Wednesday, May 25, 2011

6 Years Old

Natalie's big day was yesterday.  She had her 6th birthday!  She had so much fun opening presents in the morning--which were mostly dolls from the "Tangled" movie.  Then at lunch time we had a birthday party with her friends.  I made dough and let all of the kids make their own little pizza to eat for lunch.  I think all of the kids really enjoyed that.  Homemade pizza is one of Natalie's favorite foods.  Then we played some games, including "pin the nose on Flynn Rider's wanted poster," and a candy game where the kids had to roll a "6" in order to pick a piece of candy to put in their goody bag.  And they all jumped on the trampoline, which caused one kid to exclaim that this was the best birthday party ever.  Natalie had so much fun at her birthday party.  Nate was even able to stay home from work until after the party so he could celebrate with her too.  Here are a few pictures.

Natalie loves her Junie B Jones books.




And Natalie's cake request was Rapunzel.  First of all, we are going to pretend that, other than the 1 1/2 hours I went and played volleyball, I didn't spend all day (until about 5:00) making this cake. 


Natalie loved it, and that is what's important.
Happy birthday to Natalie!  We love this little girl so much and are so glad she is part of our family.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Kindergarten Graduate and How many people are in your family?

Natalie had her Kindergarten Promotion tonight.  It was so cute.  The kids sang a bunch of fun songs for us and then walked up one by one to get their "diplomas" and then we all had cake.  Natalie was kind of sad afterwards though, because she is going to miss her teacher.



Natalie right after getting her diploma.

Natalie and her kindergarten teacher, Ms. St. Paul

And along the lines of Natalie, here is a funny conversation I had with her this past Sunday.  You know, because Natalie never says anything funny...

After church I was asking her about Primary.  She told me that she got "spotlighted."  That is something their Primary does.  They pick a child and then ask them a question (about themself) and have them answer it in front of the whole primary.  It is kind of a fun get-to-know-you type of thing.

Me: "So what question did they ask you?"

Natalie: "How many people are in your family."

Me:  "Oh.  What did you say?"

Natalie:  "Seven."

(I wasn't ready for that answer.  Five, yes.  I was even wondering if she would say six.)
Me:  "Seven?  And who are they?"

Natalie:  "Dad, Mom, Natalie, Kelton, Kaitlin, Damon, and the baby we don't have yet."

I laughed for a bit and then playing along, I asked, "well, what if we have two more babies?"  She got this look on her face that said, "Oh no! I hadn't thought about that!"  I could tell she was worried that she got the answer wrong.

I must admit, I did not know we were supposed to include potential future children when asked how many people are in our family.  So, I hope no one asks me that question before I get some time to sit down and figure out an answer.  What's funny is I didn't even realize until last night that the adults in primary probably thought she was making an accidental announcement.  So it looks like I might need to do a little damage control before the whole ward starts spreading rumors.  (I later told Natalie that she can just tell people that we have five people in our family, because she still thought she should say seven.)

So, do you know how many people are in your family?  Because I apparently don't.  :)

Saturday, May 14, 2011

What I've been up to

Note: this is a journal type post, mainly for myself.

I thought it might be fun to write down what I do in an average week.  I know my day to day schedule won't stay like this forever and then I won't really even remember it anymore.  It would be nice to look back and remember these things I do everyday right now.

Monday: I play volleyball every Monday (and Friday) morning at the church from about 8:45-11:00.  Kelton enjoys playing with the other kids there.  Coincidentally, almost all of the other kids there are boys.  It is during Damon's naptime and he will just fall asleep in his carseat in his stroller and sleep most of the time I am there.  I've been doing this since Damon was only about two months old.  Actually, I first started playing when Kelton was about a year old but stopped while I was pregnant with Damon.

Tuesday:  At 3:30 we all go to Natalie's sports group.  We've been doing this for about the past three months.  I organized a sports co-op with people from church so our kids could get together and play some sports without having to mess with/pay for the organized sports.  We started with softball, then did soccer, and now we will wrap it up on this next Tuesday with a game of kickball.  Natalie has really enjoyed it.  It will be nice when it is done, though.  I miss having one day where I don't have to go anywhere or do anything.  I can usually clean up my house a little.

Wednesday:  10:30 is storytime at the library.  Then I teach piano lessons most of the afternoon.  I start at 2:30 and end at about 4:30.  It doesn't look like much, but this is probably my craziest day of the week.

Thursday:  In the morning from 8:30-10:30, Kelton has playgroup.  I do this along with three other moms I know that have kids almost the exact same age as Kelton.  So every fourth week I have the kids at my house.  On my off-weeks I go in and volunteer in Natalie's classroom.  I usually end up helping the kids do worksheets at center rotations.  Then in the afternoon, I teach one hour of piano lessons from 3:00-4:00.
Friday:  Volleyball again.  Takes up my whole morning. :)

So that is my set weekly schedule.  There are obviously other things I have to fit in here and there, like trips to the store, Natalie's piano lesson, etc...

Here are some other things I have been up to lately.
*Potty training.  I started potty training Kelton almost four weeks ago.  In some ways, it hasn't been nearly as bad as I was expecting.  It only took him about two days to get the peeing part completely down.  He doesn't even have any accidents.  I guess that is one big advantage to potty training a child over three years old.  However, we are still having massive issues with pooping.  He has no desire to go in the potty.  But he knows he's not supposed to go in his underwear either.  This results in him just always trying to hold it in.  We won't discuss how frustrated and at a loss I am.

*Garden update.  It's going okay... My carrots (which are in the spot next to the tomatoes) don't seem to be doing well.  They started great, then just kind of stopped growing.  And there they sit.  Not dead, but not getting any bigger.  Same thing for the cantaloupe plants.  Very much alive, but not getting bigger.  They did produce some flowers.  But that's it so far for them.  In the bin on the far right are my potato plants--Yukon Gold to be exact.  The plants are starting to die off--which is actually supposed to happen prior to harvest.  But I thought it was maybe too early for that to be happening, and not really believing there were any potatoes in there, I decided to do some digging.  I couldn't find any potatoes so I decided to be more aggressive.  I had the plant half way pulled out when I discovered that there were in fact potatoes under there--a little bit smaller than golf ball sized.  I quickly reburied the plant, gave it lots of water, and am crossing my fingers that I didn't do irreparable harm.

We've already picked some strawberries.  That is... the few that the bugs haven't gotten first.  Next to the strawberries are my cucumber plants that I started from seeds.  Of all my plants, they seem to do doing the best.  But hey, there is still time for them to go downhill too.  I sure hope not though.  As you can see, they are flowering, so maybe we will get some baby cucumbers soon.

My tomatoes.  My two regular tomato plants started out great.  Even started producing tomatoes--four on each plant.  Then, all of a sudden, they started turning yellow and dying.  They aren't getting any bigger.  Things are not looking so great for them.  Supposedly, you are not supposed to have to fertilize this SFG soil but in an attempt to save my plants--which are "not quite dead yet" (name the movie reference), I put some miracle grow on yesterday.  I'm not too optimistic, but we'll see.  The picture below is one of my cherry tomato plants.  The plant itself is not huge and wonderful looking, but it has a bazillion little tomatoes on it.  Okay, about 80 the last time I counted.  If you look closely, you can see them all over.  And they are starting to ripen.  We've picked two so far.

*Baby stuff.  This is not an announcement.  But Natalie and I have decided that our next baby needs to be a girl.  I went to a baby shower the other day and I made a gift I had a really hard time giving away.  Tell me, is this not one of the cutest things you've ever seen?  You can't really see it in the picture, but I made little flowers and sewed them on up by the toes.

Here is why I had such a hard time giving them away (which is stupid, I can always make more...)
I bought this dress on clearance at Walmart for $1 when I was pregnant with Kelton.  After I made the shoes, I realized that they might match this dress.  I couldn't believe how perfect they matched.  (you can click the picture to make it bigger, I think.)  I would have sworn they came with the dress if I didn't know better.  All of the colors are a complete match.  See, point proven.  I need another girl. 

*Damon.  He's walking!  He's not a pro yet, but he can walk across the room now.  The days of one or two steps at a time are gone.