More funny things

The kids came through again today with some more funny saying. Just thought I'd share.

Lizzie was looking through some toy binoculars today and she would say "Look a shoe. I need to capture this on film".

I like to watch this show on Style Network called Clean House. The show is about people who are pack rats and have filthy, cluttered houses. The kids watch it with me and I tell them that we pick up toys and clean the house everyday so our house doesn't look like those houses. We were watching it today and Hunter had his little stuffed lion with him. Hunter said " Lion really likes this dirty show". I hope he doesn't tells anyone how mom likes to watch that dirty show.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm potty training Anna. She's doing a great job and I praise her every time she uses the potty. Today she went to the bathroom and as she reached for the toilet paper (if I don't watch her she'll unroll the whole thing) she said, "Aw, peeing is cute". And I have to admit that she is pretty darn cute when she does.

Hope you get a kick out of these.

Funny kids

Just thought I'd tell you about the funny things the kids did and said the last couple of days.

We picked Hunter and Lizzie up from their Sunbeam class at church yesterday and they told us that they learned about temples. Hunter had a great picture that he'd colored and proudly told us that it was a picture of a goat going to the temple. Not sure if he just didn't listen to the lesson or if that's some deep doctrinal insight. I do know that it's definitely a piece of art we'll keep.

Somehow, at dinner, Anna ended up sitting in her booster seat with a toy that plays the ABC song. I took it away from her so we wouldn't be forced to listen to it all through dinner and that of course made her mad. She started to cry and pushed her plate away saying, "I don't want it". She repeated this phrase a few times and then switched to "I don't want it. It's not nummy". By the time the other kids finished their dinner, Anna had decided that she did want her dinner and that it was nummy and that is was fun to make a mess with mashed potatoes.

We headed out to Walmart tonight and on the way Rich told the kids that no kids were aloud to sleep in our bed tonight. Lizzie was of course offended that she would be banished from some place and asked Rich why. He told her that she pushed him off the bed last night. She said "Oh, I'm sorry Dad, I didn't know you were there. Do you still love me?".

Just an interesting side note. We saw a turkey in our front yard when we left the house tonight. A welcomed difference from the usual cottontails that we see all over. The kids bug us all the time about how they want a bunny. We finally told them that if they could catch one they could keep it. I think they've given up.

After reading these stories none of them are really as funny in writing as they were in person. Hope you like them anyway.

Cute little Anna

I just wanted to post this cute picture of Anna. She fell asleep on the living room floor today with a pair of sunglasses on. Her napping habits are quite funny. I can't lay her down or rock her to sleep. When she gets tired she just finds a quiet spot and lays down and goes to sleep.

Her big news is that she is well on her way to being potty trained. We started yesterday morning with a couple of accidents but by the afternoon she was doing pretty well. She wore panties all day today, even on our trip to Walmart, and didn't have any accidents. Is it possible that we could be a diaper free household soon?

She just likes being a big kid. When we go swimming she wears swimmies (those little inflatable things that go on the arms). She thinks she can swim and doesn't like me to hold on to her in the pool. We went swimming last night and she was holding on to my hands and then jumping in. I finally convinced Lizzie that she could just jump in without me catching her and once she started doing that Anna had to follow suit. She floats in the pool and kicks her little legs and eventually she gets somewhere.

She loves animals especially Littlest Pet Shop ones and when she sees a baby animal she says in a really high pitched, squeaky voice "Ah, it's so cute". She's just a good kid and we are so glad that she is a part of our family.

Kids, kids, kids

Lizzie set off the house alarm again this morning. This time we were all awake and I was just heading out of the bedroom as it happened. I was able to turn off the alarm before the signal was sent to the monitoring station. I was only about 5 steps away from the control pad, but Rich was still concerned that they hadn't received a signal. The alarm freaked Lizzie out again, but Hunter and Anna didn't seem too concerned by it. I guess they've just come to expect Lizzie to make a bunch of noise.

Hunter just makes me laugh. Lizzie said something about wanting to go to a bull contest (bull riding)this morning. Hunter heard that and started talking about riding "that yak" and how "that yak rashed his knee". Then the Dr. cut a hole in his knee. It all sounds a little like a small incident that happened earlier this summer to his dad. Hunter idolizes Rich and he tries to do things like his dad. Every morning Hunter follows Rich around while he gets ready for work and then follows him out to the car so he can watch Rich drive off. He also really likes Rich's new Chevy Cobalt, or as Hunter likes to call it "the Chever".

Hunter has an imaginary friend named Jackie. Jackie is a boy who works in Dallas and sometimes Richardson (just like Rich). He always drives whatever car Hunter is fascinated with at the time. He sometimes lives in our old house in Richardson or our house in Bonney Lake and on occasion he lives in California next to Grandma. The funny thing is that Hunter will ask me if I can take him to Jackie's house. He'll pack a little snack and put clothes in a backpack. I guess he just misses all those old places. He had another friend named Katie for awhile right after Rich hurt his knee. Sometimes her dad hurt his knee falling off a moving truck too and sometimes it was Katie with a hurt knee. I guess he's worked through his emotions with regard to Rich's knee because he doesn't talk about Katie much anymore. The cool thing, and maybe this is a twin thing too, is that Lizzie knows all about these friends too and gets just as excited about the prospect of visiting Jackie as Hunter does.

Anna is just cute. She has the sweetest little voice and I just love to listen to her talk. At lunch today she wanted a "popacicle". I told her she had to eat lunch first and that made her mad. She tries to through a fit like Lizzie does, but she just can't pull it off because it is so cute. She'll say "Hmm" and cross her arms "I want a popacicle now". Or sometimes she'll hit something instead of cross her arms. The fit never gets her what she wants, but it sure makes me laugh.

I just had a little conversation with Hunter. Apparently his plan for the afternoon is to take a bus with Beth to Flapjack (?) and then he's going to Jackie's. He's got some bags packed and I think I'm supposed to take the bags to Jackie's house. Somewhere in all this Jackie is supposed to drive his jeep somewhere. I don't know how I got involved in this scheme, but I have other things to do.

I love these kids so much. As much grieve as they give me, I get a million times more joy from them.

Sunday morning wake up call

Elizabeth set our house alarm off this morning. She woke up early and was watching tv in our room while Rich and I tried to get a few more winks in before we had to get up. All of a sudden the alarm went off. Rich and I jumped out of bed just as Lizzie came running in our room with the most horrified look on her face. Rich still giggles when he thinks of the look. It scared her and Hunter so much. She kept saying over and over, "The alarm is really loud". Hunter wouldn't get out of our bed until we told him it was ok. Anna just slept through the whole thing. I guess it was probably a good thing. We talked to the twins about what they should do if the alarm goes off in the middle of the night and that they shouldn't open the door in the morning until the alarm is turned off. If nothing else it got our neighbors back for their dogs barking day and night. Kids are so great.

Why spend the money on beds?

Here's a little background info for this story. The twins had been sharing a full size bed until we moved to the new house. Everyone has their own room now so we figured it was time to separate them. They've all been doing great at sleeping in their own beds all night. Lizzie insisted on sleeping on the floor one night claiming that her bed was "too comfy" and we've found her asleep on the floor a few times since.

Recently Hunter has become concerned about monsters. We get the outside of our house sprayed for bugs (the bugs are crazy here, especially the fire ants), so we started telling him that they spray for monsters too. This seemed to be working until we decided to activate our house alarm. He had questions about what the alarm was for and what it would do. We explained and he asked if the alarm was for monsters too. Thinking it would reassure him even more we told him that if a monster got past the "monster" spray then the alarm would go off and the police would come and take him away. I think the whole thing backfired so not only is he leery of monsters, but now he's leery about the monster alarm.

So to get back to the story, for the past few nights he's wanted to sleep in the monkey bed (this is what we call the full size bed because it has a monkey comforter on it) which is in Anna's room. Of course when he wants to sleep in the monkey bed. Lizzie wants to sleep there too. We let them all have a little slumber party for a couple of nights, but they stay up and talk and keep Anna awake. Last night when Hunter asked to sleep in the monkey bed, we put our foot down and told him he had to sleep in his own bed. Hunter and Lizzie both protested, but laid down in their beds. Hunter came down once to ask what the beeping noise was. It was us setting the alarm and he comes down and asks about the noise every night. Lizzie came down to inform us that after trying for 5 minutes she couldn't sleep. We ushered them both back upstairs and after a few more scoldings for not going to bed they settled down and went to sleep.

At 2 in the morning Lizzie shows up in our bed. I kept thinking that I could hear Hunter calling me, so I went up to check on him. I found Anna asleep at the top of the stairs and because of a couple of falls down the stairs (one resulting in a trip to the ER and a CAT scan) I decided to risk her waking up and put her in her bed. I peeked in Hunter's room and he wasn't in his bed, he wasn't in Lizzie's bed and he wasn't in the monkey bed. I found him down stairs asleep on the couch. When I got back to our bed Lizzie had done a flip and was now sleeping with her head at the foot of the bed. No problem, more room for me, but Rich had dreams of being kicked by Lizzie all night. It wasn't a dream. So after finding all 3 kids sleeping soundly somewhere other than their beds, I asked the question, "Why did we spend all that money on beds if the kids are happy and comfortable sleeping on the floor, the couch and just about anywhere?". I don't have an answer other than eventually maybe they'll like sleeping in their bed better than anywhere else.

Here's a couple of pictures from the community pool.

Rich and the kids at the pool

This is our cool pool. The closer pool is the kiddie pool with a sloping entrance. The farther pool is the "big kid "pool. The outside of it is 3' and the middle is 5'. The 2 pools are connected just behind the kids. The big yellow thing is a fountain that the kids can turn on. We love it!

Funny Firework Story

I forgot to mention the funny theory that Hunter had about fireworks.
On the night of the 4th, the fireworks at a near by park started just after we put the kids to bed. The noise kind of freaked Hunter out, so I sat with him and we watched them from his bedroom window. He was really curious about where they came from. I told him they came from China and were sent to America on a big ship and then people could buy them. He wanted to know if they just came out of a hole in the grass, so Rich and I explained how they worked. On our way to church we pass a Buddhist Temple. As we passed it on Sunday, Lizzie says, "Hey, there's the Chinese place". Hunter replies, "Oh yeah, that's where fireworks come from". I'm guessing he just has no concept of what a different country means.

Independance Weekend

We started off the weekend with a firework show in Wylie (the town next to ours) on the 3rd. They shot them off at Founders Park which happens to be about 3 miles from our house. We were expecting the usual crowds and traffic, so we were super surprised when we didn't find either. We were able to find a parking spot right off FM 544 (Here's a little side note. FM stand for farm to market, so it's basically a farm road that connects all these little towns. True to Texas form, the little farm road is 6 lanes. We live about a mile off of FM 544) that was about 150 yards from the park.

We set up our chairs and blanket in a huge field and then I took the kids over to play on all the inflatable toys. This was the only place we ran into crowds. After waiting in line for 20 minutes for the big slide, Hunter got to the top and decided it was too scary and wouldn't go down. An older boy (maybe 12) went up and helped him come down the ladder. Lizzie, of course, climbs right up and slides right down and has a great time. We then went over and waited another 20 minutes to jump in the Spiderman jumpy house. This time Lizzie was the one who wanted out of the deal. She jumped for maybe 5 minutes and was done. By this time it was getting dark so we headed off to find Rich. We found him right where we left him, relaxing comfortably in a chair.

The firework show was a pretty run of the mill affair, but we enjoyed them. When the show was over we folded up the chairs and blanket and headed for the car, hopped in and were on the road in about 1o minutes. We were home by 10:15. That's the earliest we've ever made it home after fireworks. Rich and I were quite pleased.

We spent the 4th doing errands and getting ready for a BBQ that we were having the next day. Rich got a new charcoal BBQ with a smoker on the side and I bought a brisket to smoke. Rich did all the research and made a plan for the brisket. He marinaded it overnight, coated it with a spice rub and brushed on the BBQ sauce every hour. I think he ended up smoking it for 8 hours, but he had a hard time keeping the temperature up at the end so he finished it in the oven. We had our friends over to be the guinea pigs and to play a couple of games of Settlers of Cattan. The brisket turned out pretty good. The flavor was right on, but because he finished it in the oven it was a little dry. Still very good though. Rich has now started a "smoking journal" so he can fine tune his skills. We're thinking about smoking a turkey for Thanksgiving. We'd be happy to play host to any who would like to come and partake of the fruits of Rich's smoking labors.

My very first blog

This is my very first blog entry ever. The first time I heard about blogging I thought, "Who has time to blog?". Then I started looking at my friends blogs. I started thinking of all the things I could post on a blog and all the people who might like to know what's going on with our family. The more blogs I read the more I wanted to start one. So here I am with a few minutes to spare and I'm starting a blog. I hope everyone enjoys reading about our family as much as I like to talk about them.

The kids and I spent the day at home recovering from 3 days of painting Hunter and Lizzie's rooms. Hunter decided on blue and we got a dark blue. I painted the bottom 3 ft. of his room 4 times to get it all covered. Next time I'll listen to the guy at Home Depot and get the dark primer. Lizzie's room was considerably easier since she chose a nice shade of lavender. Poor Anna hasn't gotten her room painted yet, mostly because she doesn't complain as much as her brother and sister do.

Here is a prime example of why time is such a rare commodity for me. Hunter just came in from outside and asked if he could spray some bug spray. I of course told him no. Then he comes in with a bucket and asks if he can get some water. I guessed that that would be ok, but I had some doubts. A few minutes later he comes in and asks if I can open the back door for him. I get up to help him and discover that the bucket he has is leaking water. There is a trail of water from my bathroom to the back door then to the front of the house where the computer is and back to the back door. Thank goodness it was just water. Hunter has since announced that he has poured water on the bug (we've got some nasty ones here in Texas) and saved of all from certain death or maybe just the heebbie geebbies. Thanks Hunter!