November in photos

It seems like November was a busy month. Here's a bunch of random photos to illustrate the month for us. This is a long post so be forewarned.

Ginger and her Grandpa Lovstedt.

Ginger loves copying Penny in everything she does. It always makes me a little nervous.

A cute photo of the girls after Church. Ginger's tights are all nasty from crawling around on the dirty Church floors.

I went to my Grandpa Allsop's funeral in Washington. He was a great man. At least he's in good company up in heaven. I'm sure my mom was happy to have her dad around again.

Apparently my grandpa thought it'd be fun to have each of the grandchildren throw some dirt on his coffin at the cemetery as they were burying him. Here's my brother, Scott, posing with the shovel before the ceremonial dirt-throwing.
My mother's headstone. Her and my grandpa are buried in the same family plot at the Toppenish cemetery. It's always weird to think about my mom being dead. Especially looking at her headstone. It makes me think about the finality of death. But, on a hopeful note, it also makes me grateful for the Atonement in ways I never would have understood before her death.
My family at the funeral service. Me, Kristin, Ashley (Scott's wife), Scott, Amanda, Jake, Becca, her husband Jon, Juliann, Dad, Judy.

I turned 30. I feel like a real grown-up now.

As usual, the day after Thanksgiving, we went camping in the desert and Stephan rode his dirt bike with some buddies. It was freezing and it rained. Camping seems harder with a crawler. Ginger's 14 months and still not walking so she drove me crazy in the dirt and all the stickers. I think she looks like such a big girl sitting here with her real shoes on.

Despite hiding out in our friend's van during the rain storm, Ginger managed to give me some cute pictures. She gets more adorable all the time. I love her huge smile.

Sometimes Ginger's smile looks a bit goofy, like here, but she's still so freaking cute! How can you resist her chubby little cheeks?

Penny has turned out to be quite the little princess-wanna-be. She loves dressing up in her hand-me-down princess outfits and dancing to this one album, "Princess Tea Party." (Thanks, Julie!) Sometimes she'll lay down on the ground and pretend to be asleep and then tell me to be the prince and I have to come and wake her up with a kiss. It's hilarious. I don't know where she's even seen Sleeping Beauty. And, honestly, I never wanted a princess-y girl. She's turned into this all by herself.

Happy B-earth-day, Penny

(not to scale)

Three years ago Penny came to the earth. So I thought we could make her a cake shaped liked the earth in honor of that day. OK, I know the geoid is actually more like an oblate spheroid, but you get the idea. Notice the Sierra Nevada, Rocky and Andes mountains, and Hurricane Penny brewing in the Pacific off Hawaii. Antarctica and the Great White North are also on there, just not visible.

Birthday Girl


Grandma and Grandpa came over for a birthday dinner.


Ginger had a good time too.

An accident waiting to happen

Happy birthday, Ginger

Ginger's birthday was a few weeks ago. Here's a short video of her eating her birthday cake. She just kept shoving the cake in by the fistful.

As I watch the video now, I wonder why it's so shaky. Apparently I couldn't sit still so hopefully you don't get sea sick.

¿Como se dice...?

Yesterday while we were in the car driving home from the grocery store, I had the following conversation with Penny.

Penny: "Mommy, how do you say butt cheek in Spanish?"
Me: "Umm..."
Penny: "Is it abuela?"

Scott's wedding

We went to my brother Scott's wedding this weekend in Salt Lake. He married Ashley James from Nebraska. Welcome to the family, Ashley!

Here's the happy couple:

Here's me and my siblings and step-siblings:

My little, happy family:

Me and six of my siblings, without Kathryn who's on her mission:

Penelope and Ginger at the reception:

Marriage Bliss

Today's our anniversary. Stephan's grandparent's were also married on August 14, except in 1947. Here we are with them in 2004 at Christmastime in their house in San Diego. They both died this last year.

I was looking through our photo libraries trying to find some pictures of us from the last five years. In the first two years of our marriage, we have tons of pictures of me and Stephan doing lots of fun things and we both look good and alert and happy. Then after Penny was born, all the pictures are of Penny with one of us, or just her. And, I swear, I look better in all the pre-children pictures than post children. Childbearing has done something to my photo-taking abilities or maybe just to my skin and hair.

Here we are, five years later and a happy little family. (We have river-walking booties on, in case you were curious. And, the pants around Stephan's neck were wrapped around Ginger to protect her from the swarms of attacking mosquitoes.)

Here we are walking off into our happy future.

Devils Postpile

We went camping last month near Mammoth, California with Stephan's parents and his sister and her family. The Lovstedts camped there when they were kids so it was a fun walk down memory lane for Stephan and Julie. We did several little hikes, one of which was Devils Postpile.

It's this cool geologic formation. Being the daughter of a geologist, I was intrigued by how it formed and how it got these hexagonal shapes to the columns. It really was crazy. Apparently, it had something to do with a lava flow moving down the valley and then it cooled at varying speeds, causing the vertical jointing. Or something like that. Julie's husband, Greg, is a PhD student of geology so he had lots of explanations for what we were seeing.

These are the pillars from the side with the pile of rubble in front.

The whole group.

We took a short hike to the top of the postpile. Here's a view of the tops of the pillars.

Taking a break on top with the girls.

Penny and her cousin Chloe playing with Grandma's walking sticks.

Penny and Chloe resting on a log bench along the way.

Penny and Chloe, again. Check out Penny's knock-knees. Cute, uh?

Meanie big sister

Penny loves making movies with our little digital camera. Here's one she made a few weeks ago. It's hilarious! We're not exactly sure what happened but obviously Penny made Ginger mad and then ran away because she knew she was busted. Whenever she gets in trouble, she runs to this corner next to the back door. The other day she said to me, "I don't wanna be busted, Mommy." Apparently I've told her she was busted one too many times. Funny, uh?

Ginger's face

Ginger makes the cutest faces. Here's just a sampling.

The Prophecy

"Neither can survive while the other lives" was the prophecy for Harry Potter and his nemesis Voldemort. A similar thing happens with my two children. Neither can sleep while the other is awake. Ginger is a wonderful baby and she sleeps through the night, and has for some time. Penny was the same way. Both girls sleep through the night and have approximately the same 8 pm bed time. If you consider each of them seperately it makes for a pretty easy bed time. Sounds like a parent's dream come true, right? Well here's what happens.

When we put "the chosen one" into her crib she can't be made aware of the presence of anyone else in the room or she won't go to sleep, but "she who must not be named" usually doesn't go all that quietly and calls out to us telling us that she isn't tired or needs a drink of water. This alerts Ginger to the fact that she is not alone in the bedroom so she struggles to free herself from her night-time wrap and to peek over the crib and look at Penny in her bed. Eventually she gets frustrated either because Daddy's wrap was too good and has immobilized her (rare these days) or because she was successful and is now looking at her sister begging her to play with her. She starts whining and moving around in her crib, peering over the edge at Penny. Then Penny who has been claiming she wasn't tired for some time sees a golden opportunity for escape and starts yelling, "Ginger's crying in mine ear!" over and over. This encourages Ginger's struggles and her whining escalates to crying. Then it just snowballs and an intervention has to take place because Penny's still yelling at Ginger to stop crying and Ginger's just crying for someone to come play with her. Neither is in any condition to fall asleep at this point so we have to get them both up and calmed down before we can start over staggering the bedtimes enough that they fall asleep individually undisturbed by the other.

I too have seen the future. An epic battle will unfold between my children as they find other ways in which it is difficult to coexist peacefully. Perhaps for many years. Maybe someday we'll get a third bedroom and that will help.

Family picture

Here's an attempt at an updated family photo. These are from Easter. We're not a super photogenic family.

Dirt-biking in the desert, a while back

We went camping in the desert with some friends the weekend after Easter. It was, of course, a dirt-biking trip. No one really camps in the desert because it's a beautiful place. Although it does have some charming characteristics, like the sunsets are great. It also reminds me a lot of where I grew up, Midland, Texas. Every time we arrive in the desert, I have flashbacks to my childhood.

Penny loved "driving" the buggie.

We camped in a tent but used the back of the van for our cooking and such. Ginger looks confused.

Penny with her little friend, Wyatt. They have the exact same birthday, except he's one year older. She loves him.

Twinkle, twinkle

Here's a cute video of Penny singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." We missed the first line of the song but you still get the idea. I love her little voice. Apparently she's already discovered that the ABC song and Twinkle Twinkle have the same tune.




Here's another video of parts of other songs and "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home." Some of it's boring but I'm not a pro at editing video clips.

Don't Call it a Come Back

33 years of faithful service is going to be 34. The van passed it's free smog re-inspection!

I'm still sort of reeling from the emotional roller coaster I've been on the last few days. Here's how it went down. Last time it failed the guy recommended I get the carburetor rebuilt. I bought a kit to do that like 8 years ago and when I saw how complicated the instructions were I put it aside and forgot about it. So I dug it out of the van's medical kit and figured I had very little to lose at this point so I just went for it.

Monday- Pulled old carb out and started taking it apart to clean and rebuild it. Half way through I realized that the kit I had was the wrong one so I aborted mission and put it back together with the old parts and put it back on the van. Went to bed at 2 am.

Tuesday-Van wouldn't start in the morning. I figured I did something wrong when I put it back together so I took it back off that night and tried to rebuild it again. This time I just went all the way. Took everything apart and cleaned thoroughly (it was totally filthy in there) and ruined the original gaskets so with a razor blade and a few gaskets of the wrong shape from the kit I made one gasket that seemed promising. I put it all back together and when I picked it up to go put it back in the van a spring was laying on the table where I was working. That spring should have been one of the first things to go back in. So I rebuilt it completely again. Went to bed at 3:30 am.

Wednesday (today)- van started right up this morning! I guess it worked. Took it for a test drive and it was running great. Got home and there was a puddle of antifreeze under the van. Apparently it sprung a leak. Found that and fixed it, then started it back up and went for a drive. It was running poorly this time. Don't know why, but I spent a few hours trying to figure it out and couldn't. Then since today was the last day for my free smog retest (hence the late nights) I just drove it to the smog place still running kind of badly. I had no expectation of passing, but I figured I could at least use it as a diagnostic to see what was wrong after all my tinkering and make a new plan.

I said a little prayer in the waiting room while the van went under the sniffer. And when it was over, Jesus came and told me that it passed. That is, Jesus Portillo, the technician. I don't know if he waved the tester in the general vicinity of the tailpipe, but not directly in it or did some other trickery, and I don't really care. I was kind of in an incredulous shock. I thanked him, paid my $8 certificate fee and drove home to my faithful wife who had told me it would be alright. She was right.

So, I need some food and a lot of sleep, filled with dreams of me and the van and the new adventures we'll have in the 2009-2010 season. Those dreams may be something like the video below- special thanks to Dave and Kelsey for finding it.

Van Video

Four generations of fashion

My mother died four years ago today. In her memory, here's a walk down memory lane.

This picture is of my mom (on the far left) with her two older sisters. My grandma loved dressing them in matching dresses and lining them up by age. About 1954.

Another set of matching dresses, again lined up by age.

This time my uncle made an appearance in the line-up.

This is from my childhood, circa 1985. My mother obviously liked the tradition of matching dresses so she made these dresses for my sisters and me. Except she took it one step further and made a dress for herself out of the same fabric. I'm the one with the dark hair on the left. Becca's on the right and Juliann's the baby. Bald babies run in the family.

Here's the same baby dress my sister was wearing on Penny, 2007.

And the same dress on Ginger, 2009.

As soon as I learn to sew, I'll make myself and the girls matching dresses and post some pictures.