April 28, 2012

Pica (n.) an abnormal appetite or craving for substances that are not fit to eat, such as chalk or clay.

I think Bailey may suffer from this.  I let her play outside with the kids while I cleaned up and found her sitting on this table, gnawing away on a brown piece of sidewalk chalk.  She didn't seem to be particularly enjoying it, but still wouldn't stop.  And this isn't the first time.  Ew.

April 27, 2012

At the risk of sounding like an old geizer, we didn't have techonology like this back in my day.  Here the kids are watching "Shawn the Sheep," streamed from Netflix.  Now I know this is nothing revolutionary these days, but I still think it's super cool that we can do stuff like this.  And yes, this is what the loft looks like at the end of the day, most days.

April 26, 2012

Sorry for another lame weather picture.  I didn't mean for this to be the picture of the day.  I took this picture to show Jeff, who was at work, how much it was actually raining.  It just happened to be the only picture I took today. So there you go.

April 25, 2012

These dang moths!  Amarillo (and probably other places) has been flooded by moths these past few weeks in plague-like proportions.  It has something to do with no rain last year and the warm Spring this year.  We have hundreds of them in our garage, I can see them swarming as I driving down the road, flocks of them jump to attention when we turn on the sprinklers, and Syd has taken to carrying around a plastic grocery bag to gather the dead ones in our house.  Supposedly they will be gone in a couple of weeks.  Can't wait.

April 24, 2012

Glad I'm not this guy.  We're putting a sand box in this corner of the yard, which requires us to move some sprinkler heads.  Jeff decided to tackle this all of a sudden.  So he was out digging trenches, replacing sprinklers, fixing grass, and other stuff I don't really know much about.  I'm not really sure why he chose the hottest day of the year to do it.  The high temperature was around 90 degrees.  But all the sprinklers work, so good for him.

April 23, 2012

You know, sometimes I get to the end of the day and realize nothing terribly remarkable has happened that day, thus no picture.  But I suppose those are good days because "nothing remarable" means no one was injured and had to go to the ER (except maybe Jeff, but that's a good thing), no major household disasters occured, and no one did something stupid, like cut their own hair.  So you get a nice, pleasant picture of the kids enjoying root beer floats after Family Home Evening.

April 22, 2012

Gee, I just can't figure out how this patio door gets so dirty...

 

April 21, 2012

Remember when going out to eat used to be a fun?  It's so not anymore.  At least not with five kids.  They argue over who gets to sit where.  They complain about the food not coming fast enough and then don't actually eat the food.  And don't even get me started on Bailey, who has reached that age where she won't sit in the high chair and is just generally noisy and crazy.  Maybe in another five years, or so, it will be enjoyable again.

April 20, 2012

  Today Jeff came home and asked me what comes to my mind when I think of a $2 bill.  I said my Grandma Darrington because she used to put one in our birthday cards every year.  But that was the wrong answer.  Apparently the owner of Amarillo National Bank was known for giving out $2 bills. (I don't know how I was supposed to know that.)  This man died recently and today Jeff treated his widow in the ER.  She insisted of giving him a $2 bill for each of his kids.  I guess it's her way of carrying on his legacy.  The kids thought it was cool but not cool enough to save them.  Ryan is already talking of all the toys he'll get with his two dollars.

April 19, 2012

Here's something that was reaffirmed to me tonight:  my kids' eating habits now are the same as when they were babies.  Shelbi was a fantastic eater as a baby, still is.  Syd and Ryan were picky, still are.  And Erik has an interesting quirk.  With the occasional exception of french fries and potato chips, he won't pick up food to eat with his hands.  I remember when he was a toddler and I wanted to just put some food on his highchair tray and have him feed himself, he'd have none of it.  It was especially frustrating because Ryan was a baby and I had to spoon feed them both.  Erik won't feed himself until he could successfully use a fork or spoon.  Which brings us to tonight.  We had grilled cheese sandwiches and apple slices.  He could NOT bring himself to pick up the sandwich.  I threatened all sorts of punishments if he didn't eat, but ultimately felt bad for him because he didn't want to disobey, he just seriously is freaked out by touching food.  So I gave in and cut his sandwich into pieces.  He ate it fine after that and even ate his apples (with a fork.)

April 18, 2012

The kids started to play this "Flippin' Frogs" game, where they launch frogs onto the tree.  All of the flying frogs made Bailey giggle so it quickly turned into "Flip The Frogs at Bailey."  She laughed and laughed.  It was adorable.

April 17, 2012

    Batting practice with Dad in the backyard.  Erik said he "smoked the game."

April 16, 2012

Having dessert this evening I thought about how I hadn't taken a picture yet today.  Nothing of note really happened.  Unless you want to see a picture of me cleaning the bathroom and playroom, going to the grocery store, or shuttling kids to piano lessons.  So here's a picture from April 16, 2009.  This is the kids' homemade rock band.  I'm especially fond of Sydney's paper guitar.

April 15, 2012

I had to take a picture to mark this momentous occasion.  Jeff is home (not working), awake (not sleeping after a night shift) and eating breakfast (not running off to a meeting) on a Sunday morning. Truly remarkable indeed.

April 14, 2012

 Walking back from our mailbox the other day I realized that this is the first thing that people see when they walk up to our house.  It's dry, sometimes weedy, with plants growing in strange places.  So Jeff and I tackled it today.  It took all day.  We moved some plants, added some new ones, put down a weed barrier and filled it in with rocks that won't blow away in the Amarillo wind.  It was not the most ideal day for yardwork.  We were working against thirty mile per hour winds.  Many of our neighbors came to see what we were doing and make fun of us for working on a day like today. 

Our bodies are sore and sunburnt, but it was well worth it.  By the end of the day the winds had calmed down, leaving a nice pleasant evening to sit back and stare at our handywork.  So much better.

By the way, this is what your baby will look like after you've let her run crazy all day while you've been busy working.  You should see what her clothes look like.

April 13, 2012

Bailey's Happy Place.

April 12, 2012

Many years ago I was at our church on some week night and there was a table set up with free stuff for anyone who wanted it.  I picked up this game.  It has a speaker that tells the kids what shape or picture to stand on, sometimes telling them to do crazy things.  Eventually whoever is standing on the right shape wins.  It's one of those toys that the kids will play with nearly constantly for a couple of days and then not care about for another year.  This is that time of year.

April 11, 2012

There's not much in Amarillo, like mountains or tall buildings, to get in the way of seeing off in the distance for miles.  This is what our sky looked like all afternoon and evening.  It looks cool, but we were under a tornado warning all day.  I suppose I could have just stood up on the kids' playhouse and watched the sky in every direction to look for a tornado instead of checking the weather.

April 10, 2012

Step one of Operation: Redo Stupid Fireplace.  Jeff took a hammer and crowbar to the tile and had it striped in a few hours.  We figure with our family room looking like this, now we have to finish the work.  Now we just need someone to come out to build the frame and set the stone...

April 9, 2012

There are some perks to Jeff working nights.  Like waking up the next morning to find a box of delicious, fresh donuts that he picked up on his way home.

April 8, 2012

It's been a few years since I've made the girls' Easter dresses.  It seemed like they would wear them on Easter then never again.  This year I decided to make skirts.  The girls picked their pattern and fabric so they have no excuse for not wearing them again.  Shelbi was also excited to have a scarf to match her skirt.  She probably showed me five different ways she could tie it as she was getting ready for church.

April 7, 2012

We did our Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning this year and I had good intentions of posting pictures of that, but apparently I'm a lousy photographer that early in the morning.  Every shot was either blurry or just plain boring. 
Our kids get a little "gift" from the Easter bunny and this year Erik got a baseball tee.  I watched him take it out onto the porch and do a few practice swings.  Then he picked up a piece of blue sidewalk chalk and made some kind of mark on the brick pillar.  I thought maybe he was keeping score.  But then I realized that he had drawn a circle (sort of) and was trying to hit his "target" with the baseball.  Very cute.

April 6, 2012

The kids were off from school for Good Friday so we spent the afternoon coloring Easter eggs.  While looking for the egg coloring kit I bought this year, I found two other unused kits from years past.  We decided to experiment a little and put two tablets (same color) into one mug.  I know, we're wild and crazy!  The result was "uber-colors."  Dye so strong that you only really had to dunk your egg for a couple seconds for it to color, or leave it in for longer for seriously deep color.  The only problem was that we went through seven and half dozen eggs like it was nothing.  That many hard-boiled eggs will never get eaten in a house where no one eats deviled eggs, creamed eggs on toast, or egg salad sandwiches. 

April 5, 2012

I think I might have a problem.  I started to notice an abundance of magazine and catalogs around my house, so I gathered one of each and came up with fourteen.  I understand that companies will send their catalog to anyone, but the magazines are kind of a mystery.  I don't how they got my name, but I'll take them.  Many times after the kids are all in bed, I'll plunk down on the couch with a stack of magazines/catalogs to look through.  Jeff can attest to this.  And I may or may not have just subscribed to two more.  How can I say no when they're offering a year's subscription for $6.00 plus a free tote?

April 4, 2012

Poor Jeff had to come home from Las Vegas to this mess in our bedroom.  A dream of mine is to some day have a dedicated spot for my sewing stuff.  Ideally a place that I could just leave my mess out and shut the door.  I imagine my mom felt the same way.  She had to wait until kids started moving out of the house to get her sewing room.  Let's see, Shelbi's 10 now...

April 3, 2012

Another school program behind us.  Syd's second grade "musical" was the Lion and the Mouse.  She played Tumbila (basically monkey #2).  She had four lines.  The whole thing lasted twenty minutes.  Short and sweet, just like Sydney.

April 2, 2012

This blog is certainly not about sugar-coating my life in any way.(Remember the cereal for dinner, messy Sunday house, and Shelbi's bug-infested bedroom?)  So I feel okay about showing off a little bit today.  Over the weekend I put together these flannel board stories.  All of the pictures were already gathered on one website, I just had to print them out.  I laminated them, glued flannel on the back and put them in envelopes with a short synopsis of the story that goes along with the pictures.  My goal is to put together a whole Family Home Evening box, with ready-made lessons and activities.  That way, when it's the kids' turn to do a lesson, they can go to the box and put it together all my themselves.  It worked like a charm tonight.  Shelbi taught us about Jonah and the whale.  I didn't have to do anything but show up.  Okay, now I'm starting to sound lazy again.

April 1, 2012

Many years ago I started the tradition of doing a puzzle during General Conference.  I figured it was a good way to stay awake.  The kids usually are really excited about it in the beginning, but lose interest.  This year I had no place to sit because they took over.  This is a 550 piece puzzle.  I did some of it, but it was mostly done by a four, five, and seven year old.

March 31, 2012

So did you guess my 14:30 riddle? Probably not.  The soap dispenser in our dishwasher doesn't work, so we've figured out that the best time to add detergent to a running cycle is 14 minutes and 30 seconds after it's started.  I told you not to get too excited.  I had good intentions of taking some pictures tonight of the kids playing out on the patio.  I think we've already started lazy, summer time.  We're going to bed too late because it just so nice outside in the evenings.  Tonight, for instance, I finished the dishes and read out on the patio while the kids biked/rollerbladed/colored with chalk.  It was lovely.  When we came in, I saw this:

I forgot to add the detergent.  The plan is not foolproof.

March 30, 2012

Again I forgot to take a picture today.  Maybe I'm trying to erase watching "Zookeeper" for movie night from my memory.  SOOO dumb.  I made the effort to try to watch the whole thing with the kids, but by the last half hour even they weren't interested any more.  So I left to fold laundry.