A Real Salon Hair Cut

Ethan went and got his haircut tonight. He's only had one done at a salon like once in 2015 when I was away in Brazil and he was here staying with his grandparents in Utah with Joseph. So, at the salon tonight, he didn't know what to do. Like when she went away to go wash his hair, he didn't follow her. Then she turned around and looked at him as he was still sitting there like "Why aren't you coming?" and she motioned for him, and E was like "oh!" And same thing at the shampoo sink, he didn't know what to do so he saw upright on the chair, and she told him to lay back. Funny. "So, where do you usually get your hair cut?" "My mom does it." "Why didn't she do it today?" And Ethan didn't want to explain everything about his thinking... which was: "Well, this was a spur of the moment thing cause I'm getting some senior pictures taken by my sax teacher and so this morning he texted me that I should bring my suit for a few 'mission pictures' too, but last night I was told my hair was a too long for my mission paper submission, so I didn't get want to risk it not looking "missionary" enough but I wasn't able to get it cut before I came down here to Orem, but I decided I should do it now etc etc...." ....So instead his answer was "She picks her nose" and implied I do so while I'm cutting his hair, and that I let boogers get in his hair and the stylist was speechless at how wrong that was of me to do to him. When he told us all of that tonight, I was like "My goodness....YEARS of cutting hair service that I've given to you from the love of my heart (and the frugalness of my wallet).... trimming your hair your whole LIFE, and just like that, for no reason at all other than to save yourself from having to make small talk, you threw me under the bus..." He said he knows it was wrong and apologized to me. Apology accepted. His haircut looks great though! I'm excited to see the pictures he got taken! I wanted a quick pic of his face. I told him to give me a smolder. He was like "OH NO!!! I DIDN'T DO A SMOLDER PHOTO!!!" Such a shame. This one will have to do.

Ok, we got it for posterity. Enjoy that hair while you got it. In a few months... the MTC clippers are coming for it! 

Two other exciting things from today - My blog books arrived! That was super quick! I just ordered those last week on Jan 21st! So I have my anniversary gift to Corey ready, and with that, the 2010's are done. All of my blog books are gray binding so far, but I think I'll change it for the next decade of the 2020s. 

And Daniel is ready for school. He was wearing a backpack around the house today and saying it was time to go to school.

And Owen would hear that and say "Noooo! I can't go to school!" And I am worried if Owen is going to be ready by fall. Part of me wants to let Owen stay home, but these two like to battle and get on my nerves, so it might be better to begin to separate them. Owen will be 5 years old in July, so he'll be a young kindergartener, like Hyrum was.... and he's kinda nervous about new things sometimes, like Hyrum was... and it makes me worried it will be like Hyrum was in elementary school. Maybe Daniel could pretend he is Owen? Or I'll just have to trust and hope that Hyrum was a unique case and things will be fine with Owen. Hyrum's turned out fine, there's nothing to worry about. But Daniel seems super ready, like Abi was. And Daniel is a darn September birthday, like Abi was. (That stupid September cut off) Maybe I'll sign Daniel up for preschool or make sure he has playdates set up? Hopefully Owen will be ready and my current concerns will prove to be all for naught, and Daniel will be content to hang out at home with his homebody mom. We'll play school, I'll do it buddy! I'll get crayons and we'll color and learn ABCs and stuff, it will be good.

Not On Top of It

This morning while I made oatmeal for breakfast, these two cute little boys played at my feet. Daniel was teaching Peter how to play drums on the pots and pans.

I've been pretty consistent at making oatmeal every school morning. Corey likes the steel cut oats, so we don't do the regular rolled oats anymore. As I've mentioned before, we only have 2 vehicles right now. I'm okay to be left a home without one usually, but if Corey takes the car then he runs the risk of being the one that needs to go get the kids at school, should any emergency arise. So it's best if I keep the car even though I don't need it. So I took Corey to work this morning. So after we dropped him off, I took the little boys to the store with me (because today was one of the rare occasions that I was on top of it for once and I actually knew what I wanted to make for dinner tonight!) The boys were excited about getting in the car cart!

I used to always go to Fresh Market instead of Smith's because they had car shopping carts.

But Fresh Market closed a year or so ago, so now I'm stuck with Smiths, so I usually don't take kids.

I can do Costco with the little boys, but I don't like going to Smiths. Maceys worked though - I can do Macey's with these little guys.

Hey, this could even be a standard operating procedure that I go do a quick "groceries for dinner" run after dropping Corey off at work. ...Of course, that would mean that I have to be on top of it, and right now.... I'm not...  as evidenced by the fact that I bought some vegan treats at the store....

So we had vegan ice cream for breakfast. Yeah, so I'm not performing at my peak right now. I blame this guy...

He's like literally sucking the life out of me. I've told Corey that my only complaint about Peter is that he nurses too well. And is too content to keep it up. So I'm feeling trapped a little bit and am looking forward to having my freedom back some day in the future. Once I have sovereignty over my body again, then I'll get my act together again and might be on top of it. But as for now, hooray for hardship nice cream. And violin playing. Violin is my new escape from life. I really like it. I played for a few hours today (another reason why the house is a mess...) This is what my thumb looks like after holding the violin bow for a long time. It makes me feel like I'm working hard, go me.

Ya can't be on top of everything. Taking care of kids, cleaning, family budget, dinner, violin, nursing... Right now I'm in survival mode, so we'll see how it goes, and we'll try to just keep on keeping on.

Science Fair

Lily recently had her science fair at school. Her friend's mom kinda carried it for us parents. I helped - I bought a few of the supplies she needed, and I also took her over there and picked her up many times. But they worked on it over at their house, so Hailee's mom I think gets most of the credit. When they had the fair at school, Corey went to rep us. Lily and Hailee were one of the projects that won and advanced to district. The district fair was this week. Yesterday was the judging, today was the open house. It was killing me a little bit to have to go out there twice. Yesterday her friend was supposed to pick her up, but then they had a crazy day at work and so their sitter took Hailee but didn't know she was supposed to pick up Lily.... they said they'd be by at 5:30, and at 5:50 I told Lily that they prob forgot or something so I rushed her out - she was late for the judging but it was ok. We decided to be super on time for the open house today. And Lily and Hailee and their "Smarty Plants" won again!

So yay for winning! But they didn't give them the awards until 6... after the open house was done. So we had some time to kill.

Corey's parents were there with us, so nice. The toddlers were bored. We walked around to look at trifolds several times. So since they won, they are going to region, which will be a fair up at the University of Utah and that is as far as the elementary kids can advance. Here Lily is with the other kids from her school that are also moving on. Lily is the fourth from the right.

Lily on the far right, with her friends showing their medals.

Good job Lily and Hailee!

A Fort and Family History

On Saturday, the kids had a few commitments: Wes had a lift clinic with his performing group, Sophi had a birthday party, and biggest exciting news Ethan had his BYU Music Program audition and another audition for the University of Hartford Connecticut (I think). Corey and Ethan met up with Mel for lunch. Later on Saturday night, and Ethan got a text from his professor from BYU saying he was accepted to the program, yay! Now he just needs to get admitted to BYU to make it official. So life keeps pressing forward.

Lately Abi has really wanted to get out of sharing a room with Lily and Sophi. Mostly cause of their barbies all over the floor. Sorry, not barbies, the dolls are "DC Super Hero Girls". And I agree, Lily and Sophi do make a pretty big mess in there. Abi contributes to the mess by leaving her fair share of clothing all over the floor. Anyway, Abi has asked and nagged and pleaded to share a room with Owen and Daniel instead. I told her I'd like to wait until Ethan leaves for his mission to officially move things around, but fine, you can go in there to sleep but don't move your stuff in yet, until I can find a new place for everything. Then Owen and Daniel weren't sleeping in there anyway, and then Abi did start to move things in and THEN the teen boys confronted me all upset "How come ABI gets her own room!?!?!" I told them "She doesn't have her own room..." Ugh, so then they all wanted to rearrange things and thus we had to fix it this weekend and we mostly did. So we moved a bunk bed in there, and now Abi and Natalie are sharing the small room/former little boys room. Owen and Daniel are in their toddler beds in Lily and Sophi's room. Abi and Natalie's room is clean. I still need to find a home for the train table. LilySophiOwenDaniel's room is a mess. So that's mostly what we did this weekend. Oh, and while the rooms were all in a disheveled mess, the kids decided yesterday to make a blanket fort in the front room.

It was very big and they used a LOT of blankets and books but I didn't want to stress about the mess they were making, so I went and hid in my room and read and snuggle with Peter.

I've been doing really good at studying the scriptures so far this year with Come Follow Me, I'm loving it. Corey came in the room and we both logged into Family Search and searched for "Relatives Around Me" and Corey and I found out that we are 9th cousins! Our ancestors meet up together at John Merrill (b. 1669) and Sarah Marsh (b. 1673) and their sons Caleb Merrill for me, and Nathaniel Merrill for Corey. Also for me through Albert Francis and Jessie Edith Butt, Corey through Reid Franklin Curtis and Lula Loveless. I didn't know we were related, so ya learn something new everyday. That might be a good app for the kids to use when they are dating.

One funny thing from this past week - Now that Peter is our baby and we are used to how he looks, we often have to do a double take when we see pictures of baby Daniel on the blog or in old photos.

He looks so different from Peter. It makes us laugh~

Ethan has continued to stoke this humor of this by sending me several old photos of Daniel during the past week.

Peter has such big eyes, and Daniel's look so small, especially next to his big baby cheeks and big bald baby forehead -

So then tonight I don't know why they were looking for the passports, but Corey and Ethan came and flashed this photo of Daniel at me and I lost it -

He's' cute now, but these are pretty funny.... I was dying of laughter - And Sunday is one of the few days I wear mascara, so it was running down my cheeks.

Corey was like "You can't laugh that hard at the way Daniel looks! The poor kid is gonna have a complex!" Well, Daniel, you wouldn't have even have been aware of us laughing at you if I hadn't blogged it here, so I hope this doesn't give you any self esteem issues, cause we think you're adorable (see pic 7) And maybe it's actually Peter that should be nervous - cause he's such a beautiful baby, he probably can't keep that cuteness up. He might have peaked too early! He ain't got anywhere to go but downhill! I think they're both adorable kids and I think they have a good chance of being good looking adults someday. And I think we'll all get good laughs as we ooh and aww at how cute you both were when we look back at your baby photos. Look at your mom, doing family history for you both! You guys are lucky to have it all blogged here for your posterity. (You're welcome!)

College Auditions

Ethan had his audition today with the school of music at BYU. He was also supposed to have one up at the U of U, but they called and asked to reschedule, which was fortunate for Ethan cause he had too much going on this morning and was hoping to call and cancel- he had to get his Concert Night photographs taken up at the capital at 10, and then had to rush from there to go down to BYU for his audition at 1:15, and he wanted time to practice before that. Corey took him down. They met up with our own BYU Cougar Mel -

Hey Mel, any advice to give this young man?

Ethan had a couple of minutes to practice before his audition time.

And done. There was a lot of work leading up to that 15 minutes! 

Right after the BYU audition they headed to the Soundhouse for another audition with someone from the University of Hartford. Ethan was going to play a Sony Rollins tune he transcribed, but the guy said "I don't want to hear a transcription, I want to hear you!" So E was like, "Ok...." and then he played the transcription anyway, and the guy was like "Wow! You sound like Sony Rollins!" to which Ethan smiled and shirked it off, like "Huh! Funny, that's weird that I sound like him!"  Corey said that Ethan said the BYU audition didn't go as well as hoped, but the Hartford guy was blown away by Ethan. Corey was a little worried, I'm not sure if Ethan was, but Ethan got a text tonight from his teacher and the professor at BYU who makes the decisions, Ray Smith, who told Ethan that he is in. So that is really good news, congratulations Ethan! Now you just need to get accepted! They brought Mel home for the weekend, which is fun, we love having her here. And here are a few pictures of Peter being adorable and playing favorites tonight. Peter, who is your favorite?

Is it Mom? It's me, right? You know you love me the most, come to me! He protests and snuggles up more into Wesley's neck. Cute

See, I'm conflicted. As I said yesterday, I kinda want to be free of this little baby, but he's just so gosh darn cute! We all love it when he wants us.

I'm glad he likes Wesley. He likes Ethan, Wes, and Lily, and sometimes will tolerate Abi. Well, even if he won't come to me right now, I know I'm his favorite!

Toddlers, Babies, & Teens

This afternoon Daniel decided he wanted to go outside on an adventure. He got dressed on his own and had his little backpack ready, then he headed out. He wandered around the backyard looking pretty adorable. I called him over so I could take his picture.

A toddler close up. Do you know where you're off to, Daniel?

Cute kid. All dressed up with no where to really go, but that's ok cause he was content to just wander around the back yard for a bit. He had toy food and random things in his backpack.

Toddlers are pretty easy. Busy and noisy, but fun.  They're pretty independent and along with that comes plenty of messes... I like them.

Babies - I'm torn right now with Peter, cause part of me is eager and ready for him to grow and be more independent/need me a little less, but I'm also going to be so sad if he's our last! A few pics of me snuggling with him on New Year's Eve...

Such a snuggle boy. I love it, so sweet

So then there's that side of me that just wants him to stay little and to savor every baby moment.

But I've never nursed any of my babies this long. I'm blaming my inability to lose weight on the interrupted sleep and the physical stress placed on my body by the demands of breastfeeding. I've read and heard it's good for them to nurse as long as possible, and he seems happy to continue with this thing we have going, so maybe I'll just keep doing it? But I'm super frustrated with my weight right now. I try not to be, but I am. I could probably also blame it on violin, cause for the last several months instead of doing sprints, HIIT, or lifting heavy weights to impress myself, I'm am impressing myself when I practice or learn something new on the violin. Violin has ruined my health! I know I should be able to do both, but there are only so many discretionary hours in the day. Sigh. I'll just take one day at a time, control the controllables, work hard, pray harder, and keep on keeping on.

Teens - Sometimes Corey and I feel like we're falling short and so in over our heads. There are too many kids and too much to keep track of for us to keep on top of it. Or if it's just a matter of us learning how to keep track of it all, then the problem is that we haven't learned it yet. The high school kids got their grades back recently. Ethan got straight As, but Hyrum and Wes' grades were not good. Like several Ds and Cs between them. Thankfully there were fews As and Bs too. Luckily no F's this time but we've had one of those last year, still need to get that fixed. So we're trying to step it up there with checking their current grades every day and following up on them and breathing down their necks, cause just trusting them to stay on top of it hasn't worked. We went over Wesley's grades with him and there's still time for him to turn this around and have a good cumulative GPA by the time he graduates, but he's got some ground to make up. He's got to start now and he's got to do it. So yeah, Corey printed up and taped their poor grades on the wall in our closet where we will always see it, so that it can always remind us every day to have them show us their grades and take care of missing assignments and make up any tests asap.

Things are going well with the kids in elementary school. And Abi in jr. high is doing ok... we think there are problems there with her grades, but we haven't had that as our priority to examine that yet since its' just 6th grade. But hopefully we can teach her how to work before it starts counting toward her academic record. We've got lots to work on here!

Another Daily Log

Honestly, I don't know how to title my posts lately. Like I'm kinda just doing a daily life logs and putting what happens each day, so the title of this one would have been "JBR, Peter Asleep and MozArt Group" but it just doesn't make sense. So, I don't know how to label these things. Anyway. We are in the beginning stages for Ethan filling out his mission papers. He went to JBR last year to see if he qualified for their research study for his wisdom teeth removal, and he didn't cause he only had 3 wisdom teeth and he needed 4. But I called again to see if they had a study for just 3 teeth and they said yes, so we went in again. The little boys came in with us and feasted on the office candy while we waited for news after his x-ray. Daniel is really enjoying his nerds.

When the clinical assistant came back, he said E doesn't qualify for this study. For this one participants need two on bottom and one on top and Ethan has one on bottom and two on top, so he can't participate in this study, but their next one in March would allow two on top, so we're planning on calling them again again in March and hope that one works. I know we could just go to a regular place, but we like JBR cause we don't have to pay and he get's a gift card with a couple hundred. When we left he said let's just go somewhere else (cause he really wants someplace where we pick him up afterwards while he's high on the meds, so that we can make a viral video cause he's positive he would be hilarious on drugs - the one that we were laughing at today is this guy named Becket who squeezes the sunscreen, haha!)... but when I pointed out that he'd be trading a funny video of himself for the gift card, then he changed his mind. He wants that money for his free spending money. So that was a busy afternoon and these two took a nap after we got home. Cute boys

A few other photos from yesterday. I took another one of the little kids sleeping. Sophi shared her bed with her little brothers again. Cute to see the three of them there

Their room has gotten a bit messier with the little boys claiming it. We tried to pick it up a bit yesterday - Lily, Sophi and I were talking and folding laundry and Peter crawled into Lily's arms and fell asleep.

He likes Lily. And I was happy to folding their clothes for a few free moments without him crawling on me. He sleeps for Ethan and Wes and Lily, but not for me. Or if he does, then I'm like "I gotta get stuff done" like my job of endless dishes or forever sweeping, but as soon as I try to lay him in the crib he wakes up.

I am still letting him cry it out at night time, but I'm not as tough during the day. I'll pick him up and let him play, or will nurse him to sleep and then I fall asleep too. I do love snuggling with this little one, and in case he does end up being our last, I want to savor it. But I also am itching for some freedom. I'm glad he is attached to his siblings, I really appreciate the break they give me.

For my personal record, today was the day I got my first collections notice email from this Belfast Ireland fitness thing that I don't want anymore and I've already paid over $600 bucks for and I feel stupid for joining it but I'm going to blame it on my post pregnancy hormones (I joined it in Feb when Peter was a new baby). I don't want to talk about it yet, but yeah, just thought I'd put that here for my personal notes. I was watching a few things on youtube from Dave Ramsey about what to do with debt collectors. So it made me feel sick when I saw the email, but after a few videos and calling my mom, Nicole, and Corey, I think I'm ready for them.

One other thing - Last night Corey stayed up doing some computer programming with Hyrum (it was late but they were in the zone) and I was going to go stretch in my close but instead I got distracted on Youtube and first I found this ping pong video which I thought was funny and amazing. And then I watched lots of videos of this group called the MozArt Group - they are so clever!
Mel and I have been sending their videos to each other, this is one with the broken arms is one of her favorites. Sooo funny, like I am just smiling the whole time, so funny, I love them! Here's a few of them that I loved -
Four Seasons
The Conductor
World Music - I love cowboy Mozart and the yodelling

Sleepovers

The little boys have abandoned their room and have been sleeping with their sisters. This was probably my favorite picture of them from Saturday morning.

I'm glad that the girls don't mind (yet?) having the toddlers sleep with them. Looking at these two, however, reminded me of why kids are not allowed in our bed. This would make me not have a good nights sleep....

I'd be thinking "I love you Daniel, but..... go away." I don't mind seeing them sleep like this though. I like seeing them share things, but I don't want to share my bed. Here they are this morning - it looks like Natalie got a bed to herself. Daniel slept with Lily's bed

And Owen was on Sophi's.

Another good thing: Daniel didn't have any accidents on Sunday or Monday! But he did today. I kept a pretty close eye on him all day Sunday but he didn't go at all. Monday I kinda forgot about it, but in the evening he called me for help, I made sure he made it to the toilet, and he did it by himself! And with that, I thought I could call it good

But then tonight he had a #2 accident, so we're not out of the woods yet, but he's doing good, hopefully just another week or so and he'll have it down.

A few other wins - Today I ordered blog books for 2019. The bad news was that Blog2print hasn't been doing any new year discount specials, which I was holding out for. But the good news is that I didn't posted too many pictures in 2019, so I was able to fit the year into just two volumes! 2018 was three volumes so I was hoping to avoid that, and I did, go me. That was what I spent most of my time doing today. So December is all caught up and I have a few posts for January to catch up on, but it's nice to just be weeks behind, and not months.

Hyrum went in for an interview at Subway tonight and he's going to start working there, hallelujah. Now he'll finally get some funds to help him work off his traffic fine and we're going to make him contribute toward the Fiesta's repairs too (cause it happened while he was behind the wheel).

A big win for Ethan - last night his bowling score was 248! He's been sharing this screen shot with everyone -

(Update: Ethan has made a youtube channel and HERE is a funny little bowling video tribute to himself that he made. Funny kid)

And one last win for Mel at BYU - she's been dating a very nice guy (returned missionary who served in Oregon) and last night they held hands! That's the first time Mel's held anyone's hand, so we were all excited for her. She probably doesn't want it recorded here, but it was a moment shared and cheered for by all, so sorry Mel, it's gotta go on the blog. We think she and Trent make a cute couple.

Interruptions

Last night, we finished up the Come Follow me lesson for the week. The kids did a good job paying attention. Well, they were quiet atleast as I read some things to them and as we watched the screen. And when we were done, and turned back on the lights, I saw one of the reasons why they had been so quiet.

Ethan had been drawing on Peter.

And Peter had sat and willingly cooperated. Ethan decided he needed a few more touches...

Peter likes Ethan. When Daniel was a baby, Daniel didn't like E much, but Peter loves him.

...And will apparently trust him to do whatever he wants with him. 

Well, Peter... was your trust well placed?

"Yeah, it's fine Mom, it will wash off." If Peter sees Ethan, he will call out to him and lean towards him. Sometimes Ethan is like "uuuuuugh..." like tonight. Eth was practicing in his room with the door closed. Peter was at his door on his hands and knees, staring at the crack, like a little puppy wanting to come inside. I opened the door just a little. Peter pushed it open, and crawled in and called to Ethan. Ethan picked him up. Good job multi-tasking Eth!

Peter's lucky that we all find him adorable and irresitable.

Peter came and interrupted my workout tonight too. I had gotten in 3 rounds, the last round took as long as the first 3 cause of all his friends that followed him.

That's what I get for sleeping in on a holiday. It was cute though, I'm glad that they are inspired to exercise.

Daniel running without clothes, lol. He's been in potty training camp this weekend, and we made a big breakthrough Saturday with his first #2 to make it in the toilet. He hasn't gone since, and I'm keeping his clothes off so I can see what's going on and put him on the toilet fast. But he's almost trained, yay.

When he gets trained, I will only have Peter in diapers - that is just ONE kid! That hasn't happened since the year 2000, when Joseph was our only child in December 2000 right before Mel was born, so it's pretty exciting!