My Little Helper

I love this little girl. She follows me around the house and "helps" with every task I do.

Whether it's cooking, cleaning, laundry, or dishes she is always there getting into things.

Such a sweetie pie!

Pocket Hoarding and Fish Face

Have you seen the show Hoarders?? It's a show that follows people that have serious problems, well, hoarding - to the point that they have so much junk they can't walk around their house. I think my son has a similar problem. I have termed it "pocket hoarding". I know it is somewhat normal for little boys to keep stuff in their pockets, but look at this picture:

This was from one pair of pants!! I mean, he has empty candy wrappers, blank pieces of paper, erasers, and an old Sonic receipt! This boy loves to keep stuff in his pockets. I first noticed this was a problem when we went to a museum. Everyone had to empty their pockets to go through security. They gave each of us a box to put our things in. J filled the entire box with the items in his pockets! I never know what I am going to find on laundry day! I guess I'll have to banish cargo pants in this house.

My baby girl has a new talent. It is making fish faces. She does it all the time and thinks it is just the coolest and cutest thing ever.

We all agree!

The One With Lots Of Pictures

This past weekend we headed down to Canon City to celebrate John's birthday, and to celebrate the first weekend of Spring Break. What's in Canon City you ask??

Well, the main thing is this:


The Royal Gorge Bridge. It just happens to be the highest suspension bridge in the world. I think the whole town was built around people coming to see this bridge.

It's a stinkin' long way down, and even though the whole area was fenced off I was still extremely nervous every time my kids walked up to the gate. I don't do well when it comes to my kids and heights.

While there isn't a whole lot more to the town, there were a couple museums we visited. The first was an old jail that had been turned into a museum. You could go in the old jail cells and even see the old gas chamber. Yeah, it was a little creepy.

Here's J. I almost asked if we could take one of the cells home. It might come in handy every now and then!! =)

This was inside the gas chamber. You couldn't go inside the actual chamber, thank goodness, this was creepy enough.

And, here is a chess set made out of toilet paper by one of the inmates. I can't imagine how many hours were spent making this only to have it confiscated by the guards. Makes a great display though.

We also went to the dinosaur museum there.

Here are the kids sitting on a real Apatosaurus (the dinosaur formally known as Brontosaurus) femur bone. I guess this bone was not taken care of by whoever found it which is why they let people touch it.

They had lots of cool dinosaur bones everywhere,

and they have the most complete set of Stegosaurus bones anyhwere - of course, this could have been elephant bones and I wouldn't have known the difference.

Upstairs they had a kid area where the kids could look at fossils, put bones together, watch movies, look through microscopes, and dig. My kids loved the digging part.

I'm thinking future paleontologists here.

Lil Sis loved the dinosaur blocks and puppets. I also let her dig for a little bit but she started dumping all the stuff out of the box.

We walked down the river and played in the park there.

Here is John setting an extremely bad example for the kids.

And, of course, we swam in the pool. This was probably the kids favorite part. From the moment they woke up every morning they would ask "Can we go to the pool now?"

We saw some beautiful sunsets while we were there.

And, we also saw the "World's Largest Rocking Chair". So my life feels pretty complete right now!! =)

Now I just have to find something to entertain the kids for the next two weeks. I love Spring Break!!

I'm Not Irish, But Kiss Me Anyway

Happy Saint Patrick's day!! This morning I got up and made the kids green eggs for breakfast. They thought it was pretty cool except that we didn't have any ham to go with it - a fact that was lamented by all the kids.

Looks appetizing doesn't it??

The boys all made sure they wore green to school so they wouldn't get pinched.

I didn't have any green on, so B pinched me several times as I was cooking.

Lil Sis entertained us all at the table by performing her new talent - making fart noises by blowing on her hand. She's a child prodigy that one!

One of these years I think I'll try and make an authentic St. Patrick's Day celebration dinner, but none of the traditional foods ever really sound that good to me. Do you have a favorite dish that you make every year?

The Best Day

We have a program at my house where I give the kids a bead when they are doing something nice, or do something the first time they are asked. They get to put the bead in their jar and when the jar is full they get to go somewhere with either Mom or Dad. Yesterday B filled his jar and got to go to a place of his choosing. He chose IT'Z and he picked me to take him.

So we went there and bought an hour and a half of playtime and away we went. We bowled,


rode roller coasters,

played video games, air hockey, Dance Dance Revolution, ski ball, and many many other games. We got this many tickets...

...which translated to a zhu zhu pet, a fan, a popper thing, a bat, a ninja sword, a flying frog, and several pieces of candy. We had a blast!! On the way home, B sighed and proclaimed that this was "the best day".

I love spending one on one time with my kids, and I love rewarding them for their good behavior.

Sigh

I don't know why I can't seem to find time to sit and blog lately. Okay, so I know why - we have been busy. But I always used to find time for it before. I need to get back in the habit.

Here are a few things that have been going on around here lately:

We had the Blue and Gold Banquet for Scouts. It was a lot of fun to put together and attend. T got his Bobcat badge. He loves scouts and was so excited to get his very first badge.

In the ward I grew up in, they would turn the scouts upside down, pin the Bobcat badge on and then tell the boys they couldn't turn the badge the right way until they had "done a good turn". Regretfully they don't do that in our ward, but at least I got a hug!

Looking through my camera I had a lot of pictures of Lil Sis sleeping. I love to watch her sleep. I used to think that Heavenly Father must be bored out of his mind watching us all the time. I thought it might be exciting sometimes when we were doing something interesting, but most of the time I thought he was probably bored. Then I had a child and I realized that parental love is warm, reassuring, watchful, anxious, overflowing, hopeful - never boring. I could sit and watch her all day - even, no especially when she is doing nothing but sleeping.

She has also started waiting by the back door when her sibllings go outside. She wants to be with them so badly. I take her out when I can, but she would be happy to tag along with her siblings all day.

Another sleeping picture.

She also turned 9 months old and I never posted her picture. She is 10 months old now and I need to take her 10 month pictures. Pretty soon I'll be posting her 1 year pictures. I just can't believe she is growing so fast.

John has been doing some projects around the house that I can't wait to post pictures of, and we are talking of finishing our basement. Any know any good basement finishers??