My (soon to be) Checkered Past

To ease the sting of the move I have started to list the things I definitely will not miss about DC. For sure the yappy dog next door and the constantly sick kids from a sweaty germ-land of a big city are top on my list that I will not be sad to say goodbye too. But top of the other list of sure-going-to-miss is the front hall of our three door house. Black and white tiles were the first things that caught my eye on my first visit here. Luckily I just happened to have this black and white diamond rug that I was saving for a rainy day ... say, in the form of a 1903 row house. I will always have this image of kids running through the front door into the house.

Speaking of rainy days, it's monsoon season in DC and the kids danced out to catch some nice acid rain on their little tongues while absorbing flaking lead paint through their wee bare feet. Tender. (This is how I am talking my self out of loving DC.) I love ... uh, I mean hate this city.

Listen to what Liz is up to.

Liz Davis-Maxfield (age 20) is in Boston studying music. Click on the arrow to hear what she put together for Berklee School of Music scholarship applications. Andrew provides the jazzy accompaniment. You can catch Liz live with sister Katie at the DC temple on Friday, August 10th or in Orem on Friday, August 24th at the Noni Building. Both gigs start at 7:00. (Is that right, Marco?) Click here to listen to more tunes off old albums.

p.s. Liz, does this tune have a name yet?

Ohhh-HIO

So, several important points are the subject of tonight's post ...

1. After a thorough check-up at comp-usa, the doctor recommended a total lobotomy for my laptop. They swiped it clean (I had a back-up of everything) and reloaded. I feel like I am hanging out with a faster version of an old friend who has no memory of any conversations we have had in the past. After a little couple's therapy, I think my presario and I will be fine.

2. Katie has ONE p-day left to read any emails. That's right folks. If you just haven't around to writing her while she was diligently serving the Lord, you have approximately 12 hours (give or take a time zone or two) in which to lend your support toward bring souls to Christ. Send fan mail to tesserkate@gmail.com.

3. I finished Harry Potter and stopped ignoring my children and the rest of humanity. (I have a friend who is a NASA physicist who told me she read the whole thing a work in three days while prepping for the up coming Mars launch. Hmmmm. This isn't a manned mission is it, Holly?) Katie says she is going to read it on the way home from South Africa. That would be a great way to spend 21 hours after 18 months of hard work.

4. The powers that be decided that the week Harry Potter 7 was released would be the perfect time for a family reunion. Thirty-five Davises gathered together in Ohio and TOTALLY IGNORED EACH OTHER! "Yeah, great to see you, cousin, now go away so I can finish this chapter!" We spent some time in Amish country but I was too possessed by a horcrux in the form of a 759 page book to take but just a few pictures.

Here is a cousin dog pile on Steven who has the best freakin' Mormon fro since Eldridge Cleaver. He was a great sport and Xanny's genetic twin (minus the fro, darn it.) Below is one of my most beloved brother-in-laws, Jeffy (I have 7 to choose from), wearing a classic politically-correct tee shirt. He's a great cook.

My children in "action" with a couple of gentle giant cousins. Noah is wondering how he ended up with a sleeping baby and Steven raises the bar for Xan over stimulation. Thanks, guys.

"Cousin-Cam" catches small, medium and large layers of Davis boys.

Oh, Annie. (She's a tennis pro and general rock-star. Her sister, Liza, is headed to the MTC this week to learn a little Russian. Good luck, Liza!)

Now we are back in DC and I love this little house. We will spend the week being tourist, getting ready for the return of Sister Davis (saturday) and packing up for that sad day when we have to bid farewell to Capital Hill.

Sunday in Logan

Last Sunday we saddled on up to Logan to look for houses for Katie and to check in on Kim's bees. (OK, they are Kim's brother's bees and I know Kim could never let me get away with calling them her bee boxes.) It was also the prime apricot day in North Logan. We grabbed Kim and headed up to Smithfield to see Emily and her kids and her barn. Jealous. I want a barn.

Here are Xanny and Isaac enjoying some snackies.

Good bye, Utah. Next stop OHIO.

Goodbye Colorado

On the way out of town we stopped at my favorite field of wildflowers. Little did I know the field was actually a SWAMP! The boys loved it and just ran as far as they could because they quickly realized I wasn't going in after them. You can see all dead brown trees in the back ground. The Pine bark Beetle is killing everything in sight. It is very sad but still strangely beautiful. My dad has cut down well over 1000 trees on our place alone. It is all a product of global warming because it would take seven days of 40 below weather to kill them all off and it just doesn't get that cold anymore.

Xan insisted on posting this shot of his muddy bum. He is such a boy! Below you can see the dazed and confused look on the faces of road weary children. We pulled into my mom's house around 3:00 am after finding every hotel room on I-40 booked. It was probably better the boys slept all the way home. Let's just say Ari has much better taste in music and movies but Xan, none the less, persevered in his really bad sing of John Mellancamp. (Xan: "I was four in the USA, four and three quarters in the USA" Ari: "Mom, make him stop singing that really bad song!" Xan: "I was four almost five in the USA, bored in the USA!" Ari: "I can't live with this anymore! Make it STOP!")



Editor's note: My computer has a worm or some sort of evil weasel. I don't know what is more frustrating -- how slow it is working or that someone is using me to support their money laundering. Not to mention I have several HUGE family events coming up in the coming weeks that need to be blogged about. Any way, I am taking it in today but who knows how long it will be before I am up and running at a normal speed again. Oh, what I would give for a little in house tech support. Wish me luck and pray for our little compaq.

Colorado - part 2

What is it about boys and fishing. Ari (above) and Xan (far below) could have spent all day and all night fishing. Is it something primordial? Is it a survival skill reflex left over from caveman days? Who cares - it kept boys busy without mom's having to sing and dance all evening. Xanny has a very zealous casting style but the Barbie fishing pole kept up with him. Look at his official "I am a boy and I love to FISH!" smile. Below is Nico who looks like an angel here but is much more of a Naughty Fox.

Acting out the Three Little Bears on the porch of a little cabin in the woods. These three decided to skip the porridge and went straight for the stale marshmallows they found on the kitchen table. I had to leave a note for the real cabin owners that Goldilocks has gone 21st century and opted for marshmallows.

This is just before Ari thought it was a good idea to run over to the moose and take it for a joy ride. Whitney retaliated and stalked the moose with her camera. (She got the really good shots, which isn't very surprising considering her ability to turn straw to gold.) Hopefully she will posts her pictures soon on her own blog.

"If You Give a Kid a Moose" Tour - Colorado '07

This is the story ...

1 mini van (special thanks to the Andersens)
2 moms (Whitney & Andi)
4 very small children (Ari & Xan- 4, Nico & Nina - 2)
and 973 miles of the open road. (Route 40 to Grandlake CO)

You remember my disaster of a Friday the 13th last week? In a desperate attempt to change my luck, on a whim I called my longtime friend and hero, Whitney Bushman.

Andi -"Hey, what 'cha doing this weekend? Want to do something insane and drive to Colorado with me tonight? You know, 10 hours each way with screaming kids. Are you in?"

Whitney - "Wow, I thought road tripping was something I gave up with being single. Of course I'm in."

Andi - "Great, I'll be at your house at 7:00 pm and we will drive all night and gossip while the kids sleep. What could be better?"

Whitney - "That's in 10 hours, Andi. And I have to work all day. Sounds great ... um, I think I am going to have a heart attack."

Luckily, we didn't have to drive all night because my really nice dad called ahead and got us the very last room in Craig CO complete with continental breakfast. After leaving Whitney's house we realized two things. First, the car converter for the DVD player didn't work and second, the four little whippersnappers were far from being sleepy. The were as excited at the thought of a road trip as we were. They were great but the ride over was somewhat a kin to getting a tooth pulled with out Novocaine. Thank goodness Whitney and I have exactly the same mothering style. Basically if there wasn't any blood involved, why intervene in the natural development of a young mind.

We pulled into the hotel parking lot at 1:00 am and schlepped our little sleeping bundles up two flights of stairs where we all collapsed in a heap of bodies and blankets. My mom always said that co-sleeping with babies is like sleeping in a washing machine. Imagine sleeping with FOUR of them. These are some well traveled tots and no strangers to hotel life. Here they all are far too early the next morning with Ari making his own "Boys Don't Cry" music video with the flicker camera. (Ari is the hippest kid I have ever met. He can sing ALL of the Cure's songs and will sing them for Nico when he is upset until he stops crying. Now that is brotherly love.) Next you have breakfast in bed a'la Best Western. Mmmm, ripe bananas and two year olds. Maybe I should have left a tip for the cleaning lady.

But the trip there was definitely only half the fun. This is the view from the front of the cabin. These are twin moose yearling calves and an osprey bird of prey swooping in across the meadow from a recent fishing trip. Ari nearly got trampled by the momma moose for trying to get too close to her babies. She was 15 feet away from him and staring him down with her ears pinned back. I would have taken a picture but I was busy saving his life. Later when Whitney asked him why he was running towards the moose, Ari explained that he wanted to ride them. If you give a kid a moose - he will want to ride him.

(p.s. It's nice to be back online again and I promise more Colorado pics soon.)

Andi In Colorado, Marco in Boston (With New Pictures)

This is Marco filling in for Andi, who is in Colorado enjoying the moose, and the elk, and the clear mountain air. Here's a picture of a neighborhood elk, just outside their cabin in Grand Lake.

(Actually this photo is from a previous visit, but you get the idea. No doubt MANY more pictures will soon be joining this blog....!) The only slight damper to Andi's enjoyment of Heaven-in-Colorado is that there's no internet connection at the cabin, so she made me promise to post.

Luckily, I had a little adventure this weekend. I went to Boston to visit Liz and Andrew for a couple of days.

We went first to a funny Museum in Lexington, "the first shot of the revolution". Liz had seen it on her way to the Music School where she has been teaching. It was advertised as a free revolutionary war museum, and it was that, but it also was a museum about the Masons. Very interesting, kind of a proselyting-visitor center like museum, how noble and virtuous and patriotic the Masons are. It even had a little bit about Nauvoo and Joseph Smith. It also had an amazing collection of old quilts, and some funny clocks made by an old clockmaker. Anyway, it was interesting and strange.

Then, we went out to Walden Pond. OK, I was all ready to commune peacefully in the primeval woods with the transcendentalists... but the parking lot with the 2000 cars was our first clue. The pond is now a Very Popular Beach -- hundreds of people in the water, crowding the beach and trails, picnickers all over. It was pretty chaotic.



But we wandered away from the crowds and finally (maybe a mile a way) found the "home site" where HD Thoreau lived during his Roughing It experiment. And that was in fact a peaceful place. And a very nice hike in the woods.

And from there we went up to Liz's gig, which was supposedly a Rock and Roll festival in a town called Tewksbury about an hour north of Boston. They ultimately put up a schedule that would have had Liz's band playing about 7pm... but by then it was looking pretty clear that this was going to be bands playing for bands with no audience, and so we persuaded the organizer to let Liz's band go first. They were great, well loved by the other bands. The band's front man is Will Knox, a guitar/vocalist guy (from London, very charming), plus string bass, banjo, and cello. Very eclectic -- kind of folk-rock.



We then drove down to Cambridge and crashed a ward party where the Kooimans from our Capitol Hill ward just moved. Hi Indy! Xanny misses you!

Here's Liz and Andrew's apartment, off Mass Ave in downtown Boston. They're right by Fenway Park, though they admit to not having gone to see the Red Sox yet. Their apartment gets two of those windows, on the 3rd floor....


And exactly right across the street is Liz's school: Berklee College of Music. Where she's a star, of course.


Here's Liz, enjoying some chinese takeout just before the concert.


Stay tuned for Andi's Report from Grand Lake!

Friday the 13th, anyone?

Did anyone else have a Friday the 13th day?

I had a great field trip planned to SLC museums when the tire went flat, the 4 year old lost his shoes (somewhere in route to SLC), the CAMERA BATTERY DIED (the worst part of the day!) , we got a parking ticket and the 2 year old peed all over her new butterfly tutu -- in the middle of the museum. I finally just gave in and came home vowing not to leave the house until after mid-night tonight. By then the camera will be up and running and the tutu restored to its original state. Hmmm, a midnight fieldtrip ... we haven't tried that!

Water and Wind

In my folks "back yard" runs the Fort Canyon stream. Even when it is 100 degrees the run-off water is chilly and just the perfect thing for kids. We spent the afternoon digging oceans and floating Pooh Sticks.

Finally the heat broke with one of those "evaporated storms", unique to the desert. You see the clouds and feel wind but all the rain evaporates long before making it to the ground. Xanny learned the hard lesson why one does not pee into the wind. (Boys!)

Paul is the BEST friend EVER in the WHOLE world!