Father-son campout and girls night!

Last night Scott took Charles to Lehi for the annual Father-son ward campout. Charles was really excited to sleep in a tent with a sleeping bag(his first time)next to Daddy. They ate tin foil dinners which consisted of potatoes, chicken and carrots all cut up into bite size pieces. Here is a picture of Charles in our tiny little two man tent. I personally think it's more the size of a one man tent but Scott says I'm wrong...one thing is for sure though: you'll be nice and cozy if there's two of you!
Meanwhile, Elisabeth, Annabelle and I had a girls night! Elisabeth was in charge and this was our agenda: paint toenails(just Mommy and Elisabeth), put dresses/skirts on, go get an ice cream cone(we went to Arctic Circle and then she was able to play on the equipment for awhile), go to the library, go to a park and twirl around in our dresses, go home and set up a sleeping bag in Mommy's room for Elisabeth, do our normal night time routine, then play Dora Memory(we played 5 rounds of this!) and watch a couple of Cosby Show episodes. The only thing we didn't get to do was the library because we forgot that they close at 6pm on Friday. During our Cosby Show time the boys called and Charles and Elisabeth carried on a really cute conversation. I only got the last part on video...Elisabeth laughed A LOT when they first started talking, apparently it was pretty funny talking to Charles on the phone while he was in a tent.

This morning the boys stayed for breakfast and then came home. For breakfast they ate omelets and the way they cooked them was pretty cool. They had all the makings for omelets out on a table and you'd stick whatever you wanted into a plastic ziploc baggie, including the eggs, mix it all up in there and then stick the ziploc filled bag into a pot of boiling water and let it sit there for about 20 minutes and then it's ready to eat! Perhaps most people already knew about this way to make omelets, but I'm not much of a camper, only been a couple of times so everything is new and interesting to me! The kids slept pretty good last night though the parents didn't sleep quite as well. Both children either cry or talk in their sleep and so that kept Mom and Dad up for awhile. But overall, it was a very fun and memorable evening!

Play mat

Today I was telling my neighbor Maren that I'd like to find a play mat for baby Annabelle so that she could entertain herself a little. She happened to have one in storage that we could borrow. So I took it home, set it up, laid her down and then walked into the kitchen to warm up dinner (I love having leftovers, they're so fast and easy!) and a few minutes later I went in to check on her and this is how I found her:
Fast asleep! It turns out that Annabelle is not so entertained by this cute little play mat after all. Perhaps it's an acquired taste. Unfortunately, If she ends up liking it in the future I figure the only time I'd be able to safely pull it out and allow her to use it is if her older siblings are asleep because they enjoy sandwiching Annabelle and aggressively whacking at all the toys.

Kid friendly activities

Sunday Elisabeth helped me bake blonde brownies.Monday the kids went outside to 'paint' with water on our cement patio(thanks for the idea Gina).
Today we made pudding, taped some wax paper to the table and did some pudding finger painting. It was sure yummy!

Tae Bo

I exercise 5 times a week, Monday through Friday, on my elliptical machine for about half an hour. After we finish up breakfast and the kids get dressed, Annabelle goes down for her morning nap and the kids want to watch a dvd, usually leap frog or Dora, so I let them do that while I work out on the elliptical machine while reading a book or Ensign articles. I love doing this because I get a little bit of time to myself and it gives me some extra energy. It works out pretty well for us. Walks and runs have gotten too difficult with three kids. I only have a double stroller so either Elisabeth would need to walk or ride her bike or I'd have to strap on Annabelle and it just seemed like too much to do every day.

When my dad came out to visit, my mom sent us a few things. One of the things she sent out was the Tae Bo II Advanced video with Billy Blanks. She knows I have the first one(it used to be hers but no one ever used the advanced one but me she let me have it) and thought I might like this one as well. The last couple of days I've been wanting to do something a little different for exercise so I put in this video and tried it out. The kids mostly just watched me(for 60 minutes!), though sometimes they'd do some of the exercises too. It was hard but it felt so good and I worked up a good sweat! At the end of the the work out Billy gave a little pep talk that I liked. He said to talk positively and to "Remember the words that proceed out of your mouth to make it be positive to your life and to somebody else's life. Anything that is negative take it out and throw it away because you don’t want your ears to hear it because whatever your ears hear is usually what you do. So take it and throw it away and be positive from this time on and you’ll start to reach your goals."

So there you go! Thoughts on life from Billy Blanks!

Trading beds

The kids swapped beds this week. We found a twin bed on craigslist that we picked up for Elisabeth, we handed her toddler bed down to Charles, and moved his crib into Annabelle's room. I know her bumper is blue, but blue is all we have so that's what she gets :) Annabelle had been sleeping in our room in her bassinet and I had planned on leaving her in there for a couple more months, but she's sleeping so well that I decided to give her new room and crib a try and it's going really well so far. If she keeps it up then we'll probably take the bassinet down next week, but for now it's just sitting in our room in case it's needed. Some nights I do have to get up once to feed her, but I still feel like I'm sleeping better despite the middle of the night walk because I am a light sleeper and Annabelle makes little noises and moves around in her sleep, but now that I'm a room away I don't wake up to all the little noises, just to the louder ones, the ones that mean she's awake and ready to eat.

Ladies night with my roomies!

Last night I was able to meet up with a few of my roommates from college! It had been way too long since our last visit and I loved every minute we spent together! We met at Chili's (apparently that is THE place to have ladies nights because there were several other tables within eye shot that were crowded with woman wearing wedding bands and holding little babies) around 8pm, ate a little and talked a lot. The only thing missing were our out-of-state roomies. Perhaps we could plan some sort of reunion in the future for all to attend. Thanks ladies for a fun(and much needed) night out! This is what I ate, a white molten chocolate cake! SO good!

The power of prayer

Yesterday afternoon Annabelle started screaming crying and wouldn't stop. I tried everything that I could think of to get her to stop. I tried feeding her and she refused and kept screaming. I tried her pacifer, same result. I put her on my shoulder for about 5 minutes, patted and rubbed her back, turned her facing out to put pressure on her tummy...same result, kept screaming and crying. I checked her diaper, she was poopy! I changed her but she kept on screaming. I put her on my shoulder again, rocked her, sang to her but nothing helped. Her face was SO red and she had been screaming crying for over 20 minutes so I really started to worry. It was definitely some sort of pain cry, but she wouldn't burp so what else could I do? I laid her down on my bed and checked her body to make sure nothing was pinching or hurting her. I found nothing and she continued to wail...though now it turned into that cry that you almost can't hear because they're having a hard time breathing. So now I'm thinking, "what do I do, what do I do? This is my third, I should be able to help her! Should I call my mom? No, she's probably at work and I can't see how that would really help. Should I call a nurse? (me going over the conversation in my head): 'Hi nurse, my baby is screaming and crying and she won't stop. Nothing is hurting her that I can see, and she won't eat and I've changed her diaper. What should I do?' No, I can't do that, she'll think I'm stupid and won't be able to help anyway unless I brought her in and that'd take too long. There's got to be something I can do! Pray! Yes pray!" Elisabeth was with me following me around because she was also concerned. I told her I was going to say a prayer so we both got down on our knees and prayed for our Sweet Annabelle. Once I finished I tried nursing her again. She latched on this time and drank, in between whimpers, but only for a couple of minutes and then she stopped and started screaming and crying again. I put her on my shoulder again, I just knew this was the answer, getting that little bit of milk in her had to have helped. I put some pressure on her tummy and back again and finally she let out a HUGE burp and within 30 seconds she stopped crying and was happy again. I took this picture a few minutes after she finished crying because she was smiling but her face was still all red and splotchy from crying. I'm so thankful for our father in heaven who hears and answers prayers.

Grandpa Garnica

My dad left about a week and a half ago. Since he's been gone we've occasionally seen Elisabeth walking around with a 'cane' (actually a bat) while saying, "I have old legs." We told Elisabeth that Grandpa has 'old legs' and that's why he couldn't go up and down the stairs(though he did use the stairs once his first day here). He's 81 years old and his knees are just...well they are 81 years old too and they are tired and giving him lots of pain. My dad doesn't walk around with a cane, though he should, but trying to convince him is a little hard. He doesn't want to feel old and crippled, and that's understandable, though we're trying to convince him that there are some nice looking canes out there, and in fact President Hinckley had a nice one (though it seems like he mostly carried it rather than used it). We'll see what he decides.

While dad was here I had him make lots of his famous "Garnica Beans". You know, the first time I had refried beans from a can was when I went to college; my dad ALWAYS makes beans from scratch and we had it just about EVERY day, along with mexican rice. He also makes some fantastic enchiladas and guacamole, I was sure spoiled(FYI:Dad was born and raised in Mexico, he moved to USA in his late 20's and he owned a Mexican restaurant in Seattle for awhile)! As a side note, mom was also an amazing cook! But this post is about when Dad was here and the food he made. So anyways....I have made them a few times since we've been married...The first time I made them they were SO dry, it was gross, and we ended up throwing most of them away. They've gotten better every time but they never seem to reach that level of perfection in look, taste and texture like Dad's. So while Dad was here I was excited to watch him in action to see if I could figure out what I was doing wrong. I think I've about got it down now, though Dad says I need new pans (apparently mine are "no good"...a direct quote from Dad in his cute accent), and I also need to buy newer and a different kind of pinto bean. I think I bought the right kind (isn't there only one kind out there?), but I think he's right about buying newer pinto beans. See what happened was we got all these pinto beans for free when we were on WIC almost 5 years ago and because of my first couple failed attempts at making beans, I decided that we better just enjoy them when we visit Dad. I saved these bags of beans, didn't necessarily store them correctly, and so they're a little bit different. We were still able to use them, we just had to cook them A LOT longer than normal. So here's dad's recipe if anyone wants to give it a try; it's in my own words because he doesn't write recipes down, and I tried to add a couple of tips so that you might have a better chance of succeeding(unlike me) the first time you try them. (This is a picture of refried beans that I made up today just to give you an idea of what they look like)

Refried Beans
Wash and drain pinto beans(I use a bag or about 2-3 cups). Cook beans in a large pot of boiling water (once it begins to boil turn the heat down to about med-hi) for about 2 hours, until they have softened. Add 2 Tablespoons of salt during the last ten minutes. In a large frying pan warm a thin layer of canola/vegetable oil(temp. should be around med-hi). Put in large spoonfuls of beans(watch out because they will really fry and water/oil will jump out at you). Add some of the juice from the pinto beans(I usually do about 2-3 ladle's full). Mash the beans while stirring to refry and let sit for a few minutes. Bring the temperature down to low.

Saturday activities

Our Saturdays are usually spent cleaning, shopping and getting things ready for Sunday and the following week(we have church at 9am so we like to select outfits and do ironing if needed). Now that the ground has thawed, we also do yard work which keeps us busy. This past Saturday we went to the Hudson's and let the kids play in the water. Charles didn't want to go into the little pool or go down the slip in slide, he just wanted to stand outside of the pool and splash the water with his hand. After quite some time he was willing to go down the slide with a little bit of assistance (Brian held his hand), and afterwards Brian also helped him into the pool. The kids LOVED splashing in the water on this very warm day. On our walk home Annabelle probably got tired of staring at her bonnet and fell asleep in the carseat (I promise I didn't know it was like this, otherwise I would have fixed it...I've been accused(jokingly) of putting her hats and headbands over her eyes on purpose so that she'll fall asleep :), because it seems to happen fairly frequently). Also notice that her pinky finger is hooked into the hood of the carseat....she was startled in her sleep and flinched and it got caught in there, but it must not have bothered her because she continued to sleep. In the evening I went next door and worked in the kitchen and in the yard for several hours because our neighbor's daughter was just married and was having a reception in her parents backyard. I had a lot of fun! I got to serve along side several other women(mostly older...between 20-30 years older than myself) who I go to church with but whom I didn't know very well before and working together gave us the chance to visit, share stories and laugh at silly things we did throughout the evening. I love serving with others because you're busy doing good and, from my experience, there is usually no gossip, and people are happy and cheerful which is contagious! My family came for awhile, went through the line, ate, visited with some friends and then went back home and got ready for bed. Elisabeth even got to feed Annabelle(Annabelle has only taken a bottle twice so that was fun for her).

Conversation with Elisabeth

This afternoon we were outside playing and our 18 year old neighbor, Katie, came out and was getting into her car when Elisabeth decided to go over and give a quick hello. She talked to her for a minute (I couldn't hear what was said) and then Elisabeth came back and Katie drove off. Elisabeth told me that Katie is going to the Doctor and then we had this conversation:

"Mommy, does Katie have a baby in her tummy?"(she's knows that I pretty much only go to the doctor when I am pregnant)
"No. Usually women don't get babies in their tummies until they are married. And Katie's not married."
"Oh, well Ashley (Katie's sister) is getting married tomorrow, so then she'll have a baby in her tummy tomorrow." (said in a very matter- of-fact tone)
"Well, probably not tomorrow. But maybe she'll have one pretty soon."
"Yeah, she will because every womans can have babies when they're married."

I think this is just the very beginning of many interesting conversations of this sort. :)

Amazing sleeper!

Annabelle has started sleeping through the night, and she's only 3 months! Now she doesn't sleep through the night EVERY night, but more than half of the time she does, and she never wakes up more than once a night. This is such a pleasant surprise! Elisabeth was a pretty good sleeper too, she started sleeping through the night around or just after 4 months(which is when she discovered her thumb). Regarding Annabelle, I was expecting the worst and imagined her to follow more of Charlie's sleep habits... he also sucked his fingers starting very early on in life but even then he didn't start sleeping through the night until he was one year old and he would usually wake up a couple of times! And so I am very grateful for this recent development and hope that it continues.

Garnica's visit over Memorial weekend

Grandpa Garnica and the girls

Wednesday my dad flew in from Seattle and my brother Fred, his wife Robin and their kids drove out from Denver. They stayed for the weekend and took off for home this morning. We had a really nice time visiting with one another. We had a lot of good laughs and in fact last night we were all laughing so hard and loud that most of us were in tears! The kids enjoyed playing with their cousins. Shaun is about a month younger than Charles and Reese and Annabelle are not even a week apart which is fun. I think they'll be good friends throughout their lives.

Shaun and Elisabeth

While they were here we made LOTS of Mexican food since my dad is an amazing Mexican chef! Friday we had Brian and Maren over for dinner; Brian served a spanish speaking mission so he and my dad got to visit in Spanish which my dad enjoyed. Sunday we had my aunt and uncle over for dinner and then afterwards the kids went out back and played for awhile. Thanks for coming and staying with us, we love you all!

Fred and Reese

Fred, Robin, Reese and Elisabeth

Me, Dad(Luis Garnica), and Annabelle

Here are a couple of video clips that we took while outside. The first one is of the kids dancing, and the second shows Annabelle and Reese. Annabelle does not like looking at cameras which you'll see :).

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Blurb.com

Our family photo journal (aka blog) for 2007 arrived today! I am so excited to have a copy of it! I used www.blurb.com to create my 8x10 hardcover book and I love it! It was easy and fun, though it does take a little bit of time especially if you want to change the format and layouts of different pages, and it only cost $50 w/shipping and tax for about 120 pages! A couple of months ago I was going to print off a bunch of pictures from the last several months from Costco and it was going to be $40 so I'm glad that I found this just in time because now I have all my pictures printed, bound and scrapbooked! And it's a really great quality. Here are a few pictures of the finished product so you can see for yourself. I also added a table of contents page and in the back I added my yearly family newsletter and a section called, "from the mouth of babes" that has cute things the kids said. This is definitely my kind of scrapbooking. (I included lots of pictures so you can see a sample of different layouts)

Busy

Yesterday morning/afternoon we went to a friends house, we played on the slip and slide, played with outdoor toys, visited, ate and had a really fun time. We came home and the kids ate lunch and took naps. When they woke up we started our preparations for the guests that would be arriving today. We cleaned the bathrooms, mirrors, got beds ready, cleaned clothes, rearranged rooms, vacuumed etc. Most days I can go, go, go until around 5pm and then I start losing steam. Scott gets home at 6pm every day so there's usually about an hour there where I'm just hoping that the kids will color or play outside or do something where they can mostly entertain themselves while I get dinner together. Yesterday around 515 Elisabeth asked me to come downstairs and look at her room because she cleaned it beautifully and made her bed. As we were coming back upstairs I could hear Charles in the kitchen. I went in to check on him and he had taken out our dish detergent(the child proof lock was broken sometime earlier this week by someone...my best guess is Charles), opened the dishwasher and dumped A LOT of dish soap inside. I was too tired to deal with monitoring Charles while he cleaned it up so I sent him to his room, grabbed a spoon and then sat down (because I was too tired to stand while doing this) and spooned it all back in. 10 minutes later it was mostly all cleaned up and so I went back to his room to tell him he could come out now and I found him holding his desitin and smearing it all over his face like shaving cream. His hands were covered and it was also on his shirt. By the time we got that all cleaned up Scott was home and dinner was obviously not ready. We made and ate dinner and then we went outside and worked on our garden for awhile. It was late, we were all tired but our neighbors had extra mulch that they offered to us and so we wanted to get things ready for that. The kids weren't listening very well: they were running in the street and shoveling dirt out of the garden and throwing it everywhere. Around 8pm we went inside and the kids started getting ready for bed. I was feeling very flustered and frenzied so I put Annabelle down in her bassinet to sleep and then I found Scott and told him I was going to take a shower because I needed a 10 minute break. I turned on the shower head and then cried under the water for a few minutes(as a side note, I cry when I'm overwhelmed with some sort of emotion: happy, sad, stress, frenzy, frustration etc.). It's amazing what a shower and few minutes of alone time can do for you; when I got out I felt refreshed and ready to help get the kids to bed.

Parenting, especially parenting to several little ones, can be exhausting at times but it's also very rewarding. Children give the BEST hugs and kisses! I love getting slobbery kisses and I love it when they wrap their little arms around your neck and squeeze you tight. And it's amazing to me how quickly they forgive and forget when they've been hurt or wronged. I love watching them learn new things and progress and grow. The other day when Charles pulled Elisabeth's hair, instead of hurting him she used her words and said, "Charlie, I'm very upset with you. You are not making me happy and you are making me sad and I'm frustrated and I don't want you to do that." It was funny to hear her say that and at the same time I was very pleased because I knew that it was hard for her not to get angry and lash out at him, but she's learning to control herself and to make good choices. And that is the most rewarding thing for me: seeing my children make good choices.

Three discoveries

1.)
Elisabeth has been waking up around 630am for the last few weeks. Last week we discovered that she can read a clock(sort of), so I put one of our alarm clocks in her room and told her that she couldn't wake up Mommy until the first number (I pointed to the hour number on the far left), was a 7 or an 8. She's doing really well with this! She still wakes up early (you can't really force a child to wake up when you want), but she'll get all dressed and then play quietly until it's 7am or until she hears us because occasionally Charles will wake up before 7am as well...I might just try and get another clock for Char. I know he won't completely understand the way Elisabeth does but at least I can tell him I won't be coming in to get him until the first number is a 7; we'll see how that goes :).
2.)
Sunday we discovered Charles sitting on the tile in the kitchen cracking LOTS of eggs and dumping them into a big bowl of pudding. Apparently he wanted to start our Sunday baking tradition a little early, and on his own :). When we found him we said, "Wow, are you baking something delicious?" He smiled and said yes. Then we told him that we love to make yummy foods and we like for him to help, but that he needs to do it with either Mommy or Daddy. He agreed and later on that day he helped us make some funnel cake mix.

3.)
Annabelle has discovered a preference in which fingers she sucks. Unfortunately, she's not our first child to do this: Elisabeth sucked her thumb, Charles sucked his pointer and middle fingers,(and I know what you're thinking when you see the picture below of the 'partners in crime'. You're wishing I would come and style your kids hair just like Elisabeth's, but I'll tell you now that I don't have time to do other children's hair because it takes hours just to get hers right :)) and Annabelle sucks her middle and ring fingers. When I see her sucking them I pull them out and replace them with the binky. Despite my efforts I'm afraid that all the children that I will ever have will be finger suckers. We're going to need to invest in a good family dental plan. I wonder if there are plans that will pay for braces? Now hopefully after going through the 'quitting' problem with each child, I'll learn some great tricks on how to help them quit and it'll get easier with each child...yeah right, if only ALL kids were the same huh? :) As my friend Rachael would say with a smile (I can hear you now Rach), "Yeah, good luck with that!"