Cousins are Cousins

(disclaimer: since discovering that we can print out our blog on blurb.com and make it into a book and it's super easy since it slurps it all off your blog for you, I have started making our blog entries longer since I will eventually be making this into a sort of family history log/journal so feel free to skip the excess writing and over-abundance of pictures- they're for me someday and my book and you're welcome to enjoy them now or skip over them. Sorry just don't want to have to go back and do more work if I can do it now.)

Taylor comes from a huge line of Woodbury's (thanks in part to polygamy in the 1800's) and there are benefits and drawbacks to a family that large. The good side is that there is always someone there if you need help. The bad side is that there are so many of them that I can't remember who is a third cousin, who is a great this or that, or who is a once-removed something or other. So I've taken to calling everyone a "Utah cousin". I'm sure that's very politically incorrect but much easier to say and remember. Especially now that we're trying to explain things to Ethan. Everyone is just his "cousin". At first he was very confused. We went over to play at one of Taylor's first cousin's houses (what does that make her kids to Ethan- 2nd cousins I think) and I told him we were going to visit his cousins. He actually started crying when we got out and they weren't his actual cousins from my side that he remembers from New York and Ohio. Since then we've had over Taylor's grandfather's brother's granddaughter's kid to play. You get the picture- EVERYONE IS A COUSIN and we're all just happier that way.

So last weekend Taylor's mom's sisters and their families came in town for a big Servoss family reunion (not nearly as big since total that's only 2 sisters and their husbands and 6 kids altogether)but they got to be Ethan's "cousins" none the less. And he fell instantly in love with them.
Can you blame him? They played guitar hero with him and let him pick the songs and only quietly laughed at his singing and dancing (which is cute now for a 4 year old but will someday soon earn him 3 XXX's on America's got Talent). And he will tell you (since he told each and every cousin that showed up) that his favorite song is "Iiii wanna wock-n-woll all niiight in pardy everee day". L to R: Isaac, Aunt Linda, Tonya, Ethan and Julia

Isaac was funny. He instantly fell in love with Julia and begged to be picked up and carried around by her. He's never done that with anyone else so it really made us laugh.

Just had to include this picture of Isaac trying to eat his first popsicle. He was very confused by the stick and kept trying to pull it off. Of course once he did it was too cold to hold onto and not so fun to eat. Nice and messy though so gratefully I have a washer nearby.

On Saturday there was a chalk art festival at Gateway mall so we braved the occasional rain and went down. Amazing isn't it? Seriously that's a sidewalk with chalk on it.

Here's Ethan's favorite- Mickey Mouse although sadly covered up by plastic because of the rain.

And this is my favorite. I love Where the Wild Things Are.

As part of the free festival they had all sorts of games and activities set up. Here they're trying to sell you on buying these tennis courts for your backyard which we obviously didn't buy but Ethan had a blast playing. He seriously picked it right up.

Okay so you see how crazy his swing is and truth be told he totally whacked the lady next to him that was helping him but that's what you get for giving a 4 year old a racket and a ball and then not standing 10 feet away. I think it's the golf in his blood coming out. He certainly follows through on his swing.

Poor Isaac was not allowed out of the stroller since there were lots of crowds (he's too fast and I'm getting too pregnant). But he enjoyed the french fries, especially once I let him hold the box and he could feed himself.

Too cute to not post. Seriously- Ethan will thank me in 10 years that I included his cheesy grin in our blog book.

While Isaac fell in love with Julia, Ethan fell in love with Sofia. She turned 9 while she was here and Ethan thought she was the coolest person on the planet. He followed her around like a puppy dog and she was kind enough to let him and even play with him. On the last night she was sitting next to him at dinner and after 20 minutes she got up and went and sat by her mom and I heard her whisper "he just keeps asking questions and I'm tired". Welcome to my life child. Welcome to Mr. Curiosity.

It rained (poured actually) almost all of Saturday and Sunday and finally cleared that evening. So when the cousins went out to play in the backyard, Ethan and Isaac couldn't wait to tag along. Russell was patient with Ethan even though the concept of "freeze" was lost on him during freeze tag.

Isabella was cute. She followed Isaac around all weekend even though he was following Julia around. She was such a good babysitter that I got to sit and eat and chat with the adults instead of having to follow him around.

Freeze tag. L to R: Russell, Isaac, Ethan, Oscar, Julia, Isabella, Tonya.

It was a great weekend and Ethan is still asking where his "cousins" went. Luckily- he has hundreds of other "cousins" right here in Salt Lake that he hasn't even met yet!

Free things in Utah

I will admit we were spoiled in DC where all of your tax dollars paid for our free trips to a ton of amazing museums. Thank you again. We enjoyed them and will miss them. So in my quest to be frugal and since for the first time in our married lives we're balancing utility bills into the mix of expenses, I went searching for free or at least discounted activities around Salt Lake and found quite a few.
So if you're ever in Salt Lake, the Natural History museum is free every 1st Monday of each month and the Tracy Aviary and Ogden Dinosaur Park are free every 1st Thursday of each month. For June we tried out the Aviary. Ethan was very confused where all the elephants and tigers were and not quite satisfied with a trip to just see birds.
He was however very happy to sing me the Kookaburra song when I told him that's what these birds are.

Isaac was happy that the park was very empty and I let him out to run a lot.

See, he won't even turn around to smile for the camera.

And of course his favorite part was that random peacocks were running around the park and he could chase them. In fairness, he would only get within 15 feet of them and then stop when they'd caw and puff their feathers out. Apparently that's scary to a 18 month old.

And Ethan's favorite part was watching the vulture rip apart (literally) the small, white rabbit that he was given for his dinner. Fun! Gotta love boys!

And isn't it ironic...

Guess who turns 18 months today?!? And since we're playing the guessing game... can you guess what Taylor and I got as church callings last Sunday?!? Just 1 week before Isaac is legal in Nursery? Here's a hint, I would have LOVED this calling 8 months ago when Isaac started walking and I started walking the halls of church. Can you guess? NURSERY! So it appears Isaac will be one child who doesn't have to deal with being left at the door in tears. Actually we've been leaving him the past few weeks and he's been happy to say goodbye- figuratively of course- he still won't say bye and refuses to wave too although we know he knows how because he occasionally waves to strangers and will sometimes say bye to them as well. He just won't do it when prompted. Crazy child.

I'm actually really excited about the calling. Right now we're only on rotation for every 3 weeks and the bishop is hoping to call one more couple so it would only be once a month. That means I can still attend Relief Society and Sunday School but get a legitimate break every few weeks. Taylor was hoping for callings in an organization so we could get to know more people but I'm happy to take easy callings while life is still so busy with work, moving in (still), and the BAR.

This was really supposed to be a post about Isaac and his milestones but that will have to wait for another day.

Happy Half-Birthday though! We love you!

Ethan the Soccer Player

I think several of our blog readers have already heard my ramblings for why I put Ethan in 2 separate Soccer activities this summer, but for the sake of journal keeping I'll tell you again. Last summer was the first time that Ethan participated in any kind of organized sport. He played in a month-long league for 3 and 4 year olds. He was just barely 3 so often he was out-sized and out-skilled by his teammates and the other team. He loved it though- at least for the beginning of the season. There were no practices- just games and he was happy to just go out there and kick the ball (lots of the other little kids were entertaining to watch though because they prefered picking flowers or kicking the ball out of bounds instead of trying to score). But by the end of the month, lots of the other teams had chosen a goalie so where Ethan was able to easily score in the beginning on a basically empty goal, by the end, someone was stopping his ball- with their hands no less which greatly offended Ethan since he had been told not to use his hands. His 3 year old mind just could not wrap itself around someone being "mean" and using their hands to block his goals as being a legitimate part of the game and so he often melted down into tears and screams. He does have a bit of the Kitchen competitive streak in him and I will admit he gets being a bad sport from my side of the family.
So this summer, I was hesitant to put him back into the same league, already imagining the tantrums and tears only this time from a much bigger 4 year old. When I found a league that was "practice only" I jumped on it. So Ethan has been going to weekly soccer practices for the last 3 weeks. And he LOVES it! No tears, no melt-downs. And anytime he's started to tell me that he "beat" this kid or that he kicked it better than "that kid", I've been able to emphasize that this is about having fun and sharing- not about winning. Ethan is in the green shirt above waiting his turn to practice dribbling the ball.

It's also been a good class for him to work on skills. He's now much better at dribbling the ball, stopping it with his feet, and using his left foot.

Here he's in orange standing in front of his coach as he explains their next drill. So after 3 weeks of focusing on soccer being fun instead of all about winning, I was interested to see how his first game in the other league would go.

Taylor was very happy that his jersey this year is not blue so they can't be the Bluejays (he thought that was too sissy of a name last year). This year Ethan is lime green so the suggested team names so far are the green machine, Criptonite, or Slime. Ethan's on the left with some of his little teammates and a father who stepped in to be coach.

I have to admit I like his team this year much better. The parents seem to be more involved and were standing on the field or at the goal box to help coach the kids. They even went and took the kids off the field when it was someone else's turn to sub in.

I'll try to videotape parts of his next game so you can see just how excited Ethan is. He literally spent half the game doing his "excited dance" as I call it and the other half running full speed ahead. (His excited dance consists if him bouncing up and down and switching legs front to back).

On the very first posession he kicked the ball right down and scored a goal and then came running back past us with the cheesiest grin and a big thumbs up for us. It helps to be 4 and bigger than the other kids. A few possessions later when he did the same thing his coach kindly pulled him back to be the goalie which I think was wonderful. It let him play another role and let the other kids have a turn.

At one point near the beginning of the game, the ball went out of bounds and so they needed to throw it in. The little high school ref (red shirt guy) tried explaining it to Ethan by saying "throw it over your head", so Ethan stood at the line, and threw it backwards over his head and out of bounds again. He did this several times before the other kids got impatient enough to just kick it back inbounds. Oh well, he'll figure out the finer points of soccer later. Very entertaining though but sadly I wasn't quick enough with the camera.

At one point when he was brought back to be the goalie, another kid tried to join him in the goal and Ethan physically "helped" him out of the goal. Hopefully he'll like taking his turn in each position as the month goes on. Overall it was a fun game. Lots of crazy kid antics to watch including one child who prefered running figure 8's around the cones instead of playing and another little girl who didn't want to play and stood and cried on the field for 5 minutes refusing to move. There was one almost meltdown from Ethan where the tears started but at least not the screaming. Apparently another teammate had kicked the ball away from him (not that he hadn't done that several times already to others himself) so we've still got plenty to work on.

Taylor's mom's sisters and kids were all in town for a reunion this weekend so they came and watched the game. Here they are doing a "tunnel" for the kids.

And this is Ethan running back after his last goal. Can you guess how many he scored??? He'd tell you it was the "perfect" game because he's 4 years old and he scored 4 goals. Go Ethan! On a funny side note- do you see how baggy his little shorts are? Although he is fully 4, he still can only wear 24 month shorts and even those often fall off his skinny, little bum. So even though we had the drawstring pulled as tight as it would go and even though we adjusted it several times during the game, he spent most of the game running up and down the field with one hand holding up his shorts.

Joyschool Graduation

If you're not Tiana, Jacky, or Gina you should take another look at that photo. I admit I had to, and then I nearly fell off the chair laughing. Sadly, since we moved the end of April, Ethan missed the last month and a half of Joyschool and he missed his graduation. But since those 3 moms are such amazing ladies and such wonderful friends, they went to all the trouble of creating an "Ethan cutout" so that he could vicariously attend graduation.
It makes me almost cry thinking of all the wonderful times Ethan had in each of their homes. He truly loved Ches, Elise, and Mark and I couldn't think of 4 better kids to have had together. They were all such individuals and yet blended so well and really loved each other. I loved having them in my home and loved sharing in their joy of life and learning. The realization of how perfect that preschool experience was for Ethan has really sunk in lately as I've been checking out various preschools around Salt Lake. We live in a fairly affluent neighborhood and there's no one interested in doing a playgroup and definitely not in doing Joyschool. They're all willing to shell out the cash to send their kids to preschool. It seems we'll be doing the same and the more I've been looking, the more I appreciate how wonderful it was for Ethan to never have been bullied at Joyschool, to always have been treated kindly by his teachers who I believe truly loved him and were always so patient with him and his little idiosyncracies. He was always so excited to go to Joyschool and so excited to tell me all the fun things they'd done that day. I hope I can find a group like that for Isaac someday.

Joyschool was truly such a blessing and that's due in large part to the 3 wonderful women who shared their time, homes, children, and love with us. Thank you again Tiana, Jacky, and Gina. We will always have fond memories of Joyschool and I will always be grateful for the wonderful and joyful beginning it gave Ethan.

Enjoying Photoshop

Sunday naps are the devil.

You always think a Sunday nap is your friend, but it always comes back to bite you. You either feel crappy all Sunday night, or have trouble making it through Monday.

While Sar and kids take Sunday naps, I've taken to doing photoshop tutorials to keep myself awake and engaged. I love photoshop and aspire to be really good at it one day.

The first is a friend of Ethan's at his birthday party.

I used this picture from the internet of a woman dancing to create the next one.