White Dress

Miley insists on wearing a dress everyday. She has started to raid my shoes to. Not just any pair of shoes, but my heels. And hats, she's really big into hats.

These are actually my wedding shoes, which spurred an impromptu photo session with my girls and my wedding dress.

Lola thought I was so weird and she was counting the seconds till she could be done. Miley on the other hand was stripping naked in anticipation of wearing such a puffy dress.

She loved every minute (except a brief moment of claustrophobia when I put it on her.)

I sure love my girls.

Rub a Dub Dub

I got my big girl camera to take some pictures of Miley and Blake in the tub. I got some amazingly awkward shots. (Closing your eyes during pictures is a gift I passed on to my kids.)

But I got some keepers too.

The Pie

Friday night is pizza night. Big, greasy, delicious pizza.

(No pictures of Miley, she wasn't cooperating.)

Blake's Top Three

 

Blake brought home the greatest coloring sheet from primary. In big letters it says Heavenly Father's Plan for Us. It has a large circle for them to color. Blake filled his with grey intense scribbles and one little brown squiggly. His teacher wrote his explanation on the bottom of the paper. And I quote, "This is a picture of me and a horse, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch! These are my favorite things on
earth." (I was teasing him and said that I thought I was his favoritething on Earth. He assured me I was there with him and his horse.)

I sure love that kid.

MLK

Ryder and Lola were discussing Martin Luther King in school.  They
were sharing with Jon all the things they had learned about him. Jon
started to explain the challenges and discrimination that black people
faced then. One of the things he talked about how some restaurants
would only allow white people to eat there. This was kind of shocking
for the kids and Lola said, "What if Cafe Rio was like that. You would
be the only one in our family that could eat there, because you're the
great white man!" (A nickname he earned after a photo of our family
was taken in the pool.)

Later on at dinner we were eating tacos with generous dollops of sour
cream. Lola started smearing sour cream on her face and said, "I look
like a white person!" (In case you are wondering she considers herself
to be beige based on her experience with crayons.)

He Knows if You've Been Bad or Good, So BevGood For Goodness Sake!

Blake moved to the naughty list this week. First offense. Jon and I had wrapped the Christmas eve presents and put them under the tree. Florecita had also visited us and dropped off the cousin presents. Blake and Trey were playing upstairs and I was downstairs with Miley and Ryder. Blake came downstairs crying because he had cut his finger. I got him cleaned up and a bandaid on and then checked to see what he was cutting. He and Trey opened every single present under the tree. He was even wearing a new pair of socks (a purple and green fuzzy pair that I think were for Lola). Trey accidentally snipped his finger with scissors when they were trying to get through the packing tape on Mom and Dad's package. He has informed me he won't open any more packages until Christmas, which isn't really noble considering he opened all available already. And because I'm classy I just took the new socks off his sweaty little feet and put it in the "to wrap" pile.

The second offense. It was close to bedtime and everybody was piled in our bed as we read Christmas books. Blake was trolling around our bathroom not participating. He came out of the bathroom and said, "I'm ready to go to bed now." That is when the first mental alarm went off. The second one went off when I smelled nail polish. I asked Blake if he got into my nail polish. He quickly (too quickly) said no. I took his hand and told him lets go check. My bathroom stank like nail polish, but I couldn't see any spills, until I went into my closet. There in the carpet in wide arching circles was an entire bottle of Carrie Underwood pink polish. Luckily I had carelessly left an oversized sweatshirt that I sleep in on the floor that protected some of the carpet. I tried several internet cleaning tips, but alas they all failed me and we now are proud owners of ruined carpet.

Ryder has also been working on getting on the naughty list. He wasn't sharing with his sister and I warned him that he better share or he was going to end up on the naughty list and not get a present. He informed me that he would still get presents on Christmas. I explained that yes, his Dad and I would still get him presents because we love him, but that he wouldn't get his present he asked from Santa. He insisted that he would and we discussed it for several days. He finally told me he knew I was lying because he read a book in school about a boy and on Christmas he still got a bike even though he was naughty. (It's Christmas, David! By David Shannon, it is a super popular book but for obvious reasons I can't recommend it.) 

I'm a Survivor

We survived another week. Barely. Actually everyone thrived, except Blake who found out why we have the rule of not putting things around our neck. The details are a bit murky since it happened after bed time and the only witnesses were kids. Lola claimed she didn't see Blake jumping and his neck got stuck on a cord she was holding... He is fine but does have a rope burn on his neck, which got him a lot of ninja turtle bandaids and a free pass to sleep in my bed, cuddling his Mama and using his Dad as his personal foot rest.  

Jon left today for another trip so we had FHE tonight. He had a lesson prepared, but we had some slight reverence issues so instead of his planned lesson he talked about why we have FHE. He asked Lola why he thinks we have FHE and while she answered Blake was continuing to be disruptive and generally not listening. Jon asked Blake what Lola just said. To which, he answered, "Boobie!" We committed the parental sin of laughing and suffered random Boobie answers for the rest of the evening.

Later the kids were playing a game on the tramp called Shark. Lola and Ryder had learned this game at a Sports Camp. Its basically tag. The taught it to Blake and of course had him be the shark or it. The game started and Lola started crying because Blake BIT HER. I asked Blake why he bite Lola, he looked me in the eye and calmly told me, "I was the shark."

The kids played outside for a good long while, which is great. I usually just keep the screen door closed so I can hear them. I try to let them work out their problems and I love listening to them play and laugh together. I only come out to intervene when there is wailing. For instance Lola did get injured for a second time this evening. She laid down on the tramp and asked Blake (the kid who just bit her) to try and jump over her. Lets just say his jump wasn't a success.