If You Chance To Meet a Frown

I have to share the funniest little incident that happened on the way home from church.  We were in Jaron's little car so all three kids were sandwiched into the back seat.  Gracen's nursery leaders had done a lesson on being happy and she came out with this balloon that had a frowny face painted on one side and a smiley face painted on the other side.  We sang the song about it (You know the one: "If you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay...") and then Eli took the balloon from Grace and let it float around the backseat.  I warned Eli that it would probably go out the open window if he did that.  Sure enough, a couple seconds after I said it, Gracen's little pink balloon was gone out the window.
At first Grace didn't know what had happened.  She looked around with a confused look on her face.  Then the eyebrows furrowed down all angry like.  Then her lip stuck out.  Her eyes squeezed shut and the tears started rolling down.  She burst out crying.  That set Eli off crying.  At first I laughed, then I felt compassionate and told them both it would be okay - that we would get more balloons when we went to the store this week.  When Gracen heard that, she grabbed Eli's arm and through her tears said to him, "Hear that, Eli? We get more balloon at store!"  My sweet little kids.  Their little exchanges fill me up with joy sometimes.

We've had a fun weekend as a family.  Jaron took the boys fishing all day Friday and I got to run errands with Gracen.  Then I cleaned the downstairs until it was spotless (under the couch and all!) and that felt great.  The boys have been really into superheroes lately.  Judge us if you want but they've seen all the Spiderman movies in the last few weeks and this weekend we let them stay up late with us to watch The Dark Knight.  Anything superhero is right up our alley these days.
As for Gracen, over the last few weeks I cleaned out the toys and we ended up with almost nothing for her to play with.  She had her baby dolls and her play kitchen but other than that, everything else was put away or gotten rid of because it was too young for her now.  I wasn't sure what the next step in girl toys was but last week I got Gracen a whole bunch of Littlest Pet Shop stuff from a garage sale.  I always thought they were the silliest toys ever and that I'd never own them. Ha!  Gracen loves them.  I remember learning as a Child Development major in college that kids act out real life situations through their toys to help them emotionally work through life situations.  On Friday, I overheard a Littlest Pet Shop conversation:

Animal 1: "Where's your brothers?"

Animal 2: "I don't know."

Animal 1: "They gone fishing!"

Animal 2: "Oh, okay."

Haha, so funny.  She sure has quite the little imagination.  She loves to feed those animals, to put them to bed, to baby them, and to nurse them back to health.

As for Jaron and I, school is plugging on.  Next month is Jaron's PM&R rotation which will be good because that's something he might have his sights set on for residency.  I'm doing a research design class that's quite interesting.  Sometimes I think I love research...and then sometimes I think I don't.
Wow...I didn't think I was going to write that much. :-)

Odds 'n Ends

I haven't posted in awhile.  Nothing terribly exciting going on around here so I'm posting a few odds 'n ends pictures of what has been going on.

This is my kids dressed for the day.

After weeks of nonstop wear for this Spiderman garage sale find, I broke down and got Alden and Eli each a Spiderman costume off Ebay.  Now they don't argue over whose turn it is anymore!  Gracen loves this "princess" nightgown enough to wear it during the daytime too.  Yes siree, I do get comments when I take my spidey/princess/kids on errands around town.

 

 For a few weeks there we had some pretty wild spring weather.  One night we had a tornado scare but no touch-downs in our county.  This picture was taken the night the rain was so heavy it washed away the playground wood chips.  You can't tell from the picture but the sky was the eeriest orange color.

 Reasons 468-470 that Jaron is an awesome Dad: He takes his boys fishing, he teaches them that we eat what we keep, and he walks them through how it's done.

 I don't ever wake up and tell myself I'm going to feed the neighborhood dinner but somehow it works out that way sometimes.  Now that I think back and count we fed 17 people dinner on this night.  I couldn't be happier that our dinner table gets the chance to be full to overflowing!  Someday we might have enough space that no one has to eat on the lawn. :-)

 This is our new favorite way of getting down the stairs.  Pretty efficient, I'd say.

Ipod Goodies

Jaronw as showing me pictures from his Ipod last night and I asked him to send me a few of the goodies.

I love this one.  This was taken on the week that I spoke in sacrament meeting.  Apparently nobody was being reverent for Daddy so he took everyone outside to practice being reverent.  Haha, I love it.

 Jaron took this one on an afternoon that I couldn't find the camera.  We're going to miss having so many nearby friends when we move next year.  I especially love that Levi is wearing cool dude shades in this one.

 

And this video is just too funny for words.  It was taken on an evening when Jaron had taken the boys fishing.  It was getting a little too near bedtime.

Backyard Baseball

Jaron has started a new rotation.  Surgery was such a rough rotation that we're all feeling a breath of fresh air with his new rotation.  So far the hours have not only been good but they've been normal working hours - like a 40 hour work week!  It's left him time for all of us and we're all loving it.  

One evening, Alden asked Dad to come out and pitch a wiffle ball to him.  It's still strange to me that Alden's getting into this "bigger kid" stuff.  Turns out he's quite the little slugger.  Eli's got a little ways to go before he develops the necessary hand-eye coordination but he had a good time first playing catcher and then taking his turn at bat (in his Spiderman suit that he's worn everyday since we were given it a couple weeks ago).

 

April?!

To beat the 90 degrees + weather we had last week, we busted out the slip 'n slide.  Eat your heart out, Genny in barely-emerging-from-winter-Saskatoon! ;-)

 

We enjoyed sharing the good times with neighborhood friends.

Speaking of friends, I snapped another picture of Gracen and Noah.  They'd been playing upstairs when suddenly Noah went outside and got her little chair and took it upstairs.  A few minutes later, I went up to see what was going on.  When I asked them what they were doing, they said "Eating dinner."  I asked them what they were eating.  Gracen looked up at me and said "Food."  Of course.

You'd never believe me, but I do Gracen's hair every day.  She often pulls it out, though, and I just let it be.  Those tiny plastic hair elastics are great but she pulls a wad of hair out with them every time!

Swimmin'

Shortly after Christmas we used some Christmas money my mom had sent to get a membership at a nearby gym with a sweet pool.

 We've been pretty consistent at hitting the pool.  I tried to convince Jaron that it actually saved us money because instead of spending my time going out shopping, we went to the pool instead. ;-)

During our time there each of the kids fell or re-fell in love with the water.

Even I got to spend a few heavenly mornings swimming lengths.

Gracen sometimes spent a lot of time watching AquaFit in the next pool over.  I think she learned a few moves.  Each lap around the lazy river she'd make me stop, hanging on for dear life against the fast current, and lift her up so she could see what the Aquafit ladies were doing to their music.

 The pool has a lot of neat stuff that makes it entertaining for little kids.  Unless we went on a Friday or Saturday afternoon or evening, we often had the place pretty much to ourselves.

 The best part of the pool pass was how comfortable my kids became with water.  Despite having taught swimming lessons in a previous life, I definitely think that the best way for young kids to learn to swim (initially) is to be in the water frequently.  I think the structure of swimming lessons isn't necessary until they're old enough to learn strokes, around age 5 or 6.

During our three months of frequent swimming, Alden learned to swim under water and mastered going down the big water slide (you have to be able to swim to the edge by yourself).

 

Gracen learned to swim with a noodle and decided she should therefore be free to roam the pool.  She even didn't want me to touch her in the lazy river.  Keeping a close eye on her became difficult as she grew more fearless.

 Eli became comfortable putting his head under the water and learned to jump from the edge without me catching him (but not into water more than chest-deep).

 And now our membership has ended.  

We're sad but looking forward to next month when the outdoor pools will open!

Mommy Preschool

This past week was our last week of mommy preschool for the year.  We've been doing a preschool twice a week with some of the families from our church.  Every week we switch whose house its at and for the last week, it happened to be at our house.  I never remember to take pictures but I made a point to during this last week since it was my last chance.

Alden was in heaven on this day because he had a day off and got to come to preschool.  He knows we have more fun doing our learning activities at preschool than he does doing his worksheets in kindergarten.  Man, I sure wish kindergarten was more like preschool! Sigh.

I snapped some pictures so we could remember this year's group and what kinds of things we did.

Like:

Stringing Fruit Loop necklaces.

 

 Going on letter hunts around the house.

 Thanks to my bestest friend, Kristin, we did the Three Little Pigs.  I got the idea for making these little pigs houses from the internet.  I gave them "puppets" on popsicle sticks and they loved being able to retell the story to each other.

Building spacial awareness with legos and tape. I got this idea from a great preschool blog but...I can't remember which one. :-)

 Sorting out what starts with "Z" and what does not.

 Then we found the animals who'd escaped from the zoo and hidden themselves around the house.

 We built robots out of a chopped up pool noodles and golf tees.  Another great idea from some other blog. :-)

 Lastly, we celebrated the last day with cupcakes.  Sweet little Grace had a hard time getting her candle to stay blown out. The girl is near obsessed with birthdays.

And now I'm thinking I might do a little, once a week preschool over the summer to force myself to get my kids thinking from time to time...if I can convince myself that mine and Jaron's schooling won't get in the way!