The Tornado that died at our house.

Did I ever tell you the story about the Tornado that got killed at our house? I didn't? Well pull up a chair!

I know what you're thinking. How do you kill a tornado? Well, I'm pretty sure that between the 6 of us, there's not a thing we can't accomplish if we work together.

It all began on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The daddy was taking a nap, the baby was taking a nap, the mommy was feeling guilt creep up inside her from all of the things she says she'll do someday but never actually does so she seized the moment, made a plan and went on a scavenger hunt of sorts to find her ingredients. Item #1: A glass jar. None in sight...not to be discouraged she bounds down the stairs to where her mom has other cool stuff hidden in the kitchen cabinets below and voila! A glass jar is found. CHECK! Item #2: Dish Soap. Check. Item #3: Food Coloring. CHECK! Item #4: Marble. CHECK! ...lest you think we're on a roll...Item#5: Lid for previously mentioned glass jar. Uh. Hmm. The only lid she can find is the one that roofed the teeny tiny jar "house" that held the captured grasshopper and 'Sam Proclaimed' newest member of our family (albeit for a VERY SHORT TIME) a few weeks prior, that had been lovingly adorned with a gazillion nail holes and rendered very un-waterproof. DARN! What to do what to do.. AHA! Again, not to be discouraged, the mommy remembers the yummy bear lake raspberry jam in the refrigerator and does a little switcheroo with the lids. (we are now the proud owners of bear lake raspberry jam with a seran wrapped and nail-holed lid) HOORAY! Now for the fun part! I excitedly gather the three boys beside me and start my commands. "Josh, fill this jar with water up to here", "Sam, pour three long squirts of dish soap here", "Gabe, stick this marble in here" (we forgot about the food coloring). Then they all watched with excited eyes as I spun the jar 'round and 'round in circles and then held it up for all to see! A TORNADO! WOW! OOH, AAH! WOAH! Happiness all around! Daddy wakes up and comes out to see what all the fuss is about, the baby wakes up and cries to come out and see what all the fuss is about and everyone takes a turn making the tornado in the jar. YIPPEE! And then, another idea starts brewing... Sam asks if we can add ANOTHER marble to the mix, to see if it makes an even BIGGER tornado. I say why not and they happily run off toward the marble stash, and then back to the kitchen. Happiness, happiness, glee, glee.

And then... it happens. Just like that, they killed the Tornado. "Oops" one of them says..."um, mom, dad, we broke the tornado" another one says. Mom and Dad (in unison) say "HOW?" another one says "we DON'T KNOW!" and that is their story. Nobody knows how, and nobody broke it, except that I think it was later determined that Sam broke it, but he still doesn't know how, and he still insists that it just broke "all by itself"...and then, we cleaned up broken glass, water, dish soap and marbles for a half an hour, and then Mark saved baby Will from nearly ingesting a broken piece of glass the size of his thumb (the NEXT DAY! - we REALLY thought we'd gotten it all!) and that is the story of the Tornado that died at our house.


The End.


ps. I'm saving this story for me to read the next time I have guilt creep up inside me for all the things I say I'll do but never actually do. See what can happen? Maybe it's better sometimes to just be lazy. After all...you just never know!

snapshots from a lazy Monday morning in September:

Pancakes as big as your plate (or head)! We've been craving them ever since Anaise blogged about them here


Where's my pancake? I want my PANCAKE NOW!


If I were a cat, I'd have fallen asleep there too. Cute that he fell asleep on Gabe's blanket. Cuter that Joshua covered him up so he'd be "even more cozy".

What happens when you bribe your boys to entertain the baby in his crib while you take a shower. You come out of the bathroom greeted by a trio of stuffed animals dressed in build-a-bear and baby Will's duds.

What my sweetheart left for me on the kitchen counter - just because!

Mr. Incredible

No...I am not talking about this guy:



I am talking about this guy:



If you know him at all, you know exactly what I'm talking about. There isn't a person on the planet that can meet Mark and feel like he is just an "average guy" there is nothing "average" about him. He is amazing, smart, funny (SO funny), witty, romantic, passionate, smart, funny, compassionate, and funny all rolled into a 6 ft. 2 inch BEAUTIFUL human being. Have I mentioned he's funny? He is. Hilarious actually, he truly makes me laugh every single day, multiple times. I know people say that about people they know, to make a point that the person they are talking about is really funny, but I'm serious when I say that he makes me laugh EVERY.SINGLE.DAY! Oh, and have I mentioned he's smart? Well he is. SERIOUSLY smart. I can prove it! Last Tuesday he found out that he PASSED the Audit exam for the CPA. PASSED it. Nailed it. CONQUERED it. Totally checked it off the on your way to becoming a CPA list. Audit exam? CHECK! Yes, there are 3 more to go, and yes, the financial one is next and is sure to be a doozy, but HE DID IT once and he's going to do it again I TELL YOU WHAT! WAHOO! I am so proud of him. He works SO HARD for us and he NEVER complains. We are so blessed to have this man in our lives. I love this picture of him. If you look close you can see his sparkly lips, thanks to my sparkly pina colada lip gloss from Bath and Body Works. I wonder how that got there! Okay, that's enough, now stop looking at my husbands lips.

WAY TO GO Daddy! We love you and are SOOOOOO proud of you! Thank you for being so wonderful. Oh, and thank you for letting me use your razor this morning in the shower...except that you didn't actually know that I used it, so you might want to change the blade now...fyi...and maybe a little bit too late.

ps. um...yeah. I'm a titch late posting this....okay, a lot late. He did pass it almost a week ago after all... and my cousin may or may not have posted about it already, which we all know means she did, which is pretty pathetic of me don't you think? Thank you Kandis for your support, only you (and the other few that have actually gone through taking the CPA exam) know what he's really going through and your support means so much to both of us!

Today I am thankful

for Noggin and it's program this morning that taught my 3 year old the importance of optimism. To "not think about what you can't do, think about what you can do!" For instance: When it's raining, don't think about all the things you can't do in the rain, such as ride your bike or fly a kite, think instead of the things you CAN do in the rain, like splash in the rain puddles, or better yet... sit in a wagon pulled by garden snails!! Thank you Noggin, thank you so much.

Weekend Highlights:

Temple Night, we did an endowment session for the first time in what seemed like forever. Our usual monthly temple nights are with a group in the ward that do sealings. We really REALLY enjoyed doing the session this time and plan to go early on temple nights from now on so we can do both. We also really love our tradition of going to Taco Time on our way home from the temple. We get our nachos and drink and go and park across the street to eat. Then we stop at Arctic Circle to get our awesome "free-tonight-because-we-went-to-the-temple" babysitter a chocolate oreo shake for a treat. We've done this every single time on our way home from the Temple for years. We're kind of wondering what we're going to do when the South Jordan Temple opens and we won't drive by Taco Time anymore - we might just have to go there anyway, we can't bear the thought of breaking tradition now!

Joshua got to go to a birthday party on Friday. They went bowling and he had a blast. He said he got one strike and he would have gotten a spare, but instead it was a foul because he stepped over the line. All of that practicing on Wii Sports must have paid off! :)

Friday night we finally had our traditional movie night with the boys. We've had so many projects (another post) going on lately that we've been putting it off. We all snuggled in our bedroom (Mark, Gabe, and I on the bed and Josh and Sam on the floor by the bed with oodles of blankets) ate popcorn and watched Back to the Future. SO fun... but my that Marty had quite the potty mouth in high-school! We're hoping he's cleaned up his act since the boys are convinced we're watching the next two in the coming weeks.

Samuel got to play with his cute friend Brodey. They are on different tracks this year so this was the first time since school started that they've gotten together to play. He had so much fun!

We went to lunch at AB's Drive-in (Sorry Aunt Ellen, we had coupons!) on Saturday. We all shared a chocolate-chip shake, YUM! Except when the cup seemed to get fuller than it was when we bought it...that's when Mark and I stopped eating and left the rest to the boys. Eww!

Then we went and drove by my childhood home. On a recent trip to the gym we ran into a boy from my old neighborhood (that I used to babysit for). He said he'd heard they were going to tear the home down and build another one in it's place. We thought we'd drive by to see if it was still standing so we could show the boys where I grew up. We also thought if it WAS in the process of being demolished we could steal a brick (Mark's sentimental idea) so that I could have it to remember it by. It was still standing, but looked SOOO different from the way I remembered it as a little girl. In fact, it looks more like I remember it in the above picture (taken from Google Maps), with the black shutters. The black shutters have since been removed and that makes a big difference. I was amazed at how different ALL the houses looked, not the way I remembered them in my mind at all, but still very beautiful. I so wished we could have gone inside where I could dash up the stairs 3 at a time, just once more for old times sake! I have such fond memories of this beautiful house and my childhood days spent in it. My pretty green and yellow room with white furniture and two window seats. The "big room". Our huge playroom with raw umber carpet where all our toys lived and we could play to our hearts content. The balcony where I could check in on my family or visitors from down below. The "huts" that my dad started for us in our closets by cutting through the Sheetrock and framing a room inside. Mine never got fully finished, but Shar's actually had carpet inside and a light so my friends and I would hold all of our secret clubhouse meetings in hers. :) The trampoline, the hot tub and playing, playing, playing. That is what I remember when I think of this house. It was so fun to reminisce about these things a little this weekend!

Our Stake Conference was today and not until the afternoon which meant we got to sleep in! ....Well, we meaning the boys and I, not Mark. Poor guy had a leadership meeting at 7AM! I'd already told him to come home and crawl back into bed for another hour or two but instead he got Will out of bed, fed everyone and brought ME breakfast in bed. Yummy ham and cheese omelets even! I really don't deserve this wonderful man!

We wrestled with our 1 year old for 2 hours during conference. This isn't so much of a highlight really, as it was just pure relief when it was over. That and the fact that we came out triumphant and didn't have to leave once...though the families around us might have wished a time or two that we had! We've dubbed Will the "Sacrament Monster" and he plays his role quite dramatically for the most part. He went pretty easy on us today with it being 2 hours long and all. It was still all we could do to get him home, get his belly full and in that bed though. Whew, one-year-old's are HARD WORK!!

And last but not least we got all dolled up (me) and "cool" (everyone else) for some individual pictures in the backyard. I took the plunge this year and ONLY bought the class picture from the boys' school. I NEVER display the school pics anyway since I take my own candid shots of the kids for my walls, but for some reason I've always felt too guilty to not buy at least the smallest package. This year however, I'd made up my mind. I checked "class picture only" on those envelopes and never looked back. ANYWAY, that left me really needing new individual shots. I think we got some good ones that I'll be posting later, but couldn't help but post these little "numbers" courtesy of our 9 year old photographer. Sam took our first few, but then I had Josh take the rest. Mark kept saying I "fired" Sam, but fired is a pretty harsh word. I prefer the term "on hold" instead. Temporarily "on hold" until he can figure out how to not cut off Mark's head or my chin. :)

Aren't we cute? ....our poor poor kids!




Hope you all had a wonderful weekend too!

Visitor

It was about 5-ish (in the morning) Will woke up screaming, I heard him, but gave him a few minutes to go back to sleep. He didn't. Sigh. I got up to retrieve (usually at the veeeery back corner under his crib by the wall) his binky and give it back, hoping that is all it would take. It wasn't. I retrieved the binky (exactly where I thought it would be) and gently laid him back down, he was soaking wet. I immediately regretted my decision the night before when I did the "feel" test and had determined that his diaper (pretty newly changed) was fine enough for the night. It wasn't. Sigh. I changed him and got him all warm and cozy (which made me feel happy) stuck in the bink and tip-toed away. Whew. 2 minutes later I hear tiny feet shuffling in my room. Moooom, (it's Gabe) tan I sweep wif zyou-dyzes? (you guys) Yes, I say sleepily and he snuggles happily in between us. Hi sweetheart, I say as he folds in close. "Heh-woah tweethow-t (sweetheart..that one was hard to write but is exactly how he says it), I wuz zyou"...."Mommy?" What? "Did zyou know zyou bed is SOOO tozy and warm?" Yes, I did. Are you warm? "zyes". Good. Are you happy? "zyes, zyou are duh BEST mom evah". You are the best boy sweetheart, I love you! "I wuz zyou too mom"...."mom?" what? "Zyou are tind-of goo-ishing me". Sorry, I'll give you more room. (Gabe then snuggles closer to dad) ....time passes... "Dad?"...."Dad?"...."DAAAD?"...."Mom?" What? "Daddy is goo-ishing me". Oh. Daddy?...DAAADDDYY (huh-what?) You're squishing Gabe. (Oh, sorry, I'll turn over)...time passes... "Mom?" What? "I sink I am doh-ing to doh back to my bed". Okay sweetheart, I love you! "I wuz zyou too." and he shuffles out.

Morning comes and I say happily "HEY!! Did you come visit mommy and daddy in the night?" to which Gabe stares blankly at me and says (like I've lost my mind) NOOOO, siwwy, I didn't come visit you, I sweeped in MY bed!

I wonder which one of us is right.

Inspired.

Two days ago, the mommy of this house would not have in a gazillion years allowed this to happen:

Boys watching cartoons on mom and dad's bed BEFORE reading and spelling homework were done. (don't mind Gabe's stocking hands. He was being Mr. Incredible. Makes perfect sense, right?)

Especially when the 3 year old's room looked like this: (my, I do post "messy room" pictures a bit too often, don't I?)

However, yesterday the mommy of this house had a change of heart. She decided that the boys could watch cartoons on mom and dad's bed just because. Just because it's fun. Just because she can't even remember the last time they've been able to watch cartoons and just because she is healthy and happy and able to break the rules just this once. Her change of heart came from this family:



It seems that everyone has heard about them by now, how could I be so out of the loop? I immediately found their websites and have been immersed in the reading of NieNie's dialogs on her blog here ever since.

I've also been reading her sister's blog and my heart just aches for this sweet (and SUPER funny) family. Stephanie reminds me SO much of my blogging friends and her tragic accident just breaks my heart. I thought about my cousin Trish when I read this story: (only because you had a very similar post Trish, not because I think you lock your kids out of your house all day!) and I thought about super-mom Megan when I read this story: and in all of her writings I see bits and pieces of everyone and everything I love. Like so many people I know, this woman loves her faith and her husband and her family more than anything and shows it almost daily in her wonderful and creative posts. She and her husband are now in an AZ burn unit. She with burns over 83% of her body and he with burns over 30%. Reading and learning about her the last few days have completely inspired me to be better. A better wife, a better mother, a better homemaker and a better blogger. I use this blog as my family journal, yet there are times when I don't post for 3 weeks or even more. I strive to do better and I pray along with the rest of the blogging world for Stephanie and her husband and for her recovery. It seems I've had a lot of these kind of take-time-out-to-smell-the-roses types of lessons lately. I think my Heavenly Father is trying to tell me something, and I think today I'm going to start listening.

My Knight - another reason I'm happy today...

To Mark:

Dear Knight in Shining Armor,

Alas there was but one icy cold can of coca-cola left in the refrigerator today and it has since been guzzled up. Would you fancy perhaps bringing us home an icy drink to mingle with the flavors of creamed tuna on toast that we shall be enjoying as a family this beautiful evening?

much obliged, my sweet prince...er, wait, I mean sir Knight,

I lovest thee very much,

your fair maiden

Reply:

Dear Maiden,

I suppose in my quest to conquer all the many dragons and slayers I have been battling today, I might find passage to the castle and bring you a delectable drink. However, it will take much sacrifice, as I must travel through the dark forest, pass over the poisonous moat and scale the castle wall, all whilst holding your passion drink in hand. I just have one question my love. Will the cost be worth my sacrifice?

Knight.

He is meaning a kiss, right? I love this guy. Passion drink, hee,hee,hee!

Reasons to be happy--updated

We have thought about it and found lots of great reasons to be happy today, here is a partial list:

This guy got to eat some of his favorite things for breakfast: bananas, pears and graham crackers.

This guy gets to stay in his pajamas ALL day:

These guys LOVE each other:

and today when I asked Gabe if he could go and get Will's sippy cup for me in his room he said "Zyep! I shoo tan do dat foe zyou, mom!" I am so lucky!

sidenote: while eating our pears this morning, Gabe announced that to him they taste "dust wike appools" (just like apples) so we pondered about that for a moment. About 20 minutes later he said excitedly (no gabespeak here, I'm too tired): "Hey MOM! I know why Pears taste just like Apples! Because they are LEMONS!!" Who knew?! And now you've all learned something you didn't know. Glad to be of service. :)

update: I totally forgot to add the cutest part of the conversation, when Gabe explained to me something along the lines of "because they also have lots of water in them and that makes them taste very apple-ish" (sounded more like "ahpoowish", but you get the idea) My 3 year old said "Apple-ish" Isn't that cute? and TOTALLY something I would say. In my opinion, your regular vocabulary can be expanded by leaps and BOUNDS with the simple word of "ish". It is used very frequently around here, and now apparently by more than just me. YAY GabE!

It's raining!

It's raining outside. Quite simple really...or is it?

I sent the middles outside to eat their snack. Josh is at scouts and Will is in bed. I went into the closet to get on my shoes so that I could go and mow the lawn - a task I've been meaning to complete all day but kept thinking the luminous clouds above me were going to break any minute and then I'd be stuck in the middle of a half mowed lawn soaking wet....

Anyway, back to the middles. I sent them out to eat their snack and am sitting in my closet getting on my shoes when Gabe walks in and announces: "Mom, it is tarting to rain outside so tan we dust eat our nacks inside duh house?" (please let me know if you need a translation on this)

I say with a sigh as I begin to remove the shoes I had just hunted for and put on my feet: "Yes, Gabe you can eat your snack inside, just please eat over your plate and try not to make a mess."

Gabe says: "Oh-tay MOM!" and is off.

In enters Sam who proceeds to tell me pretty much exactly the same thing, but perhaps not quite the same way... (I immediately e-mailed myself a copy of this conversation to be sure I could get it word for word)

"Mom, Um, it's raining outside, so can we eat our snacks INside? because it's raining outside and I think there is going to be a BIG storm, because you know Gabe's police car and that baseball thing that Gabe has that holds the ball up so you can whack it with a stick? Well, you know how that's kinda heavy? Well, the wind just TOTALLY blew it down, like it was like a invisible guy outside just doing it like *insert HUGE hand and arm motions here* SWOOSH, just like that. So I think it is going to be a BIG storm, so that is why maybe we should just eat our snacks inside. Okay?"

Yes, Sam - that is okay. Just please eat over your plate and try not to make a mess.

Sam: "Got it!"

So based on the difference between these two conversations and my WHOLE first paragraph about getting on my shoes and mowing the lawn - would you say that my little Sam comes by his talkative-ness naturally at least? At least there's that. And I couldn't help from blushing with pride. :)