After the crazy flurry of activity after Thanksgiving, the "peace" of Christmas Eve had finally arrived. I love the feeling on Christmas Eve...all the shopping is done (and even if it isn't there are no stores open to get anything else!), the house is clean (because if it isn't, Santa Claus won't come in...my mom taught me that one!), and everyone is relaxed...ahhh...oh, wait NO ONE is relaxed...the kids are touching every present trying to see if they could "guess" what's inside, the little boys are asking me every 10 minutes..."Is it time to open our presents yet?" Because it is our tradition to open one gift on Christmas Eve, it is pajamas and everyone knows it, yet they are always excited to see and put on their new jammies. This year was no exception, everyone was excited to open their PJ's and officially get Christmas under way at our house. This year, I found the cutest little PJ sets at Walmart that came in a cute little backpack with PJ's, slippers, toothbrush, and a little mini flashlight, Buzz Lightyear for Kolt and Transformers for Jett. These choices seemed a little too juvenile for Blaze so I just glanced over to the next kiosk and noticed a bunch of more "mature" looking sets of the same type with video game themes on them, sizes S, M, L, and XL.. I thought "Great, Blaze will love this..." not too immature, but still a unique PJ set. So Christmas Eve came and both little boys absolutely LOVED their PJ's, slippers, toothbrushes, and flashlights, Sierra loved her soft L.e.i. jammie bottoms, and at first sight Blaze was VERY happy with his "Modern Warfare" PJ set... until....he pulled the pajamas out of the bag....they were MEN'S size XL!!! Oh my gosh! I couldn't believe it...at first I felt so bad, mostly because I felt like he was disappointed, but then I got a bit mad...I mean REALLY!!!...do wives/mothers/girlfriends really buy a pajama sets in a backpack with video game themes!?! Honestly, and the kiosk was RIGHT NEXT to the ones for the little guys, so why would I not assume that they were for older boys and not grown men! Come on!!
Luckily, Blaze was a very good sport and I know how to sew...so on Christmas Eve, when I should have been relaxing, I was frantically altering a pair of men's XL pajama bottoms to fit my 11 year old boy!
Christmas morning came full of surprises and some "not so surprises..." Sierra got her much-wished-for-watched-me-buy-it-online coat from American Eagle, which looks totally cute on her (She's a SUPER model!!). All the kids asked for Santa to bring Wii, which he did, along with Wii Fit Plus...woo hoo...totally fun!!
For Blaze this year, Mike and I had decided to get him a 22 rifle. He loves the outdoors, fishing, hiking, camping, and really enjoyed doing some rabbit and coon hunting with his cousins last year. However, Blaze is probably the biggest "Gift Detective" of all of our kids and unfortunately is very good at it, and honestly, even a very bad "Gift Detective" would recognize the size and shape of a gun wrapped in a box...(not to mention the fact that he spied Mike checking out guns one day while we were out shopping and wasn't very subtle about the fact that he believed that was what he was getting for Christmas!)...and so the deception began! Of course, we did not wrap up the gun, as it would have taken him about a tenth of a second to figure out what it was. As the days grew closer to Christmas, I kept hearing the question.."Have you done all the shopping?" or "Have you wrapped up all the gifts?"...and I kept saying yes.
On Christmas Eve, I wrapped the key to the lock on the gun case and taped a string to the bottom of the package, then ran the string from under the Christmas tree behind the couch and to the other end of the room to the coat closet, and tied it to the gun case and put it behind all the coats! It was so funny on Christmas morning when he opened up that key and then found that there was a string attached to his gift...and not only Blaze was excited about seeing what was at the end of the string. All the kids were following him around and very anxious to see what was in the back of the closet!
Needless to say he loved the gun, and the surprise!...and now he is anxiously waiting for his Hunter's Safety course to begin so that he can get his small game license this next winter...I just hope he doesn't ever want me to cook his little rabbits....ick!!
While tying Blaze's quilt (I guess I'm what one might call a "red neck" quilter and I tie my quilts by laying them flat on the floor), I didn't realize that one of Jett's socks was on the floor underneath, and when I rolled up the "done" portion of the quilt in order to be able to reach the next area to tie...I found I had sewn Jett's sock to the bottom of the quilt! Well, we all got a good chuckle out of this and I quickly cut the tie and laid the quilt back down to re-tie the tie I had removed....however....I neglected to REMOVE THE SOCK!...and once again when I picked up the quilt, the sock was sewn to the bottom!! So, once again, I clipped the tie, but this time I remember to remove the sock from underneath before re-tying! What a sad state of affairs that it took me 2 tries to "unsew" a sock from the bottom of a quilt!
It was Parent Teacher Conference night, therefore, it was freezer pizza night...I had cooked 2 of the pizzas, then put the last one in the oven, just before it was time for Mike and I to leave. Sierra was put in charge of babysitting and taking the pizza out of the oven in 10 minutes....? While we were out, Mike said, "Should we call her see if she took the pizza out?" I said, "No, she will get it out," thinking that even if it slipped her mind for a few minutes, she would smell it and then get the thing out of the oven....that pizza was in the oven for almost an hour and a half and amazingly, she claims she did not even smell the burning pizza!
Halloween Pics - Jett as a Scurvy Pirate, Blaze as a Ninja Turtle (thrown on at the last minute when I told him he could not collect candy if he didn't wear some type of a costume!), and Kolt as a Ninja
Later on, Kolt decided to try out the "Redneck" look...FUNNY!
Once again, a great time was had carving pumpkins for Halloween...and, once again, Sierra started a pumpkin guts fight that was not appreciated by all! Jett was VERY grossed out by the slimy stuff and threatened to "puke" more than once...I was not very appreciative of the "guts" fight either since we all know who would end up cleaning up the mess from it!
Kolt was so happy to be making jack-o-lanterns out of his very own pumpkins that he grew this past summer and he carved one little pumpkin all by himself! Mike, Blaze, and I had fun doing some cool carvings (from patterns of course!)...Mike did the mummy face, Blaze did the "flame" face (obviously!), and I did the witch (again, obviously?). Sierra felt that Halloween needed to be a little more uplifting, so she did the happy face :-)
Our pumpkins turned out really cute, but unfortunately the only place we got to see them lit up was on the kitchen table as it was sooo windy on Halloween they would not stay lit! Oh well, I guess I would take the wind over a blizzard on Halloween, since we still got to go trick-or-treating!
This spring, Kolt's CTR 5 Primary teacher gave them a lesson on Faith - Faith is like a little seed and if we nourish it, it will grow. We have probably all heard and/or given this lesson at one time or another in our lives, and we may also have been given a small cup with some soil and seeds to plant as our faith and to nourish and watch it grow. Personally, I do remember having these lessons as a child and I also remember that not much ever came of my little cup of seeds beyond maybe a little green shoot and then, soon after, the death of my little sprouts. This was not the case with Kolt's little "Sprouts of Faith."
Kolt's teacher gave him a little baggie containing all the ingredients to grow his "faith:" 1 paper seedling cup, some soil, and 3 pumpkin seeds. So we filled the cup with the soil, stuck the seeds in the soil, added some water, and put the cup in the kitchen window. Kolt was very diligent about making sure that I put water on his plant and checked on it nearly every day. He could barely contain his excitement when he finally spied a small bit of green peaking through the dirt, then a few days later, a second! He was, however, slightly disappointed knowing that he had planted 3 seeds and only 2 sprouts had grown. Then, suddenly there it was the third seed had sprouted and he was ecstatic! He was so happy watching the little sprouts growing in the window and soon the roots were bursting out of the little seedling cup and he couldn't wait to put his pumpkins outside. The only problem was that it was May and it was still snowing outside! I didn't want to take the chance of his precious seedlings being frozen so we kept them inside until it got pretty consistently warm outside (although this summer never got really very hot around here).
Kolt was so excited when we took his pumpkin plants outside, he helped me dig a little hole by the house and we stuck the little block of soil in the dirt and buried it. The little pumpkin plants began to grow and grow and grow! They got so big that they were almost half the width of the house. Kolt checked on his pumpkin plants nearly every day and he was so excited when we FINALLY found a little pumpkin on one of the vines, then another and then one more. He watched them grow all summer and checked on them often. When he would go outside to play, inevitably, I would see him run around the corner of the house with a huge grin shouting..."Come see how big my punkins are!"
Three little pumpkins grew from 3 little seeds and Kolt could not have been happier if he had grown 3 acres of pumpkins! I think since we put the plants outside so late in the season, Kolt's pumpkins didn't quite have time to turn orange, but he didn't mind since his favorite color is GREEN!
If you might be here looking for new posts……...scroll down a bit...…I'm back -dating the "Recovery" posts so that they stay in chronological order so I can publish them later. New posts won't be showing up on the blog feeds, so if you're interested, check back every once in a while to see if I’m caught up yet!
Each week Sacrament Meeting is pretty much an adventure for us...
Where will we sit, who will sit next to who (and this will change MANY times within the hour), who will have to go to the bathroom 2 minutes after the sacrament has begun, how many pieces of gum will be left in my bag and who will get upset because they have to split one, who will get a paper cut on the program, who will draw an inappropriate picture on the program, who will stab who with a pen, who will take 2 or 3 pieces of bread or spill the sacrament water on themselves or someone else, who will hit their head on the wooden part of the bench, who will mooch a snack from the people sitting behind us, who will have forgotten about their talk or scripture they are supposed to give in Primary, who will notice the Bishopric are all falling asleep, who will accidentally snort while trying to stifle a giggle and get us all (including the Bishopric) laughing during a totally inappropriate supposedly spiritual moment...?
All of these things I have come to know I will have to deal with each time I set foot in the chapel with my four trailing behind me. However, this week was a bit of a surprise...
It started out normal enough, with Jett having to go "get a tissue" about 2 seconds after the bread had begun to be passed, pointing animatedly at the "liquid" running from his nose, so I let him go although I truly did not see anything. So we made it through the sacrament fairly smoothly, at which time I pulled out some "mints" from my bag, which were actually Altoids Cinnamon, the "curiously STRONG mints" (which are actually really hot, which is why I like them!). I opened the tin, took my usual 2 and quietly passed the tin to each of the kids, offering them one also. Sierra took one, Kolt and Blaze each took one. Then, Jett took 4...AND put them ALL into his mouth at once!
I shook my head at him with that "you made a big mistake" church look and proceeded to turn back around to pay attention to the speaker. About 10 seconds later, out of the corner of my eye, I start to see the commotion of Jett waving his hands in front of his mouth and bouncing up and down in his seat...so as always the ever caring mother that I am, I leaned over and whispered, "You chose to put all of those in your mouth, now chew them up and get rid of them!" and then turned back around to attempt to pay attention to what was being said.
The next thing I know, I feel an urgent tap on my leg from Blaze...I look...he points to Jett...whose face is beet red, lips trembling, and eyes red and watering...and then he blurts out..."I need water!"...and this was NOT a whisper...and Sierra and Blaze start laughing uncontrollably as Jett rushes out of the chapel to go and get a drink, while I try to remain "mature" and NOT laugh, which was not an easy task! It was just too funny!
Thankfully, we made it the rest of the way through without incident, other than periodic fits of giggles from Sierra every time she thought about the look on Jett's face!!
Good Evening My Fellow Bloggers. The State of the Blog of La Vida Loca De Flores on August 29, 2009 is this: IN SHAMBLES!
However, despite the recent blogonomic recession, this blogger is in good spirits and ready to make an attempt at recovery! There is a lot of hard work to be done. With a post deficit of AT LEAST 15, this blog will not recover overnight...it will take time and hopefully should be in full recovery at a future date that cannot be specified. With programs like the "Cash for Bloggers" and a Universal Blogcare Program, this blogonomy could bounce back quite quickly. However, with the obvious funding constraints, there are not high hopes for the "Cash for Bloggers" program, and a Universal Blogcare Program is just too vague...would one blog post really work on everyone's blog?...it is just not going to fit in with the needs of this blog. Hmm...so where does that leave this blog?
It leaves this blog with a "President" who can make lots of promises, and who will try very hard, but due to the incredible responsibilities heaped upon its President and frequent uprisings from the other five citizens in this blogtry, may or may not be able to live up to them.
In other words....I am incredibly far behind, but I hope to start getting caught up! We have really had a fun and exciting spring and summer with sports, a baptism, and a really fun trip. I was so bogged down with work, kids' sports, planning the trip, getting kids ready for school, along with a general feeling of "blahness" that I just didn't have the will/desire to blog....which, once again, goes back to my own insecurities of my worthiness to even have a blog and clutter up the World Wide Web with my boring life and dull, blurry, off center, lame-O pictures! Now, though, with all the kids in school all day, and I have had some "peace" time each day to myself, I think about all the things I should have blogged about and I have realized how much I do love my blog...even if no one else ever reads it or looks at it...I want it for myself. It seems to be a good outlet for my feelings (just like now...I only planned on writing the first 2 lines and now I'm just rambling on) and it makes me feel good to think that I may be posting something that if I hadn't we would have forgotten about. I know there are so many fun stories that have been lost over the last year because I didn't take the time to type up a quick post to my blog! How SAD!
So here we go with another huge catch-up period...I just hope I can remember more than I have already forgotten!
It's May and the 2009 Baseball season has FINALLY arrived!
Having done most of his "growing up" to this point in the "desert" of Southern California, where baseball season starts in February due to the weather (both the favorable weather in winter and the very real risk of actual danger of playing outdoors in 120 degree heat in mid July), Blaze was seriously ready for baseball season to start!
Blaze had a great season with the Cardinals, proving himself to be valuable player in a very close knit, small town baseball league. It was almost like he was a "rookie" coming to a new team for the first time. Most of these boys had been playing baseball together and been coached by the same coaches since they were little T-ballers. He managed to "wow" everyone, from the boys, making many new friends....to the coaches, being invited to play on Powell's All Star Team! He was so excited and was the youngest member of the team.
The Powell All-Stars took second place in one tournament, with Blaze pitching one shut out game, which was so awesome! Then, he made a fabulous diving catch of a line drive that was going like 100 miles an hour at second base! Don't get me wrong, the whole team was awesome and they took first place in their home tournament here in Powell, which was totally great! They were a great group of boys (and one girl, our cousin Shawnae) and it was so much fun getting to know and cheer for those kids and Blaze made some of his very best friends this summer!
The team also took a trip to Wheatland to State, where they won all of their games in the round robin segment of the tournament, and then had a devastating loss in their very first game of the single elimination portion! Those poor kids were so sad! But, even though the season ended on a sad note, it was a great one for Blaze, The Cardinals, and the Powell All-Stars!
Jett played baseball as an Angel this year and had a great time! He also made some great friends and his baseball skills have developed so much. He was a little disappointed because here in Powell, the rules and divisions are arranged a little differently than in California and so he went "back" to a coach/machine pitch league, where he was playing in a "kid pitch" division before. The great thing about that was that he was a great hitter with that ball coming in straight each and every time!
Jett's other favorite thing about this year's baseball season was the great climbing trees that shade the fields. Whenever he wasn't playing ball, he was climbing trees, as high as he could go...and when I wasn't watching baseball, I was yelling at him to get down!
For Kolt, this was his looonngg awaited first year of playing T-ball! He has been ready to play baseball since he was 2, so for a 5-year-old, that is a VERY long wait! To make it even worse, we had a very wet spring here and he got rained out for his very first practice, which was totally devastating to my poor little guy! Then...his second practice was rained out too....double devastating!
Eventually, the day finally came when he got to put on his "real uniform" and play in his very first T-ball game! He was grinning from ear to ear, with his equipment bag and his game day Gatorade.
Kolty had a great season too with, unfortunately, a few more rained out games, but he made many new friends and had a great time playing baseball and he just can't wait for next year!
Sunday, May 31, 2009, Jett was "finally" baptized! He has been very anxiously waiting for almost a whole year for this happy day. He actually turned 8 during our move from California to Wyoming last year, so with all the adjusting and settling in, we put off his baptism until, in May, he pointed out to me that if he didn't get baptized this month, he "wouldn't be 8 anymore!" I did let him know that he could be baptized at any age past 8, but he was pretty determined that he was going to be 8 when he was baptized! So I got myself in gear and made some phone calls. Michael, our nephew and his cousin, agreed to baptize him and Uncle Doug agreed to confirm him, and he was so happy about that! On that day, he was all smiles and he had a wonderful baptism experience. So many of our family and so, so many of our "newish" ward family came out to support Jett! Afterwards, we had some yummy ice cream sundaes at our house with family and friends. It was a really great day!
This spring, Blaze "graduated" from Parkside Elementary School, and in the fall will be moving on to Powell Middle School...otherwise known as PMS (hee hee!!, as a student who grew up in Lovell, this was a pretty good joke for us!) After just one year at Parkside, Blaze was able to earn the highest award given to 5th graders at Parkside, The Gold Presidential Award! This is a pretty great accomplishment for him considering this award is actually a cumulative award, beginning with grades and test scores from 1st grade onward! His principal and teachers at Parkside were so happy for him and so were we! Nice job, Blaze!!
Here are Blaze's pictures he took on his 5th Grade Yellowstone Trip (above: Blaze in a wolves' den). All of the 5th graders from his school (about 38 kids) got to go to Yellowstone for a 2-day overnighter, to study the environment and animals of Yellowstone. Blaze spent pretty much the entire school year anxiously waiting for this trip and he had a great time! It was a really neat experience for him. They were able to see many, many buffalo, a black bear and her cubs in the wild, wolves and grizzlies in the preserve in West Yellowstone, and they visited the first wolves' den created after the reintroduction of the wolves into Yellowstone, plus Old Faithful, of course, and many of the other thermal features and rivers in Yellowstone. Blaze has a real love for the outdoors and enjoys any opportunity he has to be close to nature.
When Blaze was finishing up playing basketball this winter, he began to complain of some knee pain. I assumed it was just "soreness" from maybe overexerting himself (or being stepped on or tripped too many times) during basketball, and I gave him Ibuprofen and told him to "settle down" at bit. Over the weeks, the knee pain did not seem to resolve, so I finally relented and took him in to the doctor, thinking she would tell him the same thing I had, and have him take some Advil and relax... but instead, she diagnosed him with a patellofemoral disorder. A patellofemoral disorder is where the muscle of the thigh (quadricep) is not strong enough to hold the knee cap centered in the middle of the leg, and the larger (and stronger) muscles of the glutes and the hamstrings begin to pull the knee cap towards the outside of the leg, which causes pain when climbing up and down stairs and squatting and those types of movements. So the doctor prescribed him some physical therapy.
In physical therapy, they taught him some exercises to do to strengthen his quad muscle and they do ultrasound treatments on him. He also wears a patch that actually has an electrical current running through it that puts cortisone into his knee through his skin and he has to wear knee brace with special contouring to push the knee cap back towards the center. He is so happy with the results and especially relieved that his knee isn't going to keep him from playing baseball! Luckily though (I love living in a small town!), his physical therapist's son also is a baseball player and he keeps a close eye on Blaze at the fields as well as in his physical therapy sessions!
This spring, the kids' cousins from California, who they had pretty much grown up with when we lived over there, came out for a visit. The kids were all so excited to see their "buddy" cousins and were almost inseparable for the few weeks they were here. (Brief "buddy breaks" became necessary when their behaviors began to resemble brothers and sisters rather than beloved cousins!), but all in all it was a really fun visit for all of them. They have all been so close ever since they were babies.
Blaze and Tavin are just 6 weeks apart in age and we moved to California just before Tavin turned 1 and Blaze was just 10 months old. Blaze refused to crawl and was not too interested in trying to walk...until he saw Tavin (who was walking/running by the age of 10 months!)...and then Blaze still had no interest in crawling...he wanted to keep up with Tavin, so he learned to walk VERY quickly...and thus it has been for the last 10 years...Blaze and Tavin...always trying to keep up with each other!
Nekiah was born soon after we arrived in California and Jett about a year later...so there is actually a significant age difference for them, but you would never know it...they love to hang out together...they both love to be active...Nekiah is a great soccer player and Jett loves his baseball.
Little Kolt and Kataya are probably the closest of the "buddies." They were born just 2 months apart and have loved each other ever since! They would want to be together every single day, and now that we have moved, they love to "write" letters back and forth. Kolty thinks of Kataya every day and misses her terribly. They are so cute together!
From the moment Kolt turned 5, he was ready to go to school. He woke up on his birthday and said "Okay, I'm ready to go to school!" How sad it was to tell him that he still had nearly 7 months to wait until he could start kindergarten. He was devastated!
So began the looong wait until the beginning of kindergarten for Kolt. He watched every day as his brothers and cousins marched off to school, and he was stuck at home with Mommy. Nearly every day, he asked how much longer it would be until he could go to school.
Needless to say, I was delighted when a small light appeared in the "middle" of the tunnel. In April, the school district has a registration day for kindergartners where the future kinders get to go to "school." Parents fill out registration forms and check shot records, and the kids get to meet with the actual kindergarten teachers and do assessment type of activities to make sure they kids are ready for kindergarten and what they know already, etc., etc.
Kolt was so excited for this day! We said it was his "First Day of School." So we called the health nurse to make sure his shots were up to date, and wouldn't you know it, he needed 2 shots. So first thing that morning we headed for the health office and Kolt got his 2 shots. He did not want to do it, but reluctantly agreed that if it had to be done in order to go to school, he would go through with it.
Then, later that morning was the moment he had been waiting for...to walk into a school and get to hold a pencil and write his name and answer questions. He was so fearless and went straight down that hall with his teacher for the hour and didn't look back. Of course, since he is my baby, once I was done with my "homework," I snuck down the hallway to see how he was doing, and of course he was doing great...all smiles!
When he was finished, he and his teacher came out and let me know he had done so well! The teacher said he scored above average on every concept and probably could have been in her kindergarten class that year...and she was amazed when I told her he hadn't ever been to preschool!
It was official...HE WAS READY! That was probably one of his happiest days up to that point in his little life...and was much too short...and now he has to wait another 4 months until his next "First Day of School!"
This spring Sierra decided that in the absence of softball, she would give soccer a try, which is a bit ironic considering we just moved AWAY from the Coachella Valley, where soccer is probably the number one sport kids play! However, a close number two was probably softball/baseball/teeball and we were (and still are) a baseball family...and Sierra has been playing Girl's Softball since she was 7 years old, Blaze since age 5, Jett since age 5, and soon Kolt will be playing his first season of teeball (not to mention I actually played co-ed softball for 5 years or so before Sierra got started). Needless to say, I have seen many, many softball/baseball/teeball games and I know all the rules by heart. I can count to 3 and I understand hitting a white ball and avoiding being touched by it. I understand everyone having a specific place to play on the field, and each team member getting a turn to try hit the ball and run to base...simple! I can follow the game quite closely and I know what the next move should be and where the game will go from there.
This is definitely NOT the case when it comes to soccer! Wow, this is a confusing game! Girls are running this way and that...from one end of the field to the other, some of them run all the way, some of them stay in the middle, and the ball is just going all over the place, seemingly with no purpose whatsoever. While I do understand the concept of no touching with your hands (then being confused when every 2 minutes someone is actually throwing the ball) and get the ball into the net...most everything else is totally foreign to me! Positions?...you mean there are actually positions in soccer...other than the goalie and "the kickers"?? Off sides...isn't that from football? I try to cheer them on, but mostly just look and sound silly, so I resorted to just cheering when I'm sure our team got the ball into the APPROPRIATE goal net!
Despite being totally confused pretty much all the time, we have really enjoyed attempting to understand the game, but we have mostly just enjoyed watching Sierra enjoy learning and later loving the game.
Another fun thing about soccer season this year was that Sierra got to play with my niece (her cousin, of course) Jessie (#35 above), who actually lives in neighboring town (30+ miles away), Burlington. Because Jessie's school doesn't have a soccer team for girls (along with a few other neighboring towns), Powell opens up their team to those girls so that they have an opportunity to participate. It was a really fun time for both of them. Since they are just 6 months apart in age, they have always been pretty close, so for them to be able to play together on a school team was a lot of fun for them...and for us too, since we got to hang out with Dan and Elaine and cheer the girls on...Go Panthers!
This April Blaze earned his Webelos badge in Cub Scouts. As of now, he has completed all the requirements to receive his Arrow of Light, which he will be receiving at our next pack meeting!
(Kolt and Blaze playing a marble game at the Pack meeting)
This was such a fun day! The kids had a day off from school and we decided to head up to Cody for some stuff at Wal-Mart, then we headed out by the lake for a little walk and some fun. We started walking along the edge of the lake (Buffalo Bill Reservoir) and came to this great spot where the wind wasn't making many waves, so the kids started trying to skip stones on it. They had a great time...and got pretty good at stone skipping! I think the record for the day was about 14 skips by Blaze. We spent over an hour hunting for the perfect skipping stones (and I even found some later on in my washing machine!) and tossing, throwing, skipping rocks into that little spot on the lake. We were sad to have to leave so Sierra could get to soccer practice by 4:00...and she barely made it too!
