Picture Pages

Who remembers that show??

Yesterday, my friend, Kayleen was kind enough to snap some photos of Grayson. They're his 2 year old photos. He'll be three in November! I really stink at keeping up on this picture stuff. I know what you're thinking, "Why didn't you get his done when you had your family pictures taken?" Or maybe I'm the only one thinking that! I'm such a scatter brain! Anyhow, check out Kayleen's work: http://www.photosbykayleen.blogspot.com/

She did such a great job. She had him talking and talking. I know, this is nothing new, but I just don't know how she got such awesome pictures with him yammering on! If anyone ever needs their pictures done, I highly recommender her!

I will definitely have her do Mabel's one year pictures...in about 6 months...he he. Or maybe just after this nasty bruise on her cheek clears up!

Beans, beans, the Messy legume...

The other day I was expressing to my husband how anxious I was for school to start back up. I'm not looking forward to the schedule, I hate that. But I was looking forward to not having six kids in my house under the age of six. Bret suggested a craft project. I had to laugh at his naivete. Six kids and glue, paint, or play dough-this all translates to big mess. But, I will give him credit, he was trying to help keep his wife from going insane!

Today, I faced the plain facts. I needed to find something for at least my kids to do. I pulled out a packet that I had gotten from a workshop one of the Kindergarten teachers did for the parents last year. It had a bean game. You slide a bean onto a triangle divided into sections numbered 1-10. Whichever number it lands on, you get that many beans. Each person took 3 turns, to see who could get the most beans. This lasted for a while with Aiden, Gray, and I. Gray won everytime, his two was worth like 20 beans apparently.


Then we decided to make pictures with the beans. Gray, not really interested, so here's what he and Miss Mae did:


NO, those aren't beans. It's those puffed rice snacks.

Can you guess what each picture is? I started with these:

Aiden thought of the next two:

After we were done, Aiden wanted to glue them onto paper. Ugh, glue. But he reeeally wanted to do it so he could give a picture to his dad. So against my better judgment, I broke out the construction paper and glue. We would have plenty of time to get it done before the other kids got here.

BUZZZ! WRONG-O! The kids arrived 20 minutes earlier than I'd been told. And they all wanted to help. Yay! And then they wanted to do their own pictures. YAY! Translation: gluey table, gluey fingers, gluey beany mess.
But I guess they had fun and that's all that matters, right?
RIGHT?!

Right.

It kept them entertained for about and hour.

Word of the Day

And the word of the day is: Super.

"Grayson, can you use that in a sentence, please. Or maybe just use it aaaaaall daaaaaay looooong?"

"That's super good."

"That's super hot."

"Super Cold!"

Pointing to scissors, "Those super hurt!"

"Thank you, Grayson."

I don't know about you, but the word has lost all meaning to me now. Super.

A trial with a happy ending

This is what happened this morning when I told Grayson to go to his room and not come out until he's dressed! I sent him in and didn't hear him for a while. So I went back to his room and he sat there with Aiden's quilt grinning at me. "Get dressed," I told him...again. I left to get some chicken marinating for dinner tonight and came back about a half hour later. He was out like a light laying on the floor and all I could hear was the sound of thumbsucking.

This kid tries my patience on a daily basis, but I had to laugh at this. I put the towel over the lower half of his bum (Mabel's pink towel...but it has a hood, or hat as Gray calls it, so the boys are constantly using it). Had to at least keep it PG-13.

A-Camping we just went

We spent the weekend at my FAVORITE campround, Airplane Flat. I cannot express to you how much I love that place. It's probably mostly an emotional attachment from all of the good times had with good friends. Not to mention it's beautiful. It was basically a 3rd Ward reunion. I have to mention that not a single Dewitt showed up...those bums! That's right Derek, tell your family that they stink! There were (these are the 3rd Ward kids) 3 Greens, 2 Mlyeneks, 2 Flakes, 1 Abbott, 3 Reeds, 3 Biggs, and ZERO Dewitts. What's up with that?!

Anyhow, on to the good times. The kids had a blast exploring and just getting dirty. Aiden was glued to Tyla, of course. Grayson was glued to Aunt Rosie, of course (and true to Grayson form, spent much of the time in his chonies). And Mabel, she was covered in dirt. We arrived to the campsite around dinnertime on Thursday. John and Rose made some YUMMY steak salads. We took Aiden and Ty down to the tree swing then on over to the Flats part of the creek. We hiked on over to the Meadow and back up over the hill to the campsite. It was a nice little jaunt. We drank hot coaco, listened to Rosie read a book to Gray, quoted A LOT of The Incredibles (and pondered why on earth there was no part 2????) and then I was beat, so we hit the hay.

Friday Todd and Christina made omelets with all the fixin's and fresh fruit. You know how I love my omelets...MMM, Heaven. Then Bret and I gave a short tutorial to John and Mom on how to play Rook. Then we headed down to the creek. We walked back up the path a ways and Mae and I sat at the edge of the creek while Gray and Bret headed back further to find where Todd, Tyla, and Aiden had gone fishing. John and Rose came in later. There was a little part of the creek that came up to just past my knees. The water was c-c-c-c-cold as usual, but John kept talking like he was gonna jump in just to wash his 'pits'. I told him...multiple times...it's not deep enough to jump in. But as I was climbing out, John, being the slow one that he is, jumped in. He landed with his hands down and scraped them up pretty good. He thought he was being a funny one splashing me, but that kind of backfired now didn't it??

We headed back to camp for some taco soup. I think Kendra may have left out an ingredient when giving the recipe to John, so that her taco soup will always be THE Taco soup. I'm just sayin'. But it was still tasty. The kids wanted to go back to the tree swing. On our way there, we found another tree swing rigged up at a campsite. It kind of scared me....I wasn't gonna sit on it. But the kids each took a quick turn and then it was off to the good swing. Aiden would have spent all day there if we'd let him. We came back to camp and John and I attempted to play the game he is developing. But it started pouring. The canopy we were under wasn't big enough, my back was in the rain still, so we put the game on hold but never got back to it. Then it was time for Bret and I to cook up some dutch oven chicken and taters. The chicken was a bit chewy (I HATE CHEWY CHICKEN. It makes me angry) and the bacon was a bit black. Other than that, good. Bret hiked to the top of the hill and found about a dozen elk so he came back to get me and we walked back up to see them. I'm not one for walking/driving around looking for elk, but they are beautiful animals. We made some dutch oven for the dessert sharing that night. I was nervous, we'd never made it before without burning it. But it turned out beautifully golden. All the 3rd warders met, talked, and shared desserts.

Saturday morning we had pancakes a la Todd with ham steaks, eggs, and more fruit. Did you know they make pancake batter in those spray cool whippy type bottles?!! Pretty genious, I must say. Fancy!! I was quite taken with this contraption if you can't tell. We packed up camp after breakfast and then had some lunch, hoagie sandwiches. We drove down to the creek for one last hurrah for the kids. The kids didn't seem to mind the cold and were jumping in all over the place. I was walking over to see where Ty and Aiden had gone and I lost my footing and fell in. Awesome. After a quick change at the van, we headed back to the heat.....oh the heat!! Is it time for another camping trip yet???

A hodgepodge of pictures:

Just a bit of the beauty that is Canyon Creek:

The path down to the tree swing. Isn't it gorgeous??!

The creek was covered with these little purplish/blue butterflies. There seemed to be more than usual. You would step into the greenery and they would flutter all around you. I had one land on my toe. It stayed there for quite a while before flying away.

These trees were in bloom. So pretty. Does anyone know what kind they are???

Miss Mae's special day- Edited

My baby girl is one today! We celebrated her birthday with family and friends on Saturday. We had build your own sub sandwiches with fresh fruit, chips, and cupcakes with buttercream frosting. I chose a flower themed birthday, mostly because I wanted to make some cupcakes I saw on Youtube. You know it's all about the food with me!

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Then we had Mabel eat her smash cake. She wasn't so sure about it at first. I think mostly she was wondering why EVERYONE was watching her eat. As you can see she eventually got into it and made quite a mess. Gross side note: you should have seen the color of her #2 on Sunday...well, just look at the frosting and you get the idea.

Grayson stood there and picked at the side of the cake while she ate. Mabel swiped at him a few times. Then while he was walking away, she grabbed the back of his head. Serves him right, stealing cake from the birthday girl! While I was washing Mabel up, the other kids planted their own flowers. We did this in lieu of games. I just didn't have the games in me this year. They seemed to enjoy it though.

Here's the whole crew after the party was over. L to R: Gray, Faith, Brielle, Tyla holding Mabel, Max, and Aiden. As you can see, not having a morning nap was really wearing on Mabel by this time.

These are my other nieces, Claire and Hayli (holding Mabel). They arrived fashionably late to the party, so I had to snap a pic of them with miss Mae. Bret had already put Mabel down for her nap, so when I went in to get her, she started fussing. She just wanted to get some sleep! Poor thing. But Hayli hadn't seen her in quite a while. So I took the picture and let Hayli hold her for a bit, then put her back to bed.I can't believe she's one already. My how time flies when you have the best baby in the world!

And baby Ev was there, too. But his mom went and let him fall asleep before the group pictures were taken. So no pictures of my little chunk-a-dunk!

Victory is mine (X2)! Mwahhaha!

I'm going to go ahead and call it official! Grayson is potty trained! Oh happy day! This has been an uphill battle since....October! He showed interest while we were visiting my sister in New Mexico. For like the last 3 days we were there he wanted to go potty on the toilet. Of course there were LOTS of false alarms, but it was a step in the right direction. Then we came home and for about a week he wanted NOTHING to do with the toilet. So I tried off and on for the past forever! I'd do the underoos thing and he'd have an accident and want nothing to do with them. He would whine until I put a diaper back on. Then it was like a flip switched in his head (Oy, this boy and his switches!) and all he wanted to wear was underwear. I let him wear them to church last Sunday...very scary! I warned his nursery teachers and made Bret stop in during the middle of class and take him to the potty. It went swimmingly! So, while I still anticipate the occasional accident, and rue the days of mad dashes from the back of the grocery store to the restroom, I'm gonna call it a victory! Background note: latest obsesion-The Incredibles. I'd forgotten just how much I LOVE that show.

Victory 2: Mabel will finally drink from a sippy! It's just the soft Nuby sippy, but hey, I'll take it. It went from, "What the heck are you trying to stick in my mouth lady?!", to "I'll humor you, just a few sips...", to "What the hey, I'll suck this down, but the next one better be a bottle". And now I have to buy more sippies so that's all she will get.

And these are the things a mother celebrates!