WATER FIGHT!!!!!!

You know what happens when your husband is home ALL day EVERY day?

Tension.

No matter how much you like each other, no matter how well you are getting along, there is an underlying tension. You don't want him to mess up your routine, you don't want him to be bored, you don't want him to be discouraged, you definitely don't want him to start down the depression road.

Well, Timm has been home since November. We've been down this road before and it's been ugly at times. This time has been pretty good. We haven't let it get us down too much. We've even had some fun, not bad at all. This week has been an *eh* week though. We are tired and we're sick of being in the house. We've had some fun distractions, but it all comes swooping back as soon as the fun is over.

Today has been a long day. Nobody fighting or anything, just long and a bit boring. Dinner time came around I grudgingly made tacos. Dinner conversation was lacking, (not much to talk about when you are with each other 24 hours a day) nobody had any news. Timm started in with the teasing and I'm telling you I just wasn't in the mood. He kept at it though and every time it was aimed at me he would just smile and giggle. He just wasn't catching the death looks or he just didn't care. So after a few minutes of this I really just felt like dumping my cup of water on his head. I decided that was a pretty bad idea so I sipped my water down until I only had an inch or so of water.....
then I dumped it on his head.

I didn't get much on him though, he knocked it out of my hands. He looked at me a little surprised, but laughed, so I dove for my cup, got a little more water and threw that on him. He grabbed Alison's water and threw it in my face. That was it, it was on. I raced him to the sink and started filling my cup. We fought over the cups, just barely getting each other here and there. Then he put his hand over the faucet, spraying me in the face and I threw a cup of water over my shoulder. By the time it was all over we were both bent over laughing, we were both soaked to the bone and it took three towels to clean up the kitchen.

We now know that the best medicine for unemployed tension is a water fight. Who cares if it's winter? We had fun, the kids think we are crazy, and everybody is smiling.

Andrew's Friend

We do most of our grocery shopping at Harmon's. Well, almost a year ago the whole family went to the store, except Andrew wasn't there. Crackers Bigpants was. One of the cashiers, an extremely nice boy named Tino, saw Crackers. Tino just loves that Andrew has almost no inhibitions and will go where ever he wants dressed as a clown and he told him that. He told him that he was so awesome and brave. That just tickled Crackers. Just before we had gone in he said, "I hope I don't scare anybody." He is always so thoughtful like that. Well Andrew and Tino soon became fast friends. Tino always gives Andrew big hugs and high fives. He has even let him scan the groceries. Here comes the sad part.... Tino is leaving soon. He is joining the Airforce, he hopes to be a medic. We wanted to make sure that we got a picture of Tino before he left and we know that he loves Andrew, but nothing makes him happier than seeing Crackers come into the store. (He has even told us that he has had horrible days, but all that changes when Andrew comes to visit.) So the next couple times we went to the store after we found out he was leaving we made sure to have Andrew's Crackers gear and a camera in the purse first. These are the pictures we got....
Good luck Tino, we will sure miss you! Especially Andrew/Crackers.

Yipiyuks

Alison is such a creative girl. I love the projects she comes up with and this is one of my favorites! Have you ever heard the poem Yipiyuk? it goes like this.....

The Yipiyuk by, Shel Silverstein

In the swamplands long ago,
Where the weeds and mudglumps grow,
A Yipiyuk bit on my toe…
Exactly why I do not know.
I kicked and cried And hollered “Oh”—
The Yipiyuk would not let go.
I whispered to him soft and low—
The Yipiyuk would not let go.
I shouted “Stop,” “Desist” and “Whoa”—
The Yipiyuk would not let go.
Yes, it was sixteen years ago,
The Yipiyuk still won’t let go.
The snow may fall,
The winds may blow—
The Yipiyuk will not let go.
The snow may melt,
The grass may grow—
The Yipiyuk will not let go.
I drag him ‘round each place I go.
This Yipiyuk that won’t let go.
And now my child at last you know
Exactly why I walk so slow.

Well Alison really liked this poem and has made herself a Yipiyuk bag. Just a drawstring bag full of modeling clay and doo dads (Yay! Finally a use for all those little things that she can't seem to part with). She makes these cute little creatures which she calls Yipiyuks out of the wonderful doo dads and clay that come from this bag. Then, she pulls out a book, preferably my Planet Earth book, and finds a cool picture. Then, she takes pictures of the Yipiyuks in front of scenery from the books. So cute right?
(She let Jack make this next one, he called it "Uggy Ippy Uck") Are you off to make your own Yipiyuk now? Maybe even a Yipiyuk bag?

Ring Toss!

This is one of my most favorite games! I love it, it makes me laugh every time!
What you need for this game....

Kids, 2-6.









A balcony, stairs with a small landing, or even a very large second story window.









Hula hoops.









Whenever my kids are outside and they ask for the hula hoops, they know this is what is going to happen. They all stand out on the lawn and I toss the hoops over their heads.
We almost always end up doubled over in laughter by the end (by end I mean after they run the hula hoops back up and we do it two or three times).

WARNING: Kids may end up in tears after being hit in the nose by a hula hoop (but no worries, if it hit their nose it probably went over their head 15 points for you!).So here's a really loose tie in, but it's my blog, so there.
Ring Toss is a game often seen at Carnivals or other street festivals right? Well, here are some pictures of my gorgeous girls after they got their faces painted at the Ogden Arts Festival. Sorry about the lighting on these, but don't they look pretty?

When Make Believe Meets Reality

My kids play the strangest games, especially during the summer. Hollee asked me to come into her room on Friday afternoon. I walked back to find this.....

Hollee had wrapped all the kids up in "bandages" in her own little "triage" room. It was pretty cute. Broken knee and wrist.

Broken ankle, wrist, and arm. Missing ear and punctures on the head.

Broken arm and leg.

They all listed their ailments (which were many with all the added injuries before they were done playing), but I only remember how a few of the injuries happened. Eli got bit by an American Alligator on his head, and Smeigel bit his thumb off. Notice here that the doctor isn't the only one missing from these pictures, we're also missing Jack. He didn't want to be a patient on Friday. He was saving that for Monday.
Jack was standing on a chair trying to reach candy on the table. Somehow he slipped and fell, smacking his chin on the chair on the way down. I took him to the clinic and he got 5 stitches.

He likes showing off his bandaid beard. (and messy face)

Poor baby.

The youngest of five and the first to get stitches. We always knew it would be him.

My Alison

Alison....Alison is probably the quietest kid you will ever meet. She just doesn't like to talk. It makes her uncomfortable. If you try to get her to talk, she becomes even more quiet. Talking just doesn't happen.

So, you won't believe what she did yesterday. We were all out shopping and I decided to get all the kids a new shirt. Hollee, Eli, Andrew and Jack all picked shirts that were very typical of what they wear and Alison picked this.....

(I GOT AN A+ IN TALKING)

She held it up and I just laughed! I didn't know how much I should laugh so I held back a bit. Then she said, "I think it's funny, because I don't talk very much". I lost it at that point. So funny! Nice to know Alison has such a great sense of humor.

MY HEAD IS BEEPING!

My cute, cute boy.
(I am writing this in the knowledge that he will be reading this so keep up.)
When Eli was three years old we lived in Oregon.
His most favorite thing in the world to do was to go to Grandma's house. Unfortunately, some odd things happened over at Grandma's. I mean really odd things, like his head would beep. Really high pitched kind of shrill beeping. Kind of like some type of alarm. We all heard the beeping. It usually happened when it was smoky in the kitchen, like if we burned something or the wood stove was smoking. The beeping would start and then he would exclaim to us, "My head is beeping!" Then, he would plug his nose to make it stop. The nose plug seemed to magically work.
It was all very inexplicable.
How cute is that to have a kid with a beeping head?

Well Eli is now seven years old.
I had all but forgotten about his beeping head until the other day when he came home from school.
Eli: "Mommy? Remember when my head would beep when we were at Grandmas?"
Mommy: (suppressing a smile) "Yes, I remember."
Eli: " It happened again today at school."
Mommy: (getting harder not to smile at this point) "It did? Weird!"
Eli: " I know, huh."
Eli leaves the room like this is all no big deal and Mommy quickly calls Daddy while giggling.

Again I have to say...
...My cute, cute boy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Presenting......

CRACKERS BIGPANTS!

Do you recognize this clown? This is Andrew doing what he does. Notice how the pants are too small? Those are the little touches he makes, and yes, he named himself.


Crackers here has made a few public appearances. The grocery store, Target and general errands around town. Last Wednesday was his first party. Crackers was the entertainment at our Relief Society birthday social.


He was the hit of the party, if I do say so myself. He was adorable. He passed out balloons, he took pictures...


(here he is giving one of the Young Women bunny ears)

even played a few jokes...


(he's whacking his primary teacher)

I didn't get a picture of it, but when the bishop came in to say "hi" he took his giant fly swatter and went over to the bishop and started whacking him. He whacked him over and over and said, "Am I bugging you?". The bishop replied, "yes". Crackers said, "Oh, I thought so" and kept right on whacking. The bishop knows Crackers only too well and laughed when he saw him and said, "His life's ambition right?" Yes, yes it is.




By the way, here is the cute birthday cake I made for the party.

Hollee vs. Jordan

Now you may have noticed that most of these posts have been about Andrew, with a few guest appearances from Jack. The reason for this is just, Andrew is home with me all day, every day and he is 5, just a silly age. So I decided to put up a few of my favorite stories of all my kids.
Now I asked my sister if i could put up this story because it kind of makes Jordan sound like a bully, but he totally isn't. He's one of the sweetest boys ever! The keyword in that sentence is "boy" though, he's always been a boy through and through......

There were some key differences between Hollee and Jordan when they were babies. Hollee a girl, Jordan a boy. Hollee a first child that was by herself most of the time, Jordan a second child. Not just any second child either, his older sister was the first grandchild on both sides of their family so she was spoiled as all get out! Hollee was quiet and quite frankly, a lazy baby, Jordan was a ball of energy. The kid didn't know how to walk, only run, run, run. Also, Jordan may have been 5 months younger, but he was bigger.
Sorry I couldn't put up a younger picture of Hollee, I really need to scan in some of her tiny baby pictures.

Hollee and Jordan got along for the most part, they crawled together for a little while, they saw each other all the time. One day Jordan discovered that he was bigger than Hollee and he liked it. She would come over to his house to be dragged around by his older sister (which I am sure was a welcome break for him) and he decided he wanted in on the action too. So he started pushing and hitting Hollee any time he had the chance. Hollee would just whimper. Seriously, she was too lazy to even cry. All of us parents watched this change come and wondered what to do. This continued for a couple of weeks until this fateful day.....
Hollee was sitting on the floor of Jordan's living room. She was (lazily) playing with a toy similar to this...

(Do you remember it now Gabrielle?)
She would hit the balls, slowly lean over to get them, put them back in and hit them again. Hollee had not yet seen Jordan and was having lots of fun. Jordan walked in the living room. He was in a good mood and he had no intentions of picking on his cousin at the moment. Hollee looked up at Jordan and something close to panic came into her eyes. She looked down and saw two little plastic balls. She picked them up, walked right over to Jordan and with one ball in each hand bashed him on either side of the head with the balls. Jordan was shocked! He started to cry and she walked away looking a little bit too satisfied. I didn't know what to do, I was more shocked than Jordan. Then Dave (Jordan's dad) busted up laughing and so did I. Later that day Hollee watched Jordan bite his older sister then proceeded to bite him twice, both times unprovoked. We quickly got that nipped in the bud and from that day forward they never fought again. Really, they NEVER fought again.



p.s. Did you notice my new background? kind of remind you of clown cars? Stay tuned...

Interfering With Babies

I babysit my niece Sam a couple times a week.

If I'm lucky I get a few precious moments of being her most favorite person in the whole world in the morning. Today I got a whole hour of being her favorite person. It was adorable. She wanted me to chase her, she giggled, she smiled, she even came up to me while I was sitting and moved my hand out of her way so she could climb on my lap and just cuddle. When this baby cuddles it's the sweetest thing ever. She puts her cheek right against mine and coos while she plays with my hair. ADORABLE!!

Well, things change when Jack wakes up. I now come in a very far away second.

Jack walked in the room and she started giggling like she always does. Lucky for me Jack can't start his day until he has given me a good cuddle. So he smiled at Samantha and walked over to me and climbed on my lap. This ticked Sam off. She threw a full blown fit. She screamed, she kicked and the tears immediately started (she's really good at that). So I picked her up and put her next to Jack on my lap. The fit automatically turned off. She smiled, threw her arms around Jack's neck and was again the happiest little girl you have ever seen. They are now sitting on the floor eating her dry cereal. He leans over and eats it like a puppy dog (noises included) and she laughs her butt of every time.

I think I like coming in second.

Preconceived Notions

Don't worry, he's fine. (I have to put in these disclaimers before I tell the story or Grandma will have a panic attack!)

Andrew fell and split his head. There was all sorts of blood, because it was on his head, but it was very small. I told him I had to look at it so I could see if he needed stitches.
He says, "I don't want stitches! Stitches hurt!"
...
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...
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...
the clock ticks...
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...
...
...
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...
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...
"What are stitches?"

Like I said, he's fine, he didn't need stitches.

Dissapointed Already?

Some of my older kids came home from school today with a newspaper. On the cover was a very impressive picture of the National Mall during inauguration. The kids were fascinated by this. Andrew asked them what it was (we listened on the radio instead of watching so he hadn't seen). Hollee told him it was when President Obama was sworn in.
He says, "Huh?" which is classic Andrew. Head cocked, eyebrow up and all.
She says, "When he was swearing in to be the president".
A look of complete devastation came across his face. He could not believe it. We got a brand new president and he already had broken this kids heart.
He says, "He was swearing in"?
"Yes".
"Does he lie too"?
After we had stopped laughing we told him that there are two types of swearing. Cussing, and promising, we told him it was the promising type.

His faith was automatically restored. How cute is he?!

At It Again!

A little while ago our friends Clint and Amber came over for dinner. Our kids have known Clint for over 4 years now so they are really comfortable and have lots of fun with him. Well one of the dishes at our dinner was balsamic apples with shallots. These were being passed around the table quite a bit. Clint was helping out and dished some up for Andrew. Some apples fell on the table cloth right in front of Andrew's plate. Andrew looked at the apples, Clint looked at the apples, then before Andrew could get to them Clint stuck his fork in them from across the table and stuffed them in his mouth. Andrew looked at Clint in utter disbelief. His expression quickly turned into disgust.
Clint looks at him and says, "What?". Like he's all innocent.
Andrew looks at him and says, with a tone of voice like- you should have looked-,"There was a hair on that".
Clint looked a little something like this.....

....pretty much everybody at the table (excluding Andrew, he was the perfect picture of seriousness) bust up laughing.
Clint looks at him and says, "Why did you tell me? Couldn't you let me think it was ok?".
We all continue laughing as Andrew just looks at him and shakes his head.
Andrew took a few more bites of food, then calmly looked at Clint and says, "I was just kidding, there wasn't a hair".
The delivery of Andrew's first practical joke was perfect. He's a mischievous little guy.

Where Does It Come From?

I don't remember much from when I was five, but I'm pretty sure that I did not have an endless fountain of quick witted remarks to everything that was said within a 2 mile radius.
It is almost impossible to argue with or get mad at Andrew (my five year old). No matter what we say he always has something to say back. Now I don't think this really counts as back-talk. He is not saying these things to be snotty or get out of trouble, he just can not let an opportunity to make somebody laugh pass. It's in his blood.
Yesterday in church he was sitting on Timm's lap and would not stop being a wiggle worm. Finally Timm tells him that if he doesn't stop wiggling he will sit on the floor. So, instead of just stopping, he freezes his face and says, "ok" out of the corner of his mouth. Timm then picks him up and puts him on his lap (he had wiggled his way off) and Andrew is in freeze frame. He had his arms out like a zombie, his face in a grimace, and his legs are oddly splayed like he was just about to sit when he was frozen. Of course this is when the bishopric looks over. Timm says they just looked confused. How do you not laugh at that?
Of course that is just one of the dozens of things he does every single day. There is no way I could even remember let alone write all the things he says and does.

Now, I promised Dave that I would put in a blurb about Andrews underwear. I can't find any good pictures so it doesn't get it's own post. Dave saw Andrew running around in his unders (everybody has at some point, he doesn't like clothes) and finally somebody else thought they were as funny as I do. Andrew has these King Kong underwear, I cannot wash, fold, put away or lay out these underwear without laughing. On the back there is a big picture of King Kong destroying the city, but right on the front it says in big letters "KONG". A little funny right? But wait, look a little closer, is that a subtitle? Yes it is, it says "8th Wonder of the World". Seriously, it does.

Jack and the Donut

So we all know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, but today we are going to tell the story of Jack and the Donut.....

The first Jack was a small, thin and hungry boy.

Our Jack was a small, fat and hungry boy.

The first Jack wanted nothing more than to be able to feed himself and his mother.
Our Jack wanted nothing more than to feed his fat belly.

The first Jack climbed a beanstalk finding a beautiful treasure that would buy anything his small family would ever need.

Our Jack had a yummy donut. Ate every bite of it, but that wasn't enough for him. He wanted his sisters donut too.

The first Jack took the treasure and was chased by an angry giant. He ran down the beanstalk and chopped it down, thus getting away.
Our Jack also took the treasure and was also chased by a giant (he was very tiny). Here is where we split paths for a moment. Instead of going down a beanstalk and getting out of reach of his giant he took his treasure and held it high above his head and ran away, but wait, isn't he smaller and just holding his treasure closer to the giant? Then how did he get away just like the first Jack? Luckily our giant was much nicer and thought that this was so funny that she let him have his treasure.

The moral of Jack and the Beanstalk? Sometimes you can screw up so badly (trading your cow for beans for instance) yet still end up ok in the end.
The moral of Jack and the Donut? It pays to be cute when you're not very smart.

Ninjas

A Strange thing happens to my children while I sleep. They all become ninjas.













I often wake up in the morning to find one or more children in my bed with me. Sometimes I will find them as I am falling off the bed because there is no room for me, but most of the time I don't see them until morning. I swear they are ninjas. We never hear them come in. We never see or feel them climb into our bed. Sometimes when I wake up sore from being cramped all night I swear they came, they slept, they left, all without us ever knowing.
They also have this uncanny ability to ninja creep into my room while I am dead asleep and wait until they are inches from my face and ask... "Mommy can we have breakfast?" "Mommy, can I play on the computer?" "Mommy, can we watch t.v.?" They never ask these question quietly. This scares me so bad I practically jump off the bed. I never hear them come in. Does this happen to all children or are mine just super elite night time ninjas?