Kara's Baby Shower

We are anything but ordinary, my sisters and I. We planned to do a baby shower for Kara but she was all set for the baby so instead we planned a baby room deco-party. Because of the type of party it would be, we kept it in the family instead of inviting friends. I love hanging out with my sisters and daughter(s)!

Back: Cami, Kara, Caytlyn

Front: Kate, Erika, Kimber

"Before"

Kara had a colorful vision in her mind of how she wanted her boy room to look and we did our best to make it reality. The first night was spent clearing the room, taping, primer and the first coat of paint. Getting schnockered on paint fumes on top of the late night silliness made it a reeeelly fun night.

The next morning we did the second coat of paint, moved everything back into the room, added the curtains, set up the crib and by noon we were ready for naps.

"After"

However, not very often do we all get together so we (minus Kara, who needed to take a nap and focus on growing a baby) went shopping. It was more looking than shopping (though Erika did get some really great deals at Plato's Closet) and of course, we ate. We were a teensy bit loopy from our partying-painting-project so after one clothing store we were headed back to Kara's for a movie. A really lame movie. We only watch about 7 minutes of it before we turned it off. Instead of wasting away in front of the TV we helped Kate finish the stuff for her primary lesson and then laughed our way through a few rounds of Nertz. Again, we stayed up waaay too late but we did soak up every possible minute together before we zonked for the few remaining hours of the night. Caytlyn and I chose to sleep in the basement, thinking we would sleep better away from the others who were still talking, and off to bed we went earlier than the rest of them. We talked in the dark until just past 3 am. It was like having a college roommate again and I felt young . . . until the next morning when I needed to drive home. Luckily, she stayed awake to chat with me for the entire 4 1/2 hour drive while Erika snoozed away in the backseat.

Baby Zane joined the family just a few weeks later.

April Fools' Day 2011

April Fools' day to us is more about silly food than pranks (though I did pull one over on LeRoy that wasn't very nice and I am going to be spending the next 20 years groveling for forgiveness over it). We have a neighbor that gets so excited for our yearly prank food delivery that she even takes pictures of it. The boys have fun tricking their brains by looking at what they think is one food and tasting another.

This year our brain fooling April dish was spaghetti.

White cake made in pot-pie size tins, soaked with red jello for moistness and color effect, topped with noodle-y cream cheese frosting and chocolate "meat"balls dipped and drizzled in strawberry jam.

We already have next year planned.

Just For Laughs

When I'm out and about and I see something that makes me burst out in public laughter, I'm grateful that I have picture taking capabilities on my phone.

I found this on a t-shirt at the BYU-I bookstore. It's not necessarily laugh out loud worthy but I thought it was clever.



I still laugh every time I see this recipe book cover.
Seriously, did the peek-a-boo bare arm dangling a dress looking apron and that particular title not catch any good Deseret Book Store editor by surprise? I especially like the "ooh, la, la" on the apron.


This was a treasure found at Shopko during Christmas shopping.

Did Disney okay this?

Chillin' With My Boys

On the 10th of March I told Derek and Justin that they would be missing school the next day. They gave me quizzical looks with mischievous grins and early Friday morning we headed out. When Derek turned my IPOD on with ABBA blaring through the car speakers, I knew it was destined to be a fabulous trip!

The road from Rexburg to Salt Lake is rather dull and brown and full of sagebrush. And, there are lots of cows. Everytime Derek would see cows he would holler out "cows . . . mooooo" and then informed us that everyone had to moo. Pretty soon all of us were calling out "cows" and all of us would mooooo together. Hyrum was the first to call out "horse" and pretty soon we were a traveling ark, bellowing our hello to any animals we passed.

Our first stop was my sister Kara's house. Hyrum was going to have a play date with his cousin Max while the rest of us went to the show. For only being three days apart these little men are completely different in size and favorites but it didn't stop them from spending some quality time "washing" dishes, playing games, "swimming", and jumping on the couch (which Kara has a cute video of but I can't seem to load here).

Disney on Ice was spectacular! I felt like I was missing half the show because so much was going on around the whole stage and above the stage. The skating was smooth, tricky, daring, and they even involved the crowd throughout the performance.

Mickey and the brooms from Fantasia

The Halloween Festival of Villains (that was awesome!!)

Toy Story (Nathan's favorite)

We left Utah early the next morning to head to Preston, Idaho for my cousins funeral. During the drive from Sandy to Ogden, Justin seemed to have a case of the giggles. Once we realized he was laughing at the Chic-fil-A billboards we all seemed to get a case of the giggles. Who knew cows could be so funny?

As we passed through the mountains to Logan and Preston the only radio stations we could get were in Spanish or from the 60's. For some reason that sparked a round of random dancing as the boys chicken pecked and armpit danced to their best Latin abilities. When that fuzzed out I switched it to the oldies station, which by the way, was a true oldies station, not just the 80's oldies that my kids occasionally endure. Derek asked me "do you know this song?". I laughed right out loud since I had just been envisioning poodle skirts and bobby socks and pony tails with ribbons in them.

We enjoyed an unusually warm day in Preston and made the very best of it. The boys were so excited to play in a park and I was excited to see and feel the sun. As we came through Swan Lake we stopped at the hill with the stairs and enjoyed a small hike.

Rock On!

Derek is forever creating or building something so when I saw this cardboard guitar idea on Make It and Love It I bookmarked it to show him after school.

He immediately (I'm talking before practicing his cello or doing homework) went to the garage to dig through the pile of cardboard that has been growing all winter for recycling. The tracing, cutting, poking, gluing and stringing began and by evening the boys were playing their new guitars.



Tuning them is not an option but Derek did manage to pluck out Mary Had a Little Lamb and did his best to teach it to Nathan. It didn't sharpen his cello skills any but we considered the entire project his music practice for the night.

Dear Mother Nature,

I am sorely disappointed in the weather attitude you are displaying today. However, I am willing to overlook the 2 inches of snow that have fallen in the last 12 hours and the whiteout conditions that render me unable to see my neighbors house and even the fact that the snow is still falling since I too, as a mother, have my days of dumping cold, wet, cloudy emotions as I struggle to leave behind one season of life for another. I encourage you to let the winter season become only a memory, welcome spring as the gradual change between two weather worlds, and to shine forth your warmth and beauty with the much anticipated season of summer. I hope you can regain your focus toward a brighter, warmer future.

Until then, I will prepare my home for the upcoming summer as I wipe away dust bunnies and smudge prints; tend to the seedlings in my kitchen growing into their flowery vegetable glory; and put away the last remnants of the winter holidays in the anticipation of meeting up with you on Friday for a cozy 58 degrees.

Your companion in change,

Kimber

Hyrum's 3rd Birthday

I can't believe my baby is three! He has graced us with three years of fabulous laughs, never ending cuddles and, more recently, vocal "I huv oo" sentiments. His smile lights up the entire family.

Hyrum has some definite favorites and for his birthday I wanted to include all of them. So here's his blue, Elmo, strawberry, star, horse, cape, birthday bearing the name he has recently come to recognize in letter form, Hyrum.

The cake: Elmo with 4 layers of strawberry gooey goodness. I ended up with a 2 day hand/forearm cramp after doing all that "fur" on his cake but it was worth it!

I thought there could never be a kid who loved Elmo more than Nathan did . . . until Hyrum came along. He has three stuffed Elmo's of different sizes. For a kid who will not be babysat by the TV, Elmo can get his attention and I have about 12 minutes of uninterrupted shower time.


The gifts: blue, Samuel the Lamanite, star, Hyrum, cape, horse

Hyrum has no interest in letters (except the letter E - probably because of Elmo) but he LOVES colors. He knows a wide range of colors by sight and name but if there is ever a choice it is blue. Blue cup, blue shirt, blue blanket, blue crayons, blue books to read. He even fights with LeRoy when told that he has green eyes (it took 6 kids to finally give LeRoy his wish of a green eyed baby). He demands that his eyes are "byue yike mommy's an Hathan's". He also loves stars, especially if they are blue. He is always trying to wear one of Nathan's many capes and he gallops around pretending he is on a horse. Samuel the Lamanite is his favorite scripture hero. He has a poster of him above his bed; he hollers out in the middle of church when he finds a picture of Samuel in his scripture reader; he requires that we call him Samuel when he is in hero mode.



And here is a video recap


He had a rough time falling asleep after so much excitement and during the night he woke up with a scared cry. It was different than the sleepy whimpering that usually walks into our room and plops down on the floor next to my side of the bed. As I picked him up his little arms wrapped all the way around my neck and held on tight. After spending my evening reminiscing about his birth and remembering those three first weeks of spending my nights on the couch with him on my chest (the only way he would sleep at night) I couldn't just put him on the floor. I took him to the couch with me and we slept like we did three years ago. It was so nice to feel his heartbeat next to mine and to smell his freshly bathed hair and to feel his warm body covering my torso with his head tucked snugly in my neck and his little fingers wrapped around mine for security. I love holding him in my arms! Having a 19 year old has made me realize that these moments become fewer and fewer and they pass so quickly. I wanted to memorize every detail of my one on one quiet time with Hyrum, just like I did the night he was born. Needless to say I didn't sleep any more on the night of his third birthday than I did on the night of his birth but both of those nights will forever hold a memory of peaceful joy, pure love, and sweet contentment.

Erika and Harrison

On the one sunny day that we have had so far this year (slight exaggeration, I think we've had three sunny days!) Erika and Harrison took a nap with the warmth of the sun streaming in through our big window.

These two are perfect napping buddies! They can contort themselves into the strangest sleeping positions and when they are out they are dead to the world. To wake Erika up we nearly have to pull her off the bed or shake an arm or leg until we border abuse to pull her out of her dream world to join us. It doesn't matter if it is first thing in the morning or it was a 20 minute nap.

A friend posted this on facebook today.


We have watched it so many times that Nathan and Hyrum are chanting it while playing in their fort.

The video reminded me of this picture

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2011

After a very sleepless night due to a heavy breathing, non-stop coughing Hyrum sleeping on my bedroom floor, I forced and dragged myself out of bed to uphold the green tradition of St. Patty's breakfast at the Edwards' home.

I had already been up until 1 am "kissing" each of the kids with their special leprechaun kisses (shamrock stickers) and setting the table to save me time in the morning. I even texted a shamrock sticker picture to Levi and informed him he had been kissed by a leprechaun and he motivated me to keep going on the decorating when I was so ready to fall into bed - and the coughing hadn't even started yet. It was a good thing I did most of it last night because I barely managed to plop green pancakes on the table this morning and only 5 of them showed up in shamrock form.

As always, the extra work was very worth the effort and the kids' responses were of complete surprise. I thought they would expect it after years of doing this but March 17th really does sneak up on us without a lot of commercial prep. You'd think from all these pictures that I was the one demanding photos for a blog but in reality the kids ask for pictures because they love looking back on them. Erika was the only one not overly enthused about pictures being taken at 7 am but she was still good to show up in at least two of them.

Justin wore one of the blinking shamrock necklaces to school, LeRoy wore his bow tie to Electrical Wholesale, Nathan wore his bow tie and "kiss" to preschool, I'll wear this "cheer" shamrock headband all day just to keep my hair out of my face, and each of us is sporting a lovely green shamrock rubber bracelet. We're doing our part to celebrate!

I had intended to clean my house today but I think Hyrum and I will just sleep away the morning while Nathan is at preschool and we'll blame the mess on the leprechauns. After all, they have a reputation to hold on to and I wouldn't want to ruin that for them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ AFTERNOON UPDATE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the kids came in after school they found the first clue to their treasure hunt. After going up and down the stairs following clues to ten different locations and being quite stumped a couple of times, the treasure was finally found . . . in the bathtub. They divided the spoil equally and we munched on the last bits of minty chocolate kisses, chocolate coins and bubble gum coins while laughing our way through Little Rascals.

I love it when an older movie is brought back to life for another generation. I forgot how many great one-liners there are in that show. Not ones that we want repeated in church, but we're already the odd ball family in the ward so I don't think anyone will truly be that surprised. I'm sure having my sons spout off woman-hater quotes and sewer swamp name calling will solidify our place in the world.