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!

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!