I've been working on applications to grad school and i've finally finished the two first choice schools. It wasn't easy, I had to put together 2, 20+ page portfolios of my work, get 6 letters of recommendation, write two 1,000 word essays, take the GRE, get copies of transcripts from BYUI and Purdue and get it all done by the 16th for Harvard, and the 30th for UPenn. Man, the last month has been a marathon and Amanda has been a great sport about me not having a job, but I think the grace period is over. Anyone seen the yellowpages? M....McDonalds, yup, they look like they're hiring. Gotta Go!So just when I though all who were going to get it had it, Casey had to go and join the ranks of the children (as usual) and get a raging case of pink eye. So far I am the only one in the family who hasn't personally dealt with the nuisance (knock on wood).
And just to prove we are not bias towards brunettes we thought we toss a blondie into the show. Bennett is so great at haircuts, and always ends up looking incredibly studly!
After picking the kids up from primary on sunday, I was talking to Maya's teacher and she said, "Maya was eating paper in class today."
"Yeah, she also likes to eat chalk too," was my reply.
"Yeah, she sits next to a chalk board in the primary room and i've seen her run her hand along the chalk tray and then lick her hands." she said.
"I know, she's a weirdo."
"Yeah, she is a weirdo."
I stumbled on this video from the summer which only reinforces my daughter's weird eating habits.
So this is not a new year's resolution, because I really don't like those guys, but it is a much needed update. As our camera has been on hiatus because of lack of AA batteries in the Elmer house, there have been very few pictures taken to catalogue our happenings, and thus, we forget what we have been doing week to week, but I did happen to find these photos of Elmer Family Poncho day, and two pics of Bennett's first birthday. so there you have it. 
When I was at Olin Partnership on my internship, I was exposed to this really neat british artist, Andy Goldsworthy (http://www.morning-earth.org/ARTISTNATURALISTS/AN_Goldsworthy.html) and I was totally amazed and felt a deep connection with his work as he is an artist/naturalist. I know it sounds hippie, but his projects are so cool that I had to try out some works of my own, i know it's sort of copycatting, but who cares, it was a ton of fun and took me a good 6 hours to make gathering up all the leaves from different maple trees and arranging them arround the trunk of one of our trees. As I was working on this I started by collecting leaves from one of my own trees, but as I ran out and needed more colors, I kept having to go around my neighborhood to get more leaves. I think it turned out pretty cool and the next day, it had pretty much blown away, but it was still a fun little project. I even had a little go at the front porch which didn't get completed.
I know that we haven't had much to post of excitement these past couple of weeks and that usually our blogs are heavily photo based and for that reason you haven't heard from us. Well, we are at the Porter's this weekend for conference and I had to take a few pictures of our newest member of the family strutting his stuff and getting his first haircut.
Today I was talking on the phone with Sarah when Maya decided to go out back and play. She opened the door, stepped outside and started screaming her brains out. I was afraid she had sliced her foot off (or at the very least her toe) so I ran over and started scanning the area for blood. I didn't find any blood, however I did find a rather large praying mantis standing near the doorway. My child who loves everything nature was pointing and crying hysterically. Being the mature adult that I am, I made fun of her and suggested we catch it so we could show Porter and Dad when they get home. Maya now loves her 'Pry Mantis' and after a short while came in saying "Mom guess what my 'Pry Mantis" did?" "What did he do Maya?" "He POOPED and it looks just like our poop." After that exciting event she decided her "Pry Mantis" was hungry so we got out the Bug library book she just checked out last week and did some research. It turns out Mantis are voracious eaters and will eat just about any bugs so we went bug hunting and watched that "Pry Mantis" devour a cricket. It was awesome!
I'm going absolutely nuts without my camera! My mom always told me "You should never love anything that can't love you back", and I usually try to heed that advice, but I'm dangerously close to loving that stupid camera. I hate not having it, especially now when my baby is starting to make his first big boy messes.
Due to the previously mentioned delima of having no camera you will have to dust off your imaginations and picture this... I was siting in the living room talking to my sister when Addie (my niece) came in saying 'Bennett eat food' I just assumed she meant he was playing in the pantry and continued my discussion. Well I know what happens when you assume but I don't let that keep me from proving it. A few seconds later I happen to see Bennett's little leg from around the corner and it's covered in a brown powder. And instantly it clicks "OH CRAP HIS GOTTEN INTO THE COCO POWDER." I had just bought a brand new container of coco and somehow he had gotten into it and spilled it all over himself and the pantry. It was a terrible mess to clean up but his little coco face was priceless and he smelled delicious all day.
At leas until the next big mess of the day. A little later I saw Bennett going into the bathroom while I was busy so mentally I say to myself "Oops he's not supposed to play in there I'll get him in just a sec." A second was just long enough for him to get into the toilet and not only grab the contents (he has a sister who is afraid of the sound a flushing toilet makes) but put them into his mouth (don't worry I wouldn't have photographed this mess). What has my baby turned into?
Last week the we finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl to the kids. They both loved it! And in celebration of our accomplishment (reading our first big book) we bought a ton of Wonka brand candy and settled in for a movie night. We had prepared everything and had even borrowed the video from Sarah (way to save a buck). I had made these cute meatloaf and mashed potato cupcakes from family fun, and candied carrots (Willy Wonka wouldn't have it any other way). After dinner we started the video, broke into the candy, and the kids had eaten more than I care to admit before the opening credits even finished (we watched the old version). Well you would think with all the careful planning that went into this little shindig we would have been all set, but less than 10 minutes into the movie the disc started skipping infuriatingly (that's what I get for being a cheapskate). Casey then tried to improvise by renting the movie online, but it was going to take an hour to download so in a fit of desperation we let the kids watch an animated Star Wars movie and gorged ourselves on chocolate and 'fizzy lifting drink' to lessen the disappointment.
For Months now I had been looking forward to flying out to Utah so that I could spend some time with my brothers, sister, and the unofficial 6th Elmer sibling, Cameron Rippy.
After flying into SLC, my brother Dan and Cameron and I drove up to Rexburg, Idaho and crashed at Will and Nicole's place where we stayed up late catching up.
The next morning, since we couldn't leave until 11am, we spent about 3 hours on Willy's Wii trying to hone our Ninja Gaiden skills which we had cultivated as teens in the early 90's. Luckily the Wii's controller was as un-ergonomical as the original had been and we soon found out we were just as bad at 30 as we were at 13 and that level 3 is still way hard to beat!
After that exciting dip into the past, we gathered our gear and packs and headed out to Darby canyon in Driggs, Idaho, about an hour away.
Upon arrival at the trail head an hour later, we had learned three very important pieces of information. The first being that "Holy Diver" was the lyric Dio and Kill Switch Engage sings and not "Moldy Tiger" as Cameron suggests it was. The second was that no matter how gently you bang on a cracked windshield, it still is never a good idea, even if you are Willy. And the third is that if you're going to be hiking into the Ice Caves, you'd better darn well make sure that the birth canal isn't still plugged with ice before you pull your rappel rope after the initial 60' ice rappel into the caves or you could be spending the night in the caves and have search and rescue come and rescue your butts out of there.
There were about 50 cars parked at the trailhead because SAR (Search and Rescue) was conducting a search for some cavers who had gone into the Ice caves and had gotten stuck by ignoring important piece of information number 3. It was comforting to know that if we did get ourselves in over our heads, we'd at least have someone there to pull our dead, frozen bodies out of the caves.
Search and Rescue Sign stating: "Search and Rescue Operation in Progress. Please do not drive past this sign!"
Thankfully they had a pretty good attitude about us going up there, but maybe that's just because they were kind enough to snap this final mugshot of all of us together so that they could quickly identify bodies and notify next of kin.
The 2 mile hike up to the Wind caves was peppered with comments like, "When is it going to level out?" and "There is no way this is only 2 miles" and "I knew I shouldn't have eaten 10 Jack-in-the-Box tacos even though it only cost me $5." Most, if not all of these comments came from the extreme left of the above picture, but i'm sure we were all guilty of thinking them at one point or another.
We decided that we would camp at the base of the Wind Caves since our plans of actually going through the caves was impossible due to the ice plug, even though a small portion of our group wanted to try chipping out the plug with a hatchet. We unloaded our gear at base camp and put on the only clothes we had that weren't dripping in sweat and headed up to the Wind Caves where a massive waterfall was cascading out of the entrance to the caves. 
As we entered the cave, you could immedeatly feel the temperature drop about 20 degrees and as we hiked further into the mammoth entrance to the cave and as it got darker, we started flipping on our headlamps and strapping on our knee pads. We finally came to the entrance of the Wind cave, a small birth canal of a hole, about 2-3' wide and squirmed our way in. It only got tighter from there and at one point the cave makes this funky Z-shape and Dan was pickpocketed by the cave as it grabbed everything in his pockets and scattered them on the floor as he slithered through. We finally got to the toilet bowl, the furthest you can go in without ropes and we rappelled in. Malerie did her first rappel ever in 40 degree blackness into a wet pit. The rest of us dropped in and we found that we could not really go much further, though 3 of us were able to get across a raging underground river by stemming above it. I imagine we could have all made it across, but due to the fact that some of us could no longer feel our fingers despite the neoprene gloves we had, we decided to turn back and watch Cameron display his remarkable crevasse rescuing skill of ascending a rope with Prusiks. Progress was painfully slow, but in the end he made it up and was able to belay the rest of us out of the Pit of Despair. By the time we got back to camp, we were excited and exhausted and did what any excited and exhausted cavers who had just returned to camp would do, we consumed calories! and man did I punish that MRE that I brought, though after that meal, I do not envy those serving in the Armed Forces.
The evening was spent sleeping under the stars and with Cameron, Dan, and Will waking up every ten minutes thinking they'd heard a bear as they had chosen to sleep closest to the fire pit where Dan had dumped his Tuna juice on the fire to quench the flames before bed. Robby, who had forgotten to pack a sleeping pad, made do with about a million little pinecones and slept like a slept like the Princess and the Pea.
The next morning we awoke and against overwhelming odds, the group was persuaded to ignore their sore muscles and aching backs for a push to the entrance of the Ice caves. The hike was again peppered with the "There's no way this is 1/4 mile" and "Do you really know where the entrance is" but despite all that, we made it up and enjoyed the icy cold air blowing out of the entrance. After a bit of exploring, we decided to call it quits and trucked on back to the base camp and packed up our stuff and headed off. After hiking an hour back down to the car, we decided to take a dip in the icy stream, but as we were all changing, a group of young women drove up while we were in our B-day suits. Malerie of course was sent elsewhere to change, but I think we definetley scared those young women away. 10 minutes and 10 screams later we were back in the car and on our way back to the Burg. All in all, a successful trip i'd say.
