Say Yes to the Dress

Okay, the girls and I have a new summer obsession. Sitting in front of the tv for hours watching reruns of 'Say Yes to the Dress'. Now we are all caught up so we only watch the new ones, but for a few days there it was nonstop. The girls have pretty much designed their own dresses in their heads now. Jeannie came to pick Emma up for Activity Days on one of our TLC telethon days, and apparently she got an earful...."Can you BELIEVE this girl spent $25,000 on a dress she is only going to wear one time? I mean, that is just ridiculous! You only wear it for a few hours. My mom says my 'budget' is about $500......"

Inevitably, this is what it led to:





Yes, this was my wedding dress, and incidentally, I am proud to say I still fit into it. Let's ignore the fact that I swam in it on my wedding day, and when I put it on now I look like I have several kids' floatie tubes on underneath it. Oh well.

Crazy Cabbage Patch Kids

As an interesting bit of trivia, the cabbage patch Spencer has used to be Sean's when he was a kid, and the outfit 'Buddy' is wearing is what Spencer wore home from the hospital.

Kenna's Kindergarten Graduation

May 2010

Emma was so excited about the Daddy-Daughter ball for activity days in May. Here she is with her date!



Waiting for her date to pull out of the garage.



And since there was so much hollabaloo, Kenna had to have her hair done too.

Can you believe this million-dollar smile?


Emma's 2nd grade program was also in May. Here she is with Mrs. Braby.

And here is her contribution to her class project.


Will I miss the days when Kenna and Spencer were home together for hours at a time, mostly fighting? Probably some day. But not in the near future. Here was one of the rare moments they weren't tearing each other's eyes out.

War Paint and Wonder Capes

I have to document this moment in history. I'm sure at some point I will look back and miss this. But for now, yesterday was one of the most Spencer-trying days of his life to date.

Let's set the mood a little. Mommy is cleaning the kitchen for the first time in a week, preparing for friends to come to dinner. Spencer is conspicuously absent. Then come's Mackenna's voice...."Mom.....Spencer painted hisself with black stuff." This is what I found.


Pink sparkly lip gloss: slathered in hair, rubbed all over eyes, and obviously, on his lips. Eyeliner: well, you can see for yourself. He looks sad because this was taken directly after his rebuking.

It takes mommy ten minutes to get him all wiped down. Luckily he was still in his pajamas. Fast forward to after he is dressed in a clean white t-shirt and Mommy has sent him upstairs to get some socks.

Mackenna: "Mom.....Spencer got into some pink stuff." He has ONCE AGAIN painted his hair, face, and oh, as a bonus this time, his clean white shirt with pink Princess and the Frog chapstick. He undergoes another rubdown, a little more vehement than before.

After school. The girls are helping me clean (still) and we are trying to get a start on homework before our guests arrive.

Emma: "Mom....Spencer is into your white lotion..." but it is not lotion. It is my Mary Kay lip mask that Sarah gave me out of the goodness of her heart. And he has not only rubbed it all over his hands, but has decided to handle the tv remote as well. At this point mommy has no idea what to do about any of this. At some point he also got ahold of a dry-erase marker and drew all over my wall - "making a picture for our customers" - he defends, referring to our dinner guests. This just in, folks.....dry erase markers are only dry erase on a dry erase board. It takes 20 minutes for Sean to scrub it out of the wall.

Am I being punished for something......?

I'll close with a positive. Thanks to Stephanie Smith's suggestion, hair cuts have finally become a little less traumatic for all involved. He used to kick and scream and cry the moment his shorn-off hair would touch his skin, then start thrashing around when the hair went unavoidably into his open mouth. Thank you, wonder cape!

March 2010

The highlight for this month is that all of us girls got our ears pierced. Emma has been saying for weeks now that she was the only girl in 2nd grade without her ears pierced (which is probably true, since her class is divided into 1st and 2nd grade, and there are only four 2nd grade girls total). And Mackenna said she wanted hers done for her birthday. So we took Kenna while Emma was at school. She didn't wince, say 'ow', or look nervous at all.



When Emma got home we took her and her hands were cold and clammy while she waited in the chair with a terrified look on her face.


The same day Emma got hers pierced she also lost a tooth, which she pulled out on her own.

The only other exciting thing was my New Moon party. We played Twictionary (yes, I came up with that one) and New Moon the Movie Board Game. We talked through the entire movie.


Here is the Team Edward cake (for more pictures see my cake blog):


And here is Team Taylor. I mean Team Jacob:


Oh. One more thing....Kenna turned six! Here she is next to her family presents and cards:

She actually had about a week-long birthday. We went to dinner at Training Table on Tuesday to celebrate, since Sean was working on her actual birthday. On Wednesday, her birthday, she got to open all her gifts from our family. After school we had chicken nuggets and curly fries per the birthday girl's request, and the kids watched Princess and the Frog while I made Easter egg crispy treats. Kenna's actual party is on Easter Sunday when we will have Sean's family and also some of Amy's inlaws over for dinner. But I just finished the cake tonight. It is pistachio cake with lemon-cream filling, and definitely the most fun I've had doing a cake for a while:

February 2010

I'll just dispense with the excuses about how long it's been between posts. I'll just admit to myself that I've lost the blogging bug and that I'm only keeping it up now because it is my family scrapbook, which I eventually want to put into an actual book. I think I'll aim to post once a month, and then I won't feel so guilty. With that out of the way, here are a few little highlights from last month.

Here is the picture the girls made me for my Valentine's present:


And, of course, Spencer had to follow suit:


Here I am with my (count them) four children:


Emma dressed as Abish from the Book of Mormon for activity days. She was supposed to go dressed as her favorite Book of Mormon hero. When she asked if there were any women in the Book of Mormon, this is what we came up with:


Kenna took this one of Dodger and I napping the other day. Okay, so I was awake and told her to get the camera, and then pretended to be asleep for the picture.


And here is Spencer trying to dodge a yucky mommy kiss:

I will digress here for a moment and elaborate on Spencer's latest quirks. After a near perfect potty training experience almost a year ago, he has started having accidents. We kind of got into the habit of pulling his pants down for him, pulling them back up, washing his hand (i say hand, not hands - because of his cast) since he broke his arm. So it's almost like we started over when he got it off. 90% of the time when he yells "I GOTTA GO POTTY!" it is followed by a pee-pee dance and accompanied with an "I CAN'T!" when I tell him to pull his pants down and go. Then out of nowhere I will go into the kids bathroom when I hear them making their routine 6 a.m. racket and find him sitting on the toilet with his pants down, no problem. What is the deal?

He has also started asking to have friends over. He is getting to that age when his sisters are at school and he doesn't just want to kick it at home with me and the dog. We were planning on putting him in preschool in the fall, but the teacher Mackenna had for preschool, who was fabulous, isn't having a 3-year-old class. What to do? (Aside from Joy School).

Here is Spencer cleaning Aunt Amy's toe polish off. I think he might have a future in the business. ("You want nail design?")

Ice-Pickles

Just a few little things.

The other morning the girls made me breakfast in bed, which consisted of a poptart, a nutrigrain cereal bar, and a banana - all drizzled with honey. Quite creative, if I do say so myself.


Today Spencer fell asleep sitting up while watching Cars. Since giving up his binki he hasn't really napped much, unless I nap with him.




I suppose he is pretty tuckered out. He went to a Valentine's party at a friend's house today. And on that note, here is what we decided to do for the kids' valentines this year. I hate giving out more candy, and I hate to stress myself out with something that will go in the garbage in a few days. This was super cheap and pretty simple.


The only other thing I wanted to mention is Spencer's little funny thing he said the other day. I don't know what got him thinking about it, but suddenly he said "Mom, when it's Summer can we have ice-pickles?" I busted up, because I knew he meant popsicles. Funny little guy.

Spencer is 3!

And I have a feeling his threes are going to be worse than his twos. What is that all about? He has been waking up at 5:30 in the morning, crying that he's hungry, or thirsty, or whatever. MAKES ME CRAZY. Anyway, today is his birthday, but since I work tonight we celebrated it yesterday. Here are some pictures of his special day.

This year we did a Toy Story cake. If you want to see more cake pictures, they are on my cake blog, Custom Cake Creations.




Since it is our year off for birthday parties, we just went to Arctic Circle for dinner with a couple friends and family, and then came back to our house for cake, ice cream, and presents.




Oddly enough, this was his favorite gift:





Happy Birthday, baby boy. You have passed both the milestones I wanted to have behind us before your birthday. Potty training, which you did about 6 months ago or so, and getting rid of your i'i (binki). Good job. Now let's work on that attitude!