Fishing Tradition

I cannot tell you how much I love these pictures. They were taken on our yearly fishing trip with my Grandma Jean and Grandpa Ted. It was Joshua's first time and I didn't think that he would like the wind blowing in his face when we were driving the boat to our fishing spot, but he loved it! And when we moved him up to help Grandpa Ted "drive" the boat it was the cutest thing. Doesn't he look like a competent little boat driver in the first one and a crazy baby driver in the second? Just had to share these photos.

I love this tradition of going fishing and my children do to. Not that I actually fish anymore. I am the historian. I need to man the cameras and take a ton of still shots and video footage so we can always remember these fun times. I don't mind doing this since it isn't the fishing that makes me love these little trips. The fun of visiting and relaxing as a family and having this time with my grandparents is so wonderful. And I must admit that all the snacks and candy and drinks that my grandma provides for us on the boat doesn't hurt any either! : )

Funny Face

(Taken when we were fishing with my grandparents. He loved the feel of the wind in his hair as we took the boat to the fishing spot. None of my other kids were too thrilled with the windy boat rides until they were older. He is such a happy baby)

I love this face that my youngest does--all the time. I think he is going to turn into a little clown. He shows all eight of his little teeth and wrinkles up his nose and heavily breathes in and out. He loves it when people laugh at him when he does it or mimic him. It is ugly and cute all at the same time. It makes me think of that song "My Funny Valentine" :

My funny valentine.
Sweet, comic valentine.
You make me smile with my heart.
Your looks are laughable,
Un-photograph-able.
But you're my favorite work of art.

I am amazed so often when I look at him and see this pale little blue-eyed, blond haired baby. With Paul's and my darker coloring and all of the other kids being brown-eyed and darker haired it really looks like he was switched in the hospital. However, there were no other boys born that day so we know that that didn't happen. Paul calls him our recessive gene baby. I call him our miracle. Not because there was anything miraculous about his birth or anything but because I never expected to get that coloring. I love it!

He is now just shy of 10 months old and is only army crawling. However, knowing that it is not a bed of roses to have a mobile child we are not complaining. But I can see that he is frustrated in not being able to move around. My girls were both almost a year before they crawled and they have turned out normal and intelligent so I am not concerned. He is such a nice squishy baby. He is going to have to build up enough muscle to haul that body of his around before he can get too much more mobile.

Some nicknames that we have for him are Joshie, Blue Eyes, Fatty-Fatty Fatterson (compliments of Aunt Erin!), Chubs, Angel Boy, and Joshie-Poo. We are all crazy about him and are so glad he is ours.

Riding around in the girls' doll stroller. He almost didn't even fit in it, but he had a great time.

Imagination

I love to watch and listen to my kids when they are using their imaginations. Sometimes you get to hear fun little romantic dramas from the girls' Polly Pockets, barbies and princess dolls as they discuss love and marriage. Or you get to hear about the grave peril other toys are in (such as when Hyrum plays with his animals. They are always running away from something so they won't get eaten and falling off of cliffs and things.) And I love it when they are "reading" books. They look at the pictures and make up their own stories if it is a new book or they try to retell it through memory if it is one that I have read to them. It is the sweetest thing.

I am not so sure I enjoy listening to them playing "house", however, because the mom and dad always sound so demanding and downright mean. I can pretend that it is all learned from the TV shows and movies they watch, which might be true to some extent, but I know that a lot of the phrases they use come out of my own mouth. Of course, they don't seem that awful when I am saying them (and we do have to allow for artistic license and all that), but it sure makes you think about how your kids are interpreting everything you say and do!

I didn't really mean to go off on a tangent like that. I was mainly writing this so I could share some pictures of my girls in some of their "imaginations". SO . . . drum roll please . . . here they are!





This is Hannah and Emma playing "At the Ball". Hannah wanted to be a princess dancing with a prince at a ball. There is nothing like a willing little sister to supply the want of the real thing. They came up with the "prince's" costume on their own. She is wearing her big brother's sunday pants (rolled up) and shirt with her own Sunday shoes and a cape (every prince needs a cape!). To top it all off she is wearing one of the girls' knitted caps with a crown on top. It was too adorable! They even had the correct dance position, but as the dance continued it turned into more of a headlock! It was one of those, "I love being a mother!", moments.




This is Emma in another of her get-ups! She is playing with her Polly Pockets which she LOVES. She and Hannah had created a whole house outside with tons of dolls, books, flowers, baskets, toys, etc. They had a great time and the house was quiet so Joshua had a great nap so I had a great time. Bringing it all in and cleaning it up was not so much fun, but that is the price we must pay sometimes.




Hannah loves having a brother who will dress up with her again. Not that Joshua had much of a say in the whole process, but looking at his face I think it is obvious that he didn't have any objections. He really was just too cute!


I wish that I had a picture of Hyrum using his imagination but now that he is a big school boy we don't have as many photo opportunities. Plus, now that he is older he is more into organizing and list making and managing made up parties, dinners and activities. He is not your typical boy in some ways (not big on super heroes and sports), but he is very loveable with his seriousness, love for animals and his love for reading (especially anything about animals!)

I LOVE MY KIDS!!!!!

Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde!

Our house is a little more peaceful than it was this morning. You may not believe it but our sweet boy, Hyrum, was putting up a big stink all morning. I know, it is strange. It all started with his scooter. He wants to keep it in the house (when he remembers to bring it in). I want it outside. Today I decided to make it a rule that it should stay outside. I didn't think it would be a big issue because we were dealing with Hryum and not Hannah and he already left it outside a lot of the time. But since I decided that it now HAD to stay outside he was not going to let that happen. I told him that he could choose to leave it right up next to the house by the 4-wheeler or he could put it in either side of the shed. If he still wanted to fight about it I would lock it up until tomorrow. I gave him 15-20 min. to get over the sulk and make a wise choice but he refused. So I had to take it away and lock it up. However, I first had to take him outside and lock him out of the house because he was putting up such a fight! After that I let him back in and told them all that it was time to pick up the family room. He refused and just sat there on the couch. I talked the girls into cleaning without him by talking up the whole service bit. You know, we are going to serve our family by cleaning this room and especially Hyrum by cleaning up his stuff for him even when he was acting like this. I was surprised that it worked, but Hannah was in a very giving and righteous mood so it did. However, Hyrum tried to make things harder for us by throwing the stuff on the couch onto our cleaned off floor and pulling out everything under the couch. This was not in the attitude of helping us to do a good job, however, but just to make us work harder. Paul told me to tell him that we would lock him in his room if he was going to continue to hinder us in our efforts or be disrespectful. For a while he left us alone, but when we went to clean the girls room he shut the door on us and held it closed so the girls couldn't get out to put things away! So, he was locked up. After banging on walls to get attention he decided to beat on his door. After a few loud crashes and such from things being thrown or banged on the door I went in there and there were some holes in his door and pieces of the molding around the door and frame were laying on the ground along with the vent that is over his door! I therefore told him that he would now have to stay in there until his dad came home (about 1/2 an hour). Actually the vent fell off after I told him this in one of his other fits. I kept telling the girls to ignore him, but their way of ignoring him was to tell him that "mom said to ignore you!" Or "we can't talk to you right now" They just had to say something! Hannah is a little mother and trying to point out just where he was wrong and repeating all the things I had told him and also to point out the ways that she had made the right choice ( i.e. that she left her bike outside or in the shed when we told her to without making a fuss.) You can imagine how this was appreciated by her brother. Paul came home finally and spanked him and locked him in the room again! But before you turn us over to Social Services or whatever, we told him he could come out when he stopped making a fuss and could be good for five minutes. So about 7-10 min. later he was finally a free man again. Anyway, I am glad that he seems to have recovered and that he is now playing nicely with everyone. His dad told him to come and ask me if there was anything that he could do to help me and he did it in the nicest way. My sweet boy was back! I don't know if I am tough enough for this mothering gig!

Random Thoughts

I have been avoiding writing ever since I started this blog since I feel paralyzed by not having the perfect thing to expound about and the perfect way to express it. I am a much better reader than writer, but I figure that there is no point of having a blog if you never use it. So, I am going to just ramble a little bit this time and see if after a few more blogs my perfectionism will die down and this will get easier!

I was thinking as I washed the dishes this evening that I love my kids. Not that I have never come to this realization before, but today I was able to enjoy them a little bit more and the fights were minimal so I could really feel a lot of happiness when contemplating them and some of their cute, sweet ways. I think I will record a few of these now so that I can remember them.

First I thought about my youngest daughter. She is 3 and we are still trying to get the whole using the toilet thing into her head. Well, this Sunday at church she decided that she wanted to use the toilet so my husband took her to the bathroom. She came back all proud for having accomplished this and pleasing mom and dad. At the end of Primary she was at the front waiting to give the closing prayer and the Primary President was talking to the kids about not getting up and down so much to use the bathroom and get drinks. Well, Emma went around the podium up to our Primary President and informed the whole primary that "I went to the bathroom." She was so proud. I hope that she didn't realize all the chuckling was from what she said.

Also, that same day, my oldest son told the whole primary that as a way that he would follow the Savior's example would be to "not hide when he was supposed to be cleaning" Now I thought that was so cute, but it would be even better if I believed that it was actually going to happen. At least I can now always bring that up when he hides and maybe his better nature will exert itself!

My daughter Hannah was in her Primary class and they were learning about the Word of Wisdom. Her teacher explained that candy wasn't that good for us but that we could eat a little bit each day and it wouldn't hurt us. Hannah gave the closing prayer in her class and told Heavenly Father that they would try to eat one piece of candy every day! She is also getting ready to go to Kindergarten next year and I took her to get her Kindergarten shots yesterday. My mom had promised to give her a dollar for every time she got a shot and didn't cry. It was great! I never had a kid so excited to get shots before. The doctor was running late and she kept asking me when it was going to be her turn. In the examining room she would keep looking over at me and whispering or mouthing "I am being so brave." It was too cute. She figured that 4 shots would be perfect because combined with the finger prick that she had earlier that would be five dollars! Well, she got her wish. 4 shots! And she was very brave. She had a little break down just before her fourth shot--said she was too hot and that made her too uncomfortable--but she quickly pulled herself together and got that last shot with no more fuss.

And there are so many other great stories that I prize, but I won't bore any one with more right now. I know that mothers find their children a lot more entertaining and sweet than anyone else can.

This last week we went to Utah for the week to go to my brother's graduation. That is a big part of the reason that I haven't written before now. Trying to pack a small minivan with the stuff that would be needed for 6 people to stay away from home for one week and all the necessary snacking and entertaining things we would need for such a long trip was a little overwhelming at first, but we managed to do it and even made it there and back without wanting to lock ourselves in our rooms and pretend to be alone when we got back. I think that it really helped to break the journey up into two stages and have a halfway point. Thanks again to Stephen and Jen if you ever read this! It was a great vacation and we got to see so many family members and friends that we haven't seen in a while. We were so glad that we went. A side note: Paul and I read the Five Love Languages on the way there and absolutely loved it. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it.

Friends are marvelous creatures. I was able to see one of my old roomies from BYU days while in Utah and it was still so easy to talk to her and be with her. That is what I think makes good friends--the ones that are going to be your friends your whole lives. And then when I got back I saw my friend Ashley and she told me she had missed me when I was gone! It feels so good to have friends. I would go and list all those that I count as true friends but I would be sure to overlook someone so I won't attempt it. I don't know what I would do without friends. To be able to get together and visit or chat on the phone or receive an e-mail or letter can just brighten the whole day for you, especially if your day consists of cooking food that no one seems to like and cleaning up messes that will never stay clean and trying to solve problems and fights for rather irrational small children and dealing with a fussy baby and not really be able to have a lot of adult conversation because your husband is gone or when he is home he doesn't really want to talk about everything and . . . you get the idea. We need friends.

Well I think that is enough random (and possibly very boring) thoughts for now. In summary: My kids are ADORABLE (don't you forget it!), Long trips with your family don't necessarily have to turn out badly, and Friends help keep the smiles on our faces. Tune in next time for more amazingly boring thoughts from Amazing Mommy! : )