Happy Birthday to Dad Dastrup

I love this picture of Dad Dastrup--Grandpa Max Dastrup--holding Lucy on her blessing day. (It's not the clarity of the original, taken by Aaron, because it's a compressed email file.) The focus is intentionally on Lucy, but I love the soft presence of Grandpa holding her on his knee. I think this picture is representative of Travis's dad. He's always there, rock solid and fixed where he needs to be. He's helping to support and anchor everyone else, but he doesn't want the limelight or too much fussing. He wants to quietly be surrounded by the people he loves, and to quietly serve them. The following two pictures are only two examples of the many times he has finished my ironing pile for me. Once was when I was coming home from the hospital with Lucy, and the other while we were getting ready to put our Indiana house on the market. Travis wears a shirt and tie every day to work, and then several white shirts for bishopric duties. My ironing board is usually out with a large ironing pile just waiting for me to have time to attack it without little people pulling on me. This quiet act of service means so much to me. I love you! Happy Birthday!

Music Lesson Thursday

Thursdays are my busiest day. There tends to be some cello cramming early in the morning and for a few minutes after school. Anna doesn't need to cram because she practices almost perfectly from 5-7 every morning. In theory Michael and I practice from 6:30-7:30 a.m. Early morning practices, as opposed to having to do in the afternoon, have been a bit spotty since, well, my pregnancy with Lucy, but September has been pretty solid. We rush to eat dinner at 3:30; otherwise it's 8 p.m. when we can eat or I have to pack a dinner to bring with us--and this just isn't going to happen. Then I take Michael to Kaysville for a cello lesson, leaving Sarah and Lucy with Anna. I race home from Farmington to load my three girls in the van along with Anna's violin, and drop off Michael's cello. Ideally she has played for twenty minutes so she is warmed-up for her lesson, but this doesn't always happen while she's babysitting. I drive to Farmington and drop her off for an hour lesson while I find some way to entertain everyone else (and often feed Lucy). This feels so easy after five years of attending lessons with Anna. I was spending too much money window shopping at a nearby Home Goods and Marshalls, so we've been playing at a playground in my friend Emily's neighborhood. I hope she won't tell the Neighborhood Watch on us. We're also going to show up on my cousins Scott and Elisha's doorstep one of these times--just in time for dinner--I mean a visit. It's an exhausting, but satisfying afternoon and evening. No one can believe it's bedtime when we get home, and unless I'm really grouchy, everyone gets to bed a little later on Thursday nights. I plan to enjoy the playground as often as we can until cold weather forces us to do some more window shopping. One might ask where Travis is for all of this running. He's still at work most of the time, but every now and again he makes it home to take Anna, and that's always a welcome surprise for all of us.

Lucy at 9 months

Thompson Family Reunion

In June Sarah, Piper, Mia, and Sammie were signed up for a summer camp run by some girls in Grandma Thompson's neighborhood . For five days, two hours each day, they enjoyed games and activities organized by these girls. We didn't have an official reunion or trip planned as an extended family, so we planned other fun activities all week with whomever in the family could be there. Of course Travis wasn't there and many people were working, but we planned things for the kids each day and gathered for dinner in the evening. We enjoyed a beautiful evening at the Christensen's cottage at Sundance, took the kids swimming at our friends the  Diederich's pool, and we even planned a treasure hunt. The number of activities we planned would be considered lightweight by Dastrup standards, but as Thompsons, we were pretty proud of ourselves. Wonderful to see the friendships between cousins strengthened every time they're together. Wee Scout Sandgren is such an adorable addition to our pack of girls, and sweet Finny is very outnumbered with all of his little girl cousins!

Cousins

We're so glad Emily and her kids Caleb, Daisy, and Johnny made it up to Ogden during their visit from their new home in the Washington D.C. area. Grandma and Grandpa Dastrup brought Benjamin up also, and the big boys had a great time together. So did Sarah, Daisy, and Johnny, as you can tell by the smiles in these pictures. Wish Emily Joy and Grandma and Grandpa were in the pictures too, but we're glad we took the time to capture these cute cousins together to remember until next time we get to see them.

Sarah's 4th Birthday

Now that July is almost over, it's probably time to post some pictures of Sarah's birthday, which was May 27th. I feel like her birthday kicked off summer. We had a fun campout at (great) Grandma and Grandpa Holdaway's cabin, which is at Wild Wood in Provo Canyon. This was our first night in the tent we received for Christmas a year and a half ago! The kids all loved it--even Lucy in her basket. Grandma and Grandpa Dastrup were amazing sports to pitch a tent and stay there with us. We loved the time to escape from busy life and play together, especially time to focus on Sarah. She requested cupcakes with chocolate curls, which she learned to make from a Better Homes and Gardens tutorial on my Nook. The chocolate marscarpone cupcake recipe she requested from watching an episode of Everyday Italian with me. Our chocolate curl making barely resembled the tutorial, but we had a lot of fun. Give us three giant bars of chocolate, a couple of rusty vegetable peelers, and several energetic helpers and we'll eventually get a little pile of usable curls along with a very big mess. Sarah got a rather lame scooter that I thought would be cool, and a simple karaoke machine from Grandma and Grandpa Dastrup that was a big hit. We had a campfire and listened to her sing many Scripture Scout songs into the mic. We stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Thompson for a couple of days too and got to have Sunday dinner with them--nothing special for everyone else because they gather every Sunday for dinner, but it's always special for us when we get to be there. Sarah received a fun surprise--William's old bicycle, all washed and looking brand new. We added training wheels and she is having a ball biking with the two little neighbor boys and her big brother in our cul-de-sac. We sure love our little Sarah. She entered the world with those big, round eyes, the first thing we noticed about her. Travis was sure something was wrong, but they're just an adorable part of our happy little girl. She has brought us nothing but joy since she joined our family.