How to act suspiciously

We like to call 911 at our house. Just for fun.
Last year it was Rosalie, age one, who dialed for emergency help. Have you ever noticed that the 9 and the 1 are conveniently located near the edges of the phone where fat little thumbs can squeeze them repeatedly?
That's when we learned that they have to dispatch an officer whenever there is a call. Just in case someone is trying to get help and someone else, like a kidnapper, is stopping them.

This time it was our 10-year-old calling 911 just to shock her older sister.
"I thought the phone was off!" she protested, when her dad informed her the police had returned her call.
When the officer arrived, (Finally! Good thing it wasn't a real emergency.) she refused to face him and hid behind her hands and her dad until he left. Just like someone who'd been threatened by evil kidnappers who didn't want her to be identified. Kidnappers who hoped to reassure the police by letting them see a regular family with a daughter too embarrassed to show her face. A face which was probably as red as her hair. The only red hair in the whole "family". . .

Detton-ation!

My college roommate (bff) Shelley Detton came to visit with her husband and kids the day after the 4th of July. Since they'd already seen the best Southern Utah had to offer in tractor parades and demolition derbies, we offered some different small western town activities--horse back riding (on borrowed horses) and inviting yourself over to your neighbor's pool.


Thanks to our cousins the Mckays, we can always offer a good time to our guests when they come.



At our own house we offered them activities such as pushing through a hundred yards of 4 ft. tall alfalfa to the trampoline, hiking through the back 40 to the riverbed to look for wildlife (mostly slimy water-life), and being checked for ticks on coming back home. Just kidding, we forgot to check for ticks. Shelley, if any of you start to feel feverish. . .
It was fun for my kids to get to know Shelley and Steve's kids. Their oldest, who is 7, is nearly as tall as our 10-year-old. And their 4-year-old is as tall as our 7-year-old. I'm not sure how much taller their 1-year-old is than our 2-year-old; she never held still long enough to compare them. All the kids played hard and slept little for two and a half days. It's somewhat difficult to fall or stay asleep when five kids try to share the space under the stairs.

Shelley is so talented. Not only did she bring me a present, (the blue and red bag) she also speaks couch! She walked into my living room, took one look at my two sulking sofas, plopped down one of her handmade decorator fabric bags and said, "This fabric goes with both sofas."
And lo and behold, it did. Just like that she bridged the thirty year generation gap between our old new couch and our new old couch (which we found out, from an upholstery tag inside it, was made in 1976.)

Take a look at the photo essay she did on her visit here. She makes everything look good. I wish she could stick around and be my personal decorator.