Behind a Boat

There are few places I love being and few things I love doing more than being in or behind a boat. I LOVE IT! When I was in McCall I had a couple of opportunities to do some skiing and wakeboarding. It was a lot of fun. Here are some pictures.

Here's me making a cut early Monday morning behind my Uncle Jim's boat. It had been about two years since I had slalom skied, and I was somewhat proud of myself that I got up the first time. I went twice and was pretty sore for a few days (not as proud of that!), but it was a blast.
I went wakeboarding at the end of the week with my cousin Jimmy and my brother Braden, that was also fun, but I didn't do as well as I would have liked. Again, though, it felt so great to be behind a boat.
Robb also came with us and he did good on the slalom ski as well.
Jordan went too! After several attempts at getting up (definitely the hardest and most exhausting part) he was worn out and threw in and opted for the towel.
Braden went wakeboarding with me too and I think he had a fun time. This was my best shot of him.

Sarah's B-Day stuff in McCall

I'm sure this will turn into an annual event for as long as we live so far away from our family, as Sarah's birthday is close to the annual "Farmer Family Reunion". So, for the second year in a row we had a birthday celebration for Sarah up in McCall with most of my family. Sarah enjoyed getting presents from her family and everyone LOVED the large ice-cream cake that her Mom made, with Heather's little message on the top.

Sarah's B-Day Celebrations

Braden and Amanda came up and spent Fri night with us and got up here in time to enjoy the bed-time routine with Sarah and Nathan. We are a good mid-way stop for them on the way to McCall and it worked to have them participate in Sarah's birthday fun in the Boise area on our way to McCall.


It's crazy to think that my baby bro is going to be a dad very soon. And the cool part is that I could totally tell that he is excited about it. He was very engaged with our kids and they seemed to really enjoy being with them (both in the time that we had them to ourselves and when we were all in McCall). It was neat to see and he and Amanda are going to be great parents! Here is "Uncle Braden" holding his newest niece, Jane.

A well-known Hamm tradition (from when I was growing up) is getting to choose your favorite cereal for your birthday. This year Sarah chose Froot Loops and enjoyed them for several days!

She was looking forward to going to the zoo on her birthday.... even if she really just wanted to ride the carousel. The zoo was a lot of fun and it was great to have Braden and Amanda with us on this leg of the journey as well. We next went to Red Robin... Sarah's favorite restraunt. Nathan loves ketchup, so he decided to dip his straw in the red goodness and then put it in his drink.... stir... and:
...bottoms up. He probably did this 6+ times and seemed to enjoy the extra flavoring.
Sarah was really shy when the RR crew came and sang her happy birthday, but she enjoyed the sundae they provided.
Here is a pic of us at the RR in Boise. It was a lot of fun!

Sarah's Birthday Party

Sarah had her Birthday Party to celebrate her 5th Birthday on 7/25 (the day after Pioneer Day and the night before we left for McCall... busy!). The theme was a "Jungle Expedition" or Safari. Mary did an AMAZING job planning and putting this cute idea together based on different ideas she saw on-line. The invitation is below... I hope you can read it.

This was the invitation to the party, which I think is very creative. Then on the back of the invitation is this:
The kids "passport" where they are supposed to paste a picture of themselves and then write their name and favorite animal below. The kids then brought this and we hole-punched it and put it around their necks with strings.

Sarah showing her friends how old she is. When the kids arrived they made bags wherein they would put the things they "caught" along the way. Crayons, glue and little animal cut-outs were available for them to decorate their bags.

The safari began once all the bags were made and started with a story in the tent... the kids seemed to really enjoy it!
As they went around the yard they would find various "animal trails" that were bags of different goodies that lead to specific animals (peanuts: elephants; cheetos/tiger tails: Tiger; banana's: monkey; gummy worms: snake; tootsie rolls: giraffe spots). On each trail their were enough baggies or goodies for each kid to put in their bag. After each animal was found, Mary would tell a story or give some interesting facts about the specific animal. Above, she is telling the kids about how a tiger's tail can indicate his mood or his current plan of action. While Mary was getting all of the glory, I was behind the scenes keeping Jane happy, laying out the trails in the areas the kids had left and taking pictures. After the actual hunt, the kids went inside and made their own safari animal stick puppets. It was hard to help the kids all make these, but they mostly did a good job being patient with us and they seemed to really enjoy the results.

After they fininshed the puppets, Sarah blew out her candles on her cup cake and then the kids enjoyed their cupcakes and then Sarah opened all of the fun presents that she got from her friends.

Again, Mary did an amazing job with this party and I was so happy to be involved and to help out with the stuff behind the scenes. She often says how stuff like this is "not her thing", but she always amazes me with the job that she does! The kids seemed to thoroughly enjoy this safari and it was nice to send them home with some fun stuff and not too loaded up with candy.

Pioneer Day Tradition

On th 24th of July our church (and the state of Utah) celebrates "Pioneer Day" which is the commemoration of the day that the early Pioneers for our church entered the Salt Lake Valley. We've decided to do some fun things for this day, though we don't have many pics. We usually have a lesson in our weekly "Family Night" (typically Monday evenings) preceeding Pioneer Day that talks about Pioneers. On the actual day there are two main "events": cooking in a fire or in the BBQ and sleeping out in a tent. We made some delicious foil dinners this year and cooked enough for leftovers the next evening.


The kids enjoyed the meal.... well, Sarah did, once there was Ketchup involved. We then set up the tent and got the kids "to bed". They didn't last very long.... We found Nathan playing on the ground outside the tent. He needed a diaper change and then chose not to sleep in the tent, which was a surprise considering how much he enjoyed sleeping out there for camping. Sarah stayed out there and slept 'til around midnight when she wet her bed and had to sleep in her own bed in the house... which she was disappointed about, but too tired to put up too much of a fuss. It was my year to sleep out there with the kids... we'll see if Mary counts this one for me so she can be on for next year.

Oops!

So I think this was on 7/23 or sometime thereabouts, but we were preparing to go to McCall and have Sarah's b-day party and stuff and I wanted to install a security bar in our rear sliding door. This door was mis-installed backwards so you can't just put a stick in the slot because the slot is outside instead of inside... anyway, it's annoying. When installing a normal security bar for a sliding door you are typically installing this into the frame of the door. Not the case in our situation.... of course, even though I knew that, it didn't really click into my head until after the glass pane completely cracked while I was drilling a hole in the middle metal frame. Nice work Jeff! Why don't you just hit yourself in the head with a hammer.... darn it... I've done that one too (6 stitches in the forehead). Here are the results:

We heard little cracking throughout the night. We were already really busy prepping for the upcoming stuff, but we were up 'til almost 1 pm that night just trying cover the window with the tarp and stuff in case the broken glass actually fell out.

Here was our patch job, which held up until the next day that we needed to remove the glass to make our house both safe and presentable for a kid's b-day party.

Mary did the actual clean-up while I was doing various other things. It looks okay, but now we just have one pane for the time being.

I don't know how I got by as the "maintenance man" for 3.5 years while we managed apartments.

Nathan did fracture his foot...

He has to wear shoes night and day. That was a lot (read the sarcasm) of fun at the beach in McCall, but he did pretty good with it. He fractured some metatarsal bone on the front interior of his foot and we'll probably keep him in the shoes at least another week before getting it re-examined. Fun, Fun, Fun

Three Jobs

So I'm ridiculously behind in blogging due to a week-long vacation in McCall (yes it was wonderful and yes I hope to blog about it soon!), but this is one I've been wanting to do for a while.

I've decided that I've had quite a diversity of jobs in my brief "career". Though, like most people, I have had a decent number of jobs, I will focus on three that underscore the range of my jobs.

1) My first job after my mission was at a place in Bellevue, WA called "Fox's Spy Outlet". Yeah, it was a spy shop, kind of a little hobby store and most of our traffic came from curious businessmen on their lunch break. Though we got a few sketchy characters in there occasionally. I was typically alone in the store and ran it by myself. And because business was SO SLOW typically, I did two things: read and watch re-runs of the Cosby show. Even though I had served a mission and enjoyed really reading the scriptures... I developed a LOVE for reading during my 6+ months I worked there. I started the "Work and Glory" series, and completed a good list of other books that I hadn't had time to read/study on my mission. Three highlights from doing the actual job: letting two guys experience being tased at their request and watching their knees buckle (that was pretty funny!), being able to shoot one of those launching wires tazer things at a poster and watching the shocks spread down the wires and then all over the wall (I felt real cool) and lastly: I sprayed some pepper spray in the front of the store just before closing (I was bored at times and tired of reading) and then went in the back of the store to do some closing paperwork. When I came out ten minutes later I was surprised when I started gagging and my eyes started running and my throat was on fire. I couldn't believe that the stuff was still in the air and that it was that potent still after ten minutes. I hope I (and you) never have to experience pepper spray again!

2. Just before I got married I took a job with David's Bridal and spent 2.5 years working for them in the bridal gown industry (primarily dresses). For most of my employment there I was the only male that worked there.... when people asked what I did my response (if I wasn't very comfortable in my manhood) was that I was a "shipping receiving manager at a local retail store". I did enjoy my job for the most part, though it was often really busy, especially during "Bridal Christmas" (Jan 1st - April... but it seemed to continue into the summer). I know all about A-line dresses, fancily-named-colors, and everything from bustles to boustiere's to bridesmaids gowns. The job allowed me to work full-time while completing most of my undergraduate studies. It also had great benefits. It was an interesting job, but it felt like I was undergoing estrogen therapy the whole time!

3) For the last year I have worked for Three Springs, Inc here in Idaho and serve male teens with Sexual Behavior Problems. Although in some ways it's a difficult population to work with, I really enjoy my job and the work that I do and the change that I get to see with juveniles and their families. It has allowed such a diversity of work, which I really enjoy (running groups, family sessions, individual sessions; coordinating treatment with education, behavioral, medical and psychiatric staff; and interfacing with state agencies).

Anyway... these are some pretty diverse workplaces in the last 7 years! Oh yeah, and Mary and I were Landlord's for 3.5 years!

I would love to hear about your three craziest, strangest jobs.

Recent Tidbits from Sarah

So tonight Mary mentioned that Sarah had woken up last night and come and complained to Mary that her "bed was all messed up" and that she needed help (I have a very vague recollection of this episode). Mary told Sarah to go back to bed but Sarah insisted, saying "Mom, it's like a jungle in my bed". Mary got out of bed and helped Sarah back to hers.

A little while ago Sarah was going through an episode where she would report in the morning, or cry out at night and complain about bad dreams. We try to be validating during these moments (it requires a little more effort in the middle of the night), knowing how real these dreams can sometimes be. Then after this happened off and on for a little while, Sarah started reporting that "Dad, I started to have a bad dream last night, so I just fast forwarded through the scary part... and I was okay." I thought it was another one of Mary's innovative ideas to help deal with these types of situations, but I recently asked Mary if this was the case and she reported that it wasn't and Sarah must have come up with it on her own. Pretty adorable thought process. Oh and yes, we do still have a VCR!

We're Pretty Sure that Nathan Broke His Foot on Friday...

He had X-Rays on Saturday and we'll find out the results tomorrow. Should make McCall pretty fun! We'll tell the funny/sad story when we know the results for sure. Poor little guy won't even put weight on his left foot and wants to be carried to different locations of the house, depending on what he wants to do and then scoots/crawls around in the little areas. He's been quite a trooper though, or it must not hurt that bad. He's himself, except that he can't walk or run around.

First Harvest from the Garden

So, we planted stuff in our garden about 2 months ago and we started picking our first vegetables (one yellow squash and one green zuchini) about a week ago. We have since pulled about ten or so more of these goodies out of our garden. It's fun to go look at it each evening and see the growth going on out there. There were some times where we didn't ever think we were going to get anything out of this garden as it was slow to get going and we weren't sure if the stuff was getting enough water (as we were both unfamiliar with the needs of plants in this climate). Mary had a great couple from our ward come over during the day and give us some great tips and ideas, and since then things have gone pretty well. Our beans are growing slowly and the butternut and spaghetti squash should be appearing in the next month or so. We have little canteloupes about the size of a softball right now, our tomatoes are struggling and we're hoping to have some peppers to pick in a month or so. Anyway, we're enjoying this part of the gardening process: picking the vegetables! Here are some pictures

Our first picks from our first garden at our first house

Jane Update

I guess my Mommy called today and wanted to see some new pics of Jane (I don't know why and I know she's probably the only one). So we will oblige. Jane is now 2.5 months old. It seems that we understand her needs much better than we did with Sarah or Nathan. Part of this is probably the result of being more experienced parents, but part of this is the result of the great information from Dunstan Baby Language (this is great info if you've never heard about it and although some people don't agree this exists, we've been impressed with the results and how it seems we are able to recognize and meet the specific need that Jane has based on the sound that she is making. Mary is much better at recognizing and distinguishing the sounds, but it seems to be working well, we recommend it to any mom-or-dad-to-be). Sometimes, when Jane is upset we just plop her on her back and she's content for a while just looking up and wriggling on the ground, making lot's of adorable cooing noises. She is also our best sleeper... by far. We discovered very early that she likes to sleep somewhat upright, so this has put her in her great new babyswing, which is out in the living room and where she sleeps at night and during the day. This has allowed for one thing that we wanted to have happen with her: sleep amidst noisieness, which is nice that we don't have to always be "shushing" Sarah and Nathan... unless they're too loud for our own tolerance level. Around two - three weeks she was sleeping through the night (to bed between 10-12 and up between 6-8) and this continued until about two weeks ago. Currently, she gets up usually about once at night, but typically only for an hour or so. Though, occasionally she still sleeps 'til 6-7, which is great. This has allowed Mary to avoid some of that post-partum depression stuff, which has been great! It also helps that I'm around A LOT more then I was with Nathan since I'm not in graduate school! Anyway, Jane is a little doll and her big sister still adores her and always wants to help, and Nathan is warming up to her... a little at a time. These are all recent pictures of her that we took. Nothing special beside the object of the photograph. She's in my lap for all the pictures... a place she seems pretty content in.



Even though she's got slobber stuff running down her chin in this last one, I think it's a cute pic!

80 Month Anniversary!

Mary and I have been married for 80 Months today! I try to remember this monthly and I remembered it today while I was typing up a case note at work. So I quickly did the calculations and remembered that it was 80 months today! So I called Mary and wished her "Happy 80 Month Anniversary". She usually just chuckles and thanks me for remembering. Sometimes she remembers before me and extends to me the congrats. It's a fun thing to remember.

Landscaping

So I've mentioned all of the landscaping we've done recently and I thought I would post some pics. Unfortunately, I didn't take the pictures of all the weeds that Mary pulled out of this area, which was a ton. This is one of the larger areas that we did, but we did a good chunk of the border of our backyard. We didn't plant any new plants (thought we did pull-out a few struggling ones) and the rocks and lanterns were there previously. The weed barrier should keep all of these pesky Idaho weeds out of these areas for the most part, which will be a heaven send!



I think we're done with a lot of the landscaping in the backyard until the fall when we want to re-plant some grass that we hope will come in on some of our bare spots. We of course have other grand landscaping ideas, but this was a necessity as we felt the weeds were overtaking our backyard, so this will certainly help. We'll see which other projects will now occupy our time.

Camping at Baumgartner

This weekend we (Sarah, Nathan and I) went camping (Fri afternoon to Sat afternoon) with a group of people from church. We traveled up in the mountains north of Pine and Featherville (crazy that we have members that live in Featherville, 1.5 hours away, and they are still in our congregation's boundaries... and they actually come!). There were about 8 families or so that came and it was a lot of fun. This was my first experience camping since we moved here (over a year ago now, time flies!) and it was beautiful. We had a nice, FREE!, secluded spot right next to the S. Fork of the Boise River. We were one of the first ones there so we got a nice spot right next to the river to provide some natural white noise for the kiddos.

After we got the tent all set-up, we sat down and had some pizza that Mary had cooked for us before we left. The kids enjoyed the food and while they did so I got a picture of them in front of our tent with the river in the background.

The Idaho lifestyle is a decent house with lot's of recreational equipment (campers/RV's, ATV's and/or snowmobiles), so many people have motorcycles and stuff. Anyway, some friends from church brought their four-wheelers and let me take Sarah and Nathan for a ride on some of the trails. The kids loved it and Sarah was just belting out songs at the top of her lungs as we cruised along, it was cute. We got it up to about 35 mph in some spots and Sarah and Nathan kept asking me to go faster. Don't worry, I was safe, even if I had to hold Nathan with one hand and steer with the other.
Nathan played at the river all evening. When it got dark I finally had to put the hammer down and drag him away (kicking and screaming).
This glow-stick has a story. Sarah got two of them over a year ago and used one of them when we slept out in the backyard last summer and just LOVED it. I had no clue that we still had the other unused one. As soon as I mentioned that we were going camping about a week ago, she instantly ran into her room and brought it out and had it out all week, talking about how she was going to use it and asking me how and why it glows. She was pretty excited about it. She had it all evening and at night and all day on Saturday.
Here's the kiddos in bed. I didn't realize Sarah had so much pizza sauce on her cheeks! It actually got pretty cold at night (I could see my breath at times and I was wishing I had more warmth with a sweater on and a windbreaker) but I think that the kids stayed warm enough. Nathan was toast by the time bedtime rolled around at 10:30 (typical bed-time is before 8), but then once I got them in bed and read stories, the kid got a second wind and thought it was the funniest thing to get out of the sleeping bag only to have me wrestle him back in there. I finally just got him in there, told him to stay and left for adult time, knowing that he would get out. When I came to bed later, he was laying on top of his pillow with his bear and blanket next to him. He stayed asleep while I got him in his sleeping bag with his bear and blanket.
Sarah enjoyed roasted marshmallows on the trip and yes, she is in her jammies so, yes, this is in the morning... but it is after breakfast.
Just a cute picture of Nathan drinking his water in the morning.
Nathan was right back at the water in the morning, throwing rocks and loving it. I tried to keep him away as long as possible as it was pretty cold in the morning but I had to relent once the sun started warming the camp up.
There was a hot-springs that had a pool (drained each night and re-filled each morning) near our campground. So it was a perfect end to our trip as it allowed the kids to get all that dust off before we hopped in the car. It was the perfect depth (at Nathans shoulders) to allow both kids to play in it. I didn't think they'd get in when I felt the temp, but I think the desire to get in the water outweighed the hotness of the water and their bodies quickly adjusted and they were jumping off the sides to me in no time. It was a great time and I hope that we can do this some more this summer.