A few of my favorite things

So, I was lieing in bed after sleeping for seven hours straight and I had to come write this. I am in Malad and it is so nice to wake up to the sound of nothing as opposed to the sound of cars ten feet from your window. The night before I came to Idaho, I slept through the night. I know that seems silly to mention, but it hasn't happened for literally two years and I just had to come put it in writing. I thought that maybe it was a fluke, but Mason has slept through the night almost every night since, and I am a new person! So, I will make this as "cheesyless" as possible for those of you poor friends who actually take the time to read my blog.

A few of my favorite things:

1. IDAHO---the state and more importantly the people who live here and visit here....

2. Sleeping through the night(me and my kids)--no having to pee or roll over with a ten pound baby in my tummy, no nursing, no changing dipers, no changing sheets and wet pjs, no sick kids, no kids with gas or indigestion, no hungry kids, no thirsty kids, no scary dreams...yay!

3. Friends--1. The ones that get me out of bed to go walk every morning and are always there to watch my kids. 2. The ones that have moved away.

Highlights of the last week

Yesterday in Young Womens our lesson was on journal writing and since this is the closest thing to journaling I've done in quite some time, I thought I'd catch up a bit. I broke our camera a couple of weeks ago at Mia's dance recital, so I'm sorry I don't have any pictures to liven up my blog. So here goes:

May 14th: Tonight for Family Home Evening we watched the massive rain storm outside. I procratsinated preparing anything for FHE, so I decided to wing it. We had major thunderstorm warnings today and the big one hit just as we were getting ready for bed. We popped a bag of popcorn and turned my big 2 1/2 person rocker(one of my favorite possesions...just the right size for one hippy adult and two scrawny kids) towards the big window and watched the sheets of rain come down, and the lightening flash. Mia insisted that if this was going to count as FHE that we say the prayer and sing songs...so we did and then we took turns saying how thankful we were for the rain...I think Mia's real reason for being thankful for the rain was that she got to stay up late and watch the storm. Our conversation turned to the earth and how pretty it is after rain and then mia asked how God made the earth and so we discussed the seven days and what God created on each day and then that led to the Sabbath day...long story short.... Procrastination rocks. This was a really fun FHE.

May 13th: Mothers Day started with a bang...literally. The electrical box thingy to our building blew up at 6:30 a.m. taking our electriciy with it. Since our kids were watching T.V. while Jared and I unsucessfully tried to get a few more minutes of sleep, this was a major tragedy. We took the kids outside to show them that the explosion wasn't anything major and then they wanted to go for a walk so we walked around the nearby buildings...we then realized that most people have their windows open and don't appreciate being woken up by giggling kids at 7:00 on Sunday morning. So, to entertain the kids Jared took us on a ride downtown(the real reason was get his lesson manual that he left in his office). The kids love going to Daddy's work. They love going downtown and riding the big elevator to the 33rd floor to see where Dad works. Mason particulary likes the oddly painted horse statues as you walk into the office(they cost more than a very large house and are hidious looking). The kids enjoyed running around the big empty office and twirling around in Jared's work chair. The best part of the trip...free candy and hot chocolate in the break room. Aside from Mia spilling hot chocolate all over herself, it was a fun little trip.

The biggest thing I look forward to on Mothers day is hearing the primary kids sing in Sacrament meeting. Because I was out with Mason, I didn't realize until I got into the chapel that the kids had already sung their song in Relief Society. (I'm rarely in Relief Society because of timing issues...our ward is weird and until recently we had young womens during Relief Society) anyway, the music leader sat in front of us and said: you didn't get to hear the primary sing, we were going to skip the song in sacrament meeting, but I'll let you make the call and decide.....I got to hear my song. I had heard Mia singing "Mother I love you, Mother I do" all week and it was even better and so much fun to see her singing up on the stage with a beaming smile just for me...

May 10th: We planted our "garden"...we have two planter boxes of flowers and two tomato plants out on our deck. I almost killed the tomato plants before I even bought them. I was frustrated with Mason because he kept grabing stuff out of the Walmart cart and throwing it out(he has really long arms...he was buckled into the cart and could still reach the food). So finally after he had done it a million times I grabbed what he had in his hands and threw it back in the cart and totally smashed the plants that I had carefully protected by putting up a barrier made out of dipers and milk. Luckily it was only a bag of marshmellows and only one major stem broke off. I let Mia invite Abby and Payton over to plant the seeds in the planter boxes. They were great at taking turns and poking the holes and setting the seeds in really soft and then patting them down with more dirt. They did get a little impatient and ended up dumping most of the seeds in big clumps, so we'll see if they grow or not. Even if the flowers actually do grow, they don't have much of a chance at success...between Mason's irresistable urges to dump out the dirt and Jared having to take care of the flowers while I'm in Idaho for five weeks this summer...they don't have much of a chance. But it's fun anyway.

May 5th: Mia had her dance recital. I wish I had my camera to show you all the pictures, but as I mentioned before, I broke the camera and I can't download them till we get a new camera. A lady in our ward gave the dance classes for free for the last four months. Two moms made the costumes for ten dollars and they looked fabulous. The kids had a blast and Mia is still singing the songs from it.

Mia's First Boyfriend

I've mentioned in the past that Mia takes gymnastics at the local rec center. Well, its been quite the productive class and not just because she can already do more gynastics that I ever could, but also because she now has her first boyfriend! His name is Grant and he is the only boy in their class of four girls. Mia has known him for about six months from the gymnastics class, but it wasn't official till this last week. We were at the park playing with Abby, who is also in the class, and Grant happened to be there too. Grant came up to Mia and told her that she was his girlfriend and he was her boyfriend. Mia was really excited and came and told me the whole story. Grant kept running by her saying "hi girlfriend." They played together for about an hour and were really cute. I asked her afterwards what it meant that she was his girlfriend. She said that they were getting married. I told her that kids don't get married and she gave me a duh mom look and told me that they weren't getting married now, but when they grow up they will. I asked her what they do till then. She said,"we just play together." Today was the first gymnastics class since the park, and I knew that Mia was excited to see him. I didn't know if Grant would remember that he had a girlfriend now, but he did. They stood in line together and talked together. Every week after class, Grant helps the coach clean up all the mats and equipment (what a gentleman). This week Mia helped him put all the stuff away. It was really cute! She must have gotten her skills from Jared; I'm sure I was quite awkward with boys till...well, I guess I still am.

Sueann, Abby's mom, took these pictures today in class. Cute!

Short Visit

My parents took Becky and Jeff to Navoo last week. On their way home, they had a lay over in Denver, so we got to see them for a few hours. Mia (and me too) couldn't wait too see them and couldn't stop talking about grandma and grandpa. It's amazing how much fun an airport can be when you are with grandparents and aunts and uncles. Mom, Dad, Becky and Jeff all took turns playing hide and seek while alternating telling me about their trip. They had a great time seeing all the restored sites. I think some of their favorites were seeing Adam-ondi-Ahman, and doing a temple session in the Navoo temple. The kids enjoyed all the presents that my parents brought back. It was great seeing them and catching up, but it was way too short of a visit.

I also realized that I didn't have any pictures of Becky and Jeff with my kids since they've been back from their missions, so I tried to get one at the airport. So here is Mia with them, but Mason wouldn't leave my Dad's arms the whole time as you can see in the family picture.

Late Night

Mia had her first "Late Night." I got the idea from Sara who was too chicken to ever sleep over at her friends houses all night, so they had "Late Nights". Last week my friends that live next door, Chistian and Sueann, needed a babysitter from 6- 11:00 p.m. so, I watched their girls Abby (4) and Anna(2). The girls(Mia, Payton, and Abby) have asked to have sleepovers before, but since they are too young still, we've been promising them a late night and this was their first one. They were so excited to get to stay up way past their bed time. They had so much fun watching movies, playing, and eating tons of popcorn. The only bad part of the evening was the lady in the apartment downstairs got mad at us for the noise. (She's a little grumpy and doesn't like the kids to run around). But all in all they kids had a great time. This is a picture of all of them watching the new Charlotte's web with their sleeping bags and pillows.

Kids

Mia is growing up so fast. She is starting to take things into her own hands when I am not available. The last few days while I've been putting Mason down for his nap, Mia has been hungry. First she took a new, unopened bag of cereal off the top of the fridge(which was quite a feat/balancing act) using her little rocking chair to climb on. While she was on the counter, she got my scissors and made a complete circle cut around the MIDDLE of the bag. Granted the cereal makers don't always fill the bags totally full....but the middle....thats asking for trouble. There was a large pan on the counter that I had sat there to dry, so Mia improvised and somehow got all the overflow to go in there and then took what she wanted for a snack. I was so proud that she hadn't made a gigantic mess that I just had to laugh and say good job. Although later I realized that she had used the top half of the cereal bag for a little craft time. She took the scissors and shreaded it into tiny pieces all over the living room. Other random food items that I have found out lately include: hot dogs, tortillas, bread... the list goes on. In the case of sealed items, she finds it easier to climb up and get my scissors than to figure out how to open it the intended way. I find a lot of shreaded packages in my kitchen.

It's official. Mason is no longer a baby. He is 18 months old and can now go to nursery. For some reason I've kept the notion in my head that he's still a baby till he goes to nursery. Well, last week was his first day and I have to admit, I thought it would be harder for me than him. I dropped him off and he was just fine. I watched for several minutes through the window and except for a few tears that stopped even before I could rush back in and "save" him, he seemed fine. I have to admit that if I had been alone, I would have cried. I can't believe how grown up my baby is. I checked on him after relief society and he was happy so I went off to young womens thinking maybe this would be easy....twenty minutes later I saw Jared out in the hall with him. I went out and even though Mason wasn't crying, I could tell he had been for a really long time because he was still doing that breathing thing where it seems like they are trying to catch their breath...you moms know. Anyway, I guess the nursery leader said he had been crying off and on the whole time... =( I was heart broken and Jared said he'd never send him back. Jared is a little overprotective when it comes to our kids...its actually kind of cute...and Jared rarely does cute. Well, I guess all we can do is hope things are better next week.

Easter Morning

We had a fun Easter, even if it was cold and snowy. We had to cancel our ward egg hunt because of the snow, but the kids still had fun decorating eggs, finding eggs, making a mess with the grass, and especially eating candy. They got some cute clothes from Grandma and Grandpa Crowther and a foam soccer ball which was a big hit. They had an egg hunt at the Allen's house next door. Once I showed Mason what the bucket was for, he really got into it and found tons of eggs. He was even more thrilled to find out that the eggs weren't just cool shakers; but holders of candy too!


Mason spent a lot of the morning trying to get the grass off his feet. He got really frustrated every time he stepped on a piece. He wouldn't move till he got it off, and most of the time he didn't get very far till he stepped on another one.

My Ballerina...and more

Mia has been taking ballet/tap class at the local rec. center for the last three months. Ever since she started, she can't stop dancing and twirling. Between dance class and watching all the barbie movies (aka 12 dancing princess, princess and the pauper...) she is pretty brainwashed to think she needs to dance 24/7. She goes to class with two of her best friends Abby and Payton. Abby lives next door and Payton lives down stairs. They are always together and frequently dancing.
Mia in the black and pink--Abbey in all pink next to her--and Payton in the light blue next to Abby.

Jared saw this post and insisted that I add these pictures of Mia. I think he hopes he can unbrainwash the ballerina and secure himself a climbing partner for years to come.