The Woes of Childhood

A few days ago I was in my kitchen cleaning up when I heard Brooklyn talking to herself in the living room. She does this quite often. What's really funny is when she's mad at me she goes storming off into her room muttering to herself about what a mean mommy I am. Once she gets the door to her room closed her voice changes from her whispered hisses to normal talking and I really get hammered. I would feel bad about it if it wasn't just so darn funny! As it is I try to ignore these kinds of tirades hoping they absolve themselves!

So back to my original story. I'm in the kitchen (because I basically live there. Not cooking really, mostly cleaning up after Jace who thinks he needs to be eating 24/7. Seriously.) and I hear Brooklyn talking to herself again. I perk up my ears and really listen. Brooklyn, in one of her most sad and dramatic voices is saying "I never asked for this. " Deep sigh. " Why did I get such chubby cheeks?"

At this I peeked around the corner to see Brooklyn looking in a hand mirror with downturned lips and big eyes staring at her reflection. I about lost it. I knew it wasn't funny. But it really was. So I rearranged my face to go talk to her. I started out with the spiel all good mommy's tell their children. It went something like this.

"Brooklyn, you're beautiful and perfect just the way you are!"

And then I gave her a brilliant smile.

She wasn't buying it. "But mom, I have chubby cheeks!" Like that was the worst thing that could happen.

So then I lied. "No you don't Brookie. You're just right."

At this she glared at me and grabbed two chubby fistfuls of cheek. "Yes I do. See."

I began backpedaling. "Well Brooklyn, look at my cheeks. They're chubby too." I blew my cheeks out to make them really chubby. "We're just a family of chubby cheeks."

Another bright smile.

And that was the end of it. And I'm really starting to wonder how to prepare for the teenage years. If I can!

Happy Birthday to our Abby! Abby's big day was December 14 and she turned 6 years old! This is Abby and Brooklyn with their birthday dresses from Grandma Dena. Brooklyn actually got a dress for her birthday on her birthday but it was too small. So Grandma came to the rescue and brought these two out for Abby's birthday. The girls absolutely love them!

Here's our birthday girl raking it in! She's reading her birthday cards because she can!

Here are the kids plus Grandma Suzette. Abby didn't have a very specific request for her cake (after I shot down the castle and monster theme) so we just did easy peasy! As long as it's pink who really cares?

Things about Abby now that she's 6!

She started Kindergarten this year and loves, loves, loves it!

She comes home from Kindergarten extremely tired (meaning grumpy!) after her hard day at school (she goes a full day).

She loves to draw and some of her favorite things to draw are her family, herself and Brooklyn as superheros, fairies, princesses etc.

She has started piano lessons and had her first recital 2 days before her birthday and did great!

She always wants to be in charge of her younger siblings (and I'm not talking babysitting, I'm talking bossing around!)

She also loves playing with Brooklyn and she can get Jace to laugh harder than anyone else.

Skirts and tights are a must - unless it's really cold out:)

If Abby could have one wish granted it would be to have real wings that could make her fly.

To my favorite Abby in the whole world - WE LOVE YOU!!

November Birthdays!

Happy Birthday to me!! And to Brooklyn! But first we'll tackle my birthday (which won't take very long!). My birthday landed on a Saturday this year and we celebrated by Darren going hunting:) My man did not fail me and brought me home a nice plump goose to take care of. Or I should say several. Since it was birthday I refused to touch them and went back to baking my cake! Anway, while I was baking my cake, my girls were over at my neighbors house baking me cupcakes. Surprise! Suffice it to say we had plenty of cake! Aren't they beautiful?

I invited Bat Girl and Wonder Woman to my party and they were a hit! I bought these costumes at the after Halloween sale at Walmart for $4,99 and was so excited for the girls to wear them. Abby loved hers from the get go. Brooklyn broke down in tears when I showed her Bat Girl.

"You want me to wear that black costume? But it's all black!" Sob, sob, sob.

Anyway, I told her that she was only invited to my birthday party if she was a superhero.......

(Oh, relax, I wasn't really going to hold her to it. But it worked;)

And now, she loves being Bat Girl. It's hard not to with me singing the Batman theme in the background! So here are my Super Girls!

Happy Birthday! I'm not sure why Darren didn't join us in this picture, but he was there.

Now moving on to Brooklyn's Birthday! She turned 4 years old and has been looking forward to this birthday for a long time!

We had Grandma Suzette, and Pa (my mom and dad), and Grandma Lu and Grandpa Sim (my grandparents) over to celebrate.

This is Brooklyn's new coat from Grandma Suzette and Pa and her new boots from us. And no, I didn't ask her to pose for me. These things just come natural to her! Very conscientious of fashion and looking good!

Here's Jace, Abby and the birthday girl. Grandma is holding Jace - sorry for cutting off your head mom!

Brooklyn asked for a rainbow cake - again! This is the 3rd rainbow caked we've done in our house and the second for Brooklyn, so we decided to use skittles instead of frosting this go around for something different. Brooklyn loved helping make the rainbow.

Things about Brooklyn at age 4:

As I've said before, she loves looking "beautiful". She can spend all morning getting dressed up, fixing her hair, putting on her play make-up, etc.

Jeans are not an option.

She wants to go to school very badly.

She loves going to our neighbors house to visit and would go every day if I let her!

She just reached 40 lbs and has graduated to a booster seat.

She is very tenderhearted and can get her feelings hurt easily.

She's our most cuddly child by far. And also most dramatic! She has facial expressions like you wouldn't believe!

She loves going to the gymnastics open gym every Monday.

She is getting more picky about what she eats (she used to eat anything) and at the moment hates anything with noodles.

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Pink is her favorite color.

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She loves watching Tinkerbelle movies, Barbie movies, and Scooby Doo.

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Painting fingernails is a favorite past-time.

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Happy Birthday to my big 4 year old! We love you!

Halloween 2010

Halloween has finally come around - er, to my blog that is! Unfortunately, in my scramble to find little girls fairy wings, bumble bee wings, the candy bowl, shoes, and jackets all around I forgot my camera. The good news is my mom had her camera. The bad news is my mom's camera is tiny and hard to hold steady which results in blurry pictures. My point with all this rambling is that I got no good pictures at our Trunk or Treat (which was on Saturday). Which also means that I got no good Halloween pictures since we didn't do Halloween on Sunday.

Anyway, this is my little bumble bee. I can't even tell if he's actually wearing the wings that I insisted on bringing. Figures. All my plans are thwarted by this little guy. He also wouldn't stand still or even look at the camera for the woman who does everything in life for him (for those of you who aren't mothers I'm talking about me). How ungracious. There was also a hat involved, but I think we all know how that went over. Not good.

Here are some pictures of my little fairies. These were taken long before Halloween in my attempt to capture beautiful fairy wings and tutu's. Unfortunately, I don't really know what I'm doing as a photographer and was not happy with my results. So I just put my camera away that night and vowed never to look at them again.

And I didn't - until a few days ago and I realized that these were about the only pictures I had of the girls in their Halloween costumes. ( remember? I forgot my camera on "Halloween"?) Sigh.

So I weeded through the rejects and pulled out the best ones. (And in comparison to the one picture of my poor little Bumble Bee, the Fairies are looking pretty good!)



This is Brooklyn. She's trying to fly away. And it almost worked!

Happy Halloween!

Grandpa's Punkins'

We've made it our yearly tradition to get to the pumpkin patch that's down the road. My Grandpa works for the farmers who grow the pumpkins so we feel like we have the run of the place!

Here's one of Brooklyn's picks. I say "one of" because we ended up with a whole trunk full pumpkins. If you notice the shirt that Brookie's wearing you may recall my last post. This is the infamous "ugly shirt" and also the day of our battle. I know this since it is the only day she has worn this shirt - oh wait, I think Auntie Breezy conned her into wearing it one other day. Anyhow, I've been trying to get her to put the shirt back on so I can take a picture of it and put it with that post - to no avail.

You catch my drift.

Poor little Jace face planted about 3 minutes after we got here. I turned my back for half a second and it was all over. He wasn't even in the field. Or walking over rough terrain. I guess he just tripped over his own feet!

Abby found the tiniest pumpkin and Jace carried it around in his little hands for the rest of the day. It was a perfect fit!

Here's everybody with our pile of pumpkins. We always like to make sure we have plenty of pumpkins to decorate our porch with. A little too many you may be thinking. Well, just ask Abby and Brooklyn - you can never have enough!

Until next year!

The Shirt

And so the battle begins.

Brooklyn got a new shirt as a gift from one of our friends a few weeks ago. And it's been sitting in her drawer ever since. I've pulled it out a couple of times for her to wear and she refuses. I don't generally care what my kids wear and I let them pick out their own clothes most of the time. But I do feel that as a mother I have a duty to step in every now and then. For instance, when Abby wants to wear the same outfit for the 3rd time in one week - and I haven't had a chance to wash it yet.

Or when Brooklyn decides she doesn't need to wear the brand new shirt that just weeks ago she liked.

Anyway, just the other day I decided I was ready for battle. I knew that Brooklyn didn't want to wear her new shirt and I knew she was going to just have to. We are not wasteful people! I got it out and told Brooklyn to close her eyes and I would put her shirt on and it would be a surprise when she opened them (wink, wink).

Brooklyn was all up for it until she realized that her shirt wasn't going over her head. And she knows she only has one shirt with buttons.

The "I don't want to wear this shirt fit began" but I was ready for it.

Fine, I told her. You don't have to wear it. But you will have to wear it tomorrow. She agreed to that readily enough (you know, instant gratification), but began telling me all about why she doesn't like this shirt. It looks like Dad's shirts (Darren's polo shirts). It has green in it and Brooklyn hates the color green (which is true - she won't even eat out of the green cereal bowl). It has a collar and only boys shirts have colors. On and on.

I stopped listening and just reminded her that tomorrow she was going to wear it. Fine.

Well, I had been prepping her all night about wearing that shirt the next day (which is cute by the way) and she really was fine with. That morning she was still fine with it. I was shocked. Smiling to myself about how ingenius I was we headed to Brooklyns room to get dressed.

Did I mention that Abby was already getting dressed? In a pink, glittery, butterfly shirt. Brooklyn took one look at Abby's overall shiny pink outfit and resolved to tears. "Abby's going to look more beautifuller than me!" Over and over.

I didn't care. Maybe Brooklyn gets her stubborn streak from me? Hard to say.

Finally she threw herself on the bed and angrily said "Fine! But you'd better pick out an ugly skirt for me to wear with my ugly shirt. At least I'll match!"

And so I did. And she looked cute.

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of!

And mud. Lots of it!

I read somewhere recently that children who have experienced many different kinds of textures, aka mud, in the first 18 months of life have a higher IQ than children who did not.

So I let Jace have at it. Ok, not really. I mean, I really did read about the said study but that isn't why I let him play in the mud. He just did it. He was only squishing it around at first, and although I was cringing, I thought it was probably good hands-on play. I was naive enough to think he could handle playing in it cleanly for longer than 10 seconds. I blinked and this is what I got. Jace shampooing his hair with mud. I didn't even know he could shampoo his hair. See! Getting smarter already!

And then he showed me how he could climb up a ladder and go down a slide without any help. I didn't know he could do that either! I can just see his IQ rising!

This is Jace hollering out of sheer joy. And why not? It was a good day to be a boy!

Now that it's officially October, I'd like to go back and touch on a few things we did in August! Every year (last year excluded, a little something called a newborn!) we go with Darren's family to their cabin in Island Park. Here's what went down!

This is where you'll find the longest, fattest, nastiest trout ever! Which would make any acclaimed fisherman's mouth water. However, these particular trout happen to not be up for bait. They are in a safe area of No Wading, Swimming, or Fishing. But they will hang around and wait for you to throw food to them.

Which is just what we were doing here. Although on this particular day there were some very ferocious seagulls hanging around fighting for the fish food. I don't know that the fish even had a chance at it!

We never stop bug hunting even if we are on vacation. We found some very beautiful moths that we tamed. And accidentally smashed a few too........

We had a few (or maybe several) battles of will.

We went 4 wheeling. Jace's favorite activity. Every time a 4 wheeler drove up he actually lost his breath and started hyperventilating. How's that for excitement! He definitely knows which toys are for boys! And, yes, about the helmet. They don't make one small enough for a one year old. But the boys didn't go far.

The girls also loved 4 wheeling. There are some things you just can't get enough of!

The cousins loved playing together. If they weren't swinging outside they could be found playing many different kinds of games inside. The men did lots of fishing, the women did lots of talking/reading/kid watching.

We also made it into Yellowstone for pizza and the Playmill one night. We saw Beauty and The Beast and the girls really loved it. I have to say that so far this one was my favorite. We go nearly every year so we've seen quite a few of them.

We had a lake trip planned but the day we had picked out for the lake ended up being about 50 degree weather. No thanks. We opted out.

And that brought our cabin trip to a close! Until next year!

Family Pictures

We had family pictures taken while we were in Utah this summer and these are some of the end results!

The more kids we add to the mix the harder it is!!

This is one of two pictures that turned out for Jace. That's right. Two. Of Jace. Everytime we put him down he took off. I'm sure many of you know just what I'm talking about. But the two we did get are pretty cute!

Brooklyn fell asleep right before we got to our appointment and you can tell in the family pictures. But she finally started waking up in these pictures. I love this one!

Family pictures are extremely stressful (outfits that coordinate, kids that cooperate, husbands that stop complaining :), but once you get the end result they're totally worth it! Now if I can only convince the rest of my family for next year!

Jace

Jace chose Darren over me today.

My heart still hurts.

First Day of School

I can't believe I have a Kindergartener!! Here's my little Abby on her first day of school.

Doesn't she look so cute! She picked out her own outfit and loves her new shoes - they totally light up! What she really wants is some Sketcher Twinkle Toes. You know what I'm talking about. The sneakers with jewels on the toes that "twinkle". Her shoes are just plain old Sketcher Lights. But they were on sale. And so much cuter than the other ones!

Here's my whole crew. The little guy just gets thrown around. Don't worry. He likes it. And if he doesn't he lets us know. Loudly.

Brooklyn has been dreading this day every since she figured out what a whole day of school was. All summer long if we even mentioned Abby and kindergarten she got the saddest look on her little face. So this morning she did everything with Abby and got ready to go to "school" too.

Here's Abby officially at school and officially on time!!

Since I'm new at dropping off a kindergartener I didn't know what to do when I got to the school. I pulled up where everyone else was dropping off their kids and a teacher came up and was ready to get Abby out when I mentioned I wanted to take a picture. She told me to pull up further and I could park. So I did. I left Brooklyn and Jace in the car, jumped out, and took some pictures.

Then Abby was ready to go into the school and I didn't know what to do. Jace and Brook were in the car and Abby was heading into the school - by herself!!!!

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So I let her go (sniff, sniff). And I didn't even walk her in on her first day of school. What a terrible mother! (Although I'm pretty sure I would have been a more terrible mother had I left my babies in the car unattended.) It all happened so fast. But I did have time to take a picture. Just one last glimpse. Of a cute pink backpack. And she was gone. I guess the apron strings are cut. And not by me.

So I did the next best thing and jumped back in my car (which was good since the principal was banging on my window and informing me that I was in fact in NO PARKING ZONE!!!) and pulled around the corner to wait for Abby to emerge on the playground. Which she did (thank goodness!).

Here's the photo I took of Abby on the playground even though the playground teachers were eyeing me from afar with that "we're keeping a close eye on you because why are you taking pictures of our kids on the playground" look. And what I wanted to shout at them was - well, never mind. I was still on an emotional roller coaster so I was thinking crazy thoughts.

I was sure Abby had seen me when I took this picture (did I mention I took more than one playground picture - which might be why I was getting the looks I was getting?). Anyway I knew she was heading my way to say hello and a part of me knew that I was the crazy mom that just needed to leave. But I was still feeling guilty for letting her go in by herself so I stayed.

What really happened was Abby began running straight for us and I began waving. Then Abby stopped at a group of kids, looked at them and began running again. To another group of kids. She was looking for her friends and had no idea that her delusional mom was still hanging around.

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So to sum things up, Abby survived her first day of school. We did get a call from the school nurse letting us know Abby had fallen on the rocks and had some bad scrapes and a hole in her new shirt. But she didn't cry.

I guess that means my baby is growing up!

Alpine Slide

While in Utah we decided to try out the Alpine Slide in Park City. Darren and I have only been once before (our 2nd Anniversary) and had a great time.

This is us just going up. Abby was excited to get to go so high!

Here we are - the whole family (minus Jace - poor little guy gets to have no fun!)

In front of us were the crazies we went up with! I'm not sure but I think Ryan is throwing some sort of gang sign......

The girls LOVED playing together and got along really well. This is our walk to the top of the slide. It didn't take long to get there.

What cutie - petuties!

This is some strange animal that lives under the slide and pops up to watch any slider goers. Look at him - he's totally waiting for some one to slide down! Apparently there are quite a few of them and Darren tried to grab one as he went down. Talk about animal rights being invaded!

And here is THE SLIDE (and some toes)!



Darren and Abby prepping for their race (which was strictly prohibited by the way. I know. What rebels!)

Brookie and me. We were way EXCITED!

This is my brother Travis. We went with my other brother Daniel and my other sister Breanna (the newly wed - wedding pictures still to come) and my parents. But this picture struck me because of the girl in the background. Go ahead. Take a look.

Let's get a little closer. (Little does Travis know of the darts being thrown his way!)

Alright fine. Just a bit closer.

Yikes!! Apparently she is not in awe of Travis's good looks!



If anyone knows this girl please tell her that my brother IS a good catch!!

Actually, probably one of the main reasons this caught my attention is that I too have been accused of throwing dirty looks. Looks I have no idea I am throwing. This coming from my husband (and a few others...).Hey, I've said it a hundred times but I'll say it again. That is my natural expression people. I don't throw evil looks (unless you're my husband:).

Anyway back to the point. I'm sure this girl could care less about Travis (gasp!) and is probably wondering about her cat at home or something. I guess we'll never know!