The Murdock Travel Guide

The evolution of travel Murdock Style:

In the early 2000s we had one small baby who required lots of diapers, wipes, changes of clothes, comfort items such as a favorite blanket(s) or toy(s), and other bodily fluid containment systems. He even needed specialty seats for feeding, car seats 4 times his size, a portable crib to sleep in... There was no such thing as traveling lightly. We had to be prepared for everything. Traveling was like war, we had PDKs (Personal Disaster Kits) stashed in the car, in the diaper bag, at the places we were visiting. It was exhausting. And then we had more babies!!!! I have come to the conclusion that having babies means it is completely impossible to travel lightly... But there are some ways to minimize the stuff you take.  And eventually they do grow up and not need so much stuff. And we have learned some things along the way that make traveling light so much easier these days.

Tip #1: Use ziplock bags to stuff clothes in. You can put a pair of pants in a bag and then squeeze all the air out of it while you zip it closed and Viola! It is smaller and takes up less room in your luggage. Bryan learned this skill in scouts as a boy when packing for camp. Works like a charm.

Tip #2: If your child has a favorite toy such as a creepy rubber snake that he/she must hold at all times then you need to practice letting your child put it through some sort of pretend scanner to simulate that awful moment when your child has to let go of it in the security line so it can be checked in the x-ray machine to make sure it is not a bomb. Our story: When Isaac was a preschooler he had this rubber snake we found at a garage sale that he loved and had to have with him AT ALL TIMES. He slept with it, he ate with it, he played with it. When it broke into two pieces he magically had two snakes that he must keep with him at all times. When it broke into more pieces he ran out of hands and would just stash bits of that snake places that made him happy. I was not allowed to throw any parts of it away. The only piece I could actually throw away was the piece of snake that fell in the toilet. I stood my ground against the tiny dictator that that part of the snake needed to go in the garbage. We traveled to Oklahoma via plane during those preschool years and Isaac had to have his snake. He almost had to go through the x-ray machine with that blasted snake. He had to let go of the snake to let it go through security. Enter tears and screams. Everyone around us hated our guts for bringing that screaming munchkin along to the airport. Please please learn from our sorrow. Practice that scenario before you get there so it won't be a most embarrassing moment contender.

Tip #3: Roll your clothes up. Just like little sushi rolls. They take up less room that way. If you roll them up and stand them on the flat end then you can see everything in your bag at once. Put all the pants together, put all the shirts together, rolled up and stood on end so you see the swirl in the roll from the top... It is actually pretty in your suitcase. Magical even.

Tip #4: You can even roll up entire outfits... tops, bottoms, underpants, socks. This works really well for road trips where you stay overnight someplace. Put one roll of clothes per person in a suitcase along with all toiletries and then you just have to bring in one bag to the hotel making more room for everyone to squish into one hotel room.

Tip #5: I love to put my underpants and socks in their own separate bags within my suitcase.
For a long time I used ziplocks to put my undies in. Then came that time when my bag got searched because I was visiting my family and my grandmother insisted she impart of her wealth to me so she gave me a sliver plated pepper grinder. TSA did not like that silver plated pepper grinder they saw in my suitcase via x-ray and I must have looked incredibly worrisome so they searched my bag. And there were my undies in a clear ziplock bag right on top of my open suitcase. It was embarrassing. I have since moved to using cute little zippered fabric bags to store my undies in so that next time TSA decides to search my bag I won't be horrified by my undies being so dang visible in my carry on bag. The cute little bags make them store smaller just like a ziplock but have the advantage of not being see through. REI and the Container Store sell some awesome little travel storage bags that I coveted... but they were ridiculously expensive so I made some myself. They were super cute and inexpensive and worked the same. Plus I got to sew- which I love to do. It was a happy thing for me to hack those cool storage bags.

Tip #6: Let your kids pack their own bags. I give them guidelines: 4 Jammies, 4 pants, 4 shirts, 4 undies, etc and let them pick what they take. They love the chance to choose what to take.  Yes, you can examine the bag later to make sure they followed directions.  

Tip #7: This is the hardest. Just travel with ONE CARRY ON bag. Whether you are in a car or traveling by plane, you will be so much happier to have less to cart around. If you need diapers, buy some when you get there. If you need toothpaste, buy it there. Bring just barely enough clothes with you. Wash the clothes every night if needed. You may wear the same out fit multiple times that week, but the reality is that most of the world actually does that. When we were prepping for our trip to Croatia a few years ago we studied the Rick Steve's website with travel tips and this was his most adamant tip. It was a good one. Just do it. It was fun to go shop for things we did not have but found we needed. And it did not cost us much to get some of those things. It was risky, it was adventurous, it was fun to visit the stores. It was worth not taking so much with us.

We hope your upcoming year is full of adventures and travels and that these tips will help you.

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Scripture study

Last night we were reading scriptures as a family like we usually do- each person reads a few verses, then when we are done we pray and then we go to bed. We do not have Davis read, probably because he is only 2 years old, but last night he insisted he get a chance. He had to hold the scriptures himself and this is what he said: “... And it came to pass… Behold the Lord said… God… “ and more phrases that regularly are found in the scriptures- all unprompted- were in there too. I wish I could do justice to just how cute and hilarious he was with this. What a cute little boy we have on our hands! And we know he listens now don’t we!

Reece also cannot be left out of the conversation about scripture study. He is our youngest kindergartener by far having a June birthday. Isaac was a September birthday, Micah was a January. They were just plain older when they went to kindergarten. They were solidly at the end of their first grade year before they were independent readers too. Due to family scripture study, we realized that Reece was an independent reader by the end of kindergarten. Late this spring he started just reading the scriptures when it was his turn to read rather than have us prompt him with what to say. This last Sunday he was asked to read the scripture in Primary and we forgot to go in to assist him so the primary president stood by him to help him and was shocked that he did it all by himself except for a a big word or too. That boy sure is surprising us with his capabilities.

Each of our boys is so different. Micah was amazing with fine motor skills and puzzle building at a young age. He just sees how things work. I think he will be a mechanical engineer. He still is the type to observe until he understands how something works. Isaac was always very quick to learn math and science concepts- maybe an something math or engineering related? Though he is pretty good at making friends, maybe a salesman for an engineering company? He sure can sell stuff to Reece easily. Reece and his power of reading and comprehension- possibly and author?- he tells some hilarious stories already. he is so dang creative. Davis may just well be the comic of the family. He is too smart for his barely 2 year old body and already has us amazed by his quick wit.

It is just amazing how each one of these boys that we have is so different even though they come from the same family. I love them all and am so glad we get to be their parents.

Lucky 13 years

This year we celebrated 13 years of wedded bliss.

The activities:

To celebrate I told Bryan that I don’t care if he thinks I am geeky for wanting to do this, but I will not settle for anything else but going to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens and touring them on the Segways they rent there for way too much money. He thought that the gardens sounded lame, but the Segway element sounded awesome. So off we went to make my dream come true… And for some reason we had a freakish downpour. We got to the gardens and the rain had stopped, but we were told that it was too wet for the Segways to go out. BOOOOOO!!!! So to kill time we went to see the Avengers at the movie theater at Thanksgiving Point around the corner. This was something Bryan had been wanting to do and so his dream came true :-)

After the movie the ground was dry enough that we could go out on the Segways at the gardens and I have to say It. WAS. WORTH. EVERY. PENNY. So fun! The gardens are lovely and even Bryan liked them, and touring them on Segways was so fun. Zoom, zoom, zoom! I think we saw it all. I think I want a Segway now too.

The food:

We were out all afternoon and evening for our date. We ate at Famous Dave’s for the first time ever for lunch and we loved it. We got some skinnylicious meals and they were great. We had a snack at the Museum Cafe at Thanksgiving Point Museum of Ancient Life which was rather boring, but served its’ purpose. For dinner we went to some fancy pants Italian Bistro off the highway and it was ok. I wish we had gone to Primo Restaurant right by our home in Cottonwood Heights, but we were hungry right then, and the Italian Bistro was right there… sometimes you make sacrifices that aren’t worth it after. If only we would have had the stomach to wait another 25 minutes until we got near home to go eat. Next time, I will not even dare try another Italian place! I have learned my lesson!

The Company:

It was nice to spend a most of a day together without kids. I love Bryan very much, it was so fun to get him all to myself for a day!

July 2012

The summer has flown by and we are now on the thresh hold of the month of August. This last month we have done more good stuff worthy of mention.

• Hike up to Lake Mary- or Another Knee Bites the Dust. We have a great little Falcon Guidebook that is entitled The Best Easy Day Hikes- Salt Lake City. It said Lake Mary was a great hike for families with lots of wildflowers to see and a pretty lake to visit. The Lake was very pretty. Here is what I will say about the hike: Not particularly great for young families. I took my friend Amy and her three younguns along and we had to practically drag all 7 kids UP THE MOUNTAIN. I had Davis on my back, Amy had her baby Ruby on her front and we had to rest frequently to get air to our oxygen deprived brains as we climbed higher and higher up, up, up, the mountain. Let me just say UP was the word of the day. And since what goes up must come down, we definitely experienced some steep downs of the day too. Each of us in my family slipped on the steep trail and we had lots of patching up to do at the bottom when we got back to the first aid kit in the car. All of us shed blood this hike. I now have matching skinned knees- hence the title “another knee bites the dust.” 10 days after the incident I an still wearing a bandage on the latest scraped up knee. The hike killed me and I could not exercise for a few days afterwards. Somehow, I remember the day fondly though.

Lake Mary Hike 2012

• Visit from the Barney Family- These friends from our old neighborhood in Washington needed a place to stay for a night while they passed through and I am so glad they came to us. We met them in Temple Square and took them to see the Salt Lake City Cemetery and we had a great time with them at our home. I hope they come again!

• More Seven Peaks- We finally have suntans. Oh yes, we are no longer pasty white. Visiting this place has changed that. I have been diligent with the sunscreen, but the boys at least are turning into brown little critters as they run around in the sun at the pools at Seven Peaks. I myself am just barely looking less than pasty white, but I will gloat about whatever color I get! Micah has now gone on all of the slides you ride with the inflated tubes. It took us 8 visits to the water park for us to get him to finally go on them all. It took us 7 visits to get him to go on one of those slides at all! Reece still refuses to go down a tube slide. Reece has however finally decided that the slide at the rec center pool is no longer scary and he frequents it when we go swimming there.

• My Downton Abbey obsession- This month I found the show Downton Abbey that many of my friends have been raving about. I watched season 1 on Netflix streaming in 2 days straight. I loved it. I found season 2 was only on disc from Netflix and I had a hard time waiting for each disc in the mail, so I went to the trouble of signing up for Hulu+ only because they have season 2 streaming. I loved season 2 as well. I just heard that season 3 will start in January of 2013. Can. Not. Wait.

• The Stay-cation: We have been so busy with scout camps, work engineering summits, and track that I was forbidden to talk with Bryan about a vacation of our own until the stress of the aforementioned stuff was out of the way. The last camp was finished July 11th, track ended the 14th, and the engineering summit ended the 19th… Whew, we now had 3 free weeks in which to vacation…At this point it was late notice for anyone we may have visited. In fact, we were asked by my family not to visit when we finally had time to leave town because they did not have time to spend with us then. So we opted to go camping here in the Uintas instead for a short vacation near home. Well, the time came to pack up for a camp out and everyone had runny noses and sore throats and we were dang tired from the other summer stuff we have been up to so we decided to stay-cation instead.

Day 0: We bought fishing poles, a fishing license and Bryan taught the boys how to fish in the backyard. They practiced casting and other skills in the shade of the backyard.

Day 1: Pioneer Day! Love Pioneer day here in our little town. We have a neighborhood Fantastic Flapjack Fling and Sausage Sizzle in the morning. Then the great parade in the afternoon which is practically on our street. Followed by the carnival in the park with concerts and Fireworks at the very end. We usually light a few fireworks of our own in the street but this year with all of the fires, we stuck to watching the big show only. I think I watched Downton Abbey after everyone was in bed.

Day 2: We went to a park with a pond here in town (Willow Pond in Murray) and the boys had their first experience fishing. Not one bite from a fish was had. The ducks and geese really liked Davis and his goldfish crackers. Davis thought it was so cool that they liked his crackers that he kept trying to feed more to the birds. Since the birds were in the way of the fishermen I cut off his supply of crackers. I finally told him he could not have any crackers unless he ate them and I had to put them directly into his mouth if he really wanted one. Well, he is too dang smart. He opened his mouth, said “AWWWW” to indicate he wanted a fishy cracker, I put a cracker in, he closed his mouth, walked away a few steps, took the cracker out, and fed the darn thing to the birds. He knows how to outsmart me! I took him and Micah off to the playground shortly thereafter and they had the best time playing in the fountain there.

After the park we went to Costco for lunch and got the world famous hand dipped chocolate ice cream bars and churros for dessert. Yum.

After nap time we went to see Brave at the movie theater with our 3 younger boys and two neighbor girls. Good flick.

After the boys were in bed I am pretty sure we watched an episode of Downton Abbey.

Day 3: We took Bryan with us to Seven Peaks. The season passes allow us to go to Pass holder hours only from 9:30 to 12 so there are hardly any lines at the slides which is awesome. Also, it was a chillier day- like only 90 instead of 100 degrees so there just weren’t too many people there. We stayed all morning and had fun. I told Micah that he had to ride every tube slide once or ride the Orange slide TEN times or he would lose screen time for the rest of the day. He was a good boy and tried them all once and loved them. We stayed until lunch time and had a good time with Dad there this time instead of Krysti the babysitter.

Bryan and Davis napped for a few hours in the afternoon while I took time to go shopping for some new clothes for myself that fit me better. I went to Old Navy hoping I could buy some of those cute, cheap, graphic t-shirts to wear around and amazingly I could! It has been a long time since I could fit into stuff from Old Navy that they carry in the store (drat all that pregnancy weight). But Woohoo! I have been losing weight! I can really buy stuff there now! I was so happy! Replenishing my wardrobe as I grow too small for stuff has just gotten cheaper. I now love Old Navy again.

In the evening we watched the Olympics opening ceremony while having a picnic dinner on a blanket in front of the TV. Gotta say, I liked the show. Very clever. I love Mr. Bean. The boys even loved Mr. Bean. We will be getting Mr. Bean flicks now to watch every weekend for family movie night.

After everyone was in bed, I watched the last episode of Downton Abbey… I will miss it. Such a good show.

Day 4: We finally made it to the Uintas. We really wanted to camp, but the allergy snuffles made us wimpy so we took a day trip with the fishing poles and the beloved raft and sack lunches instead of doing the overnighter there. Again, no fish were caught, but it was fun. We floated around the lake and fished until the skies rained us out. Reece laments still that he could not ride in the raft because it started raining and thundering right as he was about to take his turn. We drove around site-seeing while listening to an audio book and the boys were happy and dry at least. We drove into Murdock Basin in the Uintas- purely because it is named after us. It was pretty cool. People take their ATVs in that Basin. Due to the fact that our minivan is not an ATV, we did not explore too much, but we have dreams of going back in something more rugged some day. (Bryan is researching Toyota Land Cruisers as I write this. Not that we will buy one any day soon, but when we do- in like 7 years, he will know all about it)

Today/ Sunday- went to church today and amazingly saw one of Bryan’s friends from childhood there with his family. Alan Madsen is his name and he lived near Bryan in his first home in Kennewick. Funny, but Alan and his wife and kids lived in our current ward for a few years and moved away to Kennewick just before we moved in here and he and his family came back to visit this Sunday. Cute family. Wish they still lived here! We could use some more young families! The best thing about the Madsen family is that they too have 4 boys. I tell you, there must be a club for families with 4 boys.

Thus ends the story of the Stay-cation of 2012. Back to the grind for Bryan tomorrow.

Many of you will think I am dumb for saying this, but the saddest part of my summer is that Davis keeps showing signs of readiness for potty training. This means my baby is growing up. Sniffle, Sniffle. And that life will get more hectic because freshly potty trained kids are tricky to take out of the house and not easy to transport places for visits. I never thought I would say this but I will miss diapers for the convenience of them. Also, I will miss having a baby around. We will be moving on to the next stage- again. We were at THAT stage with our family before Davis came along. But now we are really for certain moving on and not turning back. Sniffle Sniffle again. I guess they all have to grow up some day. And yes, part of me is SOOO GLAD to move on, but it is “so hard to say good bye to yesterday.”

Enough nostalgic stuff. Here are the rest of the pics.

Fishing, Summer 2012

"Remember the Time when the Pinewood Derby Track didn't show up?"

Tonight was our annual Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. I am definitely re-evaluating whether we should do this annually.

I am cubmaster. I am in charge of this event. I delegate much of the duties out to my awesome committee, which usually works out better for all of us. Then each of us just have a few things to do and it gets done. I make lists. I check things off. I have people report back to me on their duties. Somehow, it all works out usually even though I fret and worry beforehand because everyone has ownership of their part and they all do a great job. Somehow it failed tonight. It was set up work out great at least.

I had delegated to Fred Flintstone to reserve the track of his friend Barney Rubble for our race. I confirmed with Barney on Saturday the time AND location of our event. We were set. Barney had a great method for running the track and keeping score so were were going to use his system for the race. Bam-bam, his son was actually going to run the race for us since Bareny was engaged elsewhere. Bam-bam would train us when he got there 30 minutes early for the race on how to use the system and score it and determine winners. He even was going to bring some contraptions for us to let the siblings race bananas down the track during down time. Barney told Bam-Bam “Take the track to the church building Fred Flintstone meets in.” I think Fred met in the building he took the track to 20 years ago, or at least Fred did meet in it at one point in his life I am sure. That building was not the one Fred currently meets in. Bam-Bam was sitting in the parking lot over there at that building wondering where we all were. He was trying to call us and find us, but to no avail. Meanwhile we are trying to call Bam-Bam from a totally different building. It turns out that there are no less than 5 LDS chapels on Bengal Blvd, a short 2 mile stretch of road, and Bam-bam was at a different one from us. No one is getting anywhere with the phone method because by golly none of us have the right phone numbers we need. Racers are arriving on time, early even (BLESS THEM FOR THEIR PUNCTUALITY!) and they are all noticing that weirdly enough, there is no track. They are wondering if they had the right place… Oh my.

In the end the story gets a little better. But it doesn’t feel like it gets much better. At least not right now as I still suffer through the aftermath of emotions that go with being the person in charge when a big problem arises.

The event is supposed to begin at 6:30. At 6:25 or so I retire into the kitchen with a bunch of den leaders so we can discuss what to do. We had no Plan B for what to do when the race track does not show up. That plan just was not in my PDK (Personal Disaster Kit as Alvin Ho would say). We called Wilma Flintsone even to see if she had contact info for Bam-Bam. CoulWe could not get a hold of her. Nor Fred. It was a mess I would say. I believe in God, this was an event for boys at our church in a church sponsored cub scout pack, all I could think to do was pray. I felt we certainly deserved an answer to a prayer right then of the question “what in the world do we do?” Should we find a long board and just use that? Go out in the parking lot and race the cars from the upper parking lot down to the lower and hope they all go straight enough to reach the finish line? We closed the door and I said this is the point where we NEED TO PRAY, but I was in tears and could not say it. Louise then offered up a wonderful simple prayer and within moments it all worked out. The cell phone of Bam-Bam was reached by Wilma, he knew where to go, and we had a track within five minutes of the prayer being offered. I will tell you right now, PRAYER works. Sometimes really fast too. My testimony of prayer has just been greatly strengthened. Why in the world did we not think to pray earlier?!!

There were plenty of people there to help bring in track parts and we put it together lightening fast, but alas and alack, the event did not run smoothly thereafter. The track owner did not have the luxury of time to tell us how he liked to run the event and train us so it could run smoothly. People were milling around, kids were getting bored, little siblings were running around like little imps creating mischief. Bored children cause much trouble, we had to hurry. We plodded forward with a broken mixture of what we did last year and what Bam-Bam wanted us to do. It was messy, it was slow, it was awkward. No one was happy with what we had going. Somehow the boys had fun. Though I am sure that parents will groan about this event for a very long time.

If I get asked to be released from this calling of Cubmaster sometime soon because so many parents complained, I will gladly bow out gracefully. Tonight was a night that will live in infamy. Oh my. It was bad. I really would like to crawl under a rock and never see the light of day again right now. At least I know that I will be able to laugh about this someday. At least I hope I will. Oh my. I surely hope I will.

Memorable Father's Day weekends

This week I have done some reflecting on past Father’s Day weekends. Some of the things I have pondered are because of what my friend’s have posted on Facebook. Even though Facebook is a bit of a time sucker, it has led me this week to ponder some sweet, sad, and wonderful things.

• Father’s Day weekend 7 years ago. Bryan had just spent a Thursday evening out with guy friends to celebrate the marriage of his friend Trav Story before the big event. They went out for Pizza and played video games most of the night- totally boring as far as bachelor parties go, but fun with this crowd of friends. For some odd reason, each time Bryan goes and does something fun without the rest of the family, one of us gets sick. I think there is some bad curse going on there. I can go out on a girls night out and no one gets ill, but Bryan goes out and the family suffers. It is really strange!

The unlucky person who got ill this time was Micah. He was a toddler. He spent the evening throwing up. I can remember both of us sitting together on the bathroom floor, being stripped down to our underwear so there would be less laundry to clean, and him cradled in my lap and every now and then him throwing up on me, me changing AGAIN, cleaning him up, and waiting for the process to repeat again all night long. Bryan came home really late and found us looking pathetic in the bathroom. We finally made it to bed.

The next morning we were supposed to drive to Boise for the wedding of my friend Jandy. I was exhausted from dealing with a sick kid, so was Bryan from staying up late playing video games with the groom and friends, and we decided to ditch the trip. But then Micah woke up feeling as good as new. Weird. Bryan convinced me to try the drive, even though we were both tired. We made it halfway there, stopped at a rest stop at the top of Cabbage Hill just outside of Pendleton, OR to exercise a bit and use the bathroom. When Isaac said he did not want to get out and burn off some energy, I thought “how strange…” He just wanted to sit in the car. We decided to drive on… and then we learned why so many people insist on leather seats in their cars. Isaac threw up all over. We futilely clean for a while. It smelled horrible. We turned around and went back Down Cabbage Hill to Pendleton. We thought about going to Bryan’s parents who live 40 minutes from Pendleton, but did not want to get them ill too. So we found a hotel, cleaned everyone up, tried to clean the van some more, tried to rest, then Micah threw up all over the bed. We called the hotel front desk and asked for another blanket and were told they did not have any more. What?! isn’t this a hotel, aren’t we staying somewhere that specializes in changing bedding regularly?

To make a long story short, there was more vomit, even less bedding, and our van smelled so bad we could not drive all the way home without really cleaning it out- it was too toxic to ride in. We decided to just go to Bryan’s parent’s home, use their carpet cleaner to really clean the van, air it out for the weekend, and hope no else got sick, and then head home without ever reaching the wedding of my good friend Jandy. Amazingly, everyone was well again once we hit Kennewick, Bryan’s hometown. We cleaned out the van and had a pleasant time with Bryan’s parents, and it turned out to be Father’s Day weekend and we got to spend it with Bryan’s Father. It was actually really fun in Kennewick that weekend. And no one else threw up. (For the record, the next van we bought had leather interior. We will never go back to something non-wipe-able!)

• The next memorable Father’s Day weekend was 6 years ago when Reece was born. He came into the world as cute as can be. Bryan almost missed his birth because he was down in the gourmet hospital cafeteria eating some divine food because this was a really REALLY nice hospital. Nurses went down to search for Bryan because I was having trouble and progressing fast and ha, ha, but he had stepped into the restroom, or was out in the pretty garden… He was only gone for 30 minutes or less, but man a lot happened in that 30 minutes. He got back in the room just barely in time for my 1 1/2 pushes to get Reece out.

• Another Father’s Day weekend that I will never forget was 2 years ago when my dear friend Cinda had a premature still born baby girl who she named Marguerite. I myself was pregnant with Davis and 6 weeks from my due date. I was already nervous about my own pregnancy due to my placenta being previa and feeling the most miserable I had ever felt while pregnant. I was so sad about her loss. I had thought I would like to drive up to Canada with the kids to be there for the funeral and show some extra love to Cinda. The day before I was going to leave though my water broke. So I had to have a pre-term baby myself. Davis came 5 1/2 weeks early. I spent lots of time worrying over whether he would be ok being premature. He was however the biggest Preemie I have ever seen. He came out 6 lbs, 10 oz. Amazingly he did well. He came home 5 days later and thus began my worst summer ever. But that is another story.

• One year ago around Father’s Day we spent some time reflecting on how we had made it through a rough year with our hardest baby who ended up having much discomfort due to acid reflux. We were so amazed we had made it through that tough year. Medicine changed Davis from being the grumpiest, most colicky baby, to the happiest little guy. He was in so much pain from the reflux, he was so skinny because eating hurt, he was so sleep deprived because laying down was uncomfortable- but medicine changed all that.

• We have found that this year Davis is still a joyful little boy thanks to medicine. We have tried to ween him off the medicine, but it is very apparent that he still needs it. This last Father’s Day weekend, we found ourselves grateful that we made it through another year with 4 good kids.

Bryan is such a good dad, I am so glad to have him as my partner in crime as we try to wrangle these kiddos of ours and teach them how to be good little people. I could not ask for a better man to be my best friend and companion!

Christmas is coming

We are decorated for Christmas. The new door looks great with a wreath, and some garland. The tree looks great even though only the top half is decorated since the baby keeps running off with those bottom decorations. We have lights hanging in the windows out front since we did not feel a need to buy a ladder tall enough to reach the roof to actually hang the lights there. It turns out the green dining room looks very Christmasy with red and white stuff thrown around. The led candles on a 5 hour timer I impulsively bought at Costco that turn on everyday in the evening make my mantle look cozy and pretty. Christmas cards are arriving in the mail and being displayed on the wall. It feels much more festive inside than our first Christmas here when all of our decorations were in some warehouse in Seattle waiting to be delivered to us until 4 days before Christmas (and who wants to unpack decorations when you have a zillion boxes to unpack so you can have other essentials instead?).

The hardest part of this season has to be getting addresses for everyone we want to send Christmas cards too. Then finding time to write a letter to go with the card is a bit hard too. We did have a great time today getting our cards ready for mailing. The assembly line technique we used for getting Christmas cards ready was fantastic! Mom doing addresses, Reece doing stamps and return address stickers, Micah stuffing the card, Isaac stuffing the letter, Bryan sealing the envelopes, Davis creating messes for us to clean up later…

I think this will be a nice Christmas season for us. Hopefully we will sleep for more of this season than we did last year (Davis hardly slept and was so miserable with reflux that we even took him in to a doctor on CHRISTMAS DAY- that is desperation I tell you).

Brighton Meadows Campout 2011

Amazingly, the Brighton Meadows Campground had spots open on this Labor Day weekend. It’s owned by The Church and is available for free* first-come first-serve. I think most people just don’t know about it, because it’s a great place to camp and it was Labor Day weekend and all. We decided to take advantage of the opportunity and camped there last Friday night.

It was a busy week with us and we didn’t really start getting ready to go until I got home from work Friday. It took us a while, so as we left town at about 6 pm we stopped at Sonic to get some dinner. So much for cooking over the fire. When we got there it was starting to get dark and it was already chilly. As Ily and I worked on getting the tent set up, the boys begged us to start the fire. To get them out of our hair I told them they had permission to go start it themselves. I wasn’t sure if they even knew how to strike a match, or what to do with it once they had. They worked pretty hard at it though, and by the time the tent was set up they had actually produced some flames. Frustratingly, the flames weren’t staying lit. With the tent done, I walked over to the fire pit and gave them a couple pointers. Isaac found a greasy paper bag from Sonic, which I crumpled up and handed to Micah, who stuffed it under a nice little teepee he had made out of some sticks. Micah lit the match and set it ablaze and the sticks caught on fire. We carefully put a bigger log on top and it became a real campfire. Micah will make a good cub scout in 4 months, and Isaac a full-fledged boy scout when he turns 11 tomorrow.

We used the fire to make smores for dessert. Davis was fascinated by the fire. He would reach his hand out towards it and we would say, “hot!” and pull him back. He thought it was a game and started to reach his hand out and say, “ha!” himself. This was his second time camping (we went to Clover Springs in June, I think we forgot to write about that), but his first time camping and being able to walk. He loved putting the biggest rock that would fit in his mouth and just walking around with it there. Nature’s pacifiers? We would pull the rock out of his mouth and he would immediately crouch down and grab another. It was a losing battle for us and the activity left a nice ring of dirt around his mouth like a painted-on clown smile. Painted on with dirt. He was a little dirt ball the entire trip. It was really cute.

Davis slept horribly. He wouldn’t hold still or stay in one place. I guess in your crib you can just crawl around like that, but in a crowded tent he kept bumping into us and waking us up. He also crawled away from any sleeping bag or blanket that might have kept him warm, and it did get a little cold that night. As scoutmaster I long ago I gave up any expectations of actually sleeping well while camping with kids. I avoid a lot of disappointment that way, and sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. This night wasn’t surprising.

In the morning we had planned a simple cold breakfast of yogurt and muffins. The muffins never happened though, so it was actually going to be yogurt and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Because it was still cold in the morning the boys opted for the hotdogs that Sonic had replaced the night before, cooked over another fire. Hotdogs for breakfast. I couldn’t do it. I shared a yogurt with Davis (he’s pretty demanding) and ate a PB&J. Ily made us hot chocolate too, and even put some in a bottle for Davis to drink. I think everyone was satisfied.

After breakfast it was time for the highlight of this campground, the lake. They have some canoes and a zip line for all to use. We figured it would be crowded with all the other families camping here, so we brought our own little blow-up raft to paddle around in too. It actually wasn’t that crowded after all, but we still used it. Reece had fun in it paddling around with me for a while, but Davis liked the raft more than any of the other kids. Isaac and Micah both did the zip line a couple times, but they didn’t have enough mass to carry them all the way across the lake, and had to drop into the cold water each time and swim to shore. They paddled canoes around a bit and eventually ended up helping Reece make his mud pies on the dock. We all enjoyed the lake.

When everyone was hungry enough we helped clean up a bit at the lake shore and then headed back to our campsite to make lunch. We heated up burritos made with Ily’s famous refried beans on our butane stove. Then we packed up the car and noticed that we had remembered my Father’s Day present, my bow and arrows. At this point I think everyone else had left to go watch the BYU game (it wasn’t the usual Salt Lake crowd of Ute fans) and we were the only ones around. We didn’t have a hay bail or anything to put the target on, so we just shot towards the hill that the dirt road climbed. It was fine for our meager skills, and we all had fun. I put the quiver that the arrows came in on my back and the kids told me I looked like Robin Hood. There ain’t much better than that.

Unbelievably, it was 4:30 by the time we drove out of there. I tuned into the BYU game as we drove and the second half was starting. BYU was down 0-3 and Jake Heaps threw an interception that Ole Miss ran back for a touchdown. The kids were whining that they didn’t like to listen to football and I figured the game sounded hopeless anyway, so we turned on their book on CD instead. I was shocked when we got home to see that BYU had won it.

Just about every time we camp with whole family we wonder if it’s really worth all the trouble. Hopefully the kids remember more than than just Mom and Dad grumbling about how it wouldn’t kill them to help carry a sleeping bag or two to the car, or how their baby brother cried all night. I think overall we did OK this time.

Behold, some pictures (taken with phones, one thing we did forget was our real camera).

Brighton Meadows Campout 2011

• You do have to clean the bathrooms before you leave

First week of school-Done!

On Monday the oldest two boys returned to school. Reece will start tomorrow. It has been nice to have a quieter house this week and enjoy time with him. Reece has actually happily done things like play with playdoh for hours, build with legos quietly, and help me bake instead of whine about how the older boys won’t let him play with them. The older boys were looking forward to school until it actually happened. Then they were sad that they did not have an extra week home like Reece does. They have “The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side Syndrome.”

We are so lucky that our school has A/C. And more lucky that it is actually working! Several schools in our district do not have A/C and they have actually had to excuse kids from school because it is just too hot to be in the building. Methinks that our school district should not have started school so early. A typical Utah summer is really HOT in August! We actually hit 100 degrees a few days this week. I wonder if these people who run our district are educated, but not very smart? They should have waited a few more weeks to start just so that the kids and teachers won’t die of heat exhaustion.

Davis is getting very busy these days. I feel like I am fighting fires with that kid. I clean up one mess he has made to find the next one that he has moved onto while I was cleaning up his last disaster. He is very curious, which shows great intelligence and is great until you have to clean up after him. His favorites include fishing in the toilet and splashing water everywhere, unrolling entire rolls of TP, emptying drawers of their contents, hiding remotes, finding legos to eat, climbing in the dishwasher, and other busy baby things to do. We have gotten so much better quickly about keeping the bathroom door closed and other such preventative measures. He really is cute in all his inquisitiveness. I can keep him occupied for almost a whole 30 minutes just playing with pencils and an old drink cup with a matching lid that has a hole for a straw. He will put pencils in the hole forever! He is still trying to figure out just where the pencils disappear to. When I open up the cup and dump out the pencils for him, it is like magic! I gave him a haircut last weekend to make him look a little less unkempt and it did not turn out so well. He is a moving target. By the time I gave up that first day, his hair was trimmed in some places and not in others. It has turned into a many day long event to cut his hair because I keep pulling out the scissors to edit his hair a little bit more each day. He looks pretty good a week after the haircut was started.

This weekend we took the boys up the canyon to find a creek to wade in so we could cool off. We had to train Davis in the art of throwing rocks into the water. He took to it quite well. We spent quite a long time watching all 4 boys throw rocks together. I think you cannot be a boy child without throwing rocks. It is in the agreement you sign before you are born or something.

Bryan hurt his back last weekend so we have been taking it easy with him all week. The poor guy hurts himself once a year. He is feeling much better this weekend.

On Tuesday we had ward temple night and we found someone to babysit so we could go. Bryan drove so that he could anticipate all the turns and things and not hurt his back more. He did make the mistake of choosing to drive his car instead of mine though. His little Powerwagon II is a stick shift which saves son gas $$, but is not so comfy for a guy to drive in stop and go traffic with a hurt back. Needless to say, he stayed quite awake and alert through the whole temple session because of his discomfort!

We have been doing mostly well otherwise. That is about all I have to report for this week.

"Bye John!"

“Bye John!”

Those are the words yelled out a car window by a little boy as he waved at my son, his new friend. I don’t have a child named John you say? Well, that is mostly correct. I do have a silly little son who is so cute and hilarious and changes his name frequently. Reece has started introducing himself as John now. John is his middle name so this IS a step up from introducing himself as Diego or Batman. That is legally one of his names.

We debated whether to name him John Reece (I preferred that combo because it flows so nicely) or Reece John, knowing full well that I planned to only call him Reece. So many friends who go by their middle name said that it was a bit difficult to do that. They did admit it was really easy to tell who telemarketers were when they called asking for them by their first given name instead of their preferred middle name. They all agreed that that was the only bonus about going by their middle name rather than their real first name. I decided to just name him Reece John so he could go by his first given name and avoid the confusion of being J. Reece Murdock.

Now five years after that debate he has decided to do the opposite? Now I have R John Murdock.

For the better part of the last year he went by Diego. For a few weeks, he went by Batman. I could choose to be offended by his apparent dislike of my name choice for him, but instead it makes me giggle profusely. What a silly kid we have on our hands!

Dreadfully far behind

I know we have not blogged enough for the longest time. Sorry. I do have a few brief stories from this week to share though:

Our boys have decided they really want to earn money so I said I would pay them $5 per bathroom if they wanted to clean the bathroom (to my specifications of course) and we have various other chores that can earn them money too. The other day they wanted to earn some money so I told them to go clean the bathroom because it really needed it. They decided they would rather not earn the money.

I was eating breakfast the other day when Davis got grumpy in his high chair and I got him out and sat him on my lap instead. Then he shared everything he had just eaten with me by throwing it up all over me. Twas adventurous.

Today I got my dinner ready in the crockpot and then we went out for a hike to find nearby Bells Canyon. I came home to realize I had set the crock pot onto warm, not high, so our dinner is now going to be ready at bedtime. We will eat it tomorrow I guess. Whoops. I am also too tired to cook now thanks to the hike. Out to eat we go.

I told my boys Tuesday they cannot play Wii after 7:30 am on Wednesday because I was tired of hearing it all day and them fighting over it. They got up before 5 am so they could get their time in. We were all grumpy all day thanks to the early start.

My AC is working like a champ. Love it. The basement is practically Antarctica. The upstairs is just lovely though.

We have been slowly working on our sprinkler system to fix the leaks from the winter and Bryan repaired a leak to find the next one 6 inches away from the one he just fixed. Oops. Once he finally had time to fix all the leaks we had to check the sprinkler heads. Amazingly, they all work. We just have to figure out again how to program the system and then I will no longer have to remember to actually water the lawn with the hose. The hardest part of using the hose is remembering to turn the water off again. I had to pay Isaac a dollar to run home and turn off the hose sprinklers when we left for a few minutes to visit a neighbor that turned into a few hours… Oops.

Davis has four teeth now. Tooth number three was his first tooth on top. It was not a middle front tooth, but one next to it. It totally looked like a fang. It was hilariously cute.

Memorial Day Weekend

p>We decided to visit the grave of my Grandma and Grandpa Murdock this Memorial Day weekend. The weather was supposed to be really rainy on Monday, so we took advantage of the relatively clear skies on Saturday and headed down to the Orem cemetary. We found their plot, set down our flowers, and I told the boys some stories about Grandma and Grandpa until they got tired of listening to me. Then we left and went up Provo Canyon a ways to Bridal Veil Falls. It was a short walk to the falls and the kids had a good time playing in the water and seeing all the water. Click on the link below the picture to see all the photos we took with Ily’s phone.

Virtual Desktops on Windows

I love multiple virtual desktops. I have to work on windoze sometimes at work, which doesn’t have virtual desktops, but I found Virtual Dimension, and it rocks!

Posted by Bryan on March 13, 2006

Knee-Deep at Alta

Part way through the day on Friday, I realized I was skiing down
the hill and the only sound I could hear was the squeaking of my
boots. I couldn’t hear other people, I couldn’t hear my edges
scraping across ice—basically all I could hear was the silence of
fine, dry, knee-deep Utah powder. It was turning out to be one
awesome day of skiing at Alta. I
have the difficult assignment of interviewing internship candidates at
BYU for my company, so once or twice a year they fly me down to Utah
to meet with the hopefulls. As I’ve done before, I decided to take an
extra day for myself after the interviews and go skiing. My sister,
Julie, skied with me and we had a blast.

My interviews were Thursday and it snowed most of the day. Friday
was the ski day. There was about 6 inches of powder, and a relatively
small crowd at the hill. The soft snow was very forgiving on the
steeps, and I felt like I was skiing better than I ever had in my
life. If I hadn’t bought some sunscreen at lunch I might have had the
worst sunburn of my life too. It was that nice out. I forgot about
the terrible traffic that we’d had on the way up pretty quickly (two
accidents!). The way home was slow going too, but that was OK,
memories of ripping down the hill were very comforting.

(Sorry, neither of us remembered a camera, so no pictures)

Posted by Bryan on March 12, 2006

Root Partition Full

If you’ve tried to access the website in the past few days you haven’t been able to. I’m sorry. This will be way too much information for many of you, but so I don’t forget I’ll write down just what happened and how I fixed it. For the less interested, just know that I’m on top of it, and that the system is back up. Yay!

Here is the sequence of events that lead to this, as far as I can re-create them. First, I don’t remember how long ago, but I installed Mandriva Linux on this machine. I probably had it automatically partition the hard drive, probably for a desktop setup. This created a root partition and a /home partition. It made the root partition about 6 GB, and all the rest of the hard drive went for /home. I put a second network card in the machine and set it up as a router for my home network. I configured samba to serve files on the network card that the home network was on, eth0. Since then I have installed the postgresql database, which by default keeps all its data in /var/lib. Also, a goodly amount of log files have accumulated. I don’t know how much space this was all using before, but I made a change that started using a whole lot more recently, and not on purpose. I bought a linksys router, so I disabled eth0 on this machine. This caused samba, actually nmbd, to write lots of error messages to about 4 or 5 different log files: /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, /var/log/daemons/warnings, /var/log/daemons/errors, and I think /var/log/mail/warnings too, all saying it couldn’t find eth0. All of these log files had grown into the hundreds of megabytes range in size. Finally, Ily saw the whole machine crash when she tried to open a rather large attachment in gmail. Firefox probably saved it to /tmp, which became the straw that broke the camel’s back. Of course this happened shortly after I left town for a few days, hence it didn’t get fixed until today. Ahh computers, you gotta love 'em. At least with Linux it’s easy to figure exactly what when wrong like this.

Needless to say, I reconfigured samba, deleted some log files, and for good measure I removed a whole bunch of cached rpms. My root partition has 2 GB free now. I hope that lasts until I can figure out how to non-destructively resize ext3 partitions!

Posted by Bryan on March 11, 2006

Winter Weekend Continued

Sorry I’m late in posting this. After gushing to Ily about how much fun Isaac and I had on that beautiful day of skiing, I decided to take her and Micah up there two days later on Presidents day. The sky wasn’t as clear but it was much warmer and still very fun. We stopped at frozen Multnomah Falls for a bit, and then continued up to Cooper Spur. There wasn’t anything Micah could do there, so we continued on Highway 35 to Little John Sno Park for some sledding. The boys loved sitting on the sled between our legs, and Ily surprised me by being so willing to hike up the sledding hill over and over. So that was Saturday and Monday of last weekend that Isaac and I spent out in the snow. It was so much better than watching it rain from indoors!

Pictures and movies, of course

Posted by Bryan on February 23, 2006

Isaac's First Ski Trip

Isaac and I went skiing yesterday at href=“http://www.cooperspur.com/”>Cooper Spur. It was fabulous.
The conditions were the most perfect that I think I have ever seen. A
bitter arctic wind has swept the sky completely clear of clouds and
haze the past few days, and dropped the temperature down into the
teens. The wind was still blowing hard in The Gorge as we drove east
on I-84, which made me nervous about the day ahead, but with Mt. Hood
looming large in front of us our van climbed highway 35 from Hood
River and the wind quickly became calm. At the resort the blazing sun
made 18 degrees feel like 40, and the snow was a fine dry powder. It
was a shades day for sure.

Cooper Spur is the perfect resort for a kid to learn how to ski.
Kids under 7 ski free (or was it 6?), so I only had to pay for my lift
ticket and Isaac’s rentals, which were incredibly cheap. There is a
single double chairlift and a rope tow that cover a whopping 50 acres
of terrain (the big resorts in Utah cover thousands of acres). Kids
music played from the speakers on the tiny little patio at the
miniature lodge, and the rental shop dude told Isaac how “awesome” his
little skis were, cementing Isaac’s early enthusiasm for this
tremendous sport.

I struggled teaching Isaac at first. He proved to be a more
difficult student than Ily and other friends my age I’ve taught.
After a bit of, um, harsh words between us, Isaac wisely called for a
snack break at 10:30. He sat in the sun on the patio while I went to
retrieve the grub from the van. On the way back I stopped at the
ticket/rental office and paid for a group lesson for him. After
apologetically telling Isaac what a horrible teacher I was he became
pretty excited for ski school.

The class was a success, after an hour he was riding the rope tow
and snow plowing down the short bunny hill all by himself. We rode
the inner tubes a bit, broke for lunch, and he was ready for the
chairlift. At least, that’s what he told me. Isaac fearlessly rode
to the top, and even though it took about an hour, and some serious
effort on my part to keep him from giving up and sliding down the hill
on his bum, he made it all the way down. I knew it was a success when
at the bottom he didn’t head straight for the car like he’d
threatened, but for the rope tow to reassure himself that even though
the big hill gave him trouble, he was still master of the bunny hill.
A little more tubing and it was time to head home, with Isaac asking
when we could do it again. Cooper Spur hasn’t seen the last of the
Murdocks.

Be sure and check out the href=”/gallery/isaacs-first-ski-trip”>pictures and video!

Posted by Bryan on February 19, 2006

Category Specific Feed

The RSS link (that puts the orange icon in the url bar of Firefox) is now category specific. It used to just link to the feed for all categories, no matter where on the site you were. Now, for example, if you are on the Geek topic it links to the Geek feed, or if you are on the About This Site topic, it links to the About This Site feed. Django makes this stuff so easy, I love it!

Posted by Bryan on February 12, 2006

RSS Explanation

I found a better explanation of what rss is, and how to use it. It’s long, but thorough and helpful.

Posted by Bryan on February 12, 2006