Sunday Drivers

Signs of Spring.  Every time I passed these beauties last year I would wish I had the camera, tonight it just so happened that I did.

Jack in serious spring contemplation.  (Actually I think he was trying to get his sandy, sock-less shoe off.)

Elise picked the flowers, sniffed the flowers and then tasted the flowers.  For the record: not so tasty.

I love sunset.  I wax philosophical as the sun sets.  However, it's your lucky day and I will spare you.

My girlie.  Isn't her hair glorious?  

Gifting me flower bouquets.   They smell wonderful.  I kinda want to plant my tent in the middle of these beauties and camp-out.  No one would need to bathe for at least a few days the fragrance was so strong.

My little flower objecting to being sniffed.

Yay for sunday drives and purple desert's majesty.

New Found Freedom

A set of wheels

 Jara has been begging me for weeks to take the training wheels off of her bike.  I've been putting her off.  I still remember learning to ride a bike.  Thankfully Jara has her father's bike riding genes.  She's got speed, skill and bravado.  I haven't seen her take an interest in anything like this since we introduced her to the lake five years ago.  She is in her element.  The training wheels and her mother were holding her back.  I guess I had to let her fly.  And fly she did, but not without her trusty safety vest of course.  She begged me to keep riding once it got dark and I told her it wouldn't be safe.  She promptly fetched Jed's road construction reflective vest out of his truck and declared herself safe. She's glowing.  I wish I had a picture of her face, I only have video and this one picture.  Also:  bike riding for an entire afternoon will help your child to go to sleep promptly at 7:00.  Wiped her out.  That's it-bikes for everyone! 

Walking!

Elise did it, she graduated from crawling to walking!  Goodness, I forget how fast they can become, literally overnight.  One week having to be bribed to walk across the rug, the next week streaking.  She is so proud of herself.  I love to see her tottering little crab walk all through the house.  However, once they walk they don't seem as babyish.  sniff sniff.  And it is a little unsettling to catch something out of the corner of my eye moving at that level now.  I feel like the toys are coming to life.  Minor details compared to the joy of clean hands and knees.  

Yay for my girls and their new found freedoms!  

Warning:

streaking will not be cute when you are a teenager Elise, don't even think about it.

Names

I like names.  Around here we name everything.  As a child I named everything.  The millions of stuffed animals I housed all had names.  All my imaginary ponies had names, with fictitious pedigree lines, yeah it was that bad and yeah I was that weird.  The point being...Let me introduce you to our latest named objects.

-Elinor: my orchid, her lover is Edgar the rubber plant.  Think beauty and the geek.  I like alliteration so hence Elinor to go with Edgar.  Elinor is currently in full bloom and beeeyoutiful!

-Jezebel: Jed's truck.  The truck has blue tooth fancy shmancy talk-to-you-lady, she dominates our relationship, so her name is Jezebel.  Plus when you drive with Jed you feel like you are in hell, Jezebel's probably in hell it all comes full circle.

-Dora:  While we are on the topic of vehicular names.  My brother was kind enough to name my Explorer-Dora the explorer.  Glad that one stuck.  

-The "forbidden" room: sounds bad.  It is.  We don't have a garage/shed or anything for all of our miscellaneous junk that most families accumulate:camping stuff we don't use, rubber-maids of kiddie clothes size 5T and down for boys AND girls, boxes of childhood memories,  boxes of mission/college paraphernalia (not that kind), Christmas stuff, bikes, candles, wagons and tool boxes.  I shut the door and pray.  Thankfully I have amazing powers and can find just about anything in there but might die getting to it.  Jack had a friend over and as he was giving him the grand tour he respectfully paused behind the closed, ominous door and whispered, "this is the forbidden room, only mommy can go in there, it's scary."

-Friday Fang Dangle:  Has anyone else read the book about Friday the cat.  He calls himself "Friday Fang Dangle"  and I'm pretty sure if I ever have another cat, that will be his name. Or I will change my name to Friday Fang Dangle.  Yes, it is that awesome.  Go ahead, say it, has a  nice ring to it doesn't it?

Well that's the main names.  Go name your plants, vehicles and rooms now, it adds character or makes you one, either way...

18 Months

Elise has hit the big 1-8.  A turning point, she is now nursery age compliant.  This Sunday was her debut. She took to nursery like a fish to water.  Within the first 5 minutes she had already stole and defended her rights to the pop-up toy.  Didn't cry or miss me once the leaders reported.  I feel a little bad, she sold me out for toys and a dixie cup of goldfish.

A new favorite past time, watercolors.  First, you bite into the window marker, non-toxic may I add, and then with a sufficient amount of drool you create the appropriate consistency for your masterpiece, preferably on a hard surface.  Paper is too weak for such genius.

Elise is the best eater ever.  After two non-eaters I am giddy with the joy of all that it takes to satiate this baby's appetite.  She feeds herself, mostly, and likes to take her meals at the picnic table.  Elise's favorite foods are clementines and pizza, separately served of course.

She also brushes her own teeth.  Refuses to walk but brushes her own teeth.

Showing me her nose wrinkle.  I love this picture because she is having a morning face-to-face conversation with her bear while eating.  She gives him a little taste every now and then.  The other day in the car I heard her making exaggerated sippy cup noises, I turned around to find her alternately holding her sippy cup in front of first, Jack and then Jara giving them "drinks."  Sometimes she shares.  So nice.

Shall we discuss the walking situation?  She is my latest walker.  She still prefers crawling.  She is starting to walk and is capable of it, but to rule her empire she needs speed.  Walking is not efficient enough.  I hope she gives up the crawling soon because I'm done with the dirtiness of crawling.  Plus she is going to get trampled.  Nursery is survival of the fittest, certainly no place to persist in crawling.  

Other 18 month items of business:

-her morning beauty routine now includes self-application of hand lotion, it's never too early to ward off wrinkles, she rubs her hands so cute, I think we've gone through a whole bottle of the expensive stuff in one week simply because I love to watch her rub those chubby little paws together.

-a few new words:  bowl, mama (screamed from her crib every morning), ME, YEAH!!, 

ehhhh accompanied by vicious head shaking(no), deeDEE (blanky), ba (bath)

-showing off: if she thinks she is not getting a sufficient amount of attention she will start walking.

-vicious screaming at the radio in the car if Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer isn't playing.  I used to like that song, I think.

-Kisses

-Reading longer books, favorites are "Dog Food," "Goodnight Gorilla," "From Head to Toe."

-Play time with just me when the other two are at school. She is such a good only child.  

-And a molar, that was fun...

Moving

A week into January we got a phone call from the establishment that rents us our home with the news we have been dreading to hear for almost two years...
Nice lady evicting me:  Hello I just want you to know we have received an offer on the house and accepted it.
Me: Silence
Lady: So that means you have 30 days to find a new place.
Me:  silence
Lady:  I'll email you the papers to sign.  Have a nice day.

And just like that we were 30 days away from being homeless.  I should have known it was coming, for two reasons: #1 It was for sale the whole time we were in it. #2 I had finally made my peace with it and it was starting to feel like home, instead of a temporary lodging that we could any day be sold out of.  Yes, that is what happens when you start to feel comfy, a gentle reminder that life isn't FAIR, comfy or peaceful. However, after a brief moment (okay more like a day or two) I came to grips with it and we started on plan B, plan C, plan D, a migraine like I haven't had since high school and we ended up with plan E.  A week before we had to move we made the decision to live...

 in a van down by the river.  hahaha.  
Okay, not really, 
well kinda, 
how about a house that used to be on wheels, I got the axles in my front yard to prove it, down by the river.  
There we go.  

Yes, I am being a little ungrateful and painting a picture worse than it is, we do have five bedrooms and 3 bathrooms after all.  It's clean.  Jack and Jara like the purplish hue.  Our landlords are very kind to let us be here and most importantly, we felt divine inspiration that it was the best choice for now.  We are probably only a couple of football fields away from where we used to be, I love my neighbor (that's you Brandi), Jara didn't have to change bus stops and we can stay in our same ward.  Plan D didn't accommodate for that little detail.  
So, yes I've been silent, kind-a crazy and muttering to myself in the grocery store but I think I'm coming back.  I now only have one room full of boxes that are still unpacked and I plan on leaving it that way.  Oh and if you have a house you want to sale, let me know, because this is temporary and the next place is going to be permanent  and I'm going to stay there for at least twenty years because my husband is not in the military or a carnival worker.  

Thank you:
Everyone who watched my kids or had them over for play dates before and after the move so I could pack/unpack.
To those who brought me food because the kitchen was out of commission for awhile.
To my family because they know the worst.  My sister packed my closet, my mom cleaned my old house, my dad babysat, my brother listened to my bitter diatribe prelude to the migraine blow-up, and my father-in-law who cleaned up the outside (among other things) single-handed (literally) poor man had to even take down our Christmas lights-yes it was February.   
My neighbor for organizing and lysol'ing my kitchen and letting me junk up your garage.
To all the kind people who helped move my excess o' furniture and didn't judge me for the plethora of cheerios coming out of the wood work.
To my friends who came to my cleaning "party" 
Bless you all.  We are so, so grateful.  As grandma Wheeler would say..."I'm buying you all a pony."    


*note:  the pictures will come, don't you worry

Merry Christmas!

WHERE'S THE TYLENOL ?
OR...
In our case Pepto.

It went something like this...

December 25th
2:25am  Joshlyn gets up to take NyQuil (couldn't sleep and had a little cold)
2:30am Jack pukes
3:00am Jack pukes
7:00 Jack pukes
7:30 Presents!
Noon:  Elise has pooped her way through 5 outfits
7:00pm Jed pukes in the kitchen sink
9:00pm Joshlyn is alone on the kitchen couch eating her way through a cheese ball and praying everyone feels better and she stays disease free!

Good news-that was the worst of it.  Jara and I avoided the disease, Jack and Jed never displayed another symptom except an aversion to food the next day. Elise was smelly for awhile and then also recovered.  Whatever it was, came swift and fast, by the next day my whole family was cursing me and praying for death, and then left.


Happier Memories...

Jara with her two favorite presents: a red bunny and an art/scratch/draw kit.  Jara specifically requested from Santa a red bunny, about a week before Christmas, of course.  She kept insisting she wanted a RED bunny.  I tried to convince her she didn't want a red bunny.  Four days before Christmas she told me "Santa would be sure to bring her one, because he knew how much she wanted one."  Good thing Santa and Amazon prime are affiliated.  It truly has been her favorite present, even a month later she is still playing with it every day.

Packages, boxes and bags. 

Elise with her favorite present.

Jack with his favorite present.  Jack is going to be a professional archer.  He can aim, pull back and let it fly. This picture was taken right after he had let go, look at that form.

We try to make memories for our family and hopefully they will remember the nativity advent calendar we mostly finished...the few little projects we did...the daily excitement of opening the advent calendar Aunt Loni got us...the gingerbread doghouses...the Christmas songs we are still listening to in the car...favorite presents...and most importantly the love and happiness we feel at this time of the year as we celebrate the birth of our Savior.  Merry Christmas!

Twas the Night Before Christmas...

Christmas Eve is my favorite holiday.  The anticipation and excitement of the kiddies.   The yuletide ham.  The family party which involves white elephant bingo and some form of a game with trivia that I can win at and at the end of it all before going to sleep, the feeling of calm and gratitude when contemplating the night of our Savior's birth.

This year on the agenda...

Fun:  the babies were so fun this year, even if Elise had two wardrobe changes and it was past their bedtimes.  Who doesn't love patty-cake?

Food:  I would like to say I made all of this but really I only made a couple of things but most importantly I supplied THE ham.  You know how I feel about ham.  Not just any ol' ham, honeybaked ham.  Mmmm.  I also made the twice-baked potatoes, my specialty, that diseased everyone, or so I've been told, more on that later.  

Games:  The infamous white elephant bingo.  We are good at bingo.  My presents were the best, worst kind...

As in-my dad won a sporty, yet stylish sweat band provided by moi! He dutifully wore it.  It helped him get into the action and avoid sweat dripping in his eyes during one of those intense bingo caller moments.  

Just when you think nothing could top the head band, lookee here, fishnet gloves.  For that perfect moment when you want to have the look of gloves but the use of your fingers, due to the breathable fishnet they can also be worn year-round in Nevada.

Here is the star of the nativity.  So precious.  

And here is our first ever, live nativity scene.  It melted my heart.  Look at Joesph with his sweat bands and UNLV snuggie/robe.  I scripted, sang and dressed them and couldn't have been more proud.  They were perfectly in character and performed Oscar worthy roles.  A great way to end a wonderful evening.

*note: This post took a long time coming due to the fact that blogger and my computer have been having issues.