Success... but will it last?

We have been having problems lately with getting Kitty to go to nursery during church. Since we have classes first I will usually take her and drop her off on my way to the primary room and lately she has been throwing a fit when I try to leave her there with the nursery leaders so I usually end up taking her into primary with me. Then after we are finished with opening exercises I will try and take her into the nursery room and stay with her for a few minutes until I have to get back for singing time. The last couple of weeks I have been able to take her in but she usually hasn't stayed the whole time until this week, finally! One week I even had Luke take her in and sit with her during junior primary's singing time because she was crying and screaming when I tried to take her into the primary room with me. I think that her biggest problem with nursery is that nothing there is hers. She has some personality issues where she has a hard time if she doesn't have control over things because she likes things to be in a particular way or order. There are a couple of kids in the nursery that are very controlling and try to take everything that anyone else has and Kitty has a hard time with that.

The other success today was that Kitty stayed in the chapel with the rest of the family when I went out to feed Baby K and she didn't scream and holler. In the past whenever I have left with Baby K to go out and feed her or change her diaper Kitty will scream and put on quite a show until she is allowed to follow me. Today though she actually stayed and was okay with it (after some coaxing from her dad). Hopefully we can keep this up and it won't just be a one time thing.

Warning!

I recently bought a hair flat iron to help make my hair a little bit easier to fix in the mornings. After I opened it I was reading through the instruction booklet to learn how to use it correctly. Just about the whole booklet was full of warnings on what not to do and how not to use the iron. In fact, there really weren't any instructions on how to use it other than how to plug it in and turn it on. This, though, was my favorite line of the booklet:

WARNING: Never use while sleeping!

That one statement dashed all of my hopes for getting a headstart on my day by fixing my hair in my sleep!!

Strawberry cake

I made this cake for my birthday this year and both DH and M&M loved it so much that they wanted seconds (and they are not normally cake lovers). M&M told me that she wanted that cake for her birthday so I made it for her party on Saturday. My parents both loved it as well so I am including the recipe here for anyone that would like to try it. It is a very light cake with a cream cheese icing. (I have only made it without the strawberries in the frosting because I was afraid that that would overdo it on the strawberry flavor for me.)

Light Strawberry Cake
1 box white or yellow cake mix
1 small (4 servings) package sugar-free strawberry gelatin
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup strawberries, thawed if frozen, pureed if fresh
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 egg whites

Frosting:
2 tablespoons butter, softened
4 ounces fat-free cream cheese, softened
3 cups powdered sugar
Strawberries and juice to moisten (about 2 tablespoons) - or 1 1/2 T milk + 1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray cake pan(s) with nonstick cooking spray and dust lightly with flour. Set aside

2. Place the cake mix, strawberry gelatin and flour in large bowl and mix together. In another bowl, combine the strawberries, water and oil. Pour wet ingredients all at once over dry ingredients and combine. Add the egg whites, one at a time, beating after each addition. This should take several minutes.

3. Pour batter into prepared pan(s) and bake for about 25 minutes. Remove from pan(s) and cool on rack.

4. For frosting: In a large bowl, mix together butter and cream cheese. Add powdered sugar and beat well. Add strawberries a little at a time until the icing is a good spreading consistency.

5. Frost the cake and then refrigerate.

Roller skating!

DH and I had quite the workout last night. M&M and Luke's orthodontist sponsored a family skating night at a local skating rink last night. They offered free admission to the rink, free skate rentals and free pizza and drinks. I thought that we might just take M&M and Luke with either DH or me but we decided to take the whole family. M&M brought her own roller blades and then the rest of us used skates from the skating rink. Kitty had to get the plastic kind that straps on over the shoes (and the velcro holding them together wouldn't stay fastened). It has been a LONG time since I've been roller skating so I was a little rusty but it was fun.At first DH wasn't planning on skating so I took Luke and then Blondie once around the rink. It was so hard trying to teach the kids how to skate and to try and keep them from falling and hurting themselves! After I took Blondie around we grabbed some pizza and then they had a prize drawing for the orthodontists' patients. Both M&M and Luke won something - M&M got a $20 gift card to Target and Luke won an ipod shuffle! Some of the other prizes were tickets to a Salt Lake Bees baseball game and electric toothbrushes. While the drawing was going on, DH went and got some skates for himself and took a few turns around the rink. Then he took Kitty and then Blondie around again. Luke took a few turns around the rink by himself and stuck to the carpet around the edge. He was very determined to try and learn how to do it and he was much better when I took him around again before we left. Blondie and Kitty also had a lot of fun and didn't like having to take turns - they wanted to keep going again and again!They did a fun partners game that M&M and I played at. Everyone had to have a partner and skate holding hands and every time we heard a siren noise we had to turn around without letting go of our partner's hand and skate in the opposite direction. That was a lot of fun! I was definitely worn out by the time we left! Baby K slept through a good portion of the evening which was nice. The only bad part about the evening was that they kept running out of pizza. I think the rink was supposed to be providing our pizzas and they just couldn't keep up with the demand. Finally the orthodontist went out to Little Caesars and picked up about 10 pizzas that he brought back for us. I only got one piece and DH only had two.

August trip to the zoo

I really don't care to go to the zoo in the summer because it is usually so hot! My mom called the other day and asked if I was interested in taking the kids to the zoo since they go back to school soon and we had a couple of cooler days this week. At first I said that no I didn't want to go - I have a hard time changing my plans last minute sometimes and had planned on doing laundry and grocery shopping today. After thinking about it some more I finally relented and decided to go if we could get there before it got too hot. The only benefit I see to visiting the zoo in the summer is that they usually have some animal shows that they don't have during the rest of the year - such as a pretty cool bird show.

So we met at the zoo around 9:30 a.m. and stayed there until around 2:30. By the time we left I was dying of the heat and looking forward to getting the kids and especially Baby K out of it as well. We took a train ride, saw the bird show, ate lunch and then saw a short big cats show with a leopard. The bird show was awesome! We saw some penguins that all took a swim together and we also had fun watching a 3-year old orangutan swing around in her play area. Baby K did great and took a good nap there.

One benefit to year-round school is that we can do fun things when it's cooler out and not just in the summer months. So I don't anticipate us going to the zoo again until October when the kids are off-track - and the weather is perfect! Now I just need to recover from my heat stroke...

M&M's pool party

M&M had a friend party this year and she wanted to go swimming. So after discussing our options with DH we decided to have the party Saturday afternoon at our local indoor pool. We decided to have everyone meet at our house for cake and ice cream and presents and then we would drive the girls over to the pool in our car. M&M invited 6 girls from school and church and my parents agreed to come and help as well. We only heard from three of the girls before the day of the party - 2 were yeses and 1 was a maybe - so we weren't sure how many girls we would have for sure. This was going to affect whether or not we were going to take everyone or leave some of the younger kids home with grandma.

We ended up having 4 girls show up (and that included the maybe). I was able to fit all 6 girls in the van plus Baby K so we decided to take the whole family. Blondie and Kitty rode with Grandma & Grandpa and Luke rode with DH. Baby K fell asleep in the car and stayed asleep almost the whole time we were at the pool. Grandma kept watch over Baby K and then Kitty decided to hang out with her at the kiddie pool.

M&M and her friends are at the age where they can pretty much navigate the whole pool without any kind of adult help so it was a really nice age to take to the pool. The pool we went to has a huge slide, a lazy river area with a whirlpool and some water works that spray water. It is very kid friendly with most of the pool less than 4 ft deep. Luke hung around Grandpa most of the time but he is really close to not needing adult help too.

Baby K finally woke up the last 1/2 hour we were there and so I changed her into her swimsuit for the first time! She is so chubby! She wasn't quite sure what to think of the water (because she had just woken up) but she didn't cry once. (It definitely helped that the water wasn't too cold.) At first I put her in a bouncy seat/swing that they have in the kiddie pool that lets the kids bounce and get their feet wet. She didn't look too comfortable in it so I took her over to see her dad in the big pool. He took her and swam around with her in the big pool for a little bit. She just kept looking up at me with huge eyes!

We ended up staying at the pool for close to 2 hours and everyone had a lot of fun! It was really nice having my parents there to help with the younger kids so that I could walk around and take some pictures and not have to always worry about where everyone was. Overall the pool party was a great success!

Heat

We just returned from a HOT day at Utah's Hogle Zoo. It was nice to walk into our COOL, air conditioned house - thanks to my husband who fixed the air conditioner the other day and he also fixed our leaky dishwasher a couple of weeks ago. It's nice having a handyman around the house!

There's something different about Utah's heat that really zaps the energy from me. Growing up in Virginia with the high humidity I don't remember being so tired whenever I spent a day in the sun. I finally made it out to our garden the other day because it was overcast all day and felt great outside! Because Utah is closer to the sun you can definitely get burned quicker here and we go day after day after day with not a single cloud in the sky. I long for the days when it rains or when we even just have clouds in the sky! One benefit to low humidity though is that if you can find some shade it feels much cooler than being out in the sun.

Our garden has definitely been neglected this summer, mostly due to Baby K. I just didn't have the time or energy to plant anything this year. Because of that the garden has completely gone to the weeds. Some of the weeds are as tall as I am! I spent a good part of the day on Tuesday pulling weeds with the kids. I filled up the garbage can and we have probably another 2 garbage can size piles of weeds pulled that will have to wait until next week. And that's only about half of the garden...

Thumb sucker??

Baby K is 4 months old today and she has been trying really hard the last couple of days to get her thumb in her mouth to suck on. She is finally starting to succeed at a more consistent rate lately (even though it looks really awkward). Try as we might she still has not been able to catch on to pacifier sucking for some reason. She will still gag herself on them and get really frustrated because she gets no food from it.

Talker!

Baby K is turning in to quite a talker! On Sunday (July 27) we went to my parents' for dinner & to celebrate my dad's birthday. As we were getting ready to leave I was holding her on my lap, looking up at me and she just started babbling and cooing and went on for at least 5 minutes. We were all amazed that she just kept on talking for so long. I also kept kissing/eating her neck and she was laughing at that. Baby K definitely has a talkative period in the evening when things have settled down and she is ready for bed. I really enjoy being able to spend some time with her after the older kids have gone to bed. (I will try and get some video up of her talking shortly.)

Kids will be kids

DH was watching the older kids while I went to some stores yesterday evening with Baby K. When I got home he relayed this incident to me:

DH found a large moth-type bug that was lying dead on the sidewalk. DH called the kids over to look at it. M&M, Luke & Blondie were all completely grossed out by it and didn't want to go near it. Then Kitty came over and DH pointed it out to her. She promptly bent down and picked up the bug and held it in her hand to examine it! (The funny thing about this story is that sometimes Kitty will see a teeny, tiny bug in the house and she won't go anywhere near it until someone kills it for her...)