Natalie is 6!

Today was another busy day - a repeat of yesterday - Mel and Abi are at Young Women camp, Corey had volunteered to be the male on guard at the camp, so he was up there over night. Hyrum had driver's ed at 7 this morning. I left here at 6:30 with him - Driver's Ed is out at Taylorsville High School from 7-10. Corey was headed back just in time to be able to pick Hyrum up, so that was nice and saved me a trip. Ethan left at 8:30 for his ACT class, which went from 9-4, then he went straight to work 5-close. Lily had a day camp today from 12-9, Wes had Little Big Band at 4. Corey took him cause was going to sub in Crescent for Ethan at 2. Corey practiced the sax a bit to warm up his chops after he got home with Hyrum. Then after driving down he found out it was sectionals today so he didn't need to be there, and the sectionals were cancelled anyway, so that was kinda too bad he lost that time for no reason. It was nice of him to be willing to sub last minute for Ethan though. I've been home with HSNODP. And today is a fun day cause it's Natalie's happy birthday! If you zoom in on her in this picture below, I think she looks pretty funny.

So Natalie is 6! Corey has been up in Park City this week with some of the kids, including Natalie, but she wanted to be home for her birthday, so they came home yesterday around noon and we've been hanging here. I set an alarm this morning to go get her a birthday present. I did already have one gift on hand, but I ran out to get ice cream and donuts for her "cake" - when I had it all ready, we went to wake her up and sing.

Natalie! It's your birthday! Do you want donuts?!? Hurry before Owen and Daniel eat them all...

I only got 8 donuts. Ethan had his before he headed out for his ACT class, and Owen and Daniel had already eaten the frosting off of theirs and were ready to go for another. That's when I said basically told everyone to get up or lose their donut to the toddlers. Make a wish!

I bought her toys when I got the donuts. I've never bought toys from the grocery store, but it was a pretty good experience! Most of the things I wanted were on sale, yay. I got her a few Toy Story 4 toys, a Super Hero girl, and coloring books and crayons.

The other gift was a little school house Calico Critter knock off brand from Target. I originally bought it thinking it would be for Lily, but then I decided to save it. Good call, Natalie loves it.

So then all the grandparents came by with presents and then Natalie played all day. The last birthday tradition, new this year, was to see Iveth and her family. Abi had dropped off a blanket to them that we had in our car after the 4th of July fireworks. Then we were texting and when Iveth knew we were home, she and her kids came by. I had cake, they brought ice cream. And with that last birthday visit out of the way, Natalie was willing and Corey and the kids were going to head back up to Park City. We were able to talk Iveth into going, so Corey took her two boys up and Maria stayed with me and Daniel for a little bit. I kept them busy playing with the water in the back yard so they wouldn't notice everyone was heading out without them. Then Iveth ran to run a few errands and pack, then pick up Diego at work to let him know they were going to Park City, fun surprise haha. So I'm here with Ethan, Daniel and Peter. Ethan has his ACT class tomorrow, and I'm going to stick around until Abi and Mel get back from their girls' camp tomorrow around noon. Then we'll probably head up to Park City to join in the fun. Should be tolerable with another mom up there helping keep eyes on the toddlers.

Oh, and it's Wednesday, so we got to hear from Joseph. He called earlier than usual, he was able to see some of the birthday fun. He is training again. I showed him Peter and he Peter didn't have his shirt on and Joseph said "That is a white baby... I haven't seen a white baby for such a long time!"

I thought that was funny. But things are good in Guate and things are good here at home, so we're all good. We'll prob have a little extension of the birthday fun up in Park City tomorrow cause they left the ice cream here before having a chance to eat it! Happy birthday Natalie!

Butterflies!

We've been watching our chrysalis attentively the past few days and were so excited that two of our butterflies came out today - amazing! As they got darker and blacker and we could see their wings, I was wondering if/how those little wings would turn into big monarch wings...


Maybe these were miniature butterflies?


Nope, they got big and beautiful. We loved watching them hang and fan their wings.


We all got to play with one of the monarchs for about 15 minutes - it flew onto the grass and then onto a bush and we'd go get it on our fingers before it finally flew away too high for us to retrieve again.


The other one didn't try to fly until it was sure it could get away from all us onlookers and up all the way over the fence, and since I told the kids to not touch it until it left the branch first, we didn't get to play with that one at all, but the kids did see it flutter away happy and free :)

It was a lot of fun. We're excited for #3 to emerge tomorrow and then our baby caterpillar on Thursday.

And my daily discipline report for today (recorded in this food journal):


woke up at 7:30 - went to bed at midnight = 7.5 hours sleep
7:30 - cottage cheese, yogurt, great grains (270)
8:00 - exercise challenge - 400 lunges, plank and reverse plank 3x each for 1 min each
11:00 - chocolate shake and celery (300)
12:00 - wheat thins, cream cheese, tomato (330)
2:00 - ham, tortialla, cheese, lettuce and tomato (270)
5:00 - few chicken nuggets as I made dinner (guessing 150)
6:00 - Vanilla Protein Pancake (300)
Total calories - 1620 and I don't have the munchies or anything, so that's good! Almost 10:00 - heading up to bed soon, hopefully will get the kids in bed and myself too before 11.

And just to be accountable, yesterday I must report that I did end the evening slightly stressed and thus in my weakened condition had two balls of the frozen cookie dough since we were outside lighting fireworks and the box freezer was right there taunting me... Time to own up to my actions and look up how many calories are in those babies. Didn't say on the box, (probably not a good sign if the company is afraid to tell you!) And I couldn't find the nutritional value of Otis' oatmeal chocolate chip online either, but from the types of frozen dough that I found and their calories, I'm guessing each of those balls of dough is 170 calories!!!! Yikes. I've been nibbling on those quite a bit and didn't think they were that naughty. But even with the two balls of cookie dough adding 340 at the end, yesterday was still okay overall at 1800 calories (lucky for me I woke up so late I guess)

And lastly for your entertainment, here's Brian Regan talking about butterflies. I wouldn't have had any questions about butterflies before this summer, but now I might, but we've already looked up a lot of the answers. The funniest part of that clip starts at 1:30. "Don't even get me started!..."

Fourth Hangover

The kids came home after the fireworks yesterday and just crashed. This morning they were all in the same spot. Hyrum and Abi dead on the couches, Wes on the floor...

Daniel woke up during the night and I brought him downstairs, he looked like he was recovering too...

All these dead bodies in every room... Lily under the pink Zebra blanket, Natalie under the blue one?

No, Natalie was already awake, she had such a good nap the night before that she had already recovered. The rest of us slept in. It was kind of a work day, tomorrow we're going to Scofield for our annual boating day with neighborhood friends. I took Ethan to his lesson with Ray and I went to Costco with Owen while we waited to stock up on our food contribution. The peaches right now are just perfect! They are so sweet and tart, they make me feel like singing. I'm bring peaches to Scofield, I bought 5 trays - a few for Scofield, a few for Sunday when we get together with my family (my little brother is in town from Texas.) At Scofield Corey will probably bbq cause he's a social drinker meat eater. Car loaded with food, 100+ degrees outside, we went back to pick up Eth. I let him drive to the lesson and let him drive home too. He almost rear ended a car on our way. He was hungry and thinking about McDonald's fries and didn't notice the car in front of him. Luckily I screamed loud and he slammed on the brakes, anti lock brakes kicked in and we didn't hit them. Also, thankfully, the car behind us was far enough back or alert enough that they didn't rear end us, although they did look at us when they passed us on the freeway. It took a good 15 min for Eth's car to stop racing. He forgot about the fries for a little bit. Sorry, people, he's a student driver.

After we got home, we unloaded the perishable food and then we went to the park. The kids wanted to go earlier, but it has been so hot. Nicer once the sun starts setting. The sprinklers were on, which gave us a nice mist to cool us down, but Daniel didn't like it, and Owen thought the sound of the sprinkler hitting the chain link fence was super scary...

Owen! Run and hide from the big scary noise!

Daniel liked the slide. The both liked the teeter totter.

 My legs got tired after just a few jumps. Hooray, Abi came to help me out

Pretty fun.

We played at the big park while Lily and Sophi showed Natalie where the little park is that she'll be going to with her kindergarten class. I'm gonna miss my Natalie when she starts school. Just two little boys at home, what will I do with my time? Lol.

Holiday Weekend

We had a great holiday weekend. It started off with the 4th of July Fun Run, Joseph got 2nd place. Watch out for him next year... I got like 5th among the women. Maybe I'll try for next year too.

followed by a delicious American breakfast. No, not cereal.

Then we watched the community parade. I had Wes and the 4 little girls to watch. They did great and I wasn't stressed out at all! Go USA!

Corey and the other kids were playing in the band in the parade! Natalie's ready to clap for them as they float by...

Go Granite band! So they went through the parade and then performed again at the carnival. After the parade I was going to go pick them up, ...but Corey had the keys. So my options were: walk a half mile down to the carnival with 5 kids. No. Walk a half mile home with 5 kids. No. Wait for Corey to come back. Yes. So we waited for like a half hour in the warm July sun then we moved into the less warm shade and chit-chatted with neighbors and it was a perfect Summer day. Corey eventually came, then we went home and took a nap.

Then we went to Holladay for a great firework show and Peter Breinholt in concert, so fun! We had a picnic, played games with cousins. And Sophi put handful after handful of red dirt from the baseball diamond onto her head. Nice!

The firework show was awesome!!! Works out much better since we live in the "fireworks prohibited" area of the valley. Did you like the show Hyrum?

Natalie did. Sophi and Natalie did great, they just needed to be snuggled.

Then today we went over to Corey's parent's house to watch the World Cup, Costa Rica vs. Netherlands. I think we have a future soccer player in the family She can't walk well yet, but she's not letting that small detail slow down her game, Go Natalie! Go Natalie!!!

This is what Natalie does when you tell her to focus on the ball:

The game went overtime and then to penalty kicks. Costa Rica lost, but they did good and had a ton of lucky breaks. Would have been fun if they won, but still fun to watch. Ethan doesn't like the Netherlands now, he thinks they flop a bit much and took cheap shots hitting and pushing our Tico brothers. I could get into this soccer thing, but probably shouldn't, cause I've already got more than I can do... So then at 5:30 we were headed up to the mountains to our friend's cabin, we love our neighborhood friends. Friendship is even more enjoyable in nature :) 

It's fun to see it now with all the snow gone. Natalie liked the rocks. Life is good.

Circle of Fun

I've said it before, but I'll say it again... I love the area we live, such an awesome community.  Yesterday after the fun run we had a great breakfast and then watched the small town parade.  Breakfast for $20 for our whole family of 10.  Doesn't get much better than that.

 

After breakfast there was a flag ceremony, then the annual Granite Parade.  Our kids voted that our neighbors, the Dahle's, had the cutest float of the parade - they turned their boat into a pirate ship and were launching water balloon cannonballs into the crowd.

The other highlight of the parade was when Mr. Ensign, who had come prepared with water ammo of his own, retaliated and fought back, it was funny to see them going after each other.  :)

Then in the evening was the neighborhood firework show.  Last year the party was called the Culdesac of Fire, named after the Stadium of Fire.  But since the real fires are putting a bad spin on the word fire this year, the neighborhood party was renamed the Circle of Fun.  The kids did have fun, with our neighbors breaking out their popcorn and cotton candy machine, we brought popsicles to share, there were doughnuts and brownies, lots of fun.  Ethan had like 12 cotton candy and as he was moaning later that night but received little sympathy from me.  I told him to remember how he felt, that's his body trying to tell him that what he just did, if continued, would slowly kill him.

Melodie just relaxing and watching the show on the grass:

Joe and Hyrum played some b-ball with his tall friend and his tall friends tall father.  I think it was kids against the dad.

Sophi didn't like the fireworks too much, but overall everyone had fun at the Circle of Fun!

Scofield 2016

We have been down at Scofield this weekend with friends and neighbors. We've had a great time joining our friends in Scofield for the past few years: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015. This year I headed down last night with a van full of kids, and Corey kept Natalie and Sophi home with him so he could work. They came down today with Joseph (he had a date last night). It was all the usual great times and fun: tubing, roasting marshmallows, lots of good food and visiting. I had lots of good helpers with Owen. It was fun to see him sitting by the fire~

"There's that red camera light... is that lady taking pictures of me again? She is like obsessed with me!"

Yes, Owen, I think you're pretty cute and I admit I can't get enough of your little round face. It was nice for me to be there with just one little kid - Owen and I chilled at the "cabin" (a double wide mobile home) and I let the other kids run loose. They were free to go down to the dock or run around in the dark without much concern from me as to whether they were safe or not. It was a nice break for my motherly instincts. No concern for anyone falling in the fire pit either.

Although Lily and Abi both did singe their fingers a bit on the metal roasters as they pulled off their burnt marshmallows.

I also didn't do a good job today with protecting them from the sun. They ran down to the boats before I remembered and around 4 when I caught them I could tell they had gotten a bit fried. "Go put some sunblock on, you're burnt" I told Ethan. He didn't heed and I didn't follow him around to make sure he did, and he's feeling it now. They got pretty red. The little kids are good, Abi got a bit red. Her and Ethan got it the worst. I told them that I really just have my brain on watching Owen, so I need them to be in charge of themselves and come to me. I'll try to do better, but it would help if they could help.

Tonight finish of a fun day at the lake, we all went out on the boats to watch the fireworks. I walked down to the dock with Natalie - here she is showing me the way~

It was my one and only time on the boat this trip. It was nice to get out on the water.

The highlight for me was seeing Owen on the lake for his first time. He looked quite sobered and out of his comfort zone.

Owen and I were sitting near the back of the boat. I let him stand up and look backward over the end of the boat to the water. Standing there helped him to be able to move a bit more in his life jacket - the same life jacket Sophi wore in 2012. She looked adorable too (actually she looks pretty funny in picture 3 there, lol!) Good memories. After the boat started going fast, Owen looked at me with great concern and as if he needed some reassurance. He looked like he could have broken into tears at any moment, but a little smile and kiss on the cheek from me helped him keep it together and he was just adorable.