Doogels/Dawg/Doug/Douglas - What ever we all call that kid

I can't believe that Doug comes home in just 2 weeks... Mom and Dad leave on Tuesday to go pick him up and tour around Argentina till the 21st when we'll have our big family reunion. I am so freaking excited for the 21st for so many reasons! 1) I'll get to see Doug again 2) Everyone will be there, all 8 of us kids will finally be in the same place at the same time for the first time in 10 years - I'm crying just thinking about it.. 3) I'll get to hold my newest niece Hazel! 4) I'll get to be with my family, those I love far more than I love myself, for 6 glorious days.

 I. Can. Not. Wait.

To help tide me over for the next 2 weeks (which will drag by, I'm sure), I've compiled a few of my favorite pictures of Kate, Nate, and Doug: 

All dolled up for the Newport Beach Temple Celebration back in 2005 

 Doug playing with Gracie

 Kate, Nate and Doug acting like dorks as usual at Becca and Bryan's wedding - circa 2010

 Us together on Doug's last night at home before the mission

Dropping Doug off at the airport 

Two weeks....I. Can. Not. Wait!

Fun with the Schofields

There are so many stories of crazy, fun times that I had with Rach, Mark and the kids. Maybe a list will be faster and more convenient to read..

-Unpacking the basement at the farm - throwing the bags at each other and moving 20 thousand tons of food storage (I might be exaggerating a little)

-Taking the kids on walks to the temple so they could play in the fountains

-Shelly asking me to stay a week longer and me actually doing it

-Went to the temple with Nate, the first family member I've gone with since I went through last year

-We found a park with a huge hill and I, of course, had to teach Shelly how to roll down it!

-Emily asking me to "put your computer down and play with me"

-Annie laughing and waddling towards me every morning to give me a hug

-Hanging out with Nate and maybe developing a crush on one of his roommates..apparently I'm attracted to men that are sarcastic and use big words...but we won't talk about that :)

-The kids laughing, telling me I'm boring just so that I would tickle them

-I got Rach and Mark addicted to Grimm and they in turn got me addicted to Once Upon a Time and Common Law

-Watching the kids while Rach and Mark ran errands. At one point both Emily and Annie were crying hysterically - one upstairs, the other downstairs.

-Jason's funny one liners. The best being "I can't eat licorice, it makes me listen to Satan."

-Cleaning out the carport shed - finding not only typical Grammie and Granddad stuff (tools for the lawn, boxes of boxes, a can full of bar soap, colored toilet paper), but also a bird's nest complete with 3 baby birds. 

-Celebrating Annie's 1st and my 25th birthday

I remembered to pull out the camera only a few days before I left, but I got some way cute pics anyways!

 Annie making faces at me

 Emily wanting a picture with Aunt Katie

 She's so proud of her messy self!

 Jason looking superfly!

 Rach and the kids taped balloons to my door on my birthday. Once I was awake, the kids had fun playing with them.

 Shelly made me a card! The 2 and the 5 are how old I am. While the blue square in the bottom left corner is my face - it actually says "your face" on it. I love it!

Pictures with Aunt Katie!

Annie got a cake all to herself, I had to share mine..oh well, I don't think I'd really want to dig into Annie's once she's through with it.. :)

 Nate did a great job taking these photos of Annie and her cake. I was busy cutting my cake, so I talked him into documenting the experience for me. Thanks again, Nate!

The Birthday Girls!

The Provo House - Now Rach and Mark's place

I spent the last two weeks helping Rach and Mark move from the farm to the Provo house. It was a crazy first few days making multiple trips loading and unloading the truck, but we got it all moved over and the organization commenced. 

Here are pictures of the progress we made:

The formal dinning room (as Mom calls it, I don't have a name for it..)

The upstairs

Downstairs

 They turned the downstairs kitchen into a craft room for the kids - brilliant idea!

Wondering where the fridge and oven went? Well, wonder no more!

This guy is heading to the dump

              

 This guy is in the pantry

It was all kinds of adventuresome trying to get those guys out of the kitchen and to their designated spots. Turns out the oven was wired directly into the wall, not just plugged in - that was fun to discover and fix. Rach wanted the fridge in the pantry, but didn't know if it would really fit. After an hour - and taking off the doors - Mark, Nate, and Dad were able to get it in there. Apparently if you have 3 amazing men working really hard on a problem, it'll fit :)

Kid's room

Shelly, Jason, and Emily share this room. Annie is upstairs in Granddad's old office.

 Play room

The hallway downstairs

They need some pictures of the Gardner side (hence the notes in the frames informing Rach what pictures to put there). It's a good thing we're about to have a family reunion! :)

The backyard

 Rach has been doing some research into how to fix the cement stairs cuz they are in need of some serious help! They plan on having a garden somewhere, still haven't figured out exactly where yet. And they have a wicked awesome swing set that needs to be put together. There's still a few things left to get done, but I'd say it was a successful two weeks :)

The eclipse is afoot!

How do you celebrate a once-in-a-lifetime event? Well, I'll tell you how I do it. I party it up!! 

Yesterday in honor of the solar eclipse, Cedar City had an event at the Aquatic Center. There were 10 different stations all about the solar system and the eclipse. They were giving out solar glasses to whoever went to 8 of the 10 stations, so Melody and I went. Of course, by the time we got there, the glasses were gone. We decided to check it out anyways. I'm glad we did; it was a lot of fun. We got to make "rockets" out of pill bottles, antacids, and water. There were presenters on the phases of the moon, constellations, and light pollution. I got to make up my own constellation - I know you'll be surprised when I tell you I choose to make a penguin :) And I got a schedule for Cedar Breaks Star Parties this year. I've wanted to go to one since Dad and I did our National Parks tour two years ago. So if any of you want to join me in this adventure, just let me know! 

While we were wandering through the stations, I decided that I wanted to go to the sweet spot in Kanarraville where we could see the perfect "Ring of Fire". I convinced Melody that it would be a fun outing and later we got Michelle and Jake to join us. Since we didn't get any glasses (despite trying 3 different times at different places around town) we made pin-hole viewing boxes. We were able to round up 3 different boxes for the 4 of us to share.  

Today we met at our house around 5pm and headed down. As soon as we got off the freeway, we saw cars parked along the side of the road waiting for the eclipse. We wondered if there would be space for us in the town, so we started making plan B of where we could come back to if needed. Finally, we made it into town and started looking for somewhere to watch - hopefully next to someone with a telescope willing to let us look through it. The church looked promising, so we stopped there and had a picnic of sandwiches and punch that we had brought with us. Jake went wandering and found Trevor - he joined our group since we are so cool :)

 Here's Melody and me picnic-ing! 

When the eclipse was just barely starting, we grabbed our boxes and headed to the parking lot to check it out. Melody and I decided that we should track the progress of the eclipse on the bottom of our box. So we grabbed a pencil and tried to make the circle stay put long enough to trace it. Apparently there weren't many people who made boxes, so we were an anomaly. We had groups of people come to check out our boxes. One lady after talking to us for a few minutes offered us her extra pair of solar glasses! We were SO excited! We passed around the glasses and boxes so everyone could get a chance to see it. 

 Me, enjoying the cool solar glasses!

I tried to take a picture through the glasses..

you can kind of see the eclipse starting on the right side of the sun.

After 30 minutes or so, a sheriff car drove through and we found out that if we had continued down Main Street that we would have found the media center. Off we went to check out that action! We knew the media would be at the best spot to watch and that there would most likely be telescopes we could look through.

Apparently, the "Sweet Spot" was at the garbage dump...

We were excited to find out that were at least 5 different telescopes for people to look through - thanks to SUU. We quickly got in line for one and found out that we were again the anomaly of the group. Out of the thousands of people there, we were the only ones with boxes (at least that I could see). At least two different people took pictures of us looking at our boxes, someone even took video of us tracking the progress on our box.

 Waiting in line to look through the telescope

 Tracking the progress

 Jake and Trevor holding our boxes and waiting patiently for our turn with the telescope

Why, hello there Jake! 

It was cool looking through the telescope. It was really big and orange! After that we moved off a little ways to get away from the crush of people. The complete eclipse was getting close and we were discussing how we would pass around the one pair of glasses when a guy in front of us turns around and offers us his extra pair of glasses. How blessed we were! So now we had 3 boxes, 2 glasses, one cup - that Trevor somehow found out works decently enough to see the eclipse through - and 5 of us, with just minutes to go!!

 Here are a few attempts of a picture through the glasses:

All the people at the sweet spot:

 We're getting close!!!

People started cheering as the Ring Of Fire became complete. Some even sang the song "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash. We passed around our glasses and boxes and celebrated with everyone else. 

 The Ring of Fire through our 2 different glasses

Melody tracking the Ring of Fire 

The Ring of Fire in Jake's box 

 Jake, so excited for the Ring of Fire!

 Trevor looking through his cup

 All of us, what an adventure!!

After the Ring of Fire became the Pac-Man of Fire, we headed back to the car - stopping along the way to track the progress. 

 Awesome shadows from the eclipse

Our completed tracker!

This was certainly an amazing adventure! I'm grateful for friends that were willing to join me on this crazy escapade to a small town in Utah and for the random people who graciously shared their glasses and telescopes with us. It made the whole experience even more special!