Ve haf a vinner!

I've been meaning to post this exciting news all week—Joey took first place in literature for Reflections. This kid thrives on positive reinforcement. He just lights up—I wish I could have caught his face when they announced it. But he's still pretty happy here:
I do feel a little bad that what is getting reinforced is a first draft, "this is due tomorrow so I'd better get it done"entry. Here's what he wrote:

Beautiful People
By Joey Marsh

Some people think that beauty is fancy clothes or make up, but I think beauty is happiness, kindness, and treating others the way you want to be treated. I think that someone beautiful would be helpful. For example my grandparents are beautiful. They may look old, and have wrinkles and white hair, but they are nice and happy and they treat others kindly and they are helpful. I think everyone on Earth can be beautiful if they are kind to each other.

Awww.

AND, guess who won these brownies?!

Yes, this might be an unprecedented two-winner week in the Marsh family. Hopefully our luck will extend to our teams tomorrow. Too bad we're not still living in Idaho, we could give the lottery a try. :) Thank you, Stacy Julian, the only person I know of who loves brownies as much as I do. If you haven't checked out her blog, go and be inspired.

I don't think I've ever won ANYTHING before, and it was so fun to see my name listed (although a little embarrassing because I left a pretty lame comment—couldn't I win when I had something witty to say? Um, don't answer that.)

Since I'm feeling the love, and I think all three of you reading this would agree that if I had an area of expertise, it would be brownies, I too am going to give away some homemade brownies. Just leave a comment, preferably a lame one. I'll draw one of them at random on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. You can even pick which recipe you'd like: St. George Brownies, Mint Brownies, Brownie Cake or Ultimate Brownies (which I haven't posted yet, but will if you pick them).

Finally

I've been promising to post this recipe for weeks. Thanks for being patient.

This is Halloween

Or rather, this is us skipping Halloween. When Shawn and Melissa invited us to join them and the Boydens at Disneyland for the weekend, no one was more surprised than I was that Rob agreed on such short notice. I mean, it took him FIVE YEARS to pick out and buy his road bike. We're not exactly spontaneous. But as Melissa said here, we "clearly underestimated Rob's hatred of all things Halloween. He was more than happy to leave costumes and trick-or-treating behind." We had a great trip—thanks Stringhams and Boydens! Here are some highlights:
Alright, this isn't really a highlight, but I can't document this trip without mentioning our three hour stop north of Beaver. What's sad is that we actually got out of the house at 6:00 a.m., which is a record for us, only to be delayed by a nasty snowstorm.

While we were waiting for the gates to open our first day there, a cast member (Bob, pictured here with us) said he was looking for a family of six to open the park. Several families raised their hands until he added "from Utah." That's us! It was fun to be the first ones in.

Both of the boys were picked for Jedi training, another first for us. I wish I had a photo of Ainsley hiding behind my back every time Darth Maul came near us.

We didn't see as many characters this visit, but it was fun to see a few in costume.

We loved Toy Story, the latest ride at California Adventure.

The decorations everywhere were great. The Haunted House was completely redone in "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

We got several shots with Mickey though, all in different outfits—he must have been busy changing his clothes every five minutes. :)

Joey was picked to be in one of the shows. Too bad he's not very dramatic.

It was three times the fun on days two and three, since the Stringhams and Boydens were there too.

Rob thinks this photo sums up the whole trip pretty well.

The whole group.

No costumes this year, so we settled for shots in their Halloween shirts.

More photos here.

The Stringham, I mean, Marsh Adventure

I mentioned to Rob that I was thinking about updating the blog today, making it clear that I was only thinking about it, not promising to actually do it. He told me to make it easy on myself and just link to Melissa's blog. We did cram four days of fun activities with the kids in the week before school started, but she's done a much better job at posting than I have. So you can see what we did Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday by just clicking. I actually feel a little guilty that we spend more time with these cousins than other cousins or friends, but it is SO convenient—they live so close, and everyone has a buddy their age (except for Peter, and so far at least, he doesn't seem to mind). Plus they are awesome and way fun. Of course this fun all took place over a week ago so I still have plenty to catch up, including the first day of school and Ellie's birthday. I'll get to the school stuff later...here's what we did to make Ellie's day special:

Since Rob wanted to get a long bike ride in around ten, we opted for a birthday breakfast and let Ellie choose the where and what. Of course we ended up at Hagermann's for french toast.

Definitely a good idea to open presents first thing—I think we could have gotten away without planning anything else for the day, since she would have been content to play with her new things.

She got an MP3 player, some new shoes, a magnetic paper doll, Annie on DVD, a book and new ballet clothes.

Great-grandma Clayton joined us, and Grandpa Riley (behind the counter) was able to take a break while it was slow and eat with us.

I really tried to get ONE shot without a silly face, but silly and six just seem to go together.

Good times.

While Rob was off logging around 70 miles with Shawn, I whipped up some cupcakes (which were unfortunately not photo-worthy) then we headed to the Murray City pool to hook up with the Stringhams. Ellie was very excited about the water slide, so it was a bit disappointing to find it out-of-order after we had paid and were already in the pool.

But, with some chocolaty sweetness,

diving board poses for the older kids,

and fountain fun, they all had a good time anyway.

Thank you Stringhams for making Ellie feel like she got a party when she really didn't. :)

Melissa, I'll have to e-mail the rest of the photos to you—there are some cute ones of just you guys and Peter. Then when you blog it I can link to you again. :)

Coming later today (or maybe tomorrow), an interview with the birthday girl. We love you Ellie!

If I could stop time...

This would be a great stopping point. We took the kids swimming tonight after dinner. It was a little cold so while Ainsley was warming up next to me I snapped about 30 photos of her. Oh my gosh I love this face.
We've been trying to pack as much fun as possible into this last week before school starts, so I have a bunch of "things we've done" posts to catch up on, but what I really want to post is that it doesn't get any better than this. Well, it might be a little better if we had a cleaning lady at home while we're out playing. But this is about the gratitude I'm feeling...I love this week of fun, I love this stage in our lives, I love my family. And cheese, lots of cheese. Obviously.

Hike to Donut Falls

Today while I was dropping Joey and Will off after drama camp Becca mentioned that they were planning on hiking for Family Night, and we ended up tagging along at the last minute. It was a short, easy hike, but somehow the girls still ended up riding part of the way.
Not so many wildflowers on this hike, but the water was pretty.
And the company was great—we love the Breinholts.
A big bonus for me is the chance to take photos of the kids without too much of a fight.
This is at the top, but the Falls were out of my viewfinder.
There they are (the lower falls, anyway).
So who wants to go hiking with us next week?

Best Birthday Ever

I was at youth conference for Robbie's birthday this year, and felt bad because I like to make birthdays a really special day for the kids. To make things worse, we've decided that once they're in the double digits they probably won't get a friends party, and since we've already bought him a new bike, tennis racket and sleeping bag this summer, we told him not to expect any big presents. Here's what saved the day:
We had talked about going to the Peter Breinholt concert, but decided it was a little late to keep the kids out when we had church at nine a.m. Luckily the Stringhams wanted to go and we decided to throw responsibility to the wind and join them.
Becca was kind enough to bring our blankets since she was coming early anyway. We also got to sit by the Ensigns, Griffiths and Breinholts, so it was a huge party. We even got a sneak preview of the set list:
Of course there was a lot of dancing:
I didn't get a great show of the birthday boy—he WAS having fun, really.
It was a gorgeous night and a great venue.
We had a great time, although the young couple sitting next to us might NEVER have kids now.
The best line of the night came from Scout—Rob was teasing her and she replied "You're the president of the you're wrong club!"
The absolute highlight was when Pete wished Robbie Happy Birthday right in the middle of "Flowers." I'm so bummed, I had been shooting video of the kids dancing, but had turned it off as I turned back to the stage, so I missed catching that on video.
To top it all off, Pete gave Robbie a signed copy of Deep Summer for his birthday. Robbie declared it his best birthday ever, and it's hard to argue with that!

We love you Robbie!

Welcome home buccaneer

Shiver me timbers! Today I got home from a fun youth conference to find this card waiting for me:



I have NO IDEA where the buccaneer theme is coming from, but Rob and I are relieved to know that Joey has a future career with Hallmark. More later about youth conference and Robbie's eleventh birthday. Until then, ahoy mateys!

Youth Conference

There are some people who love serving with the youth because it makes them feel young. For me, it's just a reminder of how old I am! I do feel lucky though, we have really amazing kids in our ward, and great leaders (I'm the exception to the rule). Of course the fabulous vacations are a real perk too. This year we went to Manti. We drove down in Sunday dress, had lunch at the park, then headed to the temple to do baptisms for the dead.



I didn't bring my nice camera, so when Christianne got there with hers I quit taking photos. A few other highlights were:
yummy dutch oven cooking, Forever Strong on the lawn, the "faith" hike, boating, a killer bonfire with smores and a great testimony meeting.

Birthday hike

I should be doing fourteen other things to get ready for youth conference tomorrow and Robbie's birthday on Friday, but we had such a fun hike last night I want to get it posted. I had to turn down an invitation to hike to Cecret Lake with a friend yesterday morning since we had swimming, but decided that would be a perfect way to celebrate Rob's birthday. The Stringhams were game (as always) so we grabbed sandwiches and drove up to the Albion Basin. Here's what it looks like from the base (it's worth the drive even if you don't want to hike):

Everything is more fun with cousins.

The wildflowers were so pretty. I didn't get any shots that do them justice so we might just have to go back up—I hear they're at their peak mid-August.

At the trail head:

One, two...

skip a few...and we're there:

Food always tastes better after a hike:

By the time we got up there the sun was down.

So we hurriedly lit the candles on the mangled brownies (by the way, that's a 4, not a 9)

and sang happy birthday:

As photo nazi, I couldn't leave without a few family photos, which Shawn kindly took:

And I tortured them too:
We hustled back down the mountain:



And made it to the bottom just as it was really getting dark. If only I had brought a tripod, you'd see how pretty it was.
It was definitely something we need to do again, and often. Thanks for the idea Julie, and thanks for coming along Stringhams!

Freezer jam

This is so ridiculously easy I can't believe I've never done it before. I picked up a half-case of raspberries at Costco that looked great, but tasted pretty bland, so I decided to stretch my homemaking abilities and make jam. Now that I know how easy it is, our freezer will be stocked. If anyone reading this is just as clueless as I was (and I doubt that), here's the recipe:

Mix 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1 package Ball No Cook Freezer Jam Fruit Pectin together, then add 6 6-oz. containers of raspberries, crush and mix for three minutes, then let it stand for 30 minutes.

Most of the pectin boxes had recipes with triple the amount of sugar, so this isn't too sweet, but it's yummy!

And on top of a sourdough English muffin...mmmmm!

Not-so-happy campers

I'm finally ready to end my blogging sabbatical. We've been crazy busy, and maybe someday I'll fill in those gaps...or maybe not.

Last night Rob and Robbie went to their first scouting overnight camp. Of course I have no photos of that (it is Photo Scrooge that we're talking about here). Here at home, the other three were begging to sleep out too, so after negotiating some jobs that had to be completed, I agreed to let them sleep on the balcony, where I could supervise them from my air-conditioned room and super-comfortable bed. They did their jobs and we got them set up:



They were out there just long enough to say prayers and take a couple of photos, then I turned off the lights and went in. Ten seconds later Ainsley was in trying to turn the lights back on and I told her to close the door so the bugs wouldn't come in. "Bugs?! I don't want to get bugs on me!" from all three. Truly their mom's kids. So they ended up "camping out" on the floor in the girls room:


I got a couple of clean rooms and a good eight hours of sleep out of it, so that's my kind of camping.

As Ainsley says, "Congratuwations Dad!"

I think Joey summed it up pretty well in his prayer last night: "we're thankful that Dad got graduated today."

Here's his EMBA-team:


And his B-team:


And the A-team expanded:

We had a minor meltdown when one of the gameboy batteries died, but the boys made it through the reading of over 1,000 names without having to be escorted off-premise by mom security.

Of course now Rob's all hyped up about the idea of a PhD, which is a little scary.

But not quite as scary as the short period of time before this is a reality:

Cute haircut

Ellie's been wanting to cut her hair all year long, but we've stalled since we needed to be able to put it into a bun for her ballet performance. Now that swim season is almost here, I had to agree with her, so we had it chopped off today.
Here's the before and after:


She had the requisite ten inches to donate to Locks of Love, so hopefully this nice thick hair will look good on someone else too.

I'm a little biased, but I think she looks beautiful either way.

Field trip season

Ellie and I had a good time at Wheeler Farm today, but we're both grateful that we don't live on a stinky farm.

Keeping busy

I finally got around to hanging some pictures today. I was going to surprise Rob when he got home, but let's face it, he's not big on surprises, and I'm just not that patient. Hanging pictures in a grid is not easy, especially when you have to jerry-rig some scaffolding. While I was up there Joey said, "Um, Mom, is that safe?" I told him not to tell my grandma about it, but that yes, I was being careful. It feels good to cross that project off my list. 

While dad's away...

The girls have been "sleeping over" in our room. On Monday they were so excited about this that they had their pajamas on by four in the afternoon. The boys have felt a little left out, so I promised a movie night/sleepover on Friday night. I even got them some new summer jammies, which the girls have been wearing since 2:00 p.m. 

I didn't get my daily photo yesterday or Wednesday, but if I had taken one, it would have been from the driver's seat. We had chess club, soccer practices, ballet, piano lessons, young women's, scouts and a leadership training meeting. Throw in trips to Costco and Albertson's, plus laundry, dishes, homework and piano practice and you know why I wasn't really in picture taking mode. One week down, and one to go.

Entered to win

I'm hoping to win a madsen cargo bike in this contest. I love the idea of running errands on a bike, although I might have to move if I really want to put it into practice—I'm not sure I can handle the hills even without the extra weight! Thanks for the link Shawn!

Dinner options

It's not like we never exercise the cereal option when Photo Scrooge is home, it's just that when he's gone I don't even feel guilty about it. I even tended Mikey today, so I could have ordered yummy Hagermann's sandwiches, but I figured that three out of four kids would just as soon eat cereal, and Robbie opted for leftover Café Rio burrito. Just keeping it real so Rob doesn't miss us too much.

A near perfect afternoon

Rob left for Prague and Budapest this morning, and will be gone for two weeks. :(  Luckily we had a busy and fun day planned. After kickboxing, we picked up some bagels and some friends and went to the tulip festival at Thanksgiving Point. It was beautiful, the weather couldn't have been better, and it was so fun to hang out with Julie & Liza. The only reason I added "near" in the title is because I forgot to put sunscreen on any of us, so we're all a little pink now. A small price to pay.

The best part? While I was rushing the girls to find sandals and get out the door, Ellie was really mad and threw out this statement in retaliation: "You are SUCH a BORING MOM!" Later tonight, the girls were still talking about what a great day it was, and Ellie said "Mom, I guess you're not such a boring mom after all."