Birds!

We were so thrilled to have my grandparents, Nonny and Bob, stop in Logan on their way to the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City! We always love to see them and it seems like our visits come too far between.

They arrived on Friday night, so the boys visited them for a lovely evening of swimming at the RV park and visiting together. The boys LOVE Bob, especially because he will let them climb all over him!


Any time you throw a pool into the mix, my kids are happy. So happy, in fact, that it's difficult to get them to hold still for a picture!



On Saturday morning, my mom met us at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, just West of Brigham City, where we had arranged to go on a guided tour of the refuge. For those of you near this area, I would highly recommend this activity. Right now, they are doing construction on the road into the refuge, so we didn't get as complete a tour as we normally would have, but it was still great. The tour is currently offered twice a week and you go in an air-conditioned van (an absolute must-- and don't forget your sunscreen) to an area of the refuge that is off-limits to the general public. The tour lasts about 3 hours and you see some incredible birds. Plus, the education center is only a couple of years old and very nice, and the whole thing is completely free (they do accept donations, of course). It's a very fun, very educational family-friendly activity.

Anyway, back to our day: we had a great time! My mom and Nonny decided to dress alike. They said it was unintentional, but you never know. ;)


The boys LOVED looking through the binoculars! We brought our own little cheapies, but Nonny and Bob had some fancy Swarovskis, and the tour guides had some even fancier scopes. The really nice scopes were mounted on tripods and everyone took turns. It was very cool.



This picture doesn't do an awesome job, but you can kind of see the vast amount of birds feeding on the marshes in the refuge. I haven't been a birder to date (though I could see how you could get into it), so I'm not sure if I remember everything we saw. I do know that we saw a lot of funny avocets, spindly stilts (my favorite-- they're so cute!), snowy and great white egrets, pelicans, blue herons, white-faced ibises, grebes, and Canada geese. I'm positive I didn't mention everything!

Nonny and Bob, who are expert birders, were thrilled to see some baby coots at the end of our tour-- they had only seen adults to this point. I'd say our adventure was a success!



The construction is supposed to be complete in October of next year, and according to Chris, who did a feature story about the refuge last year, the best time to go is early in the morning in the Spring. We've been talking about planning an early morning bike tour of the 12 mile loop in May of 2010-- a long way off, but I'm still excited about it!

Oasis

Chris set up a little oasis for us in the backyard: the whale pool and umbrella for the kids and another umbrella and a lawn chair for me. Even though it is crazy hot (well, not to you AZ people, but to everyone else), it is actually pleasant to be outside with conditions like this! Yesterday I got a tiny bit of reading done in my cozy chair, but mostly just relaxed with my feet in the water.


It's almost deep enough to swim, especially if you're wearing your googles.


Sweet relaxation!


I think the 24th of July is the funniest day. Before I moved to Utah, I thought this was just a normal day. Sure, we acknowledged the pioneers' arrival into the Salt Lake Valley with primary activities where we dressed up and sang that song about walking and walking and walking and walking and walking... but that was about it. Then, as a newlywed living in Salt Lake City, I was surprised by the fact that not only did I get the 24th off from work, but that they were actually going to hold a parade and fireworks even bigger than on the 4th! What? Sweet! Why? Oh yeah, the pioneers! Huh.

Sadly, the company I work for now is not based in Utah and therefore, I went to work yesterday. And of course, we know the whole "newspaper never sleeps" thing, so if Chris isn't getting Christmas off, he certainly isn't going to be home on Pioneer Day. But he was home in time for the fireworks, which we could see from our front porch.

Our next-door neighbors watched the fireworks with us and the little girl kept saying, "beautiful", but in her little girl voice it sounded like "pitiful." The show really was fun, but I had to laugh because the 4th of July fireworks show in Idaho Falls just spoiled me rotten. Comparatively, everything else really does look like an amateur attempt. "Pitiful," may be a bit strong, but it was no Freedom Celebration!

Before the fireworks, we brought out the sparklers left over from the 4th. I tried to mess with the shutter speeds on my camera (which I know absolutely nothing about) and I thought these ones turned out kind of cool.




One more thing about Pioneer Day-- for some reason, I can't help but remember this stupid camp song I learned at Pine Basin when I was in 5th grade...

If I had the strength of a pioneer, pioneer
Into the wood I would fly, WOULD FLY!
There to remain as a pioneer, pioneer
Until the day that I die, I DIE!

The song was so annoying that I still get it stuck in my head! Ha!

Oh, and yet another self promotion for my design blog (if you can't self-promote on your blog, where else can you do it?)-- another freebie and a comment contest!

Digi Scrapping Stuff

I just put a few updates on my design blog (Elise Hansen Designs), including a new FREEBIE & a link to a site with awesome tutorials on how to get started as well as advanced scrapper Q&A. Quite a few of you have asked for tutorials, and frankly, I'm just guessing half the time myself!

Also, I'm thinking about offering to do blog design-- probably have three or four free designs, then charge a small fee for custom blog layouts. Would people be interested in that? And, if so, what do you think would be a reasonable fee for a custom layout? Just throwing it out there...

My Missing Virtue

I know I said recently that I don't usually share very personal things on this blog, but I've been working with this issue in my head the past few weeks... okay, years... and tonight I just feel like venting. So, skip this post if you want... I mostly just need to get my thoughts out of my brain.

I am not a very patient person.

I've felt this particular facet of myself very sharply in the past few months. There are certain things that I think need to happen for me and for my family, and these things, both big and small, have not happened the way I would like them to. When I was a teenager, my dad would often remind me that the world does not revolve around me, and I lately, I feel that teeth-grinding phrase sneaking back into my thoughts, another reminder that even though I'm an adult, this concept still holds true.

A few weeks ago, our Stake President spoke in our ward. He started out by going through a survey he had taken himself of people in this area on what they don't like about people in the church. It was really funny, and I have to admit that almost everything he said was something I had complained about at one point or another, except for gum-chewing, which Chris and I both do. As he went on, the comments became less funny as it started to hit home to me how critical and unforgiving I was being, both of others and of myself. He then spoke about what I believe should be the essentials of a spiritual person: love, acceptance, and patience. He told us to ease up on ourselves and each other, and to try to speak, act and think with love as the primary motivator. It was an incredible message and I felt very personally changed and challenged, and not in the way I was expecting. I came home resolved to be more loving and patient with my family and myself and the world in general.

Well, the weeks have passed and I feel my old self creeping back in. And then I feel frustrated that I couldn't just change overnight. It's the patience thing again-- the weakness I need to work on is gaining patience, and the only way to do that is to be... well, patient.

Tonight I was googling around to try to self-diagnose a little bit, and I came across a pretty good site (http://www.coping.org/growth/patient.htm if you want to check it out yourself) that had a description of how you feel when you're being impatient. It actually made me laugh out loud, because it's pretty much a description of how I've been feeling:

How do you feel when you are impatient?
irritated
agitated
ignored
frustrated
resentful
forgotten
anxious
burned out
misdirected
tense
over stressed
misunderstood
nervous
ill tempered
over responsible

Kind of funny, huh? And blah that I've been feeling like that! And even more blah that these feelings are all due to my own impatience!

The site has a couple of good exercises that I'm going to try, and hopefully these will help me relax a little bit and find joy and satisfaction in small, everyday progress.

The truth is that I do have a great life and I have so many incredible blessings. I just need to focus on being appreciative of the simple things and know that everything always works out for the best in the grand scheme of things. And stop checking my e-mail every two minutes. Sigh.

Okay, okay, I'm done for tonight. Back to fun stuff tomorrow! ;)

Little Updates

Thanks to Chris for digging this out of storage! It's not deep at all, but our funny whale pool manages to provide hours of entertainment on hot summer days for the boys. I like that I can just sit on the porch with a glass of icy water and not have to get into a swimming suit myself.



I am quite positive that the day will come (and much sooner than I'd like) when my boys will not be willing to dance in front of me, let alone for the camera. Until then, I'll keep taping as many of their impromptu jam sessions as possible!