New Underwear

Davis is excited about his new spiderman underwear. Today after lunch, I came downstairs where he and a friend were playing the wretched Nintendo, and he had taken off his clothes (shirt and shorts). "Davis, why are you sitting around in your underwear?" I asked.

"Mom, I like wearing just my boxing shorts."

Guess what kind of underwear they are.

"This is the right place, move on."

Here in Utah, we celebrate Pioneer Day on July 24th--it is a state holiday. There is a big parade downtown, small parades all over the state, and fireworks galore. This is the day that commemorates the Pioneer arrival in the Salt Lake Valley in July of 1847.

My mother's ancestry is from the Southeastern part of the U.S. (her maiden name is Davis-- guess where my son got his name? Actually, we are related to Jefferson Davis (leader of the Confederate States-- what a pride, eh?) My Dad's ancestry, however, can be traced directly to the early Mormon Pioneers that crossed many grueling miles across plains of central United States and mountains to settle the western U.S.

In 1845, the beautiful settlement of Nauvoo, Illinois was experiencing difficulties. The Mormons had settled this swampy city and worked extremely hard to beautify the area-- to great success. The already existing surrounding settlements were resentful of the Mormon's success and disliked the huge influx of Mormon converts that had arrived in the city during preceding decade. Add the seemingly suspicious roots of the church-- Joseph Smith's testimony of golden plates (an ancient book written by the earlier inhabitants of the americas which was another testament of Christ) given to him by an angel, and people didn't have much respect for the Mormons-- well beyond the mainstream of traditional Christianity. They also disliked the fact that these new visitors voted as a block and were experiencing great financial success. The Mormons had previously been driven from their proserous settlements in Missouri and were now experiencing much animosity in Illinois. After Joseph Smith was marytred, the new leader of the church, Brigham Young, announced that it was time for the church members to settle far away, where they would be free to practice their religion in peace.

Opposition to the church had become so bad during the winter of 1845-46, Hundreds of Mormon homes were burned that winter in an effort to rid the territory of the Mormons. The extreme harrassment caused the peole to be driven from the city of Nauvoo during the bitter February of 1856. They crossed the huge Mississippi river on ice. The long trek across the cold plains of Iowa was grueling and cold-- many of the Mormons had left the city in such haste that they didn't have proper shoes, coats, or supplies. I marvel at their persistence. It was clear to Brigham Young that in order for his people to make the long exodus west, they would need to prepare better. During the summer and fall, the first group of pioneers worked to plant crops and shelter at Winter Quarters that could be used in the spring and a stop for the many people who would pass through. When things warmed up, the next spring, 1847, the first wagon train left. Most of the travelers could only bring one bucketful of supplies. They learned to be well organized and traveled in smaller groups and companies-- much like the military. They walked 10-15 miles every day, 6 days a week; on Sundays they rested. They suffered through wind and snow storms, dust from the wagon train, and extreme heat. All told, they traveled more than 600 miles. They traveled through Nebraska, Wyoming, and finally settled in the desert--Utah. During the next 20 years, the trails became the path of exodus for nearly 70,000 Pioneers. I honor their sacrifice and hard work.

This story is my legacy-- through my ancestry and because I am now a resident of Utah. When I was young, I didn't really think about how difficult the journey was and the sacrifices these people made. But as I've gotten older, I honor their commitment.

This year, my mom, little brother, the kids and I visited the "This is the Place Monument" at the mouth of Emigration Canyon which overlooks the city of Salt Lake. The view is AMAZING. It is said the when Brigham Young emerged from the canyon and took in the view of the valley he uttered these words, "This is the right place, move on." I think I would have said the same thing-- because I feel that way when I overlook the city. They have a monument there to honor the pioneers who died on the journey and it has become a historical landmark. Inside the heritage park, there is a VERY large pioneer city with repilicas of early pioneer homes, schools, churches, and such. On Pioneer Day, there were all sorts of guides dressed up in pioneer garb and told stories at the different landmarks about the way of life for the early settlers of the valley. It was a scorching hot day-- like 98 degrees and I was in awe that so many people lived and worked in such simple conditions. What hard workers!! I sure felt like a major wuss cause I was complaining about walking in the heat-- these people worked in it, and when they were done, they couldn't escape to a nice, air-conditioned home.

I took a few pictures, but my camera batteries died quick. Enjoy--and Happy Pioneer Day! Go PIONEERS!!!

Grandma helps Eliza walk on stilts.

Davis, Eliza and Uncle Chris pose with a young lady dressed as a pioneer in the theatre/church/school (multipurpose building)

Davis poses on the small, model train

Eliza poses in a small "play" cabin

"What's for Dinner?" "Corn."

Stinky bum. . .

Yes, I know you think this post SHOULD be about Roger, but no-- I am talking about my darling little 5 year-old Eliza (though Roger does have a dirty diaper about once or twice a day).

That's right, I have a stinky bum situation here. And it is NOT pretty. I thought I was done with this stuff, but no, I have been dealing with potty ACCIDENTS this month-- lots of them. I am talking major streakers here, folks. The girl just gets so busy she doesn't go to the bathroom until the last minute. Reasoning with her doesn't work. I even tried pulling the "you're going to Kindergarten soon, the kids will tease you and call you 'Stinky Bum,'" but that didn't work. Any ideas?

In her defense, today she was a little loose. There is something pathetically funny about a little girl trying to explain away an accident because she thought it was a toot, but it came out with more than she bargained for. . . . .

Questioning the Candidates

WARNING: blatant criticism of Presidential Candidate to follow

Though I think Obama means well and really does believe in people, I honestly don't feel his time as a state senator in Illinois or the U.S. Congress was extraordinary or even compelling reason enough to qualify him as President.

I was totally shocked to read this interview between Obama and Katie Couric. Couric calls Obama ON THE CARPET about his stance on the surge in Iraq and progress in the region. Read the interview and tell me if you think he is totally contradicting himself from question to question. . . .in one breath he talks about things in the region being more stable while in the next he is questioning the surge at all. I did not follow his line of thinking and came to the conclusion that he has decided or been advised to criticize all tactics of Bush even when the facts clearly show that things are on the up and up there--violence and deaths have dramatically dropped.

Obama has said that even knowing what he knows now he still wouldn't have supported the surge-- instead he would have had Americans 'negotiate' their way past the violence to put an end to terror in the region. Maybe that would have worked-- much better than the surge?- though, as Obama says, it is all hypothetical. He declares that the money spent in Iraq puts Americans at further risk because the troops haven't spent as much time in Afghanistan. Hey, maybe he's right, maybe if we had just left Iraq two years ago and leveled Afghanistan's mountains, we'd have gotten rid of the terrorists. Although, as Obama says, it is all hypothetical, and the terrorists might have fled right back into Iraq!

I am increasingly concerned with Obama's ability to think for himself instead of taking the direct opposite stance of Bush, McCain, or Republicans-- even if they have a good idea (I'm certainly not saying all their ideas are good either).

Computerless and Floating Nights

Wow!! I never realized how often I would pop online until: dum, dum, dum my laptop decided to go on strike. Last Wednesday I was minding my own business when the laptop decided it would no longer respond to the internet. No loading pages, no surfing other people's websites, nada. After deleting a bunch of programs the internet is working, but for some reason is still having issues loading blogs. Needless to say, my kitchen is cleaner because I am not using every spare moment to sit on my bum, but I really do miss my out. Thus, I am relegated to the dungeon computer (aka desktop in the basement).

I have decided I dislike night float intensely!! Since losing my night-time computer out, I realized that when D is gone at night, I am LONELY. T.V. just doesn't hold my interest (except a few choice shows), and chick flicks just make me miss my true love.

On the plus side, D has totally adjusted to his hours and sleeps like a wee babe during the day. On the minus side-- last Saturday night was his night off and after we put the kids down, D said, "Let's go out!"

"Okay. Should we see the new Batman movie?"

"Yeah."

So we rushed downtown got the earliest tickets still available (10:00 P.M.), got ice cream, and then almost peed our pants during the movie (and I literally mean I almost peed my pants. The movie was so good I didn't want to leave to go to the bathroom so for the last 1/2 hour I was bouncing in my seat. As soon as the credits rolled, I RAN out of the theatre (D thinks this is hilarious). When we got home, it was after 1:00 and I had a hard time getting down cause D was jabbering and we were thinking about how evil the Joker was. At 2:30 A.M., I wake up because D is rolling around in bed (can't sleep-- this is his normal wake hours). We are then both awake for awhile until I politely ask him to leave because he is tossing and turning too much. When he gets up I feel guilty and say, "Nevermind. I'll sleep on the couch." I was thinking that I sleep there better (I have a bit of an insomnia problem). Needless to say, I was tossing and turning on the couch for an hour after that. Earlier in the day I had seen Suessical with the kids and kept having strange dreams of Jokers and Who's.

Anyway, that was my strange week. Hope yours was equally entertaining.

Wordless

Sadly, I must confess my near 17-month-old has four words: "MAAAAAAAAH" (sometimes "MAAAAHMAAAAAAH"= mom (always yelled loudly), "Uh-oh" = uh-oh, means he dropped food off of the high chair, and "Eeee?"= please, and, sometimes "Dad"= dad.

For those of you who are unaware, this means he's behind. Most kids have about 5 words by their first birthday and they add 2-5 words every month after that. Thankfully, Roger is the third so I won't be freaking out too much. The twins were late also (especially Davis), and now they talk too much. My hypothesis is he is leaking brain cells with his rapid hair growth, which requires a hair cut every two weeks!

On the plus side, here are signs that Roger is not dumb (this list is for posterity since I am a horrible journal keeper):

1) When I say, "Rogie, it's time to go night-night," he high-tails it out of the room.

2) He spots airplanes and helicopters in the sky that I don't even see and responds with a point and a scream.

3) His favorite book is "Things that Go," a delighfully boring book which has a picture of every sort of machine imaginable and a little blurb about the boat, train, truck, or excavator. I've started leaving the book in bed with Roger and last night I caught him singing to himself, "WOO WOO WOO WOO." (like a police siren)

4) Yesterday I caught him peeking under the couches. When he looked under the love seat he started yelling, "MAAA MAAA" and ran over to grab my skirt. He then pulled and pointed me back to the couch, knelt down, and pointed to a binky out of reach.

5) He can roar like a bear, make fish lips, and point out a particular animal out of several pictures when you ask him, "Where is the dog, cat, horse, etc?"

6) When he is running toward the street, I yell, "Roger, turn around and come back here. We do not play in the road." He complies (for now).

7) Whenever I open the oven he makes a little tisking noise with his mouth. (meaning it is 'hot'). When I gave him pizza tonight, he grabbed it, dropped it, and made that noise (I didn't think it was too hot, but I guess he did).

8) He threw a ball behind us and 2 pews back in church. There were several laughs.

9) He likes to 'jump'. Usually his jumps are just accentuated squats, but every now and again he'll catch air.

10) He will usually give kisses, hugs, and loves (head bonk) on command.

I LOVE THAT LITTLE GUY!

Isn't it Ironic?

This morning I was cheerfully cleaning up the house whilst listening to happy children voices wafting in from the backyard. "Wow," I thought, "They are actually playing outside-- digging up bugs, playing in the dirt, using their imaginations, and doing just the sort of things you want your kids to be doing instead of being glued to the T.V." I was on cloud nine. There were no complaints against me because I was making them go outside, no complaints because life wasn't fair when I asked them to get off the computer, and, especially, no screams like 'I HATE YOU MOM!"

Just as I was on this little trip, my mom called. We started conversing about the play we were going to on Saturday when, suddenly, a scream came from the backyard. "Gotta go, Mom," I said as I raced out the backdoor. I was greeted by the neighbor boy screaming because Davis had whipped him in the face with a jumprope. "Davis," I said, "Did you whip Will with the jumprope?"

"Yes, but I didn't mean to. We were pretending to be Indiana Jones and he got too close." (don't you just love the way he blamed the other kids for getting in his way? AND how does Davis even know who Indiana Jones is?)

While Davis was making excuses and Will's cries were winding down, I saw Eliza and Abby (Will's sister) pulling apricots--unripe ones-- off the tree. "What are you girls doing?" I questioned, not really wanting the answer. You see, someone had picked an apricot earlier in the morning, and I told them all very clearly they were NOT to pick off ANY apricots yet. Then I noticed the 3 BUCKETS FULL of green apricots. Smoke was coming out of my ears.

"Mom," Eliza explained, "we were getting food for the potato bugs we collected." Yeah, 3 buckets full of apricots would definitely be a feast for the 10 bugs they had in wait in a plastic bowl.

I lectured the kids a lot more calmly than I felt (probably because the neighbors were there and I didn't want their mom to hear stories about how mean 'Prunella' (that's what Will and Abby call me) was. I promptly told them they needed to come inside because they had made 'bad' choices and couldn't continue their playing. I sent them downstairs and made them play with legos and Polly Pockets (they wanted to turn on the T.V.).

After I calmed down I realized I was so happy earlier when the kids were doing just what kids ought to do-- and forgot that getting into trouble while using your imagination is a childhood given. In the meantime, the only apricots left on the tree are out of easy reach and will require a ladder and more time to get down. . .

Dr. Millar, the 'Night Float'

With intern year down, D has started his first rotation as a true surgical resident working the 'Night Float'--dum, dum, dum. This means he is working six 12-hour shifts a week from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. He actually has adjusted quite nicely. However, I am struggling putting the kids to bed (his usual duty) because I can't come up with outrageous, rhyming tunes on the fly. It is strange--in a good way-- to have him walk into the house at 7:00 A.M. with a big grin on his face. Today I benefitted from this schedule because he "stopped by the grocery store on (his) way home" and picked up eggs, bacon ("I even got turkey bacon, it is 98% fat free"), and white bread for French Toast (items I generally stay away from-except eggs, we were just out of those). Breakfast was lovely, though I am always baffled by the dirty pans left in the sink for someone else to wash (hint, hint-- breakfast is a million times better when the dishes aren't left over).

D says he enjoys roaming the hospital at night. The halls are not bustling with visitors or administrators. Many of the calls he gets are 'important,' meaning someone's vitals are going down the tube, or they need a consult, or emergency surgery. Last week he got a frantic call from a friend in the SICU (surgical ICU) saying this guy was crashing and he needed to be "unzipped." What this meant is that D paged his attending, ran down to the unit, they poured iodine over his belly and cut the patient open from his sternum down-- his bowels were blocked, inflamed, and desperately needed room to breathe. This is the stuff that ER is made of.

On a sadder note, one of D's saddest/more embarrassing things happened during the night, too. He was juggling some consults when an elderly woman presented with a perforated bowel. She had undergone surgery in the previous week and rather than go under the knife again, her family (her grandson was a scrub nurse at the hospital) elected to to send her to CT or something to see if she was a candidate for some sort of laprascopic and less invasive procedure. About 30 minutes after they left he walked past their room which was slightly ajar and he was greeted by the family in a circle at the foot of Grandma's bed. D cheerfully burst, "So, what's the verdict?" To which the answer was the ENTIRE family turning around with tear-stained faces. The nurse D knew said, "She didn't make it." She had died during her CT scan-- so sad. D was mortified that he hadn't picked up on the sombre mood before he opened his mouth. I am sure he recovered quickly with words of remorse and understanding.

D also says people's true colors are revealed during the night. Want to know if an attending is REALLY cool? Wake him up at 2:00 A.M. about a consult. At this time of night people have not had sufficient time to put their masks on. He is surprised by the reactions some attendings give to performing their DUTIES. This makes me wonder how I would react if awoken in the night by a resident. Since I will never know, I can imagine being awoken in the night by a crying baby (or two). Hmmmm, that doesn't bode well for me. . . . .

Davis looks like. . . .

STING?

A woman at the gym was watching Davis playing around and said he reminded her of Sting. I think I got this blank stare of bewilderment because she was like, "You know, Sting, of The Police-- Gordon Sumner, when he was younger." Yeah, I knew who she was talking about-- love his albums, but didn't quite catch the resemblance, maybe it's because he's like almost 60, right. . . . .what do you think?

Lazy Days of Summer?

I keep waiting for a week when I don't feel totally bombarded with play-date requests (thus children playing at the house NON-STOP), driving to neighborhood activities around town, preparing for Sharing Time (I've done it 4 times in the last 2 months), driving to gymnastics and swimming classes, and throwing together a big Pioneer Day Activity for the kids in the neighborhood on Saturday (not to mention the looming menace of the Primary Program-- which I have to write).

Seriously, where are the lazy hours by the beach, sucking Otter Pops all day? I need a vacation from my vacation!!!!

Go America!

We got this hairbrained idea to color our hair for the neighborhood parade and breakfast-- I'm a sucker for a little bit of fun!

All American Family: AKA The Weird Millars Who Live Around the Corner

Mom's NOT in on the hair action

(every party needs a pooper, that's why they invited me!)

In the parade. . . . .

Uncle Tracy using Roger as a sheild during a squirt bottle fight

The cousins pose in front of Grandpa's hot tub (with cold water inside). They splashed for hours.

And finally (no pictures) we walked to Sugarhouse park for spectacular fireworks. Roger kept daddy-hopping with the neighbor's Dad's (I'm thinking he was trying to find his own). While I was sitting there with my 3 kids and watching the spectacle, I thought, "This is what America is all about. . . .a great day with your family and friends in a country where we have the freedom to pursue our hopes and dreams." What a FANTASTIC day!!!

Who . . . .

was the person that decided watermelon-flavored candy actually tasted like watermelon? Don't get me wrong, I like it, but do not understand why it is labeled as "watermelon."

Speeding Ticket

As D walked into the door this morning he informed me, "Well, I guess it was about time. I just got a speeding ticket."

Camilla, "Dang. Where did you get it?"

D continued, "Just past the high school. I haven't seen a cop there in five years."

I then declared, "They are there all the time. I guess you haven't driven past Highland High during the normal hours of the day in 5 years."

"Oh yeah. Well anyway, I turned the corner past the high school and started speeding up. When I hit 45 I turned my head and saw the officer shoot me with the gun. I immediately pulled over. When the cop got to my car, he told me that was the first time he'd had that happen (someone pulling over BEFORE he chased them) then he asked me if I had any excuses. I said 'no.'"

"No EXCUSES?" I exclaimed. "How about the fact that you've been working all night and wanted to get home and sleep? I know you could have sweet talked him out of the ticket by telling him about your sacrifices to mankind."

"Yeah, but I was speeding."

Thus the story ends. D will look into traffic school options--but I don't think that will save us from a fine. Luckily, he will be around during the day for the next two months, otherwise that wouldn't be an option (I guess they don't care if you sleep during traffic school?). I never cease to be amazed at my husband's honesty and conscience (roll your eyes here).