First Week of Summer Vacation

We’ve successfully made it through our first week of no school without one “I’m bored.” I wish we could say without one tantrum, complaint, fight, etc . . . maybe next week.

We kept ourselves busy with lots of fun activities. We had a little family BBQ on Monday. The kids loved playing with their cousins. After that, it was just me and four kids. We went to two parks, fed the ducks, played several games of UNO (the kids’ new favorite), and played with neighborhood friends a whole lot. Every day after lunch we have “family time.” Abby takes a nap and the rest of us enjoy a matinee in the movie room. It gives us some quality down time in the middle of the day and keeps us from having the whole neighborhood here 24/7. Next week we start swimming lessons. The kids are really excited about going to the pool and I’m excited to have some built in entertainment for them.

Here are the girls ready to go to the park in their matching summer shoes.

Ben and Emily followed the lead of some older kids and decided to climb a pine tree at the park. I didn’t take a picture until they were on the way down. They really had climbed about ¾ of the way up the tree.

Abby wasn’t about to share a good piece of bread with some stupid ducks.

Cute kids at the park.

Ben was so excited about “mastering” the monkey bars that he insisted that I make a movie.

Tooth Fairy

Emily lost her first tooth yesterday. It is hard to believe that she is old enough to even have a loose tooth, but I guess she is. It fell out when we were eating dinner. She was very excited.

She bought a little tooth fairy doll over a year ago with her money from doing chores . . . it’s a little 3 inch doll and the skirt comes off so you can use it as a little pouch to put your tooth in before you put it under your pillow. It is amazing that she could even find it after a year, but she did. She was very excited that she was finally able to use it.

She came in at 6:25 this morning to show us her loot. She got a gold dollar, a bag of jolly ranchers and a Littlest Pet Shop dog that she named Brownie.

Shed

Our spring project this year was to build a shed. We had it on our to do list for five years from now, but the more difficult it got to walk around the cars in the garage, the more urgent it seemed. Nate worked hard and got it done in seven days. Of course, life happened between those seven days, so it really took about six weeks. That’s the way projects go in this house. Here are some photos to show the progress from start to finish.

Here’s our before picture. The cement pad we poured four years ago has sunk quite a bit. Hopefully it is done moving.

End (almost) of Day #1.

Progress on day #2.

Work day #3. There was a pretty long hiatus between days two and three . . . as evidenced by the change in the grass and the leaves on the lilac bush.

Day #5. Nate tracked down an exact match for the siding, but we overcame our anal tendencies and didn’t match up the grooves on the shed with the ones on the house. In this family, that’s a big step towards being footloose and fancy free.

Day #6. Nate’s roofing skills from his post-mission summer job have sure come in handy in this house.

Day #7. Ta-da! The last trim pieces are up. Now we get to spend our Memorial Day weekend cleaning out the garage and organizing all of our stuff. Fun, fun, fun.

End of School Festivities

We have had a fun time with all the end of school activities for the kids. Here are the highlights.

Ben’s last fieldtrip was a swimming party at the Clearfield Aquatic Center. Nate went with him, but mostly just hung out while Ben played with his friends. It was easily Ben’s favorite fieldtrip of the year. He had a blast! (No pictures . . . Nate didn’t want to have to keep track of a camera at the pool.)

Nate and Emily went to the “Daddy and Me” fishing fieldtrip at the trout farm.

Here is Emily with her first (and quite possibly last) catch. She gave her fish to Grandma Reatha since “we don’t like fish with bones.” She’s right. We like the ones that come in perfect little rectangles in your grocer’s freezer.

Ben’s first grade program was called “One Big Happy Family.” He did a great job singing all of their cute songs.

It’s so cute when he tries not to smile. He just can’t help himself.

Today was Emily’s preschool graduation. She has had a really fun year with Miss Kim and is excited to start kindergarten in the fall.

Emily said her part perfectly!

Preschool graduation was at the same time as Abby’s afternoon nap. She tried to make the most of the gym floor.

Today was also Ben’s field day. He has become a huge basketball fan all of the sudden and was very excited about the basketball he got at the face painting booth.

Ben loves the Jazz by default, but he wishes they would win more often.

We celebrated tonight by going out to dinner. The kids got cool balloons from the “I work for tips” man.

Little Miss Independent

Abby is a stinker! She has decided that she is too grown-up to have Mom or Dad feeding her. She just clenches her teeth together as soon as she sees the spoon coming. She refuses to eat anything unless she puts it in her mouth by herself. That can be severely limiting to a one-year-old’s diet. Her old favorites of yogurt and applesauce are out the window (unless we want to clean up a huge mess). We were hoping to break the pattern of stubborn kids in this family, but it looks like she’s not going to let us off that easily.

Here is Abby after feeding herself cheddar potato soup. We’re way past the bib stage . . . we just strip her down to her diaper and let her have at it.

Mother's Day

Our track record for fun Mother’s Days has been pretty hit and miss in this house – toddlers don’t really get the concept of giving mom “a day off”, so this one definitely qualifies as g-r-e-a-t, GREAT! Nate and the kids were fabulous and made the day wonderful from start to finish . . . (okay, so Elise didn’t get the “no whining on Mother’s Day” memo, but other than that, it was perfect). Here’s a recap:

The kids helped Nate make breakfast – biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, and orange juice. Yummy! Church was great. The highlights were hearing Ben tell the kids in my Primary class that they needed to be extra good for me since it was Mother’s Day and I am a mother, and being able to pick out Ben’s and Emily’s voices out of the whole Primary choir during sacrament meeting. They are not shy kids. Elise didn’t really know the words, but she was sure moving her mouth like she was singing in the Tabernacle Choir. It was cute.

After church and lunch, I got a very rare Sunday afternoon nap. (Abby had decided that she wanted to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day at 2:30 in the morning and didn’t go back to sleep until 4 a.m. I very much needed some sleep.) Nate sent the kids in with chocolate covered strawberries to wake me up. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

The kids helped me open my presents and then we went for walk on a new route. It has a little creek/stream that crosses under the walking path. The kids were very happy about stopping to throw rocks in the “river.” We came home, played outside for a while, and had scrummy turkey sandwiches and cheddar sun chips for dinner (my favorite).

We finished the night by watching a (lame) movie together and having strawberry shortcake . . . Nate assured me that fat grams don’t count on Mother’s Day.

Days that good are exceptionally rare, and I appreciated every second of it. I have no expectation of a repeat performance anytime in the near (or distant) future, so I want to remember every detail. :) It seems a little unfair that I got the best husband and kids in the whole world, but I am willing to live with it.

Nate took the kids shopping on Saturday morning and they surprised me with flowers.

The kids were more than willing to help me open my gifts. Elise was pretty mad at church when they handed out chocolates to the moms. “Why is no one giving me presents?”

This is exponentially better than the way the kids usually wake me up.

Abby’s head is blocking my quality, felt flower corsage that the kids made for me in Primary. It was amazing.

Mother's Day Tea

Today, Emily and I got to go to a tea party at her preschool for Mother’s Day. We wore our Sunday best and all of the moms got fancy paper corsages. The kids sang a few songs and then we played a “guess which mom” game. Her teacher had the kids answer questions about their moms last week for the game. Emily did a pretty good job for mine. It is funny to see yourself through the eyes of a 5 year old. We had punch and cookies off of real china cups and saucers. We had a fun time together.

Me and my girl.

Emily’s class getting ready to sing.

I love that Emily originally said that I was 73 and then changed it to 33. Phew! And, just for the record, I watch Dr. Phil about twice a year.

Frogs and Floods

A few months ago, we had a big flood in our storage room downstairs when the floor drain got backed up. It was such a pain to clean everything up, that we wanted to be sure that we never had to deal with a flood again. Nate found these cute little frog water alarms on Woot and we bought a bunch. We put one next to every toilet, under the kitchen sink, next to the washer and downstairs in the storage room. We figured we were covered.

Fast forward to yesterday. Elise used our bathroom after church. She has a tendency to use LOTS of toilet paper. When she flushed, the toilet got plugged. No big deal. Nate figured he would just wait for the water to go down and then plunge. We went for a walk, ate dinner, made cookies, hung out with the kids, and watched a movie . . . it was a great Sunday. Then we went to get ready for bed. There was water all over our bathroom floor and it had soaked through a large area of our bedroom carpet. What we hadn’t realized, was that the toilet was seriously clogged and no water was draining through. There is a very slow leak from the tank into the toilet in that bathroom. Over the course of several hours, that very small leak turned into a very big mess. The only dry spot in sight was right underneath our cute little Woot frog. Apparently, we had unknowingly placed him on a slightly elevated 8 inch section of our bathroom floor. There he sat, high and dry on his little island. Grr!

During the next hour and twenty minutes of using our carpet cleaner to suck all the water out of the carpet, we managed to develop a sense of humor about the whole thing and see the bright side. Positive #1: We own a carpet cleaner; Positive #2: It was a toilet paper clog . . . no poop involved; Positive #3: The baseboards behind Nate’s dresser are now free from dust bunnies (since we had to move it anyway); Positive #4: No visible water damage to the basement ceiling (so far).

It will be a funny memory to look back on in our old age.

Making the Rounds

It seems like we’ve been battling illnesses for a couple of weeks in this house. I was lucky enough to start the ball rolling with my 3 days of stomach flu (food poisoning?). Abby took her turn on vacation – thankfully skipping the puking part. Elise decided she wanted in on the action at 4:00 this morning. Fabulous! Luckily for me, Nate had already planned a work-at-home day since I had an appointment this morning. It was nice to have him here to share the joy of taking care of a sick kid. We don’t really remember the last time that Elise was sick, but today has taught us that she is not good at it. She is quite possibly the whiniest, most demanding patient we have ever met. Fortunately for her, we love her loads and we know that she has had a miserable day. That helped us to be lots more patient with her grumpiness.

It looks like the fun might just keep on coming. Nate went to bed early because he was “not feeling so hot.” I guess it is my turn to take care of him.

Even sick and whiny kids look sweet when they are sleeping.

Zion National Park

We figured that since we were in the area, we should swing by Zion National Park. The thought of adding a couple of hours to our drive time almost made us chicken out, but we are glad we went. It was a good fun time.

Elise and Emily were really excited about riding the shuttle bus since they have never been on a bus before. It was nice to ride together and see all the amazing scenery. We saw a few rock climbers going up the face of the mountain. People are crazy! We got out part way up the canyon and had a picnic lunch. Then, we rode the rest of the way up and hiked the Riverside Walk up to The Narrows. Ben was a great hiker. The girls were less great. Luckily, Nate is tough. He pushed Emily and Elise most of the way in the stroller and I carried Abby. The kids were excited about the wildlife (Emily counted 11 squirrels and we found a cute little lizard), but their favorite part was throwing rocks in the river at the end of the trail.

On the trail.

Riding the shuttle.

Our scenic picnic area.

Emily being goofy at lunch.

Throwing rocks in the river.

Single-handedly getting four kids up a steep rock face is trickier than you might think, but they sure look cute.

Abby got a nice little nap on the tail end of our hike. She looked so comfy lying back with her feet up.

Can you find the amazing, camouflaged lizard?