Graduation Day

So Noah graduated from preschool today. Wow! He's growing up fast. I'm excited for him to go to Kindergarten but I'm going to be a little sad too. At the graduation they played that country song that goes something like "Let them be little for a little while." Or something like that. I think they play that song at all preschool graduations (at least that's my experience). Now, I am really not a fan of country music but I am a sap, especially when it comes to my kids, and that song always gets me a little weepy. The graduation had a train theme and instead of caps and gowns the kids wore train engineer hats and bandanas. It was cute.

After graduation I took Noah with me to the store and then I said we could go to McDonald's for a for a happymeal to celebrate graduation. So we go there and eat and then he puts his shoes in the shoe bin so he can go play. About twenty minutes later it's time to go so I tell him to get his flipflops on (he gets mad if I call his flipflops shoes, doesn't believe they're a kind of shoe- completely different things). He puts on his navy blue flipflop and then takes another flipflop out that is lighter blue, like the old flipflops he outgrew, and puts that one on. I tell him, take off that shoe and put your flipflop on. I don't want him wearing someone else's nasty shoe. Well we look all over for his other shoe but can't find it anywhere. Then I proceed to walk around the play area and look to see if there is another kid with two different kinds of flipflops on. After about five minutes I give up and say let's just go. Again he tries to put the light blue flipflop on and I tell him to take that shoe off and let's go home. He's worried because he doesn't have another shoe to wear across the parking lot and I tell him I'll carry him, so we take off. So we're driving home and he starts telling me about how he couldn't find his other flipflop so he put his old flipflop on. This never even occurred to me because my kids have always left the house with matching shoes on. I'm still not sure about the story and he seems a little vague on it himself, but we get home and there in the mudroom sitting right on top of a small pile of shoes is the other navy blue flipflop. So now I guess I get to check his feet for matching shoes (or flipflops) before we leave the house from now on!



Pictures Noah made me~ Me, Noah and Me

TAG!

I've Been Tagged!

How to play this game of tag. Post these rules on your blog. List 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions/collections, 3 random/surprising facts about yourself. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Joys:
1~My family. I really got lucky with them.
2~Decorating my house. Or rather now that I'm basically done, coming up with things to repaint so I don't get bored with it.
3~A good non-fiction book.

Fears:
1~That I will fail as a mom and not be what my kids really need in a mom.
2~I'm kind of a hypochondriac so I'm frequently fearing I've contracted some deadly ailment.
3~That gas will go up to $10 a gallon.

Goals:
1~To go back to school when Noah starts first grade.
2~Run a couple 5k races and get in great shape this year.
3~Play the piano well someday.

Obsessions/Collections:
1~Let's see, I'm not much of a collector but I do have a lot of painted wood chachkies or knick-knacks or whatever in my house.
2~One obsession is the presidential election. It gets annoying sometimes but I really can't stop following it on a daily basis. Probably because it seems like the most important election I've seen in my lifetime.
3~Color. There are nine different colors of paint on the walls in my house.

Random or Surprising Facts:
1~When I was a Freshman in college I occasionally talked to this engaged guy at the LDS Institute (building for religion classes for Mormon students). He gave me a ride home one day and asked me if I'd kiss him so he could have one last fling before he got married. I laughed and told him I didn't think so. It probably would have been a waste of a kiss for him since I'd only kissed one guy up to that point in my life. I wonder if the marriage lasted with a start like that.
2~When I was at BYU, out of desperation I took a job as a model for the art classes. I chickened out and quit on my first day because I couldn't bare being seen in the flesh-colored bikini you had to wear (since of course BYU doesn't have nude models). I ended up instead as a janitor in the art building working at 3:30 am.
3~I love to read out loud to my kids good rhyming children's books.

Sunny Jim, Moon Face, Weepy Weed, Buffalo Bill, Biffalo Buff

It Could Happen To You

Funny Obama in 30 Seconds finalist~

Spring Shape Up

I decided not to weigh in anymore. At least not for a while. I'm still chugging along slowly but surely, but the scale can get you down when it doesn't move as fast as you want it to. I'm going to do a couple of 5k races this summer so I just want to train and see the results after. I did this race for the Children's Justice Center held at the West Jordan Park last summer and they had a 1k race for kids along with it and all the kids who ran it got teddy bears. The kids want to do it this year so they're going to join me in training when school gets out. I think they'll have a lot of fun doing that.

Happy, Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you Moms and Grandmas out there! Mother's Day makes me miss the good old days when my babies were really babies. So I thought I'd share a few memories. This is a novel I know, but bear in mind I'm doing this blogging thing for journaling purposes too!

Isabella was born 4 weeks early on January 4, 1998. We went to the hospital on Saturday morning and they gave me an IV of drugs to stop the labor since I was only 35 weeks and 6 days pregnant. I went home after and ended up back in the hospital that night and they let me stay since they figured I'd be 36 weeks when she was born (as if 24 hours would have really made that much of a difference!) So after sleeping through the night with an epidural, she was born in the morning weighing in at 6lbs 13oz. She was so tiny and had trouble figuring out how to do a lot of things when she was little so I often wondered if another week or two in the womb would have helped with that. She cried a lot as a baby. I think it was sort of a double whammy. She was a fussy baby with clueless parents. I was scarcely around babies before I had one and had no idea what to do with the little thing, even though I read lots of books on the subject. One example of how stupid we were as new parents is how excited we were to start having quality family time together. When Isabella was 4 months old Spring was here and we went to the store and bought a bike seat. We asked the guy in the bike shop if they had any bike helmets for babies. He said no, of course and looked at us and our baby as if we were idiots. So we went home and put the bike seat on Brent's bike, deciding we'd get a helmet just as soon as she was big enough. We took her for a ride that lasted about fifteen minutes and she screamed the whole time and was kind of slumped over in her seat. When we got back we felt terrible and didn't take her for another bike ride until she was about eighteen months old.

Isabella~Our first Baby!

Zoe was our second. She was born 2 weeks early on September 29, 1999, and was the most exciting birth of the three. I remember going to the bank in the morning while having contractions and hanging out at home, not wanting to make Brent leave work earlier than necessary or make Cathy, my mother-in-law, leave her job teaching high school before school got out (she was going to watch Isabella). When I got to the hospital I was crying and the nurse said she could tell it would be soon just from the look on my face. Zoe was born 30 minutes later, weighing in at 7lbs. 3 oz. I didn't have time for an epidural but they did give me a shot to numb the pain. It was the most painful thing I'd ever been through but when she was born I thought it was the coolest experience I'd ever had! I was so happy afterward to have experienced natural childbirth (for the most part anyway). She was a good baby and slept through the night on her own from an early age. She was very happy as a baby and had this funny laugh that she still does every once in a while. Later when she became a difficult (but lovable) pre-schooler, I was often shocked because she had been so happy as a baby!

Zoe sucked her thumb for almost eight years and was even
doing it in her ultrasound picture!

Noah is the baby of our family. After the great experience I had having Zoe I wanted to do the natural childbirth thing so Brent and I took a Lamaze class. We were, of course, the only couple in the class who already had two kids. We went to the hospital 9 days before Noah's due date. The natural childbirth thing didn't quite work out. We walked around a few hours before I gave in and got the epidural around 2 am. I was really tired and they wanted to put an internal monitor on Noah and attach it to his head because the nurse said they couldn't get a good reading on his heart rate when I was moving around during contractions. It's kind of hard to sit still during contractions! So I got the epidural because I didn't want anyone putting probes on my baby's head. Well Brent fell asleep for the next few hours and I laid there with my legs feeling really weird because of the epidural. I couldn't sleep and sat there watching the movie "Footloose" on TV with no volume because it wasn't working for some reason. Finally around 7 am it was time and poor Brent had to wake up from his nap and Noah was born pretty quick. I don't like the expression "popping babies out" but that's what it was like with him. Two pushes and he popped right out, weighing in at 9lbs 2oz. He was so big and looked like he was two months old on the day he was born! We decided he had better be the last because if we had anymore this one would wait for the due date (couldn't have that!) and would weigh 10lbs! He was a sweet, cuddly baby and I really enjoyed my time with him as a baby, knowing he would be the last one.

Noah was one freakin' cute baby boy!

Me, pregnant with Isabella. Second trimester, all cute and glowing. Never suspecting I'd gain 50lbs with each pregnancy and never be "cute and pregnant" again because I'd look like I was four months pregnant a week after the pregnancy test in subsequent pregnancies!;)

I actually like this picture of me in the hospital right after Isabella was born, all looking like a pizza face. I was blessed with reasonably easy pregnancies with nothing worse than a little sciatica here and there. But the picture shows how we all sacrifice for our children in one way or another to bring them into this world. For me with Isabella it was horrible acne and rosacea (I still have a bit of the rosacea) and people asking me on a daily basis: What's wrong with your face? Why is your face so red? Have you tried anything for that? To which I always answered, "No, I haven't tried anything. I don't even ever wash my face!" One person even used it as an opportunity to try to sell me Amway!

Mommy Music

Mother's day always makes me think about when I was pregnant or when my kids were babies. Does anyone besides me have a certain song that reminds them of when they were pregnant with their kids? Whenever I hear that Chumbawumba song, "Tubthumping", it reminds me of when I was pregnant with Isabella. The last month of my pregnancy they must have played that song on the radio a dozen times a day. I don't even like that song that much but it brings back fond memories of those last few babyless days in my life (and barely fitting behind the wheel of my car where I would likely be when I heard the song.) The song "Allstar" by Smashmouth always makes me think of being pregnant with Zoe. That song I loved. It was fun to sing along with when driving down the road to my checkups at the doctor's. As for when I was pregnant with Noah, it's Vanessa Carlston's song "Thousand Miles". This song is particularly memorable because everytime I heard it the pregnancy hormone's would kick in and I would start crying. It got to be comical at a certain point because I'd hear the song come on the radio and I could actually make myself start crying, which would then make me laugh!

Mother's Day

My kids are the best! They gave me a great Mother's Day. Isabella and Zoe brought me breakfast in bed which consisted of yogurt, toast, orange slices, and cheerios with milk. It was a lot of food considering I usually don't get around to eating breakfast on Sunday morning. All three of them made me a ton of homemade gifts and cards ranging from Noah's hand print in clay to Isabella's coupon book to Zoe's lavender smelling sachet. They are such great kids, I'm very blessed to have them in my life. I told Brent I only wanted one thing for Mother's day from him. First you have to understand I'm not really into gifts for Mother's day, birthdays, Christmas, etc. I tend to think presents are usually for kids and tell him it's no big deal or if I really need something I say, just get me a gift card. So I told him I wanted (sorry if anyone finds this offensive or disgusting!) a new toilet seat installed in the family bathroom that doesn't smell like urine! Sometimes it's the simple things in life that make us happy! Oh and he gave me chocolate too, which is always a good choice.

Just a trifle

I hosted book group at my house the other day and made this yummy trifle for dessert. I thought I'd post the recipe , it's a great spring dessert and pretty too!

Strawberry Lemon Trifle

• 8 ounces reduced fat cream cheese
• 1 cup lemon nonfat yogurt
• 2 cups skim milk
• 1 (3.4 ounce) package instant lemon pudding mix
• 2 packages fresh strawberries (32 ounces total), sliced(set aside a dozen slices for top)
• 1 (10 inch) prepared (or from a mix) angel food cake
• 1 (8 ounce) container light coolwhip topping

In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and yogurt. Add milk and pudding mix and beat for 2 minutes on medium. Put in fridge until needed. Tear angel food cake into 1 inch pieces. Place in layers in the dish: angel food cake, pudding mixture, strawberries. Layer until dish is almost full (I had two layers of each ingredient). On top of last layer spread cool whip and put the strawberries that were set aside on top around edge of bowl as decoration.

Top Ten List

I got an email from my good friend Laila after I started my blog saying she'd read it. She said my "get to know you quiz" reminded her of the Top Ten Lists we used to make when we were roommates at BYU. So I thought it would be fun to make one. This one's dedicated to you Laila!

Top Ten List (in no particular order)

1. Running (okay jogging really) early in the morning in the Spring and Summer, just about the only good reason I can think of to get up before 7am.

2. Blond hair. I'm so glad my kids got the light blond hair I had as a kid!

3. Good Craftsman architecture and kitchens with creamy white cabinets and subway tiles. Some people enjoy paintings in art museums, for me great home design is a work of art.

4. Springtime in my town. It's really green and pretty for about three or four weeks.

5. Fresh cut tulips in a vase on my kitchen table. I know it only happens once a year but I enjoy it while it's there.

6. Going for walks with my family after dinner (the 10% of the time that no one cries or is too tired or has a tummyache....).

7. Chatting with Brent at the end of the day before we roll over and go to sleep.

8. Summer vacation. Outings with the kids, crickets on cool evenings, and no packing lunches before bedtime!

9. Grey's Anatomy. I can't help it, I'm a little addicted to that show!

10. Scooters. Best form of kid transportation ever! They're easy to toss in the back of the van, you don't have to feel guilty when you send your kids off to school without a helmet, and they're fun. That's why I have one too.

Spring Shape Up

Week 2 results are in. I'm down a total of 5lbs. Yay! I guess I've lost my winter weight and I have to get serious now. I went walking three times this week but I was still a little sick so I didn't do as much as I should have. I'm going to set a goal to get five workouts in this week with some strength training added in. This is totally boring stuff for anyone reading this I'm sure but it will help keep me motivated, hopefully. We have a trip to Southern Utah planned for June so that will be a good incentive to get in shape so I can survive the hikes!