The job chart

I just got this finished for Natalie. I am excited, and so is she. It has taken me way too long to realize that she is by far old enough to really start helping out. And I need the help. Plus, I am excited to use this to teach her about responsibility and money management. Across the top are the things that she needs to do every day. I laminated everything so she will mark off the boxes with a dry erase marker. (By the way, a laminator is a very fun toy. I got myself one with Christmas money. I had no idea they were so cheap! I think it was only $20.) Her jobs are: homework, practice piano, clean bedroom, more school practice, daily job, brush teeth, read scriptures, and say prayers. The more school practice category is for me to help her work on additional school type stuff. For example, I noticed she needs some practice writing numbers and I want to start doing addition and subtraction flash cards with her. Stuff like that. Then she has a daily job that will change every day, depending on what I need her to do. I put three Velcro circles on the bottom of the chart and Velcro on the back of all of her potential daily jobs. That way I can put up to three jobs on the bottom of the chart for her to do each day and I can rotate them as needed. Most days I will only give her one job. But she might do three jobs on days like Saturday. Also, if she does all of the Daily Jobs for the week, she will get paid $1. The money is not tied in with the other jobs along the top of the chart--those are just expected. The money is only for doing the jobs along the bottom all week. I am excited about the money tie in for a couple of reasons:

1)We can teach her on a personal level about tithing.

2)We can teach her that when you work hard and do a good job, you get paid for it. That is how the real world works. I would like her to learn that before she is actually out in the real world. Same goes for this next one...

3)We can teach her how to manage money. Having worked at a bank right next to a college campus, it was scary to see how many young adults have no idea how money works. And yes, you could add many, many adults into that category too. Just look around at our economy and all of its 0% interest financing on things like TVs and couches... Natalie has started seeing things (like press on nail stickers) at the store that she wants me to get her. Instead, I talked to her about how she can earn money and use it how she wants. She can buy small things when she first gets her money, or she can save it up to buy bigger fun things. After getting her dollar from the tooth fairy the other day, she wanted to go to the dollar store to pick something out. I explained the concept of saving to her and what she could buy later if she waited. She was very excited and told me she wanted to save her dollar. I was a little worried that she would still want to go spend her dollar right away. And I would not have stopped her. But I was very proud when, on her own, she chose to save the dollar and was excited to do it.

So we will see how the job chart works out. I think it will be good for everyone.

Backtracking

Since this serves somewhat as our family journal, I thought of a few things today that I wanted to record. Because if I don't, I know someday I will be trying to remember exactly how old our kids were when these things happened and won't be able to.

This is a long post and probably too boring for most to read. So I will put this little story at the beginning instead of the end. Because its funny. This happened right before I sat down to type this post. Kelton was in the corner and I realized he had been there for a little while. Actually, I realized as I called him over that I couldn't actually remember why he was there. Oops. So, according to the standart protocol as always, I asked him, "Kelton, why did you have to go to the corner? What did you do?" His response, "Because... I pushed your button." I immediately remembered what he had done--he had opened up my laptop and turned it on. He then got in trouble because he knows he is not supposed to play with my computer and he is not supposed to turn it on, and was sent to the corner. After his response, I did the one thing you are not supposed to do when trying to correct bad behavior... I started laughing. So did Kelton. If only I had remembered what he had done, it might not have caught me so offgaurd to hear him say he went to the corner for "pushing my button."


I started teaching Natalie piano lessons on January 26th. I know the exact date because it is written in her lesson notebook. She was so excited to start. I had kind of showed her some stuff on the piano about a year ago and it was obvious that she wasn't old enough to start lessons. Then in January I had someone call me wanting to see if I could teach lessons to her five year old daughter. I agreed. I had taught five year olds before and knew it could be done, although they don't pick up on things quite as fast as a seven year old, and they take a bit more patience to teach. Since I was going to be teaching someone else's five year old, I figured I might as well teach my own five year old. Plus, Natalie was actually closer to being six than five so I decided she was definitely old enough. Natalie is doing really well. She does spend more time messing around playing whatever she feels like on the piano (a lot of which strains my nerves and ears to the breaking point) but she does play her lesson songs too and I hardly ever have to remind her to practice. Now, a few months later, she still asks every few days if it is time for her new piano lesson. Sadly, she doesn't always get her lesson on the same day each week. I tried that. The problem is, her two little brothers attack when they see her at the piano. They leave my other students alone, but not their sister. And if it happens to be dinnertime, or other stuff needs to get done, her lesson gets moved. It's just the way it is. But we have only missed one week so far. I think that's pretty good. Also, part of the reason I was putting off starting lessons with her was I was afraid that I would have a hard time teaching my own child. I have endless patience for teaching other people's children how to play the piano, but didn't know how that would work out with my own. I'm glad to say that I am able to slip into teacher mode, even with my own child, and not get too frustrated when she doesn't understand something.


As a side note, I now have 6 piano students, including Natalie. Two of those students I haven't starting teaching yet, but they will start in about a week. The first one (Natalie T.) I have been teaching for two years, the second one (Hailey) for one and a half years, and then the other one (Hannah) started at the same time as Natalie. It's funny how two years ago when I started teaching piano again after about a two year break (I had 15 students before Kelton was born) I was ONLY going to take the ONE student. But little by little I have decided that I can handle a few more. Plus, it's easier to take on new students when I already know that the students are good kids. And their parents are friends of mine. Since piano teachers can be hard to find, I do feel a certain obligation to pass on the knowledge I have so that there will still be people who can play the piano. So, here I am with six students. But I think I will keep it at that number for a while.


Moving on to Kelton. Several months ago I realized that he knew most of the letters of the alphabet. This surprised me a bit. I knew he knew some of them but didn't realize he knew so many. Over the next few days I actually started teaching them to him and he quickly learned the rest. He even knows the lowercase letters. Then a few months ago I realized that he knows about half of the sounds the letters make. So I started working with him on learning the ones he didn't know. He quickly picked those up too. So pretty much right at three years old, Kelton knows all the letters of the alphabet, upper and lowercase, and all of their sounds. He doesn't quite have all the sounds of the vowels down though. Just the other day it occured to me that I should probably start to try teaching him to read. Very simple stuff, like CVC words. He might not get it at all. Natalie knew all the letters and sounds for well over a year before she understood how to put them together to read words. So we will see what happens.

1 tooth-1 tooth=

Natalie came home from school looking a little different today. Her front tooth has been hanging super loose for about a week now, and today it came out at school. She was so excited. She got a sticker and her teacher gave her a little tooth shaped container to put her tooth in. (The other sticker is an Owl All Star award. She got that for telling the truth even though it meant she would be in trouble. She was talking when they were supposed to be quiet and fessed up.) This brings Natalie's lost tooth count to 3; two on the bottom and one on the top. The other top one is getting pretty loose too.
Here's a better picture of the missing tooth. It won't stay missing for that long. You can see the whole bottom of the new tooth coming in.

And I discovered that this little guy got a new tooth. He probably didn't get it today, but today is when I found it. He hasn't gotten a new tooth since January. This brings his tooth count to 7; Four on the top and three on the bottom.

Square foot garden

I got the garden all done today. This whole square foot garden idea is so easy. I decided to do this method because the dirt we have here can hardly qualify as dirt, let alone "soil" for planting a garden in. We have a few plants in the back yard and it took about a week of continuosly soaking the ground to be able to dig a one foot deep hole. But square foot gardening doesn't use any of the existing dirt.



Here is the frame for the garden. I did ours 2x6 feet. Nate had been working a ton of hours latetly (like between 8-10 billable per day--he's been actually at work for 12+). But he was nice enough to pound these boards together for me last night at like 9:00.



Then we filled it with "square foot gardening mix" which is a combination of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost. I was glad to find out it is sold premixed at Lowe's. And I don't know what the kids are doing. I didn't tell them to put their hands up. I guess they are just excited.

Then you divide it into square foot sections. You are supposed to actually put a grid on, using something like thin boards so you can permanently see your lines. But mine was small enough that I didn't think it was necessary. Plus, I didn't want the cost of the extra wood and the extra work of putting together a grid. I probably would have done it for a larger area though.

Then we put the plants in. Hopefully we can keep it pretty and green like this. From left to right in the picture below is: tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, canteloupe, strawberries, and cucumbers. I planted the potatoes and cucumbers from seed, which is why you can't see them. I also only planted one potato plant. In the square behind it I am going to plant 16 carrot plants. But I already planted some carrots elsewhere and I want them to be offset from each other. So I will plant the carrots in the garden over the next few weeks, so I can hopefully have carrots continuosly. And for those of you thinking I am crazy, I plan to grow the cucumbers vertically and have them climb a tomato cage. If that doesn't work, they can grow outside the box. The canteloupe vine will have to go outside the box. I also put my tomato plants way closer together than recommended. But I don't care. They will grow into one giant plant, I'm sure, but in reality, I should have used the entire garden to plant four tomato plants. I wasn't willing to do that. We will see what happens.

My little garden helpers... I even let Kelton skip his nap (*gasp*) so he could help too. You will notice that about half of the garden is in direct sunlight and half is shaded by the wall. This is going to be my experiment. I have one of each plant in the sun and one in the shade. According to the directions, all these plants are supposed to be in direct sunlight. However, I wondered how smart this is when you practically live on the surface of the sun. And the shaded ones might not stay shaded once summer comes and the sun isn't offset in the southern sky. But we will see.

And here are my other carrots that I planted 3 days ago. And no, those are not milk jugs. They are super high tech planters. High quality. Very expensive and hard to find. Okay...they are milk jugs.

I didn't want to make the garden any bigger, but I wanted more stuff. So I planted 5 carrots in each of these. And I have a large storage bin thing I got from the thrift store that I am going to plant 3 more potato plants in. (All of these containers have holes in the bottom for drainage.) I used different dirt for these so we will see how it works. The square foot garden soil is $16 per 2 cubic feet. This other stuff was just $5 for about the same amount. Since I have carrots and potatoes in both kinds of dirt, I will be able to compare.

I went visiting teaching today and one sister showed me her watering system for her garden. That is my next project to look into. It was completely automatic and awesome. I was planning on watering by hand. Okay for the 80 degree here and now. But I don't think I will feel the same way when it is 100+ degrees outside. (Oi! why do I like it here again?)

I am really hoping for at least one edible something to come out of all of this. Otherwise it will just be an expensive failure and we will try again next year (the sq ft soil can be reused after composting). But I figure if it can survive the ants, other bugs, my kids, birds (which I hear love to peck strawberries to death), oh and the blasted sun, we will be in business!

On another note... Happy St. Patrick's Day! Everyone is wearing green today. Well, except me. I don't think I own green. Nate actually has a dark green dress shirt. He wanted to pinch me this morning. But I told him that unless he was planning to pinch all the green-less people at work, he had to leave me alone.

The kids got shamrock shaped pancakes for breakfast.

And yes, they were green too.

Kelton is such a cute boy, but I feel like a lot of times I don't get very cute pictures of him. But I liked this one.

Here's a little St. Patrick's Day story for you. Natalie had a bag of "gold" (spray painted rocks) that she brought home from school. She said we needed to hide them so the leprechauns couldn't steal it. Last night we built a Leprechaun trap and put the gold inside. (Hey Rob, we used glue. Drilling a hole in my foot didn't sound like that much fun.) Natalie was sure she was going to catch a leprechaun, even though we told her they are very tricky. After she was asleep, a leprechaun snuck in and stole the gold and left a few packages of Smarties for payment. Nate told me that she was going to be really upset about loosing the gold. I thought it would be just fine. Well, this morning we all went in to check the trap. Natalie had that "I'm so excited I can hardly contain it" look on her face. She was sure that there was a leprechaun in there. We opened it up and saw the missing gold and Smarties. Natalie burst into tears. She was sad that there was no leprechaun but even more upset that he took her gold. Point for the husband. But that's okay. It probably takes the total to about 425 to 1... Possibly 2. :) (I love you Nate!)

What's funny is that she suddenly stopped the tears and said, "that leprechaun is nice!" Appreciation for the candy had kicked in. I said, "well do you want the gold or the candy?" We had told her she could probably write a note and leave it for the leprechaun and maybe he would give the gold back. Her answer, of course, was "both." Wouldn't it be great if we never had to choose between things we wanted? Hey Cherie, do you want to save up money for a bigger house or pay off student loans? Um... both! I like it. Someone figure out how to work that, and get back to me.

Green thumb...we hope

It's spring break. So I have all three kids home with me. I have been trying to think of things we can do to make the week a little more fun. Within the next few days we are going to plant a garden for the first time ever. (more on that later) I read and was told that Marigolds are a natural bug repelant, so I decided that we could plant some to put in and around our little garden. The kids were really excited to buy the pots. I was really excited to find them at the dollar store. Today during nap time, I let Natalie paint the pots. She loved every minute of it.

Kelton woke up near the end and got to paint a pot too. This picture makes me nervous for their clothes, even though I know we were able to successfully keep the paint off.

Then I let them put in the dirt, or potting soil stuff, or whatever it is. I think it's supposed to be mixed in with existing dirt, but that's not really possible here. So we will see what happens when we try to grow plants straight in this stuff.

Natalie filling up her pot. After this, I showed them how to plant the seeds (which Natalie said were really ugly) and water the dirt.

All finished! It was super hot so Kelton was not really in the mood to sit on the hot patio and have me take a picture. I thought their paintings turned out really good. Now we will wait and see if we get any flowers.

And on to the next project...our square foot garden. I have high hopes...

I'm not THAT old

Dinner Conversation:

Natalie: "When you were a little baby did your mom and dad hold you and be like, 'oh you are so cute' like that?" (She uses the word "like" a lot. Direct result of listening to her kindergarten teacher talk all day.)

Me: "I don't know, I don't remember. But I bet they did."

Natalie: "What did you look like?"

Me: "I have pictures. Would you like to see them after dinner?"

Natalie: "Oh! (pause) Are they in color?"

Kelton needs his brother to grow up faster

I was cooking dinner when I heard Kelton from behing me exclaim, "Look! I'm a princess!!" I turned around to see this... (Natalie wasn't in the kitchen yet, though.)

Then after dinner Kelton comes clomping (is that even a word?) into the kitchen with these on his feet and complains "I need a dress." He was very upset about it too.

His shoe fell off while I was taking pictures and he couldn't get it back on. This was the resulting sad face.

I guess it just goes to show that sometimes everyone wants to feel like a princess.

This made me smile the other day. I realized Damon was awake from his nap, but he was happy and not crying for me to come get him. When I went in, I realized why. Who wouldn't be happy with not one, not two, but three pacifiers?! I think what actually made it funny was that all three were different kinds. (Soothie, Mam, and Nuk)

Things that make me happy...

I've found myself mentally compiling this list of things about my kids for a while now. They are things I would like to remember, so I figured I better write them down.

Things that make me happy...

*Kelton's laugh. When you tickle him just right, he does this super fast laugh that reminds me of a chipmonk. Anyone who hears it can't help but laugh too because it's pretty funny.


* Damon's laugh. Baby's laughs are always a guarantee to make people happy. Damon is no exception. He used to snort when he laughed. He still does sometimes. Now, when he's having a lot of fun and starts laughing, he laughs repeatedly on the intake of breath. It is so cute and it cracks me up. I also love how he laughs and smiles with his mouth wide open. He's done that since he was brand new.


*Listening to Natalie read. I know all kids learn to read, but listening to your own child read is different. I'm constantly impressed by what words she knows without sounding them out and by what words she can sound out. I would guess that her reading level is at about 1st grade. But I bet within a few months it will jump up even higher.


*Damon's hair. It's dark and straight and he has tons of it. I love combing it. I love looking at it. It really does make me happy. Part of that, though, is the cute baby under the hair. :)


* Watching Kelton eat a plate of raw vegetables. He will eat raw broccoli, cucumbers, and carrots--and he likes it! Natalie loves lettuce and carrots and apples. It really does make me happy to watch my kids eat fruits and vegetables.


* Seeing Natalie get off the school bus with her backpack. She just looks so big.


* Natalie's big brown eyes and curly hair.

*Kelton's big blue eyes.

*Damon's eyelashes.

* Watching my kids sleep. And having all three of them asleep at the same time.

*Kelton's "European" kisses. When he gives us kisses, he insists on kissing one cheek and then the other.

*Damon's open mouthed kisses. At least we've taught him to kiss us on the cheek instead of the mouth.

*Watching Natalie play with Damon. She can make him laugh like crazy.

*Watching Kelton open the door on the Durango. This one really does warrant a video clip, but you will just have to use your imagination. Kelton is still too short to be able to open the car door. But he has found a way to circumvent that minor obstacle. He reaches up on his tiptoes so he can get his fingers around the handle. Then he climbs us the side of the car, puts his right foot on the car and his left foot on the top of the tire so that he has leverage. Then he pulls the door open. Then comes the best part. He then dangles from the door while it swings open and then drops to the ground. I'm sad for the day when he grows another inch or two and will open the door just like everyone else.

*When Natalie and Kelton dance along with the "Augustus Gloop" song on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They've got the actions down as well and the Oompa Loompas. Plus they make awesome faces when they do it. This one also needs a video clip.

*When Kelton wakes up happy. Sadly, this is a rare occurance. He just isn't a wake-up happy kind of person. Can't say I blame him. I would rather be sleeping half the time too.

I know I am probably missing quite a few of the things I've thought of. But I can always edit them in when I remember them. Anyway, I love my kids. I can't imagine how boring my life would be without them. My house would definitely be a lot cleaner... but who wants to sit around, bored all day in a clean house? I sure don't.

Awesome discovery (ies)

I'm sure this never happens to anyone else, but it never fails that as soon as I start trying to cook dinner, everyone needs my attention or help--especially the baby. Dinnertime for him is always while I am cooking, and never when I'm done and the rest of us are eating. Tonight it just hit completely wrong. He was finished eating the things he could feed himself and wanted his baby food. I was not in a spot where I could stop and Damon wouldn't stop crying. Natalie came into the kitchen and I asked her to play with Damon for a minute. Then I had a great idea.
I sometimes forget that Natalie is old enough to do stuff I think she is too little to do. I think that happens a lot with the oldest child. But this worked out great. Natalie was very excited to feed Damon and Damon didn't protest to it either. Yes, it was slightly messier than when I do it but it was worth the extra clean up. She successfully fed him the entire thing.



On another note, Damon wants to know how fast you can unroll a tube of toilet paper. He seriously doubts you can do it faster than him. We have been trying to keep the bathroom doors closed, but when we don't, Damon gets in there, and that kid is fast. He loves the toilet paper. He is my first child to have such an obsession with unrolling the toilet paper.

And I found out the real reason why babies do this. You may think it's because it is so much fun to bat at the toilet paper and watch it spin around and around and pile up on the floor. Not so. It's because if you are successful at unrolling the whole thing before you are prematurely removed from the bathroom, there is an amazingly yummy treat hiding in the middle...

Sadly, this isn't even the first time he has eaten the toilet paper tube. This kid loves to eat paper/cardboard/magazines/boxes and anything else along those lines. And I mean eat. Not just "pick up and put in the mouth because I am a baby" but, "pick up, bite off, chew, and swallow..." unless I get to him before the swallowing part and pinch his cheeks and make him spit out his wad. Maybe I should be more alarmed, but I actually find it kind of funny. I say "kind of" because sometimes he eats important stuff, like bills or the Ensign, and then it's more annoying than funny. But he's just so cute that I can't be mad.

And no, that's not paper on his face. Kelton was kind enough to leave an unfinished white fudge covered Oreo on the kithen floor. Again, too cute to be mad at the mess. What's funny is that the scene of the crime was about three feet behind Damon. But as soon as we discovered what was going on, he started crawling away as fast as he could. It's funny to watch a baby "sprint" on hands and knees. It's probably even funnier to watch a 9 month old baby realize that he's been caught doing something he knows he shouldn't be doing.

And all this pretty much sums up Damon at the moment. He really is as sweet as his little face looks in the pictures. But he really never stops moving and he gets into anything he can. (And as of the last few weeks, he is finally sleeping through the night!)

Back in business

Today is Monday. I have been without the internet since last Wednesday. And now finally, the internet is working again. I'd like to thank Qwest for the huge inconvenience this has been. Seriously, it seems silly, but you try to go without the internet for almost a week. No email, no online banking, etc... Fun. We canceled our home phone and I agreed to let them upgrade our internet speed. When all was said and done, our modem couldn't support the higher speed (even though they said it could) and they of course couldn't send someone back out right away to fix their mistake. But we are good now.

While the internet was out of comission, we had a crazy bout of weather roll through. No rain, no snow, just cold. Like really cold. We had one day where the high was barely above freezing. Remember, we are talking southern Arizona. That same lovely day, we had frozen pipes. Gratefully they were just frozen and not broken like a lot of other people's. But we had no water until 3:30 when I decided to go outside, unwrap my pipes (yes they were wrapped up and still froze) and use my blow dryer on them. I felt a bit like I had been thrown back into the past that day. We had no TV (we never have TV), no internet, and no water. The next day (Friday) the crazy weather actually caused school to get canceled. The school was afraid of having trouble with frozen water lines, electricity and heating problems and such. It's finallly warming back up to normal February temperatures, but it sure was a crazy, cold few days.

I need your advice...

So I may be opening up the floodgates here, but I need some advice.

Kelton is 3.

Kelton wears a diaper.

I think he is now the oldest child at church who is not potty trained, or potty training.

I do not want to potty train him. I am actually quite happy to just change diapers. I am lazy and only change him in the morning when he wakes up and again if he is messy and then before bed. It's easy. Potty training is a mess. It's not easy. I don't like it. I don't want to do it.

I have potty trained one child, so I should know what I am doing, right? Well... I'd rather not go into that whole story right now. It's depressing. And I think it's the real reason why I never want to potty train another child. How am I supposed to potty train another child when the first one used up my ENTIRE (plus some) potty training patience reserve? And Kelton is headstrong, stubborn, always right, etc..., etc..., etc... I'm afraid one of us might not survive.

So. Help me out here. I need advice, strategies, methods, books, whatever you've got. I want to hear about it. For the sake of a very stubborn 3 year old (who really is a sweet boy) and his already-frusterated-just-thinking-about-it mother, please tell me you've found something that works. Please!

Mesa Temple and a Baptism

This post is a little late, but I wanted to track down some pictures first, and I didn't have my camera with me.

On Friday, January 14th my sister-in-law Tina got to go through the temple for the first time. She asked me to be her escort, so it was a really exciting day for me too. I love being able to hear the temple Matron, or one of her assistants, talk about the temple. This is the third time I've had that opportunity, and I love it every time. The session was in the evening and we didn't take our kids with us. Nate's parents were able to come down and stay with our kids at our house. It was so helpful to have them do that for us. And the kids loved spending time with Grandma and Grandpa.

Then, the next day (Sat. Jan 15th), my niece Hannah (Tina's daughter) was baptized. She's been waiting for about a year for this to happen, so this was a really exciting day for her. It was also exciting for my brother Rob, because he got to baptize her. Also, January 15th is his birthday. So not only did he get to baptize his daughter on his birthday, but he was also baptized on his birthday. So they were baptized on the same day--just many years apart.

Now this is where this post kind of ties into the one about Kelton's birthday. All of these events kind of happened at the same time. So it is because of the temple and the baptism that Kelton was able to celebrate his birthday with both sets of grandparents. (We celebrated Kelton's birthday with the family and the cake on the same day as the baptism.)

Blog post about my blog book :)

A few weeks ago I finished making my blog into a book using Blurb. I just got the finished product today and it is so awesome!
You can arrange your posts however you want, put your pictures where you want, etc... It was really easy to do and didn't take that much time. (granted, I just finished turning my husband's mission journal/letters into a book, so this was a piece of cake.)

The best part is, I was able to buy a Groupon to Blurb a few months ago--$60 value for $20! So, the total for my 150 page harcover book came to $60 and some change, plus about $7 shipping. And I only paid $27 for it. Awesome. (thanks Chad and Erica for letting me know about the groupon!) To anyone who might be contemplating this, it is totally worth it. Now that I have the finished product, I even think it would have been worth paying the full price if I had to. I upgraded the paper to Premium (lustre) and I think it is worth the extra few dollars too. (I think it added $6 or so to the price of my book.) The paper is nice and heavy and has a nice sheen to it. It doesn't have a glare like glossy paper, but is not dull like matte.

Anyway, I am very excited about my new book. It actually inspires me to blog more. I used to keep a written journal. I was actually pretty good at it. Then I had a baby. But I still did a good job about writing every few months. Then I had another baby. Journal entires dropped off to one or two a year. Add baby number 3. My last journal entry was... January 31, 2008... 3 years ago...written just after Kelton was born. Wow. But then I started blogging. I don't really like that it has replaced my written journal, but that's just kind of the way it is. So, now that I have this nice little book, I am inspired to write more so that my "replacement journal" is accurate and not missing any of the little things that make me smile from day to day. I know it's not the same--I don't put the same details in my blog as I would in my journal. But for now, it's better than nothing, right?

So maybe you will see an increase in posts. Maybe not. But if you do, at least you will know why now.

Look who's 3!

Happy Birthday Kelton!!!
Kelton's birthday is today and he is three years old. I can't believe it! I'm starting to think that every time one of my kids has a birthday, I am going to be amazed that they are as old as they are. I don't know if I will ever get used to them getting older. I started asking Kelton about a week ago what he wanted on his cake. I threw out some suggestions, like Lightning McQueen, but when his dad threw out an "A" cake, Kelton was sold. He changed his mind a little depending on the day, but the "A" cake was requested the most. So here it is. I did two things with this cake I had never done before. This was my first ever cupcake cake and I did it using a method called "frozen buttercream transfer." It turned out to be pretty easy, and I'm sure it helped that the "A" and the balls were about the easiest design I could have used to do the frozen buttercream transfer with. (for anyone wondering, the condensed nutshell of the method is: get a picture, put waxed paper over it, pipe in the colored frosting in the appropriate places, freeze, then peel off and put it on the cake.)

Kelton loved his cake. And so did a handful of other adult U of A fans who happened to see it.

He was excited about the candles and us singing to him.

He was not so excited about the flames on the candles being gone after he blew them out...

Cupcakes!!! Kelton loves cupcakes.

Kelton does not love messy hands. My poor kids. I hope I haven't done permanant damage to them. I do not like for them to have messy (with food) hands. And it has rubbed off on them. They don't like having food on their hands and after eating, insist on getting it cleaned off right away.

We actually did the cake yesterday because we had some family gathered together. (I plan to do another post on that when I get some more pictures.) So we also had Kelton open his present from Grandma and Grandpa Burgess after we had cupcakes. He got a wooden train set, similar to the Thomas ones, but at a bazillionth of the price. Kelton has no idea who Thomas is anyway.

He loved it.

So much so, that he went a little crazy.

Earlier in the day, Grandma and Grandpa Webb were at our house. So he got his present from them a day early too. He got a new Zhu Zhu pet with a house and a garage with a car. It really is fun. I didn't realize that Zhu Zhu pets did more than just scurry around aimlessly. My favorite is when the Zhu Zhu pet goes toward the car, makes a car-starting noise then gets in the car and "drives" it. Kelton was having a lot of fun playing with it.

We were really glad that we ended up celebrating Kelton's birthday a day early because at about 2:30 this morning, he woke up with an upset stomach and started throwing up. Nate was such a good husband/dad and took care of him and cleaned everything up. Then he slept on the couch with Kelton the rest of the night. Kelton had a bit of a fever this morning and was really tired today, but he's feeling better now that he was earlier. (Ironically, it was exactly three years previous, 2:30 a.m., that we were on our way to the hospital for him to be born.)

When he first woke up, he didn't want to open his presents, and he was quick to make it known that he didn't want us to wake him up by singing "happy birthday," which is our tradition. After a few minutes, he decided that he did want to open his presents. I was afraid he was going to feel too sick to enjoy it, but he was still really excited to get some new toys and was even smiling and laughing.

Here he is with his daddy, sitting right in the very same spot where they spent most of the night. It's too bad I didn't take a wider angle; you would be able to see the throw-up bucket sitting on the couch next to them. Poor little kid. No fun to be sick on your birthday. Like I said, I'm glad we celebrated yesterday.

Happy New Year?

Here's a great way to start off the new year... have a pipe freeze and break. (Will someone smack the homebuilder and tell them that yes, it does freeze in southern Arizona, quite frequently actually, so pipes should not be exposed.) I don't know how long it had been out there gushing before I found it. I could hear the water but thought it was my neighbor washing something off. I don't know how well you can see in the picture, but a few inches under the spicket, the first elbow joint completely broke and blew off. Water is pouring full blast down out of the pipe. And you can't see this at all because of the shadow, but there is a nice little 2-3 inch deep river over by the trash cans which ran all the way down to the street (this picture is taken on the back side of the house.) So Nate got to go out by the street to turn the water off, which turned out to be not so easy, being that the box was flooded with muddy, ice cold water and filled with rocks. It took a while before Nate could even find the shut-off valve (like maybe 15 minutes) and even longer for him to be able to feel his hands again. When I talked to the guy from the water company, he said he had already been to about 20 houses to turn off the water because they had had the same thing happen. But everything turned out okay. Nate got a cap to screw on to stop the water and fortunately, the broken pipe was outside and not in the house.

So this post should probably be a couple of different posts, but I can never remember what order the posts show up in when you do multiple posts on one day, so they are all lumped into one so I can make sure they are in the order that I want.

Since coming home from Christmas, Damon has become quite the little box climber. He loves, loves, loves to climb up/into any box that is on the floor. Take a look...


And there he goes.

And he's so proud of himself.

Damon has also figured out how to pull up on things to be able to stand up. He hasn't mastered it yet, but we have caught him a couple of times at the bookcase and most recently at the bathtub, throwing toys in to make loud noises. Problem is, he is too little to get back down. Oh, and he also can't figure out how to climb out of the boxes once he gets sick of being in there. So overall, Damon has recently learned that up is easy, down is not.

These next pictures are for Grandma and Grandpa Burgess. The kids love their scooters! We got them out and put them together a few days ago, but it was nasty cold and windy outside (and I think it was raining). So, we pulled the car out and let them ride in the garage. They had a lot of fun.

And how cute are these pajamas?!

How cute is this BABY?!

Grandma and Grandpa Webb gave Damon these pajamas for Christmas (along with the U of A ones) and we put them on him tonight for the first time. I absolutely love the reindeer on the bum. So adorable.