Grandma's House

The week after school got out, we went down to Grandma's house.  She was out of town for a long time and had just gotten back.  I promised her a day of slave labor for Mother's Day, so it was time to pay up.  It was also the anniversary of my dad's death, so we went to his favorite steak restaurant and ate a steak for him.    

 I took a picture of the kids sleeping area.  You can tell they were not in any mood to sleep.  They just wanted to be crazy monkeys.

 Allie and I went to Grandma's mother/daughter night at her ward.  She got to get a fancy hair do and we made some cute necklaces.  It was fun to see the ladies that I grew up with as leaders and teachers in church.  I got told over and over again that my little Allie girl looks just like me when I was little.  

 Jason had fun playing with Grandma's toys.

We did some yard work and the kids all found a snail to torment for the day.
This one is Nate's snail named Sticky.

 There were some really big ones that are just beyond gross.

They all had a great time playing with cousins.  I didn't take any pictures of the things that they did, but they made up a cute club house in the gazebo and had signs drawn up and everything.  It was fun to see them all getting along so well.

It was really fun to go down.  I usually feel like I am just bringing my chaos to my mom's house and that I am never any help to her.  She comes to my house and is Cinderella for the day and all I do in return is bring children who pee on her carpet and break her tea set from China.  This time, I did get some work done and even though Nate spilled a 44 ounce drink on her Persian rug, I feel like we might have balanced things out enough.

A Happy Tree

A while ago, Jason was asleep and the house was completely quiet.  I went in search of Nate and found him glued to the tv.  I totally cracked up laughing because I remember zoning out to the paintings of Bob Ross when I was younger.  It's funny, I wanted to make sure of his name just now, so I typed "happy tree artist" into the browser and he came right up.  The show sucked Nate right in, as it has thousands before him.

Lemonade Stand

Allie and her friends had a lemonade stand one of the first few days of summer.

I'm thinking that I need to set up a lemonade stand...they came home with some serious cash!

Floating the "River"

We had so much rain this spring that the river by our house ran.  The kids were so excited and spent nearly every day down there "floating the river".  I knew there wasn't much more than a trickle, so I went to watch them and see how they were making the trek down the river.  It was pretty funny to watch them navigate the rocks in just a few inches of water.

It is still running just a little, but they can't make it down on their tubes anymore.  It was good while it lasted though and it made me realize that I  miss having the river.  Jake and Carson used to play down there every day when they were little.

 The little boys had fun playing out there and I liked it because I could just sit on the rocks and watch them without chasing them all around the countryside.

We sure are lucky to live in such a great place.  I wish this river could run all summer and into the fall.  It sure keeps the kids entertained.

Things I don't want to forget...

...Jason has been so funny lately and I wanted to write a few of the things down so I don't forget.  You don't think you ever will forget things, but it just happens.

Jason is really dramatic and he has a wild imagination.  He has talked about "scary ghosts" and "mosters" for a long time now.  Whenever I tell him to hurry up, he'll say "hurry Mom!  A moster's coming this way!"  and he'll look over his shoulder, give me a scared look and he literally quakes.  It's hard not to laugh...or purposely scare him just to see him stand, frozen in fear and shake.  He's not really scared, he's just a good actor.
He likes to quote his favorite movie lines and they all go into a loop.  When he starts saying one, he goes right to the next one and then to the next and so on.
For example, he'll say "we jumped out the window, shhh! we jumped out the window" (whispered dramatically like in Big Hero 6). "Furry baby!  Furry baaaby" (Big Hero 6)."Major Rockstars" (Alvin and the Chipmunks). "Darkness!  No parents!  Darkness" (Batman from the Lego Movie this one is said in his "devil voice" and can shock anyone new to the devil voice.  Then he'll go back to "we jumped out the window".
He usually goes through this routine of movie lines during lunch with Nate.  They crack each other up and say the same things over and over.
Nate can control the rewind button on the remote and they rewind their favorite parts of shows over and over and laugh their heads off.  I think that's why he knows them so well...including voice inflections.

Jason also loves singing the Silly Monkey song that they sing in Nursery.  He mumbles and fumbles his way through most of the song, but he sure loves the part "a naps tha mokey righ out a da tree!"  (the crocodile snaps that monkey right out of that tree).  He does it with such enthusiasm that it's impossible not to laugh when you watch him snap like a crocodile.

Jason is obsessed with owies.  He inspects us (me and Mike) and whenever he comes across a scrape or a scab, or even a mole, he looks concerned and asks "a happened Mommy?"  It doesn't matter what you say happened, or if you told him it was a mole, he would continue to ask what happened.  Mike started messing with him and started saying that he crashed the snowmobile, or that he crashed the motorcycle.
Now, he finds something and says "a happened mommy?  You crash da abeel?  a kiss it" (I kiss it).
Not only are all our sores from snowmobile crashes, but his are too.  I was trying to get him down for a nap and I started scratching his leg softly to hypnotize him.  He was halfway asleep when he jerked away and said "abeel crash" and I remembered that he had scraped his knees and I was probably hurting his scrapes.

He still says "a holdju" when he wants me to hold him.

When he's playing with his cars, he tells them to "roar your gingins" (roar your engines).

He calls my mom "grandpa" even though he can say grandma.

He says "yeyyow" for yellow.  He calls chicken nuggets "burgers".  He'll say "ewww yuck...that tastes terrible" if he eats something yucky.  He has a stuffed animal that says that when you push its tummy, so he has taken it on as a favorite saying.

When he coughs, he dramatically says "a choke!" when he's done.

When he gets in trouble, he says, through his tears "A not a mister", or he angrily accuses an offending person of being a "mister".  That is from Mike.  Sometimes when one of our kids is throwing a fit, Mike will say "You're in trouble Mr!" in his stern voice, or even "You're gonna get it Mr!"  None of the other kids have thought that was anything to bat an eye at, but it sure breaks Jason's heart.  His behavior can actually be governed (sometimes) by the threat of being a "Mister".

I can't think of anything else to add right now, but I wish I could follow him around with a video camera all day.  It would record all the juicy kisses I get throughout the day and all the times he tells me "a wuv oo Mamma".  It would zoom in on his cute little chubby fingers as he expertly swipes the letters into place on the word game he likes to play on the ipad.
It would record a thousand cute things in a day.  It would also record a lot of crying stubborn fits.  Fits over getting the wrong color bowl at breakfast or the wrong kind of juice in his sippy cup.  A fit over being strapped in the car seat.  A fit over taking a bath and then a fit when the bath is over.  He's a super cute kid, but he's still a tough one.
I sure do love him though and I forgive all the things that make life hard with him because there is so much good about him too.  More good than bad, that's for sure.

Dads

It's Father's Day!  I love my dad and I love the dad of our kids.  Mike is an awesome dad and I am so grateful for him in our lives.  I was looking for a good picture of him and the kids and we don't have a recent one.  He doesn't really like posed pictures anyway.  So here is one with him putting all our children in danger in search of "fun".  Our trees have started to really grow big and this one was hitting the house and scratching at our windows.  They took care of it pretty quick and had fun while they worked.  That's the best kind of work anyway. 

Happy Father's Day Mike!

I'm Blllloody

Jason gets a lot of bloody noses.  It's something I've never had with a kid before.  He got his first one when he was about 8 months old and was wrestling with Nate.  Nate came into the room covered in spattered blood and I couldn't find a hurt anywhere on him or on Jason.  I could not figure out where all the blood came from until Jason woke up from his nap and had blood on his pillow and face.  It had just sprayed out of his nose while they were wrestling and then stopped for a little while.  Weird.  Anyway, it's hard to contain a bloody nose on him because he usually smears it all over his face and clothes before I have even noticed that he's bleeding.  He is also just starting to say his "l" sounds rather than a "w" in its place so he comes up to me saying "I'm blllllloody" with this funny tongue thrust thing that he does when he says his l's.  It always looks like a murder scene.  He has had enough now that when he gets another one he'll sit still with a kleenex up his nose and wait for it to stop.  He's a cute kid.

Dating the kids

When I first became a mom, I was talking to my Aunt.  She has a great family of girls and they all have a close relationship.  I asked her what she thought made her family so close together and she told me about their date night situation.  They have 4 girls, so each kid got one week a month to go out with a parent one on one.  They did their FHE night on Sunday so their Mondays would be free.  Their dates were simple and easy, but she said the most important thing about it was that they could rely on their date night.  It didn't get shuffled aside and forgotten if things were busy that week.  She talked about how their dates brought them to conversations with their girls that they might not have had any other way.  I remember thinking that it was a great idea and something that I wanted to do with my family.  When we first tried it, Nate was a baby.  We also felt like we saw a lot of our kids and that we spent one on one time with them all the time anyway.  Things just fizzled.  I was reminded of it again a few months ago and the nagging feeling didn't go away that it was something that we should start up again, so we did.  We started having our FHE on Sunday nights.  It is so much easier to do it then anyway.  Monday was always so chaotic with piano, Allie's gymnastics, and the temptation to stay out late with the beautiful weather.  It always seemed to get shunted to the end of the day and rushed before a late bed time.  Now, I have more time to plan a lesson and we aren't rushing through it just to say we did it.
Jake is the first born, so he got the first date.  We flipped a coin to see if he'd go out with me or Mike.  Mike won the coin toss and they were off.  They got in the old car and headed out for a cruise.  They came home with smiles and ice cream on their faces.
Allie was next.  She wanted to see the new Cinderella movie.  It was well out of the 3 dollar budget, but she said she'd do free dates for a long time if she could see the movie.  We went on a Saturday instead of the Monday night and it was so much fun.  We liked the movie, but more importantly, we had great conversations in the car on the way there and back.  Allie wanted to know about how Mike and I met.  We talked about the apartment that he lived in, and I drove her past his place, and the place I lived.  We had a great time.
Nate's date with Mike was next, and he had been dreaming of it since Jake got his date.  They played the x-box and Nate was introduced to Donkey Kong.
I took Jason the next week and we walked around the block.  He was fresh from the bath and in his cute monster jammies.  He took off running, and for the first time, I didn't stop him.  I just kept up and let him go wherever he wanted to go.  It literally took us an hour and a half to go around our neighborhood circle once.  He stopped to chat with neighbors, pet dogs, play on the rocks, and play on water hydrants.  It was so much fun.  He had fun because I wasn't forcing him to do something he didn't want to do (like hold my hand or run slower).  I had fun because I got to see the kid beneath all the rage.  He really is a cutie.

 I think he tried to open this for at least 10 minutes.  It was so funny.  He has the best "straining" faces of anyone I know.

Our next round of dates have been just as fun.  I had a date with Nate last week and we ran into his little church buddy at the library.  Nate ran right up to him and told him he was on a date with his mom.
I think it's been a great system.  I hope the kids will enjoy it as much as me as the time goes by.

Unmotivated

My computer is in my room and ready to go, but I have been unmotivated.  I don't take nearly the amount of pictures I used to take and I don't write as much as I used to.  I have been unmotivated and it makes me sad.  Whenever Mike takes my laptop to church to help in his Sunday School lesson, the kids look at the blog as they sit in sacrament meeting.  There hasn't been anything new for them to look at for a really long time, so maybe I'll have to get motivated.  I think the only way to do that is to just start.  I am way behind on a lot of really fun things that we've done, so maybe I can catch up somewhere along the line.

For now, I'll leave you with the most recent pictures on my camera...

Allie went shopping with me on Saturday.  I tease her that she costs me more money than anyone else in the family because she can beg in just the right way.  The boys are easy to say no to, but it's hard to deny Allie the things she begs for.  This time, she saw an unfinished wooden owl that she wanted to paint.  She wanted to do a project with me...how could I say no?

The only problem with that is that I am used to buying something and then putting it on a shelf to do "later" and that usually means never.  Allie reminded me of our project several times an hour until I finally caved in and made it happen.

It turned out really cute.  She was pretty heavy handed with the glitter and we are still finding glitter everywhere, but when I walk by the cute owl on our piano, I am grateful for her tenacity.

Payson Temple Open house

I drove past the Payson Temple as it was being built and knew I wanted to go to the open house and see the inside of that beautiful temple.  My Mom had some tickets, so I loaded the kids in the car and we took off.  Jake was so bummed, but he had a field trip that day and didn't know which one to miss.  In the end, he decided to go on the field trip.  

My Dad and Sam's grave were on the way to the temple, so we stopped by and did our best to clean them up even though we forgot the bucket with cleaning supplies.

It's been a long time since we've been there.  I think this is the first time we have pictures of Jason because he was always asleep in the car.  We might have some of him as a baby, but I just can't remember.  Anyway, Jason and Nate were climbing all over my dad's grave and I wanted to stop them, but in the end, I let them climb.  My Dad wouldn't mind at all.  There are so many things that we miss him for in this life, and that I feel like he is missing out on.  I hope that he isn't missing out as much as I think.  I hope he sees us and is a part of our lives from the other side of the veil.
I also hope that Sam knows what a good sister he has in Allie.  She went around and found little pieces of flowers to make a bouquet to put on his grave.  She takes such good care of her brothers...all of them.

Lori's girls came with us too.  Allie is surrounded by mostly boys on the Schwab side, so she is always happy to get with the girl cousins that surround her on my side of the family.

After the cemetery, we went to the temple.  It was beautiful.
I was a little nervous about taking the boys, but I hoped they would feel the special spirit of the temple and be calmed.  It didn't really happen.  I wonder if there are many other kids who can say they ran in the halls of an LDS temple and had to be stopped by a patron.  It sure made me feel good about my parenting skills.
Other than the littles being a bit wild, it was a really neat experience.  There weren't as many people as we are used to seeing at these type of things.  At one point in the tour, you could go into a celestial room as they talked about the ordinance work that goes on in that room.  I didn't hear what they had to say because I had to leave with Jason, but I think it was neat that they talked to anyone who wanted to listen.

The flowers on the grounds were gorgeous.  I couldn't believe how big some of the tulips were.

My Mom is an awesome child wrangler...

I didn't end up with a good picture of the temple, so this will have to do.  It was a quick trip there and back because I wanted to be home for Jake, but it was completely worth it.  I look forward to going to the temple when it opens.  I love to see the temple!