Still laughing

So, at the swim club there are bubble gum machines with little rubber animals in them, and much to photo scrooge's chagrin, the kids have spent a few quarters to buy some. Today, Joey, Ellie and Ainsley were bartering with them when I heard Ellie tell Ains "I have a no-return policy on the squirrel." I'm still laughing.

The writing is on the wall

This is Ainsley's portfolio. She's never met a writing utensil she didn't love. Unfortunately, her favorite canvases are our walls, doors and furniture. These are a few that we haven't yet cleaned off, or that won't come off (no, not even with a Mr. Clean sponge). It's too bad I didn't have my camera when she grabbed the red sharpie at the Stringham's summer solstice party and decorated their chairs and tables (luckily those did come off with Mr. Clean!). 

Seriously though, if I had a nickel for every time I've said "WE ONLY DRAW ON PAPER!!" I think we could finance our kitchen remodel. Maybe I've got the wrong strategy going—if she learns her letters, she can work on her tag and make some really fly graffiti art.

Robbie the Fish

Robbie had his first swim meet tonight. He swam the team relay, the 50 meter breast, the 50 meter back and the 25 meter fly. He did a great job, and won three third place ribbons! We are so proud of him! He may not be the next Michael Phelps, but he's working hard, making friends and having a great time. What more could you ask for?

It was fun to get to watch Jonas, Samantha and Jenna at the meet too. When Joey starts swim team next year maybe we'll get up to ten minutes of water time during the four+ hour meet. :)

Happy Father's Day!

First of all, let me apologize for not paying tribute to my mom, Judy and grandmas on mother's day—I was busy sleeping in and having breakfast made for me, and then of course church and a great dinner made by Ralph. Hopefully, they know that I love and appreciate them.

I'm feeling pretty blessed today as I think about the great dads and grandpas in my life:

I was born to the best dad,


AND I married the best dad,


who also has the best dad.


We are also lucky to have the best grandpas still around.

Happy birthday Mom!

Mom, 

I'm sorry for all the clothes that I wouldn't wear. And for being such a picky eater. Also, for the dents in the Celica, Station Wagon and Astro Van. Pretty much for my teenage years in general. I'm really grateful that you brought me into the world and let me live in spite of all that. Right there I'm forever in your debt, and since then, you've potty-trained my oldest and been on Disney trips with us three times, so I have no chance of payback. But I hope these four make up a little for all the pain of raising me. ;) We love you!       Shell

The salad that launched a blog

This really doesn't qualify as a recipe, unless your name is photo scrooge, but it belongs in our family favorites book, especially after Robbie wanted to start his own blog just to post this. I was hesitant to let the boys start a blog (I can't even keep up with my own!) but Rob encouraged them, and helped set it up, and now I'm looking forward to getting more of the boys perspective on our family doings. Credit goes to Anne for introducing us to this yummy combination at Bear Lake. And speaking of Anne, congratulations to you and Matt! We can't wait to meet little Clara!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Yesterday I asked the girls if they knew how lucky they are to know their great-grandma. They are especially blessed because we live less than a mile away from her, so we get to see her a lot. Yesterday the girls had a tea party at her house, which they always love, because Grandma makes real hot chocolate and food for them to use with the plastic tea set instead of just making them pretend, like mom does. Grandma came to Ellie's ballet recital on Tuesday night, and we met her for dinner at Apollo Burger on Saturday. We are so lucky!! 

We love you, Grandma! Happy birthday!

Test smarts

I had to laugh when Joey brought this picture home last week:
Today we went to the awards ceremony at our elementary school to see Robbie get an award for being in the top ten percent nationally on his IOWA tests. We are so proud of you, Robbie!

And I'd like to take this opportunity to thank photo scrooge for genetically enabling my kids with smarts.

Ballerinas

"Mom, I loved my ballet recital. I wish I could have gone on stage a hundred times! When can I do it again?" Ellie has been ecstatic since last night's performance. Being a prima donna might just be her calling in life. :)  She really did a great job; she was much more confident and excited than she was last year. In my completely unbiased opinion, she and Amelia were the cutest ballerinas on stage. Next year's cast is already showing some promise though:

Happy Birthday Care!

One of these days I'm going to scan all of our childhood photos into iPhoto so we can see who looked more like Shirley Temple, Cara or Ainsley. Until then Care, here are the few photos where you are NOT behind the lens. I know, you probably wish I'd done a collage of photos you've taken instead, but it would have taken too long to pick my favorites. 

BTW, are you older than Dad yet?

Goodbye crib!

I hate to tempt fate by announcing that we have dismantled the crib for the last time. Ainsley was getting herself in and out of it anyway, so we thought a bed might be a little safer. We bought bunk beds when Ellie moved out of the crib, knowing that they'd probably share a room at some point, so we just needed the mattress and bedding. The girls were so excited about the new beds that it took them a while to actually go to sleep. They seem to be having the same problem tonight. 

Now if we could just be done with diapers...

Am I Bizarro Rachel?

Okay, I don't think I'm her polar opposite, but reading her blog lately, I've decided that we are living parallel lives. Compare Rachel's post to my field trip to Wheeler Farm with Joey's class yesterday.

The biggest difference is that she went on a nice sunny day, while ours was rainy, cold and muddy. Joey didn't mind, and I loved spending some one-on-one time with him. Don't forget, this is the same kid who wiggles his teeth until he can yank them out (sound familiar?).

We just read the same book, too. 

Here's where I become the bizarro, though:

Not only are there no knobs on the closets in our room, but my front door knob has been gone for months now. And even if Rob happens to have a generous co-worker with a great doorknob collection, I'm holding out for a new front door first. Let's hope it doesn't take ten years.

Anyway...Rachel, keep up the blogging—maybe when I get behind I can just copy and paste for our family record.

Daily Haiku

Photo Scrooge has started a new blog, called Just Seventeen Syllables, where he will delight readers with his poetry. I told him that it would be even cooler to have a dueling haiku blog, with two or more haiku posted so people could vote for the best one, but I wasn't about to up against him. Although I did offer up this one last night:

Leaky foundation,

mold...who knew? The b@$!*#^s who

lived here before us.

Zero for Two

Joey was so excited when Rob said maybe we could hike up to the living room on Saturday that he had his jobs done in record time. I was looking forward to it too, since hiking up to the living room was the first date Rob planned for us that didn't also include Troy and the ski centurion (NOT that I minded those dates). We had planned on hiking after we both got off work, but when I went to leave, my car wouldn't start, so I called Rob and our hiking date turned into a run to Ralph & Judy's to borrow jumper cables, and then back to Crossroads Plaza parking for my Acura. Judy wasn't home, but it was the first time I met Ralph. Although Rob and I saw each other pretty much every day after that, we never rescheduled our hike to the living room. That was almost thirteen years ago. We knew our second attempt wouldn't be the romantic, watch-the-sunset and make-out kind of hike—we were just hoping to get all four kids up with a minimum amount of whining. It was a perfect day, blue skies but not too hot. And amazingly, we didn't hear much whining (just Ellie, when she saw a bug on her hat or one of the many dogs we met on the trail). However, we did not make it to the living room. We forked left when we should have gone right. We did make it up on a nice ridge overlooking the valley though, and we had a good time. We're thinking about trying geocaching next. We may even try to get to the living room before another thirteen years flies by.

Avoiding responsibilities

I've got a bunch of things on my to-do list: 

• help Robbie finish his rocket before the Cub Scout space derby tomorrow night
  
• plan menu & go grocery shopping
• get remodeling bids from contractors
• buy teacher appreciation gifts
• pay bills
• work on Relief Society lesson
• clean the house!!

I spent the weekend successfully avoiding these things, instead doing this:

• e-mailing Rob with ideas for Mother's Day gifts
• dinner with Ralph & Judy (great company, but we don't recommend TGIFriday's three weeks in a row)
• seeing Iron Man (two big thumbs up from both Photo Scrooge & Scrapbook Nazi)
• watching a 4-0 blowout by Robbie's soccer team, the Oddballs
• not finding The Living Room, our family hiking destination (see the next post)
• reading a 619-page book about aliens, prompting speculation by my family that I had been abducted
• sleeping in, and enjoying two meals cooked for me in the same day
• forcing my kids to have their pictures taken with me
• using my new salad spinner 
  
• lots of laundry

I did get to cross one thing off my list—my pots are planted. And the yard looks great since that job is fortunately on Rob's list.

Mayday, mayday...

I'm known around here as the scrapbook nazi, which is laughable since I've only created about three pages in the past year. And you'd think that a scrapbook nazi would be all about photo shoots...but no, like photo scrooge, I don't really enjoy the process. It's the result I'm after. So when Cara called this morning to tell me that, of the 200+ shots she took yesterday, NONE of them are good, well, let's just say I'm happy that Davy has great photoshop skills. Or maybe my mom would be happy to get this one (that I took) for mother's day:

If you could get rid of one job or responsibility, what would it be? I'd love to never clean another toilet. Especially any toilet used by boys. Mopping floors would be a close second. On the other hand, a clean house makes me happy. So while cleaning and mopping four bathrooms and a kitchen today was a pain, I will enjoy the clean house for the next ten minutes until the boys get home and the cycle starts over.

Shell's Spaghetti

I now have photos for more recipes than I have time to type up, and frankly, I don't need to reference this recipe to make it, but it needs to be in my book just because it's my very favorite meal, and unless you count cereal, the one I've prepared most often. Mmmmmm...

Happy Earth Day

I must confess that I did NOT take a shorter shower today to cut down on my water use (and I don't have any plans to change this habit). However, I came up with the brilliant idea of planting a tree with the scouts today. I guess that as the three burly men with the forklift were loading it into the suburban I should have realized that the two nine-year-olds and I would not be able to get it out, let alone into the ground. Luckily Cara married a stud, who pretty much single-handedly planted the tree while I told the scouts to watch and learn. Rob, we're so grateful that we've named our first-born Robert. And thanks for the extra rock-moving muscle, Dad. I have the best family.

Our Trip: The OCD Version

9 days, 1613 miles, 4 kids, 1 suburban, 3 theme parks, 8 loads of laundry, 336 photos. I know, it sounds like the makings for a modern version of The Inferno. But it wasn't. We had a great trip. The fact that we were able to break up the long drive with an overnight stay in St. George really helped (thanks Ralph & Judy!), and it's hard to imagine a Disney trip without having a 1:1 kid/adult ratio (thanks Mom & Dad!!). The kids all travelled well, giving us hope for a church history road trip someday. We had to stop at Borders on our way home, because I underestimated the number of books the boys would go through. The parks were relatively uncrowded, even though last week was spring break in Utah County (we did see a lot of BYU apparel). It was between about 65 and 90 degrees our whole trip, and when we heard that it was snowing back home, we were on the verge of looking at real estate. 

Some of the highlights were:

• seeing Ainsley light up during the parades
• watching the boys swim, fully clothed, in the ocean
• reading several books and relaxing
• Joey's excitement at being tall enough to ride all the adult rides
• getting soaked on Splash Mountain & Grizzly Rapids but still being warm because it was 90 degrees
• finding cool souvenirs at the magic shop
• Jamba Juice for breakfast everyday
• Rob driving the whole way there and back, and posing for a few photos without complaining

Oh, and if you're wondering what I forgot...it was clearly a subconscious plot on my part—I forgot the laundry hamper, detergent and dryer sheets. I did laundry on Thursday, our "off" day, so we could just pack five changes of clothes instead of ten. I picked up a couple of fold-up hampers in St. George and detergent in San Diego, so it was no big deal. The hotel had four washing machines and six dryers, so I was able to do all the laundry in just a couple of hours, watching the kids swim in the pool while the loads ran. If we are ever really wealthy, my laundry room will have at least two washers and dryers!

In spite of my obsessive-compulsiveness, two figures were deliberately excluded from the tallies: one is the number of calories consumed on this trip, and the other is the total dollars spent. I think it's safe to say the calories number would be higher, but the dollars spent could be scary too. On the bright side, we saved $299 by going before October 17th, when we'll have to pay for Ainsley's ticket and the adult price for Robbie's. And although the Master Card campaign is so cliche, this vacation really was priceless.

What am I forgetting?

We are packed and ready to go to sunny California. But I have a history of forgeting to pack something. In the past I have forgotten underwear, my camera, socks, contact solution, my cell phone charger and a jacket, to name a few. It must be that very-early-onset Alzheimers. Well, whatever it is, it's too late, we are leaving. Melissa has graciously agreed to come over and clean the toilets in the event that we don't make it back, so there is nothing left to do but have fun.

Happy Birthday Judy!

So I saw Judy today, and talked to her on the phone, and completely forgot to wish her happy birthday! Since Ainsley is now 2 1/2, I'm not sure I can use the post-partum, sleep-deprived mommy brain excuse anymore. It must be early onset Alzheimer's.
Sorry Judy! Hope you had a great birthday. I know that Joey sure enjoyed having a birthday date with you.

Tagged

Rachel tagged me a few days ago, but I've been busy trying to put together a spontaneous (for me, anyway) week-long vacation to Disneyland (more about this soon). Since then Melissa tagged Rob, and I loved his hilarious, time-saving approach of using the metric alphabet (the decibet) to respond. So while I realize the comic genius factor doesn't apply here, since I didn't come up with this idea, I was at least smart enough to marry a genius, therefore, what's his is mine.

A-attached or single:
In case you haven't read the sidebar, I'm the lucky wife of the most wonderful (and sexy) husband ever!
B-best friend:
He also goes by photoscrooge.
C-cake or pie:
Pie, if it's fresh strawberry pie, and cake, if it's Brownie Cake.
D-day of choice:
Vacation days.
EF-essential items:
Books, toilet paper, lip balm, running shoes.
GHI-Indulgences:
Comfy shoes, jeans that fit, reading time.
J-January or July:
JULY!
K-kids:
I have four—one of each kind, as Rob likes to say.
LMNO-life would be incomplete without:
Family, friends & Italian food.
P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z-phobia or fears:
Spiders, rodents and apparently showing up for a final exam even though I never attended class, judging from my only recurring nightmare (okay, maybe lack of preparation would be the Freudian interpretation).

Brownie Cake

I'm not much of a cake fan, but love brownies, so it's no surprise that my favorite cake ever is called Brownie Cake. Thanks to Judy for introducing me to this recipe, and for giving me the Junior League cookbook as a wedding shower gift. My cookbook practically opens to this page (or the breakfast casserole page) since it's got splatters and smudges to prove that we love it.

Crepes

Crepes for breakfast has become a general conference Sunday morning tradition. Mmmm...

Where is the pause button?!

Every once in a while we hit a milestone that makes me realize how fast life is going. Ellie hasn't started kindergarten yet, but I took her to registration yesterday, and felt a combination of sadness, relief and excitement that she'll be going this fall. Hopefully she'll stop sucking her thumb before then. :)

Celebration

This post is in celebration of a couple of things: first, and most important, Melissa's birthday today. I'm not sure if she keeps me sane or if she just makes me feel like I'm not the only insane one. Either way, thanks Melis. Happy Birthday! Second, I've been taking old negatives to Costco to have them transferred to CD a little at a time, and I love having these on my computer. So it was easy to find a decade's worth of shots for this collage. If you want a closer look, just click it to enlarge. BTW, I did not come up with this format, I just copied Rachelle.  

Does this prove that I'm not a slacker?

Because I am obviously still feeling defensive after coming across as a slacker in the SL Trib (see sidebar), I am posting this photo as evidence—you be the judges.  Yes, it's a photo of the girls napping after a busy day, but look closely at the couches.  These are the same couches we purchased just before Robbie was born, so they've seen us through 10 years, 1 dog and 4 kids.  Aside from the color, which definitely dates them, they're in pretty good shape.  Now I ask you, if I had spent the majority of my time for the past ten years sitting on the couch, wouldn't you expect a little more wear (at least a huge indention)?  Right.  Now that that's cleared up, I need to go see if I can scoot one of the girls over a little so I can get some R & R. :)

Wii love the Easter Bunny!

The Easter Bunny has been good to us. Not only does he accommodate our request to come on Saturday instead of Sunday, but check out what he left in my basket!

Rob had a deal with the boys that if they ate no candy at home from Halloween to the end of the school year, we would get a Wii. He thought they'd only last a couple of weeks, but they've surprised us. I thought we might be better off in the long run if the Wii belonged to me though, so there's no questioning the house rules of when it can be played. I guess the Bunny read my mind! And many thanks to whoever does the shopping for the Bunny—she saved me a lot of searching time. :)

After filling up on candy at Jim & Joan's annual egg hunt, the boys are now ready to throw it out so they can earn a couple of games (Star Wars Legos is their current obsession). 

This year's egg hunt was fabulous, as usual.  It was great to see all the Nichol cousins and the amazing kitchen remodel.  The kids love to go there even when they aren't loading up with candy, so they were in heaven today.  I'm going to try to get a slideshow on the sidebar soon, since, as usual, I took too many photos.

Penne Alla Telefono

I am a pasta snob.  Sorry, it's true.  One of the side-effects of living in Italy.  And I love this recipe.  Even Ellie will eat this, so it passes the I-don't-eat-anything-but-cereal-and-bread-picky-eater test too.  Best of all (as explained in the last post) if you've already prepared and frozen the Tradional Italian Tomato Sauce, you can have this on the table in about 15 minutes.