Summer update

I haven't been blogging much lately mostly because I have complete summer fever/laziness. I have never looked forward to summer as much as I did this past school year. Homeschooling was a rewarding "adventure" for myself and the kids, but once their last assignments were turned into their K12 teachers in June, I literally did a "Toyota jump" and have been partying ever since. I wish I could say that I am one of those amazing moms that keep my kids sharp over the summer with various educational activities, but I am not going to lie.

So far, our summer has consisted mostly of swimming, swimming and more swimming. Sheldon and I have decided that we will never live in a house in Vegas again without a pool. I haven't been as grouchy in this 115 degree weather knowing that we can just jump in the pool when it gets too unbearable. Anyway, here is my feeble attempt of updating my blog by posting a bunch of pics. Hopefully, my laziness will subside when the kids go back to Heckethorn this fall.

Taylor performed the role of Mrs. Potts in a production of Beauty and the Beast. She had to sing 3 solos throughout the play and brought tears to my eyes. She used to hide behind people when standing in front of crowd and has really come out of her shell.

Sheldon's sister, Shellee, and my niece, Leila, came to visit from Washington. Avery talks about Leila at least once a day and thinks she is her best friend. Avery loves when kids come to swim who will sit on the pool stairs with her.


My kids cannot get enough of my niece, Madison, who is staying with us this summer from Florida. Poor Madison, however, has probably had enough of Avery getting into her things.

My sister, Missy, Madison and Aiden

My kid also LOVE to meet Grandma Great at restaurants. Grandma Great always overrides their mom's decisions and orders up all kinds of goodies. Recently, they got their favorite "TCT's" at Macayos with all you can drink Shirley Temples.

This is Avery's summer hairdo. :) Actually, this is what Avery's hair looks like when she goes swimming and then takes a nap with wet hair.

Sydney has become quite the daredevil by the pool this year, especially considering the fact that she just learned to swim late last summer.

I threw a surprise party for Taylor a few weeks before Taylor's birthday this year. Her birthday always falls too close to the 4th of July which means most of her friends are out of town. Surprise parties are a lot harder to pull off than I thought, but it was a great success.

Sheldon took me to Rosemary's to eat with the fancy folk for my birthday. I usually HATE fancy restaurants, but Rosemary's had the best food I have ever eaten.


Uncle Ryan popped in yesterday and asked if anyone wanted to go to the Adventure Dome with him. Three little girls almost passed out with excitement and jumped in his car. Kudos to my brother for taking 3 girls and for braving the summer weekend crowds. He also scored a few more favorite uncle points by taking them to CiCi's Pizza for dinner.

Weekend Fun

Last weekend was action packed.....

First, we had Ned's 4 kids sleep over so he could take Cherlynn out for her birthday. Although it got a little crazy, my kids were in heaven having their cousins over. I remember cousin sleepovers as being one of the best parts of growing up. Of course, now that some of the kids are getting older, a "girls only" and "boys only" room was requested by the kids at bedtime.

After miraculously getting 7 kids fed and ready for school by 8 am the next morning, I rushed Taylor and Alaina to their field trip at McCaw Mine out in Henderson. McCaw Mine is attached to McCaw Elementary School in Henderson and is only open to 4th graders in Clark County being it is the year they study Nevada History in school. Since the mine is quite realistic, the girls got to wear mining helmets with head lamps while exploring through the mine with their guide. They also got to pan for real gold flakes and bring them home. Taylor was informed by her guide that she found $5 worth of gold. Yee haw!

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After panning for gold, we then headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house for homemade mac n' cheese, all you can eat Otter Pops and to show the girls how to plant a garden. We also decided to plant a new ANNOYING Sun Chips bag out in the garden to see if it really is 100% compostable and just how long it takes to disintegrate.

On Saturday, we learned that soccer is never cancelled no matter how hard the wind is blowing. Also, we discovered that Grandma Orme, Aunt Susie and Uncle Niels are hard core fans and that crazy wind and 8am games won't get them down. Thankfully, Suz and Niels brought Winchells (better than Krispy Kremes) to make the morning brighter.




Avery was invited to a Cinderella birthday party on Sat. afternoon. She had hugged and talked about her invitation the whole week before so she was pretty excited to go. Brittany from my ward graciosuly dressed up as Cinderella and came to the party to read the kids a book and to color with them. Avery is still talking about coloring with "Rella".

 

A Fabulous Find

I have lived in Las Vegas for over 21 years and feel like I know most of the fun, little places to take my kids to around town. However, today we were invited on a new field trip to McKee Ranch in the southwest part of town. I love any opportunity to get my kids around farm animals since they are sort of a novelty in Vegas.

I knew my girls would have a great time when we got out of the car and heard a rooster crow. My kids' faces lit up with excitement while Avery tried to imitate the sound. The ranch is free admission and the owners let you bring carrots and crackers to feed the animals. They probably have more animals, but we fed goats, sheep, pigs, bunnies, chickens, a turkey, and a lot of horses, including little miniature ponies. The ranchers will also let you in the pastures right next to the horses which is rare. The ranch was full of old wooden toys, little benches, toilet planters, an old outhouse, a horse tire swing, and the extremely rare wooden merry go round.

If you are looking for something FREE to do with your kids one day, I highly recommend the McKee Ranch.

Polar Plunge

Taylor and Sydney have been asking me since the beginning of March if they can go swimming in our pool. My answer is always, "No, the pool is freezing cold and I am not heating it until May." I have also tried explaining to them that even though it is starting to warm up outside, it doesn't mean the pool is warm yet. Of course, my babbling goes in one ear and out the other.

So today when they asked yet again if they and a friend could jump in the pool, we said, "Go for it." It took just one dip of my foot into the 60 degree water to let me know that it will be another month or so before I jump in that water. I figured my girls would decide the same thing once they put their feet in. However, there was no dipping their toes in. They just came out and plunged right in.

Taylor and Samantha, being the tough girls that they are, tried to pretend that the water was just fine to quiet my laughter.


However, Mom was right as usual. The pool was FREEZING and they made a desperate dash for the hot tub.

Of course, Avery was anxious to sport her new swimsuit from Aunt Susie and to try to keep up with the big girls.
Avery has now reached the age of the fake, cheesey smile.

Status report

Hmmm, should I keep homeschooling or should I not? That has been the question hanging over my head for the last month. Well, actually, it is a question that I pose to myself on a daily basis.

Although some days have been bumpy for us, here are some of our celebrated successes over the past 7 months:

• I have finally trained Sydney to not say, "Nothing, " when Sheldon or someone calls on the phone and asks her what she is doing.
• I have finally convinced Taylor that Math worksheets are not just "busy work".
• Avery will now sit and do puzzles or color with crayons for 30 minutes at a time before throwing them at us. It used to be about 5 minutes.
• We have made friends with the lady at the gas station where I get my daily Dr. Pepper so I can cope with teaching Math to a certain child.
• Sydney used one of her vocabulary words from a History lesson on Babylon to accidentally insult someone. After apologizing, we decided to focus on the fact that she remembered the word. ;)

All joking aside, we are having fun with the K12 program and have registered for another year. I don't want to bore anyone with my many reasons for continuing to homeschool so I won't. Wish us luck!

Taste the Rainbow

Last weekend, my sister, Susie, invited my girls to sleep over. Yes, even Avery was invited. Did I mention that I love my sister?

I have told Susie, a.k.a. Martha, that she doesn't always need to make elaborate plans because my kids just want to be with her and Niels and escape from my yelling. However, she never listens. This particular sleepover entailed eating homemade pizza, a trip to Yogurtland, and then as a finale, learning how to make rainbow cupcakes. I know, I know. I've asked myself the same thing. Are we really sisters? Oh well, at least I got the looks in the family. :) Just joking. Thanks, Aunt Suz and Uncle Niels!

Will Work for Mickey

As most everyone knows, Disneyland is offering a free day at Disneyland to those who give a day of service to one of their chosen organizations. Now who would pass up free tickets to Disneyland for their whole family?

Our family signed up to help clean Lake Elementary's school grounds. It is an older school that is required to keep its playground gates open to the public on the weekends to double as a city park. However, the city does not help in cleaning the grounds, thus leaving the poor custodians with a huge workload.

Since there were about 75 other volunteers along with us, we were broken into groups. Our group was assigned the playground area. We were asked to scrub the playground equipment, pick up the trash (tons of broken glass!), and rake leaves. I was so proud of my girls for not complaining once and for working hard the whole time. We were only scheduled to help from 9 - 12, but some adults were sitting down on the benches after 30 minutes of being there. One lady asked if she could go home early! Taylor was disgusted with the lady and asked me if they were still going to give the lady a ticket.

My kids lit up when the news cameras started following us around. They kept yelling, "Mom, they're filming us!" I think the camera man was getting annoyed. :) We did get our 2 seconds of fame on the news that night, however. It really did feel good to get out and serve as a family and to earn our next family vacation.

"No peein' on my frog!"

One of my New Year's goals is to get Avery potty trained and say my final goodbye to diapers. I bought her a cute little frog potty on clearance at Target over the weekend thinking I scored since Avery loves the frogs from "Princess and the Frog". Avery was so excited, which surprised me because even the slightest mention of potties ticks her off. If you try to put her on the big toilet, she claws and screams like you are killing her. She also locks her body so you can't put her into a sitting position.

Anyway, I started talking to her about going "pee pee" in her frog. She replied with a giggle, "Noooo, no pee on the frog," like I was so silly for telling her to pee on her new frog. After some more coaxing, I tried to tell her to pee in the frog again, but this time she was passionate and ANGRY!

"NO PEEIN' ON MY FROG!!!"

Hmmm, I probably should have got a potty chair that resembled more of a toilet and not a cute little frog. Ain't nobody gonna pee on that girl's frog!

Note to Self

Note to Self: Place makeup bag, specifically mascara, on a higher shelf.

Not your typical field trip

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Today, Taylor and I got the rare opportunity to tour the Nevada FBI headquarters thanks to my great friend, April, who arranged everything. It was most definitely not your typical field trip. The parents had to pass a background check, sign privacy disclosures, walk through metal detectors, no cameras, etc. However, the most significant difference I found with this field trip versus past field trips was the fact that our kids got to go inside the FBI gun vault to learn about all of their weapons and even got to hold one of their Tommy guns. You would probably have a parade of angry mothers in the front office of the elementary school threatening law suits had this been a regular school field trip.

Thanks, April, for taking the time to set up such a unique and fun field trip for us!

Halloween 2009

The little butterfly who hated her wings and yelled "Gimme a treat!" at every house. She has told everyone that she was Abby Cadaby from Sesame Street. Please no one tell her that she was a butterfly, it makes her really mad. ;)

Sydney is infamous for picking a gruesome costume. She has been wearing her fangs for about a month now and also running as fast as she can around the house to make sure her cape flew behind her. She was so excited for Halloween this year and couldn't be bothered waiting for her sisters while trick or treating. She was usually 2 or 3 houses ahead of the rest of us.

Taylor has always chosen to be some sort of princess every year. Even her bat costume in Kindergarten turned into a bat princess. This year she wanted to be an Egyptian princess so I introduced her to Cleopatra. She played the royalty part well as usual. I think she was mostly excited that her dad let her wear makeup this year.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

"Help! I'm snuck!"

Avery has a typical 2 yr. old fascination with slamming doors and locking them. Her bedroom door has been very sensitive to its horrible treatment and decided not to unlock and let her out after several attempts at opening it with screwdrivers, butter knives, excessive force, yelling at it..........

After 45 min of failed attempts to open the blessed door and listening to "Help, I'm snuck!", I called her father to come home and rescue her. However, while we were waiting for him, her other super hero, Taylor, stepped in to help keep her calm and even pushed some fruit snacks under the door for her. Thank goodness for big sisters and fruit snacks in times like these.

One fall...that's all.

Since Sydney is turning 7 in a couple of months, Sheldon and I decided that having training wheels on her bike was no longer an option. Actually, Sheldon took her wheels off a long time ago, but she won't ride it. She always opts for the scooter. Well, the scooter is now broken and I am refusing to buy her a new one so she will learn to ride her bike.

Today was a beautiful day so Sheldon and I took the girls to a park with a walking trail and lots of grass so Sydney could learn to ride her bike. Piece of cake, right? Wrong! Sheldon gave her the pep talk, walked her through the steps of keeping it steady, held on to the back and started pushing her along and Sydney screamed BLOODY murder while sticking her feet out to the side and off the pedals. Keep in mind, this walking trail has houses that back up to it. I'm pretty sure we had all of their attention and that at least one of them was dialing 911.

After an hour, Sheldon finally got her to pedal. And then.....she fell into a plant and was done. There was no talking her or bribing her into getting back on. One fall and she was done. Maybe another day. Teaching a child how to ride a bike rates about the same on my list as potty training. It sucks!

Spooked

Being that I have not one creative bone in my body, I am always amazed by other people's creations. Recently, Sheldon came home with a skeleton that a lady in his office had made for us by using old milk jugs. My kids were so excited! Well, except for Avery. She pretty much thinks it's the spookiest thing she has ever seen. In fact, she makes a huge circle around it when she has to walk by it and keeps one eye on it at all times. I probably should take it down since she is so scared of it, but instead I am thinking about keeping it up year round and hanging it by the dog food so she'll stay out of it or in the bathroom so she'll quit unrolling the toilet paper. Mother of the year here, I know. Well, I probably won't keep it up all year, but at least until Christmas so I can keep the ornaments on the tree this year.