Two weeks is a lot

I didn't blog last week as a sort of Mother's Day present to myself.  I came home from G&G Watts' house and relaxed instead of staying up until 12:30am finishing a blog post.  That's a nice gift, right?

But now there is no way I'm going to remember everything that happened the week before this one. Because of the following pictures, I remember...

that on Monday, for whatever reason, I decided I needed to immediately find rocks for the slope at the front of my house.  The slope looks like this (or at least it did on the 5th).

The girls were outside with me while I was digging up rocks.  Well, Emilia and Mira.  Cecily was napping.  I can't take Cecily outside because her special ability to eat anything in front of her does not stop at food.

The rock pile in my back yard is apparently a great place for worms because I found a ton of them.  The girls had a grand old time taking each one down to our garden bed.  They were wearing gardening gloves for this.  Near the end, I found a huge worm, and to show the girls I wasn't afraid of touching them, I took my gloves off and let him slime me.

Mira thought that was totally cool and followed suit.  Emilia ran away.

Tuesday, I finally followed through on my mom's birthday present.  I told her I would help her organize her craft room.  The girls and I went up after picking up Emilia from her field trip to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point (it's like a petting zoo/mini farm). While we were cleaning, the girls napped/watched Frozen.  We found these old hats in the room and the girls wore them for the rest of the day.  So. Cute.

Oh, now I remember some stuff! Wednesday, I'm pretty sure I had a meeting.  Thursday, I got to go to my writing/critique group, which is my new favorite thing.  I love it! And I'm excited to do more writing with their encouragement and feedback. Friday, Alison, Ben, Megan, and I took my mom and dad out to dinner for Mother's/Father's day.  Just them and their kids.  It's a fun change of pace and something we've been doing for a few years now.

Saturday, G&G Watts took me to the nursery and bought me a bunch of plants.  Grandpa Watts has had the tradition for years now to give his wife and daughters (and daughter-in-law) flowers on Mother's Day. Last year and this year, since I live so close, he asked if I wanted to get flowers to grow instead of cut flowers.  Definitely! I also bought all my seeds and veggie plants that day and planted my garden.  I've got a little of everything: two kinds of tomato, peppers, cucumber, broccoli, carrots, onions, peas, lettuce, zucchini, and squash.

Sunday was Mother's Day and it was a good day.  Steve made me breakfast in bed. (Which is momentous because we've been married for 7 years and this is the first time that's happened.) We went to the Watts' for dinner, as usual.  Here is Grandma reading to all the girlies.

I don't remember anything happening Monday, but I took this picture of Mira.  This is her princess pose.

Since I got all those plants from Grandpa Watts, I felt the need to get them planted before I killed them in their pots.  This meant I needed to complete my revamp of the front slope.  On Tuesday, this seemed nigh unto impossible, but I decided to start by taking out the monstrous sage bush that was trying to take over the middle 1/3 of the bed. It took me an hour and a half to use those clippers (below) to cut the tops off. Then after Steve got home from work, he helped me dig out the roots.  To my great surprise and delight, that only took us another hour.  Yay!

Before we took the roots out, the pile was taller than and twice as wide as Emilia.

Wednesday and Thursday, I relaxed, trying to fight off a cold. I'm pretty sure we had a play date with one of Emilia's friends, too.

Friday, Jane, Meg, and Kate came to play in the morning, and in the evening, Emilia, Mira, and I went to the Art City Elementary School Carnival. It wasn't really what I think of as a carnival, but the girls had a blast.  Mostly, it was just blow-up bounce-houses and slides. It took Mira a good hour to understand the concept of waiting in line, but she was so cute once she figured it out. I didn't even see Emilia for most of the night because she was off hanging out with her friends (whose parents were watching them).

Mira going down a slide.  She was fearless.

Emilia is hugging her friend Maia. Behind Bubs is Maia's sister.

Mira patiently waiting her turn.

Emilia and her friend Alexia.

Saturday was a big day for me.  I have been pondering what to do with that front slope since the beginning of last summer.  I didn't know how to fix it up without spending a ton of money on it.  I live smack up against a mountain, but I didn't have any rocks to put in there to terrace it.  And I knew if I didn't terrace it somehow, the mulch and dirt would just keep sliding down the hill. After doing my research, buying rocks was out of the question.  Too expensive.  This was why I was digging up the few rocks we did have in the back yard last week.  Well, Saturday, I got a miracle.  Steve and I started hauling the rocks we had down to the slope. After we'd placed everything we had, we were dismally short of what we needed to make it look nice.  Then our neighbors and their two teen-age kids showed up, saying, "We're here to help!" And they had rocks in their back yard we could have.  Steve and the father and son went to get the rocks, while the mom, daughter and I dug out the dirt, so we would have a place to put them.  As we were doing this, another neighbor came by and said, "Hey, do you need more rocks? We have a ton of them in our backyard that we don't want." Of course we wanted them! After 5 hours of work, we have a completely redone flower bed and I had a really nice sunburn on the back of my calf.  Oops.

Once Cecily woke up, their daughter watched her while we worked.  The neighbors across the street let Mira and Emilia play in their yard with their kids for a couple hours, too.  We have AWESOME neighbors. I'll have to post pictures of the progress next week.  We all collapsed after our long day outside and I did't take a picture.

Me and Emilia and Cecily stayed home from church today because Emilia had a fever and lost her voice.  We also all stayed home for dinner so as to not pass the ickies to cousins. We had pancakes and bacon. Mmm.

On a very random final note, I love these curls.

Cecily Face

This week was much less filled up than last week--thank Heavens! It was wonderful not being so busy.  Not that I wasn't busy, just not AS busy.

Tuesday night I had a meeting.

I know, that's how I feel about meetings, too.

Wednesday, we got to play with Jane, Meg, and Kate at the park and our house.  It's been super windy here lately, so we flew kites at the park.  Jane and Meg had a blast.  My kids were either uninterested (Mira) or totally anxious about it (Emilia--for example, "Don't twist the lines!" "Watch out for that airplane! It might cut the lines!" "Don't let go! It might blow away!"-- I have no idea where she gets her anxiety from because I'm not a worrier, huh-uh.).

Thursday, Ben gave me the opportunity to photograph a house he just listed.  He told me about it Wednesday afternoon and the girls and I ran over there Thursday morning. It was empty, so I could bring the girls in with me. He needed the pictures right away, so I processed those during nap time.

Thursday night we didn't have anything planned, but the girls were at each others' throats, so I wanted to separate them.  I decided to go out with one and leave one at home with Daddy and Cecily.  I wanted to go to DI (thrift store) because I have been messing around with the furniture in my living room and wanted to see if I could find some things to fill in the walls and tables. Well, when I said I was going to DI, both girls wanted to go and would not be dissuaded.  So the three of us went and actually had fun! I found a bunch of stuff that was just perfect and the girls had fun playing with the toys and other things they found (like old trophies and Easter baskets).  I got them ice cream cones from McDonalds for being so good.

Friday, the neighbor offered to take the girls to the park with his little girl in the morning for a little while, then Emilia had school, then a playdate with a friend from school.  After I picked her up, we headed to G&G Watts' house for hotdogs cooked over a fire and roasted marshmallows.  Plus play time, of course. Steve had his game night that night, too, so it was good to not have to deal with the girls by myself all night.

Saturday, I went to the temple with the other ladies in the the new RS Presidency.  They picked me up at 6:30am.  If you know me at all, you will know what a sacrifice this was for me. :)  As soon as I got home, Steve left to pick up his friend's truck and head out to Ben's father-in-law's farm.  It's a dairy farm and they have a huge composter.  My dad tells me it's the size of our living room.  And it makes good dirt. So we got about 1000 lbs of compost for the cost of a 12-pack of Diet Coke--literally. While he was gone, Cecily went down for a nap, so I started weeding the huge flower-bed/slope in our front yard.  I did that for 2 hours and still only got 1/2 way done. Steve got back around 2, when we had to shovel that 1/2 ton of dirt out of the truck into various places around our yard, including the bed where I want to put a garden. As soon as that was finished, I showered, bathed all the girls, got us dressed and did my hair and makeup. I grabbed my camera and all of us headed up to the Riverwoods in Provo to do some family pictures for Ben and Haylee and then my whole family.  I was so pooped by the end of the day!

Nana, Dylan, and Mira at the Riverwoods where we took pictures.

Emilia made a bird's nest. It was pretty big and she was very impressed
with herself.  She wanted me to take a picture. :)

And for good measure, here is a link to a video of Cecily talking. I happen to think it's adorable baby talk.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=704619929579483

Cancelled, Changed, and Rearranged

This last week was so strange.  I had a million plans, 90% of which got cancelled, changed, or rearranged. I was supposed to have a photo shoot with a local photography group Wednesday night that got changed to next week because of weather. I had a girl contact me Friday to do a quick last-minute photo shoot--that day--and then she totally stood me up for after I had rearranged my schedule to fit her in. I was supposed to go get some compost Saturday, but then it was raining, but then it stopped and we were going to get it anyway and then the people we were getting it from changed their plans and now we're getting it this Saturday. I was going to move some sprinklers in the bed I want to use for a garden Monday night, which then changed to Friday night because Ben was going to help (and bring his family for a visit) but Lincoln was sick Monday. But then my Wednesday night plans changed, so they came then.  It only took us about an hour and 15 minutes to move the sprinklers.  It was awesome! Thanks, Ben!

My meeting Tuesday night didn't change.  Saturday, we FINALLY painted our bedroom (since we weren't getting dirt).  Though the baseboards aren't back up yet and all the rest of the trim still desperately needs a coat of paint.

Friday I looked at the budget and noticed there was less than a week left in the month and we still had money in our restaurant budget, our babysitting budget, and our family fun budget.  So we had a FUN night! We went out for dinner at Cubby's, then went to Nickel City.  Emilia was unsure it would be fun, but she's asked every day since then if we can go back.  We had 900 tickets by the end of the night.  Not because we're cool or anything--although we did win 110/200 and 70/100 tickets playing Deal or No Deal--but because we stayed long enough to be one of the few people with small children there and all the college kids didn't want the prizes.  We probably got 300-400 tickets from other people being generous.  It was fun, because we could actually let the girls pick out pretty good prizes and they were super excited.

Thursday and today the girls got to play with their cousins Jane, Meg, and Kate who are now living in Utah again.  It's a joyous reunion for all of them.

That's about it for the week.  Here are some more pics for you of my adorable children.
This girl cracks me up. She makes this face with a sucking-in-air shriek when she's excited. Ain't nobody gonna misinterpret that. :)

She is just so adorable! And nearly always this happy. Easy to love, this one.

This one's pretty darn cute, too. When she's happy anyway. So, 40% of the time?

This is how Cecily often insists on drinking her bottle.

These girls love their daddy.  He's a good jungle gym, too.

Lilacs are my favorite flower.  Yea for spring!

Easter with family

It seems like my life never slows down.  I can't decide if life was simpler if I would be happier or just bored. I'm pretty sure I have some ADD problems, so maybe both. :)

Steve has been looking for a new job for a while now, and he's been interviewing with a company for almost three weeks.  First they had him do a video interview.  There were no other people involved; he just went to a website, they gave him a question, and then he had to record a video of himself answering the question. Then they had him do a written interview/exam that took 2 hours.  Then they did a phone interview.  Then they had him come in Tuesday for a face-to-face interview.  This took another hour and fifteen minutes.  The crazy people finally got back to him on Friday to tell him they went with someone else. Steve took it pretty well.  I'm honestly glad he didn't get it. It seemed a little disrespectful of their candidates lives that they expected them to take SO much time out of their work day to interview for this position. Maybe that's just me.

Mira reading to herself at the library.  I'm so glad my kids have inherited my love of books!

Also on Tuesday, we took our 2007 Chrysler to the mechanic because the engine light was on.  It was a transmission problem.  We picked it up on Friday, one rebuilt transmission richer and $2200 poorer. That hurts.

Tuesday night, we had a Relief Society activity.  I'm on the committee, and I was assigned to bring a couple of trifles for dessert.  We did a progressive-type dinner, where we switched tables between each course so we could get to know everyone a little bit better. It was a little chaotic, but fun.

Thursday, I babysat my three nieces along with my three kids.  For having 6 kids under the age of 7 on my watch for 6 hours, it was actually really easy.  They were all girls and two of them napped for at least 2 hours each.  The other four hadn't seen each other since Thanksgiving and played like happy little princesses.  Thursday also happened to be Jane's birthday--one of the cousins I was babysitting.  It was so cute how the other girls did everything they could to make her feel special.  Emilia decided she needed a surprise party.  She and Meg set up bunch of activities in the basement, made confetti, and surprised Jane with a party.  They colored her pictures and made her birthday cards.  Also, when they decided to watch some television, Meg and Emilia made Jane a throne by piling colorful pillows on her chair.  They called her "The Queen of Utah" the whole afternoon.  We also made rainbow cookies together. It was a fun day.

I've been doing an "I'd love to!" jar with my girls.  This means that if I ask them to do something (like pick up their toys) and they say, "I'd love to!" they get to put a puffball in a jar.  When the jar was full, I told them we could go for ice cream.  Well, the girls filled the jar on Monday, so Wednesday night, we got some Coldstone.  Immediately after finishing her ice cream, Emilia whined that she didn't get a cake pop or a chocolate (which they were also selling). So ungrateful! I'm not sure how to teach her to be satisfied with what she has.

Saturday was an Easter egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpa Watts'. The girls didn't really get the concept of finding their own eggs.  They just found an egg and stood there and yelled at the person's whose it was until they came and got it and then moved on to the next egg and repeated the process. They loved it though!  I had a lovely day of reading and helping the girls dye eggs. It was frustrating though, that we didn't do anything related to the actual reason we celebrate Easter.  I was much better about incorporating Christ into our celebration last year. I feel like the Easter Bunny snuck up on me this year.  I'll have to try hard next year.

Today, we went to my parents' house and had a traditional Easter dinner after we got out of church at 4pm.  We had to be at church early this morning because our Bishop wanted to meet with me and Steve.  I got called to be the secretary in the Relief Society presidency.  I hope I can pull it off.  I'm a terribly unorganized person (as far as time and remembering things, etc.). But I'll do my best and I'm sure it will all work out.  Maybe the Lord can help me learn to be more organized through this calling and my life will work much more smoothly in the future.  That would be nice.

Sick kids are hard and facebook funnies

This was a crazy week for me.  It was spring break for Emilia and all three of my kids got sick: Emilia got a stomach bug, Cecily had a bad cough and a double ear infection, Mira had a runny nose, fever and a probable ear infection. On top of that, I somehow managed to plan a girls night with my friend, Gina, on Tuesday night, a girls night with my mom and sisters on Wednesday night, my book critique group (that I just joined this month) on Thursday night, and a visit to my mom's on Friday.  Thank goodness for going to my mom's on Friday--she saved me from a nasty cold that I had been trying to avoid all week.  I was able to take 3 naps on Friday and since I was not at home, I could not clean my house, I didn't have to cook, and I didn't feel compelled to anything work-like. Thanks, Mom!

My girls decided they were ballerinas for two days this week.
Here is them in their ballerina clothes at the "barre."

Since I was up there, I decided to take a picture of the painting I did for my parents for Christmas.
I did pretty good.

I love how Mira is using Grandpa as a recliner.  My mom is fixing Mira's blankie for the 2nd time.

It's hard to catch Cecily not moving.

Cecily looks so toddler-ish in this picture. She's not really a baby anymore. :(

This is the fairy house/villiage that Emilia has concocted on our back patio.
She was quite upset when I told her she couldn't keep it there forever.

Mira looking cute in a vintage dress from Aunt Jean.

I put a slip under it after she had an accident on the bloomers.

Of course, I couldn't take a picture of Mira and not one of Emilia. This is them singing "Let it Go."

From Facebook:
4/12/14
Steve was talking about the home projects we want to work on today and was saying how the whole house needs painting. Mira pipes up and says, "Yeah, we need to paint the walls and the railings...EVERYTHING needs painting! Except the sky."
Me: The sky doesn't need to be painted?
Mira (looking out the window): The sky no need painting.  It painted already.
Emilia: Yeah, it's already colored.
Mira: The sky is painted blue!
Emilia: That would take a lot of paint!

4/7/14
Somehow, before I became a mom, I never would have believed that it would be necessary to say things like, "Don't stand on your food." Or "Don't rub your cracker on the shopping cart and then eat it." Or "Don't turn your cereal bowl upside down (with the milk and cereal still in it)."

4/5/14
I made some pasta to have with dinner tonight that was a mix of shells, rotini, and bowtie pasta. As soon as Emilia sat down, she said, "Look! We're having butterfly pasta! And here's the chrysalis (shells), and this is the caterpillar (rotini)." I love that kids can look at the world a little differently!

4/2/14
My girls have been outside for an hour now, playing in the snow. I just looked out and Mira is lying face-first in the snow eating it, and Emilia is building a snow fort. How apropos.

3/29/14
At 10:30 last night I went to check on our girls and Emilia was still not asleep.
Me: Why aren't you asleep yet?
Emilia: Mom, sometimes my eyes just aren't available for closing!

straightening, Star Wars, sickies

On Monday, we were invited to Ben and Haylee's house, so the girls could wear their new Frozen dresses and watch Dylan's new copy of Frozen that she got for her birthday.  Monday is always my laundry day and we usually have to straighten the house, but it was really bad Monday.  I got all three girls bathed and dressed and when I was done, Cecily went down for a nap.  I had a moment to walk around the house and drink in the amazing phenomenon that is a child's ability to mess up an entire house in under 30 minutes.  I documented for solidarity purposes.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who hates the treadmill that is housework with multiple children.

 

I had most of it picked up before dinner that night, but only because Cecily wasn't feeling well and took a long nap.

Tuesday was April Fools Day.  We didn't have any practical jokes at our house.  My mother may disown me.

Wednesday, Cecily was worse, so I took her to the doctor.  She had bad double ear infections. Another round of antibiotics.  Thankfully, I only have to give this kind once a day.  Twice a day is killer.  Tuesday night it snowed.  Only about an inch.  But when the girls got up, they begged to go out and play in it.  I got them all dressed in their snowsuits and they played outside for a solid hour.  It was great! And it was a good thing they went out at 8am, because by 10:30, it was sunny and by noon, you couldn't tell it had snowed.  Everything had melted.  This picture is a little blurry because our window is dirty, but that's the girls kneeling in the snow.

Friday was a momentous night for our family.  Bubby watched Star Wars for the first time.  I think she really liked it.  She sat through the whole movie.  Emilia, on the other hand, was bored before the near-squishing in the trash compactor. She has little patience for shows that aren't cartoons.  I'm okay with that, though.  Cartoons are generally so much more innocent.  I'm glad I don't have to worry about what she watches yet.

Saturday and Sunday were General Conference for our church.  I always love listening to the leaders of our church.  I feel strengthened and buoyed up by their messages of hope and faith.  And there is always something that strikes me that I need to work to improve in my life, which is important, too. I think as disciples of Christ, we constantly have to be improving ourselves if we hope to follow the counsel in Matthew, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

Saturday I also worked on spackling the walls in our master bedroom.  Got about 1/2 way done with the chair rail awfulness only to realize that the floorboards might be unsalvageable because of the caulking used to finish the beadboard.  I may try to take the electric sander to it before I rip it out and start over.  We'll see how motivated I'm feeling.