Four Going on Fourteen

At 10:00 this morning I folded Ally's clean clothes and piled them in Crit's dump truck so Ally could wheel them into her room and put them away. I told her not to come out of her room until the clothes were all put away in the right drawers. After 10 minutes I checked on her... the truck was still full of clothes. A few minutes after that I heard crying and whining from her room, "This job is too boring. Why can't I do anything fun?" She whined like that for a while, and then it got quiet.

But not for long. Soon her door opened, she stomped out to the living room, looked me in the eye, and yelled, "How could you do this to your only daughter?!" Then she stomped back to her room and shut the door. Then I didn't hear from her for half an hour.

She came out at 11:15 and told me in her happiest voice, "Mommy, I've put all my clothes away in the right drawers. Can I watch a show now, please?"

If this is "Preschool Ally," how in the world am I going to deal with "Teenage Ally?"

The Best Birthday Present Ever!

What's the best part of celebrating your kid's first birthday? This:

We have 2 scoops of formula left! Then it's all whole milk, baby! Hooray!

Happy Birthday, Christian!

My baby's first birthday was yesterday *sniff*. I can't believe it was already a year ago that he was my little teeny newborn in the hospital.

We had a little party on Saturday, but with all the commotion, I was only able to take a picture of the cake. Mike got some of the festivities on video, though.

So here is the super-sweet, turn-your-tongue-blue, all-the-kids-wanted-to-take-the-trucks-home, birthday cake.

I have decided that little boys know that they're boys from the second they're born. If he isn't pulling stuff out of drawers, yelling, kicking (or throwing) a ball, or pushing his dump truck around, he's crawling on the floor pushing a car around. And he's already got his "I could never do anything wrong because I'm the sweetest boy in the whole world" face down.

My mom has always told me that you can handle anything your kids do all day long if they sleep at night. I always believed that until my short one started walking. He drives me crazy, and I can always find him by following the trail of stuff he carries around and drops, but I can't imagine him any other way. I love you crazy, Crit! Happy birthday!

The Bearded Lady

Ever wonder what you'd look like with a goatee? Just ask Ally to teach you how to eat anything chocolate. This is brownie batter, but icecream and chocolate chip cookies will work the same way.

Robot Ally

So after we finished our projects last week, we had a couple of empty boxes. And what does every four-year-old love to do with boxes? Here's what Ally came up with. She directed and I wielded the knife. She went between calling herself a robot and an astronaut.

Home Improvements... Finally

We spent some money at Home Depot and can finally enjoy what we spent it on (after buying a new water softener and fixing the garage door, etc., this is very exciting).

This is our new ceiling fan over the table. If you saw our old one you know why I'm so excited about this one. The wallpaper will come down soon. I hope.








These are my new hanging flower baskets and our new flag pole. You can see the back-side of our Utah flag. We hang it that way so our neighbor can see the U. He's a stinkin' BYU fan.








Ally's contribution to our beatification project was water hand prints on the driveway. But now I'm seeing I need to spray some weeds too.





I'm glad I didn't tear out the flower bed. Just about everything has bloomed now.








At Home Depot I went out to the van to feed the baby a bottle and left Mike and Ally to checkout. It took a really long time for them to get done. When they finally made it to the van, Mike said, "You're going to wish you hadn't left us in there." My first thought was that Ally was naughty and he'd gotten mad. Then he showed me the box in the cart. He bought a new garbage disposal. It cost way too much, but it's almost silent so I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would.

The Raisin Miracle

Ally loves raisins. I don't know why. I don't even like the smell of them. But they're cheap, conveniently packaged, and easy to take wherever we go, but we haven't had any for a while.

Ally played at a friend's house last week while the baby and I went grocery shopping. Since raisins were on sale, I bought a six-pack of snack-size boxes. I put all the groceries away and then we picked her up. A couple of hours later I heard her open the pantry and say in her most dramatic and amazed voice, "It's a raisin miracle!" She had no idea how they got there, but she swears that miracle raisins taste even better than regular raisins.

Backyard Campout

Mike and I bought a tent, an air mattress, and a couple of sleeping bags two years ago.The tent was slept in for the first time Saturday night. We were in the backyard on Saturday and out of nowhere Mike asked Ally if she'd like to sleep out. So we pitched the tent, made hot chocolate in a kettle outside and toasted marshmallows on the barbecue. It wasn't the true camp-out experience, but it was as close as we could get on 10 minutes notice. I stayed inside with the baby, but Mike and Ally slept all night long outside. She hasn't stopped talking about it since, and I think if she were in charge we wouldn't live in a house at all.

We LOVE having a backyard that is finally big enough to use!


He was just happy to be outside for a while--even if he had to sleep in the crib that night.