Road Trip 2009 pt. 2

Little was super excited to see her cousins in SLC. We drove down and stopped at "[Maggum]'s house." We stayed there for several days, and during that time, we occasionally saw Little, but only in the form of a giggling blur flying past in pursuit of various cousins. She especially LOVED Ambrodesiac, Wire-Delish, Yahn-Bahn-Appetit, X-babykool, Kelvinatorious, Maggnum, Pinkleberrilicious and Winkleberritissorious. Ok, so pretty much she just loved everybody. Mommy and Daddy are pretty sure that Little has never been happier or had more fun than the week she spent there--and that's saying a LOT.

Daddy spent a lot of time taking care of the kids--and by that we mean being crushed repeatedly by Yahn-Bahn-Et and X-bayesian at foosball. Mommy, Daddy, Christofferson and AD spent many nights up way, way too late watching Flight of the Conchords on YouTube. Littler spent most of her time following around the bigger cousins and generally failing to keep up but nevertheless having lots of fun mimicking them.

Ambrosiac took lots of pictures with our camera, pictures which we have now stolen and use as our own. Pretty much every picture in this post that is an intimate head-shot of a cute kid is hers, plus some others. She did a fantastic job.

X-bah-baby:

We went cherry picking at one of the cousins' friend's house. Winkleberrified:

The Amtographer:

Little cherrypicking:

Yahn-Bahnneroo:

Back home, Maggumator, Little, and Pinkleberrissima played X-babastic's guitar together. Mommy and Daddy loved how Little felt so comfortable with the cousins even though she only gets to see them once a year and is often shy.

Ok, so here's a sequence that we just couldn't trim down to fewer pictures. Kelvinatidine is reading Maggnumnation and Little a story. Little and Maggnificent have just about the most expressive mugs possible, and they love each other. It's dang sweet.

Later, the bigger kids and Daddy played "Peterball" on the trampoline. Here, X-bababay executes a sweet attack on Yahn-Bahnbastic, but gets convincingly stuffed. Ambidextrose got a rocking capture:

Peterball himself prepares to annihilate X-baylien:

Wire-Deestruck came back from a summer camp and Daddy was way excited. She was a little more excited by her drink but Daddy didn't notice:

Little gets a push from X-babbed:

Littler had plenty of fun too. She loved Winklebusterblister a lot. And when we all played kickball together, she ran around trying to kick the ball very determinedly and seriously:

We all went to go look for July 4th fireworks but the streets were all clogged. So we drove into a random neighborhood near the fireworks and watched from the street. Later we found an empty house and watched from their derelict lawn. It wasn't the best view but it felt exciting.

One day, Christofferson and AD wanted to go to the temple and left their kids in the care of Mommy and Daddy. Daddy said, "you can count on us" or something like that. About an hour before they were due home, AD called Daddy and made sure everything was alright. Daddy assured her that everything was perfectly in order. She asked specifically if Winkleberioso had stayed inside the gate, because apparently she sometimes is tempted to leave the yard. Daddy confidently assured her that Winklebell was safe and sound and that she couldn't possible avoid his eagle surveilance.

At that moment, Winkleboss was wandering up the street in nothing but a full diaper. She crossed a residential road and a couple saw her and called the cops. Daddy found her screaming and had the pleasure of trying to convince the cop [who was, after all, just about as friendly as cops ever get] that she belonged with him and that he wasn't a horrible, good-for-nothing lazy irresponsible babysitter. He succeed with the former, perhaps not the latter.

Overall we had a blast with the CAD cousins and their parents. But we also visited Daddy's parents at their current laborschloss [the Family History Library in SLC], which was great fun. And we had a particularly rockfull night at Daddy's brother Venn's house with two more cousins, Ketrifect and Marigrossa, who were supremely awesome hostesses.

Next up: sand creek hike; Daddy, Christofferson, Vonn's adventures in southern Utah's finest.

Littler

Right now--and this has been going on for 2 hours now--Littler is upstairs in front of the hall mirror screaming at the top of her lungs with joy. She's just shrieking and waving her arms in the mirror endlessly. She's so weird. And cute.

Road Trip 2009

Well, we haven't finished the Costa Rica pictures yet, but now we've finished the pictures from our Oregon-Idaho-Utah-Arizona road trip in June/July, in multiple parts.

Part I: Oregon and Idaho

One day we started driving and ended up in Oregon at Crater Lake National Park. Little was beside herself with excitement anticipating snow, and Mommy was jittery looking forward to her half-marathon. We set up our circus tent:

Adhering to true wilderness-survival principles, we packed all 7 kinds of cheese that Chesters like best: emmenthaler, stilton, brie, lots of various goudas, camembert, wensleydale, jarlsberg. Little likes cheese:

Believing that going rough builds character, we of course brought along Littler's pack-n-play and two air mattresses.

We found a little bit of snow, which pleased Little to no end. Littler didn't think much of it:

The next morning we awoke and went to the actual crater lake. Daddy was excited for this moment since he had a very potent memory from visiting Crater Lake as a kid. He distinctly remembers driving slowly to church on a busy road right by the water. There was an island in the middle of the lake with a cabin on it, with a large sunday newspaper on the front doorstep. Daddy was particularly intrigued by the thought that somebody actually had to go out on a boat in the middle of a lake every morning just to deliver a newspaper to one little cabin. This left quite an impression on Daddy, and he was excited to go back and tell the kids: "and they even deliver the newspaper every morning to the island!"

So when we got there, we drove up on an empty street to the lake. Except the lake was actually a 1000-foot shear talus slope below the road. And there is no way there ever was a cabin on the island. So one of Daddy's most distinct early memories turns out to have been a dream. He doesn't know at this point if he's ever actually been there. Whoops!

Littler really wanted to stand on the retaining wall [retains tourists from falling down aformentioned slope into aformentioned lake]. Little, bless her heart, was desperately worried that Littler would fall down. So she started crying and shrieking "no, no [Littler]! Don't jump! Don't jump into the lake! NO, [LITTLER]!!" It was cute, pathetic, annoying, and sweet all wrapped into one. When given a chance, she would run over to Littler, tackle her, and press her into the pavement to keep her from getting near the wall. That was hard to explain to the passing folks.

Daddy had this great idea to neutralize the strong mid-day shadows to get a family portrait. He got out a big reflector and reflected the sun right back into everybody's eyes. This is when he realized that the sun is pretty bright. So:

Littler is cute; the lake is beautiful:

Little, beside herself and bawling, had to be restrained by Mommy just to get those two pictures. We hope you like them.

Basically all Little could talk about [when Littler wasn't climbing on walls] was snow. She wanted to play in snow [she even insisted on wearing her special "snow suit" all day--actually pajamas, which explains the funky outfit]. So we hunted out a patch of crusty, dirty, thin slush for her to play in. She built a "super super super BIG snowman!"

Littler, being Littler, just monstered the snow:

Little declares that her snowman is big enough:

Honestly, it's hard to overstate how much fun this Tucson/Palo Alto-raised little person had in that little pathetic patch of "snow."

Daddy moved in to help with the snowman; Mommy was being too sissy with the cold snow.

He helped for about 35 seconds before his hands were too cold.

Another of Little's dreams was to make a snow angel. It didn't bother her one bit that her body failed entirely to depress the snow one bit.

Then we drove to Bend and stayed at a hotel to prepare for Mommy's half-marathon the next morning. She'll post on her blog about that [incredible feat of supermommy].

After the half-marathon, we drove to a place that Mommy and Daddy had been planning on visiting since their early courtship: Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area south of Boise, Idaho. The highest density of breeding raptors anywhere in North America! A Peregrine Fund breeding center with live Harpy Eagles! Free camping! What's not to like?

We arrived at the area after sunset:

Daddy stayed up late into the night taking pictures. Then he woke up super early to get some pictures at sunrise:

When the little ones and Mommy woke up, Daddy grabbed Little and they went on a walk together while Littler and Mommy explored around the camp.

Little with the snake river reflecting the sunrise glow from a cliff face:

Little just wanted to play with dirt. So for 45 minutes or so, she baked dirt into various remarkable delicacies:

Littler was excited to see Daddy and Little again. That was the true sunrise of the morning:

Little taught her how to bake with dirt:

We explored along the river for some time. We saw several prairie falcons, always a thrill. We found a marmot:

Lots of lizards:

Then we went to the Peregrine Fund breeding center. It was amazing! We got to see live California condors, a Harpy eagle [!!], aplomado falcons [!!], and more. Completely astounding. The highlight was a live raptor demonstration where a worker brought in a Swainson's hawk [an old Chester family favorite, as luck might have it]. Littler immediately started screech/gurgle-ing "buh-duh!" which, of course, means "bird." She was extremely animated, as she tends to be. One might almost say monster-like. The hawk flew to a perch within a few feet of us and Littler went CRAZY "BUH-DUH!! BUH-DUH!!!" while squirming and reaching out to get to the hawk. The handler didn't happen to speak Little-ese and thus mistook this for fear, so he told the hawk to fly to the other end of the room. Bad idea. Littler started bawling and screaming "BUH-DUUUUH" in a universal tongue which, being translated, means something like "IFYOUDONTBRINGTHATBIRDBACKTOMETHISINSTANTIWILLPERSONALLYMONSTERTHISBUILDINGINTOTHEGROUND!!!"

We had to take Littler out of the room, she was scaring the hawk. It's hard being Littler; she just loves animals that much.

Little, being Little, mostly liked getting to dress up as a raptor:

So then we drove to Utah. That's the next megapicture post. Stay tuned!

She rides!

We took Little's training wheels off today and look what happened:

I have to admit, I'm more than a little proud to have a 3-year-old bike rider! She's awesome!