Sweety Starts Preschool

Our newest little preschooler after the first day of class last Thursday. So cute!
Guess it was kind of a big day for him. ;)

Smarty's Looking Smarter than Ever!

So which is sweeter, the Gatorade mustache or the new glasses?

End of Summer

A bit of nostalgia pulled this poem out of me-

Now the grass may recover;
Now the swings may rest.
Dormant rooms will reawaken,
And the buses will resume.

The world is turning us,
And leaving our merry frolic-time
To catch it's breath.
But, Oh! It was fun while we were blithe.

Tribute to Ben

A few weeks ago cousin Amy posted the following on her blog. I posted a link, but Amy has agreed to guest-post her tribute here as well. Thanks for your kind words Amy! We love you!

Little Baby Ben

I sat with Ben and his family today in church today. As I watched him interact with his boys I thought of the moments of obvious adoration his boys have for him I've managed to catch with my camera recently. I realized that I hadn't ever posted them here and that I really need to share them so that the rest of the world can be reminded what a great dad he is. As my youngest cousin he'll always be little baby Ben to me but to Smarty and Sweety he's the best dad around.

What lucky boys they are!

Smarty's First Joke

Question: What do you call a pig who takes Karate lessons?
Answer: Pork-Chop!

About a month ago Smarty came home from a family party and told me that joke, and then he collapsed into giggles! It was hilarious to see him thinking that was so funny! Yeah for firsts, they're total parent pay-days.

Camping at Summit View

Last week our family went on a lovely camping trip to Summit View, Idaho, which is just above Georgetown and Montpelier.



As you can see, the campground was beautiful. Apparently it's a well-kept secret. Not even the weeds in the parking places get tramped down!

The abundance of beauty and lack of neighbors left us with that complete peace of nature that seams so elusive anymore.










We went on a day trip to beautiful Bear Lake (only 30-ish miles away).


We attempted to canoe a little bit, but with waves tall enough to crash over the bow of the boat, we could not run a course parallel with the shore, and the onslaught of motorized craft made us too timid to move perpendicular to the shore, so we gave up and enjoyed splashing and playing on the beach.

Smarty loved to run into the water splashing as much as possible, hurdle a wave or two, and then flop down into the water.












I thought he was a nut to flop down like that, but so cute. I'm so glad to see him overcoming his fear of water. He seems very in-control now.













Sweety loved to bury his toes in the sand and then run to the water to wash them clean again. He did that over and over again. Cute thing.





















After Dad pointed out the snail shells to Sweety, he had lots of fun searching for them himself.

Smarty and Sweety are signing that they are cold! But luckily we loved it anyway.

We had a great time! I can't wait to go again!

Good News About Sweety

Thanks everyone for your advice and sympathy about Sweety's breath holding. Tracy, I'm exited to give the blowing-in-the-face thing a try. It would be nice to be proactive in that moment where you're wondering if everything will turn out okay!

After my last post I want to focus on some of the amazing things Sweety is doing. I would hate to have him look up my blog 10 years from now and think that all I cared about was the scary aspects of his health care.

One of my favorite things about being a parent is watching my kids discover the world. They are so capable. They figure so much out on their own. I swear our job as parents is just to point them in the right direction and they do the rest (admitedly sometimes that requires more work than other times).


Sweety loves playing on the computer. He absolutely gets pointing, clicking, and dragging and could spend all day on Starfall.com and PBSkids.org if I'd let him. I love these sites! You must check them out if you have a preschooler!

Sweety has already learned much of the alphabet letters and sounds. And in the last few days he's figured out matching and sorting too. He can sort by color, shape, and function (i.e. things you eat, things you play with, etc.). It blows my mind that he has learned so much already! Way to go kid!

Watching Sweety with Bated Breath

For the sake of record keeping I must mention that Sweety had another "breath holding" episode last week. He fell off a chair and scraped his face in the process, which triggered the trauma. As usual, he just continued to exhale as part of his cry until he stopped breathing. Then he seized, but it wasn't grand mal this time, he just stiffened up, moaned, crossed his eyes and rolled them up into his head and passed out (then he resumed breathing). He was pale and worn out for a while when he woke up, but recovered within a few hours.

It never fails to rattle me when this happens. Even though I know he's not in any danger, it's hard to push away the panic that threatens to take me over.

They keep saying he'll grow out of this.

But we all know growing is not really his strong point. :)

Thank Heaven for Little Girls

Have you seen these hair clips yet?


My brilliant friend, Julia, had all the primary kids in our ward make these for Mother's Day presents. There pretty much no-fail. The one Smarty made for me is really cute; I actually wear it!

Smarty has a few female friends with upcoming b-days, so we picked out a couple of dollar-store purses and made an afternoon of filling them with these things. Fun stuff. The ones pictured above are my favorites.

Directions:

1. Pull apart bunches of fake flowers. Don't worry, the center is usually just a plug down through different layers of petals. I have yet to "unplug" a flower and have it fall completely apart.
2. Combine different layers of petals and/or leaves until you find a combination you like.
3. Julia usually puts hers together with glue dots, but she figured out she could economize by stapling the petals together.
   
4. Attach the button and the barrette or clip with glue dots or a glue gun.
   

Sweety Turns Three

Our cute little boy is growing up! We recently celebrated Sweety's third birthday. I can't believe how quickly time is flying!

(these pics are pre-bike wreck as you can see) Sweety loves his cousin!

With Sweety's birthday we had to bid a very sad goodbye to the talented, committed therapists at Early Intervention. But we are especially sad to loose speech therapist, Portia Erickson

and occupational therapist, Linda Huss (check Santa's twinkly eyes).Sweety's face cracks me up. He loves Linda, but he was totally not sure about Santa!

These two beautiful women have loved and steered both our boys through some of their toughest hurtles. Their influence has been immeasurable. If we are ever blessed with more children, I hope we can find some excuse to bring these two angels back into our lives!!

Shortly after his official birthday, we partied with the Bardwell family.

Grandma Bardwell found the coolest--according to Smarty--Buzz Lightyear cake for the Bardwell celebration. Sorry the pic is blurry. My camera phone isn't the greatest.

Sweety loves his new swing from Grandpa and Grandma B.
BTW, it looks like he's either yawning or maybe singing one of his famous songs in this picture. (Click here for a refresher on Sweety's songs)

We also partied with the Reeders. Dave's wife, Jaime, made a brilliant and positively sinful chocolate cake!

Grandma Reeder made a smiley-faced pinata for the kids to whack.

Dave enjoyed a snuggle with Russ' beautiful, little baby.

Not to be outdone, Joe suffered through a snuggle with Dave's big, hairy baby.

It's going by too fast. Good thing I can save pieces of it here!

Bardwell Summer Excursions

It's time, yet again, to update our records with the highlights of the last few months. So pull up a chair, get comfy, and prepare yourself for another edition of "Best of the Bardwells!"

We've had a busy, but great, summer so far. We've been to the Reeder family reunion, the Winmill family reunion, we celebrated the 4th with family and fun, we attended the 24th of July parade in Salt Lake, and on and on and on! It's been fun. Unfortunately I don't have time or energy to blog about all of it. So I won't.

But just so that there's some record of the summer, here's some of my favorite pics from the last two months or so:

It was great to have so many of us together for the Winmill family reunion on beautiful Cedar Mountain.

The Treehouse Children's Museum in Ogden:

Liberty Park in Salt Lake:

Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake:

The last day of Co-op preschool

A highlight for Ben and I was the opportunity we had to accompany the youth of our stake on a 4 day pioneer trek. Ben and I mostly helped behind the scenes with the equipment, transportation, food, and medical committees. But when it became clear that they didn't need our help as much as the handcart pullers did, we decided to test our metal and help out there.

(We grew intimately acquainted with a whole lot of this)

To no one's surprise, Ben pulled for two days with no trouble. But the one day I helped pull a handcart over sagebrush and up hills, in a long dress, gave me all kinds of respect (and maybe a few questions about sanity) for my pioneer ancestors. And of course I did it with plenty of hot food in my belly, in ideal weather, and with good shoes on. I can't imagine doing it day after day for months, sometimes in 18 inches of snow! Crazy.


We visited The Needles, a stately grouping of monoliths that pop right out of the treeless, rolling Wyoming Highlands where Brigham Young paused for 3 days to recuperate from Rocky Mountain fever before heading to the Salt Lake Valley. Apparently there's a rumor--that church historians just hate--that Brigham Young got the inspiration for the spires of the Salt Lake Temple by looking at The Needles. I think historians claim that the design was revealed to Joseph Smith and B.Y. long before anyone ever reached Wyoming. I don't know. There is some resemblance. But either way, I figure both were designed by the same being, right? It makes sense to me that they could look alike.

The most difficult and rewarding experience for me was the women's pull. Minus the men and boys, we started up the road on a hill. I was exhausted when we got to the top, and I almost died when they lead us off the road, where we were to cross several ditches and head strait up a hill that a 4-wheel drive truck struggled to climb, all while hauling our 200ish lb. handcart! The men were all gathered at the top, and they sang to us and shouted encouragement. The first cart did well; they had some tough girls in that group. The second cart almost didn't make it. One of our best pushers, my sis-in-law Millie, ran to help them. I somehow ended up in the harness of our cart (third in line) beside Lisa Handcock a 40-something woman in our ward, and by the time we were 20 feet from the top my strength was gone. I was dizzy and couldn't even see where I was going. Lisa was amazing, however. If I ever have to do anything like that again, I want her by my side!
When I had reached what I thought was the end of my rope, I remember hearing my name repeated. I thought it was just inside my head, but after a bit I looked over to see my good husband calling out to me. Of course after that, I knew I would be okay. I knew if I wasn't, Ben would feel horrible, so I just had to make it. But I didn't mind a bit when 3 of the tough girls from the first cart came back to help us. Actually I don't know if we'd have made it without them! After that, most of the women and girls ran back to help the other carts. By the time the last few carts came up the hill, there wasn't even a place to put a hand to help, because there were so many girls helping! It was great. It was inspiring.

Many of our men and boys were touched to the point of tears. Bless there hearts, they wanted to help so much! But I'm glad they didn't. It was only one hill, but somehow I feel so strong, because I was part of something worthy of note. Somehow this proves to me that I can do hard things. Of course I couldn't be a husband-less handcart pioneer. I'm clearly not tough enough for that. But I do think I'm great at psyching myself out of trying things that I could probably handle, if I'd give myself the chance.
If you ever get the opportunity, don't miss out! It was well worth the cow pies and effort we made to be there.

We still have two more important events to look forward to before we head back to school. But I had to make some kind of record, however insufficient, of the great summer we've had so far.