carnivore

We went to the Eastern Idaho State Fair today! Boy do I love that place. I would tell you about all of the fun that we had, about the animals and the food and the rides and the booths, but I think this picture pretty much sums up the Back-woods Fantasyland that is our State Fair. Jealous?

dude. sweet.

Here's some video of Avery first at Chili's last night with Chocolate Lava cake all over her face, then at the Fair today.

she can fly she can fly she can fly

The other day Avery and I are walking into Sams Club. She points up to the store's sign on the front of the building and says "Birds!"
I look up, and, sure enough, there are 5 or 6 pigeons hanging out up there. I say, "Yeah! Look at those birds!"
Avery then says (very matter-of-factly, I might add) "I want to touch it."
I laugh and say, "You can't touch the birds. They are too high."
She thinks about it for a second and then says, "Fly."
"Yes, they can fly!" I say, super proud of my lil girl (the smartest child in the Universe).

"No, I fly."

Time to stop watching Peter Pan or one day soon I might catch her trying to jump off of the roof with a teddy bear and a top hat.

out of it

Here's a not-so-funny story for you.
It's a beautiful September day. I'm at home baking a peach galette (see pictured- THIS is what it looks like when you are nice to me.) for a neighbor who was really vocal during my first-ever Gospel Doctrine class (I'm the teacher now! Craziness but I'm actually sort of enjoying it. So far.) when everyone else was sitting quietly, content to let me sweat it out.

Anyway, the galette-deserving lady is actually my bishop's wife and she lives down the street. So I am going to drive the galette down to her because I have to then run to Sam's Club to get diapers (I had two left. I need to work on my diaper food storage or something. Annoying.), then across town to B&N to meet Mandy and hang out for a bit. K had been driving the car all morning running errands and then he biked up to the school for his French Lit class so I could do my stuff. Well, I pull into the bishop's driveway, grab the galette, leave the car running, tell Avery I'll be right back (she has fruit leather and is completely sticky and in heaven so I take the Please Do Not Disturb approach), ring the doorbell and chat with Sister Hathaway for a bit in her doorway.

When I turn back around to head to the car, I feel like something is off. Don't worry- Avery is fine. The car, however, is not. Klayton had forgotten to fill it up all morning, and apparently the Empty light had been on since the day before, so... Yep. I'm outta gas. And the car is dead. In my bishop's driveway. Now, for those of you who have known your bishop for 10 years and he's your BF and/or you have no shame, you would have just knocked on the door again and asked for a gas can. I've only spoken to the bishop's wife, like, once before (hey, I've been in Young Women's) and I'm SO not comfortable doing that (Side note- They totally would have helped me. They are great people. I just couldn't handle the embarrassment. I'm a wuss). So I grab Avery and trudge up the street to my house (yes, I trudged. It was hot out and I was embarrassed ["Please don't look out your window. Please don't hear me desperately trying to gun my car to life." etc.] and super mad at Klayton [oh, he got an angry mid-French-class phone call, alright]) to get our gas can. Which is EMPTY as well. Of course it is. At this point Avery tells me, "I scared, Mommy." because I am grumbling quite a bit under my breath.

So, I do the only thing I can think of. I call my home away from home. The Chandlers. They live right across the street from the bishop and they have saved me before (I called them when a stock pot decided to assault my face and Klayton was across town showing a vacancy, and they rushed right over and watched Avery while I went to emergency care. I called them when I needed a place to put all of the food I made for Avery's birthday party and they brought me a big, long table 10 minutes later. I called them 5 minutes after that when I realized that our yard looked awful and they let Klayton come down to borrow weed whacker. Etc. Pretty much they should wear capes and spandex 24/7.). Ashley doesn't answer her phone or my text so I just walk back down the hill and knock on their door. Her phone is broken. It's good to know that I'm not the only one having an annoying afternoon. Anyway, Brother Chandler had just filled up their cars and gas can the night before!! I think he was listening to a prompting. So Ashley helped me dump their gas into my car and get it started. And she did it with minimal teasing, too!

So yesterday I got my car and two gas cans filled up, returned one to the Chandlers with my gratitude, ran to Sam's, cancelled with Mandy (she and the kids came by to meet Rocky for a minute before they headed home. Love them!), let Klayton grovel for quite a while , did a good deed for a neighbor, and let a neighbor do (yet another) good deed for me! Lessons learned: A) Klayton is good for bringing pizza home for dinner when he's in the dog house (The really yummy kind from Papa John's- Spinach Alfredo Chicken Tomato. Mmmmm). B) Check the gas gauge more often, even when K says he'll take care of it. C) Don't do nice things. It just bites you in the bum. D) Which reminds me, must bake the Chandlers something ASAP.

it's catching

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins comes out today! If you haven't heard of The Hunger Games by the same author; 1) Where do you live? Under a rock!? How are you even reading this post right now!? Is someone transmitting it to your cave using Morse Code? 2) Go out right now. Buy/rent/steal (just kidding about the stealing part... mostly) The Hunger Games immediately, read it, and send off your thank you note (if you need my address you can email me) and/or the written promise of giving me your firstborn in gratitude. Then I am sure you will know why I am so excited that Catching Fire, the sequel to Hunger Games, is out! If you are wary of book recommendations by me because you weren't too into Twilight (all two of you that exist in the entire universe), this book is nothing like that (except that they are both amazing). And everyone I have forced to read it so far has loved it.

Yes, you may consider this a challenge to disagree with me over the awesomeness of this book. The gauntlet has been thrown down. I dare you. I double dog dare you (gasp!! I messed with dare protocol and skipped straight to the DOUBLE DOG DARE! That's right! What!?).

And now the sequel has come out!! Yay!! Wait... what am I doing talking to you about it? I have some reading to do. Excuse me.

Here's what I had to say about The Hunger Games on goodreads.com:

The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Hunger Games is amazing. I can't believe I'm actually going to type this, but when I finished I was hungry for more! haha. Written in first person perspective in the present tense, I have never read a book where I felt more involved from the first chapter, even though I have practically nothing in common with the heroine of the story. Katniss is a young girl who lives in a dystopian society where the government's oppression is somewhat remnicent of 1984's "Big Brother". To save her little sister she chooses to participate in the bloody, last-man-standing battle between Districts held every year called The Hunger Games. This book is riveting and if you haven't picked it up yet, do. Now.

I just read this book again, this time aloud to Klayton. Now that I was familiar with the story, the characters came more alive than ever, especially Katniss and Peeta and their twisted relationship. I quite literally cannot wait for Catching Fire to come out in a couple of months!

I thought I was getting over this...

I'm not.

it's too late to turn back

I know that this is going to make us sound crazy, but it's the truth. On Friday night, around 6pm, I talked Klayton into taking a quick weekend trip to see my brother, Adam, in Portland, OR. Portland is about 11 hours away from Idaho Falls, but we figured, Hey, Avery will sleep on the drive and this is our last opportunity since school starts back up this week! So we packed up, ate dinner, and were on the road by 7:30! By the time we were pulling into town on Saturday morning, groggy and ill-tempered, I almost forgot why we set out on our Portland Adventure. But then we pulled into Adam's driveway and remembered in a flash. It was so good to see him and his house (so cool) and his town (cooler still). The all-night drive and fussy kiddo were so worth it! I'd do it again in a second. In fact, I wish I could. We saw many things in the 30 or so hours we spent in Portland- here's a breakdown for you in case you ever get to go there!

My Five Favorite Things in Portland:
5- Pioneer Square/The Waterfront. Portland has a cool pioneer history (I guess the Oregon Trail is, like, literal.) and they have this big town square and river walkway where cool things are always happening. In passing we not only saw a spiritual songfest and hippie craft fair, I actually saw a 40-something man with tulips painted on his face with his hands in the air and his eyes closed singing "PRAISE HIM!!" over and over next to a booth with a banner that said, "Are you going to heaven? Take our two question quiz to find out!!" Needless to say I really wanted to take that quiz, and it will probably haunt me to the day that I die that I could have found out about my afterlife potential and didn't.

4- Powell's Book Store. Portland has this really cool motto- "Keep Portland Weird". Adam told me that it is talking about the city's love of small, locally owned businesses instead of large, megamart chain stores. While there is nothing wrong (in my book) with a good megamart every once in a while, I love the idea of cherishing local businesses. And Powell's Book Store is definitely a Portland landmark. It's ginormous (yes, that is the technical term)! They buy and sell used books as well as new titles, so they had a crazy selection! And a rare book section with first edition classics worth thousands. And they had Fancy Nancy books in the kid's section- which most book stores do. I just wanted to give Fancy Nancy a shout out. She's the coolest. Anyway, it was fun to wander around and lust after all of the books that we wanted (we did pick up a few, but you should have seen our "wants" pile).

3- Multnomah Falls. This is the huge waterfall right outside of Portland that has a cameo in the movie Twilight. Sure, it was famous way before that movie came out, but, hey, let's face it- "Edward" was there. That's enough to make just about anything famous. If I heard that he favored a public toilet somewhere in the city, you better believe I would have gone there, too. Ooookay. Just kidding... mostly. It really was so beautiful and cool. Adam said that in the springtime it's 3 times as big as it was when we saw it and it soaks you when you are anywhere near it. Fun! And pretty! All of the trees around it were all mossy and stuff. Hey, I'm from the desert. Things like that impress me, okay?

2- Food. Okay, food is always the best part of any trip (except for my #1- you just can't beat that!). Portland (because of the whole KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD thing [see #4]) had some awesome restaurants. Adam and his friends took us for sushi at this place where a conveyor belt circles the entire restaurant and they charge you per plate that you take off of it- did I explain that right? Oh well- and they took us for BBQ at a really neat, home-cooking kind of place (yes, I ordered the home made peach pie along with my bbq brisket sandwich. mmmm) and to another Portland landmark- VooDoo Doughnuts. This place is insane! It's in downtown Portland and it's super famous for it's wacky doughnuts. Adam and I ordered the Old Dirty Bast... well, you get the picture. It is a doughnut covered in chocolate glaze, peanut butter and smashed up Oreos. Yes, you heard me right. Klayton got a maple bar with bacon on top. Av got a mini M&M doughnut. Adam's friends got one with Cap'n Crunch on top. And we all got the Memphis Mafia- a HUGE bear claw with chocolate, peanut butter, peanuts and chocolate chips on top. Oh and we went to this unique-to-Oregon burger chain called Burgerville (sounds lame, huh?) on our way home, and it was delicious, too! They use all local, in season stuff and change their specials according to what's fresh. When we stopped there it was cherries and Walla Walla onions! Y-U-M. I have a new motto for Portland: "mmmPortlandTastesYummymmm"

1- Uncle Adam. I have a great brother. When we decided to leave on this trip about an hour before we piled in the car and headed out, I called Adam and asked him if he'd be cool with dropping all of his weekend plans, vacating his room in his apartment, and playing Tour Guide for a day and a half. He said no, but we came anyway. Just kidding! It was so fun to see him and his town- it sounds weird, but that town just fits him! It was perfect. He loves the rain (so do I, for that matter. Must be a desert-born thing again.). He loves the sites. He's a pro at the tour guide thing already and he's only been there a year. Avery is just in love with him (and all of his WALL-E toys), too! We got to meet a couple of friends of his, Jamie and Brooke, and they were awesome girls as well. I'm so glad that he's doing well and has such good friends! Thanks for a great weekend, Adam!

heavyweight

This is Rocky, our new Boxer pooch. He's about 8 weeks old. We have been talking about getting a dog for Avery (who is an animal nut) and us for quite some time, and this week we decided that the time is right. We had our eye set on a Boxer for their energy and family-friendliness, and we are already positive that we made the right choice. He is a sweetie and has won over the heart of everyone he has met so far.

We are enrolled in puppy obedience school and have purchased a bunch of food and toys and such, but if you are in the area please come by and see him- he needs lots of activity to wear him out! And if you have any doggy advice PLEASE lay it on me. I'm in over my head as far as pup discipline is concerned.