Pretty in Pink

Nate and Emily went to their first Daddy-Daughter Party on Thursday night. They had a great time together. One of the activities was to paint each other’s toenails. Emily’s work earned Nate the “sexiest nails” award. His long toenails have always driven me nutty, but they do look kind of nice with that bright pink polish. Emily came home just beaming. She had so much fun with her dad and couldn’t wait to tell me all about it.

Easter Weekend

We had a fun holiday weekend with the kids. After spending Saturday morning cleaning up and doing some projects around the house, we headed out to the Treehouse Museum. Our free membership expires next week and we thought we should get in one more trip while we could. I was hoping that no one else would think of going to the Treehouse on the day before Easter, and it worked out that way. There were just a few other families there. That’s just how we like it. The kids got to be in the little partici-play. Ben was Prince Charming, Emily was the Big Bad Wolf, Elise was Sensible Bunny, and Abby was Little Red Riding Hood. Elise was thrilled that she had a big speaking part (it certainly made up for her field trip disappointment). They all had lots of fun. Abby was super cute repeating her lines. She doesn’t seem to have any fear about getting up in front of people. The kids made bunny masks in the art garden and we spent the rest of the time playing chess and checking out some of the newer exhibits (along with a few old favorites). It’s still not our favorite place, but even Nate admits that it is more fun when we go as a family than on a school field trip.



After the Treehouse, we took the kids out for Mexican food and then headed home to color eggs. We had a couple of dropped eggs (Abby and Ben), a tummy ache (Elise), and half a bottle of red food coloring accidentally poured into one cup (Nate). Other than that, everything went great.


Ben came upstairs at 11:30 p.m. and threw up all over himself and Nate and the couch. Fun times. I was worried that our Easter plans were about to be thrown out the window, but he went back to sleep and woke up feeling fine.

The kids opened their Easter presents from Grandma Reatha first thing in the morning. The girls got angel necklaces with their birthstones and Ben got an optical illusions book. They all loved their gifts.

I kept Ben home from Primary just to be safe. Nate came home during Sunday School to play Easter Bunny and so that Ben and I could go to sacrament meeting. We were trying to be sneaky about hiding the kids’ Easter baskets, but Ben caught us red handed. Our cover was blown. I explained that really Mom and Dad were the Easter bunny. Ben was shocked and surprised. He’s such a sweet kid. I felt a little bad about taking away his innocence, but I figured it was about time. He’s ten years old for crying out loud. We made him promise not tell his sisters and he was really good about keeping the secret. It was fun to see him doing little winks at us throughout the day when anyone would talk about the Easter Bunny. The funny thing is that I’m pretty sure he still believes in Santa and the Tooth Fairy. One of these days he’ll put 2 and 2 together. Maybe Elise will have to break it to him . . . she’s already on to us.

After church the kids found their baskets. Our hiding places were pretty tricky and it took them a long time to track them down. They loved their little presents. The biggest hits were the Zhu Zhu pets and the wallet/coin purses that I got them and all of the little novelty toys that Nate threw in (ring squirter, bouncy balls, etc.).



My family came over for dinner and an egg hunt. I was a little paranoid that it was going to rain (or snow) and ruin the egg hunt, but the skies cleared up just in time. The kids even stayed outside and played afterward. All of that worrying for nothing. It was a really great day with good food and family and fun.






We took the girls to Kohl’s a few weeks ago and let them pick out their own Easter dresses. I’m a fan of this new plan. It is fun to let them experiment a bit with finding their own style and I think that they all made great choices. Ben got a new suit too. It looks exactly like his old one, but is one size bigger. Dress wear for boys is kind of boring.

Elise the Waitress and Ben the Scientist

Holly came over last week to do her taxes. Elise and Abby were so excited to get to play with Bryton before school. When it was lunchtime, Elise took their orders and brought me these notes.


Those words translate into quesadillas, peaches, chocolate pudding, apple juice, cheese and crackers, and special apple juice (the kind with Miralax mixed in). I love her creative spelling. Ben and Emily would always ask how to spell things. Not Elise. She just does it her own way. It very much suits her personality.


My mom was here last weekend and Ben was sharing every fact he knows about space with her. I was a little afraid her head might explode, so I told him that maybe he should write it down instead. Surprisingly, he loved that idea. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started writing down facts about the rocky planets. He didn’t look in a book. It was all straight from memory. That boy cracks me up. He complains when he has one page of homework to do, but is happy to do a random, unassigned report on outer space. After he had finished the rocky planets, he kept saying “I just need to do the gas giants and then the sun and then you can type it all up for me . . . since you type faster than I do . . . and then I can make a PowerPoint presentation of all the information.” You go wild Ben.

Gooney Bird Greene

Emily’s class had a literature party today. They have been reading Flat Stanley and Gooney Bird Greene books, and her teacher told the kids they could dress up like the characters in the books if they wanted to. Emily was so excited about it. She put together quite an ensemble. She wore Elise’s birthday crown (over uncombed hair . . . I’m still twitching), a bright orange flower shirt, Nate’s flag tie, Ben’s leather jacket, shimmery silver dance pants, my Christmas light socks, and pink sparkle shoes. She looked amazing! They got to pick someone who lives far away to send a flat person to. Emily picked our friends the Kinneys who live in New Hampshire. It was a fun day in second grade.

Pinewood Derby

Tuesday night was the pinewood derby. Our ward does a different derby each year so the boys get a chance to do all three while they are in cubs. So, while this is Ben’s third year in scouts, it was his first pinewood derby. He (and Nate) made an awesome looking car. It was Han Solo in carbonite. Ben took Elise’s suggestion and named it “Car-Ben-ite”. When the cub master was announcing the boys' cars, he said “Let’s hope it’s not Han Slow-lo.” Turns out, it was. They raced four cars at a time, and Ben took third place in every heat. His car finished 12th out of 18 overall. He was disappointed, but he got over it. I think he inherited mine and Nate’s competitive nature. We’re all working on not taking things so seriously.

They had an open track after the boys were done, so we let the girls build their own car to race. It was actually a bit faster than Ben’s but didn’t fare as well in the standings, finishing 7th out of 8 cars in the non-cub-scout races. Luckily, they didn’t care about winning. They just loved that they got to make a car of their own.









I wish I would have taken more pictures of Nate and Ben working on Ben’s car. It was quite a process. They used an action figure we bought on eBay to make a mold in play-doh, and then poured hot wax into it. Nate made about 100 passes with the table saw to make a little recess for the wax in the wood block. Once the wax was hardened, they melted the edges on our griddle to get it to just the right size to fit. Then there was spray painting, printing labels for the sides (using images from the actual carbon freezing chamber from the movie), polishing the axles, and melting down lead sinkers to get the weight to exactly 5.0 ounces. All of that work for a 12th place finish (and some good father/son memories).


The girl’s car was very last minute. Nate picked up the kit on his way home from work on Monday. He let the girls pick a shape and cut it out on his scroll saw. They sanded and painted the car Monday night and threw on the stickers about 15 minutes before we left for pack meeting. They did a great job working together and I did a great job letting go and not micromanaging their project. Okay, so I did touch up the windows a bit when the black paint bled through the masking tape, but that was all.

Papa John's Fundraiser

The girls are selling Papa John’s Pizza coupons for their dance fundraiser. Each card is $5 and it is good for a free small one topping pizza. Plus, there are eight other coupons for discounts or free items with purchase. NO PRESSURE, but if anyone wants to order one/some, let us know. We have to have the money turned in by April 27th and we’ll get the coupons to you by May 10th.

Spring Break

For the third year in a row, our spring break began with a snow storm. It snowed for three days straight. Luckily it was warm enough that it didn’t really pile up, but we had a few inches on the lawn all weekend. The bright side of the snow is that all of the kids’ soccer games were cancelled and none of them had practice Thursday night. It was sweet to skip those commitments for the week.

We didn’t make any big plans, but we kept ourselves busy with some lazy fun at home. It was a much needed break from our typical schedule. Here’s a list of what we did (in no particular order):

The kids had two slumber parties in “Grandma’s room.” They watched Megamind the first night and UP the second night.

Friday was our turn to host a late night with the Jensens. We used up the leftover supplies from Elise’s class party and let the kids each make a couple of donut lambs and an egg head. They played and watched Megamind again and made some perler bead projects.



The kids and I watched Bill Cosby Himself and The Princess Bride on the days Nate had to work and we watched The Ten Commandments as a family on Sunday. I was surprised by how much the kids loved “the Moses movie.”

We played a few board games . . . Quirkle, Sorry, Trouble (or as Nate calls it “Boredom”), and Sequence. The kids also spent some time playing Guardian Rock on the computer.

We used a Restaurant.com gift certificate to go to CJ’s for dinner. The food wasn’t great, but we had fun going out. We took turns playing Labyrinth on Nate’s phone while we waited for our food. Nate was dumb and kept beating my high score.

The kids got in lots of reading minutes. Emily read for more than six hours over the weekend.

Ben and Elise shared a huge bag of pretzels on Saturday. We never have pretzels in this house because the kids always say they don’t like them. We had almost a full bag leftover from the lamb treats and the two of them couldn’t stop eating them. Ben kept coming in and saying “I need some water. These pretzels are making me thirsty.” It reminded me of Kramer, so I showed the kids the Seinfeld clips on YouTube. For the next two hours they walked around saying “These pretzels are making me thirsty” in every possible intonation. It cracked me up.

Nate entertained the kids by using his hot chocolate to steam up his glasses. I love that they are so easily amused.

I did a little shopping and Nate and I spent some time cleaning up. During the cleaning, I discovered that Abby fell out of the trailer when the kids had their slumber party last fall. For the last few months, whenever I’d mention the trailer or camping Abby would say, “Remember when we slept in the trailer and I fell out the window?” I would say “You did not fall out the window. Stop making up stories.” Abby would say, “Yes I did.” And I would roll my eyes and say, “Go play.” Same conversation every time. Turns out she wasn’t making up stories. Saturday I was cleaning out some of the stuff that we took out of the trailer, and she told me again that she had fallen out the window. I told Nate so he could get a laugh out of it too. Instead, he said “well, actually . . . she did fall out the window.” The night they slept out there, we hadn’t finished putting up one of the canvas panels and it left a little gap that Abby fell out of (three foot drop onto concrete). Emily came in and woke up Nate because Abby was crying. He went out and she was lying on the cement crying because she was cold. I slept through the whole thing and Nate neglected to tell me about it for the last five months. He defended himself with, “You never asked” and something about me being a worrier. I guess I should have more faith in Abby that she is telling the truth and less faith that Nate is.

We worked on pinewood derby cars.

I blogged.

Nate and I watched Glory. I’ve never seen it the whole way through. I loved it and hated it.

Abby come home devastated from church because they didn’t sing happy birthday to her in Primary. Apparently that is a big deal when you are four.

Monday it warmed up enough for the kids to play outside. They played in the snow (in totally inappropriate clothing) until it melted and had a picnic on the trampoline for lunch.




Here’s what we didn’t do (except for once on Sunday):

Practice piano. Comb the girls’ hair. Make good food.

That was our spring break. Nothing too exciting, but we’re okay with that. It was nice to have some time together without any outside obligations. We like each other (most of the time).

Kindergarten Spring Party

Elise’s teacher sent home a note a few weeks ago saying that she was going to be out of town for their spring party and needed a mom to volunteer to plan it. I promptly threw the note away and figured someone else would do it. No one did. When I went for my volunteer time the next week, her teacher asked me if I would please do it. I couldn’t tell her “no” in real life (even though I have a phobia of party planning). They do things a little differently for kindergarten at this school than our old school. One mom plans the whole thing/does all the prep work and just asks other moms to come help on the day of the party. So, I had to come up with two games, a treat/story, and a craft.

I found an adorable treat on Tip Junkie. We made little donut lambs. One of the girls in Elise’s class is allergic to chocolate, so I was glad I could find the same items in the peanut butter variety. They turned out so cute!



For the craft, we made little egg heads and planted grass seed inside. If all goes well, they should grow a nice head of green hair in a couple weeks. They were quite messy, but the kids had fun making them. I recruited Nate to come help on the day of the party and I’m glad I did. It was definitely a two adult craft.



I think I used up all of my creative energy with the treat and craft, because I went super simple on the games. We played spring bingo (with Smarties for markers) and borrowed the bean bag toss game that the morning mom used for their party. Easy.



After the party, the kids got to have an Easter egg hunt outside. There were a TON of eggs, so we took a few out and let the preschool kids that came with their moms do a little egg hunt of their own. Both Elise and Abby had a great time with that and are excited to do it again in a couple of weeks.



All in all, it turned out well and was even kind of fun. Maybe I shouldn’t be such a wimp about volunteering to head things up. I am grateful for the three cool moms that helped out, especially my friend Emily who also shared her pictures since we forgot to bring a camera.

Taxi Mom

I remember when my kids were little that other moms would complain about driving their kids everywhere like it was a big deal. I always just listened and smiled, but inside I thought “What a bunch of whiners. What’s so hard about taking your kids to piano lessons once a week?” I was in the fun stage of nursing a baby, potty training a two year old (and an almost 4 year old), and never having a minute to myself. Dealing with poop and tantrums several times a day made shuttling kids here and there seem like pretty easy work. Times have changed. I don’t really complain about it (except sometimes to Nate), but it really is a big pain to get everyone where they need to be every day. The worst part is convincing Abby that she gets to go with me. She is happy to hang out at home all day, so getting her in the car twelve times a day is its own challenge. Here is my taxi list from last Tuesday (it was one of those days I complained to Nate, so I wrote it all down in an email):

-Kids to school

-Home

-Back to school to pick up Ben

-Orthodontist

-Stop and get gas

-Home

-Take Ben back to school (he wanted to eat lunch at home but didn’t want to miss all of lunch recess)

-Home

-Take Elise to school

-Home

-Pick up kids from school

-Home

-Take Emily to piano

-Home

-Drop off Ben/pick up Emily at piano; pick up one of Emily’s friends and take them to Activity Days at the church

-Home

-Pick up Ben from piano

That’s it. It’s pretty much the same every day. We trade piano and Activity Days for scouts and dance and soccer practice, but the general pattern holds true for the whole week. I wouldn’t trade it for another round of potty training, but being a taxi all day isn’t as easy as I once thought it was.

Four Years Old

Abby turned four years old last week. She had been counting down to her birthday since Ben’s birthday in January. Every day she would ask “When is going to be March?” Then she would say, “It is taking for-ev-er!” Since her birthday is on the 30th, I was afraid that she would be super disappointed when March got here and she still had to wait four more weeks. She was surprisingly okay with that. Phew!

She had a fun day. She reminded us that it was her birthday every chance she got. “I can eat yogurt for lunch because IT’S MY BIRTHDAY.” “I can have the blue cup because IT’S MY BIRTHDAY.” Nate came home early so she could open her presents. We gave her a new scooter, nursery furniture for the doll house, a Tangled book, and a tape measure. She got the Tangled DVD and a fun matching game from Grandma Reatha and a gift card from Grandpa and Grandma N. Her favorite gift (by far) was the tape measure. When anyone asked what she got for her birthday, she would say “a tape measure”. Nothing else seemed to matter. She had been playing with one of Nate’s tape measures a few weeks earlier and kept saying that she wanted one for her birthday. So, we put away the one she had been playing with for a few days and then wrapped it up. She didn’t seem to notice or care that it was a hand-me-down from Dad. She was just thrilled to have one of her own.

(It was pride week at the kids’ school and Wednesday was pajama day. Abby wanted to stay in her pajamas all day since the other kids were . . . and because “IT’S MY BIRTHDAY.” That’s why she is wearing pajamas in all of these pictures.)



We watched Tangled together as a family and then Ben headed off to scouts and the girls went to dance. Nate and I played Abby’s farm animal matching game with her while the kids were gone. She was surprisingly capable of holding her own against her mom and dad.

Abby picked McDonald’s for her birthday dinner, so we headed down after the kids got home. I love free WiFi. It is lots easier to indulge the kids wanting to spend an hour playing on the indoor playground when you have something productive to do while you wait. Definitely a win-win. We came home for cake and ice cream and then went to bed. It was a pretty low-key day, but Abby loved every minute of it.



Saturday we went to Surf-n-Swim for Abby’s birthday activity. The kids were all very excited about going swimming and they all had a great time. Abby liked playing in the shallow end while the waves were on. The last couple of times she had a tube with her and would get a huge smile every time a wave would push her back. It was a fun family day. When we went to leave, Nate couldn’t find his wallet. Someone had turned it in (sans cash) at the front desk. We were a little bugged to have lost some money, but mostly we were just relieved that he wouldn’t have to get a new license or cancel our credit cards. Luckily we never have more than $20 cash anyway.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that for the five months between Abby’s birthday and my birthday, everyone in our family is an even age . . . 4, 6, 8, 10, 36, and 38. It makes me feel better about the whole world.