Go Hop On Pop

The title of this blog says it all. A lot has been going on this week, and I wasn’t sure how to include it all, but for the sake of recording it as part of my family journal, I’m going to lump it all together.

Grandma and Grandpa Titcomb arrived on Monday, the kids anxiously waited for the motor home to arrive all day long. In celebration of them coming I decided to make my Dad’s Mother’s, Mother’s who knows how many mothers recipe of Chicken and Dumplings. This was always a treat when we were kids, and it helped pass the time while waiting for their arrival. I can’t imagine how the ladies of the past made this without a mixer.

Aubrey wants to be Tinkerbell for Halloween. I’m not a fan of spending $30 on a Disney costume so I made Aubrey a green sparkly tutu. It was actually an enjoyable project, that I did one afternoon while Alyssa was napping and Aubrey and I enjoyed an episode or 20 of Dora!
I’ll pair it with a green turtle neck for warmth and maybe some white leggings, I haven’t worked out the details yet, but of course she will need some wings and some fairy dust to finish it off, but here’s what I’ve got.
It was so easy that I decided to do a red tutu for Alyssa with black pants, turtle neck, and she can go as a lady bug, I’ll work on that one during Conference tomorrow.
Friday was Emma’s birthday and preschool for Aubrey at my home! The theme for me was the 5 senses. We baked pumpkin muffins, of course smelling, and tasting the different igredients as we went along. The kids tasted the salt and the sugar, smelled the cinnamon and the pumpkin, and then ate the muffins for snack. For hearing we made paper plate tamborines, with beans. Then of course we had to do touch, so I put shaving cream all over the back yard table, and we practiced writing our letters in it and then I hosed them all down. That was their favorite part. Alyssa got involved and had a blast with the shaving cream.

I pulled Emma out of school early on Friday and we went home and did presents and cake before gymnastics. We went out to B’sghetti’s for dinner, and over to Walmart to look for a new DS game to spend her birthday money on, but she couldn’t make up her mind. I told her to call Uncle Benny, he’s up on the new releases and maybe there is something coming out she’d like to wait for. So we headed home to bed.

The kids actually slept in until 7:02 this morning, I know it was 7:02 because they all came running in to tell us they slept in… I think they were up around 6:30 but waited as long as they could to wake us up.

It was cold this morning, but we all headed to the soccer field to support Tanner.
It was tough game, and Tanner’s team lost…

Grandma and Grandpa… freezing!

Aaack, 10 years ago today my Emma was born. I have a hard time putting my feelings into words. Emma, is everything I imagined she would be. I remember looking into her little eyes after she was born, and just knew as every mother does when they see that baby for the first time that something wonderful has just occurred.
There are so many things I wished I’d known, so many things I might have done differently, but it’s been an adventure and so worth the time invested.
Emma is so wonderful, she’s beautiful, and smart, I have seen her grow into a little lady and I couldn’t be more proud of her and her accomplishments. She is so great with her little brother and sisters, she so helpful with them and has learned so many little mother skills. One attribute that I think about when I think of Emma is her honesty. She has proven herself over and over, and has never given me reason to doubt her. I know that she is only 10, but when I think that I only have 8 more years with her until she is considered an adult I want to freeze time, or at least slow it down. I’m going to try and live more in the moment, and enjoy the ride with her, because it goes too quickly.
Happy Birthday Emma!!!

Tanner and I have been reading Kidnapped together. It is written by Robert Louis Stevenson, who also wrote Treasure Island. The version we are reading is abridged, but I’m hoping to use this to inspire him to read the original when he gets a little older. The wording in this book can be a little difficult but it has given us a lot of opportunity to talk about meanings of words, and phrases that are no longer used.
This book is full of pirate talk, and fights, which just captivates Tanner’s attention. The art work is amazing, and only helps to draw him into the book. Last night we read one chapter, he reads one page out loud then I read the next page out loud, but when we were finished he wanted more. After I got the little girls in bed I returned to his room and read another chapter with him. Anyway, an enjoyable read for a boy, and his mom, I must admit, I haven’t read this classic before, I’m interested in knowing how it is going to end, but told Tanner I wouldn’t read on without him.

Alyssa wanted to dress herself this morning. Maybe she has a career in fashion in her future. She screamed at all of our attempts to help her, but she finally managed to get that shirt on her bottom end, and topped it off with those beautiful shoes… and the hair, what can I say!

“Mommy, what’s meat made out of?” is how my morning hike with Aubrey started. “Hmmm, don’t you mean plastic?” Daily she asks me how plastic is made, and I guess I have been unable to explain the makings of plastic thoroughly enough for her. Either that or kind of like finding the center of a tootsie pop, she’s seeing how many times she can ask the same question before she finds my center of crazyness. “No, what’s meat made of.” Frantically I stall while I calculate the therapy bills that I’ll have if I answer this one incorrectly. “Mom, you didn’t anwer my question.” There’s my own behavior thrown back in my face. Alright, I decide to keep it simple, kind of like the birds and bees talk with Emma let her lead the discussion and see how she feels about it all. I started with chickens, they are my least favorite of animals, with their stinky poo and well I just don’t think highly of chickens, and they don’t have big brown eyes with long lashes that stare at you. “Chicken is made of chicken.” Pause… “and bacon is made from pigs.” I’m feeling confident now. “Hamburgers are made from cows.” “Does that make sense?” So Aubrey didn’t say anything for a long time, and then she burst out, “Oh I get it! meat is made of meat!!!” “Yep that’s right” why didn’t I think of that? Another great conversation with my 4 year old.

Emma’s birthday is in ten days, just ask her, and I’m sure she’ll know the exact hour/minute until her birthday, she’s been singing around the house for days now “I’m going to be ten!!”. With Aubrey’s birthday just passing, I decided that I needed to get birthday pictures done. There is a talented photographer in our ward, so I called her up and made the plan. It’s always very stressing to get ready for photographs so I decided to only do the two birthday girls and then in November when Tanner turns 8 and Alyssa 2 in December I’ll do a joint photo shoot for those two. It’s very frustrating I had both girls hair in hot rollers for 30 minutes and barely a curl happened, I put a lot of product in the hair hoping to help, but I just can’t get their hair to curl, it’s very thick and course, and it just wont happen, so why do I torture myself. Little girls are supposed to have curly hair I guess is how I see it. Anyway, their hair turned out ok in the end.
I stopped at a gas station and picked up some spicey mints, that would be Aubrey’s “price”. She will cooperate on just about anything if a spicey mint is involved, what a strange thing for a 4 year old to like, but it works. She’d request a mint occasionally when she was feeling the naughties coming on. Now I usually don’t bribe, but occasionally all of us need a reward, and it seemed like a small price to pay. Of course I picked up a bottle of water, if Aubrey thinks I’m not prepared with a drink, that will become an issue and I wasn’t wanting her to be constantly asking for a drink knowing that I can’t give her one. Aubrey was possivtivly delightful for the pictures though and I couldn’t have been more pleased. Emma of course was easy and took no bribing, she was just happy to play model.
If anyone wants to see a couple of pictures you can visit www.bluelakephotography.typepad.com

Thanks Lynda for doing this for me, you’re the best!!!

I’m over my morning frustrations. Come to find out Danny is frustrated because we have too many types of sippy cups and he can’t find the correct lids to match the sippy… So crisis is adverted and we aren’t giving up on sippy cups just yet.

I have let my gym membership expire for the sake of our budget… so noble am I. So I have been driving daily to a hiking place in our little community and have been exploring different trails. I haul my butt up a fairly large hill to the different trails, and let Aubrey pick where we head from there. I have found many benefits to my morning hike.

Aubrey hikes with me, and some of our conversations are very enlightening. I doubt I’d hear half of what she is thinking if I didn’t share this time with her. Today she asked me about snakes and bees. She wanted to know why they like to bite people. I explained to her that they don’t like to bite people, they bite people because they are afraid. I told her she was so big and that she frightens them. She informed me that she wishes that we lived in Word World (PBS cartoon) so she could spell the word small be small and then they wouldn’t be afraid of her. She also wanted me to assure her that snake don’t eat lizards, she loves lizards. She is also very concerned that we are going to get lost, I haven’t found a solution to take away her fear yet, but with Aubrey I’m glad she is afraid we might get lost.

Taking Aubrey with me for my hike helps Aubrey to burn off some of her intense energy. That child is just full of life, yea that’s a good way to put it. So to take her for a 45 minute walk first thing in the morning helps her be a little less intense during the day. Before I would drop her off in the kid play room and that worked well, but she is actually benefiting physically by hiking with me.

When we get back to the car Alyssa starts to cry, ” more hiking” is what she says over and over and she fights hard when I put her in the car seat. I have a BOB jogging stroller and it handles the trails well, Alyssa loves the bumpy, bumpidy.

So I don’t have to pay, I get great conversation with my Aubrey and Alyssa is thrilled, all around everyone is happy!

This morning Danny declared no more sippy cups. I’m not sure what his issue is with sippy cups, but he said it has to end some where and he poured Alyssa a large glass of milk and headed for work. There is so much I could say here… all I’m going to say is sippy cups can end when he is on duty, but if I’m on duty… the sippy stays!

This brings me to a much larger issue that I have with Booster Seats. I should write a review on baby products. I really feel like boosters have major design flaws. There are so many crevices for food and milk to fall into, not to mention the cloth straps that don’t come off for cleaning. They are just an invitation for dirt and germs. I took Alyssa’s booster out this morning and hosed it down, luckily we have an abundance of sunshine here so that it will dry and not smell…

Not the best start for a morning, here’s hoping for a better day!

Well the day has finally come and Emma is not going to be happy. The kids are in need of shoes, so I ordered a pair of size 6 shoes for Tanner and a size 5 for Emma. We all knew that this would happen, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon, but Tanner is officially bigger than Emma. I’ll let him have his moment of gloating, and hopefully Emma won’t take it too hard. I try and assure Emma that really she wants him to be bigger than her, but she gets pretty upset when people think that Tanner is older than her. Now I guess we’ll have to see if Tanner’s feet can surpass his Uncle Benny’s, which I hear, but I’m not sure of, are bigger then Danny’s. A very “scientific” (I use the term loosely) website guesstimates that Tanner will be 6’5″ tall, and guesstimates Emma at 5’5″. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out in the end.