Photo a Day: Color

My kids LOVE to color and draw. Like, every day, all day long. I love that they love to color.

This little gem is what Brock brought home yesterday from school. I think he was a little embarrassed, but I think it's really funny. It says "I had a bad day when I got hit by a train. I went to the hospital. I am tired of watching TV but I am better."

I asked him about it. I was all, "Were you supposed to write something that was real?" And he said, "We could write anything, so I made up a story."

The train says "Choo-choo! I can't stop!". The little guy (Brock) says "Ah!" The brown squiggly is the train track. The different colored squares are the train cars. And then there's a dude roasting a marshmallow by a purple tent. You know, because people are always camping out by train tracks, right?

Photo a Day: Something you Found

I'm kind of cheating today on my photo a day thingy, because I'm feeling "blech" - achy and tired. I'm REALLY hoping that this doesn't turn into what my husband just got over. *sigh*

Anyway, for "something you found", I'm going with pics of the kids doing the Easter egg hunt that my mom does every year. Which is totally awesome, because she stuffs 'em and hides 'em, and because she does such a great job I don't have to do a hunt of my own.

Jake, the spazzy picture poser, just like his mom

sweet sweet Brock

Troy the excited hunter

Ivy, happy with just a few eggs

Photo a Day: Green/Hair/Funny

Okay, I need to preface this with telling you that I think that what we did was funny. Probably this was more dorky than funny, but I'm a dork, so there you go.

My cute little nephew loves a lot of girl things, like painted nails, My Little Pony, etc. Part of the girl things he loves includes long hair. Here he is, in the middle of my two kids:

Which, I must point out, he's Ivy's age, but I think he's taller than Troy. My sister makes really tall kids. (Also, Jakob in the background is a spaz and a half.)

Anyway, Micah doesn't have long hair. In fact, he has short, platinum blond hair that's so, so cute. So to make up for it, he wears "hair" around, which ends up being an old T-shirt. Lately it's been a green tank top that I think belongs to his older brother.

So Micah's "hair" got left at my house. We decided to take ransom pictures of the hair for my sister for our Family Home Evening. You know, instead of having an actual lesson about love and kindness or something. So here we are, modeling the "hair".

Jakob's spazzy model face:

I was going for a picture that was more like the shirt had its hands up, but this is what we got instead:

Again, I was going for a beard for Pete, but it was too small. So it's like a bank robber instead:

I just realized that none of my ideas turned out as planned. I have vision, but not execution. I was going for three-headed monster, but again they didn't all fit quite right:

 I can wear little boy clothes!

 A skirt for Ivy:

 And a kangaroo diaper:

We sent these pictures to my sister, along with a ransom note about bringing us Black Dutch Fudge for its safe return, but then we ended up going over there and taking it to them right afterwards.

We would make crappy kidnappers.

Photo a Day Thingy: Up

Oh, my poor, neglected blog. *sigh* We've all been sick for like, a month. Now that we're finally, FINALLY, getting better (although Jake just started getting sick today - grrr), I figured I should try to find a few minutes here and there to blog.

And what better way to do it than to jump onto someone else's idea??  If you're looking for originality here, you're NOT GOING TO FIND IT! Ha ha! Nee-ner, nee-ner, NEEEEEE-NERRRRR!!!

I was lurking around someone else's blog the other day. Because let's face it-I've moved from "commenter" to "lurker". I still read people's blogs, but I don't comment, which is so sad. Who doesn't love comments? Anyway, I was lurking, and there's a blog that that girl follows, called Fat Mum Slim. She's all about photography, and blogging, and has about a trillion followers.

So, she does this thing called a photo a day. She comes up with a topic for each day of the month. And then I think you're supposed to take these fabulous artsy pictures and link to them, and then everyone can see them, and all that fabulous stuff.

But.

I am not a photographer, no matter how much I want to be. A lot of my pictures are pretty crappy. Therefore, I will NOT be linking them to the hashtag, because people would be all, "This chick must be on crack." However, I still think pictures are important, especially pics of my kids. I'm hoping by doing this it will 1) get me back in the habit of blogging, and 2) get me back in the habit of taking "everyday" pictures.

Because I discovered this near the end of March, I'm going to do a little of March's list, and a little of April's, and sometimes combine some of the ideas. Well...we'll just see how this goes, shall we?

So here are the lists. March:

And April's:

Today I chose to do "Up" from March's list. I have two interpretations. First, this one:

My kids are always, always climbing up on the counter.

And here is my other picture. Brock drew/colored this for last Mother's Day (2011). It's a picture of Paradise Falls, which is in the movie Up. He's such a good artist - it blows my mind.

So there you have it. UP.

Poor Troy-Boy...

When Troy was little, he had a 4th of July...mishap.  You can read a little about it here. The whole time he was getting fixed up, he kept saying, "Poor Troy-boy. Troy-boy got hurt. Poor Troy-boy."  It was so cute.  And so very sad.  It's kind of the story of his life, though.

One fast Sunday, Troy wanted to bear his testimony.  I told him to go ahead and go up after the current person was done.  There was another person waiting their turn on the stand.  I had told him that once he gets up there to wait until the other people up there were done, but he didn't hear that part.  As he was climbing the stairs, the person on the stand waiting his turn got up.  Troy's little face just crumpled up, and he started crying and ran back down to our seat.  I think he thought that that person cut in front of him or something.  Again, just so sad, but so cute.



The other day, he wanted to go play with a friend that lives around the corner from us.  He was begging me and begging me.  I told him that he could go if Brock went with him.  Brock is buddies with the older sibling, while Troy wants to play with the one closer to his age, though I think they all end up playing together.

So Monday after Brock's homework was all done, the boys took off for their friend's house.  Not two minutes later, I heard screaming and crying coming from outside.  My initial thought was that one of them fell down and scraped a knee or something.

The two of them came bursting through the front door.

"MOM!!!!  There was a BIG, SCARY dog, and it WANTED TO EAT US!!!"

"It was chasing us and tried to GET MY PANTS!!!"

My kids are a wee bit scared of dogs, of all sizes.  I peeked out the front windows and looked up and down the road for a dog, big or small.  I saw some neighbor kids out, who happen to have a dog.

"Was it so-and-so's dog?"

"NO!!!!  It was a BIG SCARY DOG!!!!"

"Where was the dog at?"

They both pointed at the house on the corner.

"Well, let's just wait a few minutes, and maybe that dog will be somewhere else, and you can try walking over there again."

That's when Troy piped up: "But Mom, I lost my SHOE!"

Sure enough, Troy only had one shoe on.

Me: "You ran all the way home without your shoe on?"

Troy: "Well, the BIG SCARY DOG was chasing me and my shoe came off-" (bursts into tears) "-and so I just kept running."

I was trying not to laugh.  Because it was just so cute.  But it was just so sad, too. (Also, a little Cinderella-ish.  Running out of the shoe and all.)

So I bundled up and started walking up and down the street, looking for a lost shoe. Shouldn't be too hard, right?  I went up one side, and down the other.  No shoe was to be seen.

I got back home, and asked Troy if he remembered where he lost his shoe, or which side of the road he was on.  And of course, being 5, his story switched around.  "It was in the road.  It was over there in the yard. It was in our yard."

I sighed a big heavy mom sigh, and told him to get his boots on, we were going to go look for his shoe together.  We went up, we went down, on our side of the road.  Then we started to do the same thing on the other side of the road.  We got close to the house with the dog.  You know, the BIG SCARY dog.  And Troy froze in his tracks.

"Mom, the dog is going to GET ME!" More tears. I assured him that the dog would not get him, and is probably really nice.  He wouldn't budge, and was getting ready to bolt for our house again.

The big, scary dog was in his yard, doing scary things like RUNNING, and WAGGING HIS TAIL.  He reminded me of the dog on Up, named Dug.

Now granted, if some animal came bounding up to me that was as tall as me on all fours, I'd be a little skittish, too.

So instead we turned around and started looking the other way again. 

A minute later, out comes a little boy, who Troy recognized as a kid from his kindergarten class.  Because I'm a bad neighbor, I have no idea who lives where, or half of my neighbors' names.  I suck like that.

But Troy knew him, and this little boy was carrying Troy's shoe.  They met, and the boy said, "My dog took your shoe.  Sorry."  I nudged Troy with a "Tell him it's okay, and thanks for finding it."  We went home, and Troy (and Brock) were no longer traumatized by the dog.

At least for now, until they dare venture to their friends' house again...DUN DUN DUNNNNN!

Ramble, Ramble, Back to School, Ramble, Ramble

Well, now that school is back in session, I'm almost back into the swing of things...almost.  Here's the rundown on how things have gone thus far:

Jakob

On back to school night, we took Jakob’s school supplies to his class and got a chance to meet his teacher.  She seems really nice.  There’s a girl in his class that he’s buddies with.  She is just a little doll and a half.  She came up to him and said, “Hey, Jakob! Are we going to play at recess?"  Jakob, with a shy little smile, replied, "Yes." She said, "What are we going to play? ....Zombies?!?!?"  And Jake got a huge grin on his face and said, "You KNOW it!"  It was just so cute.  I'm glad he has some friends in his class.

I think he’s doing...okay so far.  He wants to be able to do everything right the very first time he tries something, and if he can’t then he gets frustrated.  We talked about it, and I told him that if he already knew everything, there would be no reason for him to go to school at all.  He really is a smartie pants, though.  He hasn’t had homework so far, which has been nice (for me).

Brock

I got to meet Brock’s teacher the week before school started.  She called parents and had them come in individually with the student and school supplies.  She’s a thinker, that one.  She is also very much on top of things-she didn’t miss a beat in asking me if I could come in to help in the classroom.  I told her I would try-my only hiccup is how Ivy is doing when she is with me.  Sometimes, when I’ve gone to help at the school, Ivy has been great-she just sits there quietly and plays.  Other times, she’s wanting to run up and down the halls.  So we’ll see how this year goes.

The first day of school, Brock lost his lunch box.  I swear it went to the Phantom Zone for a while, and this is why: he forgot to put his lunch box in his room’s basket.  At the end of the day he realized that, and so they went to the lunchroom and found his box, and sent him on his way with it on the bus.  But then his box was exactly like a girl’s box that rides the same bus, only she’s in 3rd grade, and somehow he had her box.  So he came home and was in tears because he lost the box.  We went to the school, to his classroom, to the lunchroom, and called the bus, all to no avail.  The next day, voila!-the lunch box appeared…in Jakob’s class’s basket.  Hm.  Very random.  But we got it back.

Brock loves school.  His homework has taken the most time so far, because he wants to color everything meticulously.  Grr.  I’m like, just scribble, child!  But he is a SUPER artist, and wants everything to look right, so I have to hold my tongue.  He’s getting better and better at reading, but still wants to guess at words.  If I stop him, though, and point at the word that he guessed, he’ll read it the right way.  I think he’s just trying to go fast or something.

Troy

Troy is just so cute.  He’s a dawdler, so I worried about him being on time in the morning to catch the bus.  But he’s done great so far.  The first day of school we were walking in to the front doors with a bunch of bigger kids.  Troy’s eyes got wider and wider.  But once we got to the classroom I think he was okay.  There are a few kids in his class that he knows from church, so I think that helps.  And he plays with his neighbor friend at recess that’s in the other kindergarten class.

This week for homework we had the Mom Scrapbook Project, as I like to call it.  Each of my kids has had this: it’s a packet that asks questions about your child, like their favorite color, a cool trip they have been on, what they are scared of, etc.  (Incidentally, Troy said his favorite trip was “when we went to Wyoming”.  He doesn’t say when we went to Lexi’s wedding, but that’s the only time we’ve been in Wyoming.  So random.)  So you answer the questions, and then you have to find things to show the answers, like pictures, and stickers, and dye cuts, and on and on.  When I did it with Jakob, I think I put a lot more time and effort into doing lots of different…mediums?  Like, stickers, and yarn, and I had him color a whole bunch.  This year, I did almost all pictures, because it’s just that much easier.  We got a few stickers, too, but that’s about it.  Oh, and I had Troy draw a couple of pictures.

Troy is just so eager to learn - he wants to know everything, and how things work.  He’s constantly asking about what words start with what letters, that kind of thing.  The other day he asked Pete to explain how waterfalls work, and ate up every word.

Ivy

I thought about trying to do a little group school thing for Ivy this year.  And then I remembered how much I hated doing the neighborhood preschool for Troy when he was three, so I quickly changed my mind.  So far, she mostly just wants to play with toys while “da brudders” (translation: “the brothers”, which is what she collectively calls Jakob, Brock, and Troy) are at school.  Sometimes she wants to be with me, so she’s at my mercy-she helped me do laundry, and put away dishes, that kind of thing.

Twice a week my mom and I are walking - outside right now while it’s still nice, and then we’ll start mall walking when it gets cold.  So Ivy rides in a stroller with a blanket over her.  She thinks it’s the best thing ever.  Which takes us to…

Nat

Have I been productive? Yes.  Am I busy? YES.  But do I have down time?  Yes. 

During the summer we slept in, and kind of took our time doing things during the day.  It’s amazing how much more one can get done when one gets up and gets moving.  After I get the boys out the door, I’ve been exercising for the first time in YEARS, either walking with my mom like I mentioned, or doing yoga.  I bought this DVD of 20 minute yoga, and so far I really like it.  The dude on it talks about how people go to bed too late, and then get up with a huge to-do list and rush through the day.  His philosophy is to go to bed earlier, and then start the day right with down time, to set the mood for your whole day and get you in a peaceful mindset.

My other morning routine is reading my scriptures.  This has been a wonderful way to start my day.  We read together as a family at night, but it’s just one page.  Reading on my own has been hit and miss, but now it’s part of what I do, and it’s been great.  It does the same thing as the yoga - it gets me in a peaceful mindset to start off my day.

Another great thing about school is the lunches.  I came up with a rotation of sorts for school lunches that I send with the kids.  It’s not fancy, but it helps break up the monotony of a PB&J every day.  I’ve been trying to include healthier sides, like carrots and celery, or little fruit cups.  So, when Troy gets home, I make the same lunch for him, me, and Ivy that I did for the other two.  So I’ve been eating a little better as well.  The other day I was like, Ooooh, celery!  I don’t normally chop up celery for my own eating, but since I had already cut a bunch of sticks it was easy to grab and eat.

After school, I teach piano.  I have 14 students this year.  Every year, before I start teaching, I get really nervous - about if I’m teaching well, if I’ll have enough time to get everything done, that kind of thing.  Last week was my first week, and it went really great.  Well, at least it went great for me – I hope it’s the same story when my students get home.  I really love teaching, and all my students are awesome.

And then at night, of course, I clean at my dad’s office.  Luckily, I’ve been doing that for a couple of months, so that’s really second nature now.  I’m glad things have been adding on little by little or week by week so I didn’t get inundated all at once.

So, weekdays, doing okay.  Weekends, however, are a different ball game, especially Saturdays.  On Saturday, I just want to sleep in, and relax.  But what I NEED to do is grocery shopping, and cleaning at my dad’s, and cleaning my own house with my kids.  I wish my kids were old enough that I could just set them to it, but I know we’d end up at the hospital with bleach in a kid’s eye or something.  So I help them out, which takes longer than if I were to just do it, but they need to learn at some point. 

This last Saturday we were cleaning after dinner and clear up till bedtime, but at least it got done.  So that’s something I need to think about.  I could try fitting one chore into every day of the week (like Monday is dusting day, Tuesday is windexing day, something like that), but I don’t know if that would be better or worse than what I have going on now.  My other thought, and I REALLY need to do this, is go grocery shopping on a different day other than Saturday.  It would be less crowded on a different day, that’s for sure.

Well, I think this post is long enough now, so I’ll be off.  But don’t worry-I’ll be back to ramble another day!

Love-Love

During the school year, Brock brought home a paper.  He had to draw an activity of something that he and his family do during the summer.  I thought he'd draw he and his siblings playing on the swing set, or riding bikes, or swimming. 

Nope.  He drew a picture of him and me playing tennis.

Have we ever played tennis?  No.  Does he even know what tennis is?  Apparently, because he had drawn us with rackets and a net and everything.

And can I find this work of art?  No.  I've looked through my stacks (and stacks and stacks) of drawings, and I can't find it for the life of me.  I'm way bummed, because Brock is a super artist.

So, I took the kids out in the morning before it got too hot, and we played tennis.  We don't have tennis rackets, but we have two racquetball rackets.  And I bought some tennis balls.

We took turns "hitting" the ball, a.k.a. swinging our rackets in the air as the ball flies by.

And we played chase.  I was trying to get Troy on one side of the net, and Ivy on the other.  They just ran around and around the net, giggling with glee.

We also did a lot of running after the ball.  I would hit the ball over the net, and my kids would miss, and then chase the ball down.

Then I would stand on one side while my kids attempted to hit the ball to me.  After 10 or so tries of them hitting the ball into the net, and by the net, and around the net, I would take my turn and hit it back.

At one point I had Jakob take pictures with the camera.  I think they were having more fun taking pictures than they were playing tennis.

Another time I served the ball to Brock.  The ball bounced on the ground, then came up and hit him square in the eye.  I started laughing, even though it really wasn't that funny.  Okay, it was funny, and I'll be the first to admit I'm a bad mom for laughing at my kid's pain.

We didn't play for very long.  And even though it wasn't productive in a rally, keep score kind of way, it was still fun.  I'm glad Brock suggested it.

The Short Version

I think I am the President of the Procrastinator's Club.  Of course, I wouldn't know, because procrastinators would just put off having their meetings, wouldn't they?

Anyway, I've been gone WWWWAAAAAYYYYYY too long from my blog.  And so much has happened!  But I'm afraid if I try to do super detailed posts of everything, then I won't get around to doing any posting at all, because I'll just fall further behind.  So, I'm going to do the highlights, and you can fill in the details in your mind.  I trust you to make up awesome things.

So, without further ado...

Pete had his birthday.  He got a computer mouse, and then some drawings done by the kiddos.  It was very chill.

I started a chore chart for my kids. Jakob had been doing bathrooms with me for forever, and the other kids didn't have any chores.  I revamped it, and now we have a rotation of several chores.  My kids have been really great about doing chores-eager, even.

I have to supervise them, but for the most part they do pretty well.  A couple of weeks ago Troy was on dusting, and I didn't know that he was trying to do it by himself.  Needless to say, I had to scrape off oodles of dust stuff off of my dresser.  But he tried, and I guess that's what counts.

I also got a laundry basket for each of my kids, and now they fold their own clothes.  I have to help Ivy a lot, but they do well folding their own clothes.  I'm not quite ready to have them try and run the washing machine by themselves, but it's helped me a lot to divvy out their clothes for them.

Brock lost his two top teeth in the last little bit.  I love the toothless smile.

We spent mother's day with my parents.  It was really fun.  My mom is a spaz.  She's so cute!

My cute friend Sara got some free tickets to a show called "Handsome Little Devils", so she invited me and our other friend Anna to go. The actors do a lot of juggling tricks-that kind of thing.  It was really impressive. And I got pulled up on the stage!  The actor next to me had me hold some roses out in front of me, and he whipped the tops of them off while balancing on a ladder!  It was really cool.

We had an Easter egg hunt at my parents' house, in the 400 mile-an-hour wind.  Idaho "spring" is very, very windy.

Ivy had her third birthday.  For some reason, I always space on the candles for cakes.  Also for some reason, I had a brand new "1" candle, but that's it-no others.  Awesome.  So that's how we ended up with two matches as the other candles.

She got some clothes, and some hair things, a Tinkerbell doll, and the movie Bambie.

I was outside on a Saturday, and Troy ran out to be with me.  His hands were in his jacket.  He tripped, and fell flat on his face on the driveway.  I saw the whole thing and couldn't do anything to stop it.  So very sad.

A few days later, Troy graduated from preschool.  He loved preschool, but he is so ready to go to kindergarten in the fall.

And speaking of graduations, Brock graduated from kindergarten.  Their program was really cute, and I thought I would cry a lot, but I didn't.

(Okay, so here is where I tried to insert a video of Jakob's piano songs, but it wouldn't load.  Good job, blogger!  So, maybe someday I'll get it to load, but until then, just pretend that you can watch that video here.)

I had my piano recital.  I've been teaching Jakob this year as well.  He did an awesome job!  He was all, "My legs were shaking a lot!"  And I don't know why he decided to stand while playing, but whatever.  He did great, as did my other students.  I played as well, and did pretty good, but botched the end of my last song.  Oh well, though.  It's not the first time I've messed up a performance, nor will it be the last, I'm sure.

Also, I look like Beaker when I play the piano: my eyes are really wide, and my mouth turns down at the corners.  It's neat.

Right after school got out, I got sick, for a week!  It was way super awesome.  I love being sick.

We took a quick jaunt to Utah for Pete's mission reunion.  I was a little bored but I think Pete enjoyed seeing some of the people from his mission.  We hung out with family, and went to Thanksgiving point, to the dinosaur museum there.  I had no idea why Ivy is crying in the above picture.

They have a digging spot at the museum, where you can uncover "bones".  All my kids enjoyed that part.

All of my boys have individually told me that they want to either study or dig up dinosaur bones.

We ate at Benihana on the way back home.  The kids' menus folded up into hats.  Troy zonked out with his hat still on.

And, this last Sunday, Ivy decided to take some scissors to her own hair.  The pile of hair she chopped off is in her hands in this pic.

She did a very thorough job on both sides of her head.  It was very mullet-esque.  It's kind of hard to see in the pictures of it.  Needless to say, we needed to get it fixed up.  I figured a cute little pixie hair cut would work.  And, of course, all this happened before I got her 3-year-old picture taken.  Because I've been really on top of things lately.  (Pres. of the Procrastinator's Club, remember?)

Here it is, all fixed up.  Pete thinks it's kind of boy-ish, but I think if I keep a barrette in it then it will be feminine enough.

Well, that pretty much catches us up to speed.  Sorry it's not heavy on the details, but I just wanted to get 'er done, you know?  So that maybe, someday, I can step down as the President of the Procrastinator's Club.  You know, when I get around to it.