The Bryant Blogger

Chinese New Year

2012-01-23T06:44:00.001-05:00

We had Trent's friends from work over for a Chinese New Year poker party. I'm sure there is some rule against posting pictures of his colleagues so, instead, here's a picture of the cupcakes I made. I cut out little fortunes, wrapped tin foil around them and then baked them.

Poor Juliet caught the pukies.

But we still made everyone dress up in their clothes from Grandpa Lee.

Hope you all have a wonderful Year of the Dragon!

Year of the Dragon

2012-01-20T18:23:00.005-05:00

It's been an exciting week around here, we are getting ready to celebrate the Year of the Dragon!

We read:

My First Chinese New Year by Karen Katz
Bringing In the New Year by Grace Lin
Celebrate Chinese New Year by Carolyn Otto
Sam and the Lucky Money by Karen Chinn
The Runaway Rice Cake by Ying Chang Compestine
The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine

We did the following:

Made fans from paint samples.
Scrubbed a ga-zillion coins with soapy water and toothbrushes.
Made our own dragon and had a dragon dance.
Cooked ham fried rice.

44 Months Old

2012-01-19T13:25:00.003-05:00

"Can I tell you something?" or "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" are Isaac's catch phrases lately. It was cute, when it first started...

Trent gives the kids a bath together every night while I clean up the dinner mess. And every night around this time, I look forward to hearing a little Isaac voice that calls to me from upstairs, "Mama? Mama! Can you get me dressed please?" I run upstairs, finish drying him off, put a night diaper on him, and then get him into his pj's. He's for sure old enough now that he can get into his own pajamas by himself, but this is the one time of the day that we have a few minutes to ourselves and so I like to baby him a little bit. I usually tease him by making him promise me that he won't grow up or else we sing made up songs about... you guessed it, poop.

He is always so agreeable during that part of the day and I wish there was a way that I could bottle up his sweetness. Lord knows we could use it at other times throughout the day!

Isaac is sleeping on the top bunk now. He still needs the closet doors opened, the bedroom light dimmed, and the hall light on to fall asleep though because he's afraid of monsters.

He loves to play rough with Asher and I wish I had the patience to let them play rowdy together, but the noise level bothers me and someone always ends up crying and hurt so I usually put a stop to their wrestling pretty quickly.

One especially bad habit that Isaac's developed is whacking people with his lovey or stuffed animals (or socks, or blanket, or anything else really.) He spends time in his room for this behavior every single day so clearly my solution is not working.

He also spends time in his room for name-calling. Lately we hear a lot of "Baby-brain!" or "Dumb-cat" Where does he come up with these?

Isaac is getting really good at putting together 24 piece puzzles and can get through two of them before getting frustrated with himself.

He's been to two Tae Kwon Do classes and has really enjoyed being able to run around and punch and kick! He's one of the youngest kids in the class and is pretty good for a 3 year old boy. He asked me when he would be an orange belt and I told him not until he passed his white and yellow belt tests, he was pretty disappointed and whined, "Oohhhh, that's going to take too long." (Another Isaac catch phrase.)

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2012-01-17T13:49:00.002-05:00

Earlier this month I predicted that 2012 was going to be a great year and I am happy to announce that we are indeed off to a terrific start!

Case in point, we (Trent) found the letter Z! This was a huge good omen because we (kids) had misplaced Z in the very early part of last year, which as you know was a bad, bad year. Now our fridge alphabet is complete, which makes me feel complete. ha ha!

Trent also found my left glove that I had lost while at FSI a couple of weeks ago. He's really on a roll, isn't he?

Speaking of my new and improved husband, I am excited to announce that he has taken over cooking dinners and all things related (menu planning and grocery shopping) indefinitely! Oh happy days ahead over here. I love not spending any more of my time going from store to store (to store to store...) gathering up all of the items on my list. In fact, I even love not having a grocery list!!

The kids are excited about some new changes for them as well. First, I have signed them up for a Homeschool Co-op once a week for a couple of hours. All of them! I have to stay with Asher the entire class (Kindermusik) time, but Isaac will be on his own with the other 3 and 4 year olds in two subjects: Five In A Row and Spanish Arte, and Juliet will discover the world through Science and learn about Cultures Around the World with the 5-7 year olds.

Joining that Co-op inspired me to form my own co-op, which I conveniently named the Mother's Morning Out Co-op and it is exactly that-- a group of 6 moms that will trade off watching the group of kids and having a free morning out. I conjured up a schedule where in a four week period we will all be on playdate duty twice and have two free mornings to ourselves.

We also put the kids in Tae Kwon Do and they LOVE it! I love it too because their instructor, Master Park, is so good with the kids. He teaches them to be assertive, quick thinking, respectful, and strong. I also love that he ranks the kids throughout the class. For example, he'll teach them a 4-6 move combination and then have them repeat it several times. Then, he'll point to a few of the kids and say "1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place... the rest of you need more practice." Yes! Finally, an environment where not everybody is the "best just because you tried your hardest."

I started my Russian language class today! Yeah! It looks like we'll be leaving DC for Moscow by the end of July and I am seriously getting SO EXCITED! I finished reading Rasputin's Daughter by Robert Alexander and am hurrying to finish up another novel of his, The Romanov Bride, so that I can start reading Ivan the Terrible.

Also, I'm in the middle of applying for a J-O-B at the US Embassy in Moscow. I have really (finally) fallen into a good place with being a Stay At Home Mom for the past year and a half, but I find myself getting so excited about this job posting. I have my heart set on this one position but my heart is not set on working, so if I don't get it, I will just continue with the SAHM thing for a little bit longer. I do love the idea that as the spouse to someone with my husband's career, I am reinvent myself every couple of years-- work, don't work... not a bad gig, right?

My dear friend, Yen, told me that last year was her "best year ever!" I'm inspired by her attitude and I think I'm up for the challenge of making this year my best ever. First 19 days of the year, so far so good.

Asher's Antics Part 2

2012-01-15T18:40:00.002-05:00

Since duct taping the diaper didn't work, I had no choice but to duct tape Asher's sleeper in a couple of spots so that he couldn't unzip himself.

Trent thinks that Ash was taking his diaper off out of boredom so he decided to move him into the bottom bunk. I seriously burst into tears the very second he mentioned the idea of taking down the crib-- it's been in use for 5 straight years and to think that it's no longer needed (it's obsolete, actually because of the drop down railing feature!) makes my heart hurt.

Through my tears, I made the kids pose for a final picture in front of the crib. I think the only reason I could get all three kids to look at the camera was because they were curious about why I was acting so crazy.

The first night was a doozy. Asher was so happy to be free of the crib that worked up a sweat running around his room for at least an hour. I finally had to bring Isaac into our room to cuddle because Asher was being so crazy. Isaac fell asleep as soon as his head hit my pillow. Trent had to finally go in and lie down next to Asher to get him to sleep.

You can imagine a similar routine for today's nap. Ash, finally crashed, but not in his bed.

It's 6:52pm of night number two, which is going very similarly to night number one. Trent did comment, "We need to put a cage around his bed or something so he doesn't keep getting out." I agree, something designed like a, I don't know... crib???

Asher's Antics

2012-01-13T11:42:00.003-05:00

We took away Asher's binky last week, cold turkey. The first couple of nights/nap times, he screamed his head off for at least 30 minutes. I guess he decided crying was futile so he moved onto other antics:

1. Stuffing his Tiger-lovey so far in his mouth that he gagged and threw up all over the crib.

2. Taking all of his clothes including his diaper off. After the first time, I was onto him and so I started using duct tape to make sure that sucker stayed on. Good thing too, because one afternoon I peeked in on him and he had totally stripped, right down to his poopy diaper. Disaster averted! Until this morning...

I Have A Dream

2012-01-13T11:17:00.004-05:00

Our homeschool theme this week was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Juliet was drawn in by the facts about Whites and Blacks being segregated and the idea that all kids couldn't play together. Isaac was more interested in the assassination. He did interrupt a lesson to ask me if he was a "white guy." (Yes, well, a quarter Chinese to be precise.)

We read:

Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport
A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr by David A. Adler

There are a lot of great YouTube videos of MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech that the kids enjoyed watching.

I'm hoping the weather is good enough that we can visit the new memorial this weekend.

An Easy Nail Board Project

2012-01-12T11:38:00.001-05:00

Trent was in training this week so that means he was home by 3:30 every afternoon. So, I put him to work on projects with the kids. Here they are building a nail board.

59 Months Old

2012-01-08T16:46:00.001-05:00

I always said that I wanted to have a girl first, just so that I could be sure that I wouldn't be the mother to all boys. Well, I totally lucked out because my first born, a girl, is amazing. She is so sweet, smart, thoughtful and spunky, what more could I ask for?

We are on lesson number 93 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We are trying really hard to complete the book by the end of the week and then she will be reading at a solid 2nd grade level.

She still enjoys playing dress up and loves the wedding gown that Memaw made for her for Christmas. Her other favorites are princess dresses and her old ballet clothes.

She enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles and is up to completing 100 pieces on her own now.

Juliet is just such a happy little girl and so much fun to be around. She's a great big sister to her little brothers and truly, a wonderful daughter to us. I don't want her to get any older... one more month until she turns 5 years old. No!

**I feel sort of weird bragging so much about my children on the blog, but to be fair, I use this blog as a replacement to the kids' baby books where I would have filled out pages and pages gushing about my little ones.

22 Months Old

2012-01-07T16:57:00.000-05:00

It's crazy for me to think that Isaac was 22 months old when Asher was born. I can't imagine having a newborn with in this house with Asher's roller coaster type of disposition...

He's has started to show a lot more interest in the activities that the big kids enjoy. He will sit and color with crayons or markers for about five minutes at a time. He also likes to do sticker projects, "play" cards, or join in on their make believe adventures.

He knows the colors in the rainbow and has us read Freight Train to him several times a day. We play a game where he sits on my lap and he tells me to buckle him up and I clap my fingers around his stomach like a seat belt and then we chugga, chugga, chugga, choo choo endlessly.

Ash has been a Daddy's-boy for a solid month now. Probably because Trent's way more lenient with disciplining Asher these days. Lucky baby. I actually set up the pack-n-play a couple of days ago on the main level so that I can more easily put him in time out without having to walk up the stairs to plop him in his crib.

See this face? He was about to throw that giant panda at me. Yup, bring on the terrible two's, I'm ready...

Ten, Nine, Eight

2012-01-06T18:47:00.003-05:00

I guess I was assuming that I was going to have a mini New Year's eve party with the kids when I scheduled this week's theme of counting, but I didn't.

Another parental fail is that as try as I might, I cannot help but compare my kids to each other!! So, Juliet was able to count by 19 months old and therefore the Tiger Mom in me starts to panic and feel the need push Asher to come up to speed, he is nearly 22 months after all. Never mind that he's a boy and the third child... excuses!

Anyway, we worked on counting forward and backwards this week.

We read the following:

Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang
1 Hunter by Pat Hutchins (if you have a boy that loves guns, this is a great book)
One is A Drummer by Roseanne Thong
Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews
Who's Counting by Nancy Tafuri
1 2 3 A Child's First Counting Book by Alison Jay
Anno's Counting Book by Mitsumasa Anno

We did the following:

Made our OWN counting books with stickers.
Watched 10 in the bed and then acted it out.
Watched 5 little Monkeys and then did NOT act it out.
Sang the Numbers Song and the Big Numbers Song
Played Chutes & Ladders, War, Skip-Bo

PS. Isaac hates "happy new year" because that's when we got rid of all the candy in the house and put an end to TV watching (temporarily).

We Miss You Already

2012-01-03T19:01:00.005-05:00

Memaw and Papaw left for the airport about 30 minutes ago and the kids are still crying their eyeballs out because they are so sad. Isaac keeps crying "I just miss Memaw & Papaw" and Juliet is crying, "It's not the same without them here!" It's true, it's not the same because when they are here, they play with the kids from the moment they wake up in the morning (early!) until they go to bed at night.

They do crafts, bake, go on walks (to the Diary Queen), and play, play, play, all day.

This lets Trent and me get caught up on our to-do lists and spend time with each other. They were here for 9 days and it flew by really fast. We miss you guys already, it was a great visit!

A Tuesday Tip

2012-01-03T13:25:00.004-05:00

I can't commit to sharing a tip every Tuesday, but I thought it would be fun to do occasionally. This is one of my favorites because I do almost all of my non-grocery shopping online. It's called The InvisibleHand. And basically, after you download it, it runs on your computer and monitors the price of the thing that you want to buy and then it tells you if it's cheaper somewhere else!

It's great for those of you that shop on Amazon and think that they have the lowest prices. This is not always the case!

Do you have any online-shopping-money-saving-tips? Please share!

Happy New Year 2012

2012-01-01T10:01:00.015-05:00

Last year I had predicted that 2011 was going to be rocky. It was. It could have been the power of negative thinking at work or maybe I was just psychic. Either way, I'm happy it's over. Well, I guess it wasn't all bad, but here's the recap from my perspective with no sugar coating.

I felt what it is like to be a single mom. - Trent went on his first work trip to Riga, Latvia at the end of January and I held the fort down at home with the three kiddos for two weeks. You can read about how I dealt with the pukies and potty training, and how I learned that I could enjoy being the sole caregiver to the kids and not lose my mind. But, what you didn't read about are the details of the first major argument that Trent and I ever had. In an attempt to be honest, but to air as little of of our dirty laundry as possible, I will simply say that it was eye opening to see the morally corrupt side of the Foreign Service, the side that I was completely (stupidly) naive to. My friend, Jill speaks about it more candidly on her blog. As you can imagine, this battle wound of an argument (no, he did not cheat) affirmed that 2011 was going to be a doozy of a year-- I was angry at him until the end of October.

This was also the year that we celebrated out 5th wedding anniversary. Initially, I had high hopes of going on a fabulous vacation, but when the time came, we had spent our anniversary fund on more important things, like surviving in DC on one income, and who in their right mind would want to watch three kids ages 4 and under for us? We did get out for a nice dinner though.

We celebrated Asher's 1st birthday, and painfully dealt with his feeding disorder (which is resolved now!)

Trent and I had another big argument in the late spring. I was feeling under appreciated by him and desperately missed having local friends to hang out with. I was also battling the loneliness of being a stay at home mom, but couldn't bare the idea of going back to work and putting the kids in someone else care. My emotions were so high that I grabbed the keys and stormed out of the house only to find myself sitting in the car and realizing that I didn't have anywhere to escape to! It was nine o'clock at night and I had no where to go but back inside the townhouse. It was then that I decided that I would take the kids to Salt Lake City for the summer. I'm so glad that I did, it was key in helping me keep my sanity. And, it was just like the old days of summer where I could spend long days and nights with my friends (oh, and all of our kids!)

Speaking of kids, in my 5 years of blogging about our family, I have never received so many emails and phone calls from a post like I did from the one about Isaac and the possum tail so I have included the link here for your enjoyment and to lighten the mood a little bit.

Trent's commitment to running the Marine Crop Marathon about put me over the edge. I think I complained about his running schedule to my friends for the entire 9 month training period. Looking back, I wish that I would have been encouraging and supportive for him, but instead I felt put out from the extra kid-duty (if they were awake) or lonely if they were asleep. I can't explain why, but when I met up with Trent after the race, in an instant, all of the anger that I held towards him just disappeared. It felt so great to be rid of those toxic emotions. Luckily for him, I was still on that love-high when he consulted with me about running a second marathon two weeks later.

But wait. 2011 wasn't through with me yet. We still had November and December to get through, but I was feeling pretty good. We were getting more and more excited about the fact that our next post will be in Moscow, Russia and I was in blissful holiday mode with the kids. Thanksgiving weekend... I was so looking forward to having both of my brothers in town and being able to get to know their fiances better. On the last night though, Trent stayed up way too late and had way too much to drink. To say that it was vomit central here from 3-5 am would be putting it nicely. To say that he is nice when he drinks that much would be a lie. I was livid for 3 straight days. I am thankful though, that I am in a marriage where we are committed to finding solutions and to making marriage worth it.

This was a year that I could not have survived without the help from my dearest friends: Chele, Shani, Yen, and Kel. They absolutely were the greatest cheerleaders when I needed them the most and were willing to let me vent and then offered me support so that I could make good decisions even through my anger. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you ladies. xoxo

I'm actually so grateful for all of my friends. By far, my favorite memories from last year are the visits with the Kelty's (in DC and at the beach), the Pierce's (also in DC and at the beach), the Chafin's, and everyone that I got to hang out with back home.

I did close out 2011 on a high note with being able to spend quality time with my family at Ben and Farrah's Vegas wedding. I have a happy heart from the closeness that I feel when I'm with my brothers and I love watching our children create special sibling memories of their own.

Now, we usually like to take pictures of where each family member is at the stroke of midnight on the new year, but I'm slightly embarrassed to say that last night I fell asleep just after 10:30...

However, I did snap some pictures of the kids while they were asleep a couple of night ago because I thought they looked so cute.

I'm really looking forward to what 2012 has to offer. I think it's going to be a pretty good year. Here are our resolutions:

Alix: To be honest and vocal about what's on my mind (see, I'm already off to a good start!), to learn conversational Russian, to curl my hair daily, and to make my kids laugh every single day.

Trent: To learn Russian, to do 200 sit ups and 100 push ups, reduce carbs to one meal a day, eliminate candy/desserts 6 days a week, and to put his wife first.

Happy New Year everyone!

Our Next Post

2011-12-27T09:16:00.006-05:00

Remember WAY back in September when we submitted our bid list? Well, it turned out that we did find out where his next assignment will be, but we didn't want to post it on the blog until it was official and apparently it takes forever for that process to be completed.

We got really lucky, Trent was the only person in his group to get an overseas assignment! (This will embarrass Trent, but he earned the highest test scores out of everyone in his group, so I think he deserved to be chosen!)

We leave sometime late this summer and I'm so glad that we have a good chunk of time to research and prepare for our two years living in Moscow, Russia!

To say that I was in shock when I first found out about our next location would be a total understatement. Remember, we ranked Moscow number 7 of 12... But now that I've had a good three months to learn more about Russia, I'm getting really excited!

I've read a couple of Russian historical fiction novels:
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander

And now I'm in the process of making a list of the warm winter clothes that we'll need...

Merry Christmas

2011-12-26T21:11:00.003-05:00

The day after we returned from Ben's wedding week-o-fun, Trent's parents came into town. So, we decided to push Christmas back a day and celebrated this morning instead. It was a Christmas miracle-- due to the two hour time difference, the kids slept in until just past 7am!

Juliet got a Hello Kitty doll, beads, art supplies, games...
Isaac got a Nerf gun, shoes, puzzles, games...
Asher got some new diggers, a dragon pillow pet, books, games...

Tonight we ate an early dinner and then headed over to the Gaylord Nation Hotel to check out the lights and then stopped at Baskin Robbins on the way home. The kids didn't get to bed until 9pm, maybe they'll "sleep in" again tomorrow.

Non Wedding Related Fun

2011-12-24T21:23:00.006-05:00

We had a good chunk of time to kill in the morning we left Vegas for Salt Lake City so we took the kids to M&M World and to the Coca-Cola Store.

Asher has four teeth coming in and has the awful cold that Trent and I dealt with the week before so needless to say, he was quite the pill this trip and would rarely agree to any photo ops. In fact, he would rarely agree to anything and yelled "no!" almost the entire trip, which was spent in Trent's arms.

The big kids and a great time hamming it up with the giant polar bear though!

We tried the Around the World tray, which is 16 shots of different coke flavors for $7. Oh my gosh, we felt so sick afterwards from all of the sugar. It was a lot of fun though.

Apparently, it is very normal to see all sorts of characters along the Strip and if you give them a "tip" they will pose for a picture. How could we deny Juliet the chance the talk to Hello Kitty?

Isaac wanted to get his picture taken with a character too, so we thought he would like this Transformer. He did, but was afraid to approach it without Juliet going with him. But, once he got to hold the gun, he was all good.

Like I mentioned earlier, Asher was not in the mood for pictures during our little walk, but it worked out fine because I was able to snap a shot of him and my mom in their matching shirts.

Isaac ended up in our bed on the last night. He often gets leg cramps in the middle of the night and cries for us to rub his legs for him. This was one of those nights. See his foot where I am supposed to be sleeping?

The kids love being at Grandma and Grandpa's house and were so dissapointed that we couldn't stay longer than our 40 hour trip this time around. Even in that short period, they still managed to get spoiled rotten with stockings filled with candy and silly toys. Oh, and of course my dad teased them to tears.
I got teary at the airport because it seems so backwards to LEAVE home for Christmas. It was such a fun week with my family and I wish we all lived closer to each other or at least could see each other more often.

The Second Reception

2011-12-23T22:53:00.001-05:00

After spending three quick days in Vegas, we flew to Salt Lake City so that we could attend a second wedding reception, Chinese style.

My cousins, Bethany and Sarah, greeted people as they came in.

Like I said in an earlier post, our kids were waking up between 3-5am every morning and nap times were usually cut short so by 7pm on the 5th day, they were in total melt down mode. After the first course, Juliet and Isaac were begging to sleep on the stage so Trent ended up taking them all home in the middle of dinner.

My parents

Our ENTIRE family (it's been at least 5 years) together.

Just us kids

Juliet loves "Auntie Kimmy" and rarely lets her out of her sight.

These are my other "aunts and uncles", not by blood, but they are my parents' best friends and the people we saw most often when we were growing up.

Aunt Becky and Uncle Don (my mom's sister)

Family friend, Ruby with her boyfriend.

Ben's best childhood friend, Ishmael and his wife.

Our neighbors from when we were kids. Autumn used to be my babysitter and Ken would drive me and my Yeh Yeh (grandpa) to the store when he became too old to walk that far.

The food at The New Golden Dragon restaurant was delicious and it was a beautiful night!

Ben's Wedding Day

2011-12-21T23:07:00.011-05:00

The wedding took place at 2:00pm in the chapel at Mandalay Bay and everything went perfectly!

Family photo

My youngest brother, David, and his fiance, Kimmy.

Asher

Juliet and Isaac

The kids with my parents

Isaac and Asher, getting ready to walk down the isle as ring bearers. This picture was taken two seconds before Asher whipped his hand out of Isaac's grasp, yelled "no!" and turned around and walked back out the doors.
Isn't it every four year old girl's dream to be a flower girl? Juliet was beyond excited and took her job very seriously.

Family photo with the happy couple

It was a small, intimate wedding. Just family and a couple of friends came to see Ben and Farrah exchange wedding vows.

And now, I would like to present Mr. and Mrs. Ben and Farrah Lee!

Farrah's parents: Tim and Donna

My dad's side of the family: Uncle Kc, Aunt Glender, and Aunt Jessica and their families.

Cousins: Tiffany, Timothy, and Immanuel.

Other cousins: Daniel (with wife Mary) and Jeremy (with girlfriend, Amanda).

Sisters!! So technically, Kimmy isn't my sister yet, but I'm impatient.

My parents and brothers.

My dad entertaining Asher.

This was the first time in over 10 years that my dad's side of the family has all been together and I really enjoyed having so much family around for a couple of days.

Pre Wedding Parties

2011-12-20T23:51:00.001-05:00

We spent last week in Las Vegas celebrating the wedding of my brother, Ben, and his gorgeous bride, Farrah.

First, I hosted a brunch for Farrah at the Bellagio Hotel,

while Trent took the kids to the Shark Aquarium.

Then we switched and I was on kid-duty and Trent went out with the guys for a while.

After that, my mom took over with the kids so the girls and guys could all meet back up and hit another buffet, watch the fountain show in front of the Bellagio, and then gamble at the New York, New York casino.

It was so fun to hang out with my brothers and their girls, even if we crashed early. The three hour time difference was a constant battle, especially when our kids were wide awake for the day at 3am.

43 Months Old

2011-12-19T15:48:00.003-05:00

I'm telling you that since Trent had his little talk with Isaac last month, this guy has been nothing but sweet, sweet, sweet (mostly). Wait, I remember now, that Trent actually had to have another talk with Isaac about not using his "mommy and daddy words", but after his potty mouth was cured, he has been great!

Lately he tells me, no joke, about 50 times a day that he "wuvs" me and that I am the best mom in the whole world. He has told me this since he could talk, but sometimes he tells me this much more often than others, I love it.

His afternoon nap is only about 45-60 minutes, but if he misses it, it's a really tough afternoon so I know that he's not ready to drop it yet. When he wakes up and I ask him how his nap was he always responds, "Great."

He works really hard to keep his temper under control and to use his words when he's mad. It's a work in progress, but I've seen significant improvement.

He loves to watch Voltron and Dragon Tales and play games like Fruit Ninja on the iPad.

We are working on Isaac's handwriting and counting to 20. He's a smart guy, but doesn't like to have to "prove" himself to me.

Theodor Geisel

2011-12-16T17:50:00.002-05:00

Or, better known as Dr. Seuss! This was such a fun theme for the week, I think I enjoyed it as much as the kids did.

We read:

Dr. Seuss by Dana Rau
The Cat in the Hat
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
If I Ran the Zoo
Horton Hears A Who!
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Green Eggs and Ham
Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!
Fox in Socks
Oh Say Can You Say?
My Many Colored Days
How Are You Peeling? Foods With Moods by Saxton Freymann

We did the following:

Wrote and illustrated our own Dr. Seuss type books (lots and lots of rhyming practice!)
Watched Horton Hears A Who
Sorted gummy fish into color groups and discussed the concepts of most, least, same.
Played What's in the Cat's Hat?
Played Cat in the Hat I Can Do That Game
Put together a Dr. Seuss floor puzzle

We ate:
Green eggs (no ham).

Cookie Exchange

2011-12-13T21:42:00.001-05:00

Last Christmas we had lived in DC less than three months and I didn't have enough friends to have a cookie exchange. So sad, because I do love cookies. But this year, my friend Aimee hosted an awesome exchange at her place, which is just a few doors down from me so it was also very convenient!

Our family ate almost all of them in one day. Delicious!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

2011-12-11T20:51:00.008-05:00

We went to breakfast with Santa again this weekend and had a great time. Well, all but the littlest Bryant did anyway...

The kids were pretty patient waiting for Santa to arrive.

They were first in line and didn't even complain (much) when two little boys cut in front of them to sit on Santa's lap. Juliet brought her list with her.

(Santa, rabbit, art, scissors)

Isaac asked for a Nerf gun-- it's pretty much all he can think about these days.

And Asher, well, maybe next year.

After nap time, we went over to "little Sophia's" house for a sugar cookie decorating party. It was such a fun idea and we had a great time.

Asher was all smiles again and ready to eat cookies.

I told Isaac that there was going to be a cookie decorating contest and he got very concerned about who was going to win. Before we arrived, he told me about a great idea that he came up with-- he would judge the contest and declare himself the winner. Hmmm.

Several of Juliet's cookies were quite the work of art, but I won't complain because she did choose me as the winner of the cookie-stocking decorating contest. (That's my sweet girl!)

Community Workers

2011-12-09T12:45:00.006-05:00

Our homeschool theme this week was community workers so we talked about all the different kinds of jobs that people can have. Isaac wants to work as a scuba diver, fireman, and fisherman. Juliet wants to be a mama to five kids and an artist. Asher is fascinated by the construction workers. I've been thinking about going back to work too. I need a break from these three little ones, but not sure about what kind of part time work is out there...

We read:

Helpers in My Community by Bobbie Kalman
Career Day by Anne Rockwell
When I Grow Up by (Weird) Al Yankovic
DK Jobs People Do

We watched:

Sesame Street-- People In Your Neighborhood

We had fun playing dress up. Well, Isaac did. Juliet was too busy drawing.

58 Months Old

2011-12-08T19:55:00.000-05:00

Juliet is certain that she is going to be a "Mama Artist with 5 kids." One day she asked me if I thought she could handle five kids and I told her that it wouldn't surprise me at all if she did. She is such a little mother to her brothers and even her friends, it's sweet.

We've been working on counting and she can count to 100 and count backwards from 20. We are still plugging away at her reading lessons, but when the two of us have a few minutes to ourselves, we'd rather do something else. Anyway, we are on lesson 84 and I'm hoping we can finish by the new year.

She is fascinated with earning money and in the last week, she has earned a dollar almost every day (that's 10 chores a day!) She likes to spend her money on notepads and lip gloss from the Target dollar bins.

21 Months Old

2011-12-07T19:41:00.002-05:00

Oh, Asher has become quite a handful recently. He is having trouble sharing and taking turns with his siblings, but the good news is, at least he is willing to play with then now. He is always begging us to read books to him and is so desperate that he'll finally let Juliet or Isaac read them to him! I don't remember the other two enjoying books as much as Asher does.

If he's not being read to, his other favorite past time is running away from me. Especially if I want to change his diaper or if we are going near the street. Some days I feel like I am chasing him non stop. When I finally catch up to him and scoop him up, he'll flash a devilish smile and say "Fun? Fun?" No, it's not much fun for me...

His speech therapist has cut Asher's sessions down from every week to twice a month. She says he is supposed to be using two words together much more than he does. If I hadn't already gone through all this with Isaac I would be much more worried about Ash than I am. I know that soon he'll be saying all sorts of naughty words and calling me ugly, just like his big brother!

Tis the Season

2011-12-04T20:31:00.002-05:00

It's only the first week of December and we've already watched so many holiday movies! Frosty, Rudolph, the Grinch, the Muppets, Mickey!! We are all pretty excited for Christmas around here.

Last night I told Juliet that I was going to take her to see The Nutcracker. I thought that she would be so excited to watch a ballet and spend time with me. Instead, she asked if she could perform and when I told her "no", she burst into tears. She cried off and on for about 30 minutes complaining that she wanted to perform on stage.

We went to an abbreviated performance (45 minutes) aimed at preschoolers and we both enjoyed watching from front and center seats. When it was over, she agreed with me that she probably would've needed to practice more before performing in front of everyone.

This afternoon, we went over to our neighbor's house so the kids to decorate their gingerbread houses. Aimee is so smart and used her hot glue-gun on them so we didn't have to worry about them falling apart.
Juliet's finished cottage.
Isaac's finished cottage.
Asher after finishing off three pieces of cheese pizza and a sugar cookie or two.

This time of year is so much fun with kids!!

Pandas

2011-12-02T09:17:00.008-05:00

I have to admit, I'm feeling a bit of homeschooling burn out. I read that this might happen, but I wasn't expecting it to happen before the new year...

Anyhoo, we have a love for panda bears in this household so this week we studied them a bit more.

We read:

DK Watch Me Grow Panda by Fleur Star
Little Panda by Renata Liwska
Little Panda by Joanne Ryder
Pandas by Anne Schreiber
A Panda's World by Caroline Arnold

We did the following:

Cut and pasted a panda collage.
Drew a picture of a panda.
Painted panda pictures with glue and colored sand.
Gave all of our pandas check ups.
Worked on young, younger, youngest and old, older, oldest.
Watched YouTube videos of a baby sneezing panda, baby pandas playing, a panda doing somersaults .
Practiced our own somersaults.

Thanksgiving Weekend

2011-11-27T11:08:00.001-05:00

We had two Thanksgiving dinners this weekend. The first one was at our place with Ben and my future sister-in-law, Farrah, her parents and my Uncle KC's family. I ordered the turkey and several side dishes from Costco, but made the rolls, sweet potato casserole, and a corn salad. Even this little bit of cooking made me frazzled and I didn't get any pictures taken from that night.

On Saturday, David and Kimmy came into town from Philly and we all went over to Uncle KC's house for our second Thanksgiving dinner. The kids LOVED having so many uncles around to play with!

My cousin, Immanuel, is a really fun uncle to the kids. The kind that gets them all rowdy and hyper-- they love him! Here he is letting Asher play with his phone.

Here's an attempt at a picture of the entire group.

We also got out the Christmas tree and let the kids hang the ornaments. If you look closely, you may be able to spot our scout elf, who the kids named Prancer again this year.

I'm not kidding when I say that the kids wore their Santa clothes all weekend long... click here to compare from two years ago.

I'm so thankful that I was able to spend time with my little brothers. Now that we are grown up, we don't get to see each other very often but I always look forward to getting together with them.

42 Months Old

2011-11-19T21:22:00.000-05:00

If I had to write this post two weeks earlier, it would have had a completely different tone. Let's face it, this little guy is challenging and we have conflicting personalities, but Trent had a man-to-man with him (as a result of a mega break down from me) and life has been MUCH better ever since. Isaac puts on his Spiderman costume every day. He's already planned out that for his 4th birthday (in May), he wants a Spiderman birthday party, then a Superman birthday party when he turns 5, followed by a Batman 6th birthday party. Apparently, the one trait we do have in common is a love for planning... ha ha.

He's still mostly sweet with Asher and will try to read him books or play cars and of course fight with swords together. I think that he and Juliet are going to be lifelong frenemies because there is no one that he adores more, but he is so competitive with her!

I can count on him coming into our bed around 2am at least once a week since we started reading Halloween stories to him. He either has a bad dream or his legs hurt him and so he ends up cuddled next to me.

He told me (while eating a piece of pumpkin pie) that he likes Costco's apple pie much better because it didn't have any apples in it.

Isaac is finally learning how to get his mega temper under control and using his words, ("ugly Mama!" "baby-brain!") instead.

Native American Culture

2011-11-19T18:38:00.006-05:00

We kicked off learning about Native American culture by going to a production of The Rough-Faced Girl at the Synetic Family Theater. The kids actually really enjoyed the play even though we ran into a couple of misunderstandings... First, and I guess this one is my fault, I didn't realize that the play would be presented in pantomime, that is, no speaking. As a result, I was whispering the story line to the kids throughout the play. Fine, until the part where I'm explaining that the sister is protecting her brother from all the village girls that want to marry him-- Juliet asks, "Why? Does she want to marry him?" and I say, "no, that is his sister." And she continues, "I know, so she wants to marry him, right?" I guess it's time we have that talk at our house about how brothers and sisters don't marry each other. This is particularly funny to me, because just that morning Juliet and Isaac were dressed up as Belle and Spiderman and they had invited me to their 9 o'clock wedding.

We read:

Good Hunting, Blue Sky by Peggy Parish
The Gift of the Sacred Dog by Paul Goble
Dream Wolf by Paul Goble
The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses by Paul Goble
The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola
The Legend of Bluebonnet by Tomie dePaola
Raven by Gerald McDermott

We looked at the pictures from:

Totem Pole by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
Powwow by George Ancona
North American Indian by David Murdoch

We did the following:

Created our own totem poles

Made beef jerky
Painted buffalo pictures with water colors

Watched Disney's version of Pocahontas
Practiced our skipping (step-hop, step-hop, step-hop! knees-go-up, knees-go-up!) during our own powwow.

The kids loved this unit and asked me several times if they could meet a "real" American Indian and go to a real powwow. So, Trent and I took them to the National Museum of the America n Indian!

Another Marathon

2011-11-13T12:05:00.002-05:00

It's no secret that I have been complaining about Trent's running schedule for the past year because let's be honest, I do not exercise. But, when he asked me if I was on board with his new year's marathon resolution, I agreed, because I simply did not know what I was getting myself into!

However, when he told me on Tuesday that he wanted to run another marathon on Saturday, I was his biggest supporter! This is because I know my husband pretty well, and knew that he would be determined to beat his time of 4:26... and if he didn't run this race, well, he'd have to keep training for another one...

Good thing Richmond's marathon was only a couple of hours away. We all drove down on Friday afternoon to pick up Trent's race packet and to check into the Omni Richmond Hotel. It was a really nice place and somehow we got upgraded to a penthouse suite for free!

It felt great to get away, even if it was just for 24 hours and it reminded me of when we lived in Salt Lake City and spent a weekend with the kids in Park City. Good family fun!

Speaking of family fun, this race was really family friendly and it helped that our hotel was at the start/finish line. Trent walked out the door at 7:30am for his 8am race start time.

We didn't get to cheer him on along the route, but we waited for him at the finish line and Juliet held up a sign she made.

Trent finished at 4:19:38 and swears that he's done running. I hope so. I heard that your body needs 26 days to recover from running a marathon so who knows how long his body will need to recover from running two marathons 13 days apart!

Happy Veterans Day!

2011-11-11T11:28:00.000-05:00

This week we learned about the heroes that have fought for our country. This was a tricky subject to teach to kids so young because they had so many questions about war and death.

We read:
The Wall by Eve Bunting
Quiet Hero by S.D. Nelson

I got choked up every time we read The Wall, but it is a really neat story that I highly recommend. Quiet Hero was too advanced for preschoolers, but I summarized it for them and we enjoyed looking at the pictures of the men and women in uniform and at war.

I tried to take the kids to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but traffic was horrible, even at 9am and then we couldn't find parking. So, after being in the car for close to an hour and a half, we called it quits and went home.

We made 8 hand print flags as Veterans Day cards and mailed them to friends and relatives.

We also played Dodge the Bombs (dodge ball) that the kids made up. As I write this, it doesn't sound like a very appropriate game to play, but at the time, it seemed harmless and the kids enjoyed wearing army paraphernalia and burning off some energy.

57 Months Old

2011-11-08T11:59:00.002-05:00

I'm in panic attack mode because I'm realizing the Juliet only has three more months before she is a 5 year old. How can this be?

Her speech is pretty advanced for her age so it cracks me up when she uses words in the wrong context like, "I don't know why I'm still hungry, I ate a whole flop of pancakes this morning for breakfast!"

She enjoys listening to Ivy + Bean on CD during nap time/quiet time or playing games on the iPad. She goes through more pieces of paper than I'd like her to for her drawings and other art projects, but it makes her happy...

Another small thing that makes her deliriously happy is fresh strawberries. I try to pick some up for her every now and then because she loves them so much and would eat them all in one sitting if I'd let her!

20 Months Old

2011-11-07T08:43:00.004-05:00

Oh, this probably a favorite age of mine with the little ones. Asher is learning to do and say so much and has the sweetest little voice ever!

He finagled his way into our bed for a few nights at the beginning of the month and then by the 4th night, he was pretty sure that our bed was going to be his new sleeping spot. It took two nights of crying it out, but eventually he got set straight again.

His hair was getting too long and Juliet and I would sweep over his bangs and put barrettes in and laugh. I wish I would have got out one of her little dresses to put him in too. Soon, he won't have any of this nonsense, I know!

He actually enjoyed his haircut this time and now he's back to being all boy again.

Which means, he loves to play fight! We've been working on counting and colors. So far, everything is "two" or "green."

Asher loves to sit in our laps and have us read books to him. Favorites are a book about trucks, a book about numbers, Mr. Brown Can Moo, and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb.

British Soccer

2011-11-06T15:05:00.005-05:00

Juliet, Isaac, and their friend "little Sophia" just finished up an 8 week course in British soccer for 3 and 4 year olds. The classes were indoors, which actually turned out to be great because it's been cold in Virginia for a several weeks.

The kids learned basic soccer skills through creative games that their coaches came up with. A favorite was "sleeping dragon" where the dragon (coach) pretended to be asleep at one side of the gym and the kids had to slowly kick their soccer balls towards him from the opposite side, grab a jersey, and then make their way back to where they started. Every time the dragon woke up, the kids had to stop their ball with their foot.

Sometimes Isaac was too afraid to play the games, which truthfully, was annoying to me, because although coach was calling himself a dragon or fox or what have you, it was still obviously Coach! What's so scary about that?

At least the kids got to practice their listening skills from someone other than us! Oh, and their soccer skills aren't too bad either.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

2011-11-04T12:45:00.002-04:00

This week's theme was The Three Billy Goats Gruff and I made some changes to my teaching approach with the kids... I was not feeling that well at the beginning of the week and just didn't have the energy to do much. So, I let the kids (no pun intended!) do most of the work.

Each day, we read a different version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff:

by Janet Stevens
by Paul Galdone
by Glen Rounds
by P.C. Asbjornsen

The kids loved comparing the different illustrations of the trolls and the goats. They also made our books and drew our own illustrations.

We tried to make our own set of horns so that we could act out the story using cushions, slides, and chairs, as the bridge.

Asher learned about the concepts of small, medium, and large & big and little. I worked on math story problems with the big kids like, "If there are four billy goats on a bridge and two trolls join them, how many creatures are on the bridge?"

This morning I took the kids to the Glen Echo Puppet Theater so they could watch their version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Apparently, four other preschools had the same idea as I did so it was crowded with kids! As much as I hate crowds, it turned out to be a blessing because I got to see first hand some pretty naughty three and four year olds, which made my little monsters seem very normal, and actually, pretty well behaved!

Here they are posing with the puppet master and Juliet is holding the littlest billy goat Gruff.

Snip, snap, snout. This tale's told out!

2011 Marine Corps Marathon

2011-11-01T21:25:00.001-04:00

I first want to say a big thank you to my wife for putting up with my "addiction" the past 10+ months. I don't think either one of us realized how much time and effort goes into training for a marathon.

I started training around January 2011 for my goal to run the 2011 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC. I set a goal of completing the marathon in 4 hours (9 minute 10 second pace for 26.2 miles). However, at the time I could barely complete 3 miles in 30 minutes.

I created a training program for myself and for the next 41 weeks I prepared for October 30, 2011. My training went well and I rarely missed a day of running that I had scheduled. Towards the end of my training I had completed a 18 mile run at a 9:00 minute pace and a 22 mile run at a 9:12 minute pace. Both of those runs felt like I was only running about 80% of my potential so I felt pretty good about the marathon pace goal I had set way back in January.

About 10 days before the marathon the bottom of my right foot started giving me some issues. I self diagnosed it as plantar fasciitis. I iced it every morning and night and didn't run on it for about 3 days. About 4 days out from the race my foot felt pretty good and I was confident that it wouldn't affect my race.

However, about the same time my foot started feeling better my throat started getting sore...really sore. Three days from the marathon and it hurt to swallow a drink of water. I didn't know what to do. I took it easy on Friday and Saturday before the race and went to bed early and just hoped for the best.

Snow in DC on Saturday October 29...one day before the race!

Sunday October 30, 2011 arrived and I was ready to run no matter what. I woke up at 5:00 AM to eat my pre-race breakfast of oatmeal with brown sugar and a cinnamon-raisin bagel. I had my clothes all laid out and I started to get dressed for the big day. My throat felt OK and my foot felt great. We left the house at 6:25 AM for Alix to drop me off at the metro station so I could arrive at the start line by 7:00 AM. The race started at 8:00 AM.

The start line was crazy. So many people, so much excitement, so freaking cold! It was 34 degrees and I could barely feel my feet by the time the race started. Right before the race started they had 2 V-22 Osprey fly overhead which was just awesome.

This is already a long post so I will give a quick run down of the race. I started the race right on target hitting the pace that I wanted (around 9:10 minute mile pace). I held that pace for the first 13 miles and crossed the halfway point right on target at 1 Hour, 59 minutes, 23 seconds. However, by mile 15 I could tell that I was in trouble...big trouble. I had felt like this once before in a training run. Looking back on it, I can see that the cold I had caught right before the race had really taken a toll on my energy levels. My last 2 or 3 short runs before the race (like 2 or 3 miles) left my legs tired which wasn't normal. Anyway at mile 16 or so my friend Rich jumped in and ran the last 10 miles with me. We had planned this before the race started and he really helped me get through the race.

By about mile 20, I ended up running/walking. I would try to run for 2 minutes then walk for 2 minutes. I was very pissed off at this point because I knew I wasn't going to reach my goal of 4 hours and I knew from my previous training runs that I could do better. Actually even as I write this I am still mad at myself. I think I could have pushed myself a little bit harder during the end but I don't know how much it would have helped. I ended up finishing with a time of 4 Hours and 26 minutes (see very bottom for all the stats).

As I was saying all sorts of nasty things to Rich during the last 6 miles he kept telling me that I will want to do another. I said hell no, no way, never in my life, etc. However, Monday on my way home from work I was thinking about the race and deep down, for some reason, I want to run another...

Duck tape is an awesome way to prevent bloody nipples! It doesn't hurt that bad taking it off either.

The kids were super excited to go see me race!

Ready to rock 'n roll!

Rich and Holly helping Alix out with the kids.

At this point I was already in pain and I was trying to be tough for the kids!

If I would have seen Rich smiling like this I would have punched him in the face. Just kidding Rich, thanks for helping me run those last 10 miles!

TRENT BRYANT #8412

ALEXANDRIA, VA, USA

Age: 34 Gender: M

Distance	MAR
Clock Time	4:31:03
Chip Time	4:26:00
Overall Place	8448 / 20991
Gender Place	5927 / 12409
Division Place	912 / 1820
Age Grade	47%
5K	0:28:39
10K	0:56:30
15K	1:24:38
20K	1:53:03
Half	1:59:23
25K	2:22:05
30K	2:52:41
35K	3:28:33
40K	4:09:07
Pace	10:09

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T13:37:00.010-04:00

I feel like we have been celebrating Halloween non-stop for a week now, but this weekend we went into Halloween overdrive! I dressed the kids up as the characters from The Muppet Show! For the longest time, the kids have called Kermit, "Hermie" and I won't let anyone correct them because I think it is so cute.

We went to Air & Scare at the National Air and Space Museum for trick or treating and Halloween crafts. As we were driving out, it started to snow! We still managed to arrive about 15 minutes early and were able to check out some of the cool airplane exhibits. (Asher was beside himself with excitement!)

I organized a neighborhood party for the kids...

Isaac was sort of mad that the other boys got to be a cop and ninja, but as soon as he brought his sword out, he was fine. Hermie, the fighting frog?

We were planning to take the kids over to Oakwood for more trick or treating with the Foreign Service crew, but Trent, Asher, and I don't feel that well so we just let the kids eat as much candy as they wanted to after dinner tonight and called it good.

As a self proclaimed candy connoisseur, it was pretty fun to watch the kids' first experience with Nerds, Pixie Sticks, Fun Dip, and Junior Mints.

Halloween

2011-10-28T17:53:00.003-04:00

Our theme this week was Halloween! The big kids have been asking me every day this month if it's the night for trick or treating yet... I showed them how to make a paper chain to count down the days, and that helped, some.

We read (over the course of the month, not just this week):

Halloween by Jerry Seinfeld
T. Rex Trick or Treats by Lois Grambling
The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree
The Berenstain Bears Bears in the Night
A Very Brave Witch by Alison McGhee
Where is Baby's Pumpkin? by Karen Katz
Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman
Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet by Diane de Groat
The Halloween House by Erica Silverman
Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson
Fancy Nancy Halloween or Bust by Jane O'Connor
The Ugly Pumpkin by Dave Horowitz
Franklin's Halloween by Paulette Bourgeois
Skeleton Hiccups by Margery Cuyler
Froggy's Halloween by Jonathan London
Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper
Little Goblins Ten by Pamela Jane
Happy Haunting Amelia Bedelia by Herman Parish

We did the following:

Halloween pasting project (why won't this picture upload correctly?)

Ghost feet

Made Gak. Juliet and Isaac played with this for over an hour and look at how much they were enjoying themselves. Asher touched it, but then he didn't want anything to do with it.

Went to a pumpkin patch, twice. The first time, we tried to go to Burke's Pumpkin Playground, but it started raining about 5 minutes after we arrived and they closed everything down. The kids were really disappointed and Isaac declared that he "hates the weatherman!" (better his fault than mine, right?) Today was a gorgeous day though so since we were out and about early, we stopped at this church selling pumpkins and I let the kids pick out their own.

Then we went home and decorated them with stickers.

Juliet is cutting out hair to tape onto her pumpkin.

And we carved a jack 'o lantern. Juliet was the only one brave enough to pull out pumpkin guts with me. Isaac said it was too creepy and Asher was only willing to put his hand inside the pumpkin if I let him use a spoon.

When we lit up the pumpkin, someone started singing "happy birthday dear pumpkin head" so then I had to re-light the pumpkin again and again so that each kid could have their own turn to blow out the candles. Strange.

We ate:

Sugary cereals

Banana ghosts

Grilled pumpkin sandwiches with apple-marshmallow teeth
Jack 'o lantern-face pancake (free!) from IHOP.

Tonight is our family movie night and we're going to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. We've also been watching:

Casper the Friendly Ghost
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Trick or Treason
Barney: Halloween Party
Scooby Doo! Camp Scare
National Geographic: Creepy Creatures

Stay tuned for more Halloween fun, we still have three trick or treating events and a neighborhood party!

Fall Leaves

2011-10-21T17:31:00.001-04:00

This week we focused on the changing leaves and talked about fall time. By the end of the week, Isaac asked if we could always use the word "fall" instead of "autumn" in our family from now on. Sure.

We sang a leaf song to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star:

Crinkle crinkle little leaves
Falling falling from the trees
Red and orange
Yellow and brown
Falling falling to the ground
Crinkle crinkle little leaves
Falling falling from the trees

We read:

Why Do Leaves Change Color? by Betsy Maestro
Autumn Across America by Seymour Simon
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves by Lucille Colandro
Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert

We did the following:

Gathered leaves and then sorted them into piles by color (red, orange, yellow, brown, green)

Made leaf rubbings

This time it was Isaac's turn to get hurt. He got overly excited about collecting fall leaves and tripped, while running, and skinned his side.

Made our own fall tress by gluing leaves onto paper

Created leaf people

Overheard...

2011-10-21T15:00:00.001-04:00

Juliet: Why would Popeye want to live in a garbage can?
Isaac: That's probably where he can find the most spinach because everyone throws it away, like me!

The State of the Family Address

2011-10-20T12:04:00.009-04:00

Ironically, I was much more into politics when we lived in Salt Lake City than I am now that we're in DC. I had more time to follow the news and could get my dose of conservative talk radio on my drive to and from work. I'm sad to admit that I get most of my information from Facebook rather than Fox News, but that's just how my life is right now.

So, I thought it would be appropriate to provide a State of the Family Address. Here goes:

Several months ago we implemented a reward system for the kids that has been quite successful. Basically, it works like this-- The kids can choose from a stack of chore cards (vacuum, sweep, clean entry way, fold laundry, wipe down counters, practice reading/writing, clean chairs, dust, wipe down the bathroom, or entertain Asher) and when the job is completed, they receive one gold coin. It's their responsibility to pick up their rooms and the toy room each morning. If they don't, that's okay too, they just "pay" me one of their gold coins and I will do it for them.

They can also earn gold coins for flushing the toilet-washing their hands-and turning off the bathroom light, saying "yes ma'am/yes sir", being especially kind to others, or anything else I deem coin-worthy.

I will give $1 in exchange for 10 gold coins. Or, they can pay me 5 gold coins for 20 minutes on PBSkids.org or give Trent 1 gold coin for a piece of gum when he gets home from work. I try not to take away their coins when I'm mad at them, but, for example, if they get sent to their room and do not go quickly, I will carry them upstairs myself, but then they have to pay me a coin for my work. Get it?

We've also started giving out $3 each month for their allowance or as the kids would say, "money they get just for being a part of this family, even if they don't behave." Isaac is saving his money for when we go to Disney world in the Spring. Juliet spends her money with stuff from the dollar bins at Target.

Date nights have fallen by the wayside due to tightening of the family budget and the fact that our babysitter had a baby herself. A friend of mine has a 13 year old daughter that I think the kids will adore so I am hoping to use her in the near future.

We have made dates with the kids a priority though, so every couple of weeks one of us takes one of the kids out for a couple of hours. Trent took Isaac to the running store, pet store, and to Dairy Queen a few weeks back and last weekend I took Juliet to Toys R' Us for a My Little Pony toy and then out for frozen yogurt with her choice of toppings (sprinkles, strawberries, Oreo cookies, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, mini M&M's, and whipped cream). Asher gets a date at the end of the month and then we'll rotate who goes with who.

During the day, I take the kids to Library Story Time, various play dates with our friends, parks, MOPS, and to the grocery store. Asher still has speech therapy once a week and occupational therapy every other week at home and that's when I let the big kids watch TV.

Trent is back on bath-duty and while he gets the kids clean, I clean up the kitchen from dinner. He's also agreed to watch the kids for an entire Sunday each month so that I can have the day to myself. Last month I worked on photo books for 5 hours and then went to the mall only to remember how much I hate crowds and shopping so I came home and shopped online instead.

Dinners are now much simpler because we use a service called Let's Dish!, which is where I have them make, split, and freeze frozen meals for us for a month at a time.

Trent is still running three nights a week and on Saturday mornings until the marathon is over. I use my free time to go to book club, Foreign Service spouse dinners, or neighborhood get togethers. We try to have friends over to play poker one Saturday a month. The other Saturday nights are spent watching TV.

We have family movie night on Friday's and Trent followed through with researching everything we'd need to make real movie theater popcorn (Whirley pop, coconut oil, and Flavacol). Delicious!

Overall, the kids are a lot of fun and I enjoy watching them learn new things and hearing the stuff that comes out of their mouths like, "Why do you listen to the GPS, when it always takes you the wrong way?" (Isaac)

As you can see, our day to day life is not that exciting, but we are in a good place.

Stay At Home Mama Drama

2011-10-19T18:12:00.003-04:00

The other day we were at a child's birthday party and some parents were commenting about how nice it is that our kids are in bed by seven each night. A few minutes later, a mom came over to me and asked, "Do you stay at home with your kids?" and when I told her "yes", she said, "Oh, that's why, you see, I'm a full time working mom so I could never get my kids to bed so early." Like her job is so much harder/more important/more time consuming than mine. I was so mad! I said, "Actually, this is my first year at being a stay at home mom and even when I worked full time, I still had my kids in bed by seven. Sometimes, 5:30. No joke."

41 Months Old

2011-10-19T08:44:00.004-04:00

If I survive raising little boys, it will be nothing short of a miracle. Especially, if I can out-survive Isaac. Most days I am sure that it will be the last for one of us...

He is really into Superheros and wears this Batman shirt or a Spiderman shirt constantly. He also likes to "save" his siblings from the Green Goblin by jumping off the top bunk or trying to pull them up with bunk bed with a scarf. It's a noisy game of make believe and he enjoys it thoroughly.

He plays really well with other kids, except for when it comes to Juliet's best little friend, Sophia. I think he gets jealous of the attention that Juliet gives to her (and not to him!) and so he bothers Sophia non-stop.

Our other neighbors have two boys and Isaac thinks the six year old walks on water and wants to do everything that Connor does, good or bad. Ha!

Isaac knows the sounds that (almost) all of the letters make and he can write the letters that we've worked on so far this year: I, L, E, F, T, H. He can cut along printed lines now and can also color within the lines.

He is still our little jokester, still mostly potty humor.

Explorers

2011-10-14T08:26:00.007-04:00

This week we learned about explorers, specifically, Christopher Columbus.

We read:

Follow the Dream: The Story of Christopher Columbus by Peter Sis

We did the following:

Floated ice cube boats down a creek.

Created the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria out of hand prints.

Sailed play-dough boats across a play-dough sea and landed on a play-dough island.
Memorized "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and the names of the ships.

Cox Farms

2011-10-09T18:55:00.011-04:00

We took the kids to Cox Farms again. This was our second year going to the fall festival and it was even more fun this time around.

Juliet felt like a pro at milking the cow, and Isaac wasn't the least bit afraid either. Asher did not want anything to do with it, maybe another time.

We rode the hayride and went down a lot of slides again.

Trent took the kids into the Goat Village.

And then we posed for more pictures...

The best part of the outing was that our neighbors met us there!

56 Months Old

2011-10-08T07:52:00.003-04:00

Juliet is such a sweet girl lately. She's so helpful and considerate towards other people and I am really proud of her. She has two friends that she is able to play with on a weekly basis, Heather and Sophia, both of them are also the oldest in their families so sometimes the play dates get a little heated, but we're working on being a good hostess and how to temporarily put other people's feelings first.

Juliet is still very confident that she's going to grow up to be an artist so I get about 10 drawings a day from her. They usually include a little note about how I'm the best mom, so it's hard to throw them away, but seriously, I don't have space for all of them!

It's very rare that she'll take a nap, but I did manage to snap this shot of her one afternoon. I love that she's holding bear-blanket, maybe my baby isn't growing up too fast after all!

19 Months Old

2011-10-07T22:22:00.005-04:00

Asher is growing up so big, so fast. Well, not necessarily big, I guess, since he is only the 6th percentile for weight, but he is doing great with his eating now. He was recently evaluated again and they have dropped the therapy for his eating disorder.

He loves the Smurfs and will point to the DVD player in the car and sing "la la, la la la la" to tell us that he wants to watch.

Last week he put his first set of two+ words together, he said, "more candy corn!"

He's also started to enjoy swinging, for very short periods of time. Slides are more his thing and he'll go up and down endlessly without tiring.

Asher is a lot of fun right now and still our little snuggle bug.

Fire Safety

2011-10-07T17:18:00.000-04:00

This week we learned about fire safety.

We read:

Fire! Fire! by Gail Gibbons
Curious George at the Fire Station by Margret Rey
Arthur's Fire Drill by Marc Brown
No Dragons for Tea by Jean Pendziwol

Then we invited Dragon to join us for our own tea party and Isaac put on his fireman jacket and put out the flames for us.

We did the following:

Had several fire drills. I'd set the kitchen timer (because I can't reach the smoke detectors) and when it went off, we'd run downstairs and out the door to our meeting place outside.

Drove to one of our favorite parks to slide down the fire pole.

Juliet was zipping up her jacket and didn't watch where she was walking, so she tripped and scraped her leg.

Baked and delivered cookies for the firemen at a nearby fire station who were kind enough to show us their fire trucks!

Asher wasn't too sure about getting into the drivers seat at first, but after he saw how much fun Juliet and Isaac had, he wanted in and then didn't want to get down.

Played Safe, Safe, Fire! (Like duck, duck, goose, but whoever got chosen for "fire" had to quickly stand up and show us how to stop, drop, and roll.) Even Asher participated!
Colored a dalmatian coloring page.

Transportation

2011-09-30T19:08:00.003-04:00

Ironically, our homeschool theme this week was transportation. This was also their last week at the preschool they had started attending earlier this month because the commute was about 30-40 minutes each way and it was just too much time for Asher to have to spend in the car.

It's actually a bit of a relief that I don't have to rush around in the morning and that we can have more time to play and learn together.

Anyway, we read:

Freight Train by Donald Crews
The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
Tooth-Gnasher Superflash by Daniel Pinkwater

We did the following:

Learned about making a tally chart and recorded the number of buses, cars, and trucks that drove by.
Practiced simple math by getting out the toy cars, listening to my made up story problems and then figuring out how many cars were left...
Filled up the bath tub with water and then dropped in several small Tupperware containers (boats) to float around inside. Then we stood back and tossed rings to try to get them to land inside the containers. Whoever got the most rings won.

Overheard...

2011-09-27T18:36:00.003-04:00

A whispered conversation between the kids at the breakfast table while I was at the sink...

Juliet: Isaac!
Isaac: Oh, Juliet, you can tell mom on me, but please don't let her yell at me okay?
Juliet: I won't tell on you, but you'd better hurry and stir your orange juice into your oatmeal before she sees what you've done.
Isaac: I'm hurrying as fast as I can.
Juliet: Hurry Isaac, she's almost finished with the dishes.
Isaac: Thanks.

I took an extra long time washing the dishes so that I could hear their entire conversation. This is the major benefit of having the kids so close together, they truly are best friends.

How Do You Like Them Apples?

2011-09-23T21:23:00.004-04:00

This week we learned about apples!!

We read:

Apples by Gail Gibbons
Up, up, up! It's Apple-Picking Time by Jody Fickes
Ten apples up on top! by Theo LeSieg
The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall
Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington
An Apple Pie for Dinner by Susan VanHecke
Out and About at the Apple Orchard by Diane Mayr

We did the following:

Made our own applesauce.
Created apple trees out of paper bags and construction paper.

Constructed our own apples out of crumpled up paper bags and colored tape.

Mixed paint with cinnamon and painted apple trees. This made the artwork smell delicious!

We ate:

apple pie
dried apples
applesauce
apple juice
and lots and lots of apples (red ones, green ones, and yellow ones)

Overheard...

2011-09-20T13:43:00.003-04:00

Conversation on the way to preschool

Isaac: Mom, can I skip a nap today?
Me: No, not until you're at least 4 years old.
Juliet: Like me! I'm 4 so I can skip a nap.
Me: Most of the time, but not all of the time.
Juliet: I can't wait until I am a mama so I can do whatever I want.
Isaac: And I can't wait until I'm a dad so I can do whatever I want.
Juliet: No, when you are a dad, you'll have to work all day!
Isaac: Well... not on Sundays.

40 Months Old

2011-09-19T12:27:00.006-04:00

Isaac is trying to get his temper in check. Sometimes he's better at it than others. It's a nightmare to deal with, but since Trent and I both have tempers, it's hard to fault him sometimes.

Just when I think to myself that his speech is becoming much clearer, another adult will give me a look like, "I have no idea what your son just said." Hmmmm. One thing is for sure, his vocabulary is pretty impressive (that is, if you can understand him...)

He is very animated when he speaks and uses his hands a lot. It's cute. Of course when I want him to speak to other adults, he's stubborn about it, but other times, he's the first to start up a conversation with them. Today he told a stranger that his sister had a blister on her heel and he had bruises on his legs but he was tough so it was okay.

He likes to clown around and combine different elements from his dress up costumes and like most little boys, he's obsessed with swords and guns!

Apple Picking

2011-09-18T21:59:00.007-04:00

Today we did something that neither Trent or I had ever done before-- we went apple picking! Our friends, the Toler's, met us at Stribling Orchard and we had a great time picking apples together!
Angie told us that there was a big friendly pig that ran around the orchard eating up all the apples off of the ground so Asher and I went to search for him. Too bad, we didn't find him, but Ash made piggy noisy for quite a while.

I don't think we were supposed to snack on the apples as we went, but we couldn't help ourselves, they looked so delicious!

My mom makes a delicious apple pie that Trent even likes and he doesn't generally like apple pie. But since my baking skills are extremely elementary, I didn't even ask her for the recipe.

Happy 40th Anniversary

2011-09-17T13:49:00.005-04:00

Trent's parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary this weekend! Here's a look back at the happy couple's love story...

Congratulations! We love you!!

All Good Things Must Come to an End

2011-09-16T21:03:00.001-04:00

This trip to Charleston was one of my all time favorite vacations. It might have even been better than our Disneyland trip which you can read about here, here, and here. Seriously, every night I fell asleep thinking about how much I was enjoying myself, spending time on the beach with my family.

We woke up to this view every morning.

And then spent most of the days playing on the beach! The water was the perfect temperature, and we couldn't have asked for better weather.

This picture (below) makes me smile because it's how most of the pictures I took turned out: Juliet is smiling for the camera, Isaac is happy, but WON'T look at the camera, and Asher is not happy about having his picture taken.

After a few bribes though, we can get one of these... close, but not perfect.

These kids could have stayed out all day and dug holes.

When we did go out, we ate a lot of seafood at some of my favorite restaurants: Locklear's, Coast, The Noisy Oyster, and Vickery's. Oh, and we stuffed ourselves at our favorite Thai restaurant, Basil.

Unfortunately, we did not get to see all the friends that we wanted to were there, but that's a good excuse to go back, right?

South Carolina Aquarium

2011-09-15T20:39:00.004-04:00

We visited the South Carolina Aquarium and everyone had a great time!

Juliet's favorite part was playing with the crabs in the touch tank.

Isaac liked the 4D Dora and Diego movie the best,

and Asher liked the playing on the shrimp boat.

Cypress Gardens

2011-09-13T15:20:00.006-04:00

We still have another 5 days at the beach, but this morning we took a quick trip out to Cypress Gardens so that the kids could ride in a flat bottom boat in the swamp and look for gators.

We only spotted one and it was up close! I didn't have enough time to take a picture though.

I guess Asher wasn't as thrilled as the rest of us, he fell asleep.

Can't resist these kinds of pictures.

Beach Vacation

2011-09-13T14:43:00.009-04:00

We left Virginia in the wee hours of the night (2am) so that we could arrive in Charleston on Saturday morning. The kids slept for about 3 hours of the 9 hour road trip, but were pretty well behaved nonetheless.

What makes this trip especially fun is that our friends, the Kelty's, joined us for a couple of days! Juliet and Sarah Claire (9yrs old) went right to work on making up stories and drawing pictures.

Isaac was in heaven because of all the boys around and especially enjoyed play-fighting with his little buddy, Max (3 yrs old).

We spent most of the weekend playing on the beach,

and spent a little time at night hunting for crabs on the beach with our flashlights.

Tim and Daphne cooked up some delicious Frogmore Stew for all us at their place on the IOP.

Jessica w/ baby Lucy, Daphne, and Renee

As always, we had a great time hanging out with the Kelty's and are glad that we get to spend some quality time together!!

Beach Week

2011-09-09T19:22:00.005-04:00

This week we learned about the beach!

We read:

The Cat in the Hat Clam-I-Am
Oceans and Seas by Nicola Davies
Across the Big Blue Sea by Jakki Wood
Usborne Lift the Flap Sharks
Diving Dolphin by Karen Wallace
Ladybug Girl at the Beach by David Soman

We did the following:

Made sand art with colored sand.

Learned about sinking vs. floating.
I put out a bunch of objects and had the kids guess if they would sink or float.

Juliet guessed sink for everything except the plastic bottle and the sippy cup.
Isaac guessed float for everything except the button, clip, and plastic bottle.

We colored, cut, and pasted a little crab craft.

We ate:

Dried seaweed

Then we colored some vanilla pudding for our ocean, crushed up animal crackers for our sandy beach, and added some Swedish Fish for our edible beach scene.

How could you learn about the beach without taking a field trip, right? Lucky for us, we are off to spend a week on the beach in Charleston, South Carolina!

55 Months Old

2011-09-08T12:26:00.009-04:00

Juliet is totally a mama's little helper. I try to remind myself to not give her too much responsibility, but she reminds me a lot that she loves helping out. I feel so lucky that I had my girl first!

We were driving back from a big play group at the park last week and Juliet said, "Did you see all those moms at the playground today? I was just thinking to myself, out of all if those mamas, how did I get so lucky to have you as my mom!" She's usually very sweet like that.

She asks a million questions a day. Sometimes I think she just likes to hear her own voice.

She believes that she is an artist. She colors pictures for us every day, here are some of my favorites.

Our family (Asher is in my arms)

And a picture of me, front and back.

Her loves right now are: Hello Kitty, singing, dancing, and eating.

Oh, and here's a little video of her that I put together:

First Day of Preschool

2011-09-08T12:14:00.004-04:00

Isaac and Juliet started their first day of preschool today. Isaac is in the 3 year old "bear class" and Juliet is in the 4 year old "monkey class". They will go two days a week for a half day.

Isaac was being his typical self and would not smile for the camera during his picture with his teacher, Mrs. Crim.
Juliet was also her typical self and had no problem posing with her teacher, Mrs. Ligon (Miss Frieda), but then wanted to chat up her teacher and the teacher's aide for the rest of the morning and promised she would try to make friends her own age another time...

I let them pick out their own new backpacks this year.

18 Months Old

2011-09-07T13:19:00.002-04:00

Asher is a year and a half and thinks that he is a pretty big boy. He is at a really fun age and the whole family loves to play with him and teach him new things.

He can go up and down the stairs by himself now so we rarely use the gates anymore.

He's saying a lot of words and is pretty good at getting his point across. I always smile when I ask him a question and he replies, "yeah..." or "no!"

He loves to stomp and dance and run around. But if he's not acting completely wild and crazy, he's cuddled up in our laps and snuggling.

He's started to sit through short cartoons like Curious George and likes to be on the couch, right in between Juliet and Isaac.

He keeps us on our toes, but he's a keeper!

Here are his stats:
Weight: 22lbs = 6th percentile
Height: 32 ¾" = 60th percentile

Our 2012 Bid List is Submitted

2011-09-05T19:51:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned before, we had to rank order our bid list to include every post on the list. After as much research as we could possibly do as to what the quality of life would be like for our family at each post and moving cities from the bottom to the top of the list and vice versa, the list we submitted looked like this:

Beijing
Cairo
Mexico City
Abu Dhabi
Montevideo
New Delhi
Moscow
Frankfurt
London
Canberra
Athens
Dakar

Remember, there's a 30% chance that we'll be stuck in DC for another two years, but they say we should know our results by the end of the week.

Back To School

2011-09-02T19:46:00.008-04:00

Back to School was our preschool-home-school theme for the week. Since they will be starting a real preschool in a couple of weeks, we talked a lot about what that will be like.

We read:

DW's Guide to Preschool by Marc Brown
Maisy Goes to School by Lucy Cousins
Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg
If You Take A Mouse to School by Laura Numeroff
Amelia Bedelia Goes Back to School by Herman Parish

We sang:

The Wheels on the Bus...

We did the following:

Made as many words as we could out of "SEPTEMBER"

Mixed primary colors to make secondary colors

We ate:

Twinkie school buses

Just when I thought they were totally pumped up to go to their new preschool, Isaac asked if they could just stay at home with me instead, and surprisingly, Juliet liked that idea too. Flattering, but they are still going to go to school two days a week!

Back to Virginia

2011-08-29T19:53:00.007-04:00

We woke up VERY early on Sunday morning to drive to the airport to make our 7am flight to Denver. Then we hung out at the Denver airport for 3 hours before we took a 3 hour flight back "home" to Virginia.I must say that they were really good this trip, but then if I'm comparing anything to the last trip, then it would have to be easy! No really, they were great!

The kids were really excited to see Trent. I wish I would've had my camera ready to take pictures of them when they saw him. Juliet spotted him first and took off on a dead run. Then Isaac took off running and jumped into his dad's arms too. Asher was trapped in the stroller, but he started kicking and yelling "Dada!"

It was about 6pm before we actually walked in the door or the townhouse, but we were all wiped out and after a quick pizza dinner and baths, we went to bed!

We had such a wonderful summer in Salt Lake City and I'm glad that we were able to spend eight weeks with my family and our friends, but I am glad to be home too.

(Trent playing around with the kids this morning)

Flight Cancelled

2011-08-27T12:11:00.004-04:00

Last night, Trent called to tell me that our flight home (planned for Saturday night) had been cancelled due to the concerns with hurricane Irene. I was busy with the babies so Trent called the airlines and rescheduled us on a Saturday morning flight instead. I was thinking, okay I'll just have to stay up late packing, but great news, we'll be home even earlier!

So, I stayed up until almost 1am last night cramming a million clothes, toys, books, etc into our bags and we woke up early this morning to eat breakfast, take a few family pictures and then head out to the airport. Right before we left, I doubled checked to make sure that our flight was still a go. Yes!

We arrive at the airport, unload the car and kids, only to find out that our connecting flight from Denver to DC had been cancelled 5 minutes earlier. Seriously?!!

The check in lady (what are those people called?) is trying to explain to me that she can easily reschedule us for a week from today.... At this point, I can't control the tears and they just start flowing down my face. The lady says, "I see that you are upset, why are you crying?" and I tell her that I was planning to go home today, and she says "Well, you could always rent a car." I was like, What? Are you crazy? Do you see these three little kids that I have in tow with me? It will take me 5 days to get to Virginia! And she says, "that would still be quicker than next Saturday's flight." True, I guess.

I must have looked pretty pitiful standing there because somehow, the lady found two extra seats on the flight out tomorrow morning. Only one day lost. Fingers crossed.

Our Last Week In SLC

2011-08-26T23:32:00.001-04:00

Here's a recap of our last week in Salt Lake City:

Juliet was horsing around on the couch and smacked her face on the wood railing, knocking her right front tooth loose... we're crossing our fingers that it will go back into place and not turn brown.

I was able to catch up with my friend Dwight while the kids ran around the playground at Liberty Park.

We went to a pirate puppet show at the library. These two really are each other's best friends and I love how close they were sitting to each other. At one point, Isaac had his arm around Juliet, but I wasn't fast enough with the camera.

Dave and Jenn invited us to their friend's house to swim.

Chele and I (no kids!) ate at a new Korean restaurant called, It's Tofu. This picture was taken later, but it's the only one of just the two of us, even though we spent nearly every day together this summer.

I took the kids to a babysitter and spent a morning getting my hair cut and colored. Later, when the boys were supposed to be napping on Grandpa's watch, Juliet and I got mani/pedi's. (Her first and of course, she loved it!)

We hung out with Jakey, Callie, Aysha, and Trinity for the last time this summer. They were all best little friends and my kids are really sad to leave them behind.

I fulfilled my promise to let the kids ride TRAX downtown and we met Kellie and Heidi at the Children's Museum.

We went to Buca di Beppo with my parents and Asher surprised us all with the amount of spaghetti and meatballs that he gobbled up!

I had a last hurrah with friends at Farr's Frozen Yogurt shop where we sat on the grass and chatted the night away.

I'm sure going to miss this place...

Sunday

2011-08-21T22:29:00.001-04:00

On our last Sunday in Salt Lake City, we went to dim sum at a restaurant that I haven't been to before, Red Maple. It was really good.

Mostly because I actually got to enjoy my meal because my dad held Asher for a little bit while I ate.

We went home for naps and then headed out to my mom's Eastern Star picnic in the late afternoon. The kids had a good time running around the park and were all red faced and totally sweaty by the time we left.

After baths, Juliet and Isaac stayed up to watch a Smurfs DVD that my mom picked up for them. She even got them all of the McDonald's happy meal Smurf figurines to play with and they held them during each episode.

The back story on the Smurfs is that a couple of weeks ago, I was at the McDonald's drive through ordering a large coke and said "Oh, they have Smurfs here." and the kids immediately started in with, "I want a Smurf! I want a Smurf!"

I told them, "You don't even know what Smurfs are." And Isaac responded, "yes, we do, I want to drink them!" Then Juliet chimed in with, "Isaac! You don't drink Smurfs, they mix them into your happy meals and you EAT them!" Oh my, they had me laughing so hard.

So now they know and they are infatuated with the tiny blue creatures...

A Pretty Great State

2011-08-21T09:27:00.001-04:00

When I was growing up, our state slogan was, "Utah, A Pretty Great State" Obviously, I agree and here are some reasons why:

It's pretty great when your little girl is best friends with your best friend's little girl. I love watching Juliet and Trinity play together, they are so cute! I hope that they will have the chance to be as close as Chele and I are...

And, it's pretty great when I get to see my long time college friend and roommate, Jaime! She came down from Evanston, Wyoming for the second time this summer so we could catch up and let the rug rats run around at Chuck E. Cheese.

See how she smiles even while juggling 3 little ones?

It's also pretty great to hang out with friends in their awesome back yards! We've been swimming at Natalie's house (no pics) and the kids were in tears about leaving Sher's place. I mean, a water slide AND a skate ramp?

Of course, it's pretty great that I get to see my friends on a very regular basis! This was my last Recipe Night out for a while. *sigh*

Parks

2011-08-20T21:18:00.004-04:00

Back in Virginia, people are always telling me to check out one park or another because it is supposed to be so great. So, I load up my kids and end up driving 20-45 minutes and what do you know, I'm disappointed. Why? Because well, I guess Salt Lake City just has much better parks!

Isaac and Asher watched these two boys (we don't know them) swordfight for a good 15 minutes.

39 Months Old

2011-08-19T22:25:00.007-04:00

Isaac won't smile for pictures anymore. He's just not interested and even when I try all sorts of tricks, this is the best he'll do (above).

He's a goofball. Sometimes he spells Juliet's name J-E-S-U-S (must have been the two weeks of vacation bible school) but I think it's funny.

He also loves to make up nicknames for people. I first noticed then when Trent's parents came to visit us back in June. He just started calling Pawpa, Pop. Since then, he's nicknamed my mom and dad, Grams and Gramps. Maybe he's just lazy... he'll call his friend Ethan, Eth or Aysha, Aysh. You get the point.

He made up a game that we all play in the car where he pretends that we are racing the other cars on the road. When we want to go really fast, he has me turn on the radio. Even if the other cars pass us, we still win because he calls them "cheater cars" and tells us that "cheater never win, right?"

We've been around a lot of little girls this summer and he often tells me that he is "tired of being around all of these girls!" He says that he does not like any girls that are not in our family!

There are times when Isaac speaks pretty clearly, but if he's in a hurry, it's a real struggle to figure out what he's telling you. He still makes the w-sound instead of the l-sound as in "i really wuv you" or "my wegs are tired of walking"

Isaac is so sweet to Asher, even though Ash isn't very loving towards him. Check out the scratches on his eyes!

He is scared easily like of the mean witch-teacher in Miss Nelson is Missing and goes into his room so he can't hear me read it to Juliet.

If he could spend all morning doing these kinds of flips with Gramps, he'd be in heaven!

Bare/Bear Bum Pincher

2011-08-15T11:33:00.003-04:00

I think I've mentioned before that Isaac is terrified of exposing his bottom, like when he's changing out of pajamas or before getting into the bath. He gets a scared look on his face and says, "but what if Bare Bum Pincher (grandpa!) sees me?"

Well, it appears as if this morning, Grandpa got him and so Isaac and Juliet decided to wait in the driveway until Grandma got home from Curves so they could tell on him. I guess Grandma told them that she would get Grandpa back and the kids were giddy with the fact that Grandpa was going to have HIS bum pinched. What craziness.

In other bum news, Isaac just came and told me that Asher had fallen asleep with his pants and diaper off (it's by his head). I just feel sorry for his poor little teddy bear!

The Zoo (Again)

2011-08-14T22:36:00.005-04:00

Since Isaac was sick when we planned to go to the zoo earlier this summer, so we decided to go again. It was perfect weather and the animals were out and about.

We got to see some more friends that we've waited all summer to see. Andrea, Collin, and Reese.

Erin and Jack.
And Shannon, Ethan, and Isabelle.

If you haven't been recently, they have the most amazing dinosaurs throughout the zoo and this particular spits out water. A huge hit with all the kids.

Not a great picture of these three, but I wanted to capture the original baby group, minus Will and Kenzo.

We walked the zoo in about 2 hours and finished off with rides on the carousel and the train.

I didn't let Asher out of his stroller until the train ride at the end. I felt bad, but honestly, once he's out, it's so hard to get him back in and he doesn't walk along side of us-- he RUNS and doesn't stop!

But he still seems happy, right?

Sugar

2011-08-14T22:16:00.004-04:00

There was a time where our kids rarely ate anything with sugar in it. Those days are long gone. Grandma makes these kinds of breakfasts...

Which turns the kids into crazy, rowdy, monsters!

And just when you think they are worn out and ready to calm down? Grandma decides everyone needs ice cream!

We also have gone to more birthday parties lately, which are filled with candy, cake, ice cream, and every other goodie imaginable.

Last night we went to Ari's 4th birthday bash and the kids had an awesome time running around with 30 other kids, watching a spectacular firework show, and then settling down with blankets and pillows to eat a TON more candy to watch Tangled outside.

It was a super late night for them. We got home around 10:30 and the kids were begging for me to put them into their beds first. Too bad they didn't sleep in any longer than the usual 6am and didn't waste any time asking for their goody bags of candy...

The Help

2011-08-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

I think most of my friends and I are in a book club, just not the same one. Regardless, we've read The Help and loved it and so we decided to see the movie together. (I give both the book and the movie 5 stars)

This summer I've also read:

Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner (3 stars)
Nefertiti by Michelle Moran (5 stars)
The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran (5 stars)
and am in the middle of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

The kids have been reading:

The Stupids
Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy
any Superhero book they can get their hands on
and tons of other library books, we go through about 15 a week.

I'm Gonna Miss This

2011-08-11T10:21:00.003-04:00

We only have two and a half weeks left here in Salt Lake City so we are cramming in a lot of get togethers. We went to Planet Play again and spent 5 hours eating pizza and playing! Here's a pic of Juliet with her little besties, Trinity and Lily.

It took a while, but the girls eventually got the hang of how to ride the bumper cars...

Isaac's favorite is this slick track. He's not tall enough to drive, but he really gets into the race. Since there were so few people, he got to play laser tag, even though he (again) wasn't technically tall enough. Of course, he loved it and all the little kids were so cute to watch because they were just walking around together like they were in a gang. I wish I had a picture of that!

Since the kiddos missed their afternoon naps, I put them down for the night around 6pm and let my dad take charge while I visited my friends Dave and Jenn and their new baby Delaney. Jenn cooked an amazing curry dinner and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about the squabbles of new parents.

And seriously, because I am trying to cram every single bit of fun into this trip as I possibly can, I couldn't resist a last minute invitation to meet up with high school friends for a late night Golden Spoon run. When we were actually IN high school, we spent almost all of our summer nights hanging out at Golden Spoon. Ahhh, the good old days!

Summer Friends

2011-08-09T14:05:00.000-04:00

Hands down, the best part of spending the summer in Salt Lake City is being able to spend time with our closest friends and our family. Pegah brought Lily and Omeed to the park and the kids played while we tried to catch up. Of course, there's only so much catching up you can do when you have 5 kids that all need you at some point, but we made some headway.

And then there's Chele and her kids. She's been on maternity leave this summer so we can see each other almost every single day! Here are some pictures of the kids at the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point.

On our way home, we stopped by IKEA because Kids Eat Free this month!

I told Chele that I am really looking forward to the day when ALL of my kids can eat at the kid's table... Probably at least another year or so. Until then, I get to sit with the Tasmanian Devil who throws his food at me while I try to eat (one handed so I can hold onto him with the other and make sure he doesn't weasel his way out of the high chair). Good times.

This picture was taken at the beginning of the summer, but I want to make sure to include it because it makes me so happy. I love seeing the kids enjoying snow cones and Popsicles outside with a big group of their friends!! It's what summer is all about, right?

54 Months Old

2011-08-08T20:40:00.000-04:00

Juliet is four and a half and full of attitude. Sometimes she is too much and I can't understand what happened to my sweet little four year old girl! Don't get me wrong, she's usually still a sweet girl that draws lots of pictures with "Dear Mom, You are the best mom in the world" written on it, but she can also turn on the tears at the drop of a hat! She also rolls her eyes at me a lot and says "fine!" or "okay!" in a sassy tone that I don't care for at all.

She seems to need a lot of attention lately and acts bonkers if she's feeling ignored. It also doesn't help that she no longer takes an afternoon nap, and by 4pm, she's tired and moody.

She loves to go shopping with Grandpa and is always interested in any of Grandma's stories.

17 Months Old

2011-08-07T22:33:00.000-04:00

Asher is much more daring at the parks now. He goes down all of the slides on his own and climbs up and down all the equipment. Still not a fan of the swings though.

He has started really enjoying reading books together (finally!). His current favorites are Good Dog, Carl and he shakes his finger and says "naughty naughty naughty" to each page. Other favorites are Rosie's Walk and Dinotrux.

His speech is improving at a huge rate. Asher can now say: grandma, grandpa, keys, go-go-go!, me too too, kitty-cat, dog, bad!, boom, eat, one more minute, up, and down.

He still does not like to see Isaac on my lap, it puts him into a fit of rage. And he no longer enjoys Juliet's help with things-- he wants me to do everything for him.

He has almost all of his teeth in. (so no more excuses about not being able to chew his food.) In fact, he finally ate spaghetti today, a whole little bowl!

Asher really loves to dance and it doesn't matter if there is music on or not. He gets up on his tippy toes and goes to town, hopping and stomping and twirling...

Da Gu Po

2011-08-06T21:41:00.005-04:00

My Aunt Jessica came into town from California to spend the weekend with us. She is my dad's sister so my kids call her Da Gu Po in Chinese.

We went to Jungle Jim's. Isaac preferred to spend most of his time playing video games.

Asher liked sitting on a lot of the rides, but wanted to get off as soon as I'd put a token in.

Oddly enough, he did want to ride the roller coaster. At least until it started moving and then he finagled his way right into my lap.

And then it took some coaxing to get him to ride the little jeeps, but he survived.

Juliet wanted to ride everything as many times as possible.

We also played at a park and then my mom packed a lunch and we picnicked up the canyon.

I'm so glad that the kids got to spend some quality time with my aunt. They fought over her attention the entire weekend...

A Birthday Party, FS Meetup, and a Shoe Story

2011-08-06T21:12:00.006-04:00

I've been napping when the kids nap, which means I have less time for blogging about what we're up to these days.

Anyway-- I took the kids to a swim birthday party for Riley and Ryder (Ramona's kids). I wish I would have taken a picture of the birthday kids, they've grown up so much since I've seen them last!!

Juliet would have stayed in the water forever if I'd let her. Isaac couldn't touch the bottom of the pool so he was finished swimming after about 10 minutes. Asher was too busy chasing around a giant beach ball and never even made it into the water. It's funny to me how different these kids are.

We also finally got to meet the Small bits family, since they are in Salt Lake City on home leave right now. They have four kids that are just a tad bit older than mine (their youngest is the same age as my oldest) so I was able to get another sneak peak at how life will be in a few years. Let's just say that Becky was super chill while I was jumping up out of my seat every five minutes to chase the baby around... I was so distracted by family's chaos that I remember to take out the camera for a picture. Looking forward to hanging out with them more in Virginia over the next year.

This next section could probably have a post all to itself, but I'll make it short and sweet. Trent's parents wanted to purchase some light up shoes for the kids for the fall. I took them to Payless to have their feet measured and while we were there, Isaac spotted these Super Hero light up's and I was barely able to get him to leave the store without them. Major tears!

So I called Janis and told her that he would prefer these shoes over any other and she went all over town looking for them, but they were sold out! We decided I'd better just go back to the store here and pick them up, which is why he has his now and has been wearing them ever since.

Days of Summer

2011-08-03T22:38:00.003-04:00

It's not easy being away from Trent for so long. The kids miss him and I am exhausted at the end of most days. Bath time was usually his responsibility so I could clean up dinner in peace and quiet. But, we are still so glad to be out here for the summer.

Eating Popsicles almost every day.

And having a goofy grandma around is a lot of fun too. She brings home things like dinosaur cakes...

and teaches the kids about whoopee cushions...

and then we all laugh at how hard the kids are laughing!

I know they won't be this little ever again so I'm glad that we can really enjoy this summer!

I Scream, You Scream...

2011-08-03T22:15:00.003-04:00

We all scream for ice cream! At least if you are my kids. We went to a neighborhood ice cream social and the kids were so excited to eat ice cream outside with our local Sandy City Police Officers!

Time Out

2011-08-03T10:36:00.003-04:00

Our Salt Lake City vacation is half way over and I must admit we have slowed down a little bit. But, mostly because we've all caught a 12 hour bug. I swear, something about being a single parent brings on the pukies with my kids!!