::stars upon thars::

There's something about stars on clothes that I can't resist.  Obviously.  And my little Sandy is the biggest beneficiary (victim?) of my star love.  Nancy and I found these star sweat suits at H&M, delightful.  The star socks have been a staple for a while.  You might think we're missing some stars on his T-shirt, but technically it's a STAR wars shirt, so we're ok there.

He's probably got Star Wars undies on too.  If you look close you can see that his shoes are also be-starred.

He's a pretty good sport, heading out to school that way.  And darling.  And just to keep it real I will mention that I'm very sure he threw a major fit about whatever coat I had him put on top of this outfit.  Nobody's perfect.  And the coat didn't have stars.  This time.

Lucy loves to get into my drawers and pull out lip gloss.  She usually does what she's supposed to and lets me apply the stuff, but lately she's gotten a little adventurous.  Not only has she gotten into some of the actual lipsticks that are in a little stand on my counter, but she has put it on herself a few times.  This day, she came trotting out of my room very proud of her "lip stuff" job.  And all I could do was laugh.  She really did a pretty good job, and I'm thinking maybe that's her color!

::photos of the day 9-21-16::

These are not photos from today.  They're from just about a month ago.  Lucy was just SO adorable in her outfit I could hardly stand it that day.




The boots she is wearing I got her for Christmas, and I love them but seh never wanted to wear them. She foudn them this day and pulled them out, so excited to wear boots.  And of course they're really too small now.  The battle to get them on is epic.  But she loves them.



She's wearing a candy necklace we bought on a visit to UT, a Frozen charm bracelet and a talking purse.  She is all girl.  And completely adorable.  Love her so!

::photo of the day 8-30-16::

Today's photo is from our San Diego vacation a couple of weeks ago again.  Here's Sandy at one of our favorite places to eat, a Hawaiian place called Ohana Cafe.  Sandy doesn't like it for the kalua pig or macaroni salad, or even the coconut rice.  He loves it for the shaved ice.  And he always picks the weirdest flavor combos.  This one is probably butterscotch and bubblegum or something else disgusting.

But look at that happy face.  That is one cute kid.  And the random neckerchief he's wearing is from a trip to Chick Fil A earlier that day.

And if you want a little more shaved ice action, here it is:



Shoot, now I'm hungry.

::sonntag::

It was stake conference Sunday today.  After the meeting there was a fireside about the Trek that Max went on in July.  They had a great slideshow which was super fun to get to see.  Max had such a great time on that trip, I'm so glad all those leaders and others worked so hard to make it happen.

During dinner Max (or was it Sandy?) pointed out that Lucy's post french braid hair looked like Gram's.  I treid to get a photo to show Gram, but Lucy had other ideas.  She wasn't posing the way I wanted her to for anything.



Really Lucy?



We read scriptures out on our grass patch after dinner and a whole house cleanup.  Oh, and by the way, Kris finally got home from his trip to CA.  Thank goodness.  It felt like he was gone forever!



It was a really nice beautiful day.  The perfect temp between fall & summer.



Gotta love the sunflare.



I got Kris's pictures from the other perspective.  The light was just right on.






I wasn't on my phone the whole time, I promise.  Those were just quick pictures.





And that's all for now, goodnight!

::long weekend::

Not long as in long in time--long as in, looooong.  Lots of work to do and lots of whining and fighting.

But that's ok.  I love the kiddos, and I've been around the block long enough to know that along with the good stuff comes the hard stuff.

Kris has been out of town this week, he's at a continuing ed course in LA.  Frenectomy.  Anyway, it was a tough week for that considering we just got back from our San Diego vacation late saturday night and the kids' first day of school was wednesday.  But then again I never like Kris to be out of town, I always miss him!  Lucy has really missed him.  With the boys when they were her age, they didn't even seem to notice that Kris was gone.  Lucy asks me every day, several times a day. "Where's Dad??"  And when I do something she doesn't like she bawls and cries for "DAAAAADDDDDYYYYYYY!!!!"



Anyway, the start to the weekend was finally getting our screens installed on the doors.  I ordered them back at the beginning of July and was hoping to get them in about two weeks.  Well, obviously that didn't happen.  But they're fabulous and we'll really appreciate them next summer!

Lucy's poses are hilariously ridiculous.

Then I took Max with me to see Star Trek while the kids got to know a new sitter.  She seems nice.  Max and I had fun.



Here's Max employing his superb photobombing skills as I tried to take a picture of a great spot for Sandy to practice riding his bike.



Today (Saturday) was a busy day full of errands and laundry and tidying up.  We went to Target for the THIRD time in a week, and Sandy only threw a couple of small fits instead of mega huge ones like the other two trips.  So I guess we have to appreciate that.

Sandy's been having a couple of weeks of 5 yr old existential struggle and grief. Oh wait, no the grief is mine. He hurts his feet kicking against the pricks, but he also hurts the pricks.



Kiddos pretending to be cookie monster with their lunch cookies.  It was a really pretty day today.

I spent the rest of the day trying to get the kids to help me clean and organize.  It was only incredibly frustrating.




We (I) did get some stuff done though, and I didn't kill anybody.  It was a success.



Though honestly I almost did kill Sandy twice.  Friday night I was exhausted and trying to get done with work so that I could clean up the house.  I walked by Sandy's room and looked in.  Whoops.  That was my mistake.  Evidently Lucy and Sandy had been very busy taking out every picture book in Sandy's shelves and spreading them all over the floor.  And probably walking on them.  I almost cried.  So we all pitched in and cleaned that up.

Today I spent lots of time cleaning up the toy storage boxes in Sandy's room, getting things organized and put back together.  I finished up and then 10 min later I went back into his room and of course he had dumped up every box I had organized, plus he had pulled out a few extra to add to the mix.
I yelled.  I don't often yell.  We got through it and neither of us ran away from home.  So it must've been a success.

Tomorrow we've got Stake Conference and a lot of laundry to put away.  Kris should get home too.  So we should have lots of good stuff to look forward to.

::photo of the day 8-25-16::

Throw back a week to our San Deigo vacation.  Max somehow succeeded in filling the lower legs of his wetsuit with water--not sure how since they're supposed to be watertight.  But he did it.  And he did it while on an unauthorized last jaunt into the surf.  You know, when the rest of us are packing up and want to leave.

Anyway, he was really proud of his accomplishment and thought he was hilarious.  In truth it was super funny looking.  But in a "yikes" sort of way.  It looked like he had some sort of strange disease where he was only gaining weight on the front of his calves.

He walked all the way home like this.  Strange boy, huh?



This reminded me of the fancy outfit below:

This was from a few years ago.  He's a couple feet shorter, but still the same Max.

::sad all around::

See the sad face in this picture?  And the big pink splotch?  They're related.  This is a sad story all around.

I'll start at the beginning.



During Lucy's nap I thought I'd snag 15 min and fix my nails.  But of course, as soon as I sat down and clipped my nails, the Lucy was awake.  When I brought her out of her room she insisted on sitting in my lap.  Then she insisted on getting her nails painted.  Which I acquiesced to.  We did a really cute little pink and silver paint job.  She was very pleased with it.  She held her fingers very still and blew on them for a long time, so all of the nails looked great by the time they were dry.

She showed her hands to everybody, including Uncle Kelly.  She was very proud.

Later that day I went to the bathroom.  Now, the normal thing when I go to the bathroom is for sometnig awful to happen.  A fight, an injury, a lost toy, some other problem.  Usually whatever happens includes lots of screaming from one of the little people.

Well, screaming broke out.  I figured Lucy was just having a Sandy encounter.  Well after a lot more screaming she came running into the bathroom, showing me that three of her little nails were all smeared.

At that point I knew something bad had happened....either she got into the remover, or the paint.  Either way it wasn't good.

When I got out to the table I was greeted by a large deep puddle of pink nail polish on the quilt that serves as my tablecloth.

I'm all sad about the quilt.  What do you think Lucy is sad about?  Not the quilt.  Her smeared fingers.  She couldn't have been more distressed that she had smeared her fingers.  Give me a break.

So now I'm working on the quilt, we'll see how much I can get out.  And I definitely learned my lesson about leaving stuff in the reach of curious beauty-hungry little hands.  How did she even get that thing open?

What a crazy little girl.  This is the point where I'm supposed to say, "See, this is why we can't have nice things!!!!"

Oh well, could've been worse, my laptop was about 5 inches away from that puddle.  That would've been bad news.


SaveSave

::this last week::

As per the usual, this was a crazy busy week with lots of work to get done.  Not the best week I've ever had (someone hit my car and dented it in a parking lot and then drove away, I almost had to fire someone, etc. etc.)  but it was also the kind of week where we got a lot of stuff done.

Week before last I got an awesome new cast iron crock pot for making roasts.  Sunday it got to make it's first roast.  A roast cooked in a yellow pan automatically tastes better than one in a boring old pan.

Right?

It really did turn out yummy.  I always feel like I did something right when I can actually manage to feed the kids something I made.  Not something that happens too often in my life right now, so we enjoy it when it does.

Here's Lucy and mom.  I think this was Monday afternoon.  Yes, that sounds right.  Sandy didn't feel well on Monday and so he was lying on one of the couches watching movie and after movie, and at this moment I was keeping Lucy company on the other couch while she had a snack.  Monday was a bit of a long day, but Sandy was feeling better by the afternoon, so that was nice.

Sandy did some awesome creative lego building this week.  This was a star destroyer.  I love all the details and small pieces he put in there.  In the back someplace is one of batman's throwing bats.  He was very proud of this creation.

I think this was also the day he decided to draw all over himself with a black marker--bones.  He's certainly not the first kid to do that in the history of the world.

I feel like I spent most of this week either working on work stuff until my eyeballs fell out, or cleaning up people's toys.  But I guess I did do some taxiing, driving people around to where they needed to be.

On Wednesday between school pick up and when we had to take Max back out to go to swim (which is only like an hour), we took a quick detour through the McDonald's drivethrough for some ice cream cones.  By Sandy's request.

This made Lucy very very happy.

Very very VERY happy.  And look how impressively long her tongue is.

It's honestly hard to say no to these cute little faces.  Max had already inhaled his, and was probably off doing something instead of his homework at this moment.

Later in the week Max and Sandy did some more movie making--This was while they were working on "Tickle Me Sandy."  It turned out super cute and hilarious.

I like it when Max includes Sandy and Sandy is actually willing to play along.

Max's cinematography and editing are slowly getting better.

On Friday Max didn't have school, which was lucky because we watched little one year old cousin Cole for most of the day.  Max was the one in charge of watching him, and was excited to work and make some money, as he's saving for a new ipad.

Unfortunately after a really great start at the babysitting job there was an injury.  Max had already started the day by taking Lucy and Sandy and Cole all in the living room and playing with them.  Then during breakfast Cole was wandering around.  Max went to retrieve him from the laundry room and on the way slipped on a baby toy and fell pretty hard.  He hit the back of his head on the door jamb when he fell and really bruised up the back of his head.

Youch!  And that was when it was pretty fresh.  When he was passing the sacrament today I could see behind his ear and it looked totally black and blue.  Poor guy!

This took all the starch out of him for a while and I had to nurse my babysitter back to health.  Eventually he got it back together.  He was a real big help for me that day because I still had a lot of work that had to get done (of course, as usual!) so it was nice to have such a helpful guy to lean on.

Saturday morning I got to go on a bike ride downtown which was super fun, then we ran a bunch of errands, did laundry and worked hard on a bunch of other saturday type stuff.  Ignore the toys all over the floor behind me!

One of our errands included Target where we found some mystery minifigure packs.  Sandy was such a good sport when he got this adorable ballerina.  He actually really like her (much to my disappointment--I was hoping to trade him for her!)  He took her right over to the lego table to play.  Max got an poor injured guy on crutches that had slipped on a banana peel.

Sandy spent most of the day Saturday playing with our playmobil collection.  This made me happy because they boys just don't play with those toys that much.  They're just so cute, they deserve more attention!

These kids were all out on a trip in the camper.  I think the one in PJs with bare feet is Sandy.  Not sure who anybody else is.

I'm glad we survived this week.  It was even a good one from time to time.  Mostly because of our cute little family.  They drive us crazy and they're a lot of work but they sure make life better--in all ways.