Friday, July 16, 2010

Laugh and Laugh Again

I hope you are familiar with the Old Spice commercials ("I'm on a horse...") If you aren't, go watch one - quickly! Then, watch something that makes me laugh even more:









PS Thanks to Zack for forwarding it to Tyler. It's been my laugh and laugh again for the day.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Nesting

Well, now that Tyler's crazy month of June is past, he's home to a long honey-do list. Luckily, he's totally game and keeps on working. This baby is coming soon!

First we painted Liza's room, since it's been Liza and Landon's room for months - yet still purple! You can see the old color inside the closet of Tyler's picture.


Of course, when we asked which color they wanted to paint their room, they couldn't agree on one color. Landon chose yellow and Liza chose green. Luckily, we found some colors that went together pretty well.

The kids had lots of fun "helping." It may not surprise you to know that I wasn't as laid back about them helping - and Landon especially kept getting paint on the most random places. So, whenever possible, I'd divert them to help clear the toys out of the baby's room or any other task that didn't involve painting.

While their room was under construction, the kids got to have a slumber party in the office.

They thought it was fun, and reminded me of how fun it is to rearrange your room or move rooms or whatever. As if moving every few years didn't keep us going enough, our parents had us switch bedrooms every so often so we all got turns in the "best" room.

Once we got the painting done, we bought bunk beds!

It has been a great source of excitement, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Speaking of when we were kids, my brothers and I had a lot of fun chucking socks or other random objects at our ceiling fan. It was endlessly funny to see how quickly the fan could turn our socks into projectiles when it was on full speed. Well, once the kids' bunk beds were set up - the first thing they did was climb to the top bunk and try messing with the ceiling fan. Luckily, it seems that the novelty has worn off (or the threats have sunken in) since they don't play with the fan anymore.

Well, though it may have felt like it, it wasn't all work this week. Somewhere in there the Fourth of July happened.

We had some friends - Cory and Mindy - over for a barbecue on Sunday, but were rained out of the fireworks that night.
We still had fun watching Tyler light stuff in the rain while we waited for the official "no go" on the fireworks.


The next night we met up again with our friends and their kiddos and saw the fireworks "for real." The kids were pretty cute about being impressed, and it was fun to hang out.
(this picture was worth including both for Liza's smile and Landon's funny face in the background!)

This week we also finally bust out the water balloons. We've been saving them for weeks, and with all our trips to the pool we haven't seen much need to come home and do water balloons. But it was a rainy week and when the sun finally peeked out we saw our opportunity.

My question is: Why do I tell my kids my ideas? Is it so they'll like me? Liza said just the other day, "You have a lot of great ideas!" (my response, "Who me?" I was genuinely surprised). I don't think it's for popularity. Maybe I'm still working on thinking before speaking. That's very likely it. Anyway, I was trying to show the kids all the fun things you can do with water balloons, and mentioned that when I was a kid, my brothers and I had one favorite way to throw water balloons: at passing cars. (What I failed to include in the story was that my brothers and I we were twice their age when we did this. And we did it from the privacy of my grandparent's gated community. Simply stand behind a concrete wall, peek out for cars, bombs away - duck back behind wall and laugh like a girl.)

Well, my kids were all game to try this out, and we have plenty of cars pass by our house. Since I'm not looking for enemies or to get tee-peed anytime soon by the teenagers, I told the kids they could only throw the balloons at cars of people we knew. Luckily Tyler was due home not long after they got started, so they saved a few of their balloons for him. Perfect.

Finally, you may remember Liza's infamous Mutton Busting ride last year. And this year it was rodeo time again. Liza still can't be convinced to get back on a 60-pound sheep, but we did go see the rodeo. Tyler had to miss it again (he's in St. George at his family's reunion/mission homecoming, etc.) but Becky and Olivia got to join in the fun. And the mutton busting was still my favorite part. The kids gave a go at the chicken scramble, but that's not nearly as satisfying for anyone involved. 50 kids chasing 3 chickens? Frustration for Liza. Oh well, there's next year. In the meantime, they had fun trying to count 8 seconds before the riders would fall off, watching the clown and eating shave ice. Let's hear it for the rodeo!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Tyler's Update



Tyler, like many of you, lives some of the children's life vicariously through pictures and videos. Sad to be the working dad, huh? He wasn't exactly impressed with Landon's video, since it didn't showcase his skills, so asked that I take a new video. So, I took a new video and included it below. The picture above is him mid-cannonball (and me doing what I always do - standing around the pool supervising).

In other news, we were super excited to see Tyler's parents for the first time since they left on their mission 2 years ago!! They got to spend the weekend with us, and it was such a treat. We had a regular Sunday agenda, and then went to the pool with them on Monday while Tyler was at work. Tyler had a soccer game that night, so they got to go see him play for the first time in years and years. I'm so glad it won't be two more years until our next visit!

(hanging out)
Finally, speaking of seeing people - it's been awhile since we've seen a lot of Tyler. He had a hectic work schedule in June, plus was in charge of High Adventure with the Varsity Scouts. Needless to say, most of his free time (what little he had of it) was spent preparing for the trip, doing a solo camp-out to do a dry-run of the trip, and then the trip itself. He had a great time! More on that later...
So, when he was home from work by 2 in the afternoon yesterday, we were all super excited. I think Liza's been reading too much Fancy Nancy, but regardless, she wanted to take Daddy out to a fancy dinner. So, after doing some exciting tasks on his "honey-do" list, we changed into our fancy clothes, and went out for Fatburger. Some pictures of us, pre-fatty, and at our fancy date night :)