October Festivities!

After losing my pictures multiple times, and finally my whole blog page the other day, I'm not going to try to re-create it. However, I do want to post some pictures of the great activities we've done this month. We've also had a lot of sick kids, crying babies, planning parties, and that's why we haven't had much time to blog. Hopefully, we can get some final Halloween pictures up this week too.


Apple Picking at Shelburne Farm - October 19th:







Harriet turned 6 months old - October 26th (She's not sitting up, no teeth yet, but she's got quite the personality and just figured out that she has a voice and lots of things to say with it. She also just figured out that she has doggies and spends lots of time oohing and aahing at them and laughing at her favorite friend and sister, Grace.)




Fall leaves at Pilot Grove Farm - October 27th:


Littleton Ward Trunk or Treat - October 28th - Harriet's first Halloween costume and activity!:

I don't want to be bribed!

...says Grace. Sunday mornings are my new hard challenge of the week. They've never been my favorite, but now that I have 2 girls plus myself to get ready, it's more than a bit stressful. I have totally given up on getting Grace to do her hair. We have had so many terrible fights over her hair, I decided it just wasn't worth the family contention to ask her about it anymore. (She will do it for dance on Wednesdays which is just great with me - she is surprisingly agreeable about putting in a ballet bun, but THAT'S IT!)

Anyway, this morning I wanted to get a picture of the kids in their cute orange outfits, so I decided to press my luck and see if I could bribe Grace to do her hair. I asked her if I could give her something and in return get her goldilocks in a ponytail. She refused outright. I gave up quickly and decided to turn to the photo - only a few minutes left before church... She would NOT sit on the couch with her sister to have her picture taken. Again, I tried to bribe her and she yelled "I DON'T WANT TO BE BRIBED!"
I asked her if she'd rather be punished for not doing what I asked and she said yes, only that didn't work either - she didn't care about any of it.

Grace comes from a long line of stubborn folks on both sides of the family and I'm afraid the trait has concentrated itself in her and she will win if tested. Few have the stamina to beat her in a battle of stubborness.

So much for bribery. David and I can't figure it out - we'll stoop to it. A favorite story in David's family is that he gave up sucking his thumb at the age of 5 for 25 cents. Not so with the Gracers - she drives a hard bargain, which is to say that she doesn't bargain. At least she has her integrity...

I did get a couple of photos - they're not great, but you can see my little "punkins."

Happy Birthday Christine

Another item that just worked out with my business trip to Utah was to be with my sister Christine for her birthday. While technically it was on Sunday, we celebrated on Saturday with dinner at The Other Place Restaurant for some nice Greek food and then back to my parent's place for games and time in the hot tub.

Last night I was in the zone with Scrabble which Christine had wanted to play. Guise, grovel, fiends were a few of my words that led to victory. I was feeling so good that I was giving word advice to my mother who was trying to challenge me for top honors last night.
While the birthday girl didn't win, all had fun and at least she could take solace in the fact that her Cougars won and she scored some good loot with the presents.

Happy birthday Christine.

Monopoly Nights

My friend Jared has already notified the world of the fun all-night long Monopoly fests that we have on occasion when Jeff or I are in town. This trip was no different. After spending the day at BYU interviewing, I drove back up to SLC for a dinner or ribs and a night of Monopoly. Unfortunately I forgot the camera, but dinner was at the Texas Roadhouse. Jared had been talking up the ribs at this place and I love good ribs. In the end, the ribs were alright (Brookside Broiler has the best ribs in SLC), but what caught my attention were the peanuts. While waiting and around the tables they have huge buckets of peanuts free for the taking. The best part is, just toss the shells on the ground. No need to clean up after yourself. Must be some Texas tradition.

After dinner, Jared called Ian up and we were on for a few games of Monopoly. I started out strong and demolished them in quick fashion in the first game, but then Lady Luck left me and I was left to watch Jared take the crown for the night. It is that black voodoo magic curse he has over me with horseshoes, fantasy sports and apparently Monopoly. One day I will break the curse and claim my rightful spot as Monopoly King.

Go Utes!!!

While the official reason that I am currently in Utah is to recruit at BYU (don't ask me why), the real reason was to attend the TCU-Utah game. When I found out that I was going to be recruiting and the dates, I immediately looked for a Utah football game to attend. I was hoping for a nice Saturday afternoon game, but instead I was treated to a Thursday evening special thanks to tv contracts.

This was to have been a premier matchup between top teams, but with Utah getting dismantled at home by Boise State and TCU losing to BYU it had lost some luster. I was a little worried that Utah was not going to be up to the challenge, but I was treated to a great game. I took Jared with me and we had a great time. The Ute defense showed up to play and while there are still issues on offense we shut down the Horned Frogs and look like it will be a showdown for the league title with BYU in the last game of the year.

Perhaps the best part of the game on Thursday was the official lighting of the new block U on the hill. Tradition is that the U flashes when the Utes win a game. The old block U was in need of repair and $400,000 later it is in fine glory. It is now equipped with white and red LEDs so that it now flashes red & white when the Utes win. Very sweet indeed.

Let's hope that it is flashing red on November 25.

GO UTES!

R&R for the weary traveler

After 40 years of routine jet service across this great country of ours you would think that air travel would have gotten faster. I am reminded by the movie "Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines" that flight really has not gotten any faster over the years. Yesterday I flew from Manchester, NH to Salt Lake City, UT. A mere 2100 miles or so via the air. It took the entire day. I left at 9:40 to go the airport to catch a flight that left at 12:05. A 2 hour flight + a 2.5 hour layover in Detroit and another 4 hour flight to SLC. So it took me 10 hours of traveling to go 2100 miles. I really shouldn't complain (think of the poor folk in the 19th century). I am just saying that I think it is ridiculous that we are still limited to ~500 mph in the air. You would think that we would have routine commercial super-sonic jets (too bad the Concorde never caught on) to take us across the country.

At least I was able to treat myself once I got to SLC. I dragged my mother with me to Sconecutter for some monster spicy fries, a turkey avocado sandwich, a cinnamon and honey-butter scone and of course some famous raspberry lemonade. With the exception of the raspberry lemonade the food wasn't particularly good, but is was nostalgic. I used to hang out there all the time in high school. It was popular with my friends because 1) it was open late, 2) it was cheap, and 3) it was never busy. I still wonder how they make money being open 24/7.
I then returned to my parent's house for a nice hour in the hot tub. That hit the spot after so many hours on the plane. Of course you can't tell I'm a New Englander now, can you? The first flight I couldn't move because I had a very squeaky seat and the second flight I not only had to deal with turbulance but someone's flatulence. Where's the gas mask when you need it!

It is fun to be here in SLC, but I have a lot of work ahead of me. This trip is mostly business with some pleasure on the side.

Good ol' Spud

I've debated whether I should make this post. But, I feel I owe it to Spud to acknowledge him today. I'm sorry if I'm giving my family one more chapter to deal with in what has been a really long and hard day for everyone. Spud found the end of his life today and is finally free from the pain and suffering he's been in for the past few years.

Spud has been our family's pet since the spring of 1995 when my mom, her friend Lolly, and Melissa and I found him running up 3300 South in front of the State Farm building where we all worked. We thought he was going to get hit by a car for sure, so we brought him inside the office. He was tired and thirsty and we gave him some water. We started to try to find his owners. He had a collar but no tags. We put up posters and left information about him at the shelters. No one came forward. He had either been lost a long time or had been abandoned. He was probably 1 or 2 years old at the time - still a puppy. He was a very nice dog, very sweet and obedient, so we decided to keep him after a few days.

Since then, he has been a member of our family. He came along at a hard time in my life. I had just gone through selling my two horses and I was having a really hard time getting over it. He hung out with me a lot in my college years. I use to take him for rides in my truck - in the cab, not the back! He was a great retriever and loved to fetch tennis balls and frisbees. Living across the street from the Cottonwood Country Club, we had an endless supply of wrongly hit tennis balls that found their way into our yard from the tennis courts there. He was a funny little dog who didn't chase cats and didn't lift his leg on anything either.

I thought of him as my dog then, although he was much loved by everyone in the family. When I got married and moved out of my parents' house, I couldn't take him with me because we were living in a tiny downtown apartment. No life for a big energetic dog there. David and I did take him on outings quite a bit though. One of our favorites with him was a kayaking trip to Rush Lake.


A year and a half after getting married, we bought our first house and couldn't wait to bring Spud there to live with us. I brought him home and he stayed a couple of days. I had no idea how attached to him my dad had become. My little sister, Melissa, was living in Richmond, VA at the time and called me on the phone after Spud had been at our house for the week-end. She said "Shell, you have to take the dog back. Dad needs him and he won't tell you." So, David and I decided to give him back to his buddy Lyle and get our own dog. This is when we rescued Velvet from the shelter.

So, my dad and Spud have been best buddies ever since. His favorite activity for many years has been sitting on the back porch with my dad when he gets home from work. Spud has always liked the "guys" in his life. I think he liked my dad and David the best although my mom has done the most to take care of him. She has seen him through lots of things including having a huge tumor removed from his belly and his developed habit of chewing his legs in his later years. She has spent many many hours bandaging him and keeping him alive for "one more week."

He's really had a great life, and has lived much longer than anyone could have expected given his health problems in the last few years. We are just glad that he came to be part of our family and that he was around for as long as he was. I'm only sorry that I couldn't be with my family in Salt Lake today, but I did get a chance to say good-bye to him last month. We hope he's catching frisbees in the sky now...

Nothing Much to Say

Just thought I should post some pictures since Hattie turned 5 months old this week. We really haven't been up to much since both Grace and Harriet have had colds for about 2 weeks. They've been to the doctor multiple times. Grace has had a really bad sinus infection and Harriet started throwing up yesterday (no, it was NOT spit-up as I was questioned 100 times - she does that every day!) Needless to say, we've done a lot of watching movies and playing with trains.Today, all seems to be well. Our weather is gorgeous. I think this is the first time since we've lived here that we've had lots and lots of really beautiful days in a row where it isn't too hot, too cold, isn't humid, the bugs are almost gone, and the sun is shining all the time. This is what people must mean when they think that late summer and fall in New England is spectacular. It really is this year. I hope it lasts, but I'm afraid it won't.
Just some bits and rambling... David and I found out something we didn't know about each other after 9 years of marriage. We both like black licorice and we didn't know it and we've never bought it the whole time we've been married because we didn't think the other liked it and didn't want to eat the whole package alone! I finally decided last week that I was willing to eat a whole package and brought it home and found out that David was a fan too! This week-end, we bought good and plenty's! I guess there is still EXCITEMENT in our lives! Although, we are both pretty predictable being such type A personalities. We pretty much by our choices that we make well in advance and after being together a decade, we've both "seen that movie."
Our dogs continue to be good girls. Since we took "their" couch out of the den and made it into a guest bedroom/office, they have taken over the bed. (Don't worry- we'll wash it well if anyone wants to come visit!) I thought they looked pretty cute taking their afternoon nap in bed like an old couple (they are an old couple in doggie years.)Well, there's David home from the Priesthood session of conference, so I guess I'm done rambling.

Thomas, We Love You!

What's a picture worth? At least a million words in this case. Grace got to meet her beloved "Thomas" yesterday at a festival in Carver, MA called "Day out with Thomas." I guess they do it all over the country and we were lucky enough to have it come to Massachusetts this fall.


Grace's love affair with Thomas started about a year ago when we started going to the Stow library for story time. After story time, we got in the habit of checking out videos (and a few books once in a while.) One of the first videos we checked out was a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD. She instantly fell head over heels for the funny little train characters, their stories, and all of their moving parts. We either checked out or rented a Thomas video every week for a several weeks until Grandpa Lyle actually bought her one. We had been checking them out so that we could take them back but now we owned one that could be watched over and over and over and over and...
I think Mo-Debbie bought Grace her first Thomas train. It is one of the smaller "take-along" trains (I knew nothing about that at the time) and she seemed pretty happy to have just one train named Thomas. Then, came another train named Percy (also one of the small ones.) They were a great pair and Grace loved them. She asked Santa to bring her some track for them for Christmas. Well, Santa and all of his helpers donated a few pieces each of track and buildings and a few other trains (this time of the full wooden size that work on the wooden track.) At Christmas we had Thomas, Percy, Lady, and James. I wish I could name all the ones we have now, but the collection of track and trains we have gathered in less than a year now takes up an entire corner of our living room and is spilling out of the large bin I bought for them (thinking it would be plenty of room for whatever Grace ended up collecting!) I thought Grace might tire of playing with them, but a year later she loves them more than ever and has plans to ask Santa for more Thomas friends and more buildings and more track. I guess it makes things easy for Santa because he knows just what to get!

So, yesterday, we packed up our car and drove the 1 hour and 20 minutes to Carver, MA to meet Thomas. It was a day-long festival of a few amusement park rides, an expensive hot dog, some long hot lines, several gift shop items (including the Harvey crane train), a few temporary tattoos, and a much awaited train ride pulled by Thomas the Tank Engine himself.

I will never forget the glee and pure joy that exploded from Grace when she first saw Thomas coming around the bend pulling his cars behind him. She squealed and squeaked and grinned from ear to ear and jumped up and down. She was SO excited. She had been planning this outing for months and had talked about it all day long for at least a week. It was a great moment to see her so happy. It was also hard to have to wait 2 hours until our train time!

We finally got to board one of Thomas' coaches and away we went for a big loop around the park. When we got off, Grace couldn't wait to run up and hug Thomas and tell him thanks for the ride and that he did a good job. Unfortunately, this was also on the minds of the 200 other kids on the train and we ended up in another line. Just before the next departure time, we made it up to the front of the line and got to meet and touch the actual Thomas train. It was a grand moment for her.

I have been trying to think of a time when I was a kid when something was that important and that magical to me. I think Disneyland came close, but I don't think it was quite on the level that Thomas is for Grace. Finally last night, it occurred to me that Grace seeing Thomas was about equivalent to me going to my first (and second) U2 concert. The only difference is that Grace got to meet her Bono! After seeing U2 in concert, I couldn't sleep for days or think about anything else because I was so full of adrenaline from the experience. The same thing has happened to her. She COULD NOT fall asleep last night. When she finally did, she didn't sleep as long as usual and got up very early this morning. Her first words this morning as she woke up were "Daddy, did you dream about Thomas? I had dreams about Thomas and Harvey and..."

Well, we could talk about Thomas all day, but for good measure, here's a cute picture of Hattie...

Little Dancing Queen

When thinking about having a daughter, I have always thought about the first time I might take her to dancing lessons. Growing up, my sisters and I took dance classes from the time we were tiny until we hit the junior high years and had to narrow our focus on things we really wanted to pursue. Of course, I dropped my dancing lessons for horses. Partly because I couldn't do both and had to choose, and partly because I had hit a point in dancing where I couldn't really progress any more because (as David says), I'm put together all wrong.

It was always my Grandma Pearlie's dream that one of us would get good enough in ballet to dance in the Nutcracker at Christmas. She took us every single year (still going.) So far, no one has danced in it though.
Tonight, the dancing moves to the next generation of tiny blonde little girls. I was seriously so excited to take little Gracie. I was almost more excited to take her dancing than I was to take her riding for the first time. Riding is just something that we do - like breathing it seems, but the first dancing lesson is almost a rite of passage for little girls.

Last week, we excitedly went shopping for Grace's first leotard, tap shoes, and ballet tights. She is actually wearing ballet shoes that are at least 20 years old - from one of my sisters, or maybe even from me. We shared and passed down the dance shoes so many times, I don't know if they really were mine or not. She proudly wore them tonight even though they weren't as pink and shiny as the new ballet shoes that showed up in class. Her "mo-Debbie" had saved them all these years just for her. Her tap shoes are white in the New England dance tradition. When her teacher told me their dress code included white tap shoes (not black), I was a little mystified. I've never seen white tap shoes before, but the girl at the dance store explained that it's a New England tradition that doesn't seem to translate anywhere else.
So, complete with black leotard, white tights, old pink ballet shoes, and new white tap shoes, we headed over to dance class tonight. Grace even let me put a ballerina bun in her hair (she barely lets me brush it, so this was HUGE!) She was picture perfect, beautiful and cute at the same time. She gladly followed her teacher to her dance room and left me with Hattie in the foyer without looking back. Her class is a half hour of ballet followed by a half hour of tap.Parents aren't allowed to watch except for on special days, but Grace reports that she learned how to warm up her legs, stretch, held onto the barre (correct spelling, right dancers?), and learned how to shuffle with her tap shoes. She says that tap dancing is hard to do and that it makes a lot of noise. She tapped softly, but the other kids tapped loudly.She came out complete with a smile on her face, a pumpkin sticker on her ballet shoe, and a lollypop in her hand. She said she had fun (which is rare for her to say when she has fun - she usually says she had a hard time because she had to leave.) She wants to go next week, so I think it's going to be a good activity for us this winter.

She has one lesson a week for the school year and then will have a recital in June. We'll see if she turns into a little dancer! At the very least, she's learning how to use her body a little bit and making a few friends.

Nummy in the Tummy

Hattie recently turned 4 months old and had her check-up last Friday. She's still a big, scrumptuous baby. She's in the 92nd percentile for weight and height, weighing in at 16 pounds and measuring 25.75 inches. She had a very healthy check-up except that her doctor found a heart murmur. I have one and we have other heart issues in the family, so it wasn't a surprise, and I'm not even really too worried about it. She's thriving and I don't think it's anything serious. Her doctor doesn't either, but she's still sending us to a cardiologist next month to make sure all is well.

At any rate, Hattie got the go ahead to start eating solid foods. She has had her first rice cereal and ate it right up. She is seriously a funny kid. She has the silliest personality and makes me laugh out loud on a daily basis. She's quite the comedian at 4 months.

She is just a smoochy, fun, little kid. Although, she is quite sensitive and fusses at the tiniest bit of discomfort (belly, teeth, etc.), she more than makes up for it when she's at her best. Her daddy is even getting brave enough to tend her for a few hours at a time so that I can go teach riding lessons. We're hoping that the cereal will help out in that department since she's decided that the bottle is not her style. She even slept for 9 hours on Sunday night (it didn't help me though, because I kept waking up worring that something had happened to her!) Go Hattie!

OK, We're Home...

For those of you living vicariously through our exciting life stories (wink wink), you can take a deep breath and relax, because we're home from vacation. Whomever says that vacation is relaxing doesn't travel with kids. Not only were their schedules entirely interrupted and their familiar surroundings taken away, we went at least 2 or 3 places a day for the (almost) month we were gone. Our kids were so fried from traveling that Grace was asking to go home to Boston during our last week in Utah.Needless to say that we didn't blog the last half of our trip because we were so busy and tired and we haven't blogged since we got home because we have been so busy and tired! It took me 10 days to get back into a routine where I actually have clean clothes, fresh towels in the bathroom and I can see my kitchen counters and I'm making 3 meals a day at the right time. It took about a week to put everything away that we brought home (including doing all of that laundry and putting it away.) I think David still has a pile of stuff in our bedroom that hasn't been put away.

Hattie sure grew a lot on our trip. While we were gone, she learned how to roll over completely (well she made the last step of getting her arm out the morning we got home), she started laughing out loud, she gained several pounds and at least an inch, I think, and she started playing with toys.

Grace had a great time in Utah because there was someone to play with her and tend to her every need 24/7. It's been a bit of an adjustment to be back at home with her busy mom and fussy sister where she has to entertain herself a lot. I had a whole bunch of work to do for the barn when we got home too, so she really had to get self-sufficient again.

I'm just so very grateful for modern conveniences. The plane trip was pretty quick, considering we made it to Utah in under 5 hours (not counting those pesky airport hours) to see our family. The poor pioneers took months to make that journey to never return to their families. We also have cell phones with pretty much unlimited long distance calling, the internet with instant photos, and now David's new computer with the web-cam makes it even easier to see people who live 2500 miles away.
Even real mail makes it back and forth in 2 days. It's a huge blessing for me. Let's just say that had I lived in the 1800's, I wouldn't have even made it here from Europe, let alone have trekked across the U.S.

So, now my projects for fall will be:

-finish Harriet's Christmas stocking (we'll see how that goes since it was supposed to be Grace's after she was born, but her Grandma rescued me and made her one in the mean-time!)

-keep up on my desk-job for the barn (it's actually addicting since I LOVE e-mail and it's heavy on the e-mail)

-teach a few riding lessons each week

-catch up on some photo albums and scrapbooks (yeah right - this is always on my list and never gets done...)

-David would love it if I'd spend a few hours in the yard undoing our jungle

-finish the book I started a month ago - half way there!

-Christmas Shopping!!!

When I'm done with all that, it will be time to make another trip to Utah. See y'all in January. (Of course, that y'all is meant for the folks out west...)

Here are some random photos taken in the last month from our trip and just after returning home. The one above is a shot from my car wind-shield looking East towards Mount Olympus - remember how I said I almost wrecked my car multiple times while trying to take in the sky while driving? - this is why! Enjoy :-)