Mom, I'm Bored....

School is out. And now comes the challenge of what to do with our days when we are home all day. If I let them, the kids would play computer all day. For Family Home Evening, we came up with a list of our Have tos and our Want tos for the summer. There are some duplicates on the list because we were all writing things down at the same time on a poster for the wall. We set a time limit for computer each day, and now they can just refer to the list when they don't know what to do.

The have to list is pretty short:
Brush teeth
Brush hair
Shower
Chores
-rooms: clothes, books, bed, toys
-family job
-dishes
-backyard
-vacuum
-dust
Scriptures and prayers
Journal
Practice music
Spanish lessons (Courtney requested that we put this on the have to list)


Our want to list, a.k.a. Mom, I'm Bored! list:
Swimming
Make anime (computer program)
Visit/call relatives
Play with friends
Board games
Write a book
Bubbles!
Have a playdate
DANCE!
Play at the park
Beyblades
Catan (board game)
Eat!
The nameless game (something the kids do together outside)
Service
Practice Japanese (computer program)
Write a story
Movie night
Scrapbook
Dominion (card game)
Wii
Yardwork for neighbors
Pictochat (computer program the kids do together)
Ride bikes/scooters
Blacksmithing (Ben is building a forge in the backyard)
Scrollsaw
Scout merit badges
Take a nap
Read a book
Paint a room
Racquetball
Basketball
Pop Island (another computer program the kids do together)
Bicycles!
Go to the Library
Gardening
Draw Something (iPod app we do as a family)
Go camping
Farmer's Market
Go for a drive
Spanish lessons
Photography
Email friends and family
Read scriptures
Camp on the patio
Projects with Mom
Take a shower (here's hoping this can make it to the Want to list for the kids someday...)
Crafts
Put on a performance (music, acting, poetry...)
Write a letter to grandparents
Practice instruments
Go on a hike
Pick weeds (the kids have actually done this for fun before!)


We all wrote on the poster, and now it is on the wall to be added to when ideas come. It was great to let the kids come up with the ideas, so they have more buy in to doing them!

Johnny's strange brain

Johnny was just making up verses to I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus:

"I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus..."

"I saw Santa give us some Thrive food, hiding it in the storage cabinet just now..."

"I saw my puppy biting Santa Claus..." my puppy a.k.a. Max (his stuffed dog from the Grinch)

"I saw the oven burn Santa Claus..." because he was hiding some reusable macaroni and cheese for us....when we eat it then go to the bathroom it appears in the oven again...I hope it doesn't come out through our privates, I hope we eat it and it goes down into our stomachs and then it appears back in the oven...

Whoa. That kid is something else!  Side note...he says a.k.a. all the time. Hilarious!  We sure hope Santa doesn't try to bring us that mac and cheese. I don't think I could eat it...

Our musical kids

Our kids were born with their father's love of making music. They all sing and dabble in piano, guitar and recorder. Ben plays the saxophone. Ben and Courtney, but mostly Courtney, play the violin. Now, they have a new instrument to add to their musical resumes. The handbell chime something or other.  We went to pick up Ben today in the band room and while I talked to the music teacher, the kids picked up the chimes and without any discussion came up with this melody. The music teacher said he doesn't know any other kids that would come in and just start playing music like that. Improv handbells...I wonder if it will catch on?

iPad 2 giveaway!

There's this great little company called Zagg (whose headquarters happen to be in SLC) that we love. We found their awesome iPod screen covers and with the way Kyle tends to ruin screens, it seemed perfect for us. We also use them for our phones. Amazingly strong covers with a lifetime warranty. Totally worth it.

Anyway, they are doing a Black Friday giveaway of iPads. Here are the details, from their site:

On Black Friday, November 25, 2011, starting at midnight (MST), we’ll be giving away an iPad 2 every hour. 24 iPad 2s over 24 hours. Each hour is a new opportunity to enter the giveaway. So yes, you need to go to the giveaway page each hour and enter.

Entering the giveaway will be simple. To enter, just submit your email address. For additional entries, you can share on Facebook and Twitter. A Facebook share is worth two additional entries and a Twitter share is worth one additional entry.

The website for more info is: 

Zagg giveaway

Our Anniversary Trip, day one

In July, Kyle and I took a trip, just the two of us. This is a rare occasion for us. We had our honeymoon, a couple of times we have spent one night in a bed and breakfast, and I just remembered a weekend in St. George for a pharmacy conference about 8 years ago. I have taken a few girls only vacations in the last few years.  But never anything with just Kyle. Anyway, all this to say that a kid free vacation has been long overdue!

We drove the kids up to Utah to stay with both sets of grandparents and then we flew to Seattle.


Mt. Ranier as seen from the airplane. Quite impressive!

We got to Seattle, hopped in our rental car, and searched, and searched, for a parking spot so we could make our lunch at the Space Needle. 

The view from the rotating restaurant really is quite impressive. This colorful house really popped out at me as we spun around and was one of my favorite parts of the view.

After lunch we walked down to the pier and the Pike Street Public Market, best known for...

...the flying fish!

If you know where to look you can also find this amazingly gross gum wall.:)

The produce is super delicious and just huge!

One of the common sights we saw were these hanging flower baskets. They are all over Seattle and Victoria. It was so lovely, but probably impractical for arid Santa Fe.

A highlight of our trip was getting to see family we haven't seen in years. My cousin Lara introduced us to her fiancé Jesse.

They also took us on a tour of the outdoor art exhibit nearby.

After a long day of travel and fun, we headed off to our hotel across the river and learned a lesson. Making a reservation for a non smoking room doesn't guarantee a non smoking room. I still don't understand why they make more reservations than they can handle. But we were tired and just gave in and stayed the night anyway.

Not all those who wander are lost

Bettie, Katie and I went backpacking this weekend. It took a lot of convincing to get me to go...I am not a huge fan of camping. But Bettie has some awesome powers of persuasion and I went. It was a very relaxing and fun 3 days.  We always knew exactly where we were (Right here! What more do you need to know?), even if we didn't always know how to get to where we had planned. But in then end, we made it to our original destination. 

Our first destination: an unplanned but decidedly perfect detour to Nambe Lake. Great waterfall on the way. The lake was surrounded by impassible mountains so we knew it wasn't the lake we expected. But we loved it.

That night we spent in a nearby meadow. It got kinda frosty and the next morning we considered cutting our trip a day short because our toes (and everything else) were freezing in our sleeping bags.

But after we got up, ate, and packed up, we decided we could handle it and were ready for another day of hiking. That is Katie, me and Bettie. We found some friendly hikers to take our picture for us.

This is the sign that caused our detour. The path we wanted was not labeled except for the no camping sign. There were not nearly enough signs to point the way. Also, our map didn't even come close to showing all the paths we passed by. But we never felt despair and we found our way.

This lake was our favorite of the three we saw. We missed the lake Bryce told us to find but found this one instead and we loved it.

Our second night was in a field full of so many kinds of trees, plants, flowers, and bugs. This was my favorite tree, which we camped under.

And this picture shows the answer to why anyone would want to backpack:

There were so many butterflies and flowers. (Lots of bees and flies too, but we'll just forget that part.) So many butterflies, big and small. And lots of amazing flowers.

This was the end of our trip. (I'm in the blue shirt.) We were supposed to have a car waiting here for us so we could drive home. Our husbands were worried because they hadn't heard if we ever found the right trail (the only time the cell phone worked was when we were camping that first night) so they were waiting around in hopes of our contacting them to tell them where we ended up. When we didn't find a car waiting for us, we continued on our way and hiked almost 5 miles until Bettie got the attention of a couple of cute guys ;) with cars full of kids and they pulled over and picked up these three dirty hitchhikers.

The end. :)

Me...then and now

Thanks to Google, this week I found two people from my high school years that I have been trying for years to reconnect with. One is my friend Anna and the other is my favorite high school teacher Ms. Schultz.  It took some work but I found them with some pretty random information about each of them. Go google!! I thought it would be fun to show what I looked like in high school when I knew them compared to what I look like now.

Then (10th grade?):

 Now:

And as an added bonus, my cute family:

This photo is from last summer, but the current stats on my kids: Ben is 11, Courtney is 9 and Johnny is turning 6 this weekend.

Ben's movie making debut

For Christmas we gave Ben the Klutz book of movie tricks. Yesterday, he tried it out and made this film: The Neat Fairy. Hope you like it!

Courtney is adapting quite well to this broken arm

(Thanks to our awesome new iMac, photo and video posts are now a piece of cake and I will hopefully be blogging more  because of it.)

So, on Wednesday, Courtney collided with a soccer ball and this happened:

That day, Courtney was very quiet and melancholy. I think it was pretty scary for her. But since then, she has been happier than usual. This morning she came knocking on our door and asked:

(She is very quiet, but she says: "Can I have some medicine?")

Which, if you know Courtney, is absolutely a. maz. ing. She has also figured out how to make do with one hand in many situations. Today she changed her shirt on her own, with only a little help from me. More examples of learned independence:

That is a Beyblade, the biggest craze around our house right now. It took a bit, but she figured out to turn it around backwards and pulled the rip cord with her thumb.  The most impressive act yet of her one handed achievements is that she can now play violin one handed:

 She will not let this broken arm get in the way of playing the violin. This is her first year taking violin at school and it has made quite an impression on her. Her teacher says she is one of the more advanced students she has and that she will miss her. Courtney will not be able to play in the year-end concert, but her teacher is letting her keep the violin over the summer. She has already pulled it out 4 or 5 times since Wednesday to practice. :)

Disney photos...at last!

Taking the easy way out, here is a slideshow of some highlights of the Disney part of the trip. Enjoy!

Santa Fe in photos

My wonderful husband took two days off to celebrate my birthday.  Today we went downtown to try out our new photography skills.  Here are the end results of our day.  And just think, if you came to visit us in Santa Fe, you could see these places in person.  hint, hint :)  Enjoy!  (If you want to see a particular photo larger, just click on it.)

Really, Johnny?

Johnny: Mom, how many years are we dead?
Mom: Well...
Johnny: I mean, how many years are we dead before being a Grandpa?
Mom: Johnny, none of your living grandparents have died yet.
Johnny: Not even once??

Juanito

Johnny is in a spanish immersion Kindergarten class and is learning quite a bit...but not enough apparently. Kyle and I were talking in Spanish, you know, so the kids wouldn't understand.  Ben and Courtney immediately called Johnny, the 5 year old, to come translate for them.  "Johnny, Johnny, what are they saying?"  Johnny calmly informed them that he didn't know because his teacher hadn't used those words yet.  :D

Update...

You may or may not be wondering if Courtney and her sling got all the attention at school today. I drove the kids instead of sending them on the bus so I could help Courtney with carrying her things.  As soon as we walked in the classroom, all the kids were asking her, "How are you doing Courtney?"  "Did you break anything?" "Are you OK?"


It worked!  :)



By the way... it is true that Courtney wasn't feeling great yesterday but even more true is that she knows how to play up a situation.  When I pull out the camera to get a picture of how miserable she looks, she puts on her best sad/in pain face. She really is doing OK. In fact, after we changed her bandages this morning and then let her get dressed, she told me that people weren't going to know she hurt her knee because she was wearing long pants.  She was still limping a bit so I reassured her that the limp would clue people in.  Of course, when she isn't thinking about it, she doesn't limp.  Silly girl.

Beware Mondays...

Last Sunday night (on Halloween), Courtney hurt her finger.  She had her old car booster seat in the house and sat in it on the floor, but her pinkie was under it and it got hurt. Monday I took Courtney to the doctor because her pinkie now looked like this:

It's a little hard to see, but she has bruising all along her pinkie.  It's her right hand, but she is still managing to write and play violin.  The right hand is the bow hand, so this isn't as debilitating as a left hand injury would have been for her violin lessons.  She got an x-ray and came home looking like this:

It looks like a probable longitudinal fracture in the distal end of the phalynx. :) That means it is not a serious break.  I guess Courtney was enjoying the attention or something, because today, one week later, I got a call from the school nurse that I needed to come pick up Courtney from school.  I showed up to find her looking like this:

No, she didn't get in a fight. Not with a person anyway. She got in a fight with the blacktop on the playground during P.E. class.

I think her finger brace actually protected her right hand from further injury.

And this is how she looked when we got home from the hospital this time. Luckily, no break this time.  But she does seem to have a sprained elbow. Two Mondays in a row. I hope "three's a charm" doesn't apply for Courtney.  Please.   We'll see how violin goes tomorrow...  

On a side note: I think her popularity might take a bigger jump with this injury, right?  A finger splint is one thing, but a sling?  Much more visibility, much bigger must equal a higher coolness factor.  I remember breaking my arm at her age.  I had a cast and I didn't care that my arm was broken.  I had a cast and that was awesome!  Kids are so silly.

Side note #2: I do have to say how extremely grateful for Kyle's job. We can use the Indian Hospital's services and not have to go to the local large hospital. We get in and out pretty quick and the x-ray is right there. I am also grateful that his job provides for our family so I can be a stay at home Mom. It makes days like these a lot easier to handle.

A quick Johnnyism...

Johnny just said: "Mom, I hope Isabella's dog (the one that bit him) doesn't come out.  Teeth chatter!"

No really.  He said teeth chatter and then made his mock scared face and chattered his teeth.  Love it!

New crafty projects on my scrap blog!

Click on over to see what I made this weekend.  It was national scrapbook day and I actually stuck with it and made all 12 challenges from over on My Pink Stamper.  It was a lot of fun!  (But Mom and Dad...maybe you should wait until I am there.  Unless you want to ruin the surprise of what I made you.)

Why do we love Grandma's house?

Benjamin had a writing assignment at school and the topic was "Who I would like to trade places with for a day."  It was the last day of two weeks of testing and he decided to have fun with the essay assignment.  I'm going to try to get him to tell it in his own words, but until then, this is what he told us he said.  He would like to trade places with his Uncle Nathan because then he would get to live at Grandma and Grandpa's house and drink orange juice for breakfast.   Hmm.

I asked Johnny why he never takes a nap during the day when I always get tired in the afternoon.  He said it is because he thinks about Jesus.  At night he doesn't think about Jesus because then he would stay awake all night.  Hmm.

Courtney decided that we don't have any more babies being born into our family because Jesus decided our family is just the right size.  Ahh.  Now there's reason!

Talk about a making you feel guilty...

Last night Johnny wanted to play Crazy 8s.  We were setting up Apples to Apples Jr so we could all play a game together...but Johnny hadn't played before and just wanted to play his game.  We told him to give it a try, but he didn't want to.  "No!  I want to play my game.  God and Jesus would play with me!"

I should change this blog to "guess what Johnny said"

Courtney got baptized today.  It was a beautiful day and we were blessed to have family here to help celebrate.  Grandma Sevy gave the talk about baptism and was talking about how Courtney was being like Jesus in this choice to get baptized by authority.  "By John!" yelled out Johnny.  Right after Courtney came up out of the water, Johnny jumped up and down and said, "Go Courtney!! Wahoo!!"  Seems to want to get all the attention.


I think he redeemed himself at dinner tonight.  After the prayer, everyone started eating.  Johnny said, "Wait!  My Holy Ghost is telling me something!  We forgot to wash our hands."  I guess he really was listening today and really is trying to understand it all.