MaeLyn's Musings

I love family dinners. Every night we try to sit down together to eat dinner. As my children have gotten older it has gotten a little more challenging as one child needs to leave to get to an event before another gets home from work. Now two of my children have gotten married and moved out so we have their company even less frequently. (It was almost three years ago that Hannah last sat down to dinner with us at home, but she is coming back to the States next month!!!!) In spite of all this, those of us who are at home try to sit down together to eat dinner whenever possible. These dinners together are a chance for us to share what we did that day, discuss and coordinate schedules, and sometimes just talk about whatever comes to mind, which is when things get fun. My kids were drama kids and there is an improv game where someone gives a group of actors a first line and a last line and they have to improvise a skit that incorporates those lines. Occasionally at one of our family din...

Day 1 We weren't in any particular hurry that morning. We woke up at a reasonable hour. We had breakfast, finished packing and loading the car, and headed out around noon. We stopped for a late lunch somewhere in Wyoming, and arrived at our campsite at Boysen Reservoir in the early evening.  The first thing we noticed about the campsite was the bugs. They were everywhere! Blessedly, they weren't mosquitoes... they didn't bite. But they were long, thin moth-like things with no appreciation for personal space. We tried to shoo them away, but they wouldn't shoo. They had no fear and got into everything! We could only brush them away, and then brush them away again a minute or two later when they came back.  In spite of the bugs, it was a nice campsite with a gorgeous view. When we arrived, we had plenty of time before dark to explore the river behind our campsite, set up our tent, and start a fire for cooking hot dogs and s'mores. It was a relaxing, no-stress start to...

It's been a week, and the camera still hasn't shown up... so.... Saturday, October 24th was a busy day. John and Josh were busy putting finishing touches on the costumes they had been working so hard to create. Steven raked the leaves from the ground below the two huge trees in front of our home. I took Josh on a walk down to the park for a photo shoot. (One of the homework assignments from my photography class was to take a portrait of someone.) Hannah and Peter carved pumpkins. Steven baked cinnamon rolls. Hannah and I dug through our Halloween decorations to find some with which to decorate the back of our van. A little before 3:30 in the afternoon, I loaded the three older kids and their costumes into the car and dropped them off at the church to help set up for the ward Trunk-or-Treat. I returned home to don my costume, collect the carved pumpkins, cinnamon rolls, camera, candy, candy bags and whatever else we would need for that evening of fun. Then Steven and Peter a...

This summer, our family acquired four free tickets to Jump City , a type of family fun center featuring trampolines, a foam pit, a climbing wall, and other attractions. I took the kids last Thursday, as end of summer celebration. I sat on the sidelines and watched and read. (I supposed I could have paid for a ticket for myself, but having already dislocated a shoulder this year, I admit I'm a little nervous about these kind of activities.) After a while, Hannah got bored, so I gave her the camera ... which is why there are no pictures of her. (You can see her socks at the bottom of the video at about the 0:30 mark.) I think the kids had a lot of fun. What do you think? Joshua John Peter John on the tight rope over the foam pit.

1 Exciting   family vacation. 1 ranger injured on a nature walk. Peter experiences the clinging power of a gum weed blossom. 1 birthday celebrated: Josh turned 12! Who knew you could bake a cake in a dutch oven? It turned out great!      1 stream played in Earlier in the season, the stream would be more like a river, but it was fun anyway! 1 distant planet sighted: Saturn 2 Campsites stayed at.   2 great parks: Garden of the Gods , Great Sand Dunes National Park 3  Miles John traveled while looking for me... when I took a ten minute walk before dinner. 4  days spent in the wilderness 4 deer seen wandering through the campground 4 hikes: Siamese Twins, Bouldering rocks, High Dune, Zapata Waterfall 5 sand dunes John rolled down     5 boulders climbed 6  types of animals seen at close range: deer, rabbits, chipmunks, squirrels, li...

Yesterday, Steven's work had a party at the zoo. Our whole family went and we were able to meet a few of Steven's coworkers over lunch, and then we toured the zoo. I haven't been to the zoo since I accompanied Peter's kindergarten class, and I don't think we've ever gone as a family, so it was a bit of an adventure. It was an overcast day, with rain threatening... and it did sprinkle on us some while we there, but the good news was that it wasn't crowded and it wasn't super hot, either. Our favorite animals were the monkeys, I think, especially the gibbon that had a blast tightrope walking on the robes in his enclosure, and then swung around the fence and came to say "Hi" to the family! A goose stood and gave us a long lecture... too bad we couldn't understand a word of it! We got tickets to ride the carousel.  The gibbon who came to say, "Hi!"  Some of the kids enjoyed the interactive activities availabl...