Mommy, Look

Look, I'm a girl.

Catch of the Day

Baby Birder

Towel Day 2016

May 25 is Towel Day.  To celebrate, I made the kids do laundry- washing towels.  Heh Heh.
Lucky decided to celebrate by unrolling an almost full roll of paper towels.

I also got pictures of the kids with a towel- a towel that was later used to mop up a water spill on the floor.

Aren't towels great?


I don't have pictures, but May 23 was World Turtle Day.  I split up my celebrating into two days by watching a Terry Pratchett movie set on Discworld, which is a flat world on the backs of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle in space.  A "world turtle."
I fell asleep the first night watching the movie so I finished it the next night.

Action Packed Days

The last few days have been action packed.  Besides our dinner on Wednesday, we also went to a retirement party for Jr.'s 1st grade teacher- Dr. Seuss themed since she loves Dr. Seuss.

Thursday, the little boys did a good job helping me with shopping so we went out to a park.  There was enough of a breeze there that we were able to fly kites.  Yippee!  Those boys had a blast.

That evening we celebrated National Be a Millionaire Day (May 19).  Jeremy and I explained to the kids about Scrooge McDuck and his number one dime.  Then we gave each of the kids their own shiny dime (and a penny to pay tithing). 

We also had a nice thunder and lightning storm.  At one point I found the kids all watching the lightning through the window in their room... and Jeremy watching the lightning through the window in another room.

Today and tomorrow at Thanksgiving Point is the annual Baby Animal Birthday Party at Farm Country so we took the kids after school to see the baby animals and eat birthday cake and go on a tractor ride.
Their new baby horse is so cute.  It was fun to see it prancing around the other horse.  "Hey!  Give me attention.  Hey!  I wanna play."

 

 

When we got home, we put on My Fair Lady to celebrate the 20th of May which is Eliza Doolittle Day.  We also ate chocolate of course.

Mount St. Helens' Day 2016

To celebrate the anniversary of when Mount St. Helens blew its top in 1980, Jeremy and I both tried very hard not to blow our tops.  Sometimes it seems that the 2-year old picks the days when we're trying extra hard to keep our tempers to get into the most mischief.  Why is that?
Besides not erupting, for dinner I made myself a spaghetti volcano.  Tee Hee.

Every Mother's Dream

Jr.:  After I do my homework, may I clean the living room?

Kite Day Observed

May 12 is Kite Day.  We couldn't celebrate it on that day this year since we went to Nichole's wax museum that night.
We've been wanting to fly kites at the beach ever since we went there on a somewhat windy evening during Screen Free Week.  There were a couple of young ladies there with kites and we talked about doing that for Kite Day, except we couldn't do it on the actual holiday.
So we were finally able to celebrate Kite Day (Observed) today.  Hooray!
And... there was no wind.  Sigh.  So the kids did a lot of running to get their kites in the air.  We still had fun, though, and stayed out way too late and I'm so tired writing this blog post so I need to make it short and put some pictures on here so I can go to bed because in the morning I've got to deal with kids who didn't get enough sleep so I need to make sure I'm rested enough to deal with it.  Sigh.
O.K.  Pictures of Kite Day Observed:

We were smart this time and wore aquasocks so it wasn't as big a deal when some of the kids got their feet in the water.

By the time we were done, though, we were so worn out.

It was a great family evening.      

The KAT's Meow

Daddy:  If you guys don't listen, we'll have to go home right now.
Jr. Jr.:  What did you say?


Jr. Jr.:  I want the lizard, because lizards are my favorite insect.
Jr.:  Lizards aren't insects.  They're amphibians.

Nature and Me

Before Screen Free Week, I hadn't been posting much.  I do a lot of things.  I just am tired at the end of the day, I don't want to do a blog post.  Then I get behind and think, well I can't post about such and such because I haven't blogged about this yet.
Oh, well.  Sometimes I just won't catch up.  So I'll show you a bit about what I had been doing.
Besides cleaning and making food and reading books (sometimes when I should be cleaning or making food), I've been enjoying nature.  In different ways I've been enjoying nature.
See?  This is me enjoying nature.
 

Jeremy and I have been taking turns in the mornings going out for walks before the kids go to school.  When we don't have a big balloon build or homework to check or urgent cleaning to do that is.
It's so nice to be out in nature around sunrise when it's quiet and the world isn't awake yet.  I love to hear the sounds of the birds when they're not drowned out by so many cars driving by.  It is very relaxing.

Some of the birds have returned to Utah County after being away for the Winter.
Swallows are back.  Ospreys are back.

Hummingbirds are back and some other birds that are new for us.

Western Kingbird

Again, I love nature so much.  It gives me such a good feeling to be among Heavenly Father's creations.  And there are so many places to go to see His creations.  So many places to go walking, so many places to go birding.  I love it.

Girls' Night

Tonight was a girls' night.  First of all in the evening, we went to see the "wax museum" at the elementary school.  The fifth graders picked a famous person, did research about them, and wrote a report or paragraph about them.  At the wax museum, the kids dressed up as the person and sat still like a statue (or wax figure) until someone pushed a "button" near them.  Then they came to life and told about themselves.  Once they were finished, they became still again. 
Wow.  Those kids did such a great job.  Nichole (my girl) did a good job, too.  She was Christa McAuliffe.  She was going to be the first teacher in space, but she was on the Challenger shuttle when it exploded back in 1986.

After we got the kids home, I got to take off for a girls' night at a friend's house.  There were four of us that got together.  We had treats and just talked.  It was so easy to chat with those gals.  It was a well needed time with those women.  Thanks, gals.

Choices Lead to Consequences

We've been teaching Jr. Jr. that choices lead to consequences.  Bad choices lead to bad consequences.  Good choices lead to good consequences.  So when he was the only child to clear off and wipe down the table this evening, he was the only child to stay up later and do a puzzle while the others got sent to bed.

May 11 is Jigsaw Puzzle Day after all.

Screen Free Week 2016

Screen Free Week this year was May 2-8.
Some highlights:

Monday, May 2, Jeremy made a balloon arch for the elementary school's mini marathon.  He managed to get a good picture before the wind picked up and knocked it to the ground, popping a lot of the balloons.  Sigh.

May 2 is also Baby Day but I didn't get any pictures of the baby carrots we ate with dinner.

Tuesday, May 3, I had a dentist appointment.  Since the dentist's office is on the way to a nice birding spot, Jeremy and the younger boys picked me up after my appointment and we drove to that spot.  There were quite a few cars parked there when we got there and we wondered why.  Since we weren't using the computer for the week, we didn't know what the latest birding news was.  People let us know there was a Little Gull there at the lake.  We'd never seen a Little Gull before so that was exciting.  A new life bird.  What we didn't realize until later however is that a Little Gull is very rare in Utah.  And we just happened to be there that day to see it.  So cool.

That evening, Jeremy went with Jr. and his scout troop hiking up to Battle Creek Falls.

Wednesday, May the Fourth, was International Respect for Chickens Day.  We had chicken pizza then decorated cards which we then took over to give to some chickens.
We got to pet and hold the chickens.  They're still pretty young, but their owners said they'd hang the cards in the chicken coop for them.  It was fun.

Thursday, May 5, Nichole performed in her school play.  It was "Disney Aladdin Kids" and Nichole was a food vendor, a skeleton, and a juggler. 

I'm so proud of her.  She did so well.  She did a good job with her singing, dancing, her lines, and Jeremy and I were very impressed with her juggling.  When she got the part of the juggler a couple months ago, she couldn't juggle very well yet, but she really put the effort in to practice and now she's learning tricks.  She's awesome.

Friday, May 6, I went on a field trip with Jr. to the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City.

May 6 is also International No Diet Day so we had ice cream in the evening.  Yumm.

Saturday, May 7, was National Tourism Day so we went to the beach.  Heh Heh.  We took the kids to a beach in the Southeast area of Utah Lake.  They were so happy because they had permission to actually throw sticks and things in the water.  We told them not to get their feet wet in the water, though, but they didn't listen and all got soaked.  Silly kids. 
We got to see a lot of birds including a new to us species.  We also saw a lot of dead fish.

Sunday, May 8, was Mother's Day.  I didn't take any pictures of the cards the kids made for me or the breakfast Jeremy made (or the clean kitchen Jeremy made while I was at the field trip with Jr. on Friday.  "Happy Mother's Day," he said.  My hero).  Oh well.  Instead here's a picture of the kids playing with Nichole's toy dog, having it do tricks.  That's something else they did this week while they weren't playing video games.

It was a good week.  We kept busy without movies or computer or Wii games.  And the younger kids only got into so much mischief.