Long Overdue and Over-duly Long

I realize I have been remiss in keeping everyone updated on our doings. Truth be told, life has just been happening fast and I haven’t had much chance to pause and document it.

So I last left off in May, I guess. That seems so very long ago! When I got home from my grandfather’s funeral in Utah, we followed up on an offer to adopt a dog from a family moving to Australia, and they couldn’t take the dog with them. We agreed to take her, but after some nipping episodes and a long conversation with my mother-in-law about my reservations and concerns, we (I) decided we weren’t ready for that and graciously backed out before the arranged hand-over. That was probably the main thing beyond normal life that happened in May.

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May 29-June 6: My mother-in-law, Marianne, came to visit. David had lots of fun playing with her (and vise versa). While she was here we shopped for a playset to put in our back yard. It got installed the day after Marianne left. It’s nice to have something out there for him to play on when I turn him out to burn off some energy. The biggest drawback is the mosquitos. He must have some sweet blood, because he always comes in with mosquito bites. We’re still trying to figure out a good way to deter them besides drenching him in deet.

June 14-June 21: My sister-in-law Jenny and her 13-month-old daughter Anne Elyse came down from Connecticut to visit. We enjoyed taking the kids swimming, going for walks, and visiting various parks, as well as the Marbles Kids Museum. My parents came up to visit the weekend she was leaving so they could visit her, as well. Jenny’s primary reason for coming down was to help with a big project that has consumed much of my time this year, especially during and since her visit. Inspired by the scanner I received for my birthday last year, I had an idea at the beginning of the year to digitize all of my family photos—over 40 years’ worth—that were sitting loose in boxes in my parents’ attic as a Christmas present for my parents. Per my request, Mom and Dad brought up 12 boxes of loose photos when they came up to see Jenny. I had already acquired four boxes from previous visits and had slowly been working my way through them up until this point. Even though I was hoping to surprise my parents, they kind of had an idea of what I was doing, so Jenny and I decided it would be easier if we just told them outright what the plan was (which is why I am just now mentioning this extra activity). After I saw how many boxes there were, I really hunkered down to scanning so that I had a prayer’s chance of getting it all done by Christmas. I got the contents of the two “Pictures to Sort” boxes appropriately distributed, and finished scanning the contents of two boxes.  With the box of my own pictures already scanned plus sending Sean's box home with Jenny, that made six boxes down, four to go by Christmas (five if I'm lucky), and three or four to wait for another year.

My scanning work station

My pile of boxes and albums for this project

July 4-5: Nathan and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. I can hardly believe we’re here already. Time has flown so fast. We also got the air ducts cleaned in the house. It ended up costing waaay more than we initially thought, but considering that the ducts had never been cleaned since the house was built 18 years ago, I thought it was well worth it.

My anniversary bouquet

July 7-14: Utah. I flew out with the boys to Salt Lake City for a Nash family reunion. I met Marianne and Bethany at the airport, and since we weren’t checking into the reunion until the evening of the 8th, we stayed at a hotel that night and in the morning took the boys to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. David loved it! He’s been much more interested in dino things since that excursion. While we were eating lunch at the café there, I looked up and saw friends from South Carolina, of all places! It was fun to visit with them briefly and introduce them to my boys.

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The Nash Reunion was fun. We gathered at BYU’s Spring Haven Lodge in Hobble Creek Canyon. Such an amazing lodge! It was a perfect setup for little kids with an indoor treehouse, playland, and sport court, plus pool tables and air hockey. David practically lived in the “Tree Room” where all that stuff was set up, earning the Reunion Award “King of the Playground”. He would play in there with his cousin Sophia, and they ran around holding hands. It was so cute. Daniel had his own bit of fun. The hallways had floors sloped like footbridges, and Daniel loved crawling up and over the “bridges” back and forth, over and over. He looked so proud of himself each time he crossed, and would pause and clap for a moment before crossing again.

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A Nash Reunion Tradition is for each family to write a limerick about their doings since the previous reunion (2 years apart). Here is my limerick:

In the North of the South, we put things in our mouth:
Binkies and fingers and boogers and toys—oh, just for the record, that’s ONLY the boys.
Nathan and Natalie prefer finer things, like Bojangles’, brocc’li, and mac-n-cheese.

We come and we go and we watch our boys grow.
They dance, count, and sing, and they climb everything.
We love our new house so our smiles no rains douse,
But we miss proxim’ty to our “tight” Nash fam’ly!

The reunion adjourned on the 11th and I took advantage of being out West to visit my family. We had an unofficial family reunion among my siblings. DeeAnn and Nate live in the area, I was out for the Nash reunion, my sister Lisle (NV) was in town while her son went to BYU Soccer Camp, my brother Sean (CT) was passing through for a quick hello on his way to WA for Jenny’s brother’s wedding, and my sister Minda (also NV) decided to come since so many of us were gathered anyway. We were only missing my two brothers that live in SC. That Monday we all gathered at a pool in Spanish Fork to go swimming together. It was a lot of fun to be with everyone. David especially enjoyed going down the big slide. We also went to Nate’s farm and David got to pet the goats, chase bunnies and chickens into their coops, water the ducks, and ride one of the horses. He found that very memorable.

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July 15-28: Washington. Since I was that far out West anyway, I continued my trip up to Washington to enjoy some more family time.

Mount Rainier from the airplane.  Just for some perspective on how huge it is, those "foothills" at the base are full-size mountains, probably as big or bigger than the Rockies.

Daniel was exceptionally fussy on the drive from the airport to Anacortes, and a family friend/physician confirmed our suspicions of yet another ear infection. Ugh! David played hard at his grandma’s house and thoroughly enjoyed going to the parks and playing in her playroom. At one of the parks I stepped in a divot in the ground and turned my ankle pretty hard. Still recovering from that. Almost a week into my stay, and shortly after Sarah arrived with her two girls, David started running a fever and throwing up. Poor little guy would just lie on the couch and watch the same three movies over and over and over. He was so inanimate, but he wanted me to sit by him. I took advantage of that time to satisfy my curiosity about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. I got through all three books before we left, just in time to wait impatiently with the rest of the country for the fourth and final book to be released Aug 2. (I just finished reading that one last night. Great series.)

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Nathan flew out to WA on July 22 to go deep-sea fishing with his Dad off of Vancouver Island, BC. When they got home we ate some of the chilled-but-never-frozen salmon they’d caught the day before. YUM. I don’t think you can get fish much fresher! Then we packed up and headed back home.

Nathan showcasing a ginormous leaf

Aug 4-8: Marianne visited with us again while Bethany was at EFY in New Hampshire (and then flew up to NH to tour the area with her). While she was here, Daniel underwent the long-awaited myringotomy (tubes in his ears).  Everything went smoothly there. I had to have him at the hospital at 5:45 AM, so between that and the general anesthesia he was pretty sleepy that day, but was happy and bouncy the next day. We decided to do his birthday party a little early so we could celebrate with Marianne. I also finished scanning another box of pictures.

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Aug 9-12: I went down to Aiken to visit the SC branch of family. My brother Preston, who was stationed at the Navy Weapons Station in Charleston, is moving to California for his next tour of duty: grad school at Stanford University. He and his family stopped in Aiken for the weekend on their way out, so I went down to say goodbye. It’s a five-hour drive, and as we were approaching Aiken, David said, “Mom, [Grand]Ma’s house is really far away.” That is the first time he’s expressed a sense of time or distance, and I found it a humorously appropriate time to start.

We had another birthday party Monday night to celebrate six cousin birthdays: Brenden’s oldest two daughters (15 and 13), Preston’s youngest two daughters (5 and 3), and my boys (4 and 1).  Sorry, I forgot my camera for this trip.  We had one cake with a cluster of candles for each cousin, and lit each cluster and sang Happy Birthday individually. It was fun, and, remarkably, didn’t take eons. David had a ball playing with all the toys I played with as a child, and had lots of good cousin time. It was hard to pry him away when it was time to go.

We came home from Aiken with an addition to our family: Preston’s cat, Alea. They couldn’t find pet-friendly housing at Stanford, so Alea is hanging out with us for 10 months while they’re in CA. David is very excited to have a kitty and keeps close tabs on her whereabouts and activities. Daniel likes to transfer her kibble into her water bowl and make big splashes.

Daniel is very close to walking. I keep thinking it will happen any day. He’s also bringing in tooth #7, so I’m mopping up lots of drool and a very goopy nose.

In addition to still being a ward missionary, I have been put in charge of the Crafty Sisters Enrichment group at church, plus I’m kind of in charge of playgroup and am trying to start a baby-sitting co-op. Nathan is still up to the same-old same-old: Work, Mission Leader, Work, Mission Leader, with the occasional video game thrown in. So there’s our very thorough update. I’ve really enjoyed being able to visit all our family this summer!


Love to all,
The (Other) Other Nashes
Nathan, Natalie, David, & Daniel

David at the Taylor Farm

My brother Nate & family recently bought some horse property near their home in Mapleton, UT and they've been gradually building their animal collection.  Two horses, two ducks, two bunnies, and a lot of chicks.  When we were out West for Grandpa's funeral we stopped by their house for dinner and Family Home Evening.  They took us for a little jaunt to see the farm while we were there.  David thought it was a blast.

Here is Ethan showing David Marshmallow, a Lion-Head Rabbit. Talk about a fluff ball! I was surprised at how light she is.

David carried her all over and kept saying "He's so cute!" (everything's a "him") I couldn't convince him to put her down and look at something else!

I stopped recording after a bit, and then David said, "Look Horse, it's a bunny!" which I thought was darling, and so started recording again as he walked over to show the horse the bunny.

He eventually put Marshmallow down and went into the tack shed and climbed on bales of hay with his cousin Evan and the dog Kaylie.  David really liked Kaylie, too.  Then Nate suggested David ride a horse.  (!!!!)  That's little boy excitement right there.  Here's Nate leading David (and Kaylie) to meet Tango. 

Meeting Tango...

Look at my big boy!  Oops, the flash spooked Tango...

And off they go for a ride...

For reasons I cannot offer besides the fact that David's a boy and he's three years old, he found great delight in kicking the chickens.  I am so sorry Nate and Julie, kids and chickens!  Here he's with Ethan as they start to put all the chickens and ducks away for the night.

Thanks for the tour, guys!  

A MAJOR Clean-Up Job

I'm ashamed to say that I've neglected our back yard for 7 months. That is, to say, since we moved in. Oh I ran over it once with the reel mower, but I never, ever raked, not even once during the fall. With all those pine trees and mature deciduous trees in our back yard, you can imagine the mess we had.

"Before"

To make matters worse, it was a mess when we moved in. I wasn't quite sure where the grass ended and the pinestraw bed began. We seemed to have a 4-foot wide transition zone across the yard of grass growing up through deep pinestraw. If I did rake the stuff from the grass to the beds, I wasn't sure where to end. Nathan and I decided the best thing to do would be to clean out the whole shebang. It was a very daunting job, so we talked briefly about hiring some young men to come clean it out for us to raise funds for Scout Camp. I even mentioned it to the YM President a couple weeks ago. But no one called and I got sick of looking at the mess. They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or something like that, so I determined to just start plugging away at it a couple bags at a time while Daniel napped in the afternoon.

I started on Monday, and he napped long enough that I was able to surprise myself by filling twelve 39-gallon bags. Perhaps the biggest surprise about that was how little yard I actually raked to get that kind of volume! David enjoyed being out with me and really experiencing Little-Boyhood for the first time as he played in the dirt and tortured bugs. He was so filthy by the time I was finished, but I know he had fun.


Tuesday I filled four more bags in a tiny little area. Sixteen bags, and the yard was not even halfway done. By Wednesday I was exhausted and sore and decided to take a break. Plus, I'd reached our maximum number of bags I was allowed to place on the curb for pickup that week, and our back-yard neighbor had two dead pine trees taken out that day. That was pretty fun to watch.

I mentioned what I had taken on to my visiting teacher when she called on Wednesday and she offered to come help the next day (yesterday). Boy did she ever! She brought a rake, her two kids, and some sand toys. The kids all went off to a corner of the yard and played while we plugged away at the yard. I could hardly believe how fast we were filling bags. Daniel woke up before we were finished, but we were so close to being done (!) that I just put a hat on him and sat him down in some shady pseudo-grass to have a sensory fiesta while we wrapped things up.


Right towards the end we had a big surprise as Jacquie raked back a clump of pinestraw and a bunny came bounding out from under it! At first I thought we'd just put it in a box and relocate it, so I put on some leather gloves and caught the little fella. That's the first time I've ever heard a rabbit make noise. After a minute I rethought that course of action, thinking since he was so young his mom would still be around, and I didn't want to separate them. I put him back down and he took shelter behind some long greens against the garage wall. The kids were very interested in the rabbit, but I told them he was very scared and might bite. They were exceptionally good about keeping their distance in spite of their curiosity. We picked up his fluff-lined bundle of pinestraw and put it up against him there to keep him warm, then gave him an apple slice and a sprig of broccoli--just in case. I don't know much about the tendencies of wild rabbits. I hope he does okay.


After that bit of excitement we were all hot and tired, but satisfied with an afternoon well spent. We finished the entire yard, with the exception of the bunny corner, something that I had never imagined I'd accomplish in three afternoons. Thursday alone we filled 29 bags, for a grand total of 45 bags of yard debris, plus a pile of sticks. I have sworn an oath never to let the yard get that bad again! Meanwhile, I really enjoy looking out at the back yard and reveling in what got accomplished.

This is the same view as my "Before" picture. I don't know that you can see much difference in the photo, but it's a huge difference in person.


Some more views of the entire yard...



Thursday's Results: 29 bags of debris, waiting for Trash Day. I put them in the garage so when/if it rains they won't get even heavier.