Payson Scottish Festival

My bagpipe teacher has invited me to the Payson Scottish Festival every year
probably since 2005. We finally made it this year.

We took a stroller for Anika to push instead of one to push her around in.

Here is a girl doing the caber toss.

There were dozens of booths each representing their own clan. If you're Scottish,
they have a lot of family history work done for you :)

Emily, a guy dressed up, me


Anika was on Than's shoulders during the Massed Bands event. She would clap and say,
"Yay!" after every song. There were random pipers throughout the park,
practicing for solo competitions. Even if she couldn't see the piper,
she would stop what she was doing when his/her song ended and clap and say, "Yay!"

Lots of dogs - her favorite!

A very young boy in a pipe band

I think this is the Payson Highschool Pipe Band marching in during the Massed Bands competition.
This event was my favorite. The best part was a solo piper playing "Amazing Grace,"
and after the first verse all of the bands joined in. Very cool!

I took bagpipe lessons for about a year in Logan (not through USU). I did work up to playing
on pipes and not just my practice chanter, but I don't have pipes. My teacher now lives in
Springville and I am actually going to take at least a few lessons again.

13 Weeks

I'm tired, I don't sleep well, and I dream way too much.

I don't want to eat the things I should.

I feel sick fairly often, but mostly at night.

I feel MUCH better than I did with Anika.

I heard the baby's heartbeat on Monday.

I'm hoping things will go better this time.

If all goes well, baby should be here around December 29th.

I hope baby won't be early - late sounds good (at least right now).

I'm not excited for the December part, but it'll be OK.

http://www.clker.com/clipart-baby-silhouette.html

U2

We went to the U2 concert about a month ago. It was pretty awesome,

and Nathaniel should be the one telling you about it but...

Reaching 164' is "The Claw."

If you look on the screen in the picture below you can see The Fray opening for U2.

Us - at least Than looks normal in this picture :)

I didn't get very many good pictures, but it was fun!

The screen showed dozens of random facts while we waited for U2. Some include:

(and these numbers were still increasing or decreasing based on changes,

and I rounded some of them out a bit)

Births Today: 30,500

Money spent on weight loss in US today: 160,000

Google searches today: 3,030,000,000

World Population: 6,966,641,000

Solar energy striking the earth today (Mwh): 2,481,000,000,000

Net forest lost this year: 2,051,750 hectacres

U2 song preformed on the 360* Tour: 51

Show: 90

This is the screen all stretched down close to the stage.

The Edge

Bono

The concert was great. U2 sounded really good, and they had a lot of charisma or

stage presence or something. They were Nathaniel's favorite band when he was growing up,

and he was really happy to be able to finally see them live.

488 Days

Anika passed the 16 month mark this last weekend.

Here she is visiting our friends' VERY large dog, Zoe. This picture doesn't do much to show

Zoe's true size. Anika loves dogs and notices even the faintest, far away barking. Her favorite word is

"dog" of course. Imagine how happy she was when we sat in front of a couple with a

seeing-eye dog in Sacrament meeting!

Anika will often pull clothes out of our hamper; usually to make a mess. In these next

two pictures she wanted me to put clothes on her, so here she is wearing my shirts.

Anika is the funniest little dancer. If the mood and music are right, she will very suddenly fold her arms across her chest and begin to turn in slow, swaying circles. You should see it :)

Some days I can't or don't want to keep up with her messes. She is a professional.

Sometimes Anika will brush her hair with a basting brush, and she laughs all the time!

One of her favorite games right now is Ring Around the Rosies. After we all fall down, Than and I will stay there and she will come over and grab our hands to pull us up again.

She was the cutest little Easter-Egg hunter. She got her own hunt at

Grandma and Grandpa Aunes. She was really good at it too!

I finally put the books in Anika's room into a bin. The other day she took a stack of

her books from our room and put them into her bin. Smart girl :)

Anika still enjoys playing peek-a-boo. She plays it everywhere! She plays it while looking through the holes in our chairs, under the table, over the bed, during diaper changes and meals, through racks and shelves at stores and the library, through her gate, through the banister, and around corners.

Here she is playing it while looking under the television (don't mind the dust)...

and behind the television.

Here is Anika's cheeser smile. The bells she is holding are from Grandma Hardman, and they are very fun. Recently Grandma Hardman was watching Anika for us and put Anika in the swing. Every time she went to take her out, Anika would push her away and wave her arms. The Little Stinker ended up swinging for about an hour until she finally got out.

Like all kids, Anika loves the park. She can tell when we are almost there. If she sees a

park she gets super excited. The other day Nathaniel took her to the park and played with her on the slides. After a while, he decided to send her down the big twirly tube slide. He put her in, thinking she wouldn't slide all the way out, and he would be able to run down and get her out, but she went flying all the way out the bottom. A woman who was at the bottom with her own kids scolded him and told him to ask for help next time. Silly Dad. Luckily Anika didn't even cry.

More cheese.

We are borrowing this talking/singing chair from a neighbor.

Anika has spent a lot of time with it. It is always nice to have something new around.

Like her mom, Anika really enjoys eating bread dough. One time while Nathaniel was making bread,

she was begging and begging to try some of whatever it was, so he gave her

some of the dough. That's how we found out she likes it. She really can't get enough.

5K

My sister, Emily, did a 5K with us. Here is a picture of our family before the race.

Me and Emily

An after-race picture. We had a nice run together and weren't running for time.

There isn't much to say about it, but we'll have some funny memories from the day.

Anika did the race in her jogging stroller with Than's help.

One of the coolest things that day is that we got two tandem bikes for $20 total at a yard sale

on the way home. They sure need A LOT of work, but it wasn't a bad deal.

Child of the 90's

My sister has been cleaning out my mom and dad's basement and she found some of my things.

Here are some doll dresses and a couple matching hats that I made with my mom. It is really a simple and clever idea. I remember doing it with friends, and we all enjoyed it. She would get out her felt, lace, ribbons, etc., and we would trace the pattern and make these little dresses.

Here are some of my old bows. My friend's mom was really into making the shoelace bows

(the multi-neon colored one) and bows made from some sort of strong pliable plastic that she would fill with candy. Too bad I don't have any of those left. I think she would put in candies like Runts and things.

The orange and pink bow goes with my even more outlandish gymnastic outfit that I wore

when I did a dance to the Beach Boys' "California Girls."

You may also notice the friendship bracelets, and the purple and blue hair clip things (I can't remember what they are called), and the white thing for your shirt. What funny things I wore!

Here is the white shirt thing in use :)

And Nathaniel sporting the weird hair claw clip thing.

14 Babies

This is my ward from October through March.

Two of the babies (& their families) recently moved from the ward,

but 2-3 others weren't there that night.

At least one more baby has been born since this picture.

Just a little crazy, don't you think?