Back to California

This trip has kind of flown by. We spent the first week mostly at Gwen's (with a few afternoon trips down to Christa and Christina's houses). Keilana loves "my friend Maysa" and Dylan and Paisley were a good match--pretty close to the same age, both happy and easy. They were really cute together on Gwen's trampoline. Paisley has Todd's eyes, but other than that she just looks like a little brown version of Gwen and her reaction to about 85% of her life when I was there was to giggle. She's a cutie pie.

Keilana was right--Yaya did in fact take her to the Panda movie. Last Saturday, Mom took Gwen and I and our kids to Kung Fu Panda. Its hard to say whether Keilana liked the movie better or the popcorn, but Dylan loved the movie. Not long into it, he moved down to the front row and just sat there staring mesmerized at the screen most of the time.

We went into Missoula with Mom on Monday to get a few things for Grandma's party, and she took the kids to the carousel. They both loved it, but Dylan was rather annoyed that he was too short to reach the stirrups on his horse and refused to get off when the ride was over. We stopped briefly at Dragon's Hollow, where Keilana and Dylan quickly disappeared and would've stayed for hours probably if I had let them. It is pretty cool. I told Mom she should put a park like that in her backyard, since she could fit a play structure that size on her property and still have lots of room. She said she liked the idea, but was pretty sure the boys would burn it down anyway. Quite true, I imagine.

Dylan's favorite activity has been throwing rocks into the creek. The second he gets away, he bolts for the rock path and sits down next to it and starts chucking rocks and clapping for himself. When we first arrived, he wanted to get in the water so I dipped his feet in and after realizing how cold it was, he decided just getting his toes in where it flooded the path was enough. Good thing, too, as its been running really high most of our time here.

Tuesday night was Grandma's party. Mom and I set up tables and chairs the night before and covered them with (what else?) red tablecloths. The idea was to put a bouquet of daisies on each table, so I was supposed to pick the daisies on Tuesday. I saw a whole bunch out by the cemetery on the old highway, so I drove out there and started picking. By myself (but with the decidedly unproductive help of both Keilana and Dylan) it took me 45 minutes to fill up one 5 gallon bucket with daisies. At that point, I thought to myself "This is stupid" and drove back to Christina's. I got her and Daij, Jenna, Azia and Kenzie to help me and in less than half an hour we filled the other bucket much fuller than I'd gotten the other one. And all those kids looked awfully cute out there in the middle of all the daisies.

The party went quite well. Grandma thought that she was coming to my parents' house for a fun little birthday dinner for Michael and I, so at about ten to six, Faye and Larry said, "let's go for a quick drive." So while they had Grandma and Clark out and about, the rest of us made our way up to the church. When Grandma walked in, she was quite surprised as the whole room started singing "Happy Birthday". Mom explained that we did in fact know her birthday was in September, but just decided to celebrate a little early. After dinner, Christa played a movie she had made (it was awesome--its starting to get annoying just how good she is at so many different things). It was pictures of Grandma interspersed with quotes from the personal history she did with Christa a few years ago, all set to music. Towards the end of it, I was almost in tears (I blame raging pregnancy hormones). Then we played a Grandma trivia game that Mom and I had put together. It was so much fun, with the categories of "Children" "Pet Peeves" "Favorites" "Our Favorites" and "Rules". My favorite moment of the game was finding out that John Jay definitely knew that his dad was the one grandma ran over.

The capper for the evening was the rose bouquet. Each of Grandma's children presented her with a white rose, each of her grandchildren with a pink rose, each of her great-grandchildren with a red rose and each of the in-laws with a purplish rose. So by the end of the procession, she had a huge bouquet representing the people she meant so much to. It was pretty cool to see the number of her descendants represented in flowers:)

The last few days we've just been playing and hanging out with Yaya. Yesterday we went out to Dinnells to visit Laura (side note to state the obvious: man! she's tall!). The kids got to feed the miniature horses and Dylan rode Goliath, which he was quite pleased about. At one point he and Hayden rode together, which was hilarious since they are built as opposite as you can get, what with Hayden being so long and skinny, and Dylan sitting up front full of roundness. Laura came back to Mom's with us while Hayden napped, and we all had a yummy lunch at the Malt Shop (at Callie, do you remember the good ol' days?) for my birthday. It was great fun to see Laura and giggle about some good times back in the day and talk about awkward friendships;) I'm afraid we never made it back out to visit again.

But today we did get to do something awfully fun. Mom and Christa and I took Keilana, Dylan, Israel, Azia-Rain, Zoran (who is a pretty mighty hiker for his little size, I must say!) and Lex on a hike to the falls. It would be more accurate to say we went on a walk on the Mission Falls trail, I guess, since we stopped at the first nice clearing after the first real hill to have lunch. But it wasn't a bad place to stop since the view is great and the majority of our hikers were under 5 (and I was pretty wary, still recovering my sprained ankle). It was nice to see the lower falls in all their spring run off glory, a sight I haven't seen in far too long. Dylan really like the falls, and when he and I were standing right in front of them, I asked if he wanted to go swimming (meaning at the dam), he pointed to the falls and said, "Da wawa? No!" Maybe he's smarter than I give him credit for.:)

On the way out we stopped at the dam and went for a swim. I was afraid my little California pool babies might hesitate at the cold, dark water but my fears were apparently unfounded, as they both charged right in. And stayed in. Keilana got cold faster than her brother (but that's true when they're swimming in a backyard pool and its 112* outside), but Dylan stayed in, mostly up to his neck, until the shivering made it difficult to stand up in the water. Then he went back to his favorite activity of rock throwing, getting in a rousing game of Sink the Sock with Zoran and Azia. There was an old sock floating in the water, and the two Laframbois kids started throwing rocks in and Christa joked that they were playing Sink the Sock, a classic reservation game that I can teach my kids. Zoran did indeed succeed in sinking said sock.

So now a visit to "Red Grandma" this evening and we're headed back to the Bakersfield airport tomorrow afternoon. Keilana is excited to go home. The last couple of days she's gotten a bit homesick, telling me at various points, "I want to go home to my orange house" or "I miss my friend Clayton" or "I want to see my daddy". And she reminds me every day that Daddy is taking her to the Wall E movie when we get home. Home again, home again, jiggety jig!!