Sunday, July 12, 2015

A small fix

Things settled down a little this week, so I decided to take on a project to make my life harder. Emilia's birthday is coming up this week and she requested a How to Train Your Dragon party. I decided to hand-sew 8 of these (because I'm crazy):


Most of my free time this week has been devoted to making the pattern, cutting out the felt, and sewing them. I've finished 2 1/2 of them. And now I'm stressing out because I've got everything else to get ready--like decorations, food, invitations, games, etc.

We also got a kitten this week. We shopped for all the cat accoutrements on Tuesday and picked her up on Wednesday. I think the only reason I was brave enough to get a pet is because Ben and Haylee's cat had babies and they wanted to give us one.

This is what she looked like for most of Wednesday and Thursday:


Now she's gotten braver and is playing and running around. I'm glad. And she's pretty cute. too, so that helps. :)




Her name is officially Flaming Beauty (a compromise between Sleeping Beauty and Flame--we thankfully didn't ask Steve for his input because he says he would have named her Nancy).

On Thursday night. I got to go to my friend Leah's house (she's in my writing group), we mostly talked and ate unhealthy food, but I did pick raspberries. She has a beautiful patch with both white and red raspberries and wasn't going to have time to pick for a while. I told her I would be a good friend and help her out. So I came home with about 5 pounds of raspberries for no more cost than my time. Heaven!

I made raspberry syrup, cranachan (if you haven't tried this Scottish dessert, you really should) and froze the rest. <> Oh happy da-ay!


Other than that, we mostly hung out at home. Reading, making funny faces, gardening...



Anyone know what kind of plant this is? It's getting a bit too big.
My first produce of the year. A nice big zucchini.
We at the zucchini and the squash I got later in the week with  this recipe tonight. It was delicious. And it's easy. What's not to like? http://www.marthastewart.com/334243/pasta-with-roasted-summer-vegetables-and

Yesterday, we worked on the house and I worked on the dragons some more. I sprayed for bugs and worked in the garden. Steve was a regular handiman (not his regular schtick to be sure) and put our entire wall back together except for mud and tape. I am super proud of him. We went out to Red Robin for dinner to celebrate not having to spend thousands of dollars fixing our foundation. Yay for things not turning out as bad as you thought, right? I feel like God watches out for us in those small ways and I'm so grateful. We are very blessed.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Missed it again. Shoot.

How did I miss last week again? I don't even know. And today I'm tired and feeling lazy. You might just get a bunch of pictures with minimal explanation. We'll see--if I can ever get my computer to recognize my phone. Annoying electronic devices.

Ahh....here we go....

The kids were bored one day, so I made a tea party for them.

We've been to the library, it feels like, a million times this summer. I picked up some books for sale while I was there. I'm excited to read them.

We went up Hobble Creek Canyon to roast marshmallows one night. It was so nice in the cooler temperatures and I'll always eat a toasty s'more.

Cecily helping Steve put out the fire.


I had just washed my hair and didn't want it to smell like smoke because we had church at 9am the next morning. So I wrapped up in an old t-shirt.

Emilia begged to be able to pose with the roasting stick. Funny girl.


Love this little diaper bum.

Visited my mom on Monday. Cecily built her first WonderBlocks tower. Momentous occasion.

Another trip to the library. Mira reads books to herself all the time, with no reading skills other than her imagination. She's got a stellar imagination.

Cecily doing puzzles while she waits for her sisters and their books. She's not so impressed with them yet.

Emilia is a voracious reader. She picked out 16 books to read and will be done with them in about 10 days.

I wanted the girls to have something festive to wear on the 4th, so I made them some shirts.

An attempt at a family photo in said shirts.

We also went to the splash pad. Emilia and Cecily were wearing the same swim suits. We have an awesome splash pad. Have I mentioned this?

Emilia looks so grown up in this picture.
We also went swimming with the Strattons, had a bbq and fireworks on the 4th, fixed our car only to have it break again, and Alison moved out, revealing that we had a leak in our basement. This resulted in taking out a large section of drywall (thanks for the help, Dad!), pulling out insulation, getting new stuff for the walls and carpet, and getting advice from a restoration guy. He'll have to come back now that we can see the extent of the damage, though. Overall, these last few weeks have been very stressful. Hope everyone had a happy and safe 4th of July!

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Another family misadventure

I didn't post last week because we had another family misadventure on the way home and we were so exhausted by the time we got here, we fell asleep a 1/2 hour after the kids. I guess I'll go in order though, so you'll have to wait for the misadventure story 'til half-way through the post.

This first picture is from two Sunday's ago. My Aunt Jean gave us this dress that my cousin Dot wore when she was this age. She looked totally adorable. But she was mad that I wouldn't give her a snack from the pantry, so this was the best picture I could get of it.


Also, two Sundays ago, Cecily spilled something on her dress at dinner at Meemaw and Peepaw's house, so she was running around in her bloomers, found the dress up stuff, and this cuteness ensued:



There's an adorable video of her singing the itsy bitsy spider in this get-up here:
https://www.facebook.com/sabrina.frohlichwatts/videos/908635822511225/?l=4732714821796192372

That day, Mira was having tummy troubles and threw up all over Grandma and Grandpa's bathroom. This is important only because it leads up to other stuff.

We stayed home Monday, since Mira was sick and the girls mostly watched TV. By Tuesday, we were almost out of groceries, so we made a grocery run and stopped to pick up some Brag Tags. If you are a mom of school-age kids and don't know what that is, feel lucky.



This was taken Wed, I think. I just love how my hair curls these days. It makes me happy.


Wednesday night, Steve had game night, so I watched Pitch Perfect (the first one, since Alison owns it and loves it), while I finished a wreath for the 4th of July. I love how it turned out. I love the kid who wanted to be in the picture, too,



Mira wanted me to take a picture of her standing on the crib. . .


Wednesday morning, Cecily woke herself up early by throwing up all over her crib. She proceeded to throw up every couple of hours after that because she kept wanting to eat. We have shag carpet. It was not fun. Thursday, I decided to limit what she ate, and by Thursday night, she had some regular food she kept down. Friday, she seemed much better, so I decided to risk taking her with the other girls to Springville's Art City Days festivities. Friday was the Children's Art Festival. We've gone to it the past two years and had fun, and this year was no exception. Here are the girls getting their faces painted.


Cecily waiting her turn.
We went with friends, the Ables and Addison.


Saturday morning, we took the girls to the parade. It was a pretty good parade. Much better than the Provo Freedom Festival parade we went to last year. The kids lasted about an hour, so I guess I should be happy with that. (I love parades, so I was sad to leave, but I should have been happy.) :)

Emilia, Mira, and their friend Gracie waiting for it to start.
Everybody else waiting for it to start.
After it started, they had to stand in the street to have a chance at getting the candy that was thrown. Emilia was amazed at how much candy they threw. Like it was Christmas. Mira was cute. She just sat on the blanket and waited for people to feel sorry for her and give her some of their candy. It worked out very well for her.
On a Saturday night grocery run, Emilia dressed up with all the accessories she could find while I looked for sunglasses. "Look, Mom, I'm fashionista Emilia," she said.


Okay, so...
Sunday, we had a family dinner to celebrate, my dad's, Cecily's, and Lincoln's birthdays.

(WARNING: Our family misadventure starts here. If you don't want to read about bodily functions, 
skip down to the picture of Emilia and Mira in the pool.) 

About 15 minutes after we arrived, Steve and I walked into the living room, where Cecily was playing, and found her squatting in front of the couch with poop erupting out the top of her diaper. Everybody flew into disaster mode, with Steve grabbing Cecily and hauling her into the bathroom, spraying her down with the shower head and getting her cleaned up. I cleaned up what I could off the floor, then grabbed the clothes, rinsed them out with the hose and threw them in the wash along with the rugs from the bathroom. Mom grabbed the carpet cleaner and cleaned up the rest.

I don't know why Steve and I didn't see that as a possible tummy problem, but we didn't. We just figured it was a bad diaper, a small leftover from her being sick this week and went on with the day. Cecily had been eating just fine for three days now, so she was feeling better, right?

Apparently not.

The kids were all cranky after dinner, so we packed every one up (after Cecily opened her presents) and headed home. This was about 7:30, I think. It's about an hour's drive from my parents house to home, the first 15 minutes of it through town, then the rest is interstate. Right before we were about to get on the interstate, I hear a strange noise from Cecily and look back to see her throwing up everything she at at Nana's house. We are driving our Corolla, because the AC in the Pacifica went out and it's been in the 90s. So all three kids are squished in the back seat and Cecily is throwing up over and over and over. Emilia is in the middle, so next to Cecily, and starts screaming, "It's gonna drip on me! It's gonna drip on me!" Cecily was sitting in her carseat, and so far has managed to keep all of it in her lap, where she is also holding her blankie. Steve immediately pulled over into he parking lot of an Applebees. I run inside to get paper towels and come back out to Steve yelling at the older two to get away whist picking up throw-up with his hands and dumping it on the ground in the parking lot. I manage to get Cecily out of the car, but to my utter disgust, I cannot do it without touching a whole lot of Cecily's half-processed dinner. I quickly strip her down to her diaper, find a plastic bag and stuff the clothes in it, then, while Steve starts wiping Cecily down with wet-wipes, I try to get the cloth covering off the car seat. So so so so so so gross. After not a little swearing, I manage to get it off and start wiping the hard plastic down with more wipes. I figure she's just going to have to sit on the hard plastic for the rest of the way home because I don't know what else to do. I have to wipe down the straps, which are going to smell terrible no matter how much I wipe off and realize some of the puke dripped down them into the seat, so I flip it over to wipe the bottom off, when a lot more puke runs out onto the pavement. Ulgh. That's when I decide we are throwing this carseat away and buying a new one at the Walmart across the street.

I forgot to mention that at one point, while we're still trying to get everything cleaned up, the other two girls are wandering around the parking lot. Steve starts yelling at them to stay still and sit on the grass, which obviously doesn't work, so then there's more yelling--you get the idea. Just then, a highway patrol guy pulls up and parks in front of us. "Oh great," I think, "Somebody called the cops on us because we are freaking out at our kids in a very public place." Thankfully that was not the case. I guess the guy was just coming to Applebees for dinner. He was nice and gave us some more paper towels from his vehicle.

So now we have two kids, bored out of their minds, sitting on the grass in front of Applebees, a naked baby who thinks this is a funny adventure, but with an upset stomach running around them, an irate dad stalking through the restaurant to rinse out a puked on blankie and clothes, and a momma ready to leave them all there to go get a new carseat so we don't have to smell throw-up all the way home.

Steve watches the girls, I take a quick drive and end up buying a booster seat, which is $12 instead of $70, a new shirt for Cecily, so she's not completely naked, and a big bottle of hand sanitizer, which I use to wipe down every part of the car that I've touched that night.

We put Cecily in Mira's old car seat, switch the other boosters around and head for home. Cecily is crying for her blankie, Emilia's got her shirt over her face, quietly repeating, "It's really smelly. It's really smelly. It's really smelly." And Mira is happily telling us stories and trying to tickle her sister, which ends up getting her yelled at.

Like I said. We fell asleep a 1/2 hour after the kids were in bed. Gah.


Nana and Grandpa set up a wading pool for the kids to play in.

Cecily got lots of fun stuff for her birthday, including sunglasses, a watering can, and How to Train Your Dragon gear.
On Monday, Emilia and Mira started swimming lessons. They loved it. And Emilia learned to get her whole head in the water and to blow water out her nose. That's a huge step for her.


Tuesday, I started not feeling well. I was really not surprised after our adventure on Sunday. Steve was lucky, as usual, and didn't feel sick at all.

We had gotten tickets for an event at the library, and even though I was not feeling great, I was stubborn and took everybody. It didn't go very well.

Eating our picnic lunch after the event.
On Friday, I was feeling fairly normal, so I decided to spray paint the lamps I got at DI a while ago to put in my bedroom. This is the before picture. I will have to post an after next week. Because I'm lazy and I don't want to go take one right now.


By Saturday, I was feeling yucky again. This virus is so weird. So instead of going up the canyon to roast marshmallows, we ended up watching a movie on the couch. Cecily's face encompasses how I felt about the movie, Strange Magic. "Why are we watching this again?" Weird weird waste of time. I don't recommend it.


Today is Father's Day and I'm feeling a little better again. So we're trying to celebrate a little. I did make Steve a peach pie...