Feeding Frenzy

Dark Eyed Junco

I have blogged before about how much Emilia loves birds.  Anyway, about a year ago Emilia started checking out bird identification books from the library and ever since then she is the resident ornithologist around here.  Last semester at school she was in a wood shop class and she had a woodworking kit.  After the class had ended she took all the leftover pieces from the kit and made a fancy bird feeder (or two!)  Now that we feed the birds it is like we have a couple dozen of the world's easiest pets.  You feed them.  The end.  Well, it's not the end actually because we get to watch them all the time and we really enjoy it.  In the spring when the snow melts I might have a different song to sing if I find mountains of bird poo everywhere, but I guess that is what a hose is for right?

These are dark eyed juncos feasting on the food we put out.  We have one favorite junco that only has one leg and we call him "Peg-leg Pete."  We get a lot of Eurasian collared doves  (which we have lovingly nicknamed Eurasian collared meatball sandwiches).  Every now and then we will see pine siskin or a pinion jay.  We are all getting pretty good at identifying birds.  Someday if we go on Jeopardy we will have a HUGE advantage in the "Birds of North America" category.

Love

Happy Valentine's Day!  For breakfast I made pink Valentine pancakes and we had pink milk.

And for dinner we had a dinner by candlelight.  I love all my special Valentines!

Pinewood Derby

Since Ian is 8 now he gets to participate in all the fun scout stuff including the pinewood derby.  Kent has to make it count since Ian is the only boy scout we are going to have around here.   Ian came home with the kit and they went straight to work perfecting that car.  They researched, they sculpted, sanded and drilled holes into the car and filled it with weights (in the appropriate places of course).  Then they painted and decorated it with some awesome flames and red rhinestones for tail lights.  It was super cool.

What is cuter than a cub scout in their scout shirt and neckerchief?  Nothing, that's what.

Ian's car won the first 2 races and then was eliminated in the 3rd.  Awesome job boys!

Misc. Cincinnati

The weather right before I got to Ohio was warm.  After I left it was warm.  While I was there it was pretty cold and wet.  Here's a pic of D&M's backyard.  SO pretty. Most people don't have fences in the 'burbs where they live so its just lots of green yards all connected.  On the deck is a plate of birdseed that the birds didn't eat.  I saw a couple of cardinals flying through the air the first couple of days I was there so I wanted to put some birdseed out to see if they would come and I could get a closer look and a picture for Emilia.  The birdseed just sat there.  No birds came to eat it.  There's even a picture of a cardinal on the birdseed so I hoped the food would attract them.  I guess since there is no snow it isn't as hard to find food as it is back at my house!

The girls were pretending to be asleep in the back of the car . These cute cousins had a fun time playing together.

More cousin pix

And here's Drew makin pots and bowls and stuff.  He bought a kiln and a pottery wheel and he  loves to pot!  He has some cool stuff!  He said he will send me a vase or something if I make him some PJ bottoms.  Gotta get on that!

Cincinnati Museum

 One of the days I was in Ohio we drove downtown and went to the Cincinnati museum.  On the way we accidentally went the wrong way and went into Kentucky for a few minutes. I hate it when I accidentally go to other states...  (Add Kentucky to the list of states I have been!)  I had to take a picture of the sign to show that we went there.

The drive to the museum was really interesting.   You kind of get used to the landmarks where you live and the way things look and it was really fun to see some different scenery and to see a city that has been there a long long time.  I was especially interested in the old brick buildings they had all over the place.  They look like apartment buildings in old movies.  The architecture of lots of the buildings was really interesting to me.

The Cincinnati Museum is the coolest building.  It's in an old Union station that was built in the late 1800s.  Trains used to drive right through the building.

There are amazing murals on both sides of the interior that show the development of industry in Cincinnati.

Picture inside the museum

Inside the museum there are actually three museums plus a bunch of other special visiting exhibits.  We went to the Historical Cincinnati Museum and the Children's Museum but had to skip the Natural History and Science part because we ran out of time.

Playing in the water

Pumping gas

I took a picture of the old Proctor and Gamble factory in the  Historical Cincinnati section of the museum because  Drew works for P&G

Here we are on a replica of an old steam ship

January Travels

My youngest brother Drew (Andrew--  it's still hard to call him Drew!) and his wife Michelle had a baby a couple of months ago.  We were talking on the phone and I said something like, "Oh man, I'd really like to come visit you and see the new baby and help you guys out!"  They said, "yeah, you really should!"  and so we started looking at plane tickets.  I decided to bring Adele so I could stay longer and Drew was able to share some sky miles with me.  The other kids were pretty jealous, of course. Ironically Emilia was the maddest, and she is the only one who has ever been on an airplane.  Ian and Elise were pretty mellow about it.  Kent, of course, was awesome as usual, and picked up the slack at home while I was gone.  Adele did great during the travels. I think it may have been more exhausting for ME to travel with a 5 year old all day than it was for her!

It took us 3 flights and about 12 hours to get to our destination in Ohio

We added several new states to our "list of states we have been to":  Georgia on the way there
 and  Minnesota  on the way home.

More about the trip to follow.

Cast Removal!

Yay! Time to get the cast off. Ian was so glad to get rid of that thing!  His arm was all scaly and gross of course and now Ian has to do some arm exercises to get his range of motion back and get some muscle back on that arm!

Triplet Sweaters

What do you get when Old Navy has striped cardigans on clearance for 5 bucks?

You end up being dressed like twinners with all your friends!  Actually what happened was that Jodi informed Christine and me about the sale so we had her pick up a couple for each of us.  Kent and I hosted a party on New Year's Eve and Jodi showed up wearing one of hers and I also had one on.  We had Christine put one on to see if our husbands would notice that we were all wearing the same stripey sweater in different colors.  And of course we had to get picture documentation of the event.

Wrapping up December

Well, here goes, the last post of the year.  I guess you could say that I am cheating because it is actually halfway through January.  Last year I finally figured out that I could schedule my posts for a date and time in the past.  I do this so my posts will all make it into the right blog books.  In a way it is bad because it allows me to procrastinate.  But at least it is done right?

We had a good time during Christmas break.  The kids went a little crazy with their tablets, being glued to them  pretty much every waking moment.  At least they were trying to be.  I finally had to confiscate them and make them do something else like PLAY with something non-electronic for awhile.  It was good to get back to school for that reason. And for other reasons.  Like messes, and fighting.  Elise brought the Christmas song that goes, "and mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again" to our attention several times.  If my kids didn't fight I'd sure love to have 'em home more.  I start to lose my mind when there is fighting and whining.  I am sure all parents know what I'm talkin' about.

It was really fun to have Amy come visit.   She couldn't stay too long because she had to get back home to work and to her cat "Kitty".  We played lots of Scrabble, since she is my official Scrabble opponent. Usually we are equally  matched and we take turns beating each other.  This time I must have been way off my game because she beat me 3 times!  (Oh the shame. I call for a triple re-match!).  At least we learned a new word: "za".  It's slang for pizza.  You should use next time you want to order pizza:  "Hey Dominoes, I'd like to order some ZA..."  It is good to know about words like za.  Especially when you keep getting stuck with all the bad letters and there is no where to go and then your friend keeps beating you...  Anyway, digression over....We saw Les Mis and went out to lunch sans kids.   While she was here Amy tried to break me of my scarf phobia.  I even bought a couple of scarves with her encouragement so now I own 3.  I am really gettin with the fashion now.  Thanks Amy K for travelling far and wide to spend Christmas with us!  We love ya!

Adios to 2012!

Christmas Day

Santa brought lots of stuff!  The kids had it divided out into piles before we even got out of bed.

The Dreamlite was by far the most beloved gift.  The tablets took a close second.

Christmas night we made gingerbread graham cracker houses.  We didn't have time to do them Christmas Eve.

Mmmm.  Brown teeth.  Somebody has been eating candy.

Cheese Party 2012 - Christmas Eve

Last year we had talked about doing a fondue for our cheese party but we ended up doing something else instead.   This year Kent wanted to do a fondue so he researched recipes and picked one he wanted to try.  We had to buy Gruyere and Emmental cheeses for the fondue. (Holy cow, it was like 20 bucks a pound!)

 Review:  The fondue was good but one of the cheeses (I think it was the Emmental) was a little overpowering and smelled like stinky feet. It was hard to eat the fondue without smelling the stinky-foot-cheese smell.  Once you got over that though it was good.

Kent the fondue master

My friend Jodi heard us talking about our cheese party and heard that we had wanted to try Wensleydale so she surprised us with some to add to the cheese fun. 

We really liked the flavor of the Wensleydale, and of course it was fun to put our fists by our faces and say "Wensleydale" like Wallace does from Wallace and Grommit.

Here are the kiddos enjoying some sparkling cider in their fancy glasses.  There was plenty of "clinking" going on . They love clinking glasses.

After the cheese party the kids got to open their gifts from Amy

Beautiful Girls

Who says less is more?

Adele's Hand Buddies

I have written before about Adele and her hand characters Uma and Vloppy.  Now she has named the hands of the other kids.  They play.  They have personalities of their own.  Here are their names:

Emilia's hands:  Spidey and Glonky
Elise's hands: Buggy and Dinkel
Ian's hands:   The creepy crawlies or Hammer and Chisel.

Important Research

This research project was inspired by having a plethora of Halloween candy in all the varieties at one time.

Purpose:  To find out which candy is the best and to see if frozen candy is better than room temperature candy.
Tester:  Emilia
Procedure:  Eat candy and document tastiness on a scale from 1 to 10.   Freeze candy.  Eat more candy and score according to tastiness.
Result: Reese's Peanut butter cups are the most tasty with the frozen candy being only slightly more tasty than the room temperature candy.  Heath Bars come in last and have the same score whether frozen or not.  All the other candies are slightly MORE tasty when frozen.

No More Monkeys Swinging in the Trees

 On Wednesday afternoon Ian had a friend over. They were having a great time playing spy ninjas and monkeys.  Not at the same time.  Not like cowboys and Indians. Spy ninjas and monkeys would make an interesting game.  Anyway, they came in to get something and then went back out and I asked them what they were doing.  They said they were playing monkeys.  I was just happy that they were playing outside.  I didn't see much of them until dinnertime when Ian was saying his arm hurt.  He didn't want to eat because he couldn't bend his arm to hold a fork.  I asked him what happened and he said that when they were playing monkeys he fell out of a tree.  We did the usual thing when you have a hurt kid-- asked him where it hurt, had him move it etc.  We didn't think it was broken but I was remembering the last time we had a broken bone (also Ian) and we didn't take him to the ER until the next day.  My intuition told me to just go in to instacare.  So I did.  And he had a supracondylar fracture of his humerus.

So they put a splint on it and put him in a sling.  He is having way too much fun with this.

The next day we went to the Orthopedic Dr. and got a cast.

And now he has this awesome thing to wear for the next 4ish weeks.  Showering is FUN with a cast.

Remedial Haircut

Remember when Adele cut her hair about 3 months ago?  After she did it I just decided to leave it uneven since it was so short on that one side. I figured cutting it would make things look worse.  I just tried to put it in little pig tails or disguise it the best I could.

Three months and 1.5 inches of growth later I finally took her to get a haircut to even it out.  It's still pretty short but it looks cute and it is EVEN at last!

Ian gets baptized!

Ian was baptized by his dad on December 1, 2012.  

The picture just can't capture the awesome textured polyesterness of this sweet white Elvis jumpsuit. (That's what ya get if you are the last one there when they are giving out clothes.)

We were so happy and thankful that both sets of grandparents were able to make it to the baptism.  It meant a lot to us to have family here.

November Recap

I have gotten to be quite the slacker with my updates. It seems like I am so busy that I don't make the time to write anything but I also feel like there isn't that much to say.  I am just going to type and see where this goes.

• Adele is up to her usual mischief.  When we returned from our Thanksgiving trip to Idaho I found that she had drawn on her wall and closet doors with marker.  Yesterday I noticed that she cut two holes in one of her sweaters with scissors.  Her hair is finally growing back from her last hair cutting adventure and I think that it may finally be time to go get a haircut and get it evened out.  It was too short before and I would have had to get here a boy haircut in order to get it straight.
  
• Elise is having a much better year this year.  Last year she had a lot of drama with friends and this year things have been going much better for her.  She seems to have stable friend-relationships.  Her one drama inducing friend is in a different class this year so that seems to really help a lot.  This friend was an on-again off-again friend and kind of moody.  This year there are a lot fewer tears and frustrations so that is good.
  
• Emilia is having a good year in 7th grade but it is a lot different than her 6th grade experience. In 6th grade she was in classes with a lot of good kids who didn't get into a lot of trouble.  This year she has some troublemakers in some of her classes and that gets frustrating for her.  She hates it when the class loses privileges because some kids are being bad.  Emilia is getting really tall and she is only 2 inches shorter than me.  She loves to come over and stand by me and see if anyone will comment that she is getting so tall and will almost be taller than me. I think it makes her feel pretty grown up.  She finally meets the weight requirement to not officially have to sit in a booster seat.  Ian will probably be the same way. I always let my kids graduate from the booster when they are 8 though. 
  
• Ian.  My crazy boy.  I love this kid but let me tell you, boys are different than girls!  In many ways his temperament is easier than the moodiness of girls but he has SO much more energy than the girls. People tell me that he's just a boy and that is how boys are.  I was starting to think he was ultra hyper but his teacher reassured me that he was just a boy and just fine.  He kids of reminds me of my brother Brian when he was a kid:  very energetic and one who gets a certain amount of pleasure from provoking his sisters.  I can't blame Ian.  He has to stick up for himself since he is outnumbered.  He is a good kid though and he is very sweet.  He has an awesome laugh that makes me smile every time I hear him. 
  
•  Kent got called a couple of months ago to be a counselor in the Elder's Quorum.  We were a little bit surprised that he got that calling just because our family is so busy with the other callings and responsibilities that we have (especially my calling in the YW).  We are trying to juggle it all and have a good attitude about the new responsibilities.  Sometimes it is hard to do all the things that are asked of us.  I will admit that I sometimes struggle with all the responsibilities that we are expected to do.  More about that later... we are talking about Kent here....  Kent has been having some abdominal pain and symptoms of gall bladder problems. He has been having some tests to see if he needs to get it removed.  The tests all came back normal but the dr. left it up to him whether he wants to get it out.  He has a family history of gall bladder problems and adhesions on the gall bladder which don't show up on the tests and scans.  Right now Kent is trying to decide whether to get it out or give it more time.
  
• As for me, sometimes I am just trying to stay afloat. I won't lie to you. I am busy and I don't always have a good attitude about it.  There are things that I have to do that take precedence over the things I want to do.  Even good things, things like being a better friend, sister and visiting teacher.  I find that I still like to volunteer for things but sometimes I overestimate the time I have or I underestimate the time it will take to do things.  It is frustrating for me when I would like to do better at things and I just don't feel like I have the time.  Or when I see a friend who is struggling and I wish I had more time to help and support them.  Sometimes my calling seems really time consuming and it frustrates me that I have to spend so much time away from my family.  And I don't have time to do some of the things I want to do.  (Welcome to reality right?)  Anyway, I have been feeling this way a lot this month because we have been really busy.  We are wrapping up the year and gearing up for the curriculum change they are doing with the youth. I have had lots of extra meetings and just the overall pressure of being the one in charge of things.  And of course it takes mental energy to worry about the yw and the ones who are struggling.  There are a couple who struggle with unstable families and who aren't making the best choices.   I don't know what to do for them.   Anyway, I just wanted to be real and honest and say that I love working with the young women and I appreciate the opportunity but as with all things there are ups and downs, good things and bad things.  I am just glad that in 2 months we will be coming up on our 1 year anniversary and I sure hope that we will be better at doing things the second year than we were our first!  We had a lot to learn and a lot of changes to figure out this year.   I think we will be on a better track when we start our second year. At least I hope we will.