Whys and wherefores...

Have you ever thought that the title of this blog was random, like those tags on Facebook where you click a link that looks up a random article on Wikipedia and that is the name of your band? Well it's not. The reason behind it is told in my very first post over two years ago. Recently I was thinking that maybe it had been a mistake to use something that specific to try and encapsulate my memories. (Plus I have been blog surfing a lot and seeing some fun and clever titles...) But tonight as I was doing a batch of laundry I was attacked by a ninja.


I guess some things will never go out of style...

Little Lila

I can't believe my baby is almost 8 months old. It all goes too fast...

Somethin' Stinky

Tonight as I was making dinner, Evie was sitting in the door of the kitchen complaining that she "smells some-pin stinky"! She says this to me at least once a day. I don't know if she has a really refined olfactory sense, or is just crazy. I told her to go tell her daddy, mostly just to get her out of my hair for 5 minutes. She marched in the living room, looked at Brian and pronounced, "There is some-pin stinky in here! And it is probably you, Dad!"

I so wish I had pictures of this...

Jake has either been blessed to be able to sleep through anything, or it's a learned trait. But that boy is out five seconds after his head hits the pillow and once he is asleep you could drive a truck through the room and he wouldn't stir. I now have definitive proof of this. Two nights ago he was sleeping upstairs in Evie's room. She, as usual, was being a stinker and not going to sleep. Brian went to check on them when we heard her talking. He came back and told me that she was curled up next to Jake with an arm around his neck and telling herself a story. Fifteen minutes later I went down the hall to get something from my room and peeked in expecting to see a sweet tableau of my two children snuggled up and sound asleep. Wrong! Jake was asleep on his back and Evie was sitting on his chest and had her hands around his neck. She was lifting his head up and down, up and down, trying to get him to wake up and talk to her! She got moved to the end of the bed and told, sternly, that she was not to touch other people when they were sleeping. She started wailing because she got in trouble, and still Jake slept on. Two hours later he rolled out of bed. Yeah. That woke him up.

Why Caite is the Best-est Babysitter Ever!

Saturday night Brian and I got to go on a date night! Love date nights. And with three little ones at home they are usually few and far between. (The cost of dinner and a movie is hard to justify when you are buying formula and diapers.) My cousin Sarah had invited anyone who wanted to, to go see the new Harry Potter and we jumped on it. It was so much fun! I really enjoyed the movie and then we had a great time visiting with Kyle and Sarah at dinner. I am really lucky to have 3 great cousins that are my same age and live close enough that we can get together on a pretty regular basis.

Caite was kind enough to come hang out with the kiddos and give us the night off. My kids love it when Aunt Caite comes to play with them, and who could blame them....


We came home to find a very large blanket tent had taken over the living room and they were all snuggled up watching cartoons. Jake was sound asleep, but Evie couldn't wait to give me a tour of their "fort"!



Caitlin had also not only made dinner, but done all the dishes as well! Best babysitter ever! And the price for almost 7 hours of her time? A skein of soy silk yarn in a beautiful teal color... I love it when I can pay people in yarn! I wonder where else that could work for me, hmmmm.

My little helpers

One of Evie's favorite "chores" is to put away the silverware. I love the help, but even more I love her running dialog about each and every piece as it gets sorted into the right place. "This a big fork or a y-ittle fork Mommy?" "Oooh! This one of Lila's baby poons!"


And moments like this are both helpful and sweet. Jake is a great big brother who loves to help take care of his sisters.


About the only things he can't do on his own now is make bottles and change diapers. We did have a diaper changing lesson a few days ago. He started (with my supervision) to change Lila, he undid her sleeper, peeled back the tabs, opened the diaper and surprise! Not just a wet one. His face was hysterical, he looked so nonplussed. I took over at that point and while I finished changing the diaper Jake said, "Okay. I do not want to learn how to change diapers!" When I told him he needed to learn anyway, he replied, "Fine. But I am not changing the poopy ones." Just like a man...

Teddy Bear Picnic Day

Did you know July 10th was Teddy Bear Picnic Day? Well it was, and we celebrated by heading to the park with Uncle Josh and Huck to picnic with our teddy bears. A lovely time was had by all.

Table Talk

This was how the dinner conversation went at our house tonight...

Jake: Um, how many minutes are in a day?

Brian: Well how many hours are in a day?

Jake: 24.

Brian: Right, and how many minutes are in an hour?

Jake: Um... 60?

Brian: Right. So how would you figure out the minutes in a day?

Jake: 60 times 24?

Brian: Thats right.

Jake: *long pause with extreme concentration....*

Me: Try this, what is 60 times 10?

Jake: Uhhh...

Me: Remember the trick with times-ing by 10 is to add a 0 to whatever number you are times-ing, so 6 times 10 would be 60, and 60 times 10 would be?

Jake: 600!

Brian: Right! So what is 600 plus 600?

Jake: 1200.

Brian: That's right, and that accounts for 20 of the 24 hours so now what is 60 times 4?

Jake: 280? No, 240?

Brian: Right. So add that to 1200 and you get?

Jake: 1440! There are 1440 minutes in a day.

Me: That's right! Good job honey!

Evie: So anyways... I love the color purple.

The creative process is exhausting...

What I found when I went into the kitchen to make dinner,


truly a moment when a picture is worth a thousand words...

For Aunt Kamra...

This cute tee-shirt was Lila's part of the surprise package from Aunt Kami, and she looks adorable in it! Good choice Kami!

A fun surprise...

Every so often my Aunt Kamra surprises my kids with a package in the mail full of fun little surprises. They came to visit over the holiday weekend and she brought one with her. Because of the crazy schedule we kept this weekend we only just opened it, and oh my, what treasures it held...


The first thing to capture Evie's attention was the tissue paper. In fact her actual words were, "Oh yook! Tissue paper!!" Well, with that level of excitement anything that came after was going to be icing on the cake...


...and what came next was SHOES!!! And not just any shoes, but glittery, Disney princess, flip-flops! Evie was in shoe heaven.


Jake just loves to read the fine print on all the packages to figure out what they are or do. These are some bubbles in popcicle shaped holders, perfect for summertime.


They would have opened them right then and there and started blowing bubbles in the living room, but the mean mom nixed that idea and told them they would have to wait until tomorrow when they could go in the backyard to play with them.


I did, however, let them open and try the package of Goldfish S'mores Adventures. (Mom and Dad tried them too, they aren't half bad.) They are gram cracker and chocolate flavored goldfish with little fish shaped marshmallows mixed in. A fun summer treat, and nowhere near as messy as actual s'mores.


I digress a little bit, these pictures are from yesterday when we joined up with some of Brian's family who were camping up Kamas Canyon for dinner. It was nice to get up in the mountains and enjoy a yummy dutch-oven dinner without all the hassle of camping with babies and toddlers.


Here is Evie hanging out by the campfire with "Unca Gweg".


He was showing her how to be a cowboy!


We have had a great 4th of July weekend and really enjoyed spending time with both sides of the family. And thanks again Aunt Kami for all the fun treats, they really made the kid's day!

Lila's Photo Shoot

 

This is one of the pictures that we had done when Lila won the runner up in the Cutest Baby Contest last April. Tina Miera is an amazing photographer who does a great job, you can check out more of her work at her blog Bumps and Bundles. I am so happy with how the photos turned out.

Yemon Logurt in a Yarge Lard

So Evie has been getting much better at her L sounds. She can say Lila quite clearly now, but the funny part is she has start to insert extra L's in some words, and she still confuses Y's and L's a lot. For instance she always wants to go with me to the "larn" store to see Shanna (It's actually Shannon, but Evie can't quite get that last N for some reason...) and she likes to go play on the swing set in the back"lard". She is also fond of having carpet picnics in the living "loom" and one of her favorite summertime treats is a "slush-lee". Today she kept asking me for some "ch-loc-late", well what girl doesn't like ch-loc-late?

Jake also enjoys a slushee treat with me during these hot summer days, now that we are actually having hot summer days. He has been having a ton of fun playing with friends and cousins and even had his first cousin sleepover with Jack a week ago. And we have had a lot of people around during the last week. Our yard has once again been a service project for our family and our ward, and we can't say Thank You! enough! Through a great combined effort they ran sprinklers out to our parking strips and cleaned out the weed choked gravel and replaced it with sod. And it was no small job because we live on a corner, so two long parking strips!


Jake's other favorite activity this summer has been doing arts and crafts with myself and Aunt Caite. Here we were doing a little painting project, and I was quite pleased with my foresight. I bought Jake a kit to paint two little pirate figurines, so that he could paint "with" us without having to "help" us with our project. I had sent him down to change into some older clothes that he could paint in, and he was so anxious to get started he forgot to get pants... (Can you say "blackmail" for when he gets older?)


As Jake said to Aunt Caite, this picture isn't G rated... but it doesn't need to be. (He actually said that to her when we were running errands last Saturday. He told her she wasn't G rated, but that she didn't need to be. I think she snorted food out her nose she was laughing so hard.)