Thursday, October 27, 2011

Crazy Hair Day


It's RED RIBBON WEEK and "Just say 'No' to drugs!" time here in our school. Tuesday was Crazy Hair Day, which is always a big hit with the kids.

Usually I help out a lot, but we've all be waking up late, so the kids were on their own this morning cause I had to make sandwiches and nurse the baby. Joe did a good job I thought. Hyrum had Corey help him use my hairspray.

I did end up helping Mel - she just couldn't think of what to do and how to do it and was sulking and going to leave with her hair normal when I said "Oh, come here" and we took off a little fall decoration thing from the wall and put that with her hair up in a ponytail.

Ethan got into the girls' curlers. With such short hair they were barely hanging on to his head, so I kept threatening "don't lose them" cause you know the world's going to end if one of Abi's curlers is missing.

Wesley didn't really care about playing the game, but I put his up quickly as he was walking out the door, telling him "you're a Teletubbie!"

And lastly, I thought I'd post this picture of our cute neighbors, they are always over at our house keeping my kids company and helping hold Sophia, they are cute. They did a good job on their crazy hair. I'll keep this picture for Mel's future reference, something to help our creative juices get flowing next year.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

October Report

What we've done this month:


As with each child born in our family, Corey took his "What? a new baby?! I need a vacation!" trip and I get to tease him for the rest of his life about it. He went to Korea for "business" right after Welsey was born, to India when Abi was a month old, kinda funny... Something about a newborn crying at night gives him the international travel bug. This time he went to Chile and Peru for 10 days (5 days in each country... partly for business, partly for pleasure). At the business part of it in Lima, he and his friend Brian got to try some very exotic Peruvian dishes -


Next they took a plane from Lima to go visit Machu Picchu - BUT... how safe would you feel if this was what you saw outside the window at the airport?

closer up...
Uhh, looks like there's a crashed airplane out there? "Let's just get this thing off the runway, yeah, why don't you shove it all over there." Would you be reviewing your life to assess your standing before God and praying to survive the flight? Yeah, me too.

Well they did survive and made it to Cusco, spent the night there, then early on Saturday they drove to Ollantaytambo , then took a train to Aguas Calientes, then took a bus to their final desitnation: Machu Picchu! New friend Javier served as their guide.

Pretty amazing pictures huh. It would be fun to go there someday. As for me, while Corey was gone I was up at night cleaning up throw up (none of it on the carpet, just beds and sheets, which I think means I'm one lucky duck) and then I was sick too and kept myself up at night with coughing fits. I was on survival mode, cue my survival food:

Yes, I ate a whole beautiful platter of these variety cheesecakes pictured above. Mississippi Mud, Chocolate Marble, Fudge Brownie... mmm, chocolate... Confession, actually, I ate two of these beauties - one platter of 12 slices, one platter of 14 slices, minus the three slices that I gave to my neighbor and the maybe 3 pieces that I shared with the kids when they caught me sneaking into the freezer in the garage. 2 for sure, 3 is a generous estimate. Kids were throwing up Saturday night to Sunday morning, the rest of the week I was sick and ate cold cheesecake for breakfast lunch and dinner to sooth my sore throat till Corey returned on Friday, at which time I shared with my neighbor and kids what was left of the cakes to get rid of the evidence. It was good, and now that Corey's back and we've both recovered, it's back to reality. Treats are all gone and I've been getting up at 5:30 and passing an awake baby Sophia to Joseph who for some reason is awake too (he wakes up on his own and showers in the mornings! I'm so impressed!) for him to hold while I go on a quick 20 minute / 2 mile run with a neighbor.

So that's what's been going on here. Other than that, I've been reading a book that Corey got which proposes that Nephi landed in Peru, titled "Nephi in the Promised Land" - very intriguing stuff!! Given me lots of food for thought, I'm eating it up faster than I ate the cheesecake, very cool, it's really fun :)

Monday, October 10, 2011

Snow and a VeggieBaby

Last week we had our first snow fall of the season -


And here's Melodie's first snowman of the season -


As I was getting out the kids fall and winter clothes, I found the baby wrap blanket "Kiddopotamus" thing that I have been looking for and it has been great to bundle Fifi up in it - she's been sleeping better and it's also easier for the kids to hold her. She was like this in her carseat this morning as I tidied up the kitchen -


In this getup we think she'll make a great Mummy for Halloween. :) Actually we've been calling her a baby caterpillar. When Corey came in and saw her he said she looked like one of the VeggieTale characters, which totally made me laugh.


Fifi the Cauliflower!