Innapropriate church behavior

Henry couldn't resist climbing in the giant bank of snow next to our car at church and fell in up to his waist.  He was having a blast until he felt the holly bush underneath poking holes in his legs. 

Meet the Lorax

I finally made my first Halloween costume ever and I loved how it turned out. He said people were laughing at him at school. I told him that he had a funny costume but he didn't believe me and thought people were being rude. Poor thing. Am I like one of those horrible moms that embarrass their kids? Perhaps.

Sir Henry

Henry dressed up in this knight costume at the Cornbellys pumpkin princess land and climbed up on this giant sparkly horse. He is so lovable.

Busy Body

Dancing with Bea in the kitchen.  He's such a sweet boy and he LOVES his sisters!

Every morning Henry goes to an hour of tennis lessons, an hour of swimming lessons(which is mainly just lap swimming and I'm surprised with how well he puts up with it) and then swims at the pool for a couple hours afterward, and never wants to go home, he reads a book a day, has playdates every once in a while, and has soccer twice a week.  He's one busy kid! You'd be surprised how often he complains that he's bored.  Seriously.  What more do I have to do? He's had family and friends staying here almost the entire summer and got to visit his cousins in CT for his aunt Courtney's wedding reception and family reunion.  He basically just ran wild with his cousins and I'm glad he's still alive. 

At Mystic Seaport.  Still comparing how tall he is to his cousin Will(Wee-o) who is a little older than he is.  Henry is still taller, but not sure how long that will last.  Wee-o's got some tall genes waiting to turn on at anytime.  Henry LOVES Wee-o and I dream of the day they're BYU roommates!

Henry's effortless volley.  He's one of the best in the class.  Check out the view we get while we're watching!

Bad Tooth Fairy

 Pulled Henry's second tooth out with pliers

Went missing

Tooth fairy came during the day, perhaps?

She came by early and will leave money under the pillow I say

Happy Boy

Mommy forgot to put money under the pillow

Sad boy

Anyone have a dollar(desperately)?(to cleaning lady and Italian friend) 

No

Promise that we will find the tooth while we're cleaning

Still lost

Next night, mommy forgets again

Still no dollar

Sad boy again

Henry thinks the Tooth Fairy forgot all about his tooth

Tonight mommy finally finds a dollar!

Sorry Henry

Bad Tooth Fairy

Last day of School

This is as good as it gets when trying to photograph all my children together.  I love to see the snow that's still on the mountains in the background.  It's almost gone!

Yesterday was the last day of Kindergarten.  I'm so excited to have my schedule back to how it was before this school year.  I know I signed him up for Chinese immersion school, but I'm kind of dreading the mundane every day schedule that comes with putting your kids in school.  I used to go on a road trip every month without a care in the world and I miss it.  I heard that Chinese school has a lot of homework.  I think it's going to be a good thing that I'm homeschooling him for half the day and that he's already ahead in reading and writing so we can just focus on learning Chinese for the first difficult months without it taking up all his time at home.  He keeps asking me when we're going to Italy and I keep telling him that it's just the first day of summer vacation and he will have to wait two months before we leave.  We're heading out to CT and NYC for a week in a couple of weeks where he will see his cousins.  He'll be so excited!

Super late Easter recap

We colored Easter eggs a few times.  This was a neon set

Well, this month has been crazy but I haven't had time to post all the Easter photos we took of the fun activities of the season.  Henry really loves holiday crafts.

Henry made this for Justin.  The BYU egg

The cousins at Tracie's house in their Easter best

One of our many Easter egg hunts we did throughout the month.  The kids go crazy even if there's just one jelly bean inside

Henry and Colton holding their monster eggs.  I have to say, this is the cutest box set I have ever seen, maybe even better than the dinosaurs.  This set came with crazy hair, monster face stickers and pipe cleaners for arms and legs.  Brilliant!

Yeah, and is snowed on our party day:(

The loot from the last egg hunt

Don't take my candy!

St. Patty's Day

This was the only one out of 20 where they were all looking and sort of smiling.  It's hopeless!

Since St. Patrick's was on a Saturday and Justin, the principal instigator of crazy Saturdays filled with activities, was out of town, I had to come up with my own. After the classic green milk that the kids wouldn't drink and downing a few Chocolate coins left by the Leprechauns, (actually from the giant box of left over Christmas candy that doesn't exist) we...

Made potato stamps with shamrocks and hearts that you can use to make a bigger shamrock

Then we made a couple hundred of these little darlings.  The kids frosted and decorated them all by themselves. We used green licorice for the shamrocks, rainbow sour candy and golden jelly bellies for the pot of gold. 

The best part of the day was watching Henry and Jake ding-dong-ditch people as they delivered the cupcakes.  They snuck around the neighborhood, hiding behind bushes and trees, tiptoeing along with Leprechaunish faces, leaving behind special treats.

When they got home I fed them green pasta and...

Pot O' Gold jello jigglers for dessert.

I paid special attention to my clover that is growing in my orchid plant.  I love my baby clover!

He likes his sheltered home

The kids also ate Lucky Charms all day long, which I have NEVER bought for them.  You can guess how long those lasted.  After all the fun, we drove down to Provo to eat dinner with my mom and swim in the indoor pool and hot tub.  The kids had a blast swimming.  We finally got home at 9pm and threw the kids into bed.  Phew! What a fun day.

What did this owl eat!!??

Henry and his Rat

  Henry and I finished putting the rodent skeleton together that we took out of the owl pellet we got from the museum of Natural History.  It is huge.  My dad thinks it's a squirrel.  I think it looks like a rat.  We'll probably never know.  Dissecting an owl pellet was one of my few memories of Elementary School that I look back on with fondness so I wanted to recreate the experience with Henry.  He really loved gluing the bones back together today to see the finished product.  And guess why we now have time for such fun activities? Chore chart!

Miracle Chore Chart (If you read one post this year, this should be the one)

I found this sticky white board at the supermarket.  It works extremely well and I can change it whenever I want

Tonight for Family Home Evening we went around telling each other what we loved/liked about one another.  Henry told me that he loved me because I go skiing with him and because I made a chore chart for him!  I couldn't have anticipated the effect this amazing little chart and system would have on my son.  He truly loves it and it works better than I could have imagined.  I got the idea from the parenting class I'm taking.  If you can take one of these classes, do it.  Don't be ashamed.  You don't have to be out of control to finally take a class.  

These are our poker chips.  The Black are 10 points, the blue are 5, the red and green are both 1point each. 

The whole idea behind this is this: Kids tend to feel entitled.  They have high expectations for being able to watch the shows they want to watch, play video games, eat special treats, have play dates, get McDonalds whenever mom is running late, and that's just the little kids.  Fast forward a few years and some kids all have laptop computers, ipods, ipads, bikes, scooters, endless designer clothes and activities galore.  And as one of my wealthy neighbors put it, "What do you get kids who have everything"(Talking about Christmas) Do they work for these amazing privileges? I can tell you that most do not.  I didn't grow up with opulence, but I hardly worked at all for what I did have.  Justin, on the other hand, worked a lot and it paid off big time. If my kids are going to grow up on a farm, they need to be able to work hard!

I bought him a little safe box to keep his chips in.  He loves locking and unlocking it to put his chips in

 This is a system that is kind of like Chuck-E-Cheese for ages 4 and up.  Your kids do a chore, they get a chip right away.  They earn enough points, they get to spend their points on things they want to do.  They save up some of their points for bigger weekly prizes and an even bigger monthly prize.  All of these things, except for new LEGOS which require insane amounts of chores to get, are things I allow my son to have anyway, but now he's just working for them.  I don't even have to remind him most days to get his chores done.  He just does them and he's going strong for 2 weeks now.  And in his words as he clutches his chips, "This is so much fun!!" In the chore column he has to do the first set of chores to be able to use any points.  He has the option to do more chores down below for more points and then there are the bedtime points at the bottom which he only gets if he does them without me asking him after I make the initial announcement that we're getting ready for bed.  The things that are hard for him to do or remember are worth more points.  Combing his hair is really hard, but he'll do it for 5 points!  Also, he is required to use his points for one daily and weekly prize.  He can't just save them up and not do anything fun all day long.  The last thing is that you have to give your kids chips for having a good attitude and you just have to do it at random without any set point value each time.  This way it inspires them to always do everything with a smile on their face just in case they earn an extra few points. 

This chart makes Henry Happy

Since this began, I have almost stopped having to parent Henry.  He's doing it all by himself.  He loves this system and so do I.  We've become even better friends and now that he's basically cleaning my whole house, we have more time to do fun stuff together and mom doesn't sit around all day long cleaning up messes and nagging him to get his chores done!  If any of you are having trouble getting your kids to do their chores, this is a great system that doesn't use candy, bribes, real money, and won't cost you a penny if you don't want it to.  If you want the official instructions I will scan them and email them to you. Let me know if it works for you!

Wild Warm Weekend #2

My little Grown Up

On Saturday morning the kids helped me clean the house and then we took Henry skiing in 65 degree weather.  Justin rode his bike up to the resort and was actually too hot in his long spandex.  It really was that warm up there. 

Just a boy and his mountain

The only girlfriend I will encourage him to have until he's 21

Tiny Tiger was the route we chose to take

 Henry went down a really fun black diamond run multiple times, each time pointing out the melty powder from the lift he wanted to hit next. It was one of the best ski days we had all year. His thin, old school skis got stuck in the thick mushy powder.  He definitely needs some fat powder skis for next year. 

Squinty Henry at the bottom.  The sun was really bright!

 
 Henry got a hold of the camera and took some photos of his surroundings. 

Snowboarder Mom

Henry loves riding the shuttle bus up to the lodge to get candy.  It's part of the whole experience for him.

After skiing we headed out to my Mom's place in Provo for a delicious dinner with swimming and hot tubbing afterward.  We finally arrived home around 9pm, I fell asleep around 11pm and didn't wake up until 10am the next day.  I was exhausted!  We certainly play hard in this family!

Wild Warm Weekend #1

I don't know about you, but I get hyper and overzealous when the weather gets warm.  I feel like I can't waste one moment inside.  Result: messy house, dirty kids, too much planned and extra tired mom and kids.

Here is our Friday in photos

Went to the zoo with Henry's friend Nathan.  I was alone with 5 kids.  They were suprisingly very well behaved.  This train, I have to say, is really lame in the winter.  Not worth the money. 

 Then it was off to the park I grew up going to, Lindsay Gardens.  Henry climbed trees, rolled down the steep hills, and just played and played.  It was fun to be back. 

Henry swinging at the park on the exact same swing I broke my arm on when I was 7 years old by jumping out of it. 

The kids getting sick of the merry go round

The kids riding the same ol' dilapidated merry-go-round that I used to ride when I was tiny.  Must be like 40 years old

We went on a house tour of my childhood. House #1 408 L street

House #2 733 9th Avenue

House #3 484 H street.  This is kiddie corner from where my friend, Candice, now lives.  Small world!

Last and coolest house: 860 1st Avenue.  I like the new landscaping.  Henry thought it was cool to see my old houses.

Then it was off to meet Justin at our favorite pizzaria

Then gelato next door at CAPO - The best gelato in town

Here it is.  The best flavor is yogurt with berries.  Tart and perfect!

Then I went to GLEEK, a musical that my cute little nanny, Latycia was a cheerleader in.  Justin took the kids home and put them to bed all by himself.  I can't believe he did it! Thank-you Justin!

Phew! That was just Friday.  Stay tuned for Saturday.