This weekend my parents, Allison, Courtney, Colby, and Mykel all came to visit us. We have been having a great time with them and there are pictures to show for it. However, before I show you these pictures I need to tell you about my Evelyn. She is amazing and it is fun (and sometimes instructive) to learn how to see the world again through the eyes of a 3-year-old. Here's two quick stories to show you what I mean:

Earlier this week we walked into a room to find Adalie and Evelyn sitting side by side looking at the scriptures. Evelyn was flipping through the pages and "reading" to Addy, who made for a very captive audience. "Look, Addy- It says right here that Jesus loves you. And here, it says that Jesus loves me! And here it says that Jesus loves Daddy!" Then Evelyn put down the book and looked at her sister very seriously. "Do you know that Jesus loves you Addy? He does. He REALLY loves you a lot."

Wow. Here was my sweet little girl who just reminded me of an important lesson- the central theme of the entire gospel is the love of our savior. Every story, every piece of doctrine, and every Sunday school lesson I have ever had can be distilled down to this one essential concept. "He REALLY loves you a lot." Thank you Evelyn for that important reminder.

Okay- next story. Over the weekend Evelyn and I were hiking around the hills by our house with Colby and Mykel. We had all stopped to look at some of the great rock climbing in the area, and suddenly we heard Evelyn calling us very urgently. "Look, look!" she was saying. We turned around and looked down the trail where it led to a little clearing in the trees, but saw nothing else. I asked her what she was seeing and she replied "Look daddy. It's a beautiful place." I looked again and realized that it was indeed a very beautiful place that she was seeing, and I was again taught that we live in a world full of beautiful places if we will only slow down and "look." But the lesson didn't end there. Evelyn turned to me, totally unprompted by anyone, and said "daddy, we need to say a prayer." And then she knelt down and said a very simple 3-year-old prayer thanking our heavenly father for this beautiful place for us to see.

I was seriously near tears. I don't think she knows how insightful she is, but I have learned a lot from being around her. What a lucky daddy I am.

Anyway, we can move on past the "serious" part of this post now and look at some pictures. It has been a great week!

One morning Rachel went to the doctor for a baby check-up and me and Evelyn stayed home and made puppets. I made the mouths and controlled the hot-glue gun; Evelyn was the master planner and designer. I think they turned out pretty good!

This, obviously, is Adalie sitting on a frog. There's not really a story to go with this picture- I just thought it was cute.

Here are the "3 friends." Allison, Adalie, and my dad. It has been fun for everyone having some of my family staying with us.

We went to the Spokane riverfront park and looked at all the booths and rode the carousel. These statues created a photo opportunity that we just had to take advantage of. Courtney looks like she is pretending to push a stroller or something.

And here's Allison and Jackson. I put this in here to point out that Jack is no longer scared of the horses.

This week can be summed up in two words: FUN and STRESSFUL. As for that last word, we'll just pretend it's not there. We'll get to that some other time. As for the fun part, well, read on. This post might be a little bit random with a bunch of disconnected thoughts. Just bear with me.

My highlight of the week was the date I went on with Evelyn. We went to a movie in the park, where they bring out a big screen and the audience lays on the grass and eats popcorn and candy. The best part, however, was just before the movie started. They were working out all the technical stuff with the screen and projector and everything and they just had music going through the speakers. After a while Evelyn seized upon the opportunity and asked me if she could dance. Sure- why not? So she ran up onto the stage in front of over a hundred people and got into her "ready" position just as one song was ending. Then she just held it- still as a lamp-post, until the next song began.

And then she totally amazed me and the rest of her "audience" with her amazing dance moves. That girl can dance! Seriously, I have no idea where she gets it from, but she can just feel the music. She did a total of four songs ranging from a heavy techno to a slow ballad, and each of her dances was unique and perfectly in sync with the tone of the music. I was a very proud daddy as I just listened to the reaction of all the people- it was obvious that they thought she was cute and that they were also pretty impressed. I could literally close my eyes and know exactly when she did something especially cute because of the collective "ooooohs" and "awwwwwws."

She is definitely not scared of the spotlight, that is for sure. In a few weeks she will start up her city-sponsored dance classes and she is very excited to meet her teachers. At the end of the year she gets to do a performance in one of the nicer theatres in the area and she is pretty excited about that as well. I love that girl!

On Saturday we took pretty much the whole day to go to the county fair! We went in the morning and checked out all of the livestock and fruits and vegetables and stuff. As it was getting to be afternoon we went to the carnival area and let Evelyn go on a few of the rides. Also, there was a "family fun" area where all of the kids had fun playing with little toys and games. After nap-time we went back to the fair where we ate dinner while watching the North Idaho Rodeo. It had been quite a while since I had been to a rodeo and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed them. There was one scary part though- at the beginning of the rodeo the entire audience observed a moment of silence for two fallen soldiers from Coeur d'Alene. They decided to do this right in the middle of one of Jack's tantrums for more cookies.

So I sat there with my hand over his mouth for the better part of a minute as he squirmed around in my arms and tried to break free. I was thinking that there must be some other kids in the audience who would make some noise too, but no. It was one of those complete silences that are almost audible because of the intensity. Right toward the end I couldn't hold the squirming Jack any longer, but just as he began a shrill shriek of protest the announcer came back on the loud-speaker and thanked everyone for their reverence. Whew. Disaster averted- I am not a social outcast because of my son- although I'm sure that those who were standing next to me were probably sure I was trying to strangle the poor boy. Oh well. Like Rachel said- We have to at least try- the only other alternative is sitting at home and doing nothing and that's not really an option.

Well, I'm trying to think of other things that happened this week. It seems like the week has been so long. Let's see...Rachel took the kids to the beach...we went to a park...We went to the mall to see what all of our new appliances would have cost us if we had purchased them from the store...yeah, overall it was a pretty good week.

Here are some pictures:

The shade-sitters. I took this from the carousel. Addy totally lit up every time we came around. It was so fun to watch her and it took my mind off the fact that the ride sounded like it was going to collapse on us at any second.

I know we have already published enough pictures of Evelyn on a carousel, but this is definitely one of her favorite things. This particular one was quite an adventure for me as well. I called it the carousel of death. The horse Evelyn is sitting on goes up and down, like a normal horse, but the fun doesn't stop there. It also goes left to right and rotates around the pole. I'm pretty sure that's not supposed to happen.

Jackson loved this game.

Addy was a fan of the snakes. Evelyn was a little more cautious around them. Jackson tried to squish them.

Evelyn just informed me that her tummy hurts because she ate a nickel. Great.

Anyway...

Last week we made the exciting announcement that we had purchased a house. We are very excited about this house. It first went up on the market about 2 months ago, around the time we were moving into our rental. Now, we weren't originally planning on even looking for a house until October since we are locked into a 6-month lease on our rental place, but when we saw this place we decided we had to at least go on a tour, so we called our real-estate agent up and asked if she could show it to us. Unfortunately, she told us that an offer had just been accepted on the home and that it was no longer showing. Bummer, but oh well. Something else would come along.

Fast-forward now to last Friday when our real-estate agent called and left a message on the phone. Financing for the previous buyers had fallen through and the house was available again. Would we be interested? Well, if it was a few months from now then we would definitely be interested. Would the sellers be willing to agree to some terms that would allow us to avoid the need to pay for a mortgage and a rental contract simultaneously? If so then we would like to see the house. Dorene (agent) called us back a little later and told us the sellers were willing to work with us and we could see the house the next day.

On Saturday afternoon we had planned a babysitter anyway so Rachel could take me to a Brazilian place for my birthday, so it was easy to have the sitter come a half-hour earlier so we could see the house. As soon as we saw it we walked in I fell in love with the place. It was large enough to have a lot of visitors over, our family could grow up in it, and it had an amazing back yard. We made an offer the next morning, got approved for the financing that same day, and signed the papers that night. It had been less than 48 hours since we even found out the house was back on the market, and now it was ours.

We've already posted a bunch of pictures of the house earlier this week. Scroll down to see the next post if you want a full tour.

So now I can move on to this week.

There were two exciting things that happened this week. The first was a work party that was hosted by the practice owner at his newly acquired house. This place was nice! over 5,500 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, 5 car garage, a swimming pool, and 5 acres of surrounding woodland with a river running through it. The living room had a super large-screen TV that took up an entire wall. The kitchen had buttons on the sink for hot/cold water, sprite, coke, and "other." The master bathroom had a shower with 12 shower heads, each one being controlled individually for flow pattern, direction, and temperature via an electronic touch pad mounted on the wall. The downstairs had an indoor sauna and hot tub. And here's the clincher- he can control everything, from the air conditioning to the volume on the TV, with a touch of a button on his phone. Again, this place was nice!

But here's the cool part- despite all of this, the only thing Evelyn wanted to do was hike down to see the river. And I was happy to take her. I hope that she stays this way- I guess different families have different priorities, and that is why I could only smile and wave at everyone as they enjoyed the magnificent view from the spacious back deck and slowly got themselves drunk. They left the forest and the river for us to enjoy. And that is okay by me.

The second cool thing we did this week was go to the boat show in Coeur d'Alene. I was excited about this, but not super excited. They were boats. A boat is a boat. Okay- wrong. This was really, really cool. It was actually a wooden boat show, and the boats were beautiful. No, make that gorgeous. Each one had a story of painstaking maintenance and/or restoration behind it, and it was almost as fun to watch the owners as it was to look at the boats themselves. It was obvious that over the thousands of hours that went into the boats the owners had developed an almost emotional relationship with their projects. To watch them instinctively caress the wood as they told the story about how the boat had been passed down for generations, or how they discovered it wrecked up on some old beach, was, for me, nothing short of inspiring. Of course there was also a lot of other commercialized events and exhibits around the place, but I think these stories are what this was really all about. It was a chance for these people to really share a part of themselves with the public through their craftsmanship. Now, I'm not really a boat guy. But you better believe that every year when this event comes around I will have it marked on my calendar.

This was mine and Evelyn's favorite. I missed it in the picture, but the front is pointed making the boat look like a torpedo. I don't think there are any corners or flat surfaces on the whole thing other than the point at the front. It gives it a very streamlined-yet-elegant appearance.

Here's Rachel's favorite. It is sort of like a floating Rolls-Royce. She especially likes the seats in the front and says that they brought back memories for her of sticking her head up in the front of Tiny Dancer (her family's little boat).

And this...is obviously not a wooden boat. This is a $509,000 yacht that Evelyn and I got to tour. Wow. That is all I have to say.

Our New House

Let us take you on a tour

First...The street view
That's pretty huh...Okay, next we'll walk inside. The first door toward the bottom left is the front door- the next one is the garage door. Don't worry, we'll see the garage later. For now, you get to view our lovely living room!

...and another view

Alright. One of the things we like about this place is the open floor plan. From the living room you can easily interact with people in the dining room and kitchen. We also love the nice "partial wall" which will serve well to keep the mess in the kitchen (let's be honest here) hidden from view.

Next, you can see a little close up of the dining room. The sliding glass door goes out to our deck.

...but we'll see the deck a little later. For now, we'll turn around and look at the kitchen! And a beautiful kitchen it is. All of these appliances are new within the past year-an-a-half, as is the beautiful wood floor. What you aren't seeing is the new dishwasher by the sink and tons of cupboard space under the bar.

We had to put this next picture in because about 6 months ago Rachel and I went on a date to Sears (I know- we're real exciting people). While we were there we sort of window shopped for our "dream home appliances." Well, this double oven/flat-top stove/microwave was Rachel's number one pick. I guess it was just meant to be.

This next one is our pantry. That is where we'll keep our food.

So, now we'll take a look downstairs. (There are two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs too. You'll see them later.)

This is our beautiful, HUGE family room. Here is one side of it....

...and here is the other. The sliding glass doors go to the back yard.

Oh- We also have an electric fireplace/heater thing.

This next thing is kind-of a cool/unique feature of this home. This is the closet under the stairs. It is a normal closet, but then there is this little door (where Evelyn is walking through).

This place was obviously meant for more storage- but it wouldn't take much to make an awesome "secret hide out." The little nook to Evelyn's right will be built-in book shelves.

Okay, now we'll show you the bedrooms...at least one of them. They all look pretty much the same. There's four in all- two upstairs and two downstars.

And next you will see a bathroom. The other one is pretty much an exact replica.

So that's the house. Now we'll move on to my favorite part- the outside! First, we'll go back upstairs and out the sliding glass doors (remember the ones in the dining room).

...and we find ourselves standing on our deck.

The deck has a beautiful view. I could sit out here every night and watch the sun go down over these mountains (which are a lot closer for some reason in real life). The nice thing is that we live on a hill, so this view isn't going anywhere.

Anyway, if we turn around on the deck, we can also look down and see the backyard. The structure on the left is my man-cave. We'll see that later too.

We have a lot of plans for this back yard. If you go down the deck and turn around then you can see the back of the house...

Along with the covered patio and fire pit.

The gravel area is the driveway for my man cave. We hope to build a little play house/fort underneath the deck. Also, if you'll remember, the sliding doors that you can see lead into the family room. There is also a little built-in tool shed behind the BBQ (you can see the door if you look closely).

This view shows the back of "The Cave" and will one day be a lush, green garden, complete with the white picket fence to keep out the kids. This area actually gets sun nearly all day long despite the large wall right next to it.

Okay- now we'll look at MY playground.

So, obviously the current owners are using it for some storage before they move out. Just know that there are great plans in the making.

...Another view, this time looking out toward the front.

And this lovely little area will be perfect for my at-home climbing wall (I already have the holds for it too). I am so excited.

I know that most of you are probably getting tired of looking at unfinished wood. Well, I am the one writing this blog, so I get to show what's important to me (if Rachel was doing it then I'm sure you would get a much more intimate view of our kitchen). Anyway, this is our garage. It's big- there's lots of storage- and I like it.

Well, that about wraps up the tour. We brought the kids to see the place today and they love it. Evelyn said her favorite part is the backyard. Also, I had to put this picture up so that I could point out Rachel's posture- it looks like she's been taking lessons from Grandpa!

Okay...It's been an awesome week. Like, really awesome. The coolest part? We bought a house! Yep, you read that right. We are now "home owners."

But that's all I'm going to say about it for now.

I know, it's a little bit mean of me to throw that out there with no follow-up- sort of like laughing at an inside joke without letting other people in on it. But it is what it is. Come back in a few days and I'll have pictures up and everything. For now, however, I want to focus on the rest of the week. It really was a great week and I don't want it to be overshadowed by the whole "house thing".

So, now that I've taken care of that...

On Wednesday I think we found Evelyn's new favorite place. It is a great park in Spokane and it has a CAROUSEL! For those of you who haven't heard yet, Evelyn loves carousels. She was introduced to them at my parent's home in Rexburg and since that time the whole idea has become an obsession to her.

On Friday I had a very active day. If you read the blog last week then you know I am "training" (in a non-commital sort of way) for an ironman race. Really, I think I like the idea of doing an ironman more than the actual thing. Anyway, I woke up and decided to push myself a little bit. I ran 7 miles, ended at the river, and immediately did a 1 mile swim. The run was fine. I am a good runner. The problem, however, is that I think I almost drowned. Well, not really, but anyone who was watching me flail around in the water probably would have thought that. Obviously I have some work to do.

Later that day we went to the beach again with the whole family. It was a different beach that we havn't been to yet and it worked out great for everyone. I was a little self-concious at first, because it was "park day," a social thing for the moms in our ward to get out of the house with their little kids. Rachel convinced me to go and I ended up being the only adult male on the entire beach. It was actually a lot of fun once I got over the fact that I was the only person without a shirt on (don't get me wrong- that is a good thing), and I got to play with the kids a bunch while Rachel socialized with her little group.

That night, for dinner, we went to another cool park that we just sort of stumbled upon while driving around one day. It was seriously one of the coolest play structures I have seen. I can best discribe it as "McDonald's playland on steroids." The kids liked it.

Saturday was pretty much consumed by "house stuff." Again, come back later this week and I'll write more about that.

Sunday was my birthday! I am 29 years old. That's old. For my birthday Rachel helped the kids put together a surprise party for me. Evelyn planned out the games and picked out all the party favors. And even though I'm not really "into" Tinkerbell and jewelry, I had a lot of fun. Evelyn in a great planner and executer. She totally took charge of the party and directed the whole thing.

I am a very happy daddy tonight :)

Tinkerbell cupcakes, party hats, and candy jewelry. Evelyn was very excited about this party that she planned and it was totally contageous. We had a great time!

Evelyn and Jackson totally bonded at the park. They ran around and played with each other for a long time. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see my kids interacting like this. Also, it means that Rachel and I got to just sit on the grass and talk!

Addy was more interested in the food than the play. She sat alone at the picnic table and finished eating all of the Cheetos and hot-dogs that were left over after our BBQ.

Oh- I forgot to write about this. We went to the "Pie Festival" on Saturday. It was like a farmer's market, and they sold pies (among other things), and we got some good pastries and cookies.

Here's just a short video that we took at the park.

We had beautiful weather all week this week, and the forecast is showing even better next week! The highs are around the upper 80's (although one day we did get into the mid-nineties) and the sunshine is plentiful.

So what did we do? We went camping, of course! Actually, it has been a while since we camped because we have been intimidated by the prospect of 3 kids (but mostly just Jackson) in the wild outdoors with no retaining walls for an extended period of time. You put that boy outside and he just goes crazy! Don't get me wrong, I think it is a very good thing. I am very proud of his adventurous little spirit, but it makes it difficult to watch the other two when our attention is constantly being drawn away by the one.

Anyway, we finally did get out. We went into the National Forest and just sort of drove around the un-paved forest-service roads until we found a spot with a fire ring that looked nice. By the time we got there it was already getting late, but up here the sun doesn't go down until about eleven so we had plenty of time to pitch the tent and explore the area and eat dinner and roast marshmallows before bedtime. It was a lot of fun.

That night, on the other hand, was not so much fun.

I think this is the worst night they have ever had. Ever. Evelyn did great. She slept with Rachel and me in a separate tent. Addy and Jack, on the other hand, were not happy campers. From the time we put them to bed until the time we woke them up there was only an hour-and-a-half that they were both sleeping. The rest of the time at least one of them was screaming- and I do mean SCREAMING- so that it was impossible to get any sleep. In the morning they were cranky and touchy and grumpy. We had breakfast which calmed them down a little bit, but then we left for home not too much later so that they could get some much-needed sleep.

But it was worth it. We will definitely go camping a lot and hope that they just get used to it. I think that maybe they were just scared by the unfamiliar surroundings. That will change and things will get better. I hope. Because Rachel and I love camping, and we're not going to stop, but if things don't get better then we might all end up needing to be institutionalized.

All right

I also have an announcement to make. Are you ready? I am considering doing something that is crazy, and that some would argue passes the line into stupidity.

Every year up here there is a big Ironman contest. You know, one of those triathlon things. It consists of a 2.5 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, and ended by a 26.2 mile run. It sounds horrible. Actually, it sounds like self-imposed torture. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that. These are the kinds of things that POWs come home from and write books about (okay, that's probably going a bit too far), but the concept is not too far off in my mind. I would ruthlessly mock all those who would even consider that such a thing might be worth doing, but the problem is that there is this small part of me that is drawn- sort of like a moth is drawn to a bug-zapper.

I think the analogy is accurate in more ways in one, but still, if I don't do it then there will always be this question in the back of my mind about whether or not I even could. And I guess that is the allure. This is one of those things you do so that you can prove to yourself that you can. Also, although I hate endurance sports, I always somehow find joy in the pain that is associated with them. It's weird, but I do, and apparently so do a lot of other people (the fact of which is the only piece of convincing evidence that I am not some sort of psychopathic masochist).

Anyway, I have decided that this is a goal I want to pursue. It would be at least a year away, so I have time to train and to learn how to really swim as opposed to just staying afloat (something I am very good at). The prospect intimidates me, and I am still not 100% convinced that I want to give it a go, but I figured that if I posted it up here then it would take me that much farther into the commitment. Also, if I don't end up doing it then I can look back and read this when I get old and feel deep twinges of regret of a missed opportunity.

So...That's that.

Oh- One more exciting thing happened this week also. We got our first ultrasound. We are happy (so very happy) to announce that we are having ONE healthy baby.

We don't know anything else about it yet other than that it is about the size of an avocado pit.

Okay, the rest of these pictures are in reverse-chronological order, so it would be best to scroll down to the very bottom and then work your way up. I am way too tired of this blog right now to care enough to change it.

On the way home- can you tell that nobody got any sleep?

Breakfast.

Yeah- they were tired.

Addy-our girly girl. I didn't bring the brush. Rachel didn't bring the brush. But somehow we found Addy brushing her hair first thing in the morning.

Good morning!

Time to wake up.

The best part of camping for Evelyn was that we allowed her to eat as many roasted marshmallows as she wanted. Yes, we are bribing our children to enjoy the same activities that we do.

Dinner time! Come get it while it is hot!

Our cute little Addy girl...before she went to bed.

Here's a video of Evelyn after we had already put AddyJack down for bed.