Why I Love This Kid

Tonight at bedtime:
I start tucking Jacob in, but then he remembered he forgot to brush his teeth. We go and do that and on the way back to his room I say "why don't you go kneel down and say your prayers and I'll just watch by the door" (I usually kneel down with him but I was oh so tired tonight and trying to take a shortcut.) I mentioned the fact that he was getting older and could start doing that on his own. His response "but mom, I'm the same years old as I was before so I still want you to come in". How can I argue with that.

During his prayer:
"Please bless everyone that they will sleep good tonight, except the robbers and the bad guys, don't bless them to sleep good, but bless the good guys that they will sleep good. Bless the poor people that might have to sleep on the ground because it's hard, please bless that they can sleep good and make the ground not so hard for them".

Daily Recap

Favorite Moments Today:

Playing iphone light sabers with Ben - me on my iphone and he on my dad's. Swinging iphones at each other and watching his face saying "I got you!" all to the background sound of Star Wars and Light Sabers - best App I've downloaded yet!

Picking cherry tomatoes off the vine and popping them in my mouth while out enjoying the backyard. Watching the kids pick beans and tomatoes off the vine and popping them in their mouths.

Dumbest thing I did today:

Turned on the Rotisserie to cook the Rotisserie chicken but forgot to turn on the heat. It was spinning round and round but not getting cooked. Delayed dinner by one hour. Had to turn on Dinotrain for the kids to watch to appease the wait. Have you seen Dinotrain? PBS. My kids love it.

What I didn't get done today:

Finish the laundry
Mop the floor
Plant my fall garden
clean my room
*sigh*

What I did get done today:

Went on a walk with a friend
Played Thomas cards with Jacob (thanks Wendy)
Fixed some sprinkler heads
Checked Facebook
Practiced the Piano
Finished my Visiting Teaching

Signing In

Back to School, Back to early bedtimes, Back to the blog. Wow it's been a long time. So long it took me a few tries to find the right password to log in. I feel a little rusty at this but I'm sure it will all come flowing back to me just like riding a bike, which I have been doing lately and I haven't fallen off yet. There is so much to say I couldn't possibly say it all so I'll just start with the present. This will be a little bit of a boring catch up about which each of my kids are doing, more for my record keeping than for yours but if your interested keep reading.

The first few weeks of first grade were rough! Not at school. Emma's doing great at school. It's not until she gets home that the explosions happen. I think sitting in a classroom all day on her best behavior just about took it all out of her. She comes home and throws tantrums reminiscent of her three's and four's. My patience was all but got and things have finally settled down. She really likes her teacher, she loves recess, and has done the monkey bars so much she has blisters all over both hands. I so remember those days! Monkey bar blisters, tether ball bruises on the pinky - oh the memories.

Jacob is in "pre-k" as they call it at his school instead of preschool and he just thinks he's so cool being in "pre-k" this year. He has a really great teacher. He's gotten this really crazy streak lately which is new for him and quite honestly I hope it doesn't last long because I can only handle one crazy kid and stay sane. For those of you who know my kids know which one I'm talking about! I need my mellow middle child to stay mellow.

Ben is just such a funny kid! He loves life and lives it large. He has a great vocabulary and keeps us laughing. He's starting to hit that "I don't want to take a nap stage" and my brain is screaming "noooooo" I'm not ready for that yet!

All my favorite Fall shows have started and I even have missed the first episode of most of them. Usually I"m on pins and needles and Fall line up doesn't start soon enough for me. But this year I was like "what??? it's already Fall and I've missed my shows?" I swear summer flew by. I loved summer this year. We traveled, we relaxed, we swam, we slept in sometimes (by sleep in I mean 7:30), and we stayed up late. I didn't stress about bedtime or dinnertime and all that. We just lived Joi de Vivre and it was great. I was sad to see it come to an end. I guess since it was our first real school year it was our first real summer. When you're a mom of little ones seasons don't really mean a whole lot except for the holidays. (especially in So Cal where the weather doesn't even change). You don't have to plan vacations by a calender or schedule dr. appt's for after school hours. It's so nice. It takes getting used to have school age kids - the whole ballgame changes. Now I have to plan vacations at the same time everyone else does.
At first I was really bummed for school to be starting, having to run a routine again, run kids here and there, and lose the carefree - ness of summer. But now that we're in the swing of things I'm actually starting to enjoy start of a new season. So Happy Yom Kippur (we got it off school), Columbus Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving and here's to a Fall full of joy and laughter. What are you going to be for Halloween this year?

Too Busy to Blog

You'll have to excuse my absence this summer, we've been too busy to blog...


Taking road trips...



Playing at the beach...


Swimming in the pool.


Going to baseball games


Watching our Monarch Catepillars grow and build cacoons




Harvesting the garden.


Enjoying our new pets.

See you in the Fall!

Summer Mornings

Can I just say...I love Summer mornings! Kids sleeping in a little from all they partying the day before (sleeping in means 7:00am), laying in bed contemplating what I'm going to do when I get up and none of it involves carpooling or packing lunches, watching the kids stumble to the couch with bushy hair and sleepy eyes (usually in their underwear as we've been on a summer pajama strike) giving me snuggles before they move on to their morning activities. *sigh* Summer is half over and I'm already not looking forward to going back to school. I didn't really differentiate between summer and any other season (except for the weather) until I had two kids in school last year. All the hustle and bustle of getting kids out the door in the morning is not missed around here. Although I guess if we didn't have that hustle and bustle I wouldn't appreciate these relaxed summer mornings as much. I'm sure as the kids get older and the craziness gets crazier - I'll appreciate even more these lazy summer mornings with nothing to do, nowhere to be, no people to see.

Where to start

I'm one of those people who instead of tackling a big job one piece at a time just gives up because the task looks too big to accomplish. Then I procrastinate doing said job until it's out of control and then I kick myself for not having done it. Does that make sense? Anyway, that's kind of how the blog is right now. I have sooo much to talk about I always think it's too big of a task for right now so I'll do it later. In the meantime things keep happening and it just adds to my list of things I want to blog about until I don't even know where to start! So I'll start right here, right now with a quick rundown of the summer. We had a great time on our trip and my next post will be pictures from our adventure. The kids did great traveling and it was a great way to start off summer.

We have 2 chickens - Lu lu & Bellamara (Betsy had to be returned because she was too loud) and yesterday we got a new kitten - Brownie - while we were returning Betsy to the fed store. We have been swimming like crazy in the pool since we got home from Texas. Ben is almost completely swimming now and loves to jump off the diving board - he is such a crazy 2 year old! We've pretty much been staying in our pj's until we put on our swim suits. Then we come in all tired out, Ben goes down for a nap and the kids watch a movie and we have a nice quiet late afternoon until dinner. I'm trying to potty train Ben so he's been commando for the last couple of days. They jury is still out on if I'm going to continue with it or give up...

Anyway, lots of pictures forthcoming - stay tuned!

Road Trip Day One

We left Friday around 2:00pm headed towards Paulden, AZ - my second home growing up. I used to spend the summers here with my grandparents and it always feels like coming home when I'm here. They live in the middle of nowhere and it's so quiet here it let's your soul relax from the chaos of the world.

We made it to the Walmart parking lot in Kingman Arizona on Friday around 10:00pm and decided to sleep there for the night (we are traveling in my dad's 5th wheel). Jacob and Emma were in the same bed and they kept bugging each other - the old "he's touching me" or "she's breathing on me!" routine. I finally got up and threatened them with life and limb if they didn't settle down and go to sleep. As I crawled back in bed they both started crying because I "hurt their feelings". My first thought was "be quiet or I will give you something to cry about!" but then I chuckled under my breath because we were all just so tired it was comical. I got a few hours of sleep between sweating to death and the yellow flashing lights of the Walmart security guard truck until Ben woke up at 4:00 am and decided he was ready for the day. He and I hung out in the cab of my dad's truck so he didn't wake up everyone else and then at 6:00 am we headed over to Walmart for something to do and so I didn't have to keep hiding my dad's pack of Tums from Ben. I felt like a piece of work walking around Walmart at 6:00am in my pj's with a baby in his shirt and a diaper only. Nice.

We headed off in the morning to my grandparents and have spent the last few days here relaxing, eating homemade ice cream, and crushing rocks. Yes the poor rocks here dread when they hear us approaching for a visit. Jacob's favorite thing to do here is crush rocks on a vice my grandpa has mounted outside.

Last night was the first night I got a full nights sleep as Ben decided to have more midnight escapades on Saturday night. I was looking forward to a bleak vacation with no sleep but I think we've turned a corner. ((fingers crossed))

Today we are headed off to Tucson to visit great friends of ours who moved out there this year, and then on to New Mexico to explore Carlsbad Caverns. The kids are being pretty good so far, let's hope it lasts. I'm trying to teach them to be patient and in the car I said to them "hold your horses!" as they were all barraging me at the same time for something. Jacob started looking around and said "what horses?" Such a funny kid.