Fifty-Ninth Passage

You know how most schools in the area are on spring break right now? You know how I homeschool my kids? Well, I decided I wanted to do a spring break too. So we are. This freed up some time to run to the dollar store with the kids and pick up some craft supplies. We got everything I wanted, except googly eyes. They were out of googly eyes. :( 

I realized that I finally have enough need for a hot glue gun to justify purchasing one. But I still haven't.

Anyway, we did Easter crafts. I looked up some pictures  of easy crafts on the internet, and let the kids choose which one they wanted to do. 

Lydia choose the bunny. (Sort of. I helped her pick it.)

I did the cutting and gluing, but she put the cotton balls, and pom poms on the glue. (Don't you love Lydia's crazy hair that's always in her face? One of these days it will be long enough to stay out.)

Owen and William picked these little chicks.

 Owen is blowing on the glue to make it dry faster.

Morgan chose a different kind of chick.

The boys, especially Morgan, pretty much did theirs on their own. I helped draw lines for them to cut out, but the kinda did the rest. 

I thought Morgan's facial expression was really cute here.

 And here....not so much. That's what he looks like when he sniffs with all his might. Just blow your nose, Morgan!

Now our house is a little more festive.

Post-it #87

Big girl Lydia! I decided I was ready for Lydia to be in a toddler bed. It was basically out of laziness. I didn't like that she had to be let out of her little prison every morning and nap time. She often wakes up at inconvenient times, and I'd rather her just wander out of her room to find me.
So a couple days ago I mentioned to David that I wanted Lydia in a toddler bed real soon. Being the awesome husband he is, he started the process within the hour. We happened to have this toddler bed that David made for Owen when he was much younger. It works.
The first night in her big girl bed, I wasn't even around. I took off for volleyball right after we put the kids in bed. David tells me though, that he was constantly up to tell Lydia to stop playing with her toys, to get back in her room, to keep the light off, etc. Apparently this carried on for about an hour and a half. Oops.
But this morning it was great! I slept in nice and long, (the boys contentedly drew for awhile) and normally Lydia will be calling from her crib to be let out. But when I got out of bed I went in to her room and she was just sitting and playing with her toys. Yay!
I think this will work out.

Post-it #86

Lydia found my sports bra and decided to try it on. It's upside down, and still a little big for her, but she thought it was fun.

Morgan came in and saw her and asked why Lydia was wearing a Bar Nip.

By the way, Lydia has been completely potty trained for awhile now. We finally got it! Yay! She only needs a diaper at night, but naptime she stays dry.

Post-it #85

The kids got an Easter package in the mail from Great Nana. Boy were they excited.

They got candy, toys, and a cute outfit or two.
Thanks Great Nana!

Post-it #84

Owen often wakes up at night from bad dreams. I don't know if he usually remembers them in the morning, but a few nights ago he had a dream that really affected him. You know how sometimes you have real strong emotions in your dreams and they stay with you all day, including the emotion? During breakfast he told Morgan and William all about this traumatic dream. "I had the saddest dream last night! William didn't want to come to this house, so he took his own brain out!" Of course Morgan and William laughed and thought it was so funny, but that made Owen mad, "No, it's not funny! It's really sad! It's sad when people take their own brains out." He told me about it, he told Daddy about it.
The next day he drew a picture of it. The picture had a few stick figures, but one of the stick figures had a brain coming out of his head, and a very dead expression on his face. It was actually one of the best pictures I'd seen Owen draw. I meant to get a picture of it, but he lost it shortly after drawing it.
He showed everyone his picture and said something like, "Look at this sad picture I drew. It's so sad because William took his own brain out."
We've had a few conversations with him, all of them included many reassurances that William won't take his brain out, that he can't take his brain out, and to not worry.
I bet that Owen heard William threaten to take his brain out to kill himself because he had to do something he didn't want to do. William often will say stuff like that. I guess it has a big impact on little brother!

Post-it #83

Once upon a time we had ramen noodles for lunch, and David told the boys we were eating hair. They only half believed it, but ever since then, every time we have ramen noodles for lunch, (more often than I would like to admit) they play a silly game.
One boy will fork up a bite of noodles and let it dangle in the air and say, "Look at my hair..." and finish it with a weird "because" statement that doesn't even fit with the sentence opener.
Here's some I regularly hear. "Look at my hair, because I have a big butt."
"Look at my hair, because I'm dumb."
"Look at my hair, because my mom is fat." Always after this one they reassure me, "We're just playing a silly game, mommy. It's not true."
"Look at my hair, because I don't like food."

It's weird, they're weird, but somehow it's become a tradition.

Post-it #82

During school time yesterday I saw a spider on the wall in the hall. Of course all the kids had to come and see it. Morgan let me know he'd take care of it for me, so I made him wait for the video camera. Here's the result.
(Oh, and please ignore my maniacal laughter.)

Post-it #81

I've lately noticed that William says "cake" in place of "take."  I don't know how I've missed it for the better part of a year, but I have. So in the past month or so I have been working with William to correct that word. If he says, "Are you going to cake us to karate?" I have him repeat the whole sentence, but replace cake with take. He often resists and persists in saying cake over and over, but when he wants to stop repeating the sentence he'll do it right. :)
Anyway, he's doing much better these days, and he'll even catch himself saying cake and start the sentence over and do it right, without any prompting.
There was one unforeseen consequence to this though. William was having a conversation with David and somehow cake came up. Actual cake that you eat. William said something like, "are we going to eat the take?" David corrected him and said it was cake. William piped in with , "No, mommy says it take!" So David explained the difference of the words, spelled them both out, and told him about their proper usage. I think it's funny. I didn't anticipate that at all, but it makes sense that he would think cake was take, since his whole life take was cake. Haha.

Fifty-eighth Passage

Lydia has figured out the sliding glass door. She is constantly going in and out of the house to the back yard. I let her, usually. The yard is fenced, it's been nice and warm, and if she's outside playing, she isn't inside whining at me.
Today she came in after a brief romp outside to show me this.

Clearly she'd been eating mud. We got her all cleaned up, and then she went outside again. This time I watched. She went straight to the garden area, which we still haven't really cleaned up from last year. She loves playing in it, and has even made a trail through the middle of it.
She got to the most cleared spot of dirt, and plopped down on her rump, princess dress and all.

What a girly-girl tom boy.
It's got to be uncomfortable sitting in dirt with just underpants to protect you.

Fifty-Seventh Passage

David and I have been married for a year! And guess what? We're still madly in love, and we like each other, and we're best friends, and we're looking forward to the rest of our life together. Still.
There was one very disappointing aspect of our anniversary. It had been our hope and goal to be sealed in the temple on that day, and we submitted paperwork and everything to get the permissions and stuff, (we'd both been sealed before, so there was a process to follow) but we haven't heard back from Salt Lake about it yet. Boo.
So we made different plans. David got off work early on Thursday, we gave the children to grandparents, and we started our date. Dinner, movie (The Wonderful World of Oz, or whatever it's called)

 and the Anniversary Inn. We stayed Sleeping Beauties castle.

It was awesome.
Friday, our actual Anniversary, was a whole day of fun. We did some shopping, which ended with me getting a new dress. We went to the Discovery Center and had lots of fun there! We paid the big bucks to see the Bodies Revealed exhibit, which was pretty fascinating, but we also just had a lot of fun messing around the normal stuff. Many laughs were had at the mirror writing corner.
I laid on a bed of nails.

There is a game store in Boise that we like called All About Games. You can go and play a game you're interested in before you decide to buy it. So we sat at the tables and played several games before making a selection. We would have stayed longer, but there was a Magic the Gathering convention or something, and we were being crowded out by unshowered, socially awkward, nerds. :)

We wanted to buy To Court the King, but they were out of stock, so we got Qwirkle instead.

We had dinner at The Cracker Barrel, and played the new game there while we ate. 

Before heading home, we stopped at the Boise mall. It was actually closing, so our main reason to go there was moot, but David ended up getting a new phone. 

We had that night childless as well. It was a great anniversary! Thanks to all the grandparents who helped with the kids!