Goat Farm tour...

We got to go to a family run goat farm this week with our homeschool co-op group. WOW. What a great field trip! We were there for three hours and we got to see baby goats that were less than 12 hours old, we got to play with and feed grown goats, hold baby goats, learn about milking goats and making goat cheese. We enjoyed a picnic lunch and a rope swing too. I just loved the experience. We were told we'd be able to bottle feed the goats, but that wasn't the case. Still, it was a very exciting trip!

This is little baby Jewel.

There was a rope swing, and Ruby was one of the youngest kids to try it. She waited in a long line several times for another swing. I love how her confidence is growing!

Heidi, Olivia, Ruby, Oma, Alice and I on the trailer ride.

When we were trying to leave the goats in the field, they wanted to come along! This one managed to get all the way back to where we went, she was so cute!

This is where they milk the goats.

Valentine's Olympics Specifics...

I am no scrapbooker, but it seemed daunting to upload all the fun pics from our Valentine's date, so I used a free template and put them on some pages. Anyway, intimidating to do when you have super scrappers tuning in!

So Mimi wrote a good breakdown on her blog about the various events. I am using her format here too:

4:00- The games begin! The boys give us homemade game shirts. Chris made mine kind of, well...suggestive? Yes. I won't be posting pictures. When I came home, the babysitter was focusing on my shirt with this weird look and I realized I hadn't taken off the shirt! How embarrassing!

1st Event- pounding nails, drilling in screws, drilling holes, and sawing a wooden dowel while being timed. John won this event, I think he was followed by the other men. It wasn't so much for us girls!

2nd Event - riding a trick bike around in a circle and from one cup to the other. Boonie and Carl took the cake on this one, but Chris and Mimi gave it really good tries. Chris finally broke the frame of the bike saving me from having to be a bad sport, because I had no intention of trying it.

3rd Event was shooting our husbands with paint balls as they ran around the backyard. I loved this event. I've never shot anything before, and it was so fun to fire away! Chris ran fast, but I shot faster...I think I nailed him twice on my own, and then he signed up for another run and Mimi and I shot together. We got him like a dozen times!

4th Event- Target practice- John with his paintball skills, won the gold.

5th Event -"Kissing." This was the old remove a Starburst wrapper with your teeth to show you are a good kisser trick. I don't remember who won, maybe I did?

6th Event-Hula Hoop Contest. The hula hoop they bought was really light weight which made it impossible to hula. Have any of you old time hula champs (like I was) given it a try recently? It is nearly impossible.

7th Event-Marshmallow Toss. This was really hard for everyone but John and Mimi. We were all eliminated pretty much the first round, and they just kept on going. It was really impressive, and I understand they practice their skills.

8th Event- Blogger. The aforementioned multitasking...blogging while talking and ignoring the kids challenge. Let's just say I cleaned up. Practice makes perfect! IF ONLY I COULD blog during the day! Then I wouldn't be posting blogs when I should be sleeping! I am known to have Mimi on speaker phone while we both do our computer stuff. We don't hold in depth conversations, we just keep each other company, but Chris doesn't get it.

9th Event- Phone Call. I had to call someone and get them to say the words: Romeo, balcony, and incubator (and a few others I don't remember) without explaining myself. I tried my parents, then I tried Mike and Sage and my in-laws, but I finally got Doug (Chris' little brother) on the phone and baffled him thoroughly. I was trying to be sly, so I said, "Hey, are you with Juliet?" That led to stories about their valentine's day. Then, since he was talking about his girlfriend, I said, "Was she premature?" He was confused by that but not totally swayed, he kept on with his valentine's explanations, which I was sincerely interested in knowing but I was in a room with five laughing onlookers, and didn't' hear much of what he said. Anyway, I should have called a really introverted person because he talked most of the three minutes I was given. THANKS DOUG! Mimi won this one for sure, she's got sisters!

10th Event- Newlywed Game. Chris I won this event, I really like playing that game!

We finished the night with a little fun on the Wii playing Doctor Mario.

Mimi and John were the power couple of the night and won the overall competition. Wahoo!

One thing is for sure...a little planning goes a long ways, this was the most fun I've had in a long time. Chris and John really planned a fun night.

Finally a video of Ruby playing the piano...

I have a webcam on my laptop, so I can now post some video (if it can be captured with my laptop, that is). Here she is playing "Go Tell Aunt Rhody." She is learning by the Suzuki method, which is really effective for keeping the learning fun and the progress rewarding for young children. I really can't say enough about it. This is her third song to complete with both hands together.

Explanation of the below post...

For Valentine's Day, Chris and Mimi's husband John and their brother-in-law Carl set up a Valentine's Olympics for our Valentine fun. One of the events thought up by my ever suspicious of my time husband, was an event during which I had to post a blog while talking on the phone answering trivia questions AND being pestered by someone posing as my child.

The post was judged on creativity, the amount of love expressed to my husband and how many words I wrote. I was also judged on how many questions I answered right.

So below is my unedited three-minute, totally distracted post that I wrote last night. I won this event but Mimi cleaned up overall. Pictures to come soon.

Valentine

There once was a man named chris pierce
his body was something really fierce
I loved his sense of humor
and the way he grows a back tumor
I want to eat up his scrambled eggs
and rub my fingers up and down his legs
he is the man of my life
and I am proud to be is wife
and have his darling children
named ruby and alice and teach them kindergarten
Chris is funny
his nose isnt runny
he is cute, smart and witty
and makes me quite giddy
I think I'd like to make him happy
and finish this blog really snappy!

Anyway, I sure love...

(not so) helping hands...

I have a sidekick in Alice. She wants to do everything I'm doing: making smoothies, folding laundry (honey, don't laugh), typing on the computer, talking on the phone, wiping down the counters, locking the door, getting something out of the car in the garage...etc. So it's not like she just wants to be there, by me. She wants to do it INSTEAD of me doing it and usually, "my my own self". What does this look like?

In the case of locking the door. We have a chain lock on the upper part of the door, so I have to hold her by the waist, above my head while she locks the door.

In the case of getting something out of the car. She has to open the door herself, retrieve the item and give it to me.

In the case of unloading the dishwasher the other day, it was lifting her up with each individual dish so she could maybe put it in the right place. This was not working. I wanted to be DONE. So...I thought, I'll teach her how to unload the silverware and set her up with a chair and she can do that by herself. Of course she'll insist that I watch her idly, but I'll put my foot down.

Anyway, she really had a hay day! It was worth it. At least she let me do my job in a few minutes and it was a quick fix to correct her effort once Chris walked through the door and distracted her.

Valentine's Party...

So Ruby and I decided to plan a Valentine's Day party together (Alice kind of helped). She made a guest list (I'm too lazy to scan it, but it was darling with all her phonetic spellings). We made valentines and planned what games she wanted to play, what she wanted to eat and do at the party. We shopped together and did all the preparations together the day of.

So the afternoon before the party, my friend Sommer was telling me about her sister-in-law's blog and if you go to her blog you'll see that her sister-in-law IS "Martha"...literally...look at her work and you'll see what I mean by the "literally". Anyway, so she posted this idea (hers are way cuter, but I wanted to use things I had on hand, and I'm no paper crafter) and so the night before the party, I wound up adding these little matchbox favors to my list of things to do! They did turn out cute though. Ruby and Alice actually played with them all day after the party, so the effort wasn't wasted.We invited 11 friends, and 9 came! We had friends from our old ward, our new ward, our homeschool P.E. co-op, our group Suzuki piano class and our academic homeschool co-op, so we covered all our bases! We started off making pizza on some previously prepared heart shaped pizza crusts I made that morning.

We played two little games, cleared the table and moved on to decorating sugar cookies.

After cookies, the kids really wanted to play, and the sun was out for the first time in a long time, so off they went to the backyard. We cleaned up the cookies and got ready to make these little paper plate valentine mailboxes for a valentine exchange. We were behind, so some of the parents were already back to get their kiddos, and we hurried to do the exchange.

The finished product.
Farewell party favors.

Our little performer...

Taking piano (Suzuki method) has been such a buoy to Ruby's confidence. She has never been a super timid girl, but she doesn't like to fail and so she used to shy from situations where that was a possibility. Now she has really internalized her teacher's slogan, "be a trier" and she is willing to try anything and learn from her mistakes and keep trying. She knows now that you can't expect to be good at something the first time, and that there is great reward from hard work and lots of trying.

Anyway, she eats up performing for others, so we participated in a little recital a few weeks ago where she played for maybe 100 people. The performers ranged in age, so I warned her before she went up that the piano bench might not be close enough to the piano. I told her she could just lean against the edge of the bench and play her song. Well, she walked right up there with a purpose! She just grabbed that bench and put it where she wanted it and then sat down to play! She played so happily and beautifully and gave a grin from ear to ear and a darling bow when she finished.

Her teacher was out of town, so this is another teacher handing her a certificate.

Teamwork...

My kids love Wii Fit, but Alice is too little and uncoordinated to do anything for more than a few minutes (other than the running). Ruby is very compasionate, and she will always select Alice's Mii and do a few of her best games in order for Alice to see her Mii "be happy" at the end of a game. Here's a new effort, Ruby making Alice's body do it! If you have Wii Fit, this is a balance game, the one where you are in a bubble on that river. They got all the way to the very end and then were done. Alice's Mii was happy!

For Porter...

So after I had planned all these things I was going to make for Christmas presents, we decided to draw names for the first time on Chris' side of the family. Whew! I'd already crocheted this darling pirate with Porter in mind. I did the drawing myself, and because my sister-in-law has three, her kids basically have to buy for the only other three kids available, so there was no way to rig it so I could have Porter without having siblings buying for siblings, which wasn't the idea. Anyway, I thought it turned out super cute and I think he likes it as well. (It was an adventure because I'd never crocheted anything but rows back and forth, and this was simple, but I had to just guess my way through. It's a good thing I don't apire to crafting perfection!

Rubyism...

Ruby: Mom, do you want to know why Heavenly Father makes kids?
Me: Yes, why?
Ruby: So that they can tell their moms that the light is green when they are putting on their makeup in the car.
Me: Yes, that is very useful for mommies.

There are some things that are such bad ideas, like putting your makeup on in the car, that I can't really get away from. I have been doing this one since I got behind the wheel. I keep my makeup in the car as a matter of fact. If we are having people over and I haven't make-uped, I'll be out in the car at some point putting it on with my trusty lit mirror.

When I had kids, I had visions of the kind of changes I'd make before my kids were old enough to be impacted by my flaws. I have since moved on to more of an ownership. I figure that some people use profanity in front of their children and teach them not to do the same. Seems pretty confusing, but I've adopted that same technique with my kids (only my profanity goes as far as "hate", "stupid", "dumb"...). Here's how it works:

Me (talking out loud to myself): I can't find my stupid keys!
Ruby and Alice in unison: We don't say stupid, mom!
Me: Mommies know how to say stupid without hurting the feelings of others. When you are a mommy you can say it too.

What do you think?