This Little Family

December: Decorating, Sewing, Performances, Hanukkah, Pip's Bday, Christmas and New Years!

2012-01-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

I'll start off with Seth's lovely paper bags! He felt like the last group of "Christmas" paper bags were way too cute, so he focused on making these more "cool-Christmas" I think he accomplished that goal. We just wont tell him how cute the gingerbread dancers are. :)

This was a fun set from a certain movie that we LOVE! It's tradition to watch "A Christmas Story" every December and "It's A Wonderful Life" on Christmas Eve every year.

Decorating: This is always a favorite for the girls. I like to surprise them and decorate the cupboards like presents while they are at school. They love to walk in the door and see it all Christmasy in the kitchen. :) Poor Pip didn't understand they weren't really presents and was disappointed to find our regular plates in the cupboard instead of a marvelous surprise.

We love making these snowflakes and laminating them. We add a few to the collection every year. We've got about 40-50 now. :)

This is the pile of scarves we made to give out to the girls friends for Christmas presents. They helped make them. We also make about 50 more with girls from our church and gave them out to passerby's after we went Christmas caroling downtown.

PIP'S BIRTHDAY

Singing Happy Birthday with her friends.

Making a wish

FAMILY PARTY NIGHT!

She chose her favorite dinner: mac'n cheese with hotdogs cooked to look like an octopus.

We had our niece Sarah with us for part of the month. She was NOT impressed with the octopus. It took a lot of work to get her to try it. :)

Favorite dessert: Yummy Chocolate Truffle Cake!!!! (To die for- just so you know!)

We proceeded to celebrate a Very-Pip Birthday by doing all the things she likes...

Favorite Thing to Do #1: DANCE!

This little kiddo loves to dance and boy does she have moves!

Makenzie and Seth made her a crazy dance mix and we had a blast.

Favorite Thing to Do #2:

Play with play dough!

Favorite Thing to Do #3: Baking and Decorating!

We made gingerbread men. Look how pleased she is with herself. :)

The whole collection. :)

On to Hanukkah!

Ever since we lived in LA, Makenzie has had us celebrate this holiday. She had a teacher who was Jewish and taught her so many fun songs, games, etc. about Hanukkah and we've loved celebrating it ever since. We don't know how to say the prayers very well in Hebrew as we light the menorah, but we figure we don't have to do it perfectly. :)

Spinning the dreidel.

Seth and Kendyl being silly with their gold coins they won in spinning the dreidel.

December Events:

Makenzie's first middle school dance. Seth and I embarrassed her by telling her our first 6th grade dance horror stories. Mine included me wearing suspender-ed hammer pants and being asked to dance by a boy who played the air guitar the whole song. Then another boy sent his friend to ask me if I would dance with him. I had, had a crush on this boy since 3rd grade and was so scared/excited and wanting to play it cool so I asked his friend who the boy was again wanting to dance and pretended like I didn't know him very well. He said he'd have the boy I had a crush on walk past so I could remember who he was (so DUMB Karalenn!) Anyway, my crushs' friend came back to me and said that my crush had said never mind and I felt dumb and disappointed the rest of the night. He of course didn't speak to me again! haha

If that was bad, Seth's was even worse. At his first dance he saw another boy dancing with a girl with his hands on her rear so he thought that is what you do and when a girl asked him to dance he put his hands there too. haha He was really put out with his family for not telling him that's how you are suppose to dance and when he got home and told them his poor mother had quite the shock. We also showed Makenzie mega gnarly dance moves like the Running Man, The Sprinkler, Grocery Shopping, Roger Rabbit, etc. We also taught her real dance tips too, like where your hands really go when dancing slow and how to punch a guy if he tries anything funny. :) After I dropped Makenzie off I sat in my car in the parking lot crying for about 20 minutes. I hate that as she gets older I don't get to watch her go through miles stones as much as when she was younger. I know, I'm going to be a wreck when she goes on her first date or when she goes to college. Well as it turns out the night was a success. She said it was so fun and can't wait for the next one. She didn't even have any horrible embarrassing moments to report, so I guess she'll just have to torture her kids someday with grandma and grandpa's embarrassing stories.

Caroling with the youth in our church on the front steps of the NY public library. Makenzie's the one on the front in a grey hat. :)

We had a pretty good turn out!

Getting pizza afterwards! SOOOO good!

Makenzie's Winter Choir Concert. These are some of her favorite buddies.

Poor Pip couldn't make it through the performance.

Makenzie's art piece in the art show!

Seth and I performed in our church's talent show. We played the song that he wrote and sang to me and asked me out on our first date with over 14 years ago. :) It's so fun being able to play and sing along with my buddy. When we were first married it seems like we played guitar together every night. In the business of kids and night time schedule we don't get them out nearly enough anymore. A few nights ago the power went out and it was so fun to put our kids to bed by candle light and because they were worried we got out our guitars and played them to sleep. We stayed up another couple of hours playing songs by candle light and we even finished writing a song that Seth had written the chorus to 13 or 14 years ago while we were still dating. :) We are determined to get them out more now. It was a great reminder of something fun and romantic. :)

Sweet Kendyl was Mary in the Christmas pageant and had a solo. She worked for weeks on learning that song and when she sang it filled the whole room with the most sweet, clear, angelic voice. I couldn't believe how beautiful she sounded. Makenzie and Pip were shepherds and Pip's job was to announce the appearance of the star. In the middle of a song a star lowered and Pip tried to shout out her line 3 times and was shushed because it wasn't said at the right time. She then scream/cried in front of everyone and even though she made her sisters embarrassed she made everyone else love her more. :)

Christmas Eve!

We had a surprise visitor come to our door bearing gifts. Santa stayed and relaxed for 15-20 minutes (he was pretty pooped after all). He gave them each a gift- pjs. We have a tradition that we can open one present on Christmas Eve- which is always pjs. Then we get to sleep in them that night and wear them to open presents the next morning. I love that swirly fabric on Santa's suit. :) wink wink. It's the same suit he was wearing a few years ago when we caught him on tape here.

Here's the pjs I made for Seth. Pretty ugly right? :) Well that's the goal anyway. :) I tried to find silly ugly fabric to make his out of. They are so comfy. He says they feel like he's wearing a blanket. He gave me a red onsie footsie pjs with sock monkeys on the feet. They are awesome! And no, I wont put a picture of me in them on here. :)

For Christmas Eve we also always have some sort of fish dinner. That's a tradition that Seth's family has carried on because of their German ancestry. We had yummy salmon and it turned out great. My family always ate by candle light from a wood carved pyramid with angels that would spin around from the heat of candles. I found a picture online of what my mom's looked like right here. They are so magical and sweet. I found a cheap nativity one a few years ago and so we ate by that and it was a peaceful and happy Christmas Eve celebration. We finished up the night by reading from Matthew chapter 1, Luke chapter 2 and 3rd Nephi chapter 1 and acting it out. For some reason I'm usually the donkey and the kids pull my hair to stay on and take turns pretending to be Mary for WAY too long... so this year we did something different. We acted out everything using our little nativity set. :) My back and hair liked this way much better. hahaha

CHRISTMAS MORNING!

They're excited. Can you tell? :) We always have to tape their doors so they remember to stop and not run into the family room. I heard Makenzie wake, scream in delight, open her bedroom door, and get stuck to the tape, and then say "Oh Yah!" I think this is her yearly tradition of how she wakes every Christmas. hahaha You'd think after a few years she'd remember that tape was there, but nope, she's Kenzie, so she doesn't. :)

Running into the family room.

Magical morning.

One more set of pjs.... for the elders serving in our area. We got to have them for Christmas dinner and we wanted to include them in our tradition so the girls and I made them some ugly pjs too. :) One of the elders has a girl friend who is waiting for him while he serves his mission. She going to be a fire-fighter so we made his out of fire fighter material. :)

Pip helped me sew Elder Hajje's pjs. She put all the scraps into my hair as we sewed. Don't I look so beautiful?! :)

Here they are opening their presents.

Elder Montierth's look is priceless as he discovered the "firefighter joke". :) I had called their mom's to ask for their sons' favorite Christmas dishes and recipes and family traditions they have we could do with them while they are away from home. Elder Montierth's mom told me about his girlfriend and so it made it fun to tease him.

Looks like they'll fit! :)

Seth and Elder Montierth playing guitars while Elder Hajje talked with his family. Oh these wonderful elders! I can't tell you how much we love them. We are so lucky to have them in our branch and in our lives. They bring such blessings to our family and my heart seems to open deeper with each one I meet. I may never have a son so I guess I just want to be a mom to them, support them and feed them as much as I can while they work so hard. :)

NEW YEARS (with the Fillmores)!

Cute Kenzie and Sam

Silly Kendyl and Claire

Sweet Pip and Jane!

We are so grateful for this wonderful family. We had fun celebrating with them (tacos and game night) and then going home and celebrating as a family by watching family videos and drinking Non-alcoholic Coquito- (coconut egg nog)

We tried a funny trick on the girls too. When we got home from the Fillmores at 8:15 I began setting the clocks ahead by 20-30 minutes every so often until we finally got 2 1/2 hours ahead of the real time. We totally tricked our girls! hahaha They kept running to the clock to check the time and then would say, "I can't believe how quickly the time is going!" Makenzie was so giggly and kept telling us that she was slap happy from staying up so late and Kendyl was having melt downs and saying she just wasn't use to being up so late. :) So at about 9:40 the girls thought it was actually midnight! hahaha We drank root beer floats and wished each other a Happy New Year and they were in bed and asleep by 10pm. After they were in bed Seth and I snuggled and watched a great movie until midnight.

What a fun night and what a wonderful year. I'm so grateful for the blessings, trials, growth, and mercies of 2011. I'm thankful for the beautiful people in our lives and that we have been able to live in so many different places and find them all feel like home and discover wonderful relationships everywhere we go. Most of all I'm thankful for my Savior and This Little Family of mine. :)

Our Little Annie

2011-11-30T05:14:00.000-08:00

Anyone that knows Makenzie knows that she's not "shy" in any way. :) In fact, she never has been. She has always been very open, precocious, and a tad dramatic. hahaha Which can be challenging as a parent, but when focused in the right direction bring a lot of fun and happiness to her and everyone around her. She also loves to sing and act and is comfortable being herself around whoever she is with and not worry about "being cool". This may just be something she gets to keep. I had always assumed it would go away as she grew closer into being a teenager, but I can see that she still keeps it with her. Sometimes her friends make fun of certain things and she'll laugh along with it or she'll tell them that it bugs her and ask them to stop- which they do amazingly enough.

When we lived in Los Angeles when she was much littler she was able to do acting for movies, commercials, tv, etc. and she had a lot of fun with that. We posted one of her commercials here on the blog a few years ago. The link is here. She was so cute and little I could squeeze her. :) She was also in "Beauty and the Beast Jr." at her elementary school and I got to help a lot with that, link about it here. We have had such crazy drifting lives that she hasn't been able to do much acting since LA for the most part and she has missed it like crazy.

Anyway, this year she is in a new school that is 6-8th grade and she wanted to audition for the play "Annie" that they are hosting. She figured since she was new and that she was only in 6th grade she wasn't very likely to get the role of Annie, but still wanted to be apart of it. I took some pictures of her before her audition because she looked so dang cute. Here they are below.

Adorable right?! :)

A few days after the audition she came bounding in the house so excited to tell me that she was in the play and that she was going to be a hobo in it. I danced around with her and congratulated her. She kept laughing really hard and finally the little booger admitted to getting the role of Annie! I screamed and picked her up and spun her around the room until we were dizzy. We jumped up and down and screamed for at least 5 minutes and fell down laughing. Then we spent an hour calling family and friends to tell them. She told me that when she saw they posted the Annie list she looked at the extras and didn't find her name and almost turned away feeling sad that she wasn't in it and then decided to just see who was Annie in case it was her friend Sam. When she looked at the top of the list and saw "Annie: Makenzie Hippen" she said her brain when blank from shock and thought to herself, "Makenzie... Makenzie... that sounds really familiar" and then it clicked and she wanted to scream, but there were a bunch of 8th grade girls freaking out around her that a 6th grader had grabbed the role so she smiled to herself and quietly ducked out walking backward out of the crowd. (That is exactly how she described it and I can picture the whole thing- I told you she's dramatic- hahaha)

She has been working her tail off. Everyday she has rehearsals for 2-3 hours and Saturdays are 4 hours. She walks around the house singing the songs and her sisters join in. It's the darn cutest thing to hear little Penelope singing "Tomorrow" in her little 2 year old voice word for word perfectly! Kendyl has become famous by association at her school and is always being asked to sing songs from Annie on the bus. One of the best parts for Makenzie is that one of her favorite friends, in a grade older, got the role of Miss Hannigan! They get to yell at each other, Sam gets to pretend to slap her and call her a drunk, and Makenzie gets to pretend stomp on her foot. They LOVE it! :) Here's a cute picture of them last year before a singing duet they did. Aren't they the cutest little buddies.

Her play is in a few months and we can't wait! All this hard work is bound to pay off. We'll post pictures, videos etc. when it's done. We love this Makenzie and the bright fun light she adds to our family and the wonderful example she is to her younger sisters.

More Brown Bag Art

2011-11-29T13:53:00.000-08:00

More amazing bags drawn by one amazing guy! :)

It's fun to watch the holiday changes: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, with a bunch of random fun in between. Our markers ran out of ink so he switched to colored pencil and I think prefers that now. :) I love waking up and walking out into the kitchen to see him busily drawing away. Our girls tell us that everyone waits to see what they bring everyday and that they are offered money for them, but they wont sell them. :) I love how the drawings come from stuff that happens in our lives sometimes and by looking at them I remember funny little stories in our family. I also love that the girls carry around and are reminded of their daddy's love every day. He's the best! Sometimes Kendyl or I draw them too so if you see one that doesn't look the same style or quality you can guess that it was one of us and not Seth.

You can't see how beautiful each drawing is when they are all compiled together like this so I'll show a few little examples below. I think I may just start a blog of purely his lunch bag drawings everyday..... hmmmm

Penelope's Preschool

2011-11-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

So for a few weeks I did a preschool with Penelope in our home, and taking little field trips with her.

Like to the park...

and the pet store where I almost caved into getting her a bunny...

Trips to the library for story time. See how she dressed herself in snow boots and an umbrella when it wasn't even close to raining or snowing. hahah She actually had that umbrella up all during story time inside that day.... :)

Learning about changing leaves and collecting as many as could fit in our pockets...

Or staying home painting...

And here's Pip coloring something I drew for her. She loves to do her work sitting on the table. I think it's starting a bad habit. I'm not sure where she learned it from?...

haha- I found Kendyl doing her school work later that day on a different table and had to take a picture.

After a month or so of doing preschool here with just us we found a few more friends to join with from church and now she goes to school twice a week with them. :) Us moms trade off teaching one week out of the month and then the other weeks we get to have sweet freedom. :)

Here's Pippy so proud on her first day of school heading out to her buddy Jane's house.

What a ham!

Kendyl is such a sweet sister. She made Pip's lunch bag for her school- just like their daddy makes them for the bigger girls every morning. hahaha Notice it's a drawing of Penelope walking her pet spider with her nose? :)

Here's the fun friends on a field trip at the zoo!

Poor Pip misses her aquarium that we use to go to a few times a week. She wanted to stand in front of this for a really long time and just watch the fishes.

This was too cute not to take a picture of. I took this picture a few weeks ago and Natalie has since had her little baby. :)

Today was my first time teaching. We learned about the letter c and the sounds it makes. As part of an activity we were "cookers" as one of them called it and we made cupcakes. They did every step. I was so impressed.

Here's our cute little bakers.

In the end they were all worried about eating cupcakes without it being someone's bday so we put candles in them, sang "Happy Birthday" to us, made a wish, blew them out, and ate them up. :) We also made little Cat in the Hats and read the book together during preschool. It was so funny because they were so stressed out while I was reading the book because of all the mess that the cat was making in the book. Near the end when the mom was coming home in the book one of the boys covered his face and another began crying. It was so awesome and cute. :) Hope I didn't cause any trauma. haha

We're pretty happy about this little preschool arrangement. I get to teach another day this week and it will still be on the letter c. We are going to read the Hungry Caterpillar book and make big fun caterpillars and I think we'll make it into a circus too with games and face painting etc. It's fun to go all out for this when I'm only in charge twice a month. :)

Brown-baggin' It

2011-10-17T04:56:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know my husband is the COOLEST! :) Every morning while we bustle around getting our kids off to school he sits at the table and draws on their brown lunch bags. It started as a fun way of writing their names and has evolved into a completely different creature entirely. In a matter of minutes it goes from plain brown bag to masterpiece. My girls have quickly become "very famous" in the words of Kendyl. :) Everyone swarms to their tables at lunch to see what their dad has created. Kendyl's teacher has her put the empty bags into a basket every day after lunch. He says he wants to collect them all year and create something for her out of them. Makenzie has begun a collage in her locker where every time people pass when it's open, they stop and stare. I take a picture before they leave each morning and the other day I put them all together in photoshop to so I could see all his wonderful drawings. For each girl to have a different bag each day, I wonder if he'll ever run out of ideas? What a sweet dad! There is no way those girls can escape a day without having a reminder from him in his own way that he adores them. :)

Kendyl's Baptism

2011-08-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

Well after almost two months I finally am putting these pictures up- a big thank you to Janelle for taking most of them and to their family and Seth's parents for coming to celebrate such a special day with us. Kendyl had decided for a little while that she would get baptized in the Susquehanna River in the spot where Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were since it's just a drive from here, but about a month before she got scared of being dunked around a bunch of fish- haha. So she went ahead and decided to be baptized at the church in a more traditional way. :)

Our beautiful girl!

Kendyl with daddy in the giddup :) I'm so grateful Seth could baptize her.

Makenzie terrorizing Bart (as usual).

Special picture with grandma and grandpa.

The whole gang. It's a little sad when I think of the crowds we use to pull at these sort of events in Utah where so much of our family can travel to or already live, but it was really special and intimate and I actually think that fits Kendyl's personality better than the 60+ people at Makenzie's baptism.

Our Magical Evening in the Forest

2011-07-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just get lucky and have a perfect moment in a day. This was one of those days. We decided to go exploring and found a beautiful grassy trail.

Kendyl found "fairy gems" broken pieces of cobalt glass which we let her hold if she did it very carefully.

There was even a hole in the center of a tree that we were pretty sure led to another land.

The trail had a path that went off it that we decided to follow and ended up at a huge rock. There was a sign that said it

was a rock that had been deposited by a glacier long long ago. We took turns making up a story about the rock and how it got there as we sat on the benches by it. We made up that the glacier was passing through to find his mommy, but thought this forest was so beautiful that he'd leave his heart here. The rock was the protection that held his heart in the center of it. :)

As we were taking turns telling the story a butterfly zoomed all around us landing on us sometimes. Kendyl decided that the butterfly was protecting the glacier's heart and that we needed to prove we were friends and needed to dance for the butterfly. Then the butterfly danced all around us too. When we left the girls made sure that we deeply bowed and curtsied to the butterfly and the glacier's rock. It was so fun! So nerdy and so fun. :) I am so grateful to have a husband who will join in with these silly adventures and be such a fun dad to our princesses. Sometimes you just get lucky.

Graduations!

2011-07-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

Kendyl graduated from 3rd grade this last year and Makenzie graduated from 5th. For some reason most of my pictures of Kendyl turned out blurry, but I did somewhat salvage this one and my friend sent me the picture of Kendyl and her buddy Claire below.

We had such a surprise at Kendyl's graduation. The classes were singing a song on the risers and then in the middle of it Kendyl stepped down and began singing a solo. At first I was worried that she was confused and thought it was time to go, but then she stood up to the mic and began singing. I couldn't believe it! Out of her mouth came the sweetest clearest voice. I was blown away. She really has been a shy girl most of her life and even at home hasn't sung very loudly with us when we sing songs at night. This last year I could hear her little voice emerging and could tell it was lovely, but I had no idea she was that good until the graduation. What an angel~ I was completely shocked that we didn't know that she had a solo until that very moment. A few other kids stepped up and joined and then they all stepped back to their places after a minute or so to join the rest of the group. Kendyl was in heaven singing her heart out. She didn't notice that her solo was suppose to be done and stood there at the mic continuing to sing with the rest of the 3rd grade. The music teacher kept signaling for her to go back and she didn't understand. It was so cute when recognition dawned on her :). She stopped short, smiled, and high-tailed it back up the bleachers. :) Everyone chuckled and I didn't feel embarrassed just in awe. What a sweetheart! I wish I had a recording of it! It hurts to think that I don't. I know this wont be the last time we hear her sing a sweet little solo voice and next time I'll have a camcorder ready.

Here she is with her buddy Claire. These two are peas in a pod. Makenzie loves Claire's older sister- Sam and Penelope's best friend in the world is Claire's younger sister Jane. They live a few streets from us and there couldn't be a happier fit. We LOVE their parents and the entire family. Claire's oldest sister Bailey is the best babysitter in the world. She's super busy, but the girls adore her when we can get her.

Onto Ms. Makenzie. :) For her graduation she requested and was granted to be able to wear mascara and a little green eye shadow, for which her mother regretted as soon as she saw these pictures below and told her that she has to wait until she's 20 to wear again! I mean look at her! What in the world? She looks 14- scary! :) She felt beautiful and hammed it up the entire day- of course.

Flowers from daddy!

So maybe we are in for it. Yikes! Good thing she's such a sweetie and a big nerd deep down. :)

Cute Penelope

2011-02-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

I just thought this was too cute not to share. :0)

Our silly Pip loves to dress herself in the morning, can you tell?

Here's some cute phrases and their translations she uses as she tries to figure out this English language of ours and be understood...

"Dennis" means Makenzie (probably my favorite- that's what we call Kenzie now).

"Dan-o or Daniel" means Kendyl (better than what Kendyl use to call herself- which was DoeDoe)

"Gogs-a-malk" means chocolate milk (a must have for bedtime. It's how I finally got her weened.)

"Torddddle" means turtle. She likes to roll her d's and t's like they are r's. It's very cute to hear her roll them when she calls for dardddy (daddy).

"Pie-ets a cart-a-bean a weeee ahhhhhhh" means Pirates of the Caribbean ride is fun and scary. (She talks about this Disneyland ride a few times a day.)

"A puffer fish red hat a shark toot silly" another thing she likes to talk about. She's referencing when she went with mommy to the aquarium and a puffer fish stared at her in the shark tank the whole time we were there. She means that he liked her red hat. Also we saw a shark swim past and fart twice. This was obviously very exciting.

We love this little cutie. Our home is much more fun with her around. (Well usually it is- she's had the flu for 3 days poor thing. We hope she's on the mend though.)

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T16:39:00.000-08:00

Here's a few pictures of the girls class parties that Penelope happily joined in and ate most of their food and candy. :)

After school Makenzie delivered a special Valentine's Truffle Cake to a friend from church. She even got a $5 tip! :) It turned out beautiful with the raspberries and tuxedo strawberries. I'm so impressed with how much she loves to make these things.

Let's not forget Penelope and our kitty, Princess Tigerlily.

Poor Seth is in overtime so he doesn't get home tonight until 8:30ish, but our family had a lot of fun this morning with him before school and work and we celebrated a lot this weekend as well. Valentine's Day isn't necessarily a "romantic" holiday for us, but we sure have a fun time as a family.

The Makenzie H. Bakery and then some!

2011-02-12T14:02:00.000-08:00

Kenzie's been having a great time these past couple of weeks. She started her own bakery (again).

It's no surprise to anyone that knows her how much she loves to bake (invent) food. She began making her own creations at a very, very young age and now makes bread every week and dinner about 2-3 times a week. Which I think is pretty amazing for a 10 year old.

We like to look back at some of her creations and recipes that she use to make me post on her blog like (here) and (here -you'll have to scroll down to the Sugareeola Recipe) and many more. We've had to eat a lot of disgusting things in order to not discourage her budding talent and now it's paying off. :)

Now, the reason for a bakery....

Makenzie wants this...

A 3D dsi which get's released in stores March 27 of this year. And my goodness it's only the cheap price of $250!

You've got to be kidding me!? Well no, she's not. But that is what I said when she said she wanted one. Let me say first that she use to own a ds, which we bought and completely surprised her with on her 8th bday. She was too young to take good care of it and wouldn't remember to always put it away. In fact one day when I had already got after her 2 times to pick it up off the floor of her room I stepped on a shirt on the floor of her room and heard a crunchy sound. Well that clever girl tried to just cover it up with a shirt instead of taking the time to put it away. So I told her she could earn the money herself, but on her allowance that would take about 2 1/2 years. :) I also try to find anyway to teach my kids how to work for things they want. (i.e. she saved this entire last year to buy her own bike- she use to have a really nice one that was a gift, but after a few months she left it at the park and forgot to bring it home for 4 months! It was no surprise that it was stolen.) Maybe saving up and earning it herself will help her take better care of her stuff. I guess we'll see.

Apparently, saving for 2 1/2 years wouldn't do. She worked on the computer for several days making a flyer for a bakery. Then she spread the word (I helped too by swallowing my pride and posting it to a church blog to help her along). Before I knew it the orders were coming in like crazy. She cooks all Saturday morning (cookies, bread, truffle cake, fudge, etc.) and delivers by 2pm. In the past two weeks she's made almost $60! At this rate she'll have that 3dsi by it's release date.

Oh my kid!

Another bit of exciting news is that Makenzie has been selected to be in a city wide honor choir, which will have its performance on her bday of all days. :0) She couldn't be more excited! Every school in the city is allowed to pick only 3 children from 4th and 5th grade. Makenzie auditioned along with 1/3 of the 5th graders in her school and was chosen! She is beyond ecstatic. She found out just before school got out on Friday and came running off the bus to tell me. She jumped all around the house and proceeded to jump all around the backyard until she made it up to the top a tree screaming in delight. I absolutely love how she isn't too cool yet! :) Kinda like her mom I guess. I get pretty excited about things and can't help but show it.

Last of all, tomorrow in church she gets to give her first talk in sacrament meeting (in front of the entire congregation). She's been getting ready for it and is very excited and slightly nervous. We know she'll do great.

So here's to Makenzie- our growing, singing, entrepreneur of a kid who has a lot of stuff going on in her life! It's nice to have these small victories in the middle of a lot of regular, boring and sometimes crappy life. :) We sure love her.

The Valentine Trick

2011-02-09T09:54:00.001-08:00

See this happy child...

.... don't let that sweet smile fool you.......she's a tricky one.

I'll tell you why.

This is my 7 year old daughter (in her new glasses) with her Valentine box she and I have made. A few days ago she came home from school saying that she needed to get a box and decorate it for holding Valentines for her class party next Monday.

You might think all you need is some stickers, makers, etc., but you'd be wrong. No, my Kendyl needed to have it be in the shape of something incredible... so we brain stormed about ideas of what to do with a box to make it fun and creative. Some of her ideas included R2D2 with real light up knobs, a car, pirate treasure box, a mailbox, and on and on until the glorious idea of Princess Rapunzel's tower. We already had the Rapunzel Barbie so all we needed was a cardboard cylinder and some spray paint. We had all the other fixins in different bins of craftiness. :0)

So after 3 hours yesterday of spray painting, cutting, gluing, making curtains, cutting out stones, adding trims and wood dowels, making a flag, and adding extentions to Rapunzel's already long hair the castle tower was complete. (Please don't ask why I have so much crap in my crafty bins).

We even found a little red bird to glue below Rapunzel's window.

We made it so the top tower could open to remove Rapunzel and the bottom part of the tower was a completely different container to keep the Valentines in. Through the back is the slot for putting the Valentines in or you can remove the bottom lid to put extra big candy in. (Kendyl is hoping this has to be removed a lot) :)

There was much celebrating last night in the wonder-fulness of such a tower.

The celebrating continued in the morning as my little Kendyl Fairy danced around her tower in delight.

So why is my daughter such a stinker you ask?

Because when I handed it to her to take to school this morning she looked at me sheepishly and admitted that she was just suppose to bring a plain old box to school and the class would be decorating them there with the teachers supplies! I was a little dumbfounded at first thinking I understood her wrong. She comforted me by saying that it was okay that her box was so wonderful because now she'll have the best box in the class while everyone else's has to be plain, that she would be the most famous, and isn't that good news?

U-hem, excuse me?

(I think she's been reading too many Junie B. Jone's Books)

*sigh*

Oh well, I'd be lying if I didn't admit to how much fun it was to make. :0) Oh my sneaky Kendyl.

Getting Help with the Laundry

2010-12-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

Our laundry has been piling up all week. I didn't fold it at night like I usually do, because I figure I'm on Christmas vacation :) Needless to say it filled and overflowed Penelope's unused crib (she prefers her port-a-crib) and I decided to recruit the entire family.

So first we grabbed all the laundry and put it in the middle of the family room. Seeing it in such a big pile reminded us of fall leaves and so naturally we had to jump in it over and over and over again. :) We learned a few things from this...

1. Seth learned that his body is older and it hurts his backside to jump into such a "hard pile of clothes."

2. Makenzie learned that if you hit the pile at just the right angle it forces dry boogers to fly out of your nose. She was very excited about this discovery while mom was disgusted and considered washing the whole pile again.

3. Kendyl discovered it's much more fun to jump in laundry than to separate and fold.

4. Pip discovered that if the pile is too steep you'll roll off the edge onto the wood floor.

5. Mom was reminded that all fun/rowdy things end in tears. Well that is until she says that out loud while promptly making 2 children stop crying and swear that they are happy and can they please keep doing it.

Here are some pictures from our escapade.

Kendyl catching a whole lot of air!

The Incredible Makenzie's jumps

Penelope and mom try it out

Seth's jumps.... and falls... and hurts. :)

If you were a fly on the wall in our house...

2010-07-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

... you would have heard these statements this week...

"Oh no PIP! Those aren't stickers, those are stamps for letters!"

"Mom, Kenzie just farted in my face!"

"That was because you were under the table poking a stick at my bum!"

"What's that all over Pip's face?" (It was lip gloss)

"What's that smell?!" (It was an entire tub of Vick's Vapor Rub smeared all over Penelope by herself of course)

While I was making dinner I called to check if Makenzie was still watching after Penelope and if everything was okay. Her reply:

"Yah- everything's fine except Pip just took off her diaper and peed all over the floor." (Oh sure, that sounds like everything is fine.)

"Mmmm. Penelope's breath smells good. Like peaches!" (She thought her older sister's deodorant would taste as good as it looked. Apparently it didn't. She kept pointing to her tongue and saying "Uck!")

While I was getting dressed Makenzie screamed from the familyroom, "MOM! Kendyl just called 911 and gave the phone to Penelope so I grabbed it from Penelope and told them there was no emergency and not to come over." A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and Kendyl screamed and hid behind the entertainment center and began bawling saying, "I don't want them to come take me away!" We opened the door to discover it was actually the neighbor's apartment door that someone was knocking on. I think Kendyl learned her lesson. hahaha

"Ack!!! Pip just pooped in the tub!"

Is it any wonder I'm discovering new gray hairs everyday? :)

Summer Fun!

2010-07-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

We've loved visiting many places out east this summer. Seth has a job at Blue Sky Studios for a few months in Connecticut (very close to New York City) and the girls and I love traveling around seeing sites and him too every once in a while. :) We find stuff to do everyday. We want to see as much as we can and live it up. Who knows when we'll be out this way again. I have hundreds and hundreds of pictures. Here's a few for now and I'll put up a few more later (as soon as I have the time to shrink them down). But first... a few pictures of our Penelope- because she's growing like a weed and is too darn cute.

She's very impressed with the smell of these flowers. :)

Found her in here when I was switching out the laundry. So curious.

Our visit to Niagara Falls

The day I took the girls to a beach and we found a 150 year old lighthouse.

(Afterwards we drove a few mile to Yale and walked around campus all dirty, sandy, and beachy) :)

Visiting the Empire State Building

Statue of Liberty

Playing in the Susquehanna River (near where Joseph was baptized) and catching crawdads

More to follow...

What a find!

2010-04-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Well I finally did it! I have been looking for the perfect frame for almost 2 years for Seth's Halloween family portrait he made of us. About a month ago I found this beauty in an antique shop. I fell in love with it. We had been looking for a frame that was gold or we could paint gold, that's design came out at the edges and preferably in the middle of each side and looked old. Well this had everything we wanted. It was the right measurements to the 1/4 inch! It was made for this painting. Bless that little frame workers heart who made this over 100 years ago just waiting for us to find it. :) It is from the 1880's and had an original watercolor/charcoal inside with it's original glass as well. We have kept it all in tact, just put it all behind Seth's oil painting. Best news of all... my mom and I talked the owner down big time! Yipee!!! I had to walk away from it that day knowing it was still not in our budget, but as soon as I finished my taxes and realized we were getting a refund I went straight to that shop yesterday (crossing my fingers it wasn't gone- it wasn't- I had hid it :) and saved its lovely little life. Now it hangs beautifully in Seth's art studio/office on the main great wall. So HAPPY! :)

Here's a few pics of the details and how it looks on the wall. (Please ignore the pile of papers I am too lazy to file away or even move for a photo of the room) :)

Swine Flu

2009-11-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

Out for the count...

Stir crazy...

3 kids have it...

10 days in our house and counting...

SOOooooOOOO sick of it!

*It turns out that's what Makenzie had on Halloween that made it so she couldn't go trick-or-treating. She actually had it the Wednesday before and the symptoms disappeared for two days and then came back with a vengeance. Sorry to all the kids she was in contact with on Thursday and Friday before we knew what she had.

Here's a picture of the masks I made them wear around the house for a week so they wouldn't pass the flu onto me or Penelope.

And in the end here's one of the crazy effects of the flu that happened to our poor Makenzie....

Happy Halloween

2009-11-01T21:51:00.001-08:00

HOPE YOU ALL HAD A HAPPY HALLOWEEN AND LOADED UP ON TREATS!

(My friend Michelle made these adorable Halloween cookies for my bday this year)

We didn't get a full family photo this year because we weren't all in costumes at the same time. Makenzie and Kendyl got dressed up to celebrate at school on Friday. Makenzie had been looking forward to Halloween since last year when she discovered that she could glower and stare scary at people all day and it was okay since it was Halloween. She really freaked her teacher out last year and some of the kids in her class. In fact one of them just asked me a month ago if Makenzie really was a vampire because he was still scared of her from the previous Halloween!

By Friday night Makenzie began coughing and growing a fever and by Saturday she was way too sick to go trick-or-treating :(

A travesty for this little kiddo.
(She's even writing a story all about it- I have no idea where she gets her dramatic side from?) :)

Seth took Kendyl trick-or-treating and gathered up goodies for Kenz- while Makenzie, Pip, and I stayed home to pass out candy. Actually Makenzie stayed away from the candy for the most part (We didn't want her sharing her lovely germs) and Pip couldn't keep her hands off it! :)

(And yes, you can see we are the jerks that were cheap this year and passed out cruddy candy. I went to the store sure we were going to be the cool people and pass out the yummy kind, but it's such a rip off to pay $2.50 for just 14 little Butterfinger bars. No way! At least not this year.)

Seth and Kendyl had a great time, but in the end Kendyl got sick too. She was a little stuffy when she headed out but an hour or two in the cool night air was enough to send her spiraling down. She was officially very sick by 9pm that night *sigh*

Even with all the sickies we had a lovely Halloween sticking close to home and being around each other snuggling and watching movies. We usually fill the whole month with activities (especially the few days before Halloween). This year was MUCH MUCH more laid back, but still really enjoyable. Even the costumes were much more simple this year. The only ones I sewed were Seth's and Kendyl's. Makenzie's was simply strips of cloth for her mummy wrappings and Pip's and mine were one's from previous years. In total I think our family was outfitted for Halloween for under $40! That's a record! (I usually spend more than that on each costume in fabric alone.)

Here's our costumes...

Kenzie never fails to be creepy and Kendyl never fails to be cute as can be. Of course our little Pip is the sweetest little kitty around (sorry Tigerlily).

Since I made this Neil Diamond costume for Seth for our roadshow he decided to use it again, but this time he was a dead Neil Diamond. Lookin' good! Here Kendyl is showing me how to pose more scary.

Here's another shot of our sweet baby. We just can't get enough of her around here. She said her first word on Halloween- "uh-oh!" and now can't stop saying it. :) Toooo cute!

Hope you all had a very fun Halloween!

The Summer Do's and One Chubby Baby Coming Up...

2009-07-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

Well since it's been nearly 4 months since our last post I figure we are long over due. (Not to mention Hillory's constant reminders) :). I do have good excuses though- Since Seth has been home working on freelance it has been difficult to get to the computer. For a few weeks he's had his own computer, but I was so busy running that exercise competition that if I got a second on the computer I needed to update stuff for that. The last week or two I couldn't find any of our old files- believe me you don't want to get me started on that subject! I have wonderful pictures from April Fools tricks we played on each other till more current things, but I think I should start with a post showing what has changed the most in the 4 months of non-posting- OUR PIP! She's HUGE! and chubby! and cute as ever!

Kendyl wants very much to be a teenager and gets very jealous of Penelope's "woohoos" (what she calls them). She says it's no fair that Pip has bigger woohoos than her when she is older! We try to explain that Penelope is just so chubby that anything that can will hang over and poke out, Kendyl is not convinced. ha!

Next.... The glorious summer hairdo- lots and lots of cornrows and braids. We sat down one day and watched a couple of movies and got their hair up in nice little braids all over their heads. It was a dream not to brush through tangly hair everyday for a little while.

Of course braids make straight hair look very beautiful when you take them out and the girls were so excited to do so and here is the picture the wonderful frizziness. It brought back a lot of memories of me braiding my hair in small braids one night a week 3rd- 5th grade just so I could take them out the next morning and have these results. :)

Well I guess I'm back on the blogging train now that I have a computer to use and have located all my old files. It will be a little late, but I think I shoudld show our April Fool's Day fun around here. Afterall- it's Kenzie's favorite holiday.

Well, the dishes won't do themselves...or will they?

2009-04-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

Okay so I could have put this up a few days ago, but I wasn't sure if I wanted people to know how dorky I really am. Oh well, here it is anyway.... Before viewing this video keep in mind that we were nasty sick here for most of a week- thus the condition of my kitchen. Monday morning hit and I felt a little better and had my eyes open to what a truly big mess I had to attack around the house- starting in the kitchen. I looked at my dishes and thought, "Well they aren't going to do themselves, so get crackin' woman." and then I imagined them really doing themselves and thought how I could create that sort of a facade myself. I had Seth tape our camera to the top of a ladder and place it in the kitchen and every few dishes I washed I took a picture. Sometimes I had fun by opening cupboards by degrees and putting things inside them and closing them again and I pretended that the dishes had to travel down the counter to make it into the sink, or take pictures of the wash cloth in several positions around a dish, etc. In all I took 159 pictures to create this 13 seconds of "animation" and I think the next time I do it I will want to take at least 4 times that many pictures to make it even more convincing and fun. I feel a new hobby coming on. :)

The magical number is...

2009-02-05T13:27:00.000-08:00

429!

So that makes Jessica the winner whose guess was 425. Email me Jess (or call) :) and tell me some of your favorite candies and I'll mail that off to you and get it to you by Valentines Day.

btw- sorry I didn't post by the 3rd. I ended up getting sick and so did two of my girlies around here. I just got all caught up in that and forgot.

Celebrating Mile Stones and A Prize Give Away!

2009-01-27T13:06:00.000-08:00

On Saturday our little "Pip" turned 6 weeks old. She smiled her first real smile and she did it over and over and over again!

We were so proud and excited for her and I think she was pretty excited for herself. :) Here's some pictures we got of her during dinner last night smiling at Seth.

Along with that I finished my medicine for my second time of Mastitis. Here's a dessert with how we celebrated... It was to die for! It's extremely good and deadly. For the recipe click here.

The first time I got to the end of my medicine with Mastitis I made these cookies in honor of it being out of my body. :) Appropriate no? Cross your fingers it doesn't come back again. It's pretty annoying and very painful. Remembering to take the medicine every 6 hours is a pain in the pa-tooty as well.

And almost as big of news as Penelope smiling... I am off my blood thinner medication!!!! No more blood clot!!!! I had to be on it until Penelope was 6 weeks old. I'm so happy to not have to poke myself in the belly twice a day anymore. I always meant to take my containers of empty shots every time I went to the hospital for my doctor visits while pregnant, but kept forgetting. It's amazing to see that I did enough injections to fill 5 containers! Makes you wonder how many are in there right? Well why don't you make a guess. Now you can't quite do the math of 2 times the amount of days I had to do it because some are missing. I did turn a little into the hospital near the beginning and I wasn't exactly faithful of doing it every 12 hours once Penelope had come. I just kept forgetting. Anyway, make your guess and whoever is closest wins some Valentines Candy that I'll send you. I'll be sure to put in a liquorish rope so you can remember my big ol' blood clot that was the length of my leg. :) hahaha Disgusting!

I'll tell you the answer Feb. 3rd

"Brocolli Obama"

2009-01-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

Kendyl is in afternoon Kindergarten and so she could be home to watch President Obama's inauguration with me. I had her sit down while he was being sworn in and told her how special it was to see a new president come into office without there being a war over who would become the next president of our country. We talked a little about our freedoms and democracy. Anyway, today she told me something funny...

"Mom, you know how we watched the egg nog- eration a few days ago and you said it was special?"
"Yes."
"Well my friend Connor at school said he hates Brocolli Obama."

I don't think it's funny that these poor kids are taught this young to hate people/political figures their parents don't like. I just think it's cute that she thought it was called an egg nog-eration and his first name was Brocolli. Minor technicalities :) I'm sure she remembers that it's a special thing to live in a free country.

Flash Back Friday- "Dear Dairy..."

2009-01-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

Look at this lil' beauty that we found... my diary from 3-5th grade (most entries from 4th). This was so fun to find and see my handwriting and spelling and what was important or tragic to me at that time. It's been through better days obviously (the binding is completely detached and is held together by a single piece of tape on the back- Brilliant!), but don't judge a book by how it looks... it's got some gems in there. I love how I would title it with what I was going to write about complete with little drawings or stickers. Also I loved that a lot of the entries are "Dear Dairy" instead of "Dear Diary". Quite possibly my favorite thing about this are the entries every couple of pages that showed an alternate personality of mine- a evil streak you may say. I wanted to be sure that no one was reading this and so I thought that if I put in terrible insults, made up swear words, and death threats they would stop. Little did I know at the time it just made my little sister want to continue on. Below is a scan of some of the pages. In case you can't read it, I'll type it below the picture- spelling and all.

4th grade

Tony

Dear Dairy (diary),
I have a new friend. Her name is Tony. She has short brown hair, a ski slope nose, frickles (freckles), green eyes, and a long neck. Heres a pitchure (picture) of her.

-I love the arrow and a box where I was going to put a picture of her and then never asked for one so I wrote inside that I couldn't get one.

NEXT PAGE

4th grade

Stop reading now. If your not Karalenn don't pay atanion (attention) turn the page Karalenn and anyone that can read this. You are a very rood (rude), a nerd, ugly, and dumb. Farewell but (butt) head.

(Wasn't that scary?) :())

There are even better entries than those and meaner, but I'll save them for another time. If I get Makenzie's permission maybe I'll post some of her journal pages because they are just as hilarious. It's great to see how she writes being the same age as I was in this diary. I think Makenzie feels she can only write in her journal when she's completely ticked with me. So I love finding that puppy and reading through it. It's great for a laugh.

Happy Friday. Hope this brings back fun memories for you as well.

Kendyl's Newest Naughty Phase

2009-01-15T12:44:00.000-08:00

While my parents were here during Christmas to help out with the new baby and celebrate that time of year my mom worked on a lot of embroidery and hemming. She propped herself in that chair for many hours and required a lamp for more light. We dug around the basement and found this beauty. :) It may look like your "normal" 5 light lamp, but Kendyl found an opportunity to express herself. She was constantly putting them in different directions and shining them into our faces.
One morning she put them in this particular fashion and asked her grandpa if he knew what it was. A lamp of course. But no, he was wrong. It was THE "swear word". It took us a moment to catch on that she had arranged it to look like a hand flipping the bird. (Oh dear!) We asked her not to do that anymore which of course makes her do it more. Usually when no one is in the room. We will walk in and find the lamp flipping us off at different times in the day. She especially loves to make the lamp flip us off when she is angry at us. Could she be Passive Aggressive possibly? (btw- she learned about flipping the bird from Makenzie who apparently showed her one day so that Kendyl would know not to ever do it).
That's not all. She recognizes swear words anywhere and can pick it up from anything. We play a game where we will say certain sayings and ask what movie it's from. Whoever can guess it wins. The other day she asked us what movie this was from... "Son of a Buh Buh Buh... Don't worry dad. I wont say the B#%&* word." (By the way- the quote was from Home Alone! A rated PG movie- sheesh!) I think it's time for one of these....

A ClearPlay DVD Player.

Flash Back FRIDAY! Stick Arm Girl

2009-01-09T11:01:00.000-08:00

Okay. So we'll see how well I keep up with my new idea, but I believe I have plenty of resources to pull from to be able to share funny flashback memories and stories of the kids/our family on Fridays. I was going through an old binder where I write down funny moments and things the kids say and came across a great story that happened to Makenzie in first grade. What she did even inspired Seth to make the sketch below which I found in one of his sketch books this morning. I'm sure once Seth sees this post he will have plenty of complaints that I took a sketch that he didn't have time to refine or color etc. etc. :) So here's an exerpt from my memory journal of our kids...

The theme of this week's flashback- "Stick Arm Girl"

April 2007:

After school I was pushing Kendyl in a swing and watching Makenzie try something interesting a few swings away on her school playground. (Note: Makenzie wasn't paying attention to anything around her except what she was doing and so she didn't realize what area of the playground I was at) She had one arm inside her shirt and a stick poking out of her other arm hole. She was holding the stick from inside her shirt so that the divided end of the stick was proped against the swing chain. She was precariasly balancing in this manner and trying to swing when a little girl walked up to her.

Girl: "Hi, what's your name?"
Kenz: "Uuhh... Makenzie" (She grunted while not looking up because she was so focusing on her balance and it took a second to register what the girl had just asked.)
Girl: "I've never seen you before," she said in a tone like she was talking to a hurt puppy.
This made Makenzie look up at her in unbelief because we play there for at least 30 minutes every day after school and she knows most everyone. Then I saw the light click on in her mind as an idea dawned on her. A happy crocidile smile spread across her face as she said back to the girl, "Maybe you don't recognize me because I have a stick for an arm."
Girl: "Yah," she said as she stared at Kenzie's stick arm.
This made Makenzie even more happy as she said in the tone of a parent talking to a child, "Haven't you ever seen a girl with a stick arm before?"
Girl: "Na-uh"
Kenz: "Oh. Well, sometimes kids have to have stick arms when they don't have a real arm. My mom and dad gave me this stick arm so I could swing."
Girl: "ohhhh"
About this point I'd had enough and called Kenzie out of her happy pretending lie, even though I was thoroughly enjoying this inside and trying not to crack.
She almost jumped as she looked back and to the side and saw me.
Kenz: "MO-mmm!" She gritted through her teeth as if to tell me not to ruin her story.
I tilted my head, raised an eyebrow and gave her a look that she understood meant I was serious. She gave an embarrassed chuckle to the girl who was now explaining to another friend that had just walked up about stick arms. Then Kenzie took her arm out and chuckled and told the girl she was just kidding and ran away to find someone else to play with still holding onto her fun stick.

I laughed so hard about this that when we got home I called Seth, my best friend from when I was a kid, and my sister. I loved how much that felt like something I would have done as a kid. It gets better though because the next day...

... as we were walking out the door to head out to school Makenzie spotted her wonderful stick on the porch (she left it there the night before because I told her she couldn't bring it in the house). Again a I saw a light brighten across her little face as she remembered yesterday's adventures with stick arms.
As she picked it up and walked a little with it she seemed to change her mind and turned to me seriously, "Mom. Kids shouldn't bring these kinds of sticks to school because they are almost weapons! A kid got expelled for bringing a pocket knife to school because it was a weapon."
Me: "Oh- I see, but what about all the kids who have to have stick arms at school?" I asked in feign sincereity. :)
She looked up at me with concern and then she realized I was teesing and her brows went down and lips tightened as she said, "Mooom!"
That made me laugh which made her laugh and she threw the stick on the front lawn. As soon as we got into the school we spied a happy little kindergartener (remember Makenzie was a big first grader when this happened). The kindergartener was holding a small stick and bouncing up and down. We then heard her shout to the P.E. Coach, "Coach Jimenez, look at my stick I found!"
Kenzie turned to me and sighed rolling her eyes and whispered, "Kids." :)

The Story (and song) Behind the Name- Penelope Calypso ALSO... some extra stuff

2008-12-29T02:38:00.000-08:00

Most of my pregnancy Seth and I disagreed on what Penelope's middle name should be. I wanted her name to be Penelope Jane because I thought she needed a simple middle name with a first name like Penelope and my mom's name is Jane. Seth wanted her name to be Penelope Calypso because he loved the way it sounded. I would joke around and call her Penelope Jane and he would say Penelope Calypso. We could not get the other to fold.

One day on his way home from work he made up a song about her using the name he liked and came home and taught it to the girls and even figured out the guitar chords to it. The rest of my pregnancy he would sing the song everyday and get them singing it too (okay so sometimes I joined in- hey, it's catchy). The girls sang it all day long even when he was gone and finally I had to admit defeat because now their hearts were set on the name Penelope Calypso as well. Yes, I know, he plays very dirty. :) He was sweet though because while in the hospital he filled out the paper work and put her name as Penelope Calypso Jane letting me win too. So Makenzie added the last part on the song using her new full name. She also made up the part about how much Penelope's mom and dad love her. It's very cute. Without further adieu... here is Penelope's song- performed by our girls.

In case you couldn't understand the words I wrote them here.

"Penelope Calypso, you make my heart go flip-so.
I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say.
Except that I do love you. Sure wish that I could hug you.
Perhaps I'll find a way. Today might be the day.

You've got a lot of love already, even more than Makenzie love's spaghetti.
And Kendyl loves you too, more than her free tattoo."

Kenzie's part: "Mommy loves you too. She'd give her life for you.
Daddy's next, he will protext you.
Penelope Calypso Jane, what a great name!"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

I also made a little recording below of Makenzie and Kendyl telling us what they like best about their new little sister. We sure are having fun with her. It's wonderful to have two such helpful and happy big sisters who want to be little mommies too. I can't believe how easily this new little girl fits into our home- as if she were always here. It's been a very peaceful, quiet Christmas season and our hearts are so full of gratitude and awe for her- reminding us of another special baby.

Announcing...

2008-12-19T10:15:00.000-08:00

We went in last Saturday to be induced and after almost 8 hours of labor and 2 epidurals that didn't work, we got our little Penelope. :) She is such a sweet baby. It took a few nights to figure out that she might want to go to sleep before 5 in the morning- but she has now learned to take longer naps which means her mommy is less emotional and puffy in her eyes.

I wish I could thank the anonymous person who dropped off the little Santa hats and stockings at the hospital because it made me so happy to have the nursery bring her to me in this one night.

And we have to put this picture in because it's our girl's favorite. It looks like she is wondering whose hand is hitting her in the face. :)
A big thank you to my sister (Kristie) for creating that cute announcement at the top and Seth's sister (Hanna) for taking such cute pictures of our new little girly!

Making Fleece Blankets

2008-12-03T15:11:00.000-08:00

We had a few families over two weeks ago to tie some fleece blankets. Every year the UFA Uniform Firefighter Association has a coat and blanket drive for the homeless shelters in the area. These blankets are so fun and easy for kids to make and make such soft warm winter blankets that I wanted to make them. We did this for Family Home Evening the Monday before Thanksgiving and had a small lesson about being thankful for the many things we have and that a way to show gratitude was to give to others less fortunate. The kids loved tying the edges and knowing that the blankets were going to other children that didn't have a home. Of course they played around a lot too and snacked on pumpkin cookies, but overall I'm pretty surprised at home much work they put into it. Here's some pictures of our fun.

Makenzie became the "scrap monster". All the little pieces that were left over were tied to her in different ways. This was very helpful. :)

Here's a finished one.

And another. :) Good thing they tried it out to see if it was comfy. :) The Price's green one turned out great too. If you want instructions on how to make them you can look at this link here. There's absolutely no sewing involved and take only about 30- 45 minutes to make depending on how fast you are and how helpful little ones are around you. :) Keep your eye out for when fleece goes on sale and grab a bunch. I think they would make great little Christmas gifts too.

A Weekend Away, Twilight, and Christmas Lights

2008-11-23T13:48:00.000-08:00

A week ago Seth and I were lucky enough to get away for the weekend to Park City. (There really wasn't this much snow, but I love this picture) :)

Hillory and Grandma were sweet enough to watch the girls so we could have this last time to ourselves before things get topsy turvy with a new baby. Unfortunately my camera died 1/2 way through the trip so I didn't get pictures of the resort/spa we stayed in, but I found some pics online of it.

We had a great time being together without kids, exploring, relaxing and shopping at the outlet malls. One of my favorite things was when we went out on an adventure to find the hospital my great grandma Lennie use to own in Park City. She was a nurse there and ran it for nearly 15 years (through the 50's to 1963). It was built in 1904 for $5,000 and when my great grandma sold it in 1963 she sold it to one of the doctors for $60,000 who promised to keep it as a hospital, but sold it a year later for around a million and later it became a library. What I love about her is that she felt no anger towards him. She had received better offers, but chose him for what he promised. As far as she went, she felt she had done the right thing and what he did was up to his own conscious and so it didn't have any effect on her. I think she so cool to not harbor any hard feelings. I grew up with framed photos of the hospital on the walls of my home and heard stories about her, her hospital, and Park City through my childhood. My mom spent a lot of her younger and teenage years with my great grandma there. The building was white back in the day, but has been restored beautifully I think.

It has been a library since and is currently a Municipal Building. It has been moved from it's original location to Park Ave., but after calling my dad on my cell he was able to direct us right to it. It's just beautiful and so special to feel this connection to my mom's childhood. She use to play in that top room of the highest window. That's exactly where I would want to play too I'm sure. There was a plaque on there with no mention of my grandma, but mentioned other people who have owned it and it's history. My mom has sent them newspaper articles and proof of my great grandma's ownership and basically it has come to the point where they will redo the plaque to commemorate my great grandma as well if we pay them for a new one (about $1500) I feel this is worth it. I think I'll try to round up some funds from family to get this done. I just feel it's important. I feel a special connection to her because my mom loved her so much and spent her happiest years with her. She's who I was named after and I want to do this for her memory.

This last weekend was fun too, even though it wasn't quite as relaxing. :) A big group of 15 of us went to see the Twilight movie and out to lunch. I considered a midnight showing, but realized that I would probably sleep through it then with all the wacky things going on in my body with this baby. I went with no expectations so that I wouldn't be disappointed. That was the thing to do I think because I ended up really enjoying myself instead of getting angry that it wasn't good enough. Seth took the girls and some of their cousins to see Bolt at the same time.

The rest of the day we spent getting our house ready for baby Penelope coming and putting up Christmas lights. (We have to get the lights up a bit early here because if we wait till after Thanksgiving the roof is most of the time too icy to get up there at least that was the problem last year) Here's some pictures of that.

Of course some things the girls did weren't so helpful in getting ready for the baby like this...

I feel very blessed this time of year and am happy to be welcoming a new baby into our kooky, fun and crazy ways. Hope she's has excited as we are. ONLY 3 MORE WEEKS!

Why We Are Worn Out From The Month Of October

2008-11-03T11:42:00.000-08:00

Decorating:

It's always more fun decorating then taking down. Here's some pictures of our spooky decorations from this month. These pumpkins came out for parties and for Halloween night but spent most of the month on a special shelf in our house. We hung our 8 foot spider from our chandelier in our entry way and put webs all around him so it looks like he's coming down to get you.

Sleepy Hollow Night:

At the beginning of the month we went to an outdoor amphitheatre to watch the play of Sleepy Hollow. They had a lot of colonial activities to participate in. The girls loved the hayride best we think. (Here is a picture of Seth posing with Katrina Van Tassel, such a bloomin' lass)

Birthdays:

Seth and Karalenn both have birthdays this month. It was fun celebrating with family at Grandma Smith's house both times and on the night of Karalenn's bday the Willis' came and made dinner and dessert for her.

Kristen and Betsey flew in from LA to surprise Karalenn for her birthday because she turned the awful age of 30! (Sorry Kristen, I think you're eating chocolate in this picture, but you are in the other one we took too) :)

These are some yummy cupcakes that Makenzie invented and cooked for Seth for his bday. They were actually pretty good. All these years of experimenting is paying off. :)

We surprised Seth at work with a big candy gram and balloons for his bday and went out to lunch with him.

Thiller:

This was actually a lot of work and we had so much fun. We practiced all month and performed it for a Stake Talent Show on the 18th. There's a video of the performance a few posts below.

Parties:

We got together several times with friends throughout the month and made Halloween cookies and played etc. but here are some photos from the Halloween party that Kendyl had and the next day Makenzie's party.

With the older kids, we spent a chunk of time in the basement in the dark with a lantern telling add-on scary stories. Basically everyone dies at the end in all the stories. :)

I also played the guitar and taught them silly Halloween songs that you sing to regular folk songs using this great book. By the way- Gris Grimly is a wonderful illustrator.

Their other favorite part was wrapping each other up in mummies and timing them to see who's quickest. Afterwards instead of doing all the other games planned we just played in the toilet paper all over the backyard. Hailey was able to stuff half of it up her dress at the end. So silly. I gave them each a bag to fill up with tp and we ended with a "catwalk" showing off our costumes. They were hilarious with this. They all won awards for their costumes.

Witch's Night Out:

In October at Gardner Village they always decorate it so fun with dozens and dozens of ugly witches and have different events going on. We went with cousins and walked around finding all the witches and then another night Karalenn and her friend Janelle went for a late girl's night out shopping there. Everyone dresses up like witches and you wouldn't believe how crowded it is.

Pumpkin Carving:

Last week for Family Home Evening we carved pumpkins. They turned out very spooky if we do say so ourselves.

Halloween Night:

For more details about our crazy busy Halloween day and night look at the post below. We wear ourselves out every year with this holiday so that we can get ourselves to not be as spooky the rest of the year. It's the only way to be able to get ourselves to take it all down, sigh, and be done until next year.

Halloween

2008-11-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

The day started with a parade at the school for Makenzie. As you can see she is Wednesday from the Addam's Family and as she came up the isle she glared at people and stared right into their eyes loving being this character. Parents were talking about the scary little girl coming and pointed at her. What a proud moment for a mom. Since Kendyl is in afternoon Kinder, her parade was later that day. Kendyl didn't want to put on her costume yet, but still wanted to look creepy for her sister's parade so she attached a spider to her hair and put on a scarf that she made out of Halloween fabric scraps and Karalenn wore a witch's hat. :) To the right is Kendyl in her parade a few hours later looking like a cute little Corpse Bride.

The girls both had parties at their school that Karalenn helped at. She was running back and forth helping in stations and playing Halloweeny songs on the guitar. Here are their class pictures. This first picture is Kendyl's class and underneath is Makenzie's. Makenzie's teacher told Karalenn at the party that Kenzie had been creeping her out all day just staring at her. What a funny kid.

Right after school was our ward trunk-or-treat. And here's our creepy family. Seth is of course a most fabulous Frankenstein and Karalenn (in case you can't tell because most people couldn't :) is Igor.
This is basically what Makenzie walked around all day acting like. I wonder where she gets this from? maybe....

..... him? We have many many pictures of Seth in various Frankenstein-y poses.

At the trunk-or-treat party Seth got mostly two reactions......

The tough guys wanted to challenge him,

but mostly people just stared at him

like this- which of course made him

walk around more scary, staring at kids.

Here's a fun picture of some of our "red-neck" buddies at the party. They were hilarious. We decorated our trunk with pumpkins and candy and it was properly raided by little ghouls and boys.
After an hour we discovered something mischievous about our little Wednesday. She would come back to the car and pretend to check on how we were doing and then run off again. Well as it turned out she was actually sneaking and putting her stashes of candy in the back seat making her bucket empty again. Then she went around to all the cars and got MORE candy! Sneaky! That way people thought she was there for the first time- or so she thought. It's a little hard to forget that a creepy kid has come to your trunk 3 times! Look how proud that little stinker is. :)

After the trunk-or-treat party we went to a section of the neighborhood where most of the neighbors agreed to do a Harry Potter theme. There were 15-20 houses all decorated in some way to be Harry Potterish. For example there was an Azacaban, Ollivander's Wand Shop, Gringotts, The Daily Prophet, Umbridge's Office, Three Broomsticks, Platform 9 3/4, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, St. Mungo's Hospital, etc. It was amazing! They passed out Maruader's Maps of the neighborhood of a guide to find the different houses and marked the one's not participating in it in grey so you could know they were muggle dwellings. What a cool group of neighbors! Here's a collage of some of the photos from that.

After hours of parties and trick-or-treating Karalenn was BEAT! She sat on the porch and passed out candy while Seth and the girls went out for an hour more of trick-or-treating if you can believe it. They are nuts! :)
And no Halloween would be complete without a group of neighborhood teenagers causing a ruckus. At one point Karalenn went across the street to take a photo of her neighbors for them and while doing so a group that had just passed and got candy from her saw her distracted and ran back up to her porch raiding the rest. She may have been tired, but she had some fire left in her. She scolded them a good one and most of the kids gave back most of what they had taken.

We drifted off to sleep filled with way too much sugar and tired bodies. What a fun day!

Kendyl's Sick Day

2008-10-24T08:34:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Kendyl had a sore throat and stuffy nose so she stuck home with me. :) We went rummaging through my fabric scraps and bins downstairs to see what we could create and came up with these things. Makenzie joined in after she got home from school and was so happy that she continued creating til night. She has plans for her own little spooky box that she wants to make completely on her own and has a big pile of mess in the family room we aren't allowed to mess with until it's done. It's going to be a graveyard scene I believe. (Here's hoping she finishes today) :)

Kendyl's class had them cut out little "ginger bread men" figures that they were suppose to color, decorate, and embellish to look like their Halloween costumes. Since Kendyl is going to be the Corpse Bride this year, that's what her ginger bread woman looks like complete with her own grave stone and black roses. You may recognize scraps from their vampire costumes from last year, Makenzie's baptism dress, and even some from Kendyl's corpse bride costume. I love that she made her bald under her veil and drew her screaming.

Here's the details of our little spooky box. Makenzie opened new shoes yesterday morning and we couldn't just thow away a perfectly good shoe box. :) Before she left for school she helped us come up with the idea to decorate the box for Halloween. Kendyl had a little witch from McDonald's and I had scraps of black lined velvet from Seth's vampire costume last year to glue all over the box. We colored a small Tupperware in black and left stars and moons going around to glow with the battery tea light inside for a good witch's cauldron. Makenzie made this great little shelf for potion bottles which are actually just little beads. Add some lace trim to the top, glue a little spider to the shelf, add some fake webs, and voile you've got a spooky little room that the girls played with all night long. We really had a great time and nothing else got done for the day except meals made... so combine mess of meals and projects with no cleaning- I'm sure you can imagine what state our house was in that night. Guess what I'm off to do? :)

The "Thrilling" Weekend

2008-10-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

Since the end of August Kare has been teaching herself Thriller and then teaching others in the neighborhood the dance so they could perform it at the Stake Talent Show this last weekend. Here's a few photos of the group and a video of the performance. (She's in the cut up white dress with purple longer shirt/dress over it in the front to the right of "Michael"). Nicole's boy- Christian was in the dance too. He's just 7 and did an awesome job. You'll see him in the video. He's such a cutie. Her group had such a great time and it's a fun time of year to do this dance.

Seth also was a part of the of the talent show by submitting his Halloween family portrait that he finished painting just in time. Hooray! It's magnificent. The original oil painting is 3 feet by 4 feet! Here's a photo of it with his fancy blue ribbon, but it just doesn't do it justice for what it looks like in person. (He even added our little Penelope who is on the way).

Even cooler than dancing Thriller in front of a huge crowd was a surprise visit from Karalenn's friends Betsey and Kristen from LA. They flew in without her knowing and drove straight to her church where she was practicing at a dress rehearsal the night before. Kristen walked right into the room where she was dancing and took pictures of Kare's reaction.

She was so confused the whole night. hahaha Kristen and Betsey stayed with us Friday through Monday and had a great time hanging out, going to a movie and out to dinner, staying up late, and shopping. They had a great time being together again. Betsey bought them matching shirts because they are all prego. Betsey and Kare are due a few days apart and Kristen is due in April. Does anyone want to make a guess at what movie that line is from on their shirts?

We sure miss you guys!!!! Thanks for the trip!

That wacky tradition...

2008-10-22T16:02:00.000-07:00

A week and a half ago we had our first snowfall for the fall. So of course we had to keep up with that weird tradition that my sister and I made up when we were about my girls' ages.

Seth is such a good sport that he joins in too. Basically you have to run barefoot in the snow 20 consecutive steps and then you can run inside and put your feet in a warm bath tub. You can repeat it as many times as you like, just remember to fill up that bath tub before you step outside or you'll be sorry. I think when my sister and I first made it up we would just run and stand on the heater, but it became more fun to fill up the bath tub with warm water and rest for a while in between trips to the snow.

So like last year here are some of our silly pictures....

Princess Tigerlily even joined in this year. We let her go first since she had never seen snow before. She just sat and looked at it for a while, but eventually became brave enough to venture out. Our girls thought this was hilarious to watch.

Okay Kris... tag. You've got to show proof that you're still keeping up with this wacky tradition with your kids when it snows there. Love you! Anyone else can join in too. Comment when you do it and post it to your blog and we'll go check it out. I know I did this with my roommates in college and some of them still do it. My friend (Jessica) from high school use to do this with Krisser and me and taught it to her roommates too.

May through September

2008-10-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

Because I was so out of it for most of the summer I thought it was time to do a catch up. Yes, most of the summer was spent with me in bed and the girls at friend's houses in the neighborhood, but we did take some pictures and by August I was able to do a lot more so here it goes: from the end of May through September. (We'll post our Halloweeny stuff in a bit)

This was the last day of school for me teaching. I know I look silly. This wasn't my regular teaching attire. The last day is a whirlwind because we celebrate "Circus Days". Every class spends 8-10 minutes in each room with different circus activities and the teachers dress up like clowns. It was a really rough day for me with the emotions of saying goodbye and running out of the room to throw up every few minutes. The second picture is of me snacking all day trying to keep it together. :)

Two days later was Kendyl's dance performance. She was so cute on stage. It was her first recital and she did fantastic. I think her favorite part was wearing sparkly blue eye shadow and bright lipstick. We had to miss Adam's baptism (a cousin- my brother's oldest) because it was at the same time, but they had a swimming party afterwards at their hotel that we were able to join them.

Here's some pics of the swimming party. Kendyl spent all of her time near the stairs feeling safe and Makenzie and Adam were two peas in a pod sticking together. Kendyl actually put her head under the water a few times. That was a first. We were very proud. :) This picture was taken a few days later. If you look close enough you can see an i.v. going into my wrist from being in the hospital. I had been checked in with a blood clot, but had to stay a few days because of dehydration. When I got home I was hooked up to the iv for a while more and basically the whole time I was down our little kitty was taking care of me by sitting right on my leg or pelvis or stomach where my blood clot was- bless her heart. Needless to say I grew very attached to her- my little protector. Speaking of Princess Tigerlily (our kitty- her name changed from Princess Buttercup to Princess Tigerlily because the girls discovered her wild nature and thought she needed a tiger in her name but still wanted her to be a princess). She use to sleep a lot in this little plant when we first got her and a few days ago she tried to climb up into it again and didn't fit so well. She looked extremely put out, but was stubborn enough to fall asleep in that position. It's fun (and a little sad) to see how much growth she's done in 6 months.Along with all the help from sweet neighbors my parents also came for a week. It was so nice having them here. My dad spent almost all of his time playing with the kids or in the kitchen and my mom washed and folded about 12 loads of laundry and cooked tons of meals. It was so so nice. Here's a picture of my dad and Seth "being helpful" that one of the kids took.While my parents were here it was Kendyl's birthday. I'm so glad they could be here during that so Kendyl could feel like she wasn't shoved aside on such a special day. She woke up to breakfast in bed and family presents- as is tradition. She was most excited about her Barbie Mariposa as you can see. She picked two friends to celebrate with during the day- Halle and Megan. They are our little neighbors and are the cutest twins. We went to Artic Circle for lunch and played in the play land and then went to see Walle. Afterwards we had cake and ice cream. Halle and Megan's mom made this beautiful cake. Kendyl is really sad because we had just sang to her and then Halle and Megan blew out the candles while Kendyl was trying to think of a wish. We hurried and lit them again so she could make a wish and blow them out herself, but it took a minute to calm down- darn it. Finally she got the tears under control and that wish out. :)Some other visitors we had this summer were; my old roommate from Ricks- Sarah and her son Ethan, Seth's brother- Lyle and his family, and one of my buddies from LA- Nanette and her daughter Elle. Here's the picture of Sarah and I and our kids. It was so fun to sit and visit for a few hours. We were laughing and talking as if no time had passed in the last 10 years. I love those kind of friendships. She is due in just a few days. Good luck Sare-Bear.Here's a picture from the visit with Lyle and his family. Lyle is taking the picture so he's not in it. Hilly and the girls and Seth's parent's came for the visit as well and brought us dinner. (All summer they brought dinner Sunday night- so sweet) Please ignore how nasty sick I look. Here's the visit with Elle and Nanette. The girls spent most of the time under the trampoline having picnics and pretending. It was so fun to be with their old buddy. In the picture on the right Elle and Kenz are sad and petting our Tigerlily kitty because she had just run into a rose bush and her eye was bleeding- poor thing. Seth's sister- Hanna came and picked us up to take her to the vet because I couldn't drive yet. Our visit was cut a little short. :( Tigerlily can see pretty good out of that eye now, but does have a scar on her cornea. We nicknamed her One-Eyed-Willy and bought Goonies after that.Here's a picture of how pretty our yard looked on 4th of July. All summer people would sneak over while I was in bed and weed our garden and mow our lawn. It was so sweet. On the 4th the scouts went around and put flags in front of everyone's houses. I felt so patriotic. :) Usually the only flag we fly is our Jolly Roger.The girls had a lot of time on their hands this summer. Our house was completely destroyed many a time and not being able to stand for more than a few minutes at a time made it very difficult to keep up with them- bless their smelly hearts. Makenzie got very creative with cooking and inventions. Here are some pictures of some of them. This top recipe actually turned out pretty good. :)Luckily this wasn't a recipe to eat. It was a science experiment. You mash up an old banana and stick it in a water bottle, stretch a balloon and stick it on top, and wait a few days to see if it will inflate. Ours did a little bit, but mostly it just was stinky. :)This is a special invention for our kitty that Kenzie made up using a pizza box, an empty milk jug, a towel, teddy bear, and bowl. You cut a hole in the back of an opened pizza box and tape the opening of the milk jug through it. Next you put a towel inside the pizza box and put a bowl just under the opening. You can add a teddy or toy that your kitty will like too. This turns into a room for the kitty. She can sleep on the towel. You cut the bottom off the milk jug fill it with food. As the food runs low you can take the bottom you cut off and push more food through the hole into the bowel in the sleeping part. Very clever Kenz. :)Makenzie got a cute hair cut- chopping a good 6 inches off. She's been wanting to do that for a long time now. The last week of summer I was feeling better and could walk for more than 5 minutes, so we did the best we could to live it up. They had a swimming party combined with gobs of neighbors. Hanna and Syd came along too. I love the picture of Sydney guarding the slip and slide. She was a little worn and anti-social by this point so no one got to use it for a bit while she laid at the end of it. Hanna also took us up into the mountains so we could "hike" a little and play in some water. The girls had wanted to go camping so bad all summer and we just couldn't so Hanna was sweet and took up to a beautiful spot to play for the day. That night we set up our tent in the loft area and the girls watched movies and slept there. It was so fun we let them sleep there for the next 3 nights until school started. Unfortunately I couldn't find my camera on Kenzie's first day of school and so my friend Michelle took pictures of her, but hasn't got them to me yet. I'll add them when I get them, but for now here's some pictures of Kendyl on her first day. (Kindergarten starts a week after everyone else). She really wanted to wear that witch hat to school, but I convinced her that we could take pictures and she could just wear that near Halloween. She agreed thank goodness. At the school she found a familiar friend and they were so excited to be in the same class they held hands walking to class. She sits right next to a buddy from church so that was fun for her. The bottom right picture she is hiding her red embarrassed face because I had just kissed her goodbye. :) I think a mom is allowed to do that still in Kindergarten...This is a fun idea Kendyl did a few weeks ago. Remember her Barbie Mariposa? Well she used the wing flapping out tool so much that they don't attach to her barbie anymore. Instead of being bummed she has figured out something new to do with them... tape them to her backpack. That way she is Barbie Mariposa everyday. :) Believe it or not these pictures were taken still in September (the end of it grant you). I got in a fall mood when the air felt crisp one day and thought I'd surprise Seth with a mock "Thanksgiving" dinner. As soon as the wheels started turning and I had turkey cooking and realized I had stuff for mashed potatoes, yams, stuffing, green bean casserole, rolls, sparkling cider, and two pies I got really carried away. I made WAY too much food and so called in the reinforcements (The Willis Family). Since we had some Halloween decorations already out we named it our "Halloween Thanksgiving dinner in September" and feasted. Martha and I are due around the same time so we got a tummy bump picture of us at the top there. We decorated the table with eyeballs and a skull in different glass containers and used vampire, frankenstein, and witch goblets. Very fancy. :) We had a blast.
This last picture is from the end of September with my group practicing the Thriller dance. We started practicing Sept 6th and our talent show is tomorrow. :) We are dressing up like zombies and are pretty excited. I started learning the dance by watching tutorials online in August and then invited everyone in the neighborhood with fliers on their doors to see if they wanted to learn it. We had a pretty big group, but luck isn't on our side. I just got another call this morning of a friend canceling. That's the 3rd this week. :( We are down to 10 of us when originally it was double that. It has been really fun dancing and practicing though and it's kept my energy up through this last part of pregnancy and helped my blood clot to go away quicker so that's good now matter how embarrassing this might all turn out. haha

Makenzie's Guide to a Good School Year

2008-10-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

(By the way, I wrote this so so so long ago and planned to put photos up of their first day of school, but haven't been able to find our camera cord to upload photos since August :(- well today they got their school photos back and I figure that's as good as first days go. Hopefully we can find that cord soon so I can show pictures of summer fun, Kenzie's latest inventions, Kare and her friends practicing the Thriller dance for upcoming talent show, etc.)

In honor of the school year beginning I thought I'd post some of the tips I've heard Makenzie (big 3rd grader now) giving Kendyl (our new Kindergartner) for having a good school year and a good first day.

Tips in choosing a backpack:

*"Don't pick a pink backpack. Every girl in Kindergarten has a pink backpack."

*"Don't pick a backpack with any picture on it. It's cooler to have it just be a design or one color." (Guess Kenzie wasn't going to use her "I love Troy" High School Musical backpack from last year in the 3rd grade. HSM is sooo second grade- sheesh mom)

*This first and second rule can apparently be overlooked when the Kindergartner really likes sparkly pink barbie backpacks. (Kendyl wasn't buying into these rules.)

*"Try to find a backpack with secret compartments that could hold a jet pack or like 15 laptops or something." (hmmmm) (Well after 30 minutes in the backpack isle at Walmart Makenzie finally found a backpack with a secret compartment in the inside big enough to hold some pencils. It was pink and had- you guessed it- a picture of some cute big eyed animal on it. When asked what about her first and second rule of backpacks she said that it was more important to be able to hide stuff in it. So I guess this one should be rule number one.

*Tip from mom about backpacks: Write your phone number on the inside of your child's backpack and not outside or else a clever little boy who sometimes walks home with your daughter may memorize it and call her afterschool. (Um- I don't think so. Maybe when she's 20.)

Things to Remember on the First Day:

*"Lay your clothes out the night before so you can get dressed in the middle of the night if you wake up. Pick clothes that show your kind of style, kinda fancy, but not too fancy- so all the kids will look at you and know that's your kind of style."

*"Listen to the bell at recess because if you are just having fun swinging for a long time and don't listen then you'll look around and see just big kids all around you and when you go back to class your teacher will be mad because you were at recess for an extra hour and she couldn't find you. It's really scary when that happens, but if your teacher sees you were scared than she wont get too mad and then it's kinda cool because you don't get in trouble and you got to play for a really long time, but don't really do it, because it's still scary." (This happened to Makenzie last year) :)

*"Don't go in the bathroom unless you look at the picture by the door because if you are just trying to go potty really really fast and run in a bathroom it might have boys standing up in there." (This happened to Makenzie last year too.)

*"Try to sleep the night before even if you're excited or else you might be so tired that you'll fall asleep on your desk." (Kenzie actually fell asleep on her desk this year and had to be helped to the office for mom to come pick her up, but not because of lack of sleep. Clever mom gave her half a dosage of Benedryl for her itchy mosquito bites from the night before. Benedryl makes mom hyper- it has the opposite effect on Kenzie and most people we've come to learn.)

How to Have a Good School Year:

*"Make sure mom makes you a lunch everyday and doesn't forget." (More like make sure you don't forget to be responsible and grab the lunch on the counter waiting for you time after time so mom has to go back to the school an hour later to bring it to you. Tip from mom: Make your child put their lunch in their backpack right in front of you so you know it's there. Also give the school some extra money for hot lunches just in case. Forget about teaching your kids responsibility. haha)

*"When you walk to school and home look on the ground a lot and see what cool things you can find like rocks and chunks of wood and string and sticks that make a V and wire and plastic and stuff so that you can come home and make cool inventions out of them. Hide them in a cupboard in our playroom or mom will throw them away when she sees them on the table." (Too true.)

*"Don't loose your library book and don't turn it in and forget that you did and think you lost it so you don't let yourself check out a new book for months and months and look all over the house and be sad because you can't find it." (This happened last year as well.)

*"Don't tell lies to your teacher and say that a different kid did something when really you did because that's double trouble." (This happened to Makenzie in 1st grade)

*"Sometimes it's fun to spray Halloween color spray in your hair before school so you can have cool colors and it's not just the same hair color as always. Then the kids will look at you and say, 'Wooa!' " (Kenzie did this probably 5 or 6 times last year, but we just looked in the school guide book they sent home and realized it's against school rules- oops.)

Well with all these tough/humorous lessons our Kenzie has seemed to learn from and all the advice she was giving Kendyl you'd think Kendyl would have been more scared for starting Kindergarten, but not so. :) We hope these tips help your cool grade schoolers as well.

Not really the most fun way to wake up...

2008-08-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I woke up to a phone call that went something like this...

Neighbor: "Did Kendyl make it home yet?"
Me: "Huh? (I look at the clock) It's 7:30 in the morning."
Neighbor: "Kendyl was just at my house seeing if my kids could play."
Me: (Shooting straight up in bed) "What?"
(Door shuts from down stairs and scampering little steps run into a room upstairs and try to shut softly to Kendyl's room)
Me: "She's home. I'm sorry. She's dead meat." (hang up)

Me: "Kendyl!"
(no noise)
(phone rings again, Makenzie is just waking up and walking in my room and gets the phone)
Kenz: "Yah, she's right here."
(Oh great)
Me: "Hello"
Different Neighbor: (in a very very scratchy voice) "Hi Karalenn. Is Kendyl home yet?"
Me: (through gritted teeth) "Just now."
Neighbor: "She was just here seeing if my son could play."
Me: "I'm very sorry. I just woke up and didn't know she had left the house." (since she usually sleeps til 8ish)
Neighbor: "Yah, I just woke up too... because of Kendyl."
Me: "Uh, right. Uh... sorry about that. Have a good day."
Neighbor: (laughs and hangs up)

Me: "KENDYL FAE HIPPEN! GET IN MY ROOM THIS INSTANT!"
(Kendyl comes out of room pretending to be just waking up, but fully dressed down to her shoes)
Me: "Were you just at Dylan's and Bart's house?"
Kendyl: (looking shocked) "How did you know?"
(nice)
Me: "I was just talking to Bart's mommy. YOU woke her up!"
Kendyl: "oh."
Me: "Did you go to anyone else's house?"
(Kendyl then proceeded to name about 4 other neighbors. One on completely the other side of the park at the end of our street and a few houses up about 1/4 of a mile away. She told me they were all gone though so I didn't need to be mad.)
(Grrrrr. Knowing that she must have been out since about 7 to hit all those and was waking them all up too.)

(It is about this point as she is talking that I am looking around my room and seeing the disaster in there. My bed is completely blocked in chairs and boxes and bins.)
Me: "Were you trying to trap me here?" (pointing to the mess everywhere)
Kendyl: "No. I was building you a fun fort in your room this morning, but you wouldn't wake up and play with me."

Okay. So I'm not really sure what time this kid woke up to do all this to my room and make her social calls, but I do know she will never do it again. Our "little talk" lasted quite a while and her punishment will help her remember as well. After she left my room and shut the door I started laughing and had to call Seth at work to tell him all about it. Makenzie was still in my room and was very confused why I was laughing when it looked like I was about to breath fire the minute before while I was talking with Kendyl.

I'm sorry if you are one of our neighbors that she woke up. :)

We're Having Another Girl!

2008-07-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

Well Seth will be even more out numbered now. :)

We are excited to have another little girl in our home come December. Did I mention we were due right on Dec. 25th. ug. I'll have to be induced a week or two early though since both of my other girls have come 6 days early and I can't have her within 24 hours of my Lovenox shot. So we just have to plan for a little earlier- which of course we don't mind.

The good news for me is that I have finally won out of my favorite name. Since 6th grade I have been claiming "Penelope" as my middle name since I didn't have one. With my pregnancies with Makenzie and Kendyl I begged for the name Penelope and Seth would make fun of me. This time around Seth has really warmed up to the idea and likes it now. So hooray for me. :) He has also decided that Pip is a good nickname for Penelope and says he will call her that. :) I think I'll call her Penny Lane.

As far as a health update I am doing so much better. I went on my first grocery shopping trip last week and did fine. My blood clot doesn't hurt so much, but I can still tell it's there dissolving because my leg feels tired after walking for a bit. My morning sickness is so much improved!!! That's what I'm really really happy about. I'll discover things that I should not eat after it's too late right when I start feeling cocky about feeling better. Like on Friday I had a mint and my stomach hurt for 2 hours afterwards- ridiculous. I can't really complain though because it's like night and day from where I was 2 months ago. Life is slowly getting back to "normal" just in time for summer to be over and the kids back in school in 3 weeks. :( Oh well, we'll try to live it up while we can in the small doses we can.

2008-06-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

There's a bit that has happened this last month that those around here know about, but we might as well catch everyone else up. June 3rd was our 9 year anniversary. We had reservations at the Anniversary Inn (for the pirate ship room) and at a yummy restaurant in Salt Lake. Seth's sister Hillory was babysitting overnight and we were set, except... Karalenn's left leg kept bothering her. It had been hurting for two days and it got the the point that it seized up on her and she couldn't walk. She called her doctor and described the pain and explained that it was swollen and purple. She was sent immediately to the E.R. because she had the symptoms of a blood clot.

Sure enough, the blood clot was enormous and filled the entire main artery of her left leg from her foot up to her thigh. The baby is okay. It was amazing that it hadn't dislodged and gone into her heart or lungs with how long it had been there (considering all the walking around without going to get it checked out). She was stubbornly trying to get through the anniversary celebrations and was a bit irrational with pregnancy-brain, thinking it was some side effect to anti-nausea medicine. :) In fact, while in the E.R., after giving her a shot of blood thinner and pain killer she wanted to hurry and get out of there so they could still celebrate. Much to her dismay she was admitted to the hospital to stay for two more days. Part of the reason for the two day stay was for dehydration. She had lost a lot of weight and was so sick she couldn't keep anything down for weeks before it all came to a head. She was hooked up to an i.v. to help bring back some nourishment and was instructed how to give herself blood thinner shots twice a day (which she will have to do for 6 more months and then after the baby comes she can take pills).

So instead of this...

We had a special room like this for our anniversary. We called it our "hospital themed room", but Seth did draw an excellent pirate ship on the white board across from the bed. :)

...and instead of dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant we had this. :) YUM!

We returned home on Thursday, but had to go back in on Friday because the blood clot had spread to her pelvis and abdomen. She was sent home with strict orders to stay in bed and not go down the stairs. A nurse began coming every couple of days to change her i.v. and Karalenn stayed in bed while sugar water pumped into her for a while. Our community here chipped in like we've never seen. Friends came early in the morning to help our girls get dressed and fed and took them for the day until Seth got home from work. People dropped in every hour and a half to bring up more snacks for Karalenn to her bed and change her throw up pan (yuck!!!!!!). People have sneaked into our house and cleaned it, mowed our lawn, weeded our flower beds, and brought books and movies. Makenzie and Kendyl have been in heaven playing with their friends every day and can't wait to hear who they go to each day. What a blessing to have them not stressed out along with us. :) We can't describe how amazed and humbled and grateful we are! It has been an especially enormous blessing to have family close bringing in meals and helping. Karalenn's parents came this last week and just left today. It was so wonderful having them here as they helped in only the ways that parents know how.

Every week gets better. Kare can go down the stairs now and wander into her garden outside. It doesn't scare her to give herself shots in the stomach anymore. In fact, it's quite the highlight for Makenzie and Kendyl to watch it happen every morning and night. We have been so blessed to see the blood clot ease as quickly as it has. She can still only walk for a few minutes, but that's amazing for how long she was suppose to be on bed rest. She is learning to not push it. :) Which, if you know her, is extremely hard to balance and a bit frustrating. The more circulation and activity she can get the better the clot can break up. She hopes that within a few months she can join her walking group in the morning again. What we are most grateful for is the blessing of the morning sickness decreasing so much that she could take her i.v. out (literally- she got fed up and pulled it out after the nurse took an hour and a half looking for a vein that would work):) and it is still decreasing to where most of the day she is well. This is such a miracle!!! Her other pregnancies she has been sick about 8 months of them. That is what we were expecting this time, but hoping and praying for less. We have been grateful for your prayers and she has received many priesthood blessings to get through this time. It's wonderful to see miracles in our lives.

She went for a check up on Friday and the baby is still doing well. We were excited to find out that we get to find out the gender in a week and a half (July 8th). Some of her blood tests have come back and we've discovered that she has a condition called (get ready- it's long) Methylenetetrahydofolate Reductase Deficiency or MTHFR with the c6777 mutation and A1298c mutation. That clears things up right? :) Now we don't quite understand it ourselves, but the best we could gather from her specific type is that it is very rare and comes from a gene mutation that she gets from both sides of her family and makes her prone to heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots. Pregnancy and birth control can trigger it more easily. Isn't that exciting? It's okay though. We aren't scared or sad or anything like that. We wouldn't have even been able to discover it had she not been pregnant and got the blood clot. Now we know that she just needs to be on blood thinners the rest of her life. This could be as simple as baby aspirin (hopefully not shots), and it will protect her better than had we never found out. The doctor called the conditions for discovering it "the perfect storm", so we are grateful for the blood clot while being pregnant after all so that she could take the right blood tests to discover it. There isn't a lot known about it and it's pretty rare, but we feel we are in good hands.

We would still appreciate your prayers and thank you for those offered already. I'd like to take this time to sing you all a song that sums things up pretty well...

You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have the facts of life, the facts of life.

(I've just read through this and think that I should mention that Seth has an odd sense of humor of writing things that don't sound like jokes, and most people don't understand that he is being funny- refering to his "Facts of Life" theme song above. This tendancy in him makes it a little embarrassing when he writes on our family Christmas cards. :) But you gotta love him. ~Karalenn)

That's it for now. We'll talk to you again soon and let you know if it's a boy or a girl when we find out.

Kenzie's baptism

2008-06-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

I have a minute to post some pictures and talk about Kenzie's baptism a month ago. It was such a special event. Aunt Kristie flew from Seattle to come give a talk on baptism, Aunt Hillory and her two girls (Cadi and Reni) sang "A Child's Prayer" beautifully and Grandma Smart gave the closing prayer. Seth baptized her and all the priesthood holders in the family that were able to be there helped in confirming her with the gift of the holy ghost. It was so special and peaceful and happy.

Here's a before picture with daddy.

We took a family picture too and Kendyl as you can see was feeling a little left out of the focus of the day so Seth had her and him take a picture all by themselves too. What a smart daddy. :)

Here are all the people from our family and Kenzie's friends that came (except Joe and his two youngest- Jack and Sam. They were sitting out in the car because it was a little long for them) :)

The first pic is your regular smiley one and the second is probably more true to all of our personalities. Thanks for coming everyone!!!

Afterwards we had a big brunch at our house and that was so fun sitting and talking with everyone for a few hours.

Last of all, here are some of the sweet pictures my sister took the next day (Sunday morning) of Kenzer with her fancy hair do and gloves. :)

We're sure proud of you Kenzie and the work you took to make this decision for your life. She really did work hard to gain a testimony this last year and we're happy for her and her diligence.

QuickCam Fun

2008-05-30T08:56:00.000-07:00

Well I've been gone for quite a while. I have pictures from Makenzie's b-day party, baptism, fun with cousins, last days of school, the kitty in silly places in our house, etc. but here I go and post these weird and awful pictures that Seth and I had so much fun taking. It seemed like less work to post I guess.
My theory of our baby being a boy is SO out the window! I have become just as sick as any of my other pregnancies and am so so miserable and am a big sobbing slug lying around the house. I hate how anti-social I feel too. I go to the doctor today and am hoping for a miracle pill to take away my morning sickness (all day and all night sickness). In the last two weeks alone I've lost over 10 pounds from how yucky it's been. Anyway, these made me laugh. I laughed making them and laughed looking at them later and so that means something to me now-a-days. Sorry about the honest and gory details.

Makenzie's Birthday (April 30th)

2008-05-01T16:11:00.000-07:00

Well I guess we didn't get this up in time to show Makenzie's bday happenings on her true bday, but the day after isn't so bad. Truth is I couldn't find the camera until now to put these up. :)

So it started with the traditional breakfast in bed, but Seth added a fun twist to it. He made a funny face looking at her. She was super excited. What a creative dad. Then we ran down stairs to watch her open presents. She opened the present from Kendyl first which Kendyl saved up for and paid all by herself. (I actually let her keep half her money so she wouldn't use up all her savings, but it's sweet she wanted to). It was of course some horsey figures that Kendyl promptly opened and has been playing with ever since. Luckily Makenzie has been quite distracted by her other present to not care which was....
A nintendo ds and two games! She was completely blown away! It was adorable to see her genuine reaction. Mom was quite surprised as well when dad bought it a few days ago. Makenzie has been begging for 2 years for one. Mom has been putting her foot down about not getting started into any of that stuff, but dad was just too excited. :) It is fun though to give them something that they dream about getting. We limit her to 30 minutes two times a day. For the rest of the day she had a party in her classroom where mom and Kendyl brought in treats and then we played after school and went as a family to her favorite restaurant for dinner- Denny's. :)

We got home way late from having a fun day and listened to lots of fun messages of silly singing and wishing Makenzie a Happy Bday. Thanks to all that remembered our sweet girl who is now 8! So here's a look at the last 8 years. She has been one fun, quirky, intelligent, creative, kind, genuine little friend and we are so blessed to have her in our family. She adds so much to us and I can't imagine life with out her.

Ode to my Loberly Overalls

2008-04-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

So... a week or two ago I was searching through the depths of my closet and rediscovered my ol' pal overalls. Oh my beautiful comfy overalls, how I had missed you. It was after church on a Sunday. I pulled them out, put them on, and frolicked around the house. We even went to Seth's parents' house for dinner. (Sorry if my grammar on using apostrophes was wrong in that last sentence). It was a quiet Sunday evening filled with comfy bliss.

Today I decided to have another overall adventure. It wasn't a quiet day spent with kind-hearted family. I needed to go shopping, take Kendyl to ballet, and I had lunch at the park with some friends in the neighborhood. Granted I really don't see anyone now a-days wearing these beauties but does that really mean I should get the looks I got in Walmart? I mean, come on! We're in Walmart for goodness sakes people. Now Tar-jah (Target) might be a different story. Girls in their cute springy dresses and clothes looked at me in my comfy splendor and seemed to almost laugh. Honestly! I know it's not 1999 anymore, but can't a girl wear overalls? I found this picture that looks just like what I looked like at the store. You can't tell me I didn't look hot and in style. :) Well okay, not exactly, but close enough.

I searched around the store... surely there must be someone that still wears them.

Yup! I found him. He was eating a full cob of corn right in the produce isle! No JOKE! In his cart were the peels to his corn and he was seriously chowing down on a huge piece of corn on the cob. He wasn't just tasting it to see if it was fresh. The thing was fully husked and he was on his second typewriter row.

Okay, so I guess no more overalls. :( Wahhaahaa. Which makes me very sad, but I'm sure Ij'll get over it since I only started wearing them again a few weeks ago. Still. Is there any chance these can come back in style again? Sexy no?

Tell me what you think...

1. A come back is on the way.
2. Not in this life.
3. Overalls not in fashion? What do you mean? I've never taken mine off.

Kenzie's baptism dress

2008-04-24T21:39:00.001-07:00

Well it's done but for a little bit of hemming and just in time since she gets baptized May 3rd. Since it was a sewing project I put more pics and details on my art blog here and Kendyl's creation as well. Just wanted to share it here for those that just look at our family blog.

Fun on the Farm

2008-04-24T09:13:00.001-07:00

Since last fall Makenzie has been asking me to go on a mommy-daughter date with her to see real horses. Well there are horses all around here in the fields going up through the mountains on the way to our neighborhood so I always joke around and tell her we are on our date and there are her horses. (that hasn't quite worked so she added the clause that she needed to feed them)

A few weeks ago the mom of one of my student's invited myself and my girls to come to their home and see her 10 new baby chicks that had just hatched. I excitedly said we could come the next day after Makenzie got out of school and told the mom that it might make up for me not taking Makenzie to see real horses. Then the mom told me she had REAL HORSES- 4 of them! She also had 2 pot belly pigs in her backyard! We were definitely going now!

I let it be a surprise and didn't tell Makenzie what we were doing when I picked her up from school the next day. We dropped by the grocery store on the way and bought a 5 pound bag of apples (I remember feeding apples to the horses next to my grandpa Smart's house) and Kendyl picked out a bouquet of flowers to give as a thank you. Makenzie pretended to be a detective and kept going over all her information that we had slipped to her. She knew we were going somewhere that she had never been, that is was someone she didn't know- but Kendyl and I did, she knew we needed apples and flowers for a thank you and within a minute she guessed it exactly. She bounced all the way there after that (which thankfully was only another 3 or 4 minutes and freaked out when I turned the wrong way and got us lost for a second).

There were 10 baby chicks in all these bright colors. The week before they hatched they were injected with a little color dye so that when they hatched they would be all bright spring colors. It doesn't hurt them at all. It only dyes their baby fluff and when they lose that for their grown up feathers it will be gone. The mom put them in this big bucket with a warm light above them and keeps them in her kitchen. Kendyl was pretty scared of them most of the time, but Kenzie wanted to hold each one.

Then we went into their backyard and fed their horses a huge bag of carrots and their pigs an entire bag of apples. Kendyl was scared of the horses and pigs too :) but wasn't scared of the swing set or tractor.

To say Makenzie was in heaven would be an understatement. She ran all around the barn climbing on haystacks and jumping all around. My student's mom invited Makenzie back to come ride the horses when her husband would be back in town or sometime this summer. Sometimes I think Makenzie should have been born on a farm. We're so grateful for this sweet family and sharing themselves with us. It sure made our day.

Grandpa and Grandma Smart's Visit

2008-04-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my parent's (Karalenn's) came out for a visit. The girls had been looking forward to seeing them for months and were so excited. They were going to come in January but a storm came making it dangerous so our girls had plenty of time to get a lot of things ready to make them feel welcome. Of course Kendyl decorated and made little hearts etc. for them to see and Makenzie made little badge type things. It was fun to have them come to the girl's schools. First we surprised Makenzie by hiding and scaring her when she came around the bend. The top corner picture is of grandpa grabbing and hugging her. We then went to the school Kendyl goes to and where I teach. The other pictures are of them playing in my classroom on the white board and I took a pic of the board in the front of the school that showed I was the teacher of the month. :) It was fun to have them come and see that.

Next my dad took them geocaching with his little gps unit. The girls were excited to find hidden caches all around our neighborhood. I guess it makes sense they would be stashed there in all the mountains and bushes. If you don't know what geocaching is the definition is here and the official website is here. It's so fun to do. You feel like a pirate on a treasure hunt. So here are some random pics from our adventures. Kendyl is cute and holding her map in one of the pics. She was excited for grandpa to come because she knew they would go geocaching so she made her own map and my dad pretended to follow it the whole time. He's so cool. We went into that tunnel that had gang tagging in it :( and a big puddle that the girls said was quick sand. My dad even found a cool knife on the ground which we invented the story of a gang fight in there and someone dropped their knife. What adventures.
Here are some pics of their treasures they rounded up. One of the pics has a few extra kids in it. Well we had some friends dropping by at the same time that came to stay with us and my dad was so sweet he took them out all again to the same caches so those boys could get some treasures too. One of the treasures was a Sponge Bob that actually had Kenzie's name on it! (The truth is that my dad found that in a different cache in another state and brought it here with him, went ahead of us while the girls were in school and hid it in one of the caches we would go to so Kenzie could find it) She completely freaked out! What a fun idea and what a fun grandpa! We are so lucky. :) Inside the Spongbob head was these secret little words you could look in and see. Kenzie took a picture of it. It's about Atlantis. Cute girl.
Our other favorite part about their visit was gardening with grandma. It made me so so so happy and reminded me of being a little girl. The daffodils had just started poking their green out of the ground and my mom taught them how to weed and trim rose bushes. Those silly girls were out there for over an hour in the freezing spring weather here. Ever since their visit my Kendyl has wanted to garden every day. She loved that time with her grandma and Makenzie too.
We had such a fun time with them and can't wait to see them again next weekend when they come for Makenzie's baptism! It's nice living closer to them so we can have more frequent visits.

It's Spring Break!!!

2008-04-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

So what does that mean?

For Makenzie: lots and lots of reading.

For Kendyl: lots of playing in her playroom or outside with her Barbies.

(This is an old pic of her before she got her haircut)

For Karalenn: Lots of tiara wearing time (it's what I wear when I clean and I have quite the collection) :) I am doing all sorts of home projects and cleaning out areas for spring cleaning for the first time I think. :) I guess it's just more fun for me in my first home.

For Seth: nothing. He still has to go to work everyday and come home and play with us. :)

We have the wackiest weather here. On Monday is was so beautiful outside for the first time that we went to the park to eat a picnic lunch. I felt like almost the whole neighborhood was there (seriously over 30 people). It was really a beautiful warm day where I didn't need a jacket and it was even a little hot. We stayed out so long we all got sun burnt. We flew kites for an hour or so and chatted with everyone. Perfect day.

Tuesday: Snow! Snow! Snow! It would stop and then start up again. It was freezing and the wind was so strong it blew Makenzie's little fort apart. Yuck!

Today: Nice again. Snow is gone. What the? Well I'm not complaining. I'm out to go fertilize my lawn for the first time. (Think I'll keep the tiara off for while I'm outside) :)

P.S. I've been tetris-free for one week! :)

Trip to Cali (part 3): Saying Bye to Buddies and San Fran

2008-04-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

I just remembered that I hadn't shared the last part of our trip and probably the most pictures. I decided I better do it this morning before I forget stuff about our trip. I tried to combine them all as much as I could so this wouldn't get too long. I really like how blogging has turned into such a good way to keep a record of our little family for ourselves and it's so fun to share with all you friends and family. I understand how pics from vacations can be to other people so I don't wont feel sad if it's boring to you. It's just nice for us to remember. :)

Just a few quick cute pics of Kenzie playing with the Josh and Noah. I love that pic of Kenz and Noah crammed on a chair reading their books on morning. The pics of Josh and Kenzie are when they were making a potion together. They mixed together some dirt, water, and a little clover-y ground cover growing just outside their back door. They mixed all that together and then dumped it on the dirt again making nice green blobs. If I remember right they said there was two purposes to the potion. First, it tricks people and makes them think there's a ground cover on the spot of dirt you put it on and second, if you want to just keep in it in the cup in your house it will make your house smell like nature. Roz and I discovered a third purpose- it makes a really big mess. Of course all good creations do.
Saying good bye to some of our favorite people from LA. We dropped by the school on the way out of town as it was getting out so Kenzie could surprise old classmates. It was so fun hearing all the kids scream and seeing them tackle her as they got out of class. I loved how all the kids then came running to me too. I love those kiddos there. I spent 10-20 hours a week there volunteering and I could tell you every single second graders name and about 1/2 the first graders. I missed taking a bunch of pictures because I was shaking and bawling for a good 10 minutes, but here are some people that stuck around long enough for me to pull it together. It was amazing to me to discover how much of my heart is still there. (Wish I had taken some pics of Kenzie's old teachers- still mad about that one)
The amazing and talented Kristen made these WONDERFUL capes for our girls and here are her sweet boys that were best little friends with Kenzie and Kendyl. I can't get over Fletcher's pose standing on one leg and pretending to drink from a cup. And I love Connor's cute smile and holding the jewel the girls just gave him. We sure miss you guys.
One last pic before SanFran pictures... Proof of the "Underground Book Club" where we read the books we want to read, but don't necessarily want people to know we read them. Even though I don't live there and go to their monthly meetings anymore, I find out what they are and read them that month and sometimes write about them on our "Underground Book Club Blog". I'm not sure if there is anything more geeky than that. :) Roz and I went on Wednesday night after Disneyland and had the best time. We talked about the book for maybe 30 minutes, then the usual discussions began of other books we've read, embarrassing moments, silly kids swapping stories, babies, bodily functions, sex, etc. You know- women topics. Most of these girls went to Eclipse Prom with me last May. I can't believe it's been almost a year! WOW!
On to San Fran. Well Thursday morning we realized we had hung out with all our friends a few days in a row and that maybe we were wearing out our welcome with Roz and Jarren, we packed up and took off to San Francisco. The girls and I hadn't ever been there before and it was such an adventure trying something new with no game plan, schedule, or people to meet up with. Before we left I got a few hotels for while we would be there on the internet and that was good enough. Here's some of the beautiful sights. We rode the trolley and the train, stopped at China Town, some of the piers, Ghirrardelli Square, got close up looks at big ships, drove across the Bay Bridge, The Golden Gate Bridge, and Richmond San-Rafael Bridge. We also stayed one night in a suburb of San Fran and checked out Pixar and homes around that area for fun. In one of those homes I experienced one of my most embarrassing moments I've had in a long time thanks to Makenzie and Kendyl, but mostly Makenzie. :)

Anyway, SanFran was such a beautiful place filled with the friendliest people. I felt like I was in Idaho as far as how warm they were to us. People were cracking jokes and talking to each other as they met all over the place. We'd get on the trolley and you'd think you were reuniting good friends with how they conversed and people would wave at us as we passed on the trolley. It was almost like Disneyland, but they weren't getting paid to be friendly. They are just a happy group down there. We really had a great time the 3 days we were there. This was where we went to lunch on one of the piers. Our family loves Clam Chowder and it was super good stuff. Seth is looking sad in the top corner pic because after Kendyl ate her lunch she ate 1/2 of Seth's as well. The bottom corner pic is of the girls on the trolley for the first time. They giggled and squealed all the way down. (Kenzie of course is hamming it up for the photo).
Our first stop was China town where we got t-shirts for a $1.88! and some fun fans. Mostly we walked around and Kendyl begged to get pictures taken next to statues. I laughed so hard when she wanted a picture with the "boob statue" as Seth and I secretly referred to as. She loved the deer and the golfer boy too. Makenzie wanted a picture of them playing in a heart puddle holding their heart balloons a homeless man made for them on the train. Oh the adventures. :)
And here is a pic that the girl's didn't want to get taken. hahaha. I just had to throw it in.

Last of all. Here's a pic that Seth wanted taken and one that I wanted taken of our favorite places from our trip.

Tetris Addiction Update

2008-04-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

Okay so I'm not close to being cured, but something funny happened that has made me not feel like playing it as much -so maybe only 30-45 minutes a day instead of hours. :) I'll tell you my story (Know this is completely true however unlikely it seems)...

After my last post it got me excited and thinking about tetris of course (because I always was, even in my sleep) so I went to the blessed site and started playing hoping for first place. I started at about 11:30 at night and played for an hour or so. When I died on the game I was pretty disappointed because it was no where near my highest score, but when it went to the score table like it does every time after you die it said my name was #1! I started laughing so hard. What the??? Anyway, I guess the administrator of the site restarted the scores in the middle of the night and I happen at that very moment to have a little bit of a high score shortly after clearing the scores. I quickly saved my computer screen and brought it into photoshop to crop and save in a file. Is that not the funniest luck? And look at the screen... I even beat Voldemort! Alright! :)

I know I'm not #1 in the world! Far from it because I've had way better scores than that and the top people usually have over 99 million. It's just funny to be #1 for second and on the same night I wrote about my tetris addiction. Every day I feel like playing it less because I'll think about that score table and laugh and see how relative it all is. With all this extra non-tetris time I've been painting at night again. I painted during conference too between organizing files and taking notes. I actually got two simple paintings done the last few days and am scheming on an amazing Cinderella painting. (The Cinderella one is going to take a long long long time though I think. It's not going to be my usual post card size. I'm going to make it really big- maybe I'll do postcard size first for fun though) I posted one of my paintings on my art/projects blog on Saturday and will post the other after this next Saturday when I give it to my friend who is getting sealed in the temple to her hubby and son.

Random Happy Thoughts

2008-04-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

Happy Thought #1: Hooray for Seth's missing shoe!

He found it while we were Easter Egg hunting in our backyard with his family. It's been missing for a few months (New Years Eve to be exact). It was hiding behind our hot tub in the backyard. Now how did it get there you ask? Well... Seth had to work New Years Eve (day) and we girls in this household didn't like that very much so we hid his wallet and keys so he couldn't go to work. He found his wallet at one point and my set of keys so while the little girls tackled him down I grabbed all his shoes and threw them outside in the snow to hide them. I also hid all his coats (and mine- just in case). I ran back upstairs to help the little girls wrangle the keys from his grasp and his wallet too. So obviously the girls won and he stayed home and we all went sledding on a fun hill in our neighborhood and drank hot cocoa. (To the right are a few photos from that day. Seth was way awesome to our girls by standing on his sled and going down the hill a couple of times). That day is one of my favorite memories from this year so far. I guess technically it wasn't this year since it was New Years Eve, but I'm gonna count it anyway. Well anyway, after we trapped Seth home he decided to give up and I felt it was safe to go outside and give him back all his cold, wet shoes (but one that I couldn't find). Since there was no snow in our backyard on our Easter Hunt Seth was able to spot his shoe.

Happy Thought #2: Spring is coming!

The snow has melted (probably not for good, but at least for right now). My daffodils are coming out of the ground! The girls and I are constantly on our bikes going down the hills in our neighborhood or else outside playing the guitar. Hooray for spring!!!

Is this not the cutest picture of Kenzie strumming a little song for her buddy Dillan? He lives a few doors down and he and I have a standing agreement that on warm/clear days when we are outside jamming he can come over and I'll teach him a new chord. (I like Kendyl snuggling up in a blankie just chillin' listening to the music.)

Happy Thought #3: TWINKLE LIGHTS!

These make me so happy. I put twinkle lights in a few random places in my house. I just love walking into a room and turning them on. Seth keeps calling them Christmas lights, but I think everyone should know that when you use little lights to decorate in other times of the year other than Christmas they should be referred to as twinkle lights. :)

Happy Thought #4: The day we chased a rainbow!

One day in the middle of a rain storm we could see a full rainbow. Not just half mind you! It touched one end of the ground, went up in the air, and came back down and touched the other end. The girls and I chased it for a while. It looked so close, but we kept driving and driving and it just kept getting further away. At one point we seemed to drive right underneath it. It was right around Saint Patrick's Day so we were sure if we could just get to the end of it we'd spot that pot of gold. Maybe next time.

Happy Thought #5: Silliness

Last week we watched our little niece Sydney. She's such a cutie. I probably could claim her as one of my own, she looks so much like my girls. Kenzie wanted a wacky color-sprayed hairdo, so I did Kendyl's and Syd's too. She was very excited about the colors even if she doesn't look like it here. We went all over town (walking with the morning walking group, gardening a bit, Kendyl's ballet, shopping, and out to lunch- Cafe Rio-yum, with friends). We were a hit. So hooray for kids who like to have fun.

Speaking of... here's another beauty I just found on my camera. Nice!

Happy Thought #6: TETRIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know Kristen and Nanette! What am I going to do? I tell you I'm addicted! For all of you who don't know (which is most of you because it's one of my closet sins) I have a running addiction to this game. I played people my sophomore year in college in competitions on my computer. People would hear about me and come to my apartment to play me. (I guess that's how Billy the Kid must have felt) Two years ago I asked Seth to block it from our computer with a password to help me stop playing. -true story! Kristen and Nanette got me through that rough time in my life. Well.... a few weeks ago I discovered it was no longer blocked from our computer and have begun playing again. Oh happy day! Remember how I use to post paintings that I would make or things I would sew on my art/projects blog? Well, my time has now gone into becoming a star tetris player again. Yes, I was rusty at first, but now I am 27th in the world on an online tetris site I found. Can I make it to #1? I don't know. I guess I should keep trying. No! No! I can't. I must stop! A few days ago Makenzie pretended that by me playing and being so good at it I would win us money or a trip to Hawaii. That sounds good to me. So I like to pretend that in my head as well. Has anyone heard of any sort of deal out there like that? Because if so, I'm quitting my job and doing this full time. :) I wonder if there's a tetris anonymous support group I can join. It's such a shame that one of my happiest thoughts is also my tragic downfall. *sigh*

Happy April Fools! (and happy bday James)

2008-04-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

Hope you are all having a sneaky April Fool's Day. I taught my preschool lesson on April Fool's yesterday so they would be ready for tricks the next day. It was cute how they wanted to get started right away and were saying all day, "Teacher! Your hair is on fire!" or "Teacher! There's a lion on your shoulder!" etc. etc. Of course I'd pretend freak out and they knew they were very marvelous trickers. :)

Well as it happens my own kids love this holiday. Last night Seth and I went to bed late because we were up working on our taxes (I know, we're big procrastinators). Anyway around midnight we made it upstairs to our room and found this on the floor. It's hard to tell, but it says "Happy April Fool's Day!" out of toilet paper. Kenzie told me this morning that she put the words in a crazy order to be more April Foolsy. -Good thinking. So I guess it really says, "Fools April Day Happy". She's a tricky one. :) She also wrapped our lamp in tp and stuffed it into my pillow case. I think I'll pay a trick on her and make her buy new rolls of toilet paper.

Seth and I got our revenge by going into the girl's room and toilet papering it. It was pretty fun and much easier than toilet papering here in my neighborhood.

This morning Kendyl and Makenzie giggled and planned for at least an hour and when I came upstairs after dropping Kenzie off at school and went to use the sink I found this little surprise. If you can't tell from the photo it's a quarter rubber banded to the faucet so when you turn it on it sprays you every where. mmmmm She's getting more clever. But maybe not, because I saw that she did her own sink.

Help me come up with something to get her back with. It's gotta be good!

Easter Fun

2008-03-31T10:26:00.000-07:00

Well it's better late than never for posting Easter pics I guess. It'll have to be quick too since I'm almost late for work. :0) Here's a few pics of our Easter Egg hunt and egg dying party for the fam. Eran brought Zach and Syd and Holly brought her kids and we snatched Eric and Ginnette's kids for the party because they were in the middle of moving. Hilly's girls were in WA so we missed out on playing with them, but here's some pics of who were here. Grandma and Grandpa showed up too and played a little. We had lunch and then the hunt and then dyed eggs. Overall lots of fun. (Syd got tired before the hunt so they took off, sorry I don't have hunting pics for you Hanna)

Holly and Eran and kids. Doesn't Eran look happy? :)

Hunting fun.

Grandpa helping in the hunt. :)

Purty eggs. We ate lots of them and forgot to get pictures. But here's a few. These of course were the favorites, because you have to save them as long as you can.

For fun you can check out Seth's Easter Bunny illustration on his art blog (here). He's been adding a lot of simple illustrations to his blog lately that I've enjoyed seeing him work on.

Addendum: I just realized that picture of Grandpa snoozing looks like he's flipping us off. However funny/disturbing that would be, just know he isn't. :)

Kendyl Our Budding Photographer

2008-03-25T15:33:00.001-07:00

As I plugged the camera into computer to get our Easter pics off I was amazed to find that there were over 160 photos taken in the past few days. I thought it was odd because we had only taken a few pictures of the Easter egg hunt we had with cousins. I saw strange photo after strange photo. Using my deductive reasoning skills I discovered that our Kendyl had some fun with the camera this weekend. A lot of fun... (here's a few of the many) It's kinda fun to see the world through her eyes and what's important to her.

So here was what tipped me as to who was the photographer. :) And yes, to a 4 year old, the most important thing to them is, themselves.

Jewels! She loves these jewels. She carries them around everywhere she goes in her pockets and purses. Here are a few, getting closer, and closer.

And of course kitties would be next. These our the neighbor's cats and Kendyl follows them all over the neighborhood. There were about 30 more pictures of these cats. Silly Kendyl.

Our piano........... rainbow tail (our fish)............ yummmm cereal!

Ohhh. The blessed blankie! I think it's cute how she obviously arranged her blankie in the best position before she took a photo. ;)

A silly mom, a silly sister, and a silly dad. (The pic of Seth is from when I was sick and Kendyl was sick and Seth was trying to entertain her. He let her put that toilet paper all over his head. Don't worry, it wasn't already used.)

Silly Preschoolers

2008-03-22T20:53:00.000-07:00

I've been keeping track of some of the silly things my preschool class has been saying and doing (like I did here) and so here are a few...

1. "Teacher where do you live?" I then replied the city name of where I live and he says back, "No teacher, not your mom- I mean where do you live... around here?" (as he looks around the classroom to which I am guessing he was looking for my bed) :)

2. One day while I was reading with one of my students he told me out of the blue that he had zits on his bum. lol I mean, what in the world do you say to that? I just laughed and laughed.

3. "Teacher my dad loves Homer and Spongebob. They are his best friends." Another little girl replied to this, "Well my dad says Spongebob and the Simpsons are evil!" (Probably not a good idea to tell this little girl's family that Seth had a job doing character layout for the Simpons.)

4. A little boy let me know that his mom put mascara on his eyelashes and curled them before school. (He does have the most beautiful eyelashes.) When I told his mom at the end of the day she laughed and said that sometimes it's just too tempting because they are so long. Poor boy. :)

5. When one of the girls walked into class one of my boy students shouted, "Hello Avery!" and then said to the class that he loved her because she was his best friend and his sweetie girl! How cute is that?

6. One of the boys was feeling a little grumpy and I said it was okay if he felt grumpy, sometimes you just do. Another little girl piped in to help by saying, "Ya, like when your dad comes back from Philadelphia. They can get really grumpy there." (I haven't ever been there, but I don't think I want to if it makes you grumpy.)

7. I warned my class the week before Saint Patrick's Day that they better wear green if they didn't want to get pinched and I also warned them that they better not wear red because that meant I got to kiss them. Well a week went by and on the morning of Saint Patrick's Day I opened my door to 7 of my 8 boys wearing completely red shirts all looking excited!!!! hahahaha. I couldn't stop laughing as their mom's told me they had planned out their shirts a long time ago so they could kiss me and one of the boys shouted, "Hooray, now I'm gonna KISS YOU teacher!"

8. We were talking about dinosaurs and one little boy told all of us he use to have a dinosaur until it ate his sister and then they had to give it back. When I explained that dinosaurs haven't been around for millions of years another boy said that I was right and that he remembered it was a long time ago, like when he was one or two and then they all died.

9. "Teacher, bears aren't mean, they just like to eat people."

10. One of the dad's came to pick up their child early (usually it's moms that come) and another little girl shouted, "Hey how come your dad isn't fat like mine?" She then spent quite a bit of time telling all of us how her dad was the fattest man in the world. (Just so you know, this is completely false. I was excited to see how fat he was at parent teacher conferences and he was just regular.)

11. I was shocked when two of my boys started wrestling and trying to hit each other during play time. When I broke them apart one of them was crying and said pointing at the other, "He said Cinderella sucked and she doesn't teacher! I think she's beautiful!"

12. I guess glittery eye lashes are the secret spell to 4 and 5 year old boys hearts because I wore some on a dress up day and my boy students wouldn't play during play time. They just wanted to sit by me and look at me while I took turns reading with different students. It was pretty uncomfortable actually. One boy whispered that he wanted me to wear those kind of eyelashes everyday.

13. I have found the word "hit" to be a tricky one to sound out for some of my students. In one of the books they read through it says, "Bob hit the tin can." One of my student's kept reading the word "tit" in place of "hit" and another added an "s" to the beginning of "hit" every time. Ahhhh. Hope they don't do that at home and their parent's think we practiced it that way.

Well that's a long enough list for now. That pic at the top is from "Polar Express Days" when they all got to come to school in their pjs and we did fun Polar Express activities. One of those included Seth coming and showing a few clips from the movie and talking to all the school about animating on it and being an animator. Here's another pic of that day. It's of Kendyl talking with the director introducing her dad.

Oh wait, I have one more pic that I think is adorable. At the end of class two of the parent's were a little bit late and so these boys were just laying on the ground waiting for them and I thought it was the sweetest thing when they started holding hands! How cute is that? It's cool for 4 year old boys to like Star Wars and Spiderman and hold hands. It's just so sweet.

A Hard Weekend

2008-03-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

Prepare yourself for some whining. :)

Apparently Kendyl is allergic to another antibiotic. She was on her last day of her medicine for her strep when out of the blue in school on Friday she broke out in hives. It came on in a matter of 20 minutes and she was itchy and miserable. I took her right away to the doctor and she told us she didn't know what it was (are they allowed to say that?) and to ride it out with Benadryl and oatmeal baths and Eucerine cream. Well none of those brought relief, mean while she puffed up like a little Quasimodo. I was told to take pictures of how it progressed in the small chance it didn't get better for the hospital. So below are a few pics of her on Sunday morning.

Our poor baby-girl. For 48 hours she didn't sleep more than 2 hours in a row and cried and scratched her little body. She couldn't walk or sit or sleep in the same positions because of the pain. Seth and I didn't sleep and I got very sick as well. By Sunday I gave up on this "waiting it out idea" and took her to urgent care. That's where we found out that it was a reaction to her antibiotic. Up to this point, we still didn't know what was wrong with her and were pretty freaked out. The doctor told us he was shocked at how much it had advanced and gave her steroids right there to help. It was like a miracle. The relief came over her face and entire body in a matter of 15 minutes. She fell asleep in Seth's arms while the doctor was still talking to us. I was so happy to see her feel relief that I started crying and told the doctor I wanted to kiss him. :) Kendyl is recovering quickly, but I'm still quite sick. I guess seeing her get better took myself out of survival mode and mommy mode of putting her first and now my body isn't letting me do much. I guess it takes parents a little longer. :) My friend Janelle has been so generous and brought me dinner two nights in a row- even last night, which was her son's birthday. Also yesterday I got a sweet card in the mail from a friend in LA for no reason at all. She was just thinking of me and then called me later that night. I'm thankful for such a sweet friends.

We're sad to have missed our friends (the VanDykes) that came into town from LA on Friday night. They just left this morning. We weren't sure what was going on at our home and so we didn't feel safe inviting them over and by the time Kendyl was on the right track, I was in bed coughing my lungs out. They left this morning. :( Hopefully we can catch them next time. Our friends (the Harveys) are still here so we'll try to get better really quick and see if we can play with them.

So, there's a bunch of whining. Hope you aren't sorry to have read it. It's not always peachy being a parent, but it sure makes you grateful for sleep, sweet husbands who listen to your griping and clean the house, kind friends, steroids :), and doctors who aren't incompetent.

A Great Day For Kenzie

2008-03-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

"My daughter, odd? Now where would you ever get an idea like that?"

(What movie?)

What?

Haven't you ever seen a kid wearing a swim suit over their clothes and a floaty on one arm, a cape, skull tights, stripey socks, ruby red slippers, crown, and carrying a parasol? (P.S. Thanks Kristen for the cute cape you made Kenz and Kendyl)

Well at least she wasn't the only one today dressed so crazy. :)

Why in the world would they look like this today at school do you ask? Because of this series of books....

The Gooney Bird Greene books. It's about a silly girl who has her own style, a bit like another girl I know in this household.... Gooney wears things like green tights with tutu and large diamonds.

Makenzie's class has done really well in school and had earned a party, so they voted on a Gooney Bird Greene party day where they all dressed crazy and had a bunch of fun. Two months ago they earned a "Jammie Day" and the class loved it. What a fun teacher. She's young and energetic and keeps up with those crazy 2nd graders. Makenzie loves Miss Harris. For the first part of the year she would call her Miss Honey (from the book Matilda) because she was so sweet and fun. We are glad she loves her teacher so much that she has fun at school as well as learning. I love the kids in Kenzie's class too. They are so sweet and buddies with each other. It's nice to see that there still isn't a "cool" yet. They have so much fun, are quite crazy, and from what I see all play together. It's fun that so many kids weren't afraid to dress up this way for school. :)

Temptations!

2008-03-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

So help me, I want that street sign! :) I know that sounds odd, but it's just a few streets from my house and I've been driving past it for a week now and the city has not cared to pick it up or fix it. So I feel I should claim it.
In high school my 3 best friends: Maria, Alyssa, and Jessica and I got caught stealing a street sign that had been lying on the side of the road for 3 weeks. (Here's a picture of us senior year) This wasn't the only weird0 predicament we got ourselves into in high school. I put a list of as many things as I could remember on my blog a while back here. Anyway, back in high school I watched a certain fallen sign as we drove past every day and told my friends that if the city didn't pick it up after 3 weeks I thought it was fair game. The city even put up a new street sign right next to it! Well we waited the 3 weeks and set out to get it one night borrowing Jessica's family business music van. (Brilliant, I know- it even had their family name on it). :) We got caught by the owner of the neighborhood (The Hickories), our bishop, and some stuffy guy who threatened to call the police. I guess we weren't so sneaky. Good thing none of us took up a career in burglary. Anyway, I'm sorely tempted again with this sign every time I drive past. Of course I wont, but seriously, what's my problem? I'm a 29 year old married woman with kids.

Sadly, this has been another vice this week. I was so excited to hear about my cousin (Robert) getting a job at Seth's work that I made a yummy treat for Seth to bring to him. I doubled it so I could give some to my two new neighbors and meet them and have enough for our family to eat one or two bars as well. The problem is they are too delicious!!!! You don't understand. It's one of my favorite desserts. They are called "Hello Dollies" and I would get so excited as a kid when my mom would make them. I linked the recipe here. As you can see from the photo above they are about half gone. That's right- I alone, in 2 days time, have snuck and ate 1/2 of a 9 by 13 pan of THE MOST FATTENING DESSERT OUT THERE!!! So much for good intentions. My other problem this week has been not being able to pull away from a series of books (no- not Twilight this time:). I'm good enough to wait until after the kids are in bed to read (for the most part), but then stay up into all hours of the night reading. I'm telling you- after a week of this I really need to get some beauty sleep- I've got bags under my eyes, I'm pale, it's not pretty and no- I wont post a picture of that. But here is a picture from the Internet of what I am sure I will look like in another week or two if I don't let myself go to bed before 2:00am starting tonight. Sorry Jess if that picture scares you. I can picture it grossing you out, like caterpillars. :) (btw- that is not my bookshelf, although I wish it were) :)

Someone save me from myself. I guess I just don't have will power this week. I'm pretty sure I'm not usually this bad.

Trip to Cali (Part 2): Disneyland

2008-03-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

We spent two days at Disneyland and California Adventure while on our trip. It was fun going on our old favorite rides and the girls even tried a few new rides this time (they are getting braver). :) Disneyland has been at the top of the girl's list of things they miss since we have moved. When Seth worked from home between movie projects we would try to go to Disneyland on Thursdays and once Kenz was in school we'd go on Wednesdays after school (it was her early out day). We are so familiar with that park and it was fun to have the girls have such special experiences there. It was great to go back for a few days and reminisce and hang out with some friends that had passes and could make it for the two days we spent there.

The girls really loved "Autotopia" and went on it several times.

We also spent a lot of time in Toon Town and the Princess Theatre. This was taken at Minnie Mouse's wishing well. The girls made some good wishes, but mostly just yelled in it to find their echo.

While in toon town Kendyl tried out her first roller coaster and loved it and Makenzie discovered a piano to tinker on for a while. :)

We went to the princess show and the girls got to dance with different princesses and princes and even meet them afterwards. During the dancing Kendyl accidentally dropped her ribbon and Jasmine came and picked it up for her and gave it back to her. Kendyl was so surprised and embarrassed that she didn't know how to handle her emotions and covered her face and then glared at Jasmine. :) It was so funny and cute. Poor Jasmine wasn't sure what to do. If you look closely you can see the backs of the girls (pink and orange coats) and Jasmine walking away.

I can tell Makenzie has grown since the last time she was at Disneyland because seeing the princesses made her sad and at the end she sat on the benches and started to cry. After a while she explained how sad it was to see them when she knew they weren't real and she wanted them to be real so much, but she just knew they weren't. It broke my heart and I hugged her. I told her that princesses like those at Disneyland and fairies were magical and fun even if it is something that is made up. It can be fun and real to those who want to believe and still use their imagination. She had to think about this for a little bit and asked if I believed in fairies, to which I replied, "Of course!" She perked up and said she was going to still believe in magic and hoped down and hugged that princess. You can see her little eyes had been crying if you look closely in the picture. Bless her baby heart. :) Afterwards she asked to get a princess nightgown that she put over her clothes and pranced around the park in.

Kendyl wanted a picture on her throne. :)

After the Princess show we had lunch close by and as we were eating a few princesses walked right by us and waved at the girls. Then they went through a gate right by our table. The girls got so excited that they jumped up and slowly walked over to the gate to sneak a peek in there. They turned around disappointed because they said it had just a bunch of trash can bins in it and no princesses. I can just see their sweet imaginations spinning up some scene they would come upon. Magically there would be a rainbow in the sky with horses prancing around and the princesses all dancing with each other. How disappointing to find a pathway leading around a corner with trash bins in front of it. :) (You can see Kenzie's Belle nightgown over her clothes in this picture).

What a fun time. We loved it. It just suits our family so well to hang out there. I surprised Seth at the end with another Big Fig (Maleficent) for his collection and a few books. We had a great time and can't wait to go back again this spring or summer.

Our Trip to Cali (Part 1)

2008-02-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

Well I've decided to hurry and make this post so I don't have to think about my post below when I embarrassingly didn't know the correct definition of brothel. :) So let's move on shall we?....

Our trip to California was wonderful and we took over 300 pictures!!! So I think what we will have to do is show it in segments and still then cut out 95% of the pics. For this segment we'll show pics of our trip to Point Dune in Malibu for picnic and hike to their tide pools. (The spot where we picnicked was the same place where Makenzie's first commercial job was shot.) It was the most lovely sunny day and we actually got a little bit of a sunburn on our faces- how glorious! That hasn't happened in months here in Utah.

We had a great time playing at the beach and visiting with some of our friends. The hike was a bit scary in some places. I wouldn't feel that way if it were just Seth and I, but with the girls and needing to carry them some of the way, climbing up steep places, walking along slippery rocks, and passing our girls off along cliffs- well let's just say that my friends were right when they said my eyes were still dilated with fear that night when we had a party in the Jutila's rec room.

It was so exciting and beautiful that I don't think I realized how scared I was until we got to the top. :) Seth or I would climb ahead to find the safest path to keep going with the girls and the girls were so adventurous and brave. We weren't sure if we were going the right way or if the water was going to come in on us. It was very thrilling and next time we'll climb along with other people besides the 4 of us. :)

It was fun banding together as a little family and conquering Point Dune. Just before the last bend we finally caught up to some of our friends and so we knew we were okay. We had to climb up to the look out point instead of making it all the way around because the water had come in a little more and made it too dangerous to make it around the last bend.

On our way up we found this poor little seal stuck on the cliff right beside us. I don't know how he got up there or how he was going to get down. It's hard to imagine the water comes back up that high, but I hope it does and that he's swimming around somewhere, happy with his mommy.

From the the look out point we went down the steps to the tide pools which were teaming with life. Seth and Kendyl even saw an octopus just before we left! (Too bad Seth didn't have the camera on him)

This really was one of our most favorite days of our trip. Thanks Merrell's for inviting us along and thinking of such a fun thing to do.

I can't believe I didn't get more pics of that night. I was pretty exhausted, but it was so fun talking with friends for a few hours in the Jutila's rec room and the kids had a great time with their friends. I did get a pic of all the kids in the Jutila's home watching Scooby Doo. I was amazed how many kids under the age of 8 fit in that room. :) We sure love all you guys and sorry if we missed some of you at the party- like the Harvey's with their sicky Elle, the Marsh Family and the Jensens. Congrats Britney- with your new baby. :)

Some lovely photos.

2008-02-26T18:05:00.000-08:00

Well, here are some lovelies!
I was looking on my sister-in-laws blog and saw that she posted some of her favorite pictures from her camera phone. Thanks Hanna.

Here is a picture of Seth and I in some sort of brothel at his parent's house and this one to the right is of me picking my nose. This is the picture she sees on her phone when I call her. Wouldn't that make you want to answer your phone and talk with me? :) Yes, I thought so. Actually that's probably why I always get her voice mail. Scary. Isn't technology wonderful that you can call from anywhere and see such odd pictures when ever you want?

We're Back!!!!

2008-02-25T07:03:00.001-08:00

Well what a wonderful spontaneous and fun trip we had last week. We took off for LA a week ago last Friday and spent half our week visiting old friends and on Thursday packed up again and drove to San Francisco just to look around for two more days. It was one of my most favorite vacations I've ever had. We got back late last night so I'll post more about that later and go through our pictures to decide which to show, but thought I should put something up for now...

So this is what I was going to post last week, but got too busy getting ready for our trip and Valentine's Day celebrations. We just bought our first living room set (leather couch and two chairs). We said good bye to those comfy pink couches from 1983 with a graveside service at the dump (well not really- but in our hearts- yes) and replaced them with our new set. At the end the girls couldn't quite part with the pink couches all the way so they talked us into keeping the cushions to jump on and slide down the stairs with. We keep those cushions now in the "cupboard under the stairs" in our basement to get out when friends come so they can jump on them and build forts. :) We are also excited about having our piano back which Kenzie practices on everyday. So here's our family room area...

As far as the art studio goes, our friends (the Willis') dropped by out of the blue a few months ago with this amazing desk and bookshelf set for us to borrow. They had just received it from some relatives and were on their way back to Boise and dropped it by for us to use and keep for them until they move to a place that has space for it. Of course we've been in their house in Boise before and have seen they have space for it, we just think they were being nice to us. :) Anyway, we love how it looks in there and are grateful for the furniture. It's fun to have a place for our fun artsy/animation books and creepy sculptures.

This is our books/computery/office section of the studio to do art in the computer and the other side of the office is our artsy/fartsy painting section. The fish in our tank is named "Rainbow Tail". The walls are still bare which Seth is soon to take care of with his framed art and I'm going to buy a large plant and lamp and make some curtains (masculine curtains of course), but you get the idea and it's fun to see it coming along.

Here's our messy area which is lots of fun. Seth is going to kill me for adding these photos of his painting, but I feel it should be shown. If you were to walk in our home you'd see it, so I'm putting it here for those that can't just come over. It's his Halloween portrait he started in October. It's going to be amazing! He wants to show it all when it's finished, but I'm so amazed with it already that I want to put it up as it comes along. He is Frankenstein, Kenzie is a vampire, Kendyl is a little witch, and I'm a dead victorian lady with my neck sliced open and lots of cleavage! :) It's 3 feet by 4 feet and amazing. I need to find a big gothic fancy frame for it. I'm putting his sketch below so you can get the idea of what it will look like completed (except with color). Just remember you love me Seth when you see your painting on here. :) It's sure to be ready for next Halloween's Haunting!

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

Here's our little cutie wishing you a very Happy Valentine's Day!

She wanted me to take a picture of her holding flowers for Valentine's Day. (She thinks it's today because her school is celebrating it today)
Yesterday we had a lot of fun decorating the house with hearts hung on strings and pink parasols dangling from lights and the ceiling.

Here was Kendyl's first idea of how to do her hair for school today. It's such an exciting day she needed an exciting hair do. She came out of the bathroom so proud of herself, but then after a few minutes it was heavy and pulling on her hair so she let me put one rose in and has decided to carry around the rest of them all day (the very top picture).

Speaking of fun hair do's, here is Makenzie's from last week.

She is growing a little more sophisticated in her creations these past few months. :) After putting together skull and cross bone tights, army boots, purple scarf, pink skirt, and funky white and gold top she decided she needed a hair do to complete the look. The first row were four of those little ponytail weave things you pull through and the second row took those in and made 3 big poofy things. She was excited because she thought she looked like an alien and was walking around the house all morning saying, "meep... meep, I... AM... AN... A-LI-EN!"

I warned her that some kids may think it was strange, but that didn't matter if she felt good about herself and she assured me she was most awesome and loved being an alien. :) She came home from school with lots of fun stories of everyone ("even 5th graders, except those drinking from the drinking fountain") staring at her everywhere she went at school. She took it as being very marvelous and wonderful to look at instead of self concious- What a girl! (Here's hoping she never loses such wonderful self esteem)

So backed up...

2008-02-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

Yes. I'm sorry I made it sound like something else- gross. :) No, I feel really backed up on things I could post about what we've been up to. I could write about how we're taking a trip to LA next week that we are so excited for or our new living room furniture or how Kenzie won an award in her school for mad math skills. I have a ton of pictures of us sledding, New Years celebrations, Kenzie's piano playing skills, Valentine's decorations/activities, or pics of when Brett and Elena Gassaway came and stayed with us, and on and on and on and I just feel overloaded when I think of what I could post so I just don't. In fact I don't even get on or look at anyone else's blogs because I don't want to feel guilty. For Pete's sake, why have I turned blogging into one more thing to feel guilty about? Okay- I'm not going to. I just decided. I'll write when I will and not when I wont.... hmmm do I feel better yet?.... Don't think so, but I'm sure I will soon if I keep telling myself that.
I actually feel better now that I got that off my chest. I suppose I will post something Valentines-y afterall.

Kendyl the Tapping Ballerina

2008-01-28T09:35:00.000-08:00

(Kendyl played around in the color effects in photoshop to create the color she wanted for these first two photos- just thought I would give her credit here. Way to go kiddo).

A few weeks ago Kendyl began a ballet/tap class and has been in heaven! The first day of class she kept her arms in the air (like the yellow picture) the entire class time because she felt that was how a ballerina always has her arms. It was so cute to see her standing against the wall with the 10+ other girls waiting for her turn with her arms up like that.

The second class day she decided that she needed a dancing hair do and proceeded to create the do in the the purple photo. It was a hit among the fellow dancers when we arrived at class and so she has decided to keep her hair thing in her bag for every week. Apparently it is only appropriate in her mind to wear it whilst she is tapping and not ballerina twirling. So half way through class when she switches to tap shoes she puts her hair up like this as well.

Every Tuesday is a surprise to find out what she will do to feel more like a dancer for her class. It's oh, so exciting to live with this cute girl. Here is her "pretty makeup", but in this pose, she seems to resemble Gene Simmons from Kiss. Rock on pretty ballerina!

Top 10 Signs You've Been Watching Too Much of "The Office"

2008-01-18T20:34:00.000-08:00

10. You get excited because you see someone wearing an outfit that Angela, Pam or Phyllis might wear.

9. You call your husband at work just to laugh about something you remembered watching with him from last night's show.

8. Your favorite Halloween costume this year was someone dressed in a white shirt and tie with three black spots going down one side (3-hole punch Jim).

7. Your slow internet connection turning a half hour show into a two hour show, did not detour you from watching it anyway. (this one is just pathetic)

6. You actually looked up how much a Dwight Schrute Bobblehead would be to give to your spouse for Valentine’s Day. ($19)

5. You overhear your 4 year old laughing with her preschool teacher about how funny The Office is.

4. You know who Sprinkles, Ash (dominant male), and Garbage are.

3. You giggled for more than 4 hours when Pam and Jim finally kissed.

2. Suddenly the forts that your kids make in the house go from being pretend castles and schools to Offices.

1. You dream about Jim and Pam at night (but mostly Jim). hehe

And maybe the biggest sign really is that my list was double, but I wanted to cut it down so I could be like David Letterman. :)

Adventures In Space

2008-01-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

The girls and I have been looking at photos of space all morning and totally geeking out. Man alive, space is so cool! We searched in google images for Hubble telescope photos and hit the jackpot! Here's a little montage of some. Kendyl has been spazzing out running all over the room asking what every thing is and trying to draw her own versions of things. It's so cute. My favorite was when she pointed to a black hole and exclaimed how beautiful it was and that she wanted to live there. When I told her what a black hole is and what it does she got a little freaked out and said that she guessed Kenzie could live there. hahaha. Nice. (said like Kevin from the Office).

Kenzie is loving playing the games for kids on NASA's site and Kendyl has been drawing and making up stories. She let me post one of her stories and drawing on her blog (here). It's quite imaginative. Leave her a comment and she'll be so excited. :)

Anyway, if you've got kids or are just a cool person, spend some time looking at photos of space. It's amazing!

Gooky the Scary Snow Monster

2008-01-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

Instead of folding laundry and getting a load of dishes going before preschool, Kendyl and I decided to make a snow man with the snow we had piled up from shoveling our drive way. As the pile grew it formed into this terrifying creation for which we are sure our neighbors will think we are completely psycho people (if they had any doubts). Maybe in a couple of weeks we'll make some cute penguins or something to redeem ourselves. :) Kendyl is giggling from our window right now at everybody who drives by and stops to look at him. :) She has decided that his name is Gooky and has invented a little story about him. So... I guess you are lucky to get another story from her cute little mind.

Once there was a snow monster named Snow monster, but his mommy called him Gooky and sometimes Sweetie. His daddy called him Sweet Cake and his sister and brother called him Sweetie-kaka, but when they were mad they called him BOoger-head.

He helped his mommy a lot because he did laundry with her, played with her, and went to bed really good at night. Also he ate all his dinner without being yelled at. He was so good he got money from them for his aliense (allowance) :). His dinner is baby unicorns, ponies, girl super heros, and barbies, zebras, and deer. He likes his dinner.

He's nice, but he's sometimes scary when I look out our window at him.

The End!

(That's food coloring in his gaping jaws.)

Update: When we got home from school today one of his teeth had broken off so I guess the snow monster tooth fairy will be coming soon to visit Gooky. I'll bet it's not a regular tooth fairy that comes. It's probably some sort of version of Makenzie's "Saber Tooth Fairy" (here) that she made up a while back.

Feline and Her Princess Sister and the Bad Guy and Monster and Santa Claus. BY: Kendyl

2008-01-03T12:01:00.000-08:00

Kendyl decided it was time for another story by her, so I pulled up our photos from December and she picked which ones she liked and started making up a story. I typed it all right here. Enjoy.

"Once upon a time there were two little kids and they were writing a letter to Santa because he was coming to their house that night. They gave him some cookies too because he likes cookies.

Santa was so happy he gave them makeup in their stocking. And the two girls were princesses now with the makeup. Such beautiful princesses.

Because they were princesses the bad guy wanted them, but not to eat them up. He just wanted those girls. BUT.... we fighted him!! Rarrrr! And we won!

So suddenly we made our fort so we could be safe and it was a princess castle of our fort. Yay!!!

And we were tough in there and the monsters fighted us and we stabbed them. The bear came and the rattle snake came and the dragon came and the monster came and more bad guys came and we fighted them and were safe. Kenzie got the bear and I got the snake and stabbed him with my knife in his heart. So we are heros. And I'm the biggest hero and Mary is just wonderful. She's Jesus' mom."

This Little Family

December: Decorating, Sewing, Performances, Hanukkah, Pip's Bday, Christmas and New Years!

Our Little Annie

More Brown Bag Art

Penelope's Preschool

Brown-baggin' It

Kendyl's Baptism

Our Magical Evening in the Forest

Graduations!

Cute Penelope

Happy Valentine's Day

The Makenzie H. Bakery and then some!

The Valentine Trick

Getting Help with the Laundry

If you were a fly on the wall in our house...

Summer Fun!

What a find!

Swine Flu

Happy Halloween

The Summer Do's and One Chubby Baby Coming Up...

Well, the dishes won't do themselves...or will they?

The magical number is...

Celebrating Mile Stones and A Prize Give Away!

"Brocolli Obama"

Flash Back Friday- "Dear Dairy..."

Kendyl's Newest Naughty Phase

Flash Back FRIDAY! Stick Arm Girl

The Story (and song) Behind the Name- Penelope Calypso ALSO... some extra stuff

Announcing...

Making Fleece Blankets

A Weekend Away, Twilight, and Christmas Lights

Why We Are Worn Out From The Month Of October

Halloween

Kendyl's Sick Day

The "Thrilling" Weekend

That wacky tradition...

May through September

Makenzie's Guide to a Good School Year

Not really the most fun way to wake up...

We're Having Another Girl!

Kenzie's baptism

QuickCam Fun

Makenzie's Birthday (April 30th)

Ode to my Loberly Overalls

Kenzie's baptism dress

Fun on the Farm

Grandpa and Grandma Smart's Visit

It's Spring Break!!!

Trip to Cali (part 3): Saying Bye to Buddies and San Fran

Tetris Addiction Update

Random Happy Thoughts

Happy April Fools! (and happy bday James)

Easter Fun

More Silly Preschool Stories

Kendyl Our Budding Photographer

Silly Preschoolers

A Hard Weekend

A Great Day For Kenzie

Temptations!

Trip to Cali (Part 2): Disneyland

Our Trip to Cali (Part 1)

Some lovely photos.

We're Back!!!!

Happy Valentine's Day

So backed up...

Kendyl the Tapping Ballerina

Top 10 Signs You've Been Watching Too Much of "The Office"

Adventures In Space

Gooky the Scary Snow Monster

Feline and Her Princess Sister and the Bad Guy and Monster and Santa Claus. BY: Kendyl