Mac & Cheese

Today I hosted the mac & cheese club, and as usual it was a most amusing event. I decided that since it is only a few days until Ellie's birthday I would call today's gathering a "birthday party" & forgo the receipt of any gifts (which is my least favorite part of a birthday party).
It was a very last minute decision, so I just had a "We love Ellie" party and did a Valentine's Day theme.
I made heart shaped quesadillas, red jell-o, strawberries, and of course, mac & cheese. And for dessert I made heart shaped cupcakes that I let the girls frost/decorate.
Well, one of the girls brought a lunch because she said, "I hate macaroni and cheese." I asked her if she liked quesadillas, and she said, "No, but I'll just eat my own lunch. Another girl said that she hated quesadillas, and also claimed not to want any jell-o (or frosting).
Knowing my own girls' propensities, I decided to put a little bit of everything on each of their plates and told them all that they could eat whatever they wanted and leave whatever they didn't want.
Here is the rundown of what they ate:
The one who brought her own lunch ate about 2 bites of her sandwich, 3 helpings of macaroni & cheese and 2 heart quesadillas, a scoop of jell-o and her strawberries.
The girl who claimed to hate everything I offered (other than the mac & cheese) ate 2 scoops of macaroni, 4 quesadilla hearts, a little jell-o and plenty of frosting.

It really made my day to hear the other girls claiming not to like the food I made then eat it up because Sarah has been acting the same way. She will claim to hate something, tell me she won't eat even one bite, then, when coerced to taste it, declares (shocked) that it is delicious and eats the whole thing.

What is it with kiddos and their fear of food? Oh, well! the un-birthday party was fun & now Ellie feels like she got a real birthday party :)

Dream, Dream, Dream

This morning Becca had a spelling test and I had a dream that I was helping her review for the test last night. In my dream, Becca's spelling words were "bath" words. Some of the words included: soap, wash, shampoo, bubble, water, tub, and of course the famous shampoo ingredients: cocamidopropyl betaine and ammonium xylenesulfonate.
Perhaps not shockingly, in my dream, when I saw those words, I just told her to do her best and to not worry about misspelling them.
When I woke up I started laughing at how funny that I would think that Becca would have such words. Then I worried that I was spending WAY too much time reading ingredients on my shampoo bottle.

Heil Hitler!

Tonight I was talking with Greg's sister, Shannon, about the possibility of us surprising our kiddos with a trip to a certain amusement park in southern California. I then gave the hint "Not Sea World." Brigham laughed and said "Nazi World!?"
What do you think? Should we take our children to Nazi World? I think it will make them really appreciate how good they have it :)

Foaming Hand Soap

I love figuring out ways to save money & have a new-found favorite way. For Christmas I received a couple bottles of foaming hand soap, and they are always my favorite, and my kids love them, too. I have learned that they feel like they are getting a lot more "soap" with the foaming soap than they do with regular hand soap, and even though they use it ALL THE TIME (not just after using the potty) it lasts a lot longer than its non-foaming counterpart.
Well, today I found one of the bottles empty, but rather than throwing it away, I looked online and found out that you can use any liquid soap or shampoo in the bottle if you thin it down to 1 part soap 5 parts water. Oh, yeah! I tried it and it works GREAT!
Now, I have a nearly unlimited supply of soap for my girls without having to spend a fortune to keep soap in the bathrooms. How cool is that?!

You Choose

This morning Ellie wanted to wear Becca's black dress coat to school because she was wearing her fancy velvet pants and needed a coat to match (who cares that she spilled oatmeal on her sweater before school even started and refused to change). I told her that she could wear it, but that she needed to be very careful with it because the last time she wore it to school she forgot about it and it was "lost" for almost a month.
Then, when her carpool came, I reminded her that she REALLY needed to turn in her homework and her field trip permission slip or she would not be allowed to go to the museum (I guess I could have waited a little longer on that organize your dinner into categories page).
As she was walking out the door she turned to me and said, "Well, which is it? Do you want me to not lose the coat or turn in my homework? You can only choose one."
I told her that both were important, but that if she didn't want to go to the field trip I guess she didn't need to turn in her permission slip.

Amazingly, she came home with her coat and had turned in her homework!

Top of the Morning!

Wow! It's 8:30 and I feel like I'm about done for the day, but after yesterday's Stake Conference where President Eyring told us of President Monson's positive attitude, I am trying to stay happy even when things get a little chaotic.
Last night at 9:00 (two hours after her bedtime) Becca told me that this week was her special week and that she needed a poster this morning all about her. So, I spent the evening throwing together something that would work (we didn't have any poster board so she got four pieces of construction paper taped together). I asked her what she wanted on the board and then put it together, and it turned out really cute, I must say.
Then, this morning she said. "It looks really good, mom, but you forgot the ballet slippers"...perhaps that is because Becca doesn't take ballet, but she still wanted them. So I cut some out of pink card stock, while she got dressed. When she was dressed I told her to pack her homework, and discovered that she hadn't done it. So, I told her to get started. Of course, this week of all weeks she just couldn't figure out how to do it and needed my help.
This was when Sarah came into the kitchen ornery as a jay bird requesting breakfast immediately. I don't like to give in to my children's demands; however, I also know that if Sarah doesn't have a pleasant morning she (and therefore I) will not have a pleasant day.
Then, as I was putting Ellie's homework back in her backpack (she was supposed to turn it in on Friday, but she forgot) I realized that it was actually probably better that she didn't turn it in because she, too, had forgotten a page from her homework.
It was very humorous, I'm sure, to see me telling Sarah that we didn't have any brown sugar for her oatmeal upstairs, and asking her if she would like white sugar and cinnamon instead, counting by 3's for Becca, and telling Ellie to categorize her dinner from the other night into circles and not circles reminding her that the peas, carrots, rolls (and as she reminded me--the plate) were all circles, and that the manicotti, sauce, and broccoli (we didn't actually have broccoli, but she wanted to include it) were "not circles."
Really it is my fault...when the alarm went off this morning I was having the greatest dream and refused to get out of bed on time, so by the time I realized how much I needed to get done, it was way too late to do it all.
Somehow, however, I even managed to get the girls' hair done, pull their coats out of the car (where they left them last night) and get them bundled up before they left. On the other hand, Becca will definitely be having school lunch today.

Rachel Rises to Become Terror Toddler!

Oh, yes...I predicted this day. After getting the girls off to school I put Rachel and Sarah on my bed and turned on the TV so that I could get a quick shower. I am well aware that Rachel's attention span for television does not exceed ten minutes, so I hustled. Sadly, I was not quick enough. By the time I got out, Rachel was COVERED in lipstick that she had pulled from my purse, which she had pulled from my dresser. She looked lovely, and laughed herself silly when she saw her reflection in the mirror on the way to the tub. (She cleverly hid most of the lipstick that is on her pajamas by covering it up with her right arm)


Well, I thought that I had cleaned everything up (except for myself--I needed another shower, but refused to take the risk & just wiped myself off with toilet paper) and didn't think much of it until I picked up Ellie. She received a coupon for a free mini pizza at school and asked if we could redeem it today. I told her that would be fine & headed off to get some cheap lunch. Well, I went to pay for the rest of the pizza and was asked for ID--alas, my Driver's License was missing. I searched through my cards (all stuck together with the remains of my lipstick) but to no avail. I am now on my bed (Rachel has gone down for a nap) and I can't find my license anywhere. Grrrr. Hmmm, hopefully it will turn up (perhaps it is just stuck to one of the other cards & I just couldn't see it).

It is a good thing little kiddos are so cute, because otherwise I don't think my offspring would make it some days. Fortunately, all I have to do is peek in at my little napper to make me forget the rest of the morning!

Happy New Year...

If my last post seemed a little disjointed and incomplete that is because it was. I tried to embed some videos of the girls on Christmas morning and my computer wasn't cooperating (it kept timing out before the upload was complete). So, I decided that I would just post what I had already written and come back later. So the short version of what I was going to say in the last post is:
The girls had a great Christmas. If you enlarge the picture of Becca you will see that she is holding a toy dog collar. That was a last minute creation by the elves because on Christmas Eve Becca was walking up the stairs and asked me "Mom, do you think I have been a good girl this year?"
I told her that she had been great--especially recently because she had been so nice to her sisters and had helped me around the house without being asked.
She asked "Do you think I've been good enough that I might get something extra in my stocking?"
Again I said that she probably would..
"Oh, Good! I really hope that I get something for my stuffed dog because I LOVE my puppy!"

So, one of Santa's elves decided to create a dog collar from ribbon, twist ties, paper and hot glue. All in all it turned out pretty well & a well-behaved little girl was pleasantly surprised Christmas morning.

The other "last minute elf project" was REALLY last minute. Ellie requested a makeup cell phone and a pretend cell phone that works. She also requested the phone be "Hello Kitty" in nature.
Well, I found Hello Kitty walkie-talkies and a cheapo lip gloss phone and thought I was taken care of, but Christmas morning Ellie seemed a little bummed and when I asked why she told me that she wanted her MAKEUP phone to be Hello Kitty. . . oops, Santa!
So, I took the makeup phone to the local elf who printed a Hello Kitty sticker from the Internet, cut it out & glued it on the back of the phone (fortunately the front of the phone was transparent other than the silver buttons), and amazingly, when Ellie picked up the makeup phone she turned it over and lo and behold, it WAS a Hello Kitty phone!

It's nice to be able to have such easy fixes!

Well, on to the new year. For New Year's Eve we went to Greg's parent's house to welcome the new year in with COUSINS! However, the girls got burned out by about 9:30 so we decided to take them home. We got home just before 10:00 and thought the girls would like to watch the ball drop live in New York, so we piled them on our bed to watch the East Coast welcome in 2009. After the ball dropped I told the girls it was time for bed, and they looked at me like I was nuts--"Dad said we could watch the ball show!"
I told them that all those people out on the street hugging was the ball show and it was over. This was a bad idea--I have never seen my kids look so dejected. That was it?!
Sarah went to bed bawling that it was the shortest/worst movie ever and my other girls just looked at me like I was nuts to get so excited about something so simple as that.
Once the girls were down, Greg put on a movie to keep us awake until midnight, but it didn't work too well. I fell asleep, and woke up at 12:15 to go to the bathroom. When I looked at the clock my response was, "Oh..Happy New Year" before climbing back into bed.
Yep, we really are PARTY ANIMALS!

Happy Holidays!

Since I took a brief hiatus during the holidays, I thought I would go back and fill in some fun Christmas memories.
First, I have to tell a story about Becca. I bought some really cute wrapping paper for Christmas. It was red paper with the words "NO PEEKING!" in various fonts and sizes. Well, Becca found the paper and called me over laughing her head off.
"Mom, look! This says 'king' right?" (pointing to the end of peeking)
"Yep."
"Look at the whole thing, Mom--it says NO PEE--KING!"

She was very confused as to why I would buy paper that said pee-king everywhere.