Ninnyisms

Corrine has a very cute, very round belly. A while ago, I started calling it her Buddha Belly, and rubbing it. ( None of my kids knew who Buddha was, I had to show them a picture so they would get why I called it that.)

So now we all call her belly that, so much so that I think she thinks that is what it is called. Not a belly, but a Buddha belly. It is so cute how she says it too, "my Buddha Bouwie".

Tonight, she was eating something and Michaela couldn't see what it was. She asked her to spit it out, and Corrine said:

"I can't"

"Why not?" says Michaela

"It's in my Buddha Bouwie!"

That was outrageously funny.

Then again tonight, she had finished her dinner and was sitting in Dad's lap. She asked for a treat, and he said no. She asked again, and he said no again. So she said:

"Daddy, I love you."

"Oh, that's sweet. Thank you honey."

"NOW can I have a treat?"

She's a sly one, that girl. Keeps us laughing!

Michaela is 13!

Michaela became a teenager on Jan. 29th. For her birthday, she wanted to go to Idaho and visit with her friends. We went up on Friday after she got home from school, and she had a late night with her friends. Jason and I and the rest of the kids spent an enjoyable evening with our friends the Merrells. Such fun! Saturday, Michaela went back to her friends and played at Randy's gym and went shopping. Then at 4, we had a family party for her. My mom was nice enough to let us use her home for the party! We had dinner, Michaela's choice: lentil soup, roasted potatoes, rolls.

After dinner Michaela opened her presents.

Uncle Paul and Aunt Jackie got her this cute sweater and a shirt to go under it.

Uncle David and Aunt Natalia got her some cute necklaces and the headband she is wearing here. Here she is opening the sewing kit we got her. She is loving learning how to sew, so I bought her everything she needs to get started!

Then we had cake and ice cream. She wanted a chocolate pistachio cake, very good. We ended the night by playing Mafia. Happy Birthday Michaela!

I'm not 2....

The other day, Payden was telling Corrine she couldn't do something because she was only two.

To which Corrine promptly replied:

"I'm 2 1/2!"

Don't you forget it, sista.

Payden's Science experiment

Payden is in 5th grade, and this year was required to participate in the science fair. She had to pick an experiment, conduct it, and make a notebook and display of her results. She did an experiment where she observed which soda would erupt the most when she put in mentos. She did all of it by herself, all we did was buy her the pop and print her pictures for her. Everything else she did on her own. Payden is extremly good at putting things like this together. She did a talk last week in primary and didn't ask for any help with that either. Wow!




I am so proud of her!

Shirt refashion

So my mom gave me this shirt. It has a super cute print, but she thought it made her look large. It was a pheasant type shirt, and the way it was gathered and the place that the waist fell did the same thing to me. Soooo, it was destined for something else. I hung on to it for a few weeks, until inspiration hit me. I was looking at the bottom part of it, and thought it would make a cute skirt for Ava.

Here is what it started out as.


I cut the shirt right above the high waist. This shirt had a great band on the waist that would make a great waist for a skirt! That top part of the shirt also has me thinking...I will post if I do something with that.


Here is what the band looked like.


All I did was fold the band in half and sew that, leaving an opening for the elastic.




To put the elastic in, attach it to a big safety pin. Then you can inchworm the safety pin through the waist. Believe me, this is much easier than other methods I have tried. Just picture me trying to get elastic into pj bottoms with an open hanger. Yeah. Use the safety pin method.

I used very skinny elastic, because the waist was just this size after I folded it in half and sewed it. It was also what I had on hand. Start your elastic at your opening. I usually hold onto the other part, the end, with my teeth so it doesn't get sucked in.

After you have your elastic all the way through, sew the ends together. This does not have to be pretty. I always have the hardest time getting them to stay together while I am trying to slip them under my presser foot. Once the ends are sewn, sew up the opening.

Distribute the fullness of the skirt equally, then sew the elastic in place by sewing along the seams and at the front and back. This should keep the elastic from moving when you wash it, and bunching when it is worn. I am not sure if I explained that well, but I can't think of any other way to say it. If you are confused, say so and I will try again! You don't have to hem it because it already has a hem! Yeah!

Put it on your girly and enjoy a very cheap and easy skirt! I am going to keep my eye out at DI and yard sales for other shirts this would work with.

This was her pose!

We also got our craft on Sunday. The girls and I made lots of new hair bows. Fun!

Fluffy friends

After every nap and when she wakes up every morning, Corrine likes to grab the loveys she slept with. It always includes her Minny and her baby, but she alternates after that. Some mornings, she has so many loveys that you can't even see the little girl around them. She has to carry them downstairs with her. I don't know why, because as soon as we get down there she drops them to the ground. But she always says it; "My mimmie and my baby!"

New Years with David, Natalia and Cayden

David, Natalia and Cayden came to stay for a few days, and we had lots of fun. I am afraid they got a rather tired version of me, however, being as it was the tail end of a busy holiday!

We opened presents. I like it when Christmas goes on for days!



They gave us the game, Quidller. Very fun!

They gave the girls a Book of Mormon puzzle, and it was happily received!

We actually got some snow when they were here, so we took the opportunity to go sledding. Amazingly enough, we had enough winter gear to outfit even David and Natalia. For some strange reason, we have oodles of bibs. They come in handy!
It was very windy and cold. Here is Cayden fighting with the sled; it was a flimsy thing!

Ninny loves sledding. This is her baby sled, which doesn't go very fast. She was using Ava's cool sled, and loved it. We were short on sleds, so we stopped by Walmart to buy a couple cheap ones. They were cheap, too!


Michaela!

Payden, you're going the wrong way!

Ava on her Zipfy. I tried it too, it was really fun.

She looked so cute carrying it around. She was tirelessly going up the hill over and over; she loves sledding too.

Here is me and Ava.

Here is Cayden on the Zipfy. Ava was very sweet and let everyone use her sled. She got it for her birthday and this is the first time she has gotten to use it! I think that is also David and Ava.

David, and Ava is in there somewhere!

Jason going down on the flimsy sled. This is just before he wiped out.


On New Year's Eve, we hung out, played games, and ate. Here is the little cousins watching a movie. So cute!

We introduced David and Natalia to Settlers, and they loved it. Jason is happy to have other people who love it to play with!


For dinner, we had an appetizer dinner. We had lots of food, junk, really, but we did have a vegi tray.....so we were redeemed.


We played some fun games. This one was a big hit; it is called the adverb game. One person is it. They leave the room, and the rest of the players decide on an adverb, like happily, girly, drunkenly. Then the person who is it gives each player a verb to act out, like run, dance, etc. The person who is it has to guess the adverb. We had a lot of fun, giggeling and acting out things!

I think Jason is running "girly".

This was a great game, because even Ava and Cayden understood it.

I don't remember what Payden was doing here!

And Natalia finally got her New Years kiss! Although it wasn't really how she wanted it...someone told David to kiss, and the adverb was "badly"! It was hilarious!


We did a count down at 10:00 for Ava and Cayden. Then we did it again at midnight for everyone else! That way the younger ones didn't get too tired out, and we could play games without having to parent!

We played games until 2:00 am. Natalia really wants that last swig!


We ended our celebrations the next day by getting rid of our Christmas tree(bush). The girls had to say goodbye and give it a hug!

It was a great holiday season; I wish it came more often!

Reading medals and there IS such a thing as a free lunch!

Today Ava accomplished something really great! In her kindergarten class, they have 63 little books they read at home then test on at school. They have to get every single word right without help in order to pass off the book, and towards the end they were pretty hard, with words like enormous, laughed, gnaw, begged, tried, about. When they pass off the last book, they get a medal and a cheer from the class. Ava had been very excited about getting her medal. Well, today she got it! She read and passed off book 63 and came home grinning from ear to ear with her medal around her neck.

I decided that this momentous occasion called for lunch at her favorite spot: McDonalds. I told her I would take her to lunch there to celebrate, and only after she was all excited did I consider whether I had the money to do it. (Jason gets paid on Monday, so we are very low on funds right now, especially after Christmas!) At that point, I realized I had some money, about $15, on a gift mastercard.

So off to McDonalds I went, two very happy littlies in tow.

We get there, and Corrine and Ava are dancing with excitement over the toys. I order, and the total comes to $11.37. Great, I think, I have plenty! Well, I run my card, and it is declined. Hmm. I run it again and again, and the cashier tries putting paper around it and running it. This whole time I am saying "I KNOW there is money on that card. I have no idea why it won't work!" I try my debit card, but that is declined as well(not really a surprise to me). I ask if they take checks, and the answer is no. I am about to say I am sorry for the trouble, but I have no other form of payment, thanks and goodbye (and am thoroughly embarrassed by this point). I am also thinking of the dissapointment that Ava will have, and am sure she is going to be screaming when we leave, when the cashier says, "No problem, its on me today."

I didn't know what to say.

I was embarrassed, humiliated, didn't want the hand out, but he was very nice and said, no, look, its all ready. No problem.

Steven was his name, and I want to get a thank you note to him soon.

I took the tray, still not knowing how I felt about it, and went and sat down. I know it wasn't a big deal, I know the money didn't come out of his pocket, ( I worked at Burger King for too long; I know exactly what he did) but I still felt like a mooch. I am thankful, though, and touched by his kindness.

So, anyway, there IS such a thing as a free lunch, 'cause I got mine today!

I made dirt!

Today I let Corrine help me plant some tiny little seeds in a herb kit I bought. It had one of those soil pellet things that when you add water it expands. We sat there, me adding water and her picking at it with a fork. Then I let her put the tiny seeds in, she was so careful. Not long after that, we picked up Ava from school, and Corrine said this to her right away:

"Ava, I made dirt!"

When I thought about it from her perspective, that is probably exactly what it was to her! We put a brown non dirt thing in a "bowl", added water, stirred, and had dirt! We made dirt!

Fun with babysitting

When David, Natalia and Cayden were here, we adults took off for dinner and temple square and left Michaela in charge. We are at least 45 minutes away from downtown, so we let our neighbors/cousins/friends Jon and Carrie know so that if there was a problem, an adult would be close at hand. Michaela is a great babysitter, we weren't really worried, but it turned out she needed the help!

We were sitting in the restaurant when my phone rang. It was Michaela, and she was very distraught. Corrine had been standing on a folding chair when it collapsed, pinching her little finger in it. Michaela said it was bleeding a lot. I tried to assess how much "a lot" was by asking her to put a band aid on it and see if it bled through the band aid. I also told her to give Ninny some tylenol, because Ninny thinks that is a cure-all and I knew it would comfort her.

Michaela was still worried, so I called Carrie to see if she would mind walking over and checking out Ninny's finger. She said no problem. A few minutes later, my phone rang again, and Carrie told me that the finger was bruised and swollen with a little hole in it (poor Corrine!) but no hospital visit was necessary. Then she said, "There is one other thing" and starts laughing!

She reports that Ava had taken her Zhu Zhu pet and put it on her head.

At this point, I got a very clear picture, and told Carrie that I thought I knew where this was going.

You guessed it! For those of you who have gone unaware of the Zhu Zhu pet craze, they are little hamsters that have tiny wheels on the bottom, and roam around your house. Pretty cute, really.

Well, Ava had been trying to make Corrine feel better by making her laugh. She had set it on her head, the pet said "everybody out of the way" and ran...right into her hair! I am not sure if Corrine thought it was funny, but Carrie certainly did! She was laughing so hard she could hardly explain the damage: that the Zhu Zhu pet was hopelessly tangled in Ava's hair. Carrie had tried to get it out, but couldn't, so I told her she could cut it out. Luckily, it only caught a few hairs up at the top on the front, so the cut part mixed in with her baby hairs. I was so glad, because I have never cut Ava's hair and I love how long it is.

My kids told me that Carrie was just having fits of laughter at the situation. Carrie said it was a nice relief from the worry over Ninny's finger and lightened the mood.

Much thanks to Carrie for the help; I think I owe her some pumpkin bread!

Christmas 2010 part two

We had a very crazy but fun holiday season. To start off, my brother came in on the 22nd. My mom came down earlier that day and we picked him up from the airport together. The next day, his wife came down. (She had been in Idaho visiting her family.) They stayed for two days, then went back to Idaho, my mom stayed one more day. The next day, we had Gene and Marlene over for the afternoon and dinner. The day after that, we had my dad and Connie over for brunch, and my brother came back with them. Then he left the next day, and two hours after he left David Natalia and Cayden came to stay for four days. If you read between the lines, that means I cooked and cleaned a lot, my house was trashed, we stayed up way to late for two weeks straight, played lots of games, and had tons of fun getting to visit with everybody!

Here is Ninny with her new Woody doll from Horsey Grandma and Grandpa.

We opened gifts from Gene and Marlene and to them, then had dinner. My gift was Just Dance 2. Boy, did we have fun with that! Lots of great videos and pics....but I will be nice to those involved and only post a couple of pics. But BE WARNED: if you cross me I have blackmail material!

Marlene really liked this game! She has some great moves! I about died laughing watching Jason do this. With his tongue sticking out most of the time!

Like I said, the next day we had my Dad and Connie over for brunch. My brother came with them, so we have great pics...


Watching PJ do this was TO FUNNY!

My dad and Connie got in on the action to! This is a fun game, because even the little kids can play. Ava and Corrine were so cute shaking their booties!


The next day, my brother had to go home. I got a pic with him to put up in my house.

Goodbyes were tough.





We took him to the airport, and I started crying right away. I cried all the way home, too. We will all miss Uncle Paul!

All in all, we had a great two weeks. New Years with David, Natalia and Cayden up next!