Making Me Smile...

 I know I'm weird, but I'm sensing that blogging just once a week is sometimes going to be challenging for me.    I don't want to get sucked back in completely, so I'm going to leave my goal  to post a blogpost once-a-week with a picture from each day, but don't be surprised if you see a few extra posts pop up in some, if not most weeks!   

 Here are a glimpse of two things from this past week that are making me smile and that I wanted to make sure got added to the blog.

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A little Friday night selfie fun.  I had a group text going with my mom and sisters and they would name an emotion and Ellie, Emma, and I would try to act it out for them...

What can I say?    It was cheap entertainment (for us and for the others on the group text) and I highly recommend it as a wholesome recreational activity!  

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On Thursday night for our Laurel class activity we went to visit a sweet elderly woman from our ward.    The girls were excited to hear her stories and she was a complete crack-up that kept us in stitches the whole time we were there.   

Here's one of her quotes:       

"I didn't know "damn" and "yankees" were two separate words until I was about 12-years-old."

Clearly a woman after my own heart.

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What We Do For Fun

So what do we do for fun around our house?    

Here's a little glimpse:   

As a family, we love reenacting cooking shows from the Food Network.    My kids (all of them) beg for us to do these on a regular basis.  Glen and I find them a little draining, and especially dread the massive kitchen mess that always ensues, but we try to humor them about once a month or so.  Most of my kids are now better cooks than I am and it's been fun to see even Ellie and Adam stretch themselves to create really tasty (and even beautiful) food without recipes.   I like to think that their future spouses will thank me profusely someday.

Adam, Emma, and AnnaLisa were the judges this time.  Mommy was the first one out and Daddy was the winner.  

Ellie plays dress-up with her friends.  Dress-ups lately have gotten a lot more sophisticated than the fancy princess outfits of her younger days and now they usually involve some elaborate role playing in a historical time period.   This day it was a princess and Little House on the Prairie mash-up where Ellie was  "poor Rapunzel"  and Hannah the faithful servant girl who tried to help Rapunzel.  There was no electricity and they had to use candles and cook over a fire.     

Adam plays strategic board games.   Give him any strategy game and with practice, it won't take long until he will be the new family champion! This day he was playing 10 Days In Europe Game , but "7 Wonders" is his current favorite.  We play games together as a family at least a few times a week and for sure whenever we get together with the "S" family!   Adam also just started an every other week chess club with some local homeschoolers, since he can't talk any of his sisters (or mother) into playing that with him.  

Emma makes fancy breakfasts.   The breakfasts shown below are not for a special occasion of any sort. She just really seems to enjoy that quiet early morning time in the kitchen to create beautiful and delicious food.  

 I tote kids around to their doctor's visits, classes, etc., and try to take advantage of moments to spend special time with a kid whenever I can.    Yesterday Ellie had her appointment with a seizure specialist (also known as an epileptologist) downtown, so when her appointment was finished and I realized we were only about 2.5 miles from the National Zoo and still had a couple hours before the next kid had somewhere to be, it was a no-brainer.   The zoo was empty, the animals were active, and there were zoo keepers everywhere eager to share information about the animals to anyone who would listen.  We learned all about how they track pandas in the wild and best of all got to watch the very cute baby panda playing for a while!    

Cami makes cupcakes.  This clearly isn't a surprise, but perhaps the fact that after 3-years of being in business that she still regularly fills big orders for people and that she's still willing to make special orders for mom, may be a bit more of a surprise.  She recently held a big sale for her entrepreneurship class and sold 11-dozen cupcakes (on left) and  a week later was still willing to make these "brainy" cupcakes for me to share with friends celebrating another friend's anniversary of overcoming brain cancer.

Glen makes chocolate covered strawberries!    Okay, so this was just for Valentine's Day, but it was such a sweet gesture and so much more interesting than showing a picture of him watching BYU sports, that I had to throw it in.  

I had to laugh to see how many of our family's past-times involve food.   What can I say?  I think I'm raising a family of foodies!    Even Spencer sends me pictures of meals he's proudly prepared for himself….complete with the  budget friendly ingredients of beans and rice!  

One of Spence's culinary creations

So what do YOU do for fun in your house?  

When it Rains....

...the kids at our house take off their shoes and run in it!

You probably thought I was going to finish with "....it pours,"  but while it's true that it has been pouring a lot lately (literally and figuratively), it's also true that my kids have no aversion to getting soaking wet with their clothes on.  In fact, I daresay they think it's way more fun to play in the rain than taking a boring old shower.

Usually it's too dark, or too cold, or too thundery to take advantage of torrents of rain, but tonight it was perfect and they were not about to let a sorry old rainstorm dampen their enthusiasm to play outside.

It started off with just Emma...

and backward shirted Ellie...

both of whom were soaked to the bone in no time. 

But it wasn't too long before their giggles and happy screams drew Cami and Adam out the door to pull weeds, of which we have plenty. 

 

Of course they weren't pulling weeds to make our flowerbed look nicer, but they were merely using the weeds and clumps of wet dirt sticking to their roots as a base for their dam.  Yes my kids like dams as much as I do....except whenever I tried to call it a dam, they told me I had a potty mouth and insisted that it was actually a "darn."  (serves me right for showing them that comic a few weeks ago)

In the process of their dam darn building, they came across a little tiny cricket...

which Adam decided was too cute not to pick up and admire...

and then place as his first passenger in his tin foil boat...

Adam ensured that it was a five-star gutter cruise for his little cricket buddy.

At least that is until the boat crashed into a weed growing out of the neighbor's curb that had created a boat killing little vortex and mini dam.

Randomly the kids didn't call me a potty mouth when I called that one a (damn) dam.


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Mystery Lights

Look! 

What are those glowing orbs in the night sky? 

Are they stars?  Or a UFO?  Maybe a couple of cats? 

Oh wait!  I see a face!  Is it a creepy alien?  

Or a couple of stalkers trying to see what my next blog post will be about? 

Nope....

it's just my hunny and a couple of kids sleeping in the tent set up in the backyard. 

They were supposed to be at a ward campout while I stayed home to get Spence and Cam off to their Saturday morning activities (SAT and cc meet), but DC rush hour traffic proved to be too much for these fair traffic campers and instead they watched "Brave" at the dollar theater and came home to do their camping.    Ellie opted to stay inside and sleep in Daddy's spot on the bed next to me. 

Everyone missed out on their annual Spam burgers cooked by Bruce, but I'd have to say that the nonstressful traffic coming home (approximately 22 feet) and spider free restroom facilities more than made up for that small sacrifice! 

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Moustache Monday

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I "moustache" you all a very important question...

...but since "eyebrows" the computer right now, I'll "shave" it for later. 



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Ode to the 'Stache
by  Derek Berry

Oh, glorious hairs, sprouting from face!
With warmth and a style no razor could erase,
 Hairs grow like weeds, sturdy lip prongs,
Which are worshiped and are subjects of songs,

It sits as a comrade, a furry, lippy friend,
That you can twist, style, twirl, whorl, and bend,
You are the captain, and it your first mate,
With it you have a bond to which no other bodily hair—can relate,

You might prefer the Belvedere, or perhaps the Dali,
You may sport yours like Frank Zappa and grow a goatee,
It can be a handlebar, or you can let it droop,
One end can be a basketball, the other end a hoop,

You can look like Einstein and look like Ringo too,
You could grow it very long until you need ‘stache shampoo,
It may be a pencil one, or a Fu Manchu,
A moustache is a moustache, and any one will do,

Some look pretty menacing, some look kind of cute,
Some make you look professional, some just like a brute,
You can wear it with a beard, goatee, or mutton chops,
It looks right on cowboys, Hitler, and even cops,

This is a little ode about a little droop,
A single curve of hair that can sop up all the soup,
Some are rather sparse; some look worth a lot of cash,
But never forget the power and coolness of the ‘stache

Prince Charming ?

Since I've heard from multiple sources that my posts have been a little on the tear jerker side of things lately, I've decided that today's post will be the exact opposite of tear jerker.  This post will be all about how having leukemia has made Spencer into Prince Charming.  Not the Prince Charming who wears frilly shirts, rides horses, and goes about rescuing fair maidens from scary dragons.  No, our Spencer has eschewed the Disney-esque version of Prince Charming and instead has become The Prince Charming of Hospital Patients! 

What does it take to be the Prince Charming of Hospital Patients?  In addition to totally rocking the no-eyebrow look, Spence is super polite, doesn't pee on the floor, and can take care of his own "downstream occlusions" in the IV line!  Combine these highly desirable patient qualities with the fact that Spencer can engage in semi-intelligent conversations and has been known to throw out flattering words to the nurses in his sleep (literally) and you can see a small glimpse at how Spence has become THE #1 pediatric hem/onc patient in demand!  The nurses literally fight over who gets to take care of him each day and many of them are so distraught when they don't get him that they will come to visit him regularly even when he's not their patient. 

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Don't believe he's of Prince Charming quality yet?  Here's an actual sampling of some of the lines I've heard him use on the nurses in the last few weeks.   You decide.  

Nurse with mock exasperation:  "Why is your IV beeping again?" 

Spencer:  "I'm just purposely sabotaging the line so you would have to come back in here."

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Nurse:  "It's been a while since I've seen you..."

Spencer:  "Yeah, where have you been?  I've been here waiting for you every day.  And every day with out you seems like an eternity."

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Spencer:  "If you had been my nurse that night, then I wouldn't have needed my appendix out." 

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Nurse:  "So and so keeps stealing you from me.  Maybe next shift I'll get you." 

Spencer:  "I'll just start being rude to all the other nurses, so you'll be the only one who wants me as their patient.  You'll be doing them all a favor and no one else will know the real reason is because I want you to be my nurse more often."  :)

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Nurse (yawning):  "I had a hard time getting up and coming to work this morning." 

Spencer:  "But then you thought of me and got here as fast as you could?  Right?" 

Nurse (in full agreement):  How did you know?   

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UPDATE:

• Think of Spencer like Yoda, but instead of being little and green he wears shorts, defeats leukemia, and he's awesome. He's your bro—He's Broda!

• In Spencer's body, where the pain gland should be, there is a second awesome gland. True story.

• The reduced chest pain/lack of fevers is like the mini-cherry on top of the regular cherry on top of the sundae of awesomeness that will be his life when he can hopefully go home this week. 

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"As we look for humor, seek for the eternal perspective, understand the principle of compensation, and draw near to our Heavenly Father, we can endure hardship and trial. We can say,“Come what may, and love it.”  

                                                                                                                      Joseph B. Wirthlin

Christmas Day in the Morning

When we discovered that Christmas day was going to fall on Sunday this year, I had all sorts of mixed emotions about it.  In a way, it's nice to be at church on Christmas, and enjoy the music and messages on the actual day.  But in another way, it's hard to interrupt the Christmas routine and get all dressed up and go somewhere in the middle of the celebrations, especially since we're totally the kind of family that usually stays in our sweats all day long on Christmas. 

  For some random reason, the kids did not wake up until after Glen and I had showered and we had turned on the light in their room (about 7:00am).   Then they eagerly ran to their stockings and to check out the tree.  There was much hooping, hollering, and shaking the gifts, but because our ward starts at 9:00am, their time was limited and we went quickly to bathing, eating a quick breakfast,  and getting ready for church.  It took a little more nudging than usual to get them out the door, but they did surprisingly well keeping on task.   After all was said and done though, I actually ended up liking the way going to church broke up the day.

Here we are, all ready for church...

The music and talks were excellent, albeit a tad on the long side, and I liked that we got to see many of our friends on Christmas day.   As I stood greeting families at the door of the chapel while I handed out the programs, I loved that several children bubbled over in excitement to me as they eagerly told me of the Christmas festivities they'd enjoyed before church.  I love conversations with little people! 

As soon as we got home, it was a race to get on our pajamas while Cami threw together a slightly more elaborate breakfast.  We took advantage of having my sister, AnnaLisa, in the house and did a little photo shoot while it was cooking.  Thanks, AnnaLisa, for the awesomest Christmas morning photo ever.  :)

After gobbling down some Orange Breakfast Bread and the ensuing clean-up, the kids were getting anxious to start some present opening.  Ellie spent the time making sure our new Christmas goose (hand-sewn by Sister Smith) was comfy cozy in the bed she'd made for it. 

Then, finally, it was onto the part everyone was waiting for...PRESENTS!  

  Glen is always the gift distributor and he picks a rotation (usually oldest to youngest) for opening whatever gift he chooses for them. 

The kids appropriately oohed and ahed over their gifts. 

Sometimes a little overdramatically (especially considering it was a box of crayons that she'd just opened)...

Emma had been hard to shop for, but it definitely seemed like she was as happy as a clam about the everything...

Apparently Cami loved her gifts as well...

Spencer was a little less demonstrative than his sisters, but he also seemed to enjoy the moment...

Adam is a kid who likes to give all of his gifts a try before moving onto the next one.  He had three Bionicle kits put together before the present opening was even finished and this Bop It toy has proved to be a fun distraction for kids and adults alike over the last two days. 

After opening these boots, Ellie was way too excited to keep her pajamas on.  She changed clothes no fewer than 4 times after this picture was taken.  Each outfit, of course, sported these same new boots.

We were thrilled that AnnaLisa was able to join us for the day, although she looked a bit out of place wearing her church clothes all day...

After an hour or so, the gifts were all opened, the kids were trying out their new goods, and the older kids and adults spent some time doing this....

Not me, though.  I couldn't sleep, because I was too excited and wanted to play with my new toys too (a new lens for my camera).



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Having Fun in the Kitchen

The kids and I have sure been having fun in the kitchen lately and although I imagine most of you dear blog readers also follow along with my recipe blog, I just couldn't help but share some photos of a couple of our latest (and favorite) creations.

These melting snowman cookies totally cracked us up...

And this gingerbread nativity was a labor of love.  I had to go to three different stores to find all of the ingredients, then it took as long to clean up from them as it did to make them, and the recipe post took even longer to put together than all that.  Yet, I harbor no ill will towards them.  In fact, I am in love and am still convinced that it's one of the coolest projects we've ever made. 

 Oy!   I don't know if I can stand so much kitchen cuteness all in one place!    I think I'm obsessed! 



So, do you all have any fun kitchen projects you think we should try?  I'm always looking for fun new ideas! 

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