The rumpus began on a balmy summer night, Friday, August 1st (so much neater than beginning on August 2nd) when Elise Julia Hallstrom, age 16, flew from Minnesota to Salt Lake City all by her big self (and she even changed planes!) so she could attend EFY in Provo. We brought Lauren with us when we picked Elise up at the airport to add to the excitement. As we approached the airport Lauren said "I haven't seen Elise for 2 years....what if we're awkward around each other?" But they didn't miss a beat. The first words out of Elise's mouth when she saw Lauren were: "You're so pretty!" And Lauren said the same about Elise and then added "and you're so tall!"
After we got her luggage we headed straight to downtown Salt Lake City and went to Hires for frosty mugs of root beer and cheeseburgers that are just the right size on those soft buns with powdery flour on the outside. They even gave us enough napkins this time!
Then Dennis drove us up to 17th Avenue where he grew up, and showed the girls the view of the Salt Lake Valley from clear up there and THEN showed them how far he had to walk to Bryant Junior High from 17th Avenue. It's astounding!! We need to take each grandchild on that drive sometime during their life. And of course it was uphill both ways.....in the winter. And those hills are so steep it's like the streets of San Francisco. The Avenues are my favorite part of Salt Lake partly because we lived there when we were newlyweds, at 1023 3rd Avenue, partly because my Grandmother's home was in that area, and it was celestial kingdom central in my childhood memories, and partly because it's got old houses and it's just cool. I stole this picture from the internet but it gives you some sense of the proportion. Dennis's Junior High was down at the bottom of this. Really, next time each of you are here, remind us to take you on the tour.
Then we drove downtown to the Brigham Young park in the heart of SLC and sat on folding chairs on the grass and listened to a live concert given by a fabulous band called "Tuesday Sessions" (because they practice on Tuesdays) and they were so, so good. Elise and Lauren were about the ONLY teenagers in the audience though. But they really liked it and it was such a beautiful night.
Note the yellow daisies in their hair.
The singer with the guitar is Jarom Summers (he married Trisha Hess) and to the left of him is Chad Peterson who is Amy Peterson (Solberg's) brother. Debbie's daughter Kim is in the pink on percussion. Her son Chad is just out of sight playing the guitar to the left of Chad Peterson in the dark glasses. It's funny, we almost named Andrew "Chad" - there were a lot of them!
After the concert we stopped at a 7-11 at around 3rd West and it was NOT a beautiful sight. Oh my gosh, it was the wookie bar in Star Wars (except for us of course). But slurpees are slurpees no matter where you get them. What ARE Slurpees anyway?
The next day we drove up to Park City to watch Reagan's soccer team play. It was so pretty up there and Reagan played great! They were also courteous enough to loose their afternoon game so they did well but the entire day wasn't spent waiting and waiting between games. Three soccer games in one day would wipe anyone out. Three baseball games is one thing, but soccer, whew baby, that's one grueling sport.When the soccer game was over we drove down to the outlets with Cindy and shopped and shopped. The outlets were NUTS! Cindy pointed out that every family had one soccer-uniformed child with them. Literally hundreds and hundreds of people there. (fast forward to a side note - when we dropped Ethan off at BYU this week, as we were walking across campus there were a couple of girls lying on the grass and Wyatt looked them over and said "they are literally lying on the grass"). It's one of those comments that struck us all funny and I will probably use it over and over now.
There's our awesome Reggie!!
When we got home Saturday afternoon I was so beat! I don't know if it was the altitude or what, but I crashed and took a two-hour nap. And Lou was happy to hang out in the "red room" that was all hers. Feeling unusually refreshed that evening, we decided to make crepes around 9:00 pm and here's Elise talking with Angie on the phone and showing off her crepe in all of it's chocolatey goodness. If you look on the counter behind her you can see the squirt whipping cream and the syrup, and I used both of them on mine. With warm strawberries in the middle.
Elise went to church with us on Sunday and Tony and Cindy and kids were able to come and join us for Sunday dinner. I wanted to make a list of what we needed to do to get ready and cook, and Elise was helping me. I have this yellow board in the laundry room which Jane had written the sweetest note on it a month or so back. I told Elise I hated to erase it to make our list, and she had the bright idea of taking a picture of it and then I'll always have it! So I did!
Monday morning August 4th it was time to send Lou off to EFY. She went with her cute friend Hailey that she has known ever since she lived in South Jordan. Hailey's mom came here and picked Elise up and they were so excited to see each other. And they're BOTH tall! I think Hailey's even taller than Elise. So cute.
We told Angie we would drive down to BYU and pick the girls up on Saturday morning when it was over. And then Angie read the small print on the EFY schedule she read that we had to pick them up at 7:00 AM! Holy cow! I decided to break the news to Dennis gently, but he was the MAN and told me I didn't have to come with him. I told him I thought I should come as a show of solidarity and support but he would have none of it. so yippee!! The joi de vie of retirement is wonderful for countless reasons!! (I'm not looking up how to spell that French word, so dad can tell me about it if he reads this blog).
Elise loved EFY and looked so full of light when she came home. See that shiny area on the cupboard behind her? That's reflecting off of her countenance!
Since sleep is pretty much not an option at EFY, we knew Elise would want to take a big ol' nap in the red room once she got home, and that's exactly what she did. Amy reminded me that when she went to EFY at BYU back in the day, she went to Andrew and Andi's student apartment on campus when she was finished and they had all sorts of plans in store for her while she was there. They had a softball and bat and were rarin' to go. Amy said she got there, lay down on the couch and slept for three solid hours and they never did get to do anything :-).
Elise drove out to West Valley with me later that day, and to add to her glowing post-EFY-ness she got to hold my friend Debbie's brand new baby granddaughter Maycee. We gave her some Baby Magic lotion (the smell of heaven) even though wouldn't you know it I'm allergic to it now....the Baby Magic, not heaven.
Then to end that Satuday, August 9th, we relaxed in the back yard on the hammock!
Then the wild rumpusness started heating up with the arrival of Andrew, Andrea, Brandon, Whitney and Caroline on Sunday afternoon, August 10th. (Andrew had flown in and stayed with us on Friday night prior and drove straight down to Roosevelt to join up with Andrea and kids who were with her family the Gerbers and then they all drove back to our house Sunday afternoon. Tony and Cindy and the kids drove down to join us for Sunday dinner. See the little beams of light? That's how the house felt the whole time we were together. I think it was touches of Harold and Rose and Leo and Nan and Byron and Orville and Bertha and Julia and John and Mary and Jessie joining you (and who knows, maybe generations yet unborn)..............
On Monday morning I made French Toast and we talked Caroline into trying it. You can see from her smiling eyes that she liked it! I'm pretty sure that's the only morning that I cooked breakfast.
The rest of the time, well, thank heaven for........................
(and for everybody who pitched in and cooked and cleaned and shopped and swept and did dishes and loaded dishwashers and unloaded dishwashers (dirty or clean Andrea, dirty or clean?) and ran to the store (Forrest thinks I need to buy another refrigerator and keep it in the garage because it's true, we were only to shop for one day at a time) and Tony and Cindy who opened their home to all of us. It was amazing how everyone kept the house ship-shape. . . and flies and bugs trembled at the sight of Dave and his amazing electronic bug-zapper. He was ruthless!
The only thing I thought had been lost in the rumpus were the two miniscule (but much adored by me) pigs from the pigmania game handed down from Grandma and Grandpa Hiatt, but I found them - and they had already been PUT AWAY IN THE BOX! The only thing that didn't survive the rumpus was the Slinky.......... and slinkies are dumb:
I have an everlasting soft spot for miniatures, which means the Polly Pockets live in the red bedroom, which had became Elise's bedroom and then Amy and Dave's during the rumpus. I needed to figure out a way to move the Polly's. Early one morning I thought of using the computer room since everybody has their ipads and phones and it's not nearly as needed as it used to be. So I got Ethan to help me and we lugged up the end table from the basement and it worked GREAT!
We also built a Fairy Village in the back yard. Last spring my visiting teacher (and artist) Shari Gibbons showed me one that her granddaughters built in her back yard and a lightbulb went off in my head. So I googled around and found a site and ordered way too many teeny, tiny things from it. I need REAL stuff that I keep putting off buying, but instead I delight in buying miniature versions.
And of course what made contemplating the miniature village be built, was knowing that these miniature PEOPLE would be the architects!
If I remember correctly that's a cemetery that Caroline is building :-)
I've also been working on a little path in the back yard and am still trying to figure out what to do in the left corner (next year, next year)..........but it was so fun to watch the little people try it out:
On Monday, August 11th Cindy suggested meeting up in Provo with their family and visiting the newly re-opened Bean Museum at BYU. It was free and kept everyone's interest (and when we were finished we handed off Elise to Tony and Cindy's family and it was "sayonara" to grandma and grandpa's house and she moved to Springville and became the 7th Sweat child from that moment on until her family arrived later in the week).
Whitney loves peacocks!
That evening we got out the scooters and took a walk along the Jordan River Parkway. Dennis said he'd join up with us a little later. Andrea wrote his name on the path with an arrow marking which way we'd gone so he would be able to find us.
Andrea and her family like to Geocache and she found lots of caches marked along the Jordan River parkway. They searched for one of them here off the beaten track:
And then searched for another one that was supposed to be hidden in this bench. This series of pictures is priceless as Andrea reacts to actually finding the teeny tiny capsule.
Brandon and Whitney and Caroline went out again later that night and when they returned home Brandon told me he'd been attacked by a squirrel! I believed him (but he'd actually bonked his head on a pipe while searching for a cache under the bridge). I think we had three grandsons who had bonks on their heads when we had family pictures taken!
Whitney and Caroline also rocked it in the dress-ups. I've been nurturing these flowers all summer so they would be as pretty as the granddaughters. They flourished but haven't looked as good ever since everyone left. ....Snails afflict and torment man.....
We arrived home from the funeral Wednesday afternoon just in time to greet the Huish's when they came through the door. Such fun! That night we all gathered at Winger's for dinner. I'd heard a commercial that said kids ate for $1.99 at Winger's and I thought, hey, that's cheaper than buying it at the store. Judging from these pictures, you can see that The Wild Rumpus factor was definitely ramping up:
And the little girl cuteness factor doubling with the addition of Macy and Carly:
and the moms and dads of course:
....and the awesome teens and tweens:
That night we traded kids and Jack went home with Tony and Cindy and Vivi stayed with us. When we built our house I would sit in the front room and look at all of the different angles in the ceiling and I'd think "some day little grandkids will sleep on this floor and look at these angles before they fall asleep!" And they did!!
Amy and me -a mother/daughter study in white and blue..............(with grandma and grandpa Hiatt, great-grandmother Lindsay and Dennis as a youngster looking on from behind)
And oh yeah, the girls again rocked it in the dress-ups..........
and of COURSE we had tea!! more than once we had tea..........
And the riding lawn mower with Grandpa. I think Jack has a future in operating heavy equipment in case that Master's degree in engineering doesn't pan out!
Macy puts 100% focus and determination into all she does!
....NOW LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN!!!
