Lunch with cousins

Monday was President's Day (no school!!) and so Charlotte and I wanted to get the kids together.  We met in Crawfordsville for a quick McDonald's lunch date.  We had a limited time because Katie had ballet that we had to get to.  I felt so bad when it was time to break up the fun.  Our kids do surprisingly well whenever we do anything together.  Despite the fact that we were loud (just by volume of people) the kids didn't run around screaming or being maniacs or get obnoxious or rude.  They sat and talked and talked and talked some more- although since they were all talking together it was loud in that way.  When it was time to go, Hunter and Elena were sitting at a table sit 6 inches away from each other nose to nose talking intensely about ninjas.  Anyway, they all behaved so nicely.  You know how you have people that you really like hanging out with because you know you're children will always get along nicely and be good??  That's Konrad, Elena, and Vaughn.
Here's some pictures of our nice lunch date.

I gave Coleson and Konrad money and sent them up to buy ice cream cones for all the kids. When I was gone in the bathroom changing Owen, Katie accidentally dropped her cone on the floor.  Charlotte said she handled it like a trooper (not even a tear) so we had to promptly replace hers.  Here's a picture of them all happily lapping up their ice cream.  Vaughn was enjoying his so much- it was pretty much the cutest thing of the day.


The other day I couldn't find my phone for anything.  I just knew I had brought it downstairs with me and I had only done one thing and then gone back upstairs.  So it had to be in that one place.  I looked all over for it and then finally in exasperation I said out loud, "what did I do with that phone?", to which Ethan promptly says in his adorable matter-of-fact voice, "oh well mom, I was keeping it safe for ya" as he goes right over to the cushion on the floor that he'd hidden my phone underneath.  Yea, keeping it safe for me...sure thing babe.

Jared gets to drive Katie to preschool 3 mornings a week (M,W,F) since I found a preschool just like a mile from his shop.  Very convenient.  So he drives her over and then I go in town at lunch-time to pick her up.  Anyway, Katelyn is a talker.  I've heard this is common of girls.  But it is so different from the boys.  Not that they are quiet- by ANY means.  But they just talk about stuff.  Most of it you can tune out.  Katelyn wants to have a conversation, though.  And most of the time she's talking about real things.  Like what we should do after school and what order things will happen in today.  Or how she had left something in a place at home and really hoped it'd be there when she got back or that she'd said something to someone and how they felt about it.  Conversation type things.  And she pretty much goes non-stop from one thing to another.  Constantly.  And it's worse when there's no brothers to have to share conversation time with. So Jared said the other morning that she was talking away and he pipes in with his occasional, "oh really?" when she says, "oh I wasn't talking to you, dad-I was talking to myself."  Ha!!!  Jared said it was so funny.  Then a little bit later she says, "OK dad now I'm talking to you".  Funny girl!

My Christmas decorations are still out. Ridiculous, I know, but true.  I have had them all collected and sitting on a shelf waiting to be actually wrapped up and put away in the Christmas boxes.  So last night I felt motivated to get the job done.  Katelyn really wanted to spend some time with me and do our girl things.  I said that I wasn't doing anything fun, just planning to spend the evening working on putting away the Christmas stuff.  She excitedly wanted to help too.  She's often like that.  She wants to help with dishes.  She wants to help with dusting.  Boring things that I usually get ditched to do alone.  I wonder if it's a girl thing or if she's just a helpful child or if it's that she's doing that follow her same gender parent to do whatever they do thing (the boys will do WHATEVER Jared does).  So I'm not really sure why she's like that- maybe it's all of those reasons together.  But I have to often remind myself to involve her in what I'm doing because I'm really not used to someone wanting to be with me.  Usually Jared is the cat's meow.  When he's home, no one wants to hang with me.  It's pretty nice to have a friend. 

We have a saying in our house, "Mom gets it done, and dad makes it fun".  Maybe that's why no one wants to hang with me.  I'm the task-master.  But that's what my job is.  I'm the manager.  That's what I do all day.  Coleson you need to do this, Hunter you need to do this, Katie this, Ethan this, and back to the beginning again.  On a good day I can keep everyone up and moving on what needs done and then by the time they wander off, their jobs are all done.  But if I don't stay on top of assigning and reminding, they wander off- jobs not done.  Then a little while later I'd have to try and roust them for their chores again.  So that's why I'm the no fun task master.  I need to work on being more fun.

That's it for today. 

I'm back

I haven't blogged in a really REALLY long time.  Like long enough to get pregnant, be pregnant (which takes a good long 9 months), and have a now 5 month old baby.  Here's some pictures of said baby. It's not just the pictures-  he really is JUST SOOOO adorable!!!

3 months and so so so so cute!!!!

4 months- he loves those fingers!

He really loves those fingers.

5 months

I have one question for myself- what have I been doing with my time?  Couldn't really say- might be: nursing, cooking breakfast, school, nursing, cooking lunch, school, nursing, cooking dinner...bedtime...nursing...repeat. Occasional baths, stories, laundry, grocery trips, preschool pick ups, and other life's necessities tucked in there too. Such is the life of a mom right?  And the weird part is I enjoy doing it (well most of the time- no one's perfect).  But no where in the there has there been time for mom to blog and catch up on scrapbooking or do other "just for mom" tasks.  Then I realized the other day, it's not like anyone's ever going to say" hey mom, why don't you take a few minutes for yourself this afternoon".  Haha!! Can you imagine?!  So I'm going to have to just take them.  Another thing I realized, is that I find more humor in the mundane tasks and sometimes annoying moments of life when I can think about how I'm going to try to spin it into a blog post.  I've been visiting friends' blogs again and remembering just how much I enjoyed writing about the every day moments.  So....I'm going to try blogging...again.  I know I said this before.  Whatever.  I'm starting over and there's no rules about how many times I can start over again again.  I might make myself a rule to write a new post and then write something from the past 15 months to kind of fill in.  Maybe.  We'll see what happens.  Follow along if you can.

So, to kick off with, here' s a funny moment from the middle of the night last night.  Owen at 5 months is cute, adorable, cuddly, smiley, babbling, oh and he LOVES his fingers.  We often joke that he must have chocolate or strawberry flavored fingers.  So anyway, last night he woke up with just a shrill cry- part of the little temper he's been cultivating lately also.  (It's actually a cute little temper because his cry turns from whiny to shrill as if he's saying "I SAID I WANT YOU...NOW!"  And who can resist being wanted that badly??).  Jared was fast asleep when Owen let out this cry and as I was rolling over to put my glasses on, Jared mumbles (really pretty much still asleep) "he's an angry elf". HA!!!! (That's a direct quote from a favorite family movie- Elf). It was so funny because Jared was pretty much asleep and the comment was so perfectly pertinent.  I just about burst out laughing at 4 am. 

A few weeks ago we were on a trip to Nauvoo to see some friends get married (John & Like Hasek).  Anyway, we stopped at Wal-Mart (because no trip is complete without a stop at the local Wal-Mart).  Jared ran in for some breakfast items (good man also grabbed me some Reese Cup ice cream scoring him definite brownie points).  While I was in the van with the kids we were talking about how Owen's my baby now, and Ethan was my baby before (but he'll always be my baby), and Katie was my baby before him (but she'll always be my baby too) etc. The conversation ended and we moved on to something else.  Then 5 minutes or so later, Hunter whacked Ethan (who knows why- boys in the back seat together), and Ethan says without even a pause, and just dripping with drama, "Mommy, Hunter hurt your baby!"  I just burst out laughing- which was apparently actually not the reaction he wanted from me.   But it was SO funny.

Coleson is very bright.  (This is just to preface because I do use the word dumb (for lack of a better word) a lot in the following paragraph.)  He was on the A/B Honor Roll last semester.  So he's really not dumb.  But sometimes....the questions?? I just don't understand.  I was sitting in my normal spot between him and Hunter at the island while we were working on school work and Coleson looked at me in all seriousness and said, "how many wheels are on a bicycle?"  It'd been one of those weeks full of duh moments for him and I honestly could not answer the question without saying something I'd regret.  So I just looked at him and waited for it to occur to him the silliness of such a question.  And waited.  And waited some more.  All the while he was just staring back at me.  Eventually I had to laugh- more out of frustration at the week of dumb things leading up to the kicker of all dumb questions.   This is not a one time occurrence. Ttoday I told Coleson to come upstairs to take a shower.  He surprisingly came right up and went to the bathroom, but then came out about 2 minutes later- unshowered.  I asked him what he was supposed to be doing and he looked at me very seriously and said he didn't know.  I stared back and waited for it to come to him.  Nothing.  Finally, Katelyn (who was also downstairs when I'd told Coleson to go take the shower) came upstairs and said "Coleson aren't you supposed to be in the shower?"  Coleson says "oh".  Thank you, Katelyn!  Whoever said there are no dumb questions obviously didn't have a 10 year old boy.

To redeem Coleson a little from the last paragraph and using the word dumb a few too many times, I'll also say that Coleson is doing a fantastic job with our chickens lately.  We had always intended for the chickens to be taken care of mostly by the boys.  But the boys were still pretty young when we started chickens.  This past winter Jared has completely relinquished the chickens to Coleson.  Coleson cleans the coop, looks for needed repairs and then does them, and then of course feeds them, waters them, and collects the eggs. It takes him about 45 minutes to an hour every day.  It's been very interesting to see the change that has come over him as he's developed some pride and ownership in his work.  When Jared first turned it over to him, there were a few days Coleson didn't feed them.  When chickens run out of food or water they stop laying eggs.  It can take weeks for them to recoup and start laying again.  Happy chickens= laying chickens.  So during the time they weren't laying, I had to buy eggs at the store.  When I picked up those eggs from the store shelf, Coleson was actually almost offended and asked if I had to buy them.  I did.  Boy, did that hit home.  Every day since, he proudly announces how many eggs he collected from the hens that day- beaming smile and all.  Lesson learned.

Here's one for Hunter and then I'm done for tonight.  It starts out not so funny.  Hunter is in charge of taking out the trash.  And then on Fridays he has to take the trash cans down the lane and on Saturday's (after the trash is picked up) he has to bring them back to the house.  A few Saturdays ago, we sent him out to collect the trash cans before dark.  A few minutes later we heard a blood curdling scream.  Moms know the difference in their children's cries and screams and what each one means.  There's the 'sad', 'mad', 'angry', 'you took my toy', 'I have a not so serious owey', and then there's the HURT cry and the truly scared cry.  Hunter was screaming in both. The second I heard it I was up and running to the window and yelling at Jared who was closer to the front door than me to get outside to help him.  Turns out he was being attacked by a dog.  Of all the kids in the world to be attacked by a dog, why did it have to be Hunter?  He's already so worried and so afraid of so many things.  This definitely didn't help.  The dog was the neighbor across the street's dog (some very large less common breed who we've never had a problem with before).  They had been out playing when Hunter came down the lane for the trash cans.  And he must've looked like fun- because he is.  When he ran away that was even more fun.  Fortunately, his screaming must've scared the dog off because he only got a nip out of his leg.  But obviously he was still pretty upset. Dr. Dad cleaned up the wound and then we let him play a game on the phone for a bit.  Or so we thought.  We got busy with baths and showers and putting kids to bed.  We sent Hunter to bed (but forgot to take away the phone).  Turns out he played quietly in his bed on the phone until we went to bed.  Then he crept downstairs to play.  And that is where I found him when I was leaving for early church meetings the next morning.  He had been awake ALL night long on the phone playing games.  And we have an automatic turn off timer so if the phone is idle for more than 5 minutes it locks and has to have the pass code to turn back on.  So he hadn't let it sit idle for more than 5 minutes.  He was literally awake playing ALL night.  And there he sat on the couch downstairs with his sheepish grin the next morning.  I just stood there completely dumbfounded.  And then I left.  What else was there to say?  It was kinda my fault for not getting the phone back.  But, Hunter sure won't be enjoying any free game time on the phone again for quite some time.

Valentine's Day

Katie & I making cupcakes for her preschool class.

So for Valentine's Day this year Katie and I decided to surprise the boys.  We went to the dollar store and picked up some cheapo decorations.  Then, while the boys were at scouts Wednesday night, we decorated the kitchen and dining room for our girls night (and Ethan).  Every Wednesday is girls night since Hunter turned 8 and is going to scouts now.  We get Ethan and Owen in bed by 7 and spend the evening doing girly things.  One of our favorite activities is putting together princess puzzles.  Katie is really good at puzzles.  Anyway, I digress.  So, Wednesday night we decorated the kitchen.  We let Ethan help because he was just so excited about the whole decorating idea and he had been with us at the dollar store.  It turned out very Valentine's-y.   We put hearts on each person's chair with a love note from one of the 3 of us.  And when the boys came home from scouts I wouldn't let them in the kitchen.  When everyone got up Thursday morning, they came in to see the surprise- plus I had also gotten up early to make a fun breakfast.  We had blueberry pancakes with blueberry syrup and apple pancakes with apple cider glaze and bacon and eggs.  Our family LOVES breakfast and it was a fun way to surprise everyone.  Katie had wanted to help with the breakfast, but her bed had some magnetic pull on her that morning and no matter how many times I went to try and pull her out of bed, she was stuck.  Until the bacon hit the pan.  That's when everyone started following their noses to the kitchen :)  I had also put a little gift for each person on their plates.  The boys got a box of chocolates and Katie got a little chocolate and a heart necklace.  It was a fun Valentine's morning.