Sundance with Philip's family

Our trip to ride the ski lift at Sundance when Philip and Allison come to visit has become a long-standing tradition! I wasn't sure we'd manage it this year, with Ezekiel being so new and some colder weather than usual. But we did. All the older kids helped watch the younger ones, and Ziggy slept peacefully on me in his sling the whole time! I don't think he even knew we were on top of a mountain. I should have gotten a picture of him so he'd believe me someday! Maybe Philip got one.

There was snow at the top! All the kids picked it up and made their gloves wet and their hands cold, of course. Then we warmed their hands by holding them on the side of the warm building (there is a restaurant there at the top, but we didn't go in).

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Sundance ski lift

After our trip to California, the fun continued apace as Philip and Allison's family came back to Utah to visit us! As is becoming customary, we met up at Sundance to ride the ski lift. It was a bit of a strange year, leafwise. Some years in October there have been spectacular reds and yellows on the mountain! This year was a lot more muted. In fact, it almost looked like early spring to me: lots of shades of brown and tan, with some fresh, pale green-yellows mixed in. It was so different. But beautiful!

Each boy had a girl to look after, and they were all so cute. Such protective older brothers! Here Abe prepares to help Daisy hop on to the lift.

Seb with his Goldie

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Sundance leaves

We rode the tram at Sundance with my mom a few weeks ago. Here are a few pictures.

I love these bright yellows glinting out.

Closer.

Greens always make the reds look brighter

And I loved this little thicket of oranges. So many different shades!

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Sundance

I really oughtn't to listen to old recordings of my children singing with their choir while I edit pictures; it makes me far too sentimental. Little Abe! And his little angelic voice, now only a memory underneath his newly-deep tones. But let's be honest: I'm sentimental anyway. Anything that requires me to think about the rushing passage of time sends me off into that half-sweet, half-sad aching reverie, where I start getting teary-eyed thinking about how someday all those little dirty fingerprints will be gone from my walls and doors, never to return…and then I hear screaming and crashing from what is supposed to be a room full of sleeping children, and realize that those dirty little fingers are in the act of creating MORE mischief at that very moment…and the mood passes.

But it comes back with a vengeance when I realize how long we've been riding the ski lift at Sundance with my brother's family in the Fall, and how we've all grown and changed since we started! Well. I can't dwell on it too long, or I fall apart. Anyway, here is the record of it, so I can cry again next year! :)

A tree full of birdies!

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Sundance and these dear people

This has been an extra busy school year so far, with Abe running cross-country at the high school, and all the kids in more extracurriculars than we've ever done. I think it's all about to get a lot better (the end of the cross-country season corresponding with Abe's birthday and him having his driver's license now, hallelujah!) but it's been an intense few months of driving to and fro, deadlines, double-booked schedules, gulping down meals on the way somewhere else, and hardly having a minute to take a breath between it all.

So, bless my brother Philip and his wife for coming from California, all the way to Utah with three busy boys plus two new baby twins in tow. We got to be present for Philip's priesthood blessing of the babies, and we even got to take our traditional trip with them up to the Sundance ski lift! It was wonderful to be outside in the Fall sunshine, breathing in the mountain air and watching the cousins play—or examine ski lift mechanisms—together. As I've been looking through these pictures I've been thinking about how so many of these connections, all these people I love, weren't even in my wildest imaginings thirty, or even twenty, years ago. How could Philip and I, lying in our red and blue bunk beds giggling as we tried to pretend to be asleep when our parents came in to check on us—how could we, riding our bikes over to the church parking lot or playing "ewoks" in our backyard tree fort—how could we have possibly imagined these 13 wiggling, chattering, poking-each-other, independent little PEOPLE that would become our whole worlds? It fills me with wonder to think about it.

Abe and my mom

Teddy, Seb, and Ky in a rare moment of happy conspiracy (which must certainly be memorialized, blurry or not)!

Ah, my favorite—every color together on a hillside! 

Everyone is so bundled up, it looks like it must have been freezing on top of this mountain! Some years it has been, and Philip always conscientiously puts hats and gloves on us if we don't bring them ourselves! :) But it wasn't cold at all this year. It was a beautiful, warm Fall day! In fact, everyone was getting hot and gradually discarding all their coats and outerwear (and wanting me to carry it all, of course—which I of course refused to do! If there's one thing I have less and less tolerance for over the years, it's this idea that I am the children's pack mule.)

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Ski lift and waver

On Saturday we went up to Sundance to ride the ski lift.  I've always wanted to do that.  (Rachael and I rode a tram in Germany over the vineyards one time that was one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had in my life.  I love quiet, peaceful rides in the open air.)  The day was GORGEOUS.

Seb was nervous about it at first but soon became comfortable enough to make ME nervous.  The others weren't scared at all.  Daisy rode in the carrier and YELLED on the way up (so much for quiet and peaceful rides, but oh well).  When we got up to the top, we hiked around a bit.  There were lovely sweeping views and little woodsy alcoves.

I love the patterns the leaves make against the blue sky.  Like red lace.

Bright aspens.  I love their spindly trunks.  Those "tiny" ones down on the right are probably as tall as our house (we could tell when we got closer), so you can imagine how tall the others are.

The cutest thing was on the way down.  Going up, there weren't many others on the lift, but going down many more of the seats were full.  Daisy suddenly decided to put herself out to be sociable.  She'd wait till the people on the other side were close enough, and then she'd start calling, "Iiiiii!  Iiiiiii!" and waving at them.  (This is a new skill, and new word, which she is quite pleased to trot out every so often---but only on her own timetable, naturally.)  Everyone was charmed, quite charmed.  They smiled at her and waved and "hi"-ed back.  Even the mountain bikers, though you could tell they were a bit embarrassed about it.

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Sundance Ski Lift with Grandma Nelson

It was a beautiful day and we had a great time! Luckily I had Junie in the front-pack, since she kept trying to squirm down and asking to "play, play, play." She also waved and called "hi" to the people we passed on the lift (I remember Daisy did this when we went two years ago!).

Beautiful bright oranges

Let's go again next Fall!

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Lightning

I just love the aspen trees in this picture, tumbling heedlessly over that cliff like gold lightning racing toward the ground.

This Fall has been the way Fall always is, warm October days packed so tightly between the brittle nights that they start to bulge and burst around the edges; everything dazzling and sudden and fleeting as we try to fit in one more thing before the weather turns. I'm taking pictures faster than I can edit them; convinced every time I go anywhere that this particular tree is the brightest red, this patch of mountain the sharpest yellow; trying to grab and pocket each individual flash of light from the sun as it sets sooner and sooner over the western hills.

I've written about it before, but when does that ever stop me from writing about it again? If finding time to reflect on things was hard ten years ago, it's only gotten harder with each passing season, as my heart has had to unfold itself around ever widening and branching paths with each child I've had. They're so surprising! And changeable! It's like that most-delightfully-named developmental stage, the Mulberry Stage, where a zygote divides until it fills itself nearly to bursting, and then suddenly blossoms into something completely new and differentiated and almost person-like---only I'm having to keep up with all six of them doing it over and over, while I watch helplessly and wish I had more minutes to sit still and ponder what it all means.

My eldest son, this brilliant boy, had another birthday and I wanted to grab him by both shoulders and make him freeze just like this, happy and talkative and insightful; maybe bottle his 11-year-old self and store it up so I can have it again, just a taste, after he's moved beyond bears and magic and Rubik's Cubes. I settled for telling him, sternly, that he better not have any big ideas about growing taller than me, to which he replied, (quite cheekily, I thought) that growing taller than me was the highest, holiest aim of his existence.

What did I ever do to deserve such a boy?

Well, anyway. My brother and his family were here and we got up into the mountains for an afternoon at Sundance, and it was gold and quiet and perfect before everything raced on again.

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