Garage sales, gotta love em'

Me and the kids were on our usual walk this week with our friend Traci and we saw a garage sale sign and decided to check it out. I knew I couldn't carry much since I was pushing our double stroller and I wasn't sure how much cash I had on me but we still wanted to take a peek. Now, just as a side note, Elisabeth has been really bored playing with her toys lately, the only thing she still really plays with is her stroller and dolls. All the other things seem too babyish for her. Now back to my story: so I scrounged my diaper bag for cash and realized I only had about $1.10, then I went over to the toy area and found this really cute little Hello Kitty 'polly pocket-like' house that had all sorts of furniture in it and different little Hello Kitty figures. I brought it over to the 'lady of the house' and asked how much it was going for and she said $1! So we bought it and brought it home and Elisabeth has been playing with it non stop! I love finding cheap things at garage sales that turn out to be treasures for someone else, and it's even better when it'll entertain your kid for a long period of time :).

A haircut and a bus ride

This weekend I gave Scott and Charles twin haircuts, Charles definitely has more of his daddy's features than mine don't you think?




Elisabeth went on her first bus ride today with daddy. She was very excited about the whole thing. Charlie and I followed them over in our van (it's only a 3 mile trip to Scott's work) and brought Elisabeth back home with us. On the ride home she said several times, "Mommy I had a lot of fun going to school with daddy!"

May = worst month ever

This month has been a really hard one for our family, mostly it's just been exhausting! We've all been sick this month with different things, some of us several times (I'm sick again right now and am supposed to sing a solo in Sacrament tomorrow, teach my Valiant 11/12 class and do Sharing time! Pray for a miracle, because right now, my voice is almost gone! and my energy is definitely gone).This is Scott's last month of his 9 month graduate program and he just has an incredible amount of things to do. He's had to spend a lot more time at school this month because of all of his projects, papers, etc. that are due in the next 2 weeks and it's been really hard on all 4 of us. Monday's he leaves for school about the time the kids are waking up and gets home about an hour and a half after they've gone to bed. Tuesday through Friday he's gone from 730am-630pm which means he gets to spend about an hour with me and the kids before they start getting ready for bed and then once they're asleep it's back to homework again. He also has to spend a good part of Saturday working on projects and things. We do have Sundays together, thank goodness for the Sabbath! It has sure been a lonely and exhausting month for me and a really stressful one for Scott trying to manage doing full time masters stuff, work and his calling and family. I know lots of you have been through this and some of you had to do it for 2 or more years, good on ya for hanging in there, I never realized how rough it really was until this month. Just two more weeks!!!

Kisses make everything seem all better

Charles is at an age where he gets hurt a lot, mostly because he's small and still doesn't have perfect balance all the time so he's easily knocked over. The last several weeks now, whenever he's hurt, whether it's a scraped knee, a jammed finger, a bumped head or whatever, he quickly comes over to me while whimpering, arm extended, hand stretched out and puts his cute little palm to my lips and keeps it there until I've kissed it several times and then he'll switch hands and have me kiss the other one too. It's really cute though it seems kind of funny that he does it; I think a lot of kids, including Elisabeth want you to kiss the actual spot where they were hurt. But not Char, he just wants you to give his cute little palms lots of kisses :)!

BBQ

Our friends put on a BBQ this evening in honor of the Frost's who are leaving us next week and moving down to Arizona. We're sure gonna miss you guys!

All pooped out (continue reading at your own discretion)

Charles has had ear infections for the last month and so the doctors have decided to put him on some stronger liquid antibiotics called Ceftin. These more powerful meds cause Char to have some unusual bowel movements occasionally. (Just as a side note, normal bowel movements for an almost one and a half year old are pretty much the same as adults.) This morning Scott and I realized that Char didn't have a bowel movement yesterday and were hoping that didn't mean today would be twice as much or more. We sat down together and ate breakfast and as Scott was clearing Charlie's spot he sniffed around a little and said to me, "I think Charles is stinky." Which in code terms means, 'Charles pooped and I'm telling you because you should probably change him since I'm getting ready to go to work.' :) So I walked over to Charlie, picked him up, felt something a little wet on his clothes, assumed it was from his water cup and proceeded to get a diaper, baby wipes and a changing pad. I laid him down on the pad zipped his sleeper down and was mortified by smell and sight to find brownish 'liquidy' poop(more like chunky diarrhea) oozing out of his diaper, soaking through his onsie and sleeper and completely covering his left leg! I called for reinforcement and Scott ran over with a plastic grocery bag so that I could wipe him all down with several baby wipes and then throw all the mess into the bag and get it out of the house. We put both Elisabeth and Charles in the bath and then Scott left for work. I bathed them and washed out his pajamas in the toilet and then got them all dressed in clean clothes again. We walked back out to the living room where the accident happened and I found a little liquidy poop ball on the floor! So I quickly cleaned up the area thinking that it must've just flung out from his pajamas when I quickly yanked them off of him, but then I realized that more of it was oozing out of his new diaper! So we had to go through the whole clothes stripping and cleaning process one more time, by the end of it I was all pooped out, I'd had enough for the entire week. Thank goodness today is the last day (day ten!) that he has to take Ceftin.

P.S. It is now one in the afternoon and we have just had a third nasty blowout! After filling this diaper up instead of going down the leg it went up and covered his tummy, nice work Char :). You'd think I have a newborn or something.

Kid news

Charles woke up with his pajama shirt like this:

I'm not quite sure how that happened.

Elisabeth has recently started playing with the big kids! Last week they were all standing outside our patio talking to Elisabeth, asking her what her favorite colors were etc., and Elisabeth turned around to me and said, "Mommy, can I go outside and play with them?" I was a little bit surprised by the question since she's never really expressed an interest in playing with older elementary aged kids, but I just nodded my head and said, "uh, sure." She jumped up, got on her plastic tricycle that's parked on our patio, rode past me in the living while waving her hand and saying, "see ya mom," and then proceeded to drive out the door. My little girl is growing up so fast! Pretty soon she's going to be wearing makeup, driving a car, and flirting with boys! Yikes! :)

What does the doggy say?

Char has started making some funny sounds. He makes one particular sound when he's trying to scare someone or when he's trying to make animal sounds, but it's kinda funny because he does the same sound for every animal. Here's a short clip to demonstrate what I'm talking about:

"You are loved..."

Most evenings after we've finished eating our dinner, we'll turn on Josh Groban's new c.d. and we all dance to the song, "You are loved." The kids LOVE this dancing time! Scott and I enjoy it to of course, but mostly because it's fun to watch the kids dance :). They've got some pretty cool moves. I've got it on video camera too, so perhaps if I can figure out how to get that onto You Tube then we'll post it up here later. Here's a picture of Scott dancing with both the kids on him :).

Playtime

Elisabeth is getting better at putting potato heads together. For a while she'd put arms in practically every hole, it looked pretty weird. Now she can get just about every part in it's correct hole...though if you look closely at this one, the big potato head has a nose for a mouth :). After she's put them all together she likes to play with them, in this picture she's pretending they are a family holding hands :).

Here's Charlie flashing a very toothy smile, he's feeling triumphant after knocking down Elisabeth's potato head family :). In the words of Elisabeth, "Charlie, you are a silly boy" :).

In this last picture Elisabeth had lined up a bunch of her toys on my bed and then proceeded to kiss each toy individually.

Twilight and New Moon

After receiving several recommendations from different girlfriends to read the Young Adult fiction books authored by Stephenie Meyer, I decided to finally track down a copy. I borrowed them from a friend (thanks Monique) who checked them out from the library and I read each of the 500-550 page books in a day. I could not put them down. I returned them to Monique but couldn't stop thinking about them so I finally went out and bought a copy for myself. I read them through a second time, but over a week instead of a day which I'm sure Scott and the kids appreciated :), and then I lent them out to friends, most of which really enjoyed them as well. The author graduated from BYU and is in her early thirties. Both of these books that she wrote were NY Times bestsellers and she signed a contract for a total of four books; they're all a part of a continuing story. The first two books are called Twilight and New Moon. The third book, Eclipse, comes out August 7th this year! I'm so excited! I'll probably post another blog about that book once I finish it :). Hopefully this will persuade some of you ladies (I think it's kind of a chick book) to find a copy for yourself, I know you can get them at Barnes and Noble, at Amazon.com or at Deseret Book and I'm sure they are sold in almost any bookstore. If you've read the book(s) already and liked them, please feel free to share your opinions.

Hide and seek

One of Charlie's new favorite things to do is take an object and hide it somewhere interesting. For example the other day Scott found half a stick of string cheese in the shower, and last week I found a toothbrush in my slipper. He'll usually forget about it for a day or two and then accidentally stubble across it and when he does you can tell how delighted he his for rediscovering his hidden object. In the picture to the right, Char had, one evening, hid his sippy cup that was full of milk inside Scott's side of the closet and we didn't find it until the following morning, you can imagine the sour, curdled taste :), yum!

Great entertainment!

Aren't kids such great entertainment!? The other night we wrapped Elisabeth's legs up in an ACE bandage, upon her request, and watched her in hysterics as she tried to walk around the living room, she fell over a lot :). I know, you're probably wishing you would've thought of this idea first...either that or you think we're pretty crazy and lame parents :). We'll do anything for some laughs, good times :).