Walking…root beer floats…and bunny faces

The kids were so sad to see Becca go…but we’ll see her again in a few months.In return for one nice picture from everyone we did one silly picture.  This is kind of scary…Jessie’s been working on anther pillow. It turned out so cute.  She was especially proud of her bug that she satin stitched to dot the “I.”Ken is singing a solo in our ward’s Easter program and asked his mom to help play through his part.  Then Mark and Abbie joined in singing the other parts of that song…and before we knew it they had sung through every number the choir is preforming.  Ken’s mom is so amazing! She just sight read all the music for them.  The kids loved it.After the singing, the rest of the family joined us (some by Skype) and we celebrated Brain’s birthday.  Mark lit most of the candles for us and Spencer declared that since Brian was his middle name he should be the one to blow them out…but all the kids joined in.  I’m glad we still celebrate Brian’s birthday even though he’s not here to join us.  That makes him a real and important person to my family.For FHE Mark did our lesson and we acted out Nephi going to get the plates.  Abbie was Nephi and had to cut off Laban’s head.  Do you love how she even held on to the hairs of his head….it’s a good thing I haven’t given him a haircut yet (even though he really needs one!).  Jessie (who was playing Laman’s part) really had the wiggles tonight and kept trying to make everything “funny” much to Abbie’s chagrin.  Here in the middle she’s pretending to be a plam tree while we hid outside the city walls waiting for Nephi to return.  Abbie returning with the plates and Zoram (Spencer).  It never says in the scriptures that Zoram had a sword, but Spencer was convinced that it was a necessary part of his costume – he is all boy!Spencer was SO excited to show me his prize from choir.  He even shared them with me for a bit…he tried to share them with Neil too, but Neil just wanted to eat them.Spencer pulled out the potato heads while I was sewing a baby blanket.  He wanted to make sure they all looked like boys.  I asked him about the one with yellow hair and he informed me that it was not hair but a party hat.  Lately he has loved spiking his own hair.I took a break from sewing and played with Neil.  He loved the walker toy and I helped him push it all around the basement.  I can’t believe he’s almost walking…where’d my baby go?Mark needed a two liter bottle for a school project and since we never drink soda we had to go buy some.  Jessie was really pulling for Sprite, but Root Beer is what we ended up with.  Mark and Rachel happily dished up ice cream after dinner for root beer floats… I think they both had two (but someone deleted my picture of Rachel and Mark…)  Spencer declared that he didn’t like root beer floats but we convinced him to try one anyway and he magically changed his mind.Neil has suddenly decided that he no longer eats food from baby spoons….Ahhhhh…..Ken scooped out his rice cereal and baby food and put it on his own plate and fed Neil with a metal spoon and he gobbled up all of it.   SO SILLY.  His mom doesn’t really humor him as much as his dad and he still has to eat from a baby spoon during the day.

Birthdays, Holidays and Vacation

For Ken’s birthday Jessie made the crust and Mark made the filling for pumpkin pie.  And boy was it DELICIOUS!  You know your getting old when you have to split your candles up to get them all on there :-)!After dessert Scott and his family stayed and played Apples to Apples with us.  It was fun.

Ken was in charge of treats for FHE…somehow candy bars had come up and I taught the kids the a couple of one liners I’d learned growing up “Stretch it out, out, out…Caramello,” and “chewy, chocolaty, crunchy, munchy -- Whatchamacallit!” But I had never actually tried either of these. For a really fun surprise Ken got a couple of Caramellos and Whatchamacallits and we split them in half and each got to try some of each.  The kids thought it was so fun to try and stretch the Caramello, but none them were too successful.….and now that I’ve had both I’d have to say that I’ll just stick to my Snickers bar.Jessie surprised me St. Patrick’s Day morning just as it was about time for her to leave for school with this… “Mom, I told Tori if she came over right now, you would put shamrocks in our hair for us.”  I just want her to remember this for when she has children :-)….so two slightly tardy girls we ready to celebrate the holiday.Rachel snacking on our green biscuits we had for dinner to go along with our split pea soup…we are sure going green.Neil had finished his dinner before we ate and was tired of sitting in his high chair but we found a new toy for him to play with so he wasn’t grabbing our plates of food. He loved looking at us through the canning ring.  And I think the last picture is fun…Ken’s head turned into a baby.Becca flew out to spend almost two weeks with us during her spring break.  Vacationing was cut somewhat short when on the third day she was skiing with my cousin and on her way down for the last time she fell and fractured her left tibia.  Needless to say, we didn’t get out much while she was here, but we did play LOTS of games.  This night I was decorating a page for the front of Mark’s notebook with his name and Becca joined in and decorated her name.One of her new favorite games is Banana Grams.  Basically Scrabble tiles that you arrange in a cross word puzzle in front of you.I took Mark and Jessie to the dentist and Mark had three additional loose teeth (he’s had them for months, since he refuses to wiggle them).  Well the dentist told us that one of his permanent teeth had grown in enough behind a loose one that they would schedule him to get it pulled in a week or so.  Begging and pleading with him to wiggle his loose teeth, so we wouldn’t have to go back and get them pulled worked and Mark lost and addition three teeth this week!  One of them was so old that it had a whole in the side of it!!  So here’s another tooth fairy note.

Dear tooth fairy,

I just got rid of my fourth tooth this week.  Please remember to get it.

-Mark

PS.  How are you?  PPS. Do you like hotdogs?  PPPS. I like hotdogs A LOT!!!  PPPPS. Good night!

Neil was up with us while we played games one night after the other kids had gone to bed.  He was sitting on Ken’s lap playing with some toys on the tray of his high chair.  Pretty soon he ended up like this….

the top half….and the bottom half…Jessie and Abbie made up some fun games for us to play together on Saturday to celebrate Ken’s birthday.  One was a mystical animal game where they had five different baskets: one with different animal feet, tails, heads, bodies and ears.  We took turns picking animal parts to draw.  It was quite funny.  Here’s one of our creations.It has bunny ears (by Abbie), bird head (by me), snail body (by Rachel), dog feet (by Mark), and a horse tail (by Spencer).

Neil LOVES the piano.  Ken has also taken up practicing again…but that’s hard to do if Neil’s holding down half the notes you are trying to play while he sits on your lap.  In the end….they both got to play.

Random mid-month stuff

A note to the tooth fairy from Mark.  I always love reading Mark’s notes.OK… I’m just warning you now there are a lot of cute baby pictures in this post.  Here’s the first one.  When we were downstairs I found this baby, his name is Tad, in the stuffed animal box.  Neil was completely taken with him… I think it was the eyes.  And Tad didn’t mind it when Neil poked his.  He also LOVED it when I played peek-a-boo with his little frog hat.For St. Patrick’s Day Abbie’s cupcake class made these rainbow cupcakes.  She was so excited to show me because each of the kids had been able to fill their own cupcake liners with the different colored batter.Since Neil has learned to pull himself up his FAVORITE place is the piano bench while the kids are practicing.  At first, he loved pulling on the pockets on their jeans, then he started banging on the bench while they played and now he works himself around the bench until he can reach the keys and join in on the fun there.  We really like it when to goes to the right side of the piano instead of the left.Jessie was so excited when Neil fell asleep in her arms.  I’m usually the one to put him down and we rock and sing primary songs until he conks out.  But he was just too exhausted to wait for me today.Mark’s Lincoln Log Mansion.  (As long as we get pictures of things like this no one is sad when they get knocked down.)Ken had a credit union conference that he was helping with is SLC so Neil and I went to spend the night with him.  Neil thought the floor length mirrors on the closet were just for him.Sometimes adult life seems a bit pathetic…..sometimes…or maybe just different that what we thought it would be when we were younger…we took Neil on a walk to Temple Square after dinner, but half way there decided that it was a bit to chilly for him so we went around the block and back to the hotel.  Then I fed Neil while Ken worked on some stuff for his accounting class he teaches at UVU.  We then played with Neil until he was tired and wrapped him up.  Yea….oh wait!  The sleeping baby didn’t think sleeping on his own queen size bed alone was going to be very restful…so I laid down beside him to help him fall back asleep…unfortunately this put both of us to sleep, so Ken finished working on his class, sent a few emails and went to bed too.  So much for our night on the town!

March is here…

Neil learned to pull himself up on the last day of February.  He was so impressed with his new skill.Spencer, Neil and I went to Jessie’s choir concert at school.  They sang some really funny songs set to classical music.  Spencer even sang along to some of them and was really proud of that.  Here’s the picture he took for me of us afterwards.  Don’t you love little helpers!  Well at least we’re in focus in this one.Here’s another Neil picture with his mouth open because the kids put something on his face.Abbie and Spencer made some creations for us a couple of Sundays ago.  Animals, pancakes, cookies…. Most of our play dough was all hard, so they found some that Jessie had made at Bright Ideas and it smelled like gingerbread….so at least our pancakes and cookies smelled good when we pretended to eat them.BOYS, BOYS, BOYS…Actually I think this may have been Rachel’s idea, but he’s come out with “unicorn horns” a couple of different mornings now.A somewhat recent family photo…Do you love the seventies colors…. I do! Oh, I have to add that the reason why Spencer’s eyes are open so big is because he was scared of blinking when we took the picture and this is how he prevents that…that boy makes me smile…a lot.Happy Birthday to Rachel.Neil has discovered that when he opens his mouth at people he can usually get a pretty good reaction from them.  He likewise thinks that the camera is a person and opens his mouth for it every time it’s turned his direction. Well, it is pretty stinkin’ cute.

Some snow and a play and peek-a-boo

Neil loves peek-a-boo.  He’ll even grab his shirt when I’m changing his diaper and pull it up and cover his face until I say Peek-a-boo.  He was playing with Ken while I was teaching my digital scrapbooking class and discovered the block bucket worked great too.When Neil sees you have the camera he starts squinting his eyes shut getting ready for the focus light that shines on him.  It looks like he might be sad, but he’s not.  It’s so CUTE!  “Ahhhhh….here comes that light again.”

You can see his bottom teeth and dimples in this last one.

Abbie and Spencer were bored one afternoon and so I convinced them to do a play for us.  They picked the Three Billy Goats.  They practiced while I cooked dinner and then after we ate put on their play.  Spencer told us before hand that we might hear a little whispering because he couldn’t remember all the lines and Abbie had to help him.  Here are the three billy goats.  Tiger is the littlest goat; duckie the middle goat and the alligator the biggest goat.  And here is the biggest goat knocking “King Troll” off the bridge.It was great fun and they even bowed at the end of our applause.

Rachel was dying to go sledding one more time this winter and it finally snowed enough last week.  The snow at the slope wasn’t packed down very well, so the ride was kind of slow, but we still had quite a bit of fun.  And we got to try out our new two person sled…but we always had more than two on it….Jessie wasn’t really good at the running and jumping on the sled, so she got a little help with the momentum at the top of the hill.Someone had built a enormous jump that was really steep.  Mark and Spencer went off it a couple of times.  I was waiting for Spencer to go flying through the air, but thankfully he weighed so little that he couldn’t throw the sled off balance.

A little surprise from Ken…..and they’re still looking good almost two weeks later!