For the Soul

Good-bye dreary February.

Hello, dreamy March!

Why will he taste chalk, and not bow-tie pasta?

Ahh, glorious, blissful 58 degree day!

Couldn't get this picture to rotate. Sorry.

Wait! Stop. Come here. Look at Mommy. Smile. Hey! Come back here. Stop. Hey Will?! Grr.

Gotcha!

Mr. Incredible and Mr. Spidey and Friends. Watching Enchanted. Could life be cuter?

Sunshine at 9am.

Life is good.

Once again, out of the mouth of Gabe

Hey mom?" (thanks to his big brothers, this is how every new sentence starts)

-Yes?

"We are not supposed to drink Al-toe-hall, right mom?"

-Yes, that's right, we're not supposed to drink alcohol, it is very bad for us.

"Yep, and if people see that you are drinking alcohol they might think you are like a pirate or a skeleton, right mom?"

-Hmm, maybe!

"Yeah, but it's okay to dress UP like a pirate, but just not if you're going to the Temple, right mom?"

-Yes, it would not be a good idea to dress up like a pirate to go to the Temple. How did you get so smart?

"Bee-tuz."

"Mom?"

Yeah?

"I have a booger in my eye, can you get it?"

Ah, the randomness that comes from this little boy constantly astounds me. Another one of our favorite "Gabe-isms" is his song that combines "I.AM.IRON.MAN" (black sabbath) with "I am a child of God" he starts out with the Iron man and ends with the Child of God. Seriously, WHERE did he come from?! He is such a fun, and funny little kid. We love you "super Dabe!" (his favorite nickname for himself - and also appropriately the name for his Mii character)

Valentine Wrap-up

Wow. What a CRAZY week! We are just now recouping from a week's worth of Valentine's days. I told Mark on Sunday that it's pretty sad when you need a weekend to recover from your weekend!

It was fun though. Joshua got to make a Valentine box for school and he was really excited about it. He has some of the funnest ideas. One of them was to put two box lids together to make a Wii fit board (one of the newest and well played with toys at the house), then he thought about using a giant cereal box for it, which was even better. We actually ended up trying to craft a basketball out of paper mache instead. We used paper towels and a 50/50 glue/water solution, instead of the newspaper technique. We've never tried any type of paper mache before so we had no idea what to expect. I vaguely remember doing it in elementary school, but not much - so we were pretty clueless. We covered a ballon with the paper towels on Wed. night. I figured it would have plenty of time to dry before Thurs. night to get painted and ready for Friday morning. BOY, was I WRONG! It was still goopy and wet on Thursday morning and I knew it would never dry in time. I began to prepare Joshua for the worst, and we tentatively planned on making the Wii fit board when he got home from school. As the day wore on it got a little drier and hardened a little more but was still pretty flimsy, we had almost given up when I remembered one of our valentine decorations that I thought might help. It has a circular spring with a support and when full is about the size of the balloon. We cut the balloon out, added the spring and counted our blessings that it WORKED! HOORAY! There's no way we'd have been able to use it without the spring to support it, when we popped the balloon it all scrunched up inwardly and completely deflated. Whew! Joshua was able to prime it (Jenna, the primer came through AGAIN, I swear it is bottomless!) and paint it all by himself! Then we cut out a "SPALDING" logo and pasted it on and I painted on the lines. What a task! I was glad we'd worked so hard when I went into his classroom on Friday and saw all of the amazing boxes. WOW. There was a furry monster, a candy eating machine with blinking lights, a box with a crank that pulls the cards through a hole, and a castle with a moat and a REAL GOLDFISH swimming inside. Man, I thought WE had worked hard!! I figured Josh would win a prize for SURE, but he didn't, there wasn't really a category for his though so he didn't feel too bad. The categories were things like: Most creative, most animalistic, funniest, most technological, etc. Nothing sporty or I'm sure he would've won, the other kids kept telling him how cool they thought it was so he was happy and so was I (that it was DONE!) :)

Here is a picture showing what Will did while we were making the Valentine box. It was LOUD.

Sam was kind enough to help us out too. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that it was PAST bedtime and offered a chance for him to sit on top of the counter. :)

Project complete! Sam's class made bags to hold their cards in, I am really thankful that we only had ONE box to do this time. I'm not looking forward to making 2, or 3 or *gasp* FOUR boxes!

I made their Valentines this year. It was so fun! I took a picture of them holding a straw, then cropped them and turned them into Valentines. We stuck suckers in their hands where the straw was so it looked like they were holding them. They turned out really great, which was good since I didn't have a plan B, and it was late Thursday night when we were putting them together!

I also got to help in Sam's class party Friday. I'm the room mom for his class and am in charge of the parties. I REALLY don't like being in charge, but there are a lot of GREAT moms in his class that always help out and that makes my life SOOOO much easier. We made darling candy necklaces, played bingo, passed out Valentines and made these cute little kisses mice.

Tutorial found here.

They had lots of fun, Sam loves when I help out, I know this is fleeting so I am grateful for it while it lasts. After helping with the party a friend and I went to Josh's class to play bingo with the kids after they passed out their valentines. We had a fun time embarrassing them. Every time we pulled a card that said "I love you" my friend made a big deal about how this one was for her son that she LOVES SO MUCH, he finally couldn't take it anymore and said "JOSH, tell YOUR mom to do that to YOU too so it's not just MY MOM! I took his cue and found Josh and kissed him right on top of his head, I figured I'd be dead when he got home but he didn't say a word, he's actually not the type to embarass easy, and still seems to enjoy the attention I give him. I'm sure that won't last much longer either. I'll soak it up while it lasts!

Saturday was CRAZY. The boys play Basketball in the morning and evening on Saturdays so our entire day seems full. I was planning on getting up early to make the boys our traditional heart pancakes and strawberry milk but the night before Mark and I decided we'd just get up and go to the game, then make breakfast afterward. At the game Mark leaned over and said, "how about I buy us breakfast on the way home and we can make a Valentine breakfast tomorrow when our morning isn't so busy" that sounded even better so that is what we did! Then because our night was busy as well, we just ate quickly and saved our candlelight Valentine dinner for Sunday too. We got home on Saturday and the boys opened their fun Valentines (a game and some crafts) and played with them for the day while Mark and I worked on organizing his office downstairs. We were so happy to get it DONE! For lunch on Saturday I made cute grill cheese sandwiches with wheat/white bread to make hearts, they were fun!

Sunday we had our heart pancakes with strawberry syrup for breakfast, then napped all day after church (none of us were feeling too well) skipping lunch completely, then had candlelight dinner with sparkling red punch and strawberry jello with whip cream on top. Whew. what a weekend. FUN as it was, it's good to be back to normal once again.

We hope you all had a wonderful weekend too!

Tender Mercies

I woke up grumpy today. Really grumpy. I don't have that mommy filter that others seem to posses, the one where they wear a smile every day while talking to their kids, rain or shine, sickness, health, grumpy, ungrumpy...you get the idea. When I'm grumpy, everyone in the house knows it and can sense it.

Poor children.

While putting something in the garbage this morning Joshua replied:

"Ooh, this garbage is full, don't worry about it mom, I'll take care of it when I get home today"

3/4 of my grumpiness melted instantly.

One of Sam's friends rang the doorbell and pounded on the door frantically yelling "SAM, you're going to miss the bus, it's at the end of the street, you have to HURRY!"

Sam ran after him while Josh ran back to the bedroom to get his backpack. After running 1/2 way down the street Sam suddenly stops and runs back to the front yard.

"Love you MOM!" He called.

There went the last 1/4.

These boys! They play me like a fiddle! :)

My very own font!!

I got the tip for this fun project on the Design Mom website (scroll down a bit to find it). It literally took me less than 20 minutes to create my VERY OWN FONT and it was all FREE! I'm going to do it again with a better pen so it's not so thick. I actually didn't really think it would work so I wasn't taking it too seriously but it DID work! I really can't believe how easy it was. I think this is SO COOL and I'm thinking about taking Design Mom's suggestion and having the big boys create one too. How fun would it be to do this yearly to see how their handwriting changes?!

If you have a scanner and you'd like to create your own font too go here. have fun!

OH.... Mamma Mia!

The boys have expressed a little interest in wanting to watch the movie Mamma Mia lately. They are plenty familiar with the songs, thanks to a mommy that likes to blast the soundtrack while cleaning the house. Plus, their cousins Kyle and Kole mentioned while visiting a few weeks ago that they've seen the movie and liked it so that piqued their interest a little more. They are off track right now so we thought it would be a fun activity to do yesterday. They laid out blankets and popped a bowl of popcorn while I laid the squeaky Will down to nap.

There were 4 parts I knew I didn't want them to see so I was ready for them. I diverted their attention during the "part" in the beginning of "Dancing Queen", made them close their eyes so as not to see Bill's bum (but Sam peeked, I know because he couldn't supress his giggle quietly enough), skipped completely over the "does your mother know" song, and made them study a speck of dust on the ceiling fan during the man-to-man "embrace" at the end. I'm positive that the other innuendo's (and there are plenty) went completely over their head. We had a wonderful discussion about "traditional" vs. Temple marriages, and a touching discussion over why I don't like the song "Slipping through my fingers" because though they are still small I can't help but feel like they are growing up too fast. They thought this was funny because apparently they don't think they are growing up fast enough. Groan.

Later on they tried to remember the words to "Super Trouper" while putting on their pajamas. They came out to the kitchen and practiced outloud to see who could remember the most words using me as their helper and judge. It wasn't until Gabe started to orbit the kitchen table showing off his newly acquired dance moves and singing "Mamma ee-yuh, here we doe uh-den, my my...." that I began to wonder if maybe they should be spending a little more time with Daddy.

the Squeaky "Will"

There is something to that theory, isn't there!? You know, the one about how the squeaky wheel gets the grease?

It sure seems to work that way around here.

While making waffles this morning my little Will was screaming, crying, weeping, wailing and thrashing about. tugging at my toes, getting in between the table and my legs and pushing with all his one-year-old might in hopes of pushing me backward and getting my attention away from the beating of eggs and toward his current predicament....which the cause of such is still unknown...except that I think he was just hungry and we've learned that when this kid is hungry you better feed him like two minutes ago.

SO, let's all take a guess at who got the first waffle.





Oh, don't let that charming little face fool you, look closely at the red cheeks and the watery eyes! He is deceiving you and you are all falling for it!



Don't let his attempt to make it all better by happily signing "thank you" fool you either! ....okay, nevermind..go ahead and let it fool you. Even I have to admit that that is pretty irresistible.

Seriously though, this kid is lucky he's so cute. I'm talking really really lucky. My mom thinks it's pretty funny. You know, being as I was her youngest and so "irresistible" too. :)

But hey, do you guys want the YUMMIEST Belgian Waffle recipe ever? It's from my sis-in-law Charlotte and it's AWESOME. I think the beaten egg whites is what makes this so fluffy and YUM. It's not hard either. The first time I made them it took me forever, but we've had them 4 times in 2 weeks (yeah, I'm kind of getting sick of 'em now) and I can whip them up in just a few minutes now.

Here goes:

2 eggs seperated in 2 bowls - white/yolks

beat egg yolks until they are yellow in color (I know.... they're ALREADY yellow...I just beat them for a minute or so until they are a little lighter yellow)

add:

3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup half&half (I substituted Evap. milk and it worked great)
1/3 cup veg. oil

mix well.

in another bowl add:

1 3/4 cup flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 tsp. salt

pour into egg yolk mixture.

Beat egg whites until they are white and stiff

Fold into yellow mixture. Poor into Belgian Waffle maker and enjoy!!