Good taste

My older (shorter) sister, Suzanna, came over the other day.  As we sat there talking, I noticed she was wearing a heart necklace.  This is what happened:

Me: "I love your necklace!  It's SO cute!"
Suz (looks down at it, then back up): "Thanks!  You bought it for me."
Me: "I did?  When?"
Suz: "Back in, like, 2005."
Me: "Ohmyheck I have such good taste!"

If I can remember where I got it, I'm going to tell Shane to buy one like it for me for my birthday next month.  :D

Truth

The death of me

Lexi is going to be the death of me.

I love her, don't get me wrong, but OHMYGOSH this child!

I don't have enough blog space to list everything she does to get into trouble on a daily basis, but here are a few:

Yesterday, she climbed on top of the table to get the crayons and then colored all over our 42 inch T.V.  I was doing dishes and didn't notice until I went in to see our new orange and red masterpiece.  I spent 30 minutes scrubbing it off.

After that, while I was in my room folding laundry, Lexi decided to slide a kitchen chair over to the cabinet, stack multiple boxes on it (one was a lego box-sooo safe), and then climb up and get into the cupboard to reach the chocolate covered pretzels.  After she sucked the chocolate off of about 30 pretzels, she gave the soggy mess of a pretzel to Ari.  At least it was soft, right?

I put Lexi down for a nap (and the other two kids) and may or may not have left her in there longer than needed.  (All of the kids wait in their rooms for me to come and get them-they won't get out of bed unless Shane or I open their doors and say it's okay to come out now.)

Shane finally got home (at 4:45, soo late, I know) and I went to work on dinner.  I noticed that Lexi had run to the bathroom a while before and I hadn't heard from her since.  I went to the bathroom and saw the light on, but the door was closed.  (She's too short to open the doors, so usually the door is left open.)  Rather than cry or call for help, though, she was really quiet in there.  I panicked, but opened the door and she was right there smiling.  I looked down and saw hundreds of little bits of white stuff.  I figured she got into the toilet paper because one of her favorite past times is to see how small she can shred a whole roll of toilet paper.

I took her to the front room and told Shane that he got to clean the bathroom floor since he was supposed to be watching her.  He went in and swept it all up like a good husband.  :)  Later, though, I went in to use the bathroom and closed the door and FREAKED. OUT.  What did I see?

Yep.

For real.

It wasn't toilet paper on the ground!

I cannot even tell you how mad I was.  This means that now I have to strip down that entire door and REPAINT that stupid thing!  Shane hadn't seen it earlier because he'd left the door open when sweeping.  When I showed him, he helped the situation a lot by saying,  "Yeah, you should have used primer."

Lexi is lucky that it was already her bedtime when I saw this or else she would have gone to bed two hours early.

SO, trying to think positively, Lexi has her adorable moments that remind me (and Shane) why we haven't sold her yet. (Or, heck, given her away!)

Check out my little cutie:

Sorry the camera was a little shaky.  I was laughing so hard, but trying to steady it.  :)  And, P.S., no, Lexi isn't wearing pants, but she is at least wearing underwear.  That's about the best we can hope for these days.  My little nudist.  :)

9 months old!

I have a 9 month old baby!  

Ari turned 9 months on the 4th of July and had her doctor's appointment July 7th.  Here are her stats:

Weight: 17 lbs 3 oz (25%)

Height: 27 inches (50%)

Head: 50%

Ari is only 5 inches shorter than Lexi.  Unless Lexi has a huge growth spurt, I bet Ari will be the same height as her within a year to a year and a half.  Ari is still a happy, healthy girl and the doctor is really happy with her progress since her little bout with RSV.  Ari was dealing with allergies and the coughing never got to her lungs, which I guess is normal with RSV babies, so Doc was excited about that.

We're just loving our happy girl!

4th of July weekend!

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July! 

We had a really fun weekend, starting last Thursday.  My friend, Emily, had a birthday party for her daughter, Halle, who turned FIVE!  They did a beach sandcastle theme and it was SO fun!  

Kaden was, as usual, the only boy there.  All of the 5 year old girls were so cute with him.  These ones came up to him and said, "You need to get in the water.  Don't worry, it's fun!"

 Kaden isn't a fan of the water and towards the end of the party finally worked up the nerve to go down the small slide into the kiddie pool.  He did great, stood at the bottom so he didn't get wet, and immediately slipped and fell completely in.  HAHAHA  Poor kid.  That'll teach him to be adventurous.

There was also a HUGE princess bounce house with a slide that had a little pool at the bottom.  Emily helped Lexi with this one and went down a couple of times with her, then Lexi was brave enough to go on her own (over and over and over).  :)  That's my girl! (Thanks for the help, M!)

I don't know how I missed getting a picture of the cake.  Emily made it and it looked like she took a sandcastle straight off the beach and put candles on it.  I'll have to get a picture of it and post it later.  

Friday morning started out with every kid's favorite activity: a visit to the dentist!  Woo!

Playing video games in the waiting room.

Ari chewed on an orange juice bottle while she waited for her sister and brother who have teeth to get them cleaned.  :)

I have to add a side note here:  the hygienist came out and it was a guy.  He looked familiar and I thought I probably knew him from high school.  He looked at me and asked, "Have I helped you here before?"  I said no and he asked me my maiden name.  When I told him what it was, the light bulb went on in his head and he said, "I'm Jordan Bradford."

For those of you who don't know who that is, the Bradford's were our next door neighbors when we lived in Syracuse and I babysat for them all the time.  Jordan started laughing and told everyone we saw, "She used to babysit me!"  I found out, though, that he's 22 years old, which is only 3 years younger than me.  AND it turns out that he served in the exact same mission as Shane did (British Columbia, Canada) and they knew a lot of the same places and people.  It was crazy seeing him again and I can't believe I babysat someone only three years younger than me.  Weird!

Ok, after the dentist, we went to Sandy to The Living Aquarium.  We'd never been there before, but Kaden LOVED it.  We were meeting up with Shane's family there and while we waited, we went through the "Utah" part three times and Kaden was still asking to go through again.  hahaha

Kaden waving hi from the frog.

Lexi is so good about saying "CHEESE!"

"Eye!!"

I'm just happy to be out of the car seat carrier!

 When Shane's family got there, we tried to get a pic with all three kids on the frog.  You can see how well that went...

I'm falling!

 We went to Red Robin with his family after that and then the kids crashed on the way home.  :)  

Saturday I went to see the movie Buck with my sister, Suzanna.  It's a documentary about the man who The Horse Whisperer was based on.  It was really good!

Sunday we spent all day inside because everyone was coughing and sneezing really bad and the nursery doesn't care if your runny nose is from a cold or allergies-they don't want you there.  So, we relaxed.  :)

Monday morning we headed to the West Point parade.

Kaden and Lexi LOVED their little chairs.  :)

And my favorite picture of the whole weekend:

SO CUTE!

 Ari was waving at every. single. person. and float that would go by.  It was adorable and I was trying to get it on film, but of course she suddenly got preoccupied with her toy when she saw the camera.  Here's what happened told with pictures:

me: "Wave, Ari!  Stop eating the toy!"

Shane taking the toy away...

"Where did it go?"

"No, really, give me my toy back!"

Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes say, "PLEASE give me the toy!"

Shane distracted her for a while, then we at least got a good smile out of her.  No waving, though.  :(

The tractors were still Kaden's favorite part.

 We went to R.C. Willey for some free hot dogs and, after, while Shane perused the electronics section, Lexi found the World's Largest Rocking Chair.

She literally had to use her whole body and throw herself back to make it rock.  She loved it.  :D

We didn't have any plans for dinner, so I grilled some Boca Burgers and we had honey dew with them.  YUMMY!  I love summer!  

We didn't end up going to any fireworks because A) I hate fighting crowds with traffic and B) everyone was still sniffly and sneezy, so the kids went to bed early.  :)  Shane and I stayed up listening to the war zone around us and we watched one of the X-Men movies.  

And don't worry, we'll take the kids to Weber State's fireworks in a couple of weeks.  :)

Random fun facts

I reread my Disneyland post the other day and realized I left out some fun facts!  For your reading pleasure....

While we were in Disneyland, Shane's flip flops that he's owned for years broke.  There was no fixing them (don't think he didn't try-we even asked a park worker for duct tape), so I made Shane buy more.  I wasn't going to let him walk around the rest the day (it was only around 10 AM) with one bare foot.  I went to stand in a line with the kids while he went shopping.  He came back and was SHOCKED and APPALLED.  He said that the cheapest flip flops they had were $20 (for the $2.50 kind you can get at Old Navy) and there was NO WAY he was paying $20 for those.  Since he was wearing new flip flops, I asked him how much he paid.  

He grinned and said, 

"$10 - they were a kid's extra large." 

Yup.  My husband everyone.  The best part?  Shane kept his old, broken flip flops because "We might be able to fix them when we get home."

I threw them away when he wasn't looking.   mwahahahaha

Another fun tidbit:
One of the reasons we booked the hotel that we did was because they boasted "a delicious complimentary breakfast buffet."  The entire way there I envisioned eating waffles, pancakes, bacon......and NOT being the one who cooked it!  It was almost as exciting as Disneyland itself!

Our first morning of the luxurious breakfast buffet dawned and we headed the three doors down to the "conference room."  Since we were so close to where it was being served, I should have known there was a problem when I didn't wake up smelling bacon.

We walked in and saw containers full of cold cereal (that had been sitting there for who knows how long).
Oh, yeah, and there was some bread you could toast.

My heart sank.

Shane, ever the cheap-wad, pointed out: "Hey, it still saves us from going to IHOP every morning."
DANG IT ALL!
I WANTED WAFFLES THAT I DIDN'T COOK!

Anyway, stale, cold cereal was still better than nothing....which is what we would have been eating if the hotel didn't offer a complimentary breakfast.

One more fun fact:
Our hotel was about a mile away from Disneyland.  The hotel also advertised a "free shuttle," but made it very clear with NUMEROUS signs that you are expected to tip....generously.  Rather than pay the driver $2 (yup that is generous to Shane) each time we wanted to go back and forth to the Magic Kingdom, we walked.

It really wasn't bad at all.

Probably because I made Shane push the kids in the stroller every. single. time. 
(There was a big hill we had to go over.)
We went back and forth a couple of times each day because I kept trying to get the kids to take naps.

There is a hotel almost literally across the street from Disneyland's entrance and we were surprised to see a shuttle coming and going all day to that hotel.  What the what?  Really, people?!

The only times we took the shuttle was at night because of Shane's eye disease.  I wasn't about to push that stroller and try to keep track of Shane in the dark. 

So, I guess this post should really be labeled "Examples of Shane's cheapness."  hahaha  I love him!!