A visit to the UP House

This weekend we took a trip to visit the UP house in Herriman, UT! It is part of the Utah Parade of Homes this year. The builders got permission from Disney to call it the “Up House”, and Disney bought the rights to the blueprints from them.  I heard that the builders just watched the movie tons of times and came up with the blueprints. Its done perfectly. It has a picture of Paradise Falls over the fireplace, the hose reel is the same in the front of the house, and I've heard that even the chimney’s bricks and roof shingles are laid down in the same pattern as the house from the movie. On the weekends they put balloons on the top of the house, and they even had Mr. Fredrickson and Russell sitting on the front porch for pictures. It was adorable!!

(Just a note, I stole some of these pics off the internet because when we got to the house I realized that my camera battery was almost dead and we left the memory card at home too). :( I was so bummed.  

Picture from the movie:

The real thing:

Mailbox from the movie:

The real thing:

Front entryway:

Nursery that Ellie paints in the movie:

The nursery in the real house. The finished look also had white crib like the movie as well.

The kitchen:

I really wish I had more pictures to show the rest of it. Obviously not all the rooms were shown in the movie so the builders just made what they assumed was correct. It was 3 floors, with an upstairs, and a basement. In the basement they had a theater room with the movie "UP" playing on it. It has 4 bedrooms, 2800 sq ft and is listed for sale at $399,900.

And here's the only 2 pics I got from Mike's phone: 

Here we are standing at the end of the fence.

Carl and Russell

6 months

Claire is 6 months old!

• She's a little thing at 14lbs (10th %) and 25 inches (20th %), but just like her brother she's got a big noggin pulling in at around 80th %-ile.
• She's a great sleeper. She started sleeping through the night at about 2 months old. She typical sleeps from 8pm-5am, wakes up to eat, then goes back to sleep until 8am. 
• She is NOT a cuddler (makes me a little sad). Even when she was a newborn I could never get her to fall asleep on my shoulder or chest or anything. She will resist if I try and eventually start to cry unless I put her down in her own bed when she's tired.
• Even though she's not a cuddler, she is still very needy for human touch. For the first 5 months of her life I don't think she was ever happy for more than a minute if I put her on the floor by herself. I've gotten really used to doing things with one hand: brushing my teeth, making a sandwich, making my bed, eating meals, or one time when I had to take Emmett potty in a public restroom by myself with Claire in my other arm, THAT was tricky. In the last month however she has gotten much better with being left alone. (Which I think is because she is becoming a little more independent/mobile)
• She is sitting up, rolling both ways, and eating solids and everything else within reach.
• She is very quiet. I've heard in the past that girls are gabbers and they talk alot. Not this girl. She has a very quiet disposition, her cry isn't very loud, and it has taken us months to get a good belly laugh out of her (and even then its still very subtle and quiet). She is however, a very smiley and happy baby. 
• This one is probably obvious, but she is very fair. Meaning, fair skinned. My mom jokes that she is one shade away from albino. With her fair white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes she will have to accept the fact that like her mother, she will never ever tan. 
• Her nick-names are Claire-bear, missy-moo (messy-moo when she's poopy), Cleo, and sweetie pie. 

We love this sweet little girl and so glad she's a part of our family.

PS. Recognize her dress? This was her Easter dress that I bought for her that arrived incorrectly 3 sizes too big!

4th of July

I feel like I just posted about going up to Island Park. Sorry, I know its probably not super exciting to read about again, but here's my post about going back for the 4th of July. I love Island Park for the 4th of July. Its so much fun, its warm, and there's lots to do. Island Park is a popular vacation destination for Utahns and most people you meet up there are from UT. And I think everyone in the state of Utah goes to Island Park for this particular weekend. Church on Sunday is so crowded. It takes about 30 minutes to pass the sacrament, and theres 2 chapels side by side both of which are filled to the brim, and people are scattered around in classrooms as well to listen over a broadcast system. Mike and I "reserved" the cabin for this weekend weeks ahead of time, thinking it would just be our little family all alone up there because we didn't know if anyone would be able to join us (friends, family, anyone). We were excited when most of Mike's family decided to join us! (We missed Derek, and Kyle & Tyne who were days away from having their first baby). 

We started off the weekend with the Bills Island 4th of July parade.

People decorate their 4-wheelers with patriotic decorations and throw candy to the little kids. Or if you have a boat.. that works too. Emmett and Pixton got tons of candy.

After the parade we loaded up the kayak, rented a canoe and boat, and floated the river. Its a 5 mile lazy-river float. It takes about 3 hours to float the whole way down. Its so beautiful and relaxing.

I think the lazy-river was making Emmett particularly lazy....or tired in this case. I was wishing I was small enough to do that!

"Cheesy" smiles:

Emmett's first sparkler experience:

The boys loved playing with the rockband drumset. Being a little bit older than Pixton, we had to keep reminding Emmett he had to share the drumsticks with him. So usually they each got 1 drumstick, and in this case, shared the chair too:

Love my sweet little Claire. She's finally big enough to sit up in the umbrella stroller. We got tons of mosquito bites on this walk. I hate putting stuff like bug repellant on my babies, so I just sprayed a blanket with bug spray and laid it on her. Miraculously it worked, I think she was the only one that walked away without a bug bite.

We also played some fun games, ate some amazingly good food and watched a spectacular fireworks show.

Flooded With a Mess

On Sunday Saratoga Springs got a huge rainstorm. It was coming down in SHEETS, if you know what I mean. The "sheet-rain" lasted a good 20-30 minutes and then it "regular" rained about another 2 hours after that.

After the sheet-rain Mike was outside on the porch and went around to look into the basement walk-out. This is what he saw:

And this is what we saw inside:

The water coming in through the door:

After the boxes were moved:

It most likely occurred do to poor drainage outside (there is a drain, and it was clogged) and the runoff from the neighboring lot as well. All the boxes that got wet were my parents belongings, luckily we think we caught it in time and there wasn't too much damage done. We were probably lucky we were home during the storm because had we been gone (which we almost were) we probably wouldn't have thought to go downstairs and check the basement at all and the water would've sat for who knows how long. (We rarely go down there).

As we were scrambling around I noticed Emmett had escaped the house and saw him tromping around in the rain puddles. He was getting soaked but I didn't have the heart to bring him inside. 

And this was Emmett tromping around in the basement as Mike was cleaning up. There's all sorts of treasures in the basement (I call it our "warehouse" as there's at least 3 families belongings down there so its cram-packed with boxes, furniture etc.) He's got an old ski pole and a bike helmet on. So, at least one of us had fun!

Baby Birds Update

Well I have good and bad news to finish the baby birds story.

Bad news: another baby bird died 2 days ago.

Good news: The last one to survive......survived!!! As of yesterday the momma bird and the last baby bird were gone and haven't returned. So I can only assume they both flew away!

1 out of 6 is not good odds. But at least it wasn't total failure for that little mom and her poor choices. I'm glad that perhaps we played a small part in saving a life. :)

Now for the cleanup. Its NAASSTY. Anybody have good ideas for a really strong chemical cleaner to clean this out, send it my way!

Baby Birds

About 3 weeks ago Mike noticed something funny about the bbq. A bunch of weeds and twigs were coming out of it:

So he opened it up and this is what he saw!

About a week later I peeked inside the grill, and lo and behold they hatched!

They were sooooo cute! They were no more than a day old in this picture.

I like their little mouths open in this one.

You might be wondering how the momma bird gets inside. There's a gap in the back that she gets through to feed them.

I was really surprised how fast they grow. This is them at probably 6 days old.

Hungry little things. :)

I've really enjoyed these baby birds. It almost feels like we have a pet. The barbecue is right outside the kitchen door to the deck and the sound of their chirping carries into the house all day long. I always know when the momma bird is feeding them because their cries get REALLY loud for about 30 seconds as they get all excited and start begging for their food. I hear it continuously throughout the day and its fun to hear. The momma bird is funny to watch too. If we are hanging out on the back porch she sits in a tree close by (usually with her mouth full of bugs) just squawking at us in a concerned way. If we stay long enough she'll eventually get brave and fly into the bbq even with us only a few feet away. I see her on the back lawn constantly pecking her little beak into the ground digging for their food. She must be exhausted by the end of the day feeding 6 hungry babies all day long. Even one baby is hard for me.

Unfortunately this is where the story takes a sad turn. The momma bird wasn't very smart when choosing her location to lay her eggs. We started to realize that it would be difficult for the baby birds to get out when it was time to fly away and leave the nest. We also realized with the bbq in the sun it was probably getting pretty hot inside.

A few days later I noticed their noise had diminished and I wondered if some had died as a result of a couple of warm days. I was nervous to open the bbq again though, because the last time we had done it (the above picture) they were pretty mobile and I was afraid one might fall out with the lid open. But after 3 weeks we knew they must be getting closer to leaving the nest, so we had to check.

Last night, for the first time in a week, Mike went outside and checked on them. He found that four of the six had died. We think it must've been the heat. The remaining two are not ready to fly yet, but we decided we had to prop open the lid to let heat escape and to allow them to get out. The problem with propping the lid is that the gap in the back (where the momma gets access) closes as the lid opens. By shutting off her access to the back we worried she might abandon her babies, thinking someone had tampered with the nest. But we knew if we didn't do it, the heat would kill the two remaining babies. It was do or die for these birds. We propped it open and hoped the next morning the momma bird would come back.

Well, this morning we woke up and sure enough, that momma bird was in there feeding her babies and she's been feeding them all day long. I'm so relieved!

I guess its a game of survival of the fittest for these birds and I hope these two make it.

Story to be continued....

These Days

We've had a fun month with family these last few weeks! Emmett has spent so much time with his cousins he doesn't really know what to do with himself anymore now that the house is quiet again. Every morning for about a month he had cousins to wake up and play with. Now when he gets up in the morning and we ask him what he wants to do that day, he says "play with Claire!" Poor Claire has gotten the 2 year old treatment thats not exactly fitting for her. But she usually just smiles at him as if she's just enjoying the attention.

We went to Island Park last week. My sister Kacey and her family made the long drive from Oklahoma and spent a week there, and since it had been 2 years since I'd seen her (and 1 year since I went to Island Park) a visit was necessary! My mom came (my dad is back in Korea right now), and so did my brother Eric and his family.

It was fun to have all of the 8 grandkids together:

From L to R: Rebecca, Isaac, Emmett, Daniel, Henry, Claire, Ella, Lillie (with Grandma W. in back).

Our "hooray!" shot.

I saw 3 moose (meese?) while we were there. Emmett saw 1 of the three that I saw and he got excited and said "Wow! Like Bambi!"

This little guy was right off the back porch. Mike thinks he looks starving. Maybe he was looking for our leftover s'mores.

This picture was earlier while we were in Utah. Emmett and Lillie decided to take the recorder and electric keyboard and give Henry an impromptu music recital. Henry very much enjoyed it I think.

See for yourself:

(Also note, the recital was in no way put together or arranged by me or my mom) :)

Now that the company is gone we've been working on our next challenge.

And doing a lot of sittin around.