Post Explosion

Check it out here.

Unpresidented

I know this is absolutely unheard of, but I actually posted something new on my blog for two consecutive days. Check it out here if you want.

As Promised

Well, I actually followed through on a threat (a concept I should apply more in my parenting) and I went private. Because the most annoying thing about private blogs, in my opinion, is the fact that I can't tell when they have been updated I am going to keep this blog and let you all know when I have posted something on my new private blog. You can visit our new place in cyberspace by clicking here.

Hope to see you there soon. Oh, and if you are one of those who happen to check my blog even less often than I post (which is really saying something!) and you missed the invite to the new blog just leave your email in a comment and I promise to send you and invite, eventually ;)

The Privacy Battle Lost

So, I am going private. Not by choice, personally I am not a fan of private blogs but the hubby insists. (Can you tell I am less than thrilled about this?) I figure if I let him win this than maybe I can win the more important argument, like what color to paint our bedroom walls.

Anyhow, if you like to visit my blog. Or even if you don't really like it but you do it because sometimes you get bored and visiting my blog beats cleaning out your dog's earwax then leave me a comment with your email and I will see to it that you get an invite.

To shower or not to shower

On most days I try to shower before my kids get up. It saves a whole lot of trouble. This week however I have been battling a bad cold and have taken advantage of every possible sleeping moment. The result, I have to shower whilst my kids run a muck. The first day I got out of the shower I found that Oliver had painted his fingernails a lovely shade of pink. Fortunately all the nail polish was contained on one unimportant blanket, whew. Day two was a combined effort from both kids as they got out a new roll of toilet paper and unrolled the entire thing throughout every room in the upstairs. Day three, I just didn't shower. Somedays a little stench is justified.

My latest

I did this cake for my cousin who was throwing a 1920's themed party. She wanted peacock feathers, yikes! I was pretty happy with the ones I managed to invent though.

Snowshoeing

We went up the canyon for a little snowshoeing this winter. In reality the snow was pretty packed and the snowshoes probably weren't necessary but we left them on anyway, it is all about the experience, right? We had some technical difficulties as we tried to pull Oliver in the sled (hiking with him can be somewhat torturous as he has to stop and examine absolutely everything). It took us a while to convince him to ride in the sled in the first place because there were so many other things to check out and even then it only worked really well on flat or uphill terrain. As soon as we hit a downhill section he and his sled would overtake us. In the end we spent most of the time towing he and Ruby up the hill and then letting them sled back down. It was fun though and so great to get out above the nasty inversion. I never realized how nasty Utah can be in the winter, it really makes me miss Colorado.

Double Trouble

It seems to me that second children learn a lot of naughty tricks, i.e. tantrums, getting into things, making messes, a lot sooner than their older counterparts did. Obviously this has to do with the fact that they have such great teachers - their older brothers or sisters. Ruby has definitely become Oliver's little shadow. If he does it, she must do it too. My favorite was when I saw her suffer through a sour grapefruit that she clearly did not enjoy but insisted on eating because her brother did. On the downside, she has learned (much earlier than Oliver ever did) how to move the chairs around in the kitchen to access whatever she wants on the counter. She has taken several spills onto the hard tile and yet remains undeterred. As a result, I am never lonely in my kitchen I ALWAYS have a helper on each side.

Here they are helping with the bread. Oliver used to be the number one dough snitcher at our house but Ruby has recently surpassed him. I think she could down a whole loaf of dough if I let her. Yuck!


For the record: yes, my kids are still in their pajamas at 10:00 a.m., but you see the mess they are in, why get them all dressed up for that? And that is not blood that is all over Ruby, it is blueberry juice. My kids most favorite treat are frozen blueberries. I buy the huge bag from Costco and they down it all in about a week. Oliver is forever asking for "cold frozen blueberries" as opposed to "warm frozen blueberries" I suppose, so I am glad he remembers to clarify!

Snow, snow, snow

Ollie got a new sled for Christmas, of course being as we are still in "Santa" mode at our house, he calls it his sleigh. We went to the park the other day to test it out. Oliver absolutely loved it and I loved that he was willing to drag it back up the hill himself instead of me going down after it every time. Unfortunately we picked a pretty cold day so Ruby and I wimped out long before he did. I managed to get him home, but not inside. He spent the next two hours on his belly building a road for his car in the backyard. He discovered that a backyard full of snow is as good as a giant sandbox and made me haul out all of his tractors and dump trucks for the adventure.

Adventures in Sunbeams

I have been counting down to the day that we would switch to 9:00 a.m. church for quite some time now. I thought it would be the end of all my Sunday drama. Unfortunately, I overlooked the fact that a new year also meant a new class and new teachers for Oliver as he would be leaving behind the nursery forever. When I explained to him what would be happening he insisted that he was not grown up yet, he was still little and as such belonged in the nursery. So, I went and sat with him on the front row of Primary to see if I could convince him to stay. (This was quite a switch for us because he was usually running down the hall to nursery before the closing prayer was over in Sacrament meeting). He wasn't doing too well with the switch until his new teachers showed up, it was a husband and wife team and she happens to be drop-dead gorgeous. Once he got a look at her he leaned over to me and whispered that "the mommy teacher is really cool". He immediately dismissed me to go to my own class. The last thing I caught was her husband smiling and Ollie and Oliver giving him the evil eye.

I thought that his teacher's good looks had solved our problem, but no such luck. After we put him to bed Sunday night he came back out of his room to inform us that he didn't need any new teachers because he already knew everything that his teachers told him. My attempts at teaching him some humility fell on deaf ears so we finally convinced him that he needed to go to class to help the other kids who didn't know as much as him.

Once again I thought the problem was solved, but apparently he was still perturbed and decided to take the matter to a higher source. The next day at dinner Ollie was saying the prayer, and I quote "thank you for my new teachers, but I don't need any teachers because I already know everything that they told me." It was one of those "Amens" in which much discipline is required to keep a straight face.