Zack and Austin

We got to babysit Zack and Austin for a couple of hours today. They are cute, fun boys. Heidi was a brat and dressed them the same today. It was the first time that I have called them by the wrong names. (In my defense, they were all the way down the hall and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be.) Heidi and I had planned everything just right so that the three babies could have a synchronized nap. They apparently didn’t get the memo, because none of them even took a nap. I guess they just figured that there was too much fun to be had to waste time sleeping. We got out 30 or 40 little balls and that was our entertainment for the afternoon. They have an exceptionally long attention span where throwing balls is concerned.

Zack is on the left; Austin is on the right. It’s easy when they are right next to each other! They loved throwing balls down the stairs.

Abby is all about shoes these days. She was pretty excited about having two new pair just her size in the house. She wore them and/or carried them around the whole time the boys were here.

In other news, Ben lost another tooth today. Aunt Heidi was here picking up the boys when he came in to tell us, so she got to see the excitement while it was still fresh. He was just plain giddy about it. He has another super loose tooth that he was doing his best to pull all night. He thought it would be great to get a two-for-one visit from the tooth fairy. In spite of his best efforts, he didn’t manage to get the second tooth out. He even recruited Emily’s help since she has experience with pulling teeth.

Cousin Summertime Playdate - Dinosaur Park

We resumed our Wednesday playdates yesterday. With the 4th of July and Holly being out town and the family camping trip, we had missed a few weeks. It was fun to get together again for an afternoon. We took the kids to the dinosaur park and even convinced Grandma Reatha to come along. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins. Ben entertained us all by telling us random facts that he has learned from his dinosaur books. He is certainly a nerd in progress.

Jacob was a sweet kid and gave Elise a boost so she could see all of the mineral exhibits.

Abby just kept pointing at the big dinosaurs and saying “dis, dis”. She seemed very impressed with it all.

Swimming Party with the Nunns

We had a fun party with the Nunns yesterday. Kaylynn brought her girls down right after lunch. They picked some raspberries and watched a Barbie movie while Abby was taking her nap. Then we headed to the pool. The kids had fun playing together and I had fun catching up with Kaylynn. Nate came with us and was a great pool dad so I was pretty much free just to hang out. We stayed until closing time and then came back here so they could shower up and had some “raspberry squirrel squares.”

It was a great day. I felt spoiled for adult conversation . . . I had talked to Heidi for a while on the phone in the morning, then my visiting teachers came, and then I got to hang out with Kaylynn for a few hours. That is more girl talk than I usually get in a week.

Nate picked up some pizza (and the camera) for us. He’s the best!

Ben’s goggles broke, so he wore Elise’s pink ones for the rest of night. I think it is mostly a good thing that he doesn’t care what people think.

Jill and Hanna gave into peer pressure and jumped off the diving board.

Jill was even brave enough to try the high dive.

Carly looking cute and happy in her stroller.

Bounce-Back Day at Lagoon

We had planned on taking Ben and Emily with us to Lagoon again for the bounce-back day, but changed that plan at the last minute. Lately, it seems our kids have come to expect lots of fun activities and they have forgotten that those fun things are tied to how well they behave. They needed a reminder and we needed a day to just be together as a couple. It all worked out splendidly. Grandma Reatha came and spent the whole day with the kids. (We didn’t tell them where we were going since we didn’t want her to have to listen to whining the whole day.) They had a movie marathon, built puzzles, played games and had a grand time together. Abby has a history of being a little shy and/or grumpy with anyone who doesn’t live in this house, but by the end of the day she had really warmed up to Grandma and they were great friends.

Nate and I had a fabulous time. It has been a really long time since we have had an all day date. I’ll admit that for the first hour or so, it felt kind of funny to not have the kids with us. I’m so used to doing the things that they want that it was a little disconcerting to have so much freedom to do whatever we wanted. We got over that pretty quickly and just had a whole lot of fun. We decided part way through the day that we wanted to check out Lagoon-A-Beach. We went to Kohl’s in Centerville and bought a couple of swimsuits, stopped for lunch, and headed back to the park. We spent some time playing at the water park (our spontaneous plan didn’t include sunblock - - Nate’s chest and arms look like a lobster) and then hit some more rides. We love our kids and we love doing fun things with them. That being said, it was really nice to be so free . . . no stroller, no taking 8 trips to the bathroom, no crying. In the course of the day, we witnessed lots of kids having meltdowns and lots of parents with frustrated, worn-out looks on their faces. We just smiled.

Here we are at the start of the day. No kids = no camera. We did a couple of self portraits with Nate’s cell phone.

Here we are after being drenched on Cliffhanger. There was literally not one dry spot on us. We were still pretty wet three hours later when we left to go home.

Raspberry Heaven

We like to pretend that we can garden, but we aren’t really so good at it. Luckily, our raspberries are doing great without much help from us. We have been enjoying a great harvest this year. We’ve made seven batches of raspberry jam so far and had plenty of berries to eat fresh or put on ice cream. Yesterday, we got about 16 cups (4 ½ pounds) of berries. That is our new record for a single picking.

All of our kids love raspberries, but Abby is the biggest fan. She’ll wander back and forth between us to beg for berries while we are picking. Nate was saying the other day that it must be an amazing sensation for her mouth since her taste buds are used to relatively bland food. It makes me picture the scene in Ratatouille where the rat is tasting the strawberry and cheese and fireworks go off inside his head.

Family Camping Trip

We spent a few days camping with my family this week. Nate and I went up early Thursday morning with the kids so we could get a campsite. We lucked out and got the best spot in all of Perception Park up South Fork Canyon. It was perfect . . . shade all day, close to the river, and three great tent spots. Jody and Kevin got up there an hour or two after us and Holly and Shane brought their kids and Grandma Reatha up around dinner time.

It was a big party. We had all kinds of fun in the three days we were there. The kids had a blast with their cousins. I’m afraid that they will never want to go with just us again. We played in the river, went tubing, raced Kevin’s remote control cars, played card games, kick the can, and murder in the dark, watched the kids sword fight while playing Jedi vs. Sith and Orcs vs. Humans, and had lots of yummy food. The first night, Nate and I decided to try to make Raspberry Crisp in the dutch oven. We are still newbies at using a dutch oven and it showed. It ended up being more like Raspberry Soup. It was still delicious. Jody brought up some vanilla ice cream which made it even better. We made a goal to perfect the recipe before next year.

Jody and Kevin had the boys sleep in their trailer the first night and the girls the second night. The kids were excited for their cousin slumber parties, but they were so exhausted that they were asleep pretty quickly after getting in there. On the first night, Abby stuck with her camping plan of not sleeping (grrr), but by the second night even she was too tired to fight it. She slept for 10 solid hours. Thank everything! Ben still kept things exciting with a little sleepwalking confusion where he thought the toilet was in the tent. Camping with kids is an adventure!

The girls hanging out waiting for their cousins. Abby has started doing this “smile” whenever she sees a camera.

Ben set right out to work getting firewood ready.

Jody watched Abby so we could do a family trip down the river. It ended up being quite the adventure. Ben rolled off his tube and it went off down the river. I tried to run after it while I was carrying my own tube (tricky on those slippery river rocks), and Nate tried to keep all of the kids together with him on the other two tubes. Neither of us were very successful. I’m sure it would have been a funny scene to watch. We did manage to get things together for a second try and a good photo op.

Abby LOVES wearing sunglasses. She looks cute even with her dirty camping face.

Timber! Kevin, Nate and Shane were on a mission to collect firewood. Instead of searching out and gathering stuff already on the ground, they decided to cut or pull down the dead limbs on the trees in our campsite. It was pretty funny/scary to watch at times. Nate was really good at getting the rope lassoed around the limbs. Kevin started calling him Indiana Jones. It was cute when Ben caught on and started saying “Hey Indiana” instead of “Hey Dad” when he wanted Nate’s attention.

Abby wanted to get in on the sword fighting action, so Nate challenged her to a little daddy-daughter duel.

Playing UNO.

Enjoying some hot chocolate in the morning.

The girls made this quality craft project from a stick and willow leaves. They were very proud of their creation and carried it all over the camp.

Our kids have each had a turn being sick this past week. Ben took his turn on Friday. It was kind of a bummer to be sick on our camping trip, but with the help of a little Tylenol, he still managed to have some fun. Luckily he is so in love with sitting and watching the fire that he didn’t really feel left out when he didn’t have the energy to run and play.

The river got the better of Nate’s quality sandals. He fought back with duct tape. It was effective, but not pretty.

Déjà vu.

Goodbye Training Wheels

Ben finally learned how to ride his bike without training wheels. We don’t know if it is really unusual to be seven years old before reaching this milestone, but it sure feels like it has taken a long time to get here. The combination of living on a hill and having a kid that is extremely reluctant to take instruction has made the whole process a little tricky. Nate was a diligent dad/trainer and today his hard work paid off at last.

Nate fashioned a tailpipe/handle out of a leftover piece of top rail from our fence so that he wouldn’t kill his back running along behind the bike. He still managed to get quite a workout during their practice sessions.

Here is Ben cruising around the church parking lot at the end of the day.

Weekend in Review

I’ve been wanting to do a “typical day” entry for a while – the kind of day where nothing special happens, but we just hang out around the house. In twenty years, I want to be able to remember what it was like when we had four little kids running around the house. This weekend was as typical as they come, so I’m going to use it as my time capsule journal entry.

***DISCLAMER*** I’m sure it will be very boring for anyone else to read, so proceed with caution or just check back for our next post.

Friday: Nate stayed home from work (that part is actually very unusual) because he was worn out after a full and busy day on Thursday. We were really lazy all day. We watched The Parent Trap with the kids and took a nap and just hung out on our rare, nothing-to-do day. We were a bit more productive in the evening. We mowed the lawns, picked raspberries, made 2 batches of raspberry jam, and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding after the kids were in bed.

Saturday: The kids slept until 8:30. That is sleeping in at this house. They all came in to snuggle in bed with us for a while. We got up and I made breakfast. Nate took Emily and Ben to the park to practice riding their bikes without training wheels. When they came home we took a family trip to Payless and Walmart, stopped at McDonald’s for lunch, got the car washed, stocked up with 12 loaves of bread at the Wonder outlet, and picked up a bunch of stuff from the team building activity at Nate’s co-worker’s house. When we got home, the kids watched a movie while Abby took a nap and Nate and I did some cleaning projects upstairs. Nate got out his transformers that he has been saving since he was eleven and played with Ben (since he had just gotten his own transformer in his happy meal); the girls played with their littlest pet shop animals; I cleaned a bit more and got my Primary lesson ready. After dinner, we went outside. The kids played while we picked raspberries (again!). We made another batch of jam and YUMMY raspberry shakes. We signed up for Netflix and made our list of the first 20 movies we want to see. Nate and I watched 20/20 that we had recorded the night before and went to bed.

Sunday: Emily woke up with a fever at 4:30 a.m. We gave her some Tylenol, moved her onto the couch, and tried to get some more sleep. Nate stayed home with Emily and Abby and I took Ben and Elise to church. Ben had a sore throat and decided that he was going to be silent all day. He pointed and used some creative sign language while he was getting ready for church. His silence lasted until about 12 minutes into opening exercises. It was the quietest he has ever been in Primary. After church, we had leftovers for lunch, watched the first half of Ben Hur while Emily and Abby slept, made/ate dinner, made peanut butter cookies, did a couple of loads of emergency laundry (thanks to Emily throwing up), played with transformers again and spent some time hanging out in the back yard.

That is life in this house . . . laced with a few tantrums, fights, spills, accidents and several loads of dishes. We love our kids and we love each other and we are very thankful to be living the life we have.

Thank everything for king sized beds! We have some version of this happening every morning, but it is rare to have all the kids in the bed at once. Nate took a picture just for the memory. We don’t look so cute first thing in the morning.

Abby has discovered the usefulness of a step stool. I’ve caught her a couple of times this past week carrying one down the hall. Her favorite thing to do is to collect all of the toothbrushes from the kids’ bathroom countertop. She’ll come out with one in her mouth and one in each hand. Today she scooted a stool over to the kitchen counter to try to get a cookie.

Poor Emily.

Elise loves learning Primary songs and sings them all of the time. She is a cute girl. Two minutes after I typed that sentence, I heard her singing “evah talled to soove ah Ting” as she was sitting on the toilet.

Lagoon

Nate had his company team building activity at Lagoon yesterday. We decided to buy tickets for the whole family and make a day of it. Since Nate was on the planning committee for the team building, he was busy with that from 7:30 in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon. We recruited Aunt Jody to go with us to take turns riding with the kids. She was a lifesaver! At the last minute, we decided to leave Abby with Grandma Reatha at Aunt Holly’s house. It was a good choice. She got loads of attention from her cousins and didn’t even miss us. We decided that babies and amusement parks are not a good combination . . . we even started to question how great they are for three year olds. :)

The kids had a great time. Ben is tall enough now that he can ride all of the big rides. He LOVED all of them. His favorites were the Spider and the Rocket. Emily was surprisingly brave and had a surprisingly strong stomach. We weren’t expecting that. Her favorite ride was the Bat and her favorite part of the day was seeing Miss Kim (her preschool teacher) at Lagoon. Elise was pretty wimpy. She’s usually all about the fun and we were expecting her to be wild and crazy. Mostly she just got a freaked out look on her face every time the ride started. Her favorite rides were the Baby Boats and the Merry-Go-Round.

Jody hung out with the girls for the last little while so Nate and I could ride Wicked with Ben. There was a super long line, so we almost dogged, but it was worth the wait. It was a crazy fun ride. I laughed and screamed the whole way.

More Tooth Excitement

Emily just lost her second tooth. A second tooth isn’t usually a big deal, but it turned out to be a bit of an event. Her tooth had gotten so loose that it could twist and bend in every direction. It was kind of a mystery that it was still hanging on. We were getting a little tired of her minute by minute updates on its wiggliness. Finally, Nate said “do you want a pair of pliers and you can just pull it out?” To our surprise, she said yes. She took the pliers into our closet to look in the mirror and came out holding her tooth. Ben, not wanting to miss out on a tooth fairy visit, started begging us to give him the pliers. He has a barely loose tooth, but he was pretty sure he should pull it tonight. What a kid won’t do for a dollar and a few pieces of candy!



UPDATE: The tooth fairy found this cute little thank you note folded up under Emily’s pillow next to her tooth. She is a sweet girl. Nate and I got a big kick out of the fact that she drew a little diagram to show which tooth it was.

Fourth of July

We had a great, all day celebration on the 4th. We started out the day with the parade. Nate and Ben went down early to save a spot in the shade and Heidi and Aaron and their boys met up with us just before it was starting. The kids LOVED the parade . . . mostly just the candy. They took in a haul. We always just have one community candy bag and it was busting at the seams.

Cute kids! It was fun to hang out with Zack and Austin at the parade. My favorite was when the horses went by. Zack was sitting on my lap. He got really excited and said “dog, dog.”

We had our annual Family Home Evening on being a good citizen and showing respect for the flag on Monday night. The kids took it to heart. They would stand up and put their hands on their hearts every time they saw an American flag pass by.

This is the only time Abby actually picked up a piece of candy. Once she had both hands full, she was content. She didn’t seem interested in eating it, just holding it.

Elise would hand Austin a piece of candy and he would throw it; she would run and get it and give it back to him and he would throw it . . . over and over again. They had fun playing their little game.

After the parade, we went to Heidi’s parents’ house for some yummy Pizza Man pizza and to swim. We love going to the city pool, but it is great to swim in a nice, warm pool without 800 other people around. We are glad they invited us. We had loads of fun. Even though they have their own kids now, Heidi and Aaron still manage to have enough energy to be a fun aunt and uncle.

We came home and cleaned up just in time for my family to come over for a BBQ. The kids had a great time playing with their cousins. They played on the swingset and trampoline, played lawn games, tossed around a football, did some sparklers, made their glow sticks into every possible combination (necklace, bracelet, anklet, hula hoop, jump rope, etc.), and watched fireworks. Nathan and Jacob went home early with Shane, so Ben was very happy that Kellen came over. Nate put some glow sticks inside of a couple of our plastic lightsabers so they could duel in the dark. They were pretty happy with that.

Nate’s 20 minute “Sparkler Safety Seminar”

It was a crazy busy day. I think I am getting a little too old to play all day. I’m feeling pretty worn out, but we made some good memories. I’m thankful to be living the American dream with my little family.

More Swimming Fun

This has definitely been the summer of the pool. The extra time in the water is proving to be a great thing for the kids’ swimming ability and confidence. Today was Emily’s first time jumping off the diving board all on her own. I was a little afraid to let her try it, but she assured me that she was ready. She is growing up fast!

After a few slightly reserved jumps, she started to get braver. I love that she plugs her nose when she is still 5 feet from the end of the board. She learned that from her mom.