Really, Truly, Without a Doubt, Never a Dull Moment

He keeps me on my toes so much that my calf muscles should be as big as a house by now!

He doesn't stop to take a break, he barely slows down to eat.

 

Just try to contain him... No really, someone come to my house and try!

Warm{ish} Enough to Play Outside

We have NO complaints about the wind, temperature, or weather this year at all. Mildest winter we've experience in Rock Springs. No days with temps below zero, it's just weird and wonderful all at the same time....Must be global warming, or something?

Zumba With Lindsey Taylor

If you check my Facebook page, you might think the ONLY thing I do is Zumba...not true, there are a lot of other really dorky things that take over my life too. We had Zumba-Diva-Extrodionaire Lindsey Taylor in Rock Springs for a Master Class. She's a great instructor with great music and a real talent for teaching. I learned a lot from her class and had a great time with my friends!

Here's Andrea explaining to me the ins and outs of music selection via her iPad. Thank you Andrea!

And a delightful picture of me and Johanna. Johanna, cannot look ugly if she tries, but she tried really hard in this one!

Valentine's Day Bling!

I almost forgot to post a picture of this very expensive super huge diamond that I got for Valentine's Day this year...

Oh wait, that didn't happen, this is just a picture of the "Ring Bling" that Cali and I made for her class and Carter's class. They were so fun to make.

One pipe cleaner cut in half, four little drops of hot glue on the bottom of an upside down Hershey's Kiss. Make some "prongs" out of he ends of the pipe cleaners and bend the ends, press the left over pipe cleaner into an "O" shape, wrap a tiny piece of pipe cleaner around the base of the "diamond"/point of the Hershey's Kiss.

The kids in both classes loved them! Carter gave all his extras to Miss Seeley, of course!

The King of Road Trips

For all the excitement and craziness that Caleb brings to our family, I have to say, he is the BEST travelling baby. Scratch that, the best travelling child I have. We do not mess around when it comes to road trips and day trips. We get in the car, we go. Sometimes getting to Castle Dale takes us 7 hours. Sometimes he and I can make it to Salt Lake and back before the kids get home from school. If he falls asleep in his car seat, I have been know to leave him there. I have also been known to unstrap the car seat from the car and carry it like a giant baby carrier {without the handle} so as not to disturb his naps.

The car is the one place where he is easily contained!

Feeding the Horses

My parent's neighbor keeps a few farm animals around for fun. Sometimes there are sheep, sometimes there are horses. The kids love to feed whatever animal is available during our visits to Castle Dale. Since there weren't anymore apples on the apple tree, my mom stocked the boys up with carrots for the horses.

For every bite he gave the horse, Caleb also took a bite of the carrot. After the 25.5 cupcakes he ate earlier that day, the carrots probably did him some good...even if they were covered in horse slobber.

The older Carter gets, the more he develops my fear of all things animal. As a little boy he would put his hand/head in a horses mouth. As a grown up 6 year old, he now awkwardly pants their nose.

Caleb has no fear, and pitched a giant fit when the carrots were gone.

Carter, on the other hand, was a little jumpy. I would like to encourage him to face his fears and embrace animals, but I would have to do it as I run away from the animals myself.

My Sister is About to POP!

On February 11th my mom, my sisters, and our friends threw Bethany a giant baby shower. Oh wait, who am I kidding, I only made the invitations and showed up. My mom, Bethany and sisters made all the food and decorations. It was a really fun afternoon, and fun to see old friends from the C. Dale. Here are a few of the highlights...

My sister Dory, me, and Bethany. First off, I just love being the "giant" one. Second, should someone who is 36 wks pregnant be this small. I just really wanted her to get huge and fat and make us roll her around.

The food was so good. We focused on the "Bethany is going to POP" theme, and served tons of "pop" related deserts...cake pops, pop corn... you get the idea!

The mastermind behind the fun and games, my lovely mother.

Bethany had to open so many presents, our friends and family were so generous! It took a while to get through all the wonderful gifts, as you can see, Bethany's sister in law in the background was super bored.

Dory and mom. My mom is always trying to keep her eyes open for photos.

At the end of the shower the boys showed up, they had been with Brandt to his in-law's farm, they quickly devoured the yummy treats!

Adventures in Dental Work

Almost two years ago Cali was riding her bike down the driveway {the day before her birthday} and really ate it, bad! She knocked a good chunk of two permanent teeth right out. Our dentist patched it up with some white filling, and for the most part, we forget about it. Until she bumps it after 10pm on a Friday night, with our dentist out of town, and us planning to go to Bethany's baby shower first thing Saturday morning....We had to improvise.

Christian laid her on the bed with her head hanging upside down, and glued the piece of filling right back on with some super glue. It stayed on the whole weekend until we were able to get it fixed by a real dentist. As a joke, Cali took this picture of her self and set it as the wallpaper on my phone. I really love her snaggley little face!

Assume the Position

It starts so young...

Ice Skating

I used to be a pretty mean ice skater. Our neighborhood friends and I spent hours and hours skating on purposely flooded and frozen fields in Castle Dale Utah. Good times. Great times.

On one no-school day I took all three kids on an ice skating adventure at the rec center ice arena. Indoor ice is so smooth and doesn't even have any frozen leaves or cat tails to trip you up.

Cali is getting pretty good, and I really should put her in some lessons...next year. It was Carter's first time, and he was as brave as the nervous little fella' could be. He stayed close to me and close to the wall. Caleb was nuts and walked around on the skates like they were regular shoes. His coordination abilities are really just strange. When it was time to leave the ice he pitched a giant fit.

Just a tip...containing a flailing two-year old with razor sharp blades on his feet, whilst wearing skates yourself...not good. I didn't think this one through. I pictured smiling children as I wowed them with my moves. It went much better in my head.

As if we weren't cold enough from our falls and fun in the ice arena, we went and got frozen yogurt afterward! And this is how Caleb spent the rest of his afternoon...

Collaboration

Maybe they'll be architects? Perhaps civil engineers? Maybe construction managers? Who really knows? Only time will tell... What I do know is that in these pictures they aren't fighting, and that's good enough for me right now...

Yes Caleb, Even When You Close Your Eyes...I Can Still See You

This kid is famous for hiding and then closing his eyes. He is still under the mistaken impression that if he can't see me, I can't see him. Wrong! I watch this kid like a hawk. Too much silence or not enough noise, and I am on this kid like white on rice. On one such occasion I found him here {see above photo}, just sitting nicely with his stuffed animals...

Right, there's nothing wrong with a little boy and his plush toys...

Unless said toys are on a shelf in a closet...

And said child uses them as a jumping off point...

Bedtime is for Sleeping?

Our bedtime routines around here are a little out of whack. Cali recently went through an I'm-scared-as-soon-as-the-sun-goes-down (which is bad when it's dark at about 5:30pm) phase. I hope it was a phase, and I hope it doesn't come back anytime soon. Cali is also prone to bouts of sleep walking and reciting entire nonsensical lectures in the wee hours of the morning. Caleb, my worst sleeping child by far, still finds it necessary to get up at least once a night. Sometimes I just watch Carter sleep and give thanks that 1/3 of my children sleep.

Between the two of these strange sleepers, I have endless bedtime and nighttime horror stories. Most of which involve a semi-awake me yelling at a semi-awake child. You can see that this situation isn't healthy for anyone. Since Christian spends 75% of his life in hotel rooms, he misses out on so much of the night-time excitement. Although I have called to fill him in {read: cry and complain} to him about the lack of sleeping around this house.

After one particularly fun night where I ended up with about 20 toes in my lower back, I found this letter on my bed. I'm not going to say it solved all of our sleep deprivation problems, but for that day it did make it bearable...sweet, almost.

Only in Castle Dale {and the Wilds of Africa}

Castle Dale Utah has a population of about 1,800 people...and five zebras.

The Best Day of the Year

You can never complain about a day on the San Rafael desert with no wind, short sleeves, and jackets; especially when it's January 2nd. The weather has been unseasonably warm. Is it it weird, yes. Do we complain, no! We take advantage of it, and do things that are not normally done in January!

My dad took us on an adventure south of I-70 in Emery County to find a famous, yet hidden, signature of Butch Cassidy. Apparently he smeared it on the rock with axel grease, so it has preserved the sandstone from rain and weather. Some of the signature is now disapearing, so we went to check it out before it's totally gone. We also tried to take a cute family picture on some cool rocks, it turned out about as well as the rest of our family photos. Although very fitting that I'm trying not to go over the edge with Caleb, it's kind of a metaphor for my life right now.

Since we were already in the vicinity of the Musn't Touch It Sand Dunes we decided to stop and let the kids run around. It was really the most unbelievable day, there have been colder days in May. The kids took their shoes off, rolled their pants up, and ran around like crazy on the "beach".

I hiked about half way up with Caleb, until he wanted me to carry him the rest of the way. Carrying a large child up hill in sand is less fun than it sounds. Apparently running up a steep sand dune is really fun when you weigh less than 50 lbs...Just ask Cali she sprinted up and down several times.

Caleb filled up all his clothes and bodily cracks with pounds and pounds of delightful sand!

Carter raced Brandt to the top, and Brandt showed Carter how to run down as fast as your legs can take you. Even these cute little legs needed a tiny rest.

Our faithful tour guides, my mom and dad. Our trips to the desert have been much more productive and less scary since GPS was invented. My dad is a pro GPSer and doesn't go anywhere without it. Some day I might fill my readers in about the maps and handwritten direction that led our adventures as kids. Suffice it to say our 1990 Suburban saw more that it's fair share of incidents on the desert.

I still can't get over what a wonderful day we had, and how a little bit of nice weather created one of my fondest memories yet!