Hair adventures

So it started like this. You all know Miia: short, cute, full of energy, maybe a little bit stubborn at times. If you have forgotten who she is, here is a picture. See what I mean? Cute as abutton!

Mary, also very cute, had been asking for weeks to let her get her hair cut. Well she finally talked us into it so Karen was going to take her to the salon to get a trim. As little sisters often do Miia decided on the morning of the haircut that she wanted to be like her big sister and get a haircut too. Emma, who is a great big sister, offered to sacrifice some of her Friday morning and give Miia a trim, free of charge. Karen, one of the most thoughtful and trusting mothers in the world, agreed to let Emma work her magic. Just as Emma was setting up her beauty salon Karen got a phone call from a friend she hadn't talked to in some time. Those of you who know my cute wife know that she is a bit of a talker. Who knows how long she was on the phone, but when she actually got off she found her daughters in the bathroom, and one with about five inches less hair on the left side...

We have been trying to decide since that dreadful day who is more embarassed, Emma because she mangled her sister's hair, or Karen for not only letting her children play with scissors but for giving the go ahead to let them cut each others hair.

Anyway it was off to the salon for all three girls after "the incident" and $40 later the three of them have fashionable new hairdos. I think they look great and I always appreciate a story that gives me a good laugh. Thank goodness I have a wife and three girls who continually provide me these kind of stories.

On the third date of Christmas..plus a Christmas surprise

On the final adventure of the season Emma and I attended the Cincinnati Ballet's production of The Nutcracker. The ballet was performed in Music Hall which was decorated beautifully. Although this performance was far from as good as what Ballet West puts on it was still fun to hear some of our favorite music and for Emma to watch the ballerinas. I cannot believe how grown up Emma has become.

The Christmas dates were very fun for me this year. I think the girls really enjoyed them as well. However, they were long forgotten when the real Christmas surprise showed up on Christmas Eve. Nana and Grandpa had bought tickets to Cincinnati several months ago and we had kept it a secret from the girls. I picked them up from the airport on Sunday afternoon and dropped them off about a block from the house. I drove home and sent the kids out to the front yard to play. As soon as they spotted my parents, with my mom wearing a santa hat, walking down our street there was much screaming, running, and rejoicing.

It was nice to have my parents here for Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner and a very fun Christmas morning. We then spent a few days exploring Cincinnati, something we haven't had time to do since we moved here. We really do live in a pretty great city. You should all really come visit us and we will show you. We really are blessed to have great family and to live where we do.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you. We miss you tons.

On the second date of Christmas...

Did I mention that we love Christmas? Mary and I attended a great performance of A Christmas Carol yesterday. It has been years since I have seen or read this play and I was particularly impressed with it this year. Maybe it was the amazing performace by the actor playing Scrooge. Maybe it was the fact that I got to share the experience with Mary. Maybe it was just that I was touched by the correlation of the message in the play to the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

My favorite part of this story is when Scrooge is taken by the Spirit of Christmases to Come to the graveyard. Upon a grave with the headstone that he finds is his own he pleads, in anguish, with the spirit to know whether the visions he has been shown are those that will indeed come to pass or whether they are things that may come true if he does not change his ways. One of my favorite quotes from the play is when Scrooge proclaims,

"Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only? Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!' The Spirit was immovable as ever.

So it is in our lives. What a blessing it is to have a testimony of the life, example and sacrifice of our Savior. How important a gift is that of His Atonement. No matter what mistakes we have made; No matter how far from the path we have strayed; He is always waiting with open arms to have us return to him, and because of his sacrifice we can be forgiven of those mistakes. The life we lead is the life we lead; if we are not where we want to be we have, with the help of Christ, the power to become who we want and need to become. Merry Christmas!

On the first date of Christmas...

We love Christmas at our house. We love the time we get to spend with our family and friends. We love the food. We love the music. We love the extra time we spend thinking about our Savior and serving others. We love the traditions we have grown up with and the ones we are creating.

I have tried for the past few years to spend time periodically with each of my girls on a "Daddy/Daughter" date. This year I decided to take the girls on special dates to Christamassy events. The first of these dates happened this weekend as Miia and I attended a special music concert at Cincinnati's Music Hall. Carolfest is a Christmas concert put on mainly by the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus, along with a few other groups. There was singing, dancing and even a couple of special guests (Santa Clause, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.) The Music Hall was decked in festive decorations and was beautiful.

As you can see by the photo my littlelist princess put on her nicest red velvet dress, got her hair curled by her Momma and was the cutest little one at the concert. Miia tired of the singing about an hour into the production. Luckily the young ballerinas swept onto the stage with one of the next couple of songs and saved the day. I love Christmas and love my girls.

A witch, a princess and a cow

We took a major step in the Halloween department this year. Our girls have always enjoyed dressing up, to be honest they would dress up almost every day of the year if they could. This year, however, was the first year they got really into trick-or-treating. Perhaps it was because we live in a real neighborhood this year (not that the University Village or our townhouse in Durham were not real neighborhoods) with houses and yards an tons of kids. People went out of their way to decorate their homes and set up their porches for little goblins to come by for candy. There was a yard decorated like a graveyard, two people who had built bonfires on their driveways, and even one guy dressed in a Harley-Davidson shirt and a long beard (costume or not??) who whispered that he had adult treats as well and showed me to a barrel full of Jello shots (of course I declined the offer.)

Mary and Emma ran from house to house and Miia tried with all of her might to keep up with her sisters despite her short little legs. It only took us an hour to canvas our neighborhood and by the end Emma and Mary had their bags so full that the straps had broken. Miia's basket was markedly smaller than her sister's bags so I ended up with half of her candy in the pockets of the cargo pants I was wearing. They had so much fun. I had so much fun watching them. It was a great Halloween.

The best Nana ever

This past month we had the first our first visit from Nana since we moved to Cincinnati. Obviously we hope this is the first of many visits as we absolutely love having her stop by. We hope that Grandpa Rocket sees fit to join her on some of her trips too. This time we got to do a little back-to-school shopping while she was here. We also visited the Cincinnati Zoo (pictured here). Our girls are very lucky to have a Nana that loves them, an spoils them, and their only complaint about our latest move to Ohio is that we did not decide to move to Utah so they could be spoiled on an more regular basis. Maybe next time...

Brothers

Last month we went home to Utah (on our way to Cincinnati :) ) to celebrate my brother Spencer's wedding. It was good to spend time with our families and especially good to spend time with Spencer's new wife, Laura, and her familly at wedding showers and wedding dinners and wedding receptions and wedding weddings. The girls were in heaven of course because a wedding transforms them into instant princesses. They got new dresses and shoes and even spent an entire afternoon at the Beauty School (courtesy of Melissa and her friends) having their hair and nails done.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was going out with my brothers the night before the wedding for a boys' night out. Althougth it was not as wild as some last hurrah nights before weddings may be, we had a good time playing pool and talking and laughing. What a blessing it is to have the brothers that I have. They are all a little bit different and are all examples to me in one way or another. Even though I enjoy living where we have chosen to live, one of the downsides is that I don't get to spend so much time with my brothers. I hope they all know how much I love them.

PS. I love Melissa too but she is not one of my brothers. She did, however, marry a great guy who I count as another brother.

Off we go

After several months, innumerable prayers, and just about daily scrambles to clean the house to make it presentable for showings, we accepted an offer to sale. It is fortunate for us as it happened the day before we pack up the moving truck and head to Cincinnati. We are very grateful for the chance to get this done before we start a new chapter in our lives. We have been imagining for the last few weeks how we would make it work should we have to sell the house from Cincinnati, most significantly how we would afford to pay two house payments for who knew how many months. Thank goodness for blessings and the hard work of Karen and the girls to keep our home in immaculate shape so that it was so impressive to our buyers.

This picture is of our celebratory dinner at Tomato Jake's after selling our home. Like I said tomorrow we pack up everything we own into a moving truck (in fact, to be completely accurate, we pack up everything we own into 16 feet of an ABF trailer). We will then drive ourselves to Cincinnati, catch a plane to Utah from Indianapolis (hundreds of dollars cheaper to fly five bodies to Salt Lake City than from "the Natti"). We will spend the next week in Utah for by brother Spencer's wedding to Laura. Then we will fly back to Indianapolis, drive to Cincinnati, and unload our truck. If you aren't confused enough yet it gets worse. We will be able to move our 16 feet of stuff into our new home on June 24th but will not be able to move ourselves in until July 1st (long story) so we will be staying with our good friends Dave and Michelle Hooper for a week. I guess it is appropriate that we won't get settled until July 1st as that is when my life and our lives will change significantly for the next three years. More to follow...

Memorial Day Weekend at Falls Lake

This weekend we went camping and boating with some of our friends at Falls Lake. The forecast for Friday night included severe thunderstorm warnings and the possibility of nickel-sized hail. When we arrived at the campsite the sky was clear and blue. Several families arrived and we made it half-way through dinner before the forecast proved true (at least part of it.) We spent the next hour or so running back and forth between the campsite and the van to hide from the rain. Eventually the rain went away and we got back to dinner and s'mores.

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast, and headed to the beach. We spent most of the day at the beach and out on the lake. We are lucky to have such great friends to spend time with and to live in such a beautiful state. Soon we will have to say goodbye to both our friends and North Carolina...so sad for us.

Souvenirs

In getting our home ready to put on the market I was going through some of our things that were in storage and found a picture we had taken down some time ago. It is a painted picture of some old shoes hanging on a nail on the side of an old shed. It is not a great picture. It looks like something you might find someone trying to sell at a flea market. I purchased the picture years ago on one of the last days of my mission in Alabama. I was going through this phase where I was trying to collect everything I could to remind me of my mission. I knew I may never make it back to Alabama and I did not want to let go or forget the experiences and relationships I had there. So I bought things. This picture, although not amazing or even very good, will always remind me of my mission.

This picture made me realize that I am currently going through another phase of collecting and hoarding as we prepare to move to Cincinnati. We have really enjoyed our time here in North Carolina and I know we will miss it. So if you come to our house in the future don't be surprised if you see a stained glass window of a lighthouse on the beach, a bunch of Tar Heel paraphernalia, or coffee-table books about North Carolina. We are excited to move on but sad to leave this place we have come to love.

My first gig

Some of you know that a few months ago I started taking cello lessons. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time and finally had the time and money, so I took the plunge. Learning something new like this as an adult is a unique experience that I think everyone should have. Getting my fingers to do what my brain wants them to do, or getting my brain to understand what my fingers should do to make pretty sounds come out of the cello is taxing.

My teacher, Phil, comes to my house two or three times a month and at the end of our 45 minute sessions I am physically and mentally exhausted. But I am progressing. I am learning by way of the Suzuki method: I memorize short songs without having learned to read music. This way I can learn proper techniques of playing without the additional strain of translating notes on the page into notes on the cello. So I can play a bunch of short songs; most are big hits like Go Tell Aunt Rhody, Lightly Row, and Song of the Wind. Additionally, although I haven't confessed this to Phil, I have secretly been teaching myself some of my favorite hymns. I can sound out A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and several Christmas songs.

On to the title of this entry. In one of the cutest moments in the lives of my cutest girls (which is saying a lot as their days are completely filled with cuteness), the girls asked me to perform for them. You see they were having a funeral for one of their dolls. I am not sure the circumstances surrounding her death, I can only say that the next day she suspiciously was again alive but had a different name. The girls held a funeral for her and asked that I come and provide some music for the service. So in Mary and Miia's bedroom, at the funeral of the doll, I had my first gig.

The nine-year-old

Emma had her ninth birthday last month. As impossible as it seems to her parents that they could have a nine-year-old, yet so it is. Some days we both wonder where our oldest daughter came from. She is so smart and so funny and so talented and so kind. But more often we understand exactly where she came from....the moments when she is doing complex math problems in her head (for fun), being punny with her words, and most often when she smiles her big smile and her eyes sparkle. It is then that I see a little miniature Karen inside that nine-year-old body. Yet she is not an exact carbon copy of her mom. She has a bit of her dad's teasing nature in her as well. We are very lucky to have Emma in our home.

A thousand words

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. This picture of our Mary is evidence of the truthfulness of this saying. If I wanted to capture Mary's personality in one snap-shot I could not have done it better than this picture did. Notice Mary's friend in the background who is posed for a perfect portrait in contrast to our little actress who cannot help but try to make everyone smile with her antics.

Mary is such a joy to have around. We never have a dull moment and we can always count on her to liven up any room that she is in. She is so much fun and brings such an active (if not a little wild sometimes) spirit to our family. She is currently busy with Girlscouts, dance, and piano lessons and enjoys having her mom as her teacher. In fact, her favorite time of the day is her "mommy time" where she gets to spend some alone time with Karen doing whatever she chooses to do. She also is busy taking care of her new hamster, Carrie. It is now a rare moment that Mary is not carrying around Carrie or building her a castle to play in.

We hope this update on our "littlest-middlest" princess makes you smile as much as she makes us smile every day.

Girl Scout cookies

This weekend marked a very important event at our house. We picked up the 240 boxes of Girl Scout cookies that Emma and Mary sold. We are now trying to decide whether to deliver the cookies or just eat all 240 boxes. For those of you who did not purchase cookies from our girls or any other girls a box of cookies now costs $3.50. For those of you who like math this means we have $840 worth of cookies in our bedroom right now. This is equivillent to one month's mortgage, about 5 car payments, 8.4 American Girl dolls, 70 piano lessons, 67.2 dance lessons, or 280 trips (with three girls) to the Dollar Store. These are just a few of the things we base our financial decisions on at this point. Based on these calculations, and the fact that we don't want to get violently sick, I guess we will go ahead and deliver the cookies instead of eat them all. Having said that we would like to report our favorite Girl Scout cookies to you all,

• Jeff is a Thin Mint man through-and-through.
• Karen is enamored with the carmel and coconut of Samoas.
• Emma loves her Thin Mints (with Do-si-dos a close second.)
• Mary prefers the peanut butter goodness of Tagalongs.
• Miia sticks with her mom and her Samoas.

What are your favorites?

No more TV

So we gave up our TV. We didn't just decide not to watch it anymore. It is now packed up and put away in a closet, along with all of the electronic boxes and wires that go along with our TV. We decided to do this as an experiment in time management as well as in an effort to improve the spirit and tone in our home. So far the experiment has worked. Aside from a few times when I have missed watching Scrubs or The Simpsons we really have not noticed it being gone. We don't have a big home, so our front room is a family room/living room/sitting room. This has been the same in every home we have lived in since we got married. Our television has always been the focal point in that multipurpose room. This focuses the attention of the room right on the TV. It is not only the focal point in the room but the portal in our home to the outside world. What we watch comes right into our home and influences our thoughts and actions. Although we consciously have tried to avoid overtly immoral programming we had noticed it was increasingly difficult to find anything to watch. We decided to change the focus of our front room, and maybe our home and lives. We rearranged the front room and put the piano in the TV's old space. The girls were initially beside themselves when we told them we were going to put away the TV. How would they survive? They cried. Since the TV has actually left we have heard very little in the way of complaints. Somehow, as children usually do, they find much more imaginative ways to fill thier time. They seem happier and more well behaved, or perhaps we have more patience and love with the TV gone. Either way, our home has been more peaceful and quiet the last couple of weeks.

"Home" for Christmas

Some of our friends who have moved away from Utah have always said that they are going home when they travel back to visit. We have never had mixed feelings about this and feel pretty comfortable saying that our home is in North Carolina. In fact our home is really just anywhere where our little family lives. Having said this we were lucky enough to come to Utah and see many of our friends and family over a two-week vacation this past month. After our visit we decided that our goal each time we return to Utah is to spend time with our family and friends and eat at all of the places we love and miss (like the Spaghetti Factory, The Pie , Maddox's Ranch House , Nielsen's Frozen Custard and Hires.) In the midst of gorging ourselves for two weeks on the above delicacies and great food that both Karen and my mom cooked we did have time to remember what incredible families and friends we have. I wanted to personally thank all of you for the great people that you are and for the wonderful examples you are for us and our girls. We are truly blessed to have you in our lives. Specifically... Rocket and Nana, thank you for taking care of us and allowing us to take over your home. Chris and Angie, thank you for sharing your beautiful children with us and giving our girls cousins they love so much. Trevor and Jamie, thank you for letting me dig up your front yard. Just kidding. Thanks for being so much fun and teaching us great new games. Spencer, thank you for introducing us to Laura. I was so impressed with her and was especially touched by her song on Christmas Eve. I think our little family will not go another Christmas Eve without including some rendition of A poor wayfaring man of grief. Melissa and Brendan, thank you for taking care of about a million kids for us during our party and thank you for doing a beautiful job on our girls hair. Melissa, you really have found a wonderful talent. George and Valera, thank you for spending time with our girls. One of our only regrets after moving so far away is that they are not around you two as much as we would like them to be. Julie and Art, we hope you all had a great holiday and we are sorry we did not get to see your family. Bruce and Carolee, thank you for playing games with us. We love you guys and you are such great examples to us. And Bruce, thanks for helping Karen with my Christmas present. It is beautiful. Craig and Janet, we missed you and want you to know we were thinking of you and hope to see you soon. Ben and Donna, thank you for being you. We are always excited to visit with you and love your spirits. Sean and Shelly, You guys are the best. Thanks for giving us a great date without the girls. Thanks for hosting a busy party at your home. Thanks for being great examples for us. And Shelly, I am not grateful for your passion for spin class as it landed me in spin class and I thought I was going to die. Brian and Katie, Thanks for the tour of your home. You two make a great couple. Grammy and Grandpa, thank you for always being willing to visit with us and to spend time with our girls. As always, you have such great insight into our lives and we love to listen. To all of our friends, we were so happy to spend time with you. We especially appreciated the time we got to spend with the Scotts. You two may be the thing that in the end will push us to migrate back to the Salt Lake Valley. We are very blessed to know all of you and to have your influence in our lives. Once again we hope you all had a Merry Christmas and we wish you a very happy New Year.

Our resident artist

I have been married to Karen now for over 10 years (or a decade as Emma likes to tell people) and rarely does a week go by when I don't learn something new about her. When I called home this week the girls told me that Karen was painting a Nativity scene "stained-glass" window on our house. Of course I thought they were making this up. Sure enough, when I arrived home that night our front window was transformed into a beautiful scene: Joseph leading Mary (and baby Jesus) on the back of the little gray donkey. I was truly amazed. It immediately added a sweet spirit to our home to have the scene brighten our front room. We had a holiday party at our house last night and every person who attended commented on the beauty of the picture. That's my eternal companion!!! We are so grateful this time of year for the birth and life of our Savior. What a blessing it is to have a season to celebrate the gift of His life and to remember His sacrifice. It is so great to have these couple of weeks to examine our lives and re-focus and re-double our efforts to serve Him and to serve those around us.

Our new floor

We persuaded George and Valera to make the trek to North Carolina over the last couple of weeks to visit and to help us lay down ceramic tile in our kitchen and dining room. George and Karen worked sunup to sundown several days to get our floor torn-up, cleaned, glued, tiled, grouted, cleaned again, and sealed. I am grateful for their talents in fixin' things. Our house looks great. The girls loved having their grandparents here. Valera taught Emma to play solitaire on the computer and finished a quilt for Mary. Miia couldn't stop talking about having her "papa" and "grams" here. Everyone (except Jeff) even went out to the Outer Banks for a few days and played on the beach and visited the lighthouses. We had so much fun having the Pypers here and were sad to see them go. Our home is just a little bit nicer because of the hard work and love from our family. Thanks.

Homeschooling

For the past two months we have been carrying out the experiment of homeschooling the girls. Okay, if I am honest, Karen has been carrying out this experiment, and I have been acting the cheerleader. You know, it is amazing the difference we have seen in our girls since starting this school year. Not only have they academically been advancing but more impressively their behavior and the spirit in our home is dramatically different. We have attributed the changes to their better rest (don't have to wake up so early to get to home school), their lack of stress (don't have to come home from school at 3:30 PM and do their homework AND clean their rooms AND have piano practice AND get ready for dance or soccer). Once or twice a week they have class or an activity with other home school kids in the neighborhood. So far their "socialization" has not been stunted by them not being in a classroom with 30 other children every day. All in all we are very happy with how things are going. I think there are days where Karen gets tired and wonders what she has gotten herself into but for the most part we are happy.

A decade with Karen

I have wondered many times in the last ten years how it was possible that I not only found Karen but managed to get her to marry me. This week is our tenth anniversary and I now can no longer remember life without my sweet wife. The best part of it all is that the better I get to know her (and I feel like I learn a little new about her every week) the more I fall in love with her. When we got married I knew I loved her. I did not understand then that I could love her so much more, but I do. Having little girls that all remind me so much of her helps compound that love even more. I hope to make her as happy as she has made me for a long, long time (maybe forever).