hume

We just got back from Hume Lake Christian Camp. It was the annual firefighter's retreat. We always have the best time. This is our 3rd year. The first year, Dan had a boot on his foot from an ankle injury. It snowed that year so that was fun. Last year I was pregnant and feeling pretty yucky. Despite those things, both years were some of the best times we've spent together as a couple. We also grew so much spiritually and connected with other couples. 

There are so many awesome things about Hume Lake. If you haven't been, I strongly urge you to check it out. Great food, beautiful mountain scenery, awesome speakers, and TONS to do. Bikes, kayaks, golf carts, massage therapists, a ropes course, fishing, archery, a shooting range or just taking a 3 mile walk around the lake. We did that twice. 

This year we took the baby with us. We both kind of expected it to be not as fun but she did excellent and everyone swooned, especially the men :) 

Here are some pics from the weekend:

It snowed the night before our last day. Doesn't get much prettier.

spring is here!

Looking for roly polies

Checking out the clouds

Getting some air

david

I wrote a post last month called a dark day. Here's a couple of pics we took on our last day of sushi with our favorite sushi chef in all the world. We'll miss you funny friend.

And we'll miss your sushi!

mommy's stand-in

Sometimes I think Mya would be able to raise Winter and Adelyn all by herself. She definitely knows what they need every day like food, milk, clothes etc. She knows where everything is. She has a lot of patience. And she would probably enjoy it.  

Mya has always been there to tell me when I screw up. One time I forgot Winter in the car on the way to church. I got half way to the nursery when Mya said, "baby, baby, baby." She could only say a few words at the time. Good thing she knew that one. 

Thursday, she reminded me that I forgot to feed Winter breakfast as we were getting into the car to go to preschool. She slept in. Not entirely my fault... 
Thanks to Mya, Winter didn't starve that day. And she got to have a cereal bar and a squeeze pouch of apple sauce on the way to school. She was so happy. (Those are snacks usually reserved for the park)

And lets not forget the Tylenol incident. Mya was the one who ratted her out.

As I was driving them to school contemplating the possibility that I may not be that great of a mom, I thought of other instances that would support my theory.

• I drove several times completely forgetting to buckle Mya into her car seat. 
• Somehow I managed to drop Winter's infant car seat out of the double stroller with her in it face down. Luckily she was buckled so she just got a good jolt. 
• Winter also nearly fell out of our bedroom window on the second floor. I caught her by her shirt as she pushed on the screen and fell through it. 
• As a toddler, Mya took a good bite out of a square of cascade. 
• And Winter downed a bottle of Tylenol. (I now have the number for poison control on my fridge)

I am getting better. Addie has yet to face any real danger. Knock on wood. 

It takes a few years to get the hang of this mom thing.

kid quotes for March

Mya (to Winter) - "Don't kick my baby in my tummy! She will be so sad."

Me: "Winter, do you know where my phone is?"
Winter: "No, but you can use mine." (orange toy phone)
Me: "Thanks Sweetie." :)

I showed Mya a video on Facebook of a dog jumping on a trampoline doing flips and rolls. I was impressed but she looked at it confused and said, "How did that doggy get on the Andersons' trampoline?" (The Andersons' trampoline is a huge hit with the kids in the neighborhood)

Mya: "Hey Mommy, remember when I got married? No no, when Jason and Jamie got married and I was the flower girl?"

Mya: (Listening to a conversation I was having)"Who's gonna run out of money?"
Winter: "Jesus!" (not the right answer)

Winter: (While eating blueberry oatmeal) "I found a blueberry! Awe, it's so... blueberry."

Wendy:(my sister) "Winter, you're going to get a spanking!"
Mya: "I wanna see!"

  

Addie: "Agoooophphph aaaa!

mom's

When Dan's working, I usually go to my mom's for the day. These were taken yesterday. 

Addie is at the perfect age. She's 3 1/2 months. She's getting nice and fat and hasn't learned to roll over yet so she stays put when I lay her somewhere.

Winter does this thing where she climbs on someone's shoulders if they are sitting on the floor. She's so fast that they don't have time to react. My mom was her last victim. 

Mya is the best picture taker. Anytime, anywhere, if I say, "Smile!" she does just that. I love you Mya! You will have lots of good pictures of when you were a sweet young child.

wheel-a-thon

This is a pretty huge event for Foothill Christian Preschool and K-8. This year Dan had to work again so it was me and the girls. The parking is HORRENDOUS but I prayed real hard and of course my God hooked me up with a spot right out front! I got there just as someone was leaving. 

So off we went to ride bikes in a circle for 10 minutes. We were literally there for 20 minutes tops. It was a hot day and I had the baby in the bjorn. So even though there was tons of fun stuff going on like bouncers, games, cotton candy, etc., I told the girls we were going to go home and get a special surprise. I gave them some candy and they were totally happy. So here is the footage from their 10 minutes of wheel-a-thonning. I convinced them to let Mya and Winter ride together even though they are in separate classes. "Winter can totally hang" I told them :) And she can. She was SO happy and didn't even care that those were Mya's classmates. I don't even know if she noticed.

This is our second year doing this and I am reminded again of the turtle and the hare when I watch these kids. The girls are the turtles and the boys are the hares. The boys start out so fast on their scooters wizzing in and out of the traffic, but they are soon tired and half of them crash and take out 4 or 5 riders. It's hilarious and so entertaining. The girls just happily ride along not caring how fast they are going. One little girl even had fairy wings and a crown on her helmet. Kids. Gotta love 'em.

Start your engines...

Go!

Man, that was intense. 

bread

I got these recipes on foodnetwork.com several years ago and I LOVE them. The bread comes out moist and delicious every time. They aren't high maintenance recipes either. I'm never careful when I measure the ingredients. And I don't beat the eggs and sugar forever like it says. And sometimes my bananas are not over ripe. They are just a normal amount of ripe. Most of the time I just throw all of the ingredients in a bowl and stir. They still come out perfect. So, try them out. You won't regret it. Click on the links below:

Flour's Famous Banana Bread

Paula Deen's Zucchini Bread

church

Our church has a nursery where we get to drop off our little ones and enjoy a quiet, kid free hour or two of worship and fellowship. What a brilliant, life saving idea that was, whoever thought of it. 

Winter's nursery routine makes me laugh every time we go to church. And I am there a lot for GUM (Growing Up Mom), bible study and Sunday service. She asks for her check in tag as soon as we get out of the car. She runs as fast as she can go, yells "here!" to the check in desk, throws her tag through the window to the check in person, pushes open the gate, books it to her favorite springy rocking horse and rides until I get there and tell her to go in her classroom. 

It's not really the way we are supposed to do it but hey, it works AND it is very efficient. By the time I walk up to the nursery with the baby, we are all checked in and ready to go. Winter knows she only has a few minutes with that horse all to herself. She's no fool. And the nursery staff find it amusing every time. Well at least they pretend to.  

When it is time to check out, I go get Winter from the 3-year-old room so she can run over to the baby room and shout to whoever is holding Addie, "We need our baby back! We need our baby back!" She makes them laugh but she's very serious. She stands there until they hand the baby over to me. 

bedtime routine

I know that I am not the only parent who goes through this. In fact, I remember doing the same thing as a child. But Mya is the queen of finding excuses to come out of her room after bedtime. She comes to the stairs and yells down, "Mommy!" And I yell back, "What?!" Sometimes they are valid reasons... sometimes they are not.

These were tonight's reasons:

"Winter took my squeezy toy!"

"Winter needs you to wipe her!"

"I tied my ponytail all by myself!"

(crying) "I bumped my head on the door!" 

"Can you untie my Cinderella slipper?" (She tied the ribbon part around her ankle and it was cutting off her circulation)

A couple of Mya's selfies :)

snack snatcher

Winter is constantly trying to take things that don't belong to her. She just walks out of the nursery or the neighbor's house with a purse on her shoulder or a dolly in her arm like it's hers. I'm not sure if she doesn't see anything wrong with that or she just thinks I won't notice... Maybe we should have a talk about stealing. 

Yesterday, we were hanging out at our neighbor's house (the Andersons') Winter had a backpack on that was not hers so I reminded her a few times that she needed to leave it there when it was time to go. So when it came time to leave, of course she wanted to take it home. She put up a bit of a fight but eventually threw it on the floor and walked out. 

As we started home, Nancy Anderson had opened the backpack and was laughing when she showed me the inside. Winter had gathered a bunch of snacks from the Andersons' garage and stashed them in the backpack! What a little klepto.  It had rice crispy treats, fruit snacks, Caprisuns, granola bars, you know, the good stuff. We try to keep snacks pretty healthy and boring at our house and poor deprived Winter saw her window of oportunity :)

baby

Winter LOVES to hold her baby sister. Baby sister does not always love to be held by Winter :)

 Check out those thunder thighs!

help

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Gal 2:20 ESV

I have two daughters that are very different. I have a not so sensitive one and an overly sensitive one. Winter is very mischievous but a few seconds after a timeout or a spanking, she's fine. She doesn't let it get to her. She has probably come to expect punishment at least 5 times a day and she's okay with that.

Mya is my sweetheart but she gets her feelings hurt so easily. She cries pretty frequently. And it's not that she wants attention. She just feels things deeply. And toward the end of the day when she is tired and hungry around 4:30, it is pretty easy to make her cry. What usually happens is that she doesn't listen and is told to go have a timeout. That's when she completely loses it. And no amount of threats or spankings or anything will make her stop crying. I usually send her up to her room until she calms down. Sometimes she stops after a while and comes back down, sometimes she falls asleep and sometimes she just carries on and on and on and gets so worked up that I have to hold her for a while until she is okay. Dan and I have learned that with Mya, a hug will fix almost anything.

But sometimes we are just too frustrated with her to sit down and give her a hug. A lot of the time we resort to yelling, "Stop crying!" And that of course does not help the situation, ever.
One time when I was reaching my boiling point with her, I yelled, "Mya, I am about to lose it! Please. Just. Stop. Crying! Stop Crying!"

Her reply immediately changed my anger into sympathy. She cried, “I can't stop! I want to but I can't!”

I knew what she was saying because I've been there too. She wanted to stop crying but she just couldn't without some help. So I sat down with her and held her until she stopped crying.

Now that I'm a mom, I have a lot of behavioral issues, not with the kids, with myself! Often, I think of Mya and her honesty in that moment. Sometimes we can't stop what we're doing without help from Jesus. 

Any behavior that is hard to change whether it is anger, jealousy, selfishness, pride or sadness is totally changeable when we let Jesus work through us and help us fix it. Let's read that verse again.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Gal 2:20 ESV

doggy style

After the girls went to preschool, I went for a walk with Addie. We came up to a signal and waited for the light to change. There was a lady in front of me also waiting for the light to change. She had a dog with her. The dog proceeded to hump the lady's leg. And she didn't even seem to notice. She didn't even move. She just stood there while her dog pleasured himself. I was smiling, trying not to laugh out loud. I tried to get a pick but he was done by then. Oh well, you can use your imagination.

Sometimes you see funny stuff while going for a walk. And that is why everyone should get out and walk!

stuck

This morning at 6:20AM, as I was making Winter some breakfast, somehow she managed to get her finger stuck in a hole located on the side of the baby's bouncy chair. I really wasn't surprised. I was kind of amused actually. Poor Winter was kind of freaking out and there I was debating on whether or not to take a picture. 

So, I tried to yank on it a little bit to see if it would budge but it was in there pretty good. I tried to think of something slippery that would make it slide out so I grabbed the soap. I squirted some on her finger and in the hole but it didn't help at all. It dried and made it kind of sticky. 

Winter was not happy. She said calmly, "No, stop. Just wait." I said, "Okaaay... what are we waiting for?" She replied, "Fo Daddy, just wait fo Daddy." So I said "Okay, I'll go get Daddy." (He has experience with this type of thing anyway) So I went and got Dan out of bed and told him he was needed downstairs. I came back down the stairs and took the baby out of the chair and started unscrewing the side. I told Winter Daddy was coming to help her. But she cried, "No! Daddy's gonna be too fast! No!" I couldn't help but laugh.

She actually managed to pull it out just as Dan got downstairs. We took pictures afterward :)

Oh and FYI, Vaseline is what Dan recommended. Also you can try holding the extremity above your head that is stuck. That way, the blood rushes out and makes it smaller. Good to know.