A new house to house my girth

I realize that I just posted about something that Jake said, but this one was so funny, I couldn't resist.

We had pizza for dinner. I decided to eat one more slice...yeah, I know...
Anyway, here's the conversation.
Jake: "Mom, you are getting full. Good eating!"
Me: "Yeah, thanks...I guess"
Jake: "You're getting bigger!"
Me: Mouth full "Oh!?"
Jake: "Yeah, you are getting bigger. We'll have to get a new house."
I just about lost a mouth full of pizza because I was laughing so hard. Who needs a diet plan when you have the honesty of a 3 year old boy.

A bike ride to Italy

Tonight, as I was getting Jake dressed in his jammies, he said
“Mom, I love to snuggle you”
Me: “I love to snuggle you too sweet boy”
Jake: “I love to sneak into the bed and snuggle you”
Me: “Yes, you do. What are you going to do when I am in Italy next week and you can’t come in and snuggle me anymore?”
Jake: “I’ll get on my bike and ride it to Italy, then snuggle you in your bed.”
Me: Laughing, “That was a cute thing to say, I need to go in and write that down.”
Jake: Laughing too, “Yeah, I say cute things.”

Trading toys

The snowmobile magazines start coming out in August. Why does that matter to me, you ask? Well, for one thing it means I have a buddy to read in bed with. Mike hates it when I stay up late reading. I grew up falling asleep with the light on reading, then when I got married, I had to start reading in another room (only when I wanted to be nice). The lights bug him and he wakes up every 15 minutes and asks when I'm going to be done. It's not really worth staying up unless the book is really good. Anyway, on the day the snowmobile magazines come out, he will stay up and read.

The other reason my life is affected when the snowmobile magazines come out is that Mike wants to go pick up his snowmobile in Star Valley. We always leave it up there for the summer. This year, we had the boat parked on the side of the house. When those magazines came out, Mike was ready to make the switch. It didn't matter that there might be a few good boating days left in the year, he had the snow bug.

So, yesterday we drove to Star Valley and made the switch. Now Mike is spending his Saturday getting the snowmobile ready to roar. He might have to wait months, but it's here and it's ready!

Maybe she'll be an avid reader...

I was on the phone arranging visiting teaching schedules and I kept hearing "THUD....pitter patter...grunt...pitter patter...THUD..." repeated over and over. I was concerned, but needed to finish the conversation, so I ignored it.

A few minutes later, I went to investigate and found Allie adding all the books in Jake's room to her crib. When she saw me, she squealed and ran into her room. She climbed in and started to read. You can't really tell from the pictures, but she really had made progress in the moving department. We cleared out a corner for her to sleep and she is in there reading right now.

I used to read all hours of the night (now I just listen to the books all hours of the night). Maybe Allie will be like me and love books.

I hope so...




This picture cracks me up because it looks like something from out of those I Spy books. I spy a doll named Brooke, pink bear, and an elephant sitting on a very unstable tree...

The reason I don't mind doing dishes this time of year

This is the view from my kitchen window. Obviously I went outside to take the picture or you wouldn't have been able to see the pretty colors through the hard water stains on the window. I can look past that, although I have thought about cleaning the window just for the season...

"Look Mom! A Hog!"

When you have a two year old, sometimes you wish they came with a few manuals. People always joke that it would be nice if kids came with instructions. With new talkers, sometimes I just wish for a translating book. Allie gets very frustrated with me when I don't understand the words she is so repeatedly screaming at me. If I didn't understand the first time it came out of her mouth, chances are the next 42 times she repeats it I'm still not going to get it. Can she point? Can she use it in a sentence? Give me the word origins? All those things might help. Anyway, there have been a few break throughs on understanding the language barrier lately and I thought I'd share them with you...



When I washed Allie's hands a couple months ago I grabbed the towel to dry them. She said "Look! A spider" I was startled (spiders aren't my favorite) and looked all over trying to find the spider. I didn't find one, so I thought maybe it had scurried under the stove. I avoided that area all morning, then forgot about it. The problem with that is that she repeated the proclamation every time I washed her hands. I tried to figure out if I was hearing her wrong, but she said "spider" pretty clearly. I just reasoned that she was wrong (like the times she excitedly says "cow" and points out horses.)


Point of the story...the mystery was solved when, after months of saying it, she finally pointed and I made the connection...

It could look a little like a spider, I guess. It does have 8 leg things...

The other word discovery was last week when we went for a walk up the canyon. She kept telling us she was seeing "a hog!" As we weren't at a farm, we once again questioned her brilliance. After many "hogs" were spotted, I made the connection. She was pointing out logs.

She is getting better at talking, but there are always days of confusion and frustration (she gets frustrated, I get confused). Overall, this stage is really fun for me. I love to watch her figure things out and learn to communicate her feelings.

Rock Band on the BIG Screen

We have an awesome neighborhood. Some of us have been talking about getting together to watch movies out on a projector at night, but in the summer it stays light so long we just never did it. Then, right after school started, they got a plan together to play "Rock Band" out there.

Heather took the pictures, and it took me a while to get them from her. So even though it was over a month ago, I just wanted to brag that my neighborhood is cooler than yours...

We had the party in Heidi's backyard...thanks for letting us play! That big sheet was our screen, and when it got dark, it was perfect.

This is Jake's friend Carson eyeing the tasty cupcakes Heidi made...note his swollen eye from a mosquito bite. The poor guy got a little beat up at our house the next week when the truck he was pushing found a dangerous pot hole. I couldn't help but say "Adrian" in a lame Rocky accent every time I saw him until the swelling went down...sorry for the short off topic wandering, I was just reminded of the scrapes when I looked at this picture, so I thought I'd add this one...

Anyway, the party didn't really get going until after dark but it was really fun. There were enough instruments for anyone who wanted to play.

Allie actually shows promising ability as a drummer...
And a dancer...Here's a picture of most the crowd.

It really was a fun night, and now we are all sad to see those long summer nights go. Thanks for the pictures Heather...I was too lazy to go get my own camera. We left when it was too dark to find the kids when they ran off. Besides, the mosquitoes were having me for a late night snack. But there were some hard core gamers that stayed out until after midnight...

We love our neighbor friends. See why I say my neighborhood is cooler than yours!

Temple misconceptions

Jake has some funny beliefs about the Temple. For a while I didn't worry about correcting his thoughts, but now I think I need to intervene. See what you all think...

When he started Sunbeams he started to talk about the things that Jesus created. He would point out random objects in his room and emphatically say "Jesus made that for me!" He also told me that he made our house (I guess in a really round about way), and all of us. He told me that Jesus lives in the Temple. I agreed that if he were going to be anywhere here upon the Earth, it would be the Temple, but I really just left it at that.

I also try to tell him stories about his Grandpa Johnson a lot. It makes me sad to think that they don't know him, so I show pictures and talk about him. So that he isn't confused with Grandpa Joe, I tell him Grandpa Johnson lives in heaven. Jake started saying "yeah, he lives at the Temple with Jesus." Once again, I agreed that maybe he would be able to visit the Temple and left it at that.

Anyway, since our neighbor Ginny was born, Jake has been asking for a new baby. The other day he told me that babies come from the Temple. He told me that Ethan (Ginny's big brother) went to the Temple with his Mom and got Ginny. Then he asked if we could go to the Temple and "buy" a new baby. If it were only that easy son...

Making the cash

Today Mike and I went down to Salt Lake to assemble some computer tables he sold to a school. We shipped our kids off to Aunt Tara for the day and knew they were in good hands. Now that they are a little older, I can leave without really worrying too much.

Here are the things I discovered today...

• Even though we were working, it really could just be considered a very long date. We talked for almost 8 hours straight. The tables were at West High in Salt Lake. Watching the kids there made us remember stories of our own High School days, and it was fun to reminisce.
• Jake would be really out of place at West High. I didn't see one blonde haired, blue eyed kid in the whole place. Maybe the ones with stretched out ears and dyed hair used to be blonde...who knows.
• We were at a disadvantage for not knowing Spanish when we needed to ask to borrow a drill, and when I tried to tell a girl she dropped her cup cakes...her loss, my gain!
• When you are gone from home all day, the chances of coming home to a clean house are very high. That was nice. (I learned from my Mom the art of the "whirlwind clean" when people are coming over. I thought Tara was going to bring the kids back to my house, so I did a quick pick up.)

Every time we do this assembly thing, I realize that I really am blessed to be able to stay at home with my kids each day. I enjoy the break, and I enjoy making a little extra money, but the thing I like the best is when I hear "Mommy I missed you" from Jake, or see little Allie come running for a hug.

Food storage Tetris, and kids that grow out of clothes too fast...

This weekend I tackled the organization of our food storage room, and the place under the stairs that holds all our kids clothes. As discussed in an earlier post, my friend Mike makes me fit everything in our house because there isn't a square to spare in the garage.
Anyway, I knew I was going to tackle this project, and I knew I wanted to write about it on the blog, so I thought about taking "before" pictures. The problem is, it was such a big mess I would have been embarrassed to document it on film. (yes, I know I don't use film anymore, it's a figure of speech).
I had just gone to a case lot sale, and had nowhere to stash the stuff I bought, so I just stacked it in piles in the already disorganized room. If any of you are fans of the show Friends, this room is to my house as the closet is to Monica. (for those of you who aren't familiar with the show, Monica is a clean freak, but she has a secret closet that is an absolute mess.) I am not a clean freak, but this room is out of control. It is my craft, scrapbook, food storage, things I don't have another home for, sewing, deep freezer, and things that should normally go in a garage room. As you can imagine, it is a mess. I have had it under control at different times, but the room seems to be shrinking, and the mess got out of hand.
Back to the point of the post...Mike gave me a "kid free day" on Saturday to sort it all out. (Not exactly what I would have loved to do on a kid free day, but I'll take what I can get.) The biggest glitch of the day is that my iPod froze up and I had to wait for the battery to die to be able to use it. Not a big glitch you say? I rarely do anything without listening to a book, so I couldn't get started. Then I remembered my old MP3 player and I was off. It took all day, but I got it cleaned up.
I added 3 big garbage cans to the room to hold my sugar, flour, and wheat. I use those things enough that I didn't want to store them in #10 cans and keep opening them. This way, I just take out a bag when I need it and put it in a 5 gallon bucket.

I was even reluctant to take "after" pictures, because although I did get the food storage part organized, the other half of the room is an absolute wreck. But, the camera couldn't get that part in anyway because of the angle of the room. You still can't get a real idea of the place from these pictures, but I did have to add some pictures or you'd get bored.

The other huge project to tackle was the kids’ clothes. For some lazy reason, I hadn’t sorted and put Jake and Allie’s old sizes away for almost a year. I just had piles stuck in bags and tossed into the room under the stairs. Now that it is getting colder and I needed the clothes behind those clothes, I sorted that all out too. (Sounds complicated, I know…it was).
As I was looking at the clothes they both wore not so long ago, I was getting a little sad. I can’t believe that Jake has grown out of a 2T. I looked at some of those warm jammies and couldn’t believe he’d grown out of them. I can remember him running around the house begging me to chase him, Allie running close behind in her little pink jammies too. I was getting sad, but then I reminded myself that it is a good thing to see them grow up. Not only are they growing out of some difficult stages, they are growing. That right there is a blessing. I’d be sad if they weren’t growing and progressing. So, I put the clothes away, and was glad I am constantly taking pictures. I may not want to document the messy room downstairs and in the corner, but I do want to document the messy faces (and cute clothes) of my two favorite growing kids.