Summer in Oregon

The kids and I spent several weeks this summer with my family in Oregon, while John finished up his dissertation. Here's a quick view of the things we did there:

Isaac's seventh birthday

Isaac and Jeremiah spinning Grandpa for pin the tail on the dragon. :)

Cuddling on grandpa's chair
Kids playing bubble tag in the back yard

Leora on Independence Day.

Isaac waiting (patiently?) for fireworks to begin.

Kids waiting for their swim lessons to begin.

Leora was THRILLED to be in swim lessons this year!

She is a super-duper floater.

Isaac is a great under-water swimmer...and therefore we didn't get a lot of pictures of him.

Jeremiah is a cute top-of-the-water swimmer.

And, he has a couple "grown-up teeth!"

Disneyland 2010

I thought if I included "2010," maybe we'd go back sometime...

We had a ton of fun going to Disneyland together! We went 2 1/2 years ago, right around Christmastime, and honestly, Isaac had a blast! Jeremiah was terrified of ALL rides he went on (Dumbo, the carousel...that's about it) and Leora was barely a year old and didn't really care.

So, this time, we went on one of the last summer days that the ark closed at 8. It was a great choice. Hardly any lines, and we could do everything we wanted to! Yippee!

Mostly the next few posts will just have pictures. Because my favorite father mentioned that wehaven't posted here recently. And I don't really have the time/current desire to write a ton. Since we're moving currently. We'll be in Wisconsin in 6 days! Which means moving out of our apartment and having everything packed and shipped and cleaned within the next 4 days...

The boys on the teacups.

Leora and John on the teacups.

Isaac hanging out in jail in ToonTown.

Alison, Jeremiah and Leora sitting on a bench on the carousel.

Leora consulting the Disneyland map. :)

Our family! At Disneyland!

Jeremiah and Isaac with Disney souvenirs!

Leora with HER souvenir. We went into the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, and I fgured we'd get her a beautiful princess tiara or purse and gloves...but no. We found the best swords and shields ever!

Good-bye Disneyland!

General Conference

This morning, I woke up early, which is to be expected when I go to bed at 8 with the kids. And I started making our traditional Conference breakfast: sour cream coffee cake (yes, I see the irony there, and we've had word of wisdom discussions with our kids because of it), sausages, and strawberries. Mmmm. Jeremiah woke up just a tad after me, and liked helping me stir all the batter for the coffee cake. He's a great helper. I had my recipe up on the laptop, and after mixing for a few minutes, Jeremiah was finished... and wanting to play a game on my open computer. But, he told me, he knew that we needed the recipe open, so could he "do the plus" to open a new tab? So cute. I love that kiddo.

I had the bright idea last night that if I took the kids swimming between sessions today, they'd be worn out and therefore at least quiet, if not actually paying attention, for the afternoon session. It worked. I think. I'm not sure because I only made it through the first half of the afternoon session. Oh well.

I'm just so glad that survived the last, oh, 5 years. I love my kids. They're great. It's taken a lot of work to get to this point. I'm so glad that I did it. I know I'll have more challenges and frustrations as these ones get older, but, it's just so satisfying to see how far we've come.

Books I've Read Recently

Not in any particular order, and I'll likely mention if I really didn't like it. If you're looking for great books to read, here are my most recent selections.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, juvenile series.

Three Cups of Tea, non-fiction. There's a sequel I haven't yet read called Stones into Schools. Very powerful non-fiction.

The Actor and the Housewife, fiction.

The Color of Water, non-fiction.

The Blind Side, non-fiction. The first 2 chapters are straight football, and I almost didn't make it through, but it was an amazing book. We just saw the movie last night, and it was also very good--and followed the book pretty precisely. It was fun to see what was straight from the book, and what was changed and embellished in the film.

Evermore, juvenile series.

The Guinea Pig Diaries, non-fiction. Not appropriate for a Relief Society book group, but hilarious. And highly recommended, with a grain of salt. :)

Parenting with Love and Logic, non-fiction. (It's a parenting book.)

And a couple books I have on hold at our library and am anticipating picking up are The Happiness Project, non-fiction, and The Help, fiction.

Happy reading!

I always accept suggestions.

Princess Danielle

Danielle opened 3 chests of princess dress-ups for Christmas. She is a very very happy princess these days.

Christmas 2009

The most Christmas-y of pictures of 2009. :)

Danielle's 3rd Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Danielle! Three things I love about Danielle:

1. She's girly. I absolutely love that she wants her hair up, me to paint her toenails, and that we pick out "make-up" together.

2. She gives amazing 3-year-old hugs.

3. She's silly! This girl makes me crack up every day. She's hilarious. And delightful.

Jeremiah's Photo Shoot

While we were in Florida, Jeremiah, my camera, and I went on a walk/photo-shoot. And, after manipulating some of the cutest pictures on my computer and some learning curve involvement, here's what we (Jeremiah, my camera, my computer, and I) came up with.

tidbits

The boys had their Kindergarten Holiday Concert this afternoon. SO CUTE!!! Very enjoyable. I teared up: Isaac surprised us by singing a solo!

Today was a beautiful day for biking.

Danielle is all-the-way potty-trained. Except she can't turn the light on by herself. I'll take it!

Jeremiah can mostly sound out words. He was watching a word-less video John found him (on YouTube) and at the end of it, he said in his sweet little voice, "Clash of Fates." Yes, that is a little too random to be environmental print.

Isaac's imagination continues to amaze me. He loves lincoln logs. He builds the typical log houses of various sizes and shapes, as well as fences and catapults and cannons. Sometimes the lincoln logs become standing soldiers defending Danielle's princess castle. He barricaded the castle door closed with tall lincoln logs and told Jeremiah it was time to knock it down...which Jeremiah proceeded to do quite happily.

Jeremiah continues to destruct while the other children construct, in general.

Isaac's being assessed for a gifted program at school, and has individual reading time with the reading specialist rather than typical kindergarten s-a-t.

My children are very much not interested in the tasty, pretty scotcharoo wreath which my visiting teachee gave me this morning, and I'm happily consuming it.

Zero Christmas presents under the tree have been opened.

We have been doing our Christmas book tradition. Each night, one child chooses a book to unwrap from under our tree, and we read a Christmas related picture book together. We all love it. I love that John comes to see the pictures. :)

The kindergarten teacher sent home "copies" of letters the boys wrote yesterday to Santa, in case the parents wanted to know what their kids wrote and what Santa might be leaving when he visits Christmas Eve. I'll just say that they have both been looking forward to these presents for a long time (for a child). Now to find out what Danielle wants...

I'm certain there's more, but that's a little taste of what we have going on around here.

Oh yes! That!

John accepted a job at Viterbo, in La Crosse, Wisconsin! After one more hot summer, we're looking forward to a very long and cold winter!

Where the Wild Things Are

The night Jeremiah wore his wolf suit, he found a blue river in the bathroom and laid it out on the floor in the living room. He dragged out a blue boat from his room, made himself a flag, and climbed in, ready to adventure down the river and to the island...where the wild things are! His brother and sister came along, in separate boats, of course, with flags of their own designs. They all sailed through the evening and into bedtime, before they fell over and ran into their beds, where they found bedtime stories and pumpkin cookies waiting for them...and they were still warm.

Since kids don't like hot food. Sorry Maurice, but it's true. They like to taste their food. Not have it burn their mouths.

Halloween!!!

This week leading up to Halloween has been a blast! My mom came out to play with us, which added to the excitement. :) We made Jeremiah a wolf suit like Max, from Where the Wild Things Are, and created bat wings to go with Isaac's ninja costume (um, he decided he wanted to be a "bat-ninja"?--apparently they sneak up to people and pull down others' pants, but we vetoed that action), and decorated Danielle's turtle shell, for her "little bitty ninja turtle" costume. We carved pumpkins and turned them into jack-o-lanterns, for the first time! We've decorated pumpkins and painted them before, but not carved. The kids were ecstatic to look at their jack-o-lanterns at night, all lit up. The boys had a kindergarten Halloween party and costume parade on Friday, and we went trick-or-treating and had carnival games and dinner at our church tonight. We've had a lot of fun!

And now....for pictures!


Three sweet children looking longingly into the flames of their jack-o-lanterns...

Ninja-Bat with his creation.

Max, making a scary face like his SCARY jack-o-lantern. :)

And, a Little Bitty Ninja Turtle with her very happy pumpkin!


More, perhaps better, views of their cute costumes. (Have I mentioned that I LOVE that these kids like to play together??)


At our church's Halloween party, while waiting on Daddy to serve us dinner. (If you really think staying with three kids while the other parent is getting dinner is the better half of the deal, you might want to think again!)


Jeremiah with his Sunbeams teacher! She's so great!

Ooohh! A ScArY math test! Run away! (John has wanted to be a math test for Halloween for years. :) He finally got a chance!)


Supermom! Here to save the day!

Trip to Utah

We went on a road trip to Utah earlier this month. We ended up leaving several hours later than we had intended on somehow. One of our rest stop stops had Jeremiah in heaven with the rocks and sand to play with. And Isaac was thrilled with the viewing scopes. We were stopped (resting?) for a good 15 minutes, and those boys seemed perfectly happy to be there all day long.

While we were in Utah, we celebrated Bill's wedding!, played with cousins and visited with family, and I took the kids to BYU. It was a great weekend!

On the way home, we camped just outside of Zion National Park. It was beautiful. Enjoying my children enjoying nature is right up with teaching them to love books, two of my absolute favorite parts of my life.