July 2019

Seals and sea lions at the zoo

This niece is as tall as a female gorilla 

A few weeks ago we found this bug on our driveway. It was already dead and partially eaten, so I think a neighborhood cat must have left it. I included my foot so you could see how big it is, and my feet are pretty big!

Grandma and grandpa brought a cool swimming pool for Hattie and Tille. It's hard to get a good picture of them playing in it but they love it. 

One of our neighbors puts on a big fireworks show every pioneer day. It started a few years ago as a neighborhood party. Now he does it at a nearby park and thousands of people come. He gets food trucks and vendors and everything, but it's not s city party at all. It's still just his hobby party. This trailer was parked outside his house the next morning. That's a lot of fireworks!

This is the Japan section of the children's museum. It took a lot of negotiating to get Tille to move onto other areas. She really liked playing at that table. 

Here are Tille and Hattie playing at the police/ fire station at the museum.  Tille is on the phone in the below picture. 

Hattie is looking out the castle window. 

The girls love bears (because of Masha and the bear), so they liked seeing one at the museum. 

We've had a few more troops to the splashpad. It still takes a lot of coaxing to get the girls into the water, but they usually like it once they're in. 

We’ve had a busy summer so far!  A few weeks ago (June? July?  I don’t even know) Matt got free tickets through work to go to the zoo.  It was during the first super hot week that we’ve had, and it was hot!  But we had fun.  We took the closest in age and proximity Glauser side cousin with us.  I can’t believe how much the zoo has changed since we were kids!  They don’t have a lot of the animals they used to: camels, hippos, wolves, most of the wild cats, and lots more that I can’t think of just now are gone.  In their place, the habitats have gotten much fancier.  You can pay a little extra (we didn’t) to stand on a balcony in the middle of the Sahara exhibit and hand feed giraffes.  How cool is that?!  The seal and sea lion exhibit is really nice now.  It’s a huge tank with islands in the middle and big glass windows so you can see above and below the water.  The seals and sea lions kept swimming right past us and doing flips and dives right in front of the girls.  That was probably my favorite part of the day.  The otters also have their own big tank set up to look like a mountain river, and they were doing flips and laps right in front of us.  Most of the animals were sleeping the whole time we were there, but we still had a lot of fun and the girls still tell us about all the animals they saw.  I think they especially liked the elephants.  They act out drinking water with a long nose, and they like to tell us that the elephants have huge feet.

Two weeks ago we went to the Treehouse Children’s Museum in downtown Ogden.  I kept hearing about how cool it is and how we had to take the girls so we finally went.  It’s basically a big play house.  It has areas set up like different countries (Tille especially liked the play food and teacups in Japan), a play fire and police station, dollhouses here and there, including one room full of fancy dolls and dress up clothes, a computer area where kids could design their own super heros and make stories, a big castle set and stage, a forest area, and a big treehouse in the middle, where kids can climb and walk on suspension bridges.  The girls had a blast! I was really surprised by how much fun they had. I think we’ll probably get them an annual pass for Christmas this year.

Tille is really starting to show a compassionate side.  Anytime Hattie is sad or gets hurt, Tille immediately brings her a toy or her milk or a snack to help her feel better.  A couple weeks ago in nursery, two little boys had a huge falling out at the very end.  Matt was trying to console one while I had the other.  Tille, who I didn’t even know was paying attention, was suddenly right next to me offering the little boy a toy she had picked out for him.  And lately, as the girls get closer to 2, they’ve been having more temper tantrums.  If it gets really bad, we put them in their crib until they’re done crying.  Invariably, whichever one isn’t having a tantrum, starts crying because she’s sad her sister had to go to her crib and is crying alone.  And they’re always excited when it’s time to get sister out of her crib again.

Hattie is a really good helper.  She loves cleaning.  If she sees me with the broom, she asks for another broom or mop so she can help.  She’ll sweep little bits of dirt and then pick them up with her hands and throw them away.  Every day when I get home from work, she likes to go through my lunch box and put my dirty dishes in the sink.  And she likes wiping things up with paper towels or diaper wipes.  She also really likes putting toys away.  She likes to organize them and make them fit just right. 

As I was typing this all out, I thought of a few more stories to tell, but I can't remember them now. That's the main theme of my life right now. I can't remember anything more than a few minutes. And now matt is catching it. We went to a wedding last week in salt lake and left the present on our counter, we went to a bbq and left the hamburger buns on our counter, etc. That's our life. So far we haven't forgotten the girls anywhere, so I guess we're not too horrible yet.
Oh, I thought of one more story as soon as I signed out! Yesterday on my way home from work I was driving through downtown Ogden and I saw some guys setting up what looked like a pretty fancy production type movie camera. Not far off in the parking lot there were five or six huge catering trucks and a big tour bus for extreme makeover home edition. I thought that show went off the air years ago, but when I got home I looked it up and it's coming back in 2020. They said they were starting with 2 homes in Ogden, and they'd be surprising them the first or second week of August. So they must have just barely started. It was cool to see. 

June 2019

I don't know why this paragraph is tiny, but I'm typing on my phone and can't get it bigger. Sorry.  Remember a few years ago when I kept getting attacked by birds when I went outside?  It’s happening again! A couple weeks ago I was out for a walk with Hattie and Tille.  We were just rounding a corner when suddenly a starling started dive bombing me.  It never hit me, but it got awfully close a few times, and hovered above me until I was well out of its territory.  Luckily it didn’t get near the stroller, but I was still scared.Another day, I took the girls for a walk without their stroller.  The next street over from us has sidewalks, so I carry them to that street, then they walk the length of the street and I carry them home from the far corner.  Hattie stopped to look at something, then Tille stopped, so I stopped to see what they were looking at.  There was a cat hiding under a trailer watching us.  After a minute, it came out and walked right up to the girls.  They were petting it and it kept rolling over for them to scratch its belly.  Then they would bend down to the cat’s face, and the cat would bop them on the nose with its nose.  It was so cute to see them playing so well with it.  I’ve never seen a cat be so good with little kids.  They played for maybe 5-10 minutes, and then the cat went back under the trailer and we kept walking.  But as soon as we left, the cat came back out and followed us and they started playing together again.  The babies always tell Matt what they saw on their walk when we get home, and they were excited to tell him about that!

Hattie and Tille got their first haircuts a few weeks ago!  Matt’s sister has a tiny salon in her house, so we went over there.  There’s a Sesame Street episode where one of the characters goes for a haircut, and they explain the whole process so she’s not afraid.  We told the girls about their haircuts for a few days beforehand, and we showed them that episode.  By the time we went for the haircuts, they were acting out what would happen. Hattie went first. I sat in the chair and Hattie sat in my lap.  Julie put the apron on Hattie and she sat super still and stared at the mirror.  Tille went next.  She was a little more nervous and needed me to hold her close, but she did great!  Now, whenever we talk about Julie, the girls mime getting a haircut.  Afterwards, Matt had his sister shave his head for his summer cut.  I felt left out, so I cut my hair that weekend.  I wasn’t sure how short I would go, but at the last minute I asked my hair dresser if it was long enough to donate.  She measured it and said it was.  So she made a ponytail and cut it off.  She said she cut 10 inches.  I believe it!  My hair was longer and healthier than it had probably ever been, and now it’s just above my shoulders.  It’s so much better in the hot summer.  And, best of all, it curls enough now that when I feel lazy I don’t have to dry and straighten it, and it doesn’t even look like a swamp monster!  

We got our ‘cabin’ remodeled!  Matt asked his contractor friend if he’d be interested in camping at our place a few days a week for a few weeks to do it, and he said he would.  We were hoping to have it done in May, but with the crazy wet weather we had this year, they couldn’t even go look at the trailer until mid-May, and then they had other jobs to do first.  But they started around mid-June.  There were 4 or so guys who went up and camped 3-4 nights a week, building our cabin during the days and enjoying the mountains at night.  Our goal was to have it done by the 4^th of July, and they just made it!  The contractor called us as soon as he got a phone signal on his way home, at 8:30 the night of the 3^rd.  Matt and I went up the next morning, and my parents, the Bodens, and the Wildes joined us later that day.  I was really excited to see it.  I knew he would do a good job, I just wasn’t sure how it would all turn out.  It’s great!  He tore down the inside walls and redid them with a pine finish, so it looks really log cabin-y.  The floors are kind of a gray-brown wood laminate.  The kitchen has white cabinets, gray tile counter/backsplash, and new oven and fridge.  And the bathroom is wonderful!  When we bought the place, I was scared to let anything touch the floor anywhere because it was so gross, but especially the bathroom.  Think of the grossest room you can imagine, and you’ll almost be there.  But now it has a new bathtub, vanity, tile above the shower, new floor, new clean toilet.  It looks like a bathroom you’d have in your full-time house.  Such a difference!!!!  When we got home on Saturday, I made cookies and we took them over to the contractor to thank him.  He called Matt on Sunday and said he’d been so nervous that we wouldn’t like it, so he was relieved.  And then they spent about half an hour talking about all the possibilities for the other trailer on the land.  We didn’t touch that, but now they’re talking about moving it and connecting it to the main trailer, adding a bathroom, making a big game room, etc.  If anything, that’ll be a project for another year.  I’m so excited to have a place far enough to be a get-away, but close enough to be convenient.

Here's a video of the girls dancing before bed. Hattie has a shirt, Tille doesn't. Look how happy they are! At the end Hattie immediately comes over to me to watch the video. When they watched it they both laughed and laughed. 

Here's our annual family picture in front of provo falls in the uintahs. I'm holding Tille, Matt has Hattie, same as last year. 

Tille's working on her selfie game 

Hattie likes to play with the recliner at Matt's mom's house 

 Here are the during and after pictures of Hattie getting her haircut

And here are the during and after pictures of Tille getting her haircut. They were both so happy afterwards!

I caught the girls using Matt as a backrest while they watched their show. Their new favorite show is Masha and the Bear. It's a Russian cartoon translated into English. The girls ask to watch it by growling like a bear. 

Here are Hattie(front) and Tille (back) pushing their babies in the strollers before church

We have a little potty, but so far the girls just like playing with it. 

Here are the girls playing with the cat they met on our walk

On mondays a lady in the ward brings her girls over for a play date so Matt can go to work
She sent me this super sweet picture. 

Hattie and Tille sit on the bed while I get dressed every morning. This morning they cuddled up and pretended to go back to sleep. 

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May 2019

Here are a few highlights of our past month(ish).

Hattie and Tille still love dancing.  Their favorite song to dance to is MmmBop.  As soon as they hear it coming on, they start bouncing and jumping around.  They also like Avril Lavigne's 'I Don't Like Your Girlfriend'.  Matt sings it to them with lyrics edited to fit them.  They like to dance with Matt while he sings it to them.

I don't know when this started, but both Hattie and Tille love cleaning out their toes.  Every time they get their shoes and socks off, they'll sit down wherever they are and pick sand or lint or whatever out of their toes.  They do it in the living room, in the car, and sometimes in their high chairs while they're eating.  And sometimes they'll try to pick mine and Matt's toes.  

Weekday mornings, I wake up way too early and exercise downstairs.  Most mornings, sometime while I'm downstairs, the girls will wake up.  They don't usually cry or yell anymore when they wake up.  Instead they just start saying 'Dada, Dada, Dada' or 'Daa, Daa'.  And Matt goes in to get them.  It's always really cute when I come upstairs and they're all cuddled on the couch drinking milk.

A few weeks ago Matt's friend and the girl he's dating came over for dinner.  We were sitting around the table talking as we finished eating.  Hattie kept saying 'Mom mom mom mom mom'.  I wasn't paying attention.  Finally she shouted 'MOOOMMMMM!', I looked at her and said 'WHAT!' She smiled and made the sign for 'all done'.  It was pretty cute.  So I laughed and took the girls to their bath while everybody else finished eating.

Lately Hattie's learned to play jokes.  When she stacks her ring toys, she'll always get to having one left, and she'll look at me like she's distraught and point to the rings to let me know she's missing one.  I'll ask where it is, and she'll pull the last one out from behind her and laugh.  She's done a few other jokes like that, but I can't think of any right now.

We finally got the girls into speech therapy.  We had the screening appointment a few days ago, and they'll start having in-home visits at the end of the month.  I'm so excited for them to start talking.  Every now and then they'll say a word super clearly and then never say it again.  So I know they can talk.  They just choose not to.  I think once they start talking, they'll say everything.

On the day the new Avengers movie came out, Matt and I had tickets to go with some friends.  We were pretty excited.  We had a babysitter for the whole afternoon (3+ hour long movie), we'd planned our meals around it.  Couldn't wait.  We got to the theater and it was silent.  No previews or anything going on the screen.  And it was the biggest theater at the place.  Hundreds of people.  About 5 minutes after the movie was supposed to start, an employee came in and told us they were having problems with the projector and it would start soon.  It finally started, then quit again about 3 minutes later.  Then it started again, etc.  We watched the first 20 or so minutes of the movie, plus the previews, about 5 minutes at a time, while the projector kept starting and stopping.  Finally a manager came in and told us they couldn't fix it and we'd all get two free tickets.  So kind of a bummer that we didn't get to see the movie, but kind of awesome that we got free tickets.  We finally made it back to see it again yesterday.  I thought it was great.  

A few weeks ago I had a dentist appointment.  I've never minded going to the dentist.  It's always just been a nice place where everybody tells me I'm awesome.  So on this particular day, I left work in the middle of the day and said I'd be back soon.  The cleaning went well, everything was good.  Then the dentist came in, looked at my xrays, and told me I had a cavity!  He said I could come back another time to get it filled or just fill it then.  I was so bummed.  I made it 39 years without any fillings.  I thought I'd make it at least another 39 years.  But I have a filling now.  I had no idea they feel like I always have stuff in my teeth.  

And one last story.  The music coordinator in my ward started asking me in March if I would do a musical number in sacrament meeting.  I don't know what my deal is, but I get sooooooooo-ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo nervous playing solos in sacrament meeting.  But I can accompany just fine.  So I suggested I put together a group of primary kids to sing and I would play for them.  She was good with that, so then I asked on the ward relief society facebook page if anybody's kids would want to sing in sacrament meeting.  I got a ton of responses, so I signed up to do two musical numbers.  The first was a couple weeks ago.  I had 5 or 6 kids singing a song.  When I went up to play the piano, Hattie and Tille LOST IT.  It was easily the worst thing that had ever happened to them in their long lives.  Matt took them outside to scream while I played the piano. After the song, I went out to find Matt and the babies.   They were all sitting on the ground outside screaming.  I picked up Tille.  She tried to calm down, but was so upset by then that she projectile vomited on my face, hair, dress, and herself. It was so gross.  So I took her home while Matt went to nursery.  We changed clothes and went back to church and they were fine.  I'm doing the 2nd musical number in a few weeks, and I'm scared for how it will go. 

Now some pictures.

When I let the girls choose their outfits, they always want to wear either their heavy winter coats, their pink furry vests, pajamas, or their swimsuits.  This particular day, they got away from me with their swim suit bottoms.  Hattie stuck it on her head and was running around the house.

Aaggghhh!!!! So much cuteness!!  

This is at Matt's mom's house.  They always find these plastic tire things (I think they're part of a toy, but I don't really know)  in the toy box and put them on like necklaces.

Walking around the park near our house.

The babies were sick one day so Matt gave them Benadryl before Grandma and Grandpa got here.  We usually just do benadryl at night so we weren't sure it would knock them out.  Now we know.  Grandma and Grandpa got a lot of cuddles that day!

Here's Hattie being unique at her cousin's house.

The Saturday before Memorial Day we went to Franklin, Idaho, Logan, and Bear Lake to visit cemeteries.  Tille really liked the dachshund on Aunt Susie's gravestone.

Again at the park near our house.  The girls went off-road a little to explore the tall grass.

This is a different park nearby.  Usually when we go to any park, Tille wants to swing the whole time and Hattie wants to slide the whole time.  Here's Hattie posing on her favorite slide.  She's wearing shorts, they're just super short and look like a diaper.

And here's Tille posing on the slide between swinging sessions.

I thought this was pretty cute.  The girls just wanted to drink their milk in comfort.

More fun with the bubble machine.

Getting better at selfies.  Tille's on my lap, Hattie's got the pigtails.

Walking around the park again.  We just can't get enough.

Aunt Kathryn drew sesame street friends in our carport with sidewalk chalk, and Tille and Hattie like going out and adding to the pictures.  Tille in front, Hattie in back. 

The girls love jumping, especially on our bed.

April

Now that the weather is warmer, we’re getting a ton of outside time!  I like to take the girls for long walks on Saturday morning while Matt does yardwork.  We have a little park not too far from our house.  There’s no playground, it’s a big field with a paved trail going around it and a creek and forest on one side.  As part of our Saturday walks (and sometimes on weeknights), we’ll go to the park and I’ll let the girls get out of the stroller and run.  Tille always likes to go off on her own.  She’ll get way ahead of us and just walk and walk and never stop.  Every now and then she’ll go off the path and wander into tall grass and weeds and I have to rescue her, but mostly she just likes to walk on her own.  Hattie likes to stop to examine every stick and leaf on the ground as we go.  And she likes to hold my hand while we walk.  I usually have to keep encouraging her to catch up with Tille.  Eventually, they both end up running around on the grass and having fun.  There are usually a few people there with dogs, too, throwing sticks and toys on the grass.  The girls love to watch that! Any time we go outside, playing in the yard or walking somewhere, the girls like to collect treasures, like pine cones and rocks.  The other day, Hattie was carrying her hat in one hand and all her treasures in the other, and she was struggling holding on to it all.  I showed her how she could put her treasures inside her hat and carry it like a bag.  From then, she clutched her hat-bag of treasure close.  At the end of playing, Tille always throws her treasures to the ground and waves goodbye at them. 

We’re still getting better at sign language.  Hattie and Tille know about 12 words each.  It doesn’t seem like much, but it helps a ton when they want to tell us what they see.  Sometimes, though, when they’re frustrated, they’ll just throw out all the words they know and hope one of them lands.  It gets really confusing/frustrating to all of us when they tell me they want to eat dog please. I know they don’t mean that, but that’s all they can think to say sometimes.

They’re getting really into dancing.  If they hear any music, they’ll grab each other’s hands and bounce and run around, laughing the whole time.  At night we all holds hands and sing and dance to ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’, ‘Ring Around the Roses’, and a few others.  They’ve also learned the primary song ‘I Will Stand Up’, and they love doing the motions to it.

The girls got to go to 3 Easter Egg hunts this year: one for each side of the family, and Matt’s office party.  They got the hand of it REALLY fast.  They loved finding eggs to put in their baskets, and they didn’t want anybody else carrying their baskets for them.  And as soon as each hunt was over, they opened all the eggs as fast as they could and shoved as much candy into their mouths as they could before we stopped them.  At Matt’s office party, Tille got a huge stuffed chick.  It’s super soft and fluffy and they both love hugging it.  Hattie got a cool bubble machine.  We dump a whole bottle of bubble solution into it, and it blows hundreds of bubbles at a time.  It only lasts a few minutes, but the girls have a blast dancing in all the bubbles.

I’ve been at my new job now for 4 weeks.  So far it’s pretty good.  I have to be at work by 7 every morning to run a big report that absolutely has to go out by 8.  That means I have to wake up a little earlier than I used to, but I’m home before 4:30 every day.  It makes such a difference to have time to play with the girls for a couple hours before the nighttime routine starts.  It used to be that I’d get home at 6:30 and make a mad dash to make and eat dinner and bathe the girls and get them to bed.  And it also gives Matt a couple extra hours each afternoon to work, since the girls are demanding more of his attention as they get bigger and want to play.

My company does steel, aluminum, and titanium casting, mostly for jet engine and missile components.  Every Boeing and Airbus has parts that come from our site.  My first day, we got to walk through the plant and see the whole process.  It’s pretty cool.  And that first day everybody kept stressing that I needed to get steel-toed shoes because I’d be walking through the plants every day talking to supervisors.  So I got steel-toed shoes.  I still haven’t worn them.  I haven’t been back to the plants since my first day tour.  I’m sure I’ll go eventually, but I don’t know when.  It was pretty cool to see the process though.  Mostly I spend my days running reports and researching variances.  It’s different from my other financial analyst jobs, more accounting heavy (ugh) but still kind of interesting.  The biggest difference is that I’m busy the entire time I’m at work.  My last 2 jobs, I’d have full days when there was literally nothing to do.  I haven’t had a day like that here yet.  It’s just nonstop projects and reports.  Makes the days go by faster I guess.

These are the girls on Easter, looking super cute. We did their hair, but this is what it looked like by the end of church. 

The girls needed extra outside time on Saturday after Matt's family Easter egg hunt. I walked them over to our church and let them play and run. They walked around the whole building and checked every single door. 

Here's Hattie at Matt's family's egg hunt. They had eggs, candy, and toys hidden in the park behind Matt's mom's house. Hattie only wanted eggs in her basket and it took a lot of convincing to get her to pick up the other things

Here's Tille at the egg hunt, with Matt's sister. 

The girls think this bubble machine is the coolest thing ever made. 

The girls are dancing after baths and before pajamas 

A few weeks ago after dinner I gave the girls a thin mint girl scout cookie. I was making my lunch for the next day. I looked up and they were doing fine. Maybe a minute later I looked up again and Tille was COVERED in chocolate. Her whole self and the high chair. I didn't even know thin mints had that much chocolate. I laughed and laughed and laughed. 

 Two of the girls favorite things: picking their noses and looking out the window.

Just looking cute before church one week. 

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