our family news

Ohio open tournament

2012-02-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

On Mary's birthday, Ella had her first jump rope tournament. She was not excited about it at all because it meant that she would not be around to celebrate Mary's birthday. She competed in 8 or 9 events (I can't remember.) and had a fun day.

She says her favorite events are speed events and those were the ones she did the best in. This video is the double under event. She jumps and the rope goes around twice while she jumps once. It is a one minute event and she is supposed to do as many as she can before time is up. You can tell by the end she gets pretty tired, but (unofficially) she did 75 in a minute.

She also competed in a pairs freestyle event where Ella and her partner, Emily, do a synchronized routine together. She had a good time.

She was super thrilled to win two ribbons, both sixth place ribbons for single rope speed and the double under event. Her age group is large so we were surprised and excited that she placed.

And just because she is so cute, here are a couple more pictures of Mary on her birthday. Here she is with her breakfast in bed.

And here she is when she went out for a birthday lunch with dad. Marc taught her to dip her fries in her Frosty. Yummy! Marc said the conversation centered around how to achieve inner peace. She says you have to stand on sticks. She has been watching Kung Fu Panda 2 on the iPad.

Mary turns four!

2012-02-07T07:29:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday was Mary's fourth birthday.

The time really does fly. It is hard to believe my baby is four.

Here she is on her actual day of birth. She was our smallest baby, weighing on 6 lbs 2 oz.

First birthday. Finally starting to grow some hair!

Second birthday. It is sad to see that her diet really hasn't progressed much. I think she chose the same menu for her fourth birthday. Pasta and fruit!

Third birthday! She calls that dress her Dora dress because of the colors.

Here she is on her fourth birthday. Unfortunately she spent most of it at Ella's jumprope tournament. But she was perfectly content with the iPad. Marc made her breakfast in bed and took a picture, but I think it is on his phone. She chose a bowl of Apple Jacks! I stopped buying sugary cereals a few years ago so that is a treat to her.

She had originally told me that she wanted a ballerina birthday. During R week at preschool, we talked about rainbows and it must have made quite an impression, because she started asking for a rainbow party.

Some facts about Mary at age four:

She is tall and weighs only a pound less than Sarah who is two years older.
She loves to watch movies especially those that star Barbie. She will watch them over and over if allowed.
She loves to play with the iPad but really just wants to watch movies on it.
She is always asking to play outside, even if it is raining.
Mary and Sarah play together every afternoon and Mary loves her big sister.
Mary gets up each morning and stands on the catwalk above our family room and yells, "Hi mom!"
Sometimes she will put herself to bed if we haven't gotten around to it and she is tired.
She is a picky eater and will choose to skip dessert rather than try a new food.
Her favorite foods are chicken nuggets and french fries but she loves fruit too.
She likes to get ready with me in the morning and likes to put powder on her ears.
She has a funny giggle and gets the hiccups if she laughs too much.

We love Mary so much and are so glad that she is part of our family!

Tanner's Birthday

2012-01-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

Tanner's birthday started off with giving his cousin Miles a bottle.

He has always wanted an outdoor birthday party like at the pool or something, but when your birthday is at the end of December that isn't a party anyone wants to go to. So we rented an indoor soccer field and he invited 12 friends and cousins to come play flag football. His uncle Scott and I were the quarterbacks and the kids just ran around shouting for us to throw them the ball. At least that was the play I called.

Scott used a little more strategy and his team seemed to get to the end zone more often.

Next came my favorite part: Costco Cake!

Tanner got a lot of cool gifts from his friends but the one that really stood out was the Sacramento Kings Jimmer t-shirt.

He had a great day, and we were so glad to be able to have so many family members in town to help celebrate.

Christmas

2012-01-08T18:23:00.000-08:00

The whole Christmas season was really fun this year. All the kids are at fun ages and were really excited about the whole thing. We have a couple of advent/countdown calendars and they were super excited to change those each day.

One of my favorite traditions of the last couple of years in Christopher Pop-in-kins. He first visited our house last year and is so much fun. He is one of Santa's elves but he has a special assignment to help watch children to make sure they are being good. He arrives shortly after Thanksgiving and stays until just before Christmas. Each night he moves to a different place in the house so he can watch and make sure the children are staying on the nice list. All the kids loved coming down each morning to look for where he was sitting that day. This picture was one of my favorites, sitting in the fruit basket holding jalapeños!

By the time Christmas Eve arrived, we were lucky to have all the Wilson's home except for Don and Justin. Justin came Christmas day. We missed not having Don here. But we had 16 cousins from 4 months to 14. It was chaotic, but super fun.

Someone rented a karaoke machine and that was part of the Christmas Eve fun.

Rylee really liked someone's voice!

After the singing and dinner, we read the Christmas story and exchanged a few gifts. In my family growing up, we would draw names and we would get to open that gift on Christmas Eve. That tradition has continued.

Once we got back to our house, we opened our new jammies and made some reindeer food. Each of the kids took a turn throwing some reindeer food.

Everyone was really excited for Christmas!! Cute jammies, huh?

Marc and I were up until nearly 1 am wrapping the last of their presents. A few of our kids had been sick and Tanner and Ella were on antibiotics for strep throat. Around 3 am Ella came in saying she wasn't feeling well so I let her sleep on the floor next to our bed. Then around 4:00, Sarah came in with the same complaint so I told her the same thing I told Ella. At 5:30, Tanner came and and started jumping on our bed saying, 'It's Christmas! It's Christmas!" To which I calmly replied, yes, but your sisters aren't up. Mary at least was still asleep in her bed. Within about 10 minutes everyone was up so our Christmas morning started really early....

Tanner and Ella each had one enormous present from Santa, but it turns our Santa had been a little tricky in his wrapping. He had wrapped 5 or 6 boxes and nested them inside each other until they got to their real present. They thought it was pretty fun!

The rest of the day is picture-less. Marc and I were too tired to think about pictures. We had pull-aparts and eggs and grandma's house for breakfast and then went to church with my parents and all the siblings families. We came home and cleaned up a little of the mess and thought about going back to my parents around 2:30, but we made the mistake of sitting down and decided we needed a nap instead. We finished off the day with dinner with the family.

It was a great Christmas!

excuses...

2012-01-04T18:56:00.000-08:00

This year, I resolve to be a better blogger.

Here are a few pics of what has been going on since our last blog post.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, Marc and my brother Kevin took the kids to Chicago to see the BYU Basketball team play in a tournament. On the way, they stopped at the Triple XXX family diner.

Ella had a jump rope workshop in early December. It was three days of hard work. We actually hosted three of the staff that came in from other places which added to the fun. Ella is all the way in the back of this picture.

We put our shoes out for Saint Nicholas...not sure why that picture is upside down!

We hosted a gingerbread house party with our friends. It was a huge success and we hope to make it an annual event.

This house was quite the masterpiece. It had a skating rink and the beginnings of a snowman with the grass showing through where the snowball had rolled..

Of course there had to be some BYU decorations. The other house has SC for Santa Claus. We cut out little gingerbread people so everyone could put their families around their houses!

Our trusty dryer, that I bought used nine years ago, finally decided to give us some trouble. It was unusable for ten days! We washed the clothes here and then shuttled them over to my parent's house to dry. Sometimes I just left them there and they came back folded! I debated about fixing it at all! This is the laundry pile just in the master bath at the end of the ordeal. The kid's pile was just as big!

And in the midst of all the Christmas chaos and busyness, we decided to go from this.....

...to this.

I did not think through what it would be like to do a home improvement project during the holidays. It's the pits. On top of the shopping, decorating, baking, and party-going, we now had to choose paint and carpet and stain colors and nobs etc, etc, etc....

This will be the new office and we are excited with the result, even if the process was a bit painful.

We also had all of my siblings except for my older brother in town for Christmas and celebrated Tanner's 10th birthday, but those two events deserve their own posts...

2011-11-18T18:35:00.000-08:00

This week Tanner's fourth grade class went to the Cincinnati Cyclones v. Toledo Walleye hockey game. They offer a program called Hockey in Education. At the breaks between the periods, they have educational spots on the jumbotron. The one I actually listened to taught mean, median and mode using hockey scores. It was interesting.

I arrived late, but found Tanner easily. Thank you to his teachers for asking them all to wear their class shirt. Unfortunately, he had already planted himself in a seat with no open seats around him. I asked him to come sit with me and I thought he was following me back up, but when I sat down several rows up, he hadn't moved. So I spent $10 to park, $13 to get into the game and probably 45 minutes of driving to watch a game that I don't even understand all by myself....

Our neighborhood is only about eight years old and our house is only three years old. We are surrounded by farmland, so I don't think there were a lot of trees here to begin with. Fall is disappointing for the kids because there really are no leaves to rake (yes, thank you, I got enough of that in Toledo!). The kids were off of school yesterday so we headed over to grandma's to see if we could scrape together a leaf pile to jump in.

It was sunny but pretty chilly outside but some of the kids worked pretty well (they are pictured!).

Tanner practiced his rake guitar.

When we were done, there wasn't much of a pile. Tanner decided to lay in it!

For Brent and Diana....what we've been doing, in pictures.

2011-11-14T12:33:00.000-08:00

Participating in the National Day of Service. We raked leaves for some elderly folks around town. The kids actually said they had fun!

Visiting a local farm with our preschool class.

Trying to carve pumpkins. The carving tool we had broke halfway through and we never finished them!

A little begging for candy. It is a good thing we have a dress-up box because Mary was something different for each of the three costume-wearing occasions that we had. Here she was a ballerina. Belle also made an appearance as did a fairy.

Traveling with the Comet Skippers jumprope team to North Carolina for a workshop.

Walking to The Mason Veteran's Memorial with Tanner's fourth grade class.

This quote made me a little misty-eyed. In case you can't read it, it says, "Rest only in the knowledge that your grief, the grief of a parent or of a sibling, or that of a child, provides us the blanket of freedom and security which all of us sleep under so peaceably at night."

Thank you to all who serve.

Going to bed too late! Mary actually fell asleep eating a cookie!

Casting 215 kids at the Mason Heights Carnival.

I think we got a picture of everyone on this post!

Toothless!

2011-10-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

In August when we went to the dentist for checkups, they hygienist told Sarah that she had a loose tooth. Since then she has been wiggling that thing with her tongue and yesterday at lunch she finally got it out. She popped it out on the table in front of her, got an excited look on her face and screamed, "This is AWESOME!"

Just as cute even without one tooth!

2011-09-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

Today was Mary's first dance class. She has been so excited. We went and bought her shoes on Saturday (because of course none of the other three pairs we have in the house from her sisters fit her!) and she practically carried them with her all afternoon. She wanted to take them to Tanner's football game, but I drew the line. She woke up this morning and could hardly stand it until after lunch when it was time to go. She was very sweet.

Marc said I should post this story so I will.

Sarah came home from school on Friday and told me that she saw her friend Jack in the hall and he had kissed her on the cheek. We were talking about it on the way home from grandma's house last night telling her that boys could not kiss her until she is 32 at the earliest. The kids were all laughing and teasing and then we heard Tanner from the back say, 'Oooo, Sarah, did you go wash your face?'

It made us laugh.

Rise and Shout!!

2011-09-04T18:39:00.000-07:00

For opening day for the BYU football season my brother-in-law Kevin organized a little trip to Oxford Mississippi for the game. So, Tanner and I joined the Wilson clan and headed south. When the question of where to stop for dinner came up along the way we consulted the GPS and found a name that could not be ignored...

In case you can't make out the words it's: Big Bubba Bucks Belly Bustin' BBQ Bliss. It was the quintessential dive on the side of the road (i think the sign says it all). But the ribs were outstanding. I just wish I had the bad manners to take pictures of the inside because it can't be described in words.

The following day the kids got face-painted and hair-sprayed in preparation for the game.

It is apparently tradition at Ole Miss for the ladies to dress up for the football games. They have this thing called "The Grove" before every football game which is a huge tent city on the main areas of campus along the "Walk of Champions" where people sit, eat, and mingle before the game. I imagine tailgating in fancy clothes just seems silly. I will say that the people there were extremely friendly to us cougar fans and went out of their way to shake our hands and make us feel welcome.

Finally, after three agonizing quarters of football the cougars decided to play and we finished up with a one point victory. Sorry the scoreboard turned out blurry. Afterwards, we went down along the field and after Heaps was done doing his post game interview he came and high-fived those of us along the fence. For those who happened to see that on the post game show I was not shoving my son or nephew out of the way to high-five Jake Heaps. It just looks that way. He actually did hit my hand as he was going along so I assume if I were to play football this week I would tend to throw it behind my receivers or right on the numbers of the other team.

It was a great weekend and I can't wait for next year at Notre Dame.

First Day of School

2011-08-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

Eighth grade...that 6:30 bus sure seems early after sleeping in all summer!

Fourth grade and a new school but he has at least two friends in his class and mastered the combination lock in no time.

Third grade...lamenting the fact that she doesn't know anyone in her class AGAIN! (Once she got to school she realized that two of her classmates were in her kindergarten class.) Excited to have lunch at the same time as her besties from last year!

Why does she have to grow up so fast?

Kindergarten. She says she is nervous but I think she is excited.

Here's the evidence. As soon as the bus pulled up she never looked back!

We got to see her at the other end too since we were volunteering as hallway helpers to guide the little lost souls to their classrooms!

Mary needs to be included in the post too...disregard the cinnamon on her chin...we spent the morning at Costco (how I have missed you this summer!) and shared a churro!

While we awaited the bus, we played with the camera.

Happy faces...

Silly faces...

Surprised faces...

Angry faces...

Scared faces....

2011-08-16T19:14:00.000-07:00

I finally decided to stop going to the cheapest photography place in town and hired a professional photographer to shoot our family. Check out our sneak peek here. I am excited to see the rest!

We've had a birthday....

2011-07-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

...shout hooray! We have a lot of birthdays in July in our family. Add grandma and two cousins that live close and we are eating cake all month!

Ella turned eight!

One of our kid's favorite birthday traditions is breakfast in bed. They look forward to that almost more than presents. And the fact that I will buy them a box of their favorite sugar laden cereal, makes it super easy on me. Ella was up early waiting for breakfast!

Dad got to bring it up before leaving for work. She had cereal (apple jacks), fruit and hot chocolate! (yes, it has been 95 degrees here!)

They also get one gift to open in the morning. Ella loves this game on the ipad, and was dying to have it for her DS.

A note on her birthday shopping. I had of course procrastinated until the last minute and expected to have all day Saturday to shop alone and find the perfect gift. What's that saying about the best laid plans? Marc ended up having football coach training all morning and then a surgery after that. There was something going on that night that I wanted to do so when 2pm rolled around and I hadn't done any shopping, I took matters into my own hands. I loaded all the kids in the van and we went to Toys R Us. I texted Marc and told him to meet us there. We walked around the store and I told Ella she could put anything in the cart that she wanted for her birthday and then after Marc picked them up, I just put most of it back and kept what I hoped she would really love. It worked out great. All her shopping was done in about an hour!

A wonderful visitor brought donuts!

She went to our favorite pizza place for lunch with dad! (another birthday tradition)

We also planned a friend birthday for later in the week, but one of Ella's friends from school couldn't come, so she went there to play in the afternoon. Her friend actually had a mini party for her complete with cupcakes and a Happy Birthday banner. It was really cute!

While she was gone we made a banner of our own. It's great to be eight!

Family party was that night. We made some delicious pizzas (yes, she did have pizza twice in one day!) on the grill and then a little party.

Ella's friend birthday party had a plants vs. zombies theme. Here are her friends that came.

Happy Birthday Ella! We love you so much!

Two weeks later...

2011-07-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

..here is my post about the 4th of July.

Not far from our home is the Little Miami Bike Trail. We have heard that it is about 75 miles long and runs along the river where railroad tracks once were. We snagged one of the teenagers from church to sit with Rylee and took the other four down for a family bike ride.

We had been down there before, but hadn't ever made it to Loveland where there was rumored to be a snow cone stand. Sarah was a newbie at the two-wheeler thing but she did a great job.

It ended up being about 4 miles from where we parked to Loveland and sadly the snow cone stand wasn't open yet. It was only about 10:30 in the morning. So we rode the four miles back to the car and stopped for an icee on the way home. It was a great way to start the day.

We also spent the afternoon at my brother's home for good food, a sometimes not so friendly game of kickball and some fireworks. His neighbor must have spent a truckload of money because it was an impressive show, but you'll have to use your imagination for this part because I forgot to take pictures!

Rockin' with Kenny

2011-07-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

Rylee turned 14 this past week! Yikes! How did that happen?

Marc and I really struggle to find gifts for her that she will like. Lucky for us Kenny Chesney, Uncle Kracker and Billy Currington were in town the week before her birthday. So we went!

Rylee really liked Uncle Kracker and Billy Currington. Kenny Chesney played a lot of his new songs that she didn't know so she didn't seem as excited for him.

I had a great time listening to the music and watching the crowd! Wow! I think Billy Currington's song is right...people are crazy!

Garlock Reunion Part 2

2011-07-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

We spent a lovely day at Niagara Falls. What an amazing place that is and we didn't even see it from the Canadian side.

We did, however, get on the boat, the Maid of the Mist that takes you up close and personal with those falls. The captain of the boat takes you to the bottom of horseshoe falls and parks you there. I asked why he sat there so long and Marc said that is what we paid for. Rylee loved it!

After we got off the boat, the kids wanted to go up these stairs that go right next to the American Falls. Rylee and I watched from below. They are waving at us in this picture below.

They were completely drenched when they came down, but all smiles.

We walked over to a little island next to the Bridal Veil Falls. It amazed me how close you are to that water.

We had briefly considered not going up to Niagara at all. It was 3 1/2 hours from where we were staying and we weren't sure it would be worth it having heard that it is so much better from Canada and while it may be, we had a GREAT time!

I guess it was pretty tiring getting pushed around in the stroller all day long! This is Mary about 10 minutes into the drive home.

We also went to Amish country which the kids said was BORING. I kept pointing out all the little kids that were out working in the yard or helping out in some way. I got a lot of eye rolling from the back! This is the only picture that I took!

I think my favorite part of the week was that our cabin was directly across the street from Beth and Doug's cabin and the kids played constantly.

Sarah Margaret with her namesake, Great Grandma Margaret. She is a crack-up!

We had a great time Garlocks. Can't wait for 2013!

Garlock Reunion 2011

2011-07-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

I was at the pool yesterday with one of my neighbors and we were talking about how annoyed we are by all the electronics that our kids want to play all day long. She mentioned that even when her boys have friends over, they want to sit side by side and play video games. Then this morning as I was looking through reunion pictures, I discovered that the first picture I took that week was this...my son and Dillon sitting on the couch playing their DSes side by side.

We enjoyed a wonderful week at Punderson State Park up near Cleveland with the Garlocks (Marc's mom's family). This gathering happens every two years but this is the first time we have been able to go since 2001. And we were SO pleased that it was an easy 3 1/2 hour drive from home!

One of our first activities was planting a tree in memory of Gordon Garlock, the patriarch of the family. This is Marc's uncle Rick sharing some thoughts about this.

Diana's descendants that were able to come. Marc's sister Taryn and her husband Jason came from Denver. The kids just love Uncle Jason (he took them on a nature walk) and he took some great pics of our kids!

An ad lib dinner theatre as we waited for lunch to be ready!

We spent a day in Kirtland seeing some of the historical sites of our church. The kids played checkers at the N.K.Whitney store. The checkers are slices of corn cobs! They actually stacked the corn cobs in towers and knocked them down.

My girls made some new friends in Uncle Pat's daughters

We had a lot of rain (shocking for Ohio this year, I know!) but never a day that was a total wash out. And it wasn't too hot, which was great!

Our family at the ashery.

Mary and Tyler, AKA Captain Jack, Indiana Jones...I really never knew who he was at any given time!

I asked the kids to pose on the steps of the Kirtland temple. Mary may have been getting tired!

Up next Niagara Falls and Amish country.

Air Force Museum

2011-06-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

We drove north about 30 minutes on the first day of our vacation to the Air Force Museum in Dayton. We had been once before but not on a family day so we decided to check it out.

The last time we went was in the winter so we didn't go outside to see the planes, but that day we decided to trudge through the rain to see them.

I just think this picture of Ella is funny

The kids all liked this plane the best...I think it's nicknamed a snoopy-nosed plane.

On family day they have a bunch of different booths set up to demonstrate scientific principles that apply to flight or space travel. (I especially loved that the kids were learning without realizing it!) This booth was about buoyancy. The kids had to try to fill film canisters with different things and make them just the right weight so they would stay suspended in the middle of the water. They use this principle in astronaut training because they do a lot of training for space walks in a giant pool at the Kennedy Space Center.

We also lucked out on this day. Astronaut Michael Foreman was there along with some others from NASA. He has been to the International Space Station twice, so he showed a film presentation and talked about his experience. It was really fun to listen to. NASA had also set up extra exhibits. My kids really liked one about the vacuum of space. Different things like marshmallows and Mountain Dew were put in a vacuum chamber to see what would happen.

We had a great time and it was a great start to our vacation!

Ella's date with Mom

2011-06-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

We have been out of town at a lovely family reunion so I have a little bit of catching up to do!

Just before we left, it was Ella's turn for her date with Marc and I. Marc was again unable to come because of surgery. Ella REALLY wanted to go to King's Island (an amusement park) for the afternoon, but the weather did not cooperate...not really surprising! So we tossed around a couple of ideas and finally settled on lunch and pedicures.

She chose McDonald's for lunch which I really didn't mind, for two reasons.

1. I actually really like their southwest salad. The dressing is great.

2. This girl is very nearly vegetarian. She does not like meat. She does like McDonald's chicken nuggets so by going there we get a little protein into her! I think she may stop eating those too though because she asked me how they cook them and I told her. the truth!

Ella wasn't sure she wanted to get a pedicure. She asked me what they do to entertain you while they do your toes. I told her I usually watch them or read. She was fascinated and the guy who did her toes was pretty funny. I don't think this will be the last time we do this together.

First week of summer vacation...

2011-06-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

I am determined to ensure that my kids have a fun summer. I am trying not to hear too many, "I'm boreds!" But it may be the end of me. I am exhausted after the first week of summer! Here are the highlights.

Often I don't venture out with the kids as much as I should because it is a bit difficult with Rylee. Sarah is speedy and always runs ahead and Mary is like molasses in winter. The girl just mosies along. I have hired a few of the young women from church to help me a couple of days a week so that I have an extra set of eyes watching the wanderings of my children.

Monday, we had Emilee help us and we went to a new park, had a picnic and played. The park had a cute little manmade stream that the kids walked in. They actually really liked it. Then we walked around the lake a bit and found a frog, a turtle and lots of snails. I either forgot the camera or just failed to take pictures. After dinner, we spent a lovely evening at King's Island.

Tuesday, we went and bought Tanner a new bike and then met friends at our neighborhood pool to swim.

Wednesday, we had Brianne here to help us, so I went to the gym in the morning while the little girls went to a beach party at the kid's korner there. Marc usually only works 1/2 day on Wednesdays so I thought that would be perfect to take each child out for some time with mom and dad. Marc has been really busy at work though and has had to put surgeries on Wednesday afternoons. Good for the paycheck but not so good for dates! Tanner decided he wanted to go paddle boating and out for ice cream, so we did. We lots of fun. But I forgot the camera again.

Thursday was lunch with the cousins. We packed a picnic and headed to another new park with a wet playground. It was really crowded and the kids didn't last long.

Friday we had to take the van in to have the AC checked out before our upcoming trip north, so we were stuck at home all day. Tanner and Ella are trying to earn money to buy ipod touches! They are always asking me for jobs they can do for money. So, since we were stuck at home, I made them a list and they were my little worker bees. They cleaned out drawers, vacuumed, watered the flowers and garden, brought down the laundry baskets, helped organize toys in the garage and organized all their school papers from the last two years. It felt like a really productive day and they each earned a little money. Tanner even said, "Wow, this day went by fast!" After we were done working we headed to the pool for an hour where Mary again launched herself into the big pool without her floaties. Tanner jumped in to rescue her!

This is the stack of papers that the kids threw away...

Saturday, our HOA had invited families to come and help remulch the playground area. They were able to save $1500 by spreading it ourselves. So we dragged our not-too-enthusiastic kids up there with our rakes and shovels and helped out. There are about 210 houses in our neighborhood and I think there were about 6 families represented. Four of them were HOA board members. Sad.

Now it is Sunday and I am looking forward to a much needed day of rest! I may have to scale it back a bit next week!

2011-06-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

I guess we must have had a pretty good first day of summer vacation yesterday. It is 9:05 as I start this and Rylee is the only child awake! This is practically unprecedented around here. I forgot my camera so I have no pictures but we stayed really busy and it was super hot, which I think made for some tired kids!

But this post is not about yesterday. It is about our weekend. Marc was busy helping my brother move and helping from some tornado cleanup. There was a tornado that hopped around about 5 minutes from here and blew down a lot of trees. Some men from church went over with their chainsaws to help clear some of that debris. Meanwhile, the kids and I did a little running around.

First stop was at the school. Yes, the day after the last day of school, I took them back to the school to help the art teacher. Every year, all the art classes get to work on a mosaic project that then gets hung somewhere in the school. I'm not sure how long they have been doing this, but there are lots of tile pictures hanging around. The art teacher needed help with the grouting so we went over. Tanner actually didn't want to go and ended up enjoying it the most!

After the school, we headed over to grandma's house so Tanner could water her garden. Grandma and Grandpa were in Nevada for the high school graduation of their two oldest grandchildren, Haley and Jordan. We had monsoon season for two solid months and now we have had a week and a half of 85+ degree heat and no rain. Southern Ohio weather is the pits. (I will admit to having longings for Utah weather)

After Marc got home we went to Kings Island to use our season passes for the first time. The kids had lots of fun. Mary is especially fun because she is tall enough to get on some of the rides, but doesn't know enough to be scared!

9:29 and I think everyone is awake..time to started on day 2

Last week of school!!!

2011-06-06T04:48:00.000-07:00

Every year for his end-of-the-year party, Mr Hill takes his class to the park for a day of playing and lunch. This is the second year I got to help put this thing together and the kids had a great time. We have finally exited monsoon season and the weather was perfect. I didn't snap a lot of pictures, since we were busy with other things, but I got a few of Ella and her good friends.

Ella and Sammy

Ella and Marilyn

Last Thursday morning, we went to the school early for a breakfast with the other kids in the gifted program. This is Tanner with one of the gifted teachers, Mrs. Hartsock. I honestly cannot say enough good things about this woman. She has made such a difference for Tanner. She is such a gift to our family and to the school...such a GREAT teacher.

Last year I made a finish line for the kids for the last day of school and they recently reminded me of that, so I repeated it again this year. I made a video of them running through it but it took them longer than I thought it would to get off the bus. That video is a bit long and boring and I won't add it here!

And for a final treat some fruit and melted chocolate.

Summer is here and I am SO excited. We have a long to-do list.

Miscellaneous pics I haven't blogged

2011-05-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

I made these cupcakes for April Fool's Day. My kids actually believed they had to eat the mashed potatoes on top to get to their cupcake. Sarah even said, "This gravy tastes like syrup!"

Marc is on a billboard. The picture is poor. I was driving when I took it!

Have you ever looked forward to your free night of the week only to have it spoiled by a 3 1/2 hour trip to the ER?

Our little monkey bonked her head on the table this week and split it right open. Unfortunately, there were a lot of kids at the Children's ER that night.

This little girl is VERY dramatic and cries at the slightest thing. I expected a difficult night. She was much braver than I thought she would be. I think all the time sitting and waiting letting the idea of stitches sink in, helped a lot. Now I need to get Marc to bring home some suture kits so we can avoid that whole mess, right?

Preschool Graduation and a new place to play!

2011-05-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

Our little monkey graduated from preschool on Friday. She was very excited. As we were leaving, the director said to her, "Now you are a kindergartener" which she corrected by saying. "Now it's summer vacation!"

Mary really wanted to be in the picture. Isn't it funny...These two are 27 months apart in age and nearly the same size.

This is a terrible picture of Miss Lesli, Sarah's teacher. She told me during parent-teacher conference that Sarah is one of the most well rounded children she has ever taught! Wow!

The three of us.

Afterward, we met some of her classmates at the park for some play time!

Marc was out of town for the weekend and the kids were supposed to have their piano recital, but that was postponed. We found ourselves with a Saturday completely void of any committments! Not wanting to waste a beautiful day, we headed to a park that a friend had mentioned in an email. We went to see an exhibit called Big Bugs.

They were REALLY big and there were a lot more, but that would be boring to post them all. On the way to the field with the big bugs, we found that this place has a really fun play area that all the kids liked.

Tanner liked hitting this button to make it rain and filling up the rain gutter until one of the park rangers told him to stop pushing the button over and over!

This is why Sarah's nickname is monkey. That kid is a climber. The 'stones' on the side of that 'mound' that she used to climb up are spiders.

There was a little program where one of the park people talked about how bugs impact our lives. She talked about beehive hairdos a little. Tanner wanted to try the wig. She also gave us the opportunity to pet a millipede and a madagascar hissing cockroach! Sarah was the only one that touched them.

This guy is part of a giant tree-house-climbing-thing.

This metal thing is a giant worm that the sidewalk goes through.

There was also a train, a cute little playhouse, some giant mushrooms that Ella loved, a suspension bridge that was really hard to push Rylee on, a free binocular craft and lots more! Why haven't I heard of this place before? We are definately going back.

2011-05-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

Marc has always been really supportive of me wanting to do races and once even dragged the kids downtown on Thanksgiving day to support me in my first 10K. The half marathon was a different story since it was 90 minutes away and he was on call. I did kind of hope that he would surprise me and show up somewhere along the course, but he didn't. When we came home, though, we found he and the kids had been busy decorating the house. Aside from the picture below, there were streamers in the kitchen and no less than 5 vases of flowers. He also snuck out and put that little 13.1 magnet on the back of my car. He really is so sweet.

I was outside (yes it did stop raining for a few hours today) with the girls today and decided to finally take down the decorations. I remembered I hadn't taken a picture halfway through cleaning them up. Imagine this one below with a .1 in the last window. This is the front of the garage.

Marc said when he was done cutting out the signs for the garage he had these big numbers that he didn't know what to do with. So he took them to the basement and hung them above the TV. This is the view from the treadmill. I told him I could have used this during training!

While the cat's away...

2011-05-11T18:59:00.000-07:00

Last time Kenna abandoned us for a few days was when I sent her off to see her sister in Arizona after I finished residency four years ago. That time I went grocery shopping before she left and we never left the house for the 3 days she was gone. This time though I thought if Kenna can run for 13 miles then dog-gone-it I can take all five kids out of the house by myself.

So, Friday night I took them out to Micheals and Target to get some streamers and other celebratory items for when mom got home and then to McDonalds for dinner. Of course, at McDs I left the kids in the car while I went inside to order (our van has the clearance of a boeing 727, it is not getting through a drive-through window).

The next day I herded all the kids into the van and off we went to do the annual "Butterfly Walk for Childhood Cancer." There is a little girl in Ella's class who was diagnosed with leukemia this year so we wanted to participate.

Ella's class decorated a tree along the route.

It was about a mile long walk and Tanner was walking ahead with one of his friends from school. That left Ella to push Mary the whole time, and she did great. The little monkey did well too and walked the whole way without complaining. I was pushing Rylee while trying to take pictures.

The best part was afterwards there was a carnival with all sorts of fun things to do.

There was a giant inflatable slide that Mary wanted to do over and over again.

There was hair painting.

There was a guy with a giant turtle and baby crocodile and this giant yellow python. It took a little while but the girls eventually warmed up to him. Here Ella is cautiously touching his tail and Sarah is flicking her tongue trying to talk to the snake.

To my surprise Ella threw caution to the wind and wanted her picture taken with a snake around her neck.

She then insisted that I do the same.
Mary abstained from any snake interaction and Tanner was off with his friend the whole time.
All in all, a very fun morning.
Then is was off to buy flowers for mom and then home to anxiously await her arrival.
We are so proud of her and we all missed her very much. She can take another trip by herself in just a few short years.

2011-05-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

2011 is a big year for me or to put it another way I had a big birthday this year. Last fall when I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my birthday, I decided I wanted to do something big, something hard, something that I hadn't done before.

I decided I wanted to run a half-marathon and thinking that my birthday is in March and that Ohio winters last forever, wouldn't it be nice to go someplace warm with some people that I love to run? Good idea, right?

So I invited my favorite women..

...my mom,

my lovely sisters, Erin and Melissa,

my sister-in-law Joy,

and my sister-in-law, Rachael. (Sorry Rachael, this is the only picture I could find of you!)

I looked and looked for big races (i love the energy of a big crowd of people running), in a warm place, that wasn't on a Sunday. I mean, if I am going to pray for protection while I do this, I am going to try not to do it on the sabbath, right? Ultimately I couldn't find one so I settled on one in Columbus in May that promised to be flat. And Ohio is nice in the spring.

Somewhere around Christmas time (I think) my sister Melissa announced that she was pregnant and due in June. Not likely she would want to participate in this race 30 some weeks pregnant.

Then, in January, my sister Erin announced that she too is pregnant and due in August. I told them both, if they didn't want to run, all they had to do was say so, they didn't have to get pregnant! (But really I am so thrilled for both of them!)

Then three weeks before race day when Rachael and I were doing a long run, her leg started to hurt really bad. After an appointment with her doctor (Marc) she was diagnosed with a stress fracture and told she would not be running any races for a while.

Mom was always planning on participating but would be walking a quarter marathon instead.

So that just left Joy and I. And thank heaven for her. She came (from California), she ran with me, we finished, and had fun.

We were pretty sore and tired after, but so proud of ourselves. I love to do things like this. Just because I am getting older, doesn't mean I have to slow down and that I can't push my body to do things I haven't done before. I feel so strong and able when I think about what we did.

Thanks ladies for a great day!

(Mel and Erin, I am there when you want to do one after those babies!)

This and that

2011-05-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

I just read one of my local facebook friends said the animals have started to pair up. It may have been raining for 40 days and 40 nights. I mentioned to the kids this morning that maybe we should start building an ark. Sarah's response was, "We don't have any wood." She's right. Should that be part of my emergency preparedness?

Anyway, on to more exciting things.

Our school district runs an after school enrichment program where people from the community come in and teach classes to the kids after school for an hour or so. Tanner has done a couple of Lego classes, chess and 'mad science'. At the beginning of the year, Ella asked if she could do a jump rope class. I agreed quickly. She is not our most active child and she struggles to sleep at night. I thought great, let's get some exercise and maybe make her really tired!

She absolutely loved it. At the end of her 8 weeks of class it was time for tryouts for the Comet Skippers, the jump rope team that the school district sponsors. We went to the parent meeting and even though we weren't sure it was a beast we were willing to tackle we went ahead and let her try out. I wasn't sure what her chances were to make the team, nor how I would handle the disappointment if she didn't, but we decided to let her try.

Tryouts were grueling. It was three consecutive nights for 2 hours and then a Saturday morning. By the time she came home on Friday, her legs were so sore, she asked if she could sit in the whirlpool tub for a while. She worked harder than I have ever seen her and really wanted it.

To my surprise, she made the team! She was so excited. Last night they had a little ceremony to welcome all the new team members and they got to stay for the workout. They don't actually start going to practice regularly until the fall.

I pray it is a good experience for her. It is a demanding thing and I am afraid we may now be one of those 'overscheduled' families! We'll see how it goes.

Kids in the kitchen

2011-05-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

I love to cook. I love to read cooking magazines, explore cooking blogs, try new recipes and dream of the day my family will embrace this love of mine, too.

I don't love planning our family menu, spending 45 minutes making dinner only to have everyone ask for a hot dog, or realizing by the time dinner is cleaned up I have spent two hours in the kitchen!

When I plan our menu before my weekly shopping trip, I often ask what everyone would like to eat only to be met with blank stares and a lot of 'I dunnos'.

So one day it dawned on me, these kids are old enough to help. I bought a couple of cookbooks that are geared toward the kids and for the past three weeks or so they have planned and prepared one meal each week. So far it has been great. I try to be as hands off as possible and let them do it. Now we just need them to venture beyond breakfast foods!

Tanner and Mary helped make smoothies

Sarah and Ella made pancakes.

Ella grated cheese (and not her fingers!)

I let Tanner try chopping peppers this last week (fingers okay here too).

Ella spread the pizza sauce. They all thought handling the pizza dough was pretty gross and for once couldn't wait to wash their hands.

2011-04-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

We have had a busy few days. Here are the highlights.

Thursday is gymnastics day at our house. We go from 4:30 to 6:45 so the three younger girls can all take classes. Mary just loves it. This is her first session in a class without me and I hear a lot of "Mary, get back in line or it's not your turn!"

Friday the kids were off school for Good Friday so we went bananas (that's the name of the inflatables place) with the cousins and some friends. My arms were really sore from my Boot Camp class on Wednesday and Mary kept dragging me on to one slide that she wasn't quite tall enough to do on her own! It was fun!

Saturday morning started with a reprieve from the constant rain and an opportunity to do my long run outside. I am doing a half marathon in Columbus in two weeks (my first!). When I got home, Marc left to go play basketball and I went up to the shower. While I was upstairs, grandpa came by with donuts for the kids and when I came down this is what I found. I think Mary may have a problem!

Saturday was also the annual easter egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpas house. Here are the bucket heads before not-so-patiently waiting for the dads to finish hiding the eggs....

...or are they eating the candy?

Bursting out the door...

The happy hunters. Sarah found so many eggs, she emptied her basket on Marc's lap and went for a second round. It really is so fun to live close to family for holidays.

Spring is trying to come.

2011-04-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

Not including the last two days when we have had about 4 inches of rain, two nights of wind and thunderstorms and a 1:30 am trip to the basement while the tornado sirens blared, we are trying to enjoy a little springtime weather around here.

We tried our hand at kite flying.

We've marveled at all the popcorn popping!

And have made many dandelion bouquets for mom. (I forget about those every year until I get the first one!)

Maybe the sun will return tomorrow?

Busted

2011-04-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

We hunted Easter eggs on Saturday at the Community Center. The little girls were first and followed the rules, only collecting about 10 eggs each...

Tanner and Ella got almost a bucketful. There were a lot of silly little toys and some small pieces of candy.

This afternoon, Mary hadn't been seen or heard for a while, so I went looking. I found her lounging on her bed with a handful of Tanner's half-eaten candy beside her and a mouthful of blue taffy! That is why I tell them all the time not to leave things where Mary can reach them! What a stinker!

Blogging again...

2011-04-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

...because a few months ago, my inlaws sent an email requesting pictures of our family that they could take with them on their mission to Bucharest, Romania. I never sent them and they entered the MTC today. Since they have started a blog for their mission, I assume they will have internet access and will be able to check our blog (though I wouldn't be surprised if they have quit doing that!) So to calm my somewhat guilty conscience, I will be a better blogger. Here are the happenings of today...

Mary had swimming lessons. She loves the water, but often opts to do her own thing rather than what the teacher asks.

I gambled and won....look at all these gift cards I scored for a mere $10 in raffle tickets! I really was just trying to support the school!

We played stickers after lunch. Mary has been instructed that we only put stickers on ourselves or paper, not on furniture or walls. She has decided she prefers herself.

We also pretended to be chickens and when that got boring, switched to lions. I was a hungry lion and wanted some meat. Sarah who was the baby lion said she knew where we could find some. She went to the toy box and got a BABY doll!!! and started carrying it around in her mouth! I admit it made me laugh!

Thanksgiving in Denver

2011-02-02T10:22:00.000-08:00

Marc's parents are preparing to leave on a mission so we thought we should go spend a holiday in Denver. We figured we would have better luck in November with the weather than we would in December so we let the kids skip a couple of days of school and headed west the weekend before Thanksgiving.

We drove through some pea soup fog and saw this as we drove!

We spent a day at the Denver Aquarium.

The kids had a blast petting the stingrays. There was one that kept swimming really close to them and splashing!

We made some decorations for the Thanksgiving table.

We decorated some turkey cookies with Jonas.

We ate WAY too much.

Tanner got hooked on the ipad that Uncle Todd brought.

We spent lots of time playing games and having fun with the cousins.

We also ran a 5K with Jason (Marc's sister's husband) and saw a couple of movies.

One of the big surprises of the week was Mary and this dog. Marc's brother Kent and his wife Stacy, rescued this 'vicious' pitbull. I will admit to having some reservations when I heard of his size. I was sure one of my children would be eaten. Mary who trembles in fear around my parent's (really my brother's) hound dog, could not get enough of this 90 some pound bruiser named Moose. I was shocked at how gentle he is. He was great around the kids and supremely patient and tolerant.

We had a great time! Can't wait to do it again!

2011-02-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

This morning we had a nice sheet of ice on the ground and the kids are enjoying their fifth snow day this year. Too bad Governor Strickland only allowed Ohio school districts to have three snow days this year. We now have two to make up.

But that is not the point of this post... the point is to document something cute that Mary said this morning. Since I am definately motivated by a deadline and now we didn't have to be anywhere, I was kind of lazy about helping Mary get dressed. Finally she wanders up to me and the following conversation took place....

Mary: Mom, can you get me some ballet clo?

Me: What? (I do speak Mary but wasn't really sure what she meant by clo)

Mary: Can you get me some ballet clo?

Me: (by now, having figured it out) Sure Mary, I'll help you get some ballet clothes.

Mary: running away toward the ballet clothes...No Mom, just one ballet clo!

I just love toddler speak!

Beware the SNEEZANATOR!!

2011-01-27T17:36:00.000-08:00

Last night was pinewood derby night and it was a big night for Tanner. Last year's car may not have been the fastest but it did get a lot of "wow!" and "cool" reactions from the other boys because he had a star wars lego guy and R2D2 on it. So, this year when I asked him what kind of car he wanted to make without hesitation he said a sneeze powered car. He came up with the concept and design of the car all on his own. So, we borrowed a nose from one of Ella's toys and the top of a pepper shaker, and viola! a sneeze powered car. He said it was the most environmentally friendly car out there. He pretty much made the whole thing himself (I just kind of held his hand when he was using the drill press, chisel, and dremel tool. He even painted it himself. I did put on the wheels right before race time but not much more than that. Looking at it, I thought "oh well, it may not be the fastest but at least he'll get some good reactions." At the weigh in he came in right at 5 ounces. Well, he ended up winning 3 or 4 races and he won first place among the Bears. He was so excited, he couldn't stop grinning. It was very fun to watch him beat some of the other boy's dads. I wonder what he'll come up with next year.

On a side note: Since Tanner's middle name is James, and I don't like Jim or Jimmy, please refer to him as Tanner Jimmer from now on. Thank you.

Make a plate day at Sarah's school (in November, of course!)

2011-01-25T19:03:00.000-08:00

Each year at Sarah's preschool, the parent network hosts a make-a-plate event. The kids each get a paper circle then they send them off the the Makit company and it comes back as a plate with their drawing on it. They had so much fun using last year's plate that we couldn't miss going again.

Sarah (doesn't she have a great smile?) did a really colorful abstract piece.

We traced Mary's hands a few times.

Ella decided to draw a scene from the ABC show 'Wipeout" complete with the two Johns providing the commentary. (That is a fake cast. See previous post)

And Tanner did a battle scene complete with zeppelin.

More of what I would have blogged about....

2011-01-24T12:59:00.000-08:00

After seeing that this sweet little baby, her cousin Addy had gotten her ears pierced, Ella asked if she could get hers done. Since noone had ever asked, Marc and I hadn't really talked about it, but he thought if she was willing to take care of them, that was fine. So off we went to Claire's...

Here she is before, all smiles...

Here she is right before. Notice the smile is gone and she could not look more petrified!

And here she is after...so relieved to have survived!

What I would have blogged about had I blogged in November...

2011-01-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

...the Mason Heights Carnival. Someone from the carnival committee at Tanner and Ella's school approached Marc about putting fake casts on kids during the carnival. Marc agreed and I was worried that it would be too much at $5 each cast. The carnival was supposed to run from 11-3. The volunteers working in that room stopped adding names to the waiting list around 1:30 and Marc didn't put on his last cast until 4:45. Parents and kids actually waited almost 2 hours after the carnival ended to get a fake cast! Marc thinks they put on around 275 casts that day. It was such a roaring success they have asked him to do it at the other elementary school in Mason in February.

Our kids were the guinea pigs as Marc tried to figure out how to put a cast on so that the kids could slip them off!

Monday Night Football

2010-11-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

The stars aligned just right for the Steelers to be in town on a Monday night. Kenna got me the tickets for our anniversary. So Tanner and I went out and found some Steelers jerseys at the outlet mall and off we went into enemy territory to support our team. Surprisingly, there were quite a few Pittsburgh fans at the game.

While we were up in the nose bleed section we could still see all the action just fine. Tanner got all excited when he saw the vendor with the cotton candy two sections over, but the only vendors that made to our section were the beer vendors. They made a killing in our section. When the game doesn't even start until 8:30 you know it is going to be a late night. We left towards the end of the third quarter at 11:00 in an effort to get home before midnight (he had school and I had surgery the next day). But, there was an accident on the highway and we didn't get home until 12:30am. He stayed awake until I turned on talk radio and then he was out like a light. We both had a great time rooting for the Steelers as they beat the bungals at home. Thanks, Kenna for the tickets!

An invitation to rebel against your genes (and maybe jeans)

2010-10-30T18:04:00.000-07:00

I am extending this invitation to all members of the Wahlquist clan who will be in Denver for Thanksgiving. There is a 5k race Thanksgiving morning in Highlands Ranch that Kenna and I will be running in and we would like to include all interested family members to participate as well. For those of us with actual Wahlquist genes lounging in our bodies this does seem like an absurd proposition (Me? Run? TVs were invented so I could sit on my couch and watch other people do that). But I urge you all to ignore those coach potato tendencies, lace up those old sneakers, and join us on race day as we watch Kenna run an amazing race (I will be doubled over a trash can around mile two, it is at 5ooo feet after all).

This is the link to the race website:

http://www.highlandsranchchamber.org/td5k/register.html

Goodbye old friend

2010-10-21T06:08:00.000-07:00

In late August, I mentioned to Marc that I thought it was time to start shopping for something to replace our 'little van'. It was starting to scare me a little with the funny noises and rattles it would make. The AC hasn't worked for a year (yes, it was quite a miserable summer, thank you) and we had decided a while ago that we weren't going to sink any more money into repairing it.

So Marc dove into the car shopping process head first devoting every spare moment to test drives and internet research. I had forgotten this little fact about Marc. When I mentioned maybe we should start looking, I wasn't quite ready for the intense focus that followed!

He finally decided what he wanted. It had always been our plan to trade in the van, give me his car and have a new one for him. I didn't anticipate (because I don't consider myself a sentimental girl) how sad it would make me to get rid of the van. Three of our kids came home from the hospital in that car. We took lots of fun trips (Canada among them). There are just a lot of memories attached to that car and I miss it lots. I have learned in the last couple of weeks that a little SUV is not practical even for a mom that only has two kids home during the day. It is hard for them to get into and you can't take any friends with you because there is not room for a third carseat.

So long 'purple van'.....it's been fun.
This is what Marc chose...
He says he wanted a convertible because he thought the kids would like it!!!!

Sarah Margaret's birthday

2010-10-11T04:24:00.001-07:00

Last week our sweet Sarah turned five! She is such a sweet girl. We had a great celebration in honor of her birthday.Sunday was our family party. Sarah chose an iCarly theme.
We hooked up the video camera to the TV so they could make their own web shows and had some 'random dancing'.
A computer cake...
And some fun presents....
Wednesday was her actual birthday and she got a little present before school.
She had lunch at Red Robin with dad.
And then a girls night out with mom, Ella, Aunt Rachael, Monica (her cousin) and grandma. The stars somehow aligned again and Disney princesses on ice opened in Cincinnati on her birthday. It was opening night so tickets were cheap!
Sarah didn't know until we got there what we were doing.
The girls enjoyed some over-priced snow cones.The show was great. It told the stories of the classic princesses, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella among others. It was really fun to watch and the girls really loved it.
I can't believe it has been five years since Sarah joined our family. We really love her so so much!

Apple Picking2010

2010-10-08T04:18:00.000-07:00

We continued our annual tradition of picking apples last weekend. We drove up to Columbus to visit with Marc's cousin Beth and her family and checked out one of their local orchards. This one was light years better than the one we went to here, but Tanner was disappointed that the trees weren't big enough to climb (though that did not stop him from trying). We had lots of fun and there were tons of apples.

Another attempt at a family picture!

(Wow Beth! I had no idea you did that until I saw the pictures! Thanks for helping her!)
Tanner and Dillon have a good time together!

Good thing we aren't having family pictures taken!

2010-10-03T19:13:00.000-07:00

It has been a rough week for Mary. She walked a little too close to the swing and got smacked in the head. You can see what's left of that bruise above her left eye. Then she was running downhill at the park to see the ducks, stumbled and couldn't get her hands down in time. Her nose met the pavement first! Then she bonked her head on Tanner's dresser in the same spot as the swing bruise, so that one is actually worse than this picture shows! Let's hope this week is better!

A belated but sappy birthday poem for my little sis

2010-09-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

As I think back on the days growing up with my sister

There were times I would have preferred a weeping blister

Over the years we have grown up and live far apart

And now I realize something obvious from the start

She was a actually a friend and I’ve missed her

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TARYN!!

If you're going to write a poem about your sister and the only rhyming word you can think of is blister you should proceed with great caution.

I miss summer!

2010-09-18T05:02:00.000-07:00

Over the summer, this is what our regular schedule looked like. Except for a few weeks of swimming lessons, we had lots of time for playing with friends and cousins and spending time together. I remember thinking that in some ways I was excited for school to start so we could get back into a routine. Now I wish it were summer again.Below is our current afternoon regular schedule. This does not include things that come up like Parent-Teacher conferences, department meetings, book club, etc. I think I may have allowed the kids to do too much!

cooler weather.....outdoor fun

2010-09-12T18:50:00.000-07:00

We have finally gotten a break from the 90 degree humid days and have been having some fun exploring the outdoors.

Saturday, we didn't have anything until a soccer game at 1 pm so we decided to check out the Loveland bike trail. It is a 70+ mile flat bike trail that follows the Little Miami River. It was a great morning with cool weather and good exercise. We don't have a bike trailer for Rylee so I ran with her in her stroller for a couple of miles and then switched with Marc for the bike and the two little girls. This trail is really fun. I can't believe we haven't taken advantage of it before.
The last couple of Sunday afternoons, we have explored a local park. It is called Liberty park and they have an old military cannon that the kids have had a lot of fun playing on.

Last Sunday we found this poor duck that had obviously lost a fight with someone or something and was missing most of the side of his face and most of his beak. The kids were throwing some bread and it didn't look like it was able to eat. Tanner was really worried about it. He has prayed for it every night since and that was part of the reason we went back today, to see if that duck was okay. We didn't see him so we can only hope for the best.
Some shots of the kids (mostly for grandmas)

I just realized there aren't many shots of Sarah in this post, but rather than try to move the pics around, I will promise pictures of Sarah's first soccer game in the next post.

Firsts

2010-09-08T19:27:00.001-07:00

Today was Sarah's first day back at preschool. She has been excited to for school to start since the bigger kids went back to school a couple of weeks ago. She has a different teacher this year (which I think makes her a little nervous) but the same aide (which she is very happy about!).

( *warning...little soapbox moment coming...does anyone else really hate the practice of putting Miss in front of a person's first name and calling them that? Does putting 'Miss' in front of a first name make it a respectful way for a 4-year-old to address an adult? Couldn't a child just as easily learn to call her teacher Mrs. Jones? It bugs me. It makes me miss All Saints in Toledo with Mrs. Stokes.)
Mary just had to be in all the back to school pictures this year.

The other first for today is that for the first time in a little over 13 years, we have no crib set up in our house. sniff, sniff Mary hasn't used the crib since the bunk bed went up so we (and by we I mean Marc) took it apart and moved to the storage room in the basement. sigh

Play me, I'm yours

2010-09-04T08:53:00.001-07:00

Here in Cinci last month there was a program called "Play me, I'm yours" in which 30 or so pianos were placed all over town in public spaces. The idea was for regular people to just sit down and play for whoever happened to be sitting nearby. Well, one of the pianos was stationed at a nearby Graeters ice cream shop. So, I thought it would be fun to have Tanner, Ella, and myself go and play the piano and get some ice cream as a reward. We loaded up the kids and off we went. When we got to Graeters there was no piano and I thought we had missed the program. Tanner was quite relieved, and we got ice cream anyway. When I was paying for the ice cream I asked when they took the piano away. I got some confused looks and quickly realized I had come to the wrong Graeters. So, off we went with ice cream in hand to the correct Graeters and found the piano outside as promised. It was a nice friday evening and there was a good crowd outside enjoying their ice cream. Tanner already had his ice cream and could not be cajoled, prodded, or threatened into playing, but Ella bravely sat down and played one of her newer songs and got some nice applause. I also played (it was a sporadic duet with Mary at times) and got some nice applause as well.

Recap

2010-08-28T05:03:00.000-07:00

I thought that life would be a little more relaxed once school started. That has SO not been the case.

Last week as a kind of 'last hurrah' before school started and to celebrate that we finally read the Book of Mormon from front to back as a family, we decided to surprise the kids with a trip to the Great Wolf Lodge. We didn't tell them where we were going, just that we had a surprise for them to celebrate. We started with dinner out at the Outback (we had a gift card). I think they were disappointed as they thought this was the big surprise we had been talking about for a week. Then we had to go meet Ella's teacher which was fun because Tanner had him last year and LOVED him. After, we casually drove over to the Great Wolf Lodge and parked. Even as we exited the car, the kids were asking what we were doing there. They were a bit slow to pick up on the real surprise.

When they finally figured it out, they were so excited and after a quick trip home for Ella's swimsuit (oops!), they were excited to hit the water park. (Rylee stayed with grandma.)

Tanner spent a good deal of time trying to master this pool. He said it reminds him of the show Wipeout.

We swam for a couple of hours on Thursday night and all day Friday. We had a hard time keeping up with Sarah.
By mid afternoon on Friday, everyone was fading. We could tell the kids were getting tired. Marc and Ella wanted to do the slides so I loaded Mary and I on a tube and paddled out into the wave pool. After one cycle of waves, she was drooping, and after the second she was out.

She was in such a sound sleep that I was able to paddle out of the wave pool, unwedge myself (literally) from that tube, walk to a chair and remove her life jacket and she never stirred. So funny.

In other news, Marc found out this week that he PASSED his boards! He is now officially a board certified orthopaedic surgeon.

And finally, we celebrated 15 years of wedded bliss this week. I was really excited for our anniversary because I had the perfect gift. I struggle to find good gifts for Marc because unlike me he never says he wants anything (except a purple hippopotamus). But this year, the Pittsburgh Steelers are playing the Cincinnati Bengals on a Monday night in Cincy. Could the stars have aligned better? I think not. I scored some seats and gave him the tickets on Thursday.

First Day

2010-08-24T04:25:00.001-07:00

The kids started back to school. Rylee has moved to the middle school which means her bus comes at 6:29! Good thing I like to get up early! I drove her to school since I had been unable to get new brakes installed on her wheelchair in time for the first day of school.
I looked online for some new ideas for back-to-school traditions. I found some fun ones. We started the day with our names spelled out in pancakes. Tanner's was too long for the plate. My mom has a useful tool called a pancake pen which made this breakfast quick and easy.

Tanner is in third grade this year and Ella in second, which in Mason means they get to ride the same school bus again for this year and leave the house at the same time. I asked them to hold up 2 and 3 fingers for their grade level. Apparently it has been a lazy summer for their brains...

Here we go......

Mary just really wanted to be in a picture.
When they got home from school, there were back-to-school sugar cookies to decorate and a survival kit that I had put together. Marc said the survival kits were a big hit. I missed the fun since I was wandering around downtown Cincy trying to find the man who was supposed to put new brakes on the wheelchair.
They had a great first day!

Girl's Day Out

2010-08-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

(Imagine that these pictures are further down in this post and that this one is not so blurry!) (I get so frustrated trying to move pictures around in these posts)

The last time I got my hair cut, I realized that my next visit would be just before school started. So I thought, why not bring the girls along and we'll make it a girl's day out. Here we are before leaving the house. I don't think either of them had even brushed their hair at this point.

We stopped at Panera bread for a quick breakfast. Sarah only wanted a smoothie. I swear that girl would eat nothing and drink all day long if I let her.
Ella opted for a chocolate chip bagel.
We then headed over to the salon. Here are the girl's while we were waiting. It's a great before shot, isn't it? Still looks like neither of them had brushed their hair (although they did). I let them decide how they wanted their hair done. Ella opted for the tiniest little trim off the ends. She loves her long hair. Sarah on the other hand went for the drastic change and I think she looks stunning.
After shot....
We had a fun day together and spent the afternoon hanging out with Marc's cousin Beth and her family. We had so much fun in fact that we didn't take a single picture!

2010-08-13T19:14:00.000-07:00

I was thinking I didn't really have anything to blog until I looked through the pictures from the last couple of days and realized there was.

Tanner and Ella passed their Yellow Belt test at Karate this week. Neither one of them really likes Karate, but they are having to learn that hard lesson that we finish what we start. Since I am committed to pay for it for 6 months, they are going. They have fun when they get there but getting them there is torturous.
Back in the days of med school, condo living and coin-operated laundry machines, I used to get rolls of quarters at the bank and save the state quarters for a collection someday. I have had a container of quarters on my dresser for at least 8 years. Anyway, Tanner has been looking for some ways to earn money. I told him if he would count and roll all those quarters, he could have 10%. I thought I might have $100 in quarters. Wrong! There was $190 and he scored $19 for a few hours of work. Who knew there was that much money in there. That will make a good dent in the back-to-school shopping.
It is SO hot. Still. We have been swimming so much that the kids are tired of the pool. Today they played in the sprinkler in the back yard. This was how it started.
The next time I looked out the window, I saw they had suspended the sprinkler over the slide and were literally flying down the slide and laughing the whole time.
Tanner said the ring made the landing a little more comfortable.
Not sure why you would need goggles and water wings.
Last night for enrichment, we had a little sewing class. I made this little pillow for the kids to put their teeth in when they lose them. Then the tooth fairy can leave the money in the little tooth pocket. It turned out really cute and the kids are excited to lose some teeth. It was a fun little project. Easy, useful and done in less than an hour.

No sleeping beauty here!

2010-08-11T04:10:00.000-07:00

Instead we have a sleeping ladybug,a sleeping giraffe,
and a sleeping wonder woman!

Cincinnati Zoo

2010-08-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

We haven't been to the zoo since Christmas time and with a break in the humidity on Friday, we decided to go. We were really spoiled in Toledo because the zoo was only a 5 minute drive away. Here it seems like such an excursion to drive 25 minutes to the Cincinnati zoo.

Right off the bat, the kids found this bird that imitated them when they would make noises and bob their heads. They thought it was hilarious.
I think this was the first time that Mary has been the to zoo and been interested in looking at the animals.
Ollie and Mary kept hitting the glass of this leopard's enclosure and yelling, "Wake up!"
Yes, Madagascar hissing cockroaches. The insect house will definately make your skin crawl.

We always have to ride the carousel.

Go Bananas!

2010-08-08T18:54:00.000-07:00

Wednesday lunch this week was McDonalds! (good for the kids, not so much for the parents) and then a trip to Bananas, one of our local indoor inflatable playlands. Our cousins who have been visiting from Japan are leaving next week and they wanted to check it out. The kids had lots of fun jumping and playing (and working off their chicken nuggets!)

Mary was a little timid at first but warmed up quickly.
Sarah is a nut. She has no fear!
After a while the cousins figured out it would be fun to make trains and go down the slides together.

Here are all the cousins that jumped and played. Eliza and Rylee just watched.

left to right- Megan, Ollie, Mary, Ella, Sarah, Monica, Trey, Tanner, Cameron and Calvin

Look what a dollar buys

2010-08-04T04:32:00.000-07:00

In the spring, Marc picked up a couple of small kits at the home improvement store which were basically a dixie cup, dirt and some seeds. The kids got them started and I watered them until they started to grow. We planted them on the side of the house which is always sunny and look what we have now. Ella's sunflower is taller than me! Tanner's was originally planted in a less sunny spot and may be a different variety of sunflower. We moved it a few weeks ago and it is doing great. I think it may catch Ella's.

They have had so much fun watching the plants grow. Who says a dollar doesn't buy anything anymore?

Wednesday lunch

2010-07-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

Every Wednesday, we get together with grandma and our aunts and cousins for lunch. During the school year, we try new restaurants or stay in and try new recipes. This summer, with a group of 4 women and 15 children, we have tried to find other things to do. We chose to go to the park this week. It was HOT. But the kids were great. The park has a little sprinkler thing which made for some funny pictures.

(Scott, I thought you would appreciate this one of your son!)
There are always lots of ducks to feed at this park.
My brother Scott is an attorney in the Marine Corps and has sent his sweet family to stay with Grandma while he helps out in Afghanistan. This is his youngest, Eliza. Don't worry, Scott, she has gotten lots of love here.
After the park, because it was REALLY HOT, we came home and went to the pool.

Our house is about seven houses down the road from the pool. Unlike many of our neighbors, we usually walk up there. Mary usually lags behind. On the way back home on Wednesday, I looked back to check on Mary and this is what I saw!
I love little tanned-bleached-blonde kids.

Three little stories about....fish (?)

2010-07-28T04:07:00.000-07:00

We have decided to try again. (no, no more babies) We are now the proud owners of a small aquarium and three little fish. The kids are having lots of fun feeding them and watching them. The filter, unfortunately doesn't seem to be working right. This morning the water is a nice shade of brown (ewww)!

Tanner went fishing last night for scouts. Marc said he was a really good caster, but sadly not the best catcher. Only 2 of the dozen or so scouts actually caught a fish .

And finally a short video of our little fish. This kid is scary around the swimming pool. More than once this summer she has just launched herself into the pool alone! I have laid awake at night worrying about her making it through swimming season. Fortunately, a good chunk of our city pool is just the right height for her. And because she just wants to be like the other kids, she seems to be figuring out the swimming part.

Out of the crib

2010-07-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, we found a pretty sweet deal on a set of bunkbeds at Costco and picked them up for the little girls' room. Mary has been asking to sleep in her new bed since, but has not been able to actually stay in it long enough to fall asleep....until Friday night. She spent her first night in her new 'big-girl' bed. I think it helped that she shopped with me, didn't have a nap, swam for a few hours and spent the evening playing with the cousins. She was too pooped to get out of bed. She's growing up fast (sniff, sniff)

County Fair

2010-07-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

Each week we get together with grandma and the rest of the family for lunch. This week I noticed that the county fair was going on and suggested that we go check it out. Who doesn't love hanging around farm animals when it is 90 degrees outside?

We saw some adorable baby pigs.
We sunk some of Marc's hard-earned money on the rides. Mary really thought this one was a lot of fun. She even practiced her pageant wave for when she is Miss Warren County!
Our cousin Cameron talked his 65-year-old grandpa into riding this contraption with him. No spinny rides for me, thank you.
Tanner wasn't interested in the rides. He asked if he could play a game or two. I tried to talk him out of it telling him that you never win anything and it was a waste of money. He proved me wrong. He managed to get a ping pong ball into a little fish bowl and walked away with a goldfish. He was really cute, too. At one point after we got home he pulled a chair up to the counter and read a book next to his fish. He has been wanting a pet for a while.

I was a bit concerned about Joe (the goldfish) because he just sat on the bottom of this vase we put him in. Every now and then he would start to fall over sideways but would correct himself. I stopped on the way home from book club and bought fish food and fed him and he came up to the top to get the food but quickly sank back to the bottom. I went to bed a little worried but encouraged that he had eaten. Unfortunately, as apparently often happens with goldfish, Joe was dead in the morning and poor Tanner was pretty upset. There's another reason to add to the list of reasons not to have pets. The cousins that went to the fair with us won 4 goldfish and all of theirs died within 2 days. I think that helped Tanner feel a little better.

Boards

2010-07-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of our office (sorry it is really dark), where Marc has spent the vast majority of the month of July.

The stacks on the floor are his patient files that he will be presenting tomorrow morning at 9:45 in what will hopefully be the last of the tests he has to take for a long time! He has worked really hard and is really nervous. Your good wishes (and prayers!) appreciated!

Ella's birthday

2010-07-18T19:13:00.000-07:00

It is sometimes a bummer to have your birthday on a Sunday, so we tried to make it fun and special for Ella. We even brought both sets of grandparents over!

We started with breakfast in bed. She was pretty excited.

She got this funny headband. I told her she could not wear it to sacrament meeting!

Ella has seen some mini cakes at the grocery store and added it to her list of wishes for her birthday. Grandma got this purple and pink one for her and she helped make the 'Starfy' cake on the right.

There we a couple of presents.

And at the end of the day, a happy seven year old.

Happy birthday Ella! We love you lots and lots!

blogging for the sake of blogging

2010-05-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

Things I said this morning that I never thought I would:

"You don't get any cereal until you finish that doughnut!"

Kenna bought doughnuts yesterday and the kids wanted both this morning. In hindsight I'm not sure what my logic was at the time other than to exert authority over my children.

"Sarah, you have to leave your knockers in the van!"

I didn't realize what I had said until Kenna start giggling. Sarah had one of those annoying toys with two balls and a handle that you shake up and down and they clack together, and she wanted to take it into sacrament meeting. I stand by my position but I recognize my poor choice of words.

As a side note, the township where we live has these free movie in a park events every two weeks. They have this big inflatable screen and we all set up chairs in the park and watch a movie. This past week was "Where the Wild Things Are" In short, it was absolutely the worst movie I have ever seen. The plot made no sense, I only wanted bad things to happen to the main characters and didn't care what happened to the others. We asked the kids if they wanted to leave and only Tanner wanted to go. So we suffered through it, but please learn from our mistakes and save yourselves from the agony.

Spring Break in Florida 2010

2010-04-16T12:26:00.001-07:00

Here's what we did....

A little baby blessing.A little getting to know our newest cousin, Addy. An unplanned easter egg hunt.

A little pretending to be an astronaut (and we did actually get to see the launch of the final space shuttle...but no pictures of that!) A teeny tiny bit of Disney.
A lot of cousin time.

An awful lot of Mary doing anything but go near the ocean.And a lot of fun in the water.

Tanner would say we also did a lot of driving which is true. As it turns out everyone (or at least the other four moms at my kid's bus stop) goes to Florida for spring break!

Have you ever.....

2010-03-30T02:40:00.000-07:00

Have you ever gotten up before the kids to exercise on Monday morning so that you have the rest of the day to be really productive?

Have you ever had a perfect plan of attack for your productive morning that included the post office, the bank, a goodwill drop and a little shopping for your upcoming spring break trip?

Have you ever had such a fun, busy weekend that you had to have a nap on Sunday afternoon and forgot to help your first grader finish (or start really) her timeline project for school?

Have you ever been in the office 10 minutes before the bus comes on your precisely planned Monday morning when said timeline project is due trying to finish it up and had your 2 year old fall off the office chair, hit her head on the leg of the desk and split her head requiring an unexpected trip to the ER?

Have you ever heard how much scalp wounds bleed? It is true.

An episode of Dora, four staples and a popsicle later, all is well.

Mary and Sarah helping out

2010-03-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

Many things about this video make me chuckle.

First, how furiously Mary is cleaning!

Second the huge ball of wipes that Sarah is hiding behind her back.

And third how Sarah tries to blame it all on Mary!

I held the camera the wrong way and have no idea how to rotate a video so either tilt your head to the side or pick up your monitor and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise! Sorry!

Bracketology according to Ella

2010-03-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

Me: Georgetown or Ohio?

Ella: Of course Ohio, silly!

Me: Butler or UTEP?

Ella: (giggling) Butler has a funny word in it

Me: Vanderbilt or Murray St.?

Ella: Murray St. has my middle name in it!

Me: Temple or Cornell?

Ella: Temple helps us get to heaven

Me: Clemson or Missouri?

Ella: Have I been to Missouri?

Me: No

Ella: Then Clemson

Me: Kansas or Lehigh?

Ella: Well, Lehi was a prophet...

Happy Birthday Mary Berry!!!

2010-02-04T19:34:00.000-08:00

'Twas two years ago that into our life

popped this little berry out of my wife

With four other children already present

the housing situation became very unpleasant

But with eyes and a smile so sweet

having her around turned into a treat

She's learned to say bumblepus, Dora, and fries

but love of the latter has resulted in 95th percentile thighs

While all the kids love to smother her in hugs and kisses

a somewhat disappointed Tanner still wishes

that while he and Mary are of the same genus

there are days where he'd rather she had a...

...lego set

bicycle

comic book

cookie, etc.

What were you guys thinking?

Yesterday was a big day

2010-01-27T19:01:00.000-08:00

Tanner had his first pine wood derby. While his car wasn't the fastest, I overheard some of the older scouts say that they thought his car was the coolest.

How do you know which way R2D2 is facing?

Ella lost another tooth. She got hit in the face during basketball practice. She was actually pretty excited about it. She even wrote a note to the tooth fairy explaining what happened.

I think one of her friends at school told her that the tooth fairy's real name was Sarah.

It's great to be eight.....

2009-12-30T04:15:00.000-08:00

...just ask Tanner.

His birthday started with a request for breakfast in bed, which Dad made for him. French toast and juice in a sippy cup! (We don't usually allow food out of the kitchen/dining room to avoid messes!)
There was lunch with Dad and Marc was excited because Tanner actually wanted to go somewhere besides McDonalds or Burger King. When they left, the plan was to go to Taco Bell. While that would not be my choice if I could go anywhere I wanted, it was his. But, when they came home they told me that had gone to McDonald's after all. Tanner said it had been a year since he had a chicken patty! Marc took the camera but forgot to actually use it!

We then had a great party at Lazer Kraze, a local laser tag place. Great for me because all I had to do was send the invites and bring the cake!

Mary enjoyed the arcade.

So did Sarah.

The cousins inside the arena.

The army man cake.

After the party, we invited the family back to our house for dinner. Tanner's request? Hamburgers and french fries. I think that means Marc had the same meal twice in one day.

After dinner everyone joined in for our inaugural playing of Beatles RockBand. I think grandpa may have enjoyed in the most.

A little info about Tanner at eight.....

He is SO smart.
He LOVES Legos.
He is a voracious reader and prefers non-fiction, especially wars and military books.
He is a Cougar fan (of course) and roots for the Steelers as well (just like his dad).
He likes spending time with friends , but I think he secretly prefers his family, especially when we play games or do fun things together.
He has a great giggle.
He is a thoughtful brother and son.

Christmas

2009-12-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

I wish I had my own personal photographer who would come and capture Christmas morning on film and allow Marc and I to just sit and enjoy the children and all the excitement. Ella woke up at 3:30, blaming the wind for waking her up. Marc and I are not sure she went back to sleep. By the time everyone else woke up, around 8:30, she was almost too excited to contain herself.

I think the kids enjoyed their presents from Santa and from Mom and Dad. There was lots and lots of smiling! Enjoy the pictures.

Okay, no smiling on this next one, but I needed to include a picture of Rylee. Isn't the hat cute?

Santa left some clues leading the children to this gift in the basement.
Mary would have been completely satisfied with a stocking full of Hershey Kisses. Once she found the chocolate, she could not have cared less about the rest of the gifts.

It's finally Christmas Eve

2009-12-25T05:06:00.001-08:00

Our children have been counting down for a long time for this day to come. We had lots of fun. Here is what we did. We made an assembly line to finally get some Christmas cards out. Daddy licked the envelopes, Ella stamped them and Tanner did the address labels. I had not put the stockings on the mantle. One, because I wanted to decorate it how I wanted to and also because I thought those heavy stocking holders would just be begging for Mary to pull them down on her head.

So part of our day was getting out the stockings and putting them on the mantle.

I think they had been up about 5 minutes when one was pulled down but the victim wasn't Mary, it was Sarah.

We decorated sugar cookies for our eagerly awaited nighttime visitor.

At grandma's house, we had our own little Christmas pageant. The wise men brought baby Jesus a really lovely wooden box full of poker chips!

And we came home and opened our new jammies!

The kids, especially Tanner, were SO excited about Christmas, but all fell asleep really fast. It was a fun, fun day.

Favorite Rylee pics

2009-10-31T11:46:00.000-07:00

I been meaning to post these pictures since my last post. These are some of my favorite pictures of Rylee but they didn't have her toy so they needed their own post.

I believe this is her first Christmas. She made out like a bandit.

Here is my little Rylee burrito.

Sheer joy with bubbles.

Just cute.

Just a perfect smile and actually looking at the camera.

I don't know what happened here.

OK, this one isn't so good of Rylee, but look at that hair! Oh, the memories.

It's raining men!!!

2009-10-14T19:48:00.001-07:00

Rylee has always had only one toy that she will really play with. We call it "Mr. Happy Face" and other than the church hymnal it may be the only toy she will crawl across a room to play with. Over the years we have lost several Mr. Happy Faces but a couple of years ago we stopped being able to find it in the stores. The one she has now is one I found on ebay a couple of years ago. Recently, she has chewed off one of his "ears" so he looked more like a Van Gogh toy but with a sunny disposition. Kenna and I began to wonder how we were going to find another Mr. Happy Face. It is made by the Sassy toy company, so I went to their website and found a "contact us" form and explained our situation. A couple of days later we got a call from a company representative saying that they no longer make that toy but she had gone through the warehouse and found three toys stashed back in some unused corner and while they weren't in perfect condition we could have them if we paid for the shipping. We very happily paid for shipping and just a few days ago they showed up, much to her delight.

Well, this got me to thinking about when Mr. Happy Face joined our family. And so I started digging through old pictures to try and find his origins. Try to find Mr. Happy face in the following pictures.

Here he is at Grandma Wilson's house guarding Rylee from Kobe the dog, or is it the other way around?

Here he is in Canada whale watching with Tanner.

Here he is watching a Fourth of July Parade in Washington, PA.

This is a tough one, but if you look close you can find him posing with Grandma and Grandpa Wahlquist.

This is in black and white but you can still make out his button nose (no pun intended). A pre-marine Uncle Scott was trying to cut in on the action.

Here Cousin Cameron seems to have succeeded where Uncle Scott failed. This picture was taken in April of '01. The lambs later testified against Calvin in the ensuing custody battle.

Here he is getting ready to go for a swim in the pool with Rylee and Tanner. Keep your legs comments to yourself, thank you.

And this is the earliest documentation I could find of Mr. Happy Face. He seems to have joined our family on Christmas day 2000.

Thanks, Mr. Happy Face, for being Rylee's bestest friend for so many years!

Iron and what?!

2009-09-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

The following conversation took place over the dinner table a few days ago:

Tanner: Dad, did you know that Grandma has a book about iron and sex?

Me: .......uh......what?

Tanner: Did you know that Grandma has a book about iron and sex?

Me: .....uh.....what?

I had no idea how to respond to that question. I was trying to think about what such a book would really be about. Tanner is very interested in history so maybe it is a book about the start of the iron industry and the first iron tycoon's sultry wife, or maybe an adult themed coffee table book. I am not one to judge what type of literature another person reads but if grandma did, in fact, have a book about iron and sex why was she showing it to Tanner?

Tanner: Dad? Dad?

Me:

Tanner: He said something else but I wasn't paying attention because I was flipping through a coffee table book in my mind

I was finally able to get to the truth without having to answer any questions about what I thought he said. Thank goodness.

mmmm, Fritos...

2009-09-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

Last week I got a haircut and every time I go it seems like I get the lady who is fresh off her cigarette break. I know it seems rude when she trying to make polite conversation but I can't really respond because I'm holding my breath the whole time. Well, this time when I walked in the "salon" (can you really call BoRics a salon?) I could see all the way through to the open back door where there was a girl sitting outside on an empty milk crate. As soon as I walked in she got up, came in, took my name, and told me to sit down in her chair. As I walked over to her chair I began to practice my deep breathing. I quickly realized that she hadn't been smoking but did just polish off a bag of Fritos corn chips. I just can't win.

I have mentioned my problem to Kenna who has suggested I go to her hair stylist who has a no smoking policy for her employees but she charges more than $20 for a haircut. I'll be honest, for me to sink a lot of money into hair care is like paying into social security. Something tells me that when I retire neither one is going to be there for me. At this point the "stylists" spent most of their time on the "perimeter" of my scalp anyway. What is really annoying is when they wander off my scalp completely and start messing with my ears and eyebrows.

What I don't understand is that in the morning when I look in the mirror this is what I see...

But that may be because reality is just too hard to face.

Take me out to the ball game...

2009-08-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

Last week I took the middle three kids and went down to a Cincinnati Reds game. They were playing the Washington Nationals and so I figured we wouldn't have any problem getting seats. The kids were very excited and Tanner brought his glove "just in case."

So, what was the highlight of the game, you ask? Was it quality time together?

No.

Was it great seats (honestly, there aren't any bad seats in that stadium) with nobody behind us so the kids could run around a little bit? No.

You'll notice Sarah is covering her ears. That is because there were 5 or 6 Cincinnati home runs hit that resulted in a mini fireworks display each time. Was that it? No.

It was this glorious sight that suddenly popped up in front of us like sunshine on a gloomy rainy day.

THE COTTON CANDY LADY!!!!

But then the clouds crashed back in front of the sun when I just couldn't bring myself to spend almost as much on cotton candy as I did on the tickets so I only bought one and split it among the three of them. Ella had been following the cotton candy vendors all over the stadium and by the sixth inning was convinced that they were never going to come over to our section.

But the kids had fun and so did I. I much prefer to watch baseball in the stadium than on TV. Then as a bonus on the way home we stopped and got everybody (mom included) a milkshake, so the evening ended perfectly.

Cincinnati Zoo

2009-08-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

Marc took a couple of days off so we are trying to check off the last of our summer to-do list. Marc took Tanner, Ella and Sarah to a Reds game but I will let him blog about that. He is much wittier and creative. Yesterday, we went to the zoo. Ella and I tried on a shirt made to fit an adult gorilla, a 42-inch neck in case you were wondering. We watched a really fun bird show, featuring a bald eagle.

We of course rode the carousel. Sarah is just coming into the picture on the left.

And we rode the train.

The zoo is also a botanical garden and the flowers are so pretty. I had to take a couple of pictures.

A visit from Uncle Scott

2009-08-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

My brother Scott has been in town for the weekend. He and his family live in Okinawa, Japan, so it is a rare treat to get to see him. We had fun just hanging out. It seems that his presence brings out some silliness in the kids! They all really think he's fun, especially Ella who has an ongoing discussion about which of the two of them has the most beautiful hair!

Have a safe trip home!

Rylee Rockin' with Rascal Flatts

2009-08-10T04:45:00.000-07:00

We found the perfect (late) birthday gift for Rylee. As we were driving home from Gatlinburg last weekend, Marc noticed a billboard for a Rascal Flatts/Darius Rucker concert coming to Cincinnati. Since neither Marc nor I could imagine a more perfect combination to make Rylee happy, and grandma was willing to watch the other kids, we decided to treat Rylee to tickets. We bought lawn seats because we thought it might be too loud for Rylee inside the pavilion. It was a perfect night for a concert. That teeny white speck in the middle of the next picture is Darius Rucker. He was great and even did a few Hootie songs for the us.

I think Rylee liked it!

Great Smoky Mountains

2009-08-09T05:02:00.000-07:00

Since Marc couldn't take a long vacation this summer, we decided to spend a few days in Gatlinburg, TN with my brother's family and my parents. The trip started out a little rough with a morning of rain and no electricity (AAAGH, no TV, computers, video games...we were forced to interact!), but it picked up quickly. Here's what we did.

We viewed some fabulous scenery. (Mount Leconte, in case you are interested)We found a great little paved trail and went for a little hike by the river. Remember our whole morning of rain? It made for a rapid river (and a nervous mom!)Why is it so hard to take a family picture?

The next morning, we found a yummy local pancake house in which to stuff ourselves, then boarded this trolley for a trip into Gatlinburg.

We putt-putted.

We found a calmer spot of water where our nervous mother actually let us get our feet wet.

We rode an aerial tram (imagine you and 100+ other people suspended by wire hundreds of feet above mountains and trees...) to a little amusement park.

We slid on boats. And we slid on carts. I think the alpine slide was the highlight.

There were also bumper cars, a giant swinging pirate boat, and lots of other fun. We then got to ride the aforementioned delightful (does the sarcasm convey?) aerial tram back down the mountain. The kids loved it.

We had a GREAT time with our family. We thought you all might enjoy the name of the road that led to our cabin.

Yes, it really does say Boogertown.

So much for a nice relaxing Sunday morning.....

2009-07-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

Marc's mom and favorite Aunt came to town Saturday. We spent a lovely evening enjoying some of our favorite Mason cuisine and looked forward to visiting with them more this morning. Just as we finished breakfast, Mary, who has recently learned to climb was left standing on a chair in the kitchen. Sometimes she gets a little bouncy and jumpy. So as she stood on this chair, bouncing and jumping, amazingly, the chair fell. Now this would not be too bad, but the chair happened to be pretty close to Rylee's wheelchair and Mary's chin connected with some part of her chair leaving a nice inch-long bleeding gash. So Marc and I scooped her up, got dressed, left the kids with Diana and Shawn and headed to the ER for some stitches. As we sat waiting for the gel that they applied to numb the area, we noticed that in the fall she also chipped a tooth and somehow bruised her cheek. She hated the papoose board, but quieted down almost as soon as they let me pick her up. Marc approved of the stitches done by the ER doctor, though he did request another one be put in between two that he felt were too far apart. Here is a picture of the wound.

The other kids declared it 'gross' when we changed the bandaid tonight. When we left for the hospital, Ella quickly ran to her room and grabbed one of her high school musical bandaids and gave it to Marc for Mary. So sweet. Here's Mary with her Gabriella bandaid!

All in all, I should be grateful. Falling off a chair and hitting your face on a wheelchair could result in something much worse than 8 stitches and a chipped tooth. We live about 5 minutes from a nearly-new branch of Cincinnati Children's where they were fantastic with Mary. And, this is the first time ever one of our children's has needed stitches (knock on wood!). Thanks Shawn and Diana for taking care of the others so we could both go!

2009-07-24T04:41:00.000-07:00

We continued to celebrate Ella's birthday on Tuesday by inviting a bunch of her friends and their families to our neighborhood pool for private pool party. It has felt like we have been celebrating her birthday for weeks, but she has just loved it.

There were about 20 kids that came. Ella said she wanted a pool party and listed a bunch of kids she wanted to come. Marc and I decided we didn't want to be responsible for making sure all the kids didn't drown, so we invited families. It worked out really well because there were kids for everyone to play with.

There were lots of presents. She even scored a Vera Bradley purse! (from one of the neighbors!) And lots of cake and ice cream. Ella loved her party and I hope that it made her feel as special as she is!

We have also checked a couple of things off our summer to-do list the last couple of days. Marc had the afternoon off on Thursday so he took Tanner, Ella and Sarah to Lazer Kraze, a local laser tag place. The kids had a great time and talked about the strategy for next time all the way until bedtime. The vest they had to wear weighs ten pounds. Marc said Sarah did a great job.We also removed Ella's training wheels and about 3 minutes later, this is what we had. She was obviously ready for it. Our practice session was abandoned when she noticed that our backyard neighbors were out on their trampoline.

Presenting...

2009-07-22T13:48:00.000-07:00

....Maggie Ball, Sarah's favorite pool game. She is such a little fish.

Ella's Big Day

2009-07-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

Ella has been excited for this day I think since July 19th of last year. Her much-anticipated and discussed sixth birthday finally arrived today. I wanted to make her feel special today so last night I spent an hour and a half or so cutting out sixes and hearts. When she woke up this morning she found that many of her usual places had been 'six-attacked'. (On Monday, when the front door was heart-attacked, she asked if we could do that on her birthday, too. I thought it might be more fun to do something just for her) There were sixes on her bedroom door. There were sixes on her side of the bathroom mirror.

There were sixes going down the stairs to the kitchen.

And there were sixes on her chair at the counter. She asked me why there were sixes everywhere! I think she liked them!

She went to a primary activity this morning, a pioneer trek, and had a lot of fun. Then Marc took her out to lunch for our traditional lunch with dad on your birthday. She chose Red Robin, much to Marc's delight (he banned Chuck E. Cheese forever), and was thrilled when the wait staff came and sang to her and gave her three balloons.

She spent the afternoon playing Blendypenz with Tanner and Sarah and helped put together goody bags for her party next week. We are having her party on Tuesday night with her friends and she agreed that it would be okay to just go out for ice cream tonight and have cake and candles then. She was allowed to order whatever she wanted. She chose a rather sickenly-sweet cotton candy milkshake. In our house there are some pretty stiff taxes known as the mommy tax and daddy tax which allows us to take a little (or a lot) of whatever you might have. These taxes can get pretty high if the children have something that Marc and I really like. This shake, however was essentially tax-free!
She got to open a couple of her presents and actually chose to save two of them for Tuesday. Such self-control!

Happy 6th birthday, Ella! You are such a ray of sunshine!

Summer Fun

2009-07-16T04:25:00.000-07:00

Mary was playing with a pair of goggles before swim lessons the other day. She lost her balance, but had her hands tangled in the goggles and ended up going forehead-first into the concrete! Yesterday, playgroup was at a park here in Mason that has a little water area. The thermometer on the car said it was 71 degrees and it was not sunny. But the kids were so excited to play there that they didn't care.

All Sarah did was try to drink it. I think she recognized that it was not really warm enough to get wet!

Can you believe she's TWELVE?

2009-07-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

Today is Rylee's 12th birthday and we had a busy day of running around. So busy, that this is what I saw when we finally made it home at 4:45 this afternoon. As for Rylee's day, I got up and made her some pancakes for her birthday breakfast! Then, a little bit later, our front door was 'heart-attacked' by the Young Women's leaders from church and one of the girls that will be in her class starting next week. I can't believe she is old enough to be in Young Women's at church. It makes me feel old.
After running around to swimming lessons, lunch at grandmas and getting the wheelchair lift serviced, we had dinner and then had the cousins and grandparents over for dessert. Rylee is difficult to shop for so we decided to decorate her walls this year and painted some shelves for her. Tonight we had everyone who was here make little fingerprint flowers on the shelves to decorate them.

We made one of Rylee's favorites, lime chiffon dessert, and sang 'happy, happy birthday' with a little country twang, because this girl likes her country music.

The cousins helped open her presents.

Happy Birthday, Rylee!

We sure love you!

Holy Monologue, Batman!!

2009-07-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

I am just finishing up Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and towards the end one of the characters has a monologue that lasts for 66 pages. It is all about values, personal responsibility, integrity, blah, blah, blah. I read the first 10 pages or so and then I just skimmed the rest. Maybe if I was personally responsible for my integrity I would have read the whole thing. Oh well (said while shrugging).

Here is the answer key

2009-07-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

Playing the role of Col Hannibal Smith: While there are plenty of little girls bossy enough to play the role I must admit that I look the best with the unlit cigar hanging out of my mouth.

Lt. Face Peck: None other than Ella Marie. She is always flashing her smile and she knows she has to be extra cute when she asks for things.

Capt. Howling Mad Murdock: This one was a little tougher. Certainly, Sarah has the craziness down but if I remember the series right Murdock was the mechanic who was able to turn a beat up clunker of a car into a battering ram/tank in just a matter of hours. Tanner is the only one in our family with that kind of skill so the part goes to him.

Sgt. Bad Attitude Baracus: There is no question that Sarah Margaret has this role all wrapped up. All she needs is a few gold chains and a mohawk and she's in.

So who are Kenna, Mary, and Rylee going to be. Well, they are the attractive damsels in distress that we rescue every week. You know, Kenna is the small bakery owner who has not paid her protection money to the mob for a couple of months, so they start to harass her, we swoop in and shoot up their vehicles, flipping them over in such a way that the passengers are able to stumble out dazed and confused, and then they decide to leave her alone, we then drive off right as the military police show up and everybody is happy.

Bah-bahbahbaaaah Bumbumbumm

2009-06-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

In 2009 a crack commando family of seven was sentenced to a summer squished into a grand caravan without air conditioning for the crime of having too many kids. The parents promptly escaped into the Cincinnati underground, flew to Florida and drove back in the biggest baddest van since...well, you know.

Mary, escaped with us and was very good little traveller. Here she is doing what Kenna referred to as "pole dancing." Nice, mom. But we found that she really doesn't appreciate being stuck in a car seat for 12 hours, but maybe she was upset we didn't take her to the beach before we left Florida.

So, we landed in Pensacola Friday evening, met our very friendly salesman who then showed us how to work some of the bells and whistles, prayed with him at his request, stayed in a hotel that night, and then drove home Saturday. Here is Kenna driving. I remember when we were at BYU she told me that she wanted a car that would make her look small. Well, I think we found something that accomplishes that.

As we were driving through Kentucky we decided to stop at a Waffle House for dinner. Neither of us had been to one and we wanted to see what all the hubbub was about. We figured that since they are everywhere they must be good, right? Wrong! Between the flies, the smell, and the freshly reconstituted orange juice seeing that place in our rear view mirror was a welcome sight.

Rylee had her first ride on the lift on Sunday. The other kids were sooo envious.

So, the story of why we had to go to Florida goes something like this: "You need how many seats? And a wheelchair lift?! We don't have anything like that" repeated at every dealership anywhere in Cincinnati. That left us with the internet. We couldn't find anything big enough, new enough, and with a wheelchair lift until Kenna found this van on eBay. We bid on it and lost, but the reserve was not met so nobody won it. Well, we called the dealer directly and appealed to his softer side and he made us an offer we couldn't refuse.

Now for the fun part. Continuing with the A-team theme we are going to play a matching game.

Help us figure out which family member should be which A-team member. Obviously, some answers will be used more than once.

The Original A-team

Col. John "Hannibal" Smith

Lt. Templeton "Face" Peck

Capt. H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock

Sgt. B.A. "Bad Attitude" Baracus

The Cincinnati A-team

Marc

Kenna

Rylee

Tanner

Ella

Sarah

Mary

The real answers will be given in a couple of days.

Just let this percolate in your brain for a bit

2009-06-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrK0rZj6pes

Tongue-tied

2009-06-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

Mary was born with a 'prominent lingual frenulum' (for all you current and future doctors), also known as 'tongue-tied' (for everyone else!). Basically she couldn't stick her tongue out (which may not be all bad) because her frenulum connected to the front of her tongue. One pediatrician said to clip it only if it affected her speech or her eating. Another pedicatrician said, 'clip it'. And the ENT said it's up to you. We decided to clip it. So at 6:30 this morning Mary and I headed to the surgery center for her frenulectomy. Here she is in her hospital gown all ready for surgery, blissfully unaware of what the next hour would hold.

The anesthesiologist allowed me to hold her while they put her to sleep which was quite unnerving. One minute she is screaming because they are pressing a mask to her face and the next minute she is limp and unresponsive. She even kept her eyes open long enough that they asked me if she slept with her eyes open. Creepy. She did fabulously. The procedure took all of about 3 minutes, I think. Almost as soon as they walked me to the waiting room, they called me back to talk to the doctor and about 5 minutes later I got to go back to recovery.

Here we are just before leaving. Just a little groggy and dopey and with a really itchy nose from some narcotic drops they gave her. She drank that bottle while we sat in recovery and then lost the entire bottle all over the kitchen floor at home. I didn't get a picture of her sticking out her tongue, but the other kids were quite excited that she could !

Love is....

2009-06-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

Chocolate covered cookie dough on a stick.

Today I came home from work and found a bag that said "Happy Father's day, a little late" and inside were some delicious treats from a local candy shop. Kenna knows how to speak my love language.

On another note, Kenna thinks the title of my last post was a little too NC-17 for a family blog. I apologize if you thought so as well. In retrospect the MoTab concert should probably have been a separate post.

Minimal clothing, heavy breathing, and sweaty bodies....just a typical date night

2009-06-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Last night for our date night Kenna and I dropped the kids off at the cousins house and headed to downtown Cincinnati to run in the "Run for Kids" 5k in Hyde Park. We were undeterred by the heat advisory issued by the city due to the high heat and humidity. In our minds that just meant we didn't have to spend a lot of time warming up. Also, being in downtown Cincinnati that meant that the course was going to have a few hills. It turned out to have the same long hill twice because we had to run two laps around the course. As we were waiting for the race to start we saw a guy with no shirt or body fat walking to the starting line and I told Kenna "I bet that's the winner right there."

When the race started Kenna mercilessly ran off with all the fast people and left me running with the mom pushing the double stroller, the Olympic speed walker, and some old guy with bad varus (that's bowlegged) knees. I did ok for the first mile and a half but then the effects of heat stroke started to set in and I had to walk. As I walked by the finish line on my first lap that same body-fatless guy crossed the finish line as the winner in 16:47. He lapped me by one second. Well, I picked up the pace because I knew Kenna would be waiting for me. Sure enough, as I came up on the last turn Kenna was there waiting for me. She offered a drink but I had not the capacity for speech at that point and so I just ran by her. She ran and caught up with me (easily) and said something else my ears heard but my hypoxic brain couldn't process and I just kept on running. Oddly enough, even though I walked about a 1/4 of the course I finished with my second best time of 37 minutes. By the way, we saw the fatless guy do at least two more laps while we recovered from the race. Showoff!!

After the race we stopped at Potbelly sandwich works where I got a sandwich and a boysenberry milkshake. And then on the way home we stopped at the Cone were Kenna and I both had peanut butter milkshakes. That's right, two milkshakes. There was a heat advisory!

Thursday night we took our friends from residency to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with the Cincinnati Pops. It was really, really, really good. They sang some very interesting songs in addition to classics like Come, Come Ye Saints. We had a great time.