Summer Reruns

Aren't boys the greatest? This was last fall...about three weeks before Gray was born.

Monday, September 10, 2007

let's hear it for the boys

I've never quite understood the fascination that the male species has with throwing rocks into water. It seems to happen every time guys are around a body of water surrounded by rocks. They can spend hours throwing rocks in. My experience with this comes mainly from my teenage and young adult years. But today I realized it is instinctive...something inherently part of being a male. Parker and Reid, who is barely old enough to throw, spent nearly an hour throwing rocks into the water, laughing and congratulating each other on their awesome splashes.

We took an unplanned trip to the dog park this afternoon. I mention that it was unplanned only because I had no camera and no towels. We had to be out of the house for a little while this afternoon and Chief, my dog, had to come with us. There's not a lot of things to do when you have a dog in tote...especially a dog as big as Chief. He's about 140lbs, slightly too big to carry Paris Hilton style in my over sized and over priced (I added that for Traci's sake) Louis Vitton bag. Chief thoroughly enjoyed the freedom to run leash-free and the boys were ecstatic about all the dogs that came to greet them.

After a little time enjoying his romp, Chief discovered a murky Ohio pond (and Ohio has some of the murkiest ponds/ lakes/ rivers in existence) and went bounding in. Parker and Reid would have followed suit had I let them. The pond discovery was what led to the afternoon of rock throwing. Reid is fearless and made several attempts to jump in after his rocks. I made several attempts to stop him. He did end up falling into the questionable water and wet from the waist down. He tried to make it look like an accident, but I'm not convinced that it was. Parker came out with muddy hands, feet and knees. And Reid was muddy from his nose to his waist, and wet and muddy from his waist to his feet. After a full blown lie-down-in-the-mud-and-cry tantrum on Reid's part, I got the boys, Chief included, out of the dog park and loaded back into our now slightly more rugged SUV. And although I came unprepared with a camera and towels, I did have hand sanitizer and bathed the kids in Purell before handing over pretzels and sippie cups to my mud monsters.

In all seriousness, days like this make me glad to be having another boy.

Summer Reruns

This post always makes me laugh. This was five days before Grayden was born. I do not miss pregnancy.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Animal Control

I remember mom telling me about finding a cat in her front yard shortly after she moved to Arizona. If I remember correctly, Mom made several attempts to shew the cat away and even sprayed it down with a hose. The cat, although perhaps irritated, didn't move. When animal control came to take care of the cat, it turned out the cat was very pregnant.

I currently feel like that cat. Not only would I be willing to make any effort to get off my feet and even result to lying down in a strangers front yard out of sheer exhaustion, but I don't think any effort on the home owners part to shew me away would get me up off that lawn. Not even being hosed down.

I may, however, get up if animal control came to take me away. I don't care to deliver this baby in the same place the cat delivered her litter.

Summer Reruns

Ok, this rerun is for my Texas friends who asked me to blog about it so they could hear the whole story...Although I wrote it last October, it's my account of Halloween in '06.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Halloween Mishap

I've been thinking about Halloween since August (or maybe since last Halloween) and had costumes planned out and fabric purchased before the month was over. And of course I spent yesterday frantically trying to finish them up before Spencer had to go back to work today after three weeks of paternity leave. All three boys now have costumes ready to win prizes at the ward Halloween party next week.

As I was sitting at the sewing machine, I kept thinking about last year's Halloween mishap. I'm sure some of you have heard this story, but I've never recorded it for my own records...and it's a doosy!

It was the day of our ward Halloween party, and I was in large part in charge of it. I had to be at the church in the early afternoon to start setting up and wouldn't have time to get back home to get ready. So when I fixed my hair that morning, I just fixed it for my costume. I was going as Lucille Ball...a costume repeat, I know, but no one out here has ever seen that costume and it was a good one. I show it off every opportunity possible. I was especially excited because I hadn't had an opportunity to leave the house in a costume since college. I was excited to show off my kids costumes as well. I sat down to the machine to make a few adjustments to my costume (I hadn't worn it since before I had kids and nothing fits the same after).

While sitting at the machine and ignoring my children, I see Reid (9 months old) coughing up blood. I should have warned you this would be graphic. Don't worry, that's as gross as it gets. Then I look to Parker who I now notice, a few moments too late, that he has my pin cushion and is dispersing pins around the room. Although I hadn't seen it happen, I just knew Reid had swallowed a pin. He was notorious for putting things in his mouth that don't belong there. To make matters worse, we only have one car and Spencer had it that day. So I had to get a friend to drive me to the ER.

After a series of x-rays, they finally found the pin. It had punctured his throat and was lodged there. So after happily crawling around the ER and winning over everyone's hearts, all of a sudden everyone was afraid for him to move so it wouldn't puncture anything else and cause a more serious problem. I had to keep him still and happy...which is an oxymoron for a 9 month old who hadn't eaten or slept for about 7 hours at that point. We had to take a life-light ambulance (not a regular one...one for life threatening emergencies) over to the children's hospital. There they had to put him under and surgically remove the straight pin.

As a side story, when I met with the anesthesiologist, Reid had started to put something in his mouth again. I sarcastically said, you'd think he's have learned by now. She looked at me like I was a stupid parent and told me in all seriousness that he wouldn't be able to understand that at his age...Duh!

They got the pin out and Reid had to stay at the hospital over night. We missed the ward Halloween party and I still haven't left the house in a costume since college. With the ward Halloween party coming up next Friday and me still post-partum, I don't fit into any of my old trusty costumes. We'll see if I have time to work something up in the next week.

And now back to the start of my story...I had to have a friend come pick me up, wait in the ER, ride in an ambulance, meet with an anesthesiologist and a surgeon, and sit in the waiting room at the children's hospital, all while sporting a Lucille Ball hair do. If anything could be funny about that day, that was it.

A Very Parker Sunday

Parker looks forward all week to Sundays. It's the day we don't run errands or play with friends or go to the park or anything like that. So it's funny to me that a kid, who's not yet four, would love our Sunday's so much. He's not really good with days of the week yet, but he knows Sunday is after Saturday. Every night he asks what day it's going to be when he wakes up. So when we tell him Saturday, he gets excited because "the next day is Sunday and we get to go to church." A few weeks ago he woke up Saturday night with the stomach flu and among all the throwing up, he asked if he could still go to church. And was sad all week about missing it.

To say Parker loves Sunbeams would be a major understatement. Sunbeams is the class he attends with the rest of the 3-4 year olds. When his teacher in our last ward heard we were moving, her exact comment was, "Not Parker, he's the best one." And her own grand daughter was one of the kids in the class. She said he is so reverent and eager to learn. He pays attention and is respectful. He follows directions well. When we drop him off to class, the first thing he would say to her each week was, "What is our lesson about today?" The teacher in the new ward said something similar when I went to pick him up from Sunbeams yesterday. She asked if I was his mom and went on to compliment him on so many things. Parker loves learning and the Gospel is no exception. I love that about him.

Yesterday afternoon he sat down to the piano and after a few versus of I am a Child of God, started making up his own church song. I can't remember it word for word, but it went something like this: Church day is my favorite day. Oh how I love to go to church on Sunday...and on and on and on along those same lines. I made a video of it, but Parker has an issue lately with not wanting to wear clothes. I didn't want to post a video of my cute kiddo in his undies...there are some sickos on the Internet.

With a kid like that, you'd think we were fanatic church people (and you all know the kind of church people I'm talking about). But I think we're just regular people who love the Gospel. We make efforts to teach the kids the Gospel at home. They get a little mixed up sometimes. Yesterday in sacrament meeting, Parker got excited because he heard the speaker mention President Packer and he recognized the name. I asked him who President Packer was and his answer was the President of the 12 Ohio States. Well, we're trying. He was close. He also got excited when President Monson and President Uchtdorf were mentioned. And when someone quoted Mosiah 2:17 , his comment was, "King Benjamin said that." Right on Park!

Ok, so maybe we are church fanatics. I think Parker's a little smarty-pants. He retains just about everything he's taught. Although I love to brag about my kids, I mainly just wanted to write this down for my own memories...so when Parker is a obstinate teen, I can remember that he once looked forward to Sundays.

Happy. Happy. Happy.

You are only young once, but you can be immature for a lifetime.
~john p. grier

Spencer's birthday is Monday so for today's flashback...a recap of Spencer's year of being 30. (That's right folks, he's 31 this year.) Spencer hates getting pictures taken so I don't have that many. When I get the camera out, he pulls some goofy face. He figures he'd rather look funny on purpose than by accident. So here it is. Love you Babe....You can thank me later.

Spencer's 30th birthday...my 30 year old husband wanted to celebrate at the zoo.


Young's Dairy...Labor Day


Shortly after Gray was born. I remember coming home from something to see this. Do they look exhausted or what?


The Pumpkin Festival


Halloween


Gray's Blessing Day


The Buckeye Game (Thanks again Abbey!)




Christmas



Reid's Birthday


(Spencer stuffed his pants with balloons at Reid's party. Didn't know that one was going to end up on the web did ya?)


Faces at the park


The Zoo


Easter


Thomas the Train Ride


Croquet


One of our favorite family past times...making faces in the computer photo booth.




I love this man. Happy Birthday.

Mike's birthday is tomorrow. I haven't unpacked boxes of pictures yet. Consider yourself lucky. You can bet you'll get your flashback, only a little late. Happy Birthday Mike!

Breathing Room

I'm making myself take a little breather in the middle of all the craziness that is my house. Some of you may want to know how the kids are holding up through it all. So here are some pictures of my ingenious methods of entertaining the crazies...who have been especially crazy this week.

First...Gray enjoyed his first sucker. I sat him in his high chair with one of these babies and it kept him entertained for a good while, while I packed...only I got a little distracted by his cuteness and had to snap a few pictures.




The older crazies decorated boxes. Score one for mom! This kept them occupied for a long time. Not only did they color nearly every square inch...inside and out...but when their artwork was complete, they sat inside of them forever.



They washed their bikes.



Parker dressed up like Mr. Fantastic.

And then found some time to relax in a hot tub...who needs a pool anyway. They threw fits when it was time to come inside after nearly two hours of this one.