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!

Little Tumblers

Corrine and I are in a Mom and Me tots class that has both dance and tumbling in it. The first part is dance, and we sing and dance to songs. They even practice some very elemental dance moves. Corrine really loves the dance and freeze song.

For the dance and freeze song, they get to put on sparkly skirts. Here is Corrine having her own little Marilyn Monroe experience.

For another song, they get to hold a teddy bear or little doll and throw it in the air, and balance it on their heads while they walk on tippy toes. Corrine does tippy toes really well!

Then for the second part, we go to the tumbling room and run and tumble! Here she is walking on the balance beam.


Here she is doing a somersault. She has also gotten brave enough to to back bends.



For some reason, she loves running up and down this thing. It is spongy and bouncy, maybe that's why. But she says "Run with me, Mommy!" and then we run up and down it over and over. They also have a big tramp that is her favorite.

Ava has taken clogging for the last two years, and it wasn't her favorite thing to do. We have found her thing in tumbling, though! She can't wait to go and gets so excited on Wednesdays!

Going into a back bend.

Perfecting her cartwheel. When I watch this class, I am amazed that there isn't constant banging of heads together and that the poor teacher isn't clocked on a regular basis. There are hands and feet and legs flying all over the place! Ava is of course the littlest in her class, although she isn't the youngest.

She absolutely loves this, so this is what we will keep her in. The older girls are also taking things, Payden is doing tumbling and Michaela is in hip hop. Neither one loves it. They both miss clogging very much, so they will probably go back to that next year. I can't find my pics of the older girls, when I do I will post some of them.

New Years Resolutions

Most of the time, I make new years resolutions. They usually involve losing weight, being more organized, and not yelling at my kids so much.

This year, I have absolutely no desire to resolve to do anything above that which I already am doing.

I read others resolutions, and I just think "bleh".

I don't want to.

I have plans to do things, like run more, lose a few pounds, etc, but I don't want to frame those as "resolutions."

It just sounds to concrete, like to much pressure to me right now.

I am not sure why this is; maybe just that this year has been so different for us, and things are still up in the air as to where we are going to live when we move. I feel like I just can't plan too far in the future.

I don't really know the reason, but new years resolutions hold no appeal for me this year.

So, while I was very much in the Christmas spirit, I am being decidedly bah humbuggy about the new year. Or at least the resolutions part.

How do you feel this year? Any resolutions? Or not?

Christmas 2010

Just a warning: if you are not family you may get tired of the endless pictures in this post. Sorry! We had so many pictures it was hard to choose just a few; we had so much fun this year!

This picture requires some explanation. My mom had been saying that me and my brother had similar profiles, so we had to get close and examine them. Really, we weren't about to kiss! We had also just gotten back from a run, so I look scroungy. My brother and I both run, we haven't done a race yet together but it is a goal. We got to go on two runs together while he was here.

Hanging out! I love having my brother and his wife here. They live in Tennessee and I only get to see them once a year, so it was very exciting to have them!



Making cookies for Santa, a Christmas Eve tradition. The girls get to decorate two; one to eat and one for Santa.

The girls warmed up quick to Uncle Paul. I was worried about Corrine, she hasn't seen him for a year and that is more than half her life, but she was comfortable quite quick!

Then is was Christmas Eve. That night we opened presents to and from PJ and Jackie, since they were going to her family for Christmas day. That night we also had our nice, big dinner.

Jackie made the girls hats and scarfs, and they looked adorable.

Here am I opening a homemade present from Jackie.

Here are the girls in their Christmas pj's for this year. I bought the shirts and embroidered their initials on them and made the pants out of silky material lined with flannel.


Time to put out the cookies and milk for Santa! Then the girls went to bed and we played games and watched movies.

Christmas morning, we ate breakfast, PJ and Jackie left, then we opened all the rest of the presents.

Here is Michaela with her owl. I made each girl an owl out of my scrap fabric. They didn't cost me anything and they loved them!

Here is Corrine with her owl!

Here is my mom opening a HUGE picture of a cat that Ava made her! Ava made presents for everyone this year, and wrapped them up herself. She worked on this one all afternoon long.

Payden got boots and skis we bought her used online. When she opened the boots, I asked her to try them on because I was worried they would be too small. She tried shoving her foot in them, but couldn't get it in. So I took it from her. It smelled awful! I told her we would wash them. I couldn't get the liner out, so Jason took it from me. He looked inside, and said "There is a dead mouse in there"! No wonder they smelled so bad! Payden started crying (she had just tried to shove her foot in there) and everyone else started laughing and jumping and just making a bunch of noise. It was so funny! Poor Payden. She was still excited about her present after she calmed down.



Does everyone else's house look like this Chrismtas morning?

We also took a trip to the Temple to see the lights, and got a $30 ticket for parking in the wrong place!

Corrine looks so big in this picture!

A visit to Saint Nick

This year we got to see Santa at our ward party. Usually we go to the mall, but the santa and the set up looked so good here that it saved us a trip! Ava and Corrine were so excited to see Santa. Ava could hardly wait her turn to get up there.

Here is a pic with all of them, Michaela really didn't want to do it because her friends were there. She did humor me and go stand behind santa, so she is in the pic, just way int he back! Payden is just in between enough that she wanted to see Santa too.

She is asking Santa for a bubble gum gun(?) and a pillow pet. He brought her a pillow pet!

So cute! Ava and Corrine had so much fun sitting on Santa's lap!

Holiday Yummies

I always love holiday baking. It is one of my favorite traditions. (Who am I kidding, all of our traditions are my favorites!) I love planning out what I am going to make, getting the supplies, and spending a day or two making everything. Then plating it up and delivering. Usually, I make 20 or so plates of yummies, but this year we didn't know many people here so I only had six plates to do. I still enjoyed the process, though! The mint fudge was especially yummy. I made two batches!

We made "gingerbread" houses out of graham crackers for FHE one night. It was a fun activity, and fun to see how creative all of us are.

We used copious amounts of mini marshmallows. They make good snow.

Corrines was more of a shack than a house. But she loved it!


Here is mine. The only problem with doing this is that you have them sitting out in your kitchen for a week!