Marathon

Marathon was this Sat.
Greg ran it.


It was fun following them around and cheering for them.
Michelle and Rod came down.
So did Ashley and Miles

We got to see Allison and Eme and Cooper too!
I had my birthday (sigh) and General Conference was awesome as well.  I feel so lucky to belong to a church that has such great men and women teaching us.  I feel grateful as well for a living prophet that can tell us what the Lord wants us to hear.  Don't know what I'm talking about?  Go to lds.org to find out more.

Ben's birthday is coming up as well.  He will be 8 in a few days and getting baptized this Saturday.

Greg will be turning 39 this next week.

October Already!

The school year is in full swing!
I can't believe that my life could get any busier, but it has reached new levels!
Grace goes to school just after 7 am, Rylee is right after her at 7:50, Ben leaves about 8:30 or until I can't keep him in the house any longer, and Mia scrapes out about 8:45 right before the bell rings for school.
By 9:00 I am already exhausted getting these kids up, fed, dressed, hair, lunches made, homework finished and books read.

The kids are super busy this year too- no real change I guess.
Rylee is still doing dance but decided not to pursue the pointe part of ballet.  She and her sisters just finished a cheer clinic that ran for 3 weeks.  They preformed at the Snow Canyon football game against Cedar City.  They did such a good job.  Very proud of them even if I was a little anti cheer at first...
She also does tumbling on Thursdays and of course Young Women on Wed night.
And not forgetting the piano lessons they all love on Friday mornings.

Grace decide not to do dance anymore.  We were all a little sad to see her stop as she was so good at it.  It was a hard decision to see her stop but after a lot of reflection, it felt like the right thing to do.  Time does rush on so fast and it has been nice to have her around me more.  My favorite part of the day is when she comes home earlier than everyone else and I get 1 hour with her without the other kids there.  It has been very good for the both of us.  That  poor middle child always gets the shaft it seems.

Ben is doing 2 football leagues back to back.   Hopefully he wont get burnt out.  So far he loves it and seems to be catching on.  He's good at it and bigger than everyone on the team, but he hasn't quite got the agressiveness down.  He's my little soft hearted lion.  He also started piano this year.  He is doing a new technique that the teacher started that should help him advance quickly.  He HATES piano but we are are all bearing down and giving it our best shot.   We're hoping that if he picks it up quickly and can start playing songs soon on his own he may like it more.   So far he is like some sort of mixture of a wild stallion/donkey on the piano bench!  He also is doing hip hop with a group of boys on Mondays.  It is sort of a secret so don't spread the word.  He loves to dance and this has been really fun for him.

Mia is 6 now and definatley grown out of the little girl stage.  I have finally stopped carrying her around on my hip... (really?) and she is becoming what all my kids have done at six-- been utterly awful! No more hugs and kissed, no more listening to mom, no more helpful smiley girl.  Whatever she sees the older girls doing (even if its sassing me) I now it will show up pretty quick on her....
When she is sweet (which is a lot of the time) she likes to do dance with her friends and play.  Ahhh PLAY.   That sweet and simple word of yesteryear!

That's us in a nutshell right now.

September Happenings

We got invited by Scott Wakefield and his family to go to Lake Powell the first week of September!  We had so much fun and so did the kids.  They will never forget playing Barrel Ball, the treasure hunt and Alkaseltzer Gun war.  So much fun!

On our way driving home we drove straight into a lighting storm.  That is the closest I have EVER been to lightening.  It was so close and strong it literally lit up the whole valley around us as if it were daylight.  Imagine the energy required to create such brightness.  As cool as it was, we were really terrified that we would get hit.  We actually saw the lightening hit the road ahead of us not more than a hundred yards or so!   

I know they say you are safe in a car but, really?? If that had hit us we would have felt something.  We even felt that we should say a prayer of protection while in the car.  It was really scary!

Thanks for the unforgettable memories!

New School Year!

Rylee (dispite the 8 fingers) going into 9th grade.

Grace going into the 6th grade at the intermediate school.

Ben here, loving being photographed, going into the 2nd grade.

Mia, (SOB!) going all day into the 1st grade.

Parenthood

So what do you do when your 5 year-old decides to shred a huge block of Styrofoam?  Filling a playroom with what at first sight appears to be a huge snowstorm in St. George in May?


I' m guessing any good parent would make them clean it up? 
Granted, you can't just vacuum up this Styrofoam as their are golf ball chunks intermingled with millions of b.b. sized chunks that would clog your vacuum.


So a smart mother cohearses downstairs said 5 year old, and proceeds to clean swiftly and efficiently as any seasoned mother would do...

5 year-old follows along...

No.    5 year-old begins to play on the ropeswing in the playroom. (Yes, we have a rope swing inside.  Its hot here in the summer!)
Kind mother calmly explains that it "wouldn't be right for mommy to clean up your mess" as she declaws child from ropeswing- still with a smile and an occasional tickle to "keep things light."


Child begins to get that hard edge to voice which all mothers know will somehow morph child from a cute female version of your husband to some sort of uberdetermined mule...

Yet mother prevails and patiently explains the reasons why the child needs to learn, The Value of Cleaning Up One's Own Mess.


Quickly child begins a surprising, yet very convincing, reenactment of the child in Poltergeist: 
 "I don't WANT to clean up THE PLAYROOM!!!!!"              
 Repeated 23 times in quick succession. 

Mother is shocked and slightly impressed as she watches the veins pop in child's neck and face start to turn rather red and sweaty from exertion.

This experienced mother knows she can't back down and clean it all up herself (although the thought of being alone with the soothing sound of the vacuum is soundins very alluring at this point). 

She must be firm.  Must show who's boss.  She tries the old fashioned, "I'm going to have to spank you if you choose not to clean up with mommy" card.
This card does not work!  Child lays down her Ace of Spades of determination and... runs away!

Mother takes charge, catches child, and delivers the promised delivery of said old fashioned goodness.
Things now explode into Mother Guilt and child mutiny and excessive "THAT HURT!!!" and if possible, louder crying.


Experienced mother now realizes she is not so experienced...
5 minutes later after child runs off to relieve herself, this mother decides she must change tactics and use her weapon that works without fail:
The hug.
A simple hug... on the lap... on the slide... and a simple story: a story of a little girl who's room was terribly destroyed by her mean older brother.  The mother of these children in the story makes the little girl clean up the brother's mess.  Is that right?  Is that fair for the little sister to have to clean the mess of the older brother? 
"No."
"Who should clean up the mess?"
"The brother, that was bad of him to do that."
This mother on the slide then asks, "Who made this mess:"
"I did."
"Who should clean it up?"
silence...
Then said child eventually slips off lap and happily (yes, happily) starts to clean up.

Mothers.

The toughest job in the world.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you out there.

Keep keepin' on!

Tomahawk Missile Cruise

Greg and I are on our way to Salt Lake to begin our latest travel adventure. After running in the Great Wall 3 years ago we r ready to try something new. We thought a cruise through the Mediterranean to see how accurate the Tomahawk Missiles are launching into Libia would be fun! Cruises these days are getting quite creative!
Seriously, we are hoping we can avoid some of this unrest in northern Africa and see some amazing sights: Rome, Monte Carlo, Athens, Izmir turkey, and Israel. It should be a blast. Neither one of us has been in this area (minus Greg's mission to Columbia). We are feeling a little guilty leaving our babies, but it will be nice to actually be able to talk to each other. Between our 4 kids all vying for our attention 18 hours A day, we don't get more than a few key phrases or words out from each other. A possible: "hungry?", "what??", "where's Ben?" "get the phone!" "what?" - you get the picture.

Oh, when traveling, I highly recommend traveling with a neck pillow. It's like Gavin your favorite blankie and stuffed animal wrapped around your neck. If your really attached to yours like I am you'll buy the one with a snap on the end so u can just wear it all the time!
Stay tuned...
SLC -Boston, MA

Back On!!

Ok, I'm going to do this!  I'm going to blog again.  My intentions are thus:  It has to take me 10 minutes or less to post or I will just hit publish post, and I must use this as a journaling tool for my family.  No frills, no fancy edited pictures, no overly funny/showy posts.

This has been a busy, busy school year for the Taylors.  We've got basketball for Ben, Dance for Rylee, Grace and Mia (plus gymnastics for Mia) as well as school, church activities, visiting friends and family you name it!

We did get a chance to sneak away to Disneyland for a few days at the beginning of February.  We surprised the kids in the car and it took them a good 15 minutes to realize we weren't teasing them for them to believe.  We didn't quite get the excitement we were hoping for as it turned out most everyone was sick or feeling not their best on the trip.  Mia eventually ended up throwing up. (And we were all expecting Greg with his poor alluminum stomach on the rides...)
Here are our highlights: 
1. Making our kids stand in front of the Rabbit's door near the Madd Hatter for our sort-of annual see-how-the-kids-have-grown-photo.
2. Getting the Mickey's Secrets app on my phone to find Hidden Mickeys and what-nots throughout the park.  We ended up "finding" our own hidden Mickeys whereever we went because they aren't very easy to find.  We did visit the hidden pet cemetary behind the haunted mansion.  Big thrills there!
3. Forcing Mia to go on Tower of Terror (twice) and them feeling bad when she bawled afterwards.  "I... couldn't... BREEAATHE!!!!"
4. Meeting up with our friend Scott, watching the World of Color (highly recommend it) and the Fantasmic show and enhaling 2 funnel cakes.
5. Forcing the kids to wear trash bags on the Grizzley River Adventure (I just made that name up but you know the ride) and then getting stuck on the top of the rapid.  Oh! and then getting 10 feet from the end of the ride dry and having a surprise geyser burst right on Grace's head! Priceless!
6. Making a reservation at Goofy's Kitchen, walking all the way over there to find that it would cost our family $250 to eat there.  (They were actually going to charge us $37 to feed GRACE!!)  Not gunna happen Walt... you are no match for Greg and his wallet.
7. Riding the teacups with Mia while the big kids went on the Matterhorn.
8. Squeezing a family of 6 into a tiny room and waiting for our teenager to get ready every morning.
9. Eating top raman and food scraps (vending machine junk and leftover nuts and cracker crumbs) for dinner on Sunday.
10. Last but not least, my personal favorite... The WWF punchfest displayed in the line to see Michael Jackson give the performance of his life as Captain EO.  Not one of my proudest moments as Ben pounded on Grace's back in rapid and forceful succession while Grace returned a swift kick to the shins.  Two crying kids, dozens of shocked bystanders, and me asking in mock concern to them, "Where is your mother you two?"