Other Random Silliness

For Mark's birthday he got some glow in the dark stars that he's been bugging Ken about helping him put up for just about forever. OK, maybe not forever, but just the last 3 months. I guess he didn't think mom was tall enough to put the sticky putty on the back. He started ended up putting them all right over his bed, but he was especially proud of his Little Dipper constellation.

While we were in DC Abbie got this cute little book called Too Many Cats. The parents read one side of the page, and the kids read the other. Sunday morning we had read the book several times and were starting to get a little silly. Basically what happens is this little girl wants one white cat for her birthday, but ends up finding 10 different cats of all different colors, until she wakes up on her birthday and gets one white cat. Well in the version below she was finding purple hamburgers, blue asparagus, etc....

Sometime last week before the snow began Abbie, Spencer and I had our official first picnic of the year - sandwiches, apples and the most important part Cheetos for dessert.

While we were enjoying the sunshine we found about 12 of our crocus blooming. They were so beautiful, but I think I planted 30 plants last year. So it was exciting and sad all at the same time.In DC I bought Spencer the shirt he has on... it says DIG IT on the front. Do you think I found the right one for him? This year he is finally big enough to reach the levers on this cool digger my grandpa in Salt Lake made. He's called on me to take pictures of him digging several times already this spring. (Man, I wish I was organized enough to get those sleds put away now that winter is over.)

For St. Patrick's Day we did a little fancy do for Jessie off of one of the hair blogs I have over in the sidebar. Check them out if you have a little extra time or want some new ideas. This has been such a fun thing. Jessie came home so happy. Her teacher had taken her around to show all the other 4th grade teachers. It made her feel special, which I guess was the whole point in the first place.

Berry's at the Park

Angie Berry and her girls met us at BYU's Natural History Museum the Friday the kids had school off. It was so FUN to see them again. After looking around and pretending to be eaten by the T-rex we headed off to the park. Abbie so wanted to be able to across the monkey bars like the other kids and after watching Grace swing side-to-side as she went across Abbie decided that she would give it another try. I couldn't believe she was so perceptive to notice that something so simple would help her reach her goal. Before we left she could go across all three of the monkey bars. GO ABBIE!

Spencer brought us over some water. What a great helper!

Angie's older girls had to use the bathroom while we were playing and the ones right at the park had a sign on them that said "Closed for the season," as if we all stop needing to use them during the winter. Weird.

Anyway while they were off locating a bathroom, my kids got to play with Angie's baby and they had too much fun.

It was so fun watching them be so careful with her and watch her just laughing and laughing as they took her down the slides. What great kids I have. I am so blessed.

Space Derby

Mark was SO excited for the space derby! So excited that even though I told him not to play with the kit until we were ready to put it together he just couldn't stand it. And when one of the pieces ended up on the floor and Jessie picked up this tiny metal poky thing and asked me what to do with it I told her to throw it away before someone got hurt. Ken was kind enough to go through the garbage twice looking for that little piece. Mark's scout leader brought us over another rubber band assembly kit and Mark only got in trouble a couple of more times for not putting it away.

The day finally came to start the project and Mark couldn't have been happier. A very wise and kind neighbor let us use his belt sander to get the general shape. Mark helped for a bit and then decided that dad could finish that part. Mark painted it blue all by himself with a flash down one side and the word BOOM down the other. The morning of the race Ken was helping him put the hanger thingy on the top (don't you love my technical terms) and it broke. Ken was about to pull out his hair, but a little super glue and time fixed that problem. Sometimes I wonder why we do things like this year after year!! (Oh, Mark's is the blue one at the end on the back row. I forgot to crop the picture and am too lazy to do it now.)

Mark finally received his Bobcat. He was also thrilled about that since we were in DC during the last pack night. After he got his award he helped lead us in a "round" of applause.The never-ending winding began...I swear it took 10 minutes just to get the first race going. People's rubber bands kept snapping, the propellers kept slipping and unwinding...man the leaders who were around for this last time couldn't figure out what was wrong, but after a few rousing camp songs everyone was ready. Unfortunately only one rocket the whole night even got to the finish line, but the boys didn't seem to care too much (thank goodness)!

Can you find Spencer in this picture below, he kept sneaking around trying to get the best view of the night's events. Our happy cheering section.

More Sleep...Nah

I'm finally done with Mark's scrapbook so it can be printed! YEAH ME! OK, it's still from back in 2006, but it's still a reason to celebrate! So click on the slide show in the side bar and enjoy. (If you find any spelling errors...PLEASE let me know!)

So with one more project crossed off the list do you think I'll be getting a little more sleep?

Here are a few of my favorite pages if you don't have the 2 minutes and 50 seconds to watch the slide show.

Do you want to play?

Pay it Forward

So, here's how this game works-the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive, at some point during the year, a handmade gift from me. What it will be and when it will arrive is a total surprise! The catch is that you must participate as well. Before you leave your comment, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going (or be lazy and copy and paste like I did). Then come back, let me know you're going to play and sit back and anticipate the arrival of your gift! Well isn't this fun?

Yeaterday, Today and Tomorrow

So last Saturday night instead of putting Jessie's hair in sponge rollers we tried just little chucks of hair all twisted up and held in place by a rubber band. BAD IDEA. She looked like she was ready to be a clown for someones birthday party. It's a good thing we don't have church until the afternoon.

I took her into the bathroom and soaked her head and put a bunch of conditioner in it and proceeded to gently comb out the mess. I reminded me of the time I had my mom do rag curlers on me. That was also a Sunday morning and my hair turned out about like Jessie's. I think we're just going to stick with sponge rollers! On Saturday for lunch Spencer wanted to make his own sandwich and somehow convinced Ken that he could do it himself. He calls peanut butter sandwiches: "peanut butter and crunchy," because he likes half crunchy and half smooth peanut butter on his bread. He sat there humming to himself while he worked on it.

Abbie and Spencer making soup for me. Yummy!

We finally got a picture of Mark in his new Cub Scout shirt. Boy is he loving it!!! He wouldn't let me take a pictures of him on his first day because I hadn't gotten all the patches sewn on yet and he wanted it to be perfect. After his first meeting, he came home and was helping drain some ground beef for tacos and spilled grease all downthe front of his brand new-not-all-the-patches-sewn-on shirt! We covered it in stain stick and only had to run it through the wash twice.

Jessie practicing a vaulting move. It's a LOT easier to do this on the barrel than on the horse.

Mark on the horse.

Abbie and Spencer playing at the end of the lesson. The three of us usually play Duck, Duck Bruce, and Sleeping Queens down in the little house by the barn and then go up for the end of the kids lesson.

While Abbie and Spencer stayed with Grandma while we were in DC, Grandma took pictures of all the fun things they did together and then printed them to put into a little book. Abbie wrote all the captions for her book by copying a sentence she would have us write on a scratch paper. She did a great job. My favorite thing she did while we were gone was playing with noodles. Ken's mom just bought a 2 lb. bag of macaroni noodles and put them in a bowl on the table along with a few other bowls, measuring spoons and cups. She said the kids poured noodles back and forth for a hour two different days.Jessie and Mark giving their presentation on DC for their classes at school.Ken's cousin asked me to take pictures for MORP. Abbie, Spencer and I went to check out a good place. The only problem is that Abbie isn't quite as big as high school kids and so the pictures always turn out a bit different.

Spencer loves getting CARS stickers when we go visit daddy at work.

We ended up taking pictures up at the Riverwoods and they turned out great; once all the kids finally showed up.

The Last of the Vacation

Ken got up early Thursday morning and went to the grocery store so we could have a "real" breakfast. He surprised us with fresh strawberries, yogurt and instant oatmeal. We used the coffee makers to heat up some water for the oatmeal (the kids thought that was great) and really enjoyed the warm breakfast. I think Ken was a little surprised at how long it took to get going. But with the two hour time change and sort of late nights all the rest of us were plastered.

We finally got out of the hotel about 10:30 and then had the walk down to the National Mall ("Mall" you say, I know it's so confusing...but just keep reading) only interrupted by Ken returning to the hotel for a couple coats. Our first stop on the agenda was the Washington Monument. The tickets to the top are free you just have to pick them up. They didn't have any immediate times left so we got tickets for 1:00 and headed back to the the Natural History Museum because Jessie wanted to see the gems.

Before we got to the gems we stopped in at the dinosaur exhibit. Mark was being really silly at this point. I did enjoy the display of how the bones look as they are unearthed -- just a big jumbled mess. I'm amazed anyone could put them together.

Heading upstairs to the gems we only got side tracked by one other exhibit on outer space before we finally got to the gems. We saw the biggest blue diamond in the world called the "Hope Diamond." Maybe they call it that because all the rest of us hoped it would have been us to find it, who knows. (Ken told me they named it after one of the owners of the diamond whose last name was Hope. I like my explanation a lot better!)

Here is Jessie in front of some huge Amethyst crystals. Amethyst is a purple variety of quartz (crystals that have six sides that come to a point). This one is part of a 70,000 lb geode from Brazil! We also learned that 2000 years ago the Greeks looked at quartz and wondered what on earth it was. They concluded that this clear, hard substance was water frozen so hard it couldn't melt and so they named it their word for "ice," crystallos. How's that for a history lesson?

Another cool rock. Man you could probably spend months going through this one exhibit and come out with a PhD in rock science.

1:00 came and we were right on time to the Washington Monument. This is us at the top.

Now this is SO COOL! Looking out the windows of the Washington Monument, due north, south, east and west, you can see 4 buildings of importance. Looking straight east is "The National Mall," that strip of brown dead grass, or in other words the strip of property that most of the Smithsonian's and National Monuments sit on with the Capital Building at the end. Straight south is the Jefferson Memorial (you can tell because the top is domed), straight west is the Lincoln Memorial and straight north is the White House. Now isn't that cool?
The Washington Monument is 500 feet tall! And one level down from the viewing area are a few pictures and facts about George Washington. After reading about what a totally amazing person he was (along with all the other totally amazing people I'd read about the last few days here) I was beginning to feel a little like a nobody and trying to figure out how I could really make a difference in the world. I mean like how does one get into a position to do something great? I don't know; it's kind of hard to explain, but it was a little depressing. Trying to convey these feelings to Ken, he reminded me that even Washington had a mother and a wife. How does he always know what to say to make me feel better?

Our almost last stop of the day was Arlington National Cemetery. And when I get permission from a friend I will share a little story about this grave marked for Francis R Peyerl, Theodore J Pinkos, and Frederick W Link.

I was trying to capture the number of men who have given their lives and are buried here in the name of freedom. A sad but inspiring place to visit.

We were able to watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. It was quite impressive, but I think I would have appreciated all their efforts of respect a little more if they had been able to explain more of their ceremony.

Our first metro ride was from Arlington back to "the Mall." It was fun to have another "first" with the kids.

Since breakfast was late, lunch was late too. We headed back to the Garden Cafe for some soup, Potato Corn this time. Tasty!

And then bought a Smithsonian shirt for each of the kids and went for a walk to the White House. The closest you could get was about a football field away and there was a police man out patrolling this section of the fence. Not much of a view, but hey, now we can say we've been there.

After that we just wandered the streets until we were freezing cold looking for a restaurant that no longer exists. We ended up at Subway instead. Tasty and WARM, a little too warm even. Of course we had to finish off the evening with another round of hot fudge sundaes and one more show on cable. This on was on steel -- how it's made, recycled and mixed with other things to be just about the strongest most flexible and durable material ever made. It was so amazing.

That finishes up the trip. Besides getting up at 4:00 Utah time to fly back home, Friday was uneventful, YEAH!!!! After we picked up Spencer and Abbie at Grandma's I came home and just had a bowl of delicious cold cereal. Call me silly, but I couldn't believe how much I missed such a simple thing.