Poli-Nate

My quality husband decided he had too much free time on his hands, so he started another blog. It's intended to be an outlet for him to share his political opinions and pass on useful links to others. He assures me that his subsequent posts will be less long-winded than his first. We shall see. :)

Feel free to check it out at http://poli-nate.blogspot.com/

Reader Rabbit

We introduced Abby to Reader Rabbit this week. All of our kids have played this game. I credit it with helping each of them achieve mouse mastery and gain a basic understanding of navigating through a computer program. Plus, it is tons of fun (for 2 year olds). Possibly the best five bucks we ever spent.


Abby loves having a computer game of her very own. It has been a riot to watch her play.

Green Cuisine

I hope it doesn’t make me a bad mom to admit this, but I’ve lost a lot of my enthusiasm for holidays. I used to get as excited as the kids, but lately I’ve settled into a “been there, done that” apathy. The only trouble with this is that my kids have come to expect fun things. Yesterday I made Ben a perfectly delicious omelet for breakfast. When he saw it, he gave me a disappointed sigh and said “But mom, it’s not green. If it’s not green then a leprechaun will pinch me.” I’m not quite sure where he heard that one, but he was so sincere that I ate the normal omelet and whipped him up one with disgustingly green eggs. He rewarded me by saying I was the “best mom in the whole wide world.” Phew.

After school, we had our annual pot of gold treasure hunt. Luckily the kids didn’t notice that 90% of the clues were exactly the same as last year. Nate came through with a kid approved dinner by steaming some broccoli and adding green food coloring to Pasta Roni. I’m giving us two gold stars for keeping up traditions even though they have lost their thrill for us. In the real world, the kids will only care about these things for a few more years. We can feign enthusiasm for that long.





The best part of the day was listening to Elise tell about the leprechaun that visited her preschool class. It was my turn to drive carpool and she didn’t stop talking the whole way home. “He must have been really small because he had to move Miss Jamee’s stool to get on the desk. He made a BIG mess! It couldn’t have been Ashlyn (her teacher’s daughter) because her handwriting doesn’t look like that . . . and she wouldn’t make a mess because then she would have to clean it up. If Miss Jamee just would have listened to me we could have caught him. I told her that half of the kids should go outside and half of the kids should stay inside and that she and Ashlyn should go upstairs. She made all of us go look in the back yard at once and that’s how he got inside. We could have caught him if she would have listened to my plan!” She was so passionate about the whole thing. It was hilarious.

Two-Year-Old Logic

Abby was playing with her Polly Pocket fairy (Sunburst) today during sacrament meeting. She was talking a little loud so I gave her the finger-to-the-lips "shh" sign. She gave me an indignant look and said "I wasn't talking . . . Sunburst was!"

Disney on Ice

We took the kids to Disney on Ice yesterday for Abby’s birthday (just a couple of weeks early). When we got the tickets, we thought that Abby would love it and Ben would be a little bored. Their reactions were exactly the opposite. The highlight of the show for me was watching the huge smile on Ben’s face every time a new character came onto the ice. Abby was entertained part of the time by the show and the rest of the time by playing with her seat and climbing all over me and Nate. Emily and Elise were stone-faced through the whole show, but they both said that they loved it. We finished off the party with dinner at Jason’s Deli (Ben’s treat again). It was a fun family day.

Hawaiian Highlights

50 pictures! I know, it seems excessive, but we were there for a full week.




















































*If you want actual words you can hop over to Hilary’s or Kaylynn’s blog.