Gypsy

When our kids are driving us crazy (what? that happens?) we often tell them that if they're not careful we're going to call the gypsies to come take them away.  It works as a kind of joke that calms everyone down.  This Sunday during Sacrament Meeting Spencer kept trying to take away Grant's Buzz Lightyear toy.  Then I overheard this:

Grant (with hand to ears in phone shape):  "Hello Gypsies?  Can you come get Spencer?  Thanks!"

It doesn't take much....

.... it doesn't take anything at all....

Tonight we sent the kids up to get their pajamas on. They all came back with their jammies stuffed in their shirts as "boobies." Meg's was the largest by far, Grant's located more near his belly button, and Ellie's fairly realistic.  Staying home for 4 days certainly brings the sillies out in our family.

Hawkeye Night

I think Ellie has generally given up on all those flyers that they send home from school since I usually turn up my nose and say "We're not spending money on that."  (Ellie is quite obsessed with the budget.  I bring it up regularly so the kids know that money exists, but she remembers the funny things.  Lately she asks if it is near the end of the month because that would mean we were going to eat breakfast for dinner.  What she doesn't know is this is part budgeting issue, and part laziness issue.)  Recently she brought one home about Wickham night at the Hawkeye Women's Basketball Game.  She threw it across the counter with a comment like:  "I know we're not going to that...."

But we did!  We sat by ourselves so that if Grant decided to start kicking the seat in front of him, it wouldn't matter.  It was so cold walking from our car to the stadium that Grant started crying.

Spencer likes to clap, so he enjoyed the activity:

Of course, their favorite part of the evening was the half-time show where "The Limbo Queen" went under really low poles holding cups of colored water and such.  Priorities, I tell you what.

Speaking of the Hawkeyes:

All around town are Hawkeye statues that look like this photo below:

Is it just me or does it look like the Hawk is flipping everyone off?  Just an observation of mine.

Making Valentines for School

I love that Ellie enjoys creating things.  Usually she comes up with way cooler stuff than I could think up on my own.  Here she is making her valentines for school:

Actually, this turned out much tamer than her usual projects, which is probably good since they needed to be mass-produced.

One Year Old Photos

I have pictures of all my children at 1 year old on my wall.  Ellie and Meg have matching dresses at a professional studio.  Grant is on the lawn at the park wearing clothes that clash with his socks... but he is cute and so I picked it anyway.  Today I worked on getting Spencer's photos.  He pretty much rebelled and wanted to eat the camera, but I gave him a bottle to drink and then let him play with the fingernail clippers while I took the pictures.  Fingernail clippers are really cool.  So, now you have to vote on which one I should print out for our wall.....

#1 - Actually this is just a good photo of the fingernail clippers.

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

"Look at this dumb place my mom made me sit..."

Honorable Mention:  "Please let me eat the camera, it looks tasty!"

Blue

I remember it in the bathroom.  The color blue, I mean.

It's not a royal blue.  It's not a navy blue.  It's definitely not a BYU blue.  It's a white-filled blue, a light-filled blue.  To me, it is calm.

I remember going to sit in the bathroom because of it.  Feet against the bathtub.  Back against the wall.  Book in my hand.  Softly washed blue towels hanging about me.  I still do this, despite my own bathroom not being blue, despite my own towels not being quite that soft.  A fact which makes Justin ask at night whether I'm going to the bathroom for five minutes, or for an hour.  Somehow, a piece of the blue, and what it meant to me, seeped into the bathroom as well.  But it's still about that same feeling.  The feeling that comes to me from blue.

This blue moved when my mother moved houses, a signature of hers - a favorite.  It always had a spot.  And when I began my own house, the blue came with me.

My blue is in my bedroom.  (Also in my sister's bedroom, come to think of it, though hers has more purple in it than mine.)  On the bedspread.  Hung from the curtain-rod.  It is one of the only rooms in my graduate-life restrained decorating world that I actually like and plan to keep the same.  Even now, when I walk in my room - especially in the afternoon, when light falls through the windows and brings the blue its glow - I feel myself take a breath.  It makes me say to myself:  "This is my house.  The house I am creating."  No other room ever brings that thought from me.  And I know that it's the blue that does it.

This last weekend Ellie informed me that "Grant was the most annoying brother ever, and that all he ever did was BOTHER her."  Then she asked if she could go sit in my room.

"I feel better in there.  The way the light comes in on the bed, and through the windows."

I knew what she was talking about.

She was talking about blue.

Actual Birthday Videos

Spencer's official birthday cake.  I did not make it myself - gasp - because I went grocery shopping the same day, and I never cook the same day I grocery shop.  It is too traumatizing.  Happy Birthday, Spencer!!!

Household Moments - Random

Let's not kid ourselves.  This is a lot of my life:

Margaret Kathleen Wood spells out her name all by herself:  (She then proceeded to write all over the book, so we probably won't be doing that again for awhile.)

Nap-time hair:

Grandma sent jammies in a package.  Meg immediately put them on.  (She was disturbed that they said 4T when she is now 5.  I told her it was okay if they fit, which they did.)

Falling asleep in random locations around the house:

Grandma's present for Spencer's birthday.  (Grant totally tried to steal it.)

Being one means throwing your food everywhere and playing with power outlets when your mom takes you to play at the playplace:

Doing Mom's hair:

Exhaustion from sleeping with your siblings at night:  (Now he goes to sleep, but at first he stayed up really late yelling and playing.)

Being one also means pulling everything off the shelves in the kitchen, and hoarding binkies:

Take a picture of me!

Stealing Mom's Monopoly money (at least when Grant was on my team he took money from the bank and added it to his pile), falling asleep on the floor again, pulling more stuff off the shelves.)

Caption:  I'm too sexy for these jammies, too sexy for these jammies, oh yah.