Favorite Phrases

I've decided that one of may favorite things about having kids is listening to the things that they say. Tonight, Andrew repeated one of my favorites. I covered him up in bed and he reached is little arms around my neck we had this conversation.

Andrew: Don't let the good night bugs eats you up!

Me: Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite.

Andrew: That's what I said.

Cold Snap

This is an old picture, but it illustrates perfectly how my children feel about cold weather. We're in the midst of a cold snap, which is probably much colder in the rest of the country than it is here. But it precipitated a minor upheaval at our house this morning. You see, Maggie and Matthew have both worn long pants for the last two days. And now they're OUT of long pants. They only have 2 pairs each. Andrew was out, too, until I remembered that he has an older brother who used to wear size 3. So I went and dug up and old pair of pants for him, found Matthew a pair of his church pants ("why do I have to wear these to school?") and Maggie decided to wear the same pair she wore yesterday. Oh, the drama. We just weren't expecting it to get below 50 degrees for a few more months. I guess I will be spending my morning doing some clothes shopping. Or maybe I'll just do the laundry. Yes, definitely the laundry.

New Bikes

With Matthew's birthday a couple weeks ago, he got a new bike from us. We were so excited for this new bike, that we all set out for the sporting goods store a few days later and Kevin and I got new bikes, too. Our bikes from our collage days had rusted out within 6 months of moving to Florida. So, for the first time in 8 years, I got on a bike and test-drove it around the store. Kevin had a good ol' time laughing at my attempts not to hit other people or things in the store.

So now, we can go on family bike rides. So far, we have only been on a couple of them.


I got a baby seat to put Andrew in, but I haven't gotten a picture of that yet. Matthew loves to go fast. We actually have to work pretty hard to keep up with him. He says, "My legs feel like I'm playing soccer when I ride my bike." In other words, he can feel the burn. Oh, and I decided that his soccer uniform will make a great bike-riding uniform for him. We really don't have to worry about visibility.


Maggie, on the other hand does not love to go fast. We spend the entire time saying, "C'mon Maggie, keep up!" And she says, "but then I'll get tired!" Until at the end of our little block, she just hops off in frustration.


Ah well, she's an artist, not an athlete. I do hope she learns to ride before she turns nine. (I think I was the only child in my school who didn't learn to ride a bike until fourth grade.)

Birthday Boy

We had another birthday last week. Our #2 turned 5. And now I get hear all kinds of complaints about how it's not fair that his birthday is the last one in our family (everyone else has b-days in April, June, July, and August, but he has to wait until October). I don't get it. Why do the complaints start after the party? But he did have a fun party. It was a pirate party and they threw water bombs at each other and beat the heck out of a pirate pinata.

Matthew was really worried that they would get rained out. It rained every afternoon for several weeks before his b-day. But that morning, a cool, dry wind started blowing and it turned out to be a beautiful day. I think his birthday is actually the official end to rainy season here. Hooray! I remember when he was born. We had just moved here and I didn't think summer would ever end. I went into the hospital and it was hot and muggy, but when I came out, it was 60 degrees out. I couldn't figure out what happened.

Anyway, now that I've celebrated the end of my summertime purgatory, here are some of my favorite pics from the party.

Here's Matthew running to get water balloons. This kid is a skeleton. We need to start feeding him butter. But, alas, he hates butter. He has me make his grilled cheese sandwiches in the toaster so that I don't have to butter the bread when they get grilled.


Matthew about to attack with a balloon, while I'm amazed that Andrew has survived having a trampoline:


The Birthday Cake:


Maggie reads her brother's cards:


And finally, Matthew gets plowed under by all the little boys who love his presents:

Girls' Night Out

A couple of weeks ago, Maggie and I went on a Stake Mother/Daughter campout. I have delayed putting up a post about it because I was (ahem) waiting to get pictures from a friend--I forgot my own camera. Now, in one of my earlier posts, I had mentioned that the weather was drier. That only lasted for two days. During the next 3 weeks leading up to the campout, it rained almost every day and that kept the humidity way up, too. So for our camping trip we had lots of mud. Here is a picture from the middle of the campground.


Luckily, we didn't have to try to pitch any tents. This summer, the Church just finished building some cabins on the ranch that they own out here. They aren't particularly luxurious, but they have a/c and they aren't tents. That's luxury enough for me. Here's what the inside of our cabin looked like.
Maggie and I managed to snag the bunk bed in the back, behind the curtain. We were going to save that bunk for someone else, but no one claimed it and by 10:30, all the other girls were running around the cabin squealing and Maggie was starting to have hysterics because she was so tired. So we retreated behind the curtain to get help her get to sleep. I ended up sleeping in the top bunk with her. Of course no one ever sleeps long when you pack a bunch of girls into one room. By 4 am I woke up and realized that I was tired of being kicked, so I went out to the porch and spent a few hours chatting with the other moms who has tried sharing a bed with their daughters. Unfortunately, I have no picture of me at 4 am. But rest assured, the other moms got a kick out seeing their Relief Society president with her hair sticking straight up.

Once it started getting light out, Maggie was allowed to get dressed and she tramped off across the field with her friends and their mom to go fishing. She hates fishing, but I guess it's ok, if you get to goof off with 3 other silly girls. When they came back they had not caught anything (thank goodness) but she had managed to get her shoes totally submerged in the mud and she walked back barefoot. I'm so glad she had the sense not to wear her white shoes camping.

After breakfast, we went across the field to a giant slip and slide that had been set up. Maggie warned me to take off my shoes before we set off across that field. She's a smart girl. I had to roll my pants up to my knees and we slogged through knee-high grass and ankle-deep muddy water for a quarter of a mile. Ugh. All I could do was grit my teeth and try not to think about snakes and squishy things oozing through my toes.


Maggie had fun sliding down and getting all muddy. Then we headed back to camp and she got a quick shower before heading back out into the mud while I packed up the car.



























In spite of all the mud (or maybe because of it) we had a lot of fun. Next year our stake won't be holding a campout, so I polled all the women I knew and we decided that our ward will hold a mother/daughter campout instead. We'll do it before rainy season starts. Yay!

P.S. I know have some friends and relatives who read this blog, who are not familiar with all the words that Mormons use when we are talking about church-related things. A Ward is the equivalent of a congregation and it's based on geographic boundaries. A Stake is a collection of 6 to 12 wards--our stake has 8 wards in it. The Relief Society is the women's organization at church and there is one within every ward.

Saturday

Yesterday was another typical Saturday for us. Matthew had a soccer game, Kevin mowed the grass, and I managed to mop the floor (we have way too much linoleum for that to be a pleasant job).

I did get some pretty good pictures at Matthew's game. Sometimes his competitiveness gets the best of him. Here he is knocking over a teammate so he can get the ball.


But then I see something like this and it makes me feel better. This is actually one of his best friends from church talking trash after he scored a goal on Matthew.

At one point, his shoe came off, but he went ahead and kicked the ball into the goal before running over to Daddy to get his shoe back on. I have no idea what's going on with the coach in the background.



That morning, when we were out in the yard puttering around, Kevin snapped a couple of pictures. He really likes the "macro" mode on the camera that lets you get up close to small subjects. This one is within the depths of our papaya tree. Apparently it is a great place for frogs to live. There must have been 4 of them crowded all together on one stem.


And here is the bird of paradise in our front yard. After a year and a half, it finally started growing and produced a bloom.