February 2011

A brief recap of February:

We celebrated Amy's birthday...the big 3-0!
(2/9/11)

We often get mail addressed to the previous owners of our house, including lots of sets of address labels. Josh and Mary have a lot of fun with all of the "stickers."

(2/23/11)

Josh being a cowboy, riding his horse Chester...this is a frequent occurrence.

(2/15/11)

Mary and her "glass slippers." This girl LOVES shoes--or anything to put on her feet!

(2/21/11)

Another set of slippers for Mary. I was wearing my slippers one Sunday afternoon and Mary asked where her slippers were. Since we don't have any for her, we improvised with our puppets. She thought they were great!
(2/27/11)

January 2011

In a pretty feeble attempt to (begin to) catch up on blogging, here are a few of the things we did in January.

Josh & Mary modeling their new Christmas church clothes

(1/2/11)

(1/2/11)

Mary moved into a Big Girl bed! David decided that it was time (although why he was the one who got to make this decision, I still don't know, as I'm the one who has to get up with her to put her back in bed!)

(1/2/11)

We went to the train park in Scottsdale with Michael, Shannon, Rafe & Skye
(1/3/11)


(1/3/11)


The kids have had LOTS of fun on the play set Penny, Dean & Family gave to us, including several picnics. Here are Mary, Marlee, Karalee & Josh enjoying one of such picnics.
(1/13/11)



Putting kids to work (they gotta earn their keep around here!)
(1/15/11)

(1/16/11)

Celebrating David's birthday...man, that's a lot of candles (because I have a lot of room to talk)

(1/22/11)

Labor Day Weekend 2010 - California!

This year we decided to take our first ever family vacation and go and visit Kayla, Jeff, Rachel & Jaki in Huntington Beach, CA. They were so nice to let us come and stay with them and to hang out with us and show us a good time!

We left on Thurs. (9/3/10) late afternoon. The kids and I took David to work that morning, so we could just pick him up on our way out of town, thus saving him about an hour's worth of driving home and heading back the same direction. This was the longest car trip either of our kids had ever been on, but other than general whining and wanting to get out of their carseats they did okay. Neither of them, but especially Mary, have the greatest attention span when it comes to movies, but the Sesame Strett DVD's kept them semi-entertained. Mary didn't sleep at all until about the last 20 minutes of the trip, and by then it was about 11:00 pm! Crazy girl.

Friday morning we took Kayla with us to check out Balboa Island, since it came highly recommended from some of our friends (Jeff had to work). We took the ferry across 100 yards or so of water to the island, and let the kids play for a while at a park we came across. We walked around a bit more, admired the crazy-expensive houses, stuck our toes in the water on the beach then got back on the ferry to go back to the "mainland" to ride the ferris wheel.

Friday night we all went to eat at California Pizza Kitchen and had to wait For-ev-errrr! It was a little tough keeping the kids entertained that long, but somehow we managed.

It was fun to see Rachel & Josh having so much fun together. Rachel is almost a year older than Josh, but they would sit next to each other in the van and laugh and giggle, and hold hands like this almost everywhere they went.

On the ferry ride over to Balboa Island

I thought Josh might get a little scared on the ferris wheel, but he loved it...

...and so did Mary!

David had quite the following!

On the pier at Newport Beach

Mary decided she wanted to be part of the choo choo train too

Three cute girls sitting in a tree!

On Saturday we woke up to a pretty hazy morning, but went to the beach anyway. The water was COLD, and it was even a little chilly out of the water to us "Mesans." Mary had a bit of a runny nose and didn't seem to be feeling the greatest, but I was glad that she perked up later in the day. The sun finally came out after an hour or so and David and I braved the cold water to do some boogie boarding. I think that's the first time I'd ever done that, and I caught a couple of good waves just right and had a lot of fun. The kids had a ball playing in the sand and running away from the waves. It was a fun day.

Saturday night we got a baby-sitter and Jeff & Kayla and David & I went to eat at Pei Wei, then went goofy golfing. I was totally on my way to winning and finally beating David (for the first time) until about the 2nd to last hole where I blew it. Dang it!

Josh testing out the water

We got a cheapy kite from Big Lots before heading to the beach and the kids LOVED it! Rachel hung onto it most of the time, but here's Josh with a turn.

Josh went and laid in the sand for a while...it looks like he was throwing a fit, but it wasn't. He just went and laid down for a bit then went back to playing. He must have been getting tired.

If you look closely, you'll see the kite handle hooked onto the boogie board handle strapped to Rachel's wrist.

Our lovely host and hostess

David the one-finned Mer-man.

On Sunday we went to Sacrament Meeting with Kayla's family, then went to see the Newport Beach temple. The whole way to the temple Josh was upset about not going to class...I guess that'll teach us to ditch the rest of church! The temple grounds are beautiful, and the kids loved running up and down the wheelchair ramps.

Monday we packed up and headed home, and made pretty good time until we hit the Buckeye area, where a small fender bender (at least that's all we could see) left us stuck in very slow moving traffic for about 45 minutes. That was fun trying to keep the kids entertained for that much longer! But, we made it home safe and sound.

Thanks, Kayla and Jeff, for a great weekend!

It's Not Your Problem

Someday maybe I'll finally update with all the fun things we've been doing since...ummm...forever ago, but for now, I want to write these down so I don't forget.

The last while I've been letting Josh wear his regular underwear during his naps, rather than a pullup. The other day he woke up and came out to the family room and I asked him if he was still dry. He said he was, so I told him to go potty so he would stay dry. On the way to the bathroom I realized he wasn't dry and he said, "Someone just poured water on me!" Hmmm...we have a trickster around here!

Lately Josh has taken it upon himself to discipline Mary when she does something wrong/something he doesn't like. David will often tell him it's not his problem, we'll take care of disciplining Mary. While we were shopping the other day he was trying to get out of the cart so I got after him. He said, "Mom, it's not your problem." Darn kid picks up on too may phrases these days and tries to use them against us!

Jury Duty

So, yesterday I got a jury duty summons...for the 5th time in about 7 years. (I've only had to actually appear once, and I got picked to be on the jury.) They say that the process is totally random, but I swear they must keep my name on some special list! Not that I mind serving and doing my part (it's actually kind of interesting), it's just a bit inconvienient.

Anyone wanna volunteer to possibly watch my kids for me on 9/29? I won't know if I have to go down to the courthouse until the evening before.

Testimonies and Beans

A couple of weeks ago for Family Home Evening I wanted to teach Josh about testimonies. So I let Josh pick out 5 beans, which we wrapped in damp paper towels and put in the cupboard to germinate (is that the correct terminology?). We then related to him how beans are like a testimony, in that they need to be nourished to grow...beans with soil, water and sunlight, and testimonies need other spitirual care to grow in our hearts.

The next Sunday was Fast Sunday, so during one of the testimonies Josh picked up on the the word "testimony" and said "A testimony like my beans!" At least he picked up the relationship, right?

Fun Trip to Kohl's

I was shopping at Kohl's the other day and forgot to put the double stroller in the van before we left, so I only had the single stroller. (Why don't department stores have carts with room for more than one kid, by the way?) So, I just strapped Mary in and had Josh sit on the handle/cup holder tray, like I often have him do.

As I was shopping, and coming close to nap time, Mary was starting to get kind of cranky and had grabbed an item of clothing from one of the racks during my browsing. It was keeping her relatively happy, so I let her play with it. A few minutes later Mary somehow got the metal hook of the hanger stuck in her mouth and started crying. I go to her and get the hanger out of her mouth, but it did some damage and there was blood. Alarmed, I take her out of the stroller to assess the injury, forgetting that she is weighing down the stroller that Josh is sitting on...oops. The stroller tipped over backwards and Josh fell. He wasn't hurt badly, but now I have two crying kids, one of which is bleeding. Awesome! A nice older lady asked if there was something she could do to help, but really I just needed to get to the bathroom to get Mary cleaned up a bit. I finally convinced Josh to ride in the stroller and push him while carrying Mary and trying to keep myself from getting too bloody (there wan't THAT much blood, but I still wanted to salvage my shirt, if I could).

We finally made it to the bathroom and got cleaned up. I found some smarties in my purse which got the kids to stop crying. Mary's injury never seemed to bother her after the incident, and we were able to finish our shopping with only some of our dignity lost.