North Carolina

We started off our trip hanging out with cousins in North Carolina!  Brita was at FSY and Peter had to work so, it was just the younger kids and me.  They played, and made cookies and we spent an enormous amount of time looking for shoes that I was supposed to buy before I left, but I ran out of time.  So eventually Lisa saved us by buying them online and we picked them up because shoe shopping is hard.

The kids made chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, and no bake cookies.  It was A LOT of cookies, but there were only 6 by the time we left.  

A lot of time was spent playing.  I was hoping to make it seem like our road trip wasn't starting until later so it wouldn't seem quite as long.  No idea if that worked or not, but they had lots of fun even when their cousins were in school.

Some day they're going to find out they're too tall to sleep this direction, but it's adorable while it lasts.  They tried it with Ingrid in there, too, but that girl is terrible at letting other people sleep!

They also spent time swimming at the neighborhood pool.  Seriously, we had so much fun hanging out with cousins!

Benton scraped up his knee pretty badly on the bottom of the pool.  It's mostly healed now. (You know, a month later.)

 

Five years

 Well, apparently it's been five years since I used my blog.  Good times.  Lots has happened.  Probably most notably we had another kid!  Welcome, three-year-old Ingrid.  

And now I can tell you about our trip.

So many things

There are so many things I want to share with the world (and with a permanent record, since my memory is shot) that I thought I'd throw them on a blog post rather than facebook.

First of all, I had pie for breafast today.  It was so yummy.  My Relief Society has started doing more little group activities during the month and I love it.  Today we went to someone's house and Sheridan demonstrated pie crust making.  She brought a cheddar pear pie and it was so good!  I love pear pies.  She also made a key lime pie and a chocolate peanutbutter pie.  They were also really good.  The kdis played in the basement, which was awesome because it had concrete floors and there were bikes and skateboards all all sorts of thingsdown there to ride on.  Benton and Brita discovered how hard it is to skateboard.


Yesterday Elias was taking pictures (which he loves to do), and he captured some great shots of my life:

I didn't realize this was an action shot.

They totally crack me up.  Horrible pictures.  Horrible spit-up mess.  So much of my life is spent like this that it's kind of nice to have it documented.

Unrelatedly,
The other night Irene prayed that "We wouldn't sneek candy in the middle of the night."

The kids have started identifying leaf veination and edge characteristics on the leaves that stick to our windshield while we're driving.

Elias on his birthday...

Tonight Peter was helping Elias pray for dinner.
Peter: Thank thee for the food.
Elias: Food.
Peter: Thank thee for my birthday.
Elias: CAKE!


Elias has become a little obsessed with Peter helping him rather than me helping him lately.  He pretty much just loves his dad and thinks he's the bee's knees.  So..

The kids were thanking me for making dinner.
Benton: Thanks for dinner, Mom.
Irene: Thanks for baking this, Mom. You're a good baker.
Brita: Thanks, Mom.
Mima: Thank you, Mom.
Elias: Thank you...DAD. *impish grin*

He's a pretty great kid.

Swimming

Tonight Brita and I came out of swim lessons and couldn't get in the car because the doors were locked.  I double-checked that I had hit the unlock button on the key and then started to get embarrassed because we were obviously trying to get into the wrong car.  Then I double-checked the inside of the car and realized it really was Peter's car, but I was using the van key to try to open it.  I felt stupid on so many levels. :)

Brita took a swim test about a month ago for Activity Days camp and couldn't pass it.  We took her to the pool first so she could see what she remembered from last year and it wasn't much.  She could do the backstroke a bit, but she really hated putting her face in the water.  On the test she barely made it to one minute of treading water and she swam half of the distance she needed to before she just couldn't swim any more.  She was really, really disappointed that she couldn't pass the test and said she didn't think she'd be able to move up to swim team at all this year and maybe even next year.  I was so proud of her for trying, though.  I don't think I would have.

We then spent a week in Pennsylvania with the McNabb family and she worked with her grandma on swimming a few times.  Then we went to North Carolina and got to go swimming a few times and Brita pushed herself and pushed herself until she was swimming freestyle with her face in the water and getting close to taking breaths to the side.  We missed the first week of swimming lessons because we were down in NC at a science camp.

After the first day of swim lessons when we got back Coach Brandon said that two of the peer coaches said that Brita was ready and that she could move up to the team!  She's doing so good.  And I'm seriously impressed by  her persistence and hard work.  Her first meet should be this Saturday.

Benton and Mima are both in the first developmental lessons.  They're getting better as well.  Mima no longer tries to climb to her peer coach's shoulders when they take her out in the water.  Most of the time.  And the look of terror is gone.  She always says how much she loves it and how fun it is after it's over.  It just doesn't look like it watching.  She says her favorite part is sitting on the steps holding her arms up in streamline position. Benton's swallowing less water these days and putting his face in the water for a long time.  It's fun to watch them all.

Oh deer!

At least the deer stayed out of our garden.  Irene asked if we could watch it forever. I told her we could watch it as long as it was there.

Rewarded

This picture is our reward for finishing cleaning the living room.

This kid

We have a box of ash in our garage that we haven't taken care of yet. Tonight I cleaned out the car in the garage. The box of ash if a little less full.

EAT GOATS

So this is from a while ago, but I was so impressed by Benton's ingenuity.  He built the big blue monster from The Princess in Black out of Legos.  Complete with goats.  

He's built a bunch more cool Lego things since then.  They've done lots of factories and space vehicles.  I totally don't have a Lego mind, so I'm always impressed by what they can come up with.

Helpers

We were doing laundry--they were all folded and we were putting the piles away, I was doing mine and Peter's.
Mima: Mom, do you want me to help you?
Me: Yeah, that'd be great!  Can you grab my socks and put them in my drawer for me?
Mima: Not right now.

Um, thanks for the offer..