When You're The Only One...

Adam's the only grandchild in school on my side of the family. And being the only one has its perks.

His school is holding a contest (with the prize being a pizza party) for the class who collects the most Box Tops for Education. He recently asked his Grammy and aunts if they could save up their Box Tops for him.

They obliged.

And since he's the only one, there are no others to share with, so they sent him all of them.

74 Box Tops, to be exact.

Today he took them into his class.

He (and his classmates) was SO excited and is very sure they are going to win!

(Thanks everyone!)

Bath Time!

Josh always goes crazy in the bath. Definitely a water baby. (Don't mind the voice stating the obvious in the video).

I tend to state the obvious frequently.



And in other bath news, Grace insisted on eating an apple while she bathed every night last week.

Kinda grody. But all those germs are going to make for one killer immune system. ;)

Fashion-ista

She insists on dressing herself these days.

Her outfits usually consist of multiple layers (a shirt of Adam's usually being one of the layers), random clothes from her closet, and an accessory from her dress-up clothes (be it a feather boa or shoes).

Definitely puts a smile on my face.

Enjoying the End of Winter By...

... staying indoors and gluing random scraps on each other

... bundling up and playing at the park

... drinking some free hot chocolate from Starbucks

Millipede Project

Adam has to do a different project every month at school. His teacher assigns a broad topic, and then they choose some subject within that topic. Each month's project has to be done in a different visual (poster, diorama, mobile, recipe, etc.).

This month the broad topic was "insects" and he chose to do millipedes. He wrote a children's book on millipedes, blending facts in a cute fiction story about a millipede named Sam. We printed it and then "published" it at Kinko's.

By the way, Kinko's is no longer called Kinko's, but Fedex Office.

I still call it Kinko's.

Grace, Josh, and I went down for his presentation. He did great! He's come A LONG way in his presentations. At the beginning of the year, he stared at his 3x5 cards and read so fast you couldn't understand him. He also looked like he was in pain the whole time.

He now looks up and is a lot more animated, and speaks (a little) more slowly.

He still looks like he's slightly in pain while he gives his presentation, but since public speaking IS pain, whattaya do? ;)

This month his topic is "inventions" and he has to make his own invention. He's thrown some ideas around, but hasn't come up with an invention yet.

Can't wait to see what he comes up with!

Flowers? I Prefer Dead Weeds

At least once a day, Adam and Grace walk up to me with their hands behind their back, say "Surprise!" (or as Grace says, "Purprise!").

Then.. they hand me a flower they have picked, a handful of bright green grass, a dead weed, a pinecone, or a leaf.

It's so sweet.

They know that I love the occasional flowers that Mike surprises me with, and have equated my love of flowers to mean anything that grows in nature.

I love it.

Roses have nothing on the sweet little loves that my kids bring me.

Evidence

On Saturday I had a bad day.

I was worrying, stressing about our Primary Activity Day, crying because Mike's boss was mad at him, trying to clean only to have the kids making messes as I cleaned, listening to Josh's inconsolable crying, trying to ignore Adam whining about his horrid life, etc.

It doesn't sound that bad, I know, but I was having one hard day.

And then a sweet sister from our ward came by. Not someone who particularly knows me. Not really someone that I'm good friends with. Not my visiting teacher or neighbor. Just a sweet sister that I respect and admire.

She brought me a box of chocolate and wished me a Happy Valentine's Day. Talked for a minute, and then she left.

And after she left, I stared at the box of chocolate, evidence that I have a Heavenly Father who knows and loves me. And who knew that I needed a little extra love on that day.

She just felt like she needed to come by, and I'm so glad that she did. It made all of the difference in the world on a hard day.

The sweet experience has really made me think about all of the little thoughts that come into my mind during the day: "I should take some of these cookies to so-and-so." "We should make so-and-so get well cards." "I should call her soon."

Thoughts that I usually forget as I get busy and never end up going through with.

However, after my experience, I've have started writing down and doing the things that come to my mind as I go through my day.

Because, just maybe, there's someone else who is having a really hard day. Someone else who needs a little evidence that Someone up above loves them and is watching over them.

Just like I needed on Saturday.

Fun Mail

Something fun about living far from family is getting FUN mail.

Nothing beats opening the mailbox and finding some fun cards or letters:

Yes, sometimes we are still in our pajamas when the mail comes at 2:00.

Wanna make something of it? ;)

Or the occasional package:

The other fun thing about living far from family is that you don't actually live by family.

(I kid, I kid... we love and miss our families!)

:)

The Mall

Grace is somewhat of a mystery to me.

She loves nail polish, shoes, and her babies.

She also loves wearing Adam's clothes, digging in the dirt, and smelling her stinky feet.

Girly-girl or gross tomboy?

(kidding)

One thing is not a mystery, though: she is definitely all-girl when it comes to the mall. She had been begging to visit the mall forever. So, two weeks ago we did.

We made wishes and threw coins in the fountain. We smelled the cinnamon rolls at Cinnabon. We looked at the toys.


And tried on lots of shoes. Of course.

She loves the mall!

I Need to Vacuum

Three things:

1) Last night we had rice for dinner.

2) Today was a beautiful day.

3) Our apartment is located near the dumpster.

Three separate facts. Seemingly un-related. However, they combined in a perfect storm today that resulted in this:

A. Dirty. Disgusting. Filthy. Disease-ridden. Pigeon. In. My. House.

Eating leftover breakfast bits on our table.

Eating the rice that I hadn't vacuumed up the night before under the table.

Eating a half-eaten granola bar that Grace had left near the door.

Flying around the kitchen as I screamed.

Flying around the table as I sobbed.

Flying around the living room as I cried on the phone to Mike.

(Still not sure why I called him. It's not like he could have done anything.)

Pooping. On. My. Table.

This sounds stupid, but I was seriously scared. Our apartment is really small with low-ish ceilings. Every time I went near the dumb thing that had made its way into our apartment because we had the door open on a beautiful winter day and because the pigeons live right outside by the trash and because the floor under our table must have seemed like food heaven, it flew around with its nasty wings flapping and made nasty, loud cooing noises.

And, after it flew around like crazy and swooped down at me, it settled back in our kitchen area.

Because the carpet under my table probably housed more food bits than the whole trash outside.

Seriously. I was so scared.

After about 30 minutes, Grace (who thought that this whole experience was funny and that I was a dork for crying and screaming) and I locked ourselves in the laundry room and prayed that the bird would leave. (Josh had been locked in my bedroom at the beginning of the ordeal).

We came out, put a blanket over our heads and walked toward the bird.

And because Heavenly Father loves me, the bird flew out the door just like that.

We said another prayer in thanks.

Unfortunately, I had thrown an entire package of Oreos out onto the porch, in an attempt to bribe the bird out of the house. When we left to go pick up Adam from school later, I opened the door a little and there was a flock of them on my porch. Eating the Oreos. Cooing.

The movie, The Birds, took on a whole new meaning today.

When we picked up Adam, Grace let him in on the story.

He spent the rest of the day demonstrating proper techniques for pigeon removal.

No one believes how scary it was.

However, it was terrifying.

Really.

I am determined to vacuum after every meal now.

And I have decided that when I create worlds, there will be no pigeons.

2 Months

Weight: 13 lbs 4 oz

Height: 23"

I can't believe my sweet baby is 2 months old! I think the question that I get the most from everyone is if he's a "good baby". And, honestly, I have to reply "no." Not in the way that Adam and Grace were "good" babies. He's fussy. He demands to be held all of the time. He doesn't sleep well at all. We've struggled with the nursing. So, he's not a "good baby," in the way that they mean it.

However, I love that he's a mama's boy. That his screaming whenever he gets put down gives me an excuse to stop doing the housework and cuddle with him. That I've gotten to spend extra time with him at night, time with just him and no one else. That we've bonded as we struggled with nursing.

I just think that he knew he was #3 and he knew who his siblings were. And he knew about their crazy, fun, dramatic personalities. And he knew he was going to have to be a little more stubborn to get attention around here. ;)

P.S.

You've probably noticed that I've rubbed off most of his hair. True. But, I enjoyed it so much while it was here!