Won't you be our Henry Boy

Missin' You

2012-01-28T22:46:00.000-08:00

Brothers

Henry's brother from another mother just left Virginia to live in Australia for an extended period of time. We haven't seen River since we left Pittsburgh last May, so since we moved across the country it has been hard to get together, but Australia is even more impossible to visit! Our only hope is that he will come back to Utah and live right next door when he comes back to the states. Henry will miss his little brother. We love you River!

Silly little boys

Chinese immersion, here we come!

2012-01-26T00:05:00.000-08:00

As you can see I don't have any good recent photos of Henry!

I just entered Henry's name into the Chinese immersion school lottery in our school district and he got picked! I couldn't believe it. At first I was totally torn because I've heard amazing things about this program but I was totally planning on home schooling next year. It's only in it's third year here, but other places like CA have been doing it for a while now and say the kids are fluent by 6th grade and can test out of University level classes by the time they hit Jr. High. Some of them get a minor in their language before they get to college. You can only start in 1st grade and since this program is only in it's third year, the fourth graders will be the most senior group when Henry starts. There are two teachers at Henry's school and as far as I know, one of them is native Chinese. Not sure about the other one. Every school around here has something special going on in it. The school Henry is in right now has a special needs program, but the school that just so happens to be just about equidistant from the house we're hopefully going to buy here in Sandy, has this Chinese program that he got into. The new house is still in our current school district, but we're only three streets away from the other district, so hopefully I'll be able to work something out to get him there on the bus. If I had to drive him there, it would be a 6 minute drive, so not bad at all. The other really amazing thing about Utah schools is that you can put your kid in school half day if you want and then home school them for the other half of the day, which means I can just send him for Chinese school every day for either morning or afternoon (whatever time they decide to do the Chinese portion) and then I can teach him at home(or go skiing! haha). I can decide to home school him one year or put him in another year full day whenever I feel like it, but he will have to go to Chinese school every day for the three hours until sixth grade. During that time, they learn math, science and social studies as well as obvious language learning stuff. There are a bunch of videos on You Tube that highlight these programs. The best one I found is a school in California, but there are some specific ones about our school district right here in Sandy.

Utah http://youtu.be/hTG0YFU8vWA
California http://youtu.be/3zsOLNHwcso

There aren't any programs past elementary school as of now, but I bet they'll have something in place for the students as they progress in the program. I have a bunch of friends who have friends who have put their kids in the program and they LOVE it. Most of my friends wish our school had something like that or that they had put their kids in the lottery. Since Henry got in to the program, all my kids have priority to be in it as well, so they'll all be taking Chinese together. The fun thing is that they're all so close in age that they'll be able to talk to each other at home if they want to. There are also classes for the parents of the children who are in the immersion programs so they can learn as well. I fully intend to do whatever I can to learn as much as I can, even if I end up just being semi-conversational, but can't read much or write. I'm really excited for him to start! I wouldn't have believed it, but dreams do come true in Utah:)

Dead Pet

2012-01-18T22:42:00.000-08:00

Good-bye old friend

Since September we've kept a small black widow spider in our windowsill. We found her in our garage and I put it in a jar so I could take photos of it to send to my dad and then never took her out. I wanted to see how long she would stay alive. I thought maybe a few weeks, but months passed and she was going strong, eating whatever I put in there and spinning a giant web inside my large mouth quart sized jar. Everyone thought I was crazy, including myself, for keeping a pet that could kill my children in the house, but they were totally disinterested in it and it was out of their reach so I just left her there. The kids excitedly showed their friends around Halloween time that they had a pet black widow, but then they forgot about her. I enjoyed watching her spin her web and gracefully move around the jar as I did dishes and I was always on the hunt for bugs to feed her. She was the perfect pet for me! Just a few weeks ago I put some bugs in her jar and she didn't touch them and ever since then she just started to shrivel up. Today I noticed she was sitting in the position that dead spiders sit in instead of her usual sprawled out, beautiful, elongated position. She wasn't dead, but her abdomen was shriveled up and her usually red hourglass marking had dulled to white. I knew she was on her way out and I didn't want to watch her die over days and days so I tossed her outside in the freezing cold. She would die quicker that way(do I really feel like I'm going to cry? haha). I know people expect to get their pets back when they go to heaven. I wonder....

Alive

2012-01-07T14:50:00.000-08:00

Henry put this rubber T-Rex skeleton puzzle together almost all by himself. It was hard for me!

So if any of you are wondering...we are still alive. On Halloween I took the most adorable photos of the kids in their costumes with my old slr camera and they came out all unfocused and horrible and that was the last straw. I wasn't going to take another photo with that camera. Uploading photos has also been a huge problem for many reasons including 1. Our desktop took at least 15-20 minutes to recognize it was attached to my camera and bring up the photos, 2. The Mac that my sister left me wouldn't even recognize my camera as attached to it so I couldn't upload my photos on that, and 3. Justin's computer was totally full of photos and I didn't want my pictures on that anyway. If I don't have photos I'm just not inspired to blog because most of the time I forget what we did a week ago and without those photo reminders I can't even remember what to write!(such is the brain of a tired mother). Now with a new camera for Christmas and a new laptop for my Birthday that has a chip reader built into it I am in heaven. My photos load in about one minute, my camera works and I have an empty hard drive to store all my photos in! It's literally a dream come true!

Henry at the new Museum of Natural History wearing a bug mask

I guess I should recap a few major events since the last time I wrote just for posterity's sake. So...
1. In October the kids took a trip to Southern Utah with Justin to camp and play in the desert. Henry climbed to the top of an arch and scared some old ladies to death.
2. We have been taking Henry up to Snowbird on a regular basis to ski and he has gone down the blue square(intermediate for you non skiers) all the way from the top of the tram, which takes about 45 minutes to reach the bottom. He's doing aweesome!
3. I missed the parent teacher conference that was scheduled and Henry chastised me for being irresponsible. I ended up just having a phone conversation during which the teacher said he was already at the academic level they want all the kindergartners to be at by the end of the year. He could have just gone into the first grade.
4. Henry and Daddy had fun ding-doing-ditching people for Christmas
5. Aunt Courtney got married in the SLC temple the weekend before Christmas so Henry got to spend a whole week with his cousins, the Chous, and his best friend Wee-o. They had so much fun running around together, having sleepovers and throwing tantrums. We hiked up to the Bradshaw family cabin and did some sweet sledding together.

Henry lounging on the elephant trunk at the zoo

6. Christmas came and Santa brought another PS3 controller, Little Big Planet 2, which Henry has already beaten, and the best present, a slider bike called the rip rider 360 that has coaster wheels in the back that allow you to spin out in 360s. Click on the link to watch the commercial for it. It literally is as fun as it looks. Justin and I want an adult sized one.

I like how he spells Jackson

Can you tell he's watched the Christmas Carol over and over?

7. Since we're in Utah, we've had many visitors. We had Nanni and Papi(my dad and step mom Teri), Mary and Aaron(step sister who married my cousin), other cousin Margie, my brother, Uncle Will, and then we hung out a lot with Meghan and family, Tracie and family(both Justin's sisters), and had tons of fun the week before with everyone who came out for the wedding.
8. Henry has been gorging himself on Candy since Halloween and I've pretty much let him eat whatever he wants, but on January 1st I got rid of every piece of candy in the house(like I've done in years past) as far as he knows. It's actually in the Ziplock box up at the top of the pantry. When you read this 20 years from now, Henry, you'll know my little secret. haha.
9. Finally, Justin took a job here in SLC at a place called TOSH (The Orthopedic Surgery Hospital) and will start in August. We have been looking around at real estate and have found our dream farm which is a short sale so we don't know if things will work out, but we're praying to get it. It's actually a 2.25 acre horse property, but I'm going to slowly integrate some goats, pigs, more chickens, and a giant garden. The house comes with one horse, chickens and some wild cats that catch all the rats and mice. It's my dream come true, rats and all!

Halloween!

2011-11-06T22:09:00.001-08:00

Here we are with my crew! Funny story: a woman helping out with the Halloween party tripped over a baby doll Bea had wrapped up and left on the floor and she thought it was my baby(since I had actually left her on the floor for a minute about an hour prior to that to help Clementine and take a photo of my baby) and let out a loud scream and did a crazy freak out dance that scared all the kids. I scared someone for Halloween and didn't even try! Muah ha ha ha! I suppose my relaxed parenting style scares women on a daily basis anyway.

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fun game with daddy

2011-10-16T18:04:00.001-07:00

The kids love playing with their dad. We will miss him this next month as he is gone 3 out of 4 weekends in November. Waaaah.

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little testimony

2011-10-13T01:46:00.001-07:00

Today me and my four kids(still can't believe it) went to a little Halloween activity with sister in law, Tracie and at one point I noticed Henry lagging behind. I called out to him and waited and he eventually caught up to the group and as he ran up to me he announced with a beaming face, "Mommy, you were lost but I said a prayer and I found you!" Probably one of the most proud moments I have had as a mother. That's my boy:).

It snowed last Friday and Justin took him on a hike up in the mountains to play in the snow. The mountains look spectacular with the fall colors and the snow. This little boy can't wait 'till winter.

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Soccer Star!

2011-10-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

Henry scrambling to get the ball. Go Henry!

Henry has been playing soccer every Wednesday and Saturday this fall and yesterday he finally got the spark in him and had some awesome fast breaks. He didn't score, but dribbled the ball down the field several times, maneuvering around kids and actually focusing. Yay! So far we have played the black ninjas who should have been playing against professional teams(score about 20 to 0), the orange team who were all in his kindergarten class so during mid play Hen would stop to chat, hug and flirt with the girls, and other teams who were all a head and shoulders taller than everyone on our team (except for Henry who is also a head and shoulders taller than every kid on his team as well). There are only one or two kids on our team who can actually run fast enough to score and so far we usually only score zero to three goals per game and have never won. During this game he got pushed a few times and I told him that's just how soccer is and to brush it off. Then he got the idea that he should push and trip the kids on the other team if they were doing it to him, but the most funny part about that was that he would try to guard people (like in basketball) and trip kids during non play time while they were just standing around waiting for the action to start. Thankfully none of them were even moving so they didn't get tripped. He was even hugging some girls on the other team at one point. I think it's good for Henry to know that his team doesn't win, but everyone still has fun, he still gets a treat and everyone goes home happy. We just love watching Henry play sports. I've been trying to pack stuff in before the baby comes because it's going to be a long month of nothing planned after the baby comes, so live it up Henry! You are awesome and I love you!

Just like old times+canyons=happiness

2011-09-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

Little apple pickers. Clementine, Bea and Ella

Today I woke up to the lovely voice of Stef who called and woke me up at 8:20(I know she was jealous:). She told me how much she loves homeschooling and I told her Henry loves Kindergarten and riding the bus where he learned that "what the F" was a bad thing to say. Another mark for reasons to homeschool. Anyway, we went to Bea's ballet class which is always the most darling thing to watch and then my friend Alissa and I with all our girls headed up to Heber to pick free organic apples in someone's front yard. I was in heaven.

We probably picked 100 lbs of apples which we will make into sauce for all our babies. Clementine was banished to the stroller after multiple attempts to cross the super busy street and Bea and Ella were intent on climbing the ladder no matter how many times we told them it was the "mommy" job. The sign advertising the free apples had a very minor spelling error on it. No biggie.

The best part is that they used the lower case "L" so it looks more like "apies" which is even more hilarious than leaving out one "p". lol.

Really great apples we just couldn't reach. These trees were not pruned so they grew really tall and the apples were tiny, but hey, who can argue with free and organic?

Happy "apie" eaters

Clementine banished to the stroller. Poor Clemmie!

We raced home to Justin who was all ready to go up Big Cottonwood Canyon for a bonfire where we, along with Alissa and Ella who decided to join up with us, roasted hot dogs, marshmallows, played on a playground and let the kids put on a show at the amphitheater.

afraid of the fire

Clementine, once again, banished to a life of restricted access. As long as she had a marshmallow she was happy to be there:)

Bea was unfortunate enough to get an ember in her hair and now has a nice little bald spot right where her only head freckle and part usually is, so we'll see how that looks in the morning. After scrubbing the kids down and putting them to bed Justin came home with probably $60 worth of produce from our CSA and I spent quite a bit of time scrubbing down multiple winter squash, potatoes, carrots and fruit galore. My counter tops are overflowing with fruits and vegetables and I am reminded of the good ol' days in Pittsburgh when I had no kitchen space left after buying multiple bushels of peaches and had a garden full of giant heirloom tomato plants that would produce more tomatoes than we could possibly eat.

Perfectly roasted marshmallows with chocolate stuck inside. One of my all time favorite treats

What's not to love about the fall?

Rare view of my pregnant-ness

I really love the fall for every reason: winter squash, pumpkins, Halloween, my Birthday, this baby finally leaving my body soon, cool nights and fall colors. All you East Coasters who say that the fall is the best on the east because there are so many trees, believe me when I say that it's way more beautiful when you're looking at those colors up super steep canyons on breathtaking mountains. The leaves are already changing here and with all the rain we had this year the colors should be extra vibrant. I miss Pittsburgh, but it's so amazing to be up the canyon in a matter of minutes doing what we did today. What a fabulous day!

A special thanks to Alissa for providing me with all my photos since my camera is acting up. You've got skills, sista!

End of Summer fun

2011-09-05T21:55:00.000-07:00

My Mom, Henry, Bea, Uncle Will and Oliver in Island Park, ID. We got to work on that fake smile, buddy.

Henry in front of Old Faithful. My Brother said he started running toward it to get a look down the hole. Good thing they stopped him. Crazy boy!

Today was officially the end of summer and boy did it feel like it too. We went for a hike around Silver lake up at Brighton ski resort and we actually had to put on long sleeve shirts and jackets. It's pretty sad that summer's coming to an end especially because that means the new baby is coming right when it get cold and I will not have the option to send the kids outside or go to the pool where they all just play carefree in the water for hours without bothering me so much. I would have totally preferred to have this baby in the spring, but Irish twins were not in the stars this time.

Henry, Will and Bea at the lake

Cousins Henry, Jefferey, Lisa, Luke, Bea, Miles and little Anthony with Aunt Mary as a support

Henry and Bea went last weekend on a road trip up to Idaho to spend some time with my mom and step family which worked out wonderfully. They had a fabulous time playing with their cousins and uncle Will and I had an extremely relaxing and productive time here while they were gone. My mom took them up to Island Park, ID where they went to Old Faithful and did a lot of outdoorsy stuff. They slept well and were perfectly behaved! That's usually how they are when there's a lot of fun going on, so I was very grateful for that. Clementine and I had some wonderful bonding time and I even got down on the floor and played with her for hours like I used to do with Henry when he was little. I miss that time of discovery.

Heinrich and Beatrice dancing a jig with Daddy peaking over the top

Another thing we did this weekend was go to Oktoberfest up at Snowbird. Other than people waiting in line to drink tons of beer we saw some interesting German bands, danced the chicken dance up on stage(well, I did with Bea just standing there and Henry hiding under the bell table up on stage) and let the kids bounce on the bouncy castle. They enjoyed watching people go down the Alpine slide, which I did many times as a kid, and seeing other people go up the lifts and come down the zipline. I have vivid memories of my brothers flying off the alpine slide and getting really beat up. They always wanted to go as fast as humanly possible which always landed them off the track with bloodied limbs. Anyway, we had a fun time up there. We are so blessed to live in such a beautiful place! Justin and I always comment all the time that we would fly halfway around the US just to come to places like this on vacation but now we live here and it's nice to just drive 15 minutes and we're in the most beautiful mountains ever!

Henry in front of the Snowbird Tram

Also, I have to note that after all my raving about homeschooling I decided to put Henry in Kindergarten this year. Things like busing both ways, half day afternoon class, and having a baby in 6 weeks weighed heavily on my decision and I knew as soon as the baby came he would just be playing video games all afternoon while I took a nap while the babies slept. I figured that Kindergarten had to be better for him even if he does have 30 kids in his class and he's way ahead of them in most areas. At least he'll learn some normal social behaviors which I think he actually needs. I definitely have a problem with him doing things that just aren't appropriate and he really doesn't realize that they aren't. He just thinks he's invisible when he hoists himself up on a restaurant counter to grab 10 cups and lids and 20 straws because, hey, they're free anyway!

There's never a happier boy than one dressed in pirate gear. He can't wait for it to rain!

The Finch kids(oldest to youngest) Alivia, Rex, Lucy and Jack

Me with my most favorite mission companion ever! She's the best!

So, here's Henry in his new pirate rain coat, umbrella, backpack and boots. I still have to get him a backpack that isn't big enough for him to fit inside of. The one he's using hangs down to his knees. haha. On his first day of school my MTC companion Sister Schill, now known as Julie Finch, came for a visit from Australia with her four kids whom I have never met and we hung out for the morning. It was so hectic that on his first day I forgot to feed him lunch, his hair wasn't even combed, his clothes and face were dirty and we almost missed the bus. I didn't even take a photo. The other mothers took photos of their kids getting on the bus and then went up to the school to take a photo of their kids getting off the bus, but my girls were already asleep in the car by that time so I just told my friend to take a photo for me with her phone and I went home. It was so anticlimactic. As soon as I put them down, I took a nap.

POV - Steam of Life . Film Description | PBS

2011-08-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

POV - Steam of Life . Film Description | PBS

I watched this on PBS the other night and it was so touching. Check it out if you get the chance.

Pregnant, 3 little kids, 12 day long road trip? Why not!!

2011-07-31T22:46:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a super long post so just skim through the photos and captions if you want the good stuff. This is a post for posterity's sake...This road trip was to

Bryce Canyon

Lake Powell

Grand Canyon

San Deigo

Los Angeles

Las Vegas

Home(and we didn't even want to come home)

Balancing on a rock

Family hiking

Could it get more scenic than this?

Henry going behind the waterfall

Can you see Justin and Henry up there in that arch formation?

First we met my dad and Teri down in Bryce Canyon to watch them run their half marathon. It started at 6am and they finished in record time so I didn't get to see them actually running it, but we met them at the end and celebrated with a big pancake breakfast and we got to scream for Dad who won third place in his age category. Henry was bummed that he didn't get a big trophy, but Dad was totally happy that he did so well. So cute. Teri got 5th in her age group, so not too bad either. We went on a couple fun hikes and went swimming and marveled at the amazing landscape. I hope I can do that race next year since it's down hill the entire way and it's only a half marathon. I think I'll be able to do it.

My Dad and Teri with their medals

From there we met some of Justin's childhood buddies at Lake Powell with their kids and it was kind of a nightmare. The water right now is 30 feet higher than usual so all the nice beaches are covered up and all that was left was horrible prickly bush, fire ant infested, no shade beaches that were more mud than sand with tons of debris that washed up on shore to create a swampy water's edge. So disgusting! There were also tons of bugs every morning, including so many bees that were attacking our food table and two of them stung Clementine, once when she tried to pick one up that had landed on a piece of fruit she was eating and another that had flown under her chubby little leg while she was again sitting in her booster seat. The prickly bushes were particularly annoying for us because we were the only family with really little kids, so every time Clementine or Bea tripped, their legs and hands would get covered by super jagged thorns and so there were many tears. By the end of the four days Clemmie's hands were all covered with red marks and pricker splinters that we couldn't even get out. By the last day, she wouldn't even cry when she would fall. She would just find the nearest adult and show them her hands covered in thorns for them to pull out. We had to buy pants, water shoes, and a couple rakes to rake the beach so the kids could have a place to play and that worked out alright. Anyway, that was the beach we stayed at. Oh, and there was a scorpion living under our tent that I caught when we were packing up to leave. Super! Haha. If you're already tired of this rant, you can skip to the bottom, but it gets worse if you care to read on.

Clif jumping the first day -- not too high

Last day cliff jumping was way higher. I can't believe Bea loved it so much!

So we got there a day before one of the families and when we stopped to pick them up, we went to Wal Mart for some things we needed and they dropped our friends off at our camping site to set up their tents and then came back to pick us up. While they were picking us up, a huge storm came through with hurricane force winds, and totally ravaged our whole camp site. The port-a-potty we had set up(tent with a small toilet in it) totally blew away, out tent broke, both of the other families brought a canopy to put up for shade that broke, one of them borrowed, and all our food was blown off the table that was turned over so there was sand in everything. The rain got in our tents since we didn't have the rain flies on and by the time we got back, it was almost dark and so much had to be fixed to just survive. Seriously, this whole time I was thinking about what the pioneers went through and felt like I might be experiencing something somewhat similar to what they had to deal with on their journey out west. hahaha!

Our campsite with my hot, rugged husband, Clementine and Uncle Dave

The worst part of the whole trip was that Henry was a total disaster. He regressed into his three year old self for the entire trip. He didn't get enough sleep and he was with a bunch of cousins who all know and love each other and you know how Henry likes to be the boss of everything? Well that TOTALLY backfired! He was trying to boss these older kids around and they just wouldn't give him the time of day. So he was literally crying ALL DAY LONG. They were calling him a cry baby and ganging up on him(which I really don't blame them because he was being a real pain), then he started bugging them by throwing things at their legs or poking them with sticks and they had no patience for him at all. They were all telling him that they didn't want to be his friend the whole time, which made him cry even more. He would bawl his eyes out for every tiny problem, like the chips he wanted were all gone, or we ran out of Oreos, etc. He was the total outcast. He got maybe 9 hours of sleep each night which makes him so much more vulnerable and emotional so it was a deadly combination and I was embarrassed the entire time. I kind of felt like a irresponsible mom because here I am pregnant with #4 and Henry is out of control. Luckily Bea and Clementine were super cute and everyone was in LOVE with them so they seemed to tip the scales a little bit back to normal. Having said that, we had the BEST time out on our speed boat rental. I can't tell you how grateful I was to get on that boat every day and speed around Powell. The kids were cliff jumping, we found caves to explore, I caught three pink lizards and a tree frog and the water out in the middle was really clear and was a perfect temperature. One of the most entertaining parts of the trip was Clementine's new favorite word which is "Bea!!" She says it all day long and will repeat it every time provoked so all the kids would follow her around everywhere and say "Bea, Bea" to her and she would respond by saying it over and over and over. Thank heaven it never got old because it was the only entertaining thing going on on the beach from Hell. So, Bea is officially Clementine's first word that she knows the meaning of.

I love Henry's face in this shot as Justin takes him outside the wake

On the rim of the Grand Canyon

My camera ran out of batteries at this point so I have to get shots from my sister in law to update the rest.

Singing

Gabe, Bea, Clementine, Alta, Henry

After that we stayed in a really awesome suite at the oldest hotel at the Grand Canyon that night called El Tovar, looked at the Grand Canyon in the morning and then headed out to California. We drove through the hottest desert ever and the car registered 120 degrees. While we were driving, the edging of our new windshield came unglued because of the heat and it started peeling off. It could have totally flown off our car! Plus, our car almost overheated when we were going up this really big hill in the heat, but we made it to the top just before it hit the red. So scary!! In California we have been staying with Paige which is really fun and the kids are doing much better and getting a lot more sleep. We have a 5,4,3,2,and a 1 year old and one on the way living in this house right now.

Action shot of Hen running from the waves. What's more fun than the ocean?

I cannot believe we got them all under the sand. Poor Clementine!

The best part is that Henry and Bea are both just older than Paige's kids so they can be in charge and they all seem to play pretty well together. We've spent a lot of time at the beach and also went to the Wild Animal Park to hang out. We ate at this fantastic sushi place with Paige and Garrett as a thank-you for having us at their house and it was so delicious. My favorite specialty roll was called the Bomb James Bond. Yummmmmm. It was warm with scallops and some yummy sauce all over the top. Delicious! We ate sushi until we were stuffed. We also ate some great tacos at our favorite taco place today after hanging out at the Camp Pendelton Marine Base beach which we have access to because Garrett is in the Marines. The beach is so nice and not crowded at all. Then we met up with another one of Justin's childhood friends from New Canaan who have two boys and a girl just Henry's and Bea's ages and we roasted hot dogs and made s'mores on the beach and then ate ice cream. The boys names are Gunnar, Hunter, and the little girl is Fiori, which means flowers in Italian. I love her name. Bea and Fiori were instant best friends and they both have Italian names. So adorable. Fiori was obsessed Clementine just like Bea is so they just chased her all around everywhere. It was a really great dynamic.

Looking at sand crabs in a bucket. They collected seaweed, sand crabs and then Clementine ate them.

We left San Diego and went up to hang out with some friends, the Heath family, who live in Thousand Oaks for a night and it was so fabulous. If California wasn't such a bad place for doctors to live I think we would seriously consider it. They have the best yard ever and if it weren't for so many rabbits it would be the ideal spot for a farm. They have a pool, hot tub, trampoline, chicken coop, horse corral, grazing field and some sheds, plus a stream running along the back of their property that's filled with tadpoles and frogs which Henry was trying to catch the entire time. Their girls were totally into it as well, so Henry got along with them just fine. We had a blast chatting and watching the kids play and trying to get Bea and their three year old Greta to get along. At one point Bea asked if they could be friends and Greta shook her head and said "no". haha. We're hopefully going to get together with them next summer for a Disney trip. We were supposed to go but Henry was so cranky and we could only go for one day so we decided to make a real trip out of it and go for a few days next year.

After that stop we were going to drive home, but decided to stay the night in Vegas so we found a fun hotel, which wasn't a casino in this new section of town that was is super modern and connected to a high end mall called Vdara. That name bugged me a little because everyone pronounced Vadara but they just HAD to leave out the "a" to be cool. Pa-leez. Well, Justin and I got the 16 year old boy cousin of a friend to come sit in our hotel room while the kids were alsleep and Justin and I went out to dinner and ate a delicious steak dinner at this nice restaurant called Craft that is also in NYC. We woke up early the next morning an walked around the strip with the kids, which was nice because there weren't any people on the street and they had already cleaned up all the cards with naked ladies on them from the night before so it was relatively family friendly. We were bummed because they had changed the Treasure Island show to "the Sirens of TI" which probably showcased scantily clad pirate chicks and we were warned that it wasn't for kids. We showed him the ships and where the volcano show was and told him how cool they were, but that they didn't start until later and after a while, he said sadly, "mom, this wasn't as cool as I thought it would be". I felt so bad. That's what we get for doing the strip at 8am. hahaha. Oh, and on the way in the night before Bea was yelling from the back seat, "Mommy, this place is for you! This is for you guys!!!" with her super happy face expression and nodding her head. She is just hilarious. We swam at the pool which is where Bea learned how to swim completely on her own!!! she was totaly swimming and coming up for air and then would swim again. I am so amazed at how much of a fish she is. Then she totally put on a show at the pool by diving and doing belly flops from the side of the pool. The water came up the the deck level, so it wasn't that far down, but she would stand on the side with her huge sideways grin, eyes wide open and belly poking out, arms outstretched, and would just tip over and do a full on belly flop into the water. All the people in the pool were watching and were totally cracking up and everyone was talking to us about how cute the kids were. Then just before we left we went to this buffet at the Cosmopolitan that our friend recommended called the Wicked Spoon and it was the most gourmet buffet ever, plus all the kids got to eat for free. Yesssss! They had a lot of things in little tiny pans, about as big as the play pans we have in our play set with gnocchi, delicious soups, a huge meat bar, sushi, desserts, breakfasts, cheeses, fruits, etc. I couldn't even eat half of what I wanted to taste because my belly is getting so big that my stomach doesn't fit what it used to. Blasted baby! haha. The kids had a ball and we must have eaten $100 or more of food for $44.

Then we drove the 5 hour trip home on Tuesday and have been recovering ever since!

Pregnancy moment...

2011-07-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

So I forgot to bring Justin's clothes to a nice dinner after his bike ride up to Sundance to eat at pretty much the nicest restaurant around. Here's the story if you care to have a good laugh...

http://blog.ryanandalissa.com/2011/07/dinner-jacket.html

Sorry Justin and congratulations on finishing your boards. Can't believe we have three weeks vacation!!!

Super Boy!

2011-07-01T22:13:00.000-07:00

Yay! Daddy's home!

Henry riding his bike really fast with his super hero outfit on, mask, cape and stickers on his shirt. Such a happy boy!

I think this summer has been instrumental in the growth of Enrico. He has all of a sudden learned to really ride his bike and I don't have to force him to go on rides, he just wants to go, he has been doing his chores and is becoming more obedient. He's happier and more confident. He's even taking beat boxing lessons and will soon start on guitar. I am enjoying this stage so much and I can't wait for him to become more capable. Justin just learned that his buddy's son, who is only 6, rides mountain bikes with him up in the hills and now Justin wants to get Henry some crazy expensive bike with shocks and hand breaks. Haha! He's just as impatient as I am for him to grow up.

Blue snow cone lips holding the fire hose at a street fair

Henry and Bea doing a little dance to make their floor sweeping chore more fun.

Henry just learned how to do a real back float and couldn't be happier with himself. I'm just happy that he knows how to float in case he feels like he's in water that's too deep

Grandpa bribed Henry with a popsicle if he would go down the really slow waterslide at our pool. He refused to do it thus far, but then he realized he loved it and kept going again and again. He can even swim to the side. Go Henry!

Henry and Bea on the Ferris wheel at Liberty Park, having the time of their lives!

2011-06-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

In the pool with Nanna B. See Bea dunking her head. She's so wild in the water!

So, we've spend a lot of time riding bikes around and playing at the pool. The kids are also super awesome swimmers. I got them all these new floatation devices that are made from life vest type foam but look like floaties with a tube around their waist, but it's coastguard approved which means you can use them in public swimming pools like the one behind our house. I also bought them tiny goggles that finally fit their tiny faces and heads so now they can see underwater and all they want to do is go underwater and wave at me. haha! Every mom with a two year old clinging to her leg at the pool asks me what I did to get Bea so comfortable water and I tell them, "Puerto Rico!" Haha. She has those floaties on, but they aren't that super buoyant, so she does backwards dives and rolls and does this thing where she dunks her own face in the water like 6 times before she takes a breath and she thinks it's so funny. I seriously think she could be legitimately swimming by the end of the summer.

All the kids having a great time in the car. Guess who loves Clemmie?

We went to the Children's museum with Tracie and her kids plus my friend Alissa that lives on our street on Wednesday and then we played in the fountains(since they're both at the Gateway mall in SLC) and then we went swimming at our pool directly after that, which was an insane day, but totally fun.

All the kids in the helicopter at the museum. Bea's friend Ella is in the window. It's a great exhibit.

Then on Friday we went to the aquaraium, which is just around the corner from us and found out that it was only $36 for a year membership for all of us, so we got that and the kids were in love with it. We went with a few friends from the neighborhood which included a couple five year old boys and at one point there was this one exhibit that had a red light with some fog machine spilling out fog over the water and the two other boys were saying, "woh, that's a fire on the water!" and Henry was like,"there's no way that could be fire guys. Fire cannot be on the water. That's probably just a light with some dry ice or something." They totally argued and didn't believe Henry, but when he asked me what it was I told him that he was right, but that it was meant to look like fire, he felt so good that he didn't give in.

Packed in to look at salamanders. So cool!

My mom moved into her new place, which is so awesome, so we went down to Provo to hang out and help her unpack a little. She lives on the bottom floor in this really fun complex in a super nice condo that has almost no one living there and she's right next door to a giant room with a huge flat screen TV, kitchen area, eating area that is also right next to the indoor pool and hot tub. Then just across the lawn from that is a tennis court(that needs a little TLC). I put Clementine down for a nap, walked 30 seconds to the tennis court to play with the kids and then we went swimming, all the while I would be totally in range of the baby monitor(when I bring one down)! Yay! It's the sweetest setup ever.

Trying to get a good shot in the boat. Clemmie would have nothing to do with it:(

My sister-in-law had her baby on Friday so I went to see her yesterday and when I walked into the room, I burst into tears because I was so happy for her to finally have her baby and because I'm pregnant and emotional about everything, AND because he looked a lot like Henry with his red hair and big eyes. I just couldn't help thinking back to my first moments with Henry and how special that was. She was so happy. I am so happy that she had a baby because all I ever want to talk about is babies!!!

So we've been late to church lately and it was raining cats and dogs today so I went to sleep super early so I could wake up at 6:30, get myself ready, get the church bag all ready, I made a gourmet breakfast and got all the kids clothes and shoes out, even their hair bows all ready before I woke them up. I marched them all downstairs and they ate breakfast while I did their hair and then quickly got them dressed and out the door totally on time for church! I was a little late though because it was raining so hard and I had to coordinate Henry helping Bea with the umbrella and me with Clementine and all my bags and it took an extra 5 minutes to get in from the car, but we were basically on time. So at church we had the greatest lessons. The RS one was on missionary work and a few guest speakers spoke about their conversion or their missions and the spirit was so strong, then in Sunday School we learned about the last day of the Savior's life and what he did in the last moments before he was betrayed and was captured and sent to be judged. Basically the point was that if one of us knew that we were going to die a horrible death soon, we would probably be thinking a lot about ourselves, but Christ was so focused on teaching the apostles and serving them until the last moments. It was such a showing of love and unselfishness. Such a great lesson. One funny thing is that there were two funny men who decided to sit in the front right corner of the room instead of the rows, which is where I had strategically planned on cornering Clementine with chairs so she didn't walk all over the room, but I didn't care that they were there and I blocked her(and them) in anyway. When the teacher saw this he said, "welcome to Sunday school everyone" and then looked over at me, the two old men and Clemmie and said, "And welcome to Junior Sunday school. If anyone misbehaves you will go to time out in the Junior Sunday School". Haha. It was really funny.

Visit from Daddy

2011-06-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that Justin still has a month left in Pittsburgh before he can join us out here, so he came to visit for his Birthday last weekend and he had many adventures with the kids and his buddies. If any of you know Justin, he has a plan for every moment of his life, so there was no stop to the action. Since I hate long posts, here's a list of each day's activities, a photo, and short funny stories if any....

Henry and Lisa

Thursday
-Drove up to Snowbird, kids went sledding with some Australians, decided to send the kids to ski school this winter.
-Went down the mountain where there was no snow and did a .2 mile hike up to Lisa Falls and ate snacks, let the kids get wet and rock climb. The river and falls were raging and freezing cold, plus it was less than 60 degrees out, and it was raining.
-Wait, are we still in Pittsburgh?
-BTW, it was the rainiest May in recorded history in Utah and you wouldn't believe how much snow is still in the mountains and how green everything is: gorgeous!
-Justin went on a 4 hour road bike ride partly in the rain
-Justin and I went out to Chimayo restaurant in Park City for his Birthday. Delicious.

How awesome is this huge tire!? Henry was amazed.

The copper mine from outside. My camera died before I got the inside shots:(

Friday
-The kids and I went out to the Bingham Canyon Copper mine with some friends, ate lunch at a fun park and hung out with a ton of new awesome sistas from my ward and their bazillion kids.
-Justin went snowboarding
-We went to see Kung Fu Panda 2 3D together. I almost cried three times, Henry LOVED it, Clementine slept(yesssss) and Bea finally left the glasses on and watched the action.
-Visited the Mayan Restaurant next door where they put on a show every half hour with people who throw fire and dive into their indoor pond from a giant waterfall. We'll definitely return.
-Mom got to go up to Snowbird for a girls night out with my new neighbors/friends

I thought this was funny

Saturday
-The kids and I went to our Stake activity called Family Fun Day where every ward is in charge of a booth or activity and people come and play. There was two giant slip-n-slides, three bouncy houses, snow cones, ice cream, pop corn, food tent, crafts, a giant climbing wall, sand box, face painting, nail painting, and some other things we didn't even have a chance to check out. Henry was obsessed with the slip n slide and Clementine ate watermelon for about 2 hours straight, even the rind.
-Justin went on a mountain bike ride with a buddy
-Had Justin's Birthday party with about 6 old friends/mission companions and their wives plus his sister and husband
- Embarrassed Justin by singing him his Birthday song, but was already extremely sunburned from snowboarding so you couldn't notice him turning red.

Henry on the rock used to build the temple

Henry soaked at Temple Square after falling into the reflection pool

Sunday
-Decided to skip church since we have sacrament meeting last and wouldn't have been able to go because of Justin's flight departure time(lame)...so we did some research on the Salt Lake Temple quarry trail which is 5 minutes from our house and is a nice paved Sunday walk with historical plaques to read along the way. We saw where the pioneers cut the stone, saw a broken chisel from 150 years ago and collected a lot of bugs. Henry was screaming with excitement every time he saw the chisel marks in the stone and any signs the pioneers left behind.
-Henry was disappointed that we didn't see any dead pioneer bones on the trail
-Drove to the Temple and let Henry see the stone on the temple that was dragged all the way there.
-While posing for a photo, Henry slipped and fell into the reflection pond, completely drenching him from head to foot. I was in the car with the two sleeping babies and missed the whole thing:(.
-Drove Justin to the airport
-Met tons of new people on our street, including three new boys Henry's age(That makes 10 total just on our street).

The boys at the temple

Dirty Dash!

2011-06-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

Henry crying with Bea wondering how she's going to clean her hands

There is an insane race called the Dirty Dash that is held in Midway, UT up by Park City at a venue that was created for the Olympics and it is the craziest race ever. There are tons of start times and categories of racers that do a 5 or 10K and other stuff, but I did the Piglet Plunge with the kids which is basically a mile race(more like a walk for me) starting on a giant muddy slope, then across a field and down a muddy slip n slide to another mud field and then down to this huge mud puddle that you have to wade through and then climb up a giant mud mountain, slide down and cross the finish line.

Henry screaming as he runs down the slip n slide

Nice view though!


Almost at the end and still protesting

Henry worried about the giant mud puddle

Behind Clementine is the mud mountain/slide before the finish line. Check out those muddy people!

By the time it's all over, people are totally covered in the thickest, blackest mud you have ever seen. You don't have to get super dirty, as you can tell from my kids only being muddy from the waist down, but most people go all out and just get super dirty. I got there and couldn't find my friends who were supposed to take my kids through the race, so I just found a straggler family at the back and got them to take the kids. Henry cried the whole time saying that he didn't want to get his socks dirty and seriously just cried and freaked out until he was all cleaned off. He was running down the hill screaming, "I never want to do this again! Waaaaa!" while Bea was so happy to play in the mud and get super dirty.

Check out these super muddy kids with my almost clean children. I wish they had gotten into it more!

Not happy Henry with pensive Bea

Since my kids didn't know this family and I didn't know them either I had to run along side them pushing my stroller through all these bumpy fields to avoid all the mud and Clemmie was laughing the whole time as she was bouncing around. She didn't cry all day long and just fell asleep anywhere and was such a trooper. Her little chubby feet got burned though since I forgot to put sunblock on them. Poor baby. At the end you can pay a little money for a hot shower(which I totally did) or take a super cold shower that's directly from the stream nearby to wash off and then most people donate their shoes to charity. They clean them off really well and give them away. I can't WAIT to do it again next year together as a family. I convinced Henry that it would be really fun if we were all holding hands and getting muddy together. Even Clemmie will be able to do it next year since you just have to be two years old to participate.

Almost to the finish line. They could hardly walk with the mud that was on their shoes!

After that we went to a hotel pool with our friends to relax and hang out until I found my phone face down in a puddle of water that was created by Bea trying to find candy in my purse and dripping water in the stroller undercarriage and letting my phone drop in it. I just turned it on for the first time a few minutes ago and it still works, but the screen is really messed up. I got the super insurance plan for it so hopefully I can just get a new one tomorrow. The kids fell asleep on the way home around 6 pm and didn't wake up until 8:30 this morning. That's the most all three have slept in together. Oh, the saddest part the whole day was when I was trying to get my stuff out to the car with Clementine asleep in my new double stroller and I had the big cooler on the other seat that is facing the seat she was sleeping in, along with a whole bunch of stuff, and I was so stressed out about my phone and I just wanted to get in the car to get home and I forgot to hold the cooler and when I stopped the stroller for something, the cooler slid forward and smashed into Clementine's chubby, sleeping face. I couldn't imagine a worse way to wake up than having a giant cooler smash into your face. I almost cried I felt so bad. Luckily there's no bruise or anything, but it was not a good mothering moment for me.

We're Here....

2011-05-22T22:23:00.000-07:00

This might scare you. This might excite you. This might make you cry. We have finally moved to Utah. I first want to say that I have always said I would never live in Utah again, but here I am. I should have known because just about everything I have ever said I would never do has come true. This is how I know God exists. I will make a short list of a few of these things..

1. Said three times that the last place I would want to go on a mission is to Rome, Italy. Result: Mission call to Rome, Italy
2. Said I did not want to boy first or two girls really close together. Result: Boy, Girl, Girl
3. Said I would never ever, ever live in Utah again. Result: Just moved here and will probably say until I die(I kind of have a feeling)

I learned my lesson and have stopped saying and thinking about anything I want.

BTW, if you hadn't heard, I'm pregnant again and it's another girl! Yay for me! Henry will be so sad. Sorry sweet boy. Maybe the zillions of boys on our new street will make it easier to hear you're getting another sister. I love you!

Road Trip #2 Revisited:Boston

2011-05-22T22:06:00.000-07:00

The last road trip we took was to Boston to see Teri, my step mom, run the Boston Marathon. We took it with my friend Gulzat and her son Daniel. We had done this trip last year and this time it was a lot more difficult with my three kids even though last year I was 9 months pregnant with Clemmie. It took us 9 hours to get to CT and we spent some fun time with The Hohl Grandparents and then we headed up to Boston and spent a lot of time with my dad and Teri, going out to eat, playing at the Science Center, taking a Duck Tour and going to church with Courtney(who is dating some fabulous guy and we're all thrilled about it but that's another blog post). We found the best spot to watch the marathon from the windows from Lord and Taylor department store and they were kind enough to let our whole entourage stay there. While we were waiting for Teri to run by LUCY CALLED FROM CALIFORNIA JUST BEFORE SHE WENT TO JAPAN ON HER MISSION!!! It was so thrilling to have two really great things happen at the same time. The kids sang to Lucy and told her how much they loved her. I miss her so much. Just today I called the guest bed, Clemmie's bed and Bea yelled, "No! Lucy's bed!"

Anyway, Teri did great and we did get to see her run by. Henry cried because he said he couldn't see her. I was busy taking photos and so I couldn't point her out even though I was yelling, "She's the one with the orange hat!!!" a million times and he was crying, "I can't see her mommy, where is she!?!!!?". We also took Gulzat to Harvard Square and ate some pretty good Thai food. The biggest trial of the trip was that we had Bea and Clemmie who both woke up once per night and woke each other up the first night for a couple hours which almost killed me the next day. Gulzat let Bea stay in her room so I could get some sleep and so I survived....but that's about it.

On the way home we stopped off in NYC for some delicious treats, Saigon Grill, Dinosaur BBQ, and Grom and then made the long drive home. I was driving that day for almost 12 hours. Needless to say I spent the entire next day on the couch.

Road Trip #1 Revisited:DC

2011-05-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

For some reason I have a hard time blogging about road trips but I have to blog about the trips we've been on these past few months. We took a trip to the Washington DC temple March 26th and we hung out with our great friends the Romneys (woot woot!) and spend all day Saturday amongst the beautiful cherry blossoms. It was the first day of the Cherry Blossom Festival so the blossoms were absolutely perfect and we got some really fun photos of the kids playing by the trees. Henry actually got in trouble from security a couple of times because he was venturing in the flower beds and tried to climb up some trees. I felt bad because we have really never found a tree that he could climb around here. Our neighborhood and the parks around here do not have climbing friendly trees and I can see the desire to climb coming out in him. I was a super tree climber back in the day, climbing up really tall trees to watch baseball games and dreaming up really cool tree houses in the huge horse chestnut trees in Lindsey Gardens. I am actually kind of excited to go back to SLC and go to the old trees I used to climb and let Henry climb up.

Anyway, Justin and I got to go to the temple to pray and meditate about a job opportunity while the Romneys watched our kids and they had a blast playing in the mud. Luckily they have a plethora of clothes of all sizes and we got all the kids dressed in clean clothes for the festival. On Sunday we attended their Spanish ward which was fun trying to understand what was being said. I understood maybe 60% of everything and got the gist of all the talks. We drove home with no problems. We love that place and visiting our friends!

Easter fun and madness

2011-04-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

Our big handsome boy. 5 years old....with a short baby tie on. Nice going dad.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you that Henry is crazy about candy and there has been a lot of it at our house recently. This morning the kids woke up extra early and ate a ton of candy for breakfast, wouldn't even eat their eggs and had candy fits and meltdowns in sacrament meeting. Henry left primary twice asking for candy from Justin and Bea was in a sugar low during nursery and didn't say a word or move, but just sat there observing all the fighting(someone actually drew blood today in a battle over a car) so I guess it was a good thing that she wasn't down there in the brawl.

As soon as I said for Henry to put his arms around the girls this is what he did...and then they both cried.

We did have a nice little photo session today after church and we actually got all the kids smiling in quite a few photos. Finally!!! The girls are wearing their home made dresses and Henry is actually wearing an outfit that fits him! It's a miracle!

Henry wanted me to take multiple photos of himself eating the candy.

We had our best friends/family over for dinner, watched a video from Easter three years ago and laughed our heads off and ate wonderful lamb steaks with middle eastern side dishes. Yum, yum, yum. Seriously, you would have been jealous of our meal. Then we ate tiramisu for dessert(mormon style using Italian orzo, a wheat drink). We talked and laughed and had a wonderful time. I just love my friends and family here and I'll be sad to leave them in a few weeks.

I made Henry button his shirt for the photos. I love how it turned out.

Little Sponge

2011-04-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

I am so glad for those moments when you realize your child is actually listening when you think they're not and when they're absorbing information when you think their brain is in outer space. Last week we were in the Boston Science museum hopping from exhibit to exhibit not really knowing if he was taking in any of the actual science of the displays. Henry and I ended up putting together a model of the human body and I told him a lot of things about what was going on with the heart and lungs and other physiology of the body and today while Justin was getting his blood drawn at home for a disability insurance quote Henry looked down at Justin's arm and told the nurse, "This vein is blue and that means it has no oxygen in it. The red one is the one that has the oxygen." The nurse said to Justin, "oh, you must be a doctor or something" but Justin responded, "well, yes I am, but I didn't teach him that." Well, I have news for you. I did!

Eggosaurus

2011-04-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

These were a fun craft I found at Aldi. I babysat three kids today who were the same age as my three so it was basically like having three sets of twins. They were all boys too and were all super attached to their mom, which I'm not accustomed to. When we leave our kids anywhere, they're like, "see you in a few days mom. We're having a sleepover!!!" They have no attachment complex, which I am totally fine with. Luckily they didn't mind being cuddled by me so we spent a lot of time on the couch snuggling and reading stories since they all wanted to be held all at the same time(not going to happen). Good thing they're all so darn cute!

As many of you know, I love eggs. I make a ton of Easter egg crafts and Christmas eggs stuff and I love to eat eggs, in fact, I think I ended up eating four soft boiled eggs(my all time favorite snack) today since the kids didn't finish theirs and I was in heaven. I put freshly ground salt and pepper on them from my gourmet pepper mix combo with red(I know they're not really pepper), white and black peppercorns smashed on a piece of toasted super crusty bread from my favorite bread store and I am in heaven. That is up there with dark chocolate for me. I really have to stop myself from eating eggs all day long. Don't tell Justin though because he's convinced that the cholesterol in eggs is basically poison, which I don't believe at all. Read all about it if you google cholesterol myth. Anyway, I love eggs and so do my kids!

Hentropy

2011-04-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

When I finally got the entire house clean, it was time to bathe the babes. Here they are all clean, pink and smiley.

This morning I got up really late because I'm still recovering from still not getting any sleep since the kids are used to crying for water all night long and Clementine had a blow out that took a half hour to get cleaned up. So anyway, I got up around 9:15, got dressed, found Clementine who had pooped all over herself again, so I gave her a quick bath, tidied up the upstairs and came down at about 9:50, ten minutes before this lady was scheduled to come over to give us a moving quote and I couldn't believe how horrible the house was. It looked like a tornado had hit our kitchen. Henry and Bea had been cutting stuff out all morning and had crumbled crackers all over the place, peeled string cheese, ate pasta, craisens, paper was strewn all over the place, markers were all over the floor and they had colored all over the table and spilled water all over the table and it was all underneath the table and there were still dishes in the sink from the day before, which I was hoping was the only thing I had left to do before this lady came and as I was standing there contemplating the mess, she rang the doorbell, like 9 minutes early! I don't think anyone has ever seen my house that disgusting. Not only was it cluttered, but it was covered in food and filth. There was almost no place to walk around. At least she was a woman and the upstairs was clean.

Straight from Henry's Head

2011-04-02T21:51:00.000-07:00

Henry and Wee-o digging for dinosaur bones at the Nat. His. Museum

Since we have sold our house and I'm not cleaning and organizing every day, Henry doesn't get to play Little Big Planet or watch TV anymore and his mind has gone into make-believe overdrive. He pretends so many different things every day and creates elaborate paper objects ranging from Pirate flags, hats, full body armor, alien heads, and always gives me and Justin a present that says, "I luv yoo mom/dad, frum Henry". Many times when I come downstairs in the morning he has a treasure hunt all planned out with either clues or a map. The best part is that he treats me like I treat him when he can't find what I have hidden for him and starts talking to me in a baby voice, "can you see it mommy?, just look a little harder right around HERE" and basically points right to it. Haha. He's so creative. He also writes and illustrates at least 10 pages of something every day. Today he made me a drawing of me in "the savannah" with two trees, a lion and a giraffe that were amazingly cute.

Grinding corn Native American style

The other day when it was uncharacteristically warm outside we had some friends over and Henry and his friend Thomasin started digging for bugs. Every bug they found was either mauled to death, drowned, or suffocated and every time they discovered that they had killed their new pets they felt really bad about it. They they found a big worm they named Skipper that eventually died after also being drowned and they decided to have a funeral for it under our front yard mailbox. They found a stone from the back yard and used crayons to color it and put stickers all over it. Henry wrote a note to him and brought out a napkin, which supposedly his favorite blankie, and tucked them both under the rock while they had his funeral. The mail lady drove up to deliver the mail and they told her the whole story and I could hear her from my window as she struggled to keep in her laughter. It was so amusing. We have also played vikings, dragons, dinosaurs, cowboys, etc. I am really enjoying having a five year old. He's so much more emotionally stable, is so sweet, tells me he loves me every day just out of the blue, kisses and hugs me often, takes care of his little sisters, is usually obedient, talks about Jesus and is curious about religious topics often. I am so grateful for him and what he is becoming. Just watching him being so proactive and independently interested in so many things is making me so excited to start seriously home schooling him.

Henry and Lucy having fun with phone games on the Culebra ferry

pregnancy posts from 2005 and my hairless rat surgery photos

2011-03-31T19:40:00.000-07:00

Old photo of Hen I found on Lucy's computer

So I have been trying to get access to my old typepad account so I could link it up to Henry's blog since it has all the posts I made when I was pregnant with him and I finally figured it out! So if any of you are interested in reading some funny stories and seeing Henry in the womb, here is the link...

http://milliemama.typepad.com/milliemama/

Some other highlights of this blog include

1. The documentation of the surgeries I did on my hairless rat, Egor(see photo albums on the left)
2. Seeing what my life was like pre children. I seriously saw five shows per week and went out to dinner every night!
3. The shocker that I didn't remember actually living some of what I wrote which is a stark reminder to me of why I blog. I will probably forget my entire life if I didn't write it down.

four year old

2011-03-22T18:05:00.001-07:00

Today our little Georgie would have turned four years old and I was reflecting on what it would be like to have a four year old boy instead of Bea. Since Henry seems to do very well playing with anyone older than three I always seem to think that they would be awesome buddies and have tons of adventures together looking for treasure in the woods and putting legos together. So far all Bea does is steal everything Henry puts together and she's still too little to venture outside our yard without me. Even though we have received so many blessings from his death and am grateful for his influence in our lives,I'm still convinced that our life would be better with him here and I miss him more often than anyone knows. I still can't wait for the day we're together again. We love you little boy and we know you were with us today, even during our wild prayer and scripture time.

Love,
Mommy

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First Finger Fright for my Five year old

2011-02-24T20:52:00.000-08:00

Henry Post-op(bad phone photo) with some presents

Today is Henry's 5th Birthday and we spent most of the day at the Science Center with the Chous and Gammie and Grandpa Hohl. Henry was an angel all day and had so much fun with his cousins. We even ran into Thomasin and Marta for the last couple hours and they joined in on the fun at Sports Works. On the way home it started to rain so I turned on the wiper in the back where both boys were sitting, facing backward. Our car is falling apart and the back panel keeps falling off and at this point all the mechanics of the hatch door are exposed, especially the wiper arm. As we pulled into our garage, Henry gets the bright idea to stick his left pointer finger into a hole in the mechanical arm of the wiper blade and in so doing, almost sliced off his finger. He had a deep wound that went from just below his cuticle diagonally under his nail bed and slicing into his skin. When I opened the back to let the boys out, Henry was holding his bloody finger in his other hand and looked at me saying, " I stuck my finger in the hole and I just didn't know!" I felt so horrible for my sweet Birthday boy! I rushed him into the house, rinsed it, and as I rinsed I realized just how deep it was. I wrapped it up in tissues and tape and called Justin to come home. He arrived home quickly with supplies and examined the patient. He decided to take him for an x-ray at the Children's Hospital (no break) and came home to finish the repair. Complete with gloves, tools, a couple beautiful assistants and some freezer paper as a sterile surface, Justin was ready to go. I held Henry on my lap with Gammie Lynn holding his arm as Justin injected lidocane into his finger quite a few times. Henry cried, but didn't really pull his arm back or freak out like I had expected him to do and was so brave. After his finger was numb, Justin was free to do the surgery. He removed the nail and put four or five stitches across his nail bed and then reinserted his nail into the cuticle, which assists in the new nail growing back. Justin commented that this surgery was even more complicated than any of the other surgeries he had done that day. The whole time Henry was content to boss Kaitlin and Wee-o on the proper techniques to navigate through levels of Little Big Planet and had little interest in the bloody stump of a finger his dad was working on. Justin wrapped it all up and then we ate linguine with meat balls for dinner and a Hazelnut cake with dark chocolate coating on top, opened presents and let the kids eat some candy and it was a wonderful Birthday!

Recent pic

2011-02-05T20:13:00.000-08:00

He looks so grown up to me. I can totally see how he's going to look as an adult in this picture. So handsome!

Do you Strew?

2011-02-03T21:44:00.000-08:00

I got this idea to "strew" the other day by leaving things out for Henry and Bea to find to see if they're interested in them and it works! It's an actual technique to indirectly teach. I feel like I can keep them busy when I feel like putting things out, not when I'm in the middle of feeding Clementine or doing the dishes or cooking. I finally have some control around here! Henry found a note pad and pencil I left out and decided to make treasure maps and instructions on how to make a tent, which took him about a half hour to create and then we went on a treasure hunt and made his tent, only after following his very detailed and numbered instructions and then we had a Birthday party in the tent. The most fun part of our treasure hunt was when after we found the loot we all hugged each other and jumped and chanted, "we're rich!, we're rich!" Both kids were laughing hysterically and so was I. Henry is so much fun!

Chia Head

2010-12-21T12:21:00.000-08:00

I usually regret paying $2.50 for these cheap toys at Target but I got one for our trips in September and even though it popped almost immediately Henry enjoys making it look like he has a Chia head.

Hen on the run

2010-12-11T13:21:00.001-08:00

Henry has been so busy traveling with his family and getting to know his aunt Lucy who has been living with us. Since the last post we have traveled to Puerto Rico, Lake Tahoe, Boston, NYC, CT, Block Island, and Amish Country. In-between trips we have tried to get the house ready to sell and have been doing numerous holiday crafts, activities and cooking fabulous meals...which cuts significantly into blogging time. Look for back blogs soon!

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Blogging hiatus

2010-11-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

Many factors have played into not blogging for so long, but mostly because I have a new phone and now I don't have to sit down and email all night so i don't sit and blog anymore. Also, I don't watch TV anymore and I'm getting up super early to exercise, but the main reason I'm not blogging is that I am so far behind! I just got home recently from a 5 week trip and now my sister is living with me and there is just too much to say. Anyway, just thought I would say something to get me back on track. Everyone is alive and doing well!

Caribbean in WV?

2010-09-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

Yes folks, you heard right. I think I'm falling in love with West Virginia despite what I originally thought of it. I guess the only thing I knew was this joke....How do you know that the tooth brush was invented in West Virginia? Answer: Because if it was invented anywhere else it would have been called a "teeth" brush. I know, so funny. Anyway, West Virginia is absolutely beautiful and every time we go down there for an outdoor adventure we are amazed at it's natural beauty and variety.

Do you see Justin way up there?

This is where we went last weekend. It's called Summersville Lake and the water is super warm and the lake is pretty clear so we snorkeled, did deep water solo rock climbing, kayaked, paddle boarded and played on the beach with the kids and our friends. We even camped on a super sloped site with tons of neighbors and bathrooms/showers just to be near this lake(which I didn't use more than once. That's part of the fun of camping-- no showers or toilets) I think this lake is owned by the Army Core of Engineers or something because it's totally undeveloped and you can't even rent a speed boat at this lake even though you can bring your own. This limits the amount of people on the lake and we felt like we had it all to ourselves on our little pontoon boat.

We also checked out river rafters on New River Gorge and drove across what was until just recently the longest steel suspension bridge in the world. From 1977 until 2003 it was the longest and highest bridge of it's kind in the world but France and China built some others that broke the record, but it's still up there in the top few and was pretty spectacular to see and drive across.

Our friends Christi and Dave were with us and Christi's parents joined up with us for a day and half which was wonderful because they watched the kids while we had some fun(for the first time in so long for me!) It was a slightly painful drive but we hope to return next spring, hopefully with our other friend's speedboat!

Drama I didn't ask for

2010-09-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Today was a wild day. I took my kids to my friend's house to watch while I took a scuba diving course in the morning/early afternoon and then I came back to Gulzat's house to be at a discussion with the missionaries who got lost and never showed up, then Henry wanted to go to soccer practice, but wouldn't participate (like last time) because the shirts Stef made weren't blue and then the missionaries showed up an hour and a half after they said they would and asked if they could come tomorrow, which I can hardly do because I have my other half of the course tomorrow and have to go to Costco to get diapers and food for my friend who just had a baby today. Then I took my kids home, got some food, rushed out the door to get some gardening supplies for the YW activity tonight, buy a new charger for my portable DVD player (that still doesn't work) and pick up my CSA(community supported agriculture) box(vegetables are taking over my fridge) and while turning to get on the freeway I ran into the curb(around an illegally parked car) and shredded my tire and had to wait for Justin to arrive to help me. While I was waiting, another woman did the exact same thing I did and she held my baby while I searched for her spare tire and tried undoing the lug nuts, which we couldn't do and many passing homeless men and strangers asked to help, the most notable was a drunk, one legged black man who had just gotten out of the hospital from having three stents put in his heart driving a power chair. He was bouncing up and down on the wrench with his only good leg trying to get it to budge with no luck. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. One homeless man kept asking me for money and I gave him the hamburger I bought for Justin since I was out of food, except for raw vegetables, and my kids were screaming to be let out of the car on a busy street with drunks everywhere. Then another drunk man came by and said he knew someone with a tow truck who could help us and he loosened the nuts for us for free. Yea! While I was out of the car, Henry and Bea destroyed my car with chicken nuggets and ketchup. Justin finally got there, I transferred all my stuff and the kids to his car, rushed up to the church while Bea was torturing the baby until she was screaming her lungs out and did my gardening activity with the YW and then I came home, gave my dirty kids a bath, put them to bed and I've been studying for my scuba class until one in the morning and I have to wake up in 5 hours.

Elder Abuse?

2010-08-31T22:23:00.000-07:00

This old man is always dressed as some sort of fruit or vegetable every time we visit our favorite farm, Janoski's. Justin and I think it's elder abuse. What do you think? At least he looks happy in the grape outfit. It was so blisteringly hot the day he was in the corn suit. I asked him if he needed water. I was melting in the sun and I didn't have a huge costume on!

Henry has been begging me and begging me to go to the dairy and after almost an hour drive to pick up fresh milk at the dairy he said he was scared of the cows and she and Bea wouldn't go near them. I have to admit that their heads were rather gigantesque poking out of their pens, but they were so sweet, especially the calves. The chocolate milk at Brunton Dairy is like melted chocolate ice cream and is to die for. I gave some to the missionaries today and they were in heaven.

Shame

2010-08-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

The other day I took the kids shopping down to the Strip District before Bea's Birthday party and there was the usual table of Italian pastries out on the sidewalk, which I have already tried and don't particularly like. Henry started whining for a small palm sized cookie with a ball of frosting on top the size of a golf ball and I told him I wasn't going to buy him that cookie because we were going to have Birthday treats the next day, but he couldn't get that cookie out of his head. When I was purchasing some flowers at the end of our trip next to the cookie table Henry came up to me and told me that the lady told him that if I was with him she would give him a sample of something so I reluctantly went over and asked the woman if she told him he could have a sample...and she said that she hadn't. Ugh. So once again I told Henry that I was not going to get him that cookie and he had a melt down on the sidewalk. The lady, I guess, felt bad for Henry and said, "OK, you can have a cookie. Which color do you want?" and she gave him the cookie with a huge ball of blue frosting and then she said she couldn't give him one and not his sister so she handed Bea a cookie with a huge ball of pink frosting. That's when I realized I didn't have any wipes with me(you should see my stroller now) and I told her she didn't have to do that and thanked her nicely. That's when she proceeded to take two dollars out of her own purse and handed them to the other guy behind the table to put in the money box -- right in front of me. I didn't know how to respond. I thanked her again and walked away. As I walked away she mumbled something to the effect that I should just give my kids a cookie instead of let them suffer. Pa-leeze.

Forgot to Think

2010-08-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

Another mud creation by Henry

I have been drilling into Henry's head that he needs to think about everything he does before he does it and decide if it would be a good decision or a bad decision. He has come up to me a few times and apologized that he made a bad decision, which is very big of him. Today we were at the park and I noticed he was playing in the mud. I really didn't care because he was wearing dirty old clothes and we were just going home after that, but after he had finished playing in the mud he came up to me, covered from head to toe, saying, "Mommy, I'm sorry. I just forgot to think." I almost laughed out loud but I kept my composure and thanked him for realizing that he made a huge mess and that he probably shouldn't have gotten so incredibly dirty.

Cute bonding moment with Henry. How can I not love this boy?

Luckily the pool was open and we got to use their showers to clean up Henry and his friend Daniel and it was no big deal in the end. It was so cute though while I was cleaning him up because he realized that he wasn't in trouble so he started telling me all the things they were playing in the mud. He was so cute about it and so excited about his mud creations. He really is a creative little boy and I love seeing his mind at work.

Henry in the mountains

2010-07-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Panoramic shot of the Tetons thanks to Eric

Henry was so excited to go out to Utah and Idaho so he could climb into the mountains. As we drove around Salt Lake City he would ask when we were going up into the mountains and was constantly commenting on how pretty they were as we drove along the foothills. He even said at one point that he wanted to stay in Utah forever, but then recanted saying that he didn't want to leave our house behind. I think he'll get over leaving our house when he gets out to Utah and we go hiking like every day! Yessss! (can you hear the Utahn coming out in that?) First of all I have to give a shout out to Will, my brother, who graduated from BYU Idaho and which was the main reason for our trip. The graduation and ceremony were really crazy since they were at night, which is really late for my kids, but we got through it and had some great memories from it.

Henry hiking down the mountain. Can you see my dad carrying Bea? He carried her half way down and said his arms weren't even tired. What a burly man!

All three of us with the Tetons in the background. This is what the East just does not have. No amount of trees can compare with the mountains.

Uncle Will, Henry, Me, Bea, Nanna B and Lucy

We did get to ride up the lift at Grand Targhee resort and hike down which he loved. The best part were the millions of wildflowers all over the mountain that Henry was enthralled with. He also got really attached to Uncle Will and held his hand the entire way down, showing him all the flowers he found. Henry is also in love with hot tubs and the two giant hot tubs at the condos we stayed at were heaven for him. We also had an indoor hot tub in our hotel in Salt Lake and we hung out in it together every day we stayed there. Thank you Nanna B!

Henry and his wild mountain flowers/weeds

Henry got to hang out with his cousin Colton and Eli and his second cousins Jack, Wil, Emma, and Kirkham. Henry has almost no themed toys so Jack's collection of Toy Story toys had Henry jumping for joy. I got to get together with many of my girl cousins who I don't get to see more than once a year, which was so much fun. I really miss them.

Henry and Colton at Gateway mall

At the Salt Lake Children's Museum riding an old rescue helicopter

The kids with Nanni and Papi in front of the Snake River in Rexberg, Idaho

I really love this photo. Not only were my kids wading and climbing, they were drinking the filthy water. I'm glad it smelled like chlorine because the water was pretty murky. Yuk! I just love that no one said anything to them. Utahns are so laid back!

We got to walk up to my grandma's grave and spend some time with her. Henry and Bea spent most of the time playing in the gutter with the water flowing down from the sprinklers that were watering the cemetery. Brings back memories of when I had nothing but the gutter to play with. I even washed their faces with gutter water. Aahh the good ol' days:)

So this is the weirdest tree in the world. The trunk is the same all the way up but somehow another tree sprouted in the trunk of the lower tree and is thriving on top of it. This is what you can sit and ponder as you sit on my grandma's bench. It surely fits her rebellious nature. You go Grandma B!

And guess what we found all around our campsite?

2010-07-07T18:38:00.000-07:00

More blueberries?! Our campsite in WV this weekend was surrounded by little wild blueberry bushes and Henry was so dedicated in picking them all. We had a blueberry feast after he was done gathering them all up. They were so tasty but really small compared to what we get at the store. We also saw a ton of wild strawberry plants and some raspberry plants. The river was FULL of crawdads and I'm sure has plenty of fish as well. We decided that if we were pioneers, we wouldn't mind living there and being hunter/gatherers in that area.

Blueberry Bliss

2010-06-25T19:58:00.000-07:00

This year the blueberries ripened really early and I found some really tasty ones at the grocery store for a great price so I bought 60 pints. You might be thinking, "wow, that's a lot" but I bought 50 pints last year and we ate or gave away about 10 pints and we ran out about four months early and I was rationing them every time we took out a bag from the freezer. So this time I ended up freezing 50 pints and this year Henry helped me during the entire process! When I bought all those blueberries, the first thing Henry said to me was, "Mommy, what were you thinking?!" with his hands up in the air. Couldn't agree with you more my son.

His job was carrying a crate of 6 pints over to the sink and emptying each pint into a colander and rinsing them off. He also had to stack each crate and the empty pints in neat stacks. I poured the washed blueberries onto towels to let them dry and picked out the squished ones and stems. After they were dry we put them into bags and carted them down to the freezer. I have rarely seen Henry so dedicated to his work. He even came up with a few songs about blueberries while we were working. This was the best one...

We love to froze blueberries

Wash 'em, smush 'em, put 'em in a bag

Apples are disgusting

Let's eat 'em all up

I have to agree with him that we haven't eaten a good apple in a really long time. Afterward, Henry and Bea built some awesome towers with the cases. Here are the proud architects!

Thanks Henry for helping me do the blueberries this year.

Dad Time

2010-06-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Henry and Bea have had some really great Dad time recently. They have had so much fun together, however you probably won't hear about much of it because Justin won't write it in the blog. Here is a pic of the three amigos and the card that Henry made for Justin for his Birthday last week. Henry made the whole thing and it's of the two of them fishing, even though they didn't catch any fish and some guy gave them one to take home since he felt bad for Henry.

Great Big Brother

2010-06-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

Henry wants me to take photos of him and Clementine all the time. He has been pretty good at protecting her and unless he's seeking for attention, in which case he copies what Bea is doing to her. I can tell, though, from the sparkle in his eyes that he really loves her.

End of Soccer

2010-06-08T18:29:00.000-07:00

Henry spent the last couple months playing soccer with a bunch of his friends. It took a while for him to get into it but in the end he really loved it. We had an awards ceremony last week where they all got a cupcake and a medal for participating. Thanks to Stef Chou for putting it all together!

The kids in the photo are...(from top to bottom and left to right)
Henry, Daniel, Stef's neighbor Chloe?, Kaitlin, Emmalee, No idea
Avery, Thomasin, Wee-o, Kennadee, Katherine, Hudson.

Scarf Clug

2010-06-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while Henry was sitting on the potty he took the end of the toilet paper roll and put it in the toilet and then he wrapped it around his neck a few times to create a scarf to keep himself warm while on the sat. When he emerged from the bathroom he said, "Mom, if you see a scarf coming out of the toilet, don't flush it or else it will become clugged". Good thing Justin watched the whole thing go down so he could explain it all to me. Thanks for the good laugh Henry.

A Sweet Son

2010-05-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

Henry drew me a picture today. I'm holding Clementine and the circle next to us is the earth. We talk about the earth like it is part of our family. Henry is still obsessed with throwing littler away and is always shocked when he sees people "messing up the earth". Reminds me of the day he ran after the garbage men yelling, "you're messing up the earth!" when they let stray garbage fly away as they collected the trash. I really love my boy! He's been so good with Clementine too.

Here's a close-up

Introducing.....

2010-05-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

http://clementinerebecca.blogspot.com/

Critter Heaven

2010-05-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

Ever since it warmed up we've been enjoying the outdoors and Henry and Bea have had so much fun outside finding all sorts of bugs and animals. The other day a toad hopped past me so I caught it to show Henry. He was so excited about it that he played with it too much which caused something inside of it to hemorrhage and it eventually died. It's still in our tomato garden, totally shriveled and Henry still insists that he's just sleeping and shows all his friends. Poor little thing. Henry also discovered a tiny wasps nest inside our deck umbrella when he observed a wasp going up into the cover. We opened it up and found the nest with ten or so little larvae inside. We kept it for days and those gross little maggots were still moving in there with their little alien mouths begging for food. It was pretty gross and entertaining. Then, one morning I noticed that the ants that have invaded our kitchen were piled massively over the little hive, which I left on top of the microwave, and I guess they had finally died and the ants were desperately trying to get what they could from them. (shudder). We're working on the ant problem but I don't want to do anything toxic! Any suggestions?

Just yesterday we caught the most beautiful moth. It's a Giant Leopard Moth and I think he's on his way out because he put up no struggle when we caught him. He's the most beautiful moth I've ever seen and he just hangs out on my finger, hanging on for dear life. He's still alive, but shows no signs of vitality. One of the most fun things Henry likes to do is take his tennis racket outside and swat the wood boars. They have such crazy personalities! They love to come right up to your face and hover, checking you out and egging you on like an annoying sibling. They when you try to swat them away, they skillfully avoid you and then fly right back into your personal space as if to say, "haha, you missed me." Henry's oversize tennis racket, however, is tough to avoid and he hits them quite often. I always see little wood snowflakes falling down on me as I'm gardening by the deck as they dig their way through the only pieces of real wood on it. A real bumble bee landed in our pitcher of water the other night as well and after we flicked him out and sent him on his way with a fork, Henry and the other kids were excited to drink the "honey water".

So far it's all been fun and games but when the Japanese Beetles come to eat my raspberries, the war begins and now I have an organic defense option! I can't wait to use it. Muah ha ha!

Henry's Mother's Day gift

2010-05-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

For Mother's Day the primary put together jars with slips of paper in them with thoughts about all the mothers. This is what Henry said about me....

My mom's favorite sport is......baseball
My mom's favorite thing to do.......go home
My mom's favorite place to go......playgroup
My favorite meal my mom cooks.....candy
My favorite thing to do with my mom....watch a movie
My mom's favorite color......blue
My mom's favorite food.....everything

I think he may have me confused with someone else. lol.

T Ball Drama

2010-05-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

Henry is on a T Ball team this year and so far, we've had some pretty interesting experiences. His first practice was filled with tears and frustration which was mostly my fault. I really had no idea what he was supposed to wear and I forgot to go get him a glove so we show up in shorts and a tee shirt when all the other boys are wearing mini professional uniforms with gloves. Henry would not participate or focus and when he finally did, he cried every time he didn't get the ball and when all the boys dived into the dirt, Henry's legs got all scraped up and he cried even more. To top it all off, when it was his turn to hit, which he actually wanted to do, he had no idea what to do after he hit the ball and decided to run after his own ball which he picked up about 20 feet from the T and all the other boys stood there, confused, and one boy said, "uh, you're out". All the parents thought it was hilarious, as did I. It was pretty painful though and I wasn't sure if he was ready to play.

Since then he's done better and has generally participated and has enjoyed it. The games are really fun because every child gets to run the bases every inning and no one counts the runs and even if the kids manage to get the ball and throw it to first base before the runner gets there, they're still not out, so no one feels bad and everyone scores. This is the way Henry needs to play a game: no winners or losers. Last weekend he went to the father and son's campout with Justin and didn't get to bed until midnight and woke up early to get to the game the next morning. He was understandably cranky and distracted. He sat on each base to rest, came in from the outfield when he saw our friend's daughter eating candy, wanting some, didn't focus at all and the last time he hit the ball, he dropped the bat, lowered his head and slowly walked to first base with his hands hanging down to his sides. I thought it was hilarious, but Justin said that it just stresses him out to see his son so distracted and clueless. Well, it's hard to teach your son every sport during residency so we're just going to have to deal with it!

All in all, he's having fun and learning a ton and I'm glad we signed him up!

Brother River

2010-04-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

We took Henry and Bea down to VA to visit our great friends the Romneys since we haven't seen them in months and it was an eventful trip. Justin and I went to the temple for the first time in probably over a year while Christi watched our kids trample the temple ground flowers and make a mess all over the grass. After the long drive down there and the dirty clothes I bet some passing people wondered if they might be homeless. Lol! I do love dirty kids though. Henry had a great time playing with River, whom will hopefully end up being more like a brother to him when they move next door to us someday(fingers crossed). They played outside trying to avoid getting attacked by the family's crazy dog and spent some quality time talking together on a short hike where Henry caught a frog all by himself. Since River is almost two and a half, he's not at Henry's comprehension level yet which led to this hilarious conversation....

Henry: (Talking to River about frogs and other things for about five minutes)
River: (Speaking softly, with no inflection indicating a question and repeating about a million times during the conversation) What. What. What. What.
Henry: Hey River, do you even know what I'm saying? Do you know what I'm saying, River?
River: Yes.
Henry: Then why do you keep saying, "what"?
Henry and River: (giggles)

It was an unforgettable moment.

We spent some quality time listening to General Conference where all I heard was that I had to be a better parent. Were there any talks on any other topics? Haha! I guess that's what I needed to hear from our Prophet and Apostles.

Sunday morning we all went down to see the cherry blossoms in downtown DC. River tipped over in his dad, Dave's pack and now has an identical cut on his lower lip to Henry's and Dave's. Justin, however, is not in the cut lip club, although he was very excited to be able to use the vial of human superglue that he always keeps handy for emergencies. He glued the cut together and we were on our way!

Henry, Bea and River played really well together and when they were apart because of nap time or because Henry and Justin got lost on our hike they were constantly asking where the other was and truly missing each others company. Good thing they'll be hanging out all weekend this weekend up at our place! We can't wait to host them at our house.

Craziness

2010-03-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Henry has had some pretty serious melt downs lately. These can come from anything including when I cut his strawberry wrong, when I drew a wrong line on a picture we were supposed to be drawing together at school and whenever I refuse to dress him and undress him like he can't do it himself. Yesterday I was driving in the car and during a calm moment we had this conversation...

Mom: Henry, what I can do to help you to be happier and not freak out so much when things go wrong?
Henry: Well, I was thinking...if you just give me what I want every time I want something I will always be happy!
Mom: You know I can't do that Henry. What if we always talk nicely to each other and work out problems together when things go wrong?
Henry(very seriously): Mom, I just don't think I can do that because I'm crazy. I just keep getting crazier and crazier and I just can't stop the craziness.
Mom: (laughs out loud and starts getting seriously worried about when baby #3 arrives)

Well, if any of you can help me "stop the craziness" I will invite any suggestions.

Shark Party Details

2010-03-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I realize that Henry's Birthday party was over a month ago but if you can believe it, only yesterday did I just finish scraping the last window that I painted with glue and poster paint to look like an aquarium with sharks swimming around. I wanted to have his shark party at the zoo, but that would have cost 500 dollars just for the space so I made my own aquarium with the many windows in my living room complete with over a hundred balloons covering the walls to look like the water.

This party was pretty much out of control and whenever I don't blog about something ever(like my trip out to the NW by myself for two weeks while I was in my first trimester of pregnancy=exhaustion) or very late it means that it's taken that long to recover or it's just a blur from being too tired. Some details of the party include...a total of 45 people in attendance, a really cool shark pinata filled with 20 lbs of candy and probably weighed more than Bea, singing the jaws song, playing pin the fin on the shark, reading a book about sharks, playing shark attack with a giant shark balloon to the theme music of JAWS which really scared some of the kids. It really makes you realize how music influences how we feel. Some people deny it but you can't deny a two year old who has never seen JAWS freeze in absolute fear after hearing the movie theme music. We, of course, ate a ton of really yummy food that included shark cheese crackers, shark shaped sandwiches, three types of seafood dip with crackers and a giant fruit salad.

The highlight was, however, the cake, which I painstakingly made over two days time. I tried to copy another woman's cake on this awesome website but my perfect shark head coming out of the water turned into a super scar-faced shark with a collapsed mouth. No one noticed though and the kids all loved it. It was also pretty scary! The bottom of the cake was the most delicious cake I've ever made though which was a whole wheat version of this dulce de leche cake. Best cake I've ever made and possibly ever eaten. I also made my dulce de leche from scratch using a real vanilla bean and milk(as opposed to using a can of sweetened condensed milk), and that took three hours in itself to make. I highly recommend it.

After the cake we watched Henry's 4th Birthday slide show which was the best yet and he still wants to watch it over and over again. I did it to one of my favorite Coldplay songs, "Death and all of his friends," which seems like a weird song title but I didn't even know exactly what the words were until I uploaded it for the show because they're almost inaudible and most of the song is just an instrumental, and a really fantastic one at that. Anyway, the show was great and I know those slide shows make Henry feel really special so I'm going to keep doing them as long as I can manage. I'm getting faster at creating them anyway.

Henry then opened all his presents which were mostly transformers and other action figures. He really needed some age appropriate toys since everything we had was either baby oriented or just blocks and puzzles. He really loves his transformers and he and daddy spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to transform them and they also love playing with legos together now too.

Henry still tells everyone, especially complete strangers, about his shark party. The best part about it was that we were able to coordinate it with Gammie and Grandpa Hohl along with favorite aunt Courtney(she chases the kids for hours on end) who helped out immensely. I couldn't have pulled it off without them unless I had woken up at 4 am to get things started that day. Thanks to everyone who helped out and who came to the party! I hope to never do anything that crazy again.

The New Neighbors

2010-03-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

These last few days Henry has gotten the idea into his head that he has to make a present for our new neighbors. If you haven't been keeping up, we haven't had very good luck with our neighbors. Henry has pooped and peed on our neighbor's deck, the YW scared our other neighbor half to death playing hide and go seek, we got in trouble playing in our other neighbor's yard, etc. etc. I have felt kind of bad because we haven't even gone over to meet our new neighbors yet so when Henry said he was making a present for them I was thinking that this would be a great opportunity to formally meet. He worked for three days drawing, coloring, and writing at least 20 different items. He wrote "I (heart) you neighbors" and "welcome neighbors" and of course wrote Henry all over everything. He traced his hand a foot on at least half of the papers and if you see him you will notice his fingers and toes outlined with blue and green marker. He put them into a giant box and I made some meyer lemon squares to go along with the strange gift. We've been busy over the last few days so every night he's been disappointed that we haven't gone over there so this morning at 9am he convinced me to let him go over there to deliver the box. I was SURE they wouldn't be home at that time so I let him go over while I stood in our driveway. He rang the doorbell and looked back at me saying, "I'm going to wait for a long time mom". After about one minute I said, "well, it looks like they're not home so we'll come back later." That's when he proceeded to open the front door, which was unlocked for some reason, and he poked his head into their house and yelled, "Hey, there's a package out here for you!" Then my poor neighbor, in his underwear, came to the door saying that he had just woken up and thanked Henry for the announcement. At this point I was in shock, hands over my mouth, at what had just happened, totally embarrassed, I yelled back that Henry had actually made that for him and that I didn't think they would be home and that I was really sorry. I asked him if we could come back later sometime and he said to come back at 10am. We went back and guess what? No one answered. Big surprise.

To my boy on his Birthday

2010-02-25T21:51:00.000-08:00

My Dearest Henry,

Four years after you were born I find myself doing exactly what I was doing in the hospital before, during labor, and after your entrance into this world: watching the Olympics. Now that your dad has finally had a breakthrough with your desire to ski, our dreams for you to eventually dominate the snowboard cross event in the Olympics in the year 2026 are slowly becoming a reality. You should know that your father and I gave you your middle name Jackson thinking that if you were in the Olympics some day, Jackson Hohl would be an unforgetable name and therefore you would easily be a favorite to win! You are the perfect combination of your parents with energy that never ends and to your mother's dismay you use most of that energy to search for and ask for candy. I have noticed that you have trouble discerning what your body is trying to tell you and every day it's a constant battle to get you to figure out if you are hungry or tired. It's usually accompanied by lots of tears and many discussions about problem solving. Cutting things out of magazines and junk mail occupies much of your time. There are ziplock baggies all around the house that are full of coupon clippings and photos from The Friend magazine. You are an extremely thoughtful boy and announce every day that you want to make a present or card for someone which is really hard for you because your baby sister always climbs on the table and sabotages your projects. You are usually very patient with her though and always scream for help with a laugh and a smile, knowing that she just wants to be a part of your life. You are an amazing big brother and always complain when Bea takes naps because you are bored without her. She copies everything you do and you laugh and wrestle all day long together. Her Birthday present to you is that just yesterday she started saying your name instead of calling you dada. Every time you cry she comes to give you hugs and frequently makes tears turn into laughter as she pokes you in the nostrils and lifts your shirt up to find your belly button. You are going to preschool but your teachers still have to drag you, in tears, away from me and Bea. You are learning how to read at home and we do a science experiment almost every day together. We also sing and play instruments every day and I always catch you making up funny songs, especially as you lay down in the tub waiting for me to drag you out. You and I cook and bake everything together and get just as excited as I do when our bread comes out perfect and when I make home-made popsicles. Your greatest passion, however, is the scriptures and several times per day you ask spiritual questions and we have many deep conversations about Heavenly Father, Jesus, the Spirit, the prophets in the scriptures and scary Satan. You have read through the children's Bible and Book of Mormon three times and are now reading about Church history in the Doctrine and Covenants. You always talk about making it to heaven where Jesus and your brother Georgie are waiting for you AND where you get to eat the fruit of the tree of life. I hope you're not disappointed when you realize that it's figurative! Speaking of food, your favorite food is sunny-side-up eggs and any kind of fruit. On your Birthday you set a record of eating 5 eggs in one sitting! You love your daddy and ask every morning where he went, even though you know he's at work. You rejoice when he comes home and you always have a blast together trying to figure out transformers and putting together race tracks. This winter has dumped down almost four feet of snow which you and your dad used to make a giant snow cave/tunnel with fort in the front yard which our entire family fit in. Even though I don't think you've grown out of your terrible twos(or accepting the fact that you aren't the only child/center of attention yet) you still have many moments of pure sweetness and kindness. I love looking into your big gray green eyes and at your dimpled smile. I can't wait to find out what this new year will bring and what new adventures we will have together. You are the most darling boy in the world and I love you with all my heart. Happy Birthday sweet Henry boy. I hope you have had a wonderful four years of life!

Love,
Mommy

lady of the livingroom

2010-02-19T18:14:00.000-08:00

This is proof that I actually don't clean my house. Yes, my house is always tidy but this is what Henry found under the rug the other day which is a testament to how often I actually vacuum. She has probably been there since last summer. My family just came to visit and Henry had his Birthday party so I cleaned the floors for the first time since Thanksgiving which was the last time we had company and just so you know, the floor looked exactly as clean/dirty as it did two days after I cleaned as it did for those months of never washing it. I'll say it once and for all. Cleaning is a waste of time. Go live life and leave the cleaning for when company comes. That's my motto.

Sign of Independence

2010-01-19T21:29:00.000-08:00

Today we went to Costco and Henry found a cart of his own and actually pushed it around the entire store. I was pretty amazed that he didn't abandon his cart after 5 minutes. He was really dedicated to that thing, especially after he started collecting samples. I had to put all the yummy things in his cart because Bea was after all the food, being the hungriest baby in the world and pooped three times while we were out. The entire baby seat was filled with samples that he collected and saved until we got to the tables after check-out. At some stations he took like 5 samples. Good thing all those ladies have known him ever since he was an infant with his mohawk and love him to death. The most darling part was that his little smiling face was peaking through the center of the baby seats. His dimples are getting more prominent as his face thins out. Just loving that. He did run into quite a few people but each time he yelled, "excuse me, you're in my way!" I apologized many times but most people didn't care since he looked so darling.

Never too early to learn how to read?

2010-01-18T21:03:00.000-08:00

This week I went to a preschool meeting with Henry's teachers and all the other parents. They were detailing the abilities of children in the three age groups they teach and in Henry's age group they said that they "aren't even introducing letters this year, but they have them all around the room for the kids to see." I was really shocked at this. I think they seriously underestimate the abilities of most kids. I mean, do most kids really not learn how to read until they're 5 or 6 years? If you look back on Henry's blog, he recognized all his letters at 19 months old, probably earlier, because of Signing Time and now he's learning how to read before he's four and at this point I feel like he's pretty average in his development. I don't know. You tell me. Anyway, this book goes really slow and it doesn't take much time each day to go through the lessons. Even with Henry's short attention span he absorbs exactly what he needs to so he can move on to the next lesson. Tonight he wouldn't go to bed without doing his lesson so there we were at 9pm doing the reading lesson for 10 minutes together which also includes writing. He LOVES reading and can't wait to show everyone what he knows, even though it's only 6 letter sounds at this point. I highly recommend this book to teach your kid how to read.

Boys love cold

2010-01-05T22:08:00.000-08:00

Henry skiing in Gammie and Grandpa's back yard. He would go from the top of the slight hill onto the frozen pond. They also did it with Justin's old radio flyer sled all waxed up. It was a blast!

Henry skied for the first time before he turned two and did remarkably well. Last year, however, he had trouble enjoying it but it seems like he's doing a lot better this year since he has his own gear and has practiced at small hills all over the neighborhood and at Gammie and Grandpa's place in CT.

We really hope and pray that he will enjoy it and can learn quickly so that Justin will always have someone to take with him on ski trips since I seem to be pregnant every single winter and can't go. I'm looking forward to next season!

Henry shoveling snow in our driveway. Look at the smile on his face.

Henry and Justin skating at PPG Place in downtown Pittsburgh. The area is so beautiful because the surrounding building is made of mirrors so all the Christmas lights reflect all around you. Henry thinks it's a temple.

Oh yeah, in case you didn't already know, I'm prego with a baby girl, due in May:)

More Christmas thoughts from Henry

2009-12-17T21:50:00.000-08:00

Henry's Nativity. Something's not quite right....

Henry is really attracted to music and he takes after me being able to hear a song once and never forgetting it and just about memorizing the music and all the words. I've been listening to Handel's Messiah in the car and I caught him singing along to many of the songs. One night he asked me, "Mommy, what does 'unto us a son is given mean'". I told him what it meant and now he sings that part even louder. He also sings, "Every kiss begins with Kay" about 5 times per day. I don't even think he knows he's singing that one.

In Pittsburgh we see a lot of trains and the other night we saw a train pulling giant cars full of coal. Henry remembered that it was what bad kids got in their stockings. He thought for a minute and said, "Mom, is Santa going to put coal in Satan's stocking?" Haha! That one caused Justin and I to burst out laughing.

Henry is still in the Christmas spirit and he's milking me for all the candy he can get. Enjoy it while it lasts son because on January 1st it's all going in the trash! Muah ha ha!

Henry's Christmas Contribution

2009-12-15T21:25:00.000-08:00

Today has been one of the happiest days on record for, say, the past year and a half. I didn't hear crying or complaining all day from Henry. We did some shopping this morning and since we had to buy ice cream, candy and honey crisp apples he was in a great mood. We went to Enrico's on the Strip where he always gets a free chocolate covered people cookie and that made his day. When he got home he spent about 4 hours putting presents together for his cousins and his dad. He looked around the house and found Justin's favorite foods and spent a lot of time wrapping each item in construction paper with a LOT of tape and bows. He wrapped a honey crisp apple, a clementine, a can of root beer, a bag of popcorn and a bag of oatmeal cookies. He spent a long time making a card with stamps and even wrote his name on it by himself. Then he found a box in the basement and put it all in and used up even more tape closing the box. Then he went upstairs and found wrapping paper and wrapped it all up. I was so amazed at his ability to focus for all that time and for being so excited about giving Justin such a thoughtful gift. Henry wanted Justin to open it right away and I agreed since there were perishables inside, so he opened it and was so amazed at what was inside. Henry packed all the treats up in a couple of small backpacks and we went to a giant Christmas light drive-through display. We ate our treats and enjoyed the lights together. Thanks for your sweetness Henry. We love you.

Henry's Thoughts

2009-12-11T20:20:00.000-08:00

The purpose of this blog is to ultimately get Henry to take it over and continue detailing his life. It seems to me that he may be ready to add more to this blog because he's been pondering things a lot more lately. These are some of the things that have been on his mind...

"Mom, do people usually have the same head and body when they grow up?"

I love his use of "usually" in this sentence. He may be wondering how a head his size could grow to the ginormic proportions of his father.

"Mom, is there moisture in water?"

First of all, how do you know about the word moisture let alone be asking me about the concept of moisture?

And this is what escapes Henry's lips most often...

"Mommy, Bea is the cutest baby ever and she thinks I'm so cool"

Yes she does, Henry. This opinion has averted many potential fights because of Bea's obsession to play with everything Henry plays with and eventually ruin everything he creates. He also likes hearing his friends who don't have younger siblings say that they want Bea as their little sister. She is really tolerant and really fun to play with. I'm so glad they get along so well.

Thank you, You're welcome, May I and Will you vs. Can I and Can you

2009-11-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

Henry and I have been working on grammar a lot lately. He's doing a great job saying "may I" and "will you" instead of "can I" and "can you" which doesn't make any sense grammatically in the way we use it...not that I'm perfect at grammar but I do know the difference between their, there and they're and your and you're which I see misspelled ALL the time amongst educated adults. I am pretty obsessed with teaching my kids at least what I know and hopefully they'll end up being mindful of other grammatical issues as they grow up.

Henry and I just had this conversation

Henry: Thank-you mom for my piece of candy
Mom: Thank-you for saying thank-you!

20 minutes later
Henry: Mom, you didn't say you're welcome when I said thank you.
Mom: Oh, sorry. You're welcome, Henry
Henry: Thanks for saying you're welcome when I said thank-you mom(sweet smile).

Oh, and he just asked me if he could recycle his sucker stick. I just love that boy:)

Lunch? What?

2009-11-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

Marta, Henry, Thomasin

So as most of the other children are graduating to cool Halloween costumes my son likes to stick with his theme of really cuddly, plush animal costumes. His cousin was a cool pirate and Henry was a fuzzy frog. He loved his costume and it kept him really warm. Neither of my kids needed a coat and that's always a plus(Just ask Jerry Seinfeld). He raked in tons of candy which I threaten or bribe him with daily.

I'm about ready to throw it away since he's shed a lake full of tears already when I don't let him have it whenever he thinks about it which is usually first thing in the morning...and every second until he goes to sleep. I also realized that he has no concept about Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Have any of you had trouble with this? I have tried to teach him and there's even a song that he knows from Signing Time about it but he still can't remember what Lunch is and when it's eaten. That may be an issue stemming from me not having any sort of regular eating schedule until just recently. I tell him he can have a piece of candy after lunch and he eagerly eats his breakfast and then asks for candy at 9am. I tell him, "no, after lunch, which is in a few hours" and then he bursts into tears, sometimes for extended periods of time.

Two of the most disturbing costumes ever

He's also started turning my techniqes for threatening back on me like when I tell him I'm going to throw his candy away if he doesn't start behaving he'll say, "If you do that, then I'm going to hit Bea all day long and be really mad." Then I say, "Well I'll just put you outside all day then." at which point he says, "I'm just kidding mom." It's getting cold out there.

Tears for Tomatoes

2009-11-06T19:16:00.000-08:00

Today I broke down my garden and threw the withered, dry tomato plants in the compost along with all the tomatoes that Justin forgot to pick while we were on vacation that rotted on the vine. When he saw they were all gone Henry burst into tears. I held him and told him we would plant new ones next year and that we could go out and buy some today and he wept..."But I only love Heirlooms!" That's my boy:)

BTW there are beautiful heirloom tomatoes at Right by Nature(local organic store) that are almost $6 per lb. Is any other produce you can think of that's that expensive? I don't know that there is. Any ideas?

Henry also caught a walking stick the other day all on his own. I'm so proud that he's following in my footsteps, loving bugs, nature, gardens. He really loves everything now that I think about it. I have so many interests that I usually can't choose between any one of them so I do them all. I think Henry'll be like that too. We can't wait to get him up on his own skis this year. Many wipe-outs are to come!

Henry the Pirate Farmer

2009-11-03T20:09:00.000-08:00

Pretend play is at a all time high these days with our little Henster. He's constantly babbling and if I respond to cries for help or questions he's asking I frequently get the reply, "I'm not talking to you mom!" Lately, however, Justin and I have been included on the fun as we play pirates almost every day. Our couch is the main boat, the chair is the life boat (for rowing ashore) and a huge poster of the movie, "Land of the Lost" is our treasure map. He has a periscope and his ride on toys are the dinosaurs he has to kill before he can collect the treasure.

To give this a comprehensive description, you must know that everything is said in rough, scratchy pirate voices. The first day I asked him who was going to be captain and he said in his usual voice, "I'm captain," and then I asked him what I do and he said, "you take care of the baby". Not much of a roll change for me. He gets off the life boat where he was supposed to fight a T-Rex for the treasure(I was the T-Rex growl) and as I was trying to play the part, he told me that he was only poking him in the bum but hadn't chased after him yet. Finally he was chased and he used his sword to slay the beast.

The all-time best was, though, when Justin was playing with Henry and they went around the house collecting pretend things to put in their treasure chest and when he was done Justin asked him what he had collected and in his pirate voice he said, "food, drinks and seeds." Justin asked him what he was going to do with the seeds and he said gruffly, "plant a garden so we can eat vegetables." Justin and I couldn't hold in our smiles and chuckles. That night for dinner he wouldn't eat his squash but I turned pirate and told him that he had to eat it because we grew it in our pirate garden and while he was laughing, I shoved a huge mouthful of it in and he happily chewed it and swallowed. We just love our boy.

I'm also going to start including my thoughts about the many reasons I wish to home school and time to pretend play and be creative is one of them. I heard creativity usually starts petering out as soon as kids enter the public school system. Tragic! I want my kids to have all the time in the world to write plays, paint, roll-play with their siblings, etc. I remember my sister spending hours writing and illustrating books when she was only 5. I still think she could have been an amazing author but I think the busy life of a child going to school doesn't allow kids to develop their natural talents enough to make it enjoyable, at least. I had talents in many things but I was always stressed and rushed to get practices in my busy schedule which makes things not fun at all. I even see it with Henry. He used to create these fabulous abstract paintings but now he thinks he has to draw or make something recognizable or it's not good enough. He gets frustrated and won't continue. I want him to think that whatever his hand does is fabulous and that he doesn't have to think or reason to create art. I think I'll have to take him down to the museum of art and show him some abstracts to bring back his confidence.

Pool Boy

2009-10-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

We took a trip down to Dallas to visit Nanna B and Grandpa Chris last week and Henry had a blast. His favorite thing was the hot tub and we lounged around it in every day, rain or shine. Henry can now swim under water pretty easily and spent most of his time jumping from side to side of the rock covered hot tub, completely submerged. We all thought he would break his teeth off (not that they aren't already traumatized) but instead the pads of his fingers got totally rubbed raw from all the contact with the concrete and stone. Every finger and toe had a blister on it and it made eating with his fingers really difficult. Just so you know, Henry has an issue eating with his fingers...still. I think it's because I didn't introduce silverware to him until probably after he was two. Bea already eats with a fork and hardly makes a mess while Henry still has food all over his hands, face and clothing every meal. He cried a lot at meal time asking for band-aids to cover his raw fingers. Anyway, Henry was such a good swimmer even showed me he could swim to the side of the cold pool after I threw him in a couple of times. Sorry Henry! He swam really fast, cried, yelled at me until I told him how fast he swam and how awesome he looked, and then he felt pretty good about himself. He tortured "the boys" (two red poodles, Charlie and Oliver) and had a great time throwing the ball in the pool for Charlie to fetch. That dog never gets tired of retrieving the ball!

We ate good food morning, noon, and night, played with uncle Will all weekend and got to see our good friends the Evanson's and meet my second cousin's wife and kids while at dinner at Chuey's and play with everyone back at the house in the hot tub. Nanna B took us to play tennis, to the park, and to our favorite store, Cutie Patootie (where we always find the best, never before worn, winter coats and pants).

At the park Henry showed us how fast he can run and every night Nanna B read him stories and sung him to sleep. We really love our Dallas visits. One thing about Dallas is that it's rampant with the swine flu so Nanna B has some hand sanitizer that we used after we went in public places. When our plane landed and we were walking out to the car Justin told Henry not to touch his face before he washed his hands. To that Henry replied "Nanna B has special soap that kills the swine flu". He said it so matter of fact-ly and was so amazing to me that he rememberd the name and finally understands about sickness and how you transmit it. He is getting so smart! Even my brother, Will, not really being around a three year old much, kept commenting on how smart he was. Not that he's a genious, but that three year olds really know way more than you think they know and can comprehend some pretty complex ideas. It's so wonderful to see children grow and progress. That is truly one of the joys of motherhood:)

"FU" N in the car

2009-09-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

Henry is always singing, usually the ABCs which he NEVER gets tired of. Today he was singing the ABC tune but only using the letters F and U. Saying over and over, "F F U U FF U". Justin and I were trying to hold back our laughs. We finally suggested another song and he forgot all about it. I wonder what made him pick those particular letters. Good thing Bea can't really talk yet.

Camping dream come true

2009-09-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

After the last camping trip in the cold and rain --wait, it wasn't rain it was inchworm poop dropping on our tent all day and night. That's right. -- we had the most fantastic camping ever in WV last weekend. We met up with our best buds Christi, Dave, River, and impending arrival of gender unknown for a sunny weekend at the best camping spot we've found in the East coast.

The campsites at Blackwater Falls were right on a beautiful river and the second night we stayed in the premier spot with a tiny creek running alongside it as well. There was plenty of dry firewood, a stone firepit, soft grass padding our tents, amazing mountainbiking trails all over the area and a Shop-n-save five minutes down the road. haha. Schweet. The area is home to some really fantastic little towns that have been singled out in Outside magazine for being great for outdoor adventure. I can't remember which one, either Davis or Thomas. They both looked like they had some really fun boutique stores, interesting restaurants, live entertainment, festivals and the best part is that you feel like you might just be in the mountains.

The mountains aren't anything like the west, but after spending 7 years out east, I'll take 'em! Henry was counting down the hours until we left and is still asking to go back to our camping site as we speak. I've never seen a boy so happy and content as when he was sitting next to the roaring campfire in his crazy creek chair with a cup full of hot chocolate in both hands. He couldn't keep a smile off of his face. Henry and River played a ton together and I forgot to thank Christi for watching out for Henry the whole time since Bea is in a world of her own. So thanks girlfriend!

The boys enjoyed playing in the river, exploring, finding bugs and snakes. Henry did get a little rough with cute little River. I think it's all the suppressed tackling energy he never get to get out with Bea at our house.

Justin and Dave took two fantastic bike rides while we let the kids nap, relaxed and let the kids run around. We spent some time bouldering around this rocky area just seconds from our campsite where Henry got to use his climbing shoes that my brother gave him for his first Birthday. They fit perfectly right now and he was a climbing maniac and climbed up everything he could find.

After such adventurous days Henry went right to sleep and couldn't wait each night to get into his super cool sleeping bag he got from my Dad. The first night he was so sleepy that he went into the tent and fell asleep in Justin's bag and we had to transfer him into his own. He was tuckered out! We spent one afternoon hiking up Seneca Rock which is a beautiful rocky top mountain which is really rare in the area since all the other "mountains" are covered from base to crest by trees. Oh and the leaves were already changing so we experienced some really fantastic vistas as we drove around.

On our way up the 1.5 mile hike of Seneca Henry kept asking to be carried and said he was tired, but I think it was just because the other two kids were being carried and he felt left out. At one point I had Bea on my front and Henry on my back, which got a lot of laughs out of the people passing us on the way down. It actually felt pretty balanced with him on there and I was getting a good workout.

I have to say that my glutes didn't even get sore after that so I must be in pretty decent shape with an extra 60 lbs to carry. When we finally got to the top we saw amazing views of the valley below and refuled for the hike down. There were some ligit rock climbers up there which would have been really fun to try. Maybe next time. One of the best things about Seneca Rock is their Discovery Center.

They have a corner just for kids with puzzles, books, bean bags, sand table with molds to make animal tracks with, animal figurines, habitat set-ups, papers to color and crayons. Everything was about nature so we were in heaven. Justin and Henry read books together on the bean bag chairs, bea ate sand and I cleaned up the mess. Henry cried when we told him we weren't going back to camp that night but we assured him that we would be back to our jewel of a find soon. Anyone want to come on our next camping trip?

Where have we been, you ask?

2009-09-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

The task seems daunting to actually write everything we've been up to these past few weeks. We have been busy harvesting, canning, freezing, and drying food as well as traveling, welcoming visitors and loving life.

Labor Day
Was spent at our friend's, the Nobbs, lake house on Lake Chautauqua which is beautiful and fabulous. It is also the home to a place called "The Institute" which is an amazing private neigborhood with a central college which kind of reminds me of the Dharma Project on LOST. Another place called Lily Dale is a place where they teach you to communicate with fairies, gnomes and to bend spoons with your mind. I plan to go up there next summer to attend the spoon bending class with some friends. Want to come with? Anyone, anyone? We cooked amazing dinners, played in the lake on a giant tube with my friend Melissa, met a darling Italian family and stayed up way too late. Henry found his favorite new girlfriend, Eliza, and now I'm singing "There's a hole in my bucket dear Liza and dear Henry" all day.

Then we were supposed to go to NYC but our plans got postponed which gave us time to do much food preparation for the winter. Check the food blog shortly for the juicy details:)

Henry really loves to play with playdoh so I decided to make some with a recipe from a book I have and Henry was more excited than I had seen him in a while. We decided to make really thick dinosaur statues but they cracked really badly and fell apart. Beatrice also ripped some of the apart with her iron grip. It's always fun to be able to make something you spend a fortune on.

Next, my friend Sarah Morris came up for a couple days to cook gourmet food. She also has a giant baby girl named Eva who is the exact same age as Bea, almost to the day. In fact, we have three friends who have baby girls only two weeks apart from Bea's Birthday. Miraculous. Anyway, it was so nice to have someone in the kitchen who knew what they were doing and had the confidence to just do what needed to be done. I kind of like two cooks in the kitchen! We also spent some good time out back with the swimming pools filled up with warm water, went shopping down on the Strip District, and made her fall in love with Pittsburgh(not hard to do), took a trip up to our local farm, Soergels, and cooked up a storm. Henry's favorite was the home-made dark chocolate mint(real mint leaves not the fake ones) ice cream. Probably the best ice cream I've ever made.

Henry really had a blast with the two babies. He tortured them a little here and there, but all in all he was pretty decent to them. He thinks babies at this stage are so funny because they just talk and babble nonsense and I often her him laughing his hardest laughs at these little girls who say such funny things.

Actually, I think I'm going to do a separate post for the camping trip we did last weekend.

Farm Livin'

2009-08-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

Every night before Henry goes to sleep he and I spend some quality time together. We read poems, read lots of scriptures, but lately we've been dreaming about our future farm. I usually start listing off all the things we will have at our farm, including goats, chickens, rows of corn, a huge pumpkin patch (in which we will grow giant pumpkins that will be be big enough for him to fit inside of), etc. I've recently added that we're going to have grapes growing all over the fence surrounding our property and a few of each type of fruit tree so we can pick our own fruit every year. Henry gets so excited at the prospect that he can't even control his body. He starts wiggling and yelling and exclaiming his excitement as he's coming up with his own ideas, like dogs and cats, a giant patch of colored carrots (see hohlfoods.blogspot.com for a visual) and rows of beets and Brussels sprouts. lol.

I'm sure by the time he grows up on a farm he'll be sick of all the work, even if he loves the produce, but I wouldn't be surprised if he became a chef someday. He surely loves good food and animals too.

Beach Vacation #2. Man is Henry spoiled!

2009-08-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

Once again we find ourselves at the beach, this time in North Carolina. The water wasn't as warm as the Bahamas and the waves were larger, which was fun for us, but the kids weren't too keen on getting cold. Henry enjoyed jumping over the small surf but was most interested in digging in the sand and making giant sand castles. Henry also learned how to swim! It was basically a result of him putting on goggles and probably because he was watching Kaitlin swimming around all week. He still needs to work on technique and still has a hard time treading water to get a breath, but he finally will put his face in the water with his head down and do a general forward crawl. Yea! So once again I have to just make a list of the fun things we did because I hate logging every detail of long trips so here we go. Fun things we did....

Spent some time with our friends Sarah Morris and family in VA
Flew Henry's dragon kite for the first time on the beach
Went at night to the ocean to chase after casts of crabs with a flashlight
Climbed up a steaming hot lighthouse to see the view
Drank totally delicious regional light house root beer and decided that someday we would, instead of a wine cellar, have a root beer cellar where we kept many varieties of root beer ready to be brought up for parties and such.
Made giant sand castles with moats and waited for the tide to come in to fill it and I quote Kaitlin Chou, "Woh! I didn't know this was going to be so cool!".
Ate gourmet meals every night, including my favorite dinner, shrimp enchiladas and two of my favorite pasta recipes, caprese, and bacon squash
Actually read a book, "The new global student"
Attempted surfing again with no luck. Justin and I are getting really frustrated with ourselves. I mean, shouldn't two hard core snowboarders be able to get up?
Found one of the coolest houses we've ever seen. I just love the asymmetry of it all
Boogie boarded and body surfed as much as possible until they kicked us out of the ocean because the waves got too big(residual hurricane Bill) for you East Coast babies who don't know how to swim in real waves.
Spent countless hours in the hot tub and pool playing with the kids and getting Henry and Kaitlin to dive for grapes in the hot tub.
Found a local type of grape in NC called the Muscadine grape, yum, but the peaches were a totally let down. Big, but mealy with no juice. What a pity.

Caught two sticky tree frogs and a big toad, all of which Bea tasted
Got freaked out by the giant spiders all around the neighborhood. I'd seen them before in Japan, but not here.
Ran on the beach in the blazing heat with Courtney(because we were too lazy to get up early)
Had a photo shoot to try to get a decent photo of the family without much luck. Sorry Paige, I can't find one where everyone looks decent. Mostly Justin's fault as usual.
Unsuccessfully tried to take a photo of all the grandkids on the beach
Collected shells and jelly fish bodies washed up onto shore.
Rested, relaxed, played, slept, ate and drank delicious things. Thank-You Lynn and Burnell for the wonderful vacation!

I'm sure I missed a lot, but that's what I remember right now

Boys are trouble

2009-08-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

So I know what you're thinking, why are my boys so much trouble. It's usually the baby who's to blame for trouble sleeping. Well, she is the only person in the family who isn't waking me up on a regular basis. She sleeps completely through the night and isn't cranky in the morning! Here's an example of what I'm going through...

3:30am Henry Screaming in Bed: I want gum! Waahhhhhhh.
Me, delirious from going to bed at 1am and running into his room: Okay, I'll
find you some. Just relax and go back to sleep
Henry: I don't want your gum, I want daddy's gum! (kicking and screaming)
Me: Okay, I'll ask Daddy when he wakes up
Henry: No, I want some now! Aaaaaaaahhhhh!
Me: Henry, you're going to wake up your little sister and Daddy and he's not
going to be happy about that. He's really tired.
Henry: Daddy!!!! Ahhh. Ahhhhh!
Me: Go back to sleep please, it's the middle of the night. Everyone is
asleep!
Henry still freaking out: My Daddy, I want my Daddy! I want gum! Aaahhh!
Me: Henry, if you don't stop screaming I'm going to throw your blankies in
the garbage!
Henry: No! Don't throw my blankies in the garbage!
Me: Then stop freaking out and go to bed! It's the middle of the night! If I
have to come back in here, I'm not going to be nice! (I leave the room)
Henry whimpering for the next hour or so and turns on the light. I can still
hear him so I don't every really fall back to sleep until he's in bed at 4:30
5:15am I hear the loudest crash ever. Justin's not in bed and it's still dark
outside. I run out to the hallway and frantically yell, "Justin are you
home!!!!???" thinking someone just broke down the back door. My adrenaline
is on overload.
Justin: few second pause, yes, I need some help
Me: I walk down to the kitchen to find en entire half gallon glass milk jar
with the full amount of milk in it smashed on the ground in front of the
open fridge, milk everywhere, glass everywhere, milk on the carpet, under
the fridge, down the wood floor slats, and Justin needs to leave for work,
can't be late.
Me: cleaned up milk and glass for an hour and start my day

This and other incidents including Justin crashing the baby gate down one morning after another night of Henry's fits are common occurrances in our house lately. I basically get no sleep. Now I'm sick in the middle of the summer and have a race to run in two days! Boys really are trouble

Another one for the record books...

2009-07-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

So things aren't going so well around here. First Justin broke the glass top of the deck table, then Henry broke the mac laptop for good, then someone broke my car window to steal my purse that had all of $10 in it and the rest of my whole life, including my phone photos of my darling children that I will never see again. I had to go down to the bank to get some new cards sent to me and while I was talking to the nice man in his cubicle, Henry was pestering me for one of the suckers they give away, whining,"mommy, I want a sucker" over and over. This eventually turned into, "mommy I have to go pee pee" and holding himself. I asked the man if there was a restroom we could use and he hesitated since there were no public restrooms, but he said we could use the employee restrooms and of course he had to go in the men's room and didn't want help. I went back out to get Bea when I heard Henry freaking out in the restroom. I took Bea with me this time and found Henry trying to pee in the man sized urinal which he could not reach. He was unsuccessfully trying to climb on the urinal with his pants down, which wasn't working. He wouldn't let me help him, and would NOT go in the regular toilet. After a few minutes I was fed up and pushed him to the toilet and smacked him on his naked bum which started his flow and he was FURIOUS! He was looking down at his stream and screaming, "NOOOOOOOOO! I don't want to go in the toilet!!! Ahhhhhh!". I came out with my screaming boy only to notice that while I was trying to deal with Henry earlier, Bea had found the graham crackers and the guy's cubical was strewn with crumbs. I dragged them out of there and continued my quest to get my life back together.

Haircut

2009-07-25T21:34:00.001-07:00

Henry has had a haircut for a couple weeks now and I forgot to post a photo. It was the result of a bad trim, but I think it looks good on him, especially for the summer. The story goes...I trimmed the back and sides too short but left the front long which made him look like a punk. All he needed was a little eyeliner and some skinny jeans and his look would have been complete. So, we had to cut the rest off. He really does look different. What do you think?

Now that I have my baby girl whose hair I don't ever have to cut if I don't want to, I think I feel ok about cutting Henry's hair short. I still miss his little curls. Here he is at the zoo riding the jeeps.