Happy Halloween

I think this was the funnest Halloween I've ever had. To be honest, Matt and I are pretty lazy when it comes to holidays--we do the bare minimum for the kids sake but don't put forth the efforts necessary to make things extra special. Our kids make up for our lack of enthusiasm and it was so fun to watch them in action.

Ellie has been obsessed with Harry Potter for about 6 months now so she's been planning her Hermoine outfit for a while. Then, a few months ago, when we decided one day to actually brush Mathew's hair, we discovered that he looked a lot like the Harry Potter villain, Draco Malfoy. Sophie wanted to be princess Leah but changed her mind at the last minute and went for the BYU cheerleader outfit. I found monkey hats at Micheal's so I wore Troy in the baby carrier and we were monkeys.

It was delightful to watch the excitement during trick-or-treating. Watching Mathew was like watching the tigger movie in fast forward. His little feet were moving so fast and there a little spring in his step. After every house he would yell "They gave me candy!!" as if it were the first time. His bucket was full but he wouldn't let anyone touch it.

Half way through the night, when he was on a major sugar high, he started saying he was super-Mathew and was flying around with his cape. He had all of us laughing so hard.

The next morning was Ellie's birthday. She got a pocket knife and a "fur real" toy duck. She is one of those kids that really loves her toys and it's so fun to watch her bond with them.

Troy's about to walk and is transforming before our eyes. Yesterday he started waving and he is climbing up the gate I use as a play pin. He plays games with us and his hair is starting to grow so sometimes I don't even recognize him. Can I slow down the clock?

The next week everyone got sick. Luckily it was a mild strain of the flu but still noses were dripping all over and everyone was running to the bathroom all the time. I kept the girls home 2 days and had all 4 kids needing my constant attention. The stomach flu with a recently-trained toddler gives a little extra adventure to the house. In fact, I even went and bought a pregnancy test because I kept on thinking that everything was smelling really bad in the house and I must be pregnant. But sure enough, the house really was just smelling extra bad.

Potty training, Sleep training and cross-training

I've been recently mourning the fact that I haven't been blogging in so long. If I don't write things down, it's almost as if they never happened. The kids have been asking me to tell them stories about when they were little but I'm surprised at how little I remember--how much gets lost.

The last few months I've been focusing on getting some fundamentals in place--Establishing schedules, routines, potty training Mathew and trying get in shape. Now that Troy's sleeping through the night, Mathew's peeing in the Potty and I've lost 40 pounds, I'm ready to begin documenting my life at some level again.

Yesterday was a true testament to how quickly kids grow up. Mathew made a huge leap in his drawing. For weeks he has sat at the table drawing lines and circles--spending 20+ minutes on his works of art and proudly replacing anything on the fridge with his work. Yesterday, his lines and circles turned into recognizable apple trees. Troy started doing patty-cake and pointing to his nose on demand. He looks at me with such intense eyes, just begging me to teach him a new trick.

We went to San Diego last weekend and stayed with my sister, Julia, and her family. We were able to use our free Sea World passes and went to the beach. The kids played in the ocean for 3 hours straight. Very fun.

Mathew loves dinosaurs but has his own version of their names: Rock-osaurus, Dino-saurus (my personal favorite), Broccolli-saurus (he corrects us when we say Brachiosaurus). There are more but I haven't fully decipered them yet. I caught Mathew standing on a ladder, with his pants at his ankles, trying to pee into the washing machine with a load of freshly-washed clothes. He still has that mischievious streak in him but at the same time is so loving. There isn't an hour that goes by in the day that he doesn't say "I wov you mommy" or give me a hug. So it all evens out in the end.

Summertime

I've gotten so behind on blogging. Mostly because we misplaced our camera charger for a few weeks and pictures are what give me ideas of what to right about. Anyway, this is what we've been doing with our time..

-Church: I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting 2 weeks ago. They'd ask me to speak 20 minutes on "the Sabbath--a delight". That's the longest talk I'd ever given and I put a lot of time and energy into it. It feels good to go through that every once in a while. Also, after more than 2 years, I was just released as RS teacher. I really enjoyed that calling even though it was a stress every month. At least it kept me honest with my scripture study, etc.

-Tennis: Matt has a dream of everyone playing tennis. The girls really like it and identify themselves as Tennis girls. We put them in a 2 week, 2 hour a day camp. It's really pushing Ellie's attention span although she made a friend there so it keeps her going. Sophie's improving a ton. Mathew cries that he wants to play so we got him a racket and I've been just throwing balls to him during the class--it's very cute.

-I hired a 12 yr old girl to come over 2 hours every morning to help me with my routine. While I do piano and reading with each girl, Sydney works with Mathew to do "chores and homework" (unload dishwasher, clean up books, work on coloring and cutting). While I work with one girl, the other does chores & homework. Then the girls play board games while I take Tito on a snooze cruise. So far it's been nice because it would take me all day on my own. This way we work hard for 2 hours and then have time for play.

-Gymnastics: Ellie and Mathew had been doing gymnastics but Sophie wanted to go too so we found a time where all of the kids take a class at the same time. It is the most enjoyable hour for me to sit and watch all 3 of them!

-Thundercats: Matt loves digging out old shows he watched when he was young..somehow got a hold of the old Thundercats episodes. The girls LOVE them. I was trying to hide them because I think they are a little too old for Ellie but she eats it up. Whenever Mathew is sleeping I let them watch an episode. Ellie tells everyone about the show that has really cool face painting and practices running like Cheetara.

-Mini-family reunion: Matt's cousin, Lee, and his family are moving to Guam with the Air Force so there was a reunion at a park last weekend. It was fun to see everyone and then we were able to hang out with Matt's cousins on Sunday and Monday too.

Visit with the cousins

James and Kristy stopped in Arizona for 2 weeks before going to Mexico City for the Summer (James has an internship). Here are some highlights:
-Filling our van to full capacity with kids/luggage
-Taking 7 kids ages 7&under all genetically siblings to the zoo twice
-Dancing in the rain with umbrellas
-Kids had a blast at a small amusement park in Phoenix.
-Ellie and Isaac bonding over Magic Tree House books
-James and Kristy buying a used Phil and Teds stroller on Craigs list and then realizing it was being sold at Costco for the same price. Then they sold the old one on craigs list and then bought a new one.....all of this within24 hours

Preschool graduation

Ellie had her preschool graduation this week. They had a little ceremony and each kid got and released a balloon. Ellie's was the only balloon that flopped to the floor and then I realized that she had been trying to suck the helium out of it. She is always looking for a laugh.

She was wearing a hand me down dress of Sophie's so I thought it was so funny that one of her friends showed up in the same dress.

Here is Ellie with her friend Jacob. They both insist that they are going to get married one day...hmmm. They are such sweet friends though.

The last picture is Ellie and her cross stitch project. I got it as a summer activity and she really loves it. She also likes to wear an old pair of my reading glasses (glass fell out of them).

Matt's b-day

Matt's birthday came and left. Poor guy had to work early so I think he was at work before any of us had woken up.

I was able to get someone to watch Tito while I went to see Sophie's performance of the "Three piggy opera at school". She is such a performer at heart. She's becoming so reserved but when she gets in front of a crowd she has no reservations. It was fun to watch. Here is a picture of Sophie (right) and her friend Rachel(left).

That night I made Matt's favorite meal (Turkish Shish-kebabs and rice). For desert, I made my Mom's recipe of baked Alaska. It was fun for the presentation mostly because the brownie was slightly burned. But it was fun and different (not quite as beautiful as my Mom's used to be).

I love this action shot of us keeping Tito's hands off of it for the picture. Also, I just noticed Troy's feet made it in the bottome picture.

For Matt's present, I got a digital photo frame he's been wanting for a while. I never wanted it because I'm not crazy about how it looks but it has been fun to actually look at pictures. It's funny to see how bad our memories are...it seems like we only remember things that we have pictures of.

Eagar

Last weekend we went to Eagar. Some highlights were:
-Playing in the irrigation water
-The kids got to ride horses with grandpa
-We cracked and ate a coconut
-Enjoying beautiful scenery/weather
-Feeding cows and horses
-Grandpa Sam's expressions...here are some of our favorites from the weekend:
(to Tito) "come on weenie-arm, you're slower than the second coming"

"you couldn't pour pee out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel"

"I haven't been this happy since the hogs ate my little brother"

(to Matt while fixing fence) "That's good enough for the girls we go with"

(to Tito--regarding his babbling) "When are you going to start talking white-man?"
"that'll make a rabbit slap a bear"

Weeks are flying by

A few weeks ago I ordered a grain grinder and mixer and have been looking forward to using them. When they arrived, I put the boxes aside for a time when I could carefully unwrap the new arrivals. I noticed the kids were being unusually quiet while I was practicing piano with Sophie and when I came out, there was a scene straight out of a Lost episode. They had stabbed the boxes with kebab sticks and forks.


Since then, we've gotten good use out of the machines. I'm trying to get my kids to like bread since they currently refuse to eat any kind of sandwich. I've been making a lot of pizza, cinnamon roles and other things that will help them ease into liking bread. I got this cool bread recipe that I love that uses lecithin instead of oil and makes 4 loaves of bread in under 1 hour. Between this and trying to use my food storage, there have been some growing pains as we transition what we eat.

Meal planning is more difficult for me than it should be. Take bread for instance. I've worked hard to take bread out of my diet because of my weight issues but then my kids stopped liking bread too. It's difficult to factor in different tastes, what's healthy, what's economical, etc. I'm still figuring it out. I'm really looking forward to this Summer and hoping the kids will participate more in the meal process.

American Express announced another set of major lay-offs. In the fall he survived a 10% of the workforce cut. He was the only person left on his row. Right now it looks like we may have dodged another round but we can never get too comfortable. I am heartbroken for all the people who lost their jobs though and will try to be prepared no matter what. The most important things, of couse, are family & health.

I took Ellie to the Elementary School office the other day and she said to the receptionist. "Excuse me, I'd like to register for Kindergarten please". What a moment. This girl feels so grown up--Hopefully her spirits are not dampened by the big kids on the playground.

Show Choir Concert

The girls have been going to a show choir class where they sing and dance a little. Mostly they just enjoy the performances. This was Ellie's first time doing it and we didn't know what to expect but she did a great job. I think they had a good time. I got some medals for them afterwards. I never used to do that but have noticed that they are dissapointed when they see that other kids are getting trophies, flowers, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wFRjoiU1ns

Piu-Piu

It seems like my girls were born wearing a purse and playing with dolls. Tito, on the other hand is a different story. Although he can hang with the girls in playing house if he has to, he clearly favors anything that can be shot or ridden. I have been convinced that this was innate and in no way a learned behavior since he was born into a house of barbie dolls and frilly dress-ups. The other day Matt was asking me why Tito was saying "Piu-Piu" (Pee-oo Pee-oo). I thought it was obvious that was the sound of a shooting gun. Matt informed me that, in English, a gun says "bang bang" not "piu piu". That was a real blow to me because I honestly don't remember teaching Tito to shoot guns. I swear he started doing that on his own...but I'm the only one around here that was raised in Mexico so somehow, Imust have tought my son to shoot in Spanish.

Did I already mention that I spent Tuesday on the phone with poison control? Tito got into my prenatal vitamins while I was nursing Troy. Considering he no symptoms, aside from a few nasty diapers, I think he must have only eaten a few. Although at the time I had no idea how many he'd eaten.

Saturday was a Mother's day event at Ellie's pre-school. She was so cute and totally treated me like a Queen. Recently she's been extra-super polite to me--she asks me if she can help, gives me lots of hugs, etc. She also wanted to choose my outfit and made me wear one of her favorite necklaces which was way too small for me. Also notice the corsage on my arm.

It was great to see all of her art work and to see her interact with friends and teachers. She's a gem.

The circle of trust

I've had the hardest time figuring out the food storage thing. Over a year ago, I decided that I wanted to get serious about it and I ordered wheat. It's been one thing after another that has gone wrong...order was dropped, cannery closed for Summer, order dropped again, cannery decided to only sell wheat every 3 months, etc, etc. So we decided to do it on our own. We got the cans and wheat at the cannery and then bought a bunch of rice at Costco. It took a while to locate the stake canning machine but finally we got it. After all the hastle, I'm now realizing that most people here (who actually have food storage) have done it this way. Why did this turn out to be so complicated and shrouded in secrecy? It feels good to have finally broken into the circle of food storage.

The girls had a lot of fun too. At the cannery they helped me count labels and we talked about the process that the cannery goes through as well as the concept of rotating food. They enjoyed filling the cans but especially loved working the canner and labeling the boxes. They decorated some of the boxes and I feel like they are time-capsules in a sense.


I also ordered a wheat grinder and Bosch mixer this week and am looking forward to using more grains. Our grain intake has been limited to whole wheat waffles made in the vitamix and cracked wheat cereal.

The quiet observer

I've posted way too much tonight but I'm avoiding going to bed. I just wanted to post this picture because it summarizes Troy right now. He just sits there with his dimpled smile, watching everyone. At this point, he was watching the kids squirt eachother with a hose when it's still way too cold for that kind of thing. Troy's like the "greenie" on the mission that is to the point that he understands everything but just can't speak yet.

Digging up old ghosts

A friend from the ward called and asked me to help out at her daughter's school on Wednesday. They were doing a reenactment of Immigration at Ellis Island and were trying to help kids understand what it would have felt like to live through that experience. They had kids dress up like immigrants from that era and grouped them into families, gave them passports and fake identities and a few of us volunteers pretended to be immigration officers. We were told to only speak in our foreign language--the point was for the kids to feel the confusion that immigrants felt. We were supposed to ask questions, and pick who to let through and who to deport.

It really didn't matter what I asked or said to these kids because none of them could understand a lick of Bulgarian and probably had no idea such a country existed. I started out just asking what's your name, where are you from, etc. The kids had no clue what I was saying. Half way through, I caught myself saying to a group of six year olds-- "What do you think you are doing here, you slimy cult followers? What right do you think you have to come to our country and tell us how to live?" At that point I realized I was having a cathartic experience...remembering the harassment I experienced on my mission.

Bulgaria wouldn't give us Visas so every month we had to leave the country and come back in again. The closest border was Yugoslavia (Serbia) so the mission Pres would drive us to the border, let us out and we would have to walk out into "no man's land" which is a strip of land between the Bulgarian and Serbian borders. Then we'd turn around and show our passports to come back in. The guards there hated us and would harass us and sometimes tell us they wouldn't let us back in the country. They of course did but sometimes would make us just sit there trying to scare us.

Police would also bang on our apartment doors sometimes and ask us what we were doing there, Always inspected documents, etc. and basically tried to intimidate us. We used to joke that they were just trying to keep track of our birthdays because that's one of the questions they always ask among hundreds of others.

Right before I left, we got a new mission president and he was determined to stop the harassment. At the time, Bulgaria wanted to join the EU and of course religious harassment is not looked on favorably. Pres. Stephens asked the missionaries to report every single incidence of harassment and then he began to file claims. According to Pres. Stephens, Bulgaria became one of the top in the world in religious persecution that year because of all of the claims. The harassment stopped after that.

Anyways, it was an interesting re-living that this week.

"Day off"

The kids have a 4 day weekend and for them it's a day off but for me that means overtime. Sophie and Ellie always get really into their imagination games on days off so that means messes. I love to see them play that way but I must say that between having family and friends over last week and being out of town on the weekend, I'm really behind on laundry and house cleaning.

Matt took the kids to the gym for an hour on Friday and it gave me some time to catch up a little. The kids love going to the gym because they always do face painting. When they got home they were deep in character of butterfly and some kind of Spring fairy/princess and were doing Nacho-libre type dancing.



We are actually getting a pretty healthy crop of strawberries in our garden. It doesn't replace the cartons I'm buying weekly on sale, but Mathew does enjoy picking/eating them and I think he's finally grasping the concept of why we wait to pick them when they are red. He also enjoys finding the mutant strawberries like the "twins" in the picture.

Last night we dyed Easter eggs and, like every activity, it slowly evolved into bigger and bigger projects. We started dying eggs but then they were tie dying paper towels and then old T-shirts.

This morning Matt and I enjoyed listening to the excitement of finding Easter baskets and I couldn't help but think how quickly these darling years will pass. Even though Mathew ate way too much chocolate and that annoying plastic "grass" gets everywhere, this time will be over way too soon.

Tonight the kids wanted to have a slumber party and the girls insisted that Mathew join them. Matt and I walked in to see they had piled up almost every pillow and blanket in the house in their room and Mathew was sitting on top of his thrown daring us to try to move him. We knew it wouldn't actually work but we let them try it. Sophie fell asleep right away while Ellie and Mathew looked at books together for about an hour. After that, Mathew was acting up too much so we finally put him in his bed. Oh well, tomorrow they can sleep in.

More Safford

We had an Easter egg hunt in Safford. They have some really cool property so it was a lot of fun for the kids. We let the younger kids go out a few minutes early so they could get the easy eggs and here is a video of when the older kids were finally unleashed.




At one point Mathew hurt his foot and he was telling everyone that he was climbing a mountain and he stepped on a porcupine. We were all laughing until later that day he came in saying he found the porcupine and wanted to show it to me--one of the burs that are all over the place. The funny thing is that it really did look like a little porcupine.

Friends and family

Some old friends of ours, the Detmans, were in town last Thursday visiting from Utah. They have 5 darling kids and it was so fun to catch up with them!








The next day, we decided to go down to Safford and spend conference weekend with Matt's cousins. It's always a good time to travel because we are relieved of church callings. The kids were so happy to be with their cousins and, although I did have to chase Mathew down a little, and we had some melt downs, overall it was relaxing. They live in a rural area and the kids love just running around in the dirt and throwing rocks. Kristen (Matt's cousin's wife) made delicious strawberry shortcake and Wes made home-made smoked pulled pork...yum. There is something about seing that many kids together that is so darling. The boy cousins really tried to include Mathew which was nice of them since he kept on wrecking their games. Matt took the last picture with his phone...Mathew helping the boys play xbox.

Attack of the flying scrolls

This Sunday Sophie and Ellie got into a fight about something. Later on, I was doing piano practice with Ellie when a piece of paper rolled up with a rubber band around it. It was a note from Sophie apologizing for what she'd done earlier. I could see Ellie's anger just melt away instantaneously. After piano, Ellie was very busy and every few minutes would call out--"how do you spell.." Later, when I was doing piano with Sophie, these scrolls came flying in one by one--there must have been 20 of them. The first was an apology note from Ellie and the rest were pictures she'd drawn for her. The girls were so giggly and excited--it was really sweet. I caught this picture as Ellie was scurrying down the hal --about to deliver a load o "flying scrolls".


At testimony meeting that day, Sophie asked me if it was OK for her to bear her testimony about flying scrolls. I told her that was fine as long as she could tie it into her testimony about the gospel. She said she wasn't sure what to say about that so she better wait til next time. Our next FHE was about bearing testimonies so I'm curious to see if she will get up.

Ellie

Ellie starts Kindergarten this Fall and I'm really going to miss having her home. She has overcome so many obstacles this year. At the beginning of the year, she looked like Linus from the show Peanuts. More and more she wouldn't take her thumb out of her mouth and would carry her blankie everywhere. It was really affecting her socially because she would prefer to sit out with her thumb rather than interact. She seemed very fragile. I was going to wait til this Summer to start talking about the thumb, but Matt just asked her if she wanted to stop and Ellie said yes. So she agreed to letting us put that bad-tasting nail polish on everyday to help her stop. Motivated also by the bribe of getting a barbie if she stopped, she really worked hard until she was able to give it up. Ever since then, she has been a different person. She seems infinitely confident, her allergies disappeared, and has endless energy.

She is really determined and is working hard in so many areas--reading, rollerblading and she even passed the last level of the typing tutor this week. I need to learn something from her ability to stick to her goals. Of course, maybe if I was offered face painting and tatoos as rewards, I would get something done too.

Messes and haircuts

This week, I cut out a bunch of clip art and made a "Sleep Rules" poster for Mathew. We had one for Sophie and Ellie and it really seemed to work. Mathew seemed to enjoy and understand the discussion. The first night was awesome..he stayed in bed, didn't call out a million times, etc. Day 2 however, I was telling Matt how wonderfully the poster was working...thinking Mathew was asleep.... when we heard little noises coming from the hallway. He had been very busy and had emptied a ton of stuff out of his room and was dragging everything right outside his door (maybe building a fortress?). Anyway, not sure if this photo totally captures the destruction in his path, but you get the idea.

We had a pretty big wind storm mid-week and it blew tons more lemons off of the tress. I spent a few hours sorting them, realizing that most of last week's batch was rotting already. On Friday we tried doing the lemonade stand thing--except I thought more parents would be interested in buying just lemons--to entice the kids, we decided to offer a free tatoo if you bought a dollar worth of lemons.

We live across from the school so we do get quite a bit of foot traffic but the down side is most people have lemons coming out of their ears right now. We did get 4 customers and it was cute to see Ellie be a salesman. She was calling out to everyone that passed by and would often get scared half way through the sentence. Ellie made a really cute sign that said Lemons..you can't tell in the picture, but the S is backwards. Mathew couldn't figure out what was going on. Every time Ellie would yell out "do you want to buy lemons?", Mathew would say, "No Ellie, they don't want any lemons!" ...he was getting so frustrated that she wasn't listening to him. Then Mathew wanted to play with the money and an all-out brawl broke out in public between Ellie and Mathew.

On Saturday, we took Ellie, Sophie and Mathew to get their hair cut. I've always cut Mathew's hair and I was feeling guilty that it looked a little crooked last time, so I thought I'd watch a professional do it to see what I was doing wrong. Mathew was petrified and sat more still that I ever thought possible. I commented that Mathew was being really good for the beautician and she bragged that she was "really good with kids". I had to laugh because, by the look on Mathew's face, I think he thought he was going to die. I didn't try to burst her bubble though.

Anyway, her cut was way more crooked than mine-- and Mathew doesn't even stay still for me-- so I'm just going to do it myself next time.