Leprechaun's Day

That’s what the kids call St. Patrick’s Day. It seems like every year their knowledge of leprechauns increases and they have all kinds of expectations about what the little guys are going to do during the day. Emily learned at school that leprechauns can lift anything in the world except Styrofoam. So, the kids spent half of Wednesday night making little leprechaun traps out of Styrofoam cups. They wrote cool things like “TONS OF GOLD IN HERE” on the cups and propped one edge up with a broken crayon. The first thing they did in the morning was check the traps. Some of them had been triggered, but there were no leprechauns inside. Bummer. Their over-active imaginations had them seeing mischief everywhere. “This isn’t where I left that. Did you move it? I didn’t move it. It must have been the leprechaun playing a trick on me.” Abby and I went over to help in Emily’s class and for the rest of the day Abby talked about how “that naughty leprechaun put glitter all over the floor in Emily’s class.” They are funny kids. We played it up a bit with some green food and drink and our traditional treasure hunt for a pot of gold. It was a fun day, but I’m starting to worry that my kids will be the only 8th graders that still believe in leprechauns and tooth fairies and the Easter Bunny.

Two in One

The kids got two new cousins on Tuesday . . . one through adoption and one through marriage.

Sarah has really been part of the family for almost ten months, but now it is official. I checked the kids out of school early so we could go to the courthouse. They thought it was super cool to go through a metal detector (Abby even had to be “wanded” because of her hair clip), and they all commented on how fancy the building was. It was educational for them to see how things work in a courtroom. The hearing was short and sweet and everything went smoothly. It was a happy day. Jody and Kevin are lucky to have Sarah and she is lucky to have them. Hooray for adoption!



Jody made fun baby cupcakes for everyone. She was attentive to detail and gave each of the kids’ cupcakes the right color of hair and eyes. Very cute!


We hurried home from the courthouse for piano lessons and Activity Days and then headed down to Pleasant Grove for Braydon and Virginie’s wedding reception. Virginie is from Canada. French is her native language, but she also speaks English, Russian, and Spanish. Nate has been giving us lessons on how to pronounce her name properly so we don’t sound like dorks. She seems like a quality girl and we are happy that she is part of the family.



The highlights of the reception for the kids were eating yummy crepes, watching Uncle Karl eat a giant strawberry in one bite, and getting mini bottles of bubbles. Since we had a three hour round trip in the car, we had lots of time to kill. We played US trivia on the way down and listened to The Best of Bill Cosby on the way home. Good times.

Family Day in SLC

I entered a giveaway on my favorite hair blog and won some passes to Disney on Ice. The prize was four tickets, but I thought we could buy a couple more and go as a family. Nate and Ben were not big fans of that plan. I guess Disney on Ice isn’t so cool for males over the age of ten. I was fine with not shelling out an extra fifty bucks, but I still wanted to make it a family day. So, I came up with Plan B. We drove down together and Nate and Ben spent a couple of hours at the planetarium while I took the girls to the ice show. We all had a great time. The girls loved seeing all of the Disney characters (although they were a little bitter that Aurora wasn’t in this show) and were quite impressed with the special effects and cool skating moves. The little girl sitting behind us added to the fun. She was a complete crack up. She was only about three or four, but she was belting out the songs and yelling things out to the characters on the ice all through the show. Emily thought it was hilarious. I liked the second half of the show better than the first half because I worked up the courage to ask the guy sitting in front of to take off his big Mickey Mouse hat. (I’m non-confrontational in general and the tattoos on his neck and arms kind of intimidated me.) It was nice to be able to see the show without those big red ears in the way. I’m glad I was brave.




The boys had fun at the planetarium (Ben more than Nate). They watched a movie in the domed theater. Ben thought it was awesome. Nate was less than impressed with the subpar script and special effects. For the rest of the time, Nate wandered around reading all of the displays while Ben hung out at the Newton’s Daydream exhibit. He couldn’t get enough of it.



We all met up afterwards and went to Costa Vida for dinner. The kids had each gotten a card for a free kids’ meal from school and I had a gift card, so we got out of there for $3.75. Sweet. I love basically free family fun days.

Writing Notes at Church

At some point, I’m sure I will expect my kids to listen during sacrament meeting. For now, I just expect them to be quiet. Lately Elise has been keeping herself quiet by writing me notes. I absolutely love her phonetic spellings and the funny things she says. Here is her note from today:


Elise: What are we goeng to have for Dinr? :)
Me: I don’t know. What do you want?
Elise: Book Ples (She wanted me to hand the hymnbook back to her so she could write on it.) Can you Ask Dad if he can Mac Tomado Sop Ples.
Me: He said, “Sure.”
Elise: what Dos this say. (arrow to "Sure")
Me: Yes.
Elise: Yay I Hope it is with a yomy Tret
Me: What treat do you want?
Elise: Emily What treat do you want.
Emily: Chese Cake.
Me: We can’t have that tonight. It has to be in the fridge longer than that. What is your second choice?
Emily: Brownies?
Elise: Wayt Maby I shod (meaning shouldn’t) have ask Emily that can we have Smohtes to Nigt and have Rotber flots
Me: We will see.
Elise: Ples Ples Ples
Me: We’ll see.
Elise: We’ll stil see rile (really?)
Me: I love you, Elise!
Elise: I Love you to mom
Me: Thanks.
Elise: I am Lafe ng (laughing) rit naw
Me: Me too. I love that you can write notes to me.
Elise: I do not know y I jost seid that have a nis Day

I love that girl!

Wipeout

It was such a nice day today that the kids and I decided to walk home from church with our friends. Abby was doing her best to keep up with the big kids and tripped and fell. She landed right on her face. She hit one of her front teeth really hard and ended up with some road rash and a big fat lip. I was glad that she didn’t knock her tooth out, but I’m pretty sure she’ll be twins with Ben and Elise and have a nice grey tooth in her kindergarten pictures. Poor girl!


The picture doesn’t do her lip justice. It is really about four times its normal size. And, that's not snot on her face. Nate put some Neosporin on her right before I took this picture.

Children's Choir

Ben and Emily sang in Stake Conference a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was pretty neat for them to have a chance to sing in the tabernacle before all of the renovations are done. Emily was genuinely excited about doing it. Ben was not. He was a little mad at me for making him sing, but he got over it eventually. I didn’t get to see them (Elise was sick, so I stayed home with her), but according to Nate they both did a great a job singing and sitting reverently in the choir seats for two hours. It was fun to hear them tell me all about it. They actually listened to the talks and had lots of stories to tell me when they got home. I also had a couple of people tell me how “funny” Abby was. I’m a little afraid to know exactly what that means. Nate says “she acted like a three year old at stake conference.” Apparently that was pretty entertaining for the people sitting by her.

I sent a camera with Nate, but the batteries were dead so he took a picture with his cell phone. It’s not a great picture, but it’s all about the memory.


A couple of days later, Emily got this sweet little postcard from her school teacher. Have I mentioned how much I love my kids’ teachers? I really feel like we hit the jackpot this year.

Dr. Seuss Day

The Cat in the Hat, Thing 1, Thing 2, and Sally

Elementary school is fun! Making cool costumes the night before Dr. Seuss day is not always so much fun. We did a test run with Emily’s hair last night and the supposed-to-be-bright-blue hairspray we bought came out dark purple. Crikey. Time to improvise. Luckily we had some blue pom-poms in the playroom. They were pretty haggard, but they worked. I put the hats together after the kids were in bed last night and I was a little afraid that the girls wouldn’t like them. When I got up in the morning, Emily met me with a big smile and said, “Mom, thanks for the hat! I love it! It’s perfect!” Phew. I was so pleased that she was happy. Then I went to throw something in the garbage and saw this:


Too funny. Nate was apparently trying to avoid a repeat of Valentine’s Day. I told him that next time he needs to tell her to crumple it up in a ball before she puts it in the garbage. I was wondering where all of the sweetness came from. At least she was obedient. :)

*Thanks to Celeste for the pom-pom idea, to Holly for the red and white hat, and to Jacob for the long-sleeved black shirt. You guys rock!

One More Thing

I forgot to include this little gem in yesterday’s post. Nate and the kids did a special musical number (If I Listen with My Heart) in Primary last month. They did a great job. I don’t think one sound came out of Abby, but she mouthed the words beautifully. She isn’t so shy at home. She has been belting out the first verse of that song ever since. I love listening to her sing. It makes me happy.

Overlooked

Since my memory stinks, I try to be pretty thorough with this blog. I’ve had a bad case of the winter blahs the last couple of months, so there are few things that I would have normally blogged about that went under the radar. I thought I would do a quick post to catch all of the stragglers.

Piano Recital

Ben and Emily had their winter piano recital last month. Emily played “The Mermaid” and “Andante”. Ben played “Beach Party” and “Rip Roarin’ Rag” (kind of a funny choice since he is still working on mastering those dang Rs). They both played flawlessly and didn’t seem the least bit nervous to get up in front of everyone. Last year they both had serious stage fright, so I was happy to see them acting more calm and confident this time around.

The only catastrophe of the day was Ben’s outfit. I’ve always made him wear a suit and tie to his recitals and he has always complained about it. I decided that it was time to pick my battles. We compromised and I let him wear khaki pants and a polo shirt. It bugged me that he didn’t look dressed up enough, but I was almost over it. Then he got up to introduce his songs. He hiked up his pants right as he stood up so it looked like they were quality four inch floods. I’m pretty sure next time he will be wearing his suit. :)


Nate Had a Birthday Shout Hooray!

Nate turned 38 on the 1st of February. He got lots cooler presents than most years . . . a scroll saw, a set of router bits, and the 1910 expansion for our Ticket to Ride game. He knew about all of them ahead of time, but he was good at pretending to be surprised for the kids. We did all of our normal Tuesday night stuff and threw in some chocolate cream pie and a round of Ticket to Ride to make it special.


Beer Belly Eyes

We’ve been building up a Health Savings Account for the last few years. We figured once we had a good buffer in there that would cover any unexpected medical expenses we would both get Lasik. This was going to be our Lasik year. It turns out that neither of us will be getting it done. My corneas are perfectly healthy, but my vision isn’t bad enough to make me a good candidate. Nate’s vision is LOUSY, but we found out that he has a rare (1 in 1000) condition called keratoconus (aka beer belly eye). Basically his corneas kind of bulge at the bottom and if they did Lasik now there is a good chance he would go blind later. So, another 50 years of squinting for me and another 50 years of contacts and glasses for Nate. The good news is that we’ll have plenty of funds in our HSA to pay for all of our kids’ braces.

Speaking of Braces

Emily has started on her orthodontic journey. She has a bit of an overbite (which may or may not be due to the fact that her mom let her have a bottle until she was two). In January, she got a cool blue bite trainer. She has been amazing about remembering to put it in every night. She had a checkup yesterday and the orthodontist was very impressed with how much her teeth have moved. Hopefully she’ll keep being so diligent and save herself the fun of wearing headgear in junior high.


Penmanship 101

Abby has started writing her name. She was reluctant to try for a long time, but she finally gave in when it was time to write her name on some Valentines. She’s pretty self-critical of her penmanship (i.e. “I made that one too long”), but she loves having this new skill. Her latest thing is to add some decoration to her letters (like the suns on the end of the Ys in the picture).

What a Difference a Week Makes!

Last weekend we got a little taste of spring. The weather was so nice that we went on a Sunday afternoon walk and the kids played outside for hours. Elise and Abby even had a picnic on the back lawn before school on Tuesday.




Fast forward to this weekend. We got hit with a big snowstorm on Sunday. No picnics at this house for a while. Instead we took the kids sledding. Nate took Monday off work and we headed over to the park first thing in the morning. Sledding is lots more fun now that the kids are more independent. Even Abby was able to hike up the hill on her own (Nate was still nice enough to taxi her up a few times on the sled).










Ben and Nate were the only ones that went down the bumpy runs. The rest of us stuck with the smooth slope. Ben thought it was cool to catch some air on the way down.


Emily and Elise made a cute little snowman. We didn’t come prepared, so I found a few things in the van to use for the finishing touches. I think it looks pretty cute with a pencil nose, lifesaver buttons and eyes, and a caramel apple pipe.


I had to leave early to get ready for a dentist appointment, but the kids weren’t done yet. Nate stayed with them so they could play a little longer. Ben threw a snowball at Nate and pretty soon all of the other kids at the park had joined in the big Nate vs. kids snowball fight. When I picked them up it was all they could talk about. I’m glad that Nate is a kid at heart and is always game when the kids want to play.