Teaghan Comes Of Age

Just kidding, I don't know what the REAL "Coming of Age" is, but somehow I don't think it's 11 years old. However, I am posting about Tea. Some of you have inquired as to when Doug and I are allowing Tea to babysit, and we finally allowed it last weekend. She had such a blast babysitting for the Paynes (Thanks Jessica for askin!) Granted, she is only 11 so watching children late into the evening is still something we'd like her to wait to do until she gets a little older, but she is a great little sitter. Doug and I have used her quite a bit lately:)
ANYWAY, I figured I would use this bit of technology called blogging to make mention of it. So there you have it. Use it as may. Teaghan will be so proud that I didn't forget.

My Week as Godzilla

I think it's really true what they say- that if you act a certain way you can turn into something else entirely. Well, in this case, my kids have turned me.

Turned me into GODZILLA. GODZILLA!!! Or maybe Atilla the Hun. Certainly nothing princessy and rosy. Heaven forbid, that would be actually something nice for mom.

I don't know if it's the fact that it's tax season and all the ugly gets blamed on tax season. My kids being monsters I blame on tax season. The fact that I'm a single parent is the result of tax season. Global warming could even be blamed on tax season.

When Doug calls me in the middle of the day to see how I'm doing, I say Fine. Cause usually I am. AT THAT MOMENT. (sigh) Unfortunately he doesn't see the total breakdown I had with our second child, the fact that I was almost in tears and haven't yelled that loud since I was in labor with said child. (I went natural with her, so there was actual yelling, verses the epidural with the other three.) So by the time he asks me, I'm just don't want to rehash it all. I'm woman, see me roar? Well, you probably don't want to see that. But when he's asking me, I really am just...fine. The worst was over, the problem has been solved, the beating has been forthcoming. (Just kidding. I don't actually beat them. I just knock their heads together :) However, I think that he really does know what FINE means. At least now he does cause he reads my blog.

So this is what prompted me writing this post. I was hanging out with Andon on the couch. We were playing "What are you going to be for Halloween," played by each person taking turns telling the other person they're going to be a toilet or some such silliness, and he pulls his face close to mine, raises his one eyebrow (he gets this from me. It's sheer talent is what it is) and says,

"Mom, you need hair dot com."

Huh? And what?

HUH????

So now my son thinks I need a hair do. Well, said hair do costs money. Said hair-do pays for your jeans boyo!

Sheesh! Everyone's a critic. I'm now going to have to check out hair dot com. Where in the world does he get this stuff??!!!

And Kim, if you're reading this, I need you to go back to work by the tail end of April so that I can get my hair done, highlights and all to get ready for my cruise in May. PLEEEZE say you're going to be off maternity by then? I don't want my son to be embarrassed of his mother.

Have I really turned into that? The mom who's 5 year old thinks I need a new do? A FIVE YEAR OLD! My gosh, what am I in for when he turns 15???

I'm only 33 for pity sake!

How much flogging can a mother take? I have no pride, no youthful cheeks, and no perky boobs either.

WAAAAAHHHHH! (Imagine I love Lucy saying this.)

Andon Turns 5. IN JANUARY!

Yes, I truly suck. I am just barely getting around to posting MY SON'S birthday. I was reading Elizabeth's blog about Nathan and I realized that Andon turned 5. ONE MONTH AGO! Sheesh.

He turned five on January 6, and it's so amazing the difference between 5 and 4. I even remember thinking to myself one day that he went to sleep one way, and woke up a different kid. Seriously! He's got this funny little personality with a knack for stating the obvious, along with what I think will be some fine dry wit later in life. Hmmm, wonder where he gets that?

He wanted a transformer birthday party, so that's what we did. And we're STILL doing. Transformers is still being played up at our house. For the party, I divided the group up into Decepticons and Autobots and had them find their team playing cards that Teaghan had pinned up all over the walls. They wore red armbands cause I realized the vinyl transformer logo didn't show up very well on the blue. We watched a quick transformer cartoon, had cupcakes with transformer rings in them, put our Optimus Prime masks on, and played find the Allspark. When they found it we opened it up to discover the goody bags aka "treasure" hidden inside. All in all, a very fun time we had!

So here are just a couple of pics. I have to say that the ones of Andon trying to blow out the candle on his cupcake, (I don't do big cakes anymore. Cupcakes are more my speed) were quite funny. The concentration on his face, and the kids anticipating him blowing it out was really funny. But he couldn't do it. Doug must have taken 20 pictures of him just trying to blow out the candle! What kid can't blow out a candle? (shake of the head) At least he's coordinated. Doug kept taking pictures thinking that the next one he took would be the one that finally worked. I think I ended up "helping" him. It's my hand you see in the pictures.

Isn't that funny though? He couldn't blow it out! I actually started thinking if I'd bought trick candles. I think I even went to check on the package just to make sure. But they weren't. So weird.



Here he is, getting ready to blow. Notice how happy he is.



He's poised and ready. The lips are starting to pucker.



The lungs are opening up getting ready for air to be expelled onto the flame, with perhaps a little spit mingled in. (Reason #4 to not have a big birthday cake.)





A slight look of puzzlement. The flame is still there. Huh. That's weird.

Well, let's try again. Mom and dad and everyone are cheering me on. I certainly can't give up. It would be a blight on male-kind everywhere.


Awww, guys, I was just playing! Ya'll don't think I can't REALLY blow out the candle, do ya?


Okay, here we go again. For real this time!


Now it's getting painful.







Out comes the hand, cause you know, proper placement of a hand on another's head helps with blowing.


Finding proper placement of "the Hand."



YESSS!!! Success! Whew, I'm exhausted just blogging this!

Here's just a couple photos of the kids. Okay, more than a couple. I can't NOT take less than 100 photos at one sitting. It's just not something I can do. And I'm okay with it. I believe there may be something like Photographer's Anonymous.




I think it's so funny at this age that there's still a certain amount of ownership involved with gifting a present. The giver gets to help the 'getter' unwrap said gift. It's just unspoken rules for 5 year olds.





This is the smile you get towards the end of said party. I was making him pose for multiple shots with his friend and the gift. It became more of the vaseline smile- all teeth, cramping facial muscles.




All in all, a great birthday!!!! Andon was so excited to have his 'friend' party. Unfortunately, I don't know what happened to the picture of the kids in their cool Optimus Prime masks. They really were cool. They came in two parts, per mask, and took three adults to assemble them. And yet, no picture. (sigh) Good grief.

What the???

I just noticed that there is an extra song on my playlist. I'm not exactly sure how it got on there, nor am I a closet High School Musical fan, but there is a song from HSM3. Huh.

Huh.

There are two culprits.

I wonder how long that's been on there? As much as I love High School Musical, (come on, it really is cute! It's like Grease without the steroids and I LOVED Grease), I can't say that any of those songs would make it on my favorites.

Just thought it was VEERRRYYY interesting. Nothing seems to be off limits anymore. Not even their mother's Blog, for pity sake.

(sigh) Good Grief.

A little Introspection

I've been feeling somewhat introspective lately and have been meaning to post since last Friday but just haven't managed to sequester away even just 15 minutes to accomplish that task. However, this morning I'm making the time, amidst Zakry and Archie playing underfoot the computer chair. My feverish attempts at making him stop poking the dog with a paintbrush are falling on deaf ears. Big surprise, I know. However, I'm hopeful of the day that this child will be an amazing young man. (sigh)

So last Friday as I was coming home from delivering Teaghan's lunch to school that she'd forgotten, I noticed through the windshield the amazing sky in front of me. I was in total awe.

When I was a kid, I would often find myself looking at the sky. Sometimes if I was dealing with something difficult, other times just because. The heavens' have always given me such peace. I would lay on my back, or look out the car window, close my eyes, and just...breathe. I still do the same. It is so hard to stare up toward the heavens' and not marvel, not realize that there is a greater power at work here. There is an Almighty hand that created the world, and for those brief moments I feel caught up in it. As my gaze would wander back down to earth, it seemed like all the trials of reality would resurface, but for those brief moments of complete wonder, they stayed with me.

Last week was particularly trying. I'm not sure why, maybe just the stress of my life, or maybe I hadn't taken the time to gaze toward heaven and just close my eyes and inhale. So when I got home from taking Tea's lunch to school, and ran in to my room, grabbed my camera and started taking pictures. I soooo wish that I could've taken the view from my car, but the view of the clouds from my front yard were still breathtaking. This is what I took:





This morning from my back door I noticed the skyline above the roofs was a great study in contrast. You could just make out the blue sky trying to peek through, and the black clouds that had poured rain off and on the last couple of days. I had to grab my camera and capture yet another picture of the sky. Maybe now I've had my fill for a little while. Perhaps this is just another small reminder from Heavenly Father that I need to look to the Heavens more, whether it be for peace, or for strength. Either way, what I saw this morning means that there is a 'break in the clouds.' It's Valentine's Day tomorrow and I have a sweet and thoughtful husband who still keeps in mind the importance of showing how much he cares on Valentine's, and also still remembers my birthday two days later. He knows that it doesn't have to be anything on a large scale. It's just nice to be acknowledged (smile) I love you for that!

Nobody Knows, The Trouble I've Seen......

It was very quiet at about 5pm this evening. I knew Zak was outside, but usually I can hear him running around yelling, chasing the dog, or getting into some such mischief. But when it gets quiet..... that's when I know their are "games afoot."

I walked outside to see this:



and this: (This is a partial "Plummer's Crack" that has the makings to be a full-blown "crack" in 10 years.)



and this.





And then I see this.


This is why he's still alive.

I caught this one mid swing. Look at the concentration on that face! My it's tough work getting absolutely filthy.



Here's the beloved hole that he worked so hard on. More like beloved scratches in the ground.



But here's what it produced. Cute little boy toys!



I'm just so thankful the ground didn't yield anything REALLY disgusting...or creepy...or anything that smells or crawls around.

So I asked him to sit in the wheelbarrow- one can't waste a good photo moment. He looked at me like I just told him that all he could have for dinner was ice cream. Like, "really mom? I can actually get IN it?"





Again, this is why he's still alive. I CANNOT RESIST THIS FACE!



However, this is not all the mischief Zak has been up to. Do you see how ashamed Archie is? He can't even look me in the eye. tsk, tsk, tsk.



Can you see it?



Can you see it now? Do you see the hot pink stripe of color going across the dog's back?



That, my friends, is nail polish. The poor dog is Zak's lackey. "Come here boy, come here. Let me see what this does to you. Oh, that's pretty. Let's do some on the OTHER side too."

I was going to put this in the "dog chronicles" label, but I think it would be more appropriately named "The Zak Chronicles."

I wanted a picture of the dog but he wouldn't hold still long enough, so Teaghan picked him up and I took a picture. However, I just noticed how she's holding his hind legs. Like a chicken or something. Not sure...not sure.



And last, but certainly not least, I love love love toddler hands and feet, and in particular my baby's hands and feet. So I leave you with pictures of dirt encrusted toenails and fingernails. Mmmm...mmmm....mmmm.... my favorite.

Subsiding the Craziness

Doug, my thoughtful, brilliant husband, came up with a great idea for the kids. Now, I know a lot of you already use this method, but I'm hoping that it actually WORKS this time for us. He knows how crazy stressed I am right now. Well, it comes and goes. However, because he is who he is, he wants to help minimize it. The Blessed, blessed man.

Now, you have to understand that I'm feeling slightly out of control with the kids. Mornings are nuts with getting the girls ready for school, and in particular Brittnee. I swear, this child has her own time zone, and it in NO WAY coincides with the rest of the planet. Plus, it takes forever, and I mean that literally, to get her homework done. It makes me batty!!!!! There cannot be enough explanation points after that statement. Plus, the boys are getting older and are requiring more boundaries because they'll just run all over me and not stop to think about it. So to please everyone, and to make this a win-win for all involved, Doug came up with an incentive that we'll present to the kids tonight during FHE.

The idea is to help de-stress not only my life, but the girls' as well. And the boys, but their problem is just being obedient. Brittnee needs to de-stress. She bottles up her stress and it comes out in cold sores. I always know she's having a hard time when she breaks out. Teaghan's just really on the ball most of the time. Sometimes she makes me want to pull my hair out when she's in a mood. But the mood I'm referring to is the "I'm a crazy pre-teen who wants to flit around, tease everyone, and then laugh about it." She likes to dance around and sing at the top of her lungs and crack jokes. Then she pulls her sister into it, who really doesn't need a reason to act crazy, and then I've got the both of them going at it. It just gets really loud, and they tune us out when we try to talk to them. This is so much fun to experience right now.

My dad's theory is that if Mom is happy, then EVERYONE is happy too. Keep mom happy, and the rest of the family doesn't have to walk on eggshells. Perhaps Doug, after 13 years of marriage, has figured this one out too!

Here's the plan: We're going to give the kids beans to put in their own individual jars for anything that Doug and I want to correct- aka the crap they dish out that we don't like. They'll accumulate these beans over time and then they'll be able to purchase items in our "Store." Items will include: Jamba Juice gift cards, Starbucks gift cards (for Frapaccino's people!), pedicures, match box cars, Wii games, candy, Claire's gift cards, toys, etc. They can save up and buy the expensive stuff, or they can buy the small stuff. This not only teaches them that good behavior pays off, but how to manage money as well. See, he's brilliant. Anyway, I'm super excited to start it and hopefully it will help us all get along better.

Cross my fingers!

Christmas 2008

Wow, 2008 is over. It came, it conquered, and then it left. What in the world did I accomplish last year?!

Well, my children are still alive, so I guess all the many, MANY meals that I cooked actually made SOME difference. The dental work for Andon is done and paid for, another year of school started, and everyone is happy and healthy.

What did I do for myself? Hmmm.....not sure.

For FHE we decided to work on MONTHLY goals, vs YEARLY goals. It's so easy to get burn out when you're facing 12 months. Plus, the kids just can't think that far in advance. If we can get through the week we're good. (We function on a week to week basis here at the Bassett house. My brain can't handle the overload that even a week and a half provides.) So the kids picked out what they wanted to do for the month of January, and then the first week in February we'll reevaluate and see what we need to change or keep. This seems to be the easiest for me and Doug as well. (Cross my fingers it works.)

I'm not nearly up on my blogging as I used to be, but I'm finding the time this morning. I thought I'd share a few pics from our christmas and trip to Utah.

So here goes:


Both her and Teaghan got necklaces with the beginning initial of their names. They got two cause Grandma bought one and Santa brought another. I suppose Santa and Grandma oughtta coordinate better next year:(


Britt got Kids Bop 14 which she was super excited about. The girl LOVES music. She's building up quite her own CD collection. As she gets older I may need to start getting her good teen church music. Right now her collection consists of High School musical soundtracks, Camp Rock Soundtracks, a couple disney cd's sung by popular artists, and a couple of kids bop cd's. Good music. Let's hope it stays that way.



This is a picture of my boys and their cousin Treven. As you can see, the nudist colony is STILL healthy and thriving. For winter time Doug and I have said that the boys have to have at least a pair of pants or a shirt on at ALL times. We don't care if they take off their shirt, as long as they keep their pants on. It was a fight initially, after the summer was over and they were allowed to strip down to their skivies in the afternoon, but we held firm, Doug and I. So needless to say, when Treven is over, he takes his shirt off too. Boys will be boys. I have to say that there have been times that I wish I was one so that I could take my shirt off and not shock the neighbors. But alas, such is not the case. But thank heavens cause who wants to have boy parts? Know what I mean???



This is my adorable niece Maycie. I wish they were planning on living in california for the next five years because I want to use her as my guinea pig when I need to learn something about my camera. I love taking toddler photos!!



More pictures of the nudists. Wouldn't it be funny, 10 years from now and they're still not wearing shirts? That day may have to be documented and put on my wall, ready for the use of blackmail as a coercion tactic when they're teenagers.



The girls are opening gifts. Note the little tree at the top: that wasn't our christmas tree, but now that I'm looking at it I realize that I didn't get a photo of the tree. Why in the world not??!!? It was absolutely gorgeous! It was the best tree we've ever had, and we've been married 13 years. Why in the world did I not get a picture???? Oh, how I lament.

It really was quite the tree.

Anyway....



Archie loved the wrapping paper. However, he didn't like the fracas of all the UNwrapping. Too loud I suppose, cause it really was a free for all.



You may be wondering why we got silverware for Christmas. No? Oh well. You can just skip to the next picture while I explain. Doug's mom lived with us the last couple of months while she was trying to sell her house, and one day she heard me complain about how I am always buying spoons but we NEVER, and I mean NEVER, have any. This went on for months. I would buy some, cheap though they were, and they would turn up missing. It became the joke around meal times to see if we could actually get enough spoons to feed everyone. The joke became very poignant particularly when we had soup for dinner.
So guess what she got us for Christmas? Yep. Silverware. Sweet, blessed silverware. One can never have too many. In fact, it's such nice silverware, that the drawer that it all sits in is very heavy. Oh how I love it!

I guess I should've warned you at the top. This post is turning out to be fairly long.

We went to Utah this christmas to see my family. We stayed with my sister. The kids couldn't wait to wake up and play in the snow in the backyard. Andon didn't think it was going to be that cold. He came in afterward complaining that his pants were wet. Go figure.






This was Zak's first time seeing snow. We got smart after Andon's complaint of wet pants and put bibs on Zak. He wasn't sure what to do with the snow once he got out there.


"You want me to lay down in this? Are you crazy?"


"Yes, see... watch us. It's fun!"


One of the days we were in Utah we took the kids down to temple square and over to the conference center. We've been inside before but had never taken a tour. It was very interesting hearing all the data about the building. It was quite the undertaking, especially when Pres Hinckley asked if they could get it done in just three years, so that he could be alive to see it completed. And they did! The view from parts of the building was spectacular!



One of the things in the Conference Center is this miniature waterfall. Children toss their coins in the fountain and then the people who work there gather it up and give it back to the church. I wish I could remember the amount she said gets collected, but I've never been one for retaining facts. I suppose that's why I suck at trivial pursuit. Anyway, it was a rather large number because I remember being astonished that that much money is pulled out of this little fountain. So Brittnee tossed in coin. I don't know if she made a wish or not. One can't ask those things you know- the wish won't come true:(



Doug and I got married in the Salt Lake Temple, and we took one of our wedding portraits right here. We thought it was only fitting that we get one of the kids in the exact same spot. This picture has become a reminder for me what two people can create. Here Doug and I started out, just the two of us, and 13 years later we have this little family. Absolutely amazing!



Did you notice the girls with no coats? I'm practically freezing to death taking the photo and the girls don't have coats. (Neither does Doug, but you can't see him.)
Are we from California or what? "Coats? What are coats? We don't know what those are. We have no use for those."

We took the kids to see the Joseph Smith movie in the Legacy Theatre. It was sooooo good!! I fought tears the entire time! The girls came out of it crying as well, but Brittnee in particular was quite touched by it. She came home and on her wall, put up pictures that she'd pulled from the Ensign of the First Presidency, along with numerous other church pictures. She wrote on one of the pictures with permanent marker that says, "Stand up for Yourself." She told me that Joseph Smith stood up for what he believed in and we should too. I'm slowly getting it that Brittnee is a deep thinker, and is actually quite profound at times. I was so moved and touched by her thoughts from this movie. So glad we went!!

All in all, a great Christmas.