Mrs. Google

I feel like a dictionary/search engine/answering machine lately. My boys happen to be particularly curious. I field questions all day on all subjects and have to come up with some pretty creative answers at times, which may or may not be true! But I am finding this harder and harder to do as my oldest is now in first grade and is an avid reader. If he is not happy with my answer he simply looks it up in a book or asks his all-knowing teacher. So in order to be right once in awhile I have found myself "googling" questions to find correct answers. Apparently if it is on the Internet it is true, according to Connor.

Questions I have fielded lately include:

• What is a narwhal? Do they really have horns? Are they real? Can I catch one?
• What is the biggest living animal on earth? Is it the blue whale? Is that a mammal or fish?
• How do you know when you are going to have a baby? How do you know when it is ready to come out? How does the baby know how to eat if it doesn't understand English?
• Why was there a cross on the Kirtland temple but Angel Moroni on every other one?
• When do I have to get married? Who am I supposed to marry?

Some tend to be easier to answer, no google search needed:

• Can I have a snack? (immediately following a meal)
• Can I play with play doh? (not a good request when your mom is a clean freak)
• Can I have a friend over to play? (hmmm...just what I need right now, more kids)
• Can we watch a movie with popcorn? (see above answer)
• Can you buy me something? (did you bring YOUR money?)

This last set is usually very easy to respond to: NO! Not right now. But for some reason this answer is not one they ever want to hear and have the hardest time understanding. Why can they understand the mysteries of heaven and earth, but not the most simple answer of all? Apparently I need to start saying YES a little more often and see if that gives me better results.

Happy Birthday Gage!

Gage is 3, almost 4, as he puts it! Our funny little guy is getting so big now, I can't believe it. He has become quite the naughty little boy this last year. He is very sneaky and mischievous in every way. He is often walking around with his hands hidden behind his back and tells me, "I don't have anything in my hands." It is usually something he shouldn't have at all, food out of the kitchen, one of his older brothers toys, mom's money, etc. He loves to crack jokes and tease anyone he can. Next time you see Gage make sure to ask him his knock knock joke, he will be more than happy to accommodate your wishes!

For Gage's birthday we went to the Draper temple open house, he was so excited to go. But at the end of the tour he was a little upset to find out that they had cookies not birthday cake for refreshments. He decided it wasn't his birthday after all since there was no cake or presents. What a kid! He chose to go out for Chinese food for dinner, not because he likes the food, he loves the little cocktail umbrellas that he gets for going there, and the chopsticks of course!

This little fella is so much fun to be with, he is headstrong and stubborn and we love him for it. He loves to help his mom out and will do anything for his little sister. His favorite things to do right now are fight with his brothers, tattle on anyone saying bad words (stupid and hate) and suggest they get soap in their mouths, pretend that he is Santa Claus so he can wrap up toys and give them as gifts to us. He loves to dress up and pretend he is Nacho Libre, a witch, a doctor, etc. We love Gage and are grateful that he is in our family.

"The" Dress

My mother bought this dress 7 1/2 years ago when we were pregnant with Connor. Everyone thought for sure he would be a boy because my parents already had five grandsons and no girls. Well, Connor was not a girl...so I passed the dress on to Jana during her next pregnancy.... Bridger was not a girl, Jana passed the dress on to Karli...Porter was not a girl...this went on for 4 more boys between us three girls. The dress was passed between us over and over again, finally Jana left it in a bin of clothes to be brought out if any of us sisters ever had a girl, we all had significant doubts, as you can imagine!

Finally, our little girl decided to make her appearance. McCall is the first to wear it, in fact after all those years, it still had the tags on it. I don't think Gymboree would take it back at this point, not that I wanted to try! McCall has now worn the beautiful little dress twice and may not fit in it again next week, her neck is abnormally large to accommodate those jowls and her two chins! So here are some pictures for my sisters, who patiently passed this on and on and on... I look forward to passing it back to them one day.

Boys still vastly out number the girls in the family, 17 to 2, but we wouldn't trade any of our boys for a whole passle of girls. We can save the dresses for those still to come to the family, but we also have some darn cute overalls to pass down to the boys...they may have holes in them from being played out, but they too can be darling!

Intelligence...nurture or nature?

This is Gage. Gage is a very funny little boy with quick wit and lots of love to share around. Gage makes us laugh often and is always found doing crazy things. Just yesterday was one such event. Ryan had the boys at the church for a bit while I was at a bridal shower. I came and picked up the boys, and ran around the church trying to find Ryan's scriptures. We were kind of in a hurry so I kept telling Gage, "hurry up!" He whined and limped along while I kept asking him what was wrong, he replied over and over that nothing was wrong. He was wearing these great boots:

To tell you the truth, I hate these boots, they always make him go slower because they are so big and chunky. But he insists on wearing them ALL the time. So while I am getting after him to hurry up he continues to whine and walk gingerly. Finally, I stopped him, after we had walked all around the church and we were heading home. I asked him, "are those boots too small for you now?" He replied, "maybe." Then I had a flash of brilliance and asked, "is there something in your boot?" He replied, "maybe there is, I don't know."

This is what I found in his boot. Four paperclips, WOW, how the heck was he walking in those at all? I spent 20 minutes running around trying to get him to hurry and all the while he was walking on these paper clips. Not sure why they were in his boot or why he kept them in there, but there they were still in pristine condition and Gage made it home with them, which is why I think they were in there in the first place!

New Years Resolution

Well, let's just say that McCall has different New Year's Resolutions than most. While most of us are trying to reduce overall from last year, McCall is trying to increase.

Her goals:

• to be back at birth weight at 2 week appointment - accomplished, plus a full pound!
• to double birth weight by 6 months - accomplished, already there at 7 weeks.
• to sleep through the night - not likely going to happen. If you want to keep up this figure there will be no missing meals for the sake of sleep!
• to be able to wear her cute outfits for more than two weeks without growing out of them - yet to be determined, but no luck so far!

We are proud of McCall and the progress she has made thus far on her goals! I wish mine were as easy to obtain!

Thank you Grandma!

We have to thank Grandma for sending this great suckers for the boys. Not only were they great for a photo op, they also colored the boys mouths and surrounding area in blue, provided fantastic amounts of stickiness and endless pleasure. Until Gage dropped his and it broke into a hundred shards of sticky sucker mess. Fun was had by all, except maybe me, as I had to be the one to clean up the kids, the mess and eventually dispose of the lovely "mouths". Thank you Mom! If only I could get you back...what does Korlyn make messes with?

The Movies

Another great day at the movies. I was privileged to take all the kids to the movies this afternoon. Ryan had to work, but Connor had the day off at school so we decided to go watch "Bedtime Stories". It was a fun movie and the boys thoroughly enjoyed it. McCall slept through it and was a perfect little angel. But that is where the fun stopped.
It was our typical movie, the popcorn was dumped all over the floor, the root beer also met its demise on the now sticky floor. Well, there was a little wailing and carrying on over the loss of our delicious movie treats. But it got worse, Gage decided that he really needed to go potty during the middle of the movie so I took him, only to find out that he had already wet his pants! Grrrr, I literally took him potty as we were leaving the house. Oh well, he had to sit in his wet pants for the last half, which didn't seem to bother him one bit. Then we had another accident, another one of my boys, who will remain unnamed due to embarrassment, wet his pants too! Are you kidding me? So I am pretty sure we left as much liquid behind as we took with us.
We won't be sitting in row F, seats 16-19 again and I suggest you don't either! I think I ought to give Ryan the opportunity next time, it's not fair that I get to have all the fun all the time!

Laundry Woes

Now I consider myself to be a slightly above average homemaker, in the sense that I enjoy housekeeping and laundry (ironing is another story)! I know I don't hold a candle to the amount of laundry that my mother has waded through during her lifetime, but she had 9 kids! By choice, I might add!
But today, being laundry day, the second this week, I am bothered by a few items that continue to be passed through my laundry cycles. I had all the laundry in the house done on Monday, sheets, area rugs, blankets, clothes, towels, dishtowels, etc. I have a routine that I like to stick to, all the laundry on Mondays and clothes again on Fridays. I have discussed the amount of laundry with my children and some are catching on to the fact that you can wear pj's more than once; jeans, certainly; shirts, usually not when you are under 7; underwear, never no matter what age; socks, another never; towels can be used a few times if they were hung up, etc... well, on Monday after doing 5 loads of laundry I was done with the sheets, blankets, rugs and was starting on clothing. Tate entered my room, where I always fold all the clothes and put them in piles for each child, he surveyed the relatively small amount of clothing on the bed and exclaimed, "well, we sure took it easy on you this week!" Are you kidding me? I had just started the clothes and had 4 loads remaining, but his little eyes only saw one folded load on the bed.
Fast forward to today, I have 5 loads done and one to go. Some may want to blame the extra laundry on having a baby in the house, but honestly she doesn't come close to the amount of clothing that her brothers go through. I just finished all the socks and underwear... Gage - 16 pairs of underwear, 3 pairs of socks! Seriously, how does that work you may ask. Well, let me tell you. The boy wears about 5 pair underwear at a time to be Nacho Libre (thank you Karli and family!). Well, when a two year old has an accident in 5 pairs of underwear all 5 are dirty! The older boys on the other hand, how do they have 5 pairs of pj's to wash, 2 underwear, 12 pair socks, one pair of jeans and one shirt! Grrr, we are going to have to go over this again!

What happened?

How did I go from this...

... to this?

My mom used to dress me cute, do my hair, pose me for such cute pictures...and then I took over for myself. I may have to turn it all back over to Mom, maybe she really does know everything. And another thing, why do boys not have to go through that horrible hair stage? I guess it finally catches up to them when they have no hair!
Looking back, Kindergarten was great to me, grade 8, not so much! When you go from cute to braces, glasses and afro all in the same year things are not looking up for you.

Eggnog...

Well, this tops all of the questions my boys have been asking me since McCall's birth. Many have centered around the difference of boys and girls, a few about how the baby gets out of Mom's tummy, thank goodness they will still take the answer "the Doctor helps the baby get out", many have been about nursing, etc. But Gage asked the funniest question the other day at lunch, he looked at me in all sincerity as I was feeding McCall and asked,
"Which side does eggnog come out?"
Wow, I laughed hysterically before giving him an answer of neither. That kid is pretty funny, he loves to play jokes on people and tell jokes that make no sense. Next time you see him, ask him to tell you his knock knock joke, it actually makes sense and has a good punch line. He keeps us laughing and shaking our heads.

Little White Dress

McCall and I were both blessed in the same dress, 32 years apart. I must say that she filled it out a lot more than I did with those very chubby cheeks. I was so glad my Mom saved my dress, it might even be back in style now as vintage clothing :)

An Oldie!

Here is another old photo I found, all I can say is WOW! We still added one more brother to the family after this was taken, so it must have been 1989 or 1990. I absolutely LOVED my glasses, I got to choose them out myself and this is what I chose, hmmmm why didn't anyone tell me how horrible they were? As for the hair, let's just leave that one alone!

Throw back...

Found these old pictures from my freshman year at college. Ahhh...the good old days, and the bad hair days. Fun times with great friends, I sure do miss you all!

McCall's Blessing

The proud brothers

McCall's "bling" - thanks Jennie!

Ballerina slippers - thanks Amy!

We blessed McCall this past Sunday. It was a nice day and I am glad we did it because her dress, which is my blessing dress, was so tight around her chubby little neck that I almost couldn't do it up. I didn't think this would be a problem as I was 9 lbs 13 oz when I was born and she was 3 lbs lighter! But she has been packing on the weight, already past 10 lbs. She also broke out in a pretty bad case of baby acne, so we will be doing more pictures when she has cleared up a bit! But all in all it was a great day.

Not Impressed

McCall in her Christmas dress.

We are having so much fun dressing up this little girl! Unfortunately, she is not sharing in our enthusiasm. Aren't girls supposed to love trying on new clothes and accessories? Not sure I am going about this right. So here are a few pictures of our attempts of getting McCall into her outfits and getting pictures of it, not so good! She does not like to be put down at all, so as long as she is being held, she is happy. She is definately filling her role as princess of the household.

New Years

Jessica and Michelle, they don't like to have their pictures taken!

Connor and Dylan, they also do not like to have their pictures taken!

Tate, he loves to sled

Jessica and MaKenzie

Gage

We spent New Years Eve up in Liberty with Joe and Michelle. We had fun eating lots of great food and playing some great games. The kids were up until 11:00 when we finally got a few of them asleep, amazingly the next day was not horrible with them! New Years day was spent sledding and eating chilli. We love the winter!

Seventh Heaven

Connor turned 7 this week! He has been looking forward to this birthday for a year now, and he wants to turn 8 as soon as possible so he can be baptized! Not sure how to teach him to love the moment he is in. But...I remember doing the same. Connor is a great little boy who brings a lot of fun and laughter into our home. He is a great big brother and is often found trying to solve disagreements between his brothers. Connor is a bright little boy who LOVES school and even homework. He is really starting to enjoy reading and has recently taken a keen interest in sharks and dinosaurs. Highlights of this past year for Connor were:

• losing 3 teeth
• spending a month in Canada with his cousins
• breaking his arm (yes, he considers this a highlight!)
• getting staples in his head (the removal was NOT a highlight)
• "graduating" from kindergarten and starting 1st grade
• learning to read - now he reads everything, not always a good thing when we are seeing billboards on the freeway, or we are trying to spell things out so the kids don't understand
• becoming a monkey bar master - despite the broken arm falling off them
• getting a little sister

He has been a joy and is always trying to please everyone around him. I often get comments from primary teachers about how good he is in class and we are proud of him. He is a great kid all around, even if the 6/7 year old humor drives me crazy. Side note, why do all boys think potty talk is hilarious? He may drive me crazy but I love him!