Laundry

Now you can see who really helps me with the laundry.

Not To Park In The Back Of The School

We got a double delivery this week. If all of you people were parked illegally then we would not be able to be efficient. This is why there is no parking behind the school in the delivery driveway.

"Mom, Are You Proud Of Me?"

Look how serious she is in the picture above.

My 6 year old taught herself to ride a bike today. Yesterday she asked if we would take off her training wheels and Lewis did after work. She had time to sit on the bike and try to balance while standing there and then we had to go inside. Today she went out for 5 minutes and came back in to get us to come and watch. So we did, and you know what? She can do it without a problem!!

Adam and Jason each took over a year, 25 scraped knees, rivers of tears and at least one grounding. When Adam was learning, Lewis had to just walk away and make him do it himself because he would cry in the first 10 seconds of the lesson, we started teaching him when he was 5. Adam ended up teaching himself (probably out of embarrassment) at age 9 or 10 (maybe 12). Jason learned last summer at age 9 but can only now start riding alone without going down a hill, and stop without just having himself crash into a curb or tree or car... you get the point. Haley is still learning. She just started learning yesterday. So maybe tomorrow, but most likely in about 3 years or so.

So when Abigail asks, "Are you proud of me mom?" I say yes. Yes I am.

How Do I Look?

I FINALLY went and got my hair done (and scheduled another hair appointment for 6 weeks from now so that I can keep it pretty). I love it. Now if I can just figure out how to do it the way that she did when she cut it!

My Baby and Me

I took this picture of Abigail tonight once she was asleep. If you look closely you can see that she was not only sleeping with her American Girl doll, but she must have been reading the magazine when she fell asleep too. It is tucked nicely under her baby's head. How cute is she?

Look At My Blog

I changed all of the pictures and the header picture. The kids have grown so much!!

What Keys?

When I was little we lived in a small house next to the train tracks in Provo, Utah. My dad was in law school at BYU and my mom was taking undergrad courses, and of course they worked. I was the third of four children that had been born (there ended up being a fifth, but she came a few years later) before my dad graduated from law school.

We were poor then, and even though we had lots of toys to play with I would always make up games with random household items. One morning I was walking through the living room into the kitchen when something shiny caught my eye. It was my mom's keys. Oh joy! I knew right away what I was going to do with those keys. I was going to play catch... with myself. How was I going to do that you ask. Oh it was a plan in my head before I even grabbed those keys. I was so excited. It was going to be so fun. And the best part? I was all alone in the living room and nobody was going to bother me.

So I snatched up the keys and stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. I faced the front door stretched my arm back and let the keys go with all of my might! Before they even landed I was congratulating myself on the great throw. But how far can a toddler throw keys... not very far. I was either a wimp or a weakling or something else all together, who knows, but those keys only went like 4 feet. So I went to where they landed and turned around and got myself all set up to throw them again. This time I took a little step when I threw them and they went a little farther. Yes! I am great. I thought that I was the strongest kid in the world. I might have even let out a little Incredible Hulk roar and tried to rip my shirt off...maybe. When I grabbed them the third time I knew that I was going to at least hit the front door, if not blow it off of the hinges and get the keys out into the yard. As I got my stance and threw the keys I knew something was wrong before they even hit the floor. I watched them crash into the floor and saw the keyring fly apart. It was like slow motion in my toddler eyes. The keys flew everywhere.!

I panicked. I grabbed what I could find and shuffled all around the living room looking for somewhere to hide the keys. In my mind I had broken something that was irreplaceable. And I knew that my mom was gonna be really mad.

That is when I saw the book on the bookshelf. I knew it was the best place to hide the keys and keyring. I opened it up and shoved everything inside, and I closed the book. I then pushed down as hard as I could on the cover trying to get it to shut all of the way. I could not figure out where my strength had gone. I was the HULK, a giant green monster a minute ago, and now I am no stronger then a kitty cat. As I was panicking to get the book closed I heard a noise and decided the best thing to do was just run away. Fast. So I ran downstairs and decided to play something else, anything else.

Well, as what happens with most small children I forgot all about the problem once I was busy with something else. Some time passed (I am not sure how much time. I was busy playing and I was two or three for goodness sakes), and my mom was running around trying to get us ready to leave the house so she could go to class. (I think. Maybe it was work, but I think it was class.) That was when the yelling started. She couldn't find her keys. In my mind I thought, keys, keys, what are keys. Then I remembered. Oh crap. She is gonna kill me.

So I watched for a while. She was searching everywhere for those things. Sam was helping, I am supposed to be helping but I really just want to sit in the twirly 1960's chair that we had in the living room. I was content to watch it all play out. Finally the keys were found. But the one key that was not there was the car key. CRAP!! I missed a key. By this time I was standing by the bookcase looking at the broken keyring like it was an alien and like I had never seen a key before in my life. The following is the dialog:

Mom: "WHO DID THIS??? WHO DID THIS??? WHY ARE MY KEYS HIDDEN IN A BOOK? A BOOK? WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD PLACE TO HIDE SOMETHING? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU GUYS??WHO DID THIS? I AM LATE. WE ARE TOO LATE TO EVEN GO NOW. WHO DID THIS??"

(This went on for about 5 minutes with neither Sam nor I answer her except to say things like not me, huh, I don't know, and similar 2 to 4 year old child answers.)

When I was about to crack because I thought that we were both going to get beat to death with wet noodles Sam suddenly says: "It was me. I did it. Sorry."

What? What? Music to my little ears. Of course I look at him in shock and dismay. But in my mind I was thinking, FREEDOM!!! I WILL LIVE TO SEE ANOTHER DAY!!

At that point my mom put Sam in his room for the rest of the afternoon. I think he got spanked for not telling her when it happened. I was so torn up that he would do something like break something and hide it from Mom, that she let me have 2 Popsicles and I got to go outside and play for the rest of the day.

So what did we learn from all of this? I learned that Sam will save you when your a$$ is on the line :) So if you ever get arrested, you know who to call.

*We do talk about this story a lot at my parents house when we are all together. Sam has said that he admitted to it because he thought that maybe he did do it and then forgot about it. I just did not want to get into trouble, period. I guess at this point I not only can take the blame for Sam becoming the miscreant that he is today, but also that I owe him a Popsicle.

Update What?

I feel like I should be updating something on this blog of mine. But what? Nothing interesting is happening. We are just living our everyday lives.

Get Up
Go to school/work
Homework/lessons
Dinner
Bed
Repeat

So what do I write about? This is the question that I ask myself everyday when I sit down to type. I have lots to say but does anyone really want to hear it? No, I am sure that you don't, and frankly I like writing this blog so that I can have something to look back on and see what we have been doing with our lives, so it doesn't really matter what anyone else wants to hear, right? But is mundane everyday occurrences blog worthy? Again, no, I do not think that they are.

I have been going back and reading my blog. I am reading backwards and I got to 2009 before I stopped and laughed. I used to blog some good things. Not that pictures of the kid's parties aren't good, but some funny or interesting things have been posted on this blog in the past. So what happened? I got busy, bored, lazy... all of the above.

Now that I have the minute to type something I am rambling on about nothing of any importance and wasting my time...

So I have made a decision. In between all of the cute pics and short nothings I will be posting stories. Funny stories, crazy stories and some questionable stories. My goal is one story for every year that I have been alive. As we all know that number is 29. So hopefully by the end of the year I will have 29 stories that in many years when my kids come back and read my blog they will have at least a little view into who I was, and who my friends and family were.

This hopefully will at least get me out of my blogging rut. Maybe.

Do You Want Fries With That Burger?

Haley: "Dad! Would you get up out of my grill?"

Lewis: "What?! Your grill is up here.What are you talking about?"





Oh! The things I hear while on the computer.

The cleaning woman came today and it was beautiful. Three hours later my house looks like it exploded. Why?