Dauphin Island

Just another weekend checkin' out the local beaches. Other than the fact that I had to walk a mile round trip just to get to the bathroom, the beach at Dauphin Island was acceptable. The weather was breezy and overcast which was perfect. No rain, although it looked like it was going to.



I think Tanner was a fish in another life. He LOVES the water, he found it especially funny when a big wave would come a long and push him over. I, on the other hand, was trying to resist the urge to tie him to my waist with the beach towel because he was making me so nervous. He actually navigates the water fairly well.



Lana enjoyed running away from the big waves and playing with her friend Emma who's family met us at the beach.



I have never laughed so hard at the beach before I saw Emma's dad play "Dead Body" with her. He lies dead still on the beach where the waves was up while she pulls on his arm trying rescue him. I'm pretty sure it freaked some people out, thankfully he'd poke his head up every few minutes to check on his boys.



The hole digging contest. It's amazing how much fun kids (and adults) can have with just a plain ol' hole at the beach.

Last day of Preschool

It is a bittersweet day for me today. Bitter because it was the last day of pre-school for Lana.

FOREVER. (sniff, sniff)

Sweet because I get to have her home with me all summer long before I have to give her away to all-day Kindergarten.




I made the kids sit for a few pictures before leaving for Lana's End of the Year program.



When my kids are yelling and screaming at each other this summer I will look at this picture and remind myself that they are not always monsters.




This one was my favorite of Lana. I think she was laughing at Tanner doing something silly.



My "thoughtful" Tanner.

I love Tanner's facial expression in this picture.

Lana did so great in her program this year. She sang all the songs and did all the actions and there was no crying because she found us in the audience!

We have grown to love her friend Gracelynn because Gracie really took Lana under her wing this year (as much as a 5 year old can). Gracie looks out for Lana (and sometimes would make her a partner in crime) but she really helped Lana come out of her shell. During the program she even made sure Lana had found us in the audience. We're sad Gracelynn will be going to a different school next year.

Lana and Mrs. Monika

We could not have asked for a better teacher this year. Each night before bed Lana frequently talks about Mrs. Monika. Sometimes she'll talk about what she did at school but mostly she talks about what she wants to give to Mrs. Monika. There were a few days where I had to do a little convincing to get Lana to go to school but for the most part she was happy to hop in the car and go. Occasionally she was sad it was a Saturday or Sunday and that she didn't get to go to school.

There are actually 11 kids in Lana's class but they took the picture on the Kindergarten registration day and a few kids were missing.

Kindergarten here we come!

Copy Paper

By Paul:
So it seems like recently the children will color on everything they arn't suppoed to color on. I will find writing/coloring on walls, furniture, windows, floors, televisions cabinets etc. The thing that has me confused is that we recently purchased paper for the purpose of coloring on, but it is still clean. I have come up with an idea. I will cover the items I don't want a crayon or pen to come close to with clean white copy paper. If my theory is correct, the children wont go near it! So if you come to our house and see white copy paper taped over all the cabinets, you will know why.

Emergency Trip To Coast-Paul

As many of you know, we have a problem brewing on the gulf coast. On Tuesday I got a phone call from my concrete supplier about an emergency trip to the coast due to the pending destruction of the coastal area. The fear is that the oil spill will cause enviornmental and economic havoc to the coast. They decided to swing into action and do what they could, while they still could. They booked a fishing cabin and chartered a fishing trip. Now this is no ordinary fishing trip, but an emergency fishing trip. With the pending catastrophe, fisherman will be out of work, and the coast will be off limits to fishing. I am so glad I was able to selfishly give of my time to help in this great effort.

Family Home Evening

Just in case my children ever come to your house and color a picture of Jesus (or any other type of church figure for that matter) like an Oomp-Loompa, I just wanted you to know where it came from...




Our FHE's are never boring.



Especially with this crazy 2 year old who crowned himself King of the Crayons. At least he knows his colors and will hand you the right crayon now instead of throwing a random handful at you.




Thanks for making FHE fun!

Gulf Shores, AL

Yesterday we headed for the beach. We'd been wanting to get out of here for a couple of weeks now and even though we'd had a few things we could have been doing (and will be busy for the next few forseeable weekends) we made the decision to just go.

We tried to keep it a secret from Lana. I bought the kids' swim suits a few weeks back and every day Lana would ask me if she could put it on or she would tell me "the weather is perfect for going to the beach, mom". We told the kids we were going to the "park" to play. But the park was far away. Then as we were loading the car, the word beach slipped out of my mouth and Lana totally caught it. I tried to save the lie but I think she had us figured out.

This is me taking a picture from underneath the canopy, because this is where I was. Sitting in the shade, reading a book. Now it's not Destin or Hawaii but it was semi close to home (about 3 1/2 hours).

When we first got to Gulf Shores, we pulled into the first parking lot we saw. It took us about 10 minutes just to drive through the parking lot only to find out it was completely full. We said forget that and drove 5 minutes down the road to this beach. It's a state park but you just have to pay a fee to fish off of the pier. It was a nice and clean beach, had restrooms and plenty of parking.

The kids and Paul built sandcastles and ...

a sand ice cream cone. Yum! Paul later made it into a garden gnome but I didn't get a picture of that one.

The kids lasted about 5 hours on the beach and then it was time to head home. Seemed like a long ride home but well worth it.

An afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese

A couple of Saturdays ago one of Lana's classmates had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Believe it or not, but I had never stepped foot in a Chuck E. Cheese before. The kids seemed to enjoy it. Tanner was mesmorized by the animatronic mouse and Lana was creeped out. The pizza was bleh, but who goes to Chuck E. Cheese to eat pizza?


Tanner enjoyed a piece of chocolate birthday cake.


Mmmm, chocolate cake mustache.



Lana is blissfully happy in the drivers seat while Tanner looks slightly terrified riding in the back. Might possibly be a real reaction in about 11 years.

Gardening

We spent our Saturday putting together the square foot gardens. I am super thankful that this year we have a back yard to put them in.

Lana was a very good helper and great at planting all the seeds.

Tanner was a good helper handing dad his tools and playing with the tools when not in use.

He was also a pro at getting himself uber dirty. I cannot comprehend just how dirty this boy can make himself in such a short amount of time. This is taken before noon.

Paul took care of all the hard work and dirty gross parts. Without him, our gardens would not exist!

Garden #1

Garden #2

The first sign of spring

The hammock has been hung!

Making my own laundry detergent

So I've been wanting to try this for a while but A.) I've had apprehensions about whether it worked just as good as "the real stuff" and B.) do you know how hard it is to find Arm and Hammer Washing Soda in a small town? I finally had to order it online. FYI, it still amounted to way less money than actually shelling out $20 for another container of detergent.

A friend of mine made some and said it was super simple and easy and that it worked just a good as her other detergent. She pointed me at the Duggar Family Recipe and I figured that if this detergent works for a family of 20 something kids, then it's got to work for my little family of 4.

Duggar Recipe for Liquid Laundry Detergent

4 Cups - hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 Cup - Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda*
½ Cup Borax

- Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.

-Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

-Stir detergent and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)

-Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled.

-Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.

-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)

*Baking Soda will not work, nor will Arm & Hammer Detergent - It must be sodium carbonate!!

TIPS FOR LAUNDRY SOAP: We use Fels-Naptha bar soap in the homemade soap recipes, but you can use Ivory, Sunlight, Kirk's Hardwater Castile or Zote bars. Don't use heavily perfumed soaps. We buy Fels-Naptha by the case from our local grocer or online. Washing Soda and Borax can often be found on the laundry or cleaning aisle. Recipe cost approx. $2 per batch.

This was the most labor intensive part of the whole thing (and it wasn't even that hard). I happened to have Ivory soap in my cabinet, so I just used that.

Melting the soap took the most time (and that was maybe 5-7 minutes at the most).

.

Trying to find the Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda was the biggest pain in the butt, until I figured out I could order it online for still relatively cheap.

Then I mixed them all together and VOILA! I guess we shall see tomorrow, it's supposed to thicken up. I've already got a few loads of laundry in the queue to test it out. Here's to squeezing a few more bucks out of the paycheck!

Poking marshmallows with toothpicks

So we are home this week with Lana on Spring Break. We didn't have anything planned, just a non-eventful "staycation". Monday was beautiful, except Tanner wouldn't let me run my errands. He threw a fit before I even got him out of the car in the Target parking lot. (Something about me not letting him bring his ginormous Little Tykes car into the store.) I just buckled him (and Lana) back up and went home. I made the kids play outside in the back yard and then later that afternoon we played with the neighborhood kids at the playground.

Tuesday I thought we'd try again. We were almost out of the house. I was in the bathroom doing Lana's hair when all the sudden I noticed how quiet it was in the house. Tanner?? Tanner??!! What are you doing???!! I come out to find him covered in a white powdery substance. No, not anthrax. Turns out Tanner discovered a open box of baking soda. Looking back I should've taken pictures but I was more concerned about getting it vacuumed up before the kids tracked it all over the house. Tanner already knew he was in trouble and headed straight for his room and closed the door. Luckily the rest of Tuesday was uneventful.

Today it is too cold to really enjoy being outside so we've spent all morning inside. The kids were getting a little crazy and I needed a few minutes free of crying, whining, tattle-tale-ing, screaming, etc. So I pulled out a bag of those nasty mini fruity marshmallows that the kids love so much, some toothpicks and let them go to town.

Lana made all sorts of contraptions.

• Rockets
• A compass (she didn't know what it was called, she called it the thing that points the direction)
• A rocket with a compass
• Shapes of all sorts
• A snowman
• And a whole bunch of hammers

Tanner enjoyed poking the marshmallows and making hammers (he was the one who first figured out the hammer shape and then Lana ran away with the idea).

And then of course, he devoured his creations! 30 whole minutes of peace and quiet. Totally worth cleaning up Tanner's spit out, mushed up marshmallows he left for me on the floor.

Decisions, decisions

My kids are not fantastic decision makers. I blame it on myself. I will admit that I struggle with being indecisive. Anyway, to help my children in their decision making (and to save my sanity), I only give them two choices. "Choice #1 or Choice #2. You choose". Today after church while we were waiting for lunch to get out of the oven, Lana turns to Paul and says,

"Daddy, let's play toys."

Paul pauses and says, "How about you bring me a book and I'll read to you."

Lana obviously did not want to read books because her response to that was, "Daddy, do you want to play dolls or play bears? You choose."

Ha! My kids really are listening!

A memorable birthday

#28 should go down in my birthday history as one of my most memorable birthdays I've had so far.

The original plan was to head to the Baton Rouge Temple for our Stake Temple day. Unfortunately Mr. Stomach virus (who shared the love with us the week before) decided he was not finished with Lana on Thursday night and still Friday morning. So we stayed at home. Before Mr. Stomach virus showed up we had a babysitter lined up for Saturday for Paul and I to go out. Well, our sitter called Friday night with Strep and we most definitely didn't want that in our house in addition to the pukes. So we call around and finally get another sitter lined up. Saturday morning comes around and Lana is still sick. Back up babysitter canceled. By the end of the day I think we were all a little stir crazy and Lana hadn't been sick since the early morning hours and was keeping down food. So to get us out of the house for a bit we decide to head to Outback to try and salvage my birthday. The food was mediocre and poor Lana was just dragging.

Fast forward a week to Friday. Paul calls me up and says the babysitter will be there in 45 minutes. We are going out. And we did. We went and saw Avatar and it was awesome. I haven't seen a movie that I enjoyed that much in a while. Better yet, no sick-whiny-crying kids at my side for 3 glorious hours! Thank you Paul for that fantastic post birthday surprise!

St. Jude's Trike/bike-A-Thon

Let me just preface this post with: I am a crappy school mom. Thank goodness I get to "practice" with Lana and that this is only pre-school.

Lana came home with the St. Jude's Fundraising packet about 2 weeks ago. I put it on the bar top in the kitchen and forgot about it. I guess it got buried with old mail and such and then thrown away because when I pulled the reminder flyer out of Lana's backpack yesterday the packet was no where to be found. Way to drop the ball for the cancer foundation (which multiplies the guilt by at least a million). After Paul talked me out of banging my head against the brick wall for being the crappiest school mom of the year, I got out a big envelope, threw in some cash and signed a quick permission slip on the top to allow Lana to ride in the Trika-A-Thon.

Thank goodness I did because this girl had a blast. She was so excited when I told her that she would get to ride her bike at school with her friends. Tanner and I stopped by to watch her make her laps and snap a few pictures.


Tanner was not really happy that everyone else was riding bikes and he wasn't. Sorry Tanner. Maybe next year bud.



I fixed Lana's helmet after I took the picture. I guess the teachers didn't want to take out her pony tail so they just propped the helmet on top of her head. Nice.




These were just the kids from the Pre-K 4 classes (pre-k 2 and 3 went earlier). It was a little crazy at first and I was almost positive that someone was going to get run over or we were going to have a 10 bike pile up or something. But the kids did great. Most of them watched where they were going and Lana got through unscathed (phew!). I guess they really were listening to the bike safety lessons!

Lana's Valentine Day Party

Thursday was Lana's Valentine Day party at school. She came prepped with her Lightning McQueen (for the boys) and Disney Princess (for the girls) Valentine cards. I made her write out each one with her classmates names and also her name on there for practice. Some were barely legible but at least she could say she did it all by herself. It was obvious that the parents of a few of the kids did all their Valentine stuff which to me is a little disappointing. Lana had more fun putting the cards together than she did handing them out. She also decorated a hand sanitizer bottle with stickers for her teacher Ms. Monika.



Tanner and I were a little late so we missed the cupcake action (I'm okay with that, trust me.) The kids had made two, one for them and one for their parent. I guess Lana was pretty ravenous because she ate mine before I got there.



Here's Lana holding her Valentine's stash.



Happy (over-rated) Valentines Day!