Post-it #28

I love that my kids like to color. It sure is nice to have them still and quiet and calm for a few minutes.

 Oh wait, maybe not so calm after all. For some reason Lydia was so mad that I was taking their pictures. Haha.

Post-it #27

When Lydia wakes up in the morning, she is usually pretty happy and patient about waiting for me to get her out of her crib. She just chatters to herself and reads a book or plays with her dolls. But one morning I heard Lydia screaming for me in agitation. When I went in her room, this is how I found her. 

 Her chubby little knee was good and stuck. And her pants were off. I got it out though!

Post-it #26

Flowers from David: 06/25/2012

Fourteenth Passage

Last weekend we took the kids to Kuna cave. We bought them all flashlights, and tried to get them excited, and met up with my brothers' family. 

The one problem with the Kuna cave is that you have to climb a large ladder into a giant black pit. It can be scary for the kinds of kids that get scared. We have two such kids among us. 

Morgan wasn't one of them. He did great.

 I carried Lydia down, and she did fine. But William and Owen were very nervous about the ladder. I took Owen down, and David followed with William. It was kind of comical how they screamed and/or cried the whole way down the ladder.
But once in the cave they were fine.

Lydia got a flashlight to hold, but most of the time she held it like pictured below. Didn't help much.

 Owen stuck with Daddy for the first half, but soon grew more confident and followed the bigger kids around.

 Morgan and William climbed up into this little niche. They are in the back.

Going back up the ladder was another ordeal for the boys, be we eventually all made it out. Then we played at my brother's house and had a great time.

Post-it #25

Lookit! We're twins. 

Thirteenth Passage

Last weekend we took the kids to the drive-in theater. First we went to Wal-Mart and let them all choose a box of candy and a bug juice. The movie didn't start until about 10:00, which is two hours past their bedtime, but they were great. 

Here we are waiting for the movie to start. It was a double feature. First was Pirates, Band of Misfits, which was okay. It kept the kids entertained. In fact, all three boys stayed awake for the whole movie. However, all three boys ended up in the two chairs with David and I before the movie was over. 

 We kept Lydia strapped into her carseat, which was a life save. She was kinda difficult until she fell asleep.

My three cute boys. 

The second movie was The Lucky One. We all sat in the car for that one, because it was getting pretty cold out. We just turned the van around and David and I watched it from our seats. The kids slept through it. I could have slept through it. It really wasn't worth watching. 

It was a fun evening though!

Post-it #24

From another room I heard Morgan teasing Owen.

Morgan: You're a lady, a little, little, lady!

Owen, in a very angry voice: No! I'm a big lady!

Twelfth Passage

I'm going to do a new chapter of this blog. Pictures of things the kids break.

I'll do a few retroactive pictures to start.

There have been broken drinking glasses, ripped up books, branches torn off the trees, you know, the normal stuff.

David has an ipad. He had a stylus for the ipad. The kids like to play with the ipad. Morgan was playing with David's ipad and using the stylus, and decided to rip the rubber tip off. Bah! So David bought a new stylus. (They aren't cheap.) Owen was the culprit this time. First he dipped it in water so the rubber got all dry and crackly. Then I do believe he ripped it off when using it.

The kids were jumping on the trampoline with the sprinkler under it, but thought it would be more fun to play with the sprinkler and hold it, and aim it at their brothers. It resulted in a fatality. William was at fault for this one.

 My sister, Stephanie, gave David and I this resin figurine for a wedding gift. We really liked it. I guess the boys did too. The story we have pieced together from the accounts of guilty 3 and 5 year olds goes something like this. Owen was holding the figurine. He was also holding a flashlight. William wanted the flashlight, so ripped it from Owen's hand, causing Owen to drop the figurine.

William and Owen got to buy the glue that will hopefully fix it.

Our kids seem mighty destructive. Is that normal, or are our boys just over achievers?

Post-it #23

All the boys have the same shoes, and Morgan and William wear the same size shoe. At swimming lessons one day, right when we got there, I noticed William's feet. 

Two left feet! Doesn't bode well for his dance partners in years to come.

Eleventh Passage

Morgan and William took swimming lessons during the first half of the month. We signed Owen up too, but after two days of him refusing to get in the water, we asked for our money back. 

Check out this photo; the little circle of kids and teachers is the boys' class. Morgan and William, however, aren't paying any attention, they're doing their own thing. This, unfortunately, wasn't unusual. 

 I had to take this picture of Morgan's little butt crack.

 Morgan learning a back stroke.

 They got to play in life jackets the last day.

During the lessons, Owen, Lydia, and I, hung out on the bleachers. Owen played with my phone most of the time, and Lydia was surprisingly good about just sitting and watching. Often on my lap, often in her stroller. But as the second week progressed, she started to get bored, and became much more unmanageable. 

Here's some fun videos.

Morgan's like a little fish, and he did awesome. The teachers recommend he move onto the eel class. William, while he made a lot of progress, was too scared of the water and too timid of the teachers to learn most of the stuff in the class, and it was recommended that he repeat it. We'll see though. I doubt we'll put them in lessons again until next year, and a lot could change by then.

Tenth Passage

One of my favorite moments of melding our two families together happened about 3-4 weeks after we were married. David needed to get his ipad replaced, so we all went to the apple store in the Boise mall.  To keep the boys entertained and out of trouble, laptops with a camera and funny camera effects were set up for them. I went from computer to computer to change the current camera effect for each boy, but soon Morgan figured out how to change it himself. At one point William wanted his changed and an employee overheard and came over to assist him.  Morgan told the employee that he knew how to change it all by himself. The employee said, "Well then, why didn't you help your brother?"

Morgan looked at the man with confusion and said, "Brother?"

The man replied, "Oh, he's not your brother?"

Morgan, in amazement, asked, "How did you know he was my brother?"

The employee said, "Well, you came in together, look the same, blonde hair, it just made sense." 

The whole time I just observed this happily. I love going places as a family where people won't know us and won't know that we're a mixed family. I like it when people assume that I am the mommy of William and Owen. I like being a family of six, rather than two separate families of three that are joining together. 

Another time I met a neighbor of ours who was asking about our family. She told me that my kids all look just like me. As much as I disagree, I was happy to hear it! 

Post-it #22

We have a morning glory problem in our backyard. Those pesky weeds are taking over the lawn. But the boys don't see them as weeds, they see them as pretty flowers.

William, in his sweetness, picks me a few flowers on a daily basis. Throughout the day he will bring me one flower at a time, then go back to play. Often Morgan and Owen observe this, so they do it too. What a lucky mom I am. 

 It is 1:45 p.m. as I write this and William has already given me five flowers today.
I remember when I was a little girl and picking dandelions or those little purple field flowers by the handful and presenting them to my Grandma Martin. What I remember so keenly about it was her eager reception of them. I remember her putting the weeds, given to her in love, in a cup of water and placing them on the window sill. And I remember how it made me feel. So, I found my vase with the smallest opening and filled it with water to preserve the sweetness of sweet gifts.

Post-it #21

We have a no-shoe rule in our house, and so have a little shoe rack by the front door. It is supposed to look like this.

Owen's daily chore is to put up the shoes. But we usually have more shoes by the door than fit. So Owen improvises. 

Complete with penguin. 

Ninth Passage

David, Morgan, and Lydia, and I, just returned from a weekend in Utah. Morgan and Lydia hung out with their dad, and David and I went to downtown Salt Lake City. First we checked out the new mall they have down there. Very fancy and pretty. 

Then we went to the Salt Lake temple. 

This was our first time going to the temple together, and it was such a good experience. We felt the Spirit together, and we felt the desire even more, to be sealed together in the Lord's house. I want my David forever. 

After the temple, it was well into the afternoon, and we were HUNGRY. So we went to the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial building to have an early dinner or late lunch. It served as both. We planned on going to the roof restaurant, but at $40 a plate, we changed our minds and went to the Garden restaurant instead. We had a lovely view.

 But here was my favorite view....

 We had to get a photo together.

 When we were full to bursting we went to the Conference Center to walk on the roof. They have four acres up there with trees, fountains, meadows, and waterfalls. Very cool.

We went back to the JSM building and watched the movie they had playing at the Legacy theater, which was also nice to do together.

We went back to the mall where we had parked the car. We found a broken escalator, so David had to use the wrong side... :)

We had such a lovely day together, and felt so close and in love.

The next day we headed back home. Lydia is a horrible traveling companion. She screams so so much! It can be very frazzling in the car.

We stopped at a gas station in Sublett Idaho so Morgan could go to the bathroom. They had llamas there!

We let the kids feed them.

Oh, and Morgan was playing with my phone for a time and took a multitude of pictures. 74 of those pictures were close-ups of his face, many had hardly any differences. 

What a goofball. 

Post-it #20

I happen to think this is adorable.

Eighth Passage

It's been a couple weeks now, since we went bowling, but I finally got my videos converted to something not macish. (Thanks, David!) 

One weekend we decided to take the family somewhere fun. Bowling it was. And fun it was. Lydia wasn't feeling fantastic, so she was actually more containable than she would have been otherwise. For a lot of the time she just hung out in her stroller, looking miserable. 

The rest of us had a grand ol' time though.  Here's Owen.

Owen's usually took a long time to make it down the lane. But sometimes he got a little help, as seen below. 

But David usually did much better than that! See?

Morgan did really well, and a lot of times didn't even need the bumpers. His poses were funny.

William did the best of the three boys. He had a funny slide that he did, as if sliding home in baseball. And he was so fast approaching the lane that I never got a complete video.

Then there's me. The winner of the day. Boo-yeah! Pretty boring to see though.

And here are the ending scores.

After bowling, we went and got milkshakes, then went to a park to play. Caldwell may be the only place in Idaho where our white family is a minority. I didn't see any other white kids playing on the playground. Just an interesting observation, is all.