Birthday Extravaganza and Stylin' Eclipse Glasses

I'm so far behind on this whole blogging thing!  I just realized I had a whole folder of pictures from the Annie & Ellie's family birthday party from a couple weeks ago that I hadn't posted yet.  It was also the day of the eclipse, and my Dad had brought handfuls of welder's lens for us to look through, which was very cool. 

Annie and Ellie got a karaoke machine for their birthdays. (Birthdays one day apart = shared birthday presents.  I'll probably have to pay for counseling later.)  Isaac was possibly the biggest fan.  The kids sang for awhile before everyone showed up for the party.

 Man, this kid is cute!

 The girls opening their gifts.

 My niece, Miss Bailey Boo

 The girls jumping on top of Dad on the trampoline.

 Owen and Aunt Star.

  A couple family pictures (minus Isaac, I have no idea where he was when we took these.)  On the second one we all tried to be as crazy as Ellie.  She still wins.

 Still winning the crazy-faced award.

Grandma Ruth and Owen checking out the eclipse.

 David and Talina sharing a lens.

 My cute husband and me during the eclipse viewing.

 Ellie and Isaac would rather jump on the trampoline than worry about what the sun was doing.  Isaac is such a big fan of Grandpa KC!

 Aunt Star, Annie and Aunt Talina.

 Not approved for checking out the sun, but the girls were still super excited for their new swimming goggles!

Five Months Old & May Randomness

It's been a crazy last few weeks.  My little sister Lacy got engaged to Ben (or "Uncle Ben" as the girls are excitedly squealing from time to time.)  The girls birthdays.  Greg worked a ton.  A TON.  Then he worked out of town.  My friend Rachel had twins.  Then ended up with a postpartum infection that nearly killed her.  Literally.  The one surgeon (from her second emergency surgery, the hysterectomy) told us they lost her on the table for a minute.  I spent almost all day at the hospital with her for days, and Greg would bring me the baby to nurse every 2-3 hours.  She's home now, and moving forward with a long, difficult recovery.  Greg's Grandma Verla was also in the hospital, and was getting progressively weaker during this same time, and she peacefully passed away at home on Memorial Day.  My birthday was yesterday (Greg's is Sunday), and then we think life will mellow out for awhile . . . right?

Anyway, today I realized that Owen is now 5 months old.  (As of yesterday).  So some picture taking was in order . . . (he's in the middle two pictures, Annie's the outside ones -- they remind me the most of each other out of all my kids.)

We still have another month of school left, but Annie got her Kindergarten Graduation pictures.  Which crack me up, 'cause it looks like the photoshopped her head on to an adult (with childish hands) body.

Ellie and Isaac

Ellie and Owen -- she is starting to warm up this whole 'big sister' gig a bit more.

My smiley five month old!  (Who is NO where near sitting up on his own, and seems to have COMPLETELY forgotten how to roll over, despite once being fairly proficient.  He is the LAZIEST baby ever and pretty much is just held, cuddled, nursed or sleeping all day) :-)

My girls at their birthday party -- Ellie's four and Annie's six now!

 At six years old Annie is over 43 inches, at 16% on the charts.  Her weight is 46 and a half pounds, at 62% on the charts.  Ellie is still pretty tiny, at 3% for height (36.42 inches), they had her weight at 33 pounds (37%), but they weighed her in shoes and everything, and at home she's only around 31.5 pounds, so that seemed high.  (Isaac is now 30 -- they're almost tied.  And he's not two yet!) Annie's reading blew away the doctor, and Ellie's bubbly enthusiasm and energy cracked the doctor up.  She commented that both girls are really solid, with incredible muscle mass for their ages, and they're obviously pretty active.  Said as Ellie bounced around the room like an energizer bunny on a trampoline.  I proudly told her Annie's been going on 1 mile and longer bike rides up and down some pretty intense hills lately.  They both play outside and play hard ALL DAY LONG.  It's hard to get dinner served before 6:30 or 7:00 now 'cause they're having so much fun playing.

Cousin Bailey making out with Isaac's head -- these two have SUCH a cute relationship.  He's kinda protective of her, constantly fetching toys and getting mad at anyone who upsets her, and he sits there mildly amused or at least passive while she mauls his head.

The girls with the kids we invited to their party -- i.e., the people who's houses we can see from ours!  At one point there were an extra four or five of the neighbor boys hanging out on the bouncy house too -- all these kids come from two streets!

My chunky monkey.

Bailey and Owen are so freaking cute.

Smiley baby!

Mother's Day!  Sandbox flooding is a must at our Mother's Day celebrations!

Mother's Day is extra important when you have a missionary out of country who gets to Skype -- they girls were so giggly when they saw Uncle Cody!  Isaac didn't really get what was up, and obviously doesn't recognize Cody 'in person', but as soon as we had Cody say the same message that's recorded in to Isaac's teddy bear, Isaac's eyes bugged out and he broke in to a huge grin and whispered, "Cody Bear?"  SO CUTE!

May Facebook Updates:

May 31st - Yesterday, around 12:30 in the afternoon, I said to Isaac, "OK Bug, it's probably time to get out of your pajamas!" To which pouted, "No Mom! It not time for pants yet. No pants. Not yet! It not time for pants yet!" Dude, it's after noon. It's totally time for pants.

May 23rd - Annie was telling me about how she's conquered her nail biting habit, then she added, "And I NEVER bite my toenails . . . it's disgusting. And it takes a lot of hard work to get your feet up to your mouth."

"I don't think that spider will come back now," declared Annie after ushering a spider outside, "I keep defeating him!" Possibly had to be here, but her proudly stating that she kept 'defeating' him was hilarious.

May 21st - Annie during prayer tonight, "And please bless that Ellie will start saying her R's right, instead of saying them like W's."
This child is REALLY concerned about her sister's speech problems . . . she's started doing 'speech school' with Ellie, rewarding her with little bits of candy or cereal every time she pronounces an 'R' correctly. I have NO idea where she came upon this idea, or how she's latched onto the idea of 'curing' Ellie's problem, but it's kinda funny, and disturbing :-)

May 19th - I bought two dozen cupcakes for the girls' birthday parties this weekend. Isaac found them this morning and threw them to the floor. Deep breaths . . .

 May 18th - I left Isaac with my sister Talina while I ran to the store -- when I came home, he ran to the door, threw his arms around my leg tightly (and didn't let go for a minute or two) and said, "Mom! You home! Mom! I am SO happy!" It was the sweetest thing in the world.
And I now suspect Talina beats him while I'm gone. :-P
(Later he was pointing at baby Bailey and teasing, "You barely napped Bay! You barely napped!" He speaks so weird for a one year old.)

May 17th - Annie talking to a friend: "Ya know, I really love being five. Everything about it." Sighs deeply, then adds, "I'm gonna miss this when we're six . . ."

May 16th - I left my sister with my kids for an hour or so while I went to the school to finish up something for Annie's teacher . . . between my four kids, her one, and the neighbors, at one point she had fourteen kids at my house. Good thing we're not a daycare, or that would've been illegal :-)

May 11th - Earlier while I was changing a blow out diaper, Annie was whining about something I'd asked her to do. "Do YOU want to come change this diaper while I do your chores?" I asked. Sheepishly she replied, "No, I don't want to clean up diapers."
Ellie helpfully called out from her room, "Mom, not nobody wants to do what you do!"
That does seem to be the consensus.

May 6th - Grandma Karine was dropping off the girls after a sleepover, and as they were walking inside I said, "Hurry Ellie, we are going to Grandma Ruth's house." Ellie cheers, " Yay that's my favorite grandma!" BWAH HA HA HA! Poor grandma Karine!

May 5th - Worst words in the English language "Look Mom! I got basaleen!" (Vaseline). He had it alright -- in his hair, on his head, face, hands, legs, the couch, the carpet . . . I think I'm going to cry.  (After four different attempts to wash the Vaseline out of Isaac's hair (four different kind of soaps), I just shaved his head . . .)

May 4th - Annie is officially a huge fan of "Choose Your Own Adventure" books . . . in particular the historical ones. She's fascinated with the Underground Railroad right now, and they have "Choose Your Own Adventure" one where you get to pick whether you're the runaway slave, the abolitionist or the slave catcher. We'd exhausted the first two options, when she finally chose to do one of the 'slave catcher' adventures -- her response, "Mom, what is WRONG with these people?!"

May 1st - Apparently I have not done enough puzzles with Isaac -- I just got one out, and I was taking apart the puzzle, so we can put it back together, and he started screaming, "NOOOO! No Mom! Don't break it! Don't break it apart! Don't break Elmo apart!"

How do you know Annie's off track? 'Cause it's 7:40AM and she's already come up with FOUR DIFFERENT CHARTS she wants us to make (a chore chart, a reading chart, a prayer chart and a teeth brushing chart . . . I should start charging her for all my graphic design services!) :-)

Karaoke-okie

My girls just celebrated their birthdays -- and like Mother's Day, I need to catch up on the blogging of such things.  But for now, here's videos taken of the kids playing with the girls' main present, a karaoke machine.  Isaac FELL IN LOVE (I should've known, he sings more than the rest of my toddlers ever did, he totally belts out songs in the car, and he can sing several a'capella, and several dozen more along with CDs in the car.)  He kept asking to 'karaokie-okie', and asking for the 'microphone' anytime he hadn't had one in his hand in the last 30 seconds.  So, here's videos of my little performers . . . one of these days I'll post actual stories and pictures!

Picture Updates

Random pictures . . . and facebook updates from the last couple weeks.
I'm seriously becoming quite the blogging slacker.  Sorry.  :-)

April 16th:  Just looked outside to find Annie riding up and down the street on her friend's two-wheeler bike -- so, a major parenting milestone checked off while we weren't even paying attention :-)
(She's been riding her bike as much as humanely possible this Spring -- and Greg raised her training wheels up an inch or so, so she really wasn't using them a ton anyway . . . but she hadn't wanted to take the big step of taking them off until her birthday. But apparently, she got antsy and just went for it anyway! Go Annie!)
Two other friends also learned the same day.  Yay for peer pressure.  :-)
Now if only she could lose a tooth, then she'd feel complete.  :-)

Cousins -- Bailey and Owen are wearing coordinating outfits in the same size!

Gotta love the Tulip Festival!  These three just look like sisters!

Yes, Owen does look just that awesome in those glasses.  He was as happy about them as he looks.

April 18:  Isaac got his cast off.  He's slowly relearning to walk without it.  We also found out Annie got in to the Spanish Dual Immersion program.  We took her out of the ALPS program, and are going for Spanish.

April 20: I was upstairs getting the baby down for a nap for a few minutes, and when I came back downstairs I found Isaac sitting up to the counter with a fork and a jar of peanut butter he'd gotten open. He looked up at me, face and hands covered, held up his fork and exclaimed, "Mmmm! Peanut butter!"

April 23: Family Home Evening was basically all of us trying to hear Greg read a story over Isaac who was yelling, "Let do than Bean again! BEAN! BEANNNNNNNN! Let do it! BEAN!" Note to self . . . save singing 'Jesus Wants Me for a SunBEAM' 'til AFTER the lesson next week . . .

Annie came running in to my room at 9:15PM. "Mom! I forgot, we left some books out on the trampoline! I don't want them to get ruined!" I assured her I would go get the books, and for the love, go to sleep already, you're five years old and it's after 9PM, and you have school tomorrow.
Well, I just made the last of several trips and all SIXTY-SEVEN books are now back inside. SIXTY-SEVEN! My kids are crazy. And I'm apparently a very neglectful mother, as I never noticed SIXTY-SEVEN books making their way out into the backyard . . .

Isaac yelling out my back window, "Sissers! Get off my twamp-oh-leeeeeen!" Nothing sounds cuter than big long words from angry one year olds :-)

April 24:  Toddlers are so random . . . it'd be fun to know what goes on inside their heads. Isaac just marched into the room, exclaimed, "These MY pants Mom! My pants!" while pointing down at his pajama pants. Then he turned to leave, pausing to turn around, emphatically point again at his own pants and add one last dramatic, "MY pants!" Then huffed out of the room.

April 26: Annie's newest list of sight words include: argument, beneficial, arrangement, bargain, category, business, certainly, comparative and calendar -- these lists are getting harder and harder to make 'sentences' from :-) (We typically tell stories from her sight words, like "The 'scary' 'ghost' 'hosted' a 'party' on 'Friday' night," or something like that, just using as many of the words as possible. What now, "The arrangement was beneficial because we struck a business bargain . . . ") :-)

I had my first 'are they twins?' question in public about Ellie and Isaac.  Nope, they're over two years apart.  They're just within 2 pounds and are both wearing size 6 shoes (Isaac grew out of two pair of 5's that he'd only worn once or twice and that I'd just bought last month!  Ellie is ALMOST in 7's)  :-)

April's Been a Busy Month . . .

We've done a lot this month . . . and taken lots of pictures.

(Sorry if you're on facebook -- these are pretty much all repeats)

Cousin Bonding Time

My sister, Talina, and I got the coolest Christmas presents this year from my Mom.  Thanksgiving Point passes for our families.  Now that the babies are a bit bigger, and the weather is nice, we went today to go activate our memberships.  Unfortunately, pseudo-hurricane-force winds kept us from our original plan of going to the Farm area to check out baby animals, but we had a blast going to the Dinosaur Museum with the kiddos.

Bailey cracks me up around Owen -- these two are gonna be SO much fun to watch grow up together!

Here's our Bailey Boo hanging out in our frontroom . . . Annie & Ellie found her this hat, and insisted she wear it.

Letter to Uncle Cody

The girls helped me write an email to my little brother tonight.  Here's what I transcribed:

Ellie, "Adios amigos!  Adios amigos!"  I don't think she knows Spanish well. 

Annie giggles and corrects, "Hola!"  Ellie added, "Hola pato!"  Since we have taken to addressing ducks in Spanish around these parts.  "Hola pato!  Hola pato!  Hola paco!" she says.  Don't know why it suddenly switched to 'paco'.   Annie, "How are you doing?  In Uruguay?"  Now she's jumping up and down and giggling.  Isaac is in bed for the night, and Owen's lying on the bed getting fussy 'cause nobody's holding him.  I'm prodding Annie to talk about Conference.  Annie says, "Hola."  This is working well.  "Hola pato!" hijacks Ellie, "That's like hello or goodbye for ducks."

Annie finally stops giggling long enough to say, "I got Bingo on one of my Conference papers!"  She ROCKED Conference Bingo.  Jelly beans were consumed in mass quantities.  Annie had a friend call to play about an hour into the first session on Saturday, but she could not be torn away from all of her papers and Conference packet stuff for another half hour.  We have pages of decorated ties, tally marks for most popular words, and coloring pages of President Monson. 

Ellie is singing a song to Owen to try to calm him down on the bed.  It went, "You are stinky, stinky, stinky and you cry, cry, cry!"  It did not seem to help.

"He he he.  It did not seem to help," Annie giggles as she reads over my shoulder. She is now dissolved into a pile of giggles on the floor after reading the last sentence about her reading over my shoulder. 
"When is Cody gonna come home?" Ellie whines, "I want to go on a cruise already!"  Yeah Cody, way to hold up the cruise. :-)  Now she's singing you the "Months of the Year" song she learned at Preschool.  Now she's pointing out where she's finding the word 'Ellie' in the email, "Why did you spell Ellie?" she asks, but then is distracted and starts singing the months again.

Annie is still giggling.  "I'm reading along!" she laughs.  [Reads over my shoulder].  More giggling.  More giggling still.  [Reads over my shoulder].  Loud laughter.  But not the kind cautioned against in Conference.  :-)  Both girls are now in a pile on the floor, laughing.  I don't think Ellie knows what Annie's laughing about, but she's joined.  I told them they now have one last chance to say something to Uncle Cody before bedtime, "I love you Cody!" Ellie exclaims.  She's now singing the Months song again.

Annie giggles upon reading that, but had said a few seconds ago, "I watched half of both parts of Conference."  [Reads over my shoulder].  Giggles.  She really did love Conference, and would proudly show you the papers with the words she heard, and a couple notes from talks. ("Helping" was what she got from one talk.  Score . . . Family Home Evening tomorrow is now on Service!)

"Bye Cody!  Bye Cody!" Ellie exclaims while blowing kisses!  Then she looks at the computer screen and says, "Thanks that we can see you!"  Pause.  "Wait?"  Did she just figure out this wasn't Skype like on Christmas?!

"I love you Cody," says Ellie again while Annie's deciding what to say.  "YAY!  ELLIE! E-L-L-I-E!" she exclaims as she sees her name typed.

"Uncle Doh-doh," Annie giggles.

"I Love You, Doh doh!" Ellie loudly laughs.

"And now she's calling you Doh-dy," Annie laughs as Ellie dances around the room singing, "I love Doh-dy, I love Doh-dy." 

"Dad says I used to have imaginary friends called Doh-doo and Iah," Annie says incredulously.  Greg brought them up when they were calling you 'Doh-doh'.  I don't know if she believes him.  Remember Doh-doo?  He drove a car.  And was married to Iah.  I think Annie's my only kid who's had imaginary friends.  Oldest child thing, maybe? 

"Have fun," Annie finally settles on her parting words, "Have a good mission!"  She thinks for a second, "I love you Cody. Bye."

There you have it, a combined family letter. :-)  Enjoy the attached pictures of poor Isaac in his cast, and Owen on his third month birthday.

Annie reads the last sentence, "Does he even know we have an Owen?" Annie asks.  I assure her I've sent you letters and pictures about him, and you're aware of Owen's existence.

Love you Bug!