Crazy Day

I am officially banning my children from Michael's Craft Store. When Ellie was little, as is evident by past posts, she was a bit of a handful. She was fearless when we went to the store & would wander off/not follow me no matter how much I asked. One day (when we were at Michael's) she wandered away from me to an aisle that had flip-flops and boas. I decided to hide around the corner of the aisle to see how long it would take her to realize I was gone & try to find me.
She started pulling all of the boas & flip flops out of their respective bins & was trying them all on (for several minutes) when a store employee came around the corner & saw the mess.
I was very embarrassed & tried to explain myself as I hurredly cleaned up the feathers from the floor. I got the serious stink-eye, and I didn't go back for a while, but that was absolutely NOTHING compared to yesterday's adventure.
Today is my last day of having preschool for Sarah at our house, and I wanted to make the day special, so I am having a "Number Carnival." For one event, I thought it would be fun to let the kids get their faces painted, but I didn't have much by way of face-paint & hence made my way to Michael's.
The trip started off like any other, with Rachel wanting everything in sight, but I eventually made my way to the paint aisle. I started looking at the various colors, trying to decide what would work best, when Sarah said, "Um, Mom... Look at Rachel. I turned around & for a moment thought that Rachel had found a bottle of Pepto Bismal, but soon realized that "the one that coats" is not a medication, but a brand new bottle of pink paint.
Somehow, she had reached the paint from the cart, opened the bottle, and dumped it all over herself & the cart before I could choose one color of paint.
I forgot to take my phone, so I have NO pictures, sadly (that would have been worth more than a thousand words), but if you can imagine the Pepto commercials from years past when they show the medication covering the inside of the stomach completely, you will have some idea of what Rachel, the shopping cart, the floor, and Sarah's shoes looked like.
I had no idea there was that much paint in one bottle.
Well, there was a lady on the paint aisle who shimmied past us as I stood there dumb-founded, another 2 women saw us and walked by, but nobody stopped to help.
I told Ellie & Sarah to stand perfectly still & ran to find some help. I found a sweet girl who was restocking shelves just a few aisles away, and told her of my plight. She told me she would get something to help clean up the mess & I left to keep an eye on my girls.
When she came back she arrived with 1 wet paper towel. She handed it to me, looked at the mess and said, "This probably isn't going to be enough, is it?" and she hurried off to get some better tools.
Well, I took the one paper towel & mopped up the floor first because Sarah had already discovered how cool it was to make footprints by first stepping in the paint then walking down the floor. I did an amazing job (if I do say so myself) at making that rag work.
I then wheeled the girls over to the bathroom (which, naturally, was on the opposite corner of the store) where I met up with the employee who had brought me the first towel.
She came into the bathroom with me & took off Rachel's shoes while I took off the paint drenched shirt. When I did, I discovered that her tummy looked like a Pepto commercial, too. I threw the shirt in the sink and started using more wet paper towels to wipe down her face, stomach, arms and hands. Her pants weren't quite as messy as the shirt, so I just wiped them off while she was still wearing them, rinsed off as much paint as I could from the shirt, wrung it out as well as I could & stuck it back on her. The employee helped me put Rachel's shoes back on, and headed back to work & I spent the next 30 minutes trying to clean the shopping cart.
I have to say that Ellie & Sarah were GREAT. I told them that if they would stay by me the whole time & not cause problems I would paint their faces when we got home & they did a fabulous job entertaining Rachel & staying put, so they earned their prize.
Well, when we got home, I poured about a teaspoon of the various colors of paint on a paper plate, went into the back yard & started painting faces.
Rachel was up on the playground and I hadn't even finished the first cheek when I went to get more paint & saw a tiny hand smearing all of the colors together & smearing them on her face.
Apparently, Rachel thought she deserved to have her face painted for the second time in one day... I suppose she is more into modern-art when it comes to face painting, though.

I just found this picture online--if you multiply the mess by about 10, and change the blue paint to pink you will have some idea of what it looked like.

So that was a little bit of my day yesterday...my question is, what is the worst thing that has happened to you in a store?
I have had some serious poop issues, my grandma had my mom open powdered sugar when she was little, but I'm pretty sure this was worse than anything I have experienced (though not quite as stinky)...can anyone out there top it?

I love You, Mom!

Yesterday I was trying to get the house picked up, and after vacuuming the front room and throwing a load in the laundry I went into the kitchen and found Becca working on a "project" that involved glue, wire, crayons, paper, scissors and tiny scraps all over the floor.
Now, please don't think that I am against my kids making projects, but when I'm in the middle of cleaning (and the girls are supposed to be helping) it didn't really thrill me to see the mess on the table & floor.
I walked into the room and said, "Becca, what are you doing?"
To which she responded, "Mom, I'm making this for you....It has Ellie's name on it, but that was just so you wouldn't know it was yours until I was done."

Brilliant. How clever to put another name on it, Huh?! But I'm SURE it was really for me :)

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

What melody do you sing when you see those letters? The old "Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?" or "Come inside it's fun inside."
Either way, there is a new generation of Mickey lovers coming up. Rachel has been a Mickey fan ever since our trip to Disneyland (prior to the event she had no idea who he was), and so for her birthday yesterday we had a Mickey day.
I decorated the kitchen with a Mickey Mouse birthday banner and balloons (the banner was free to print online), picked up some Mickey plates at the store, and started the morning with Mickey Mouse pancakes.
Then, Rachel wanted to play outside, so we rode bikes and went for a walk. Can you tell she was happy to be the birthday girl?

After riding bikes all morning, we picked Ellie up from school and went to the store to get some ice cream. Rachel (naturally) spotted some Mickey fruit snacks as we were cruising the aisle, and since it was her birthday I decided to let her have them. Then we packed up lunch for a picnic at my mom's house while I did her hair. We had Mickey grilled cheese (and for some reason this picture will NOT post the right direction...go figure)
Then we came home and I frosted cupcakes and made Mickey pizza for dinner (we also had salad, fruit and other healthy things during the day, but who wants to see a picture of a tossed salad?).

Sarah marked her territory on the purple cupcake as soon as it was frosted. Can you tell?

I let Rachel choose her cupcake first & surprise, surprise, she chose one that had a "Mickey" toothpick.

We also tried to take the candles and toothpick out of her cupcake for her to eat it, but she kept putting them back in.
I think she knew she was in charge yesterday.

Happy Easter

We had a great spring break, and I have to say I'm sad to send my kids back to school. This week has made me excited to have them home for summer break. Over the course of the week, we went to the park, visited a little frozen yogurt place where you get to dish your own yogurt & toppings, went to Carls Jr. with the cousins, decorated Easter eggs, and went swimming at the rec. center.
On Saturday morning the girls discovered that the Easter bunny had filled their baskets during the night, and they enjoyed a breakfast of chocolate bunnies and breakfast quesadillas. For the quesadillas, I cut corn tortillas into egg shapes, and mixed food coloring with egg whites to make "paint" then let the girls decorate two "eggs" before cooking them up. I filled the quesadillas with ham, cheese and scrambled eggs.
Here is a picture of the girls' creations after they were cooked:
Then, we had an Easter egg hunt with over 100 plastic eggs. They were filled with little Easter erasers, jelly-beans, and robin's eggs.



The plastic eggs were filled with spring-time erasers, flying bunnies, and a few jelly beans/robin's eggs. When the girls opened them, they were most excited about the non-edible goodies, and I was glad that there wasn't too much candy this year.

Sunday I gave the girls cereal straws & milk for breakfast which is a real treat for them, but I found them at NPS, so I only had to pay a quarter for them. I then got the girls ready for 9:00 church, which took most of the morning, but they looked pretty cute :)

After church Greg showed the girls the new clip from Elder Holland's talk. If anyone hasn't seen it, here it is:


Then we went to my parents' house for a yummy dinner & to Greg's parents' house to wish his mom a happy birthday. All in all, it was a great week.

Movie Title Mania

After putting Rachel down for a nap, Sarah asked if she could watch a movie. I told her she could, then she asked me if I had "Barbie Diarrhea." I started laughing so hard that Sarah said. "Mom, it's not funny. Barbie Diarrhrea is very serious." So there you have it. . . Barbie diarrhea is very serious stuff.

FYI, the title of the the movie is "The Barbie Diaries" and we haven't actually seen it, there's just a preview of it on one of our other movies.

How did that happen?

Tonight we went to Greg's parent's house while the guys went to the Priesthood session. Greg's mom had made marshmallow Easter eggs and let the grandkids decorate them. Well, Sarah decorated hers, helped me decorate Greg's and then went off to play while I decorated my egg. Rachel stayed with me, and without my knowledge licked all of the frosting off Sarah's egg, so I took some frosting and gobbed it on to recreate her masterpiece.
Well, we just got home and Sarah looked at her egg and asked "How did that happen?"
I asked her what, and she said, "Look! my bunny house (apparently that's what she made) looks so different, but it's so cool!"
So, my question is, when she spent exactly 15 seconds decorating her egg, and then didn't look at it again for two hours, how did she notice that the frosting blobs were different?
All I can say is that she is too smart for her own good.

Ebony & Ivory

This is the newest addition to the family! We are all VERY excited about it, too! Becca has insisted on me teaching her the basics of piano, and she can now identify middle C, whole notes, half notes and quarter notes.
I am amazed at how much I have forgotten since I last played piano, but I am having fun with some old piano books my aunt sent over (before she even knew we were getting a piano) :)
So a couple of details about said piano...it is more than 80 years old, but has been rebuilt in the last 20 years or so. It was made by Beher Brothers, and we are very happy to welcome it into our house!