Our Little Harry Potter Fanatic

Life with Mark is never dull. A few weeks ago Bryce and I were watching the first Harry Potter movie (we’ve been reading the books together) when Mark got up from his nap. He saw the screen and immediately sat down on the couch to watch the rest of it with us. We keep our DVDs at the bottom of our TV stand and the first movies he pulls out are all Harry Potter. Seriously, he’ll hold them up for us to see and point at either the TV or remote. Sometimes he’ll even turn the TV on for us and sign ‘please’. It’s hilarious. His favorite scenes are always Quidditch. He puts his arms in the air and cheers “Go, go go!” whenever he sees them flying around. Then he claps when they show the crowd clapping. It’s so cute. We were driving to NC and had A Bug’s Life on for him to watch. He wasn’t super involved and was even fussing some so I switched it to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I kid you not, he was practically silent for the entire movie, then took a nap, and watched the 2nd one. He couldn’t have been happier. See? And, then, the second one is just cute. “Give me the camera, Mom.”

As a disclaimer, we aren’t letting him watch all the Harry Potters since they get scarier in the later books and he is only 18 months old. And, he won’t sit through the whole movie, but gets up and plays with his toys and then checks back in every once in a while.

P.S. I wrote this post on Sunday. On Monday he was watching a little bit of the first movie before bed and it came to the scene where Oliver Wood is showing Harry the Quidditch balls. When Wood gave Harry the snitch, Mark started pointing at the screen and whining followed by his motion for ‘I want’ and ‘please’. Yes, he wanted the ball from the movie. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen, but we let him hold a Lindor truffle since they are packaged in a bright and shiny foil. It worked well, but took a fair amount of coaxing to get him to let go of it when it was time to go to bed.

Week in North Carolina

We had to go down and see everyone in NC for a week before school started so we headed down there the first week of August. Mark loved going to the pool with his cousins and also the Marbles Children’s museum. He thinks the water exhibits are great, but especially liked driving cars in the vehicles section. He did NOT learn to drive like this from me.

Mark loved hanging out with his cousins, Lonna and Bryce, especially while they played Super Mario Bros on the Wii. He would grab a remote not being used and sit on the couch with them pretending to play as well. Grandma also has the pictures of that. We were glad to be there to celebrate Bryce’s dad’s birthday and see Kim, Jason, and family for a bit before they left on vacation.

Utah-Idaho-Utah Vacation

I’m very behind on posting, so I’m attempting to catch up this week before Bryce starts school again next Monday. Time will tell if I succeed.

After Bryce took Step 1 of his medical licensing boards in June, he had two months before his MPH classes started so we decided to take a few vacations. During the end of June/beginning of July we took a two week vacation to Utah to see friends and family. Here’s a recap of our travels:

June 25-26: Spent with Grammy and Grandpa Ted for Grammy’s 80th party. My whole family was there (and really nearly all of my extended family). Here’s a quick picture of Grammy and Grandpa Ted with Mark. He’s around their 25th great-grandchild. Ted turned 90 this past March. Although we didn’t get to this time around, we love playing cards with them. We’ll see them at Christmas in Colorado and I’m looking forward to a few good rounds. My sister, Susan, her husband, Brian, and their two girls, Grace and Kate, were there too. Grace and Mark had lots of fun at the kids museum, the Treehouse, in Ogden, and just playing at Grammy’s.


June 27: Bryce’s little sister, Ashley and her husband, Greg, had their first baby on June 16th. Despite being only 11 days old, they couldn’t pass up the chance of having their parents, us and his sister, Kim, and her family from N.C., as well as Bryce’s two other sisters that live in Utah at the baby blessing. Needless to say between all of the Harbertsons and Greg’s side of the family, little Aurora had a very large circle of priesthood holders blessing her. But, the real riot was trying to keep 10 cousins ages 0-6 semi-quiet on two parallel benches in sacrament meeting. We all ate lunch together afterward and got to enjoy what was as close to a family reunion as we’re probably going to get for a few years. Grandma took all of the pictures so I don't have any to post, but they do exist.

June 28-29: Spent with my parents, sister, Joy, and Grandma Joanne and Holly down in Utah Valley. We hung out, ate, and toured the Thanksgiving Point gardens while my dad and Holly went golfing with Bryce’s dad and uncle. The gardens were really pretty and we got some cute pictures of us and Mark.

Mark feeding Koi fish at Thanksgiving Point

Mark LOVES water.

Omi had bubbles for him to play with in the Secret Garden.

Best we could do with a family picture.

June 30: Catching up with Tiff, Kyle, Kallista, and Dave as well as Tiff and Kyle’s kids. Tiff and Kallista are some of my roommates from college. We’re really glad we got to get together since both Kyle and Dave are starting MBA school in different states. Thanks also to Aunt Debbie for letting us crash at her place despite having her oldest son, daughter-in-law, and their 6 kids already there.

July 1: Spent some time with my sister, Joy, and then dinner with some of my old colleagues at BYU Graduate Studies. I worked there for 5 semesters +2 summers while at BYU and LOVED it. I wish I could have seen more of the staff, but was glad to at least get to go to dinner with Claire, Janice, Breann, and Maria.

July 2-4: The day we got married was a bit snowy so Bryce’s uncle, Glade, couldn’t make it down from Idaho for the wedding. I hadn’t ever met him, which means Bryce hadn’t seen him in 4 years or so. So, we decided to go up to Island Park, ID for the weekend to see him and his family as well as spend a day at Yellowstone. The weather was nice and cool and the park was awesome. Mark did surprisingly well in the many hours in the car thanks to Cars, Emperor’s New Groove, and Ratatouille. That DVD player was really a lifesaver.

Awesome waterfall at Yellowstone.

See the bison causing the traffic jam? He was just crossing the road.

Walking the trail around the Mud Volcano.

And, of course, we had to wait for Old Faithful to go off.

July 5: Hung out back down at Grammy’s in Ogden to recoup a bit (it’s 4 hours from there to Island Park) before driving nearly 6 hours to St. George to see Bryce’s sister, Erin. Erin and Chris had graciously let us use Chris’s car for our trip so we figured the least we could do was return it to them and spend a few days there.

July 6-8: Down with the Gappmayers in St. George. Mark had fun playing with his cousins, Max and Sydney and their two dogs, Murphy and Thatch. Bryce and Chris watched the kids so Erin and I could go see Eclipse, which, surprisingly, they weren’t too excited to see. We also hit up a splash park so the kids could play for a while. Then, after a fun, but exhausting two weeks, we flew back to Baltimore from Vegas. Thanks to Pres. Obama for deciding to fly into the airport as we were trying to leave, delaying our plane by almost 2 hours and not getting us home until nearly 2am after a 5 hour flight with a 16 month old.

All in all, we had a really great time, which is why we didn't take many pictures. Thanks to everyone who let us use their beds, eat their food, and borrow cars and everything else while we were there. Hopefully we'll make it back out in another few years.