Deep Thoughts, by Britta and Avery

Britta: "Everyone in the whole world is a girl except for the boys."

Avery: "A panda is a panda."

There you have it folks. Truer words rarely have ever been spoken. Now, take this moment to contemplate that truth, apply it to your lives, and I'm sure you'll be the better for it.

Yeti Garden Art - A Treatise

[Submitted by Ben]

Today I received an email from my sister suggesting an accessory for our co-op garden.


(A little background first. Stephanie and I found another family in our ward with a yard and a desire to garden. We struck a co-op with them: we contribute labor and supplies and we split the harvest.)


This is the email I received with the subject line "Ben needs this for the new community garden" and included a link to this item:

My younger brother Alan shared his thoughts on the matter:

Haha! "If you can't afford 'class' - you can still afford to CLASH!"

I decided to comment on her suggestion as well: First impression is that it would make a pretty useful scarecrow. Second impression, does Sasquatch work out?!?! Take a look at the guy - he's seriously buff! He obviously does a lot of bench pressing, arm curls, squats, and abdominal exercises. Does he use creatine powder? Where does he get his proteins? Does he ever carb-load before lifting?

Even with as buff as sasquatch is, I sympathize with the hair loss. Maybe he should follow suit with other body builders who have hair loss and just shave his head completely. That seems to keep with the image of masculinity and current trends. But how would that look with all the long body hair? I suppose it would diminish the mystery and fascination of sasquatch to look like you are wearing a gorilla suit without the mask.

And why is he looking to the side. With feet as big as his, he should be looking in the direction he is heading if he wants to avoid an embarrassing tumble. (Believe me, walking one way and looking another is dangerous; I know from experience).

This must be an example of true art because it really has me thinking about it. So many unanswered questions! Still, I don't think art belongs in the garden. It dramatically increases the risk of tripping while walking and looking sideways.

I Woman Hear Me Roar

Eden decided to get the thrill of her life and go parachuting...off her bunk bed. She really thought she was being daring so she was a little surprised that I started laughing about it and even encouraged it. Rock on Sister!




Britta decided to be a bit more daring and jumped without the parachute.





And Avery just warming up to the idea of daring, decided to jump from the bottom rung of the ladder.

Avery's Third Birthday!!

Avery started her big day off in true birthday girl fashion. She got dressed in her favorite dress up dress, and upon learning that Ben had already made her cake the night before, asked for cake for breakfast. Who was I to deny the birthday girl?



Avery wanted to go the park for her birthday. I did insist that she change her outfit. She had fun playing on the equipment, but once she saw a field full of dandelions, she was ecstatic. A side note: Picking dandelions is Avery's favorite out door activity. It doesn't matter where we are, where we are trying to get, or how late we are, if she sees a dandelion, she runs for it, picks it, and does a little skip and a dance. So we spent the next half hour picking dandelions.



We had a minor set back in our partying when she fell and scraped her leg, but a special birthday picnic lunch and sucker soon put things to rights.






And of course, the day was rounded off with cake, ice cream and presents. She was a happy birthday girl indeed.

American Idol's Fifth Judge

Ben and I love to watch American Idol together. It was definitely a lot more fun when Paula was on her crazy pills, but we love the music and the contestants, and Simon and Paula's ongoing love-hate relationship.

Because Eden is on Spring Break this week, we thought we'd let the girls stay up a little bit later and let them watch a few of the contestants perform. Britta, calling them as she sees them(scroll down a few posts) quickly began summarizing each performance. After Lil Rounds performance: "I think that at first she wasn't very good, but she just needed some confidence and then she got it so it was pretty good. I liked her." That's our Britta B!

Britta Putting Two and Two Together

Britta is my call them as she sees them kid. Here are a couple of funny examples of her putting two and two together and, well, calling it as she saw it:

(Britta saying family prayer) "...and please bless mommy that she'll get enough sleep tonight so that she won't be grumpy in the morning..."

(Britta stuck her finger into Weston's mouth) "Ouch! Mom, he bites really hard! You better switch him to bottles quick!"

Yes, Those are Boxes on Our Kids' Heads!

Kids are so funny and the games they come up with give us a laugh and keep us on our toes!






It all started because Britta chose to put her "Build A Bear" box on her head for a monster costume.






Then the other girls decided to put on the boxes and ram into each other! I don't know why kids do the things they do, but Heaven bless them all!

Odds Are...

When you are the only boy in the bunch(excluding Ben-he's a man!) and you're the youngest child to boot, odds are you are going to come across a lot of girlie toys. This happened to Weston recently. Avery left her "My Little Ponies" on the the living floor, and Weston having no prejudices towards girlie things(he's not aware of cooties yet), promptly picked it up and tried stuffing it into his mouth. I of course thought it was hilarious and wanted to document the first of many times Weston would be playing with girlie toys(whether coerced or by his own free will). Ben came in, took one look at me photographing our son with a sparkly pony, made some sort of comment about me "demasculinating our son" and went to get the bin of cars. The pony was traded for a car and Weston resumed stuffing and drooling.


A side note: Ben and I felt it was important to offer a wider variety of toys to our girls to round out their personalities, you know, mix in a few cars, tools, and dinosaurs with the polly pockets and baby dolls. However, when the dinosaurs and cars were inviting each other to tea parties and balls, we gave up.

Tooth Fairy Blues

I love being a mom, and I love traditions and holidays, I just wish some traditions were more compatible with the demands of motherhood, i.e. the tooth fairy. It's 7 o' clock at night, ben was out of town, Avery and Weston were sick and Eden comes running in to my room excited because she finally lost her tooth. She starts going on and on about the tooth fairy coming and what she'll leave for her. My mind begins to race trying to remember if I had any cash in my wallet, any in Ben's drawer, any change in the car-no, no, and no. I start in on the couch cushions when I begin contemplating ruining Eden's childhood and spoil the magic of the tooth fairy and tell her the cold, hard truth. Then I remember that Britta has some money in a jar in the laundry room...crisis averted.

NOT EVEN A WEEK LATER!!!!!

Eden lost her top tooth and again was extremely excited, and I thought to myself, well at least this time I know I have a dollar in my purse, whoo! So the day goes by, evening, kids in bed, I lay down to read a book and was so tired,fell asleep. Next thing I know, it's 6:45 am, and I hear Eden in tears talking to Ben while he's getting ready for work telling him the tooth fairy didn't come. SHOOT!!!!! Granted I was up a few times through out the night with Weston, and I should have remembered then, but I was only awake by the most technical sense of the word. Ben and I tried to smooth out the situation and told her we were sure the tooth fairy would come that night. All day, I kept reminding myself to put the dollar from my purse under her pillow. Well, I leave for a meeting, come home, go to my wallet to get out the dollar and it's not there!!! Oh that's right, I had to use it to donate to Eden's class for a book fair! So Ben goes to the store, 10 at night, to get her her favorite candy bar and it puts it under pillow. All is well.

Now, I know the easy and responsible solution would be keeping extra money on hand, but that would involve an extra errand to the bank or actually remembering to get cash back at the grocery store while I'm shepherding three kids past the candy section, loading grcoeries in the cart and telling Weston, "It's okay, we're almost done, hang in there buddy." Why oh why didn't the person who created the tooth fairy have a clause built in to make it easier on parents: "The tooth fairy will come within 1-3 days from the time the tooth came out."

Update on Weston

Weston is 5 and half months old!! He is rolling all over the place, sitting up on his own, and loves to gnaw on our faces. Eating is his favorite hobby, followed closely by drooling and excels at both. While he's pretty satisfied with strained peas, we can tell he's looking forward to using his two new teeth to their full extent to sample the food on our plates. He laughs and growls and blows raspberries and is a ton of fun to play with.