Age differences

My children were pretending to fight monsters together (think Final Fantasy style battles mixed with Pokemon elements). At the beginning of each fight (cue epic battle music), they would announce their primary offensive weapon.

Zachary: electric cultlasssssssssssssssssss!!!!!
Chayce: pyroblaaaaaaade!!!!!!
Payge: Jelly beans!

September, JZachary's birthday, Chayce's Baptism, wildflowers, and mulberries

Jillian and I went to the Glenn Miller USO show at USU. We need to go dancing more often!

Grapes from our vines (that the chickens couldn't reach, we had about 25% of last year's harvest)

Quinton in daddy's office, chewing on a car.

Zachary's birthday cake, a minecraft creeper. No it didn't explode when he blew out the candle (maybe next year). zachary has figured out how to set up a home server so we can play multiplayer minecraft.

Chayce's belated birthday cake. We had a combined birthday party after the baptism on the 28th.

Chayce, 8. Yes, 8. 

Chayce and her daddy.

The children helped clear the rocks so we could seed this area with wildflowers and crimson clover for next year. This is a view from the center facing south.

A view from the center facing north.

As we cleared the area behind the fence, we found a submerged kiddie pool full of sand. We removed the decrepit pool, and left the sand for the children to play with, and avoided seeding wildflowers in this area.

We have been clearing the chicken of grass and will replant this area with quinoa, amaranth, sorghum, clover, and alfalfa. The fence will be line with raspberries and sunflowers. We'll add three mulberry trees (two red, one white) in the center. 

The mulberry trees, Illinois everbearing, Oscar, and Sweet Lavender (the white variety)

Payge getting ready to water the newly planted trees.

Chayce picking almost ready plums.

The three mulberry trees

A view from the other direction

Payge next to the sweet lavender mulberry (bottom left) and in front of the plum tree.

When little boys prepare for the day

I hear Zachary up in the bathroom. He has just washed his hands but has obviously not left the mirror. I hear a low, raspy "die....Die...DIE...." I imagine his face is quite contorted.

Update (23 seconds later)
Noises have stopped and he has left. He must be ready to torment his sisters.*


* He actually doesn't do that too much. They play together well. It has cooled off lately and they have spent many hours playing legos together, and the only time it falls apart is when Payge takes it personal that her castle was attacked.

Hawaii

This August, I attended the American Psychological Association conference in Oahu and Jillian came with me (12th anniversary). Some friends watched our children while we were gone. I presented an R graphing package I wrote. But most of the time was spent exploring the island, armed with tips from my sister Effie (who used to live on the north side) and cousin Adrienne (who currently lives there). Our favorite was hiking the mountains and rainforests, I'm not sure I got enough of that. I'd also like to take my children there and spend more time in the waves. Here are some highlights of the trip.

Our first day there was very windy. This is in front of our hotel waiting for the bus. After one ride, we decided the bus wasn't worth waiting for and just walked everywhere. We put in 13 miles one day, including a walk to, climb of , and walk back from Diamond Head crater.

The same windy day, though my hair is not as conducive to estimating wind turbulence in a still shot.

We woke at 3am our first morning and couldn't sleep, so we walked Waikiki. This is a picture of the sunrise over Diamond Head crater, though it is hard to tell the sunrise part.

A picture of use from the top of diamond head, looking back on Waikiki from where the previous picture was taken earlier that morning.

We went on a tour of the island put on by the Polynesian Cultural Center (where my sister Effie used to work). This is one of the beaches on the East side.

Nu'uanu Pali lookout looking East. It was very windy here too.

On our way to see my cousin Adrienne and attend the Laie Hawaii LDS temple, we stopped to hike Waimea Falls Park. Being in the rain forest was amazing, I wish I could have spent more time reading about all the plants.

Jillian in Waimea Falls Park

It was good that I didn't have a shovel with me, because there was ginger everywhere, and I was tempted to smell each one's roots.

Us in Wimea

Waimea Falls. We decided not to swim, but that is an option and there are lifeguards on duty.

Waimea Falls

Jungle foul, from when modern chickens descended. I was tempted to capture a couple chicks and bring them home, but I wasn't sure how I would get them on the plane or past agricultural inspections.

The grounds of the Laie Hawaii Temple

Jillian in front of the Byodo-In Buhdist temple

A small waterfall behind the Byodo-In temple.

A picture of the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park facing north west with the mountains in the background. After visiting here, we were tired, already checked out of the hotel, and missed our children. So we went across the street and caught a movie while waiting to go to the airport.

September is here

Since returning from Hong Kong the children and I have stayed busy in the evenings. This week we have prepared and dehydrated 2 bushels of cantaloupe (not from our garden), tomatoes, and sweet green grapes (the latter two from our garden). This was squeezed in each evening between regular after dinner chores and lawn mowing. The children have been fantastic help and it was quite fun.

I found 10 eggs in our firepit. The leghorn, Clara, apparently has been laying them there. I wasn't sure how old they were so I fed the yolks back to the chickens.

A new grape vine I helped along this year (last year I was ignorantly mowing it) produces a red, generally seedless, muscadine flavored grape. I'm excited to make juice with it next year (this year I'll just eat them since there are not that many).

Quinton has a new game he calls kissy-kissy. Jillian loves getting kisses. However, he tried playing it with both the chickens and bees tonight. The chickens tolerated it, the bees not so much, but I noticed in time to rescue him.

Here are some recent pictures

Dragon tongue, purple, and blue lake beans.

Hardneck garlic (the softneck was already braided and put up). Both hard and softneck produce bulbils which I will plant for 2015 (I'll take cloves from a few bulbs for 2014 garlic).

Chayce and Payge loving on a Holstein calf at the Cache County fair

Quinton didn't care for touching any of the other animals, but was ok with petting the sheeep

Quinton loves tractors, but here he is not please that he has to share

Chayce looks big enough to drive this one

Grilled pizza. Jillian made the most amazing dough. The sauce was pesto I made from garlic I dug up and forgot to bring in for a week, so it was sun roasted and made the best pesto I've ever had. Feta cheese and squash, tomatoes and onions from the garden.

Our chickens have grown up

We trained some pumpkin plants up the aspen in the front yard. There are currently four different kinds of pumpkin growing in that tree.

My blueberries produced this year. This plant is still ripening at writing in the first week of September. We hope this is typical of the plant since the other plant that produced did so in July. Spread blueberries across the summer! More plants are on next year's to do list.

While I was in Hong Kong, Jillian went to Geneva and Chayce found a stinky snake. My dad conjectured it had been in the septic system.

After months of asking, I finally had the time and the remembrance to let them put on swim suits and have a massive bubble bath in the jetted tub.

Quinton was not a fan of the jetted tub. Or the bubbles. And taking his picture was not helping things.

I spent this week in Hong Kong as a delegate to the World Statistics Congress. I presented a literature review of the state of the science on applying Structural Equation Modelling to complex survey data. While I am not completely at home in a city this large, this has been a great educational experience beyond what I am learning attending the conference sessions. It has been interesting experiencing a city that intersperses ultra modern business and architecture with traditional open air markets with on site food preparation including butchering. I've ridden subways, trains, and ferry's, none of which are common in the places I have lived though I have finally used enough times to suppress the initial panic of not being in control of the vehicle I am on. Or the realization that the number of people in the subway station exceeds the total population of the town I live in.

I occasionally see small families with children Payge and Quinton's age, usually tourists from mainland China. (How do I know they are tourists? They could pass for locals, but they are holding maps and are as lost as I am trying to find places.)

The pictures below are to some places I've been, including the Hong Kong Conference and Exhibition Center where I've been during the day, the harbor with ferries, and some markets nestled among sky scrapers.

Update: I went with my colleague Marcus to see the big Buddha statue East of the city.

An now for some perspective. Hong Kong has over 7 million people living in 1/4th the geographic area as Cache County's 112,000 people. That is over 6000:1. Assuming an average household of 4 in Cache County, we would have to put 24,000 people on the geographic footprint of each Cache County house to support a population of 7 million. Nothing but sky scrapers here (note that the Buddha statue I visited was ~11 stories high, the Eccles Business School at USU is only 9). This is why the mass transit is so dirt cheap ($2.46 US$ for the longest ride you can take on the subway without changing stations). Also note that half of Hong Kong is uninhabitable mountains, much like Cache County. By comparison, New York City has 8 million is the same square mileage as Hong Kong, but essentially no mountains.