"Gingerbread" houses

We went for a stress free decorating year and used graham crackers. Loved it! Here's the new thing, pretzels. They are all the rage for cool gingerbread houses around the world. (At least around our world). We built towers, columns, Turrets (don't ask, I think Tyler and Brian's creation was some sort of fortress complete with gummy bear soldiers.)

We had gold coins as stair steps, M&M walkways, and Hershey kiss trees going up and it was wonderful. What a different a year or two makes! Decorating these was actually really fun since the boys got a little older and more capable. When you don't have to do every little step for them it actually becomes quite the creative process!

Family photos...in 22 degrees

Why is it that every time we take family photos it's below freezing? Maybe that should be my goal for the year, no more winter photos! Especially since my home is so "Summer", you'd think I would have thought that thru earlier in my life.

This year I wanted to really expand my photography skills and do our own. I figured worse case scenario was that I try to do them and they bomb so I hire someone anyways.

I didn't have to go scrambling for a photographer, as luck would have it, because they turned out great! With the help of the boys we got every shot I was hoping to get. Jake took all the couple photos, Tyler did the setting for a few of the family photos as well as the "push the button and run man".

I must be blinking too much

I got up early today, hit the gym, showered and was sitting my my table drinking a chocolate peanut butter protein shake reading the ensign when I flipped a page and it was filled with pictures. Not just any pictures, mom and sons. 18 year-old sons who were grinning from ear to ear due to the recent change in church policy that worthy young men may serve at 18 rather than wait until 19. It made me think of conference morning when my 10 1/2 year old son got a similar grin and turned to me, oblivious of my welling tears and said "MOM! I've only got 7 years to go until my papers go in!". Cue sobbing mom to enter stage left.

Maybe it's because I've been away from my blog for so long but last night as I was working on catching things up I watched the slide show at the bottom and listened to the playlist, although I was a little cranky that it was no longer imbedded and I had to go to a different site for it. Anywho, watching that playlist I realized that they have grown up drastically in the last two years. Suddenly I felt like all those "older moms" that tried to tell me it goes by so fast weren't fervent enough in helping me understand this. They said things like "it will go so fast" and "You'll blink and they will be grown up". I feel like what they should have said is something like this:

• Wake up every day and notice the little changes that happened over night. 
• Look into their eyes when they speak, every time. Even when you're busy.
• Hug them as often as they let you.
• Never be too busy to play legos and trucks.
• When they start having opinions about the world they live in, realize that they are not an extension of you, they are themselves, you are lucky if they want to share that with you.
• Someday they will come to you and tell you they know there isn't a Santa, you will cry more than they do because to you that discovery is a loss, to them it is a milestone that they are growing and living life in a way that is open to discovering new things. 
• Some mornings you will wake up and feel grumpy at everything they do, those moments pass and as they start dropping some of their most annoying habits you will miss the feel of a lego breaking skin on the bottom of your foot and the sound of someone jumping down the last 5 stairs on their way to breakfast just because they can.
• They will eventually leave you in a display of excitement and courage while you stand at the airport or the curbside feeling like your heart got ripped out of your chest wondering if you should call the cardiologist for a check up. 

I have yet to experience that last one, but the anticipation leaves me feeling like it's time to find a family cardiologist in preparation for that moment. 

No, today it's smaller things like kids who can make their own lunch and the fact that no one in my home believes in magic anymore. It's the thought that with 7 and 9 years to go, my sons are anticipating the day they will walk out my door and serve the Lord for 2 years of their lives. It's realizing that I have passed the halfway point of having children in my home and it's painful. 

So instead of spending the day wallowing in self pity that will leave me a little grumpy and weepy I will get it all out on the blog and then spend my day trying to just enjoy every minute of them. 

Halloween - Lego style

You would think with how much we love legos around here that this would have happened sooner. 

This year was the year of the home-made lego costumes. It seemed like a "no-big deal" project when I suggested it. You would think that with tools like cardboard and duct tape it would be pretty simple right? First let me tell you what I've learned through the month of October this  year.

1. Lego leg shaped cardboard looks really cool in photos, but is impossible to walk up stairs in.

2. Trying to make Lego leg shaped cardboard that works for stairs is impossible.

3. There are some things that duct tape doesn't stick well on, like wicker baskets

Now let's talk about what I did here just in case you ever think to yourself, wouldn't that be a fun/easy Halloween costume...

1. The masks are made out of dollar store wicker baskets with the eye area cut out. I had to put foam cushion in the basket to protect their heads. They eye holes are yellow foam and sharpie

2. The main suits are cardboard and duct tape.

3. The shoes are cardboard and duct tape, also packed with foam so they would stay on their feet

4. The pants. This gave me enough laughs to count as an ab workout! I sewed "sumo" sized pants for them out of fleece. Then I took big rectangles of foam and cut a hole for their waist. I attached the fleece pants to the foam and voila! Fairly lego-style legs that were stair friendly. Then I put the cardboard tops on and shoved the foam inside the tops, where it magically stayed for the entire night. 

Were they worth it? Heck yes and here's why. My kids looked at me like I was a goddess (always a great experience when they get into the double digits age group) and they looked really cool. It was fun making duct tape art. Ty really doesn't have much longer for cool costumes so it was really fun to go all-out with making one this year. 

Chapter 12: In which we decrease our kid size by 75%, I begin to homeschool, and we move to Missouri

It has been almost an entire year since the last post. I can't say I feel guilt about that but I have lately wished that I was back to the blog. If for no other reason other than someone should be cataloging my and my family's life somewhere.

Last year August found us moving to Fort Leavenworth Kansas. My brother was deploying and his 4 children, our nieces and nephews, were in need of a guardian for the span of deployment. We raised our hands and said; "we're on it" sometime around August of 2010. We moved into my parents basement for the span between "we're on it" and "we live in Kansas". July 24 saw us packing out truck and reversing the pioneer trek, sniggering all the way that "this was not the place". We still find that pretty funny. :)

Hindsight is 20/20 and I can't say that I had any kind of clue what it meant to add 4 more children to our family. Or to add Teenagers. Or girls. All of these things allow me to wear my supermom cape with nothing but pride. I did it, and 1 year later as we prepare to move as my brother arrives home I can say I am so grateful for the experience and so proud to be the aunt of these remarkable children. I have been blessed to grow a very close relationship with my nieces and nephews that most "distant" relatives never have.

A brief glimpse at our weekly happenings would look like utter chaos, I was also teaching yoga and within a few months found myself the director of a lovely little studio in Leavenworth Kansas, The Leavenworth Yoga Co-op studio. On any given day we would spend the hours of 3pm and 9pm driving the four youngest to sports, going to watch the older two in their sports, homework, work, taking care of the dog (my brother's), a kitten (mine), and an obese hamster (Jake's). And yes, the hamster had a bit of an eating problem when it came to the sunflower seeds.

One week from today is the last day I will be a mom of 6. I will return to being the mom of two and it will be very quiet. I'm not sure I know how much spaghetti to put in the pot after cooking for a home of 8 spaghetti lovers. I feel sad and elated at the same time. It has been 2 years since my little family has been in a home alone. Our own home. Alone. Do I still know how to run my own home? We'll see. But then we throw in the real kicker...I am homeschooling my children next year.

I'm going to give you a minute to pick your jaw up from the floor...go ahead....

Ok, here's my reasonings. I understand that everyone see's a child's education differently and these reasons will mean nothing to you possibly. Or they will resonate and you will want to chat more about it. I'm available after 2 every day ;)

1. When we decided to stay living in the Kansas city Missouri area we found that very few school districts here are good ones. The average test scores for the schools near our new place are 35%. That is not good enough. When my kids ended school last year I felt that they had been cheated out of an education. And they had. The schools here (supposedly the best in the area) have 25 kids per class. Most of the kids are behind grade level having very little school-stability (they are military kids, they move every year to different areas of the country). With the no-child-left-behind ra-ra going on, they certainly don't leave the behind ones behind, instead they let the ahead kids fall off to the side while they try to rescue the behind kids. Do we wonder why we never catch up with this? Teachers are overworked, over pressured, and underpaid - period. They cannot keep up with making sure every kid in a large classroom gets on the exact same page everyday. They are judged by numbers and they number crunchers require improvement. Why do I care? Because my "ahead" kids started the school year above grade level. They ended the school year well below grade level.

2. I actually LIKE having my kids around. I do enjoy free/me time but I'm not one of those moms who is constantly complaining on facebook that they have to see their kids for more than dinner time each day. (if you are that mom, I hold nothing against you, it's just not me)

3. I feel responsible for my children's education and I feel that in public school I am handing that responsibility over to someone else.

4. It's probably time for me to learn my multiplication tables, I figure this would be sufficient motivation. :)

So we press forward, discovering a new "normal" to our daily scene. I'm sure the posts from this moment on will be nothing but entertaining! Although I will spend a while catching up with last year's photos in a very brief but necessary way.

Wish us luck!

Happy Birthday to me!

This is my new best friend. It's a vitamix and it was a birthday gift from my wonderful parent-in-laws. I have to drink rice milk due to a milk and soy allergy and rice milk is ridiculously expensive considering rice is pretty dang cheap. They are also rice milk drinkers and they use a vitamix to make their own.

I figured that rice milk was an amazing enough thing to be able to make myself until I started reading the recipe book that came with it. A WHOLE new world opened up...pardon the pun :) and I've been making crazy green smoothies ever since! Here is the before photo to the left <---------- br="br" nbsp="nbsp">

What you are looking at is:
Grapes
Oranges
Carrots
Bananas
Apples
Spinach
Pineapple
And here---------------------you are looking at it in juice form! Amazing

Who loves their mommy?

I have to say this for my boys, they really love me. Brian is monumentally bad at taking photos of major family events but he is very dedicated when it comes to documenting for posterity the moments when my boys let down their pride and too-cool-ness and snuggle with me.

A few things are cracking me up about these, the first is that Tyler is bigger than I am in that photo to the right. By about 2 inches.

The other thing that is amusing that I probably would have forgotten to post about since I've kind of blocked it out is look at my hair in that photo with Jake. There's a story to it, and no, I didn't for a minute think it looked good and I did NOT ask for it to be that light. Here's the story:

I went to get my highlights put in for summer and I decided to go to Lifetime spa for it since I would already be there for work. I made pretty clear that she was understanding what I wanted and she sounded like she got it. Well, 1 hour and 20 minutes later she takes the foil off my hair over the sink and all I hear is: **gasp** "I'm not really sure what happened". If there were ever words to strike fear in the heart of women everywhere it is this.

I respond, patiently but fearful: "what do you think happened?"

It didn't get better from there. She still wasn't sure but what she came up with was that it somehow magically got lighter than she thought it would. Um, yeah, caught that part darlin.

As she brings me to a mirror and takes the towel off my head I get the rare opportunity to see what I will look like in about 40 years when my whole head of hair is white. Needless to say, it convinced me that I will forever be maintaining my trips to the salon for a very long time. I can't explain the amount of shock I experienced at what she had done. To top it off, I was 5 minutes behind for a massage so she asks if I would like to have her fix it after my massage. As kindly as possible, this is what I said:

"this is one of those really honest moments, do you really feel confident that you can fix it in any way or is it time to let someone else take over that could help me?"

Well she felt confident so I figured I'd let her try, really it couldn't get worse. So I went to my massage (which was a little harder to relax for that usual) and when I came out she tried hard to fix my hair. That really blonde photo is the result of her fixing my hair. Believe it or not, it really was worlds better than what she had done the first time.

I have since then gone to someone different who has brought my hair back to it's normal color. Lesson learned, only go to HIGHLY recommended people!!