This Kid Had A Great Birthday

Ethan turned six this last week.  He is growing up so fast!  He is my kid that is up at six in the morning, sometimes before Brian and I get up.  He's the one that gets ready for school (almost) every morning all on his own, including saying his morning prayers, although he is starting to sneak in some play time in the mornings as well.  He loves dinosaur oatmeal; says he loves fish, but doesn't actually eat fish; likes to wash the dishes; and loves to play computer games.  The thing he's been saying the most of lately is, "Mom, I want to do something fun," or "I have nothing to do that's fun," and usually that means he wants to watch TV or play computer.  Actually, a couple of weeks ago, when he wasn't allowed on the computer, he kept saying, "I just feel like I need to exercise my hands," hoping that I would count moving the computer mouse as hand exercises.  He loves to cook, and he's a great help in the kitchen.  He's even volunteered to make his favorite dessert, lemon bars, for Family Home Evening tomorrow.

Ethan started his week off by having a combined birthday party with his cousin, Asher.  He requested a dinosaur party with a dinosaur cake, but the cake turned into a volcano cake with dinosaurs on it.  He watched me decorate it, and if I was a nicer mom, I would have let him pipe more frosting than just a line of lava and a couple of trees.  He was happy with how it turned out, though.

On his birthday he took dinosaur oatmeal to school for his birthday treat.  These he did help me out with.  He cut the cards, while I stapled them to the oatmeal.  He was very excited about these!

 We had the Activity Day girls over, and they sang him happy birthday before they had cookies.

But he didn't even stick around until the end of the song.  He wanted to go play upstairs with the Salisbury boys.

We also went to red Robin for his birthday dinner.  He ordered a corn dog, which surprised us, because he's been turning into a cheeseburger person.  Before the food came he said he was starving, then once he took a bite of his corn dog, he said he was "stuffed full," but then I told him the waiters wouldn't come sing to him until his food was gone, so he went ahead and ate the whole thing.  We got him a ten-games-in-one set that includes checkers and games like that, and the Pairs in Pairs game, by the same people who did Bananagrams.  (He likes games and puzzles.)

Ethan had his friend birthday party on Thursday after school.  We just included Marcus and invited his cousins, Derek and Asher.  We wanted to keep it small, plus I wanted to do it at a time when they wouldn't have a big sister around to take over - I mean - "help."  We picked everyone up from school, had lunch, opened presents, and built our very own volcano.  I used the moon sand recipe that's been floating around Pinterest (8 cups of flour, 1 cup of baby oil) and loved it.  It didn't stay well enough to keep the volcano shape, so we probably should have used play dough, but oh well.  It worked well enough, and I found it very therapeutic to play with.    We used the elephant toothpaste recipe for the lava, but it didn't erupt right.  When I added the "make it explode" ingredient, it just grew a tiny bit.  I tried adding more hydrogen peroxide (9% - was that the problem?) but that didn't work, so then we went to plan B and threw in a bunch of baking soda and vinegar.

Then, on Friday we had a stay-cation with Brian's parents at the local La Quinta.  We were supposed to go up to the cabin this weekend, but it didn't work out, and Dan and Diane still wanted to do something fun, so they came up with this.  We played games, had the pool all to ourselves, ordered pizza, and just visited and had fun in the hotel room.  Diane told me today that they had planned on spending the night, but at 1:30 someone having a different sort of party was put into the room next to them, so they decided to spend the rest of the night in their own bed.  It was a lot of fun!

Becca looks worried in this picture, but she really did enjoy it.

She looks a little bit happier in this one.

Brian thought he had bubbles on his face, but as you can see, he didn't.

On A Sunday

Becca fell asleep soon after church today, but I didn't lay her down right, which meant that she woke up about five minutes after I left her room.  I heard her make a noise, which I thought was a cry, but when I went to go pick her up, it turned out that she had flipped herself over and was facing the other direction and was making out with one of her teddy bears.  She was growling and laughing and having a great time.  Honestly, I've never seen a little girl baby that growls as much as she does. 

 

 The teddy bear in question is named Tucker.  He's the lighter brown bear that she's almost on top of.  But it doesn't do a lot of good to point him out, because the darker brown bear behind her - see him back there? - is also named Tucker.  We got them when I took her to the emergency room after our car accident last month.  I tried to take her to urgent care, but they wouldn't look at her since she's a baby, so we had to take her in to the emergency room.  The nice gentleman that walked us to our room gave her and Marcus each a teddy bear, and the name on both tags said, "Tucker," so we went with it.  I don't know if they'll remain the Tucker Twins as she gets older, or if she'll someday rename them.

This picture is just to show that cute mole on her left wrist.  You can barely see it, but I noticed it when I uploaded the photos, and I wanted to share.  I love that mole!

Snow Day

All weekend long I kept hearing, "It's supposed to snow on Sunday," then "It's supposed to snow on Monday," then "It's supposed to snow on Tuesday," and it finally dumped a good 10 inches or so late Tuesday night.  Ethan was the first to tell me that it was supposed to snow, because his Kindergarten teacher told him about it, and he was so excited all weekend.  He even spent Sacrament meeting on Sunday having Brian feed him letters so he could write, "It will snow storm on Monday."

Ethan already had school off yesterday, because it was afternoon Kindergarten's turn to go on the short Wednesday, and Alyssa got a two hour delay.  She didn't want to go, especially after she heard our neighbors were staying home, but I told her it would probably be just one big party, and it sounds like it was.  They watched, "Rio," did some math worksheets, and played "Heads Up 7 Up."

The kids had so much fun playing in the snow.  They were ready to go out around 7:30 in the morning, so I sent them to play, then they came in for shortbread cookies and hot cocoa for breakfast.  we took Alyssa to school at 11:00, then headed over to my parent's to play their Disneyland Kinex game, then we picked Alyssa up at 1:40, she made some Pillsbury Valentine cookies that Brian's mom gave us, and we had a fun afternoon cleaning the house, playing in the snow some more, and working on projects.

Brian's office even rescheduled people so they could close at 3:00, so he was home early, too.  We've been getting office furniture on Craigslist, and we're starting to plan and decorate his den.  My instinct is to call it an office, but he refers to it as a den, so that's what I'm going with.  "Den," sounds more relaxing, I think, which is probably why he prefers it, too.  So Brian's office (work office) is right next store to a JoAnn Fabric store, so he hopped over there at lunch and sent me pictures of fabrics he likes for the curtains.  I think he's having fun having something of his own to decorate.

I also set up my Silhouette Cameo last night, and let me tell you I had so much fun.  That thing is amazing!  I've worked with both my mom's original Silhouette and my Cameo, and I can safely say, 100%, that the Cameo is a thousand times better.  When my mom and I would do projects with hers, we would get a great final outcome, but it took so much time arguing with the machine, and re-cutting things that got messed up during the cutting.  I cut a whole bunch of vinyl last night and the only problem I ran into was that I accidentally chopped off the tip of Marcus' nose when I was cutting (by hand, with scissors) his sillhouette off of the roll of vinyl.

So here's a little bit of what I did last night:

Alyssa - so beautiful!

Ethan - so serious

Marcus - I couldn't get him to hold still!

Rebecca - absolutely adorable!

Now our entry way is one step closer to being finished.  I used a tutorial to make the silhouette shape and another tutorial to cut it with the Cameo.  I made the flower for Alyssa's hair by converting Googled shapes into cuttable shapes, and the headband for Becca by just playing with shapes in the Silhouette software.  Brian and I are going to take each other's pictures later today, so we'll be added to the wall soon.

The Book

Last night I had a dream about a magical lion, who was being held prisoner by an evil queen.  He turned himself into a man to be able to escape, and he happened to escape at the same time one of the queen's priestesses was also running away.  Now, in my dream there was no romantical connection between these two characters, but if I were to write a book about them, there definitely would be, because, well, I like romantical connections, G rated, of course.  So these two are running away from the queen's guards and hiding in a tree with a little boy - I don't know how the little boy showed up, but they were protecting him, and Brian had a pretty good idea about who he should be - and then I woke up, and it was a lot cooler in my dream than I've told it, and I thought, "That would be a great book!"

(On a side note, Brian has James Bond type dreams that he wakes up to thinking, "That would be a cool movie!"  He's told me about them, and they probably would be very cool movies.)

But after thinking about this great book, and thinking, "I'll write it as soon as I'm done with the one I'm writing now," I then thought, "Oh, shoot!  I only have one page of that book written."  Yep, one page.  But, you know, that's progress.  I just need to get going on it.

I've been doing really well with my other goals, mostly because I have a set and serious plan to accomplish them: reading my scriptures aloud to Becca when I put her down for her morning nap (which makes her conk out real fast), setting a very specific task each month for food storage and emergency preparedness, etc.  I think I need to come up with a time every day and say, "This is my time to write," otherwise it might be years before this book is finished.

One thing that's helping and inspiring me is a girl I went to church with during all my growing up years.  A couple of years ago she announced on her blog that she was going to write a book, and now it's finished and will be debuting in April.  Isn't that cool?  Every time I read one of her posts on Facebook I think, "Alicia's a mom, and she found the time to write her book, so I can do it, too."  By the way, Alicia's book is called Emerald City, and it's set in Seattle.  I can't wait to read it.  And I'll probably keep a copy on my bedside table to remind me that the goal is attainable.

So to refresh my memory about what I've written and planned so far, I'll give you guys a little bit of information about my book.  The heroine is named Maura and the hero is Bowen.  Brian came up with Bowen when we were on our way to Great Wolf Lodge.  He kept naming cities we were passing when I was trying to come up with names for the different cities and kingdoms for my book, and when he said, "Bowen," I thought, "That's perfect for the prince's name!"  The villain is named Kendrick, but in every thing I've written so far, he's referred to as Bad Guy, or B.G. 

Here's a little snippet of the Prologue.  Don't be too critical of it.  When I read through it just now, I found many things just in that paragraph alone that I want to change, but that's just the nature of a rough draft.  Anyway:

He quickly descended, holding the precious book carefully with one arm.  Sitting on the stone floor, he opened the cover and silently ruffled through the pages.  He knew there was a lot of work ahead of him to learn the language that the spells were written in.  He also knew through his studies that this work couldn’t begin while he was still in the cave.  The only person that was allowed to use magic in the cave was the mage that the books had belonged to long ago.  To everyone else it was strictly forbidden.  He(name?) knew he should take the book home with him to study and learn from, but the words on the first page caught his attention, and in his excitement he read them, sounding them out slowly, even though he did not know their meanings.  He whispered the words as he read, loving the feel of them on his lips.  A slight rush of air came swirling from the page and circled twice around him before heading toward the cave entrance.  Once this small wind left his skin, he assumed that it had dissipated into the air.  He never knew how strong those whispered words were, or how far they traveled.

And Finally, A Christmas Post

We had a wonderful Christmas vacation.  I loved having the kids home from school.  With Christmas being on Sunday, Brian didn't get much actual time off, but he was able to be with us enough to have fun.  We did a lot of things with my family and Brian's family, but we also just spent a lot of time at home, enjoying being home.

Because we had church at 9:00 in the morning, we "arranged" for Santa to come while we were gone, instead of during the night.  It worked great!  Christmas Eve we had everyone over at our house to play games and let the kids run around.  Then we went over to my parent's house for Grandma Harris' birthday party and doing the nativity and singing Christmas carols.

On Sunday we got up, and got ready for church, and went to Sacrament meeting, where Alyssa sang a solo in the ward choir (she and Kenzie Salisbury sang the ending: Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!  Born is the king of Israel.) and I played the flute with the choir for a different song.  My parents played Santa while we were gone, then came and joined us to hear Alyssa sing.  The talks given Christmas Sunday were fabulous.

We went home to find our Santa gifts, and to find that if you leave a note for Santa telling him that his glass of milk is in the fridge, he replies with, "Ho! Ho! Ho!"  Apparently Santa feels the same way that I do about warm milk: nasty!

Alyssa got a small stuffed animal with an American Girls book full of fun questions to ask friends.  Rebecca got a bunch of bibs for when she's ready to start solids.  She also was supposed to get a high chair, but the boys saw it come in the mail, so we just went ahead and started using it so she could sit at the table with us during meals.

 The boys got a Beyblade stadium to share, and they each got a Beyblade.  They love them, and are always battling each other, or as Marcus says, "babbling."  When Ethan is at school, Marcus will ask me if I want to have a "Beyblade babble" with him, and we have a great time.  Really, though, those things are fun!

Sadie got a freakin' huge bone that she's already devoured, and Callie the Cat got some cat grass that she's ignored (apparently she prefers plastic) and a feather toy thing.

When we were done with our Santa presents, Brian's parents came over, and we opened everything under the tree.  This year we drew names for handmade gifts, which was so fun.  Alyssa made Rebecca a hooded towel, Ethan made Marcus strips of road that you piece together out of old jeans, Marcus made Brian a picture for his office, and Rebecca made (okay, fine, I did) a little stuffie for Ethan out of an old sock.  Ethan had said that he wanted a friend for his zuzu pet, Dowpia, so that's what we did.  We made it out of one of the socks that Brian gave me when he proposed.  I made Alyssa a scripture bag to match the scripture cover I gave her last Christmas, and Brian made me a printed powerpoint presentation offering an overnight getaway when Becca's older.

Other presents:  Alyssa got Twinkle Toe shoes; Ethan and Marcus got walkie talkies to share; Brian got meat thermometers, bear claws, and other cooking paraphernalia; Becca got a bedtime seahorse stuffy; and I got a Silhouette Cameo (I haven't set it up yet, but I can't wait.  I have a ton of projects I'd like to do!)  One of my favorite quotes from the day was when Marcus carried his walkie takie around for about five minutes, excited to have it, then when we put batteries in it and showed him how to use it, two minutes after talking back and forth with Brian he said, "Oh, it's a walkie talkie!"  Brian's mom had books made of the first two years of my blog, which I love!  It was such a surprise!  My parent's gave us a gingerbread cookie mix from Disneyland, complete with a Mickey Mouse cookie cutter.  It's so cute!

We went over to my parent's house in the evening to give them their gift, and we learned that my brother, Phil, had just gotten a counter offer on the house they want to buy.  They made an offer, but knew someone else was making one at the same time, so they didn't expect anything, but on Christmas afternoon they got an email with the counter offer.  We're so excited for them!

So it was a great Christmas.  I didn't take a lot of pictures, and half of what I took are fuzzy, but here's what we did get.

Marcus opened this present without taking the ribbon off.  it was really quite amazing.

The picture says, "What is your favorite thing about Dad?  I like him silly faces.  Marcus, age 4"

They both just conked out

Happy New Year!

I normally don't do new year resolutions.  I am the type of person that loves goals and charts and schedules and routines, so when the new year rolls around, I already have goals in place, so I don't really have a need for special resolutions.  Right now, though, I've gotten out of habit on things, and there are definitely some goals I need to put into place to get my life back on track.

1. Read the Book of Mormon twice
I have not been doing well with scripture study.  I try, but it just doesn't happen.  So I'm setting up a pretty big goal.  I know, you're probably thinking, "If you're not reading your scriptures now, why don't you just try to read it once instead of twice?"  My thinking is that I get more out of the scriptures when I read in larger blocks, so if I have to read two or three chapters each day to finish by a certain time, it at least will be more beneficial than reading just one chapter a day, so hopefully it will be easier to keep up.  My plan is to read (maybe even out loud) while I put Rebecca down for her morning nap each day.

Our stake president, President Andelin, gave us all a challenge at church today to read from the Book of Mormon every single day this year.  So not only do I have my personal goal for scripture study, but our family has decided to have family scripture study every day as well.  We used to be really good at family scripture study, but we've gotten off track lately, and we need to do better.  I printed off a chart that has the chapters in the Book of Mormon in it for Alyssa to fill out, a 2012 calendar for Ethan to cross off the days, and I got out a mason jar for Marcus to put marbles, so each of the kids will have a job that keeps track of our progress.  Plus, we're going to start having scripture study in the quiet room again, with everyone holding their scriptures. 

2. Go to the temple every month
This is one that Brian and I were trying to do last year, but it got messed up with me getting pregnant.  Rebecca is now old enough to leave with a grandma for a couple of hours, so we're going to start going more often.

3. Work on emergency preparedness
We have some food storage in the garage, and a couple of tubs with our 72 hour kits, but there is still so much that we need to do.  I'd like to do one thing each month to help with our emergency preparedness.  This month we're going to set up an emergency station in the garage.  We need to go through and update our 72 hour kit, and I'd like to purchase a Costco pack of water bottles for each family member, then stack it all in its own special spot in the garage.  For February I think I'd like to get the pantry stocked with canned food.  I reorganized our pantry on Saturday, and there's a lot of canned food spots that are empty.  After that I guess we'll get going on making sure we have the big things - like buying a bunch of flour one month, wheat another, sugar, etc.

4. Run a 10k
It has been over a year since I've been running.   I miss it!  The last time I ran was the Turkey Trot last Thanksgiving.  That was the first day that I woke up with morning sickness.  I faked being healthy pretty well for the run, but I wasn't able to go out after that.  When I was running before I was only doing 5k's, but my brother asked me if I wanted to try for a 10k in the fall.  Looks like I need to get training.  So the small goal for this is to run a 5k each month, starting in March, then switching to a 10k when I think I'm ready.

So there you have it.  I was going to put "finish my book" on the list, but I really don't know if that's going to happen.  I only have one page written of the rough draft.  With Rebecca still being small, and Marcus still at home needing attention, I just don't have time each day to sit down and work on it, and it's something that I don't want to sacrifice being a good mom for.  I think about it all the time, and I still want to work on it, but it might take me longer than I originally planned.