The Moments That Give Me Hope

Me: It's time for bed, do you want to say the prayer or do you want me to?
Jacob: I want Jay-Jay to.
Me: I don't think he's big enough yet.
Jacob: Yes, he is, I'll show you
Jay, say "Heavnely Father"
Jay: "eavenly ather"
Jacob: "Thank you for this day"
Jay: "anks for a day"
Jacob: "Bless for blessings"
Jay: "essings".....AMEN!!

And that is what big brothers are for!

Home for Lunch

"Well Hi Jay-Jay how come you're naked?"
"Oh, we gave him a bath"
"Really?"
"Yeah, we had to, he was covered with shampoo"
"Why was he covered with shampoo?"
"Cause he dumped it out on himself.....and all over the carpet."

"The Hot Dog Rules"

Keep in mind I wrote these when I only had the two little girls :)

Tonight dinner consisted of: a hot dog, a bun, and ketchup. Here are the rules that resulted from just one meal:

1. No touching your sister during dinner (Anarosa)
Sub-rules: (this not being clear enough)
a. No poking your sister during dinner (Anarosa)
b. No biting your sister during dinner (Alana)
c. No pulling your sister's hair during dinner (Alana)
d. No grabbing your sister during dinner (Aanarosa)
2. No playing under the table at dinner (Anarosa)
3. No dipping your hair in ketchup (Anarosa)
4. No dipping your sister's hair in ketchup (Alana)
5. You must keep your food on the table during dinner (Anarosa)
6. If you want more ketchup you must ask for it, you may NOT take it off of your sister's hot dog and wipe it on your own. (Alana)
7. No throwing food, ever. (both)
8. Singing and dancing and growling are allowed at dinner if you stay in your seat (both)
9. There is absolutely no screaming or shrieking at dinner (Alana)
10. NO taking food off of your sister's plate (both)
11. No grabbing your sister's food and smashing it in half (Anarosa)
12. If your mouth is too full you may take the extra food out and put it on your plate (both) but you MAY NOT take spit-out food off of your sister's plate and eat it! (both) See rule 10.
13. If you want a drink from Mommy's cup, you must first chew and swallow the food that is in your mouth (both)
14. You may not fish the ice-cubes out of Mommy's cup with your hands because you don't like water with ice in it (Anarosa)
15. No sitting on the table during dinner (Alana)
16. No feet on the table during dinner (Alana)
17. When Mom starts counting to five, you had better JUST FINISH YOUR DINNER!!!!!!!!

I found the smell!!

Yes, that's right, for the past week and a half there has been an obnoxious smell coming from our walk in closet. Both Mark and I have been constantly trying to figure out where it was coming from. We were finally getting convinced that some critter had died in the walls and we were going to have to pay someone to knock holes in our walls to find it, until today....when I moved the dresser to find a very large cup of chocolate milk!!! (complete with spoon to stir it with) hidden away behind it.......Yep......chocolate milk.

I thought about taking a picture, but I just had to hold my nose grab the cup barely by the edge and walk verrrrry quickly to the outside garbage can.

Anarosa's comment: "Huh, I could have sworn I took that out...."

Our New Friend

We have officially adopted a caterpillar. The girls found a caterpillar in a bunch of flowers that were in Mark's office at church. They REALLY wanted to keep him for a pet, so we sacrificed on of my canning jars to make him a little home.
I was a little worried since, we've tried to do caterpillars before, but they never survive more than a day or two. This little guy has been here for three days and seems to be doing well. He certainly can eat!!
The kids decided to call him Stripedy (pronounced stripe-ed-eee).

Caught!

We have a little spot bot carpet cleaner (which we use ALL the time!). I set it up to clean two little spots on the carpet (nobody knew how they got there...) Each cycle takes about seven minutes and everytime I walked by I had to re-start the cycle.

I finally found out who was doing it!!

Isn't he helpful, pushing buttons for me!!!!

A Slip of the Elbow

"Mom! Mom! You have to come see this"

mmmm...hmmmm......

"It was a little bit of a natural disaster, it wasn't my fault though!"

Uhhhhh whatever it is just get a towel and clean it up!

"Well.....my elbow slipped"

Okay, I'm coming.....

Monkey Tales

So I'm getting the kids ready for church and notice out of the corner of my eye, Jacob running around with Anarosa's scarf sticking out of the back of his pants........hmm..
"Jacob?"
"Yes, Mom"
"Why do you have a scarf in your pants?"
"I'm a Monkey Boy.......you said if I ate all those bananas I would turn into a monkey boy and I did!"
(I don't remember saying such a thing, but it does sound like something I would say, so we'll roll with it) I let him run around with the scarf for a few minutes thinking he'll get tired of it.
Pretty soon Anarosa comes to get her scarf back because it's time to leave for church. Jacob won't give it back.
"But I'm a monkey boy and I need my tail"
"Yes, I know, but it's really Anarosa's scarf and she wants to wear it to church"
"WHY would she want to wear a GROSS MONKEY TAIL TO CHURCH?, besides, if she pulls my tail off of me I will DIE!!"

Sooo...just how do you convince a monkey boy to give up his tail?

One Appendix Too Many

On Monday evening Anarosa started complaining of a stomach ache. I didn't think much of it because all the kids have been sick with the flu, so I told her to go lay down and I would check on her in a bit. She started throwing up and her stomach wouldn't feel any better. At about 9:00 I got worried and called Kaiser. They told me to get her to the nearest emergency room right away. I called Mark and he had to leave his shift at work to come home and let me run her to the emergency room. Once we got there, it took us 6 hours, (they had forty admissions that shift), but we finally got a diagnosis of appendicitis. Luckily we got her there before it ruptured and they were able to do surgery at about 8 am Tuesday morning.
The surgery went great. She came out of the anesthetic without any problems. I felt bad for her, she was really tired from being up all night in the ER before they did the surgery so when she came out of the anesthetic she kept asking what had happened to her (she didn't really understand that she was going to have surgery) But she was up and walking in a couple of hours! She just came home this morning, and we are all happy to have her back! (especailly me, because I've been sleeping in chairs next to her bed for two nights!! and I am ready for my own bed.)

Some Confusion about Tithing

So Jacob's birthday is coming up and he got a card in the mail with money in it! He was really excited about it. Dad mentioned that he could pay tithing now that he had his own money. He looked a little confused so Mark followed up with a simple explanation that we give 10% of our money to Heavenly Father. Jacob accepted that and without further ado started throwing one of his dollar bills into the air! Finally in exasperation he looked up and said "Heavenly Father, you're gonna have to come down here and get it"