, make and model, along with a few other details. Too bad he doesn't blog. ;)

It was a lot of fun to see most of Ray's family. Only 3 of the 15 children were not present. That's the largest gathering since our wedding, 6 years ago, when ALL 15 were actually there.

Tamara and David are really into cool cars--I believe they own 7--and so had a car-themed wedding. There were model cars in all the decor and even on top of the wedding cake in place of the traditional bride and groom figurines. It was fun. They also served great food catered by Fatz, a restaurant found back east.

Here is the wedding party:

Alex and Jennifer, two of Debi's children with Grandma Loneta:

Two of Ray's sisters, Michelle and Elizabeth:

12 of the 15 children of Ben and Loneta, in order by age. And just to prove that I do have everyone's names and age-order down, they are: Jessica, (Austin missing), John, Tamara (would be here if she weren't the beautiful bride in the middle), Cathy, (Anna missing), Danny, (Martha missing), Ray (my hunk), Elizabeth, Michelle, Becky, Debi, Jim, Ben. Amazing, huh? No multiple births, and none were adopted (though they do like to joke about that with a few!)

The Three Musketeers:

I love this one: the immediate family all laughing at someone's joke! This picture is so fitting because this family is so fun. They are always teasing each other and/or thinking of witty and clever jokes. Good times!

Everyone and the spouses who could come:

Again, it was so nice to be with everyone, even though our time was short. Loneta, I haven't forgotten that I need to send you these photos, and I will!

Our little family:

Hair

This post is for those NOT faint of heart. That is a warning for the last photo, specifically. If you have a major problem seeing hair that is not attached to ones head, don't scroll down.

These first two pics are of three of my nieces and nephews. [Incidentally, I wish there was a word, like "sibling" for "brothers and sisters", that worked for nieces and nephews. Do you know what I mean?] Anyway, they are: Jared (2), Ethan (5) and Rachel (4). Jared and Rachel stayed at our house for some of the time while their parents were on a cruise. Rachel doesn't like getting her hair done, so she looked footloose and fancy free on some of the days. She did let me do her hair a few times. But isn't she cute, even with the messy 'do?


Then there was the incident with my hair and the scissors. No, one of the kids did not get to my hair with them. I did, actually! We went to our ward hydrotube party and I had put my hair in a ponytail, then braided that. I used those new plastic hair elastics that are see-through and stay in really well. Too well, I've learned. The bottom one came out OK, but the one that held up the ponytail was stuck. Ray was already asleep, so I didn't want to wake him. I first tried a knife, and when that didn't work turned to the scissors. And we all know how I do with scissors (see this post)

Not being able to see what I was doing, I did my best to only cut the elastic. When I heard the crunch of hair in the scissors, I didn't panic. I mean, I do have layers in my hair anyway. Note in the photo below: the clump of hair on the left is the first that fell out--no big deal. The middle clump fell out as I was getting into the shower, and the messy mass on the right is the stuff that came out as I was washing my hair. (Talk about freaky!)

I went to bed with wet hair, wondering about the damage I had done and if I was going to need to go get it fixed today. But, HOORAY, the short hair is mainly at the nape of my neck, so it will probably only show when I wear a ponytail!

Note to self: never use those super-tight plastic hair elastics if you are going swimming! They don't come out!

The Waiting Game

I have not given an update on our hopeful adoption of Amelia. Incidentally, I have continued to call her by her assumed name, Amelia, on this blog because of the possibility that we might change her name. I'm just trying to keep it simple.

But back to the adoption. In short, we are still waiting. I'm not even sure of all the details, but we are waiting for them to track down the biological father (who we think still lives locally, but they weren't sure of his current address.) We are waiting for him to be found and hope that he will choose to sign away his parental rights. He does know of Amelia's existence, which is a good thing in our minds. We have no idea how much longer this process will take. It continues to be a huge trial of our faith, and we are hoping that the trial grows short quickly! But we're hanging on.

Amelia loves her reflection. Here are some pictures of her enjoying it--taken while I was enjoying her very big belly! She is so much fun.

A Fun Visit

Ben and Tasha and their kids just came and spent a week with our family who all live in the area. We had a great time with them. Much to Ray's chagrin we went ahead and took another family photo, just because it was so novel to be all together again. (Nevermind that we were just together in Reno in May. And took a picture then. But we didn't have a sign for Chase in that photo!)

Ben and Tasha own and run a cool online vinyl lettering business. Check it out here: http://wordsanywhere.com/

We did a lot of fun things together, but of course the best part was the late-night talks. As often happens with those talks, random subjects were covered. For example, I learned that Ben and I fall asleep exactly the same. We both start by lying on our back, then turn onto the right side--facing our spouse--for awhile, and then finally end up on the left side to fall asleep!

I also won't quickly forget the story Ben told of a time when he was a flower delivery guy in the Bay Area, long ago. He was waiting to pull out into traffic from a side street when a man opened the passenger door of Ben's delivery truck, got in and said, "Take me to Baht [translate: BART]. Must get home. Very sick." So Ben went ahead and took him. To this day he is not sure if the guy thought he was a cab driver or what, though he did not pay Ben upon arrival at the BART station. Sooo funny.

We love you guys and can't wait until you live closer!!

I'm No Green Thumb

Its only been in the past five years that I have become interested in growing things--ever since we bought our home. Ray built a 5'x5' box so I could experiment with growing our own vegetables. Here's the sun shining through my zucchini:

We also inherited a great raspberry patch that keeps growing bigger every year.

I know raspberries have been labeled weeds, but they are my favorite weed ever. Each year in late June or early July, these succulent little berries grace a large area along my back fence, and I feel strangely akin to them somehow. They have brought me such joy. Before this I was never really drawn to the raspberry. I would usually order the strawberry or blueberry menu items. But once I tasted the great freezer jam that came from my backyard harvest, I've never been the same.


See below, the arrow is pointing to the little cone that is left once you pick a raspberry. Its easy to know when a raspberry is ripe enough to be picked: it has fallen slightly so you can see the base of the cone just a little bit. But then take care--it will practically fall off as you pick it!

Look below at how a clump of raspberries grows. Only one or two ripen at a time. So I go out and pick them every other day. You're not forced to harvest them all at once. How considerate!

At the beginning:

At the end:

We also have Concord grapes growing along the back fence (another gift left from the previous owners.) Unfortunately they have such hard seeds that they are not so enjoyable. I'd actually like to pull them out, but Ray wants them to stay for now. They are pretty anyway, as shown below, but I don't like how they crowd out my raspberries, and block their sun.

Behold my very small garden. When the prophet said to plant a garden, did he specify how big? Hope not!

A Word of Caution

I've always thought babies try doing new things once or twice and then think about it, then try again later until they finally get something. And then as they master whatever it is they might be learning, they eventually get faster or better or more comfortable. Right??Not "Amelia". The only thing she appears to be cautious about so far is about what we might be trying to put in her mouth (food, medecine, teething gel).
She's not cautious when approaching animals, namely dogs. She crawls right up to them at parks. The other day she chased our poor friends' dog, Sandy, around the living room until Sandy didn't know WHAT to do and finally had to be sent into her kennel.
She's not cautious when learning to walk. She doesn't just take a step or two and then pause. She takes as many as she can and goes as far as she can go before falling to the ground.

And finally, she's not cautious about learning to drink from a cup. Tonight in the bathtub she was downing glasses of bathwater (oh, yum; and is she getting too much salt in her diet?) with a little shot-type cup as well as a 46 oz. Target cup. It made no difference to her that she was completely gagging on it while it also went down her nose and into her eyes--she was having a blast!

She's a little daredevil! And just so totally cute!