the Birds

So every Fall we love being outdoors more and observing all the changes going on. We are reinpsired to take walks and recently started talking a walk after dinner. On our latest Sunday evening walk we saw a flock of thousands of (I assume) starlings flying overhead. It was a HUGE cloud of birds. We've also noticed the return of vultures. (Last Fall we counted 19 at one point in the trees overlooking our deck.) The cloud of starlings made me remember a morning last fall when I kept hearing all this squwaking and I looked out the front window to find our front yard COVERED in starlings. Then all of a sudden, they all flew AT the house (well, up and over) and into the trees in our backyard. It was like something out of the Birds. You know, that scary Hitchcock movie I've never seen, or I'd imagine out of the birds anyway. It appears that this is a migratory time and our area is part of the migration.

Here are M's typings:
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Mommy Moments

So a recent Conference address talked about how the rewards of motherhood come in small moments. Here's one that happened today. I fixed the sleeves on M's doll's dress. When I gave her the fixed doll she said, "Mom, you're the winnerest. Radurlations, Mama!"

Climbing the wall

At Girls Camp last week there was an obstacle course. I was assigned as the leader to help the girls get their harnesses on. So I helped close to 90 girls get ready to do this event, let alone encourage them on their way. Some of my own Mia Maids figured out that I'd NEVER climbed this wall, let alone any wall. They were appauled that I'd put them through this. Let it be known that I'd already anticipated climbing as soon as all the girls had finished. So this just finalized the idea. So as soon as I'd put the last girl in a harness I got mine strapped on.

Let me just say, you'd better have the right shoes to do this. And tennis shoes are NOT those shoes. I have very weak upper body strength so this was going to be difficult no matter what BUT the shoes didn't help. I couldn't get a grip so I couldn't push up. I tried by golly! I hung there longer than any girl and tried just as hard but the bottom-left picture is as high as I got. This was quite an experience. One I'd like to try again someday.

Did I mention that the nearby pool has a climbing wall over the deep end. I have to try this sometime when I'm without kids.

He's related to Me

This did not come from Daddy's side of the family.
(Well, ok, he doesn't handle spicy foods THIS good but he definitely does better than his sister.)

Happy Birthday to Me.

So Daddy and M went to great lengths to make me a Red Velvet cake for my birthday. If you look closely you'll see that they dyed the filling frosting blue. With the white cream cheese with coconut pecan icing on the outside it was truly red, white & blue. It was good but didn't make the Recipe Canon.

Another quirk you should know about is that I'm a FIRM believer that there should be the correct number of candles in a cake. I'm grateful we can find the box of 500 or something for about a dollar at Party City because I also don't clean candles. Are you kidding? Licking them off is part of the fun and I'm not washing that many candles! So the top of the cake had plenty of holes. Anyway, I got back from camp on Saturday and we celebrated a day early by going to dinner and having our neighbors come over for cake. Then we put the kids to bed and watched fireworks from our cul de sac. We were going to watch from the roof (AND I even climbed on the roof!) but alas our own trees blocked the view.

Sunday was fairly low key but we sang all my favorite hymns and M even picked up part of America the Beautiful. (Thank goodness for repetitive phrases in hymns.)

Every birthday is a review of where I am and where I want to be. I've decided my key words for next year are these.

Smile.

I can see the wrinkles developing. I think smile wrinkles are cute and frowning ones aren't. I want to make sure I get the right kind.

Play.

I want to be part of my kids life and I think this is imperative to the process.

Laugh.

See above.

Listen.

Sometimes I open my mouth without listening. I need to do better at this.

Love.

I'm trying to be like Jesus.

If I do more of all of these I will be a better mommy and a better person.

Saturday Morning cartoons?

Not in this house.

So the other morning M set up this little bed (I'm seeing a trend of her making these nests lately) so that she and Daddy could watch a car show before Daddy had to leave. Ok, this wasn't Daddy promoting the watching of a car show. This was M asking for a car show. No. I think she knew I'd say no to Dora but she knew Daddy would melt if she asked for a car show. For a while now Daddy's been sharing his love of race car and car fixing podcasts with his kids (one morning he let me sleep in and I found Daddy and F eating Cheese Nips and watching race cars). Daddy tells me she actually really likes watching them fix cars and will request them when he's in charge.

I guess it's all fair. I get to watch my Stacy Julian videos because Maddie really likes them. So I guess we have a scrapbooking/car junkie on our hands. Oh, and F likes to play with the toy kitchen and wants to be held while you're cooking so he can watch you cook...chef anyone? The only question is whether it's pastry or main line.

Happy Fourth of July!

Ok, it took three tries but I'm SO pleased with how this picture turned out. Yay that M smiled and F looked at the camera! Thanks Nanny for the shirts. We were quite patriotic!

Retiring the Old Header

This picture was taken during Christmas-time. As it's the first day of Summer I'm grateful I have a new family picture.

Of Course!

We made watermelon sorbet. (Yummy!) Wouldn't you know this is what M decides to do.
No it didn't stick.

Birthday Presents

More birthday gifts for F. He loved the buttons on his new phone and the yippy, battery powered doggie. Mommy loves his new cool weather jammies!

Linus

I promise I'll get a better picture of this soon but I just had to tell you all about our little Linus. Recently, F LOVES his blankie. He drags it around to the point that he trips on it because he's got it over his head and can't see where he's going.

the Next Project

So now that Daddy's finished the "playground" he's moved on to staining our deck. It looks beautiful, still has a lot more to go but will be well worth the effort (and the second coat). It's a brown-red solid stain. We went with the solid stain because there were so many different kinds of wood in the whole project and we want it to look cohesive. Wonderful thing about this project is M can help! Daddy was skeptical at first but she's been out there with her brush hard at work. It's great if F is down for a nap and M's outside helping Daddy. It means I can get some work done or even go out and help stain myself!

Swing Set

So, this was Daddy's project for a couple of weeks. Nani Kim let us have her old swingset. We dug it out and transported it to our house. Daddy's vision is amazing. He figured out how to get free mulch on Craigslist and we bought the edging. We already had the stain but we did buy a new swing seat the conforms to tiny bums. After some work it was in. The kids love it. Although the spiders do too. So we have a permenant broom by the swing set so we can brush it down before they play. One day M was out playing and I hear these blood curling screams. She was trapped up on the slide deck by a spider. She was terrified and didn't know what to do. So we've been memorizing Joshua 1:9 and we talked about how when we see a spider we have to "Be Strong and of a Good Courage" and STOMP the spider (or get the broom and brush him off). She's still terrified but not so much blood curling in her screams and she does know how to stomp the spiders. Reminds me of the heeby-jeebies I used to get when my dad gave me scorpion squishing lessons on the back porch. I hated doing it because for some reason I thought they could get me through the bottom of my shoe. I'm glad he did it though. Anyway, that's our swing set. Definitely a majority of the work by Daddy but the Team pitched in on various parts. Even Aunt Ruth helped us unload a trailer of mulch and lay the landscaping fabric. You should of seen us getting the first trailer of mulch. F was attached to my back in the Ergo Baby Carrier while I shoveled a bit. M had her own little shovel which at one point she asked if we could do "Nephite Fights" with them and she also figured out the when we clanged two shovels together it was like "Chairs", I mean, "Cheers".

Happy Birthday!

F turns 1! So one of his very favorite things are doggies. So our friend found this awesome dog cake and we thought it was perfect for him. He wouldn't touch it though. It was amazing. He didn't want anything to do with it. So funny. I wonder if he thought it was a real dog. He LOVED the ice cream though. We had a great time celebrating with our friends (whose Daddy happens to share a birthday with F). So we had sushi, tempura, crab rangoon, & potstickers for dinner. We also enjoyed Uncle Bob & Aunt Toni too. They got F a tractor that lights up and moved. He thought it was great!

Memorial Day