Why not paint with your feet?

My kids are in bed - all of them - finally asleep. I realize that I haven't posted anything here for (what is today?) sixteen days, and this blog is in desperate need of being caught up. The last few weeks have seen the last hectic days of school, complete with teacher thank you gifts and parties. We also "celebrated mediocrity," to quote Rus, (because he's a pessimist/realist), by hosting a graduation party for Beau and his joy school classmates. I have to say that I am officially not a fan of joy school. I will spare you my soap box worthy thoughts on the matter, and instead just say that I will happily and diligently find a preschool for Marianne to attend when the time comes.
Beau, second from right, with a graduation cap that is too small for his off the charts head...

The other major thing that has been occupying my time and thoughts is a project I am doing for a friend. She is paying me to draw a comic book for her husband for Father's day. The comic book will contain "stories" of some of his greatest moments as a husband and father over the past thirty years. It is a really fun project, but also really intense as I am trying to convert memories into stories complete with humorous dialogue and pictures. When I'm done drawing and coloring everything I will take it to a company that will scan in all of the drawings and turn them into an authentic bound and published comic book. I am SO excited for the finished result...but I admit I am a little stressed about getting it from rough sketches to finished product. I just keep thinking, "this will be EPIC, this will be amazing, this will be priceless, I have plenty of time!" Positive thinking, right?
I guess I'll share a few random thoughts as I wait for the 300+ pictures on my camera to load. (Rus has been photographing the birds in our backyard so he can identify them with one of his two bird books. Nerd. I love it. And Jacob has been taking pictures of ants and lizards and rocks in our backyard. Junior Nerd.)
A few days ago Jacob came inside from the backyard with a 1"x1"x four foot long piece of wood. He said, "Mom, is it okay if just you and me go to the garage for a minute and use the sander and we sharpen the end of this to a point?" I replied, much to his frustration, that sharp, pointy sticks are dangerous. He countered, "But if it's not sharp it won't stick in the ground when I throw it!" And I reiterated that throwing sharp pointy sticks was really dangerous. This really mad him mad and he stomped out of the house with his dull, flat stick yelling, "you NEVER let me do things I want to do!" I'm afraid he's right. I never let him make wooden weapons, because I'm sure if I did he would somehow accidentally wind up maiming one of his siblings.

Also: Marianne's arms seem to be permanently covered in permanent marker. I am not sure how she does it - I can't seem to find a permanent marker to save my life when I really need one, but she finds them all over the house in random places. And then she colors her arms and her legs and if I'm really lucky, nearby books and furniture. My cousin watched her a few weeks ago and she was wearing long fleece pajamas. I changed her into cooler clothes later and found that she had completely colored one of her legs. I'm not even sure my cousin knew she did that because the pjs covered it up!

Here is Marianne "smiling" for the camera in the dress my mom bought for her when she was just a few months old.

Marianne is certainly the prime source of entertainment in our family. She loves to sing (it sounds more like an indian chant), and if you ask her, she'll sing you the happy song or the doggy song, where she sings that particular word over and over. She loves to twirl and fall on the floor, and her vocabulary seems to increase hourly. She still loves my ipad and I find myself hiding it from her all day long and sneaking away from her to check emails when I think she's distracted. If she sees it, she has to have it, and she has a disturbing ability to operate it as well as my other children.
Lastly, I have to admit that I am not afraid to get dirty. In fact I sometimes invite it, like when I ran the Dirty Dash last September, or when I laid out paper and dumped paint on it and let Beau and Marianne skate on it with their bare feet. We needed large sheets of painted paper to make collages in Jacob's class on the last day of school. So Beau and Marianne were my helpers and we painted three large sheets of paper with vivid colors and lots of texture. The kids in Jacob's class made good use of the paper and his teacher proclaimed it the easiest last day she'd ever had. Success.
(Note our finished raised flower beds and fountain in our back yard!)

Hair cut!

I decided to let go of my long hair...it was time. Luckily I recently found an excellent stylist who I knew would do a great job. She started by literally sawing off about five inches from my hair with a really dull pair of scissors. Then she laid the sad looking bushy tail on the counter in front of me. I had a few minutes of really conflicted emotions while a sad montage of "pictures" of my long hair ran through my head. And then I told myself I was being dumb, and this shorter hair is going to be great, and it will grow back anyway.
The end. (Of the ridiculously detailed account of my haircut).

Funny Faces

Last night we were having a little bit of fun with Marianne at the dinner table. She is such an expressive little girl, and we exploit that as regularly as possible for our own amusement.

The best part about last night, though, was taking the pictures of Rus making the face, and then Marianne making the face.

Priceless, I tell you.

Lucky for Rus, he knows every picture I take is fair game for the blog, so he totally saw this coming.

 

Rus: "Marianne, show me your teeth!"

 (sorry for the mess on her face, we didn't take care of that soon enough...)

"Marianne, show me your lips!"

"Blowface!"

 "Fishy lips!"

 

And then the fun ended because Marianne wanted the camera, and I wouldn't give it to her...So sad!

Please don't let me be a mean old lady...

 I was at the grocery store a few weeks ago and Beau and Marianne were happily chasing each other around the produce section. I visit the produce area last, and by that time they are usually done with being in the cart and I am done with them playing with my newly acquired food items. And honestly I think they are both super cute and fun, so I allow them to run free while I quickly grab the last few things that I need. While they were merrily running around, they found themselves in the path of an elderly woman and her cart once or twice...and I apologized and smiled. But only a few minutes later I saw the same grumpy old lady whisper and roll her eyes with another old lady...about my children. It really made me grumpy. And self concious. And I couldn't help but pray, please help me not be a mean old lady someday! Please don't let me forget that children are loud and careless and slightly wreckless, but that's just because they are bright, happy little souls who haven't had to learn to quiet themselves because of mean old people. Please let me be one of those sweet, doting old ladies who tells young mothers that their children are so beautiful and so precious!
Anyway, there's my rant. On to more important things, like Jacob losing his tooth. It was epic. Rus tied a piece of floss to his tooth and then to the back door, and then Jacob slammed the door shut...and experienced a little yank, but the tooth hadn't budged. So he opened the door again, stepped back again, and with help from dad, slammed the door shut again. And before it even slammed, the tooth was out and Jacob was suddenly scouring the floor, saying, "Where'd my tooth go?" Then he grabbed it and ran to the bathroom to see the gory mess his victory had caused him. He was so proud. Rus and I were so proud. We recorded the whole event on the ipad and I had to watch it a half dozen times that night. I still had little chuckles escaping my mouth when my head hit the pillow that night.
He's such a handsome boy!

It just so happens that Beau and Marianne are becoming great friends. I have enjoyed capturing their little moments together the past few weeks. Marianne adores Beau, but if anything in her world goes wrong, she'll exclaim "Beau!" in a chastening tone. She's really got the intonation down on that one.

Beau is great at reading to her...if I were able to photoshop the boogers off his nose, I don't know that I would. Those boogers are an accurate representation of four months out of our year...Marianne loves hats and shoes. She is constantly pulling on hats and kickinf off shoes. She prefers Beau's boots (which incidentally are light up - how cool is that), to her own mini-tennis shoes. If you can't find your shoes in our house, you're not crazy - Marianne has relocated them for you.

 A few weeks ago Bekah had to dress up as a person from an autobiography. She picked Laura Ingalls Wilder - her favorite person, pioneer, and author. She wore an old Laura Ashley dress of mine from England that is missing half the buttons in the back, and we sewed her a bonnet. We knew Marianne would need a bonnet of her own.

 

 We also made a corn husk doll to mimic Laura Ingalls Wilder's doll Charlotte. Bekah wanted the doll...the boys wanted hawks and jaguars. I am now convinced that corn husks are not the proper medium for making hawks and jaguars.

 Marianne will be really grateful when she is older that she has a super stylish aunt who can't resist buying her clothes. That is how this beautiful dress came to be Marianne's. DeAnn bought it for her at Target. I am so in love with it. I want one in my size, please and thank you. I'm also in love with the adorable little spitfire in pigtails. She totally ROCKS that dress.

 As you saw in previous posts, our backyard is a work in progress. This past weekend it progressed a little further, thanks to Rus and his mad muscles. While I cut bricks on the tile saw and shuttled kids to and from birthday parties, Rus laid the bricks. He paid the kids a dollar each to carry the bricks from the pallets they were on to a location nearer to Rus. It was comical seeing Jacob book it from one spot to the other, running as fast as he could because the brick was so heavy.

But by the early afternoon, our work was done! Here are our gorgeous raised beds, with chair and bucket decor provided by the kids. Our fountain is half up in this picture...the top of it is on the ground to the left.

 Next up: Dirt! We need to order dirt to fill those lovely boxes. And between now and the time we actually plant something, we need to come up with a plan to deter the deer and rabbits from eating whatever we plant.

Farewell Infinite Soccer Season

I like soccer. I like my kids playing soccer. I even like the whole AYSO organization at makes it super cheap and possible for my kids to play soccer.
I could just do with about four weeks less of the soccer season. I miss my Saturdays. I really don't appreciate watching my kids play in bad weather. And AYSO should really invest in some heavy duty stakes, because I'm not a fan of having to actually stand and hold the goal posts down to keep them from blowing away in 100mph winds.
With all that being said, I think that being a part of a team was really good for my kids. The other kids and parents on Bekah's and Jacob's teams were awesome. Bekah and Jacob didn't like the bad weather either, but other than moaning about that, they never complained about actually playing soccer. I think they really enjoyed themselves. Here are a few pics from their last games last Saturday.
If Bekah could have had it her way, she would have been goalie for every period of every game. And she was pretty good at it too! There were about three games in a row where she didn't let a single ball past her whenever she was goalie. We called her the brick wall.

But when she did get her turn playing the field, she did a great job. She wasn't really the one to take charge of the ball and score a goal, but she always played her position well and paid attention to what was going on on the field.

 Her team was the Tigers. I took my face paints to their last game and gave them all tiger eyes. They were a super good bunch of girls.

Jacob's game was after Bekah's game. It was late in the afternoon, and we were just doing our best to be there. That's why we arrived with a kid wearing a cape, a giraffe with some worn off face paint, and a girl with tiger eyes. Oh and Jacob had leopard-print arms.
His team was the Decepticons. (He was a big Transformer fan at the beginning of the season...now all I hear about is animals).

Jacob was an AWESOME defender. He loved to hang back and make sure that absolutely nothing from the other team got in their goal. (He's in U7 - they have smaller goals and no goalies). The other teams got past him some of the time, but for the most part he really kept the ball rolling the other direction.

And now for some pictures of the giraffe. Marianne LOVES this giraffe costume, and it was just her luck to find it as we were walking out the door. The weather had turned a little chilly and I figured all the fur was just some extra insulation.
She hugged her dad, (note the crazy remains of face paint),













played with Bekah,

And did some good ol' fashioned tackling with Beau and Bekah.

 We'll be out there again in the fall, but I really am happy to have my Saturdays back!
 

Blessing Baby Maverick

Rus was in shock the night his good friend Clint called him up out of the blue to invite us to the blessing of their new baby boy Maverick. Clint is not really the type to pick up the phone and call an old friend. He's not much of a talker face to face (unless it involves vehicles, guns, or redneck stuff), so phone conversation is really a stretch. So when Rus hung up the phone he said we were going to Safford the next weekend because Clint called and asked.
And we did. And it was a great trip. We didn't want to descend on them with our entourage, and we knew they had a lot of family in town already, so we decided to stay with Rus's parents in Lordsburg (Only 70 miles from Safford). I know I've already mentioned the shooting range in Roger's backyard...we all were able to enjoy a little target practice.
Each kid got a chance to shoot Grandpa's .22

Bekah...

Jacob...

I love this multigenerational pic, these men (+boy) right in their element.

 Beau...

I wish I could explain Beau's face in this picture...

 I even got a turn...I am shooting Louise's single action rifle in this picture. I really liked her gun.

We spent Sunday with Clint and Nicole and their family, going to church, eating good food, and visiting. I had to take Marianne out of sacrament meeting to change her bum, and as we were walking out she loudly exclaimed, "BYE!!" And waived to everyone we passed. I just tried to keep my head down as I laughed embarrassedly, but I heard later that the bishopric got a kick out of her earnest farewell.
I loved holding Maverick. He is a sweet baby. I painted a picture for Nicole of him laying on the floor, sucking on a stuffed animal goose. (Top Gun. If there is a Maverick, there must be a Goose.) I also raided Louise's fabric stash and sewed him a stuffed goose. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of both.
Here we all are...I'm amazed how Rus, Clint, Nicole and I have evolved from four single kids to two married couples to two full grown families. (Ooh - you can see the picture I painted sitting on the shelf on the right.) Jacob is holding Maverick. Marcy is sitting next to Bekah and Merry is next to Clint. A picture of their angel son Marshall is on the shelf.
I dearly love Clint and Nicole. We have traveled quite a ways with them, some roads pretty rough. Our relationship is pretty special.

It was a great trip...hopefully we'll see more of each other in the future!!

 

Easter

The weather was forecasted to be really nice for Easter, and I was just itching to use our brand-spanking new patio, so we invited everyone over for a ham dinner. By everyone, I mean all the family we could possibly claim in the area. Jason and Joy and their five, Carla and Doug and their four, and Jake and DeAnn and their two. (That's a lie, there are more cousins and relations in the area we didn't invite, but they have grown children and wouldn't appreciate the special dynamic that fifteen children under the age of nine provide...) Doug and Carla also invited a coworker and her mother; we were happy to have them over too.
Carla had found a great way to teach about Jesus' resurrection with different types of symbolic foods. She prepared all of the foods and then had the kids come up, one by one, to help her explain how they symbolized a part of Christ's death and ressurection. It was really neat; perhaps a new tradition was born. 

 Of course we carried out the traditional Easter egg hung, complete with "don't touch any cactus," and the requisite pair of tweezers for the children who got poked anyway.

 I just realized that Jacob somehow managed to be absent for this picture. I'm not sure if he's hiding or simply not present...We are also missing Joy's baby Wyatt.

 Joy and Rachel

 It was a really fun and special day, thanks to good family and a loving Heavenly Father.