I do, You do, Who wants Swine Flu?!!

Yes, we are having our own little party here in Idaho. Actually, once we got over the actual being sick part, and it's only been me and Alex so far, this whole self-quarantine, don't go out in public, cancel all your meetings thing is pretty okay. We're a little stir-crazy at times, and I don't want to know how many movies the kids have watched, but it's really nice to be freed from some of your responsibilities and appts. and things without feeling guilty. The last time I left the house was on Thursday to go to the doctor, and that is the only place I have been since last Tuesday. Literally. As I have started feeling better, I have complained to Danny that I want to be sick again because it is so nice for a change to not have to worry about anything except staying alive! As soon as I feel better, I start feeling this pressure to get lots of "things"done and be all productive, but I am fighting it.
Yesterday we made a fire and brownies and resisted eating the rest of them until 11 this morning, which I thought was pretty good. We've played Candy Land with the kids and Danny and I have been playing Scrabble. We found out we're not that good, but at least we're evenly matched!! Every other minute finds one of us banging our fist on the table saying, "If only I had this one letter!!" See, the problem with Scrabble is that even though you can think of nice, big long words, you never have the letters for them. So you have to know lots of weird short words, like "zareba", which is a small enclosure made out of bushes in Northern Africa. I did make a word that was worth 75 points- it was "quotes" with the "q" on a double letter square and the whole word on a triple word play. Definitely the highlight of my week!! And several times we have nearly spelt out swear words in desperation, but have always been able to put something else down. (But not until after we told the other one what we were thinking of using.)
Alex has been watching Oklahoma a lot and really likes "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' " and has started singing it around the house in his best Gordon McRae-like voice. I love it, but Danny can't stand listening to the same parts on the tv anymore, so he gave Alex headphones so that he can watch the tv but we can't hear. Now we just have to get Alex to understand not to use the headphones when other people want to watch something.
I've started reading Catching Fire and wish that when I was sicker and just in bed I had felt like reading then!
Other than that, we're just laying around, kind of enjoying being left alone by the world. Having something contagious is the next best thing to moving out in the woods by yourself. We're thinking about catching ebola next!

Wild and Wonderful West Virginia

Here is my trip in pictures. Unfortunately, I really don't know why, a lot of my pictures turned out so blurry I had to delete them. And, I forgot to take pictures a lot of the time because we were having too much fun! But, here you go with the few that I did get.

Notice Audrey is giving me the "look." She was very excited to see me, I hear, until I actually got there. But she warmed up after a little while.

Anya crabby pants
I think these next two pictures qualify as "wild and wonderful," while serving the dual purpose of paying Megan back for a couple of pictures she put on of me. Hehehe.. revenge is sweet. :) But those cookies do look really good right now. When Danny saw this picture he asked if Megan was using the cheese sauce as toothpaste. I didn't want to say anything but, well, they are in West Virginia now. They say that toothbrushes were invented in West Virgina, because if it had been anywhere else they would have been called teethbrushes.

Their very pretty and huuge back yard. I must have taken this picture the one day it didn't rain while I was there. The day I left it was 70 degrees. I don't think the weather likes me.

Huuge deck

Audrey wears her pink cowboy boots everywhere and gets lots of compliments on them.

This is Audrey "smiling" for the camera. It looks painful.

This is blurry, but it is Anya putting her dolly in the stroller. Very cute.

Aiden's room- I love it and so does he!

Anya's room. I took pictures of Audrey's room, but my stuff was kind of everywhere, so I won't post those. I'll let Meggie put some on. But if she doesn't soon, I can threaten her with the pictures I have of the room NOT CLEAN!!! (Insert evil laugh.)

The family room as seen from the stairs. The kids had little gold coins on the floor.

I think this is the only picture I got of Aiden that wasn't too blurry to use. He was at school the first two days and I think that he thought we just stayed at home while he was gone, waiting for him, because when he got home on Friday he told me, "Aunt Mel!! You have to come to my magic show tonight because you have been here two days and you haven't done anything fun yet!!"

This is a horrible picture of me, but I am putting it on here to show how tired I was on Sunday. After this we took naps. Look at the bags under my eyes! Yikes!

Just to reassure everyone that Brooks is still the same Brooks. Whew! We were so worried!
Very blurry pictures of some of the party food. It was all soo good! Relish trays and spinach dips and chips and cookies and homemade bread and cornbread and caramel corn and pumpkin cake and chili and hot chocolate and root beer! It makes me want to have a party!

Here are some of the pictures of the cool old houses. Mommy, you would loove them! I wanted to go inside all of them and Megan tried to convince me to go knock on one house and ask them about it and maybe they would invite us inside to look around. But I was too scared. I'll bet when Danny comes next year he'll go and ask for us. I love my husband!

I know Meggie put pictures of this one on her blog, but I just love it!! You need to zoom in so you can see all the cute details. This was the one that she tried to get me to knock on the door of. The next picture is of the back of the house. The picture doesn't capture how really huugge it was. You have to look to the far right and see that behind the trees it keeps going further and the bushes cut off the bottom fourth floor. The camera couldn't get it all in. Just the garage part is like my whole house. Can I have it, Danny?

On our hike, the day I left. Wahhh! See, Anya is upset just thinking about it!

This was the last picture we took together before I left for the plane.

There were so many fun things we did together that we didn't get any pictures of. Like going to a million cute little stores, watching High School Musical 1 & 2, craft stores, furniture stores, lots of stores where we didn't have any money and wanted lots, the big neighborhood garage sale, looking at houses and so on. Isn't it amazing that I could visit Meggie across the country and that we would find all the same things to do?! Best of all was just being there and visiting together and getting to see her family and friends and the wonderful new life they have there! I can't wait to come again next summer with my family and stay for longer. And this time I will have my huge truck that I can stuff full with all of my garge sale finds!! Thanks for letting me come stay Meggie! I did have the time of my life!

A few funnies

Here are just a few funny things the kids have said-

We all know how much Alex likes to quote movies. He had been watching Harry Potter and he loves the part with the Sorting Hat. He came upstairs quoting the line, "It must be... Gryffindor!" But every time he said it, he pronounced Gryffindor wrong. I was trying to help him say it correctly, when Danny stepped in to "help." He was telling him all kinds of silly ways to says it- gryffinsocks, and so on. But Alex topped us all when he said in his best "sorting hat" voice, "Must be.. Gryffindorks!!" Danny was dying laughing and so Alex thought he must have it right and kept going around the house saying "Gryffindorks." We think he might be a Slytherin at heart.

Tristan tells everyone we see that there is a baby in his Mommy's belly. But to make it even better, he then tells them that they should come and see when it comes out! And yesterday I was bringing the crib back up from the storage room and Tristan looked all excited and asked, "Is the baby coming out now?!"

In Sacrament meeting Alaina likes to tell me about what she did in Nursery. She always tells me about snacks. Well, this week she couldn't say it quite right, but she made up for her poor linguistic skills by talking louder. So very loudly in Sacrament meeting she kept saying over and over, "I had sax! I had sax!" And I could not get her to stop saying it!

Alex has been bringing the old infant car seat upstairs and putting Alaina in it. (I should have gotten a picture.) Anyway, our car seat is the same as Haley's, so Alaina loves to get in it and then says, "I Hunter!!"

And last, but not least, yesterday while I was reading to Tristan, I started wondering what Alaina was doing. Well, I went into the bathroom and she looked at me and smiled really big. "I putting on makeup!" she says with a proud grin. Well, she had probably started out okay, because there was lipstick on her lips. But from there it went to her forehead and eyebrows. And the worst part is that I wear the long-lasting kind, that only comes off because your lips peel frequently. So we have scrubbed and scrubbed and it will not come off. This is a picture of her this morning, after sleeping in it and taking a bath. It hasn't budged a smitch. She is pointing to herself and saying, "I do eyebrows! I do eyes!"

Then this afternoon she found it again, added more lipstick and did her own mascara. Actually, I was quite impressed by the mascara. I tried to take this close-up shot to show that she actually got it on both eyes really well and just smeared it some on the second eye.
Not bad for a 2 and a half year-old! So she went to bed tonight wearing it, again. Someone suggested trying Mary Kay eye makeup remover, so I will try that tomorrow.

Also, here are a couple of shots of the book shelves we got from Mommy to put in their room. They look really cute in there and the kids looovve them!! We have to read the books off of them all the time now. So I make sure and keep the books that I like reading on there!
I don't know why this shot is so blurry!

I just can't wait unti I can do beadboard in here and paint! I think it will be super cute then! But in the meantime, it is still a fun room for them to play and read in.

Oh, and tonight when Danny put Tristan in bed, Tristan came running out saying, "Lainey's not dressed!!" Danny told him that she was, it just didn't look like it. "No!" he said. "Look!" and he pulled back the covers and there she was sleeping, totally naked. I guess her nudist colony is open night hours now, too.

One Stuck Head and Two Loaves of Bread

Today Chris from Parents as Teachers came and we had great fun playing with the toys and books she brought. Tristan and I saw her to her car, waving bye as she went around the corner. Tristan ran into the house before me and as I came in he said, "Lainey's stuck." This is nothing new. Alaina gets stuck in something every day. Today it happened to be her head stuck in the back of a chair. (We had made a huge, fun fort out of all our kitchen chairs, so they were all in the living room and on their sides, apparently just waiting for someone to stick their head into.)

I gave Lainey a "you trouble-head" look and proceeded to get her head out of the chair. Except that it wouldn't come. No matter what way I moved it, I could not figure out how she got it in there! We tried turning the chair, tilting the chair, tilting her head. But no matter how we maneuvered, we couldn't even get halfway up her ears before she was wailing and her ears were about to be ripped off. I suspect that her head must have swollen after she shoved it through, because it is inconceivable to me that it fit in there on its own.


I tried for about fifteen minutes, while Lainey sat on the floor with a chair on her head and shoulders, intermittently crying and looking worried and Tristan sat nearby crying, "My poor baby sister!! Her head is stuck!!"

The camera batteries wouldn't work, and so I couldn't get any pictures. Which is too bad, because it would have helped a lot with the visualization! So here is just a cute picture of Lainey, only stuck in a tree.

Finally, even though this was a Pottery Barn chair that I dearly love and keep in the living room, I knew that it would have to be sacrificed if ever Alaina was to live a normal life again. I got a big knife that we have that works on branches and things, but it was slow going. I called Danny and he said to use the hand saw in the garage. It was very scary to saw back and forth with Alaina's feet inches away, but I said a prayer and she was good and held still. After two cuts and half the side of the back of the chair gone, she was released at last!! She smiled really big and said, "Oh, thank you, Mommy!" Tristan said, "That was great, wasn't that Lainey?!"


Alaina has gotten stuck in more things than any kid I have ever known. Nearly every day she puts her hand down a tube, her fingers in a cart or her head in some railing and needs help getting out. If there is any way any of her appendages can fit anywhere, she will try it. When we visited Justin, we had only been there minutes, when she had her arm stuck down a little hole in a stepstool. In the end we had to butter her whole arm to get it out. When we went to Jon Shipley's parents for his luncheon, Alaina got her head stuck in the cat climber and it took several people to get her back out again. Only she would have thought of trying to fit in the cat carrier at home recently, and I was quite surprised that I only had to stand it on its end to get her out.


Danny thinks we can repair the chair with glue, sandpaper and paint, but I think it's a goner. It will be a living testament and reminder that if there is a hole, Alaina will get stuck in it.

The camera decided to start working again later, so here is a picture of the chair, post-Alaina. I think it looks like some strange, optical illusion against the white walls.

On the plus side, we made homemade bread and doughnuts for Young Women's on Tuesday and my two loaves turned out great!!! For breakfast I had a big, thick slice of warm bread with butter and jelly on it and a mug of hot cocoa. Perfect. It is a good thing to start my day off happily, because there is no way of knowing what the rest of the day may bring!!

P.S. Alaina and Tristan are sharing a room now, and I keep saying I will put pictures up of how the room looks. So here are a few shots. I think it is cute, but will look wayyy better with a coat of paint on the walls. I also think that now I would go for longer curtains, but I don't think I could justify spending money for new ones, when the ones I have were bought just for that room. Also, I am getting two little while shelves for holding books to go on the wall by each of their beds. Mommy got them on Craigslist for like $5 each, and is kind enough to let us have them! (I had to spend a long time convincing her to let me pay her the $5 for them.) So, use your imagination, and someday I will put pictures up of "after" the painting job!!

This side of the room has Lainey's bed.

This has toys and puzzles and things in it, and clothes in the bottom drawers, and the toy chest is next to it. There is also a small bookcase in the closet below their clothes with more toys on it. It's too bad my kids don't have very many toys to play with!

I just got the little red lamp this Saturday at a garage sale for $3! I think it's really cute.

The whole "sharing a room" thing is going quite well. They think it's really exciting and I think Alaina feels like she is getting away with something. Like that we haven't noticed that she isn't sleeping in her old room. The only downside is that Alaina gets up when Tristan gets up, but that's getting better, too. Sometimes we can hear Tristan yelling at Alaina to get in bed, because she has to stay there until the sun comes up, which is what we told him. But it really rather defeats the purpose, if you get woke up anyway by one of them yelling at the other to "go back to sleep!"

At our house...

Hmmm... I had imagined that when Alex had full-day school, I would have so much time. I would always have my house clean, I would exercise every day, I would read to my other kids so much more and I would always blog on a regular basis. I can't figure out where I went wrong.
Alex on his first day of school this year! I know I had a better picture than this, but I can't find it! Oh, and notice the band-aid on his forehead. He had just gotten stitches from a stick that Tristan threw. When they put the stitches in all he did was say, "Ow. OOw. OOW." They said he was the perfect patient.

a quick rundown on what has been going on in our house. If you are really lucky, I might even put in a few pictures.

- Alex has made himself busy by finding and blowing up with the hand pump every, single, blow-up toy that we have. So our house always looks like we are about to head out on vacation, with large, inflatable whales, tigers and boats. But it keeps Alex busy blowing them up and the other kids busy fighting over them.






- Tristan has learned how to hook up the vcr and has been happy going through most of the old vhs's that we have. I walked in the other day and could not figure out what he was watching. Finally, I realized it was Funny Farm. He was watching it happily, apparently convinced that if it was on vhs, it must be a kid's movie.

- We worked in the yard some. When we went to someone's house with the Mahers, Nicole commented on how nice and manicured their yard was. "Our yard is not like that," she said. "Well, not mine either," I replied. "Yea, I know," she said. "I saw it." I didn't want to tell her that we had just spent the whole Saturday before working in it.

Alaina while we worked in the yard

- We took the kids to the fair! This is a fun tradition. The kids were really tired and cried a lot, but other than that and losing Alaina in the petting zoo for about ten minutes, we had a fun time.

Alex was convinced that all of the animals wanted to eat his "pamphlet" that someone had handed out. I was surprised the goats didn't.

- Alaina found out that she can fit in the cat carrier. She loved it and refused to get out and Alex thought it was great fun to carry her around.

- We had Kimberly and Nicole Maher stay here for the week and had a blast! They are from Meggie's ward in West Virginia and Kimberly was bringing Nicole out for BYU-I. As evidence of how much fun we had, I took absolutely no pictures. But, Kimberly did teach Alex how to use the camera, and Alex has now commandered it for his own purposes. I need to buy a bigger camera card. Here are few of the self-portraits he has taken.

- I am trying to convince Tristan and Alaina that bread with butter and jam is not by itself a complete food group. They are convinced otherwise.

- I just finished reading The Hunger Games and loved it! I read it in just two sittings. It's so interesting and the sequel just came out! I can't wait to read it, but I am savoring the first for a while. Plus, I promised Danny I would read Eragon first.

- Alaina has decided to start her very own nudist colony. She refuses to wear clothes most of the time, even though I got her Little Mermaid underwear. This morning she peed on the floor twice because she didn't have anything on. She's not potty-trained and I don't think she is quite ready yet. But when I try to put clothes on her she runs away and says, "I needa go poddy!!" and runs to sit on the potty, which she has never, not even once, gone on.

- At Danny's work they give out scratch lottery tickets for little prizes. Danny has won $4 on two of them. Four dollars is four dollars, but I can't seem to bring myself to turn them in. I don't even know what you do. And what if someone sees me and thinks we bought them? Awkward. So there they sit on my dresser, day after day. I can't bring myself to turn them in, or to throw them away. Maybe I should find someone who will turn them in for me and split the $4. Maybe Danny will do it. If I offer him two of the four dollars.

- I had an "imperfection" on my face and Tristan asked if it was an owie. I said, "Yes, it is." He looked at me quizzically for a few moments and asked, "Did you get it from a magic sword?" If only it were that glamorous.

That's all for now!