A little artistic license

So Jenelle LOVES to draw faces. Really, apart from the scribble, circle, line, or occasional letter by accident, it's all she draws. Oh and she always wants us to be drawing them. Here's two examples of her happy faces:
(In case you were wondering, the circles on the sides of the faces are ears, not arms.)


And this is a surprise face with the open "o" mouth, which she herself makes while drawing - cute!









I tried to get her to draw her mad face but she was drawing real people (the magenta one on top is me), and didn't want any of them to be angry. So pretty much all of her happy faces look the same, except for one. The following is my sister, Anna, or Ninnie, as she's called:



(I love watching her add the hair, she just goes nuts and says, "Ninnie has LOTS of crazy hair!" I can't stop laughing about it.)



Oh, and to make Ninnie feel better, here is one of her senior portraits. As everyone can see, she does not have hair growing out of her chin and nose. In fact, she is very beautiful and has hair most girls would give an arm for. So please Ninnie, don't be offended.

"Cherish is a word ..."

Since hearing that a friend of ours suffered a heart attack over the weekend, I have not been able to stop thinking about what happened, and in particular, about how it affects her kids. She is recovering well, which is an absolute miracle, but we didn't know that yesterday, when we taught her 5 year-old son in our Primary class. Unexpectedly, my eyes kept welling up with tears as I looked at him or heard him announce that it's his birthday this week. It was really breaking my heart and made us feel the responsibility of being his teacher so much deeper. And as I couldn't stop thinking about it, I've felt such a need to hold my girls a little longer. Thanks to all the reflecting, I didn't even get mad when they woke up WAY too early, and am so grateful because I pulled them into bed with me instead - one on either side. I think I might have fallen asleep (hard to believe with the crazy loud surround-sound binky breathing going on), and when I opened my eyes, I saw that they were stretching their arms across me to hold hands with each other. I wish I could've pressed pause on that moment (and thus have avoided the tantrums and lack of patience on my part that came later as my sensitivity wore off). I just needed to write to remind myself to really cherish moments like that. I try to tell myself that all the time when I'm frustrated and not handling "situations" as well as I should. I just hope my family never doubts how much I love them.

Goodbye Cable, Hello Internet!

So the time has come to say goodbye to Cable TV - really meaning that I will miss John and Kate Plus 8, What Not to Wear, Sportcenter's Top 10, Fox News, NBA games, and the occasional movie on tv. I gave Cooper cable for his birthday, but it was just through the end of the Blazer's season - which, seeing as they didn't make the playoffs, is over. Hopefully this means less vegging in front of the tv (unfortunately Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs are still available on our tv, meaning it will be on more than I would hope)!
However, in its place we have finally left behind the Dark Ages (as my sister said) and have the internet! Meaning I can actually blog when I want to, look up random trivia we're arguing about, check my email more than once a week (I'm really sick of there being like 30 new emails to look at!), play Text Twist, and whatever else it is that people do on the internet. Yet since they counseled moms not to waste too much time surfing the internet at conference (does blogging count?), I will try to not spend every spare second sitting in this chair (define "spare second" please). And it means I can post fun pictures of us. So here goes!

Here we were enjoying "swimming" in my parent's hot tub today after the longest day of weeding in the history of the world - but hallelujah for finally having a sunny day ... which we spent doing yard work. Wahoo.
She loves this, I find her here ALL the time!
And here too, which I think is as funny as she does.
Now this, is just totally freaky. It appears to be one of those things that somebody thought was a cute idea, but it doesn't really work out the way they imagined. I hate this binky.
And how could my little Yenta not be cute? I am sorry Jenelle for the lack of pictures of you today - the preference I'm showing Meri might have to do with the fact that you've been caught out of bed half a dozen times already tonight. For the love, can't you please just stay in bed???

Pictures from Mexico!!!

Here's a little slideshow of the best pictures from our trip to Mexico. We had a blast! It was a little hot and sweaty, and we always smelled like sun block, but the accommodations were amazing, the company was great, Meri was an angel, and we really got to do everything we could have asked for (including the super fast crocodile slides into the refreshing pools). We were both having constant mission flashbacks as I was always speaking Spanish and we were wandering through Brazil-like slums, which we both loved. My only regret is that I didn't have Spanish pass-along cards - I know, I'm a nerd but the fact that I spoke Spanish led to constant discussions about the church - including our taxi driver that drove us to the airport who nearly started crying as he talked about his 2 year old that had died. Broke my heart. Hopefully missionaries find him, or he actually goes to http://www.mormon.org/ like we suggested. And honestly, Meri put up with everything we tried to do with a smile on her face - dazzling all the Mexicans with her sparkling blue eyes. Now however, I think Meredith is bored to be home. But we were thrilled to be back with Jenellie - we REALLY missed her but we all made it, even through the crazy long trip back on the tiniest plane, which was miserable. But I can't complain, we got to go to Mexico!

Reasons for Rejoicing!

In the words and decibel level of my exuberant Jenellie, “Hip Hip Hooray-yay!” We have good news! Cooper got accepted to the MPA program (Masters of Public Administration) at PSU – which we’ve been waiting to hear for forever. Now we basically have a lot of discussing, praying, further researching, and number crunching to do to figure out for sure if we’re ready for this and if we’re headed down the right road. Does this mean we know what we want to be when we grow up? Hah. Pretty much it means a door has opened and we think we like the view. I’m excited. I think Cooper is too.

On a less life-changing note, I have finished my paintings for the show, which at least deserves a really lazy night of lounging around, doing nothing to celebrate. Or something gooey and chocolatey. I have a total of eight for the show (the two buildings on the hill and the English garden weren’t accepted) and I’m really relieved to be done. Now, of course, we have to start spending our tax refund on matting and framing the lot. But no need to dwell on that sour note – here are the last two images that will be included:

Proud Art Mama?

So Jenelle LOVES to color! That, eating, and doing puzzles pretty much fill about 90% of her day (amazingly enough, she has yet to get bored of the same puzzles day in and out). But back to the coloring – she’s getting good. She does these hilarious little smiley faces, which she’s incredibly proud of, writes letters (probably on accident) which make her crazy excited when she notices, and has even begun to color within the lines. To the right is a creepy monochromatic example:

Here’s where I go from being proud of her blossoming art skills to totally speechless. Yesterday while she was coloring with her markers I told her I was going to just run out and get the mail. In the time it took me to run across the street and back (literally 30 seconds), she colored every square inch of white on the high chair. With red marker. Not sure what she was thinking. Or how she did it that quickly. After cleaning it, I laid down on the couch and told her I really needed a 2 minute nap, and please, please, be quiet (has that ever worked for any of you??????) After turning on every musical toy within sight, she announced a desperate need to use the bathroom. Sitting up frustrated, I noticed everything else that she’d done while I crossed the street – mainly, the carpet and the wall. She’s totally never done anything like this before and I am so baffled. First – why did she do it? The other day when she did something she knew she shouldn’t have done, I asked her why she did it and she said, “because you left the room and you weren’t here.” Honestly she said that to me. So that probably sums that up. But as to how she went from peacefully coloring princess pupils to covering my house in red marker … I mean honestly, she must have gone very suddenly insane and colored everything in sight as frantically as possible. So my question for all you moms is, when I am more experienced at this mothering thing, will I understand what my kids are thinking? Or what makes them tick? Or will I at least have any idea what to say when they’re crazy? Oh and I have learned that I am not made out of the same serious art material as my professor that told me he was so proud of his kids artistic expression when they first drew on the walls in his home that he took pictures and couldn’t punish them at all. I guess I’m just not that hard core.