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?

Once upon a Costco Parking lot...

This is a story about mean people and nice people...

Mean people...
So about two months ago, I was in the Costco parking lot in no hurry, on my way home. I was feeling totally zapped from having just spent like two hours in the store totally wiping my kids out and I was just in a zone. I drove to a T in the parking lot where I turned left to head out of the parking lot. About 1/2 mile AWAY, after sitting at four traffic lights, I wound up with this car on my right side that to my knowledge I'd never seen in my entire life. It was a white sports car. The drivers wanted me to roll my window down, so I did. The driver, a woman, looked to be about sixty years old and she had the look of a soap opera star, kind of materialistic and overly made up...a little bit fancy. Anyway, she said, "You just ran a stop sign in the Costco parking lot."

I was slow to respond because I couldn't really imagine where this had occurred and why it would have bothered her. I recalled that there had been a car I had pulled in front of, but it was at least two aisles away going the standard 10mph in the parking lot and I had in no way cut anyone off. Hmmmm. I didn't have much to say. I think I said, "I did? Oh."

Then her kept man in the passenger seat leaned so I could see his friendly face and said, "Did they teach you that at BYU?" (I have an alum thing around my licence plate.)

I was baffled. I just didn't really know what to say, which is most definitely NOT LIKE ME. I was just processing when the woman got really General Hospital on me and said in a really dragged out, slow and dramatic way, "You're a gooooooood Mormon. You're a goooooooood Mormon."

Then the light turned green and we rolled up our windows and drove away. I drove next to them for some time thinking, "I'd rather be guilty of running a stop sign in a parking lot than chewing out a complete stranger!"

Nice people:

Today in the Costco parking lot, we were walking out with our cart and this old minivan was driving by and came suddenly to a stop next to us. There was this old man inside with a flannel shirt and a baseball cap on. He reached behind him and came enthusiastically out of the van with two brand new teddy bears in hand. He showed them to the girls and asked them to pick the one they wanted. They were super excited and so was he. He told me that he'd been doing this since Christmas and gets the bears really cheap and just loves making kids happy. We all said thanks and he was on his merry way.

It is just so nice to run into nice people!

Catch-up...

I got a call from a good friend who moved last fall and she was coming in town! What a fun treat it was to have she and her family at our house! Her son stayed mostly with other friends, but we still got to hang out with him during the day while his friends were at school. Anyway, we went to a local park to do some letter boxing and had a good time. We looked up three clues and only found one, but still it was fun.

After Kerry and her family left, we took advantage of a little window of time during which not all our home school activities were in full swing to go to my folks house for a visit. While I was there, I got to take some pictures for an old friend and we had fun catching up. We also got to go to the Children's Museum up there for a change with my old friends Sandy and her little one, Addison, Leisha and her nephew that she takes care of once a week, Cashton and Kelly and her busy little guy (not pictured) Aksel and...soon to be new little one...sooner than we realized...the next morning!I was already back home when I got the news that Kel had had the new baby, so we were only home a day before we headed back up to meet little Maddox. How super sweet to hold such a newborn baby! I'll add that unfortunately I didn't get a picture of either of the blankets I made for him...the one in the picture. I need to post the instructions because it is my new favorite thing to make for baby presents, and was a pattern shared with my by my friend Monica.Alice, Ruby and baby Maddox and Aksel.

While we were up north, we got to go see my cousin speak in church previous to leaving on a mission to the Philippines. Her family lives in the community where we lived when we were first married and where we brought Ruby home to her all pink little room. We had to take Ruby to show her her first house. We didn't knock on the door, but we were bold enough to go right up to it! It's funny how trees get so big and things change when you have them permanently etched in your mind a certain way.