paper boats

Quite a few weeks ago, Spud asked me to look online and find the directions on how to make paper boats, as he'd seen on the Curious George cartoon. I did, and we each made one together so he could see how it was done, and by two days later, he had made at least 50, of various shapes and sizes.  We had a stack of pink boats made from some scratch paper just sitting on a shelf for quite a while.

While on a date a few weeks ago, David and I went to BYU and played Bocce on the lawn and then walked along the path south of campus.  They've made a lot of improvements to it over the past couple of years and it is beautiful!  There is a stream (I guess) running along it and it struck me that it would be the perfect place to race the boats that Spud made.  So the following Sunday evening we gathered up enough boats for us to each have two and we raced them.  It was fun to watch and "despair" as our individual boats took on water and became soggy masses of paper (which we responsibly fished out and threw away).   I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure that one of Spud's boats (we labeled them with our first initials) actually made it the farthest, which seems only fair since he was the one who did all the work!

Prior to boat racing, we spent some time admiring the couple of dozen or so ducklings in the pond.  It was fun to remember our duckling adventure of last year as we watched these little cuties swim and cheep around the pond.  

little high, little low

I seem to have a good week followed by a bad week. And not that events are bad, just my hope and faith and fortitude and all that stuff that is necessary to get me through this time of life. The last two weeks I felt really positive about life and even the uncertainty of our future in so many areas didn't get me down, but this week has been a lot harder. I guess that's just life, but I sure wish I could hold on to the good stuff more permanently.

My friend Julie had linked this Mormon Message on Facebook, and it made me cry like a baby. It was an appropriate reminder for me this week. I wish the things that DON'T matter most mattered even less and didn't cause me such anxiety.



We did go to the park last night because my niece wanted me to take some pictures of her (she is recently returned from a mission and doesn't have any current ones for her sweetie who is out of state all summer). Here's an album: Fun times

And here is one of my favorites:

fun with kids

I think one thing I love about kids, particularly my kids, is how easy it is to have fun with them. Sprout loves balloons, so I blew one up for him this evening and then the older kids wanted to play balloon bop (where we try and keep the balloon up in the air in the vaulted entryway), so we did. We tried various ways of hitting it, and used certain parts of our bodies, and one time I said "Power punch!" as I fist-hit the balloon as high as I could, and that was immediately adopted as the preferred method, especially punctuated with loudly shouted "Power punch!"

Prior to that, Noodle taped her thumbs to her index fingers for a half hour or so, just to see how difficult it was to do things with no thumbs, like draw, eat, open doorknobs, give a thumbs up (we called it "nubs up"), pick things up. I told her that she was doing pretty well, so we could cut off her thumbs and it would be no big deal. Then she could go around inspiring people with all she could do without thumbs. She opted not to pursuit that route, though.

Spud was doing some activities on the educational/reading website Starfall.com today, and one of his favorite things to do is get into the part where there are little songs playing, and he gets up and dances around. He's done this since he was about 3, I think, and it's ridiculously cute. So today when we heard the song playing, Noodle and I came and spied on him. He gets so self conscious about things sometimes it is especially fun to watch him when he doesn't know it.

The kids did an awesome job cleaning up the playroom today, so when I went up for the inspection, Spud wanted me to toss him into the giant beanbag. So I did, and then of course had to do it a couple times for each kid. It is such a simple little thing, but they always love it.

Before the ballon bop game, Noodle, Spud and I sat in a triangle with our legs spread out and feet touching, with Sprout in the middle and he took turns run-hopping to each person and giving them a big hug. He seemed to skip Noodle regularly, so it was a joke that he didn't really love her, and then the kids tried to entice Sprout to come to them by making ridiculously sad faces.

I once had a framed saying that said, "Stay close to the young and a little rubs off." It's cheesy, but true. I go through short-lived stages where I think it would be fun to get a Wii system for the family, but I know we would lose a lot of these activities that come up just because we are hanging around doing not much of anything. I don't want my kids to have a childhood where one of the primary pasttimes is video games or TV. I don't mind if it is part of their experience, but it shouldn't be a main focus. They don't miss not having them now, but I know if we introduced them, it would be something they wanted to do much more regularly than I'd want them to.

Fall

This one is from today:

These are from last week, the morning that the kids saw that the leaves had fallen from the maple tree. Which makes me wish it snowed leaves instead of snow all winter.

fetch: fun for dogs AND kids

So, my Daisy doggy is a fabulous fetcher. A fetching fetcher, if you will. She will race to retrieve all manner of soft squeaky toys or her tug rope time after time after time. She releases the toy to the command "Give," or just drops it on her own. It's a lot of fun to watch her fluffiness run and carry her toys around (she has a HUGE plush bone which is especially entertaining!). We play fetch outside and also inside. Rudy is not such a great fetcher. He will, however, play for a bit inside when he can try and steal Daisy's toys from her, or act like a roadblock just by standing longways in her path. Spud, however, is a most awesome fetcher. I think it is one of his favorite activities. Whenever I get Daisy going on a game of fetch (usually without Rudy around), Spud will come and join in the fun, racing Daisy to get the toys and bring them back. And he can keep these sprints up for a loooong time. It's a great way for both of them to burn off their excess energy, and it's pretty fun to watch.

Though there are days when one or more of the pets threaten to send me over the edge of sanity, I do love having them around, especially for the kids. I really can't imagine anything more fun for kids than to have pets to play with, tease (in nice ways), cuddle with and love. I know my kids will never fully appreciate their "good fortune" in having an animal-loving mother, but it makes me happy enough knowing that they are growing up with these experiences and will be animal-loving adults, too.

thinking out loud

Kind of. I guess we need a blog-appropriate phrase for that. "Thinking at keyboard." Maybe that works.

A couple weeks ago was General Conference (wow, I guess it was only about 1 1/2 weeks ago, but it feels like much longer). It was my first attempt to actually involve the kids. In the past I was happy if they stayed out of my hair and managed to be relatively self-entertaining. I would tune every radio to conference, so it was playing wherever they were, but I liked to do my own thing and let them do theirs. This year I felt it was important for them to participate more, so I did a few things differently. I found some great Conference Bingo sheets, and also these Apostle Cards which I printed off and laminated. I also printed off some pages from various Conference packets--the most used page was the one where the kids could color the ties of each of the Apostles as they saw them. Pretty fun. Anyways, though it took more effort on my part both before and during the conference, I really felt like the effort was worth it to have the kids participate in Conference. As a child, I was allowed to bring toys in to the family room to play with quietly on the floor while the family watched, and I remember those times. I've always felt like Conference is a very important time, and I think it is because there was always the expectation to watch/listen to all the sessions. I want my kids to grow up with that, too. They did really enjoy the bingo sheets, and they earned treats for getting BINGO on both their Saturday and Sunday boards. So it's definitely something we'll do again.

We watched the Sunday session with David's family down in Springville. Since we don't have a TV subscription, we ended up watching Saturday's sessions in the office on my computer. Not nearly as comfortable as in our family/TV room, but at least the screen was a decent size. (I love my big monitor!) Between sessions the TV was on and there were commercials for various toys. Noodle said, "It's a good thing we don't have TV, otherwise we'd just want all these toys that they show on commercials." I thought that was rather an astute observation, and think it is very true. We do watch movies and a handful of cartoons, but we are spared from commercials. It's pretty great, really. It's hard enough for kids to be grateful and satisfied when they aren't constantly bombarded with commercials for the latest cool toy or trendy idea. My mom likes to say, "The play should be in the child, not the toy." I firmly believe this. I don't think this means only wooden or simple toys are appropriate (you should see the creative things Spud comes up with for his Transformers!), but rather that a toy should invite the child to use their imagination and not only have scripted play. One thing that Noodle does that I love is to "accessorize" all her toys. Shemakes houses for them, food out of Sculpey clay, beds, blankets, vehicles, musical instruments, etc. Plus she will write letters to/from the toy, illustrate scenes from their lives, construct a family tree, and on and on. Last week was our week off school and I sewed Noodle & Spud each a cute little plush mouse. It's pretty neat to watch how much fun they can have with one toy. Spud likes to build aircraft for his mouse from the Magformers.

budding entrepreneurs

Last Monday for FHE we went down to David's folks' house and picked cherries. They have three good sized trees, so we invited our friends along. We picked A LOT of cherries (turns out it was about 50 lbs). We decided to have the kids sell them on the corner outside our friends' house, as it is a fairly good thoroughfare for the neighborhood. The adults did most of the washing, sorting and bagging, but the kids did the sales. In total, they sold nearly $100 of cherries! We are using our have of the profits to go towards our homeschool supplies for this coming year. I think it was a good project for the kids, and they had some fun while they were at it, too.

kids

photoshop fun

So I got up at 6 this morning (went to bed to late to get up at five!) but there wasn't any google work to do. So I decided to spend my early morning hours improving photography/photoshop skills.

I thought these turned out fun:

halloweeners

The squiddos (as I like to call them...sometimes they are squid 1 and squid 2) picked their own characters for halloween this year. Peter Pan (because he has a sword!) and a nice witch. I was happy that we were able to get them outfitted with minimal effort on my part. A bit of hemming on the sleeves of Noodle's dress (it's actually a nice, velour type Sunday dress that we got at Savers for $4), some cutting of Spud's green tee shirt ($2.50 at Michaels Crafts), and I had to sew the Peter Pan hat (about $1 for the felt). Yippee! They had a fun time trick or treating and then we came home and watched The Secret of Nimh.

Utah State Fair

Last Thursday morning, Joe (my FIL) stopped by and invited us to go to the Utah State Fair with him up in SLC. We happily obliged. We were babysitting our little friend for the day, so she came along. It was a lot of fun. Highlights for me were seeing the tigers (trained and well cared for, they raise awareness and money for tigers in India), cotton candy, and the little "peep show" to see the Giant Gator. The latter felt so old-timey--it was $1 for adults and 50 cents for kids. Yeah, he just laid there, but I did get to see him blink his funky eyelid and we saw him move his arm and head. Which I dare say is a lot more than most people got to see him do. Those reptiles certainly know the meaning of "chill".

And I've decided I need a goat someday. A cute little one. Not the kind with no ears, they weird me out a little bit. And nope, we didn't eat deep fried anything. We stopped at Wendy's before for lunch, and 7-11 for slurpees afterward, so the only junk we ate while there was two of the 18" tall cotton candy.

It was a fun, exhausting day, and I'm looking forward to next year! Oh, that animal sculpture behind glass is made entirely out of butter! (Spud was pretty excited about that, though I think only because it made his mouth water!)
























Sorry the pics are a bit pixelated...since there were so many I uploaded lower res versions.