I knew it would happen sooner or later

See this? If you are standing in the hallway upstairs, you can look out this opening and see down to the front room of our house. The first time my father-in-law came to visit he said "You know your boys could rappel down that, don't you?"



Well, they haven't done that yet, but today I kept hearing clunking noises on the wood floor in the front room and discovered that my boys were "flying" toys out the opening and seeing which toys fell the fastest and how far they would "fly" before they hit the ground. I didn't mind. There is nothing around to break, and they were entertaining themselves, and letting me get some work done. I figured they would throw toys out that window at some point. If I start seeing ropes coming over the side, and my kids strapping on harnesses we will have a problem.


Later in the day I was folding clothes and looked down to find Baby Girl wearing these on her head (It's T's underwear). She put them on all by herself. At least I know they were clean!!





One more weird thing that happened today. My kids have been passing some virus back and forth. J and T came down with it last week. B and Baby Girl are coming down with it today. I was at Walmart (bought Iron Man, wahoo!) and B started crying. I thought it was because he didn't feel good, but then I looked at his arms and watched as all these little bumps started appearing all the way down his arm. I pulled his shirt up and his stomach was covered. I am certain that it was hives. B is allergic to peanuts so I have seen hives before. I know he did not have peanuts today so he is reacting to something else. I hope we don't have to go do another poke test on him. Poor guy. I gave him some Benadryl and the rash is cleared, hopefully he doesn't react again.


Now I have to go get some chips and a nutty bar and watch The Biggest Loser and Dancing With the Stars. I'm so glad there are shows to watch again.

Photo Weekend

I know, I know, more pictures!! This weekend we went up to Helen Hunt Falls with some friends to take some family pictures. It's a nice spot and we got some great ones of our family and theirs. Also I took some pictures of my sweet little niece. I only got halfway through the session with her so I am going to have to go back to take some more (twist my arm =). Here are some of the shots from the weekend. I think we are going to drive up to Victor sometime this week if anyone wants to go get some pictures of your family with the leaves.












This one would have been sweet if the baby wasn't crying, but I still like it.

Because it's cool to knit

I'm a knitter. I knit. Tonight we had a "knitting how to" class for our mid week activity. It was at my house and I think we had 13 people here. We were all making scarves. Some people were ambitious and decided to do an adult scarf. Me? I'll be making a scarf for Baby Girl. Maybe I'll finish it by the time she is 5.





See this? It took me about 3 hours. I put the remote next to it so you can get an idea of the size. How long is it going to take me to do a scarf? I'm thinking it might become a hot pad.




I actually like knitting. It is something I can do with my hands when I am watching tv. It's repetitive and doesn't take a lot of brain cells. Right up my alley. When I get to be really good maybe I'll knit a couch cover or a swimsit for myself (wouldn't that be scary). ;)

A Beautiful Quote

I came across this quote today and thought it was very touching, so I decided to share it.

"The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him."

Isn't that beautiful? And speaking of children, I have a new niece. She was born last night at 8:35, 6lbs 14ozs, 19 inches long. You can bet I will be going over shortly to take pictures of her, so look for those.

I Love This Week

I love the week when all of my favorite shows come back on the air. Mind you, I don't watch that many shows, but all the shows I do watch happen to be starting this week. Did anyone watch Dancing With the Stars last night?? What did you think? I can't believe they got Cloris Leachman on there. I thought she stunk (give her a break, she's 82), but I thought she was really funny with the judges and I was starting to like her until they gave her her scores and then they had to bleep out every other word that came out of her mouth. Really?? I can't stand that kind of crass, vulgar language, and I hope she gets voted off ASAP. My money is on Brooke Burke.

On Thursday Survivor, ER, and The Office start, and Sunday The Amazing Race kicks off ( be still my beating heart).

In honor of Premiere Week, I am going to post my first video clip ever!! Brinkley is our Golden Retriever. He is a good dog, a friendly dog, but show him a ball and he turns into an idiot. His every thought is focused on getting his ball and he fails to notice anything else around him like - A BIG SLIDING GLASS DOOR! John and I were cracking up. We thought it was hillarious that he kept doing this over and over and over. Check it out!

My New Love

For the last little while any free time that I have had was spent with Edward reading the Twilight series. But now, I have a new hobby that has been taking up all my free time. It's time to pull down the Edward poster, put away the "I Love Edward" t-shirt, and put the books back on the shelf. A moment of silence please.


Meet my two new main squeezes: A Canon Digital Rebel and Photoshop. We started our journey together a couple of weeks ago and I think we make a pretty good team. My lack of photgraphing skills are made up for by the fact that my camera takes good pictures and I can do A LOT of editing in Photoshop. I am just beginning to scratch the surface of what you can do with Photoshop, but I am loving figuring it out. So, here are a few samples of my work:


And, I promise that this blog is not going to become a venue to display all my pictures (maybe just every now and then??)



These are some pictures that I took of my friends sweet little baby. I haven't finished editing them yet but here are a few I like.












I discovered this cool thing called "Out of Bounds" pictures where you take a picture and edit it to where it looks like it is coming out of the frame. My Dad took these pictures, I just edited them in Photoshop. I like the effect.

Today he makes me smile

This morning this stack of dollar bills was sitting on my bed. B came in, looked at it and exclaimed "A hundred dollars!"

Then he said (turning to his brother) "Look, it's one five billion dollars!!"

One five billion dollars? I'm not even sure how much money that is. In reality, it is four dollars. Oh how I wish I had one five billion dollars.

More Pics

I have been trying to learn how to use my new camera. There are so many things you can do with it, and I am used to a "point and shoot" so it has been interesting. I went to a basic photography class, got some books from the library and most importantly have been playing with the camera on all the different settings to see what it does. I am still a LONG way from taking great photos, but I snapped a couple that I like so I will post them here.

Baby Girl loves to swing.

She would sit in this all day

T and B were making shapes out of the clouds

A nearby hula hoop was to fun to pass up

Dinner Time: The Good, The Bad, The Battle Over Sausage

"Meek, humble, patient, willing to submit..."

Sometimes I don't think this scripture was talking about MY child. Take tonight for instance. B was having bad manners at the table while he was sitting there waiting for me to serve the food. I asked him twice to stop what he was doing, he didn't, so I told him to go sit on the "naughty step". He turned to me, and sharply responded "NO".

I put on my boxing gloves, gave him that "Oh no you didn't" look and round 1 began. My first instinct - yell, rant, rave, perhaps even force him on the step. But, I didn't. I told B that he would not come back to the table until he had sat on the step for 2 minutes. B didn't think I was serious and walked around the living room doing everything BUT sit on the step while I finished dinner preparations. I kept telling myself don't get upset, stick to your guns, and he will come around on his own. I didn't want to yell at him. This is something I have been trying to work on. But why, oh why, can't they just obey and do everything right and be perfect????

When we said prayer and started dishing up our food (sausage casserole if you're wondering where the sausage part comes in), B began to understand that he was getting left out of it all. I looked around a few minutes later and B was sitting on the step with his back turned to us quietly sobbing. It just about broke my heart. After two minutes were up he came and apologized and was a perfect saint for the rest of dinner.

When he wanted more juice he actually turned to me and said "Mom, may I have some more juice please?" Really? Is this the same kid I just sent to the step for having bad manners? Sometimes being a parent can be so frustrating.

Classical Conditioning?

Ring this and Pavlov's dogs would drool.

Show this to Brinkley (it's his food scoop) and he goes and sits by his food bowl and drools (again with the drooling).

Ask Baby Girl if "she wants some yummies" and she audibly smacks three or four times.

Classical conditioning? I don't know, but it sure is cute.

One Lucky Find

I have wanted a Canon Digital Rebel for years now. Basically, I have wanted one since Andre Agassi used to be in the commercials for them. But, they are insanely expensive and it has never been in the budget. Today I was wandering through Target and I see that they have a Digital Rebel clearanced for $424 (which is a good price). I ask the Sales Guy about it and he said that they don't have any left except the display model and if I want that he will charge me $297 for it - lens included. It took my mind about 5 seconds to scream TAKE IT, but I called John and got his input before I made the final purchase. I was a little leary about buying a display model but it has a 90 day warranty on it and if I really don't like it I can sell it on e-bay for more than I purchased it for so its really a win win situation (a win win win for those of you who watch The Office). I have played around with it a little today, but haven't really done a whole lot (mostly because the battery had to charge and the whole Mom thing). Here are a few pictures I took, I am just itching to take it out somewhere and really play around with it.

It's too quiet...

I was cleaning downstairs when I noticed a strange sound for my house. Silence. In my head I quickly went through a checklist on where all the kids were. J? Doing homework. T? Outside digging in the dirt. B? Jumping on the trampoline with Brinkley. Baby Girl?...Baby Girl?... Ding Ding Ding we have a winner on who is getting into trouble.




You can't see it too well in this picture but her face is VERY shiny. Normally I would attribute it to her angelic glow, but not today. Today she has half a bottle of vaseline on her face and her shirt. How in the world do you go about getting Vaseline off your child? I have wiped her down a couple of times now but she still has a thin layer of the stuff on her. Any ideas???

A bunch of random randomness

I was looking at the pictures I have taken recently to see if any of them were blogworthy. I have a bunch of random pictures, that actually fit my mood tonight. It might be the combination of Claritin and Benadryl (allergy season is brutal this year) and lack of sleep, but I am feeling very random tonight. So anyway, here are some pictures that I am going to blog about and we'll see
where this post takes us.

This little girl has been taking up a lot of my time lately. She is at that stage where she wants to do and have everything. I pretty much just follow her around the house trying to decipher what she wants. Some days it is very frustrating for both of us. But look at this smile, how can you not love a little face like this?



Her favorite pastime lately is climbing the stairs. We have a gate at the top and bottom, but her very helpful and indulgent bigger brothers move the gate for her ALL the time. She hasn't fallen down, but I worry that it might happen in the very near future. I have had serious talks with her brothers, hopefully they will listen to me.

We got a really nice king sized mattress about a month ago and this weekend I thought it was finally time to get some "grown up" sheets, pillows, and a nice bedspread. So on Saturday I went shopping and got these. We still need a headboard, but we can't find one we both like that is not insanely expensive. John keeps saying he is going to build one, we'll see.

Finally, I decided it was time to take a picture for my profile. Here are three possibles, tell me which one you like.

This one says "I'm a psycho happy blogger. Read my posts. Read them!! Leave me a comment. Comments make me happy!! "

This one says "Thoughtful blogger. I only read the blogs of those I find intellectually stimulating. I perhaps might grace your blog with one of my comments if I am of a mind to do so."

And a normal picture.

Maybe we're not so cool anymore...

Tonight was date night. We went out with 2 other couples from the ward. During the course of the night the other two couples had their teenage kids calling them and letting them know where they were. We laughed at the idea of going to the house where all the teenage kids were and crashing their party. After Ironman (it was awesome by the way) we were sitting at Culver's eating ice cream when we talked about crashing the kids party again. I don't know what possessed John, but he bought an ice cream cake and said we were going to do it.

So we drove over to where the kids were (ice cream cake in hand) and knocked on the door. One of the teenage girls opened it part way and was staring at us with a very perplexed look. We pushed open the door, walked in and said "We heard this was where the party was, we thought we would come join you guys" You should have seen the looks on the kids faces. Several of them were straightening up and moving away from the person they were sitting next to because now there were adults in the room and maybe they shouldn't be sitting so close. We sat down on the couch for a while. Some of the kids were trying to make conversation but I think they were all thinking "get the heck out of here and let us watch our movie you old fogeys" It was sooooo funny. So, eventually we told them we were kidding, gave them the ice cream cake (which totally redeemed us) and left. We were laughing all the way home, and hopefully the kids thought it was funny too.

I always knew he was gifted...

...and now it's official!!

Warning, this is a shameless bragging post about my son. So, if you don't want to hear about how totally awesome he is then stop reading now!!

Yesterday J came home with a letter from the Gifted and Talented program (know as SOAR in his school). Apparently he was recommended by his teacher to particpate in this program where they take students who are performing above averge and put them together and give them more challenging work.



Today J brought home his test scores from the beginning of the year. His scores are off the charts!! He is reading 132 words per minute, when the goal is 77 words per minute!! His math score was 2443 where 2421 is advanced and he performs on a 5th grade level(he is in 3rd grade). His reading score was 2761 where 2748 is advanced and he reads on an 8th grade level.


As a mother I always thought that J was extraordinarily gifted and exceptionally smart, but it is nice to have it confirmed by an outside source (well somewhat confirmed, I guess they didn't say he was the brightest genius they had seen in years). I am so happy for him and excited (dare I use the word pride?) that he will have the opportunity to particpate in this program.

I know I am gushing about my son, but I got all teary eyed when I was looking over his results. It brings me joy to know that he excels at some things.

Also doubles as a pillow

I was sitting at my computer when John said "Rachael come here, bring the camera." I came out of the office and at the bottom of the stairs I find this:


Is this not the cutest thing you've ever seen? They actually fell asleep together. As much as I don't like that dog sometimes, I think every child needs a dog. These two are thick as thieves. They dig in the mud in the backyard, jump on the trampoline together, Brinkley even tried to get in the bathtub with B once.


I remember the dog I had growing up. His name was Sparky. I loved that dog and bawled for days when we had to put him to sleep. It is a different experience owning a dog when I am the one who has to take care of him and clean up his messes but I hope my kids have as fond a memories of our dogs as I do of mine.

Labor Day...literally

I put that title because we have a friend who is pregnant and we had been teasing her last night that she should go into labor on Labor day. As it turns out we went to watch the Balloon Festival this morning with her, went to IHOP for breakfast, and then she goes into labor right after breakfast!! She had a healthy baby girl, and I can't wait to hold her (you guys know I am going to steal her, right?)

So, what did you do today? We got up early this morning and went to see the Hot Air Balloons. It was a little dissapointing because it was windy and some of the balloons chose not to go up. So, instead of the 70 or 80 balloons we usually see there were about 20. Kinda stinks because we had told our friends how cool this thing was and how many balloons there were, and it was kind of a flop.

After the Festival we went out to breakfast (it's a tradition). All our friends came with us and it was a bit interesting trying to get 21 people seated. I think we ran the waitress ragged.

This afternoon we had a BBQ and played some Rockband. Right now I am trying to type this and keep my eyes open at the same time. Here are some of the pictures we took of the balloons. Enjoy. I am off to bed!!!

The Pilot Balloon.

He goes up first to determine which way the wind is

blowing, and if it is safe for the other balloons to lift.

Watching a balloon inflate.

Yeah!! Lift Off!!

After the balloons lift off, the fly over to the lake and try to "skim" the lake with their baskets. You can tell the experienced pilots from the non experienced ones. The non experienced ones usually "dunk" in and I imagine the pilots get wet up to their knees.

We look like we are getting ready to tackle something!