"I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello"

Actually we just said "goodbye" and "hello"

Goodbye to this:

• Our veggie-mobile
• Our first mini-van
• Our "free & clear" vehicle 
• The vehicle we had to get when we had 3 kids

Our old house in Logan

Emilia and Elise

 

 We have a lot of history with this van.

Buh-bye!  (I was actually surprised at how sad I wasn't. I am a pretty nostalgic person and didn't feel one bit sad about leaving the old veggie-mobile at the dealership.  A little bit guilty perhaps, because we were getting a car with a loan attached to it, but not sad.)

 "Hello" to our new Kia Sedona!  (Wow Sedona, you are so clean!!!)

What should we name our new van?

Quick Trip

Kent had to go to a meeting out of town for work so we decided to go with him and make a trip out of it.  We also decided to use this opportunity to do some car shopping.  It worked out really great and we were able to get a new van and have some reimbursable "business related" fun.  I dropped Kent off at his meeting and spent the day at the children's museum with the kiddos.  (And negotiated the details of the car loan while I was trying to keep track of the wild children in the museum.  Adele wandered off once but I promise it was TOTALLY not my fault! Luckily there are lots of workers everywhere and one of them promptly returned her to me as I was just beginning to panic.)

 We did some other fun stuff on the trip but I didn't get pictures of that:  Swimming at the hotel pool, sitting in the hot tub, sneaking Adele on the waterslide.... I also got to visit with my sister Suzanne who stayed in the hotel with us. She had dropped off a couple of her kids at an EFY-type camp and had a few days to spend waiting for them to get finished.  We got to see her 3 Chinese daughters and the foster baby that she is taking care of right now. 

The next day we stopped at Ikea on the way home. I have to admit that I had never been to Ikea before.  Every time I have driven past this store I am have been hit with pangs of longing but never in the past have I had the time or opportunity to stop there.   I have been missing much.  Love this store.  Didn't try the meatballs. Maybe next time.  I did buy a new chair for my computer desk which I now sit in when I blog.  

And of course, we had to stop and get some lunch at one of my favorite burger joints.  It was a quick fun trip and we were able to pack in a bunch of stuff!  Love it when it all works out.

Fun with Rocks

This one should actually be titled "Drama Over Perceived Stolen Rocks" but "Fun with Rocks" is just simpler.  In the end we did end up having some fun so I guess it mostly true.   Elise checked out a kid's craft book at the library.  She has been reading it and studying it and planning (and begging) to do pretty much all the craft projects in the book.  For family night last week she was in charge of the activity and chose to paint rocks.  We went for a walk on a nearby walking trail and each found 3 rocks.   I could probably have pulled enough rocks out of my washer and dryer in a month for my whole family to paint but the walk was part of the fun. We ended up collecting the rocks one night and then had to paint them a couple of days later because we didn't have time to do all of it.  When it was time to paint the rocks everyone remembered where they put theirs and got them.  Adele saw one of Elise's rocks and was SURE that Elise had stolen one of hers.  Elise, of course had not stolen the rock but there was no convincing Adele.  It was really quite heartbreaking because there was no doubt in Adele's mind that Elise had her rock.  She was so devastated.  And she tried over and over to convince us that it was HER rock.  SHE "went for a walk and found the PERFECT rock and brought it home to paint and then Elise stole it"!!!  We had to try to pry it out of her hands and whenever she got the chance she would grab it. 



The picture says it all.  She wanted "her" rock!



Kent being the great dad that he is decided that he would go and find a rock that looked as much like Elise's rock as possible.  Even the rock that Adele had originally picked wasn't acceptable even though it looked a lot like Elise's.  Kent sacrificed his calves finding a rock that would look like Elise's so he could give it to Adele.

After he got back he did the switch-a-roo and gave the new rock to Elise who then gave it to Adele.  Elise proceeded to paint her own rock and peace was restored once more.  Only a little residual facial blotchiness remained from the ordeal.  And Kent's bleeding flesh wounds.

More Cheffing.

My kids are becoming quite the kitchen helpers.  My new goal is to teach them to be completely independent in the kitchen in 60 days and I'll never have to cook again! 

Let's Talk about Something GOOD.

There are several reasons for this post.  The first being the fact that I need to think of something pleasant.  Something tasty and yummy and appealing.  I just got done posting about something I really hate so this is to sort of "clean the palate" so to speak.  What better thing than brownies?  (I am also still trying to separate the association of worms and brownies.  But now I have given a spoiler about the post below this.)

The other reason, the REAL reason is that I am trying to cook with  my kids more. I want them to be able to cook when they are older and I also want them to have enough kitchen experience that they won't be afraid to try new things. I think that the most important thing about doing new things and developing new skills is having the perseverance to keep trying and to not give up if things don't quite work out. I think having a little experience and having both successes and failures helps you gain confidence to try.  And if it doesn't work out, well SO WHAT right?

I made a new job chart for my kids because this summer vacation I decided that I am not going to be the (only) slave around here.  The kids make about 90% of the messes and I want them to help keep things clean(ish).  (And, of course, I have to TEACH them to work DANGIT!)  So when I was making my job chart I decided to add: "Assistant Chef" to the chart.  The jobs all rotate every week and my kids each have a turn to do each job.  Surprisingly they have REALLY liked the job chart even though they have more responsibilities.  It helps them know which jobs are theirs and they can do their job and be done.  And they have all LOVED to be the assistant chef.  They ask me just about every day if there is anything they can help me cook.  So, it is good kitchen experience time, and it is also some really great 1 on 1 time that I can spend with my kids because it is HARD to do that as much as I should.

Brownies before and after baking.  And eating.

Mom of the Year

Yeah, that's me.  Sacrifice, dedication, putting others first. Check.  Even if it makes ya wanna hurl.  Repeatedly.  We are talking about worm catching.  Anyone who knows me well knows how much I HATEHATEHATE worms.  Spiders?  They are gross.  I don't love them. Black Widows?  I am afraid of them.  WORMS?  They are the grossest creatures that crawl on (well, on and under) the face of the earth.

Our sandbox is right by a couple of sprinklers and the kids never remember to put the lid back on it.  Which results in it filling up with water.  And becoming a perfect breeding ground for microbes and slimy stuff.  The kids were outside in the backyard today trying to drain out all the water from the sandbox.   They saw some little red squiggly-wigglies and thought they might be mosquito larvae.  So, being the amazing, educational, biological person I am (even if it involves worms) I hopped on Google and did a search for "tiny red worms".  Don't worry about the fact that yesterday I was nauseated all day thanks to a stomach virus and have had some remaining intermittent nausea all day.  Nevermind the fact that seeing 100 pictures of "tiny red worms" while I can smell my dinner cooking in the oven makes me totally wanna hurl.  Nevermind that I am totally classically conditioning (Pavlov anyone?) myself to feel sick whenever I smell brownies because I am baking some while I blog and I post pictures of little red worms.  BLECK.  And mosquito larvae.  We found them in the sandbox too.

Bloodworms on the left.  Mosquito Larva on the right.

Thanks to the unlimited information on Google, while learning how to kill mosquito larvae I learned that goldfish eat them.  And that people buy freeze dried bloodworms to give to their fish for a treat becaue they love to eat them. (YUM!)  So then I got the bright idea to let the kids catch the creatures and feed them to Goldie (our bionic goldfish that we have had since May 2010).
   

It was REALLY fun sifting through all the murky water to try to extract the worms. 
Especially in my kitchen with dinner cooking.

After doing this I kind of regret it--partially because of the gag-factor and because there wre probably diseases in the sandbox that we have now introduced into our tank.  Goldie DID enjoy the worms.  She ate them right up.  I HAVE been saying though that I'd be "ok" if Goldie decided to go belly up (finally) because as it happens with many pets, I have kind of gotten tired of feeding, training and cleaning up after her.  I will feel kind of bad though if she dies because of the bloodworm treats we gave her.

Watching Goldie to see if she will eat the worms.

Don't you think this should earn me the Mom of the Year award or SOMETHING????!!  For providing my children with impromptu biology lessons and doing it in my VERY kitchen?  (With WORMS!) I was thinking it is really too bad that the science fair isn't coming up because I learned on Google how to raise your own bloodworms.  Total science project right?   Sorry if I grossed you out. I have to publish this now and go delete all the worm pictures that are in my folder.

Hair that looks like a Bum

After finishing Adele's hairstyle, this is the conversation we had:

Adele:  Mom, I have bum hair.

Me:  Why do you call it "bum hair"?

Adele: Because it looks like a bum.

Me:  No it doesn't!  You're silly!

Adele:  It's a bum.  And bums are stupid.

Independence Day 2011

 For the 4th of July we took our kids and went with our good friends Justin and Dana (and their kids Justice and Olivia) and headed for the hills to do some outdoorsy stuff.  We were worried there would be a lot of people there but I think they all went home before we got there so it was actually pretty empty.   

It's gonna take a LONG time to roast that marshmallow.

The kids had a blast roasting marshmallows and then roasting graham crackers and chocolate
after all the mallows were gone.



The dads kicking back.

The pyro inside of me was able to be unleashed for a couple of hours and I got to build and stoke the fire. Love campfires.  It was worth smelling like bacon all the way home. 




The super strong kiddos holding up the mountain.

The falls were beautiful



What an awesome day.  Love these guys!

And for the record, my friend Dana wanted me to let all of you know that SHE was the one to discover the red shoes that I love.  She found them, I bought them.  (There, happy now??? ;)  lol

Me Encanta La Mesa Nueva



The old table.  Didn't really love the weird-back chairs.

 When Kent and I first got married I bought a table and 4 chairs at some clearance deal for 75 bucks.  It was pretty small and we grew out of it after we had a couple of kids.  Next my parents gave us a really nice table that had a leaf in it and 4 chairs.  We used those chairs + one stool for a couple of years.  THEN some friends of ours inherited a table from some family members and didn't really have room to store it.  It was in their shed and they were more than happy to let us store it for them (i.e. use it) until they had more room.  Well, they just moved into a bigger house and so we decided that it was the PERFECT time for us to finally get the new table we had been eyeing for several months. 

Here is our new table.  It is one of the new ones Deseret Industries makes and sells way below retail price.  I LOVE it!

Substitute Paper People

Some friends of ours have a paper route delivering the free weekly paper.  They went on vacation and asked us to substitute for them.  They earn 40 dollars per month delivering the papers and offered to pay the kids what they would earn doing the papers:  10 dollars.  I asked my kids if they wanted to do it:

Ian:  YES,
Adele: YES,
Elise: YES,
Emilia:  "If there are 4 of us doing it then we will have to split the money 4 ways. I don't think it is worth it to do all that work for only $2.50.  (And of course does mom get paid?  No.  Nice arrangement.)

They did agree that they wanted to do it and so we picked up the papers the night before, folded them and put them in the bags.  They were thinkin this was pretty easy, and that a paper route might be something that they would be interested in getting.  We loaded up the papers the next morning, got our water bottles and went to work!  We split up the route and the big girls went one way and I took Adele and Ian the other way.  We trudged up and down the streets, faithfully putting the papers on the porch like we were told.  Except for that ONE that Emilia threw on the roof.  (Oops.)  Oh, and except for the ones Elise was too tired to put on the porches and just just left on the lawns.  We ran from big dogs that were trying to eat us, or at least sniff us to death and we WALKED really far (especially for the ones with the shortest legs).  I noticed on the way back that some of the houses had 2 papers.  (WHAT???) and found out that Elise had a couple of extra papers in her bag that she wanted to get rid of so she just gave some of the houses another one.  On their lawns.  Ian and I had already been down that street and had gotten those houses.  So, of course, we had to get out and pick UP the papers.  And try to figure out why the heck we still had over 20 papers when we thought we were done at the end of the route.  We finally figured out that we had missed a street.  I have to make a note in Elise's defense, the previous week Emilia, Ian and I had gone on the route with our friends to see what we needed to do.  Elise missed the "paper route instruction inservice" so she was a little unaware of some of the expectations.  And I guess I just took it for granted that if a paper ended up on the roof the thrower would at least leave another one on the porch.  Nope.  Hopefully our friends won't get fired after the um, amateur job we did delivering the papers.  And I asked my kids after we were done with the papers if they still wanted a paper route of their own.  Nope. Good.  Neither do I.



Doing What We Do

I feel like I never really blog about anything except trips and birthdays and special events anymore.  Not the day to day stuff.  Not that our day to day stuff is exciting at all but I guess that is why it should be here.  So I can save for the record how ordinary my life really is.  Stuff like driving kids all over the place and cleaning.  And the fact that I swore the second day of summer vacation that I had to put up my white flag and surrender to the fact that my house was going to be MESSY all summer.  How can it NOT be messy when you have 4 kids (or more!) running in and out with water, sand, grass, dandelions, and all sorts of other creatures of nature.  So, anyway you have been warned. If you come over (especially without telling me) you get what you get.  And it will probably involve ants.
Let's move on to the other stuff we have done around here lately:

• My kids are obsessed with ants.   Probably because we have a million billion ants living in our yard.  The kids play with them, murder them, feed them, draw chalk circles around them and watch them run around, bury them, make ant soup with them, stomp on them and sometimes bring them in the house to show me.
• We are (sort of) enjoying the new aquatic center they just built here.  I say sort of because the last 2 times we have been we have only stayed for less than an hour due to poo in the pool.  They make everyone get out for 45 minutes when it happens and we have learned (the hard way, by waiting the OTHER 2 times it happened when we were there) that it isn't worth the wait. Obviously their new Nazi monitoring of the "3 layers on everyone under 4" isn't helping.  And yeah, my 3.5 year old who is totally potty trained DOES wear a swim diaper to comply.  I am not sure what they can do about this but I have NEVER seen this much pool poo in  my LIFE!!!
• It is fun having my kids home but I am really starting to miss my "alone" time.  I think they are all getting kind of sick of being with each other 24/7 too.  Just an hour or 2 every day would be heaven...  In fact, I think Kent is hiding from me tonight since I was crabby.  (sorry.)
• I have eczema on my eyelids.  That's a new one for me.  It makes me look like I use a lot of pink eyeshadow and I don't know how to apply it.  And one of my eyes is goopy. I can thank Adele for that eye disease.
• Adele is mortified by using public restrooms, especially those with automatic flushers.  We have been using a LOT of different restrooms lately due to travelling, going to parks, and without fail SOMEONE has to go to the bathroom whenever we are at Wal-mart.  Emilia also had an irrational fear of toilets when she was little.

• I tried a new recipe for Kent for Father's Day:  Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake.  That was a keeper for sure.  I took a bite of it and thought, I must take a picture of this and blog about it even if it does have a bite out of it.

• Emilia had a bump on her gums from a baby tooth that was dying and was creating some fluid or something in her gums.  (exciting huh?)  I always like going to the dentist though so it is something worth mentioning.  If it doesn't quiet down she'll have to get the baby tooth extracted. I swear, we have spent an inordinate amount of money on getting baby teeth extracted.  My kids' teeth just don't like to fall out on their own. In fact, more than once I have bribed my kids with toys if they would let me pull a tooth that the dentist was threatening to extract.  Much cheaper that way, and they get a new toy.  Win-Win!
• Tomorrow we are having dinner with some friends. I normally wouldn't mention this on the blog because it's not really that big of a deal-- except this time it is and I will tell you why.  Let's see if I can do this without being too specific so as not to incriminate anyone.  We have a neighbor who lives near us who likes to have parties.  BBQs in fact.  With lots of work friends and Karaoke.  For 4 hours.  We attended such a party last year simply because we were invited and wanted to be neighborly.  It was awkward, the food was quite a disappointment especially since our neighbor boasted about his (or her) great catering skills,  all the work friends were singing the great hits and love ballads of the 60's (Peter Paul and Mary anyone?) and we just decided that we just didn't fit too well into this scene.  Especially since we had all the kids with us.  So, fast forward to TOMORROW.  We are invited to go to another Karaoke BBQ and we just.  really.  don't. want to.  So we made other plans so we wouldn't be home.  I am feeling very evil now because I confessed this. 
• Ian's cute little "girl" friend has been BEGGING and begging to come over to my house to make sock puppets.  I guess Ian told her about a sock puppet that we have that my kids call "Socket Pup".  Adele could never say sock puppet so she would call it "Socket Pup"  (Kind of like how she calls Gobstoppers "BOBSCOTCHERS".)  So a couple of days ago I made good on my promise and we made sock puppets.

• I have 2 flavors of Ben and Jerry's ice cream in the freezer. It was definitely a splurge but since I had a COUPON it was totally justified.  I have been SOOO bad at coupon shopping lately and I had STACKS of coupons that I needed to organize.  Yesterday I organized ALL of them, cleaned out my coupon folder and TODAY I got online, found the deals and did a great cereal and cracker deal.  I think I am back into the coupon groove. I am going to try to stay up-to-date with it and not get behind again.

So, that's all the ordinary stuff I have been up to.

Elise Turns 9!

June 3, 2011- Elise turned 9!!!

Elise posing with her birthday strawberry.  We always put a candle in whatever we are having for breakfast.  Since candles don't work so well in corn flakes we used the strawberry and helped it stand up with whip cream.  My kids go crazy for whip cream.  They'd be happy with a candle in a pile of whip cream.

We don't do a lot of cake at our house for birthdays.  Elise wanted peach cheesecake.

Since her birthday is in June, Elise ALWAYS wants to have a water party.  And pretty much every year it is too cold, windy and rainy for her party.  This year since we had her party 2 weeks after her birthday we thought we'd be safe.  Not so. It was very cloudy all morning with some threatening clouds.  FINALLY about 30 minutes before the party the sun came out. It wasn't hot but it wasn't freezing either so I guess that makes it a success.

We did the "Heavy heavy hangover thy poor head" thing and I think I did the "bump on the head" a wee bit too hard... (she kept trying to dodge it so I made sure I got her... heh heh heh.)

Since I was worrying about impending rain I decided I needed a back-up plan in case we had to cancel the water party.  Elise said she wanted a pinata.  So here's my last minute pinata. I wasn't about to go to the store and buy one for 20 bucks.  This one did the job and it was super cheap and easy (wrapped an oatmeal container with wrapping paper and voila~!)

 We decorated cupcakes with gummy worms, Mother's Circus Animal cookies, M&Ms (all at the request of the birthday girl). (Friend's names going clockwise from Elise for posterity's sake: Liberty M., Emilia, Ian, Jeff & Jonathan G.  Kinley & Aria G., Malabry A., Cadey C. and Caleb S.)

And of course we played water games.  Even though it was a lot of work (like parties always are) I think the kids had a good time and I was really happy that Elise FINALLY got her water party after all these years. Next year I think we are limiting the friend count to 3 or 4.