Washing the Truck

Yesterday Zach took Lincoln outside after dinner to help him wash out the bed of the truck and get it ready for his campout this weekend while I stayed inside and cleaned up our dinner. As I was washing the dishes I heard some yelling and thought hmmm.... funny, but perhaps Zach's just yelling hello to the neighbors across the street. I decided to investigate anyway and went out front to see what was up. My first observation was that everything in our front yard was wet. I heard Zach on the side of the house coiling up the hose and Lincoln happily jabbering his non-English near him. My next observation came when Zach came around the corner and I noticed he was more than a little wet. You may be able to guess what happened. Hint- hint- Lincoln loves the hose.
Here's Zach's depiction of the story. Zach turned on the hose and sprayed out the bed of his truck so it would be clean and ready for his campout, then left the hose on and placed it at the base of a plant that has been needing some extra water. Lincoln- always an opportunist- picks up the hose and decides to "help" dad wash the truck- never mind that dad is in the line of fire. Unfortunately Zach didn't really want to wash the whole truck, just the bed, but really, how was Lincoln supposed to know that? Zach sees there's no real dry way to get the hose from Lincoln so he decides on the next best thing, turn the water off. So, Zach starts making a wide berth around the front of the yard toward the side to get to the spigot to turn it off. Lincoln, wondering what dad could be doing, turns to watch Zach as he's going and like most toddlers, his hand follows his gaze soaking Zach even more, until Zach finally reaches the spigot, shuts it off and coils up the hose.
I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, especially when I saw the completely innocent look on Lincoln's face. This is just one reason toddlers can be so fun!

Full Days!

This weekend kept me moving! Saturday night I had my Autumn concert/recital in Mesquite and now I can move on! By that I mean that I don't have to practice those same songs over and over again, I get to move on to some other ones to play over and over again.
Zach, Lincoln and I went up to Logandale Saturday afternoon, had a great lunch at Mom and Dad Hills house, dropped Lincoln off to have some fun with grandma Hills, then went up to Mesquite to quickly practice on the piano before my recital.
My recital started at 6:00 and I played just 8 songs,2 from each musical era (Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Twentieth Century). My biggest piece (Sonata Appassionata by Beethoven) had me worried the most, but I think it went pretty well.
It's so funny to me that I do these recitals because I'm such a shy person. That's probably why I do these things, because I'm hoping it will help me get better at being in front of a bunch of people.
I'm very grateful that I have such a great venue to do these recitals. The piano(Yamaha 7'6")couldn't be any better if you asked me so I always love playing on it
It was a good experience, but I'm not sad it's behind me.

Sunday night we hosted the monthly family dinner at our place. I was a little worried that there wouldn't be anything fun at our house to entertain the kids with since Lincoln is younger than most of his cousins and therefore doesn't have toys for all ages, but I was mistaken. They found (somehow) my box of primary music instruments and had a blast competing with the adults for noise. We learned to talk over crash cymbals, triangles, tambourines, etc. - even with the kids making all that noise in another room- go figure. It was a good night, there's nothing like being with family.


Tuesday, Veteran's Day, we went for a walk down by the lake at the old Railway tunnels. That's always a fun walk and it was a gorgeous day for it. My mom met us down there with two of my nieces.


Even with it being his naptime, Lincoln did very well. Of course, he does like being outside, like all kids.
At the start of our walk some Bighorn sheep were crossing our path. I tried to snap a picture of them, but I have absolutely no skills in picture taking so the picture didn't come out very well.

Zach carried Lincoln much of the way through the tunnels, then we decided to let Lincoln walk a bit on the way back, something that was very slow-going. Lincoln was a little tired and would kind of weave across the path in a very s-l-o-w way.

Finally, when we were close to the end, some other walkers looked at our(Mom Hill's) backpack-carrier and said, "with those wheels, you ought to be able to wheel him around like a stroller" we just shrugged and kept walking, but it had us thinking. We decided to stop and check it out and sure enough, it would do just that. So, Lincoln was wheeled much of the pathway back to the car. Too bad, we hadn't thought of that earlier-but what a cool carrier-thanks Mom Hills!

Rick Would Be Proud!

I figured this picture ought to make my dentist brother proud.
I guess Zach and I were dawdling too much with putting Lincoln to bed so he decided he'd help us along with bringing us his toothbrush and toothpaste as he knows it's one of the last things he has to do before he can go to bed(something he loves).

HALLOWEEN- You'll Just Have to Picture It In Your Mind

Argggghh! I can't believe I forgot my camera last night!

Well, we went out to BC for some trick or treating in my parents neighborhood and we certainly weren't the only ones. So many families get into trick-or-treating out there that there were cars lined up along the streets from people from all over the city who wanted to trick-or-treat in their neighborhood.
My parents certainly decorated the house well last night, there were tombstones, pumpkins, lots of mood lighting, fog, scary music, eyes in the windows, a flying ghost.... you get the idea.

The picture above is actually an old one taken by my brother so it doesn't really represent last night, but you might get an idea of how much my parents decorate their house.
First we ate an early dinner, then we dressed Lincoln up and took him around the neighborhood with a lot of his cousins. He didn't really understand what was going on of course, but he got to where he would follow the group of kids pretty well.
My parents live in this oval shaped neighborhood so we ended up only walking on the outside of the circle, and many of the houses have steps going to the front door. By the time we made it back around to Mom and Dad's house, Lincoln was exhausted from walking up all those steps and silently refused to go up any more.
I must say, Halloween is so much fun when you have a little child's face to watch. He was so fascinated with all the decorations, costumes, and masks. He wasn't even scared- we'll see how that goes next year. :)

This picture is of Lincoln in his horse costume at a Tots Trick-or-Treat event last week. It was his naptime. Enough said.