Christmas 2011 Greatest Hits: Vol. 1

It kind of feels more and more like the events of our lives seem like stepping onto a wild ride, where we just hang on for dear life. I know it has something to do with the demographics at our house, and this phase of our lives.

And yet, the magic is alive and well.

I kicked off December by organizing the ward Christmas party. I had never done anything like this before. I don't think I'm good at this kind of stuff in general. So naturally, I worried a LOT. But I have learned how to delegate to and pep-talk people who know what they're doing (Go Team!). I think it came off well. And I got to know some really great people better.

Snow fall in the gym.

  

Sully: nervous/STOKED to see Santa.

Ang with a couple of the gals after the crazy.

...And the month proceeded with the usual excitement...
A little after school festivity with Abner.

This was a pinnacle year for Sully, who ate up every aspect of the Santa myth. He was  as obsessed with Christmas as he was with Halloween a couple of months ago, and at times he had a difficult time separating the two holidays. I mean they are both a kid's dream come true. So we had some discussion about scary witches and skeletons coming to town along with Santa. He had it pretty much straightened out though by the time the big day arrived.

Holiday confusion

Here's a bit of video of S. expounding on Christmas.

"Ginger-bread mans" with Sully.

 Noble's now annual rendition of the nativity in Star Wars Lego's - the 2011 edition.

And as a side note, this photo sort of sums up the state of our snow-fall so far. The sad remnants of Sully's little snowman in our front yard - made after the one weak snow storm we've had this winter. I think that was about 2 weeks ago.

No white Christmas this year.



Look for more highlights coming soon in Greatest Hits Vol. 2.

Hanukkah is Here

On this first night of Hanukkah - nothing fancy like LAST YEAR. But to mark the day, here's my favorite Hanukkah song...by our favorite Jewish music-man, Matisyahu.

Love it.

A little bit of fame for Noble

The kids' school was recently visited by the Fox 13 "Cool School" crew. The 5th grade teachers requested Noble to come and do his part as Puck in a segment featuring their production of "Midsummer Night's Dream". Turns out - they totally truncated it into this 5 second summary version. I guess Shakespeare is too boring for a TV newscast? The guy spent more time talking to Mrs. Peterson about Jimmer than he did talking about curriculum or the kids. But, whatever. Noble was still excited to be on TV (and Jessie was jealous). You'll see him between his teacher and the news guy (red vest, pumping his fist - he  he he). Anyway, it made for an exciting morning at school if nothing else.
Mike pointed out that Noble has now been on TV AND in the paper. If there has to be a famous member of the family, it's probably best if it's Noble. :)
 

Just when I thought I'd struck pay-dirt ---

Noble wrote out this list for himself - things he would do to help me out around the house - and posted it to the fridge to remind himself.

I was pretty excited...until I read the fine print (last sentence below).

Things we've been learning

1. Sully has turned a corner in toileting.  I can't say that any of the books I checked out at the library were much help. If anything helped it was an episode of Super Nanny that I happened to see where she helped potty-train this 3 year old kid. Their issues were different, but the thing I took away was that my own attitude is key. Confidence as a parent is crucial (and NOT just in potty training). Kids, like sharks, sense fear (and frustration)...and they exploit it.

 *Poof*!  A more cooperative Sully.

We are %100 now - including night time. Of course, I've done this long enough to know that kids often revert after they've been consistent for a while - so I won't say we're totally out of the woods yet. But I kind of think that since he waited so long to begin - he might just have made a permanent transition. He requires no reminding. He just goes.
 
2. Noble as Puck. (He won't appreciate my sharing this particular clip because he runs into the tree at the end.)
 

Noble was Puck in the 5th Grade production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He did not think to tell me when the performance would be until the night before...and even then couldn't tell me the time. He had to call from school the next day to tell me when to come. I'm glad I could go. It was dee-lightful. Sully somehow knew about Bottom and the donkey head (maybe he remembered when Jessie was in the same play 2 years ago?). And he kept asking, "Where's the donkey? Wh-wh-when's the donkey coming?" (he's got a cute little stutter right now). Anyway, WELL DONE, dude.
 

3. Mike - the Lego Robotics coach.

With everything else going on in our lives I worried about Mike taking on Noble's FLL team this year. Especially since technology isn't our strongest suit. He has learned a lot - and the kids are having tons-o-fun.

5. Abner is starting to try solid food. But I think he thinks it's gross. I am trying to cherish all the nursing time I have left with him...so I'm not in a hurry.

4. Sully's hobbies. A little bedtime reading. I found this on Sully's bed yesterday. Apparently, he's developing an interest in economics.

Thanks for Thanksgiving.

I think our official count for Thanksgiving was 36. Amazingly. & Would you believe - it didn't feel all that crowded? This might have been because the weather was nice enough for the next generation to get the wiggles out ---} OUTSIDE. Case in point:
The uncles chasing kids up and down the street with an RC car.

We had a great time.
We consumed 3 whole turkeys (one the size of a small car) - smoked, deep fried, roasted - and ALL the fixings. The kitchen island and counters were overflowing with serving dishes. Mom had asked everyone to share some things that have gone RIGHT in our lives this year. And that got everyone emotional. I love these people.

Best cousins - Grace and Em-ergy.

 My 2 brothers.

 Mitch-darling, Derek & Dad - and baby Ollie. (still making his come-back - one of the best blessings this year)

Ah...Thanksgiving. Good times.

Thanksgiving week.

This year it's at our place. I think we are expecting 798,403 people. So if you are looking for a place to go, I'm sure we could squeeze in a few more chairs.

I am oh so thankful for my life. Mike. All the little people at our house. Our house (it's cold and wet out). Our parents (love you forever!). Brothers and sisters (also forever, guys), freedom, kind people, Jupiter the Space Donkey, Pluto, Slick, food, MIKE, these comfy shoes I'm wearing, awesome report cards this term (kudos, kiddos!!), happy thoughts, health & strength, Abner's smiles, that sunset last night, learning, peace, and...love. We are all loved.

 The kids are keeping us ahead of schedule on holiday preparedness. So, by the end of the week we will most likely have our house ready, set, go for Christmas. They are the best. :)
Have a great Thanksgiving!

Down in the Mouth...and up again.

(I have no idea where that expression comes from...but it sounds about right.)

I've had a discouraging patch. You probably know what I mean...when the demands & stress of life feel so heavy you don't know how much longer you can keep it up. And you wonder about the meaning of it all, doubt yourself a lot. A general funk. Or, as I put it to Mike earlier this week, "Life is kind of kicking our butts, isn't it?"

HOWEVER. The cool thing about life is...if you just keep trying, after a while (sometimes a long while) somehow things look brighter, you get stronger, you get smarter, you get more fearless, you get more grateful. And then, AMAZINGLY - you are actually HAPPIER than before you had to struggle. (That is a dichotomy worth some thought.)

I went to the temple this week. I needed to. For the first time in months I had some real clarity. But then I went home and got all bogged-down again with life on earth - which included about 2 hours of sleep that night, and a gazillion demands the next day.
Luckily, I had a chance to go and be with some women in the neighborhood, eat and talk about the things we're grateful for. Listening to other people open up, talking about their own hurt and their own joy - it straightened me out.

Life is BEAUTIFUL.       All of it.
When your heart is soft and open.

Oh Sully.

#5 is ... so pinchy-cheeks-cute.

(here at the LV wedding festivities)

Here...with his bff from next door, after raiding Jessie's make-up. (Sorry about the fraction-of-a-second video clip. Mike accidentally had the camera set to video. And after that the battery died. But you'll get the idea.) 

Now, if he could/would just master the art of toileting....
We get a little closer every day.

Cel-e-brate Good Times, Come on!

(Mike loves Kool & The Gang...but then again, who doesn't?)

This is what I feel like today. Click play and then read the rest of the post......................oh yeah.

Big news!!!

Sully went on the potty this morning! Really!! It's true. I think he might ACTUALLY be catching on. Oh rapture!

Here's his under-used Potty Chart. But check out the big Obi Wan sticker there. THAT represents Sully's first successful visit to the little boy's room.

To top it all off, Abner slept 8 HOURS last night!!

I feel like it's all too good to be true.

Maybe the head cold and pink eye I've had this week will go away too?

(Lovely, I know.)

I'm optimistic. It's been that kind of day. :)

Yeah Hoo!

Hall-OH!-ween

Another Halloween has come and gone.

Highlights from this year's merry-making.

 The annual Sullivan Halloween party was better than ever this year. We added a hayride & a GIANT bonfire (you might have seen the glow in the sky over the Salt Lake valley).

Do NOT mess with this duo.

 Trick-or-treating this year was also bumped up to a new level. The kids are getting old enough now to cover some serious distance on Halloween. If you want some candy, we can hook you up (and your grandchildren generations from now).

Hope you had a good one.

In the Trenches: Fundamentals of Toilet Training

With a title like that you KNOW this is going to be a post worth reading, right?

I'll sum-up by saying I'M the one being schooled on this matter, by THIS kid.

After potty training 4 kids you'd think I would know a thing or two about it. I thought I did.
#5 has had me stalled out on square one for some time. Every time I broach the topic, he either changes the subject like he didn't even hear me, or if I push the issue he gives me responses that cause me to question whether he knows what I'm talking about AT ALL. I've explained the mechanics and read books to him about it. Then we drink and sit, sit again, sit again, drink and sit....Nada. But as soon as the underpants are pulled up again...BAM! What? Why? We're still just trying to have ONE success to get us off the launch pad. I mean, he is THREE YEARS OLD.
Whatever. Anyway, a couple of things:
#1. It's tougher than you would think to get poop out of a skeleton costume.
#2. Before flipping out about the 3rd or 4th puddle of pee on the floor in one day, it is good to remind one's self that urine is sterile...so we're told.

I currently have 3 books on the subject checked out from the library. I think only one of them will be useful at all for #5. One of the others, Diaper Free Baby, is all about toileting your infant. Like from a few weeks old. Sooooo...we're a little late on that technique for Sully...but hey, who knows, maybe Ab? Perhaps we'll get them trained at the same time.
he he he.
Good vibes and suggestions are welcome in the cause...or you can donate to the diapers-till-middle-school fund. :)

Reflections on a Dictator

It's been an astonishing year for North Africa and parts of of the Mideast. Watching the Arab Spring has been kind of reminiscent of watching the Soviet Bloc unravel 20-something years ago (has it been THAT long?). With the news this week of Muammar Gaddafi's death I couldn't help but think about the odd intersections of his rule with mundane American (my) life.

As a little kid I vaguely remember the Lockerbie bombing and the subsequent attempts on Gaddafi's life. I remember "Get Gaddafi" target t-shirts, Ronald Reagan calling him a "mad dog" and didn't Weird Al make a music video or something? Gaddafi even popped up in a small local paper a few years ago with this mention in an article about my old Cross Country Coach from High School (highlighted paragraph).




Weird. I have to tell you that Mike and I had some good laughs over that one. Especially when we thought of the cute lady at the Riverton Post Office with a national security threat on her hands. How absurd it must have been. But then again Gaddafi was a poster-boy for absurdity.
The thing about dictators/totalitarians is that laughing at them helps us deal with their atrocities. Maybe it's the world's way of getting back at them.

*Related digression*

Some years back we attended a wedding reception in my parents' neighborhood. The father of the bride was totally decked out in some unidentifiable military dress uniform. It didn't fit any US Service branch that any of us knew of. Even my dad, who served in the military was completely puzzled. We smiled politely and shook hands with the guy. Later, my Dad leaned over and said, "I felt like saying, 'I know you're a dictator, I just don't know from where.'" We couldn't stop giggling. That crack is legend in the family.

Mike pointed out last night that the SV Journal story has lost some of its humor after the events of this year, and specifically this week. Yeah. That's true. I found myself really uncomfortable this week when I saw footage of a badly wounded Gaddafi stumbling around in a jeering crowd. Mob justice is unsettling. I think it quickly crosses a line and becomes blood thirst. He had to go. Sorting out the humanity in it all is more difficult.

When it's fall

We had some time Friday so we took the kids and the Space Donkey up AF Canyon to see some beautiful fall color and to have a cook-out.

We had 5 votes for a repeat soon. Unfortunately, I think the weather is headed south this week and we aren't likely to see many more warm-ish Fall days this year.

I L-O-V-E this time of year.

October in chronological order (pretty much)

Here we go...

 Sully cleaning up after his escapade with the talcum powder (this took up an hour and half one day - this is why I am so unproductive).

Our neighbor took Noble's scout troop up in his plane. They had so much fun.

Especially the zero-gravity part.

 

 We had our family pictures taken. The weather was uncooperative - but our photographer pulled together some great shots.

Especially this one. (I think I might die every time I see it.)

And then, we busted a move to the pumpkin patch.

The on-going potty training saga. (It's not going so well. But dang-it, he's cute.)

Then, of course, there was the road trip to LV for the wedding we've all been waiting for (and waiting, and waiting...). Mike's little bro, Gary, finally found the woman of his dreams, Val. Woohoo! We love her!

(I totally horked this photo from Val's FB. I didn't have any of my own pictures of the newlyweds. At the time we were contending with a diaper malfunction and a sick kid.)

Outside the Las Vegas LDS Temple.

We had some fantastic times. The house we stayed in was great. We loved being all together in one place with our cousins and siblings! So HAPPY.

I really regret not getting any pictures of the girls in their flower girl regalia. Grace recovered from 'the vomiting disease' (her words) in time to perform her petal-tossing duties at the ring ceremony in the afternoon. Then she spent the rest of the weekend in her flowery head piece. Both of the girls were lovely.

Grace at breakfast with Uncle Tim. 

 A sunset stop in Holden on the way home to visit the cemetery.

A road trip was actually EXACTLY what I needed. It was quiet. It was removed from all the craziness of our lives. It was together. The DVD player wasn't even working so we just listened to tunes, read books, talked, laughed. So nice.

And that is the last three weeks of our lives in a nutshell. 

Must...Keep...Up...

Except I think I'm probably not.
Quick update.
Wait.
I don't have time.
All you need to know is that it's nut-so over here. I've had some serious thoughts about going radical and pulling out of the rat-race, loading up the family and heading out. Somewhere......where the phone doesn't ring, the calendar is not triple booked, and I have a second to breath and get my bearings...and NOT miss my childrens' childhood because we're too busy. Do you know where that place is? Call me if you do.
I'm hoping to get some catch-up posts up next week...if I can find time after our trip / the big wedding this weekend. That's a big 'IF'.

If you feel as crazed as me, I'm pulling for you. Cross your fingers for me, would you? I've found myself saying things like: "How am I going to survive this phase of my life?" and "I'm going to run away!" For reals. A little melodramatic maybe...but listen, when you are running 24 hours a day (50 things going at once) non-stop with no end in sight you can get a little bit goofy.

Time is precious.
Gotta go.

A-Team Dancing

The kids like to select the A-Team Theme on the iPod maybe more than anything else. I have no idea why. It's kind of random...but they ARE big fans of the old TV series on Netflix. Anyway, here's Sully getting his groove on a while ago to it. I noticed that his dancing is kind of more of a choreographed fight, which is apropos, I guess. My favorite part of this little vid is the martial arts-y sequence towards the beginning.
Sure to be a classic. Enjoy.

A-Team from Angie Melton on Vimeo.

Try this link if you're having trouble viewing it here.

This might give you nightmares.

Noble has a sixth-sense when it comes to finding crazy, sometimes dangerous stuff.

Like this black widow.

Tonight he ran in, head lamp on, to report that he had discovered it while searching for "nocturnal creatures".  (not his first encounter with a black widow, btw)

He found its nest in the rocks next the basketball hoop on the driveway. Spiders give me the willies (especially black widows) - and this one was HUGE. Really huge. Like an inch and half across. It must have been making a pretty good living in these rocks.

It retreated under the rock as we watched it & Noble lured it back out by dropping a cricket into the web. (I know. Don't be mad at us.) We snapped the above picture as it moved in for the kill. It was so scary-fast.

Be warned: this video is disturbing. Poor little cricket. I'm still traumatized.

When Black Widows attack from Angie Melton on Vimeo.

I was a little concerned about this spider living in such close proximity to where little kids (Sully) play. So after I stopped filming, Noble got the wasp spray (Noble's idea. He's more rational than I in tense situations.) - and we dispatched the black widow.

Sorry spider. Sorry cricket.