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!

Random acts of kindness

They always say that God answers our prayers through others. But sometimes it's not even an answer to a direct prayer, it's just an answer to our desire to know God is watching over us.
Today I was the recipient of a random act of kindness and it touched me so much. It meant so much more than just the act, it was that feeling that someone else out there cares for you and what happens to you. Sometimes, I think through Heavenly Father, our actions can mean so much more to someone than what it simply was. I cried.
It just feels so good to be reminded that we are loved and watched over, by Heavenly Father and by others who love us as well.
And so, out into the void, I will send my thank you to my someone. I hope you know how much it means, and I hope I can return the favor someday or make someone else feel the same way. Thank you.

P.S. I am always thinking my kids don't have enough clothes. And then I find out they have tons of clothes. I just needed to do the laundry.
And did I tell you that a few weeks ago as I got ready for the day, I decided to wear my silver hoop earrings. Well, it wasn't until late that evening that Danny pointed out to me that, while I was indeed wearing two silver hoop earrings, they were completely and absolutely different sizes. Hehehe.. maybe I will start something new.