Hello winter?

I am a great goal setter.  Achieving those goals is another story.  

Susan came up with a great idea to inspire the family to eat healthy and exercise and so we came up with a little friendly competition.  You get points for things like drinking 48 oz of water a day, eating 5 servings of fruits and veggies, no sugar, correct portion sizes and exercise.  Its been so good for me!  I've found it's so easy to not give the kids sugar if I know it will add 2 points to our tally, and it's a great incentive to drink water and include fruits and veggies through out the day.  Turns out I have a sweet tooth though, and mid afternoon I'd give anything for a treat.  So I've turned to honey.  Honey on toast, honey in peanut butter, honey on apples.  I figure once I can get in the habit of No Sugar, I can try to kick my honey habit.

For once we got snow on a day other than Sunday, and although it threatened to melt before the day was over, we still got a snowman in. The first of the season.

 Alex thought it was fantastic, Heidi had a love/hate relationship with the cold snow and her hands.

 Alex is so creative, she "accessorized" the snowman all by herself.

 After this one was done she insisted on making a girl, only there wasn't much snow left.

 Heidi loves my camera, and taking pictures of herself.

 I joined Pinterest and swore I would actually do half the things I pinned.  So Today we made finger paint and it was fabulous!

It was super easy to whip up and I was amazed at how well the colors came through with so little food coloring.

The texture was like pudding, and it was made from kitchen ingredients so I didn't have to worry about them licking their fingers or staining anything.

I love colors.

 After the finger paint we made a "sand" box out of old rice.  The kids "cooked" for a good 45 minutes and got along wonderfully the whole time.  That is until I left the room for 5 minute and found Heidi had filled the oven drawer with rice.

While we were cooking lunch a box of tongue depressors I'd ordered showed up and I was amazed when Alex called me over to see this.  What a little smartee!

Birthday month is upon us and I'm all geared up.  I fell hard into the work of dollhouses and after far too much research decided that dollhouse furniture is a racket and the figures themselves arn't much better.  There is hardly any selection at all, and what selection exists is all on Amazon.  I was finally able to pull myself out of the seductive grasp of all things miniature and instead bought some tongue depressors to glue together into beds and such.  Alex is a creative kid, she will have much more fun making her own stuff than opening and closing that adorable miniature $14 fridge anyway.
   Interestingly enough all the birthdays this month fall on the weekend (I'm including Friday in that) so for the next 4 weeks I should have something fun to post about, that is if I don't become obsessed with making miniature furniture.
   All my sister in laws share birthdays (quite convenient for me) We already celebrated Kara and Kate, and so now I'm preparing for the Danielle and Natalie fun in a couple weeks.  Natalie lives in Tennessee at the moment, but Danielle's birthday will involve jumping and icecream.

Warm and Windy days

Kids in cowboy hats are my weakness

I have been debating (and by debating I mean drooling) over all the different doll houses for Alex's birthday.  At first I had decided we were going to just get her a sleeping bag.  She loves sleeping bags for some reason and we plan on doing plenty of camping this summer. 2 birds with 1 stone right?
Well, maybe not the most exciting gift for a preschooler.  Then out of thin air I got the idea to buy a dollhouse.  At first I was going to have Tyler make one, but the little furniture, and the wallpaper on these modern things is just....Wow.  So now I'm scouring the internet looking for dollhouses and deals and dreaming.

I feel almost guilty.  We had decided that for birthdays we were going to just have a great day with the kids.  Go to the zoo, or a kids museum, buy them a single moderate gift from their parents and then have a family party.  Oh how easily I cave.  Alex and I have already begun planning a birthday party for her and her friends, we have chosen a cake to make and I'm trying to convince her to choose a "dress up" party instead of 'Lighting McQueen'.  I figure this year will be the exception, since her birthday is the day before mine, and mine is on Sunday.  We will throw her friends party on Friday, share our amazing day on Saturday and relax Sunday.  I thought I'd be bugged by having to share my birthday week, but I've found that it gives me an excuse to go over the top on everything.  Twice the decorations, twice the fun.

 My cousin Alyson came over to visit us the other day.  She played barbies with the girls for nearly 4 hours straight and Alex didn't stop laughing the entire time.  If that wasn't great enough, she brought the ingredients to make sinfully delicious brownies with cookie dough frosting.  Yes they were as amazing as they sound.

 She asked "So do you really get to do this every day! " referring to playing with them for hours at a time.  It put me in my place.  I'll admit that I don't always feel so lucky to "get" to be their CONSTANT companion.  But I also decided that was a FANTASTIC attitude to have and in another few years I'll wish they would talk to me, let alone play barbies with me.

 I've caved and joined Pinterest.  Turns out it was a better way to do what I've been doing for years- hoarding crafty ideas under my bookmark tabs and then forgetting they were there.  I swore I wouldn't just "collect" ideas, and I would implement the great ones I found.

 Hence the crayon board.  Alex and Heidi helped me hot glue a ton of crayons and then we melted them with a blow dryer. The girls were a bit perturbed that their blowdryer didn't seem to have an effect on the crayons.

 The final product is fantastic, and watching the colors pour down the board was weirdly wonderful.

Alex and Heidi have also decided they love going on walks.  So rain or wind or shine we try to go for a walk every day now.  These walks are best when the girls insist on dressing like cowboys, or hauling along purses full of jewelry and cars.

Today our walk was accomplished a bit differently.  Ben and Kate had free tickets to the last BYU basketball at the Marriot center for the season.  We all decided to go and take Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Danielle, the women agreed our backup plan would be to take the kids to the Bean Museum when the kids got bored after 5 minutes.  They actually lasted the whole first half!  It was fun to be there and watch the excitement live, but I was excited to let the kids just run without worrying about falling down 50 flights of stairs.
   We left the game and walked over to the Museum in the freezing wind only to find that it was closed. We hurried up to the little creamery to warm up, buy a treat and plan our next step.  It was decided that we would send Grandma back to the game to get all the car keys, while the rest of us "hurried" back past the Marriot center and down towards campus to the cars.  It seemed to take an eternity, and the kids were frozen by the time we made it, but they had a blast running and stuffing themselves full of M&M's, Skittles, and sour watermelons.  We warmed up and drove to Kate's for pizza, so happy to be home.  Not 20 seconds after we got there, the boys walked in! They had stayed and watched the game, and probably made it to the cars minutes after we had finally buckled the kids up and driven off.
The best part was watching Alex run through the grass yelling "I LOVE Basketball games!!" And squeezing both Annie and Bridger into the same carseat stroller thing, and watching 7 month old Annie steal 7 week old Bridgers pacifier.

A lovely family

I didn't get any pictures of Valentines Day, but we had a great time.  Tyler and I decided that everytime we have plans or expectations for a holiday- it's fails or someone is ill.  So we celebrated independently, Tyler at school with his homework, and I with the kids.

Tyler did let me sleep in for a half hour and make me and Alex breakfast in bed.  Later I was able to help out a friend and babysit her kids for a couple hours, then make granola bars with Kate.  After Alex and Archie returned from Joy School we grabbed our homemade valentines and went to the care center where Grandpa Archie is recovering from a fall.  We got to see him and Grandma Norma for a bit until the kids were stir crazy.  All the older ladies went nuts over our little parade of kids and Kate and I decided we need to go back more often.  We took another valentine to Grandma Jake and then came home for a little down time before dinner.  After dinner Alex and I went to babysit for Kate and Ben while they went on a date to the Temple.  We made pink heart rice krispy treats and watched "Cars 2" and played.  The evening ended with me muscling a sleeping Archie into bed and laying on the couch playing virtual zoo on the Nook with Alex.  Didn't see a lot of Tyler, but it was a day full of love and family and fun.  Ever since Alex has been on a Valentine kick, and we have been making cards just about every day to give away.

On Wednesday I got to babysit my new nephew!

 I had a few helpers, so even if he hadn't slept the entire time, I think we would have been fine.

 Heidi has been fighting naps with a vengeance.  Last week I decided that she really needed a nap no matter what.  After an eternity of listing to her talk to herself in the crib I went down to get her and found this.  Turns out I was a few minutes late.

 Alex is constantly telling me. "I just want to be a Mom!"
 Her favorite activity is feeding Bridger a bottle. It is quite cute to watch.

 Heidi likes Bridger, but only when she is in a good mood and I'm not holding him.  Turns out child number two is a bit possessive.  Heidi will run across the room and grab onto my legs yelling "No, MY Mommy" if Alex addresses, or even looks at me during one of her moods.

 We spent the weekend up in Highland.  My Mom was in town to see her first Grandson and David got to come along so we had a whole weekend of Asay love.

 We spent Friday taking a tour of BYU campus for David (it made me want to go back!).  We had a great dinner at The Cracker Barrel and then a night of 'Just Dance' and 'Super Mario'.  It was a night of laughing and reminiscing.

 Saturday was full of walking.  The weather was so nice, we walked to the Highland library then the grocery store.  In the afternoon we visited the Bean Museum Photo Contest and met up with my Uncle and a couple of cousins.  The rest of the day involved Krispy Kreme, Pizza, Pictures and napping on the couch.

 Sunday was a lay around day.  We had a great meal compliments of Mom, and even got a family picture in!

 Tyler was great the entire time, acting as sole parent most of the time so I could goof around and talk with my family.

It was pretty humorous trying to get a picture of the family.  We were using the timer on my camera and  so I had to push the button, wind through the group to the top of the stairs, grab Heidi as she tried to escape, con her into looking at the camera and smile.  Whew!

It's always fun being with family, and sad to say goodbye.  I'm so fortunate that 7 of the 9 are here in Utah for me to enjoy whenever I want.  Playing Nintendo with my brothers brought back memories and it's fun to make new memories and talk to my brothers about Prom, Photographey and kids.  I'm glad that we've been able to make that transition from angry teenagers to friends as adults and I hope we can live close and let our kids grow up together.

Ice Fishing

I've been ice fishing a handfull of times.  All memories are of being very cold and occasionally wet, very very bored, and not catching any fish.  

All of our friends are cool, but we have some who were (and are) Wildland Firefighters (hardcore) and who frequently take their kids (younger than ours) on great hiking and fishing adventures (even more hardcore).  So when we got the opportunity to join them out on Scofield reservoir to ice fish, my first thought was YES, the kids will LOVE it!  And they did.

 Tyler had a meeting this morning that we thought would last an hour.  So for 45 minutes I rushed and packed and dressed the kids so we could be out the door as soon as he got home.  After the hour passed and we realized this meeting was of the 2 hour variety, we settled into some mormon message clips and bible videos on the computer.  Heidi and Alex fought over the camels in the Wise Men video, and I wondered if I would survive the morning.

 But make it we did!

I'll admit the tent made it amazing.  We were late (and lucky) enough that all the holes had been drilled and the tent set up before we even arrived.  I've found that for some reason adventures with 2 Mom's go a  lot smoother than those with just a Mom and Dad.  Mom's just know what needs to be done and don't even need communicate needs and wants. Renee and I were able to juggle 4 kids and a fishing pole quite smoothly.  Hats off to Renee though, she caught a fish while holding a sleeping toddler.  I'm pretty sure that until my kids are more or less self sustaining, I'm taking another mother on all our camping and fishing trips.

 All the little girls loved each other as usual, and Heidi got her Josie fix.

 Tyler pulled the kids (and wife) around on the sled, which was almost as good as going down a hill.

 Alex was right at home, wandering from hole to hole commandeering fishing poles and stealing chairs.

 I was amazed with her patience and understanding of the mechanics.

 Heidi really wanted to put her feet in the hole and take her gloves off.

 The weather was great! If it hadn't been for the wind we wouldn't even have needed coats.

 Alex sat in that chair for 10 minutes, insisting that there wasn't a worm on the line until I proved it.  And then she insisted that she didn't have enough worms on her line to catch a fish.

 I was sure that it wasn't going to be IF the kids got wet, but rather WHEN they would get wet.  With the 1.25 adults to 1 child ratio, we were able to keep both Alex and Heidi dry to the end!

 Alex was pretty intrigued with the fish Renee caught, and couldn't get over her desire to step on it.  I kept telling her "No, that's not nice", and she kept inching forward and saying "I just want to step on it".  Finally I walked off to check on Heidi, and not a minute later I heard the most hysterical scream from Alex as she frantically came running to me.  Turns out the fish wasn't quite dead yet.  I'm pretty sure she tried to step on it and at some point it flopped around.  Later on she revealed that she was afraid it was going to eat her.  Heidi has a similar freak out after first insisting that she get to pet the fish.

 Josie didn't last long and had the coziest nap possible on the ice in the middle of a lake.

 Heidi just loved the freedom and wandered here and there all over.  I had intended for this picture to be of her standing, but even her super light footsteps broke through the snow crust now and then.

 This is our stubborn child.  She shoves toothbrushes down the drain and says "No Way" and "STOP IT" more than anything else.  I was afraid to leave her side to take this picture because of how frequently she tried to push the pole into the hole in the ice.

 I agree Heidi, fishing is a fantastically fun thing to do on a Saturday afternoon.

Alex napped on the drive there and Heidi on the way back.  The highlights of the return trip include...       -Heidi figuring out she could grab my hair through the back of my chair- with her toes- and the triumphant laugh once she did so.
-Alex having to pee on the side of the road. In her excited words "The BEST pee EVER!"
-Alex getting annoyed with the sun shining in he eyes and saying "I don't like it in my eyes, put the Sun in Heidi's window instead."

We got home just in time for the kids to play outside with Archie while Kate and Ben made a fantastic Paella for dinner.  It was a wonderful Saturday- just about perfect.

Things I've forgotten to write about

Alex set a goal in Joy school to save up her money to buy Mommy a Christmas dress.  About 1/4 of the way to the goal she decided that she wanted to buy a toy instead.  So off we went to the store to see what she could buy with all the quarters she had earned washing windows and cleaning the house.  Her first choice was a plush smurf, we kept walking.  She wanted the playdough dentist and the bride and groom Barbie set.  There were probably 30 more requests as we wandered the isle, but most of them were out of her price range which really surprised me. Toys are expensive!  We finally settled on Polly Pocket until she saw Little Mermaid Barbie and then about 2 minutes later choose Rapunzle Barbie.  Of all the choices I was most OK with this one and so we left.  She loves the doll and combs her hair all the time.  But best of all it taught her about wants and needs and money.  Unfortunately for her- Mommy doesn't pay that well for chores and her piggy bank is empty, so the play dough dentist thing she talks about everyday will just have to wait.

I decided when we moved (and Alex graduated from her toddler bed into a twin bed) that for her birthday I would make her a quilt comforter.  I finally made it to the fabric store to pick up what I would need and accomplished the cutting out of the pieces (with a bit of help).  WOW, I've never made a real quilt before and I've totally bitten off more than I can chew!
The idea is polka dots.  Each quilt square is made up of 4 smaller squares and together they form a circle inside of a square.  I've spend countless hours on this thing and I haven't even finished sewing the tiny squares of 1/4 circles together.  Hopefully it turns out and is worth all the trouble, but BOY, Heidi's 4 year old quilt is going to be a lot simpler!

Optimistic

Good things have been happening here, and I just have to write them down so I can look back on a day when maybe things arn't going so great.

Alex asked me to take this picture of her- with her briefcase, on the exercise bike.

I filed our taxes in January this year! It was a huge relief just to get them done, but when I found out the HUGE amount of money we would be getting back, I about died!  I seriously called 3 people to ask what they knew about taxes and if this could be true or not.  Lets just say that having a child, Tyler in school not making much money and the earned income credit- was a recipe for happiness.

 I've been playing with the idea of preschool and pricing them out, and WOW, they really add up!  I wasn't sure if we would be able to afford sending Alex at all, but with this return we will not only be able to pay for preschool, but also send out P.A. school applications, and send Tyler to interview at any schools that may want him.  Depending on how much that costs we may even be able to afford a modest little vacation to Southern Utah, or a neighboring state! I've been dying for a real family vacation!

I had decided that if we got over $300 back then I would ask Tyler if I could splurge and spend $200 on new clothes.  I don't think I've seriously bought nice, non-clearence new clothes since before Tyler and I got married. Sad huh.  But lets be honest, I never really cared much for fashion or keeping up with trends so it wasn't super hard.  Well, we got a lot more than $300 back, so I got myself a fancy new pair of knee high boots, some new pants and 2 new shirts and I'm feeling like a million bucks!  It's amazing what some new clothes will do for a girl!  Now I'm on the hunt for a nice dress and a good pair of shoes and I will be set for another 5 years.

Another giant eyes no smile picture of Heidi. These are my specialty.

Tyler has been doing a great job teaching his Anatomy lab, and got to know the guy who teaches the section before him.  Apparently he changed his mind about wanting to teach this year and offered the section to Tyler.  So now Tyler will be going up to SLCC and teaching an 2 classes and only have to do the prep work once.  It's a great blessing in our lives because it offsets the cost of gas, we can sure use the funds, and it's twice the money for about the same amount of work.  I'm so proud of my "professor" husband!

I love teaching Joy School, but my turn is finally over and it's at someone else's house for the next month! I suddenly feel like I have all sorts of time now.  And it couldn't have come on a better week.  This year Tyler and I decided that instead of stressing over what to buy for people for their birthday, we would instead throw them a party!
Monday was Susan's party and I think it went fairly well.  Awhile ago I quizzed the January and February birthdays on the things they like and what kind of a party they would like.  I was surprised at the answers and the diversity!  Susan wanted to keep things simple (something I'm not so good at), so with Kate and Kara's invaluable help we made a fantastic dinner with fancy goblets and a kids table (so the adults could enjoy their meal).  After dinner, brownies and gifts we went to the reorganized for that occasion basement, and watched a few home videos.  I was able to get a video clip of everyone in the family saying their favorite thing about Grandma, and the video turned out great!  We had carmel popcorn while we watched and then threw in a few super old videos of family vacations when Tyler was a kid and even some of Susan as a baby and Grandma Jake when she was young!  I think it turned out pretty good.

Friday we celebrated Kate's Birthday and started things out with a 1 K!  Kate loves running so I scavenged a bunch of old matching youth conference t-shirts and repainted them to say (I heart K. 1K) and then everyone had to run around the block before dinner.  It was pretty fun and funny.  We had a great dinner of Salmon and roasted veggies, then Apple cheese crisp for desert (the cheese part is slowly growing on me).  After dinner we did a round of minute to win it games and by the end of the party I think everyone was finally partied out!

Pre sledding group.  The older I get the more my life is like "A Christmas Story". The kids had to sit outside because they were dying of heat in the house. Heidi kept falling over and couldn't get up.

Saturday was the Kara's party and probably the funnest of them all because it was sledding!  We drove up Tibble Fork to the fantastic sledding hill there and spent a couple of hours wearing ourselves and the kids out on our own private hill.  Heidi LOVED it, and it was so funny looking at her snow covered face while she giggled and asked for more.  Alex took a few minutes to warm up to it, but by the end she was hauling her own sled up the hill and yelling at everyone NOT to catch her.  Archie was a dive bomber, I know he ran into me at least twice, and I'm surprised Ben and Devin made it out alive.  We ended the activity with fancy hot chocolate and doughnuts while the kids played in an awesome igloo someone had made.  It made everyone remember why we have been wanting snow all winter.

Favorite place in the house.

Saturday ended with me and the kids driving around looking for something fun to do.  We ended up as Maceys for 50 cents worth of soft serve goodness and my heart just melted watching those two eat their  icecream (Alex ate the chocolate half of her swirl cone first, and Heidi insisted on eating her's with a spoon).  It was one of those great Mom days where everything went right and the kids were behaved.

Susan got a Wii for her birthday and so we've been doing Zumba.  I've set a goal to get up early every morning and workout and then read scriptures to the kids while they eat a healthy breakfast.  I'm going on almost 2 weeks in a row and feeling great!  It's amazing what that does to start out my day and I hope I can keep this a life long habit.

We have church at 9am this year.  It's wonderful.  I have entire hours in the afternoon where I can relax guilt free and read or nap or just talk on the phone while Heidi sleeps and Alex magically entertains herself.  I love it.  It's my favorite day of the week.

I rearranged a few rooms in the house this week.  It's interesting how switching things up every now and then can refresh everything.  The kids are suddenly re-interested in playing with their toys, and things seem somehow cleaner.

I guess all in all I finally feel like we are almost in reach of our goals.  For so long it seems like life has been a few more semesters of school, just a handful of classes, one more year of this or that and THEN we will be there.  I know we still have a long road ahead, and who really knows what the future will bring but at least with Tyler's graduation in sight I feel something will happen in the next year.

Tyler caught us ending the day with a few scripture stories clips from LDS.org.

So those are the happy thoughts.  It's so fun to be around family, and my kids and I have hit a good spell- hopefully with a little work it will last awhile!