Thursday, January 29, 2009

Snow Day #3


Apparently, the difference between Oklahoma and South Carolina is that in Oklahoma the snow or ice doesn't melt as quickly! This is now the THIRD day that they have cancelled school. It only got up to the high 30's yesterday afternoon for a while, which was apparently not warm enough to clear the secondary roads. So I decided this morning that I wanted to take my girls sledding. It was in the mid-20's, so we all ate a quick cereal breakfast and headed outside with our old cookie sheet (aka the southern sled)!



As you can see, we got off to a rough start.




Our second attempt went a little smoother...


And in the end we got it down:




Even Connor got a piece of the action:




We didn't want his butt to get cold...

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Olivia's "I Love You" Present

As some of you know, Olivia was really sad last week when it snowed in South Carolina the winter we finally moved. She has desperately wanted a good snowfall to play in. Well, Heavenly Father decided to give her an "I Love You" present this week in the form of a winter storm. It was freezing rain on Monday (and no, Edmond schools do NOT let out early under ANY conditions) and sleet Monday night and snow on Tuesday. As a result, we have some great whiteness outside, and although it's not deep, it's not melting. We woke up to our 2nd snow day with temperatures in the single-digits. In fact, I was rudely awakened this morning by Olivia who was complaining to me that daddy wouldn't let her play outside in the snow because it was too cold. (It was 8 degrees.) Here's some pictures of the festivities when the sun finally came out.
The girls having a snowball fight
(note: Olivia insisted on "staging" this picture - there really was no fight)

Olivia making a snow angel

It actually turned out really nice! Can you see the wings?

Kelsey making HER snow angel

Connor enjoying the weather inside in his jammies

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Flutterby

What is a flutterby you might ask? Well, fortunately for you, I have the answer. Watch and learn...



This is the draft I used to get through my window when the wind blew. Then my lovely neighbor, Amber, took pity on me and came over and showed me that I have not one but TWO windows that I can close and therefore get rid of our drafts! But I'll always remember the flutterby with fondness...

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Well, he finally did it...

Connor has discovered his voice! And to Ben's delight, he now jabbers "dada" all day long. I was trying to capture it yesterday on the video camera for Ben, and I got it. So of course, he has instructed me to update the blog this morning. Here's for you, honey!



But of course, this is not all I am going to post. A month ago when I was pulling out Connor's 6-9 month clothes, I was missing several of his new outfits, including my favorite that I was dying to put him in for church. Last Thursday I was clearing out the garage, and lo and behold I found a box with baby clothes! I had forgotten I put them there, and sure enough - the outfit I wanted for my little man was right on top. Here he is in his Sunday duds!

Then Sunday night our neighbors came over to play some games with us. Connor was playing on the floor with their littlest one, and decided he wanted Kenneth's bottle. A battle ensued... kind of:
Here's another cute picture of Connor with the girls from last Saturday. Olivia's being goofy, and Kelsey is stylin' with her pink sunglasses.


Also, here's one other video that I just think is hilarious. Yesterday the kids were out of school for MLK They had been outside on their scooters, and I was trying to get some ironing done, so I had put in a Baby Mozart video for Connor. It's the first time I'd ever tried putting in a video for him so I could get stuff done. So after a few minutes the girls came in from outside, and became so absorbed in the video they didn't want to go back outside! I guess these things are just kind of hypnotic... works on babies and kids of all ages!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Milestones

This has been a month of some great milestones for my youngest 2 children. First, we decided to get Kelsey's hair cut short again last week. This decision came after many long days of screaming and crying while we brushed her hair. We use detangling spray - liberally - but she's just the kind of girl that tangles her hair badly without much effort. I'm sure that the fact her hair was often hanging in her food didn't help, either. So after spending several days with her hair in numerous ponytails, off we went to Great Clips. She ended up with a really cute haircut, reminiscent of her Aunt Kristi - an a-line stacked bob. These pictures really don't do it justice, but here they are. It was so cute the next morning as I got Kelsey ready for school. She looked in the mirror and said, "I finally look like a Kelsey again!" Now, what she looked like before I never got her to say, but she's glad to have short hair again. And so are Ben and I. There's a whole lot less drama during grooming every day.

Our other Kelsey milestone has to do with Kelsey's eating habits. As many of you know, Kelsey went through a year or so where the only fruits she liked were grapes, bananas, and grapefruit. And veggies were out of the question. So were all meats except for chicken nuggets or hot dogs. After being chastised by her doctor last April, Ben and I decided it was time to put our collective foot down and stop making her peanut butter sandwiches at dinnertime. And so, the drama ensued. After trying several things, we ultimately found the most success just putting a few bites of whatever we had for dinner on her plate, and making sure there was at least one thing at dinner she would eat - such as whole wheat bread and butter. This has resulted it greater happiness for me and Ben because we now plan our meals based on what we would like to have and what is nutritious, and NOT on "what the kids will eat". And then we stopped fighting with both kids on whether they ate what was on their plate. We keep gum or little suckers in the house, and if they want dessert, they need to eat whatever we put on their plate. If they don't eat it, no dessert and it doesn't matter to us. They only get in trouble if they complain. So anyway, Olivia's been a great eater for months, but we've been making progress slowly with Kelsey. Then Sunday night we had homemade spaghetti. She informed Ben and me that she loved spaghetti and she wanted a big plate of it. We told her to eat what was in her bowl, and if she ate well, she could have more next time. She cleaned her bowl, and even ate her salad without complaining! So yesterday at lunch time, Kelsey and I opened a dish of leftover spaghetti, stuck it on a plate and shared it for lunch. She loved it! And this is great, because do you know how many veggies I can sneak into a spaghetti sauce?? Here's a picture showing how much she enjoyed it. Why she wanted to eat with her thumb stuck to her forehead, I'll never know...

So now onto our youngest child. He's been rolling over for a few weeks now, but not easily. And sitting up has been slow coming as well. I'm sure it has nothing to do with his older sisters wanting to hold him all the time. But here's a funny picture I took this morning of him sitting up. He's doing fabulous.


Then a few minutes later he fell over. He doesn't like that part.


Finally, I wanted to show you the video I took of him a week and a half ago. He was sitting up propped with a boppy pillow and couch cushion, and he tipped over onto his stomach. He HATES being on his stomach. But like any good mom, I left him and made him roll over on his own. This is what he did. As you watch it, just know that last Saturday he showed that he can now roll over in about 5 seconds flat if we put him on his stomach. Daddy did it over and over again to give him good practice!


Monday, January 12, 2009

A Kelsey Funny

OK, this one is just too good not to share. Yesterday in church while we were singing the sacrament song, Ben nudged me and pointed to Kelsey. She was sitting Indian-style on the pew with her arms out to either side. Her palms were turned up and her fingers pinched together. She was going "ummmm..." Well, if there was ever a good time to meditate...

Saturday, January 10, 2009

My Redneck Christmas

Since it's now the 10th of January, it's about time I go ahead and tell you all about my redneck Christmas in Oklahoma. The day after Thanksgiving the kids and I pulled out all the Christmas decorations, and proceeded to put up the Christmas tree. Fortunately for Ben, he was working and not involved with this fiasco. Unfortunately for us, the stand for our fake tree broke when we were putting it up. It's 8 years old, so it's lived a good life, but this was NOT what I needed to deal with. But the kids and I were determined to get the tree up, and since Ben had the car at work I decided there was nothing else to do but to try to duct tape the tree stand together. The problem was I didn't have any duct tape. But I had packing tape! So I taped the stand together like so:


That brought us to problem #2. The stand was staying together, but one side sat much lower than the other two, and the tree kept tilting over. So being the eternal problem-solver I pulled out my 8-lb weights and placed them on the other two legs so the tree wouldn't tilt - like so:

And finally, we had a tree! It was crooked, but it was up. And once I covered the base with my tree skirt, it wasn't so bad...


One non-redneck thing that we wanted to post was the kids modeling the hats that Aunt Kristi knitted for them. Awesome work, Aunt Kristi!

Connor blinked.

The other redneck thing we had going on was this hilarity that ensued during one particular day the week after Christmas. The apartment complex across the street had a dead tree that needed to come down, so they apparently decided to get the maintenance guy and a couple of his buddies to do it. How hard could it be, right? When I got home from the store one afternoon, they had been working on it for a while. Thinking it would be just a few more minutes, I called my kids and mom and went out on the front stoop to watch them work so they could watch the tree come down. After another 30 minutes, I realized this would take some time, so I did what any good blogger would do - I grabbed my camera. Here's a video of them working. It's a little long - a minute and a half - but it's a good sample of what we saw: 3 shmucks who didn't really know what they were doing trying to cut down a tree. Near the end of the video they turn around and say, "We're not professionals!" That's obvious. At some point later on the big wedge that they put into the tree got stuck and the chainsaw wouldn't start. We began to wonder if it would ever come down...



But after hours of hard work, it finally did... to the cheers of many in the neighborhood.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Scooters

Well, we have a lot of pictures and videos that we'd like to post, but we're not going to overwhelm everyone all at once. I'll just put them up a little at a time over the next couple of weeks. First, let me say we had a fabulous Christmas, and my mom coming for a visit the day after was like the cherry on top. Well, it would have been if I liked those kind of cherries. I guess it was more like the hot fudge on top.


So anyhow, our last couple of weeks have been very nice. And I think Santa gets extra brownie points this year for bringing the girls a pair of scooters. They have been out on them every day since except Sunday. Olivia has "scootered" before, but it was brand new to Kelsey. The video below was taken Jan. 2nd - about a week after they got the scooters. You can see just how good they have gotten! Kelsey has improved tremendously, and Olivia has learned a few tricks on her own. And Olivia just leaned over my shoulder and said, "Be sure and tell them that whatever Kelsey learned, she learned from me." It's true enough - they've been up and down our road for hours every day, in both warm and cold weather. Kudos to Santa for the bonus exercise!! Now I just need to get roller blades and I can join them... Be sure and note the great safety procedures they have at the end of the video!