My most favorite thing!

I can't believe I haven't put this on my favorite things list before now, because it is probably my most favorite thing ever! Costco All-American Chocolate cake. It puts Little Debbie's Cosmic Brownies to shame. It is sinfully good which is why I only partake of it once a year, on my birthday. Every year, for the past few years my friend Michelle brings one to me with a big bouquet of flowers. This tradition started a few years ago when Shaun really messed up! Shaun and I are not big on gift giving, to each other. I do not expect any big, elaborate, expensive surprises on my birthday. Usually he just asks me what I want and I tell him and he goes and gets it. A few years ago my birthday was on a Sunday, like this year, and in typical Shaun fashion, at about 9:00 PM Saturday night Shaun asked me what I wanted for my birthday. The thing is, all I wanted as a Costco All-American chocolate cake for my birthday cake. He was a little late, Costco was closed. Since he felt bad he went out and did my usual late Saturday night grocery shopping for me. I figured he would semi-redeem himself by buying me a bakery cake. A poor substitution, but it would have to do. Instead he came home with not one, but because they were on sale, two Betty Crocker cake mixes! WOW. Not only did I not get my cake, I got to make my own, right out of a box cake. L-A-M-E. When asked by Michelle the next day if I was having a good b-day I related the cake story. The next day she went and bought me the cake and a bouquet of flowers and wrote a note from "Shaun" telling me Happy Birthday how sorry he was! So now it has become a joke and a tradition that every b-day she gets me a cake and flowers from "Shaun". I couldn't ask for a better friend! Thanks Michelle!

PS-As you can see from the picture Madison was pretty excited about the cake too!

D is for Donuts

Each week at school Connor's class "cooks" something that goes with whatever letter they are studying. Each child is to try what ever the food is and they then graph whether the child liked it or not, or if it is a comparison they graph which one they liked the most, you get the idea! This week it was "D is for Donuts". They didn't actually cook them, in fact I bought them at the local grocery store. His teacher asked if I would bring the Hostess assorted package (plain, powdered sugar, and wax-I mean, chocolate covered) so they each could try all three and then decide which kind they liked best. There were a few left over and since we provided them we got to bring them home. Connor was so excited! He wanted to make a graph like his teacher made and have a taste test for our family. The hard part was getting everyone to pick their favorite, they were all soooo bad! I mean downright nasty. So we all pretty much picked the one that made us gag the least and Connor "graphed" our results. Here they are:

This house is NOT for the birds!

One of the things that sold Shaun and I on this house when we first bought it was that it had lots of big windows. One of the first things we did when we moved in was take the blinds out of the windows. Eight years later I still love all my big windows, until today. I was back in my bedroom checking e-mails when Connor came screaming into my room, "Mom there's a bird in our house in the pretend tree!" I thought he was kidding me. He wasn't. I went out into the living room and sure enough there was a bird in the fake ficus! I had left the back sliding glass door open and apparently a bird flew in and landed on what it thought was a nice tree. The problem was that it soon realized it was not in the great outdoors anymore and wanted out! Here's where having lots of big windows is a bad thing. Not only could this bird not tell the difference between a real tree and a dusty fake one, it couldn't find an exit that wasn't covered in glass. It banged around to all the windows in my living room and entry trying to get out. Connor was freaking out and I was trying to stay calm. I knew it wasn't going to hurt us but the all the rustling of feathers and the banging can be a little disconcerting! The story came to my mind about a bird getting stuck in the Tabernacle in Salt Lake and all they had to do was shut all the doors and block all the windows except one and the bird went towards the light and flew out. I think this story also had a gospel truth attached to it but at the moment I was just trying to think how I could block all the light in the middle of the day, remember no blinds?! I did open the front door and the front screen and it flew out to our little screened in porch, but it still kept ramming into the screens around the porch, even though the door was wide open. It was making all sorts of squawking noises and apparently must have been calling for help because a couple of minutes later, as I was out on the porch with a broom trying to direct it to the door Connor yells, "Mom, there's another one in the house!" Sure enough another bird had perched in the ficus! Ahhh! For those of you who haven't been to my house you walk through our front door into our entry, which is vaulted, and if you keep walking straight you'd head right through our slider into the back yard. The second bird lit up above the slider, that because of the vaulted ceiling, is just a huge pane of glass. Now I have a bird at my front door and one at the slider and they keep flying back and forth between the two banging into the glass and the screens. If they had just flown a little lower they would have been either out the front door or the slider, but they kept flying up to the top of the vault. I'm sure if I thought about it I could tie a gospel principle to this story also. Not only was scaring Connor it was apparently scaring the poop out of these birds, literally. I guess it's a good thing that I don't really like that area rug in my entry way. After what seemed like an eternity (I'm not really sure how long they were in the house, but it was long enough for me to call Shaun twice and to find my camera to snap pics because I didn't think my family would believe me!) of feathers flying and birds bumping into things, they both found their way out and Connor shut the doors HARD. He was relieved to have them out of our house. I don't think Connor and I will be renting "The Birds" any time soon. We lived it.

Not so clean baby

You would think, based on the number of baths she takes a day(anywhere from 2-5) that Madison would be the world's cleanest baby. She's not, in fact she's quite the opposite. I have never met a kid that is so messy! I've heard mothers say "My child is just a dirt magnet" and I kind of believed them, I mean every kid gets dirty sometimes, it's part of childhood, but now I truly understand that. Madison is always dirty. She can find a puddle on the driest of days, I'm not sure how she does it. Mealtime is someting else with her. I have given up on bibs. Velcro bibs last for about 2 seconds, over the head bibs about 5 seconds and if you can find a bib that ties on (which is next to impossible) she can twist that thing around and out of her way in record time. A bath is mandatory after every meal, and yes there have been days that I have considered not feeding her dinner because I am at my bathing limit! As proof of this I considered posting our latest water bill. OUCH! Another funny thing about Madison is that she is not very verbal yet. She talks a lot, but it is pure jibberish with the occasional "mommy" and "daddy" thrown in. This week she has finally started saying two more discernible words "EWWWWW" and "Yucky" I hate to say it but I think she hears those words a lot. I mean, A LOT!

First day of soccer

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

So last night it occured to me that this year for the first time I have three children playing soccer, and only two parents. Shaun is coaching Amanda's team so he HAS to go to those games but fortunatly Sam's and Connor's are at the same field, so if we have overlap, I should be able to do it! They all had a great time playing today even though it was VERY hot! This is Connor's first season playing and he LOVES it! He puts his soccer uniform on every day after school just waiting for either a practice or a game. His games are HE-LAR-I-OUS to watch! They play three on three and don't keep score. Good thing since kids were scoring for each other's team on occasion! Sam's team was playing so well, they scored three goals in the first five minutes, the coach decided to let the girls play positions they've never played before, so Sam got to play goalie for awhile. She hates playing goalie, but she did a great job! Unfortunatly I had to miss Amanda's game but it's so fun for her to have her dad coaching! They didn't win but I understand they played tough! Don't worry I will not be posting commentary about their games every week, but if you want to keep up with our teams I will be posting thier W-L records on the side of my blog!

Labor Day

For Labor Day this is what Shaun did, went dove hunting, EWWWWW! I'm just glad he gave his to the guy he went with to cook and eat. I have a rule about meat, it does not enter this house unless it was bought at the grocery store, nor should it be accompanied by the words "wild" or "gamey".
And this is what the rest of us did, went to the zoo! It has been years since we have had zoo and Wild Animal park passes. Sometimes I think my younger ones get jipped out of some of the experiences that my older ones got, because we are so darn busy. Right now Madison is really into animals, anything from a fly on the wall to a picture of a giraffe can put her into near hysterics, she loves them!

Resting our little tootsies! That zoo is big and requires a lot of walking. Although I'm not sure how Connor's feet got so tired from sitting in the back of the stroller!