Long, long weekend!

If you've read Rob's post (see below) you'll know that we got snow! This was awesome. It happened on a weekend so no pressure to go anywhere. It started snowing early enough that the kids got excited and ran around for a bit before they went to bed on Friday. And then it has stayed cold so it hasn't melted. But it's been a long weekend!

First the kids woke up at six and we went out and played in the snow. (Rob stayed in bed or you'd have pictures of the kids playing in the dark in the snow.) Fortunately they got cold and came in after twenty minutes. I was too tired to do anything but stand on the porch. Then we had sweet rolls and hot chocolate for breakfast! Yum!

Then the kids went out again at 10:30 or so. Rob was supposed to go out with them, but he ended up calling a whole bunch of people telling them that church was cancelled. Whew! So out I went again. This time I chased kids and had lots of snowballs thrown at me. The kids had lots of fun.

Then they came in and totally trashed the house. Every room was awfully messy. Difficult to see the floor. All that kind of fun.
Then they went back out with Rob for a bit in the afternoon. Only Caleb came back in because he heard a dog bark.

They went out again today, but Caleb cut it short because he slipped on the ice. Rob, Beth and Jacob walked over to the park and played on the slide and swung and had fun. Caleb and I watched Mythbusters.

Today I managed to clean the house. Right now it is clean, but I've got a mammoth pile of laundry to do. Huge!

I stocked up on food for this weekend in the event that we lost power, since they were calling for so much sleet. And I remember the great ice storm of 2002. That was not fun. Rob requested that I get a can of SPAM and so I did. (He's the only one who'll eat any of it.) I mentioned that I missed Turkey SPAM. (Sad but true I liked that stuff.) This conversation followed:

Rob: If I had some Turkey SPAM. I'd get some cranberry sauce, and some gouda cheese and make me a sandwich.

Me: But if you spent the money on gouda cheese (which is oh so yummy) Why in the heck would you put it on SPAM?

The thing is that Rob's spam sandwiches are quite complicated. It involves frying the spam, melting cheese on top, frying an egg and then eating the sandwich.

We've had a fun weekend, though we are going a bit stir crazy--with at least one more day of family togetherness since school and Rob's work are both closed down tomorrow.

Have a great week everyone! And try a SPAMwich!

Snow!

The kids had a lot of fun playing in the snow this weekend, and I've been more than happy to stay home from work, sleep in, and basically not do a lot other than goof off with the kids, watch old episodes of Lost, and play an occasional videogame, because that is what snow days are all about, right?
We've built miniaturized snowmen, thrown snowballs (more like snow chunks) and ate a couple pints of snow and/or dirt in the snow. We've watched a couple episodes of "The Dangerous Catch" cause the show seemed fairly "winter-like," with its dangerously frigid fishing in the Baltic Sea. And we might even have to drink a few mugs of hot cocoa. I'll have mine with mint and melted chocolate chips, thank you.
There's still lots of photos and videos I've never gotten around to posting, stuff like birthday parties and baptisms. I'll hopefully get to all that soon, but until then, here's some snow photos for your enjoyment ...

Five!

So it's officially over. Caleb had his birthday party and we are heading into smooth sailing. No more parties, life shouldn't be crazy anymore--but wait! Crap I forgot we are moving in a week. Oops. That's a lot of work in a short amount of time. But it should be all good. I'm glad that we are moving, it's a great reason to purge. (Or get rid of the junk that I don't want in my house.) I'm looking at this as positively as possible, and I'm getting a game plan together as we speak.

Caleb had a great birthday party and is currently growing lizards and dinosaurs in the kitchen. We had a lot of fun, with boys running wild during the party. They played outside for half an hour and hazarded some comments from the neighbors. We blew things up and exploded things and I even heard that Rob's magic show was hot dinner conversation. Great fun!

I must say Caleb is dreading tomorrow since his kindergarten physical is scheduled (read shots) and he's quite upset. It's important for everyone to know that we might have a wizard in the family. Caleb has a scar on his forehead and is absolutely CONVINCED that it means that he is just like Harry Potter and will be able to do magic soon. Very soon. Not magic tricks, but real magic.

Jacob! What a week for Jacob. He is pretty much potty trained. Two days with no accidents until dinner time this week. I can take him on long errands and he does great. I'm super proud. Now we just need to break the paci habit, but that will come with time, and it's only at night. Today he came up and told me three long sentences right in a row. Eight or nine words a piece. It made me so happy. He really has come far. At church today he practiced writing his name for about five minutes. Not quite legible yet, but he is showing interest.

Beth is great, and staying up late to read the Wimpy Kid books. She read sixty pages tonight. So proud. I'm glad that she loves to read, even if it mainly seems to be only at night. She's doing a science project on the Water Cycle with Rob too. So that's great news as well.

That's really all of the family news--on a side note prayers for my mom would be appreciated. She's in the hospital with Pulmonary Embolism, which means she has clots in her lungs. Things are looking like she'll be there for a few more days. Take care everyone!

A fun birthday!

We took the kids to Chuck E Cheese to celebrate Jacob's birthday. He had a ton of fun and so did everyone else. Only one more birthday party to go and that's this weekend. As I type the words I feel myself going into panic mode, but I know that it will work out. They all have. And then I'll be done for another eleven months. Great! A few months of of stress is easier than having it spread out all over the place.

The kids are restless today. I took them to the park to let them run out their energy, but they wanted to leave in just a few minutes. Then we came home and they are all over each other. Not happy. They play well for about ten minutes and then start fighting again. It could have something to do with the interrupted sleep from the drive home late last night. I'm looking forward to school starting again though! I can make it to tomorrow.

Beth has fallen in love with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. She stayed up late all last week reading, reading reading. She's currently working on designing her own book. I'm happy. Reading is officially fun, which means I've got a reader on my hands. (I hope that it will continue past these books. I think it will as her confidence keeps growing.)

Caleb had a field trip at the Science Museum. Jakey and I spent the time he was in a class riding the escalator. That's right we rode up and down the escalators for an hour. I was very ready to leave, but the boys both had a great time. And I'm glad. Caleb is growing up so fast, and I think he is so very ready to go to kindergarten. He's all excited to do practice sheets in the books I have.

Jacob has decided he won't wear diapers anymore. So Potty training here we come. I don't know why I've been so reluctant. You think I'd be looking forward to no more diapers ever. You think, but the week of work isn't so much fun. He's doing better with a successful poop on the potty over the weekend. Jacob will be potty trained soon.

Rob had a successful debut in Hickory. It matched the Apex debut. Now they just need to find a distributer and his years of hard work will have paid off. The kids were restless at the premiere on Saturday, so I spent it running around the church. It's okay though, as Caleb told me I've got the whole thing memorized.

Writing is getting back on track and things are looking up. Have a great week everyone!

A Career Change

We are moving to a new apartment! Hooray, more space, and better other stuff! At least we're hoping. Anyway the past few weeks we've been hunting and we decided on our new place and finalized it today. When I told the kids they were okay. Then we had this conversation.

Caleb: "But Mom I thought we were moving to Hickory." (As far as I know this wasn't one of the options.)

Me: "It'd be nice to leave near Grandma, but Dad wouldn't have a job there."

Caleb: "But I want to live in Hickory."

Me: "Do you know a job Dad could do?"

Caleb: "He could kill deer."

Beth: "Killing deer isn't a job, it's a hobby."

Me: "Do you think Daddy could kill deer? He only went hunting once and decided he didn't like it."

Beth: "I don't like it when animals get hurt."

Me: "It's okay if you need the meat though."

Beth: "But Pap doesn't need the meat."

Me: "Yes he does. But that's one reason why we've talked about going vegetarian. It's better for the animals."

Beth: "I don't want to give up meat. I don't care if they kill chickens. They're stupid."

Me: "What about cows?"

Beth: "Cows are just big and stupid. They aren't cute like deer."


What a conversation. The boys had no opinion on killing the deer. I think they'd just rather shoot the guns. Have a great day!

An Announcement of Sorts

Jacob is now three. He's informed me of this two days in a row with absolutely no encouragement from me. It's official, never mind that his birthday isn't until next week.

He keeps telling me:

"Mommy I'm big now. I'm three." Then showing me his three fingers.

I figure it's close enough that correcting him would just be pointless, but does this get us out of celebrating his birthday?

Whew! Getting Back on Track!

This last week was the first full week since the Christmas break. It meant the kids were back in school, speech therapy was back on and Rob went back to work. We also said farewell to my parents and Matt on Tuesday. It was a week of recovery as well--at least for me. The older I get the more quiet time I need. Time to just be alone--it sounds awful since i'm a proud stay-at -home mom, but there it is. Caleb got sick, and slowly recovered. Then Jacob got sick and keeps dodging back and forth between great and not so great--his voice was virtually gone most of the day. And poor, poor Rob is just miserable to quote "This is the worse I've felt in six years." That statement left me wondering what awful sickness he was referring to. Strep always really knocks him out hard, and the worse time he had that when he graduated with his MA. He was miserable then, probably the worst I remember seeing him (worse than now-but I'm not feeling the way he does so who knows?) and that wasn't six years ago just four. So I'm really wondering what the worst he felt in six years means. (Note: I truly feel bad that he is sick, and I want him to get better and sleep lots and I even dragged the kids out to the store he said had echineacia and Keffir and spent over an hour looking for it in the cold, so I am sympathetic--just curious about his statement.)

It's also time to get everything back onto a schedule. We are starting a rewards system to go with our nightly chores routine. It should be lots and lots and lots of fun. At least for me. I'm going to save so much time by having us all work together.

Beth and Caleb loved gymnastics. I was super proud of Beth she got on the tallest balance beam and jumped and flipped backwards and stood on her head, and hands. Stuff I wasn't sure she was going to do. Caleb rocked it. He totally surpassed everyone in his class, but he had a lot of fun. He did have a hard time waiting for his turn and staying on task. I think he just wanted to do everything right away. At the end in his class they had the opportunity to show off a skill. Most of the kids ran in a circle--not Caleb. He did a head spin, handstand into a back flip. There was a collective gasp at his skill by all of the parents.

Beth had her first achievement day activity this week as well and she loved it. She was nervous going into it, but came out extremely happy. Extremely, extremely happy. I love the girls in our ward, her age and a little older. They are so good at being friendly and making her feel welcome.

I tested Caleb and he's doing great on his ABC's. He's got all of the sounds down and five that he needs to learn the names of. And he can write most of them. So we are in a good place. He's going to rock kindergarten next year. I registered him this week. He was so excited to go and so good while I filled out the pages of paperwork. I was super proud of him.

Jacob gets registered for preschool tomorrow. He already wants to go. I think he is going to miss Caleb once he starts school. But I know it will be good for him. It should be fun to be one on one with a kid again.

Well that's it. Have a great week anyone. No real funny stories this week, but I'll keep you posted I'm sure there will be a crazy mess sometime this week!

Family, Vacations, and Visitations

The past two weeks have been busy! First we went to Hickory to celebrate Christmas. It was a lot of fun and the kids loved spending time with their cousins. They even got to play in the snow. I'm pretty sure Rob posted pictures. I stayed home a few days to really clean the house for the family that was coming to visit us after Christmas. So I missed the snow. It's okay, I'm finding the longer I'm away from utah winters the less I miss them. Right now it's cold, and I'm miserable. We may end up in the Bahamas or Florida, but only in the winters.

The kids loved their Christmas and the Zhu Zhu pets were a huge hit. Ginormous! And Beth loved her iPod and Caleb his MP3 player. And Jacob was just generally happy with everything that he got. Rob got a GPS system and was quite content to follow it around to various places in town to see if it knew what it was doing. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it did not. Today was his first day back to work, and he was quite impressed with the traffic report feature on it. He loved his toy. My big gift were pots and pans, but a super nice aluminum set, since I do not want the nonstick kind ever again. I'm actually really impressed at how much better everything is cooking in the pans. We also got couch covers, which are a vast improvement over our current ten year old and then some couches.

After having a great time in Hickory, we came home and my sister and her hubby came for a short visit. My kids were ecstatic to finally meet their only cousin on my side of the family! Jacob was a little put off. He liked Ethan, but I think he was worried he'd become a permanent fixture. Ethan was totally sweet, and it was nice to see Sarah and Cameron too. They are both awesome.

And then my folks flew in for a week bringing Matt with them. They came down for Beth's baptism. It was a great day. I'm so proud of her choice and all that she has decided to do in her life. She's growing up so fast and learning so much.

The visit with the grandparents was fun, lots of playing games, eating food, crafts and even a trip to Build-a_Bear. Jacob was over the moon. It was funny because he'd never been and as we got close to the store he took off running into the store. Jacob loves stuffed animals and he was in heaven. He got a stuffed monkey (of course) and then picked him out a prince's suit and named him King. My mom tried to convince him to get a more manly outfit for the monkey, but Jacob was set on the prince.

We set goals this week for FHE, but I'm also getting schedules set up. My life is much smoother when everyone is on a schedule. It's about to get crazer because the kids are starting gymnastics this week! I'm sure that they will love it!

Have a great week!

Celebrating Elisabeth

It's hard to believe Beth has turned eight. It seems that almost overnight she has matured so much. While preparing for her baptismal service, I decided I wanted to make a little slideshow commemorating some of her life thus far. I hope you enjoy.

Beth's Slideshow from Robert Caldwell on Vimeo.