Tiare Gets Baptized

Tiare Turns 8

Our big girl turned 8. It was a week of celebration that began with her birthday party. It was a silly birthday party theme. We had lots of silly girls and silly games. Our neighbor Ann was the silly party consultant--she gave Tiare tons of ideas and Tiare planned them all out. The festivities included noodle slurping, crazy hair with balloons, drawing silly pictures of Chris, and much more. GG and Sole and I, along with Chris of course, were the birthday party hired help--we dished out pesto pasta (Tiare's favorite dinner), garlic bread, and birthday cake until we were about to drop--8 year olds can really eat!!

Back to School for All of Us

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these two pix definitely tell a 2000 word story about sibling dynamics and attitudes toward school! Read them for yourself.

Atticus is in 1st grade, and Tiare is in 2nd grade--can you believe it?

Chris is in his 5th year--one more before he goes up for tenure--yeah! And, the big news is that Ramona is in her 4th year--yeap, I've come out of retirement. It has been fun so far--2 months. I love having somewhere to go and something to do every morning. It is coming up on one year that my mom will be gone, so I am really grateful for the distraction to tell you the truth. Teaching, research, and writing, I have come to accept, really are my hobbies, so I might as well get paid for them. I still love yoga, running, and reading, but they don't pay as well.

We are adjusting really well--kids and Chris have really risen to the occasion and are now known to make their own lunches, eat cereal for breakfast, and other such adjustments. We are still working on getting the shirts ironed and keeping a supply of milk in the house. But, other than that, I think that it is going well. I love having secretaries who call me Dr. Cutri, and they even bought me my very own automatic pencil sharpener!! So, I'm your connection if you have a lot of dull pencils sitting around.

It's fall here, and so beautiful!! We are getting ready to by our ski passes and hit the slopes--it actually did snow here yesterday, but it has all melted. Plan your trips now--for winter visits to us!

That's all for now.

Ooops, it's September!

Well, I've been out of town for most of August, and the blog and visiting teaching have suffered for it. But, it's the beginning of September, and I'm recommitting to both!

My first out of town was Girls' Camp for a week--no pictures, you're glad as there were also no showers at Camp, no electricity--you get the "picture". It was a fun week though. I loved hanging out with the other grown ups, and the mountains were just breathtaking. I remembered what a good fire builder I was and how much I love to just stare into the fire. At our house in Ojai growing up, our fireplace was one of the main sources of heat in the house. So, building a good fire was more than just fun stuff if you wanted to keep warm at night.

I cooked all of the food for the 22 teenage girls in our camp! For those of you who know me, you know that I am not used to cooking for 22, let alone 22 teenagers, let alone on a camp stove with no refrigeration other than coolers for a week. It went well though, no one got food poisoning, and we had pretty fancy food for camping--Cafe Rio Pork Salads, yogurt/granola parfaits, eggs and pancakes, chicken salad croissants, etc. Biggest lesson learned...next time each age group of girls is going to be assigned a day and do all the cooking that day.

Chris and the kids were about to kill me as I was preparing for camp. I'd mention Costco, and the kids would say, "No, Mommy, please we don't want to go back to Costco!" I was talking to a friend that I grew up with and went to girls' camp with as a teenager. She helped me to realize that my vision of what camp food should be was very distorted due to the fact that when we went to camp as teenagers, we really went to a spa type of get-away: meals served to you in the cafeteria, then off to the pool for the afternoon, just in time to get ready for the dance that evening.

My next get away was much more in line with my spa type vision of what vacations should be like...a week in Laguna Beach.Yes, that's it...no cooking responsibilities, no certification responsibilities, ok, no responsibilities whatsoever. I went to the beach day after day and laid there and read my book--love it! Of course, I was lying under an umbrella, with 70 SPF sunblock on, and a shirt and hat. As you can see from the photo, my skin cancer paranoia extends to all of my family, and I make everyone cover-up. Oh, well, we are tourists, so why not dress the part.

I drove alone with the kids straight through to California the morning after camp, so my LA driving skills have not lapsed into those of a tourist. The directions were "Take the 15 to the 91 to 55 to 5 to the 133." Ok, no problem, I can do that! But, my patience for Orange County traffic has waned as my biggest commute at home is about 10 minutes doorstep to destination.Atticus readily got in touch with his California heritage as he hopped on this boogie board and started saying things like, "Mom, look, I'm in the tube!" Yes, well, he still is not a very proficient swimmer, so the picture above is what he calls being "in the tube". Back to swimming lessons before he hits the North Shore of Oahu. He had so much fun though and gained so much confidence in the water! Actually, right this minute, Atticus is in the backyard "shaping" a long board out of a branch from a tree that fell in our yard. He's got gloves on and a piece of sandpaper to shape the wood--no eco unfriendly foam for Atticus--he's straight up old school.
Tiare ventured much further out in the water, and, as you can see, even got me to go with her. She is a strong swimmer and loved going out beyond the "drop off" point--where it gets deep. The water was so clear, can you tell from this picture a little bit?

We had a great time looking at the tide pools. The Laguna Beach tide pools mean a lot to our family as my mom used to live in Laguna and did a whole series of paintings based on them. She'd paint them very up close, and then call them cosmos--she loved the micro in the cosmic perspective.
We stayed with Chris' mom and had so much fun visiting with GG! The kids love her so much. We also got to visit my godmother Mitzi up in Santa Barbara (Tiare and I went up for a night and day just the two of us for a mother daughter mini vacation). We were so busy relaxing and having fun that we have no pictures with GG or with Mitzi. Chris is taking most of the pictures, so he goes largely undocumented once again. He had a great time on the trip too. He got to go surfing with some old friends and got in some work too. We also got to see all of my wonderful aunts and uncles, cousins and their kids in Orange County. It was a wonderful vacation! We ended by staying in St. George and trying to see where they filmed High School Musical 2--we didn't find it, but had fun anyway. We pulled into home Sunday night, and the kids started school the next morning! One last picture that captures the feeling of California...

Tiare's Photography

Tiare wants to make a post about her photography. So, here's an interview with our budding photographer.

Mom: Why do you like to take pictures.

Tiare: Because it is cool.

Mom: What's your favorite part about taking pictures?

Tiare: Seeing how they turn out.

Mom: What made you first want to take pictures?

Tiare: Because Dad had a cool camera.

And now, the work--of course it speaks for itself, but let's hear what the artist has to say about her work...

"This picture is about how all things come to an end...one is dead and the other is alive"












"I was trying to get Froggy in the light so it would cast a better light."












"I was trying to make him like a singer...'Life is a highway. I want to drive it all night long.'"













"This was at my first hula performance. I saw this and I wanted to mess with your camera."


You will definitely have to look for Tiare's pictures in the future. As a photographer myself (chris), I really feel like she gets it.

Tiare's Hula Performance AKA A Multicultural Adventure

My dad was from Hawaii. He died way before I was even married, but I always wanted my kids to have something of the islands with them. Chris actually picked out Tiare's name which is Tahitian for a beautiful five petal gardenia. We pronounce her name in a very Americanized accent usually.

One day we were at hula, and one of the other little girls said to her mom, "Mom, that girl's name is Tiare, but her mom says it wrong." Hilarious adventures of multicultural kids. Tiare has been interested recently in her 'cultural identity'. She asks me, "What am I Mom?" Don't worry, I didn't bust out my power point presentation and give her a lecture--I could have though! I just told her that she is in Hawaii what they call "chop suey"--a little bit of everything all mixed up. I learned the term from a book that Julie Barreto gave me a long time ago called Dumpling Soup. It's a great book about making Korean dumplings--yum!


So, hula is definitely part of our island culture, and we had empanadas last night for dinner--don't tell anyone that they were not the Argentinian kind--we got them from a resturant run by a family from Chile. So maybe I'll have some grits for dinner and round out our family culture weekend.

P.S. Tiare calls the "comments" section of blogs "compliments"--that's a perfect reflection of her personality! She just asked me if I thought that she would get a lot of compliments on her hula page/post. So, anyone in the mood of commenting/complimenting, feel free--she'll be checking her fan mail regularly.

Where Has Summer Gone?!

I can't believe that this summer has gone by so quickly! Well, I guess it makes sense since we have done so much traveling--it really broke the summer up! We still have Girls' Camp and California to go before school starts.

Before schools starts again--yeah, that is in less than one month!! On that note, I thought that I would post some pictures from the end of last school year.

Here's Atticus (on the far left) with some of his buddies from kindergarten. They each look so much bigger now--a few months makes a world of difference. On to first grade for these spunky boys.
Here's Tiare from her First Grade end of the year performance. She usually never wears super frilly girl dresses, but this was a hand-me-down, and she decided to wear it this day. She had a speaking part in the little performance, and they danced the macarena (how do you spell that?). Tiare said that no one pronounced it with the right accent--her Spanish accent actually is pretty good.



The best part of summer for me is the totally unstructured play time that the kids get to have. I have wonderful memories of not even knowing what day it was and just playing for hours on end until it got dark. I feel so lucky that my kids can just run around and have adventures in our yard and the neighborhood without care. These pix are both in our backyard--which is huge with tons of bushes for secret club houses and a giant grassy area with their soccer goals at either end. Their favorite things to do with their friends are running through the sprinklers, playing soccer until the sun goes down, having Tour de France bike races in front of our house, swimming, and just running around. Tiare started a window washing and organizing buisness--she's already made over $5! Atticus and Tiare hate picking up the apricots from our two giant apricot trees every morning and evening, but oh well!

Tiare's Photo Shoot

Tiare is my dolly. She is so fun to be with. These are the photos from her photo shoot. She's a big girl reader too. She loves the Magic Tree House books and the Boxcar Children books.

The first picture is how she looks most often--about to laugh and say something. She always has something to say, and she is always telling me that I need to laugh more--my very own in-house therapist!!

The last picture where she looks like she is doing a seated yoga twist looks that way because she is about to. She is always cracking her bones--back, wrists, etc. She loves yoga too.


The cute outfits in both Tiare's and Atticus' photo shoots are not ours. Atticus came home and told me that they got to wear a lot of cool clothes from Nordstroms, but that they didn't get to keep them--rats! Don't even ask how a six year old knows what Nordstroms is.

Atticus' Photo Shoot

Here are the pix from Atticus' photo shoot for that magazine about organization--when I find out the title, I'll let everyone know. Our friends from New York were doing the photo shoot in Utah, and so they asked if our kids could be in it.










I love my little guy so much. He is a fun and crazy little spirit. He is getting so big so fast that I can hardly stand it!


In all of the photos, he reminds me of my dad, John Barreto. My memory of my dad is reading--either newspaper, the New Yorker, or some book--and his big toes were always moving as he read. Look at Atticus' toes in the first picture!! Funny huh!

Also, look at how big Atticus' feet are--I think that our children are going to be taller than both Chris and I.

Atticus loves to "read" in real life too. Every night, he ends up with a huge pile of books on his bed. He loves surfing magazines--only the intellectual ones, I'm sure--and Spanish language soccer magazines provided by his other grandpa, Juan, from Argentina. Atticus will read at night way beyond bedtime, but he always turns off his reading light before he zonks out.

Family History Adventures

A long time ago, Chris' father told me about a relative on his mother's side named Francisco Nazario Urrutia who was from Guipuzcoa, Spain which is in the Basque country. Well, about two years later, Chris gets invited to present his surfing documentary at a film festival in San Sebastian which is in the Guipuzcoa providence in the Basque country in Spain--there are no mistakes. Chris and I both worked hard to try to find information about this man before we left for Spain. We did research on the internet, and Chris searched microfiche records up in Salt Lake. We found some information, but never specifically about Francisco. The day before we left--yes, the day before--Chris was at the BYU bookstore buying gifts to take with us when he heard some people speaking Spanish with an Argentinian accent. In classic Chris Cutri style, it turns out one of the people was the new general authority from Argentina who just so happened to have been just release from being the mission president in the Basque country in Spain. Chris explains about our family history endeavors, and Elder Zivic says that he knows just the person that we must contact to help us when we are there. Everyone exchanges emails, and soon we are in the Basque country communicating with Inaki the most amazing Basque genealogist ever! Inaki tells us that he is free to work with us on Tuesday afternoon which just happens to be the exact day that we plan to be in Bilbao.




We show up at the beautiful church building on Tuesday afternoon and get right to work. The church building is right down the street from the Guggenheim Museum--amazing location! From this picture alone can you see how Chris' gene pool is fitting right in with los Vascos?!







Inaki is a passionate genealogist!! Really, his insight into different paths of research is incredible. He helped us map together all of the information that Chris got from the archives in Salt Lake.







Then, in the middle of our session with Inaki, he jumped up and said that he remembered about this book that we had to go and find. We left the family history center and headed for the bookstore near by that happened to have a whole section on Basque history. We found a giant book called Los Vascos en Argentina, and there in perfect alphabetical order was Francisco Urrutia!!! It was so exciting that I almost died! Really, it was one of those family history miracle stories that you hear about....BUT, the family history miracles of our trip were just beginning.


Here is a picture of our next family history miracle--Chris' cousin Malena! Chris had not seen her for about 15 years, and the last he knew, she was living in Argentina. Well, for the last 3 years or so, she has been living in San Sebastian--yes, the very city where the film festival that brought us to the Basque country was being held. She was flipping through the newspaper when she came across the schedule for the film festival and read the name "Christopher Cutri." She thought, I know that name, I think that is my cousin. She decided to come and see if she was right. She popped her head into the theater where Chris and the other film guys were having a little pre-screening meeting and said, "Christopher Cutri?" Chris thought that she must be from the press wanting an interview or something, but she said, "It's your cousin Malena." It was a great reunion for many reasons. God has a way of bringing people together and the right time in their lives. Meeting Malena was a great example of how families evolve and grow as each individual member matures and lives their life the best that they can. It was modern family history that had so much meaning and brought so much happiness!



Our next family history adventure took us to Barcelona to see the cousin of Chris' father. His name is Elio Cutri--the resemblance between the two of them is striking enough, but for those of you who know what Chris' dad looks like, it is down right creepy how strong those Cutri genes are!! Seriously, they are each different age-progressed photos of each other. Elio was so great to meet. He is a very hard working and kind man. He shared with us amazing knowledge and stories of Chris' grandparents and great grandparents. His stories really helped contextualize personalities and stories that we had heard about.

Paris a la Cutri

This picture makes it look like we hit all of the tourist spots in Paris--actually, we skipped most of them. I'd been to all of them before, and Chris was more interested in seeing other things. We had come across an article in this magazine that we like that was all about the design scene in Paris. We went to most of the places that the article mentioned, and they were great. But, what did we really spend most of our time in Paris doing...



Thinking deep thoughts--well, no. We spent most of our time in Paris eating amazing food in random cafes that we would stumble upon while wondering the streets!! Really, the food was so good!!

Now, why are the pictures all of me? Because Chris got a new camera for the trip, and he took all of the pictures. Actually, there are very few pictures of me or of Chris. Mostly, he took "artistic" pictures of people that we didn't know, but who were interesting looking or objects that he found interesting. Go to his blog for the artistic stuff.

Missionaries in Barcelona

We certainly didn't mean to be missionaries, but the opportunity presented itself in the funniest way. We were walking our way to Parc Guelle--eeks how do you spell that?--and we ran into the missionaries. Then, we went our own ways.






I soon found some fantastic jewelry for sale made by a lady from Chile. She asked where I was from, and I said Utah. She said, "Oh, aren't there a lot of Mormons there?" Of course I told her that there were and I was. She told me that she grew up with a little Mormon girl and had the best memories of going to church with her and how wonderful Mormon people were.


Chris and I were thinking "Where are those missionaries when you really need them?" Just then, we were looking down the ledge, and there they were below us. I continued to talk to the lady and Chris started waving to the elders and motioning them to come up and talk to this lady.



They did, and they set up an appointment!!

Finally a Blog from Ramona

Yes, I've written a dissertation, articles, co-authored a textbook, etc., BUT I've never been able to figure out how to make a blog. Finally, my friend Emily just made one for me! Thank you Emily!!

I'm just going to start putting up pictures and not worrying that they are not in chronological order or anything else. I have not scrapbooked in so long now, that I just have to get started again documenting our family's life!!

I have only read three other blogs before in my life (Mehrsa, Cass, and Noelle you should feel very important!), so I don't really know the format. So, I'm just going to tell about the pictures that I am putting up/posting--what is the blog-correct phrase? How do you get the words to show up right under the pictures? Oh, well, I'm just going to start...

This is a picture of us at a friends wedding about 3 years ago--I love this picture. It was a magical night, but it was three years ago, so what do we look like now?--well we are all bigger!


Here's a picture of Tiare from a photo shoot that she just did with our one friend who is a photographer and his wife who is an art director. The photo was for a magazine called Organization or Organized or something like that. Isn't Tiare cute? She is such a big girl now--going into 2nd grade in the fall. She has very long hair now because she is super responsible and brushes out the knots almost everyday!



These pictures show long haired Atticus and short haired Atticus. Chris usually cuts Atti's hair, but Chris was traveling so much this spring that he did not have time to cut Atticus' hair. One day, Atticus was so mad that his hair was long like a girl's. So, I took him to the BYU barber shop and told him that he could cut his hair however he wanted to. Atticus told the person that he wanted stick up hair with gel, and this is the result. It makes him look so much older. Atticus has now experimented putting in the gel himself and can get a real good faux hawk going! He is so handsome!! He was in the photo shoot with Tiare, but we don't have copies of those pictures yet. The first picture of Atticus with long hair is from when he won his trophy at Chess Club. He is one his way to first grade next year! I can't believe that my baby is so big boy.



Here's Chris and I on the subway in Paris. We had an amazing two weeks in Paris and the Basque country in northern Spain just the two of us. Gilda stayed with the kids at home. We went to Europe because Chris got asked to present his film at a film festival in San Sebastian, Spain. The whole trip was amazing!! Chris' film got an amazing reception. He was so happy, and I was so proud of him. We also got to do so much family history work!! Amazing experiences--really, if you just try a little bit to do the work, Heavenly Father will open up opportunities that you could have never imagined! I'll have to make a whole different entry about the family history experiences that we had.