Happy St. Patrick's Day!

What's not to like about Ireland, rainbows and green? My husband says this is now his favorite holiday after Christmas...why? Leprechauns have begun surprising us on St. Patrick's Day morning. The wee rascally men break into our house at night and leave a trail of destruction and yummy treats.

This year they entered through the front window, tipped the couch on its side, dumped out the basket of shoes, knocked over Kate's high chair and left again through the back door! They sure left a mess but who can resist Belgian chocolate coins, Haribo Gold Gummi Bears and Andes Mints??

And just to make the morning complete, we had green pancakes and spinach eggs for breakfast!

Not ready for a teenager

I think I got a glimpse into the future this morning...of Ian as a teenager!

Hoping his friends won't be quite this wacky...


Happy Crazy Hair Day!

Swimming in Success

I know I keep talking about swimming, but it is one of the few things I feel I am succeeding at right now.

Other things I am succeeding at:
Writing blog entries every week or so
Keeping up on email
showering every day
Making sure three kids are fed and healthy and happy
Keeping things out of Kate's nose and ears
Supporting Ben as he rehearses for a church musical 6 days a week! (more on that later)


Things I am not succeeding at:
Keeping my house clean
Finishing my 30 day challenge of reading the Book of Mormon started Jan. 3
Getting ready for the stream of spring break visitors we have lined up
Folding the darn laundry!
Reading books I want to read
Finishing a hutch I started painting...oh...three weeks ago?

Although it's sometimes hard to get up at 6:15am, go outside in the cold and the dark (again-thanks daylight savings!) there is something relaxing and centering about swimming back and forth, watching the sun rise, a few minutes of adult conversation, and getting a good start to the day. Here's to swimming!

Me doing some rockin' breaststroke!



Audra's amazing butterfly!



Here's to the kick 'n' chat part of the work-out!

Mad Skills

The inevitable happened. I took Kate to the urgent care this week to have a little rolled up blue hair elastic removed from her nose. Through Kate, I'm actually honing my extraction skills, and while at the urgent care, made a note of two items I might put on my birthday list:It seemed that the trauma of the experience actually broke Kate of her dirty little habit, but sadly, it only lasted two days. She tried some little tiny Legos up her nose yesterday. The second one was on Ben's watch. He got out a pair of tweezers and laid Kate down. (She knows the routine by now.) The thought crossed his mind, "If I can just get the Lego without touching her nostril...good thing I have MAD Operation skills!"

Funny Kid Quotes

Ian has great hair. He has a lot of it. It looks kind of like Louis's from Meet the Robinsons. The natural thing to do with his hair would be to spike it, but NO! He hates gel.
We have a deal that I do his hair HIS way during the week and MY way on Sundays. That means gel. Last Sunday, we were running short on time and Ian said: "No time for hair creations!"



We went to St. George not too long ago for a baby blessing. We stayed one night in a cheap motel room we reserved over the internet. We checked in and took a look at our rooms before unloading the van. They were okay, at least for one night. Jacob came to help take some things to our room. He started loading up the snacks, food and drinks.

"What are you doing, Jakie?" I asked.
"I have to get some food."

"Why?"
"We need food when we are staying in the jail."



On our way home from St. George we stopped in Vegas for gas and In-N-Out. Jacob got out of the car and took a look at the casinos on the strip. He yelled out:
"What's this cwazy town!?"



Jacob makes the same sound for his L's, R's and W's. He's also learned about words that rhyme. One day he came running up to me and exclaimed, "MOM, WIZard wimes with WIZard!"






We went to our favorite wholesale store on Saturday night and Kate surprised us by pointing and saying, "Cah-co!"

ER, Here I Come

Did you ever, as a kid, stick something up your nose? How about your kids, have they stuck things up their noses? Ha ha, so funny. How about their ears...do they stick things in their ears? My kids never have. That is, my boys never have.

Kate has a real problem. It started with cereal in the morning. Something about those squishy, mushy cold Cheerios felt just right in her ears. We sternly told her "NO!" every time and took her food away immediately. We cleaned out her ears, while she screamed bloody murder and told her again..."No cereal in your ears!" With time other food ended up in those same cute little ears...a shred of lettuce, a macaroni noodle, bread, chocolate, oranges...you get the picture. It got to the point where we couldn't leave her alone with food for fear she'd stuff it all in her ears instead of her mouth!

Then she discovered her nose had holes, too! Oh joy! Remember those fun little foam shapes from my last post...she got one of those up her nose. The entire thing. It was a half-inch circle all folded up nice and neat all the way up her nostril! I managed to remove it myself, but not without a battle.

Now anything she finds is game. When I catch her in this dirty little habit of hers, and call her on it, she changes the subject. Today I noticed that guilty look on her face. She had taken out her pigtails, stuffed one mini elastic up her nostril and the other in her ear. I checked her other ear, just for fun, and found a crumpled piece of candy wrapper in it! It's getting ridiculous. I know I'm destined for a trip to the emergency room with this little girl! What am I supposed to do?!?

The Day we Made the Valentine Box

Ian had to make a box for Valentine's day at school. It was due Friday. Thursday was the last day to get it done! First, I make sure we have supplies to make a box that is cute, yet not too feminine:

old shoe box...check
wrapping paper...check, we've got some red wrapping paper left over from Christmas
tape...check, three rolls!
decorations...we have tons of foam shapes, including hearts!

I do a little celebration dance inside my head for NOT having to go to the store.
"As soon as daddy gets home we will make your box, Ian," I say to my son. He has been bugging me for a week. He hasn't figured out that I am procrastinator yet. I have to wait until the husband gets home so he can take care of Kate. She's in that "seek and destroy" stage.
Husband calls at about 5:53pm.
"Umh, I have a lot to do at work with my project being due and I didn't get it all done...blah...bu-blah...blah...I'm not coming home until later."
I HATE these calls.
"How much later?" I ask.
"Probably after bed time." (The KIDS' bed time...this means I have to get them ready for bed and put them down by myself.)
I start formulating a plan for the BOX. We have to get it done...TONIGHT. Kate had a late nap because we went to Disneyland so she's in no way ready to go to sleep. In fact, she is in SUPER seek and destroy mode.
"Okay," I think, "If I put a show on for Kate, she'll just sit and watch that (Jacob, too) and Ian and I can get started on the box."
I get out the tape, the box, and run upstairs to get the paper and scissors.
I come back and the tape looks like this:



Thank you Kate! Now go and watch your show. However, she's no longer interested in Elmo.
I tell Jacob to play with Kate and keep her out of our way. I go to get more tape. I come back and the boys have unrolled paper across the room AND smashed it up! It's unusable. I trash it.



My blood pressure goes up. I remind myself it's just a Valentine's box. No need to get upset. Exhale... Luckily it's a long roll of paper. We get started on covering the box. We discover the shoe box has a FLIP lid. I failed to notice this little detail while giddily checking off my list of supplies. We don't have another box. I refuse to go to the store to get another box!!! I try numerous configurations before coming up with something that will work. By this point, I'm not letting Ian anywhere near the paper or the box. I put him in charge of the tape. Jacob wants to help with the tape. Jacob pulls off a gigantic piece of tape and of course, he scrunches it. The bright side: we're not out of tape yet tape and Kate is back into Elmo.
We get the thing wrapped, cut a slit in the top without too much ado. It's a pretty ugly box. Martha would cringe at my wrapping job. We begin to decorate. I'm actually letting Ian do it, too! We are glueing foam shapes on the box and monster baby comes back and wants to help.
"Heeya go, heeya go..." (she says things over and over until she gets what she wants) ...she's handing us shapes at an alarming rate. She's smashing them on the box. I try to put her down, she's kicking and screaming and the entire *huge* edition container of foam shapes falls on the floor. I let her play with them because it is keeping her out of my way. She sticks one in her nose. (Wish I had a picture, but I was BUSY!) The shapes are all over the house in a matter of seconds. How do things get messed up so fast! We found these after cleaning up.


In the end, we did it. It was a stressful hour or so...looking back, I could have planned it better, done it differently, but I'm glad to say it's over. The box is not great but it will do! Mission accomplished.