Random catching up...

It seems that I'm always trying to catch up.

Two weeks ago we spent the entire weekend moving into a new apartment (pictures soon to come... I promise!) Just three or four days later, I had to have not only our new apartment looking spic-n-span, but our old apartment semi-cleaned up as well so a realtor could come and take a look (it's a long story... but the apartment owners where we manage are trying to sell the units as condos and they came to get a feel for the type of work that's being done in the building!). Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep that week. A bunch of boxes that we didn't get a chance to get unpacked had to go into hiding back in a storage closet. My goal this week is to get caught up by unpacking just one box per day. Wish me luck!

I have a book that my little sis highly recommended. It's called Chi Running by Danny Dreyer. Isa claims that she keeps waiting for her knees to hurt from all her running, but they just haven't since she's adopted some of these running techniques. My knees told me I had to give this a try. Anyway, our public library didn't have it so I got it through an inter-library loan program and the book had to come from Washington. For two weeks, I've been telling myself that I must read the book (and read it quickly) because it's due back on the 14th and they're not going to let me renew it. I think I've read about 5 pages... and tomorrow is the 14th! I don't know how I'm going to catch up on this one.

Soccer season started with a fury. Ammon and Abraham are on different teams (Ammon wears a gray shirt and his team calls itself the Bomb Sharks while Abe wears orange and belongs to the Kardinals). This past week, I also babysat for two of my good friends who had to go out of town suddenly. One of the little boys also plays soccer. So in five days' time, I took three little boys and a very active almost-one-year-old to six different games. Saturday was the worst (or was it the best??). Abe had pictures and a game at 10 a.m. Then we came home to eat and went back for our little friend's pictures and game at 12p.m. Then we came home again, rested, ate and went back a third time for Ammon's pictures and game. Here are a few pictures of Ammon and Abe. They're absolutely loving soccer. I need to try to get better pictures. This will be a big part of our lives for the next couple of weeks. I'm glad my boys are on different teams so they can have fun and successes independently of each other... it's going to be fun to stay caught up with all of this.




I'm really enjoying our new apartment. It's completely remodeled and feels sooooo different than our old apartment. I actually enjoy cleaning this one. I clean and it actually looks clean when I'm done (imagine that!!). This is what I have to keep caught up with though... at least she's having fun! Now all of our new toilet paper rolls have been unrolled and re-rolled!


Another one of my catch up goals is this blog. I really want to get back to the point where I'm posting regularly. My new friend Leaca is insisting that this is my Simon Birch and I'd be making a huge mistake to let it go. I think she's right.

One final picture from this past week. One morning, I had five little boys and one little girl to get ready for the day and for school. We all knelt by the door for a prayer before going out and I made them all stay put... I was sooo thankful to have all the backpacks packed, the jackets and shoes on and all hands off each other - I just had to snap a picture. We love our little friends!

Anyway... one of my biggest catching up games is with my sleep. Jacob is now prodding me to go to bed soon. It's only 10pm, but I think I'd better do as he says this time. Today during choir practice, I actually fell asleep in the middle of singing one of our songs. I hadn't done that since college when I made the mistake of taking a Philosophy course at 7a.m. It was quite embarrassing!

Yes, I know...

I have no legitimate excuse for not posting for such a long time. I've thought about it many a time... and ended up overwhelmed by the thought of all the "catching up" I had to do. In the end, I did nothing! Tonight though, with Easter and Abe's birthday just having passed, I decided to just do it - post a few pictures and forget about trying to catch up! Maybe later I'll go back and try to do some re-capping... maybe!

Hmmmmm... there just might be a life lesson in this post. If it weren't almost midnight and if I didn't know that I have to be awake in about 5 1/2 hours, I might expound on that. But I won't, not tonight anyway.

Happy Birthday Abraham!

Our little Abraham was finally “allowed” to have his fourth birthday! (is it bad parenting to brainwash your child into believing that they won’t have their birthday unless they do certain things??? i.e. learn to buckle your own seatbelt, open the car door by yourself, try new foods, etc.)

Abe got a really cool pirate set by PlayMobil (I highly recommend this toy for any imaginative four-year-old). We were asked to baby-sit at a friend’s house today… even though he usually asks to go to friends’ homes at least 10 times per day, today he didn’t want to go… he would have been content to just stay at home and play with the pirates ALL DAY LONG!!!

We had a Spiderman/Easter party planned for last week, but the little guy got sick and we had to postpone. It will most likely be this coming weekend. We’ll be making Spiderman Easter eggs… one week after the fact! Oh well! I’ll try to post more pictures of the party after it happens!

A little Abraham update...

1. He's hilarious!!! He has make-believe friends (Paul from Antarctica and Kubu from Africa) that teach him everything he knows and does (and get him out of many "difficult-for-a-four-year-old" situations). For example, we'll be sitting at the table trying to convince him to eat his broccoli and he tells us that one time his friend Paul ate broccoli and he died because it choked him!

2. He's trying so hard to be a big boy! Just this past weekend, we took the kids to an indoor water park in Anchorage. Abe met the height requirement for the biggest water slide there - the MASTER BLASTER! He sat in the front and Jacob sat in the back of a double inner tube. I nervously watched from below as they took their turn. The next thing I knew, I saw my little boy flipping out of the inner tube and hitting the netting that keeps the tube enclosed (we discovered that even though he's tall enough for the ride, he's just too lightweight to stay on the tube during such steep drops). My heart stopped. I ran frantically to try to alert somebody. In the meantime, Jacob threw himself out of the tube, grabbed Abe, and managed to stop their downward descent. Apparently, when they managed to stop, Abe hopped right back on the tube and said, "Come on papi! Let's keep going!" Unfortunately, the lifeguards wouldn't allow this. Jacob had to get his battle wounds taken care of and file a report. If it were up to Abe, they would have finished the ride and then hopped in line to do it all over again! Mami didn't allow this!

3. He has a gentle heart!!! Abe is my little helper when I go grocery shopping while Ammon is at school. For good behavior in the store, he gets to buy a gum ball on the way out. He always uses his quarter to buy two small gum balls instead of one large one for himself. He puts the extra one in his pocket and when we pick Ammon up from school, he excitedly gives it to his big brother. This warms my heart every single time he does it. You see, his own gum ball is long gone by the time we go to get Ammon. Nevertheless, he has never waivered and decided to keep that second gum ball for himself. He does this in lots of other situations, too! He has declared that the birthday toys he has received so far are just as much Ammon's as they are his.

4. He loves hugs and kisses. While "others" in our family wake up and just need to be left alone while they come to, Abe wakes up and smothers Ziya with hugs and kisses and asks her how her night was. Then he likes to cuddle on the couch before starting his playing.

I could go on and on about my little Abe. What a blessing he is to our family. HAPPY FOURTH BIRTHDAY ABRAHAM! I love you.

More Easter Pics

It Was A Happy Easter!

i am the luckiest

we finally got to go sledding! lack of sufficient snow, sickness, scheduling… all have kept us away from the hills. but last weekend, just in time to wrap up our Christmas break, our good friends, the reese family, called us up and invited us to join them. i sat in the car while ziya slept for the first while, and i had a book i was supposed to be reading. however, it was just too entertaining to watch my husband and boys go down the hill time after time. the expressions on their faces were priceless. good wholesome fun! i wished i had one of those cameras with a powerful zoom and a continuous snap so i could capture some of their fun.

i did finally get to my book, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith and i was feeling very grateful for a Heavenly Father who still speaks to prophets. i was also listening to some music (a song called the luckiest by ben folds five [thanks becca!]), catching glances of jacob and the boys sledding, and listening to ziya's soft breathing. then to top it all off, two eagles playing with each other flew just over where jacob and the boys were sledding. i looked around at the beautiful snow, the trees, the playful eagles, my healthy fun family, a book containing gospel truths in my hands... and i truly did feel like the luckiest. it was a great moment. (not to say that i don't always feel lucky because i do... this was just one of those a-ha moments)

ziya finally woke up and we took her out to play in the snow for her first time. she wasn't sure what to think... but i did catch several smiles on her face. she just went down the gradual part of the slope. i was able to take a little video of it. what a great way to end our Christmas break.

our new year celebrating...tiny apartment and sick kids

our first week of having jacob home for Christmas vacation was great. Christmas was great. then saturday night ammon and abe got really bad coughs. by monday, ziya had one, too. we had some fun invitations for new year's eve, but we had to stay home so as not to share all of our lovely germs. we still had fun, though. we watched movies (underdog is a huge hit with our boys! thanks little grandma!), had a special dessert, and almost made it to midnight. on new year's day, we stayed in our pajamas until about 4 p.m. we just played and played and played. we really wanted to go out and sled, but all three kids were just coughing too much. jacob and i both felt like we had to make it up to our kids (they'd been so psyched about going out to our friends' cabin to be with a bunch of their friends and play in the snow and now we were making them stay cooped up inside our tiny little apartment instead). so we built a fort in their room, had a family battle with some really cool ball shooters that we got for Christmas and then made and ate caramel covered apples while sitting in the fort. it was sooo much fun. we didn't get very good pictures of the fort, but i'm including some pictures of the candy apples.

that about covers it for our new year's celebrating! we were then on to our fourth day of staying inside! lots of hanging out in pajamas and lots of sleeping... like this.


talk about bouncing off the walls??? how about jumping off the couch? usually this is strictly prohibited, but we made an exception. after all, we'd been inside for how many days now?
today, i finally got fed up with being inside. i took the kids to the public library while jacob had basketball practice. one of the librarians kept giving us "the look" every time she heard one of the kids cough, but i just ignored her. she had no idea what i'd already lived through for about four days! (lest you think i'm a horrible mother, i honestly don't think my kids are contagious any more... they just sound like they are!) then we went to a cool little diner called sal's for dinner, hung out for about 1 1/2 hours at fred meyer and finally the highlight of the entire week... we went roller skating! much to our disappointment, they didn't have skates big enough to fit jacob (having a size 16 foot really stinks sometimes!), so while i fed ziya, he went out on the rink in just his shoes and did his best to teach our boys to roller skate. what an adventure. it really is a miracle that we made it through the evening without any broken bones. the coolest part of the evening is that we had the entire rink to ourselves (i guess roller skating just isn't a cool thing to do on a thursday night?). i was extremely nervous about trying it because of my weak ankle, but i got restless and finally convinced myself that an empty rink really was the time to try to skate again after at least 15 years of not having done it. whoa! i might have to sneak out on thursday nights from now on. talk about exhilarating! i absolutely loved it. i only fell once (ammon and i tripped on each other's skates) and i actually got going pretty fast! if we don't manage to do any more fun things during this two week break, at least i got to roller skate!!!

please pray for improved health for us!