Summer Visitors: Part Tres

Bruce's parents, Paul and Ruth, just departed after spending a few weeks with us. We always look forward to their yearly visits, and I love seeing the girls bond with Grandma and Grandpa. I'm going to try to sum the whole thing up in one post, so wish me luck!

Even with guests in town, we don't miss our weekly lunches at Mi Ranchito. Bruce's dad is a little bit famous for ordering water, then repeatedly requesting Splenda and lemons to make his own lemonade. Some jokes were made at his expense, and then we took the opportunity to make a photo op out of all of his discarded limes.

Kiki tried for the same joke, only with rice. Instead of "Silly," we achieved "Gross."

The girls finished up their last series of swim lessons. The last day was a start to finish disaster, with Kiki throwing a fit over improper tootsie roll allotment, and Kate getting kicked in the face. It was one of those parenting panic moments: I heard a cry that I knew was my child, then I saw her walking towards me, then I realized she was bleeding so profusely from her face that I couldn't even tell where it was coming from at first. I finally sorted out that it was a terrible nosebleed and got it stopped, but we left the PG Pool looking like a crime scene.

Grandma and Grandpa left us to go to Jackson Hole for a few days, and in their absence we went to Lagoon. Bruce's work paid for the whole company to go for the day, so we felt a little bit spoiled.

As usual, Kiki loved anywhere she could play with water.

We decided to just hit Lagoona Beach so we could ALL swim.

We went to Pioneer Village- the church there was the church in the town where my mom grew up (Coalville).

We rode the Ferris Wheel...

...the girls loved the rides...

...and Kiki's largest disappointment was that she was too short to go on the Colossus. She's a brave one.

My mom and I took the girls to the Gateway for shopping and more fun in the water.

Jack and I took the girls and Porter on a picnic. No pictures of anyone, but I did manage to snap one of Kiki's extra long tongue.

Freaky, no?

On Wednesday, Bruce's brother James, his wife Tiffany, and their new baby Hudson were also flying in. Prior to picking them up at the airport, Bruce and I brought Kate up for a "grown-up dinner" with my sister-in-law Jill.

Jill is a tiny gal: Those are Kate's hands compared to hers.

We ate at Squatter's, which was delicious of course. We narrowly avoided an epic war and ordered TWO molten chocolate cakes instead of just one.

Kate, Me, and Jill

August 19th was Paul and Ruth's FIFTIETH wedding anniversary. Look how happy they still are:

We celebrated their anniversary with dinner and a play at Sundance.

It was so cold.

Tiffany, Kate, and Hudson

Tiff bundled and bundled Hudson until only his eyes were showing.

The Anniversary Party

Kiki ate an entire hamburger, a chicken breast, and then hit up the Sundance employees for extra cheese slices on the way out. I guess mountain air makes her hungry.

Sharing hot chocolate for warmth.

On Sunday, I uttered the words that no one EVER wants to hear:

"Everybody be ready early because I want some pictures of us looking decent!"

Ironically, my camera lens had a smudged on it, so even though we all looked decent, the pictures still turned out crappy!

Oh well, at least I tried.

Don't you just want to squeeze him? It's baby Hudson at 9 weeks, and I'm pretty sure I'm his favorite aunt.

Bruce and James are 16 years apart yet amazingly similar. It's like they are twins separated by a decade and a half.

Although I imagine that Bruce looks at James and mourns his lost youth, and James looks at Bruce and fears the years to come.

Kiki continues to turn on that charm she is famous for.

She insisted on wearing a sequined dress with fringe for 3 days in a row, and when Grandma asked for a picture in it, this was the pose Kiki delivered:
"...and if you don't like that one, Grandma, how about a little of...

...THIS?"

Kate, Kiki, and Hudson

I must tell one anecdote. Bruce's mom is famous for little verbal slips, like announcing to the Relief Society that a spa night is coming up and all the ladies should bring their vibrators (when she really means massagers). Anyhooooo...

Bruce was barbecuing some chicken, and he remarked that it didn't cook quite evenly, and I was trying to tell him that he should have pounded it, but for some reason I couldn't come up with the word "mallet" or "meat tenderizer." Ruth spoke up, "A meat beater! I use mine all the time!" and continued to speak at length about how she beats her meat.

I nearly choked. Bruce couldn't stop laughing. She has no idea (until now, I guess) that she was the source of such humor for us.

Our guests departed this morning. Before leaving, Tiffany helped Kate pick out her first day of school outfit (in Tiff's defense, the turquoise leggings were Kate's last minute addition). "Now that looks like an outfit that learning can take place in!" Tiff exclaimed. Moms are so lame when a super fun aunt is in town.

Official First Day of School Photos.

At Mrs. Hatch's classroom.

Kiki insisted on her own school picture.

Get used to that desk in the hall, Kiki.

I've got a feeling you'll be spending some time there.

Lest I Forget

My sister-in-law Tiffany has been visiting from Gilbert with my 8-week old nephew, Hudson. I have repeatedly found myself looking at this little tiny baby then my two giants and thinking, "What happened to the time?" There are a few things about my girls that I don't want to ever forget, no matter how quickly or slowly the time passes.

About Kate:
All obedience in her life is due to her eagerness to please, and not due to my parenting. She is such a sweet-natured child. She has taught me to be excited about little things. For example, her first grade teacher has the same last name as us, and she just can't contain herself. She loves pink and purple. She hates it when I back-comb the crown of her hair- "Mom. It needs to be flat." This summer she decided cartoons are kind of baby-ish, so she now likes iCarly and Victorious. She is such a skinny little thing! She loves her aunts so much, and she loves to be cuddled and have her arms tickled. She surprises me with how well she can read. Kate seems so gentle and shy, but I have seen that she is tough: she is the kid who always comes through when it counts. She loves our "Kate Dates." She is a girly girl- she wants to go to lunch and get pedicures.

About Kiki:
Kiki's naughtiness is usually the star of this blog, but in her defense, many of her misdeeds can be traced back to curiousity or faulty logic and not necessarily the desire to frustrate me. She has every speech impediment known to man right now- I'm really hoping that works itself out. She loves to sing- when she is playing alone I love to sit and listen to her because she makes up little songs and sings the whole time. She is trying to sort out the calendar- she asked me, "Is is Fri-turday or Suesday?" She is an insane dresser- she loves colors of all kinds! She thinks that meal time at our house is like ordering at a restaurant. I will ask her, "Do you want cereal or toast for breakfast?" And she will say, "I'll have the eggs." Also, she thinks the natural state of an egg is hard-boiled. She will tell me that she wants a cold egg in its shell, and I will tell her that I will need to cook it, and she will get so MAD because she thinks eggs just come hard boiled. No matter what she orders when we go out to eat, when the food comes she wants what is on my plate. When you pay Kiki a compliment, her response is, "Yep."

What I Hope For Them:

Dear Girls,

Someday when you are growing up and are frustrated with me and think I don't understand you, I hope you find this and read it and know how much I love you. I worry about you in this crazy world and don't know what the future holds for you. Until you came along I didn't know that my love for you would be felt in every part of me. I didn't know that I could hold a love for another person that could be felt as a physical sensation. I didn't know that I could want so much for another person's happiness.

I hope so many things for you. I hope that you are truly happy people. I hope that you love your family and feel the connectedness that I have felt. I hope that you get as much education as you possibly can. I hope that you are kind. I hope that you are strong. I hope that you will be both warriors and peacemakers. I hope that you have good friends. I hope that I am one of those friends. I hope you find a companion who is as good as your dad. I hope that you learn from your mistakes. I hope that you feel my love for you even when you make those mistakes. I hope that you understand when I have to let you suffer the consequences of those mistakes. I hope that you love the earth and wild things. I hope that you take care of your physical and emotional well-being. I hope that you can cook. I hope you have style. I hope you love to read. I hope that you can navigate this world with confidence. I hope that you can deal with change and grief. I hope that you can recognize blessings and gifts. Above all, I hope that I can be a witness to it all.

Love, Your Mom.

Because It Has To Be Said.

Apparently my post on FICO scores has caused some hurt feelings: A reader of this blog has actually "unfriended" me on Facebook. I'm not mad or hurt; in fact, I kind of giggled to myself because it is such a juvenile way to deal with misunderstandings.

Know what? I stand by what I said. And not only do I stand by what I said, I'm going to EXPAND on what I said.

First and foremost, the post was meant to be a simile and not an inference. I was merely drawing a parallel in my own life about how I used to be irresponsible both with money and humans, and now I had learned to be more responsible with them. I in no way was insinuating that if you have bad credit that you are a worthless human being with no friends, which is how some interpreted it. There are plenty of lovely people out there who, due to circumstances beyond their control, have had financial hardship. Of course they deserve to be the recipient of happy and beneficial human relationships.

Second, I'm going to take my simile even further and say, "Wouldn't it be totally awesome if people DID have relationship FICOs?" Imagine it...You meet someone, and you think that maybe you'd like to get to know them, but instead of making an immediate emotional investment, you could go home and pull their relationship credit score instead. If they are in the 500's, you can think to yourself, "Well, she was a cute gal, but I really don't like getting stabbed in the back, so I think I won't ask her to lunch," or if their score was in the 600 range, you might think, "Well, he's had some trouble with his parents, but it looks like he's really started to pull things together lately," and if they were in the 700's, you'd think to yourself, "Now there is someone who has shown themselves to be a good friend!"

I think a lot of our public lives are made up of a certain amount of what I'm going to call "Social Deceit." We are all our nicest in public. We look our cutest when we are going out. We don't usually fart at restaurants. We don't yell at our spouses at family reunions. The bottom line is that we hide the very worst parts of ourselves from the general public. We all do it, and it is OKAY. But a relationship FICO could cut through the fat of social deceit, because just like my real FICO, I can say whatever I want about my financial matters to you, but my credit report doesn't lie.

I look back at many relationships in my life, and I either settled for less than I deserved, or I gave the recipient less than they deserved. I think part of becoming a whole, grown-up person is that you eventually say to yourself that A:) you are going to give your very best to those that you love, and B:) you aren't going to take anyone's crap. I have an incredible example of this in my own life- my sister-in-law Lirio. (I hope you don't mind me talking about you, Lirio...but I just love you so much.) Lirio is an amazing person because she has no guile whatsoever- she says what she feels but always kindly, she stands up for her beliefs in a way that never alienates, and she has a way of sharing her many talents and hobbies without making you feel like a failure. I want to be like her because the way she treats people is incredibly loving and respectful, yet she kindly commands the same if you would like to be her friend.

I used to believe that true friendship meant 100% tolerance no matter what transpired. I don't believe that anymore. I think it is possible to set healthy boundaries without anger, to merely say to yourself, "I'm going to create a little distance here because I don't like how I am being treated." I think that true friends will privately and kindly tell you when you are out of line. I think true friends elevate your behavior because you know that they DON'T love you no matter what. I think true friends stick by you when times are hard and encourage you to do your best.

I've learned something about myself: One negative relationship taints other relationships for me. I start generalizing like, "People are so rude." or "People are so selfish." It's a dangerous habit to begin to assume that the whole world is like the one person you are struggling with. So, to the person who unfriended me, I say with 100% sincerity, "Thanks for the challenge. I still think you have nice qualities. I still think you deserve a happy life." And I refuse to let myself generalize- no matter what one person has done in the fake world of cyberspace, the people I know in the real world are just damn good people who are giving their very best.

I hope one day to have a relationship FICO as high as my credit score. I haven't deluded myself for one single day of my life that I have been a perfect friend, sister, daughter, or wife. When hurt feelings occur, I try to look at myself FIRST and ask myself honestly if I caused them. I feel terrible when I realize that I have hurt someone. I want my friends and family to feel my love for and trust in them, and I hope that it creates mutual feelings between us, because I value those precious people more than any sum of money.

Kate Has Mormonism Down Pat

"Kate," Grandma Hatch asked, "What did you learn about in Primary today?"

Kate replied, "The rules."

My FICO is...

Recently the Bruce and I have made a large financial decision. I know many people who, upon realizing that they could afford a larger mortgage payment, would immediately get themselves into a tan stucco McMansion, STAT. Not us. We refinanced our same old place to a 15 year mortgage in hopes that this place is paid off before our children go to college. Thanks to financial blunders in epic proportions on the part of both banking conglomerates and heedless consumers, a refinance is not a simple matter anymore. We had to provide tax returns, bank statements, and pay for an appraisal. The bright spot was when our "mortgage guy" (what is the official title? I don't know...) informed me that I had the 3 highest FICO scores he had ever seen. A record of sorts, if you will.

This did not happen by accident. In fact, if you met me during college, you might have thought that I was trying to ruin my FICO on purpose. But, I have learned my lessons and devoted the last decade to getting our financial affairs in complete order. It wasn't easy: understanding credit is not easy sometimes, and I made financial moves that weren't always intuitive to me. We were diligent though, in never overextending ourselves and always paying on time, and in fact, simply paying as we went the majority of the time. Bruce and I are on the same page regarding how we feel about protecting our credit rating and our financial security, so that made things easier for us. And now, I have relationships with creditors who have identified me as trustworthy risk.

What if our human relationships had FICO scores as well? I have wondered over the last few weeks how I would rate. I've certainly made mistakes in past relationships: the kind of mistakes where even 10 or 15 years later when I think about the circumstances, I still cringe a little at my own behavior. Are terrible interactions "dropped off" in 7 years? I kind of hope so.

Just like my credit has mattered more and more to me as I have matured, so have my relationships with the people in my life, more specifically, the RIGHT kind of relationships with the RIGHT kind of people. There are types of credit that I would never want: with fees, and high interest rates, and I've realized that there are relationships also where the costs are too high, and I want no part of them. I hope that similar to my evolving FICO, my mistakes of the past don't count so much anymore, and my good behavior counts the most. It matters to me that the friends and family in my life think I was worth being extended their credit.

Kiki has had a helluva week.

Which means my week has been a **********. Pardon my french. Shall I itemize?

She totally felt me up, and when I told her to knock it off, she said, "I'm just hugging your boob."

I opened the shower curtain to help her out of the shower. I was fully clothed. As I dried her off, she spat a mouthful of water on me. She had been holding it in her mouth for at least 2 minutes waiting for the right opportunity. Then, when I got mad, she shrugged and nonchalantly said, "Well. Things happen."

She threw a giant fit at the movies because she was certain I had taken her to the wrong theater. Turns out that we were attending "Ramona and Beezus," and she thought we should be at "Ramona and JESUS."

She ran away to the neighbor's house.

She has decided to pee in the grass now. That's right. One month ago I trucked her sorry butt all over Wayne County in search of a facility that she deemed acceptable for her bowels, and now, IN THE COMFORT OF OUR OWN HOME, I have repeatedly caught her heading outside naked from the waist down and carrying a handful of toilet paper.

She killed Taylor Swift (our fish). She filled his bowl full of food, which he gulped down until he died. I was so furious that I pulled the old Merrilee Barratt "You'd better run!" out of my vast repertoire of empty parental threats and she believed me enough that she just put herself right into timeout. Kate is devastated, and I'm left thinking, "Could you not have killed the old stinky pet that eats like crazy and dirties up the house?" (Sorry, Powder, it's true.)

Remember last summer, when she wore the same stinky bikini for 75 days in a row? That was nothing.

Spudman? Perhaps you mean "Studman."

After months of training, race day finally came for Bruce. He entered an Olympic-length triathlon in Burley, ID, called "The Spudman." The race involves a 1 mile swim down the Snake River, a 25 mile bike ride, and a 6 mile run.

So, it was pretty easy.

Official "Before" photo.

(Barry, Casey, Bruce, and Dave)

Bruce was in the first wave which started about 7:20 a.m.

He is somewhere among all those bobbing orange heads in the water.

Dave, Tammy, and Casey started 40 minutes later.

Yes, girls can be Spudmen too.

This particular girl is 16 weeks pregnant, so I think she wins the prize.

Bruce coming in to the bike/run transition area.

(No, he doesn't ride his bike with his legs straight down. He was merely preparing for dismount. Speed matters, people.)

At the finish line.

When Bruce entered the race, I promised him that if he finished, I would be waiting at the finish line with the homemade pie of his choice.

He chose coconut cream and I kept my word.

Bruce and Dave have had a leetle rivalry.

The thing about a race is that there are so many variables that impact the outcome.

Just because your brother-in-law beats you one day, it doesn't mean he's going to beat you another day.

At least that's what Shelton was telling himself when Liza rocked him to sleep Saturday night.

But the big winner was Barry: he beat everyone by a good 15 minutes, and he only swims once a year. Also, he's the oldest. Like a grandpa old.

A post-race dinner was held at Butterburr's.

There were heavy rains, but either God smiles on racers or on chicken fried steak, because we came out to a DOUBLE rainbow.