Another Night Owl

Allie has a hard time falling asleep.  Every once in a while, she comes out and says "I wish I were grown up so I could stay up late like you."  I tell her that I wish I were a kid and I could go to sleep like her.
One night I told her that she could stay up late if she cleaned. 
You should have seen the look of joy!
She got right to work...

She put away all the shoes.

Then she organized Nate's toys.

Then she got to work on her room. 


By this time, I was on to her "style" of cleaning, so I went to check on the quality of her sweeping job.  One look under the coffee table was enough to explain why she didn't need a dust pan...


Apparently she has been using the place for months to stash candy wrappers, broken crayons, and miscellaneous polly pocket shoes.
Oh well...
It was great to let her stay up and be productive.  Although she still has a hard time falling asleep, she hasn't asked to stay up again either.

Primary Program

Today was the kid's primary program.  They did so well!  We are into the years where they are old enough to sit still up on the stand (at least for the first half) and they can sing really well.  I was so proud to watch my two little kids sing every single word of every single song.  I loved every minute of it. 
Well, I guess that isn't entirely true.  There were a few minutes where the guy next to me was activating his pre-paid cell phone complete with help from customer service.  Really?  Do people really do that in Sacrament meeting?  Anyway,  I had to keep reminding myself not to judge.  Maybe there was only a window of time where he could fill the minutes and if he didn't do it then, he couldn't make the phone call to his dying mother later on in the day.  Whatever his story was, he hung up the phone and I was able to ignore him again.

So back to the kids...

I took this cute picture of them before church. 

They did awesome on their parts.
Allie: Jesus Christ was resurrected and I will be too.
Jake: I will do my part and honor my parents to strengthen my family.

It's always a bummer when you know that they have their parts memorized and they still stand there and wait for the prompts from the person helping them (Allie) or read it (Jake).  Oh well.  I was just so proud of them it made my eyes water.  I love those little stinkers.

I had a pretty massive headache after the program, so I went home and tried to nap.  Nate wouldn't sleep...what's a momma to do?

I put him in his crib watching old home movies of Allie and Jake.  I got an hour snooze!
I'm sad that Mike was out of town for the primary program.  Those kids really know how to bring the spirit into a room and touch my heart.  I sure do love them!

The hut

I heard Jake come in tonight.  I stayed in Nate's room and expected him to come and find me.  Instead, I heard "Mom!  I need a bag.  We decided to take down our hut and I didn't want to just leave all my digging tools out there.  I need a bag so I can keep them till next year."

Wanna see his "digging tools"?

It's a good thing he's saving them.  What if someone were to take them over the winter?

This hut of theirs has been pretty cute.  I meant to go up and get pictures of it, but never did.  Carson and Jake built a rock path leading up to a dirt slope.  They dug seats out of the hill.  They made a clothes line for their coats when they would get too "sweaty".  And they even had a "wiz spot" so they could pee when ever they wanted to.  I guess all that can be said about that is that they are creative.  They are also boys...what else can I expect? 
I've said it before, my kids have a pretty great life.

Puppy/Boy

This boy is seriously part puppy...

 When he gets concentrating, the tongue comes out.  So cute.

 "Hey...what's that you got there?  Can I lick it?"

Goodbye Number 20

When I was young, my dad drove me through a trailer park in Orem.  He told me that if I wasn't careful, I would wind up married to a guy who would bring me to live in a trailer park.  He suggested that he'd help me find a good husband and I was relieved.
I guess I grew up thinking that trailer park husbands were pretty scary, and trailer houses in general were scary too.  I mean look at the statistics of trailers that get destroyed in tornados!
Anyway, my dad didn't have much to do with picking out Mike for me, but he did approve.  Mike also owned a trailer house.  He had pulled it into a park in Smithfield just after his mission and rented it out to help pay for college.  He sold that trailer just before we got married.
My parents owned storage units that had exterior storage space.  Someone had parked a trailer house on it and were delinquent on their payments for years.  We were engaged and Mike saw opportunity with that trashy trailer.  It went to auction and we picked it up for 500 bucks.  Before I knew it, I was marrying a man that was taking me to a trailer park!

 


We pulled the trailer into the park in Smithfield and I have some fond memories of fixing it up.  I was living in Orem, so I drove up with my dad a few Saturdays that month to help fix it up.


Left to right, piece of crap trailer with no siding, my dad, Brian,ladder that squished my dad's hand earlier in the day,  Mike, Scott, and me. 

 We spent a lot fixing it up.  New siding, windows, paint, carpet, furnace, and all sorts of other problems that arose from it sitting so long.  We had a room that we called the dead cat room.  Something had crawled up under that room and died.  On hot summer days, the room would stink so bad it drove us crazy.
We lived in that trailer for a year.  My memories are of frozen pipes in the winter, and icicles in the bathroom shower when our furnace went out.  They are of burning candles to combat the dead cat smell.  Memories of finding wet patches of carpet every time it rained, of Mike climbing up on the roof to tar the holes up to eliminate the wet patches of carpet.  I remember doing laundry in our tiny hall, and playing hours of Dr. Mario on the Nintendo with Mike when he got home from work.  I remember making new recipes...and discovering that Mike isn't a fan of broccoli cheese soup (I was on a quest to find the best recipe for it and he told me when I got to the 3rd or 4th that he doesn't like it...no matter what recipe I tried). 
I remember the sounds the trailer would make as it settled at night.  I swear it was haunted (possibly by the dead cat).  Mike said it was just the way trailers are. 
Mike got me a dishwasher for my birthday because I was a diva and hadn't ever lived without one before and it was cramping my style.

My new birthday dishwasher, flowers, and book (Walden)

I remember setting up the decorations of my very first Christmas as a married girl and thinking that it was pretty fun.   Remember the story of the screwed on top of the tree?

 

I also remember the day that the man came to fix the furnace.  He showed up with long hair, no teeth, tattoos everywhere and exclaimed that he felt like he was home again because he grew up in our trailer park.  When Mike came home from work that day, I told him there was no way we would be raising our kids there :)
 

So, the point of this post is to say goodbye to good old trailer number 20.  When we found the house we live in now, we rented the trailer.  Eventually, we found a buyer.  She couldn't get credit to buy it outright, so we were the bank.  For 8 years, she helped pay our mortgage.  We worried that one day, she'd tire of the dead cat room, and the leaky ceiling and quit making payments.  But she didn't.  And this summer, she paid it off.
When we moved into our house, Mike and I worried about affording the mortgage.  We always said that at least we still had the trailer that we could go back to if we needed to sell the house.  I think we were in our house for about a month when we realized that we could never go back :)
We do have some great memories of that place.  It was a great first home and a great way to start out our marriage.  I love looking back at the pictures and remembering those days.  In a way, my dad was wrong about marrying a guy that would take me to a trailer house.  Starting out in a trailer park helped us get to where we are now.  I'm glad Mike was ambitious enough to see the potential in that piece of junk we hauled up to Smithfield.
Now, it's officially someone else's home, but because of it, my kids are growing up in the best neighborhood ever.  So, goodbye number 20.  Thanks for the memories and for helping us get where we are today!

Eating woes

It is rare to come upon Nate when he doesn't have something in his mouth.  He picks up everything off the floor and immediately tastes it.  He is such an oral kid.
So why won't he take a bottle?  I have been dealing with food issues for weeks now.  He doesn't want to take the time or focused attention that it takes to nurse, but he won't take a bottle either.  It's been quite an ordeal around here.
Why will he suck on spare parts for school desks, but he won't drink from a bottle?

Moab

We went to Moab over UEA.  If you want to hear the gorey details about the awful place we stayed (complete with days old clogged public toilets), let me know.  I'll give you an earful.  I can also tell you about the awesome drive from Moab to home...the word awesome is said in extreme sarcasm. 

So, other than a few things that were a little miserable, we had a really great time.

The boys rode motorcycles.  Mike, Jake, Mitch, and Herb (Mike's uncle and his son).

The girls rode in this.  I had so much fun driving it.  I love driving around the slickrock in Moab.  It's especially fun going in something that drives up almost anything and makes it look easy. 

We stopped a lot to let the kids run around.  We took a few trails that I had never been on before and saw some really neat places.  I think I could go to Moab a hundred times and never see all there is to see.  I love it!



We also went to Arches National Park.  We love the little sand dune arch trail that takes you to a giant sand box.  The kids love playing in it. 

Nate just had to taste it...several times.

Jake climbed to the top of the sand dune arch.  It's hard for a momma to see her boy up on top of something like that and not feel intense fear for him...be careful boy!

Allie loves her cousin Lauren.  They made a little hut to sleep in.  It's no wonder I was finding sand everywhere for a week.

 It was a fun trip!  (I can say that now...weeks later now that I have caught up on sleep and my patience bucket has been re-filled).

Got Milk?

I saw an idea for a photo shoot when Nate was a tiny baby.  It was of a kid in a bowl of cheerios.  I knew it was something I wanted to copy (I wish I could remember where the original idea is so I could give it credit, but my friend showed it to me from Pinterest).
Anyway, Nate got old enough and we did it today.  Oh my goodness this was a fun photo shoot.  I think Nate was in heaven.  He didn't quit eating these things...ever.

Oooo...I could eat you up!

Pumpkins

It was so strange this year...the kids carved their own pumpkins with little or no help from me.  How does that happen?
I thought they did a great job.

 Jake picked out the biggest pumpkin they had.  He was so grossed out when he had to gut it.  He might think twice about the size next year.  Big pumpkin = lots of guts. 
p.s. how do you like the hair?  That was left over from crazy hair day at school.  I shaved a mohawk for him and we didn't get around to fixing it for two days...why they had to be days that I had the camera out, I'll never know.

 Allie drew on the face and cut out the eyes.  I helped her with the mouth.  Pretty cute...

Just a little taste mom!

Nate's sporting some pretty crazy nap hair. 
Dad drew on his face and cut it out for him. 

As much as Mike and I hate carving pumpkins, this was the best year by far.  The kids did all the dirty work and carved things themselves.  There is something to be said for growing up...

Family Pictures

Mike is so good to get me moving on developing the family pictures.  I take them and look at them on the computer, but I have the hardest time pulling the trigger and printing the good ones.
This year, that's what Mike got me for my birthday.  I have new pictures in all my frames.  I love it.  It makes me happy to walk past the new pictures and remember that I have been blessed with a wonderful family.

And, just so you can see them better, here are the pictures in the frames...