They make us laugh!

Our kids are our greatest form of entertainment--sometimes the show is hilarious, sometimes it is sad, sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is frustrating! I think 90% of the time I am frustrated trying to get the kids to DO WHAT I ASK THEM, but I guess that's probably more like 10% of the time, and it just feels like 90%! I have been trying to pay better attention to the funny, silly, happy things they do instead of the things that drive me crazy. Here are a few examples of the good: Parker: The other day I was taking just Parker to a b-day party. I was singing an old primary song, "In the Leafy Treetops." I was just ending the second verse, which goes, "In my pretty garden the flowers are nodding," and Parker goes, "What did they do?" What??? What did who do? And he said, "The flowers. You said they were naughty." I laughed and laughed. I guess they hear about being naughty a little too much!

Jase's new thing is to say, "And Guess What?" all of the time. For example, when I picked him up from preschool the other day, they had just finished an Easter Egg Hunt. He was so excited! He said, "Mom, I found a purple Easter Egg. And Guess What? Then I found a BLUE Easter Egg! And Guess What? There was money inside the blue Easter Egg! And Guess What? Then I found a green Easter Egg!! And Guess What? Green is my favorite color! And Guess What?...." You get the point. It cracks me up! When I was pointing this out to Jared, Jase said it hurt his feelings that I thought it was cute that he says "And Guess What" all of the time. But I still think it's cute!

Lizzie is little miss BUSY all of the time! She is really enjoying her Easter CANDY. In fact, I think she may have eaten all of it already (Good, I'll be glad to get rid of it!). My favorite thing she does is say, "Huuuuhhh?" It is so funny. She will be playing with a toy, and then maybe lose it. She'll look all over for it saying, "Huuuuhhh?" with this funny tone in her voice. So cute!

Lila's new thing is to stick her tongue out constantly. It is so funny. She got her two bottom teeth in at 8 months (the earliest of any of my kids), and I think she is teething, so she always has her tongue out, probably to make her little gums feel better. She is also crawling all over the place. She started army crawling about 2 months ago, and she can crawl on her hands and knees, but she much prefers the tummy crawl. It's much faster and more effective to get her where she wants to go.

The kids all had a great Easter--candy, candy, and more CANDY!! A guy from our ward volunteered to take some pictures of the kids in their Easter outfits. It was windy, and everyone wanted to just go home, but I think the pictures turned out great. They really show my kids personalities! (Lizzie does smile all the time, just never in pictures where we want her to!) Enjoy!!!

It Makes Me Happy

I have to admit that I am a sucka for TV theme songs. Sometimes I enjoy the intro more than episode. I think it is because the intro is a constant and reminds me of all the goodness from every episode I have watched. Holly bought me season 5 of the Mythbusters for Christmas, and the intro at the beginning of each DVD just puts me in a good mood. It is not the "theme song", but in this case it is even better. Several times I have power-cycled the DVD player, because I missed the intro while I was switching inputs on the TV. As a bonus the kids love it too (especially when the tribal guy delivers an enthusiastic "BOOMDIYADA!"). I defy you to be in a bad mood after enjoying this clip.

Doneen & Izzie

Just to start off, in the last post for my b-day, it was my idea for Jared to put the picture of the old lady. I mean, this is how I feel most days!! When I saw the picture, I thought it looked like my Great-Grandma Minnie, and when Parker and Jase saw it, they both said, "It's our cowboy Grandma" which is what they call GG Minnie. It cracked me up!
Speaking of Minnie, her actual name was Armeda, but when she was a baby, one of her siblings couldn't pronounce the name, so she became "Minnie". That brings me to Doneen. That is what Lizzie calls Dalila. I don't know why. She can say "Lila", and she can even say, "Dalila", sort of! But she insists on calling her Doneen. It may be a blend of Dalila Jean, but who knows?
Lizzie also calls herself, "Izzie". So now I call her Izzie. Izzie and Doneen. Not names that I picked out, and they probably won't stick like Minnie did. But still cute!
Lizzie really likes to "help" with Lila. She REALLY wants to feed her baby food, and is constantly getting out baby carrots, baby peas, baby bananas, you name it, and getting a spoon and bib and trying to force feed Lila. I try and get Lizzie to feed her babies, but no go.
This morning Lizzie was pulling on Lila trying to get her to crawl, and I told her to stop. A few minutes later, Parker asked if Lizzie could come out of time-out. I looked over, and Lizzie was standing with her nose in the corner, where we make the kids go for time-out. I told her she could come out, and she walked over to Lila and said, "I'm sorry, Doneen". So cute, but obviously not her first time-out!!
Lila is getting so mobile! She rolls all over the place, and she also scoots forward. She really wants to crawl, and she is getting close. It won't be long now and she'll be running!
Okay, so this just happened this afternoon, after I published this post, so I guess this is a P.S.:
We have been trying to get Lizzie to use the potty. Not seriously "potty training" her, but just getting her used to going in the potty sometimes. (I am determined that when we actually attempt to "potty train" it will be a matter of days, maybe weeks, not months or more than a YEAR like it was with the boys. I cannot do the tantrums and tears (on my part;)!) any more, so this time will be better!). Well, I was telling her that when she is all potty trained, we will buy her a new toy. I asked her if she would want a new doll, or maybe a slide, because she loves slides, but we don't have one. She thought about it for a minute, and then said, "Playhouse. " What? She wants a playhouse? I guess she's not one to go for the inexpensive toys. Jase was easy. He just wanted a light saber. Arrgh! Then, she actually went number 2!! Yea!!!She was very excited, and so was I, but now I think she is expecting a new playhouse today! She kept asking me the whole time I was trying to get her to take a nap. Hopefully she will forget about the playhouse while she is sleeping....

Holly's B-day!

It's Holly's birthday today, and she did such a good job on the post for my birthday that I thought she deserved a nice B-day tribute post too. To start things off, here is an updated head shot:
She hasn't changed a bit since the day we met... But seriously, she is terrific and here is a little photo recap of the year for her (NOTE: Holly would like me to remind everyone that she did HAVE A BABY this year, and that it may have impacted the way she looks in some of the photos):

Fun in the snow

We spent the holidays with the family down at Ruby's Inn. There were some decent storms, so we had lots of fun in the snow. The snow was deep enough in grandma and grandpa's yard to dig some snow caves. We dug a tunnel that was about 20' long overall and had 3 entrances. Even Lizzie went through (no picture unfortunately).

Happy Birthday Jared

Today is Jared's birthday! Yea! I'm not going to say how old he is, only that he is 4 years older than his sister Gina, who just turned the big 30, and 7 years older than his sister Amanda who is still a youngling at only 27 (Happy birthday, girls! I figure it's okay to mention your ages since you did on your blogs, rights?!).
Here are some pictures of the birthday boy!









Hope you have a great birthday, hon! We love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously?!?!

I was at the mall, doing a little Christmas shopping, and passed a shop selling these:




Are you serious? Really? I thought just plain skinny jeans were ugly, but these are over the top. There are definitely some things that should never see the light of day again! I had a pair of these in 6th grade. Only they were GREEN acid washed. To "top" it off, I thought wearing a Yellow and Blue striped sweater with them "matched" because yellow and blue make green....

Enough said!