Catching Up

I'd like to start by saying that I hate Daylight Savings with all my heart.  I hate even more the fact that after just a week of slowly adjusting to the new time, everything will be thrown right out the window next week when the kids are on Spring Break.  DOH!!!  

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, let's get to it...

So, it's been awhile, but as I've been sitting here trying to think of what there is to recap, there's not a whole lot coming to my mind.  It can basically be boiled down to the following 4 categories:

VALENTINE'S DAY

Longtime readers will know that our family's celebration of The 5 Days of Valentine is a completely made-up extension of the holiday that I concocted many, many years ago.  Honestly, we don't really do anything all that major for each of the 5 days, but I think it tickles everyone's fancy, so we've never given it up.  This year had the added fun of sending a 5 Days of Valentine package to our favorite missionary, with extra treats for his companion as well.  Again, none of the "gifts" I got for the kids were all that big, but I can apparently never go wrong with candy or those holiday themed fleece blankets that Target carries every year.  And of course, the now traditional "Haiku for Day 2."  Hahahahaha.  Kind of ridiculous and nonsensical, I know, but I enjoy coming up with them and the kids enjoy lovingly mocking them, as the phrase "a haiku for day two" has become a running bit.  Lol.  

Ethan's care package all ready to go, with "gifts" for Days 1-5 wrapped and labeled!

(A bunting of Haiku Hearts)

SCOTT:

Bestest boy I know --

You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown;

Love you to the moon.

ETHAN:

Our hearts are with you;

Preaching the gospel each day.

Bringing light and love.

GRACE:

(Isaac totally caught my syllables error when no one else did.  Hence the scratch out in line 3.  Haikus are supposed to have 5 syllables for the first and third lines and 7 syllables for the second.  Whoopsie!)

From Care Bears and Junks,

And always sucking her thumb,

A lovely Grace sprung.

SOPHIE:

Singing and singing,

With the K POP on repeat --

Sophie finds her joy.

JANE:

Midnights and star light,

A Swiftie little moon beam,

My darling, my dear.

(That last line is from the Mercy Watson books I used to read to her when she was little, and I was delighted that she caught the reference.)

ALEX:

Comic book artist,

"What about the fun dungeon?"

Little Lover Boy.

(The second line is a quote from Clarence, a cartoon he and Isaac have been watching obsessively.)

ISAAC:

"Weird But True" loving;

A genius in the making,

Isaac is a nut.

The first day was some Skittles hearts and a new puzzle.

Another day we decorated some cookies.

(Who doesn't love Dove chocolates?)

Aside from our family "celebrations," Isaac had fun this year creating a Valentine Box for his class party, along with some homemade valentines using our go-to heart crayon molds.  Thankfully, his party occurred on the Friday before Valentine's Day, because on the day of, Isaac was home sick.  And he stayed home sick for almost 2 weeks with first a nasty stomach bug and then an ear infection that came along at the tail end.  Poor little lamb was pretty miserable, and I was pretty worried about dehydration after several days of high fever and gastrointestinal distress.  Thankfully all was eventually well and he had the silver lining of consuming endless amounts of popsicles for the duration.  Hahahaha.

The definition of tedious is watching a seven year old "paint" glue on a shoe box to then cover with pieces of tissue paper.  Just as an FYI.  Hahaha.

(But he was pretty proud of the end result.)

 

He really wanted to showcase all the sides of the box.  We quickly decided that only the top needed to have all the little pieces of tissue paper attached.  The other sides were covered with just straight sheets of it, which made it MUCH less time-consuming.

Waiting in line at Walgreens to pick up his prescription for Zofran (and lots of pedialyte and popsicles) after going to the doctor a few days in.  

#UVUbound

Other big news of the past month is that Grace is officially headed to Utah Valley University in the fall!  I honestly think it will be a great fit for her and I know she's excited to get out there.  Since she won't have on-campus housing as an option, it only speeds up the timing of being able to (hopefully) room with her cousin, Hannah, who is at BYU in an off-campus apartment.  We haven't quite worked out any logistics, but we still have plenty of time to figure stuff out.

SPRING HAS (ALMOST) SPRUNG

I know I always say Fall is my favorite season -- and I think it truly is -- but I can't help but love Spring as well!  Especially as I'm anticipating all of the plants and flowers that will start blooming here soon.  I'm a little obsessed with gardening, as any of my children will tell you, and I've perhaps gone a bit overboard in the last couple of weeks as I've started to accrue various yard tools and other gardening accoutrements, as well as a few plants and SEVERAL seed packets to aid in my efforts of making our yard a veritable garden of Eden this summer.  Hahaha.  Seriously, though.  When I'm into something, I'm ALL in, and I've spent many a happy hour these past few weeks plotting out and planning the garden beds for the backyard, with the front yard next on my list. 

I got this book for my birthday, and it's filled with GORGEOUS pictures.

My highly detailed backyard diagrams.  Hahaha.

I bought a clementine mandarin tree and the blossom scent is positively heavenly.

Some of the many seeds I've bought this year.  And in case anyone is wondering, I'm in love with Cosmos and Zinnias and I don't care who knows it!

When I saw this puzzle, I had to get it.  Obviously.

KID ANTICS

And finally, I'll finish things off with some of the latest from the kids.  Although -- as a side note -- it's harder to blog nowadays with the kids getting older.  They're much more likely to label funny anecdotes as "embarrassing," for one thing.  And, for another, there are quite a few behind-the-scene struggles we've been facing that they wouldn't want me to share.  Which is totally understandable.  And helps to explain why most of my recent posts contain an overabundance of Isaac stories.  ;)

 (It helps that he's pure comic gold and says the most random hilarious stuff, like: "I told my friends I have gingivitis, but they had no idea what that even was."  Which was said completely out of nowhere the other day and made me laugh out loud.  Hahahahaha.  What can I say?  My sense of humor runs towards appreciation of the absurd.)

The above scene resulted in the following message to Ethan (who used to read Geronimo Stilton books when he was a kid):

ME:  Isaac came home from school on Friday with Geronimo Stilton "The Graphic Novel" and was absolutely riveted.

ME:  He sat at the counter for probably 20 or 30 minutes reading after getting home and even after doing his chores

ME:  😂😂😂

ME:  He read like half the book in that one sitting and then finished it off at bedtime

ME:  I read through the first half afterwards to see what caught his attention so strongly and NGL -- I thought it was high key hilarious.  I literally LOLed several times.

In other kid news, Jane performed in her junior high's ExtravaBANDza  (a fundraiser) last week and I loved it!  I'm really going to miss attending her performances next year, even though I agree with her that dropping band for 9th grade is probably the right call.   I'll have different concerts to make up for it, though, with Alex choosing to play the cello in orchestra for the junior high, and I honestly can't wait.

I thought these were cute little centerpieces on all of the cafeteria tables for the performance.

As for Alex, I'm finally getting around to making his baptism quilt almost 4 years later.  Womp womp.  Kind of an epic mom fail, but my sewing machine was on the fritz right before he turned 8, and the urgency kind of disappeared once his baptism day came and went, and then life happened, and I got distracted, and etc. etc. etc.  With Isaac turning 8 in November, however, I've decided that I can't make one for HIM until I've finally finished one for Alex.  So with that newly imposed sense of urgency, I've already decided on a quilt pattern, pulled the fabrics I want to use, and created a mock-up on photoshop to get his approval before getting started.  Hahaha.  I guess I just live to go big or go home. 

He was really into making comics a few weeks ago, and I thought these pictures he drew were great!  I found a "Comic Book Sketch Book" at Target that is essentially a blank comic book for creating your own work.  

And finally, a few last items of interest to close things out:  I'm kind of loving the fact that Sophie's first date in a couple of weeks is a double date with Grace and her boyfriend; Alex has spent the last several weeks entrenched in all things Hunger Games; and Isaac created his "costume" for Book Character Dress-up Day a week or so ago using a potato stamp and some green paint.  Hahahaha.  

How to make a stamp out of a potato:

Cut a potato in half; "draw" your image on the raw inside; "carve" away the negative space (I used a spoon and a knife); then dip in paint and stamp away!

(It was helpful that we already had a plain yellow t-shirt hanging around in his closet.)

The finished product!

(a convo with Ethan on P-Day last week)

ME:  Last week was Read Across America week

ME:  Friday was book character dress up day

ETHAN:  Is that a potato?

ME:  Can you guess who he is dressed as?

ME:  It IS

ETHAN:  Geronimo of course

ME:  Potato stamp print for the win.  Lol.

ETHAN:  That's pretty genius

ME:  Not Geronimo -- his cousin Trap, of course

ETHAN:  Lol.  I don't even know who that is

ME:  Hyuk hyuk

ME:  (Trap's laugh)

(Trap Stilton -- Geronimo's cousin.  

Isaac passed on putting his hair in a pony tail and wearing a gold hoop earring in one ear.)

And that's a wrap!  Our February/March catch up is in the books.