Grand Old Flag

Avid readers of this blog already know that Miriam greatly enjoys watching the dance specials on the KBYU International channel. They also rebroadcast band, orchestra, and choir concerts, all of which she has greatly enjoyed. It's quite cute. She'll sit down right in front of the tv with her ankles crossed and her hands clasped and grin at the television. After each piece, she claps energetically, looking around to make sure we're clapping too, then waits for the next number to begin. One of her favorites is the BYU marching band's concert. She's seen it a few times now. The entire band is sitting on the stage, yet they are still doing their tuba shakes and other such movements. During some pieces, the drill team comes in with their flags. Now, Miriam knows about flags. At the Levanger Cousin Spring Extravaganza, the opening activity was talking about the importance of flags. Two cousins shared about two important flag events, namely Betsy Ross and the making of the first American flag and Moroni and the Title of Liberty. The cousins then all went and made their own flags, drawing on them things that made them who they are. Then there was a small cousin parade and of course a photo op. I don't know if any of the other cousins still have their flags, but Miriam loves hers. When she finds it, she marches down the hall waving it around. Sometimes she pokes Zeke with it, but I don't think it's done out of malice. More like enthusiasm. One time, she held it all the way down the street to her friends' house and back. It's only like four houses, but for Miriam that's pretty big. So when the flag dancers come in on KBYU, Miriam gets excited. Once we realized what she was so excited about, we gave her her flag when the dancers came on. That's all she needed. She now dances and prances around the room with her flag, swishing and waving it along with the Cougerettes, or whatever the team is named. It is amazing to see her be so focused on something she obviously already loves and to see the intensity that she is willing to give to it. Let's hear it for the Fighting Cougar Marching Band and Flag Team with one extremely adorable home addition waving with all of her heart!

Zeke the Wonder Cat

Soon after we moved into our own house, Brent and I decided to get a cat. We weren't very proactive about the situation, and decided that if anybody ever offered us a cat, we'd take it. So about a year later, a girl at work was looking for a home for a kitten she had found. It had been in the gutter meowing with the back portion of her right side burned. She didn't like people and she hissed a lot. But we took her home and now she is one of the sweetest little cats I know. She does have a paranoid streak and still does not like people. Of those who have been to our house, only a very small percentage have actually seen her. But she cuddles with Brent every night and loves feeding time. Her name is JoAnn, after JoAnn Seghini, the venerable mayor of Midvale, and we adore her. The summer after JoAnn came to live with us, a huge dirty white cat followed her home one day and stalked our back porch for a week. He would just stare in the glass doors and it really freaked me out. I thought he was going to kill Jo. We left on vacation for a few days and figured he'd leave when there was nothing to look at. But when we came back, the cat was still there. We decided he was ours and took him to the humane society to get his work done. I kept telling him that he's the one who chose to live with us, and that this is what you have to do to become domesticated. We initially had named him Gertrude, but with the help of Brian and Claudia we realized that he was in fact male. After we started calling him Ezekiel, his behavior improved dramatically. When I would tell people his name was "Ezekiel," a lot of people would hear "Easy Kill." Which may be considered a cool name, but not quite what we were going for. So we shortened it to Zeke and Zeke he is. Zeke is one of the most personable cats I have ever met. When the doorbell rings, JoAnn runs under the bed while Zeke walks in a stately fashion to the front door to see who it is. He is big and kind of clumsy, so when he plays his halves don't always match up. It's great. He loves boxes and will try to fit inside of any size of box. It can get pretty humorous. He also loves plastic bags and will lick any that are left out. He loves it when we come home from Macey's with grocery bags. It's like heaven to him. He also loves to open the cupboard under the sink and sleep in the dirty towel basket. It was quite amazing to watch him figure out how to get them open and I'm impressed. I'd also much rather him sit in the dirty towels basket rather than on the chair. He's pretty hairy. But he is the best kid cat I have ever seen. He's much more like a dog than a cat, and just sits and takes everything that Miriam dishes out. Of course we teach her to be soft and gentle, but frequently she will lay on him, roll over him, and generally pester him. Sometimes I wonder why he doesn't just leave when she starts to poke him, but he just sits and takes it. And Miriam LOVES him for it. She even can say his name. It started out as "See," but then she figured out how to add the vocal sound to the consonant. She now says "ZZZZZeeeeeeee!" every time she sees him and she gets really really excited. The neighbors share funny stories about things they've seen him do. He has the funniest personality and I can't imagine what his life was like before coming here. Because he is so personable, I can't imagine him not having a home before this. But if he had a home, I can't imagine how he could have become a scrawny stray. The one downfall is his hair. He has a LOT of it and it gets all over everything. Which is why we are taking him in for his second annual summer shave. He gets a lion cut and he loves it. He walks around like he's the king of everything. Last summer while he was decked out like a lion, he even chased a dog off the front lawn and stalked back and forth daring him to come back. It was pretty funny but you could tell Zeke was proud of himself. I could go on and on about this cat. He's a wonder of nature and I think he's fabulous. But I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

This is shortly after Zeke came to live with us. He's kind of funny looking, but gosh he's great.

I had the playpen out while Myelle was visiting and Zeke hopped in to see what the fun was all about. They were both pretty excited, so it was hard to get a good picture of either of them, but you get the point.

Fat cat in a little box.

This is Miriam's closet and her clothes totes. Zeke always finds the craziest places to sleep.

Sometimes Zeke will have his tongue hanging out. I think it's hillarious, but it's kind of sad how many pictures we have of him looking like this.

See?

Proof that Zeke and JoAnn really do like each other.

We love this crazy cat and we are so excited to be celebrating the second anniversary of his joining our family. HOORAY FOR ZEKE!

A Major Purchase

Saturday morning during our walk, Miriam and I passed a big handwritten sign that said "HUGE TRAMPOLINE FOR SALE." It was in the 8:00 hour, and I didn't want to wake anybody up. I decided to sneak in the backyard and take a peek at the trampoline to see if it was something we would want. I snuck, but no peek was to be had. On my way out, a guy wearing basketball shorts and nothing else was on his front porch asking if I needed help. I asked him about the trampoline sign and he said to hang on, that he wanted to put some clothes on. About two minutes later, he came out in a pair of jeans and nothing else. Good thing he changed. Anyway, he took us out back and showed us the trampoline. It was perfect. He is renting the house and the landlord said that for insurance purposes they couldn't have it up. They were sad about it, but we got a great trampoline for $60. What a deal! Miriam has experience with trampolines: her Nana and Papa have one, as well as her cousin Skylar. I am positive that she knew what we were talking about and what we were doing. As we were putting the frame together, the bed was tossed aside on the grass. She climbed on it and started making her jumping sound. "Doom! Doom! Doom!" She brought us pieces of hardware and ran around in circles screaming until we finally got it up. Needless to say, we worked faster than we probably would have otherwise. Oh what a glorious time it was for that little girl to finally climb on her own trampoline. It has already been completely worth its price. She loves to jump on it, she loves to play ring around the rosie on it, she loves to run around on it, she loves to throw her toys off of it. She just loves it. She has also changed her "Doom Doom Doom" to something that sounds more like "Jumm Jumm Jumm," so it is also developing her verbal skills. I remember a long long time ago my sister Erin gave a talk in church about perspective (or something similar). She said that if a person didn't know what a trampoline was, it would seem like a very hideous lawn ornament. But once that person realized all the great times that are had on a trampoline and all the wonderful things a person can do on a trampoline, they see it as a beautiful object and value it more and more. That is true and I do believe it. However I must admit that we have already moved the trampoline from the lush side of the yard to the more barren side of the yard because it was blocking the lushness and now its blocking the barren-ness. Much better. I love being a trampoline owner, and Brent likes to say we have a tramp in the backyard. Either way, life is good in Midvale.

Honk if you love it

As a member of the Midvale Arts Council, I was asked to help with props for the summer musical, Honk. It's the musical story of the ugly duckling. I got the list of things that they needed and started collecting, spray painting, and hot gluing. I bought giant teacups, white umbrellas, frog umbrellas, and a straightjacket. I designed an old fashioned camera out of a box and a spray paint lid, hot gluing the black fabric to the back and mounting the whole shebang on a hoe before duct taping said hoe to a box that will hopefully hold it all up. It looked pretty good, if I do say so myself. I decoupaged seven baguettes and some french bread. I invited some of my young women over and they helped spray paint and design some things. They spray painted Miriam's car seat box and put some silver spray painted dowels on it for a television. They spray painted a tennis ball can to be the lens of a television camera. Now, the strangest thing about this experience is that I have no idea what happens in the play. I imagine that there will be six frogs in it somewhere, because I gathered six frog umbrellas. I bet there'll be a news interview because on the side of the television camera I was directed to put "America's Most Feathered," and a microphone with the label "AMF." Somebody is going to have a tea party with giant tea cups I bought in the WalMart garden center. I am excited to see the show and see how they utilize all my props. If you too would like to see it, it opens next Saturday, June 21st, and goes through Saturday, June 28th, except for Sunday of course. You can find more information at http://www.midvalearts.com/ or you can just email me. I took this picture before I loaded things up to take them in yesterday. It's not as impressive as it would have been if I took it before I organized them all, but I wasn't thinking photo op at that time. My favorite part is my and Brent's shadows looking at it all. What a crazy world.

California Dreamin'

We spent the last five days in Gridley, California (an hour outside of Sacramento) with Steve and Jayda and their kids Skylar (2 and a half) and Cole (11 weeks). It was a great trip. We got the grand tour and learned the history of Gridley, we spent a day in Chico at Caper Acre, a section of Bidwell Park with an amazing kids playground, and we saw Cole's blessing. We had fresh berries at every meal and Miriam was a star on the plane and loved spending time with her cousins. Although sleeping was rough and she had more off moments than in normal life, she enjoyed the trip. And one of the best parts of a vacation is coming back home. When we got within a few blocks of home, Miriam recognized where we were and started dancing and jigging and happily screaming. It was a wonderful week. Here are some of the highlights...


Miriam loved swimming!










Uncle Brent and Skylar playing dress up. Can somebody say "What an amazing uncle?!?" I especially like the "football stance" position and Skylar making sure she's doing it right.









Wading in the river at Bidwell Park in Chico. I love how the light comes off of the river. She looks more contemplative than she actually was at the time.







Reading with Uncle Steve










This was approximately Miriam's hundreth Ring Around the Rosie after Skylar taught her how to play. She loved it and fell down appropriately each time.








The Moore Cousins










Our last night was a rough one for us. This is the next morning after Miriam had finally gone to sleep... right before we put her in the car and drove to the airport.









This is probably one of my favorite pictures of the trip. Two little diapers running as fast as they can into the sunset. How much better can it get?