Last week was a blur, and I apologize if I missed any promises I made to you (I know I did forget a church duty I signed up for and probably a list of other things). It was with such a great shock that on Monday we received terrible news about the loss of a great friend, Ryan Arnold. Ryan committed the greatest act one can do in his life, giving up his own for another. Ryan’s older brother, Chad had been diagnosed with a fatal liver disease and was told he needed a liver transplant in order to survive. Ryan and his other immediate family members were tested to see if any of their livers were a match. Ryan turned out to be the best match, and Ryan didn’t hesitate for one minute to do what it took to save his brother’s life. The surgery was scheduled not long after. Ryan and his wife Shannon traveled to Colorado for the surgery which was scheduled last Thursday. Both men got through the surgery as planned and even showed positive progress the couple of days following. However, for some reason Ryan took a turn for the worse on Saturday night/early Sunday morning and went into cardiac arrest. I’m unsure of all the details, but after his resuscitation Ryan no longer had any brain activity. Ryan was officially deceased on Monday afternoon. The details of his passing are written in these 2 articles, Arnold remembered for family and Dr. Ryan Arnold

I cannot begin to describe how I felt after learning this news. A flurry of emotions went through and continue to plague my mind. We saw the Arnolds just over a month ago when we visited and stayed with them in their hometown as part of our SD/UT trip. They are the sweetest family you could ever meet and have always tried to include us in their lives even when we all get so busy. We visited them when they lived in Nashville, TN while Ryan was attending Orthodontics school, and we also traveled with them to the Black Hills for a week-long trip while the guys were in dental school together. The Arnolds also helped us to get a taste of a Watertown winter when we visited them right before Christmas in 2008. Ryan and Mike’s hunting and fishing history goes as far back as practically the minute they realized they were both avid hunters/fishermen. The Arnolds have 3 beautiful sons, Graham, Owen, and Oliver, ages 5, 4, and 18 months.

We traveled back to Watertown, SD to attend the funeral on Monday. A couple of other dental school buddies and a hunting buddy caravanned with us from Minnesota to South Dakota on Sunday afternoon to stay at another dental school friend’s cabin close to Watertown. It was actually great to catch up with those guys; I’m just so sad it had to be under these circumstances. The service was beautiful but also made us realize how much Ryan was loved after seeing the 500+ people in attendance. Many stories were told about Ryan as a person and about his life, and Mike and I really did agree with all that was said about him. Ryan had a way of making you feel like you were his best friend that you knew forever.

Mike and I have shed a lot of tears since learning of Ryan’s death. It seems inconceivable that such an honorable man doing such a courageous act could have his life taken away like this. Everyone has said though that even if Ryan knew the outcome beforehand that he still would have followed through with the surgery to save his brother’s life. That’s the kind of man Ryan was. He leaves behind an amazing legacy in his beautiful wife Shannon and his three sons. I hope they have the comfort that they need at this time and pray for their healing.

ETA: If you are interested in helping to support the Arnold family during their time of need, there has been a trust set up for the boys that anyone can contribute to at RyanArnold.org. I know they will appreciate any contributions made.

The summer field trips continue with a trip to Alpaca Art. It’s a paint-your-own-pottery studio, and they offer 1/2 off the studio fee for kids on Wednesdays. The Johnsons have been wanting to try this place out. I’ve been reluctant to go because in the past I’ve had bad luck with these places in which I broke my painted pieces both times on the way home from the shop. However, I decided to give it a go, and I’m hoping this time will be different. We met up for lunch first at Trolley Dog, and then headed on over for a day of painting.

I thought it would be fun for the girls to each have their own fancy, dinner plates, so I “forced” them to paint a plate. Annie was really drawn to the fairy, princess, and animal figurines, but I vetoed all those **hideous** ideas and stuck to my guns to have the girls paint those durn plates. Mimi could have cared less what I gave her to paint, so no arguments with her (yet).

After many re-do’s (thank heavens that you can wipe those plates off to a clean slate which we did numerous times) the girls finally decided what designs they wanted on their plates. Annie wanted to do something French/Paris-themed, so we came up with the poodle idea for her plate. Mimi agonized over what she wanted, and after I suggested the princess crown idea a dozen or more times Mimi finally gave in to that concept. All in all, I think the plates turned out darling and will be even cuter once the bright colors show through. It was a very chaotic afternoon with a squirmy baby and toddler, but the kids still had a lot of fun and will certainly be pleased once they get their projects back.

The artistes.

The artwork. Julie and I ended up having to commandeer Alex and Mimi’s plates because they both kind of gave up and the work involved was a little too intricate for their chubby fingers.

Chloe did surprisingly well considering she was made to sit in her stroller much of the time. She got to paint two magnets, an ice-cream cone and a puppy dog.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and yes, I gave Violet her own lollipop. Poor Violet had nothing to do other than be patient for 2 hours. When she’s old enough I’ll take her to make a project.

Good times!

E.T.A.: The girls insisted on wearing their crocheted hats after they dug them up from the basement. And they also kept saying they wanted to be twins today.

I jokingly asked Sara a few weeks ago when she and her family were coming for another visit. Imagine my surprise and delight when she answered with plans to come see us this past weekend. We couldn’t have been more thrilled, and the girls were even more so excited to get some cousin time again. Sara and I made a list of things to do for their visit, and we managed to squeeze in everything including a Jelly Belly tour, a meal at Organ Piper Pizza, an inspection of a grave site of Grandma’s grandma, a visit to the totally rad park, and an excursion to downtown Kenosha and Lake Michigan. It was a busy weekend, but we had lots of fun, good laughs, and way too much to eat. Sara was a lot better about taking pictures, but I did manage to pull out my camera when we went to Jelly Belly and downtown Kenosha.

Jelly Belly time.

Of course, we couldn’t pass up another opportunity to get a picture with the VW Bug. The girls are now avid players of the “Slug Bug” game and call out “SLUG BUG JELLYBEAN” (two times since there are 2 of them) every time we drive by Jelly Belly.

Our trip to downtown Kenosha also included a trolley ride.

And piggyback rides.

Sadie also got lots of cuddles from all the Evans. They aren’t used to being around a kitty that enjoys being held even though they have 2 pet cats, Servo and Magic Marker.

We are so glad the Evans took the time out of their hectic schedule to come see us. It was a great time, and hope they had fun.

There has been so much on our agenda lately that I’ve still got stuff from last week to post about.

A neighbor told me about how the local bowling alley was offering a “kids’ club” which basically allows kids to bowl on weekdays for free. I’ll tell ya, this is a brilliant marketing tactic on the bowling alley’s part because the place was packed with kids and adults all bowling with a waiting list for lanes. I wanted to try out the deal at least once this summer, so I invited the Johnson kids to tag along with us. It was actually a nice break from the high heat we’ve been getting this year. The kids had a blast, and we may just have to go again before the summer is all gone.

The girls each tried bowling with and without the ramp. Annie gave in and bowled with the ramp most of the time, but Mimi kept up her endurance and bowled without the ramp the entire 2 games. And don’t ya just love Annie’s crazy outfit. I’ve long since given up on assisting them with their outfit choices this summer? At the end of the game the “winner” was Chloe the 2-year-old wonder bowler with a score over 100. Granted, none of the kids were actually bowling, or really paying attention, and the bumpers were up.

Violet was content to sit and watch and eat a whole bag of Cheez-Its all by herself.

Mike’s work had a family picnic the week before, and they had some fun activities for the kids including a bouncy house, an obstacle course, and jousting. I think the jousting was actually intended for older kids and adults, but we let our girls give it a go. It was funny watching them because they were barely strong enough to hold up the jousts and couldn’t even reach other. Oh well, at least the girls got a chance to try it out. In the 3rd picture it looks like Annie knocked Mimi’s joust out of her hand, but it was actually just Mimi dropping it on her own after tiring out. And, I must say check out that beautiful sky. You gotta love the midwest because we never saw skies like that in D.C. or even in N.C. or S.C. Gorgeous!

And in other news, we have a possibly permanent houseguest living on our tomato plants. Mike discovered this little guy during one of his incessant pruning sessions. At first he was just as excited as the girls were to have a new friend. I gently interjected that he may want to move the little fella to another home so as to not ruin his prized cherry tomatoes. I was dismissed. The next day Mike griped that his “friend” had taken a bite out of almost every single tomato on that plant. I had nothing to say. Mike did find what kind of caterpillar it is, some sort of moth, but I can’t remember or find it. If you have happen to know, then please feel free to offer that information. I’ll add it once I talk to Mike again. ETA: The caterpillar is a Waved sphinx caterpillar – Ceratomia undulosa and will look like this when he/she becomes a moth: http://bugguide.net/node/view/22529/bgimage

Our church congregation had its annual Pioneer Day Picnic (a holiday which commemorates the Mormon pioneers’ trek west into the Salt Lake Valley) this past Saturday. I’m on the activities committee, so I had to help run the event and not get to take many pictures. The weather had been rainy the previous night which left the ground soggy, so it was decided to have the event at church. I think it actually worked out better that way because it was hotter and more humid than hades that day.

There was a fabulous spread of food for us to eat and numerous events for the children and adults. The primary kids got to play stick pull, cornhole, doughnut on a string, use can stilts, and try to eat pudding while having arms attached to people on both sides. It was fun watching them especially seeing them try to eat doughnuts on a string. Apparently, Mimi was quite determined to eat her doughnut and was flailing all over to get at it. The adults did tug o’ war and our 2nd annual Mens’ Pie Baking Contest.

Many of the men really take the event seriously and even won’t reveal the flavor of pie to each other until the day of the picnic. Mike and I were discussing possible ideas for his pie, and we both remembered that last year the pies that got 1st, 2nd, 3rd places were the non-technical and un-traditional pies such as Blue Moon Pie (which I think was a mishmash of puddings to get to blue dumped onto a pie crust). So I jokingly said to Mike that he should make S’Mores Pie, and he actually thought that that would be a good idea. I quickly found a recipe for him to use, and off he went to make it. The final step right before serving it was to brulée the marshmallow topping. Of course, Mike was not lacking in brulée-ing tools and pulled out his torch for the job. Mike’s pie didn’t win, but it sure was yummy. Good job, Mike! The other pies in the contest were apple/peanut butter, pumpkin, shoo fly (which was the winner), key lime (made by Seth), watermelon (?!?), and flan. Now I’m totally not being biased here, but I honestly think the that either Mike’s or Seth’s pies should’ve won because those are the only pie flavors I would have been able to stomach.

Seth’s pie looked delicious, and I’m still surprised he could create such a beautiful product on his own (Julie swears she didn’t help and didn’t even know he was doing the key lime).

I had been in the process of making the girls some new dresses. The original pattern has an attached apron on the skirt of the dress. I never intended to do the aprons and was just going to make a tie belt instead. However, once Annie saw the picture of the pattern she begged me to make the aprons with it. I conceded but chose to make the apron detachable and also make the tie belts so that the girls can get 2 dresses in one. Mike suggested that since I was making the aprons that I should try to have the dresses done in time for the Pioneer Picnic so that they’d look like little pioneer girls. Of course, I wasn’t completely done on the eve of the picnic day still needing to sew the aprons. I sewed like a mad woman Friday night until 2 a.m. to get them done skipping a few steps along the way and making a handful of miscalculations, but I got the dresses “done enough” in time for the picnic. I’m actually going to re-do the belt strap on the aprons because they weren’t wide enough (one of my miscalculations), and I also want to add an embellishment on the corner of the aprons.

Here are the quick pictures I took of the girls in their dresses which don’t do them justice at all, but you get the idea. Once I re-complete the aprons and make the tie belts, then I’ll have a mini-photo shoot with the girls to get better captures of the dresses.

Julie got some great pictures of my girls in their dresses and participating in their games, so I stole them off her site. Thanks, Julie:) Their family had visited the Nauvoo Temple a few weeks ago and acquired some pioneer bonnets/hats for their kids. I should’ve asked them to pick some up for my girls, too. Very cute.

Alyssa and Annie playing stick pull.

Mimi working on getting that doughnut off the string.

And here are the girls trying to eat pudding while tied to their neighbors. Good idea to use vanilla pudding:\

We were wiped out at the end of the picnic and came home to take naps. The Johnsons called us on the way home to ask us to meet up at the beach. Without being too rude I replied, “Are you nuts? We’re on our way home to take a nap!” We did still get together with them but much later. They brought over some of Tenuta’s paninis, we provided root beer floats, and we played cornhole and bocci ball outside. When it got too sticky outside the activities were moved indoors to play Spades while the kids watched “Nacho Libre”. Good times.

“The bike races!” “The bike races!” That’s what I heard most of Friday because the girls were evidently very excited about our future attendance with the neighbors to the International Cycling Classic & Superweek Pro Tour in downtown Kenosha. Since Mike is an avid cyclist riding his bike to/from work many days during the warmer weather, our neighbor who also likes to cycle thought we’d enjoy the event. The streets were blocked off into a 1-mile circle that the cyclists had to do for 100K (or about 62 miles). It was fun to watch the cyclists and get ready for them to come around each time. A car drove in front of them and would honk at each intersection to make sure it was all clear for the riders. Annie and Mimi really got into it, too, and decided to root for a particular biker, namely 186. Annie did not give up on shouting for him every single time the bikers came around the corner. Persistence.

Here’s what it looked like seeing the cyclists pass us. Notice the girls’ Hawaiian barrettes?

As the night sky grew darker my shutter speed slowed down, so capturing the cyclists was just a blur.

Lastly, have a look at what we heard and saw each time the cyclists passed us by. You can also hear Annie’s cheering for the random cyclist 186.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ-8MHTkeNU

In other news, Mimi doesn’t quite understand why putting on her jacket and zipping it up while wearing a seatbelt doesn’t exactly work.

That’s happy birthday in Hawaiian and was aimed at Alyssa. The girls and I had the pleasure of attending her luau themed birthday party last week. Alyssa’s daddy snuck out to hang out with my girls’ daddy, so I offered to help the birthday mom out with the festivities. And I must say Julie, the birthday mom, went all out. There were grass skirts, leis, coconut cups, and flowered barrettes waiting for each girl in attendance. I’m sure you can imagine how thrilled my girls were to get these items and discover that they got to keep them. Of course, they have been wearing all the stuff ever since and using their coconut cups for each meal. Julie had lots of activities planned for the evening including limbo, hawaiian bowling (they used coconuts to bowl over pineapples), hula dancing, and crafting bracelets.

The table decorations were so fun.

And look how cute the beachy cupcakes turned out.

The girls with their Hawaiian barrettes.

The girls “fished” for their grass skirts so that they would be no fight over the pretty colors.

Hula girls.

Helping Alyssa open her birthday present from the girls.

Thanks for inviting us, Alyssa. We had a lot o’ fun.

Annie and Mimi are as different as night and day. Oh sure, they are both girly, love to wear dresses/skirts, and just bathe in femininity. However, their personalities couldn’t be more contrasting. Annie loves people and is very outgoing. She will go up to any stranger to ask a question (for instance, at the bowling alley yesterday she had no problem going up to the front desk by herself to say we somehow forgot to add a player and could they add one). Mimi would curl up into a ball in the corner if asked her to talk to a stranger. And I really don’t think Mimi likes people all that much because she sure can be quite the bully at times. Annie seeks higher learning by constantly asking questions about things or will read whatever she can get her hands on. On the other hand, Mimi is perfectly happy using whatever knowledge she acquired by just existing. I could go on for days about their differences, but this brings me to the point of this post. Annie does not get attached to things whether tangible or abstract. She’s always moving on to the next best thing and rarely takes a second look at what she used to like or love the past moment. Oh, how Mimi is the exact opposite in this regard. To say she gets attached to things is an understatement. She practically obsesses. When she was a mere wee one she loved baby dolls. You would never catch her without a dolly locked under her arm. Eventually she grew to adore other lovies such as Franklin, Baby Jaguar, Pink Bunny, Toto, and many more and will most times take a lovey with her where ever we go and/or to bed at night. You may also notice in many of her pictures she’s got on a headband. That’s pure Mimi. I will fix her hair into the cutest styles, but she always prefers to have on one of her handy dandy headbands. For the past few months, another obsession of hers has been a different set of accessories. The blue socks. The blue socks rarely leave her feet and are usually worn with the black shoes. Forget that it’s nearing a 100 degrees here today because the blue socks apparently provide much needed comfort to a little girl named Mimi.

Note to all readers of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series: Can you see a similarity between the title of this post and the title of one of the books?

We had a nice visit with Matt this past weekend. He facebooked Mike and asked if it was too short of notice to plan a visit with us. As it turned out our weekend was wide open, and we welcomed Matt with open arms. Joey didn’t come with him. In fact, I think Joey may live with someone else now, but I’m sure he’s still cute as the girls were keen on asking many times. We took him to the Harbor Market in downtown Kenosha, and Mike also had him help out with picking veggies from the garden. I’m sure it was quite a different feel for Matt who lives in a busy part of Chicago. At one point, I thought we were going to have to search for a new kitty for the girls because Matt and Sadie really hit it off. She kept coming up to him to get cuddles, and I caught her snuggling up to his shoes one morning. I hope Matt had fun with us because we sure did.

On Friday night we also had Alyssa Johnson over for a sleepover, and her parents hung out with us for much of the night as well playing Pit and Trivial Pursuit. The girls had a lot of fun cramming on the little bit of floor space in the 3 sleeping bags. Mike made French toast the next morning, and Alyssa left not long after. The girls are already asking when they can have another sleepover. It didn’t occur to me to snap any pictures of the girls of their official sleepover. Oh, well.

While driving home from downtown the girls insisted on playing “their” songs for Matt from our iPod. Annie’s is “Anniemal” by Annie (a different Annie, but it sure thrills Annie to know there’s another Annie out there who’s a famous singer), Mimi’s is “Mimi” by Maurice Chevalier, and Violet’s is “Violet” by Thao. During Annie’s song we noticed that Violet was bopping along to the tune. That girl’s got some rhythm. We were all smitten.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Rl7wnbO6Q

Ever since we moved to this neighborhood the girls have been bugging me to do a lemonade stand because all the other little girls here have done one. I’ve always been on the fence, but Mike has consistently given a resounding NO to the request. The Johnson’s little Alyssa has also been wanting to have one, and her mom was more up for the idea but didn’t feel her own neighborhood had enough traffic to make it worthwhile.

So we joined forces and let the kids have their own lemonade stand on our cul-de-sac this week. Julie came well-prepared with poster boards and lemonade mix in 2 flavors. I provided the pitchers, water, ice, and cups. The kids were so excited but really had no plan. Julie and I stepped up and showed them how to make their signs and get all the “equipment” set up outside. Once they were all set up and had been given a lesson on how to attract “customers” and how to follow through a transaction from start to finish we let them have at it.

Julie and I expected that the kids would lose interest quickly, but we were completely wrong. They stuck with it from 1:30 p.m. until around 5 p.m. when they finally ran out of both flavors of lemonade. There were even repeat customers. The kids were great salespeople. Any time they saw a potential customer they would start yelling, “Get your lemonade!” over and over. They even chased down the FedEx man who eventually gave in and purchased a cup. Julie and I used up all the ice trying to keep the lemonade cool, so we felt bad when we thought about all the late customers drinking their lukewarm lemonade. Yum!

When all was said and done the kids had made $25 from the day’s sales split four ways to $6.25 for each kid. As a bonus, Julie and I baked some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that the kids also sold later on. We had hoped that this experience would teach the kids a little bit about the hard work that goes into making money. It’s doubtful that that lesson was completely taught, but maybe a little sunk in.

When it was time to make signs the kids just starting drawing randomly all over the poster board, so Julie and I had to quickly take over and give pointers.

Ready for the first customer.

The first customers. The kids had to be given another tutorial on how much to fill the cups because an inch high didn’t seem to please these customers.

I’m glad that the girls finally got to do this. I was hoping that once they did it that the novelty would wear off and I wouldn’t hear about it anymore. No such luck. The next morning Annie asked if she could do another lemonade stand because she had so much fun “making money”. I explained to her that it was a one-time deal, and she was okay with that. Whew!