Simple

We are taking a trip to Disneyland at the very end of April.  We want the kids to have some spending money, but we would rather they earn it instead of us just giving it to them.  I've been wanting the kids do more jobs around the house anyway (because really, I do it all), but trying to figure out a simple way to do this was going to be absolutely necessary.  Because I need more simple.  And having four little kids is already not simple.

So, here is my job chart solution.  These two papers are taped on our wall at kid level.  Each of the eight remaining weeks left before we leave is on the chart.  Each day I decide what I want them to do and then use a pencil (because we all know how great pens are at writing in a horizontal position) to write in their job(s).  After Natalie gets home from school, we all spend some time working on jobs.  I help out because some of it they don't know how to do alone...yet.  When they are done, they put a sticker on for that day.  They will then get paid a set amount per week for doing all their jobs.  If they don't do all of the week's jobs, they will get paid a lesser amount based on how much they did do.  (Their weekly pay amount is based on how much spending money we wanted them to have at Disneyland, divided by the eight weeks left.  They will likely get a paycut after our trip...)

Funny story... Yesterday Natalie's job was to mop.  She was disgruntled and said "I don't know how to do that!"  I told her she was going to learn.  It would be a lot easier if I had something like a swiffer.  But I don't.  I have a wonder mop and a bucket.  The wringer on the mop can be a little hard, but Natalie was able to do it and she was able to mop the whole floor by herself.  About halfway through she exclaimed, "This is fun!" and "Mopping is the best job ever!"  I had to smile and laugh a little (like some of you are probably doing right now) because, really, it isn't.  On her job chart yesterday she even wrote, "this is fun!"

I asked her what the worst job ever is, and she said in a growly voice, "Laundry."  I don't make them do their own laundry, but I do have them fold/hang and put away their own laundry.  When the kids' pile of clean laundry became large enough to use as a ladder, I insisted on them helping me with it.  What's funny is, a few years ago when I started having Natalie help, she begged to do it because she thought it was so much fun.  But not anymore I guess.  Hopefully her love of mopping stays around a little longer.  Because I really loved not mopping.

Also, Kelton loves washing windows and mirrors.  I think this is mostly due to the fact that he gets to spray them first.  And Damon is an awesome wall washer.  Give that kid a wet rag and he will "scrub off all the yuckies" he can find.  This is great because all the dirty walls coincidentally happen to be right at his level...

And, not to be forgotten, is Arie.  No jobs yet, but she does spend a lot of her awake time exercising by jumping like crazy in her Jumperoo, which I just now realized I have no pictures of.  And she is five months old.  Crazy.  Some of her other current favorite things to do are putting both hands in her mouth at the same time, blowing raspberries (new as of yesterday), trying to grab things out of our hands, and grabbing her toes and then rolling to the side.  She does this repeatedly and ends up pivoting in full circles.  She now pays a lot of attention to our food, which means it is about time to start with the dreaded baby food stage.  I don't like messes, so baby food and I don't get along too well.  Her pediatrician said to start her at five months.  But I've been trying to hold out for six months, because it's one more month I don't have to deal with the time and mess involved in feeding a baby something other than just milk.

Oh yeah, another thing she has started doing is sucking in her bottom lip.  You can kind of see it in this picture.

And one random picture.  Damon has such a sweet little face--when he's being sweet.  I need to get a picture of his "angry eyes" when he's mad, because I think it's really cute. The face, not the anger.  He was eating lunch like this--through the slats in the chair.  And this picture gave me a great idea for another chore for the kids.  Those chairs are fingerprinted filthy!

Bountiful baskets

I had my first experience with Bountiful Baskets today.  (Well, that's not entirely true.  My first experience was two weeks ago when I paid for a basket and then forgot to go pick it up.  But let's not talk about that.)  I was really happy with what we got!  We got more than what is pictured--we also got three grapefruits, a 5+ lb bag of butter gold potatoes, an eggplant, leeks, and eight bananas, plus Nate had already eaten one of the apples (pink lady) and one of the blood oranges(which are red inside).  And that pile of broccoli is a lot bigger than it looks.  You can't see quite how "piled" it is in the picture.  I got an extra bunch for volunteering.  (Have I ever mentioned that I love broccoli?  And that 4 of the 5 people in my family who have teeth like it too?)  The spinach, I think, is going to find a home blended up in something--probably spaghetti sauce.  (Husband, pretend you didn't read that.)  I'm not quite sure what to do with the eggplant.  And the leeks are going to have to find a home elsewhere.  But overall, I think this is awesome for $15.00! 

Did you notice the carrots?  Yes, those are all carrots.  Okay, admit it... how many of you didn't know carrots came in other colors?  I actually did know that.  I found it out a few years ago.  Want to know something interresting?  Carrots were originally purple and yellow, not orange. Somewhere along the way it is thought that the two created the hybrid orange carrot.  Supposedly, orange was prefered by westerners and that's why we really only see the orange ones today. The purple ones are native to Afghanistan.  Anyway...

We got orange, purple and yellow carrots today.  There were a few random red ones in the mix, but we didn't end up with one.  I know there are also white carrots in existence.  What's funny is that I just told the kids last night about the other colors of carrots in existence as they were eating their orange ones.  I had no idea we would actually get some of the other colored one today.  The kids were really, really excited when I showed them the carrots--especially the purple ones.

The beauty of the purple ones is a little bit skin deep though.  About a fourth of the way into the carrot, it turns to an orangish color and then the middle is more yellow.  I was really hoping that they were dark purple all the way through.  Oh well.  They are still cool looking.  Oh, and if you are wondering, they all taste pretty much the same.  Kelton did say that the yellow ones had a little bit different flavor, but he said it was really good.

Now, here are some things I don't know.  When I use the spinach, am I supposed to cut the "stem" off, or do you eat that part too?  And when you store carrots and broccoli in the fridge, are you supposed to have them in a bag?  When I buy them from the store, I always leave them in the produce bags.  I don't even know if you are supposed to do that... But these don't have produce bags.  I put them in ziplocks, which I didn't seal all the way, and then put them in the fridge, but I don't know if that will help keep them from drying out, or if it will just make them soggy.  I may know that purple carrots exist, but I am realizing that there is a lot I don't know about vegetables!

Going Private

Okay, I didn't really want to do this for a few different reasons, but I guess it is now time.  My blog is going private.  There have been some porno sites accessing my blog, plus some people in Russia and Belarus (and I know no one in those places).  I know this has been happening to a lot of people--you may want to check the traffic on your own blog.

So, if you like to read my blog (or even if you don't like to but still do anyway ;) ), leave a comment with your email address--even if you think I already have it.  I will wait a few days before I make the transition.

And one of the reasons I didn't want to go private was because there have been other people I have known who have changed their public blogs to being private and I was too... I don't know-- shy maybe, to ask to be invited because I knew them, but maybe not super well.  Honestly, I really don't care who reads my blog as long as I at least know who they are.  So, don't be embarrassed.  If you want to keep access to my blog, just let me know! 

Arie's favorite pastime

See this little girl?

We finally got around to taking pictures of her favorite thing to do.

I've never had a baby who loves to have their hands in their mouth as much as Arie does.  She seems to have her fist in her mouth a good part of the time.  It amazes me that she can fit that whole fist into her little mouth.  And a lot of times her fist ends up in her mouth after she smiles.  It's like she can't stand to have her mouth open (which she does when she smiles big) without putting her hand in.  I love it.

She is such a cute little girl!  And even though she has decided recently to not sleep as good as she used to at night, she is still a super sweet baby.  She is getting onto somewhat of a schedule where I know about how long she will be up before she needs another nap and she has figured out how to make it through the day on three good naps.  That's been nice.  And while she has some pudginess in places, she is still not super big.  At her four month apointment at the beginning of the month she weighed 13 lbs 8 oz and was 24.5 inches long.  I think.  (I have it written down but I don't fee like getting up to find it!)

I love how she's holding her hands in this picture.  Like she's posing.  But really, she is just getting ready to insert that fist...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! No, wait...

We got snowed on!  Right here at our house in the desert. 
Date: February 11th. 
Time: Late afternoon

This wasn't even a snow/rain mix.  It was all out snowing.  Big snowflakes.  And it snowed for almost two hours.  We didn't get much to show for it on the ground because the ground was really wet from the previous rain, but it did stick to the ground in places.

I went out with the kids so they could play in it and catch snowflake on their tongues.  It was a lot of fun. 

Maybe about six years ago, we woke up to a light dusting of snow on the ground.  That was fun.  But I realized that this is the first time in the 10 years I have lived here that I have actually watched it snow.  I've watched snow fall before, but it really was fun to watch it fall here.  As I stood outside, I really did get a Christmas-y feeling.  Silly.  But it's true.  There was just so much snow falling, even though the pictures don't really capture that. 

Like I said before, it didn't stick to our really wet dirt out back, but you can see it on the trampoline.  (and over on the red slide on the far edge of the picture.)  If we would have had grass out back, then you would see the snow on the ground too.

What's crazy is that the metro area has snow in their forcast for around mid-day tomorrow!  They didn't get snow when we did--they are a bit warmer than us, and maybe a little lower in elevation.  So we will see what happens!  Maybe we'll see some more snow tomorrow too.

Kid dictionary

If someone wanted to create a dictionary of words invented by kids, my boys would have a few new words that need to be added in.  These are the kind of words where they think they are using the correct word, when in fact, they have altered the correct    word(s) to something similar and the result is too cute to correct.  I'm pretty sure all kids do this, and I think a resulting dictionary would be a top seller. 

Damon's new word: drawler
Kelton's new word: anoising

Damon's word is is a hybrid of draw and color.  Drawler.  He tells me all the time that he wants to go drawler a picture.  Or asks if I want to come drawler with him.  I love it.  Why say that you want to go draw and color when you can mash them together into one word?  Very efficient and succinct.

Kelton's word cracks me up and I have to keep from laughing every time I hear it used--because really, he's five and I think he would have realized that he's not using the right word.  The word he means to use is "annoying."  My kids have latched onto this word recently because they are at the ages where when the other one(s) make noises, it bothers them to no end.  Or, in Kelton's words, it is a-noise-ing.  This words gets the most use at the table during meals and in the car when Damon is either singing or making other repetitive sounds and Kelton crys out in agony, "Damon, stop it!  That's anoising!!"

Today (Feb. 7) I have to add this to my post from last night.  Because the other thing that is cute is when little kids don't make up a new word, but use a real word they are familiar with in the place of a similar sounding word that is newer to them.  For example:  A few days ago, Damon came in while I was getting ready for the day and was wondering what I was doing to my face.  I told him I was putting on my makeup.  He found that fascinating and stayed to watch.  So this morning he came in needing some help with something while I was putting on my makeup.  I told him I was almost done and he said, "Oh, are you putting on your hiccups?"

Back

Okay, blogger picture upload is back in business, and so am I.  There are quite a few new posts below, going all the way back to Christmas.  :)

Look alikes

I keep going back and forth on who Arie looks like.  I will have a random Kelton baby picture come up on my computer and I will see Arie in it.  Sometimes it will happen with Damon's pictures too.  But the winner is probably Natalie.  My sister took a picture of this picture of Natalie and emailed it to me.  (I have the picture too, just not a digital copy) It's not my best picture of Natalie, but all my digital files of her are not stored on this computer.

Natalie

 And here's Arie.  Arie is older in this picture than Natalie is in hers.  They have their own individual features, but I do think they look a lot alike!

Have I mentioned that I love this adorable girl?  And my adorable Natalie too.

I really should get on this

I really need to figure out how to find some time to work with my boys.  I took these pictures yesterday and the day before. 

Two days ago, Damon can running downstairs, very excited.  He told me, "I made a 'D'!  I made a 'D'!"  He was just so excited so I went to look.  Damon likes to color and I was sure he had drawn something that looked like the letter D, hopefully on a piece of paper and not the wall.  I was not expecting to find this.

He used Connect 4 checkers to make a D.  I was so impressed.  And look at that face.  He was so proud of himself.  He did such a great job!  Then he told me, "I made a 'D' for Damon!"  I made him promise not to touch it while I ran to grab the camera.  He knows most of the letters.  I should probably work some more with him and teach him more of the sounds.

Then yesterday, Kelton brought me a picture he made for his friend.  He is not one much for coloring or drawing so I wasn't expecting to find that he had drawn his friend.  But what really surprised me was the word he wrote.  First of all, he doesn't really like writing.  We've done a little bit of tracing and he can write his own name.  He knows almost all of the letter sounds.  A few times we have worked on sounding out simple words.

But this picture was done entirely on his own. He figured out how to write "PRKR" on the picture. His friend's name is Parker.

So yeah.  I feel like a slacker.  A mom on top of things would probably have both these boys reading by now.  So, we will work on it!

Kelton is 5!

Another one of my children has reached the "school age."  It's cute how that is one of their favorite things about being five--they are old enough to go to school.  Thankfully, Kelton understands that he has to wait until August.

We started Kelton's birthday out by singing him "Happy Birthday."  Then he opened his presents before Natalie had to leave for school. 

We gave him a Spiderman blanket and an Imaginext castle.  Grandma and Grandpa Webb gave him a set of good knights and bad knights and a knight with an eagle.  Grandma and Grandpa Burgess  gave him a catapult and battering ram.  All the toys go together and are really fun.  Some of the toys even interact with the castle, which we didn't know beforehand.  Like when you use the catapult or battering ram, a voice in the castle responds and says things like, "it's raining rock!"  or "stop the ramming!"

Kelton got to have his first friend party this year.  He was very excited.  We cleared everything out of the loft and turned it into our own Mario Land.  The kids started in the castle and then crawled out through the "pipe" tunnel.

Then they picked up a turtle shell to throw at a Goomba.

Once they smashed a Goomba, they got to go over and smash a coin block.  Which resulted in them getting a chocolate coin to put in their goody bag.

The girls at the party got to be Princess.

And the boys got to choose between Mario and Luigi.  Kelton was excited to be Luigi.

Because of time constraints, we opted for cupcakes instead of a cake.  It just seemed easier... and it was.  I made a frosting transfer for each cupcake.  But the consistency was off and the transfers didn't work real well because they were really thin and thawed too quickly to get off the waxed paper.  (I left the remaining transfers that I didn't need in the freezer.  A few days later I took them out and they worked much better with the extra freezing time.)  These are the original ones.  You can see that some of them didn't quite work, especially the flowers.

But Kelton absolutely loved them, and that is all that mattered.  Well, that and they tasted great.  He was so excited to get a star cupcake, since the star is one of his favorite things to get in the Mario games.  (Which I find funny because I find it to be one of the most useless things...)

Poor kid had to blow like five times to get the candles out.  We just couldn't convince him to get close enough to accomplish anything.

After his party, I had planned on making stir fry for dinner per Kelton's request.  It is his favorite dinner.  But, the party was from 3:00-5:00 and we had 9 extra kids here during that time and I had spent every minute of the day on his party.  So, by 5:30 when all of the party stuff was done, I was tired!  And my kitchen was still overrun with frosting mess.  So we convinced Kelton to eat out and we all went to Denny's.  Kelton seemed to have a great day.

Random Kelton stuff:
Kelton is a sweetheart.  He is also a firecracker and can keep life interresting.  He is and always has been very independent and likes things done his way.  His pediatrician once told me that these traits will make him and awesome adult.  He really likes playing Mario Brothers on the Wii and is really good at it.  He is really athletic and good at sports.  He loves playing with Natalie, even if what she is playing is girly.  He absolutely loves going to preschool and can't wait to go to school along with Natalie.  He makes the best faces when he reacts to things.  I don't think anyone can make faces like Kelton.  He loves riding his bike and is much more daring on it than his big sister.  When something is bothering him, all he really wants to fix it is for mom or dad to hold him--which is funny because he was not a cuddly baby.  He doesn't really like frosting, which I find so hard to wrap my mind around, but he loves chocolate cake.  He is very smart.  I haven't worked with him a lot, but I can tell that he already has a good concept of math as far as adding and subtracting.  And we love him!  Happy birthday!

Emulation

I love these pictures.

Fun with family and snow

The day after Christmas (Wednesday) I packed up for myself and the kids and we headed to Snowflake to stay through Sunday.  Nate had a lot of work he needed to get done so he wasn't able to come with us.  Ironically, he didn't end up working at all because he got sick with the same respritory flu I had just gotten over a few days before.  This was the first time I had ever gone on a trip by myself with all the kids, and they traveled great.  I hardly heard from them the whole way there.  And Arie slept until we got just outside of Taylor.  Christy was in Snowflake with her family and Melanie and Jade were there too.  It was fun to see everyone and also to meet Easton, who is only a month older than Arie.

While we were there, we got a fun treat.  We got to watch it snow.  I think my kids must think that it snows all the time in the winter in Snowflake.  Because there always seems to be snow there when we go.  It's funny because growing up, I didn't feel like it snowed all that much.  We must time our trips just right because we usually get to see snow.  The kids were really excited.  Natalie especially because she knew it snowed on Christmas Eve in Snowflake and they got a white Christmas (which had since melted) and she was jealous and upset we weren't there to see it.

Hudson was really enjoying throwing snow and Kelton spent the first several minutes trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

Natalie was super excited and for once, her coat didn't look out of place with all that fur.  She had a lot of fun throwing snow too, but got in trouble twice for hitting both Kelton and Hudson in the face with snowballs.

Snowball fight!  I love how in probably every picture I have of my kids in the snow, someone has a pair of socks on their hands.  Natalie is wearing my non-waterproof gloves.  We aren't equipped for snow.

Damon was napping when the kids were out playing in the snow.  But, the snow started up again after he woke up, so we took him out to play too.  He was so excited to pick up the snow and throw it that he didn't care that he had nothing at all on his hands.  For about five minutes.  Then all of a sudden it hit him that his hands were painfully frozen and he started screaming and came up to me crying for me to fix his hands.  Poor kid.  Later, after his hands thawed out, he wanted to go right back out.  He didn't even care that his hands were bare.  But this time, I decided to not be a failure as a mother and I found some gloves for him.  As it started getting dark and cold, I had a hard time getting him to come inside.

Here's Natalie with Grandpa and Jade.  I don't know why none of them have coats on.  It was cold.  And I dared Natalie to run across the snowy lawn with her bare feet.  And she did.

Arie and Easton--the two new additions to the family this year.  Easton was actually born on Nate's birthday!

Then on the weekend, we got to see more family!  Erica, also traveling alone with her kids, stopped by overnight while on the way to St. David to be with her family.  This meant that Natalie and Callie got to be together again.  I've never seen two girls have so much fun together.  Grandma made all of her granddaughters skirts for Christmas.  Mine and Erica's girls' skirts were made out of the same fabric, so they all matched each other at church.

 My boys got a new set of church clothes from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas.  They both looked so handsome--even if they were both in desperate need of a haircut.

These last two pictures make me laugh.  I wanted to get a picture of just the boys in their new clothes.  Notice in the picture above that Damon and Kelton are not standing next to each other.  That's because Kelton wanted nothing to do with standing by Damon.  So, trying to get a picture of the two of them together was, well... impossible.  Here are the only two attempts I took:

Picture 1.  Kelton is mad and standing his ground.  Damon-- who is trying to do what he is being told, but also trying to annoy Kelton who doesn't want to stand by him--is trying to sneakily inch backward to get next to Kelton.

Picture 2.  Kelton is now really mad, yelling "I don't want to stand by him!"  Damon is no longer being sneaky and is all out chasing Kelton around the room, trying to get next to him for the two reasons mentioned previously.  And probably mostly for the last reason as you can see a bit of a smile on Damon's face.

And this, people, is my life with these two boys quite a lot of the time.  :)

*Random endnote:  In doing this post I realized that I way overuse the word "just."  I edited out about ten of them.  And there are still some in there.

Christmas

For the first time, we spent Christmas by ourselves this year.  We did have one Christmas a few weeks before Kelton was born that we spent at our own house, but my parents came and were with us.  While we missed being with family, it was really fun to have Christmas in our own house, with our own decorations.  It was also great not having to figure out how to get everything to fit in the car without being seen.

On Christmas morning, our kids actually slept in until 7:00.  Since Natalie will usually wake up at 6:00, the extra hour was greatly appreciated.  The kids had to wait upstairs until we were all ready to come down.  They were so excited.

Kelton's main presents were a bike, and Jake and the Neverland Pirates Bucky ship and Hook's Adventure Rock.

Natalie got a bunch, like around ten, My Little Ponies and this doll.  She wanted an American Girl doll and we could tell she was a little disappointed to get a substitute.  But she is old enough to know a bit about tact and kept telling us that "it was okay."

I made the boys a handful of different superhero masks.  I like how both boys have the same expression on their faces.

A picture of the Christmas mess.

As per the tradition in my family, we let the kids get in their stockings after we had our big Christmas breakfast.  Oh, and if you are wondering by this point where Arie was... she slept throught the whole thing.  And I am just now realizing that we took absolutely no pictures of her on her first Christmas.  Oops.

Damon's main presents were a Little People Wheelies ramp thing and three cool Imaginext planes.  But according to this picture, maybe we should have just given him a bunch of salt water taffy.

We had a great Christmas!