Never forget

I hope I never forget all the times when at dinner, Benton looks at me and says, "Thank you, Mom, makin' it."

It's overwhelmingly nice to be appreciated sometimes.

How 'bout

Whenever Benton is offered a choice or asked what he wants to do, etc, he'll always preface the answer with, "How 'bout..." It's so cute.

Random things

You know those times that you feel like blogging, and you have time to sit at the computer and blog, but you don't have anything to blog about? I don't get those much any more, but I'm waiting for a birthday cake to bake, so here I am. And yes, I'd rather be sleeping. I'm lame like that.

I lost my sling. This is pretty much the saddest thing to happen to me in a while. Yes, I live a pretty charmed life. I really, really miss it, though. I've been trying to make due with my Moby wrap, but it's just so hard to get off. I always end up pulling yards and yards of fabric off me and then I still have to slither through a little loop. I'm sure there's an easier way, but I just don't know what it is.

I read my blog last night. I stayed up way too late doing it. I used to be funny. I used to get lots of comments on my posts occasionally, too. It was so fun to see what we were doing back in the day. There are so many things that I totally forgot about. Like one of the pictures of Benton when he was a baby. Holy cow, that's a funny picture.

My camera has had a dead battery for the last few weeks. Thus there are no pictures of my youngest daughter's recent existence. Or of my other kids', but it's a larger percentage of Mima's. I keep meaning to have her official pictures taken, but I don't have a phone number for the lady I want to take them and I don't know how to email her about them. And I'm lazy. And I don't even know if she still lives in the area.

I can't believe Benton is two. Honestly, it seems like he's been two for a while. He can just do so much and is so big. I always expect my kids to act older than they are, though, so that's part of it. It's easier when I think they're just little so I don't expect as much from them. But they just do so much.

Tonight Brita set the table all by herself without being asked. And Benton puts away the silverware. And they both just pitch in and help clean when I clean. They really are amazing.

They've been playing a lot more by themselves together lately. Today I walked into the book room and they were both sitting on the couch and each of them had a New Testament and a hymnal and Brita was helping Benton "read" a scripture. Then they would both be singing and reading and it was so stinking cute. Brita had some crazy song about the wood chips at the park.

Mima's been jumping in her jumper since we got back from vacation. Today was the first day where she was jumping really high and enjoying herself. She's so happy all the time. Except when something having to do with visiting teaching is going on. She doesn't like visiting teaching for some reason. She is so smiley. And she has an incredibly contagious laugh. Usually when Brita laughs around her Mima will start laughing and then I can't help but laugh and then the whole family goes. We were talking to Peter's parents the other day on Skype and we all just laughed and laughed. I like it because I've had a really hard time laughing lately. I wish I laughed easier. But seriously, you should hear this girl laugh.

I've started reading The Story of the World. It's a classical education style history book series for elementary school. It's kind of fun to see things roughly in order. I really want to make a timeline. Hopefully I will get around to doing it because I've wanted to for about fifteen years now.

Oh, did I tell you that when I was on vacation I found a new life goal? I decided that I want to run a children's museum in a small town. We stopped at the North Platte children's museum and it was awesome. The kids absolutely loved it. We had to carry Benton out screaming. They had fake corn stalks that you could pick corn from and take it to a fake store and sell it. They had a car room where Benton spent about ten minutes sending cars down a racetrack and he didn't even make it all the way through the bucket of cars. And they had a doctors' office themed room where there were a bunch of x-rays and a body that you could put all the organs into and a life-sized operation game. It was pretty cool.

The first thing that we saw in North Platte was a guy in a dirty black and white striped jumpsuit and shackles being escorted to the back of a police car outside the courthouse. It made me happy for some reason.

And we saw family on vacation. When we were in Champaign we took the kids to a really cool park. We'd been promising to take them there for a while. When we got there it was closed and everything was covered in plastic because they were refinishing the wood.

The joys of siblings

Today Benton and Peter stayed home from church because they were sick. As Benton was eating lunch by himself he looked down and saw a cup of water sitting on the table. He quickly grabbed it, growled "No! My cup!" and drank all the water.

It's a dog eat dog world. Even when there's only one dog.

Mima

Sometimes I look down, see Mima asleep in my arms, and think, "Holy cow, I love my baby."

Necklaces...and tractors, apparently

The kids made fruit loop (called colored cheerios in our house) necklaces today instead of taking naps. Brita came in to have me tie hers off, so I broke the thread off the needle and then promptly dropped it. About half the cheerios came off, so I carefully grabbed the end of the thread and picked it up. Unfortunately I carefully grabbed the wrong end and ended up having to restring all her cheerios. Good times. Here they are.
Brita said the thing on her head was a headband birthday hat.
And here's Mima. (She didn't make a necklace.)
As I was typing this, I heard something familiar. I finally registered that it was a marker scribbling. And then I looked and saw Benton scribbling on our barn with a permanent marker. I told him to stop so he put the lid on the marker and tried to push it shut on the paper that he had been scribbling on (you know, before he started scribbling on the farm that he had been using as a table). Where he was trying to push was a hole in the barn so the marker just made an indentation in the paper rather than pushing the cap all the way on. He saw that there was somewhere for his paper to go, so he stuffed the paper and the marker into the barn, grabbed a tractor and moved it back and forth on his barn and then looked at me innocently.
Um, sure Benton, nothing to see there.

Hats

Remember these guys?
Now they're bigger. And more snot-nosed. And stuff. They've still got the hats, though. And they're still cute.

And we went on vacation for two and a half weeks. I should probably blog about that, too.

Oh, and notice the ball behind them in a ziplock bag? They took hundreds (very slight exaggeration) of baggies out of the drawer and filled them with stuff.

Coloring

Brita and Benton are doing crafts on the new table.
Brita: Benton, do you like my coloring?
Benton: Oh, wow!

A life saved

I saved a chicken's life today. It was behind a back tire of someone who was about to back up. I got the car to stop and then the driver chased the chicken away with a ice scraper. It probably would have been more effective to have signaled the driver in some way rather than just looking like an lunatic telling the chicken to move and motioning which way it should go. Oh well. The driver noticed me and rolled down the window to see if there was a problem and I told her about the chicken and saved its life.

Then I had a chicken wrap for lunch.

You win some, you lose some.

Grrr.

I hate it when people upset me right after my kids go to bed and before I've gone to bed so instead of sleeping peacefully I have to spend the night telling them off and trying to reason with them and help them see that they made a stupid decision. I my head of course. If you can't say anything nice, at least tell them off in your head. After all it's not what you say, it's how you feel about the person (I learned that in relief society). Never mind this post. Hopefully it was enough to get me some sleep. I really, really need it.