Little Rockers

Happy Birthday to the Dad in my house! We had all kinds of fun planning his party and making gifts. Since he wasn't with us for our entire road trip in July, I thought it would be fun for the kids to let him in on the parts he didn't experience. So, my son made a slideshow from our pictures on the computer and my daughter drew pictures. The youngest designed the wrapping paper for my gift, which was a family hour at the rock climbing wall nearby.

The older kids had camps this past week where they learned all sorts of fun social group-type games. Read the agenda on our party list to get ideas to play at your next social gathering.

We had a lot of fun playing these games. Toilet Tag is a hoot because once 'frozen' a person has to be flushed to get set free and sometimes that person gets clogged. Potty humor takes on a new dimension with every generation right?

Bombs and Shield was fun. Each person was to secretly choose a Bomb and a Shield (other players) so if you wanted to be protected by a person, you choose that person as your shield and if you wanted to run away from a person you choose that person be your bomb. Well, I chose my son as my shield, he chose his dad to be his shield and my husband chose me to be his shield. Savvy?  We were running around in a circle. It was a riot. The girls just ran around screaming.

We used my gift the next day. I loved seeing my son so confidently climb up the walls (he was in rock climbing camp all week) and use the jargon. It was great.

OK, this is funny -- a marble, HA HA

Just admit it, when you were a little girl, you stuffed things in your shirt to pretend either you were pregnant or "chesty"  :-).  I have my doubts that my 3 yo was actually pretending either of those things. I think she was really just wanting to hide the marble from me and take it to the park. However, I will tell the story and let you decide for yourself.

Today has been a gorgeous, sunny, hot day (limited in number around here). I let my girl run around in her bathing suit most of the afternoon, all the time wishing I could just let go of my duties and run around in mine. I was dying of heat. That is beside the point (the whole afternoon I kept reminding myself about how sunny and gorgeous and yadi yadi yadi . . ).

At some point, she took off her swimsuit and then put it on by herself (rarely happens, so I will note when it does). When we dropped off my son for soccer this afternoon, I picked her up out of the van. She was still in her suit and I realized it was on backwards. Better her than me :-).   Then, as I was holding her, I realized she had a very hard, round ball in her chest. After a few more seconds, I fished it out and found a large marble.

Kids are so funny. I just love em.

Keep Looking Up

There are moments each day when I realize how fast time flies and how adorable my kids have the capability :-)  to be and I just want to squeeze them tight and keep them small. One of the places we went, while on my family reunion was the temple where my parents were married (I was also married there, but the point of the reunion was to return to where my parents' marriage began).

My mom told stories about her parents traveling to the temple by horse and buggy from Weston.

She's cute isn't she?

Greg told some stories related to farming, since we'd spent the previous day on his farm.

I guess a "funny" picture might go well here (relating to Greg's farm). He let us all in his new barn to see the cows get milked (can you believe how city-fied most of us have become??). My kids were enthralled with the idea of milking (they knew milk came from cows, but to actually see it happen was pretty cool). So, here is Don showing off the cow's 'skills' while at the farm the day before:

Look carefully, there is an itty bitty stream of milk coming out!

 Anyway, I digress :-).  I was hoping to put something amusing in the post and it is off the topic, but was one-of-a-kind.

After the family discussion at the temple, I wanted to wander just a bit with my children. I told them stories of doing baptisms for my first time at age 12. I got to do some of my paternal grandmother's family history names and it was really special. At that age, this temple (and city) were VERY far away and definitely the "big" city to me (honestly, the trip was less than an hour by car). Of course, I talked about my wedding day. So, this day was fun for me to share memories with my children.

The east side of the temple, what I would consider to be the front

Caught Her

I was complaining about my vacuum not working. Part of it was broken anyway, and I just figured the time had definitely come to get rid of it.

As I emptied it for what I thought would be the last time, I noticed a little hole/opening I'd never noticed before. There were big globs of hair coming out of it so I swiped at it a bit and realize it was the opening connected to the vacuum hose and it was plugged.

After a little more "delightful" digging, I could feel something very hard and quite large. I thought, "What in the world has someone vacuumed?" After much more investigation and turning the vacuum upside down, this is what I discovered:

So, I realize my little, curious 3 yr old has been up to something. And, why wouldn't a marker be good to vacuum?

Don't Shoot the Dog

One of my favorite undergraduate books was,  "Don't Shoot the Dog" by Karen Pryor (http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Shoot-Dog-Teaching-Training/dp/1860542387/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313900714&sr=8-1). This was for a Behavioral Psychology class. One of the underlying themes of the book (hence the title) referred to training children (or animals) to have good behavior rather than "shoot the dog" when he gets out of hand.

While at my mountain home this summer, I walked into the laundry room downstairs and saw this chair up on the table (and dirty clothes) just like this. I didn't put the chair there. I can just picture my dad being fed up with one of the grandkids rocking on this chair incessantly or multiple children fighting over the chair, so he got rid of the chair - easy as that. At least it was the chair he got rid of, instead of the child :-).

The chair made me smile (maybe it was my sister who put it up there - would she shoot the dog?). I don't know how my dad 'parented' me as a little kid, I honestly don't remember being 'parented' :-). I think his ways have changed. I tell my children my main form of punishment was to "do the dishes". (Just to set the record straight - my main abuse of rules was to torment my sisters (little sisters).)

Oh yes, there were a few spanks and lots of reaching behind the car seat to give me a pinch for acting up in the car. Those were the worst because if he happened to get the wrong girl . . .

All in good fun right? Fun to reminisce and especially fun for me to have my kids at my mountain home. More posts to come.

Baptism

What a wonderful, happy memory for me to share. My oldest son was baptized in Idaho with his same-age cousin. My son looked forward to this for months and months. When the day finally came, I sent both he and my dad off to the bathroom to get changed. Apparently, my son was taking his time (shocker, right?) putting on the jumpsuit so my dad asked him if he needed some help. My boy replied, "Grandpa, don't forget, I've never been baptized before."

In the chapel, my son stuck very close to his cousin. I wish all baptisms could happen like this, a lot of family support and even being baptized with a cousin.

I wish I would have gotten a picture with my husband's side of the family. I don't know why we didn't, but here is my side:

Family members drove from far distances and this meant so much to me and my son.

Technology Backfired

I am always thinking of things to post on my blog that make me happy, but when something happens that is actually downright funny, I must post right away.

I spent a week and a half at my parents home (my mountain home, as I will refer to it) and while there, I used their computer. There is an option to save passwords so I don't have to retype it each time (aren't passwords a new thing for us to deal with -- serious, I think I will have all of my passwords etched into my headstone when I die). I merrily signed in to my email accounts and facebook, etc.

Fast forward to yesterday. I checked my facebook account and saw that something strange was going on. I am no longer at my mountain home, but visiting my brother a few hours south. I saw that comments were being posted as if they were from me, but I wasn't writing them! I simply deleted the first comment I saw, and thought, "hmm, how strange is that" (it was to my nephew and referred to his specific workplace). I didn't think much of it until last night I saw that six more messages had been "posted" from my account, only none of them were ones I had actually written! I was creeped out further when I read each of the comments and they all dealt with aspects or people in my life naming names and making references to things or places that could very well be true, only I didn't write them and I didn't experience the events.

I can't remember each of the comments but one of them referred to how "loveable" I am and one referred to how adorable I thought someone's grandkids were (who I had apparently seen Sunday night). Well, the mystery kept me up during the night. I just thought someone was trying to steal my identity. I wondered if someone in my family (I have a nephew who is really computer-savvy) was playing a cruel joke on me.

I commented to my Aunt that the message she saw about me seeing her grandkids wasn't actually from me (but that I am sure her grandkids are adorable). Her response back to me indicated that her daughter was actually at my mountain home last Sunday night (I was at my sister's playing games) and that maybe someone from my home was using my account.

That got me to thinking, and laughing. My mom has been accidentally using my facebook account to make comments on pictures and send messages! Mystery solved! No one is trying to steal my identity. When I talked to her about it, she just kept saying, "I wondered why my picture wasn't showing up when I made a comment, it was always your picture." She was a little embarrassed, but laughed good-naturedly too.

I will definitely sleep better tonight :-)