Just Another Manic Monday

I have bowed down to familial pressure. Without further ado, I present the long overdue blog post. Although please bear with me as I am suffering from a rather severe case of blogger's block -- you know like writer's block -- only much, much worse. It's hard work being as entertaining as I am, and it doesn't help when my family hounds me and hounds me and hounds me for updates. Got that, family? Hahahaha. j/k. Kind of.

Anyway, we are alive and loving life here. In many ways this summer is turning out to be the equal and opposite experience of last summer. For one thing, being a year older is making a world of difference in the children. And it doesn't hurt that in place of horrible neighbors who hate us and our children, we are living in the nicest neighborhood in the world. Since we moved in, we've been given cookies, brownies, a picnic table for the kids, and a little bike. Even the narcoleptic next door has warmly welcomed us and given us a practically brand new grill (although we're pretty sure it was mostly to spite her "stupid ex" ).

Life is always busy and I've decided that I must subconsciouly thrive on chaos. During our last week in Provo, we managed to squeeze in a family photo shoot with a friend from the MBA program, get the house cleaned and set up for the next house-sitters, organize a yard sale the day before we flew out, oh and sell our car AT the yard sale for a cool $300. Hot dog.

Here are some pics from the photo shoot:









I really haven't taken that many pictures since we've moved in, but just to satisfy some curiosity about the house, here are a FEW pictures:

Okay, this isn't really a picture of our house, BUT can I say this place is awesome? We went up there to get some bookshelves to house all the books we own, and I love this place! I mean, come on -- You get to drop your kids off for someone else to watch so you can go shop? Why doesn't Wal-Mart do this???

Here are the bookshelves in back of the love seat we bought off Craigslist before we left Provo from some shady looking storage unit filled to overflowing with all these still-wrapped-in-plastic brand-new couches. Yeah. And yes I do realize that was one long run-on sentence.


Here is Grace posing for Aunt Emily to see her super cute bedding from T.J. Maxx. T.J. Maxx is the bomb dot com, baby. Only don't even ask me how many different locations I went to since we moved into town to try and find a matching bedspread for when Sophie graduates from the crib. (Okay, the answer is 4 and I still didn't even find one so I ended up getting one off eBay for MUCH more than I spent on the other one. Oh well, it all equaled out to be pretty cheap, right?)

And Ethan's bedspread was also found at the T.J. Maxx. Here is a shot of him in bed at night after he had cleaned up his room all by himself and then spread out this throw on the floor to be a rug , as he told me the next day.

Scott has been LOVING mowing our new lawn. Ethan loves to help, too. Just in case you're wondering, it takes him about an hour and half if he does the front and back on the same day.

AND NOW FOR SOME BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

Sophie has outgrown her allergies to wheat, soy, beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and peas!!!! I set up an appointment with an allergist fairly soon once we moved here, and when we went in for the testing, I was beyond overjoyed to find out the test results. Beyond overjoyed. Sophie is a brand-new woman! The wheat alone opens up a brave new WORLD of culinary possibilities for her. She is one happy camper to finally be able to eat the same crackers that Ethan and Grace are eating.

On the swing-side of this fabulous visit was the doctor's concern for her asthma. She was wheezing pretty bad the day of the appointment, so he prescribed a new treatment to be done DAILY with the nebulizer. Um, yeah. Because there isn't enough to do every day with 3 children ages 5 and under. And, it's not like she hates it or anything or fights tooth and nail to struggle from your grasp as you're trying to hold the mask to her face so she can breathe in the nebulized medicine WITHOUT getting it in her eyes because apparently studies have shown it MAY cause glaucoma later on in life. Oh wait, she does hate it. Let's just say that it was a happy night when I struck upon the idea to do the treatment once she falls asleep at night. So much easier!

Anyway, back to the outgrown allergies!! Here she is with her very first cupcake ever:

The cupcake
(Recipe courtesy of vegweb.com, a vegan recipe website which has actually proved pretty helpful since Sophie IS still allergic to dairy and eggs. And even though that "butter"cream frosting was actually made with vegan margarine, it was actually pretty tasty. Just ask my sister Amy. She liked it a lot. I'm being serious).

And here is the muppet, finally a participant in the real world.

And now on to the reason for the cupcakes -- Ethan celebrated his 5th birthday on the 25th of June and this year I was smarter than last year. Rather than asking him what kind of cake he wanted, I started talking about how cute a caterpillar cake would be about a week and a half before the event. Eventually leading up to the rather leading question of "Ethan, don't you think a caterpillar cake would be SO cool for you birthday?" How could he disagree with that logic, right? All I have to say is I am all about the cupcakes, baby. This could NOT have been an easier cake to make. The hardest part was keeping the kids from eating the colored frosting out of the bowls before I decorated the cupcakes.

Feel free to steal the idea.

I think I did a pretty good job of brainwashing him. He looks pretty happy with that cake, right?

Not so happy about Grace trying to blow out his candles, but who can blame him.

All he wanted to do for his birthday was go to the Children's Museum. Check...

...And celebrate his Oregonian roots by making tie-dye T-shirts. Check.

In Grace's never ending quest to be all things fabulous, here she is with her junk. She got them dressed all on her own. And yes, in our house all of Grace's stuffed animals and STUFF is referred to as junk. Even by Grace. She doesn't understand the connotation just yet, but suffice it to say that this girl is one collector of junk.

Here she is with her "babies." Just so you know, each junk was dressed from the inside out, complete with diapers, onesies, outfits, accessories, and shoes. She will be one fun mom.

Here she is over-accesorized at bedtime.

And again at Ethan's birthday. We are really needing to kick the thumb-sucking habit at this point.

And here is one superfluous shot of our supermuppet in her size 6-12 month swimsuit. How cute is that?

Other items of interest/note:

During the process of moving and seeing all the trash that was junked in the process, I was suddenly struck by pangs of the immense waste of it all. So, as of a month ago, we gone green! Well, okay. We're trying to go green. I think we've got a long way to go. Evidenced by the fact that in the month and a half since I first purchased a set of re-usable grocery bags, I've managed to forget to take them with me to the store, about 9 out every 10 times. Baby steps, baby steps.

The Kroger store here in our neighborhood is OFF. THE. HOOK. Seriously. It's the most awesome grocery store I've ever been in. Its like they have grocery shopping mood lighting in there or something. The food samples are EVERYWHERE and divine. We're talking whole cookies in the bakery area, 7-layer dip, little cups of smoothies at the in-store Starbucks, breads, white-chocolate covered pretzels (that's the kids' favorite), cake donuts, cantaloupe, peaches, sushi, you name it! Its probably there. It is definitely an experience in shopping. I could easily get lost in there for hours. Especially since they have comfy chairs strategically set up in the magazine area.

In other news, Scott recently received a first-hand lesson in political correctness. While getting unpacked and settled in, we realized that we would need a dresser for our clothes in order to get all the way unpacked. So, we gladly took another trip up to IKEA, and picked up a new one. As Scott was trying to put it together, the pictures in the directions weren't quite matching up with the pieces, and he couldn't figure out what was going on. So, fast forward past a wasted trip back to the store -- which is about 25-30 minutes away -- where they opened up another box only to find that the pieces in that box were identical to the ones we already had, and Scott was back at home trying to figure out what to do. In the end, he went ahead and ignored the pictures and just put it together the way it looked like it was supposed to go, but not before he called a customer help line and totally put his foot in his mouth by telling the lady he felt like he was taking crazy pills because the pictures weren't matching the pieces he had. The lady told him that she had to stop him right there because he was talking to a mentally disabled person. Whoopsie.

Alright, one quick story before I go. This one's about the power of "Air Wick" air freshener's advertising and a question of who their target demographic might be. So, this afternoon we had to make a little Wal-mart run. I don't know why I still attempt to do these things during the day with all 3 children (perhaps its that whole thriving on chaos thing...) because it's basically a non-stop juggling act. As I was trying to keep Sophie from tearing up the shopping list and keep an eye on Grace (who has still not completely gotten over her run-away tendencies), Ethan pointed to a display of Air Wick boxes and asks me what they're for. I didn't have the time or patience to go into an explanation, so I responded with an "I don't really know." This was his response.

Ethan [the puzzlement on his face all of a sudden breaking into a look of dawning clarity]: Oh, I know what this is for! I learned about it!

Me: Oh, yeah?

Ethan: Yeah, you press this button and then...um [he was really concentrating at this point]...oh, like 25 minutes later it sprays something that makes the room smell good.

Me: [barely able to keep a straight face] Oh, really? Who taught you that?

Ethan: I saw it on T.V.

There you go folks. And FAMILY, I hope this satisfies you for at least another month!!! hahahaha. I'll try to have more pictures next time around.