California Trip

Picture overload!!

So I decided to be crazy and take the kids, without Eric, to California during Katelyn's Spring Break!!  It was sometimes hard, but overall so great.  Every day there were so many moments that made it worth the drive just for that ONE moment!  I really hate leaving Eric, but it had been a year since we'd been to Madera, so it was time.  And since we picked up Katrina and Lydia in St. George, it was even better!!

So here come the pics of some priceless moments:

Whitney was deathly afraid of this "crack" in St. George the last time we went, but this time she decided to be brave and go through it!  I was so proud of her!  Kate took her through, since I couldn't get through holding Owen.

Then some nice girls helped them find their way back down to me.
My little adventurers!

Owen at my Dad's farm!  He LOVES animals, especially dogs.

He loves climbing on things, and getting dirty,

and apparently he loves tractor magazines!

Owen wanted to stay in the tractor forever- all the cool buttons and levers!

This was taken at my grandparents' house in Chowchilla.  I spent a lot of time there as a child, so it has great memories for me!  and they still have all the same cool old toys!  The look on my grandma's face when 5 of her granddaughters were there with all their little kids running around was worth the whole trip.  She was so delighted to help the kids find toys and give them snacks.  And my grandpa sat over in the dining room while we had our "women talk"- description of my cousin's latest baby's birth :)

And of course this is priceless: Sister time!  We didn't get to see Jenae that much, since she was right in the thick of FFA competitions and track practice and spring musical (In the Heights) rehearsals and seminary, not to mention homework!  The girl is crazy busy!  But here we all are at Opening night of her play (she was just a background person, she didn't have time to try and get a bigger role, so she enjoys just being in the group numbers). But I did get to be with Allison Katrina and Melissa all day every day, what a treat!  And my mom lots and my Dad quite a bit too!  And it was just so good to be with Allison and her kids and see how marvelously okay they all are after these last few months!

Meanwhile my kids got cousin time!  Since Eric and I are both the oldest, Natalie and Caleb are and always will be the ONLY cousins my girls have that are close to their age!  That makes time with them extremely valuable!  And they made the most of it. 

On the trampoline,

having Easter egg hunts,

reading reading reading- especially exciting since Natalie can read now too!

Oh and Owen had his cousin time too- the lucky boy has 3 cousins with 8 months or less age difference from him--and they're all girls!!  He loves Lydia!  (and Jenna and Cleo!)

 The kids also played lots of Star Wars,

 had quality Grammy and Grandpa Jamie time,

 and my personal favorite, spent hours playing in the empty lots on both sides of my parents' property.  This was my childhood!  This was me and my siblings, out there in the spring in the beautiful green pretending all kinds of hilarious things.  I love to see them getting to do the same thing. :)

I love this picture, because one of the most priceless things about this trip was that the girls really got to know Caleb!  Last time we saw him he was only 2 and couldn't really play with them.  But now he's 3 and a fun little chatterbox and they loved him!  It was super cute, he and Katelyn got along really well actually. :)  And of course they love Natalie!!

 Then there's these two, the little blond twins, born just 2 weeks apart.  They were interested in each other, I'm excited for when they can play together!

 Owen and his only boy cousin- until Katrina has her baby!  We are so grateful for Caleb!

 And last but not least, I must say something about these two, the best travelling buddies ever!  Not only was the drive a breeze for me with another adult there to help me and keep my spirits up (even when the AC didn't work for the hottest 3 hours of the trip--awesome), and my girls definitely behaved better since it wasn't just me there for them to complain to (Owen couldn't possibly have been better- he was a little thumb-sucking angel the whole ride!), but also I got to talk to my sister for 9 hours straight each way!  What a blast!  We covered every subject under the sun and I even learned things about her that I didn't know!  Great, great times.  We love Katrina and Lydia!!  "No way!" And her amazing husband Phillip who changed my tire for me when I got a flat no joke 2 blocks from their house!  What a blessing it didn't happen any earlier or later when we were in the middle of nowhere!  I love knowing the Lord is watching over us and feeling His protection. :)

Good trip. 

The End.

Easter

Highlights of Easter:

Whitney waking up super early like she does on every holiday and birthday!

 Sleeping beauty woken by her sister!

 Owen knew what the candy was and immediately started eating his Cadbury egg with the wrapper on!  I helped him get it off and he chomped a huge bite of chocolate and creme!

 Whitney wanted a picture with her beautiful dyed eggs.

 I think Katelyn ate her entire chocolate bunny that same day...she's a chocoholic!!  ALso notice her biting from the side- poor girl has been missing her front teeth since before Christmas!

 Owen got to do his first easter egg hunt!  He picked up one piece of candy and he was good!  He just kept looking around at all the other kids. (He loves other little kids and is always trying to hug them!  Our little social boy!)

 The dresses I made the girls and the cute outfit I bought Owen at Walmart!

 So- I REALLY love making my own patterns.  So much.  I love sketching ideas and picking my favorite and figuring out which fabric pattern and type will work for that look and then figuring out how to make the pattern pieces so the dress will look right--it's great exercise for my brain!  And then I'm just nervous through all the cutting and sewing until I can see it starting to come together, and then I'm impatient with all the little finishing details just wanting it to be done so I can reach THIS moment: when I put it on my beautiful child and it looks adorable! :)  

 The only thing that didn't turn out like I planned it was the ruffle at the neck- it was the last part of the dresses that I did and I realized too late that for it to look right it would have to be INSET in the yellow- it was NOT supposed to be hugely puffy like that!  But I would have had to cut the main dress piece to try to put it in and I was too afraid I'd ruin it-- thus the puffy throat ruffles.  Oh well, you can't have it all! 

Owen the little man.

 Oh and I made myself a matching skirt.  And earrings.  

 My cute Kate.

We had a really happy Easter, reflecting on what the Resurrection means to us.  I am so grateful for my body and that I can live again, with my family, FOREVER. :)

First-grader

Katelyn's about to finish up first grade in a couple of weeks, unbelievable!  So here's a picture I took of her a couple of months ago on a typical morning- eating breakfast and doing math homework. :)  Except this day was special because it was her first page of MULTIPLICATION!  

We shouldn't have been shocked when our smarty-pants first-grader-in-a-second-grade-math-class came home with multiplication homework, then division homework....but we were totally surprised!  Didn't we learn those things in 3rd grade???  

Well, she sure can handle it, along with subtracting 3 digit numbers, some easy fractions and basic geometry.  

What can I say?  She has really good genes. :)

Owen at 15 months

Wow it's been a long time!  We didn't have a computer for about 3 weeks, and then lately I've been imtimidated by the catching up!  So here's a current post to start.  

Owen is 15 months old, or 1 and a quarter years old!  Crazy!  I feel like he's suddenly gotten old.  Probably  partly because I finished nursing him right before he was 14 months, which seems so long ago!  babies always grow up fast in my eyes after they're done nursing.  

But the thing that's made him seem the oldest is definitely his 

TALKING!

I can't say he's my earliest talker, because we all know Katelyn talked really well at a ridiculously young age.  But I had always heard that girls were more verbal than boys, so I assumed it might take him a little longer to speak-- not so!  Here are the things he can say:

mama

dada

"suss" for sister

"at" for Kate

"gog"-dog

"woh" -woof

"da-dune"-all done

"moh"-more

"chs"-cheese

"beh"-bread

"uh-bey"-strawberry

"wa-mah"-watermelon

"ba-ah"-bye

"hah"-hi

"nah"-good night

"beh"-bear

"baa"-blanket

go

"ca"-car

"ow" cow

uh-oh!

"oyoyo"(while shaking head)-no

"ah" (while nodding)-yes

"ba"-ball

"buh"-banana

"buh-buh" (with a squeaky cooing noise)-baby

"t"-treat

"ee"-ear``

"ah-sss"-outside

"sh"-shoe

"ju"-juice

"ba"-bath

"ba-poom"-bathroom

"be-t"-breakfast

Owen is so sweet and pretty obedient and loves "helping" sweep or do dishes or laundry.  He follows directions really well like "throw away your trash" or "find your shoes".   He gives hugs and kisses- to us and to other babies he meets. :)  He has started to develop an angry scream (thanks girls for your bad example!) but he's pretty easily pacified, or gives up easily if we ignore it.  He gets into EVERYTHING- he's way more curious than the girls were at his age!  He's developed a love for shoelace-type strings and cords.  The funniest thing he loves to carry around is my blow dryer for some reason!  Basically, he's adorable. The end.

fun family activities in March

Here's a couple of things we've done lately to beat the end-of-winter blues:

Went to another awesome Theater for Young Audiences production at the SCERA- Rapunzel: A Very Hairy Fairy Tale. The kids loved it, even Owen, and Eric and I were chuckling thoughout as well at the parent-aimed jokes.  We are forever fans!!

 Before the show we were getting ready to go on our "family date" and the girls decided they wanted to "match Dad", so they found plaid shirts to wear and I got one on Owen too.

Then last weekend we went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point.  I felt so rich, going on NOT a 2-dollar Tuesday in August!  Hooray for raises and tax returns. :)  

So here are the girls posing in front of a Supersaurus leg

 and a Utah raptor

 They enjoyed themselves for a while in the Erosion room- SO fun!  Whitney made an island,

 and Eric got into it too, there's too much builder in him!  Here he is helping Katelyn make a dam.

 Owen mostly splashed and tried to eat the sand. He was pretty tired the whole time since he didn't sleep on the way up like we thought he would.

 Kate made a big velcro dinosaur.

 and Owen tried to climb on EVERYTHING!

 Kate with her favorite dinosaur: T-Rex!

 Whit with what we thought was her favorite dinosaur- until we saw it wasn't really a Triceratops!

 Here's the real thing:

 The kids about to get eaten by a giant prehistoric shark- Owen's already running away!

 The girls were great excavators!

Lots of learning fun!

Kitchen experiments

It was so funny, the other day Whitney begged me to let her "cook something" with a bunch of spices.  So we made rice in the rice cooker with chicken bullion and garlic, and then she wanted to start dumping spices in!  I suggested she should open and smell each spice and see which ones she wanted to include. The next 10 minutes were HILARIOUS, full of faces like these:

In the end the only spice in her "yes" pile was cinnamon, and in her " maybe" pile were ground mustard, curry powder, and cumin!  She eventually put butter, cinnamon, and sugar on her rice, and only ate a couple of bites, silly. :) apparently garlic and cinnamon don't mix!

cute things

So I keep thinking of things to post on facebook, and then I realize that I need to be putting them in here as well so they'll be saved forever electronically (hopefully!) and printed in family blog books.  And so, here are a few cute moments from the last couple of days/things I've been thinking about.
     Katelyn told me how much she loves to play the song she wrote on the piano because it has all her favorite sounds in it.
     Katelyn did her music-reading flashcards in only 49 seconds- shattering her old time of 57 seconds- and she was jumping around saying "YES!!  YES!!  YES!!"  So cute.
     Her class played Red Rover in PE and she broke through 2 girls' arms.  Big for her because it means she's strong and fast. :)
     She set up a pizza shop with Whitney called Pizzas Galore.
     I love the time I get to spend with Katelyn in the morning from 6:45 to 7:35 when her bus comes.  She's always talking about funny things or singing while she does her math homework or intently reading the cereal box, and the other kids are usually still asleep so it's peaceful.
     The other day on a walk Katelyn kept picking Owen up around the stomach and carrying him for a minute, and he didn't look comfortable at all but he didn't complain at all because he ADORES Katelyn.  That same day he had just gotten dressed by Eric and he saw Katelyn and practically ran into the bathroom where I was doing her hair and just stood there hugging her legs for a minute!
     Whitney says so many funny things every day that I should just keep a camera rolling and we'd become rich and famous with our own TV show.  Not that I would want that, AT ALL, EVER.  But let's see if I can remember a few-
She still calls Family Home Evening "Hamly Foam Eveling" poor girl just gets it mixed up!
 A few weeks ago she told me it was George Lincolnham's birthday.
She frequently says "why are you ruining my LIFE???"  and "why do we have these WICKED RULES???"  (or wicked poo-poo rules)
And she's so cute, some things really stick with her and she's always thinking about and talking about gospel principles, such as:
"Mom, in Primary, we learned about suffering.  Like how Jesus suffered." (led into a great conversation!)
"So all of the people who followed Satan, they don't have a family, so they can't GROW!"
"I thought in heaven it would be great, but we're going to have to be an old lady FOREVER???" ( a little misunderstanding about Resurrection: our spirits re-joining our bodies on earth-- I cleared it up! :) )
     And Whitney does her little 4-year-old best to be a good big sister.  Most of the time things go wrong between her and Owen it's just an accident or she's being too rough!  But she does make him laugh a LOT, like the other day she kept sneaking up behind him in his high chair and slapping the bottom of it with her hands and saying boo! and he thought it was the funniest thing ever.  They also play chase a lot, and she tries to read him stories (which he's NOT good at holding still for!) and she's good at helping me keep an eye on the little troublemaker.
     Owen's best new cute trick is saying "uh-oh" when something falls, but he's started using it for other purposes too, like when anything goes wrong in any way.  Or when he's stuck up on a chair and can't get off and he dropped the sharpie he just wrote all over his hand with. :) Or when he's slipped while climbing up the bunkbed ladder and is sitting on the third rung unable to go up or down.  I'm learning to come running when I hear his cute little voice saying "uh-oh!"
     Owen's face was the best the other day when, for the first time, I left the back door open and said "go ahead!  you can go outside." he just kept walking in and out, in and out, like "really???  I can come and go with no restraint??"  Then today he grabbed the tree trunk of one of our smaller trees and started walking around and around it holding on, he thought it was so neat.  And I gave him and Whitney a couple of bowls full of water on the deck, and some cups and paintbrushes, and they were happy for over an hour!  Now we'll just see if I can survive the MANY hours I'll be spending outside with him the next few months!  I'm never going to get anything done inside!!
     Owen has started getting a book, coming over to me (I'm sitting on the floor), then turning around and backing into my lap- so cute!  He will only spend about 25 seconds on each book, but hey, we are establishing the connection that reading is fun and cuddly and happy.

Okay now a couple of random thoughts.
     We started watching Downton Abbey the other day (not part of the craze, just curious!  and it was Eric's idea I swear!) and I was thinking about how weird it would be to have even just ONE maid or cook, let alone MANY servants to do everything for me- so strange!  Nice though!  Also Eric and I were talking about what I will do when all our kids are in school (a long way off!), and I hope that one thing I will do is actually clean my house every day- sweep, mop and vacuum much more often, not to mention washing walls, windows, or blinds, which I NEVER do!  (Don't even mention cleaning the bathrooms...)  Not that I really care about having a totally clean house-- my priorities are elsewhere and I settle for picking up clutter and doing dishes and I'm fine with it for the most part.  BUT, I will be pretty proud of myself if I someday have a little chore list and actually do them daily and have a cleaner house. :)
     Also, we are coming up on the end of Whitney's preschool years, and I'm so excited to have a break from preschool for a while!  Don't get me wrong, I have LOVED having a preschool group with anywhere from 3 to 5 moms and taking turns teaching our kids.  I really love teaching my own kids in a more "official" preschool setting, seeing how they interact with their friends and getting to know the cute, hilarious kids we've had in our groups.  We have had SO much fun.  I LOVE the other moms I've worked with in this over the years-MelanieCrystalHeatherCindySaraJanaeSusieLanaJamie-they have become such good friends to me.  I wouldn't change a thing about how I've done these last 4 years of preschool- 2 for Kate and 2 for Whitney.  BUT-- it has also been a little exhausting at times!!  Dealing with a crying baby or a nursing baby or a tantruming 2-year-old while teaching several curious 3 or 4 year olds is tough!  And that year when there were only 3 of us moms in the group, teaching our 4 year olds twice a week?  We had to teach really often and it was a lot of work.  I could never be a real full-time preschool teacher!  Or an elementary teacher!  I just can't handle the chaos and my patience with other people's kids is shorter than it should be.  And so, until Owen is ready for preschool in about 2 1/2 years, I am so excited to not have to worry about it. :)
      Healthy eating is going pretty well for me.  It's crazy how just one food choice (a piece of whole wheat bread vs. a cupcake) can make the caloric difference for that day.  For me the margin between losing weight and gaining weight is not very big.  So I really have to make the decision EVERY day (hour) to eat healthy.  It's crazy to think that since I'm trying to do something that's sustainable for the rest of my life (no, I'm not going to be so meticulous for my whole life, I'm hoping healthy eating will become a habit that I won't have to check so carefully) there are things I may NEVER eat again.  Like hot dogs.  Or mozzerella sticks.  Or even cheezits! I'd like to save my empty calories for something delicious like ice cream, thank you!  There's other things that I LOVE that I know I shouldn't eat, like a 900 calorie large Blizzard from Dairy Queen (900 calories??? NO ONE should be eating that!!)  that I'm sure I'll still indulge in from time to time.  And I'm definitely still eating candy almost every day.  Just not a whole bag in one day. :)  And often I get annoyed that I can't just eat whatever junk I want.  But then I remember this- I do FEEL better like this.  Physically and emotionally.  So... hopefully the logical side of me will stay in control. :)

That's all for now...