Conference Weekend

Conference weekend is probably my most favorite weekend of the year!  I love listening to the prophet and apostles and other leaders of our church.  While I love this weekend, my children have not yet grown to appreciate this 2 day event and especially Sunday when we are home A.L.L D.A.Y. L.O.N.G!  They get a little stir crazy.  I actually don't get to watch all of conference the way I want to because I have children who talk, play, fight, or need something the whole time so it's a good thing that we can record it and I can watch it over and over again.  Plus it is fantastic to have it literally at my finger tips on my Iphone!  

Kyle found my Dr. Pepper.  The flash was on so his eyes are red but I love his little face!

Conference just wouldn't be conference with out a nap.

How Caleb watches conference.

How Connor and Cayden watch conference-with Legos.

My family room after Conference.

Since the kids were bored out of their minds by late afternoon we played a few games.

Just a cute pic!

Connor has the hardest time when there is nothing to do.  It was especially hard this weekend because the fair is coming up and that kid eats, sleeps and breathes the fair.  He worked up there after school 2 days during the week and then all day Saturday.   He was not too thrilled about not going up there on Sunday mostly because he was sure that they were working with out him.  To keep him occupied he built a blanket fort in the family room, played with Leogs, wandered around the house, pestered people, made dinner, cleaned up dinner, played with Kyle, played Uno, played Hedbandz and actually sat through most of Baptists at our Barbecue.  Thank goodness when bedtime finally rolled around!

The Elders

We have been having the missionaries over as often as possible.  It has become a regular occurence for them to just show up some evenings and they are even comfortable enough to call and ask to come by for dinner when they have gotten cancelled on.  Cody has been able to go out with them a few times a week and he loves doing that.  We have them over for dinner as often as we can get on the sceudle but they serve in 3 wards and we all have take turns.  They came over for Pi Day-this was just after transfers.  We kept Elder Lane, lost Elder Steenstra and got Elder Percy.  We got to see Elder Steenstra the next Saturday though because of a baptism in our ward.  He and another Elder who had served out here got to come for the evening.  We had a little dessert party at our house after the baptism and that was fun!  The boys ask a few times a week when the elders are coming over.  Usually it is when I am in the kitchen making a big meal-sometimes they are coming and sometimes they are not.  They joined us for lunch on Saturday and watched the afternoon session of conference with us.  They are such good young men!  They are obedient and helpful and funny and just really great to have in our home.  We appreciate their service and we are glad to share our home, food and family with them!

Easter 2013

Easter weekend was busy!  We were in Provo from Wednesday-Saturday and drove home Saturday morning we could be at home for Easter Sunday.  I hate how Spring Break always ends on Easter Sunday! We either have to come home early, drive home on Easter Sunday, or have the kids miss school on Monday.  None of those are good solutions to me.  We chose the first option though so we could be here for church and because Connor didn't go with us to Provo, we wanted to be together as our family on Easter.  At Grandma Penny's we colored eggs.  I found this new way on Pinterest to color them using shaving cream and food coloring.  It gave those eggs a marbled effect and it was messy fun!  We also colored some other eggs using Koolaid.  The Pitts and Gessel family's joined us Friday night for dinner and our egg-stravaganza!

Sunday morning we had to get up a little bit earlier so we could see what the Easter Bunny had brought and then still get to church on time.  Connor slept at Grandma Dottie's but he came home around 7:30 when we go the other boys us.  Funny story-we had less problems/stress/fighting/ stalling etc. this morning than we have had most Sunday mornings and we had extra stuff to do.  We made it to church on time and everyone was well behaved.  It was an Easter miracle!

 Dad and I made a special Easter breakfast of pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream and bacon.  It was delicious!

 Yes, I do have 5 children but since Connor doesn't go to our ward he was not in the Easter photo.  Yes, this makes me sad but it is what it is.  The Easter Bunny did bring each of the boys a new tie and Kyle a new Easter outfit.

 After church we had lunch and a nap and then had ham, potatoes, rolls, spinach salad, asparagus and strawberry shortcake for our Easter dinner.  The potatoes were supposed to be those smashed ones that you boil first to get soft and then put them on a cookie sheet and smash them with a potatoe masher, season them and then bake them until they are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.  I didn't boil them long enough and so they didn't smash right.  We just ended up roasting them instead.  Love it when my cooking skills stink!

After dinner Connor went outside and hid some Easter eggs for Cayden and Kyle to find.  It was a fun day.

I am grateful we have the gospel of Jesus Christ and that we know why we celebrate Easter.  I'm grateful that Jesus was resurrected and grateful to know that we will all be too and that we can be together again.  In Primary during Sharing Time we had some special visitors come to talk to the kids.  Kathy Wheeler came dressed as Mary Magdalene and told the children her account of when the Savior was crucified and resurrected.  The children were absolutely mesmerized!  The spirit was so strong in that room and I am so grateful that I could be there for that.  I am grateful to know that the Savior was loved by so many and that He showed himself to a woman First!  We also had Ryan Wheeler, a member of our Bishopric talk to them as Peter, and then Lance Turner, our Primary second counselor's husband, was dressed as a Nephite and spoke of when the Savior came to the Americas after He was resurrected.  I love the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Spring Break 2013

Spring Break was March 25-29.  It started out not good at all with Kyle being sick and getting a terrible ear infection.  He didn't sleep for 3 nights over that first weekend and we took him to the doctor first thing Monday morning to get some medicine.  Don took Cody, Caleb and Cayden into Vegas on Tuesday afternoon for one of Cody's appointments and then they went to Viva Zapatos for lunch.  They brought home some food for me as well.  I enjoy mexican food but it not as tasty when it is cold.  On Wednesday Kyle was feeling much better so we packed up and went to Provo.  We stopped at Apollo Burger in St. George-yippee!- on the way up and found a few Geocaches along the way.  Cody ran into his companion at the MTC at the gas station at Cove Fort.  That young man came home early right after Christmas. It was quite the surprise to see him.  Cody and caleb were a bunch of party poopers and would not get out of the car to geocache.  

Kyle trying to make a break for it at Cove Fort.

On Thursday, Don took the suburban down to the dealership to get the oil changed and to have them check the brakes and the hoses.  Everything was in good condition other than the tires on the front were wearing fa little off so they did an alignment on it.  Because it was at the dealership for most of the morning we didn't really do anything.  Caleb needed a haircut desperately and I did get to go crazy in the Winco bulk foods section so that was fun.  We went and got JCW's for dinner that night and brought it back for everyone.   On Friday, we went to Rock Canyon to try to find a geocache-no luck at the canyon so we went to the park to play and Cayden and I did find one geocache right at the park.  Kyle was his usual daredevil self climbing all over the play equipment and even running across the little bridge thing.  After that we went to Burger Supreme for lunch and headed back to grandma's to get ready for dinner.  We made our special marinated chicken that Don grilled and rice pilaf.  Suzanna made pan eclairs for dessert and then we decorated eggs. It wasn't the most amazing Spring Break Ever but we had a good time anyway just being out of school for a week!  I think we ate more hamburgers and fries with fry sauce over those 4  days than we ever have!  

Spring Cleaning and Fixing the Place Up

I have been having some OCD about getting this house and yard back in shape.  With the arrival of spring it is time to begin "the cleaning and fixing of the homestead".  The spring is when we get some money from tax returns so that is another reason why we can and are doing these things.  Our window screens have been in bad shape for a while partly because of the desert sun fading them but also because Cayden occasionally gets a hankering to cut things and the screens seem like a fun thing to cut.  For a very long time we have had holes in the screens and even pieces flapping in the wind.  That was first on the fix it list.  Second we needed a new head for the vaccuum.  I love my central vac so much but it does take a beating and the power head for the carpet was about to lose its wheels and the belt on it was getting really really loose.  I can not live without a vacuum so that was a necessity.  I had to buy another coat rack because one of my darlings broke off one of the hooks and we were short holding all the coats.  Did you know you could by a coat rack on Amazon?  Well you can and I did.  It has more hooks on it then the other one did and there are some lower ones for hats and gloves and for smaller people.  In the spring the boys get the wonderful privilege of pulling weeds and having that added to their weekly chore list.  In the spring the weeds are atrocious and they grow well, like weeds.  On Monday this past week we did a clean up of the back yard and sprayed and pulled the weeds and Connor mowed down our weed patch of a lawn.  By we I mean the boys because I was busy making dinner for a friend.  I have been piling things that we don't need anymore into a box and a basket in the office to put on the yard sale website but I haven't posted for awhile because it does become a hassle to try and connect with the people who want to buy the stuff.  I got some stackable plastic drawers and put them in my office.  Each kid has their own drawer where I put school papers, report cards, birthday cards and scrapbook pages.  I really mean to put that stuff all into their scrapbooks but until I get around to it there is a nice place to store it all.  I bought one of those over the door shoe holders and put it on the backside of the door to the kitchen pantry.  That has become the new home of all the water bottles in the house and it is lovely! I also bought a small basket for my hairdryer, curling iron and straightener because I don't want to have to put them under the counter every day but I don't want them left out with their cords all over the place either.  Storage basket on counter = problem solved.  Another thing I got was a plastic bin to put my flip flops in standing up.  They were all just stacked on top of each other in the closet and I really would like it to look a little neater.  I have seen most of these ideas on pinterest but who cares as long as I can OCD my way to cleanliness.  As far as the boys and their messes-a few months ago after much frustration and fussing and cajoling I decided to lock up the Jack and Jill bathroom and make the 3 boys share the smaller bathroom.  The J &;J bathroom was a huge dirty smelly horrible mess ALL THE TIME!  There are constantly towels on the floor, toothpaste on the counters and all over the sink and don't even get me started about the toilet!  I would go in there in the mornings and just get so frustrated about the slovenly state of that bathroom.  Another epiphany came to me an that was to just lock it up and not let anyone use it.  I spent about 45 minutes cleaning it one morning after the kids all went to school and then I locked it up. I tell you what, that has really helped me not be such a crazy woman because that bathroom is always clean.  Now the other bathroom that all 3 have to share is not a sparkling clean room all the time but it is a 3rd of the size of the other and they each only have one drawer of their own to keep their bathroom stuff in.  Even when it is super dirty I can clean it in 15 minutes as opposed to 45.  I was having the boys wipe it down after each use but that didn't last long.  Connor was not very pleased about having to share the bathroom but that's just too bad because mom's sanity is worth much more than he getting his own bathroom.  I have been helping Cayden keep his room cleaner by showing him a better way to put his laundry in his drawers.  We stack it vertical and not on top of each other so he can see exactly what he has and it all fits much nicer that way.  This sweet child will not leave for school unless his room is clean and his bed is made-well his half anyway.  We can't do much about Caleb's crap other than take it away so we just pile it on the bed and tell Cayden not to worry about.  That is like telling a fish that he doesn't need to be in the water to breathe!  Most days Cayden just deals with it but there are a few-like this past Wednesday where he had just had it with the slobbiness and he was seriously having a meltdown at 6am when he was supposed to be getting ready for tutoring.  I also have been wanting to get more food storage and only buy what we are really eating.  I have hominy and refried beans from 10 years ago that just sits there unused.  We eat lots of black beans, tomatoes, cream soups and lots of canned fruit but the canned green beans and peas just sit there.  We like mandarin oranges and fruit cocktail and also jarred or canned pasta sauce.  The canned chicken and canned tuna is good too but the chicken is pretty pricey when I can bottle it myself.  I have done that twice now and it has worked out lovely but the pressure cooker scares me and it takes a really long time to do it.  I wait until the chicken is on really cheap like $1.39 a pound and then get a bunch and do it then. I do use canned corn sometimes but I really prefer frozen veggies better  We have the canned stuff though just in case the freezer goes out but I won't be buying the stuff that we don't eat because it will probably just go to waste.   If anyones need a case of hominy or a case of refried beans from 2005 just let me know!  We did get part of a beef for our freezer all packaged up nicely into 1 lb packages and 3lb roasts so that is good on the meat front.  If the end comes we do have quite a bit of food but there is ton in the freezers so the next big purchase might need to be a generator to keep everything frozen.
Don has replaced 2 doorknobs and changed out the kitchen faucet twice.  He has also fixed a plumbing problem out in the ward repeatedly over and over again.  The landscaper when he put in the sprinkler system made a funny angel out of some pipe that decided it was done being held in that wonky position so it started to leak.  Once we found where the leak was and Don uncovered it the leak became a faucet and we had to turn the water off to the house for a few hours.  He got it fixed that night but then it has popped loose a few more times requiring immediate assistance,  Don gets to play in the mud, the dark and the cold until we have running water again.  One of the times Caleb was home and he got roped into mucking it up too!

The curling iron basket.

The flip flop basket.

Sometimes my only sanity-I can wash my hands and feel the scent of the islands wafting  up my nose. Causnig me at the same time-peace and serenity from a factory made artificial smell and also disappointment that I am not there actually smelling the Coconut cove in person. 

Oh well I must be content with scented soaps and lotions, plastic bins and buckets and new hardware around the home as the simple things in my life.

Kyle Brandt is 19 months Old!

Ok in like 4 days but since I have been so behind on blogging I wanted to get this done especially so that I won't forget these things.

Ow-more like oooowwww or oooowwwweee has become Kyle's new favorite word.  He says it all the time when he is mad or frustrated and when he is hurt.  He also says it when he is hanging on my leg and wants to be picked up.  He says it when we put him in car seat.

I am so not loving the fit throwing and body arching that he doing when he is not getting his way.

He tells me he is done when he is ready to get out of his bed or if he is screaming at me and I say to him-I will pick you up when you are done screaming.  Are you done screaming?  Then he makes the sign for done.  He also does it when he is ready to get out of the tub.

"Hiee" is one of our new favorites that he says.   In the morning if I am in the bed with him and he wakes up he says  "mom!"  I say "what Kyle?" and he says "hi!".  He is also saying OK and using it sometimes in the right places.   If I say "we'll go in a minute OK?"  He says "OK".  He still loves to call his dad on the phone in the mornings when Don is here and he says Hiee dad.

He also says byee, tee too-thank you, mooey mooey-missionary, booey-berry, ny ny-night night, baa-bath, and we are getting a few 2 word sentences out of him.  He almost has his name down.  We know he can say the K sound and the i sound so now he just has to put them together.

He has some lovely allergies with his nose almost constantly running.  He just got off another dose of antibiotics though so I know he is not sick.  There is cotton blowing all over in the springtime breeze so that may be part of it.  My allergies are acting up as well so it is probably genetic.

I really thought he had chicken pox the other night.  He started getting red spots in the early afternoon and every time I looked there seemed to be more and more!  I even circled them in pen so I could tell which ones were old and which ones were new!  I googled chicken pox and of course that was not very helpful!  Later in the evening I  called in a Facetime consultation with Dr. Chris!  He thought that it was probably something he got into or something he ate.  This child loves loves loves to be outside and the day before we were doing yardwork and he was out there the whole time.  The whole valley is blooming with everything weed and tree possible. I guess it really was just some sort of allergic reaction because after some Benadryl and a night's rest, the spots were mostly gone.  I was really afraid that if it was chicken pox that he would have been contagious right during Nursery on Sunday and if that were the case, he would have exposed the whole nursery to chicken pox!  Dodged a bullet there!

So I have been sleeping in his room now for almost 3 months trying to get the child to sleep in his crib.  He was doing relatively well up until the week he got sick and then we went to Provo.  He wasn't crying anymore when I put him down and he would go to sleep in his crib but seriously every single night he would sleep for an hour and then wake up.  He would usually fuss for a minute but then go back to sleep just to wake up an hour later again.  After 3-4 of those lovely episodes I would just drag him into the bed with me so that I could sleep.  When he got sick with fever I didn't want to put him in his bed to cry at all and then he got an ear infection and neither of us slept at all that night before he went to the doctor.  He was better later in the week but then we went to Provo and so he slept in the bed with me up there.  When we got home I had the thought that maybe he just needed to sleep in the big bed and that he would sleep there much better.  That was a tender mercy/inspirational thought. I was seriously praying praying praying that he would sleep in his own bed because it was really starting to frustrate me to get kicked in the head and climbed over all night long.  Plus my bed is so much more comfortable and quite frankly my husband was getting lonely in that big bed all by himself.  So after that epiphany I am still laying down with him until he goes to sleep but then I pack pillow barricades around the bed and it is pushed up against the wall so he can't fall off.  Then I sneak out and got to my own room!  The first night he slept there until 2 without waking up and the next night it was 3 and he even made it to 5 once!  I have the monitor on in our room so I can hear him and when he does wake up and really does cry I go to him and just stay the rest of the night there.  It has been a much better solution and we may be taking the crib down here very soon!  I wonder if because he is so roley poley all night long if he was hitting into the crib sides and not liking that so he would wake up. We still have our rituals of the turning on the turtle star lamp, starting his music and turning on the stand up fan in the closet to drown out the noise from the rest of the house.  He will not let me forget the music or the turtle and if I do he points at them to remind me. Connor of course has been distressed that I would leave him in there alone but I think we all sleep much better now.  Now if only I could get over my anxiety about leaving him there by himself which is why we had the problem in the first place!

Tonight the missionaries came over for dinner and a lesson.  After the lesson we knelt down for prayer and I was holding Kyle.  He started to fuss and squirm to get down and as soon as I let him he got on his knees like everyone else.

He knows when the garage door opens it is usually daddy and he calls out "daddy". When the upstairs door opens he knows it is Cody and he call out "Coey". When the front door opens it is usually grandpa and he calls out "papa".

He LOVES strawberries!  He ate 5 whole ones tonight and kept asking for more.

He doesn't like those applesauces that come in the pouches.

He really is such a good good baby.  I have had to drag him to Vegas once a week for the last month to take Cody to the doctor and we are trying to double up appointments so that we don't have to go in more than once a week.  If we have a movie for him and a binki he really does so good even being stuck in the car for hours on end.

Speaking of binki-oh boy!  This is a problem.  I don't know how we are going to get it away from him.  He actually has gotten worse about in the last month along with the separation anxiety so maybe those two things go hand in hand and once we are over that stage we can get rid of the binki too.

Strawberries are yummy!

Mom and Kyle waiting for dad to come home from a long week of travel.

We may another Beethoven on our hands.  He likes to sit with Cody when he plays and he climbs up on the bench by himself and starts to play.

Playing in the shaving cream at Grandma Penny's while we were dying eggs for  Easter.

This is his "cheese".  When I have the camera or phone out and point it at him he knows to say 'cheese'.

This is soot from the firepit.  He looked like he had a black eye but nope, it was just dirt.  Oh and  I love the snot too!

Connor Won A Kindle!

The sophomore class had proficiency testing one day in March.  Caleb didn't have to go to school that day but Connor got the better deal!  After all the testing was over the kids that worked hard were given a ticket to put in a drawing for a Kindle.  Connor won!  He was soooo excited!  He doesn't use it to read hardly at all except the scriptures.  He mostly plays games on it but he is so proud of it!