Today Melissa and Everett were standing in the kitchen when Teddy opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of scissors. Everett remarked that we needed to go through the house and babyproof it again, to which Teddy replied “I am not a baby!” Wow, indeed. And neither is Gwen, though it still comes naturally to us to refer to them as “the babies”. Clearly it’s time to think of another way to collectively describe them. None of us like “the twins” and we have heard anecdotally from grown twins that they don’t like it either. Melissa sometimes calls them “the kiddos” and Chris calls them “the monkeys”, but neither of these sound like they will be in use for very long.

After Everett was born, Chris often called him “the kid” when talking to people outside our immediate family, as in “I took the kid to school on the bike today.” After the twins were born he added “the girl” and “the boy”, all descriptive and unique. Coworkers especially found these terms incredible amusing, though this was unintentional.

The need for these kinds of names and collective labels seems to be purely motivated by efficiency: time is one of our most precious commodities at this point in our lives, and we don’t want to drag out our sentences by saying things like “Everett Maxwell Butson, Gwendolen Rose Butson and Theodore Ansel Butson: please come to the table for dinner.” Also, we are often so frazzled that it takes two or three tries to call each child by their correct name.

We are curious to hear how other families handle this.

Everett is now seven, and we recently had a talk with him about how babies are made. However, if you know Everett you will not be surprised to learn that he did most of the talking. We have given him bits of information over time as he has asked for them. Also, on a recent trip to the library he zeroed in on the book Where Willy Went, which doesn’t go into detail but it does explain that the egg and ferns (sperm) need to get together somehow. Once the process started he put it all together himself. We have now quickly moved from the realization phase to the questions phase, most recently “So you and Dad did that? Twice? That’s crazy.”

We have recently had some significant firsts with our children. These may not seem like much, but they could have transformative effects for us as parents.

A few months ago we put a training potty in Teddy & Gwen’s room, and from time to time we would convince them to sit on it. It soon became clear that Gwen wouldn’t share it, so we got a second one for Teddy. Now that the babies are two we have decided to get more serious about toilet training. When Everett was their age we motivated him with Lebkuchen from Aldi. There aren’t any Aldi in Utah, and we haven’t seen Lebkuchen since moving here, but Everett helped us come up with an alternate system: one M&M for pee, two for poop. Once Gwen figured this out she took to it right away. Within about a day she only peed in the potty, except when she was asleep. Teddy tried but didn’t have much success and was seriously upset that he wasn’t getting M&Ms. Nonetheless, we held firm and only gave them out for using the potty, and within a few days Teddy got really good at it as well. After waking up and before bed both of them now ask if they can go.They pee, jump up and exclaim “I want an M&M!” In the last week Teddy has pooped three times, most recently two nights in a row! This may be more graphic detail about bodily functions than we usually report in this blog, and it may seem like an absurd amount of detail about our children, but it is also difficult to describe how much freedom we would feel if they were no longer in diapers.

Speaking of freedom, we are now getting to the point where all three children will play with each other for brief periods of time with minimal supervision from us. The babies have grown to like roughhousing as much as Everett, and have started doing so with him (in addition to Chris of course).

He also taught them to play tag and they will chase him from time to time (Gwen recently started whacking Chris on the shoulder and saying “Tag!”). Recently Melissa started offering to pay Everett to watch the babies in the basement. His rate is $1 for every 20 minutes. Done. This allows the children to have some play time together, Everett to make some money and further develop his sense of responsibility (he is such a patient big brother!), and Melissa to get some things while she is home with them. Like potty training, this probably sounds like a minor achievement but makes a huge difference in our family dynamics.

5/28/2015
For some time now, whenever Chris is in charge of childcare he tells Everett “It’s the Dada Show!”, which might be an indication that things are going to be a little more permissive until Momma gets back (but not as permissive as when the grandparents are in charge). It’s also suggests that there might be more roughhousing than usual.

The Dada Show for the next three weeks is going to be different because Chris will be alone. And he has big plans to make the best use of this time. As soon as he returns home there are several urgent repairs: at the time we left for Cincinnati the dryer and upstairs furnace had stopped working and the roof was leaking. Once those things are taken care of he is going to get caught up on blog entries and photos for our family website. Then he is going to clean the garage and office in order to have a less cluttered environment at home. After that he is going to write 7 papers and 3 grants, lose 20 pounds and learn Esperanto.

6/14/2015
Update: Wow, it’s been two and a half weeks at the house alone! The first few days were strange and disorienting. In order to feel more at home Chris started scattering food all over the floor in the kitchen and dumping out bins of toys in every other room of the house. He has also been taking care of some things that we meant to do but can’t find the time, for example to get a trailer to haul bikes and other toys. We talked about this in Wisconsin because we had no practical way to transport the Bakfiets (other than riding it), and over time our backs are getting more and more unhappy when we lift the tandem kayak onto the roof of the car. In Utah we have even more need for a trailer because there are no leisurely bike rides from our house. The nearest main road is 600 feet below our house. Much of the descent is over 10% grade, and once you reach the main road there are only two choices: up or down the canyon. This is not conducive to family bike rides. So we are now the owners of a 5′ x 12′ Aluma trailer which we plan to start using as soon as the regular Dada Show resumes, i.e. all of the kids are back at the house.

We bought our house in Utah one year ago today, and we moved in about 10 months ago. Our home is in the mountains. It is beautiful – there is no doubt about that. And it can be eerily quiet. The houses are spread out and there aren’t nearly as many families in our neighborhood here as there were in Wisconsin, so it has been a slower process to get to know the neighbors. It would be difficult for any new neighborhood to live up to Kavanaugh – midwesterners seem naturally friendly, and Kavanaugh was extreme in this regard. Nonetheless we have slowly but surely been able to get to know neighbors and make new friends. And everyday we feel privileged to live in this environment.

There aren’t many houses in the neighborhood that have yards because they are on hillsides, but ours is an exception. And to our knowledge our yard has been abandoned since the day the house was built. This is good and bad. It’s good because expectations are low and it can only improve (along those lines, Chris decided to mow the grass in the front yard today for the first time since we bought the house). It’s bad because the yard isn’t really usable for anything. With all of the rain we’ve had recently it was about 3 feet tall.

One family we got to know soon after we moved is the Johnstones. We met them because their garage door was open during a family hike, so we walked up the driveway to see if anyone was home and to say hi. They live a short walk away and we have gotten together with them many times. Recently they invited us over along with several other families for dinner. There were several older kids (Everett’s age and up) and this was one of the first times that all of our children were off playing in the yard together. The older kids played a game where Teddy and Gwen were zombies who had to be avoided at all costs, even as they magnetically drew the older children closer. The twins have both become fearless on slides and they didn’t really understand this game – they were just going down the slide on the swing set and then walking around to climb the ladder again. They love slides. This includes the one on the playset in our backyard that was installed with the same degree of care and diligence as so many other parts of our house. It isn’t anchored to the ground, it doesn’t contain a single 90 degree angle, and the slide is at about a 45 degree angle. For a while now Gwen has expressed a desire to go down slides (including the one in our yard) but at the last moment she would say “No!” and back away. This no longer happens. The slide at the Johnstone’s house looked so mild by comparison to ours that Chris didn’t try to catch Gwen as she went down. She flew off the end of the slide, landed on her back and immediately started crying because she had bitten her tongue. Teddy went off next and fell off sideways – fortunately Chris caught him in midair. So it turns out that it was necessary for a parent keep an eye on things. These are the kinds of discoveries that are made when Dads are left in charge.

This was also the first evening since we moved here that we went on a family bike ride. The babies sat on the bench in the Bakfiets, Everett was on the tagalong and Melissa was on her Giant. The distance from our house to theirs is a third of a mile and yet still involves a considerable elevation change. The babies were cackling with laughter as we zoomed down the hill.

Other neighbors:
Melissa recently was a moose in our yard. She send Chris an excited message that she had seen one but had no photographic evidence. This sounds remarkably similar to the jackalopes that Chris has seen – they have the body of a rabbit and deer antlers. They are numerous but, as Chris explained to Everett, it is impossible to photograph them because they are blindingly fast – far too quick for any camera to capture. However, we later found out that Melissa did get two short videos which are of similar quality to those that caught Big Foot on film. You be the judge.
http://gallery.dromomania.net/Family/2015/April-2015/i-dDwTdfR/A
There are also many other animals: mice, voles, deer, porcupines, owls, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes (we have only seen non-venomous snakes, though we know that rattlesnakes are common), elk, cougars (mountain lions), bobcats and a few species of poisonous spiders.

There are also several varieties of birds including Robins and Northern Flickers. Among the former, there is one who has been hurling his body at our kitchen window every morning for a couple months. Melissa figured out that he was trying to get a wasp’s nest that was nestled into the top of the window frame. And the latter have a habit of pecking on the metal fireplace flue on our house and our neighbor’s house to the north. This creates an amazing racket both inside and outside the house. When it first started happening we were inside and had no idea what it was. Interestingly, this behavior has been well documented.

With regard to our non-human neighbors, our philosophy is that we were here last and therefore nature should bend to meet our preferences. Specifically, any wildlife that lives nearby should meet three criteria:
1. They are cute and non-poisonous.
2. They don’t try to move into our house.
3. They don’t eat our vegetables.

We are now in the midst of the summer 2015 travel extravaganza. This started on May 20 when we left for Cincinnati and will continue for several more weeks. The plan for the next three weeks is that Melissa and the children will stay in Cincinnati while Chris travels back to Utah. This will be the longest that Chris has been away from Melissa or any of the children. It also means that Chris will miss Everett’s seventh birthday party. To make up for this, and to try to address Everett’s requests to have more time with Mom and Dad, we wanted to plan a trip with him just like in the olden times before the twins were born. It’s been a hard adjustment for him to share our attention with the twins. He has remarked often that he does not get as much attention as he used to, which we acknowledge and agree with. He has also started pointing out that “I asked for a brother OR a sister. You gave me a brother AND a sister. OR, not AND.” This is debatable – Melissa distinctly recalls him asking for AND. But it doesn’t really matter at this point because twins come as a pair.

Our trip with Everett was made possible because Cress and Amanda generously offered to watch the twins for a night. So on Tuesday morning we drove to King’s Island where we went on rides for a few hours in a park that was mostly empty.

First we went on the Beast, but Everett found this a bit overwhelming so we dialed it back a notch and rode White Water Canyon a couple times, followed by some rides in the kid park.

Later that afternoon we went next door to the Great Wolf Lodge where we swam until about 6:30pm. Up until that point we asked Everett many times if he was hungry and he always said no. But as soon as Chris talked him into getting out of the water he said he was starving. We dithered about where to eat and finally decided on a room picnic: Everett got two slices of pizza while Chris and Melissa ate carryout from the hotel restaurant. By this point we were all pretty tired. Story time was at 8pm and Chris thought that afterward we might be in for the night. Instead, Everett suddenly perked up and said he wanted to find out more about MagiQuest. We had seen children playing this on previous visits to the GWL, but never really looked into it before. The difference now was that Everett received a $50 gift from Gabby and Grandaddy to spend as he wanted, and that the MagiQuest objects are spread throughout the hotel – we passed many of them between the lobby and our room and they certainly caught Everett’s eye. So he used his birthday money to buy a magic wand and start the quest.

We found two runes before bedtime at around 10pm. He and Chris were both asleep within a couple minutes.

On Wednesday morning we got up a little after 8am and went to Waffle House. Everett had chocolate chip pancakes and bacon while drinking coffee creamers. Afterward we went back to the lodge and finished collecting the remaining seven runes for MagiQuest. Every magi has his own style and practices. Along these lines, Everett soon grew to believe that his spells would not work if his parents were standing too close. So for each spell he would first point the wand at Chris and Melissa to get them to back up a few steps, and then he would cast his spell.

Afterward we spent about three more hours at the waterpark.

One unanticipated consequence of visiting these parks when there are few people is that there are no built-in rest periods such as standing in line. Instead we were walking constantly at both King’s Island and the Great Wolf Lodge. And the addition of MagiQuest meant about three more hours of walking up and down among the different floors of the hotel. Everett was exhausted by the time we left the Great Wolf Lodge and was almost coming unglued the rest of the afternoon. This kind of behavior is a rarity for him, but a reminder for us as parents that we need to build in times to rest and eat. We were back at G&G’s house by around 3pm.

That night we had a family dinner of salmon and cabbage and put the children to bed. An hour later everyone got up again because Gwen pooped and Everett needed something from us about every 10 minutes and Teddy wanted to play on the couch (a.k.a the bed). So we changed diapers and sang some songs and put everyone to bed again. It was a great birthday celebration and we are thankful that we got to spend this time. Happy Birthday Everett!

Link to Great Wolf Lodge 2015 photo gallery

A.k.a. Clifty Falls 2015: the multifamily, multigenerational Memorial Day camping weekend with three sets of grandparents, although technically it can’t be Camp Grammapa if the intervening generation of parents is present. Still, camping rules are pretty lax to begin with: Everett had Cocoa Puffs for dinner and the twins had lollipops for breakfast. This year we reserved five campsites, three in the island and two across the street to the north. Thanks to all of the grandparents for making this weekend happen!

To join the camping trip this year we flew from Salt Lake to Louisville, Kentucky on Wednesday, May 20. This was the first of the last batch of flights during which the babies are lap children, and while the main motivation was to save money, we have been dreading it for some time. We got up around 6am, finished packing the car and were on the road to the airport by 6:30am as planned. By about 7:15 we had all 7 bags checked in by Skycap: two bags of carseats, one bag containing two pack-and-plays, two suitcases for Mom and children, one duffel bag for Chris and one 10-person tent. In the past we have never been able to checkin lap children at Skycap but apparently that has changed. They also seem to be more forgiving of luggage size – the tent was under the 50 lb limit but the dimensions were likely larger than allowed.

The flight was rough even under good circumstances. We tried to mitigate the chaos by giving each child an iDevice and a pair of headphones. Each baby got an iPod Touch and Everett got Chris’ old iPhone 4 (but without cell service). All devices were loaded up with movies and family pictures and kids music.

This worked great for Everett and worked ok for the babies, but they didn’t seem to grasp that they had to avoid touching the screen to allow the movies to play. We had an extra seat on the leg from Salt Lake to Chicago so had a row of three seats for the kids to run around a bit. Then there was an hour delay in Chicago (on the plane – we didn’t switch planes) and we got into Louisville after 4pm. By 5:30 we were on the road to Cincinnati.

Thursday was spent running errands and getting some rest after the previous day of travel. Friday morning we packed the car for camping while the adults took turns keeping the babies occupied. Here is how the Play Doh activity went:

We recently bought a new tent for camping. It’s a Coleman 10 person tent that prominently advertises on the bag that it can be erected in 60 seconds.

We found that this was true: it did take 60 seconds, plus 29 minutes for all of the other pre- and post-preparation, so it all depends on when you start and stop the timer. This is a three season tent with two doors and a soundproof divider in the middle. It provided plenty of room for the two pack-and-plays, a sleeping pad for Everett and an inflatable queen mattress for Chris and Melissa.

Camping: the babies are overwhelming. Partly because of this, and partly because of his age, Everett’s freedom has increased dramatically. He is officially an older kid now. He is off with them running around well after dark, and we must rely on collective parenting and intuition to detect if something is wrong. He was gone for long periods of time with Trinity, in radio contact, but we still didn’t know exactly where they were. He was also tending the fire with minimal supervision. There are lots of children throughout the campground and the pace of life is slow.

Friday night: we put the babies down around 7pm. Around 8:30 we realized that Teddy was still awake and crying, so we got him up and he had snacks and sat by the campfire with Grandaddy, and about an hour later we put him back down. He screamed so loudly that we woke Gwen up. Melissa tried going to sleep with them and by the time Chris came into the tent a short while later it was complete chaos: Melissa was exhausted and there were two toddlers on the loose. Chris played an episode of Jack’s Big Music Show for them and at around 10:30 we told Everett it was time for bed.

Finally at 11 everyone was quiet. In exchange for losing 4 hours of sleep at bedtime the children slept an extra hour until 8am. It was chilly at night, probably around 50 degrees, and everyone was cold when we woke up.

On Saturday Everett lost another tooth. Matt setup a hammock setup between two trees. The adults are too heavy for it, but the kids loved it, including the babies. By the second day the older kids realized that they could flip the hammock over and swing upside down like this:

After a few hours of this Everett walked up to Melissa and said “Mom, this just happened” and showed that he had a mouthful of blood. He fell out of the hammock face first and had lost his second front tooth. He was a little shocked but didn’t cry and was back to his normal self after a few minutes. Soon afterward the babies took a nap while Chris and Melissa and Everett went to the nature center to see the turtles and snakes. Afterward we drove to the trailhead at Oak Grove where Melissa and Everett hiked the tunnel (which is open for the first time this year after being closed for about a decade due to white nose syndrome among bats). Meanwhile, Chris hiked around it and met them at the south entrance.

Saturday night: we gave the babies a bath and them down around 7:30, and soon afterward sat down for adult dinner. The Barbers cooked Nancy’s Juicy Steak for dinner (named in honor of their former neighbor Nancy Westerhaus), which was delicious. After dinner we sat by the fire for a while until around 9:30 when Chris realized that Teddy was still awake and needed a diaper change. This also meant that Teddy got to stay up for the marshmallow fight (sorry Gwen!). He really got into it and even started throwing marshmallows at Dad.

Sunday morning: around 8am Teddy was standing up in his crib saying “Hi! Hi! Hi!” The rest of the day was spent listening to the Indy 500 on the radio and slowly packing the cars while also trying to entertain the babies. They didn’t take much of a nap and instead spent some time in the baby pool. Will Power came in second. This meant that the Butson family won $12 from the betting pool, which was just enough to treat the Barber-Butson family to ice cream at Dairy Queen in Versailles.

Signs that this was a successful camping weekend: everyone was safe and healthy; no weather calamities; the children were exhausted when we got home Sunday night. Everett fell asleep in the back of Gabby’s car on the way home and it was very difficult to rouse him, but after a few tries we got him to walk inside and shower and eat and we put him to bed.

The babies’ verbal abilities are now expanding rapidly. They have gone from single words to conveying ideas using small sentences. This is a major turning point for all of us: for them it is now getting easier to express themselves, and it’s getting easier for us to understand. Like Everett (and most other children), the desire to speak is so strong that even when they can’t recall the correct word they will try to reproduce something similar, and if all goes well then this will be close enough that their parents will understand them. This is how it starts.

One of the roughhousing games that Dad plays with the children is belly nibbles. We recall the time at our Kavanaugh House when Everett was about 2 and said “Dada, can you nibble me?”. So Chris pounced on Everett and after a couple minutes Grandaddy said “Now that’s a proper nibble!” Everett has since grown to dislike it, but the babies seem to enjoy it quite a bit. Recently Chris started doing the same thing with them and a couple days later Gwen said “More? More nimbles?”. Chris knows that she wants to roughhouse because she sits in his lap and gets a pouncy look in her eye. She also does not like sharing Dada’s lap – if either of her brothers tries to join her she says “Like it!”, meaning she doesn’t like it, and she tries to push them away while saying “No! Off!”. Alternately, if Chris tries to nibble her and she doesn’t want it she says “No! No nimbles.” For some reason this feels different from when a boy says no.

Teddy has always been a picky eater so we take notice when he likes something. After a fair amount of experimenting we now know that he likes bacon and sausage. He also likes yogurt, or foods that resemble it such as sour cream. And of course he also likes anything that falls in the dessert category – tonight when we went to Mark and Emina’s house he took almost no interest in dinner but this changed as soon as dessert came out. As Chris ate bites of cake Teddy would open his mouth wide and smush his cheeks up against Chris’. This is the same kid who’s first word was “cookie” last December. Another food that he recently discovered is “noonles”, as in mac and cheese or really noodles of any kind. It is a relief to us to be able to find foods that he will eat, even if it is a limited list. Despite his pickiness, he can be pretty funny and spontaneously goofy at mealtimes. The other night he pulled his bib up over his head and waited for us to notice. He also takes food and puts it on his head while saying “Hat!”.

Tonight Chris was playing with all three children on the bed. We were doing the piggy dance when Everett said:
“Ok Dada let’s make this good! Big bananadingdoos – really high! And then a ginormous flomp at the end!”
Of course Gwen and Teddy saw this and immediately took an interest. Teddy walked over to get some bounces, and Gwen started saying “My turn!”
After a while Chris said breathlessly “You…guys…are…wearing…me…out!”
Without missing a beat Everett said “That’s the point of us!”

The New York Times recently published an article called The Only Baby Book You’ll Ever Need. This was a review of “The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings,” by David F. Lancy. Coincidentally, Professor Lancy is in our new home state at Utah State University. According to the book, one of the key differences in the way that different cultures raise children can be boiled down to one concept: pick when green or pick when ripe. We are clearly a “pick when green” society. According to the article, Professor Lancy calls the American style of childrearing a “neontocracy” in which adults provide services to relatively few children who are considered priceless, even though they’re useless. The harsh sounding part of this sentence is the last word, though no one we know seems to argue with the concept of a neontocracy. Along these lines, when Chris was growing up he sometimes visited houses that had two staircases. Invariably one was the “front” staircase while the other was the “servant” staircase. The latter was probably an anachronism, but reflected that it’s purpose was to allow the house staff to efficiently go about their work without being seen. In our new house we have two staircases. One ends at the front door landing, while the other leads to the master bedroom. Hmm. Perhaps we should move into one of the children’s rooms?

One alternate view of the neontocracy which isn’t mentioned in this article is the idea that the “pick when ripe” cultures miss out on a lot of the joy and fun of having children. However, it is virtually impossible to infer this without learning more about those cultures, and so on our next family vacation we are going to visit a country with a parentocracy. That is, as soon as we can find one.

Everett is on spring break this week so we decided to make a road trip to Bryce Canyon during the second half of the week. We left Wednesday night around 8pm. Our readers may recall that the Odyssey is a “movie car”, and Everett is allowed to watch movies during long trips. Both babies are facing forward now in their car seats, and during this trip we were surprised to learn that they like watching movies as well.

They were glued to the screen during the Princess Bride, and who wouldn’t be? We were hooked from the audio alone. They stayed awake far longer than we would have expected otherwise. We also heard lots of chatter between them. Gwen would tell us periodically that she pooped, and Teddy would announce “Poopy baby!”. Teddy would go crazy anytime there was a movie scene with water (“Wawa! Wawa!”) We only stopped twice: once to change diapers (no poop, despite the frequent announcements) and once to get gas and help Everett recline his seat so he could sleep.

We arrived around 12:30am and tried to get everyone settled down. The only wrinkle in this plan was that all of the children became extremely bouncy when we got to the hotel room. The three of them were rolling, bouncing and running around both beds. We tried to get them quiet but this didn’t go smoothly – there was lots of crying and direct appeals to each individual parent. Gwen in particular was crying and moaning “Oh Dada…oh Dada…oh Dada!” every time Chris was in sight. We finally got them settled down around 2am, at which point Everett was too afraid of possible spiders in his bed, so he and Melissa switched beds. Our experience with all of our children has been that no matter how late they stay up, they always get up around the same time. However, the next morning we were able to sleep in a little bit (8am).

There are unusually few places to eat in Bryce considering how many people visit the canyon. We went to breakfast at the hotel across the street, which was one of the only options unless we drove a half hour to Panguitch. Then we drove through the park until we reached the end of the road at Rainbow Point. On the ride back to the hotel for lunch and nap we heard Gwen saying “Where is he?”. We turned around and saw that Teddy had her elephant snuggled into his neck. Melissa told him to give it back to her, to which he replied “No.” Melissa then explained that she was going to count to three and take it away. “One…”. Teddy held up one finger. “Two…” Teddy held up two fingers. Chris and Melissa were laughing so hard that we had to look away. “Three.” Melissa took it and gave it to Gwen, after which she fell asleep almost instantly. Teddy has taken an interest in elephant lately. We have tried to give him a snuggly, but he doesn’t seem to want anything else.

We managed to go on several family hikes during this trip. We had a short hike around Rainbow Point and longer hikes around Sunrise Point, Mossy Cave Trail and Queen’s Garden Trail.

We also went on two hikes in Kodachrome Basin: the Angel’s Palace Loop and the nature trail.



As we were driving the babies kept asking Everett to sing. And as soon as he finished a song they would say “More? More sing?”, and he would give them a few songs to choose from. This went on for a while until he said “Babies! You are wearing me out.” Wow – who said that?!?

Japanese people seem to be fascinated by twins! Well, at least the the ones we saw in central Utah do. On Thursday evening when we were hiking around Sunrise Point we passed a couple large groups of Japanese tourists who literally swarmed the stroller as soon as they saw Gwen and Teddy. Chris snapped a couple pictures but we didn’t even put them on the website because they are too hard to understand.

On Saturday morning we went for a wagon ride to the rim of Bryce Canyon, followed by a hike on the Queen’s Garden Trail. It’s one of the easier trails in Bryce Canyon but it is still very steep and rocky. On the way up we saw a man going downhill with a baby in an umbrella stroller (?!?).

We got home on Saturday evening. Everett’s curiosity was back in gear as soon as we got inside the house.
“Dada, do you have your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Can you look up curvilinear triangles?”
“Um, ok. What’s a curvilinear triangle?”
It turns out that an example of a curvilinear triangle is a guitar pick. Chris never knew this, even after tutoring geometry in high school (like Everett, he loves geometry) and spending most of his adult life studying equations and curvy things.

Soon afterward the babies took a bath while Chris and Melissa sat on the bathroom floor and ate dinner. Livin’ the dream baby, livin’ the dream.

Here is a link to the photo gallery.