Summer Happenings

One of the best parts of our summer is that my parents/Grandma and Grandpa Andersen get to visit for a whole month.  And because we only get to see them during that month (they live in the Dominican Republic), we cram it all in and try to spend every waking minute with them.  There's a dinner, swim party, or activity of some sort almost every day.  Lots of late nights, lots of driving back and forth, and lots and lots of fun.  Then when they leave, we crash and sleep for a few days to catch up. 

They flew home last week, and we're left with lots of fun memories. 

Years ago, when Taylor was 8 years old, he wrote a really neat poem about the importance of the Sabbath Day.  This past year my mom wrote music to Taylor's creation.  Taylor wrote two more stanzas, and now they have a beautiful song put together.  My mom had it printed, and we sang it as a family several times.  It was a neat experience for Taylor.  And a beautiful song too!

 The rest of these pictures are from our week at the cabin, with all my siblings except for two. 

Game night--who can create the coolest thing with tooth pics and gum drops?  These guys won!  Still not sure what they created though. . . any guesses?

For an early Christmas present, my mom presented all the grand kids with ukuleles.  Every day after lunch, we had "Uke" practice.  Nate and I taught a few chords and songs.  As I write, I can hear someone in the living room playing "Shoo Fly, don't bother me".  Pure talent!

Forth of July Festivities--we enjoyed a flag raising ceremony by our boy scouts, a parade, pony painting and riding, lots of fun water games, festive food, and a family dance.  The best thing--all the kids got to play with their cousins all day, every day.

Grandma with all her grand daughters.  She's just the best!

Two of my sister in laws brought fun crafts for the kids to do.  It worked out well, as it rained every afternoon, and this gave the kids something constructive to do inside while the storm passed.  Andersen and cousin Grace got a little carried away. . .

 The older girls loved making hair accessories. 

One of the most memorable, disgusting things about the week was all the crawdads.  After the boys caught a pot full of crawdads, Nate helped then cook them up, then served them to anyone interested--which was pretty much just the boys.  Gross.

 Boat creation.  The boys had to make sure it was "floatable".

This isn't a great picture.  But one of the funnest things about visiting the cabin this summer was the new Zip line.  The kids loved it, I went down once and survived to tell about it, and John couldn't get enough of it.  Super fun.

 All in all, it's been a great summer.  Other than two weeks at the cabin, we've spent lots of time swimming, camping, reading, playing board games, cooking up fun recipes with the kids, and being lazy.  Next week we're headed to La Jolla for a reunion with the LeSueur family, then school starts the following week.  Hard to believe it's almost over!

Stitches

While running a quick errand last week, Taylor was doing some wood working with Mason and accidentally slipped the chisel towards himself.  It cut pretty deep, and when I returned about 10 minutes later, Taylor was as white as a ghost and about passed out on the couch.  Mason was in a nervous panic but seemed grateful to see me. 

Thank goodness for great neighbors.  One of our neighbors and great friends is a physician assistant.  After a phone call, we went to his house to have him look at it.  He set up his own little ER at his kitchen table and stitched Taylor's hand up.  5 stitches.

Taylor got those stitches out yesterday and is doing just fine.  The whole incident just endeared all the more me to our neighbors.  So kind, so willing to share their talents, so consecrated.  Amazing people!

End of the School Year--Party!

Taylor wanted to have an "end-of-elementary-school-and-on-my-way-to-junior-high" party.  No problem, we've done parties before.  But then, after seeing his list of invites and realizing that most of them were already teenagers and in jr. high, I kinda started to panic.  I've never hosted a teenager party, and things have changed so much since I was there, I hardly knew how or where to start.  And boys--how do you entertain lots and lots of big boys?  Especially 19 of them!  Go ahead and count.

It ended up being super fun--for the boys and for me.  We had lots of candy, lots of real food, and plenty of junk food.  Taylor helped plan some of the activities, one of which was to award the boy who guessed the closest number of jolly ranchers in the jar.  It provided a good welcoming activity as the boys started coming in.

  The "help yourself" candy table was a hit.  I'm pretty sure that we got rid of about 25 pounds of candy that night.  I liked how it provided an easy social setting, and something for the kids to gather around in between games and activities.  The skittles and gummy bear bowl was refilled several times throughout the night.

Hamburgers, hotdogs, watermelon, chips, and a veggie tray served as dinner. 

 Prior to the party, John and I brainstormed a few fun activities and games.  I laugh now--but all the ideas John mentioned, I thought were really dumb.  And he said the same about the ideas I mentioned.  He won out, mostly because I figured that if we did his ideas, then he'd be leading it out and taking charge.  I'm good with that. 

One of his ideas was to create an obstacle (in this case, the blanket hanging on a rope being held by ladders) and have the boys get into teams of 4, then time each team to see how fast they could figure out how to all get over without touching the blanket.  (This was the idea that I thought for sure was the dumbest ever).  The boys absolutely LOVED it, and it kept them entertained for quite a while. 

I have since apologized.  I should have realized that John has been a 13 year old boy before; I hadn't.  Of course he knows how to be entertained.  He's been there.

 This was my idea-I'll take credit.  One of the things that bothers me about the youth now is how much time and focus goes into electronics (and takes away time and focus on relationships and people).  So, knowing that a lot of boys have phones and ipods, we put this together.  (Taylor is pretty sure that he's the only boy on the planet that doesn't have any electronics).  I first asked Taylor if he was OK with it, and he thought it was a great idea.  In fact, I never had to mention it as boys walked in the door--Taylor took care of it.  But I had to laugh.  For a little while, Taylor stepped into the backyard and the doorbell rang.  EmmaClaire ran to the door, swung it open, and  yelled "do you have any electronics?"  The boy was totally confused at his greeting.  Totally cracked me up.

I had a great time.  In fact, being around those fun, loud, roudy, energetic young men for a few hours got me excited for my own boys to grow into teenagers.  Bring it on!

The House of the Lord--just down the street!

I grew up close to the Mesa AZ Temple, which looks a little different on the outside than other LDS temples, but is absolutely wonderful and beautiful on the inside.--just like all LDS temples. The Mesa temple doesn't have an Angel Moroni on top.  Most others do.

I loved growing up close to the temple and feeling of its influence.  So when the Gilbert Temple was announced over a year ago, I was THRILLED, to say the least.  And it's just 2 miles away.  We've watched and watched this past year as the construction has developed.  Last week, I pulled my kids out of school to see the Angel Moroni lifted up by a crane and placed on top of the temple. 

Thanks to a few friends, I got some great pictures of the event.  My camera's battery was dead--bad timing!

It was one of the most exciting events I have ever been to.  There were lots of people on all the corners of the intersection and at the park across the street, waiting with cameras in hand to catch this historical event.  I felt this quiet, exciting energy that sometimes, out of nowhere, erupted into little outbursts of cheers and screams.  I felt like cheering like I did during high school football games, yet at the same time I felt such a sense of reverence and respect, and lots of gratitude that I could be so close.  Those feelings brought on lots of tears during the event.

The most memorable time came after the crane lifted the gold covered statue up on top of the temple.  A few workers got it fitted just right, then the crane let the statue down--slowly, ever so slowly, until it finally rested on the top of the temple.  Immediately at that moment, the whole intersection, full of people, started cheering and clapping.  We could hear it over all the noise of construction and traffic.  Then came a quiet silence from all the people.  No one moved for a moment, but still--all eyes were on the temple.  The silence and feelings of reverence were tangible and lasted a few minutes before people started going their separate ways.  It was a wonderful feeling.

We talked as a family later that evening about lucky we were to be there that day.  My kids felt the Spirit there and have continued to mention how awesome it was to be there.  What a blessing to be so close to the House of the Lord!

For more information on LDS temples, go to http://www.lds.org/church/temples?lang=eng

Happy Birthday to Us---14 Years Old

A fun tradition for our family is to celebrate our "Family Birthday" each year, on our wedding anniversary.  Since we were in NYC this past, we planned an extra fun and special family campout the following week for our family birthday party.

A few weeks prior, John and I told our kids about going camping and asked them to start thinking of three things about our family:  1-one thing they DON'T like about our family, 2-one thing they LOVE that we do as a family, and 3-one thing they would like to start doing as a family.  (Comes from "Start, Stop, Continue" that John learned at Woodbadge Scout training).

We told them not to talk about it, but just think on it.  We reminded them almost daily to continue thinking about it. 

Then, around the campfire up in the pines, we gave each child time to tell his/her thoughts about those three things.  We took notes, we listened, we asked questions, and we had some great discussions.

The following day while on a hike, we found a nice spot to continue our family council and discussed all the starts, all the stops, and all the continues.  Then we chose one new thing to start doing as a family, and picked one thing to try to stop doing in our family.  We came up with a code word that would help remind us what that "stop" was. 

I loved the fact that our kids are getting old enough where we can have these kinds of meaningful discussions, where everyone can participate, where feelings are validated, and where John and I can give direction and parental feedback.  It was a good time, to say the least!

Kate couldn't get enough of her little princess camp chair.  Just the perfect size.

  This picture doesn't do justice when it comes to how dirty their little faces were.  Nothing like playing in the dirt, then eating food with your hands and never washing them.

John and all his girls.  They LLLOOOVVVEEE their daddy.

  All six in a row.

 And, as it was Mother's Day weekend, I got a few pictures with my precious darlings.  I LOVE being a mom to these kids.

We sang "Happy Birthday to Us", we ate lots of treats and junkfood (like a whole Costco bag of trail mix and about 40 mini-sized candy bars, in less than 24 hours), we collected wild flowers, we sang together, caught a family of caterpillers, hiked, we told funny stories, and we loved being together.

Cheers to the start of another happy year in the LeSueur Family.

Happy 14th Anniversary--New York City

John was invited to a National Energy Conference in New York City, and it happened to fall on the week of our anniversary.  So we bought me a ticket, added a few days on the end of his "business trip", and enjoyed a super fun, memorable week together.

We flew in Tuesday early morning and left Saturday early morning.  We walked a ton, saw everything there is to see in NYC, visited lots of historical places, had plenty of time to play and rest, we ate a ton of amazing food, and we lived it up in that exciting city. 

John's business conference put us up in the famous Waldorf=Astoria Hotel for the first few nights.  Wow-I totally felt out of place as other women were walking around in their formal gowns with bling bling all over, most men were in nice suits and tuxedos.  Then there's me that never dresses up and had to borrow jewelry from a friend to fit in (because I don't own anything nice enough).

To recap:  we saw Time Square, Grand Central Station, Central Park, the LDS temple, Broadway, Wicked on Broadway, Staten Island Ferry, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Ground Zero Museum/Memorial, Carnegie Hall, Wall Street, the NY Stock Exchange, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Juilliard, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Garment District, the Brooklyn Bridge, Battery Park, and Madison Square Gardens.

I was "selected" to enter a hula hoop contest on Time Square.  Won a cool t-shirt!  I'm pretty sure I still hold the World's Best Hula Hoopster title. . . since 5th grade when I earned it.

Time Square was a crazy, busy, exciting place to hang out and "people-watch".  I was amazed at how many people were there, mid day in the middle of the week.  Then on Friday night we walked there and it was about 3 times as packed.  Lots of interesting people, to say the least.  There was tons of shows, shopping, restaurants, and cool places to visit on Time Square.  John's favorite was the M&M Store, mine was the Hershey Store.

    

                                              

 Here's Ground Zero, now with a really cool 9/11 Memorial built in it's place.  There are two pools with fountains, each sitting where the twin towers used to be.  Lots and lots and lots of names are inscribed along the sides of the pools of those who lost their lives during that tragedy.

  

 New York Stock Exchange, on Wall Street

 

The new "Freedom Tower" (replacing the twin towers) is still under construction, but will be the tallest sky scraper in America.  We couldn't even see the top of the building because it was up in the clouds.



Here'es John, with the tower directly behind him.



The famous Brooklyn Bridge was pretty cool.  It's almost 1.5 miles accross, connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn.  The car traffic is on the bottom level, and lots of people traffic on the top.  We walked across at dusk and enjoyed beautiful views of both the Manhattan and Brooklyn skylines.

We took the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty (picture above).

Walking through Chinatown felt like we were in a different country.  Hardly any English was spoken or seen on signs.  We enjoyed seeing the culture, but didn't dare eat anything through that part of town.  The whole little community smelled like raw fish because of all their outdoor grocery markets.

The LDS temple blended in with the rest of the city, except for the gold Moroni statue on top.  The first level of the building is used for offices and the family history department.  The secone level is a chapel, and the third through fifth level is the temple. 

Real New York Cheesecake.  The biggest, fattest, largest piece of cheesecake I've ever seen.  Absolutey sinful, delicious, out-of-this-world!  When I ordered it, the waiter told me that it might take a month at the gym to work off, but that everyone in the past said it's definitely worth it.  And I'd have to agree.  

And then there's John's weakness. 

John attended meetings all day Wednesday, and I was all to myself for the day.  I'm pretty sure it was the most relaxing, fun, rejuvinating day I've had in my whole life.  I slept in, then read a book in bed for a while, then put on my Garmin watch and running shoes and headed to Central Park.  I ran about 10 miles throughout the park and didn't even see a fourth of what there was to see.  Then I found myself at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, spent over an hour there enjoying myself.  Then I ran back to the hotel, sat in the tub, read some more, then enjoyed a black-tie dinner with John.  I've decided that Central Park is the best thing in the world (next to NY cheesecake).  And if I ever find myself homeless, I'm going to live there.



It's pretty fun hanging out with your best friend and having all the time in the world to do whatever, whenever for five days.  We lived it up and played hard,  then came home totally and completely exhausted!  All we have left are memories.

Now. . . back to reality!

PS-the kids did amazingly well in our absence, and we hardly missed them (sad, but true).  They were glad to have us home again, and we were glad to be back home.  All together again.