Church

Sundays are a funny day for me. They are the best and the worst most weeks. It is the only day I get to sleep in the whole week. Todd leaves for meetings early and the kids like to just sit around and play so I usually get to sleep until almost 9. Heaven. Then the kids and I always have a fun breakfast, usually it consists of waffles, strawberries and/or bananas and whip cream. If they eat all their waffles they even get one more squirt directly in their mouth. They LOVE that.

Then we rush to all get dressed, get hair fixed, snack bags put together, backpacks checked, shoes on and we're off to church. I like to be 10 minutes early for church (we make it about 90% of the time). Not bad for a mom and 4 kids, who has a hubby at meetings most of the time. However, more often that not in order to make it there early I end up getting frustrated because one of the kids is taking too long to put on their shoes or they are dawdling on their way into church.

Then church starts.....UGH! My kids are all so little and have so much energy trapped in their bodies that sacrament is just so hard. Luke and Claire can sit and color the whole meeting without making a sound. But if you put either of them by Tayson or Sophie then it doesn't work. We can usually separate Tayson from the other kids and he'll stay in one spot. He has a really hard time sitting still and I have to have something different for him to do every 20 minutes or so (snacks, mazes, drawing, cars, etc). He's a bit old for this...but I have to pick my battles. And then there is Sophie. She canNOT be contained. She drives everyone crazy by taking their stuff, coloring on their pages, stepping on them, pulling their hair, etc.

Yesterday I brought some new dress up dolls for Claire. I knew she would sit and play with these the whole time from after the sacrament until the end. I even thought that if there were 2 dolls Sophie would play a little. Silly me. In a split second Sophie grabbed the small open baggie of shoes and hats and while trying to steal them flung the entire bag up in the air. It was like a small explosion. Small magnetic wooden shoes and hats went flying way up in the air and then landed all over people in the pews around me. I heard bursts of giggles from kids and adults in all the pews behind me. I was so embarrassed. People came up to me for the next 2 hours of church telling me how funny their kids thought it was. Sophie single-handedly disrupted the entire meeting. Timmy took her out in the foyer and then Claire and Luke quietly played dress up with the dolls. Luckily we only lost 2 of the shoes.



After church is always a little stressful too. I usually get out of YW a little late so my kids are almost always the last ones in their classes. I have to check on their behavior and dread what Tayson's teacher is going to tell me. Then we rush home at 2:00 pm fix the kids lunch as fast as I can and put Sophie down for a long overdue nap. She either sleeps for 30 minutes and is horrible the rest of the night or sleeps until it's time to go to my parent's house for dinner and then isn't tired when it's bedtime.

Sunday dinner is great. It's fun to all get together and hang out and have a nice big meal that I don't have to fix by myself. We stay there until it's time for bed. Which means hurrying to get everyone in bed which usually leads to yelling or fighting. I would really rather not end my Sabbath day like that ... but it just seems to always end like that.

Maybe when my kids get older Sunday will be a day of peace and reflection and rest. Maybe....

Fry Sauce

The kids cleaned, organized and vacuumed the playroom so as a treat we went to Carl's Jr. for lunch so they could eat and play at the play land. So worth it for them to do as much work as they did cleaning. Child labor at home is a great thing.

While we were there Sophie was dipping her fries and chicken stars in the fry sauce, licking it off, dipping them again, and occasionally taking a bite of the actual food. Then I look over at her and rather than spend time dipping she was just sucking the fry sauce right out of the cups. So gross and so funny. She loved it. I hurried and took the other 3 full cups away so that she wouldn't eat those too. Such a silly girl.


While we were there she didn't really want to play in the toddler area so either Tayson or Todd would help her get up the big kid area then she would run around up top and come down the slide. I knew where she was most of the time because of her Indian battle cry. She was so excited and had so much fun.

Makeover time

Claire got a fancy new makeup set at Chuck E. Cheese today. So after dinner we decided to have a makeover party.

Claire doing her kissy face

Sophie doing her kissy face (hilarious)

Now the girls are all set up to make me BEAutiful

I'm not going to lie....she pushed so hard it hurt my eye.

As soon as we were done showing off how beautiful we all looked to the boys in the house I hurried and put the girls in the bath and washed it off my face. Even after washing their faces with a washcloth they both still had rosy cheeks for the rest of the night. Oh how I love my girls!

My teenager

funny things about this picture:

• her diaper is hanging out the bottom of her miniskirt
• her nails are painted
• she looked like she was texting when I saw her on the phone

Lions Pride

Everyday Tayson comes home with a note from his teacher on his behavior that day. If he gets a + he gets to stay up late a - and he has to go to bed earlier. Luke on the other hand just goes to bed at the same time every night. I realize this isn't fair for him. It doesn't matter if he is good or not his bedtime is at 8:00. But let's be honestly you just can't parent each child the same. When I was a kid I found this horrible (Danny had totally different rules than I did cause he was a trouble maker...just ask him). Now as a parent I realize it is the only way to teach your children. You have to be willing to mix it up and find what works for each one. Simply put Luke is an easier kid so I don't have to be as creative with him. Hopefully someday my kids will understand this.

Anyway...every night when Luke says his prayers he always prays that Tayson will get all pluses and no minuses and that he will get a Lion's pride note (this is something his school does for something exceptional...so it's not an everyday thing). He came home with a Lion's pride note today and he was so happy. We even let him stay up until 9:15. Hopefully that will last the rest of the year for him.

Another funny thing Luke does is that he is always praying for somebody. Most nights it depends on who he sees when he peeks during his prayers.

A few funny ones he's said lately are:
*please bless Sophie that she won't be messy when she grows up
*please bless Sophie that she will behave better when she grows up
*please bless Amy to have her baby and everyone else who is having a baby too

Fat

Luke has always been obsessed with fat. Maybe it stems back to his birth when he was a chunky monkey and was the biggest kid in the nursery that day (weighing more than 9 lbs). Maybe it's the fact that most of his life I've either been prego or on a diet trying to lose the "baby fat". Whatever the reason twice in the past few days he has used "fat" inappropriately. Once after I asked him if so-and-so had their baby yet and he replied "no she's just fat". And the second time when we were talking about some of the Olympic athletes legs - they were HUGE muscles. And Luke kept calling them fat legs. I kept telling him they weren't fat they were muscle but he just didn't get it.

So last night at dinner I decided to teach him "hands-on" the difference between fat and muscle. Here's how the conversation went down.

Me: Luke feel my arm and how hard the muscle is (while flexing my really big strong biceps)
Luke: OK
Me: Now feel how soft this fat is (while grabbing a good chunk of the tire on my stomach)
Me: Do you feel the difference?
Luke: Yep.
Me: Good now you understand the difference and that people who are big or have lots of muscles aren't fat. You shouldn't call them fat. Actually a good life lesson is that you should NEVER call a girl fat.
Luke: You're fat mom and you're a girl (in a totally matter of fact tone)

My fault for doing "hands-on" with a 5 year old and showing him my fat. It was so funny.

Good Morning Sunshine

This morning I heard Sophie in her bed yelling for me when I walked in she was pulling her PJ shirt off. She had thrown everything (blankets, stuffed animals, binkies, pj's) out of her crib and undressed herself and was ready to get out of bed. She loves to take her clothes off. She also loves to put other people's clothes on. She can often be seen with a pair of Claire's panties over her pants or a second shirt over her head and always someones shoes or shoe on. Silly girl.



I'm sorry that almost every picture in my 2010 challenge is Sophie....but she does more funny things than anyone else in the house these days.

Just some thoughts

Friends. I have amazing friends. Some of them I've known for a very long time, others a short while. I feel that each of my friends have changed my life in some way (all good of course). But the other day Todd and I were talking about "best friends" and really I am one of those people who has lots of friends but not really that 1 person I always go to. I guess I'm just not the kind to have a small close group of friends. Todd said he said something about this a year or so ago (I think it was when I was prego with Sophie) and apparently it didn't go over well and hurt my feelings. But I don't think it's a bad thing (now that I'm not hormonal) I just think it's how I roll. Even when I look back at high school I was the same way. Really my best friend is Todd and I've always had my siblings as my closest friends (then and now). A funny thing that happened during the conversation was that when we were talking about it Luke said "mom you have lots of close friends and started naming all of our neighbors". Such a funny and literal kid.

The easy life. I was thinking the other day that I am really in the easy part of life right now. My kids are sweet, they love me, I don't worry everyday about them being exposed to drugs, sex or things like that. I'm sure that in a few years when all 4 of them are teenagers I'll be worried and stressed wondering if I have taught them right from wrong and been a good enough example to them. But right now no matter how exhausting my 4 little kids are they sure are easy to please and they love me so much. I don't want to think about a time when they won't come running to me when they need a kiss or come crawl in bed with me if they have a bad dream. I'm going to enjoy this time in my life instead of complain about having 4 kids under 8 years old.

What is about 7 miles? For some reason 7 is the breaking point for me. I'm fine until I hit this mileage then my body revolts. We ran 7 this morning (it was 21 degrees and dark - yuck) and since I got home my poor gut has killed me. It keeps cramping and gurgling and revolting. For some reason this happens at 7 miles and anything above. Last year I solved this problem with LOTS of water and Gatorade while running. I am just not quite ready to break out the running belt yet.

Sassy Sophie

Sophie hates being left out in the morning she almost always puts on shoes when the boys leave. This morning she put on one shoe and her sunglasses and was ready to go. She makes me smile so much. Sophie is just so happy and easy going and full of life. She cracks me up. This week we have started making her put her binky in her bed (obviously it's working since she has it in the picture....) but it has helped with her repeating and talking. She has been saying a lot more since we started trying to get her to put the binky back in the crib.

Shadow's New Bed

Todd came home from running errands with this fancy new dog bed. I have only seen Shadow in it a few times but the kids LOVE it! Sunday morning Tayson got up got dressed and came upstairs to watch a movie while resting in the dog bed.

An all day event

Saturdays are a great day for Todd to spend some time changing the water and doing work on his fish tank. It usually starts in the morning, requires several trips to either the fish store or home depot or both, and sometimes ends like this.


I took this picture after Todd left to go play games with the boys. Luckily when I woke up Sunday morning it was cleaned up. Sophie would have gone to town with all that fun stuff out.

Date Night

Todd and I went to see Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief tonight. It was a good movie, quite different from the book (not surprising), but well cast and entertaining. Then after the movie we went to Terra Mia for dinner and gelato. Yummy. When we were there Todd saw this sign and took a picture so we would have some new places to try on future dates. I love that we go out on a date every week! I am one lucky girl.

Straw Bowls

While shopping at Macey's a few weeks ago Claire and Luke talked me into buying straw bowls. I bought 4 in different colors so each kid would have their own and since we have cereal almost every morning before school we usually pull them straight out of the dishwasher. They LOVE their bowls and Sophie loves drinking out of the straw. She usually spills milk and cereal everywhere but she sure has fun.


I'm not sure why Luke has 2 spoons in his bowl. He doesn't like to use utensils - he prefers his hands for most foods.

Belgian Waffles

A few weeks ago for YW we decided to work on our relationships with a family member. We made a list of their traits that made them special and made them coupon books of things we could do for them. I made books for Tayson and Luke and one of the coupons was for belgian waffles. Yesterday Tayson decided to cash it in for this morning. This is not our usual before school breakfast of cold cereal but it was fun for them to eat and I am enjoying doing special things for the boys and working on our relationship. Plus it's one experience closer to getting my personal progress finished. We set a goal as leaders to do the program with the girls this year.

Such a big girl

Sophie doesn't realize she's a little bitty 18 month old. She honestly thinks she can do anything her brothers and sister can do. She thinks that she can hold the top rail and walk up the stairs. This stresses me out since she's too short to hold it on most stairs and ends up walking upstairs on her tip toes. She is also trying to potty train. She won't sit on the little potty though only on the big one like the other kids do.

**Since we had Monday off work and school for President's Day we took the kids to the mall for lunch, to play and to buy new shoes.

Sunday Morning

I was SO TIRED Sunday morning that I stayed in bed while Todd was off to church meetings early in the morning. I managed to help the girls get dressed then finally got myself in the shower. The kids had quite a bit of time unattended and were great. Right towards the end I heard them and walked out front to see a huge barricade. Then I asked them what they were doing and they said they were blocking Sophie out. Sophie was currently shut in her room while they moved all the furniture around. I got there just in time for the show. Luke ran back to let Sophie out and they all went to the kitchen side of the barricade. It took Sophie about 2 minutes total to scale the couches and chairs and get to them on the other side. I'm pretty sure she didn't realize it was a "keep Sophie out" game. I cracked up at how sad they were that they didn't keep her out, then I hurried and grabbed a camera. They didn't even complain after church when I made them clean it all up on their own.

Home at last

Todd was awesome to come pick me up from the airport with all 4 kids. When I got in the car they were going CRAZY! Sophie wanted so badly to get out of her car seat so to entertain her I handed her my neck pillow and she loved it. It cracked me up that she knew exactly what to do with it. She is so dang cute!

A day of travel

This morning at 6:00 am Brussels time I got a call from my coworker telling me our flight home was canceled. I tried to call or get online and couldn't get my call to go through so Todd tried calling and ended up waiting on hold for about 1 1/2 hours. I did what I could from the hotel (nothing but stress and talk to Todd) then when I got to the airport I got my flight from Brussels to Atlanta re-set up but the flight home from there was canceled due to snow. We were delayed an hour but after 10 hours in the air and 2 lunch services we made it to Atlanta.

Then the fun began.

We got in and went through customs. Then had to pick up luggage (mine was one of the VERY LAST) then I had to find a ticket agent to help me. In order to talk to someone about my flight I had to wait in line for someone to tell me to wait in line to recheck my bag then wait in another very long line to go through security AGAIN to exit the airport. Then I had to pick up my bags again (which took SOOOOOO long). Then I finally got into the line to talk to the ticket agent. My flight was to Salt Lake was cancelled but there is another flight tonight which I am on standby for. As of right now my flight leaves at 10 pm and arrives in Salt Lake at 12:20 tomorrow morning (midnight). Which means IF I get on the flight I will have been traveling today for 26+ hours. Let's hope I get on the flight or my next option is a 6:00 am flight tomorrow or the 5:00 pm flight. I am very tired and just want to be home at this point. I'm not big on work travel (although I've been doing A LOT of it lately) and I really hate traveling alone. When things don't go as planned in situations like this I don't deal well and it has been a long and stressful day.

Here's to hoping I get on my flight!

A quick update: I did NOT get on my flight. I slept in the airport and then was the 2nd to last person to get on a flight the next afternoon. I did not sleep in a bed for 48 hours and traveled for 39 hours. UGH.

Brussels Airport

A few awesome things at the airport in Brussels.

A coke machine with the "boy peeing" coke.

vacuum hand dryers (awesome)

Belgian Waffles

This is pretty much the BEST food I've ever eaten in my life. I opted for the one covered in real whip cream and chocolate. YUMMY!!! I didn't care one bit that I had chocolate all over my hands and face by the time I was done or the fact that I was cruising around the cobblestone of downtown Brussels in high heels freezing my butt off. It was soooooo worth it!

Driving in the snow

Apparently it doesn't snow a lot in Brussels. This picture was out of the back window of the hotel shuttle taking us to the Nu Skin office. It was about 3 miles away and it took us about 25 minutes. Most of the time was spent trying to get up this "hill" and over a speed bump. I'll tell you what our driver never got frustrated - it was impressive. I would have the passengers out pushing. Most of the office staff had trouble getting to the office and a trip that is usually under 30 minutes was taking about 2 hours that morning.


If you ask me it wasn't a lot of snow.

Sleeping on cots

The hotel I was booked at apparently didn't have any king beds available so I was given a room with 2 twins. European twins are NOT the same size as American twin beds. These beds were more like cots. I barely fit on the bed and slept horribly the first night so the next night I put the phone under my bed, moved the end table and pushed them together. It worked much better.

Brussels

I made it. The hotel left me these yummy chocolates.

Goodbye America

I'm headed back to Europe for the week. So this is my last fountain drink for a week. Sad.

Superbowl Sunday

I had no idea who was playing but we had a nacho bar at my house for dinner (yummy) and watched the whole game. It was a good game and great food. Go Saints!

Saturday Mornings

Saturday is the only day Todd gets to sleep in and he usually gets up with the kids so I can go running so when I get home I try to let him go back to sleep for a few hours. This happens to be prime grocery shopping time in my schedule so I usually take 2-4 kids with me so he can sleep. Some weeks I question my sanity, some weeks I get really mad at the kids, other weeks we do just fine. This week the kids were being fine (they weren't sitting still or anything) but they were being good.

The seat belt in the car didn't work so I couldn't keep Sophie in the seat. She kept climbing out either while I was looking for items to buy or while I was cruising down the isle. At one point a nice lady saw her and grabbed her before she dove out.

The part that sucked was that some older lady stopped me to let me know that Luke had stepped on her foot and "nearly knocked her over". WHAT? Seriously - how could a kid that size do that much damage if he wasn't running (and he wasn't). He was doing me a favor and grabbing something from the other side of produce (banana's I think) when the foot stomping occurred. The lady was so rude and rather than get mad I just apologized and had Luke say sorry to her. But honestly it was ridiculous.

Then I decided to take care of business so I ordered balloons for YW new beginnings for the following Wednesday. Then later that day realized that I was 3 weeks off. WOW! I had a really bad day at the store to be that off.

Claire and Luke in the cart

I finally found a place where Sophie didn't cause trouble. She loved getting into my purse.

Motherhood

Yesterday I spent the day reading this blog about Bronson and I cried and cried. I don't know Sara very well (we have mutual friends and I see her at the gym). I can't stop thinking about her family and her sweet baby boy (who is 3 months younger than Sophie). She has changed my life and I know that because of her I want to be a better mother.

Yesterday Tayson went home from school early and last night about an hour after he went to bed he came into my room with his Star Wars blanket and a very sad look on his face. He hurt so bad and I told him to climb in bed with me. He cuddled up next to me, laid his head on my chest and I put my cheek on the top of his head and just held him until he fell asleep. The whole time I just kept thinking about how big he is now and how much I love him and how grateful I am that I have him. Rather than be upset about how late it was (I mean it was past 10pm...) and how tired I would be in the morning I just wanted to hold him. Soon he will be too old to want to cuddle with me and my back scratching and kissing might not make everything better but for now I'm going to appreciate the time I have to still be his mommy.

Back at InstaCare

Poor guy was feeling so sick. He had a high fever for 3 days, came home from school, was sick to his stomach and had a bad cough. Luckily it wasn't strep and he just had a cough so we just did over the counter drugs until he was all better. He wasn't happy when I took this picture and told me not to put it on my blog because that's "embarrassing". So don't mention you saw this...I have to get a picture a day on this year and it's HARD.

Yum....Ramen

After dinner, bath and jammies she found Tayson's bowl of untouched Ramen and went to town. She ate almost the whole thing. It was hilarious.

Brighton

I forgot how much I LOVE skiing. Due to several winters of either being prego or having an infant at home (8 to be exact) I have only skied twice in the last 8 years. Both times I was prego (with Tayson and Sophie) so I had to take it easy. I skied a lot in college and love the mountains. Timmy talked me into going to skiing and got me a free pass and I really needed a day off...so I borrowed all of Mark's ski clothes (thank goodness the pants fit...I had to suck it in to button them - that guy is skinny) and wore a pair of my mom's boots and Mark's old skis. The whole day cost me $13 for grilled cheese, fries and hot chocolate.

The day was adventurous. My mom and dad, Timmy, David and Steve all came. It was a little disturbing to get my trash kicked by two 65+ year olds. But seriously my mom and dad can tear it up on the mountain. My mom never stopped - she has more energy than anyone I've ever met. The second she got to the bottom she was on the chairlift ready to go. She was usually on the lift before I was even at the bottom. Lucky for me my dad was willing to keep me safe and knew which runs I should take and he never left me alone. We skied hard all day and I was soooo tired by the end of the day (it didn't help that I had been up since 5:20 am and taught spin in the morning either). I did a few blacks and double blacks (I wouldn't say I made it look good, but I did it). Everyone I was with knew Brighton a lot better than I did so I just followed them around and had a blast. They would say things like "let's hit Ziggy" and everyone but me knew what that meant. I think it was better that I was going in without knowing since it didn't give me a chance to talk myself out of the hard runs. We would go down the hill 3-4 times then move to another lift and take that one a few times then move on again. It was so much fun and I can't wait to go again.

Me, Steve, Dad and David

Mom and David

My dad
(I LOVE that he wears a helmet - so cute)

Me and my dad

Dad

Steve, David and I

Steve and I

Steve and Timmy
(Steve's goggles were so awesome - I fixed my hair a few times using them)

Timmy and I

Me, Steve and Mom
I had just gotten up when Steve went down on the hill. This was a double black and it was hilarious. I pretty much laughed and squealed the whole way down. My dad said he could hear me the whole time from the cat track on the other side. Ha!

David

Steve, Me, Mom and David

What a great day!!!

Piggie Tails

Look at my sweet baby in her piggies. She is too cute. I love her double chin and her big huge front teeth and of course her curls. Yesterday Todd asked me what color her eyes are and as I look at this picture I have no idea. They are blue/green/gray I guess.

Oh how I love my Sophie bug!