Crazy Hair Day!

It was Spirit Week at Ava's elementary school.  Which I find ironic since Halloween is just around the corner.  As Ava would quip, "Get it?"  Anyway,  Monday she wore blue.  Tuesday was nerd day which she refused to participate in because she is too cool I guess.  Wednesday she dressed like her teacher.  Today was crazy hair day.  I may not know a lot about a lot of things, but I know about crazy hair.  If only every day of grades four through six were crazy hair day I would have been the talk of the school.  This was in the days before I discovered hair gel.  Which pretty much meant frizz fest every day of my life.  Ah, the good old days.  But I digress.  Here is what we came up with for Ava.

FYI the hair color said purple on the bottle, but it was pretty pink.  Which suited Ava just fine as that was the color she wanted in the first place. 

I worried later that she looked a little like "Hell Boy".  If you don't know who that is you should thank your lucky stars and it's likely you aren't married to a nerd.  Can you believe they made a Hell Boy 2?  There must be more nerds out there than I thought. 

The back.  It was pretty traumatic for her to sit still long enough for us to make this creation.  Both Brigham and I at one point threatened bodily harm if she didn't stop whining.  I did the braids and Brigham cut the tie wire and installed it.  I must admit I was inspired by this picture.

Bad quality.  I admit I'm akin to an eighty year-old when it comes to technology.  I'm sure there was a better way to do this.  We don't have a scanner though.  Oh well.  The girl on the right is my seven year-old self dressed as Pippy Long-Stockings.  The cute girl on the left is my baby sister, Dawn sporting the witch costume all three of the Cooper sisters wore at one point or another.  She was two at the time.  Anyway, Dad somehow engineered a wire hanger in my hair to create the stiff braids.  Do they even make wire hangers anymore?

Back from 1988 we arrive back in present day time with a very alarming site.  To the left is my artistic handiwork.  You didn't know I was so talented, did you?  Hehe.  While the girls were painting at my sister-in-law's house last week we spray painted our pumpkins black.  Holly chose to use three pumpkins and write the letter B-O-O.  It was super cute.  I tried to paint a ghost.  Yeah, it didn't work so I tried to manipulate the shape into a skull.  This skull was supposed to look like "The Punisher" symbol.  It ended up looking like an Asian jelly fish.  I really got the giggles while I painted it.  I kept trying to salvage it but kept making it worse.  It's slightly disturbing and clearly the work of a psychopath.

This was the side I tried the original ghost on.  It's funny as well.  What I didn't capture in this picture was Ava was doing "cross bones" with her own arms.  She looked a little like Coolio flashing gang signs so I cut it out.  I don't want her future Ivy League school digging up any dirt on her from her gangsta past. 

Ava was sad when we washed her hair out.  She asked if they were going to have another crazy hair day any time soon.  I informed her that it was unlikely.  To which she frowned and then asked for a cup of chocolate milk while we read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Tomorrow is the big finale with a Halloween program at school, followed by a costume parade.  It's so fun to watch kids experience all the joys of school. 

Motherland or Gosh, I Love Cache Valley!

I steal away to Cache Valley whenever I can.  For me it's like coming up for air before having to go back to a hard swim.  I'm fairly certain I'm not cut out for city life, adolescent yearnings be damned.  The first thing I do when I get out of my car at Mom's house is to just stand there.  Just stand there and listen to...silence.  It's wonderful stuff for sure, and highly underrated.  

A portrait of a young artist.  I think we are all artists until someone tells us we aren't creative, that's why every preschooler enjoys finger painting.  No one has told them they aren't artistic yet.  

All the grandkids love painting rocks at grandma's house.  Ava is no exception.  Mom always finds them appropriate painting frocks AKA one of the hundreds of race shirts my parents have collected over the years. 

She has an artist's temperament.  Serious.  Sensitive.  Philosophical.  Prone to emotional outbursts.  Demanding. 

Goofy.

Grandma Debbie's dedicated to her craft: playing with the grandkids. 

The view from my brother's house.  I do believe Mt. Sterling is Cache Valley's best kept secret.  On a clear day you can see to Franklin...well almost. 

I've decided that Cache Valley is very geographically well-endowed.  The downside to all that beauty...nine months of blistering cold weather.  Okay I might have exaggerated a bit.  Eight months. 

More painting.

 More cousins.

 More cousins.

More cousins.

You get Ava and Ellie together and you have a recipe for giggling and teasing and a few crude references to bodily functions. 

Brielle was a big fan of Lily.  Everything she did fascinated her and she would crawl after her.  It's always hard to leave Cache Valley, especially because so many of the people we love live there.  But sometimes as I'm exiting off the freeway into SLC it almost...almost feels like home.  But not quite. 

Happy October!

The computer is not safe with this girl around.  She will find it and close it if she can, if you resist her advances she will get in a few good keystrokes and usually sends you off the page you were looking at anyway. 

You might as well close it yourself and put it away and pay attention to this toothy grin and the little person that goes with it.  In other obvious news, it's October and we all know what that means...

 

Fright Night!  I don't think Dracula was ever this charming.  Many important things began for me in October.  My mother was born.  My husband was born.  My marriage was born.  Yep.  9 years, with a brief "vacation" from each other for five months in year seven.  All I can say about that is...phew, so glad that is over.  

My husband is 31.  When I was sixteen I could have never imagined myself married to a 31 year-old.  And guess what?  I still can't.  Aren't we still sixteen? 

Ava and I went and picked up a Cold Stone ice cream cake in the afternoon.  It was okay.  Nothing mind-blowing and probably not worth what we paid for it. 

We dropped the girls off at a neighbor's house and then went out to dinner with some friends.  Ichiban Sushi.  Good stuff...if you like sushi.  Which we do...sorta.  I have to try hard not to think about the raw fish aspect.  Being my mother's cook-it-til-it's-charred child it goes against every moral conviction woven into my being from birth to consume anything that is not cooked properly.  But you know, it was Brig's birthday and he loves sushi and has no such moral conflicts when it comes to raw fish.  The sushi rolls flowed like wine as well as the F-words from the table next to us, but still we dined.  WARNING:  TRAIN WRECK AHEAD.

Caption this picture:

"You went to Cold Stone and all you got for me was this lousy toothbrush?"

"The hills are aliiiiiiive with the taste of ice cream and devil's food cake!" 

That's all I got.  Sorry. 

Where have you been all my life? 

To Brigham:

I'll briefly say this about our anniversary, I'm glad we made it here.  On the day I committed to love you forever we did not know who or what exactly we were saying yes to, but we leapt anyway hoping it would all work out.  We made our mistakes, to put it mildly.  When I came back to you I knew what and who I was saying yes to...and somehow that makes it more meaningful to me than the day a young, naive girl said yes to a complete fantasy of what she thought her life would be.  Thanks for never giving up on me.

Bree

 

Brielle has been pulling up to furniture and trying to stand on her own.  She crawls after me everywhere and when I'm in the kitchen I have a beautiful baby girl trying to cling to my leg if I stay in one place for too long.  She's so mobile!  It's so different from Ava.  Ava was always so mellow.  She didn't crawl until she was almost a year and then that only lasted two or three weeks until she started walking.   Ava was content to sit and play with toys.  Brielle is not.  She wants to go.  She wants to be in the middle of everything all the time.  It's so interesting to see their distinct personalities.  

She is a few weeks shy of ten months.  She says Ni-ni for Night-night.  She waves hello and goodbye.  When I put on my shoes she knows I'm going to walk out the door and starts begging for me to pick her up and take her with me.  She says Mama and Dada.  She says num-num when she wants another bite of food.  She loves to snuggle up under my chin.  She loves to pull hair.  She wants to eat and drink whatever we're eating and drinking and gets hurt feelings if she is not partaking at the same time we are.  She hates peas.  She prefers real solid food to the pureed stuff out of jars.  She loves the song on The Cat in the Hat on PBS.  She loves to watch Ava run around like a crazy person.  She likes to watch us dance in the kitchen.  She does not like the big bathtub and cries the whole five minutes it takes to bathe her.  She will take juice or water out of a bottle, but not formula or breast milk...which is bad news for me.  So.  Done.  With.  Breastfeeding.  Obviously she's pulling the strings around here though so I won't be done until she says I'm done.  Hopefully when she can have whole milk she will be more willing to wean.  

Basically I love the girl.  I can't imagine our family without her.  She makes me want to have another baby right away, and then another and another.  Shocking, I know.  What can you do?  The heart wants what the heart wants...until the body wants a full night's sleep.  Then the body tells the heart to take a hike.