Mother's Day Happenings

It's been a week since Mother's Day, but I thought I'd better post before I forget (again!). Allie gave me a homemade card and a sheet of coupons. She told me if I used one, it was good for the whole day - so if I used one that said "I will be nice to Collin" - she will do it from the time I give her the coupon until bedtime. Sounds great! So on Mother's Day she kept asking me when I will use my coupons. I told her, I am waiting to use them during the summer when she's home all day. "Oh man, you're using your coupons wisely!" she said, and to that I said, "of course, did you forget I am a couponer?" Some of the coupons say:

1. You will take me to lunch and I will talk to you and eat with you because it's always fun with you.
2. When I know how to sew good, I will sew you any type of shirt you want.
3. I will let you be on the computer as long as you want.
4. I will do a Saxon Math Lesson (this appeared twice!). :)
5. I will feed Maddie.
6. I will give you a free kiss.

...and a bunch of free blank ones. She said I'll just have to fill in the blanks and she will do ANYTHING I write on there. Awesome coupons Allie!

Collin wrote "Love You mom" on his card, in his cute little handwriting, and on one side of the card it says "I love the way my mother...." and to that he drew a flower and a pot to represent "flowers" and "cook". So he loves the way I cook! And my favorite things were "flowers" and "love". Sweet boy.

Kevin gave a nice card, a couple of cute purses and a gift card to one of my favorite clothing stores. I was out shopping the day before M-day, and while I was out he called and jokingly asked me to pick up flowers on my way home - I told him I would like a new purse instead. I just happen to be in a little boutique with some cute purses close by (wink!) and they were having a great sale, so I picked two. I ended up with flowers on M-day anyways. And on Saturday he did all the dishes, did and folded the laundry, and a bunch of other nice things. I'm glad to have a husband who helps me out a lot!

On Sunday, we enjoyed a very yummy Steak and shrimp dinner courtesy of Pops for all the mothers in the family! I ate so much, even ate maybe 4 or 5 shrimp and didn't even have an allergic reaction. My in-laws are great cooks, so any time they make food, we are excited to show up.

So I had a great mother's day and I feel blessed to be a mother to my 3 sweet kids and a wife to a wonderful husband. Photos to come later.

The Cabbage Won!

Allie's last day of school was yesterday, and she was excited to bring home a 4th place prize for her cabbage. She got a little bucket with whoppers, a bookmark, a cute purple sports water bottle, a ribbon that said "4th Place" and a nice Johnny Rocket's gift card.

Allie's Cabbage

Allie brought home this little cabbage transplant a couple months back. It came in a little cup. We planted it in our grow box and it grew well, and has a little cabbage head now. A caterpillar / bug has been working on the leaves! Today we took a photo of it and her to enter in their school's cabbage contest. The largest cabbage wins a prize. We measured the cabbage at 21 inches diameter.

Maddie Girl at 17.5 months

Maddie is almost ready to go to nursery. It will be interesting to see how she will do! She's definitely into things. She loves to climb. I find her on top of my dining table quite often and seems like she can get there faster than I can blink my eyes. I'd be cooking about 10 feet away, and one second she is on the ground, the next she is on the table. She thinks it's funny too when I am alarmed and rush to get her down - and tries to get away by hiding behind the centerpiece. I guess calm and collected should be my response here.

She also loves the piano. She takes Allie's piano book and turn the pages as she's banging on the keys. Last night she noticed Allie's piano book wasn't where it should be (it was in the office). She took it and tried to put it back on the piano book rest but was unsuccessful (the book is too big for her). I found the scattered pages and folder on the floor and Maddie on the chair. She looked at book and told me to "take it". As soon as I placed the book back in its place, she was content and started to play some keys.

She is quite a talker now - jibber-jabbering most of the time. She added some new phrases and words to her vocab -- "take it", please, thank you, "where'd go?", "where's dad?", "let's go", shoes, boo, and dirty. Often she will copy what we say. One time Kevin asked her "what's going on?" She said it back to him.

She loves trying on shoes so we find a pair here and a pair there. She also likes to get out the Swiffer mop when we're cleaning, and throwing things in the trash - I've found a perfectly good apple, a shoe, and a couple boxes of puzzles in there a time or two. With all that and taking boxes of cereal from the pantry and picking thru the marshmallows, she definitely keeps us busy. Her silly laughter and big toothy smiles are definitely worth all of her little handprints on our newly cleaned glass doors, little footprints on the freshly mopped floors (not just when it's Collin's turn to mop - he gets very agitated about those), and spilled cereal on the just-vacuumed floors. I think.

Bread, Apples, and Trains

We've been quite busy (as usual) here at home. I've made 2 batches of white bread (a batch on Mother's Day!) and canned apple pie filling all in one week. I tried Britney B's Debra Little's bread recipe (yum-o) and Mindy and I canned 58 quarts of apple pie filling. We were practically tied up with the apples until the evening. They all look really good though, and will make some wonderful pies for the next two years. Kevin couldn't wait for the pie, he opened one of the jars that didn't seal and ate the filling (it was pretty good without the crust :)).



Collin asked me not to throw away the fruit boxes. He wanted to make a little car/train and a little fridge for Maddie. He's always thinking about what he could create. Today he got busy and asked me to help him connect the two boxes together to make a "two-seater car that's a train". He tried to push Allie and her friend Kaitlyn around in it, but decided they were much too heavy. He was really excited for Maddie to try out the new train. As you can see, Maddie enjoyed it a lot. She was squealing the whole time. Tonight Collin reminded me he was still planning on making a fridge for his little sister, and NOT TO THROW AWAY the box (I throw out a lot of stuff, apparently).



A couple of days ago or so I heard these two laughing really hard. I checked it out and found Allie with Collin on her shoulders. They both think it's really funny and could barely contain the laughter once they get started. I forgot to mention that Allie recently "moved in" to Collin's room (it was probably about a month ago now. I forget why); Collin was so nice to empty out a drawer for her to put some of her jammies in. Of course his room is hardly clean, now that they both spend lots of time playing together in there. He is looking forward for Allie to be done with school, we'll see what he thinks at the end of the summer.

Picking thru what?

Maddie has figured out that the little Lucky Charms marshmallows taste really good. That is, better than the cereal itself. The little miss knows where we keep cereal, so she goes right to the pantry, and grabs the cereal box she wants. This week's favorites are Cookie Crisp, Cocoa Krispies (pain to clean!) and Lucky Charms. She likes to walk around with a box of cereal!

I was cooking this one day when I noticed that Miss Maddie was especially being quiet. Then I saw her come out of the pantry with a big box of cereal. She stood there picking thru the cereal! She would stick her hand in the box, see what she got, and if it was a piece of marshmallow, she put in her mouth; if it was cereal, she tossed it out. After watching her a little while, I thought, duh, go grab the camera. So I did and thankfully she was still doing it. I got a few pictures of this little one picking thru the cereal. Notice the unwanted cereal on the floor. It was funny. Although I ended up having to break out the vacuum because there was no way I was picking up all the cereal on the floor. Ah the joys of toddlerhood!

Allie's Big Night

Allie at her 1st Recital on November 13, 2008. She was so pretty and so put together in her dress and pulled up hair.

At this recital, Allie played "Celebration Day" and "Ring the News". She did her own hair, the curls were beautiful (told me they were easy to do too). She asked me to clip on a dark red flower at the back because she needed just a "punch" of color since she was all in black and gray. She is going to be doing my hair when I'm old. She's just good at this kind of stuff. A fashionista by nature. Growing up too fast for my liking. Looking at the photos from the 1st recital, she now looks so much older and more mature. Time flies.

Allie and Collin both played at the same recital, but it being Collin's 1st, I thought I'd do a separate post for him. Like I mentioned, this was Allie's 2nd recital. She did great, but she wasn't happy that she didn't play her second song perfectly. We kept telling her those things happen sometimes, and we just have to move on and don't dwell so much on it, maybe concentrate more on how flawless she played the first song. I worry sometimes that she is a perfectionist like her Dad and me!

All the kids and their teacher, Miss Cindy at the recital

She and Collin decided they wanted to go to Pei Wei's for dinner after the recital. We told them beforehand they get to pick where they wanted to eat since it was a big night. Grandma and Pops came to the recital -- it is nice to live here now and actually have some extended family attend our recitals and special events! Thanks to Grandma and Pop for coming. It really meant a lot to us and the kids.

At Pei Wei's after the recital, we shared growing-up stories of how I forgot a whole section at an oration contest when I was in 3rd grade and how Kevin missed notes at a piano recital, etc., and other similar ones Grandma had experienced when she was little. That was fun.

Today was also Allie's 3rd Grade Music Performance at her school. Earlier at home she and her friend Kaitlyn were making fun of some of the songs they were going to sing so it was funny to see them do the actions that they didn't really think was "cool". They did great and sang all these fun songs, a lot of them I have not heard before. Grandma and Pops also came to that. They had an art show/exhibit set up in another room so we found Allie's flower art and took pictures for memories.

With Pop, Grandma and Maddie at school.

Us at the art exhibit

Collin's 1st Piano Recital

Tonight was Collin's 1st Piano Recital.

He didn't want to do it a couple of days ago. And he was adamant about not doing it.

He picked a very short song to play. Day's End or G7, as the note he made himself says. His note says: G7, 2 -- A little reminder to play G 7 times, 2 counts each except for the last one.

He didn't want to do On This Farm (his other song). Says he's gonna do that one at Jace's house. This one's longer, with 4 different kinds of notes and a fun tune. I'm excited to hear him play it soon.

Before his turn, I kept asking him how he was feeling. He said OK, and that he was ready to go. He was even paying attention to when his friends got up to play -- like when Little Miss Robison got up to play, he told me to video tape her because her dress was pretty. Funny kid. She did have a really cute black and white check dress on.

I was a little nervous he would change his mind when it was his time. But he confidently walked up the stage, introduced himself and said he was going to play Day's End. He stood by the piano and played. After, he stood by the side of the piano for me to take his picture. Then left the stage.

We told him he did great! He said he was glad to do the recital, the bench was too high for him to sit on, and that he forgot to bow. Glad he didn't have a bad experience. :)

Here he is lining up to get his treat at the end of the recital.

Never Off Duty Teachers

This week's paragraph is:

Mothers Who Know Are Teachers
Mothers who know are always teachers. Since they are not babysitters, they are never off duty. A well-taught friend told me that he did not learn anything at church that he had not already learned at home. His parents used family scripture study, prayer, family home evening, mealtimes, and other gatherings to teach. Think of the power of our future missionary force if mothers considered their homes as a pre–missionary training center. Then the doctrines of the gospel taught in the MTC would be a review and not a revelation. That is influence; that is power.

Canning and The Goodest in the World

That's what Collin thought of the bread we made tonight. Allie thought it was scrumptious and delicious, Kevin thought it was fun to make bread (he watched). It was my first attempt to make wheat bread on my own, from freshly ground wheat -- ground with my mother in law's wheat grinder that she kindly let me use along with a lesson on breadmaking one Sunday afternoon (now that I am thinking about it, I really just invited myself over for that - lucky she's a good sport). Anyway, I was amazed at how fast it went and it was pretty easy to do. Now I know what my pro-breadmaker friends mean when they say, "it's not hard at all, you just kinda have to get the feel for it." I was pretty pleased with the results. The kids were great helpers, including Maddie.

While the bread was rising, we did our FHE and introduced the kids to their new allowance and job chart. They each get their allowance equal to their age at the beginning of the month. They are expected to pay tithing and save some. I am also getting them little notebooks to write down what they spent their money on. The allowance is not tied to chores, they are expected however to do every one of their daily, weekend, and "training" jobs. There are some special chores they could do for some extra money (big jobs), but they are expected to take care of their own room, their schoolwork, and also help out the family without getting paid - it's just a part of life in our home. If they don't do their work and I or Kevin end up doing them, then they pay us back for our services.

So for example, both Allie and Collin are expected to make their beds, pick up after themselves, practice piano, do homework/read a book (Collin). and take care of their bedtime routines on time. Then they also get to do 3 jobs on the weekends/as needed. They chose their specialties - e.g. Collin volunteered to be our vacuum/mop boy and glass door cleaner, Allie is our mirror girl and duster). Then they also get to learn new skills every so often - right now Allie is getting trained to how to load a dishwasher and handwashing dishes so she can wash dishes without help, and Collin is training to be in charge of putting away and sorting silverware. All the information I used is from the book called "Parenting Breakthrough" by Merillee Boyack. I love that book!

Today I also canned some pinto beans with Mindy, a really good friend of mine. It was fun as always, and makes the time go fast!