Family Updates

Please forgive the egocentric nature of my last several posts. I have had a great deal going on and liked to share. However, during all of this craziness we have had some very important things happen to some very important people. I will apologize for a lack of photography of some very important milestones. Yes, I am a failure as a parent.

First, Savannah. Savannah has started walking!! This started with a step or two a few weeks ago, but in the last couple of days she is going gang busters. She wobbles with her hands high above her head for balance and can go across the room! She is so proud of herself.
Second, Abbie. Abbie learned how to ride a bike, all by herself! Yes, she still uses training wheels but it has taken us a few months of half hearted attempts on all sides for her to get the concept of continuing to pedal. Following in her parents footsteps, she is LOVING biking everywhere, something our hyper-hot temperatures are not helping with.

Thirdly, Russ. Last weekend Russ competed in the Snowbird Hill Climb. It is a ten mile bike ride with an elevation gain of 3,300 feet up Little Cottonwood Canyon. The ride is short, and painful. Russ had an amazing time of one hour seven minutes. He complained that it wasn't very good, about middle of the pack of insane riders that do this ride, but with his crazy busy schedule and lack of training I was very impressed.

Finally, yesterday we tagged along with my dad's annual work Lagoon party (Thank you so much dad!!). Abbie thought she was in heaven. She went around to all the kiddie rides. The early favorite was the car ride (No surprises here!) where she got to drive a car all by herself and take her sister along for the ride. Every time she got off she would ask to do it again, and again and again.

But it wasn't until we took her on the Puff roller coaster though that she really knew bliss. She went on the roller coster five times in a row once she discovered it!

Savannah enjoyed tagging around with her sister on rides, but mostly climbing up, down, and around the stroller over and over again, while showing off her new walking skills.
We have had a very fun, crazy, and wonderful summer and are sad to see it go!

New Calling..

So, last Sunday I got a new calling. I've known about it for about a month now but I finally feel like I can blog about it. I am the new Young Women's President in our ward. I know what you are thinking, they must have been scraping the barrel with this call. I feel the same way.

I have had a lot of emotions running through me since the call. When I got the call I didn't even know most of the Young Women in the ward and considering Russ is still Elder's Quorom president I was feeling more than a little overwhelmed for myself and my family. Thankfully, I've now had a chance to meet most of the Young Women and they are incredibly nice and I have fun with them. I've been able to meet with my presidency, for whom I am extremely lucky to have. And Russ and I have developed a plan for how we will keep our family relatively sane. We hope.

But, here is where you come in..

What things did you like about Young Women's? What things did you hate? What were your favorite activities? If you have served in Young Women's before what advice do you have?

I can't promise to take your advice but I am definitely all ears.

I have been asking this a lot this week and have developed a few ideas of my own, but I would love to know what you think.

Anglophile Vacation

I think the only way to begin this post is thanking a very generous father-in-law who made this vacation happen, and to acknowledge that as far as vacationing is concerned, I have been very, very spoiled this year. (Don't worry, I think I'll be paying for it in part in the coming weeks but more on that in a future post......)

Russ's family decided to do a girls trip to England this year, following a similar boys trip a few years ago. Due to babies, and well more babies several of the girls were unable to attend but those who did had a fantastic time.

This trip was a narrow boat excursion though the English countryside into London. What, you ask, is a narrow boat? Clearly you have never met my father-in-law because it is his favorite pass time and he would be happy to tell you all about it.

This is a narrow boat...




Narrow boats traverse the canals that cover the England at a slow leasuirely pace. Every couple of feet, yards, and sometimes miles we would run into a lock.

This is a lock.


Locks are how they can make canals that increase in elevation, thus making an inexpensive mode of transportation in ancient cultures . While we are clearly not in Ancient Rome not much has changed with locks since that time. Especially these locks, which are all operated manually.
Here I am opening the doors within the gate (or posing as if I were doing so. If I were really opening the doors, there would be grunting, straining, and agony in this picture.) The doors let the water through the gate to raise, or lower the water level. Once the water within the lock has reached the level of the water in the direction you are going. You can open the gates.



Opening the 5,000 lb gates is literally a back breaking effort.
Yes, I really am straining. On our second day on the canal we opend 33 of these. Needless to say I slept well that night!

Despite the effort of the locks, the canals really are a beatiful way to see England and a wonderful experience unto themselves.

After three days on the canal we arrived in London. I have loved London ever since Russ and I spent a summer there for an internship he had. Although this trip was great because we got to visit some sites Russ and I couldn't see last time.

One of my favorite things we did was tour Buckingham Palace, where the queen lives 10 months out of the year, and low lifes like us get to tour through the remaining two months. The castle was lavish, ornate, and every superlative you could rightfully imagine to describe such a palace, unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside.


We also saw the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park. Yup, that is him alright.



We got to climb up the tower bridge you see behind us and got some AMAZING views of the city.

We went to Russ's and my favorite spot in London, St. Dunstan. It is a cathedral that was bombed during WWII and turned into a park.
Finally, we went to see Wicked in London!!!! Yes, it was everything that you would think, hope and expect it to be. It was amazing.

Thank you Lee and Petra this was a trip of a life time. Lisa and Kim I had a blast with you as well!

Walmart Price Matching

I have another fun vacation to blog about, but unfortunately something else is pounding in my brain at the moment and I just need to vent. First let me say. I hate Walmart. I hate the way they treat their employees. I hate the way they treat their suppliers. I hate the way they treat their customers. Unfortunately, I am not rolling in money and am cheap by nature, so I shop there. I realize this is inconsistent behavior and apologize for it.

However, one redeeming facet of Walmart is that they price match competitors adds. So, rather than traverse the valley getting the best deal I can take the adds to one store and get the best prices on what I am buying. Sadly I feel some small sense of vindication by paying less than they charge at such a horrible store. Yes, I realize this makes me a petty person.

Today I was trying to price match cereal. It was advertised for $1.50 at Smiths. Unfortunately by the time I got to the check out I was a little frazzled and ready to go. The checker asked me for the add, which I showed him and he proceeded to tell me that because a Fresh Values Card is required they don't match the price. I have price matched Fresh Values Card items weekly for the last year without a problem.

The Walmart website states in part, "Store managers make the final decision in always taking care of our customers, but we do have guidelines for matching our competition.

• We do honor "Preferred Shopping Card" advertised prices. Must be like items, be advertised and require a competitor's shopping card, for the discount to apply."

As I tried to explain this to him, his manager, and her manager I didn't stay, um....calm. I didn't raise my voice but I was clearly angry and was not very...polite.

Let me interject again. I am sure that working at Walmart is a crappy job. I am sure that if you were able to get a different job you would. I realize that this means that the individuals that work at Walmart are possibly doing the only job they can and dealing with an issue like price matching probably causes a great deal of stress. However at that moment, I was just tired of dealing with incompetence. inconsistency and failure to follow stated policy.

I'm bothered with myself that I got so frustrated, knowing full well if I had kept my cool I would have been more effective in the discussion. I am bothered that this comes up every couple of months, when their website is quite clear. I did call and apoligize to the manager because I felt badly about it. I just need to keep my cool sometimes. Please feel free to ignore my insanity.

Abbie-isms

While we were gone Abbie came up with a few sayings that I thought I would pass on.


I swear I don't know where she got this first one but she keeps saying, "This is freakin' me out." usually when frustrated.


She has also followed her cousin Ellie's example and is now saying things like, "Heavenly Father and Jesus want me to ________________" insert whatever activity is currently being denied her by her clearly unrighteous mother.

Finally, when I ask her to stop doing what she is doing she replies with, "But that's what Abbie's do!"

Victoria

So clearly this was longer than an intermission but I was hoping for a way to show pictures and it just wasn't happening. Russ took the pictures that night in RAW. That means nothing to me, but apparently it means that our old version of photoshop can't read them so he can only open them at work.

Victoria is a beautiful city in British Columbia on Vancouver Island, in which after visiting for two hours I happily gave Russ permission to look for work. It is as British as any town I've ever seen in the Western Hemisphere, which made it a nice contrast to our other ports. The small part of downtown which we got to explore was beautiful. The street lights all had hanging baskets of flowers. ALL of them it really softens a town. There was also some nice architecture and a series of fun street performers, although the man dressed up as Darth Vadar playing the violin had my vote as the most original.

Overall a fun city and a nice way to end our cruise.