Sad day for Provo

The Historic Provo Tabernacle was heavily damaged by fire today. The fire started around 2:30 this morning - they think in the attic somewhere. Right now it looks like the building is a complete loss. The Provo Tabernacle was a beautiful landmark in downtown Provo. When we lived there we were not too far from the tabernacle and they used to hold our stake conferences there. We will have to wait and see if anything is salvageable and if they will be able to rebuild it.

Here is a Deseret News article about the fire:
Provo Tabernacle burns in four-alarm fire

Kid talk

I just got home from driving Blondie to piano lessons and Kay came up to me while sitting at the computer, hugged my arm and said, "Hi Mom! I missed you soooo much!"

Kid talk

Kitty on the drive home from ballet yesterday: "Mom, how do the leaves get back on the trees?"

Starting to move!

When we put MJ on the floor now she will somehow manage to get herself turned around when we are not looking. She still hasn't quite figured out how to roll back to her back from her stomach but she has started scooting herself a tiny bit and will use her arms to turn herself a little at a time.

What do you mean I'm turned sideways?

Serious face (love those eyes!)
Happy face

Temple Square

The women's choir that my mom sings with performed twice at Temple Square last week. My family decided to drive downtown for the Friday evening performance and then we could see the lights there as well. Unfortunately we didn't anticipate all of the traffic that we would encounter on the way there (apparently there was a Jazz basketball game that night). The performance started at 8:30 and we ended up getting there a little late. They were performing at the Assembly Hall so the audience could walk in and out at anytime during the performance. It was fun hearing some new versions of some of the Christmas songs. It's a fun group that sings some silly songs as well as some serious ones and tries to get audience participation too. Afterwards we went to walk around the Temple Square grounds a little and then we noticed that all of the visitor's centers close at 9:00 and they shut off the nativity scene as well. So we just walked a little over to the reflecting pool and then went back to our cars and back home. Luckily it was a fairly warm night compared to what we had been experiencing a few days before so the kids didn't freeze too much!

Little things

* Having a quick and relatively pain free dentist appointment. I was gone from my home for less than an hour! I was the only patient there when I first arrived and I think there was only one other person there when I left.

* My dad watching my three youngest kids while I was at the dentist. The dentist and his assistant thought I was crazy for asking my dad to watch them for me - especially a 4 month old. I never even thought twice about asking him because he loves kids and does great with them. Kay especially loves it when Bacca comes over. Normally my mom would have come instead of him or with him but she had a concert that morning.

* MJ sleeping the whole time I was gone.

* M&M getting Kitty ready for her dance pictures while I was at a rehearsal on Saturday. She got her all dressed and even fixed and curled her hair!

* Online shopping! I am loving it this year!

* Helping the Bear scouts make tool boxes. Yesterday we finished putting the screws in, sanded the boxes and started painting them. We will finish them up next week.

More Kay talk

katar = leotard (at first I thought she was trying to say guitar)
cracker = nutcracker

"Mom!! Get back up here right now!" - This is what she was yelling the other day after I had put her in bed because Luke had put another blanket on her (one that she had asked for) and apparently it wasn't put on her quite right.

Fire

I was writing down the titles of some Christmas piano books that the kids have and after I walked away from the piano I heard Kay say, "Oh no! That house is blowing up!" I went back to look at what she was pointing at and saw that one of the books had a drawing of a house on it with smoke pouring out of the chimney. I tried to explain to her that it was from a fire in a fireplace so the house was okay, but who knows how much of that she understands...

Thanksgiving 2010

I just realized that I haven't written a post about Thanksgiving this year. We stayed at home this year and invited my sister and her husband and little boy over for dinner. My parents were up in Idaho again this year with my oldest brother's family. I made the rolls, pumpkin pie, and jello dish the day before Thanksgiving so I kept sitting around the house Thanksgiving morning wondering why I wasn't busier. I like to cook the turkey in the oven bags because it keeps it very moist and it cuts down on the cooking time - only 2 hours for a 15 lb turkey. My sister brought the sweet potatoes and an apple pie. MJ ended up sleeping during most of the dinner which was awesome for me! Baby W seemed to enjoy all of the attention and chaos - at least until the end when he was getting really tired. Kay enjoyed bringing toys up for him and even tried to pick him up once (by the neck)! It was a nice enjoyable time for all.

Snow fun!

M&M has been a great help with getting the kids suited up to go out and play in the snow! Kay ditched the mittens after a few minutes and I found her playing in a pile of dirt/mud with her fingers... Whenever the kids come in from playing they have to break out the hot chocolate and marshmallows!Blondie making a snow angel. When Kay saw Blondie laying down in the snow she yelled to her, "Lee-lee! Are you okay?"

Kid talk

Trying to get the kids to help out around the house is an ongoing struggle that we deal with in our home. Right now we have room assignments for the week that the kids are supposed to help clean in addition to their bedroom throughout the week. Today I was making Kitty do some work to help get the living room clean and DH and I were helping her out with vacuuming it. Later on the kids made some chocolate chip cookies and some of the kids had wandered into the living room while eating a cookie when Kitty piped up, "Hey! Don't eat cookies in the living room! I just vacuumed in there!"

Tummy time

Trying to eat a toy
This is MJ's pouty lip. She usually makes this face when she is about to burst into tears (like when her dad laughs). I'm not sure why she made the face this time - maybe the camera flash scared her. Luckily this time she didn't burst into tears...

Blizzard?

We had a ton of media hype about a huge blizzard that was supposed to hit Utah Tuesday evening - leaving 4-8 inches of snow in the valleys with 1-2 foot snow drifts. We were supposed to have really high winds, zero visibility and super cold temperatures. Businesses were closing early. Everything was cancelled for the evening. We were sitting at home waiting and watching. And all we got was about 2-3 inches of snow, next to no wind and super cold temperatures... What a disappointment... Normally I don't care for big snowstorms, but when we don't have anywhere to be and we are well stocked on food I don't mind getting a big storm now and then.

MJ update - 4 months old

MJ is 4 months old now and is really starting to interact with people. It is fun watching the kids talk to her and see MJ respond with big smiles. She is getting a little better with sleeping lately so I usually don't have to hold and/or feed her all day long. She still startles easily but is also getting better at that. She does not like her dad's laugh and will more often than not burst into tears when he laughs - which usually causes him to laugh even more... She is great at rolling from her back to her stomach and will usually only stay on her back for a few seconds once she is set down. Last week she managed to flip from her stomach to her back once, but I think it was just a fluke because she hasn't been able to repeat it since. She is getting better at being on her stomach and will try to grab a toy and eat it while she is laying there.

MJ drools a TON and usually has a soaking wet shirt. We keep feeling in her mouth to see if she is teething, but we can't feel anything trying to come through. MJ also will put anything in her mouth - toys, fingers, her sleeve - she just loves to be mouthing/drooling on everything! She is finally starting to chub up a little and she has definitely grown taller over the last couple of weeks. When DH set up the exersaucer on Halloween, she could just barely touch the bottom with her feet and now she can stand flatfooted in it. We'll have to move it up a notch here shortly. MJ loves to be held and quite often she will start crying when she is on the floor or in her exersaucer and will immediately stop as soon as she gets picked up. She especially loves to sit on someone's lap during dinnertime. We are still struggling with church because she doesn't like to just be sitting there on someone's lap. I usually have to get up during Sacrament Meeting and either stand in the back of the chapel with her or walk around the foyer bouncing her around.
Another thing she loves to do is pull hair! She loves getting a fistful and then trying to shove it into her mouth!

Kay talk

Funny things Kay says:

"Shhhhhh!!!" - She'll stick her index finger in front of her mouth and say this when we ask her what she is doing and it's something she shouldn't be doing.

"I'll be right back!" - while putting her index finger out in front of her.

"I don't know." - This is her first response to just about anything we ask her.

Kay loves to talk with her hands. Sometimes she will just kind of babble and while she is babbling she will put her hand on her hip or hold her hand up, palm up in front of her (and she will keep turning her hand over).

Kay is also very good at play acting with dolls or stuffed animals and sometimes we hear her reciting movies. The other day she kept walking around saying, "Where is my FOOD!" Finally I had to ask the kids where she was getting that line from and we figured out that it was from "A Bug's Life" which she had watched earlier that day.


Kay Translations:

Kanilla or Ganilla = Vanilla yogurt
Ganana or Gamana = Banana - When I try to sound it out slowly for her she will say "Ba-gamana"
Melolee = Melanie

Sleeping kids

Last night at dinner Kay kept dozing off in her seat and then she would wake up and try and position herself in a more comfortable position and then doze off again. This was the final position she ended up in:

Bear

Luke received his Bear rank advancement last week at Pack Meeting. He actually had earned it by the October pack meeting but since it was also the Pinewood Derby, we elected to wait another month. It was pretty easy for Luke to earn this award since I am his den leader. I have been in this calling for a little over 2 years now - my longest calling in this ward to date.

Now I need to get to work sewing his awards on his uniform!

Snow!!

We got dumped on Saturday night! This is what we woke up to Sunday morning:

We  have my parents' car here for a few days. I had to move the car in from the street on Saturday night so it wouldn't be in the way of the snow plows.

I measured about 10 inches on the driveway and 14 inches on the lawn.

It was kind of funny when my dad called me Sunday evening and didn't believe me at first when I told him how much snow we received! I think that this is the biggest snowfall we have had before Thanksgiving since I moved to Utah 14 years ago...  It is a very wet, heavy snow.

And here is the forecast for the next few days:

Monday - 40% chance of snow, high of 38° F

Tuesday - 50% chance of snow, high of 40° F

Wednesday - 60% chance of snow, high of 13° F

Little things

* MJ squealing when I smile and say hi to her in the exersaucer.

* MJ sleeping a little better at night and getting some good naps in during the day as well.

* Luke helping Kitty make cookies for FHE.

* MJ getting excited when her dad gets home from work.

* M&M and Luke being able to make cookies on their own without any help.

* MJ laughing while watching her siblings play.

* Kay napping without putting up a fight.

* Finding some nice shirts for me and M&M at the thrift store.

* Being told that I look too young to have a child in middle school.

Clothing Woes

Several of the kids have all of a sudden had some growth spurts.  Luke in particular all of a sudden has outgrown just about every single pair of pants that he owns.  They are all about 1-2 inches too short for him now and he looks ridiculous wearing them!  In fact, I had just bought him a new pair of pants to wear to church, he wore them once or twice and now they are also too short for him!

M&M has also grown out of several of her dresses that she wore last year and right now I am moving clothes straight from Blondie's drawers to Kitty's drawers.

Kay is just a big girl for her age (at least as far as our family is concerned).  She has skipped over most of the 2T winter clothes that we have and gone straight to the 3T clothes.  My bigger problem with Kay and clothes though is that she does not like to wear pants.  Quite often when I try to get her in pants, she will throw a fit and later on throughout the day she will take them off and run around the house in just her diaper and a shirt.  It wasn't so bad in the summertime because I had quite a few skorts that she could wear, but now it is getting colder outside and I don't have a lot of warm dresses and skirts with tights that she can wear.  She especially doesn't like to wear jeans - I think it is because she has some bigger legs than some of the other kids have had and she just can't move around as easily or as comfortably in jeans.

So today I need to try to make it to a store or two for some new clothes for Luke.  The other kids (with the exception of M&M) have enough hand-me-downs that they don't have to wear pants that are too short.  It can definitely be quite a chore trying to keep the kids well clothed!!

Crazy Sunday

Yesterday was kind of a crazy Sunday. I had to go to ward choir practice from 11:30-12:15 because they are getting ready for a Thanksgiving number and some Christmas songs that have a flute part that I have been asked to play. Normally I would be attending anyways, but ever since MJ was born I haven't made it. The time of the rehearsals is kind of bad for our family because church starts at 1:00 and it's hard getting home at 12:20 and trying to get everyone fed and ready to leave for church on time. Yesterday I was able to get MJ fed and down to sleep before I left and she stayed asleep until it was time to leave for church. I tried picking her up gently to see if I could keep her asleep a little while longer, but it didn't work so I ended up sending the rest of the family on to church while I stayed home to feed MJ.

While I was sitting down nursing MJ I all of a sudden remembered that Kitty was supposed to be giving a talk in junior primary that day! Usually the primary secretary gives reminder calls a day or two before Sunday, but we just had a new secretary called in our ward and she either forgot to make the calls or doesn't know that she should. So I quickly searched the diaper bag to see if I could find the sticker that had the theme on it - and of course I didn't find it and the other bag had gone with the family to church. My next step was to head down to the computer to go to the church's website to find the theme in the online version of the Friend. After finally locating the theme for November I quickly wrote up a short talk for Kitty to give and printed it out. I then left for church and pulled Kitty out of class for a few minutes to let her know that I had written a talk for her and we practiced it once there in the hallway. (Thankfully junior primary has the closing exercises...) I then went to tell DH about it, went to the last few minutes of Relief Society and the first part of Sunday School, and then showed up at the end of primary to help Kitty give the talk.

So today I am grateful that I remembered her talk before I left home. I'm not even sure what triggered that memory in my head. I was just sitting nursing MJ and thinking about it being fast Sunday when I all of a sudden remembered it. Thankfully things turned out just fine and I think Kitty was very glad that I had remembered.

Little things

* Teaching M&M how to make bread.

* So many people at church commenting on MJ being such a pretty baby.

* Kay loving nursery.

* Playing my flute with the ward choir today at rehearsal.

* MJ finally getting some chubby legs.

* MJ sleeping the whole time I was at rehearsal yesterday - almost 3 hours in the morning.

* Watching Toy Story 3 and eating popcorn with the family last night.

* Harvesting some potatoes from the garden yesterday and using them in a beef stew for dinner tonight.

* Eating homemade strawberry-peach jam with the homemade bread that M&M, Luke & I made. YUM!! :)

Little things

* Kay breaking out into song this morning singing "Book of Mormon Stories" and "Patty Cake"

* Kitty entertaining MJ while I showered this morning.

Trick-or-Treating 2010

Ready to hit the streets!
In our part of Utah when Halloween falls on a Sunday, the trick-or-treaters go out on Saturday instead. Unfortunately this year it rained off and on most of the evening - thankfully it wasn't a really hard rain. We started out with DH and MJ staying at home and me taking out the older 5 kids. Kay never really got into it and was content to just go around our block - partly because of the cold and the rain. She was cute to say "thank you" at the houses and when they let the kids pick a treat out of a bowl she would manage to come out with a handful. I also think she didn't quite understand why we were going house to house to get candy when we had a large bowl of perfectly good candy at our house.

Once we made it around the block we stopped back at our house and the kids bundled up some more and then we sent the 4 oldest ones out on their own with a cell phone. We live in a safe neighborhood and there were lots of kids out so we felt comfortable doing that and putting M&M in charge of them. They were out for quite a while (after stopping back one more time for some bathroom breaks). I finally called the cell phone when we hadn't heard from them and they were just a couple of houses away and on their way back to the house. They ended up walking the majority of our ward boundaries (which is about 5 square blocks) and were pleased with the candy they got. It was nice being able to send the kids on their own and I think they really enjoyed it.
DH got out the exersaucer and put it together in-between trick-or-treaters. Here is MJ trying it out for the first time!
One of the few pictures I have managed to get Kay to smile for! She loved her candy!
Sorting through the candy
Kitty with her stash

The story behind the costumes

I initially had no plans to make any costumes this year - at least not for Blondie, Kitty and Kay. Blondie and Kitty had decided that they were going to be witches and we have several costumes that would have fit Kay this year. We also already had one witch costume so I was just planning on buying another one for one of the girls. Then I made the mistake of letting Kitty go into the fabric store with my mom to buy a pattern for my sister and she came back out and mentioned that she had seen a cute fairy costume pattern - I was out in the car feeding MJ at the time. I thought about it for a minute and thought that that would be the perfect costume for the three girls because they are obsessed with the TinkerBell movies lately. I sent them back in to buy the pattern (it was on sale for 99 cents) and then I looked it over and had the girls pick which fairy they would like to be. So here we were with about 3 weeks to Halloween and I all of a sudden had 3 costumes to sew (and buy all of the fabric for).

Thankfully my mom came over several times last week to help me out and even took some of Blondie's costume home to sew at her house. I tweaked the pattern a little and added a sleeve to it so they would be a little more modest. They were all mostly finished by the school parade day on Friday (just a hook I needed to sew on two of them that I did on Saturday - we just pinned it on Friday). Thankfully we had two sets of wings already and just needed to buy one more (which Kay then didn't even like wearing). I think they turned out really cute and the girls have enjoyed playing in them! I just need to remember next year to not get myself into that same situation so close to Halloween (especially when I have a newborn around the house)!

Halloween Costumes 2010

A leaf blower - she blows the leaves in front of her face. :) M&M wore this to a youth activity on Wednesday but didn't quite get the reaction to it that she was hoping for so she decided to wear a different costume idea for trick-or-treating.
Smartie Pants
Our little clown
A skeleton
Kay as Tinkerbell - she didn't like wearing her wings
Kitty as Rosetta from the Tinkerbell movies
Blondie as SilverMist from the Tinkerbell movies

Jack-O-Lanterns 2010

The two pumpkins on the right were carved by my parents.
My parents joined us on Friday night to help carve pumpkins. We ended up with 5 from our garden this year - and two of them were tiny and still green, but we carved them anyways. I tried going to a couple of stores earlier in the day on Friday to buy a couple more but couldn't find any stores that had any good ones left to pick from.
Kitty's pumpkin - I drew the bat design and Kitty carved most of it by herself.

Kay's pumpkin - Designed and carved by DH - Kay said she wanted a scary face.

Luke's pumpkin - Luke picked a stencil design that Grandma had and he proceeded to make dots along the lines of the stencil. Then he took off the stencil and tried to follow the dots while he was carving, but the pattern was a little too advanced for him and he made a couple of mistakes. We were able to salvage it at least somewhat so that it at least looked like a skull at the end. He was a little emotional when he realized he made some mistakes but in the end he was pleased with how it turned out.

Blondie's pumpkin - Blondie also chose a stencil design that Grandma had, but this one was very intricate and much too difficult for her to carve. I was busy helping kids and feeding MJ and Blondie was poking the design on her pumpkin before I realized how difficult it was going to be. She did most of the gutting of the pumpkin and then marked most of the design on it, but I ended up having to carve it - and it was not easy in the least! I ended up cutting off a part of the face, but the jack-o-lantern still turned out pretty good. I was amazed at how some of the intricate details really came to life once it was lit up. I kept carving and thinking, I have no idea what this is going to end up looking like in the end. I had a hard time figuring out what parts I was supposed to cut away and what was supposed to be left in the end. It was definitely the hardest design I have ever carved.

M&M's pumpkin - Our biggest pumpkin from the garden would not stand up on its end so M&M and I were bouncing ideas off of each other on how to best carve it. M&M ended up deciding to carve it on its side and then put some pumpkin "guts" hanging out of its mouth (these were both suggestions that I had made). M&M picked out a stencil face and ended up doing all of it herself. We all thought it turned out awesome!

Rolling over already?

MJ is already learning to roll over from her back to her stomach. I'm not ready to have a mobile baby yet... I enjoy the stage where you can lay them down and know that they will be in the same spot when you come back.

Band placement test

M&M had playing tests in band for seat placement a couple of weeks ago and they were just told the results of them after their school concert. Out of 11 flute players, 9 of which are 8th graders, M&M got second chair and the other seventh grader got third chair! M&M was very happy and surprised by the results. She was excited to tell me and her dad especially!

Fall Soccer 2010

This year we have 3 kids playing soccer so we've been super busy with practices and games. With MJ being so young still and Kay being quite a handful we ended up doing a lot of tag-team parenting on game days. Sometimes I would go to a game with just MJ while DH stayed home with the other kids or I would stay home and DH would go alone or with one or two of the older kids. Blondie had quite a few early morning games so we would leave M&M home with the other kids and just take MJ to the game with us. It is nice having M&M old enough to babysit now!

This was Blondie's first year playing and she enjoyed a lot more than I thought she would. We put her on an all-girl team and she loved it. Unfortunately she has a coach who seems a little too busy and distracted to be an effective coach for this age. Just about every other practice was canceled for one reason or another and the girls had no idea what they were doing in the games. At first it was kind of funny to watch the girls try and figure out the games, but by the end of the season it was more frustrating than anything else. They ended the fall season with a 3-3-2 record, but I don't think Blondie really learned anything during the whole season...
Luke also had a pretty frustrating season. Since I wasn't able to coach this year, we just turned in the registration form with a couple of his teammates from last year and they were placed on a team. Unfortunately I wasn't able to observe any of the practices during the season, but the coach had an interesting style that we are still trying to figure out. It seemed like his main goal was to win and he did everything he could to make that happen - but I think most of it backfired. He had the best players on the team playing forward during the games which left all of the weak players for the defense positions. He also would only let his own son play goalie even though his son was not very good at it and he didn't enjoy playing it - AND one of the players from my team last year is an excellent goalie and loves playing the position. This boy was always asking to play goalie and the coach just wouldn't let him - until the end of the last game of the season and he did an awesome job and kept the team from losing by much more than they already were. There was also another kid from my team last year that played goalie occasionally and was pretty good - at least better than the coach's son... Luke's team ended up with a losing record overall (3-5) and it was pretty frustrating for the boys from my team last year. I don't think that any of them will choose to play for this coach next time if they continue to play after the spring season.
M&M by far had the best coach out of the three this year. When we registered her for soccer in the spring, she had two choices of teams to sign up with and she was really torn on which to pick. The coach she played for last year decided at the last minute to coach again (and he lives just a couple of doors from us and was just released from our ward bishopric - a super nice, but also super busy guy). The other team is one that is mostly from her school and they practice much closer to our house and a good friend of hers from the ward plays on the team. The coach is the husband of one of M&M's 3rd grade teachers. I told M&M that we would leave the decision up to her because she is the one that would be playing for the team and she couldn't go wrong with either of the teams. M&M finally decided to try out the closer team with her friend on it. This team has been playing together for many years and the only reason we didn't put M&M on the team last year was because they were playing the division older than M&M. The first few weeks of the season M&M was afraid that she had made the wrong decision and she wasn't really enjoying the team yet - the practices were much harder than she was used to and a lot of the kids are a year older than her. By the end of the season, M&M was absolutely loving the team and loving playing soccer. Her team ended the season undefeated and we were very impressed with the team as a whole and how the coach coached them. They had a couple of close games and they were pretty intense to watch. The team was really good with passing and the kids all played really well together. The league this year ended up hiring some high school players to ref the games which worked out very nicely on the whole. We just had to pay a few extra dollars per player which I think was totally worth it. The coach seemed impressed with M&M and how aggressive she was especially since she is quite a bit smaller than some of the other players at this age. She is also one of only 2 girls on the team.

M&M was actually pretty upset after the last soccer game of the season because she was really close to scoring a goal several times and just couldn't manage to get the ball in the goal. The coach really liked putting her in at center forward for some reason - I think he liked how she always ran towards the goal when a shot was taken in case it bounced out of the goalie's hands. M&M's team played her team from last year and a couple of the players jokingly called her a traitor, but I think she made a good choice to switch teams. She has definitely learned a lot this fall season and is looking forward to playing for this coach again in the spring.