Things I love on Friday

I love a lunch invitation from a friend.

I love Sara's laugh and I love that it is easy to make her laugh.

I love hearing Matt and Kate sing the theme song to Star Wars. They hit those high notes like it's nobody's business. And I love that when they are having a battle between Darth Vader and Princess Leia that Kate can't start the battle until she is wearing a princess dress.

Snow removal

We have an HOA company that takes care of all our snow removal. However, they don't do a very good job so I asked another company to come do a bid for us. They promised full size equipment next time!

Out with a bang

Today was finally the last day of Matt's long, long, long (and one more for emphasis) long off track break. If you didn't understand the first sentence, let me explain to you... it was long. This day has not come a day too soon for Matt or I. I love having him home, but we have experienced a period of serious under stimulation. I don't know what is so stimulating about having him in school for 3 hours a day, but whatever it is, I'll be glad to have it back. We did go out with a bang though: yesterday we went to the dollar theatre for a fun movie, Beverly Hills Chiuaua. Today we counted stickers that Matt and Kate had been earning for 3 weeks and headed for the nickel arcade. They each earned almost 2 dollars worth. I was worried it would be about a dollar too much, but luckily they have these certain games which I'll explain in a minute. In fact I asked be Matt last week if he wanted to go and he said, "No, I want to keep earning nickels." Couldn't help but be proud of that.

You know those games where you drop a coin in and the bulldozers push it to the edge and if you're lucky you win a whole bunch more tokens, but no one is ever that lucky? Well, normally I dislike those games because they are an obvious waste of money, except when we have a lot of nickels to burn through! Matt is showing the one time he won ONE ticket!

Sara had a lot of fun riding the rides.

And Matt and Kate had fun racing horses even though their legs aren't quite long enough.

And now, everyone is in bed, Matt got his backpack out and said he was going to sleep with it, and we are all looking forward to some kindergarten stimulation!

One lump or two?

Today we went sledding. It was kind of rain/snowing the whole time so we all got soaked. The fresh air was great, though, so it was worth it. When we got home, homemade hot chocolate sounded great to us all. When I suggested it to the kids, Kate said, "Oh, yes. And I can use my tea set." She got a real tea set for Christmas. She usually pretends it is hot chocolate that she is serving so it must have triggered something in her mind. I thought it was so cute that she thought of using her tea set. She set all the plates and cups and I helped her pour it. Thanks to Matt and Daddy for playing along and even genuinely saying that it was fun!

Things I love on Friday

Edamame, I love you. I love that my kids love you. I love that they eat more of you than macaroni and cheese. I love that I can buy you in bulk at Costco. I love that I only have to microwave you for 3 minutes and you're done. I love the way your beans pop right out of your shells into our mouths. Edamame, you're the best thing since sliced bread!

I also love that when Kate plays Barbies they always end up fighting. Like kicking each other, or one throwing the other one. It's awesome. I like to refer to it as Power Ranger Barbie.

I love that Sara loves sitting in buckets or laundry baskets:

My dancer gymnast

Kate finished her semester at The Little Gym. She was taking a gymnastics/dance class. She did really well and had a GREAT tiime. These are the videos from her show day. If you only watch one, watch the tap. It should be first. It is SO DARN CUTE!! And be sure and watch for Sara... There are 2 beam videos because I had to stop taping to get Sara out of the way, but the first one if very short.

No Girls Allowed

Today Jerry took Matt on their 4th annual trip to the car show. It's something they both looked forward to all week. Not understanding their obsession with cars, trucks, etc. I took Kate and Sara to breakfast with my friend Taryn and her daughter. We all had a good time.

Here is Matt driving a corvette.

Apparently, they didn't feel that this 100,000 dollar car was valuable enough to be roped off. Hmmm.

Apparently, this Bentley was valuable enough to be roped off, but they still let Matt over the ropes so Jerry could take his picture.

This is a Porsche 911 turbo.

And this is Jerry's dream Ferrari, an F430 spider, pricetag 250,000. I hope the free tickets to the car show can last him a few more years!

And these pictures were taken for me. Yes, I aim low. Actually, I'm waiting for Subaru to come out with a hybrid minivan. Can't you just see Jerry buying that for me?! It would probably kill him to do so.

An official taste test

While we were in Durango, Jerry brought home a bottle of Zuberfizz rootbeer. He wanted to do a blind taste test and compare it with Henry Weinhardt's. I know, I know, it was so much excitement we could hardly stand it. He did invite Matt to join him:And the winner was... Henry Weinhardt's. Although Zuberfizz is still really really good. Matt drank so much he said, "My tummy feels a little funny."

A swift kick in the pants!

This week has been full of January blahs. Big time. After talking to my sister, I realized she put words to how I was feeling. Wandering from here to there, not really doing anything or getting anything done, just kind of existing. A typical January feeling. I remember, this fall, as I was thinking of the upcoming winter and how sometimes January is a bummer of a month and I thought last January was good. And this week I remember it was because I was coming back to life after having a newborn. Last January was great because Sara was sleeping through the night, I was feeling like I could handle three kids, we'd gotten through Christmas which felt like a success, etc. But this year, I have no feelings of great accomplishment. I am worn out from Christmas, we crafted, we partied, we baked, we played and we had a great time, but I'm done with that for a while now. Matt's off track which means sleeping in or at least laying on the couch for a while (oh, wait, I'm not complaining about that, I LOVE that! ), but we definitely don't get anywhere fast. Friday, as I was leaning on the kitchen counter, not doing anything, but looking at several things I should be doing, I decided I was giving myself until Sunday. I was going to live up these January blahs and revel in the glory of not doing much of anything until Monday. And then we were going to have a fun January, a fun two more weeks of off track, a great life! That sounded great on Friday, tonight, Sunday night, I'm thinking I'm going to have to give myself a swift kick in the pants to get me going tomorrow morning. So, here goes... WHACK!

The anti-24 club

Jerry loves watching 24. Me, not so much. So I'm starting the Anti-24 club. Who's with me?

First Haircut

Even before Sara was born I decided to not cut bangs in her hair. Kate always had bangs and I wanted them to be different. I even bought some way cute barrettes from ebay so I could just clip her hair back while it was growing. After about 2 weeks of the barrettes, Sara was done with them:

I still tried to fight her and sneak in barrettes or little ponytails but this was always the end result. ALWAYS!! So, finally last night I broke down and cut some bangs. Stubborn girl. At least now she can sort of see!

Before...

After!

How do you spell relief? The sequel

A cancelled MRI. After having headaches for 5 weeks, Kate has now gone 2 weeks without one. So after a discussion with her doctor today I decided to cancel the MRI. He said he really could go either way on whether or not to just go ahead and do it or cancel it, but in the end he said if it were his child, he would probably cancel it. So that's what we did. I'm 95% relieved. I still feel a little uneasy about it. It was wierd to be with her, playing normally and then have her be crying and grabbing her head in pain and then have it be gone again in 5 minutes. But we can always reschedule the MRI and if she has another one, we will. So I guess anything worth imaging will persist. I definitely trust my doctor so that helps me to relax a little. A year ago I was talking with her doctor about her randomly throwing up. After having Sara spit up and be on Zantac we realized that that was probably what Kate was doing too, it just came out of her mouth. Maybe we'll find a simple explanation for her headaches too. Here's hoping!

Thanks to everyone who expressed concern and love for her. We appreciate all the prayers on her behalf.

I hope it's that easy

For the past few weeks Kate has been counting down the Sundays until she gets to graduate from church nursery to primary. It has been so fun to see her get so excited about it. Today was the big day and she was smiles all day long! When we came home from church she was jumping on her bed and said, "I'm going to be happy for the rest of my life!"

This is the cutest Sunbeam and CTR 6 I know!

A visit from the tooth fairy: Take two

Matt got very brave sledding and decided to take Uncle Clark's old sled down the hill. It has a steering wheel in the middle of it and unfortunately Matt tasted that steering wheel. He came up crying of course with blood pouring out of his mouth (well, not pouring, but it paints a better picture). I ran to him and started putting snow in his mouth to clean it out and stop the bleeding and I say, "Matt your loose tooth is about to come out." It was hanging by a thread. Midst his sobs and tears he says, "Yea! Ow! Yea!" Luckily the tooth fairy knows where Durango is and hey, I even got to pull this tooth out!

A Durango New Year

Starting tomorrow, Matt goes off track. Those 3 weeks plus the 2 weeks off for Christmas adds up to one week shorter than his summer break. I felt like we needed to do something fun during this break and I'll use any excuse to go Durango. This time it was snowmobiling. My parents have gotten a lot of snow, which meant we could snowmobile at their house which is ideal with small children so since the weather forecast looked storm free, we loaded up and headed to Grandma and Grandpa Johnson's. We had a great time. Matt spent almost every waking and sleeping moment with his cousin Sam. In fact, he participated in a right of passage of every child... his first sleepover. It was a success. They had a great time!

Having a great time!

We also got some sledding in. I don't know who had more fun, those who were sledding, or those who were yelling, "Bail, bail, bail!" as the sledders got close to the fence.

Sara does not love snow gear, but this is a great picture of her.

With Jerry's help it didn't take too long to build the snowman.

Sammy and Matt spent a couple of hours outside trying to cut off the snowman's head.?

It wouldn't be a trip to Durango without a stop at Jerry's favorite BBQ place!