organized chaos

all in a day's work

2011-12-09T12:46:00.004-05:00

pace has been asking me for a while when i'm going to get around to hanging stuff up in his room.

today he decided to take decorating matters into his own hands. he was busy upstairs for a long time. when he came back down, he was super excited and wanted me to come see how he'd decorated his room. he kept saying "it's just so awesome, mom. you're gonna love it. you'll be so surprised!"

this is the first item of decor: a pen taped to the wall, with a blank paper taped next to it. "so i can write my calendar and draw stuff if i need to."

next, a blue ornament (gifted by gretchy, who got it from school), hanging next to a blanket artfully draped in the door crack of the closet.
another artfully draped blanket, arranged under a jewelry box stolen from madeline.

and, tadaaaaa! "mom, look, bet you didn't even know it............a necklace!" hidden under the blanket and attached to the dresser with a climbing hook.

one more blanket on display. draped over the fan.

and this has nothing to do with decorating, but it does have to do with how things are different around here since we've had a boy. this is now considered to be an appropriate way to say family prayers.

and we have the traveling nativity.

can i do this in 15 minutes?

2011-10-28T17:14:00.004-04:00

so, i have 15 minutes before i have to race out the door to get pace at preschool. we'll see how far i get. mostly it will just be a list of everything i hope to post in-depth about at a future (soonish?) time.

1. we are now in seattle (well, really, issaquah)

2. it's raining

3. we stayed for 3 weeks in a hotel (3 different hotels, actually) before we moved in

4. it is hard to keep 6 children quiet in a hotel room for 3 weeks

5. some of the children may or may not have gotten locked out of or into adjoining hotel rooms in the middle of the night

6. we got a trampoline

7. pace promptly broke his leg jumping on the trampoline

8. we are on week 10 of having either a cast (named "blue leg") or a brace (named "iron man leg") on pace

9. wells started therapy for developmental delays and also for food-eating issues

10. wells turned one year old (we are lying to everyone and saying he's still 8 months, though)

11. we love our new ward

12. we miss our pool. we are trying to be good sports, but i'm afraid we got a bit spoiled.

13. we still like issaquah, even though it is pool-less and sun-less

14. the kids mostly like it because i finally bought them some boots they've been wanting for 2 years now

15. 7 minutes left--i will try to post some pictures

16. one more thing--i really like organizing a new house. i hate moving, but i think i'd really get jittery if i didn't get to start from scratch every 2 years. i have tried a new approach in this house--i label everything--everything has a spot and that spot is labeled and so THERE SHOULD BE NO CONFUSION AS TO WHERE THINGS SHOULD GO! right, children? liesel and gwyneth say i'm going through a post-nesting phase. whatever it's called, i'm having fun!

iron man leg
"blue leg and good leg are friends"--pace specifically requested this picture of them together
some moves with blue leg

the time has come.........

2011-06-28T16:33:00.004-04:00

to panic. or to move. both of which are happening this week. i sort of mostly-all-the-way just wish it was already october and i was all settled in seattle. alas, it is only the end of june and i still have a cross-country trip and a month-plus of homelessness to face. BUT in the middle of all that i will get to see my sisters (and mom and dad and davie) and friends and loren's family and so maybe i will survive after all. now, if i can just figure out a way to keep my baby alive and getting fat(ish) during all of that. ha! actually i started a new system that is working well--i only nurse him twice a day and then i feed him bottles of milk that i've pumped and/or been given through many minnie miracles. he gets much more milk from a bottle than he can from me, so since i've been doing this (4 days) he's actually gained weight! and is that how you spell 'minnie'? because i thought it was 'miny' but that must be because i was thinking of 'tiny'? 'minny'? (*the problem of the 'mini' spelling is solved, thanks to the linford family lending a hand in their comments--now that i see it, it's completely obvious that's how it's spelled---*)anyway, i know that was a long story made very short that probably didn't even make sense at all, but it's on my brain, so there you go.

and here's the latest from my pace boy:

sunday in sacrament meeting at church he had to use the bathroom, which is highly illegal, of course, but i was not willing to call his bluff, so i let him go out with gretchen. when he came back in, he stopped in the aisle and put his leg up on the side of the bench and just stood there looking around with his leg propped up all straight in front of him. i quickly pulled him into our row and told him to sit down. as i pulled him past me, he leaned in and whispered, "i was just doing some exercises." i think i let an out-and-out laugh escape. he kills me.

he's just started getting carsick (a curse he inherited from both loren and me), so we've been talking a lot about getting sick in the car. i was making him do some jobs around the house this morning, and he said "mom, actually i'm house sick. i think we'd better go camping."

fine, i'll post

2011-04-05T19:42:00.005-04:00

the kids have been BEGGING me to post pictures of their new rooms. so, here goes! there are some other random pictures in here, also, and nothing's in a particular order, because that's just how it is.

i repainted madeline and gretchy's dressers. (i know the pix on the wall are not centered right--we had to change the dressers to allow for their new reading corner, and i haven't moved the pix yet--or put the handles back on mad's dresser)

here's mad at field day
gretchy at field day
pace and the bubs
painted my oak bookshelves black, with turquoise insides. i really like it, even if it's somewhat unconventional.

liesel and gwyneth made these canvases themselves. it was quite the project, and very fun.
i painted their dressers turquoise.
i made some new pillows for my bed. also painted the lamps and got new shades. can you tell we're on a turquoise kick around here?
here's a really bad picture of the reading corner (two pink chairs under a canopy) and pace illegally climbing on the beds.
painted the beds, also, and the frame of the canvas that my great grandma gave my mom, that she gave to me!

don't know why i've been such a blog slacker lately. i have lots of things to say, but i don't really have the energy to organize anything into anything readable. possibly because i've been painting everything (not really, but close) in my house, plus nursing a baby. paint, nurse, paint, nurse. that is how i spend my time this month. painting is fun, and my baby is cute, so i guess i could find worse ways to spend my time, right? plus, liesel started therapy up again, which adds some busy-ness in to my days. PLUS, i am in this crazy post-baby-getting-ready-to-move nesting/decluttering/cleaning phase, so inbetween the painting and the nursing and the therapy i'm cleaning out the little metal track thingy on my french doors (just to give you an example of what i got distracted by today). i also redid and organized the office. it's kind of like i can't face the big stress of moving unless i get everything organized here first. which seems kind of backwards---why not wait until i move, since i'm going to have to redo it all in 3 months, right? but, my brain thinks better when things are all set-you-bet, so there you have it.

let's see.....what else to say?

liesel's doing really well. she bent her leg to 102 degree yesterday in therapy (just past a right 90 degree angle) which is a HUGE deal for her/me/us. it still hurts to bend it, but it's getting better. she can walk pretty well now--not quite back to normal (still slow--she does this hop/skip/limp thing when she wants to go fast).

the kids have been spending lots of time in the pool again, which makes me happy! i can't bear the thought of leaving it in 3 months........

we went to the beach twice this week, too. just trying to soak it all in before we go.

liesel and gwyneth went to girl's camp during spring break. they had so much fun and came home singing all the camp songs and teaching them to the other kids. it totally reminded me of when i came home from camp my first time. and it does NOT seem like that was long enough ago to have children doing it.

pace spends all his time either swimming or dancing and singing. liesel and gwyneth turn on youtube videos while they're doing schoolwork (i know, i try not to care.......) and pace hangs out with them and learns all the songs and the dance moves. he is so cute when he dances, but as soon as i turn on the video camera he gets all weird. i'll keep trying. he did a full handstand the other day while he was dancing. he was so surprised at himself. he looked at me and said "mom, i got sticked upside down for a long time!"

wells is a really good baby. really, seriously good. it's a good thing i nurse him or i'd never hold him--he's just really happy playing by himself. and, he made himself even cuter by learning how to do a kissing face and noise this week.

this is him sort of doing his trick.

12!

2011-03-05T13:46:00.003-05:00

liesel and gwyneth turned 12 today! we just got back from getting their ears pierced. fun stuff. here are some of their thoughts about being 12:

"being 12 hasn't had as much of an impact on me as i thought it would" (liesel)

"kids grow up so much faster than adults" (liesel)

"being a kid goes by so fast! being a teenager goes by even faster" (gwyneth)

"we promised ourselves we wouldn't be brats when we turn 13. why would be brats now?" (both)

time to get sappy now. i love my girls! this year has been way too hard, but i'm so glad i've been able to be home with them. we have had a good time doing projects and learning to sew together. we just redid their room (all diy projects) and it was SO fun!

i'm glad i have twins. watching them together is one of the best things in my life. i couldn't ask for better children!

and the reason there are no pictures in this post is because loading the pictures on is what always keeps me from posting! pictures next time. (soon?) and pictures of liesel and gwyneth's new room and other projects we've been doing.

no particular title

2010-12-15T13:41:00.005-05:00

my baby's taking a super long nap and i have a couple of surprise spare moments! i don't have anything in particular to say, but i do have some cute pictures i can post........

who needs an ipod? this is the new generation of boom boxes. i found pace walking around holding the little-people nativity stable upside down on his shoulder so he could hear it play "away in a manger" better.

liesel and gwyneth organized a family olympics competition. we did an obstacle course, swimming events, free-throw shots, sit-ups (i did 4 the first time--ha! i tried again and squeaked out 31), push-ups, hula-hooping........when it wasn't his turn pace practiced his motorcycle-riding skills.

here is liesel doing her push-ups
i love decorating the tree. it might be my favorite part of christmas. this picture of madeline captures our excitement.
a good use for extra ornaments.........
we went to the everglades a couple of weeks ago. we kept forgetting liesel was in a wheelchair and kept leaving her behind. pace took pity on her.
does it look like we have a really big family? i never think it's that big until i catch a glimpse of us all together. yikes!

just some randomness

2010-11-18T13:18:00.005-05:00

first of all, here are two funny signs that i'm letting things slide a bit around here:

#1 gretchen (6 years old, remember) put pace in bed last night. totally by herself. no input from me. i didn't even know she was doing it. she had him go to the bathroom, she put him in his pajamas, read him a book, and hefted him into his crib (yes, i know he's 3, but why wreck a good thing by putting him in a real bed?).

#2 gwyneth and i were looking at her faith in god book to see which things she could check off. one of the requirements was "planning and preparing a meal". she laughed and said "hello, only like a million times!".

thank heavens for good children!!!!!!!!!!

luckily, she still finds time to sneak in a good book while hula-hooping

in other news: this is how pace spends a good portion of his time these days. eating cookies and waiting for wells to wake up so he can give him his pacifier.

wells got blessed. better pictures to come when i have time to get him redressed in his blessing outfit.

and we did do halloween.

maxwell: beast/wells/newbaby/wellsmax

2010-10-24T14:11:00.003-04:00

4 weeks old today! i still can't quite believe i have 6 children. i guess the 9 months of pregnancy weren't enough to prepare me. i really, truly, and seriously can't believe i've had a baby for almost a month. i think that most of my brain is taken up with other things and i'm just fitting the baby in between things. it's a good thing i'm nursing him so i get a good excuse to really hold him every couple of hours.

so, here's the rundown on the bub. he weighed 7.11 lbs when he was born, and at his 2-week checkup he was 8.1 lbs, so he's filling out quickly. he's working on a bit of a double chin. it's funny that he can seem chunky, since he's still a full pound lighter than gretchy was when she was born. ouch! i'll take the 7-pounders any day, that's for sure. he sleeping really well at night (i feed him at 8:15 and he doesn't nurse again until 5:00) and is taking some pretty good naps during the day. the kids all love him, of course, and it's nice to have so many helpers. pace hates it when i put wells to bed for naps, though, and says that wells will "miss him too much to sleep". we are very glad that wells (so far) is a low-maintenance baby. he is starting to make his first baby-talk noises, which is very cute.

here's the rundown on liesel. 2 weeks ago the dr. said that the next 2-3 weeks would be the hardest yet. liesel and i about died. we were like "um, i thought we already were doing really hard.....". the first week after he made that announcement actually went well (as well as being in lots of pain and having a no-fun external fixator can be), but last week was a bear. by far her worst since the first week after the surgery. her main pain right now is from the muscles being stretched so tight. her leg has now been stretched 4 1/2 centimeters, and her muscles are really fighting it. her dr. is really proud of how she's handling it. i think she might be his best patient ever.

we got good news on friday, though! we are done with the stretching phase, which means the muscles will have a chance to catch up, and the pain should get more manageable. we have a couple more days of turning the struts on the fixator to get her knee aligned better (her knee was slightly knock-kneed, and the bone in her lower leg was bowed, so the dr. is using the fixator to correct some of that). we'll go back to the dr. on tuesday to find out if the knee is in place. already, her pain is much more manageable in her thigh than it was last week. her knee is pretty sore today, but overall it's much better. she was able to walk around last night a bit at the halloween party we were at, which she couldn't have done at all on thursday. we are hoping that it keeps getting better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now we just hope the next 5 months pass VERY quickly (4 in the external fixator, 1 without the fixator, but on crutches/walker/wheelchair again to make sure the bone is stable).

oh, i forgot to tell about maxwell's labor/birth. friday night (october 1st) loren and i went on a brisk hour-long walk--my goal was to have maxwell over the weekend so loren wouldn't have to come rushing home from work (even though it was almost 2 weeks before my due date, i was done being pregnant--plus, i'd been dilated to a 3-4 for almost a week by then). saturday all day i was really crampy and achy and had some really big contractions, but nothing regular. by saturday night i was having more contractions--still nothing regular, but hard enough that i called loren while he was at the priesthood session of general conference and had him come home from it early. when he got home we went on another walk (not brisk at all--more like a waddle, and only around the culdesac a couple of times). it still didn't make the contractions any more regular, so i decided to take a bath to actually stop the contractions so i could go to bed. i got to bed at about 12:00 a.m. and slept until 2:00 when i got woken up by a whopping big contraction. i expected to start having contractions then every 2 minutes or so, since that's what i did with all the other kids, but i didn't have another one for 15 minutes. it was another huge one, though. i waited for one more contraction (15 minutes later again), and then woke loren up to tell him that even though the contractions were 15 minutes apart, it was definitely the real thing. we left for the hospital at about 3:00. i was trying out the hypnobirthing method for the first time (i highly recommend it, by the way, if you are going for a natural childbirth) so i started doing my deep breathing/relaxation stuff. at the hospital we got all checked in and i was dilated to a 7. the contractions were still 10-15 minutes apart, so i was totally able to relax in between each one. they stayed that far apart until i was a 9, and then i had a few that were 5 minutes apart, and then i felt like i was going to have to push soon, so the nurse got the dr. and i pushed through 3 or 4 contractions (these were the ones that really hurt--i do not like my transition/pushing contractions at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and he was born at 8:45 a.m. i got to hold wells right away for a long time before they took him away for cleaning and all that other stuff. he nursed right off and was making everyone laugh because he was gulping and swallowing like he was getting tons of milk, but of course it was only a couple of drops.

anyway, i really liked the hypnobirthing method--it was a very calm way to go through labor. the recovery was easier, too, because i hadn't expended much energy during labor. it was an all-around satisfying way to have my 6th baby.

this picture has nothing to do with anything in this post, but i think it's cute, so here it is. he's being a swim coach for madeline and gretchen. the other day i heard all this whistle-blowing and i looked out and saw the kids taking turns being coaches and swimmers. pace even took turns being a swimmer, doing laps across the pool. his "backstroke" is hilarious. he totally looks like he's drowning because he swims on his back with his face under water and his arms flailing around like crazy. he comes up every few seconds for a breath with a big old grin on his face. somehow he can make it across the whole pool like this. i tried to make a rule that he can't do backstroke anymore, but he wouldn't listen to me.

surgery

2010-09-27T14:46:00.005-04:00

here she is, waiting for the surgery.

the day after surgery. the hospital had a scrapbooking activity.

gwyneth had all sorts of good ways to cheer liesel up. sisters are way better than moms when it comes to that sort of thing.

physical therapy.

and here it is.
be glad i didn't show you a close up of this hole 3 1/2 weeks ago. this is looking good.
more p.t.
the package loot.
home spa treatments
notice the plate of goodies.
another view.
the wheelchair.
first time going upstairs.
first time dressed and sitting at the table.
future fashion disigners.

i guess it's about time i stop procrastinating and just get this post over with. every time i sit down to do it, i give up because there's really too much to say, and no way to say it. does that make sense?

liesel had her big leg surgery almost 4 weeks ago. she has an external fixator on her leg now, and we're in the process of stretching/growing her leg to be about 5 centimeters longer so her legs will be more even in length. basically, during the surgery the dr. cut the femur bone so it could be separated apart and then attached 7 metal pins to various parts of the separated bones. the pins are attached to the fixator, which has these little rods on it that we turn 3 times a day to stretch the bones apart. so far she has "grown" almost 2 centimeters in the last 4 weeks. if all goes well, we'll have a couple more months of "growing" and then a few months of letting the bones grow back together again and get strong. the earliest the fixator will come of is march, but it could be as late as june or july. liesel does therapy at home 3 times a day and then we go to 2-3 dr's appointments/therapy sessions a week to make sure we're on track.

see, this is the problem with doing this post. that's all the technical stuff explained, but there's so much more going on..........i don't think there's any way to prepare for the kind of emotional roller coaster ride a surgery like this puts you on, and there's certainly no good way to explain it on paper.

i thought i was pretty good at seeing liesel come out of surgeries, but when i saw her lying there before she woke up and the reality of the fixator hit me, i burst in to tears and couldn't stop crying. and i don't ever cry in front of people. especially doctors. before i left the hospital to go home to the other kids (loren was staying with liesel--we took turns) i had to stay in the bathroom for 10 minutes before i looked presentable enough to walk through the halls. the first time liesel did therapy at the hospital it was absolutely awful-- she was dry heaving from pain, gwyneth was standing behind her rubbing her shoulders with tears just streaming down her face, i was crying (again.......in front of people). since we've come home from the hospital we've had lots of ups and downs. the main problem right now is that liesel's muscles/tendons/etc. can not keep up with how fast her leg is being stretched so they are really, really, really tight and sore. so therapy is hard. HARD! and it's just getting really old to be in pain all the time and to be in a wheelchair and to know it's going to be this way for a long time. i was not prepared for how hard it was going to be on me to watch liesel go through this. yesterday in church i totally lost it and cried and cried and couldn't stop, even when i was playing the organ on the closing song. then, i'd finally gotten ahold of myself and was heading to primary to do the singing time and somebody stopped me and asked how things were going. i literally burst in to tears (big sobbing ones) and couldn't talk for like 5 minutes. and then i was just like "i'm fine. just tired. everything's okay." because really, we are okay, it's just hard.

and, see, that's the problem with trying to write it down all down. because we really are fine. but it is also really too hard to do. it's both at the same time. all the time. see, now i'm crying again, but i'm also about to write a list of all the ways liesel's doing so well. and she IS doing so well. but it's still too hard.

SO, here are some of the thank-goodness-for things:

1. having twins. i have never, ever, ever, never in my whole life seen such a bond between two people as i've seen between liesel and gwyneth during this time. gwyneth is amazing. liesel is amazing. it's awe-inspiring.

2. children who read. we've gone through maybe a thousand books. that's probably an underestimate.

3. fashion-designing. hours and hours and hours spent designing fashions.

4. home spas. lots of painting fingernails, toenails.......face masks.........homemade lip gloss......

5. moms and sisters who will spend lots of time talking to liesel on the phone while she does therapy.

6. moms and sisters who will spend lots of time talking to me on the phone about liesel's therapy.

7. loren. best husband and dad ever. he is also turning in to an amazing cook. i'm trying to convince him it should be a permanent thing.

8. fathers-in-law who come to help out and sweep floors and load dishwashers and spend hours with pace in the pool.

9. grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins who send packages with all sorts of pain-distracting goodies/crafts/books/etc. we couldn't have survived without them!

so basically, we ARE doing really well, liesel's exceeding her dr's expectations, we are seeing the lord's tender mercies all around us, we have lots of good times every day............and it's still hard.

florida.alabama.tennessee.arkansas.missouri.kansas.nebraska.wyoming.utah.nevada.california.arizona.new mexico.texas.louisiana.missisippi.alabama

2010-08-15T13:37:00.017-04:00

and back to florida. we just got back a week ago from a month-and-a-week-long journey. and boy, does it feel good to be home!!!!!!!!!! except that we picked up a nasty virus in texas and liesel's had a fever/mouth sores/swollen gums/ear infection/nausea since we got home. but that's a story for another day. (we're still glad we visited you, joanne).

in order to keep your sanity and my sanity intact, i will only do a very brief rundown of the trip. followed by approximately one million pictures. give or take a few. it depends on how my sanity's holding up at that point.

day 1: drove 3 hours to kissimee, florida to give ourselves a bit of a head start on the trip. loren and i had a goal of working out every morning of the trip to utah, so we woke up early the next morning and went on a walk with pace, who rode his strider bike.

day 2: drove to somewhere in white-trash alabama. swam in the hotel pool. decided we do not like driving in alabama.

day 3: made it the "boy" allen home in arkansas (no relation to us--friends from california who had 3 boys when we had 4 girls--since then they've had a girl, and we've had a boy). had a fabulous dinner of homemade veggie burgers. did some crazy fireworks for the 4th of july. the dads loved the fireworks. the moms were nervous.

day 4: drove to marian and chad's house in kansas. had a thoroughly good time recovering from driving. got to watch a terrific fireworks show from their driveway. people in kansas are serious about their fireworks! played in the pool, went barefoot walking (it's all the rage now, didn't you know?), and watched the cousins play together. stayed in kansas for days 5 and 6.

day 7: drove to wyoming and stayed in a hotel.

day 8: drove to utah. stopped at maggie's house on our way to orem. loren's mom, dad, and sister came up for a visit, too.

days 9-15: stayed in orem. had a lot of fun seeing both sides of the family. we snuck in a trip to 7 peaks water park. i also got to meet up with some roommates of mine from byu. my big sadness of the trip was having to cancel a visit with kari and rochelle (friends from virginia). the logistics of packing and organizing a week-long camping trip proved to be complicated, to say the least, and i ran out of play time.

day 16: drove to tonopah, nevada. stayed there for a night on our way to the family reunion in yosemite.

day 17: drove into yosemite national park! hooray! went on the best roller coaster road ever. also went through lots of tunnels (or igloos, if you're pace). got to the campsite and set up camp. LET THE PARTY BEGIN!!!!!!

days 18-23: family reunion in yosemite. best fun ever. highlights: valley sightseeing, ponderosa grove, half dome hike (loren, liesel, gwyneth), swimming at the swinging bridge and hole-in-the-rock, policing the strider bike gang.....

day 24: drove to simi valley, california to karalee's house. had a happy reunion with liesel and gwyneth bffs kelsey and amelia. day 25: loren flew back to florida. the kids and i stayed there through day 26: went to church at our old ward, had a swim party with long-time friends........

day 27: drove to liza's house in arizona. played in the pool and the sun for 3 days. i could live in arizona, for sure. pace perfected his swimming techniques.

day 30: drove to poppy's house in new mexico. this was like a california reunion trip for me! went to a fabulous park and had a great time catching up with each other!

day 32: drove to joanne's house in texas. swam and played, swam and played, swam and played for the next 3 days. cousins are the best.

day 36: drove to louisiana for the night. swam in hotel pool. wished loren was there.

day 37: scrapped original plan of taking 3 days to get home from texas, and decided to drive all the way home. MADE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

end of trip.

random things i noticed on this trip: 4 wild pigs running along the side of the freeway (florida), a man doing pushups by his car on the side of the freeway (california), a town named "bangs" in texas, a huge mongo snake on the freeway (HUGE, seriously--like national geographic worthy) (louisiana), the ugliest swamp ever (louisiana), LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF EPIC RAINSTORMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (every state we drove in after california--it made for some very tense driving and lots of praying)

other side note: florida definitely has the craziest drivers of all the states we drove through. it also has the most highway patrol cars. hmmmmmmmmm. something's not right here.

oh, and it's a boy

2010-06-27T13:09:00.000-04:00

so, i realize i've been neglecting to share many important things on this blog. such as the sex of the new baby. IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!! (in case you missed the giveaway title of this post.) we are very excited about it. i just forgot to tell everyone, because after i found out i forgot that i didn't just use my telepathy to instantly beam this information around the world, and then it became old news to me, and life just moved on without me telling anyone. so, consider yourselves told. better late than never.

also, pace's birthday has come and gone without any mention whatsoever. he did have a birthday, and he did turn 3, and we do love him. here are some shots of him getting his new strider bike (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you are looking for a bike for your 2-5 year old). pace can zoom around like crazy on this thing.
he requested chocolate pie for his birthday. it's what i had on my birthday, and i guess he thought it was pretty great. he is not a big fan of cake. i love watching kids open their presents.
and here are some pictures of a trip the kids and i went on with another family. we headed to the beaches a few hours north of here to explore them before the oil spill ruins them. i had to type it small because i'm hoping it won't really happen and i didn't want to jinx it by writing it big.

we went to 3 different beaches while we were there--all totally different from each other, and different from the beaches down here. we looked for fossilized shark teeth at one (and tried not to think about non-fossilized shark teeth finding us instead. the water was not as clear as we are used to and there were largish fish swimming around our feet, so it was harder than you might think to keep our imaginations in check. i might have even screamed a few times myself.) our hotel was right on a beach, and also had a swimming pool, which was heavenly, even though it was so warm it was borderline hot tub temperature. to give you an idea of the water temperatures there, even the ocean was 87 degrees. which is VERY WARM for water. we also went to a white-sand beach. heaven. the kids found some really fun shells and we had a great time.

now we are busy (BUSY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) getting ready to go on a 6-week long vacation that will take us (driving--ack!) all the way across the country to california (yosemite) and back. we leave this thursday. wish us luck! and if any of you are going to be in utah july 8th through the 15th let me know and maybe we can get together!

swim safety lesson

2010-06-08T15:00:00.000-04:00

i've been getting nervous about living by all this water here in south florida so i've been doing "swim lessons" with pace every day in our pool. he's been doing really well (more videos of that to come later) and LOVES swimming. last night we decided to have a family lesson on pool safety. the main goal of the lesson was to help pace know what to do if he accidently fell in to a pool. he does really well swimming around with me in the water, but i was worried he'd panic if he fell in with his clothes on and everything without me there. i had all the other kids get dressed in real clothes and shoes and pretend to fall in the pool, then turn around and grab the side and go back to the steps. when it was pace's turn to "fall in" i got him dressed in clothes and a diaper and flip flops and helped him fall in to the pool. he was very pleased that he remembered everything he was supposed to do. he watched this video of it about 100 times today. the next water-safety step is getting him to be able to go from swimming on his stomach to floating on his back--he can almost do it, but it needs a little fine-tuning. anyway, that was a long explanation for a short video, but i promised pace i would put it on the blog and write all about it. he's standing right by me waiting for me to finish so he can watch the video again.

mother's day weekend

2010-05-23T19:34:00.001-04:00

i am lucky enough to move to a different state every couple of years. which also means i'm lucky enough to meet great friends in all the different states!

this year i got to celebrate mother's day weekend by going to virginia for a girls' get-a-way at betsy's cabin. i also got to spend one night each at kari's house (she's the best hostess ever!!! even though she denies it) and ellie's house (also the best hostess, plus she taught me how to make duct tape flower hair accessories, which scored me lots of points when i came home and taught liesel and gwyneth how to make them). hooray for good friends and good times.

this is where i spent most of my time. i think my true inner-most self would sit in a chair and talk with friends and eat all day every day if she could.

this is just a sampling of the great food we had. none of it was prepared by me (i was truly lazy the entire trip, i tell you), which made it taste even better!
this is the gang. some of my best friends ever. i will love them forever. sappy, but true!

this picture is taken right before (i think?) a hilarious game of "celebrity", in which i confirmed that i chose wisely to become a stay-at-home mom and not an actress. you girls can thank me later for not including any of the pictures taken during that game in this post.
none of these feet are actually mine, but i really like feet pictures for some reason.
some people (juliette) talked some of us in to doing some yoga. what could be more perfect than doing yoga on the deck of a mountain cabin? i guess nothing.
what a great weekend! i came home ready to be a mom and a wife again. i am lucky to have such great and inspiring friends. i know, two sappy moments in one post. yikes.

family scripture study and some tangents

2010-05-15T20:17:00.000-04:00

last night we were reading about the olive branches being grafted. this somehow segwayed into a discussion of arms being grafted back onto bodies if they'd been cut off. which prompted me to remember that my mom had once gotten a skin graft when the tip of her finger had been snipped off by a door. which prompted liesel to suddenly remember that she'd gotten a skin graft on her finger once (a fact i had totally forgotten). i have no idea how liesel remembered this or even knew this in the first place, since i don't ever remember discussing it with her. me saying so prompted a whole other discussion on things we could or could not remember. we finally finished reading the chapter. during all of this, pace was jumping around on the couch with some shorts on his head. which prompted loren to say, when he was helping pace say the family prayer, that we were "thankful for the clothes on our backs and on our heads". which sent all the girls (including me) into fits of (reverent) giggles. please tell me the kids are getting something out of family scripture study.

p.s. i have no idea how to spell "segway" and spell check was no help whatsoever. anybody know how to spell it?

tea party--boy style

2010-05-15T20:06:00.000-04:00

the other day i came in to the kitchen and found pace all set up in his booster with a little cup and spoon in front of him. he told me he was having a party with indiana jones. that's when i noticed the other cup set up across the table from him. that's where indiana jones was sitting.

pace asked me if i would buckle indiana in to his booster. i obliged. i asked pace if he was having a tea party. he said "no, a shake party." i guess the water in the cups was really shakes. i asked pace if i could take a picture of his party. he said "yes" and made sure i got a picture of indiana jones.

real life

2010-05-10T08:52:00.000-04:00

i'm easing back in to my real life (after spending THE BEST WEEKEND EVER in virginia with friends--pictures and details to come later, since the picture of the snakeskin above is the only one i took before my camera batteries died) by spending the morning blogging. i say the day after mother's day is still sort of like mother's day, and should be spent doing what i want to do. i don't want to shock my system by working too hard after such a leisurely weekend.

now that the pool water temperature is approaching that of bath water, i will finally get in. pace and i have been having a great time doing "swim lessons" every day.
loren plays games with the kids on sundays. and this was not even a quality i knew he had when i married him! it's so fun to discover surprise good qualities in your husband. (he has a lot of other non-surprise good qualities, too).
we went camping a week ago. the only pictures i got were of the kids eating s'mores. at least i captured the most important moments, right?
this is as far as we've gotten with potty training. hmmm.

gwyneth broke her arm a couple of weeks ago and has been waiting patiently for me to blog about it, so here it is. she broke it doing the high jump on field day at school. very exciting for all of us. her cast is waterproof (worth the extra money) so she's still been doing swim team and everything else. she gets it off this wednesday. woohoo!
i walked in from my trip yesterday to a whole table covered in flowers. this is just a small sampling. happy mother's day!

i knew pace was being suspiciously quiet while i was blogging just now. i went to check on him and found him playing with cars in the wheat bucket. i left him playing happily and came back to finish blogging. sometimes the rules are allowed to be broken. i'm pretty sure cleaning up some spilled wheat will be worth the alone time on the computer!

what da heck?

2010-04-21T09:45:00.000-04:00

pace and i are playing a great game. i'm in the office on the computer. looking at blogs, emails, etc. pace is in the family room playing hide and seek with himself, and me. this is how we play. he hides under a cushion on the couch and calls out "where is me?". then i make a wild guess (while still sitting at the computer) as to where he might be (the pool, on the fridge, at school, to name a few). then pace says "i right here!!!" (surprise). then i say "what da heck?". if i take too long to say my part he prompts me with my lines. we've been playing for about 15 minutes. it's the best game ever. we're both happy. i think we'll play it every day.

a bunch of stuff

2010-04-14T19:18:00.000-04:00

so i've collected enough different random pictures that i finally feel like it's worth sitting down and documenting things. i think i need to go back to posting every couple of days. it's way less strenuous.

anyway........

this is how i found liesel and pace watching a movie the other day. i'm not sure what prompted liesel to situate herself like this. at least pace looks comfy, even though he's technically not allowed to take the cushions off the couch..........

our pool is finally warm enough to swim in. well, not for me, but the kids and loren have braved it several times. i am fully waiting until it feels like bath water before i get in. we have a ways to go.
we went to tampa last weekend for liesel's dr's appointments. we decided to make a family vacation out of it, and spent the weekend doing fun things. we went to the tampa zoo, which was great. it had all these little roller coasters and rides that you could go on. we got the unlimited ride passes and the kids had a blast. it wasn't crowded at all, so they would get off a roller coaster and get right back on it. we did manage to see a few animals, too. the kids also loved playing in the water. in fact, the zoo was such a big hit that we spent all day saturday there, and then while liesel and i were at the dr's on monday, loren took the other kids back for some more fun.
on sunday, in an effort to remember that it was the sabbath (always tricky when you're stuck in a hotel), we went to honeymoon island and did some easy nature paths and stuck our feet in the gulf of mexico. a first for all of us! pace experienced some technical difficulties on the little walk--he is not a fan of sand in his shoes, and he was wearing these half-sandals-half-tennis-shoe shoes without socks. i finally made liesel give him her socks, but that still didn't work. we eventually let him go barefoot, which solved all the problems. apparently, running on rocks/sand/pine needles is better than a little sand in the shoes. we saw some great (and slimy) sea creatures.
okay, so not the most exciting post ever, but it's late, i'm tired, and i'm pregnant (almost 14 weeks). that should count for something, right?

because i just sat down for a minute to check my email

2010-03-17T08:29:00.000-04:00

i'm going to blog. but i really don't have anything to say, now that i'm here. except that pace has turned in to a beast. all of my children do that when they are almost three. 2-year-olds are easy for me. 3-year-olds are another story. he is still cute. but the cuteness is mixed in with a lot of stinkyness. he is also learning how to be sneaky, which is actually one of the cuter parts of his stinkyness, because he always confesses. here are two of the conversations we had this week:

pace: "mom, i was in the office."

me: "okay"

pace: "with the door shut"

me: "hmmm" (this is suspicious)

pace: "i was drinking a juice box" (not allowed at 8:30 in the morning). "i was hiding."

pace: "mom, you go ahead and go upstairs. go to bed."

me: "what are you going to do?"

pace: "i just stay down here and eat lots of raisins. i be okay."

he does not like it at all if he thinks i'm mad at him. he'll say "no, mom. i not mad at you. i loves you." and then, of course, i can't be mad at him anymore. i'd say it's a pretty good thing he came with some built-in cuteness defense systems. he'd be in serious trouble otherwise. as it is, i finally set up a play pen in the living room, where he can spend his frequent stay-here-till-you-can-be-happy moments. i was tired of carrying him up to his bed.

sigh.

let's see. is there anything else i've been doing besides putting pace in time-out?

oh, yes. liesel and gwyneth and i went to see "wicked" in miami for their birthday. we got all dressed up and had such a fun night. loren spoiled us all. first, by getting us the tickets, and then by letting us buy new clothes so we could be extra fancy.

uh oh. pace just discovered i'm on the computer. time to get off.

happy st. patrick's day! are you having fun wearing green?

sometimes it's fun being a mom

2010-02-10T13:07:00.001-05:00

i must have been in a really good mood this week because i thought that everything my kids did was super funny. for example, we were eating dinner and gretchen told us a story about when her primary teacher didn't obey her mom and she got hurt. i said something like "uh oh, i hope she learned to obey her mom after that." this is the conversation we had after that:

gretchen: "yep. like when i ran away."

me: "oh, when did you run away?"

g: "when i was 4. we lived in virginia. i still had my dora bike."

me: "did you run away on the dora bike?"

g: "yep"

me: "where was i when you ran away?"

g: "gone. daddy was home."

liesel: "i used to run away all the time."

me: "oh really?"

liesel: "yep. i kept a little bag packed."

this conversation struck me as so funny. it seems as if there's a lot of running away in my family that i had no idea about.

here's what the rest of the week looked like. nothing spectacular. i just like my kids.

pace is still in guitar-man mode. this morning as soon as the kids left for school he asked me to turn on music so he could jam. he specified which song he wanted, then said "oh, this song's cool. it's rock n' roll." did i teach him about rock n' roll? no. i did not. he has his very own guitar pick that he insists on using. sometimes he plays the guitar with one hand and a drum with the other. when loren gets home from work, he and pace jam together for a few minutes. it makes me swoon with love for my two boys. today pace asked me to jam with him. that's something i'd never been asked to do before. i took it as a great compliment.

gretchen gave the family a "how to be fancy" lesson.

i caught the kids playing play-do together. i love it.

gwyneth drafted a list of rules that she posted on the fridge:

THE RULES

WEEKDAYS

1. Get out of bed when Gwyneth wakes you up.

2. Come down only with your shoes and clothes on with your backpack.

3. Eat if the oatmeal is ready too eat, eat it. If the oatmeal is not ready to eat, help Gwyneth or Liesel with your lunch or with the dishwasher.

4. As soon as you’re done eating, you can drink your smoothie, brush your teeth, and brush your hair.

5. When everyone is done with everything then we will say prayers and leave for school.

6. Remember homework and such.

OTHER RULES

1. No yelling at pace or making him yell.

2. Pick up five things in the playroom if you hit someone on purpose.

3. Practice piano.

JOBS

WEEKDAYS

Gwyneth:

Get up, take a shower, get dressed, go down stairs, make oatmeal, make Madeline’s, Gretchen’s, and my lunch, eat the Oatmeal, then drink my smoothie, brush teeth and hair, get backpack ready for school (See rules 4 and 5).

Liesel:

Get out of bed, take a shower, get dressed, go downstairs, do the dishwasher, make lunch, make the smoothie, and eat oatmeal.

After that, brush your hair and teeth, and then get your backpack ready for school.

Madeline:

Get out of bed, get dressed (see rule 2), come down stairs (see rule 3), (see rules 4 and 5). Get your backpack ready.

Gretchen:

Get up, get dressed (see rule 2), come down stairs (see rule 3), (see rules 4and 5).

MOST IMPORTINTLY HURRY UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this was gretchen's response:

thak you geyneth I love you I will get up before you wake me up I love you varry much I will moneday

virginia girls in florida

2010-02-05T13:18:00.001-05:00

a little bit of virginia came to florida last week. six of my bff's (i have ALWAYS wanted to use bff in something) came to visit me. we had a delightfully wonderful time. it was just what my january needed. i seriously have the best group of friends ever. moving every couple of years would be so much better if i could just take my friends from each place with me. i have had to do a lot of shopping this week to get over my girl-time withdrawal symptoms.

here are some highlights:

we went out to dinner and down to miami for a girls' night out.

pace loved the only child with 7 women. he called my friends "the kids" and was almost as sad as i was to see them leave

beach time!

i love cute pregnant people in great hats

it was great to catch up on my beach time
sadly, pace ate my sucker lips, so i was not able to be in this picture

pace asked me if he could give this alligator a hug

the everglades

we tried to get pace to get out of the picture. didn't happen.

ellie was the only one brave enough to get in my pool. it was freezing!!! she deserves some sort of prize for this.

thanks for a great visit, girls! i miss you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

drum roll, please

2010-01-26T19:20:00.000-05:00

my pictures are all hung up. mostly. the ones that aren't hung up have a very good excuse to be lying around un-hung because they are waiting for me to paint the bathroom that they go in. the painted-in-fake-wood-paneling bathroom. i'll tackle it next week. if i write it here, i might actually do it.

so, ANYWAY, all my pictures are hung, which is why i'm finally posting pictures of my house. i know you've been waiting. well, my mom's been waiting, even if you haven't. and my mom deserves to get whatever she wants, since she's the one who flew out here and hung most of the pictures.

i'm actually liking this house a lot. who knew? minus the faux wood bathroom, of course. i've been so busy being an unpacking-hanging-decorating-rearranging-project woman, i don't know what i used to do with myself. good thing i've got that bathroom left. i actually get a lot of crazy energy when i move and get to set up a new house. which is good, because i get to do it again in 18 months. should i cry now or save it for later?

enjoy.

oh brother. my iphoto is not working right. or maybe i'm not working it right. whatever. i'm going to have to do this in collages. sigh. this might be more stressful than actually moving.

okay.

here's the backyard:

my room:
madeline and gretchy's room; the playroom; liesel and gwyneth's room; and the entry-way
living room:
"library":
newly refinished table and kitchen:
family room:
office:
oh, here's one of the kitchen that actually worked with iphoto. i should have done a before/after photo of the kitchen. you would enjoy (mocking, laughing, and cringing at) the lovely paintings of fruit on the walls. one grouping seriously looked like cinderella's pumpkin coach. a before-picture of the table would be nice, too. in fact, the table-refinishing totally deserves its very own post. instead, let's just sum it up by saying that it took about a week too long to do and an intimate acquaintance with home depot that i could have done without. it would NEVER have gotten done if my mom hadn't been here to help me. i am pleased with the final results, though. phew.
and one of the family room, too.

general catch-up

2010-01-10T17:12:00.000-05:00

have you ever had so much to post that you find you can't post any of it? that's what's been happening with me. more and more events and cute/interesting/fun things kept happening and blogging about it got more and more overwhelming. which is silly, of course, since first of all, i like blogging, and second of all, anything with a name like "blog" should obviously not be stressed over. anyway.......... i have learned a valuable lesson. blog about one event at a time. and don't move at christmas. AND i know i shouldn't start sentences with 'and'. but (or 'but')..............too bad.

here we go.

gretchen turned 6 dec. 21st. she had a "fancy nancy" party. it was splendiferously fabulous. occasionally, i find myself using some of fancy nancy's words. they are fun to say. gretchy had a great day--i'm glad i can still please my 6-year-old.

gretchen's birthday was a big day for pace, too. he finally figured out how to do "thumbs up". he also got to reenact the blowing out of the candles several times. i think we relit them 6 times. which was great, 'cause gretchy turned 6. totally fitting.
a couple of days before christmas a bunch of families in our ward went camping at a local campground (this was before the FREEZING COLD spell we are having right now). we opted out of an overnight stay, and just went for the evening. the campground is like 10 minutes from our house. perfect. the highlight of the evening was when a bird flew over pace and did its business on his head. he thought it was so cool. i guess he figured it added to the toughness of his camping adventure. don't worry, i took a couple of pictures and washed it off. there's a limit to the amount of coolness i can stand. the picture of the girls with their hands over their heads was taken after the bird incident. another flock of birds flew over as i was taking the picture. they were not taking any risks.
christmas was great. i loved every bit of it. pace got a guitar. he and loren jam on their guitars now. yes, pace even uses the word 'jam'. (real example: "i can't go to bed, mom. i jam with dad.") liesel and gwyneth got the percy jackson books. all 3 of us read all 5 of them in the next 5 days. i love fighting with my 10-year-olds about whether or not it's my turn for the book. i usually win, 'cause i'm the mom. loren stayed out of the fray and just started reading them today.
liesel and gwyneth did a photo shoot with some of their friends (who very sadly moved to missouri last week).
before the FREEZING COLD hit us, we spent a morning at a park in our neighborhood. the kids loved it. loren loved it, too. we played tag and did races through an obstacle course. great fun. i warned loren there would be pictures of him playing on my blog. he was okay with that.

other highlights/adventures:

1. doing fireworks on new years' eve. it's like we got 2 fourth of july celebrations.

2. riding my bike behind an old man on a bike. he was shirtless, had a beer gut, and was wearing bermuda shorts. only in florida. i passed him as quickly as i could.

3. watching the original star wars movies a billion times (loren bought them for the kids). pace LOVES to sing the theme song. his world is now filled with bad guys, light sabers, etc.

4. pace learning how to use scissors. nothing is safe.

5. pace learning how to whisper. finally! church is much, much better now.

6. the FREEZING COLD of the last week. the kids loved it. i did not. working out at 6 in the morning is way, way harder when you know it's going to be cold outside.

i should be packing

2009-12-14T15:07:00.001-05:00

but i'm not. i'm feeling a bit like gretchen's melted snowman magnet.

this is what my house looks like.
and this.
what a crazy month this has been!

what an even crazier week!

so far, i have:

gone on one sisters' weekend trip. had lots of fun (post to come at some future, more relaxed time). came home on wednesday. spent thursday packing. packed friday until a friend's baby got dropped off at my house for the weekend. spent the rest of friday morning alternating between holding a baby, feeding a baby, changing a baby, and packing. picked up the baby's older 2 siblings friday afternoon. spent saturday morning packing and loading a truck up with boxes. and holding a baby. spent saturday afternoon unloading the truck at the new house. spent saturday night making a salad and enchiladas and going to the ward christmas party with 8 children. spent sunday thankfully NOT packing, with 8 children. spent monday morning getting the baby and other children ready to go back to their house. that mission accomplished, i resumed packing. when i'd used up all the boxes at the old house, i went to the new house to unload boxes over there to bring back for more packing.

oh, i forgot to mention that this morning pace got out of the bath and went to the bathroom in my closet. number 1 AND 2. not to be graphic. i still love him, though.

pros of this week:

the new house has stairs and i'm burning lots of calories. all 8 children were delightfully well behaved, although i think the 2 older "borrowed" children might turn me in for abusing the child labor laws. loren had the house cleaned when i came home from my trip. a renewed appreciation for my calling as primary chorister--it's hard work, but it's not as hard as packing, and it's way more fun. thank goodness for sundays!

things i have to look forward to next week:

kids being out of school (good and bad?). christmas. which means ALL of my christmas shopping, too. dang. gretchen's birthday. she insists on having a party. at the new house. 2 days after we move in. it's going to be great.

new year's resolution (i'm starting early): no stressing out.

if you are still reading, thanks for letting me vent/ramble. i needed an excuse to sit down for 30 minutes. i turned the computer screen so i can't see any cardboard boxes, and it's been delightful.

moving, tween shopping, thanksgiving, new moon, 5k, goin' to the office, and no more air guitar

2009-11-30T13:12:00.000-05:00

i had to put all those things in the title so i'd remember what i'm supposed to be blogging about.

1. we just found out (well, now it's been about a month) that the house we're renting is being put up for sale, so we can't renew our lease, which ends dec 31st. panic time! we finally found another house that will work for us, so we're moving on dec 15th. the first thing that's getting moved is the christmas tree. i told loren we are decorating for christmas this year. i haven't been able to decorate for the last 2 christmases, and this is not an acceptable trend. i have 2 whole boxes of brand new ornaments that must be used. so, life is busy here. it's always busy. i should say "life is busier here". here are the pros of moving (so i can remember them when i am packing up the house for the 2nd time in less than a year): we will be closer to the rest of our ward; we'll have an actual playroom upstairs; ummmmmmmmmm.......... 1 more shower for guests (come, come, come, all you people); i might get an official yoga room; ummmmmmmmmm.......oh yes, liesel and gwyneth will get to go to a middle school that doesn't have a uniform dress code (their pro, not mine). well, that's all i can think of. i'm not even going to start on my list of cons, lest i never stop.

actually, we feel like there is some sort of purpose in all this, and are waiting excitedly (anxiously/eagerly) to find out what it is!

2. i gave in to much 10-year-old begging (again. i sense a pattern) and took liesel and gwyneth shopping on saturday for some new clothes. it was a blast. we found some great deals and had a very enjoyable bonding time. i'll have to cave more often. i was even able to refrain from shopping for myself (okay, okay--i bought myself one belt. belts don't count as shopping.)

3. thanksgiving day: i love holidays!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we went to a friend's house and had a great time. i branched out in the cooking department and made two pies. one chocolate, which was good even by non-vegan standards, and one apple pie, which didn't look pretty at all, but tasted good. didn't take pictures of either! guess i'll have to make them again! hooray!

4. new moon: went with loren and 2 other couples to see it, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. i just want to say that i was on team jacob even before i saw his abs.

5. 5k: loren and i started off thanksgiving day by running in a 5k. i couldn't believe how many people run 5ks on thanksgiving! it was craziness! but fun. loren dropped over a minute off his best time. i barely dropped 14 seconds off of mine. that was the most i could do without throwing up. i toed that line very carefully.

(me at the finish line)

6. goin' to the office: pace informed me this morning that he was "goin' running", and then "goin' to the office". he was all set with his hat, his bag (with my cell phone and some cars in it), and his sunday shoes. no pants. his final words as i let him out the door: "i so sweaty."

7. no more air guitar: loren must have gotten tired of accompanying pace on his air guitar. he came home last week with a real live actual guitar. mid-life crisis? he says it didn't cost as much as my bike, so i really have no grounds to argue with it.........

i actually really like to see him play around on it. it brings out the rocker chic in me.

pace's excuse for not taking a nap the other day: "no, i have to practice g'tar!"

excerpt from liesel's blog

2009-11-17T20:57:00.001-05:00

after much deliberation and debating and counseling and a few prayers, we let liesel and gwyneth watch twilight. this is what liesel wrote on her blog about seeing the movie:

All I have to say about that movie is:

1. it's not as good as the book

2. it's way too artsy

3. and every one thinks I'm nuts to not like Taylor

4. and I'm really hoping New Moon is better

do you think i should let them watch new moon?

am i really this transparent?

2009-11-11T17:39:00.000-05:00

i just called the girls in to the living room for a 'conference'. as soon as we sat down, liesel said:

"hey, mom. i bet i know what you're going to say. 'we've all had a very fun day. liesel and gwyneth got to watch twilight and go shopping for new shoes, and madeline and gretchen got to play at a friend's house. now everybody needs to pitch in and get the house cleaned so we can have a good end to our fun day!' (picture this all being said in a high mom-voice) ........so, did i get it right?"

madeline jumped in at this point and said "you forgot the part where she says 'and since you've all had such a good day i need you to show me how thankful you are by being extra happy and getting along while we clean.'"

apparently, i need to come up with some new lines.

halloween and 1/2 marathons

2009-11-02T14:10:00.000-05:00

loren started off halloween by running in a 1/2 marathon! he did a great job (finished in 2 hours and 20 seconds). this picture is of him at mile 4. my camera died after this, so i don't have any other pictures. sadness! i guess he'll just have to run another one!

i was able to get in my workout while i was waiting for the race to start (i had to drop loren off at 6 in the morning for him to catch a shuttle to the starting line, so i had an hour to kill). i'd decided i would go for a run--let me tell you, south miami at 6 in the morning (before daylight savings=pitch black dark) is not the best place to run if you're alone and you're a girl. i was figuring people would be out running on the boardwalk by the beach. nope. just me. and the riffraff. 5 seconds after i started running i turned around and ran back to the car to get my mace. i started off again, running slightly faster than normal and practicing my escape/attack plan. i finally saw another lady jogger and asked (begged) if i could run with her. phew! (side note--i found out she does bikram yoga, too. maybe it's affected both our brains.)

anyway----------it was so fun to see loren in a race. he trained a lot for it, so it was fun to see his efforts pay off.

okay, so halloween in south florida is great. it was the first year ever that i didn't have to bundle my children up in their costumes to brave the weather. (even in california, it gets chilly at night if you're out for long). there were no long-sleeved shirts sticking out of fairy costumes. the "lowest" it got was a comfortable 80 degrees.

when we started trick-or-treating, we discovered that in south florida, you don't have to knock on people's doors to get the candy goods. everybody sets up lawn chairs in their front lawn and hands out candy outside. it's a very efficient system, and saves a lot of time not having to knock on doors of people who might not even be home.

we went to a friend's house and set up camp in their driveway for the festivities. we had pizza and a snow-cone machine and had a great time.

and to think that loren wants to move to canada next!

my pace man was an army guy. he loved his "halloween", as he called his costume. when i showed him his face in the mirror after i put makeup on him, he just stared and stared, and then finally said "that's pace!" and broke into a huge grin.
gretchy was a ballerina/tinkerbell/fairy. we had sort of motley costumes this year. i think she was happy in the end (after 20 or so costume try-ons). i put glitter on her face, and that helped things a lot.

madeline was sleeping beauty. wrong color of hair, i know, but the snow white costume was dirty.

liesel and gwyneth were "nice vampires". their outfits were decided upon after much deliberation/compromise. i'm not a big fan of scary costumes on my children--on other people's children it's just fine. i got them some great wigs that made me want long, curly hair. under their wigs, they sprayed their hair with pink stripes. very exciting and tweenish.
i got in the spirit of things and wore my friend's long, black wig. i lived my dream of having beautiful hair for about 2 minutes, until the wig got hot and scratchy.
i did leave the fun socks on. they are a throwback to my college days when i was very into socks and wore a fun pair every day. in fact, the first gift loren ever bought me was a pair of socks.

one more triathlon

2009-10-30T13:52:00.000-04:00

this post is mostly for my mom. she never gets tired of hearing about my fun, right?! the rest of you can read if you wish.

my friend just emailed me this as i was getting ready to post this. again, i will never figure out how to get the pictures in a reasonable order.

gotta have one picture of me with my trusty steed.
okay, here' s the original post:

i forgot to put the pictures in reverse order. someday i will actually figure out this blog thing. that's okay--the finish line is the best place anyway, right? might as well start with it......

i really enjoyed this triathlon. a couple of friends did it with me this time, which made it extra fun. i was in the "mom" division--it was an all-women triathlon, so they had different divisions. so, that was fun too.

it was the same course as the first tri i did, only the swim was 300 meters longer, because it wasn't my first one. they figure if you don't drown the first time, you can handle a longer distance the next time. i beat my original time by 3 minutes, even with the longer swim--hooray for really hard workouts! also, I DIDN'T HATE THE RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yes, that deserved to be in all caps. i'm not saying i liked it, i just didn't hate it. which means i didn't have to say a million "you will keep running"-type things to myself. it was nice not having to have a stern talking-to with myself.

anyway, here are some pictures of the big event:

us at the finish line. you're lucky you are just looking at us and not smelling us. we are pretty sweaty.

holding our medals (i got 1st in the mom group/4th in my age group/21st overall)
trying to flex?
loren likes this picture because he says it looks like i'm ready to beat someone up. i'm not. i'm just making a goofy face. i put it on here just for loren.
waiting for the award ceremony
running to the finish line
my face might look like i'm hating it, but i'm not. i'm just concentrating hard.
a blurry bike picture. it's my only one. oh well.
running to the transition area to get on the bike
getting out of the swim part
waiting for the tri to start. the water's cold. well, for florida.
waiting for it to start! now i'm wondering why i'm posting pictures of me in a swim cap for all to see. i have no pride left, obviously.

the johnsons come to visit

2009-10-29T15:47:00.000-04:00

my mom and dad and two brothers came to visit us a couple of weeks ago. it's taken me this long to put the pictures onto the computer. laziness! i got into vacation mode while they were here and it's been a struggle to get back to real life. we had the best time while they were here! the highlights of the visit are as follows: we went to the beach twice in the 4 1/2 days they were here (see, i come by my beach-worshipping honestly-- it's obviously genetic); the menfolk and the children rented boats and went alligator searching (pace and i took a 15 minute ride to get enough of the experience for pace to talk about riding in a boat for days after, and then my mom and i and pace went home to relax/cook dinner/put pace in bed/talk/clean); my mom played the piano in sacrament meeting for the primary program (i am the chorister and we have no piano player........does anybody who plays the piano please want to move into our ward?)....................................i am going through family withdrawals now. who wants to come visit next?

why i love being home with pace

2009-10-06T10:55:00.000-04:00

earlier today, the whole time i was checking my email/blogs, pace gently drove cars on my back and legs. it actually felt really good and i spent more time on the computer than was strictly necessary.

i love it that pace follows me around the house as i do my thing. he carries all his toys with him and plops down wherever i am. he doesn't ever mind when i'm cleaning the house, because he just follows along behind. he also loves it when i do "sgetches" (stretches/exercises) on the exercise ball. he gets his own ball and does them all with me. he'll breathe all hard and act tired and he loves to say "ooh, i sweaty".

i love having a little buddy all day long. i'm always surprised at how much i love my 2-year-olds. i shouldn't be, since he's my 5th--i must have a short memory.

i know this is on the cheesy side, but i was just thinking how lucky i am that i get to stay home with him so that he can follow me around and drive cars on my back.

not to say that i won't also love it when he goes down for a nap in 15 minutes.

pace's toenail polish

2009-10-02T08:07:00.000-04:00

some of you have wondered about my son's toenails. yes, they are quite frequently painted. such are the consequences of living with 4 older sisters. i do have a rule that they have to be painted a manly color--blue, green, etc. loren tries not to panic.

saturday morning date

2009-10-01T13:40:00.000-04:00

loren and i did a 5k together last saturday. it was such a great way to start the day! we got some fun medals--loren got 2nd in his age group, and i got 1st in mine. gwyneth took our picture--the kids were very proud of us!

pace's shoe fetish

2009-10-01T12:55:00.000-04:00

pace is a shoe boy. he loves wearing shoes. it doesn't matter if they're his own or not. i think it's cute (of course, i'm his mom). here he is in gretchy's flip flops:these are all the shoes he owns (minus a brand new pair he just got, featured further down)
being a princess/gas station guy
liesel's sunday shoes
flipper baby
these are his new shoes (jumping illegally on a bed). he loves them. LOVES THEM. he refuses to take them off unless he's going to bed. this makes it awkward when we visit somebody who has a "no shoe rule" in their house. oh well. he shows me every day how he can run and jump and gallop and sword fight and do all other manner of cool things in these shoes.
these pictures have nothing to do with shoes. i just thought they were cute. pace got a new swim tube (he graduated from his old one to one that requires more effort on his part to float). we tried it out at the beach this week. he was a pro.

some irreverent singing

2009-09-21T12:35:00.000-04:00

warning: it is quite possible that only the grandparents of the featured children will find this video pleasing in any way.

pace's favorite song is "how firm a foundation". in this video, i captured the efforts of lead singer gretchy and air guitarist pace singing "foundation". this is approximately the 30th time they sang it for me in this one setting (in my room, while i was 'reading a book'). i finally pulled out the camera when they promised they would go sing somewhere else after i took a video of them.

the other 29 uncaptured versions were actually a lot better than this one. the silliness level went way up when i got out my camera.

mostly i just wanted to document that pace knows all the words to this song, which i think is pretty funny. he knows the words for the second verse too, but i cut the video short (you're welcome).

anyway, here it is, for your viewing pleasure, should you choose to indulge.

get ready for some (un)organized chaos

2009-09-16T10:51:00.000-04:00

i didn't mean for the pictures of my bike to show up first on the post, but that's how it worked out.

okay, so this is my favorite part of the bike. i made the bike shop throw in this seat for free when i bought my bike. i said "listen, i've had 5 kids and i need a really great seat. that's just the way it's got to be." i literally said that. i don't think that's too much to ask, do you? anyway, it worked, and they switched seats for me. and yes, that is a hole in the middle of the seat. it's heaven, i tell you.

this is the rest of the bike. it's very, very fun. i have to make myself not ride it. sometimes i get on it and just ride around the driveway for a bit. i know you all don't care, but thanks for looking anyway.

here are a bunch (okay, more than a bunch) of pictures from our last couple of weeks:

this is gretchen's reading finger. her kindergarten teacher sent it home with her the first day of school. gretchen absolutely loves it. she puts it on her finger to point to the words as she reads them. before she reads anything, it's "wait! i have to get my finger!"

pace and loren have become quite the air guitarists. pace's go-to guitar is a spaghetti noodle box. i'm not sure why.
madeline and gretchen finally had a swim meet! swim team is different here, as it's year-round. the meets are not really in the summer (=rainy season). notice the pouring rain. i think they had fun. we didn't get very many pictures (the rain put a damper on the whole photo op thing), but here are some shots of them lining up and then swimming butterfly (of sorts). gretchen spent a lot of time looking sideways to see what the girls in the other lanes were doing. don't mind gretchy's baggy saggy swimsuit. you wouldn't even believe me if i told you how many suits we have gone through this summer. at least i don't have to buy winter coats, right?
the girls had a "new york fashion show" the other night. loren and i were at the adult meeting of stake conference, and they had some friends over to help babysit/have fun. the kids took the pictures themselves. i like the facial expressions that go along with the new york fashion.
loren's birthday was monday. as you can see, we sang a very nice rendition of "happy birthday".
pace is my rain baby. i didn't even know he was outside in it until i looked out the window and saw him. he'd even had me take off his clothes, but i didn't know that going in the rain was his goal. i just thought he wanted to get undressed (not an unusual thing for him). we get spectacular rain storms here. pace loves it. i like it, too, unless i'm trying to determine if i should get the kids ready for swim team, or if the pool's going to be closed because of thunder/lightening. since it rains pretty much every afternoon, it's always a toss-up.

another triathlon--am i officially addicted?

2009-09-14T13:21:00.000-04:00

i did another triathlon on saturday. so much fun! i don't even know why it's so fun, because it's also dang hard, but maybe finishing something so hard is what makes it fun? or is that just crazy? there are only 2 parts of doing triathlons that i don't like. number 1: the jitters/nerves/butterflies i get the couple days before the race, when i'm wondering what on earth possessed me to sign up for it (i don't get nervous once i'm actually at the event--go figure). number 2: the run. gotta do something about that run. you should have heard the stern talking-to i gave myself on saturday while i was running. it makes me laugh that i have to mentally cheer myself on when i hit the run. whatever it takes, right? the swim and the bike parts are purely pleasurable. i guess 2 out of 3's not bad. i improved my time over the first one by 8 minutes, which was exciting. i got 5th in my age group (which sounds like a nice accomplishment, and it is, unless you know that ALL 6 of the women in the 50-54 age group beat my time. i can't wait to be 50! they were honestly amazing--one lady had a 15 minute run, which means she runs 5-minute-miles, which is basically faster than faster than fast)......anyway, i think i beat them on the swim part, though, so there. it's funny because everybody has their age written on their leg, so when someone flies by you, you instantly know you just got passed by a 52-year-old lady (not that 50 is old, mom). on the flip side, it's pretty fun knowing you just passed some 24-year-old guy. next time i do a triathlon i'm going to write my age plus the number of kids i have. that will show those 50-somethings! actually, it was just a more elite-athlete type of race than the first one i did. when we showed up saturday morning, loren took one look at the people walking around and said "oh boy. these people are serious about their triathlons." lots and lots of muscles. and seriously expensive (=fast) bikes.

speaking of bikes, i got a new one (only moderately, not seriously, expensive), so i don't have to borrow my friend's anymore (i am now not getting any birthday or christmas presents for like the next 10 years). i have to stop myself from getting on it every time i pass it in the garage, it's that fun to ride. and the seat is HEAVEN!!!!!! i will post pictures of it later. first i have to do some posts about my children, lest i start feeling guilty for posting about the triathlon before writing about gretchy's reading skills or pace's singing/air guitar abilities or liesel and gwyneth's new york fashion show.

discombobulated

2009-08-28T18:17:00.000-04:00

the meaning of the word: realizing at 1:50 in the afternoon the first day of school that i have met the girls' teachers, gone to the grocery store, and to target, all with my shirt on inside-out. i guess the kids starting school shook me up more than i realized.

(gwyneth just informed me that my summer blog background was not appropriate for the start of the school year. she stood over me until i changed it. i don't know how long i'll be able to stand it, but i will try to wait awhile before changing back to a summer theme)

school

2009-08-28T12:44:00.001-04:00

finally, some pictures of my children not in their swimsuits.

i really can't believe summer's over! gwyneth and i decided we'd like a school system that had school for 2 months, then a 2 week break, etc--but still had a 2 month break for summer. that would be the right balance of fun and play versus clean house for me.

pace and i don't know what to do with ourselves. it's really weird to just have one child home. it's the first time that's ever happened since i've had kids. it must be time to have another one. ha ha!

i have to admit that some things are good about having the kids back in school. i just finished cleaning the playroom, a room i avoided the entire summer. occasionally, i'd send the kids in there to do a "pickup", but i never went in there to clean it. "what's the point?" was definitely my attitude. so, it was nice to get in there and really clean it.

a clean playroom is nice, but i have to say i'd still rather be at the beach!!!

one last summer fling

2009-08-26T11:47:00.000-04:00

last week we went up to orlando for the triathlon. we went up a couple of days early and stayed in a hotel with a water park. lots of fun was had by all. our friends went up with us, which made it even more fun. it was just the right atmosphere at the water park--not too big, not too small. we could let the kids roam free without worrying, which equals a real vacation for me!

i am already going through summer withdrawals, which is why i haven't posted about the first day of school yet--it will make it seem more like summer's officially over once i blog about it!

anyway, enjoy the pictures and feel lucky that i didn't put most of the ones loren took of me in the collage. husbands with cameras are dangerous.

successful completion of the triathlon

2009-08-24T13:08:00.000-04:00

so, i did the triathlon on saturday! woohoo! it was so much fun. it was probably one of the best/most fun/greatest/happy-feel-good things i've every done. i finished in 1 hour and 23 minutes, which put me in 3rd place for my age group in the "first tri" division, and 4th for women overall in that division. i got this little award thing, which was kind of nice. loren promply asked me if i was going to take a picture of it and then throw the award away, like i make the kids do with theirs. i told him that the rules are different for me, 'cause i'm the mom. the kids can keep their awards when they're moms.

anyway, none of the pictures above are super flattering, and they mostly show me in the transition area (going from the swim to the bike, and the bike to the run), but it's a little glimpse of what it was like. loren missed my big smiles on the swim and bike courses and got my grimaces on the run (running is not my forte--the first mile of the run was an absolute killer until i settled into my groove)......it was way more fun than it looks like i'm having--you'll just have to trust me.

i started working out today for my next one. anyone want to join me?

another bike ride--not as much singing this time

2009-08-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

this is why. do you see the size of that seat? holy skinny-ness! notice how the tip of the seat is roughly the same size as the bar of the bike. it's roughly the same hardness, too. trust me.

i don't think this picture does the narrowness of the wheels justice.
this one's a little better, but to fully appreciate it, i think you have to actually be on the bike.
another shot of the demon seat.
and here's the whole thing.
this is the bike i used for my ride this morning. let's just say that my normal bike is not the same sort of creature that this bike is. i'm not even sure they should both be called bikes. it took me 20 minutes to get up the nerve to let go of the handle bars and change gears. it was a wobbly moment. i hope no one was watching. (i can proudly report that i changed gears again later on with less wobble). i hope everybody at the triathlon knows to stay far away from me. i need a sign that says "i've only ridden a crazy bike like this one other time, so watch out!" i would just get a horn to beep so everybody would know to run, but i don't think i can let go of the handle bars long enough to beep it.

i do have to say that it was very, very fun to whiz along at top speed. i got home 10 minutes before loren, and he did 4 miles less than i did. and it was fun to feel a little bit like a real (?) biker. i'm sure a true pro could have spotted me as an impostor right away, but loren said i looked good, so i'll take his word for it and avoid consulting anyone else.

early morning bike ride/sing along

2009-07-29T08:44:00.000-04:00

perhaps the only benefit that comes from having your husband be out of town for a week is getting to ride a bike alone through the neighborhood belting out songs to your new ipod. i thoroughly enjoyed my bike ride this morning. not that i don't like riding with loren--we actually get in some good talking time, which is always good. but, i have to say that it was very liberating to really let loose this morning. i figured if someone else was crazy enough to be out and about at 6 in the morning, they deserved to hear me singing at the top of my lungs. i love it when i'm able to do things that make me grin to myself. hey, i've got to make training for a triathlon fun, right?

is this a boy thing?

2009-07-23T11:41:00.000-04:00

i'm not the only one who has found my voice (see previous post). pace has discovered that he can talk really loudly about a lot of things. i guess this isn't actually a new discovery--he's been perfecting the art for several months now.

this is what i heard in sacrament meeting 2 weeks ago coming from the back row in church (where loren sits with the kids while i am up on the stand playing the organ and delighting in my alone-ness): "yeah! the bread! josh (a deacon), give me some bread. josh, come back here. where you going, josh? where's hailey (josh's sister)? oh, bread! (as someone, not josh, finally makes it to the back row with the sacrament). mommy, you got bread? yum, yum. i have more?"

my other children die of embarrassment every sunday. i try to pretend i am unaffected by the chatter. loren tries to make it through the sacrament in the actual chapel, but is usually required to make an early exit.

pace doesn't limit his exuberance to church meetings, though. we just got back from the grocery store. pace was in one of those 'car' grocery carts. he was very excited about this and was spinning the steering wheel wildly and shouting out "whoo! i go fast! look mommy! yeah!" loud enough to make everyone we passed smile. he also started repeating everything we said. (liesel: "let's get cereal". pace: "yeah! let's get cereal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", etc.) the other kids were begging each other to be quiet so he couldn't repeat anything. at this point, pace decided to up the excitement by bursting into a rousing rendition of "we will, we will rock you!", which is one of his favorite go-to songs. liesel's reaction to this: "i should have stayed in the car."

i really don't remember my girls being quite so vocal about their excitement. but i guess if a whole grocery store is smiling by the time we leave, it's not such a bad thing. right?

the art of screaming

2009-07-16T10:00:00.000-04:00

okay, so (south) florida wildlife has gone too far this time. a lizard came into my house. while loren was at work. i do not normally think of myself as a screamer. apparently, i am. it seems lots of screaming is necessary to properly catch and trap a lizard in a tupperware bowl and get it safely outside. the screaming was hard work and i'm ready for a nap now. or maybe it was the sprint to the front door with the lizard bowl that wore me out. i am not good with skittery creatures. hopefully the lizard will pass the word along to his lizard pals that there is a crazy woman in the house and they should all stay far away. unless his pals are the type that will want to see if they can make the lady scream, too. let's hope not.

the 10 commandments, by gretchen

2009-07-09T15:12:00.000-04:00

gretchen: (holding up a piece of paper) "mom, pretend this is the 10 commandments."

me: "okay"

gretchen: (reading from the paper) "if you be bad, you get dirty. if you get baptized, you get clean.......and grapes are healthy."

me: "wow."

gretchen: walks off with a satisfied smile.

one more thing

2009-07-07T08:16:00.000-04:00

you might laugh, but my own personal accomplishment for the 4th of july weekend was playing the "Star Spangled Banner" on the organ with no (noticeable) mistakes. becca, you'll understand.

4th of July

2009-07-06T19:34:00.000-04:00

get ready for a lot of pictures. what can i say, i love the red, white, and blue look on my kids. i am trying to convince those in charge (loren) that we should celebrate the coordinating outfits by taking a family picture. hmmm. we'll see.

anyway, we had a great weekend. i have to say i still missed the leesburg (virginia) parade--nothing can quite compete with those dancers (and that's probably a very good thing).

we went to the beach on friday and had a great time, as usual. pace is getting braver and likes to kick his little legs to get his tube up over the waves (which, admittedly, are not real waves, but still......).

friday night we had a little party in our backyard and set off lots of fireworks. you'll notice in the pictures that some of the kids had mixed feelings about this. gretchen spent a good portion of the night inside the house with her nose pressed against the window so she could enjoy the view without the noise.

saturday night a group of us watched the fireworks from the "hill" by our house (a landfill that was converted into a park--it's the only hill in all of south florida--i'm told we are very privileged to live right by it). it was very fun. (is it bad that my favorite part was being able to get home quickly with no traffic?)

so, here are the pictures of all the festivities. happy 4th of july!

pace's haircut

2009-06-30T20:23:00.000-04:00

as long as i'm shirking duties, i might as well shirk them good and do two posts at once. this is pace's new haircut. he's very pleased with it. he was way too sweaty with his other hair-do. i love my little man.

turtle rescue

2009-06-30T20:01:00.000-04:00

i am not a huge fan of wildlife (except for maybe dolphins from a distance and the cute owls i saw every day on the way to gretchy's preschool), but florida (i mean, south florida) is doing its best to give me a more loving and caring heart. i did take pity on this turtle that had wandered out of our canal behind our house and was searching for its home again. it was walking around in the street, and since i'm not fond of running/biking/walking past squished dead things, i decided i'd better help it find its way back to safety. i was not brave enough to actually pick it up (it could have been a deadly snapping turtle, right? even though i let pace touch it.....) so we put our pool net into action and plopped it into the wagon for the ride back to the canal. i think it should count as having a pet. don't you think?

(as usual, the pictures showed up all in the wrong order--the top picture is actually the climax of the story, where the turtle gets back to his canal, and the bottom picture is the first one, where we found the turtle, but oh well......)

lesson learned

2009-06-20T12:05:00.000-04:00

today i learned (again) that sleeping in on a saturday is not worth it when it means that when you go running at 8:15 in the morning (instead of the usual 6:00 a.m. time) the temperature will be 84 degrees and the humidity will be 88%. we'll see if i can remember this lesson next saturday. it's funny how a nice, soft bed can trick me into forgetting.

Pace's Phobia

2009-06-15T11:48:00.000-04:00

(As always, the pictures are not cooperating with the text. The swim pictures are just because I thought you might have missed seeing pictures of my kids in the pool and at the beach. I know you probably got used to your daily dose of them and have been going through withdrawals.......)

(This post's capitalization is dedicated to Annette and Ellie. Thanks for still being my friends even though I am capital-deficient.)

Okay, so, somehow I did not equate summer vacation with no time to blog, but it seems that with all 5 kids home all day, I have lost that little spot in the day that was reserved for my blogging time. I am working on getting it back. Negotiations with the children are pending. I just sent them all away (not even nicely: "Go do something. I am going to blog."). We'll see how long it lasts. (Note to Annette and Ellie--I just had to go back and re-do the capitalization because I forgot about it. I hope you are appreciating all this hard work and dedication.)

Besides having all the kids home from school, I have also been very, very, very busy (happily) doing online scrapbooking. I have finally found my scrapbooking ideal. When I realized I was really, really, really behind with all my scrapbooks (stuck in 2004), I decided I needed a realistic option to turn to. Long story short--three weeks after starting an online book for Gwyneth, I have caught her up to when school ended this year. Not bad, eh? I don't mind patting myself on the back for that one. Hope you don't mind. I'm getting ready to start Liesel's book now. I'm very excited about the prospect of having all 5 children's books all done. Hooray for Blurb!!! (Thanks Liza for coming out to get me started.)

Also, we have been busy little bees getting all our "hurricane preparedness" things ready. This is a big deal here. I guess we'll see how good we were at it when the first hurricane hits! I have to admit, though, that I really do enjoy doing 72-hour kits. All those little trial-sized tubes of things really appeal to me.

Okay, enough about all that. Onto Pace's Phobia.

We discovered recently that Pace is frightened of battery-operated things that move. The biggest offender is a large dump truck that can drive by itself. Pace hates it. We had to take it outside and leave it there. He checks out the window all the time to make sure it's staying put. I didn't know he was so scared of it until I noticed that he would never walk past it--one day he got trapped in the playroom because it was in the entryway just outside the room. He kept calling me to come "hold you" and I kept telling him I was right in the kitchen and he could come to me and then I would hold him. Finally I went into the playroom to see what was going on, and he was peeking around the corner--I could tell he was gauging whether or not he could make it past the dump truck. The sad thing is, he loved playing with this truck (he got it from a neighbor for his birthday) until he discovered it moved on its own.

He's also terrified of this little fake-pet gerbil we have that has wheels and a battery so it can "run" around in a gerbil ball. I had to put it up on the fridge, out of sight, before Pace would let me put him down.

Apparently we didn't introduce him to battery-powered toys at a young enough age. I think he doesn't understand why they suddenly start moving. We all think it's funny. Until he won't let me put him down. Then I think that he'd better hurry and grow out of this stage.

memorial day

2009-05-28T12:10:00.000-04:00

we went to a park by our house with our friends for memorial day. it's a really great park--good playgrounds, etc. plus some bonus features like vines to swing on, a treehouse/fort to climb up, and a boardwalk to view wildlife. the kids loved it all (minus the large and fearsome spiders we encountered on our walk back from the boardwalk, and some mild cases of nerves while braving the swinging vines--we need to brush up on our tarzan skills). after the park we came home and got some swimming in before the daily thunderstorm--notice that this did not deter the children from staying outside.

hooray for holidays!

pace boy turns 2

2009-05-27T14:04:00.000-04:00

i really can't believe that my baby is two! monday was his birthday. it was seriously the biggest treat to give him his presents--i've never seen anyone as excited as he was. he didn't even eat his cake--he was too busy driving his new cars. and that's saying something--the boy loves his chocolate! the first group of pictures is from pace's "birthday walk". at bedtime, pace suddenly got it in his little head that it was time to go on a walk. he went and got his shoes, came and told me his plans (he was very specific: "go walk. shoes. mommy, daddy. go runnin'. 1-2-3 race. yeah."), and said goodbye (one by one) to all his new cars. well, i'm a total softie when it comes to my baby--plus, you know i'm a succor for well-thought out plans. all the other kids were in bed already, so we grabbed his shoes and off we went. it was really fun. pace knew he was getting special privileges. i know i'm in trouble now--he's going to think he can get away with all sorts of special requests.

anyway, it was really a fun day! we also did some memorial day stuff (later post).

happy birthday, little man!

who needs a beach to surf?

2009-05-26T20:21:00.000-04:00

the kids have been busy practicing their surfing skills. i guess they are getting beach-ready in the privacy and safety of their own backyard. not only is a beach not necessary, but it appears that not even a pool is needed. when it rains (which is often, now that we're in the "rainy season" here), parts of our backyard get totally flooded. today the kids were outside playing in the water and they invented a new way of surfing. it was very funny to watch them tow each other around. i guess flooded yards do have their good points.

a bunch of random pictures that have to share a post

2009-05-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

i got this james christensen print framed for my birthday. i am fairly positive this is how i was meant to spend my days.......i always excuse myself when i read the day away by saying that i'm just fulfilling my destiny.....

i have no idea why the text is underlined. oh, in the actual post it's not underlined. go figure. one of the many things in the blogging world i don't get. anyways.......
in other news, the endangered owls that we've been keeping our eyes on had babies! they really are too cute, and i'm not even an animal lover. sorry for all the photos of them--i was trying to get them all in one picture, but when you have one inexperienced photographer and lots of jumping owls, and then you add in the fact that i was driving while taking the photograph (on the wrong side of the road while turning a corner).........well, this is the best i could do.

this is not cute animal news. this is what madeline found in our yard during our family kickball game. i was not, am not, and never will be happy about it. i almost made a new rule that we can never, ever go outside in our yard again. i think i might have rather found an alligator.
more pictures of the picture. i was trying to capture the colors better. again, there's that whole inexperienced photographer thing going on..........you'll just have to trust me that it's stunning.

family kickball

2009-05-21T10:06:00.000-04:00

we played a game of kickball last night. pace is so darn cute, he needed his own picture collage. the rest of the family is featured down below in a slideshow.

sometimes it's nice to be alone

2009-05-20T12:39:00.000-04:00

i'm going to use this blog like a facebook page for one second and just say this: pace is down for a nap, gretchen's at a friend's house, and i have 2 full hours ahead of me without children. i'm off to bed with a book!

the cube

2009-05-19T15:24:00.000-04:00

our new pool toy is the "cube". it's been a great source of entertainment. it's been especially fun for me to watch the kids learn new ways to get in and out. my favorite is the back somersault out of it. in fact, speaking of back somersaults, the girls have been practicing them, and when i discovered that even gretchen can do one in the water, i overcame my irrational fear of going upside down backwards in the water without my nose plugged, and did my first ever non-nose-plugged back somersault. who says you can't teach an old dog (mom) new tricks? the children were properly impressed, although liesel and gwyneth then had to show me how they can do 6 back somersaults in a row. i'm sticking with one at a time, thank you very much!

i am still trying to get some alone time in the cube. it would be a fabulous place to float and read a book. somehow the occasion is not presenting itself. i do need to figure out a new system for reading books by the pool. i have semi-ruined a couple so far. at least i haven't dropped the camera in yet!

capturing the moments

2009-05-18T12:40:00.000-04:00

first of all, i have to say "thank goodness for patriotic songs." the reason i say this is because gretchen got sent to her room this afternoon after forgetting how to say "okay, mom". she stomped off in a huff, but pretty soon i heard all sorts of patriotic goodies being belted from her room (mostly renditions of the 'star spangled banner' and 'grand old flag', with a few spanish treasures learned at preschool thrown in for good measure). she came out of her room a few minutes later in a thoroughly pleasant mood. i think she patriotic-ed herself right out of her tantrum. i was even able to request a private concert to hear the songs up close and personal, and if i can ever figure out how to download videos off the camcorder, i will post it.

i have been thinking the last couple of weeks that one of my favorite parts about being a mom is that i am home to capture the little treasures (i.e. funny things) that my kids do. it adds so much pleasure to my day. i thought i'd share a sampling of the treasures with you.

just another day....

2009-05-15T13:38:00.000-04:00

at the beach. we sort of maybe skipped school one day last week and went to the beach. we couldn't help ourselves. i think this is my new answer to the homeschooling/not homeschooling dilemma. i'll send my kids to public school, but i'll schedule my own vacation days. hmmm. not a bad idea.

anyway, we had a great day. one of my favorite things about the beach is that the kids all play together. i like group family/kid projects--like building sandcastles, etc.

this was an especially exciting trip because this random guy found a huge, huge, beautiful shell and gave it to us. the only catch: the owner of the shell was still very much alive and living in it. the kids had fun (nervously) holding it. then i sent madeline and gretchen on a rescue mission to throw the shell into deeper water. they were so funny trying to go out far enough gingerly holding this shell. before they could put it back, though, some other people decided they wanted to try to keep the shell. i said "good luck" and we gave it to them. their ownership of the shell lasted for a few minutes until the real owner started poking it's huge slimy foot-muscle-thing out of the shell and started flipping around trying to get back in the water. at this point (after much screaming by the girls, young and old alike) another guy rescued us all by throwing the shell like a football into deeper water. it was a grand adventure.

this beach was another great beach--it was shallow for a long ways, and had a little sandbar about 10 yards out where the water was only about 3 inches deep. pace spent a lot of time out there driving his truck.

more parental moments

2009-05-11T12:40:00.000-04:00

MAKING AND DISPLAYING OUR FLOWER CLIPS (MOMMY/DAUGHTER & FRIENDS)
DADDY/DAUGHTER LINE-DANCING AND DINNER
BIKE RIDE TO LAKE/PICNIC (MOMMY/DAUGHTER & 1 SON)
loren and i have been getting the chance to spend lots of quality time with our kiddos--always a fun thing! we've had a daddy/daughter night (which translated into a mommy/son night for me), then loren was out of town for a week, so i decided to do some fun stuff with the kids, then there was a father/son activity (which translated into a mommy/daughter night for me). hooray for children, and for getting to spend time with them! it made it sort of feel like a mother's day week. here are some pictures of our fun. i also went to the beach with the kids one day, but that deserves its own post.

trash tie hair photos

2009-05-06T20:00:00.000-04:00

so, we discovered that we are not that good at taking pictures of hair. it's hard to get the flash and lighting and everything right. here are our best attempts. hopefully it will give you some idea of how we wear trash ties. and, a side note so you fully appreciate this blog entry, it just took me 30 minutes to figure out how to post the pictures like that. also, i have worn my hair like liesel's (she's the one with lots of trash ties all over), but with all brown and black ties. i actually wore it that way to church once. it was a sort of hair emergency and nothing else was working and i figured, "why not?".

pace and church--how will we survive the next year of sundays?

2009-05-04T12:13:00.000-04:00

so, pace loves church, which is actually a problem, because his enthusiasm causes him to be very loud. in our virginia ward, his loudness might have been able to be overlooked (given that there were approximately 100 other children his exact age making the same noises). no such luck in florida. i think there are only a total of 6 children under 3 in the whole ward. and none of them are as exuberant about church as pace is. he got the whole ward laughing not once, but twice, yesterday in sacrament meeting. when loren takes him out of the chapel after all of our "be quiet" tricks have failed, pace waves to everyone, saying "bye bye" and loving every minute of it. his second time out, he said "here we go! bye bye!" loren didn't come back in until the closing song, and then when the song ended, pace clapped and yelled "nursery!!!!" sigh. it really is a good thing he's so cute.

these are a few (or two) of my favorite things

2009-05-01T20:00:00.001-04:00

trash ties. the best invention for hair i have ever come across. you can find them at www.trashties.com

i have also discovered the ped-egg foot file. let me just say, it's fabulous, and i am not usually an "as seen on tv" fan. i actually didn't see it on tv. i saw it at walmart. and i am addicted. in a good way. take a look. i got the one with the handle (not shown in the picture).

that's all. just thought i'd share.

mommy-son date

2009-05-01T19:47:00.001-04:00

loren is with all my girls at daddy-daughter night tonight. it feels weird to be in the house all alone with pace! we made the most of our night by going on a bike ride. we took our time and stopped to watch a guy fly a model airplane. other highlights of our trip (according to pace) included seeing two cats, lots of real airplanes, some ducks and birds, a car driving fast, wearing the special hat (helmet), and getting off the bike and standing on a pile of rocks. it was fun to spend time with him without worrying about anybody else. now he's in bed and i'm sort of at a loss for what to do with myself. i know i could be productive and actually start on the scrapbooking that's been piling up for over a year (okay, let's face it--almost 2 years now--i think the last time i did anything was when i was pregnant with pace) but that seems way too daunting of a task and should certainly be left for another night. the house is already clean (i made the kids help me do a "pick up" before they could go with loren--i love it when they want to go somewhere really badly--the house gets cleaned so much faster!). i think at this point i'm leaning more towards bed with a good book and some cookies.

what do you do when your husbands have the kids and you have a night to yourself?

family bike ride

2009-04-26T08:58:00.000-04:00

i got a new bike for my birthday (loren got one, too--i am generous on my birthday, i guess). yesterday we went on our first official family bike ride. it was so much fun! pace loved his seat on the bike, and the other kids did great. gretchen moved to the next bike-size up, and was able to ride the whole way with no complaining (now that her little legs weren't having to work twice as hard as the rest of ours). i was so excited about having a new bike that i even had several dreams about it. i was sort of like a little kid. last night i was trying to get loren to let me go out and ride it again for just a minute. he said no. it was 11:30 at night, so i guess it's good he was being responsible.

just another update on general living in the allen home

2009-04-23T19:34:00.001-04:00

i should be encouraged that he is acting like a boy even though he's surrounded by women, right?

sorry for the graphic nature of this picture. this is his new favorite trick. he sticks his finger in and waits with a very straight face for us to notice.

this is how madeline and gretchen showed up for family scripture reading last night

gretchen's orange-lady creation

liesel running the hurdles' event on field day

gwyneth showing off her dribbling skills

me turning 33! aaugh! am i supposed to feel old yet?

they are not drowning--they are snorkeling in our pool

this one looks even more like they are all drowning

looking lovely in snorkel gear

loren's handstand abilities--he will be mad that i put this in, but it's my blog, right?

if i had things my way....

2009-04-23T19:21:00.000-04:00

doesn't this look way more fun than a day at school?

so, if i was the one in charge of the school schedule, i would give the children days off at random times, not on holidays, and in the middle of the week--often, like 3 times a month. maybe 4. maybe 5, if it was a 5-week month. i kept the kids home from school today (it was take-your-child to work day, and only like 5 kids were going to be at school). loren couldn't actually take the kids to work with him, so we met him for lunch at a beach by his work, and then spent a few hours there after he had to go back to work (yes, i felt slightly guilty that i was playing and he was working--every once in a while being a mom has great perks). i cannot even tell you how fun it was to have a day off of everything! and it wasn't a saturday, so i didn't feel like i had to get "projects" done, and it wasn't a holiday, so not everybody was at the beach. it's days like this that made me homeschool the kids a couple of years ago. i will not get on my soapbox and go on and on about how kids spend way too much time at school, when they could learn the same amount in less time.................................

i will just say "hooray for days off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (and for friends who let their kids stay home from school, too--the extra girls you saw in the pictures are our friends that came with us).

today's quotes

2009-04-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

madeline to gretchen: do you know what's really bugging me right now? your attitude. do you know what an attitude is? well, it means you're being rude!

liesel: well, eating animals is way worse than eating humans, 'cause think of everything that animals do for us!

madeline: yeah, like cows making milk.

(there are so many ironic things about this conversation, i didn't even know where to start to set things straight)

gretchen: mom, does Jesus live in zarahemla right now?

me: no, he is in heaven.

gretchen: oh, like where Heavenly Father works. do they sleep there?

what would i do without my children to entertain me?

easter egg hunt

2009-04-17T19:19:00.000-04:00

here are some pictures of our easter egg hunt. we have a great backyard for hiding the eggs and it was fun to see the kids take forever to find some of the more skillfully hidden ones. pace was the funniest--he was very suspicious of the plastic eggs (he'd already loaded his basket up with trucks and cars before the hunt started and didn't want them to have to share the space with eggs) until i opened one and showed him there was chocolate in it. then he still didn't want to put them in his basket--he just ate the stuff as he found it. he was so sad today when he asked for an "egg" and i had to tell him they were all gone (the kids have been rationing out their goods so they could have some each day). and yes, vegans can find good treats, too. they are just 5 times as expensive and the normal stuff. good thing easter only comes once a year!

friday: spring break continued

2009-04-15T12:26:00.000-04:00

joanne's family left friday morning. we spent the rest of the day basically lounging around and recovering from having so much much all week long! it was funny how good a day of doing nothing felt. the kids (and i) caught up on our neglected reading time. these are some candid pictures of the kids during the day. and yes, that is a picture of me reading a nancy drew book. hey, it was before our trip to the library and i was desperate. the photos of the canvases are to show joanne's christmas (late) present to me. she wanted to wait to paint them until she was at my house so we could talk about colors and stuff. we painted them (i did help a little bit, which was fun) on the night that the dads and the kids were at the baseball game.

red reef park: spring break continued

2009-04-14T12:45:00.000-04:00

this was probably my favorite day of all. we went to red reef park in boca raton. it was seriously the best beach for kids i have ever been to (sorry, california! i still love ca's waves, but this was just too perfect for the kids). it was shallow water for quite a ways out, and clear (nice for quick shark checks). in addition to perfect swimming conditions, it had tide pools, crabs, fish, a reef for snorkeling around, and the water was 77 degrees. all the kids who could swim could make it out to the reef and see the tropical fish. joanne and i took a little turn ourselves while the dads had the kids. i must confess that we were a little like giddy school girls because it was just so cool to see all the fish and be snorkeling around. i have only been in clear water like that in hawaii, and i decided it makes my beach swimming much better--i have a slight phobia of not being able to see what's lurking down by my feet--i usually overcome this fear because i love the water so much, but it was really nice to be able to see what was coming my way. (and hopefully not coming!)

get ready for some alligator photos!

2009-04-13T12:08:00.000-04:00

i know you've all been waiting to see some pictures of real, live alligators. on wednesday we went to shark valley (no sharks--lots of alligators). we opted for the 2-hour tram ride tour of the everglades, rather than the bike-it-yourself option. i'm all for seeing alligators, but i wanted a little more than a bike between me and them! here are some pictures of the good times!

spring break: part 2 (miami)

2009-04-11T08:21:00.000-04:00

tuesday we made a trip into miami (my first). we walked along the beach, but only peeked over the dunes at the water because it was the infamous "south beach" and we didn't want any unexpected encounters with un-attired bathers. we enjoyed looking at the fun buildings and we found a great park that the kids loved, as well as some fabulous climbing trees.

spring break: part 1 (playing at the house)

2009-04-10T09:28:00.000-04:00

get prepared for many updates on our spring break. my sister joanne and her family drove over from texas and spent the week with us. we had way too much fun taking pictures (i just downloaded almost 300). i will try not to post them all, but we'll see if i can bear to leave any out!

the first day they came it was perfect swimming weather, so we jumped in the pool (my second time in since we've moved here--i really hold out for the hot days). the cousins had such a good time playing with each other. this first post is dedicated to the joys of cousins just hanging out! the later posts will be about all the fun places we went (think lots of alligators....)

i love almost-2-year-olds. really, i do.

2009-04-01T20:47:00.000-04:00

my baby is almost two. this is how i can tell. twice this week, he's refused to fall asleep for his nap. actually, i take that back--today he did fall asleep after 2 hours in his bed (he was happy the whole time, and alternated between singing "twinkle twinkle" and "i am a child of god", and reciting the names of people in our family (mommy, daddy, neeko, adline, getchy, pace) (neeko=liesel and gwyneth both) and counting (3, 4 jump! 3, 4 jump!). just when i was going to go in and get him up from his "quiet time nap", he fell asleep for 2 hours, so spent a total of 4 hours in bed, and then wasn't ready for bedtime tonight. he thought it was so great to say goodnight to all the girls while he was still up and running around. sigh. also today, he got ahold of a purple marker and colored on many, many surfaces in my house. (the couches--luckily just the leather ones, coffee tables, vases, walls, stairs--luckily tile, doors, himself). he proudly showed me them all, and then walked around saying "no, no pace". guess i waited too long to hide the coloring things. actually, they were hidden, just not well enough, apparently. he's also on an eating strike, and won't eat anything i put in front of him unless it's a cookie. i think all my kids have gone through this. and now they all drink spinach smoothies, so i'm trying not to worry. in fact, that's the benefit of having 5 kids. by the 5th one, you don't stress about the stages. unfortunately, my oldest 2 still get stressed about, because they're the first ones in each stage. sorry, girls! but, hey, i was the oldest, and i survived, right?

speaking of liesel, (in a round-about way), here is a quote from this morning: "i so wish i didn't have to go to school today. i've got such better things to do with my time."

i agree, baby (sometimes, at least)--good thing next week is spring break!

but i digress: back to pace being 2: he does that limp-body tantrum thing, he insists on walking everywhere, etc., etc., etc.

on the other hand, he says the funniest things. today he saw 2 helicopters in a row (his favorite next to motorcycles and tractors), and said "oh my goodness. 'copters. oh my goodness." and then got so excited that he lost all ability to form real words and just babbled for about 2 minutes.

and in all honesty, the 2-year-old stage is one of my favorites--now, 3........that's a hard one.

here's what we've been doing lately

2009-03-24T14:01:00.000-04:00

READING:

madeline and gretchen took a break from "princessing" to read. i love madeline's new reading abilities! it makes it easier to overlook her being so engrossed in a book that she 'doesn't hear me'. (and there's a chance she gets that trait from me...)

PLAYING AIR GUITAR:

don't ask me how he learned this. but it is pretty cute. pace loves music. really loves it. he dances and sings and plays the guitar any time he hears any sort of music.
WRITING THE FAMILY GAZETTE:

liesel and gwyneth thought of this all by themselves and snuck it onto the table for me to find. it was a white board with different 'articles' about our family on it. there was a 'guess who' section, a 'healthy eating' spot, some 'fashion advice', and other miscellaneous items and announcements. it was really cute and very clever, i thought. it's fun to have kids that are getting older!

LEARNING HOW TO RIDE WITHOUT TRAINING WHEELS:

on saturday i decided it was time for gretchy to be done with training wheels. loren took them off, and i prepared myself for much tears (gretchen's) and gnashing of teeth (mine). i was spared both, however--she learned how to ride without help in less than 5 minutes. no tears, no falling, no drama. yeah for gretchen! liesel and gwyneth were very upset when they said they'd learned how to ride just as quickly and i had to remind them that there had been quite a bit of drama involved with them learning how to ride a bike. they are too much like me, i'm afraid. they got another chance to prove their skills, however, when we bought them new BIG bikes last night. they handled themselves much better than when they were 7.

SPOTTING THE BURROWING OWL:

i was driving gretchen to preschool today and saw, in this field right by her school, a little tiny owl! it was crazy. at first i thought it was just a funny little bird, but then i remembered this book the girls and i had just read (carl hiaasen's 'hoot'--a very good read, i might add) about this endangered owl in florida, and so i took a closer look, and saw that it was, indeed, an owl. then i saw this sign in the field that said "no trespassing: home of the burrowing owl". anyway, it was quite exciting, and fun that we'd just read the book. and crazy that i've driven that road twice a day since we've moved here, and i've never seen the owls or the signs. must have my mind on other things! actually, it's probably because i'm showing pace the cows and horses in the field across the road. on the way home from preschool today, we saw an iguana in the grass. as long as the alligators stay put...

celebrities from gwyneth's point of view

2009-03-13T19:14:00.000-04:00

we've had celebrities on the brain lately (due to our close encounter with one at disneyworld). this has made for some interesting discussions between me and my children. i guess i may have done too good of a job at persuading them that they do not want to become 'stars' in the hollywood sense of things. this is what gwyneth said tonight: "i bet that the number of famous girls that get married to someone who is normal and nice and not famous and loves them for true love and not for being rich is exactly one." i have to say she's probably right.

new recipe blog

2009-03-11T20:47:00.000-04:00

www.greenereating.com

so, my sisters and i (and my mom) just started a blog with some of the recipes that we use. it's been really fun for everybody to share their recipes. i've cooked dinner more in the last couple of weeks than i have in a long time, which i'm sure my family has appreciated. feel free to check it out if you want to catch a little glimpse of how we weirdo vegans eat! it does have the donut recipe on it that some of you asked me for, if that makes it more tempting to take a look!

pace in his groovy clothes

2009-03-10T12:24:00.000-04:00

because i'm supposed to be mopping the floor i'll do one more post

2009-03-09T12:09:00.000-04:00

i am stalling. it takes forever to mop my floor. all the floors in my house are tile or wood except the playroom, which has carpet. anyway................
so, i thought this would be the perfect time to see if any of you want to do a 5 week challenge to lose 5 pounds with me?! i'm not saying you need to--i'm just trying to get myself motivated to do something about the way the numbers have been creeping up on my scale. maybe if i put it out there that i have this goal, i will actually do something about it? maybe? it's worth a shot at least. i should be like ellie's family and say that i'll pay you all if i don't lose the 5 pounds. but then i might go broke, so i guess i'd better not!
okay, enough rambling. off to do the floor. and my yoga. and not eat any cookies on the way.

unusual sightings at disneyworld--guess who?

2009-03-09T11:53:00.001-04:00

so, i was getting off the whinnie the pooh ride at disneyworld, and there was a girl standing there waiting to get in my car, and i thought "wow, those sunglasses really make her look like britney spears". then i took another look, and i was like "oh my goodness. it is britney spears". so, then i didn't want to show that i knew it was her, so i just acted like nothing was unusual and walked by her. loren missed the whole thing, but luckily (?) we were still standing outside the ride talking about how crazy it was, when she got off the whinnie the pooh ride, so we got another chance to see her (yeah?). in fact, we walked with her little entourage the whole way to the small world ride. loren wanted to get on the boat before them so he could casually say "oops, we did it again", but she was more privileged than us and got to go straight to the front of the line. i still managed to sneakily snap a few pictures of her. i stopped when one of the body guards turned around and gave me a 'look'. anyway, it was kind of a funny thing to have been less than a foot away from somebody so (in)famous. liesel and gwyneth's comment on the whole thing: "too bad we don't like her, huh." (and, a disclaimer here: i have no idea how to spell whinnie the pooh or britney spears, and it's not worth the time to look it up).

pace and the birds

2009-03-09T11:40:00.000-04:00

we watched a bird show at disneyworld that had real birds flying all over the place landing on their trainers' hands, arms, shoulders, etc. pace absolutely loved it, and spent the rest of the time at the animal kingdom trying to hold a bird. he would hold out his arms and say "hold it, bird", and when that didn't work, he'd look at me and say "help. pace hold bird." it was so cute we might need to acquire a bird somehow.

disneyworld

2009-03-08T20:30:00.000-04:00

we went to diseyworld for two days this week to celebrate liesel and gwyneth's birthday (and the free disney passes that came along with it), and to use the passes that loren's brother had gotten for us for christmas. we had the best time ever! since the passes were all free, we splurged on a great hotel suite that was a lot of fun, too. we did the magic kingdom the first day, and then went to the animal kingdom on the second day. liesel and gwyneth were brave enough to try space mountain with me (they didn't like it), but the rest of the time we went on the low-key rides, which suited everybody just fine!

some new "cutenesses" from the kids

2009-03-02T11:58:00.001-05:00

gwyneth: "if we were regular people, we'd have a bowl of m&m's on our coffee table."
gretchy: "mom, so, is that how you're doing your hair today? it's not so beautiful"
gwyneth: "i've decided our pool isn't really for swimming laps. it's more for moms who want to lay out on those big float things."
madeline: "my teacher doesn't care if we raise our hands. i know--i tried it out once myself."
liesel: "mom, just tell me to go to bed." me: "go to bed" liesel: "no, like say all the usual stuff." me: "okay, time for bed--get in
pj's, wash your face, brush your teeth." liesel: "thank you!"

2009-02-21T20:06:00.000-05:00

pace found my sunglasses and thought he was one good-lookin' baby. he is shirtless because i'd just finished giving him a haircut, which he was also very pleased about. he was feeling very handsome and photogenic and kept telling me to take pictures "gen" (again) and then demanding to look at them on the camera.

more house pictures--sorry

2009-02-17T20:31:00.000-05:00

i guess once i start blogging i get on sort of a role.....and loren's at meetings all night, so why not, right? i think (dare i say it?) that the house might very well be almost done (the 'almost' is because i still have to hang curtains in my room). i know i've said that before, but now i think i mean it. we got our new couches, so the big-empty-room problem is solved. i also acquired many new turquoise things that quickly found places in the house (i must be in a turquoise--not to be confused with 'blue' --ha ha--mood these days). and, i finally finished the powder room, which was actually very difficult, since it's wall-papered in not my style at all, but i think i found something that works. so, here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure. or not. mostly these are for my mom, and my sisters, who don't mind me getting a little house crazy every now and then!

beach fun (and freezing cold)

2009-02-17T20:25:00.000-05:00

valentine's day

2009-02-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

okay, so i was going to do a cute valentine's day post after reading all of yours, but now that i'm here ready to do it, i remembered that my camera sat diligently on the counter during all the festivities and never actually got used.......

i want someone to invent a camera that knows when you want a picture taken and just takes it by itself.

anyway, we did have a good day. the kids threw their second annual card-making/cookie-decorating party and invited all the kids in the ward their age. we had a lot of fun. and it was good to have their friends from church over for the first time. i love seeing the creative side of the kids, and i think i must secretly still be a sticker/fun paper junkie (left over from my elementary school days of 'the sticker collection') because i have so much fun buying supplies for the kids' parties! i went way overboard, but luckily the kids like doing crafts all year long, so i'm sure everything will get used up eventually!

loren got me the best present ever--a day at the spa! i have never, ever, ever even been close to a spa before, so this will be a big treat (i will post pictures of my newly manicured/pedicured/facialed/massaged self after i go). and the best part is that he already buys me everything i really need (and then some) so it was fun to get a real present that is absolutely impractical. hooray for valentine's day!!!!!!!

i have a question

2009-02-09T21:59:00.000-05:00

okay, so i am new to this world of online keeping in touch, and i cannot figure out this facebook thing. loren signed me up for it, and now i've got like a million friends (well, not really, but you know what i mean) adding me onto their facebook pages, and then i add them onto mine, and people can post little comments..........but i don't get why there are blogs and facebooks and why some people have both and some people have only one or the other.........and how do people find time to run in to the computer and type what they are doing every second? i realize the irony of that statement as i sit here blogging, but i only get on my blog twice a day (or so-ish), and not all the time to say exactly what i'm doing at each moment. that said, i have enjoyed catching up with long-lost friends through facebook.........so is it basically a friend-finder for people who have easy access to a computer? i guess it would be a pain to have 300 people listed on your blog list, so in that way a facebook page is better. anyway, if any of you computer-ly social people can clue me in on this, that would be much appreciated! and, i don't mind being on any of your facebook pages, and i think it's fun, i guess i'm just saying i don't know how it all works (don't go thinking i am anti-facebook)............

new 'unusuals' of south florida

2009-02-08T20:37:00.000-05:00

so, loren and i discovered something on one of our family walks the other day. all of the ducks in the ponds/lakes/canals in our neighborhood are fake! yes, fake. floating out in the middle of the water like real ducks. trying to trick northern virginia fools like us. we did feel really silly that we'd always thought there were ducks all over the place. what is really driving us crazy, though, is the fact that we cannot figure out why they are there. it's not just for decoration, because since we discovered the fake ducks, we've been looking for them, and they are on every bit of water in all the cities all over here (and there are bits of water everywhere here in south florida). the only thing we've come up with is that they are alligator decoys. i really should just ask somebody, but i feel sheepish. any ideas?

on a different subject (one dealing with cars), loren and i saw two very unusual and somewhat worrisome things in the same intersection last night while we were out and about on a date. the first was a normal car (white crown vic) that was placed/mounted/jacked up (i'm not sure of the correct vernacular here) on huge truck tires, so that the bottom of the car was actually higher than the top of our car. we had never seen such a thing before--even in california where the changing of tires on cars for various purposes is quite common, we never saw something this unusual. it would have been better if it had been painted with lightning stripes or something, because then it would have at least been admitting that it was out to draw our attention, but it just acted like a normal car on crazy high wheels.

anyway, we pulled up next to this car at a stop light, and then we noticed that the pickup (legitimate) truck in front of us had real bullet holes in the back of it. we started wondering what section of town we had wandered into, and were very glad that we were 30 minutes from home and not closer to it.

always an adventure, it is, moving to new places!!!!!!!!!!!

mother/daughter moment

2009-02-03T20:01:00.000-05:00

liesel and gwyneth and i have been doing something really fun. i guess they read in a book about a mom and a daughter who wrote notes back and forth to each other in a journal. g & l thought this sounded like fun (gwyneth actually started it first and then liesel joined in), so they each got a journal and we pass them back and forth every couple of days with little notes in them to each other. it's been really fun to read their thoughts on things, and i like being able to tell them all the good things i notice about them. i am writing this down in hopes that i will remember these moments when they are teenagers.....

tagged: 25 things about me

2009-02-02T12:16:00.000-05:00

i'm not really sure at all that i can think of 25 things, but here goes:

1. i thrive on getting things done quickly

2. i like being organized and de-cluttering

3. i do 2 loads of laundry every day--i put the first load in as soon as i wake up

4. i play the piano and would love to take advanced piano lessons some day--i played a really hard piece in church a couple of years ago and secretly loved it, even though it scared me to death

5. i want to buy a bike--i haven't owned one since i got married

6. reading is my favorite thing to do when i have a spare minute

7. dick francis is my favorite author

8. the ender's game series, john grisham's books, and 'these is my words' are some of my favorite books

9. i also like youth books: cynthia voight, the bronze bow, island of the blue dolphins, (and i almost always read all of liesel and gwyneth's library books--including the nancy drews)

10. i still do yoga every day--i started it 1 1/2 years ago!!!

11. i like to change/redecorate my house

12. if i had to get a job right now, i'd like to coach a swim team, or be one of those people who help people get their houses ready to move (a 'stager')

13. i like flowers--love flowers, actually

14. i am always looking for new 'healthy' recipes that my kids will like

15. when loren was in pakistan, the kids and i had cereal or toast for dinner at least 3 times a week

16. i do not need variety in my food--i would eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if it was up to me

17. speaking of foods, these are some of my favorites: mashed potatoes, fruit, mexican food of all sorts (minus the meat, cheese, etc), lasagna

18. i have a sweet tooth that i am constantly battling

19. i suddenly started liking mushrooms about a year ago, and now i eat them raw all the time

20. can you tell i'm hungry?

21. i just got called to be the primary chorister--i am excited and nervous

22. i would have liked pace to be twins (crazy, i know, but then i could really be 'done')

23. i like camping

24. i looooooooooooove weekends and holidays and days off work--i love it when my kids are home from school--that's why i homeschooled in the first place--i like being scheduled, but i like it to be my own schedule

25. hmmmmmmmmm. i wish my hair was curlier; i wish i could afford more pedicures and massages--i do not like manicures, though; shopping cures lots of my problems; i love purses and shoes--i've had the same purse since november and i'm not looking for a new one, and that is a record for me

26. sorry i cheated and crammed lots of things in at the last second!

27. consider yourself tagged! i'll be checking your blogs.....

2009-01-30T14:45:00.000-05:00

so, i've been working on more 'house' projects. i am actually getting a little sad that i'm almost done setting up this new house. time to move again? ha! just kidding! i will find a way to deal with the no-more-decorating-blues that does not involve moving. anyway, here are the last couple of things i've been working on:

1. we did our 'black and white' wall in the playroom (in virginia, these pictures were in the hall going up our stairs)--this wall may not look like much, but it took loren and me the better part of one day, and involved way too much measuring and math and changing of minds. luckily, we are both really pleased with the results. you can't tell what the pictures are of, but they are a collection of pictures that we have gotten in all the places we've (loren) have traveled/lived. this is loren's brainchild--i just get the pictures framed.

2. the big empty room is finally getting furnished! we still have to get couches (a work in progress) but at least this one wall is done. loren made the mistake of telling me we had 'plenty of money in our checking account' (transferred from savings to pay off our car....), and i figured he wouldn't mind a few dollars missing.......so i went out yesterday and acquired the necessary accessories to finish this wall.

3. thanks to my artist sister (joanne) i had 5 fabulous original prints waiting to be framed and hung. i've been saving this long hallway in my house for them, and i finally got them framed and finished yesterday! i begged loren to help me hang them last night, and then i just sat there looking at them forever, in post picture-hanging bliss. the photos do not do these prints justice--there's not a good place to stand in the hall to really see them all. anyway, joanne gave these to all the sisters at our sisters' weekend back in october--they are prints of some art she did in high school. go, joanne!!!!!!! (she had to really come out of her comfort zone to do this....and now i'm blogging about it for the whole world to know.....)

anway, i did not mean to ramble on for so long about my various 'things' (and should i feel guilty that i write more about my house than my children? i'll write about them next time). and, i don't know why they pictures are posted in the wrong order. it appears i need help controlling my blog!

madline's birthday

2009-01-29T20:32:00.000-05:00

i suddenly realized that i hadn't said anything about madeline's birthday (jan 17th)--oops! my poor middle child. she did have a fun day, though. we were very brave and invited some new friends over for a cupcake decorating party. our new neighborhood is great--lots of fun kids. anyway, here are some pictures of my little 7 year old baby! she told me today that she's being extra good now that she's 7, because she's almost 8, and ready to be baptized.

too much 'wicked'?

2009-01-24T11:40:00.000-05:00

i was cutting gretchen's hair today, and she said "oh good. now i look just like glinda. i'm gonna name one of my childs glinda when i'm a mom".

it has been surround-sound 'wicked' at our house lately--i can't escape it--i go to bed with the songs in my head and wake up with the songs in my head--i guess that's what happens when your children listen to the cd at least 10 times a day!

i guess i should be grateful it's not high school musical anymore?!

my boy

2009-01-23T20:02:00.000-05:00

just when i was convinced that pace was all boy, i caught him wearing one of the girls' shirts, carrying around a purse full of paper dolls. don't tell loren! (madeline and gretchy confessed that they'd put m's shirt on him, but the purse and dolls were his idea).

i can be a fun mom, too

2009-01-23T19:51:00.001-05:00

okay, so i know that deep down inside, some of you think that my children are deprived because of my somewhat unusual eating habits.....(it's okay, i'm not offended).........so, just to prove that i can be a fun mom and a weird-eating mom, i made donuts today!!!! alright, fine, they were vegan and low fat, but they were still darn good! anyway, this was a huge deal for me because i'm not a very adventurous cooker, and this involved not only trying out a new recipe found on the internet, but also buying a donut pan--this is the only fancy cooking thing i've ever owned (besides the apple slicer ellie gave me--but is that really a 'cooking' thing?)! my children were very pleased and were probably wondering where their real mom went to. so, here's a picture of the final product--just in case it never happens again, i want proof!

a sign i'd rather not see

2009-01-21T11:49:00.001-05:00

so, today while i was driving i saw a sign in my neighborhood along one of the many canal/ponds we have here in (South) florida. the wording of this sign disturbed me. this is what it said: "it is illegal to feed or entice alligators". i am not concerned that i am going to break this law, as i have no desire to feed or entice alligators in any way, but i am a little worried this means that i might come across an alligator who could be wanting to be fed/enticed/etc. i have been assured that there are not alligators lying around nilly willy, but this sign does not seem to support that claim....

it seems to be that if you see a sign saying "don't feed the ducks" that there are ducks in the area......

i'm just hoping the alligators don't get word of the sign and feel inclined to put in an appearance!