More on the Mulch - from the girls' perspective

The day of mulching wasn't that bad after all! We got to play outside ALL day, and got away with all sorts of stuff because Mom and Dad weren't looking - like eating dirt! We got free rides in the wheelbarrow from Old McDonald (who needed more of an arm workout):












Then we started to get into everything in the garage, and found all sorts of fun stuff to do! Mom and Dad should really think about organizing their lives some time, instead of just throwing everything out here! (Oh, in this picture, check out the placement of Meri's legs/feet - really, can that be comfortable?)









When we started to get bored and make them feel bad for us (and worried about us sucking on the lawnmower, trying to move cans full of paint, or things like that - which of course are just imaginary examples that didn't really happen because our parents are responsible), they let us play in the car!









What a great idea! Sure, mom's chapstick got eaten, the rearview mirror got "uh-oh, I brote it off," fish faces were made on every conceivable inch of window, the car went nuts when mom and dad turned it on again(windshield wipers, blinkers, hazards, full-volume radio - you name it) , but we were kept happy and occupied while it rained during the last 30-45 minutes of work.
And we gotta say, mom and dad did an excellent job. The yard looks great, and it didn't even take all day. We'd go take a picture of it to show you, but not only would it not do it justice, we're not allowed to cross the street.

Sound tempting to anyone?

Anybody in need of exciting weekend plans??
How about this:
I'm excited. Meredith can't even find the words to describe her excitement. Jenelle will be rolling around in it for pure joy, and Cooper ... about now he's wishing we had a house-full of boys, instead of princesses. In fact, looking at this massive pile of mulch (it looks small in the picture, but don't let that fool you), makes me actually consider having like 10 kids. For one, it would mean I'd basically be pregnant for the next 10+ years, which apart from all the down sides, means I would get a doctor's note excusing me from back-breaking labor such as this. And additionally, they would all grow up to be happy little helpers, wanting nothing more than to spend their weekends doing whatever we wished, and loving being covered in expensive animal poo.
So again, if you're bored tomorrow, you know where we'll be - from sunup until sundown. Any takers?

A little artistic license

So Jenelle LOVES to draw faces. Really, apart from the scribble, circle, line, or occasional letter by accident, it's all she draws. Oh and she always wants us to be drawing them. Here's two examples of her happy faces:
(In case you were wondering, the circles on the sides of the faces are ears, not arms.)


And this is a surprise face with the open "o" mouth, which she herself makes while drawing - cute!









I tried to get her to draw her mad face but she was drawing real people (the magenta one on top is me), and didn't want any of them to be angry. So pretty much all of her happy faces look the same, except for one. The following is my sister, Anna, or Ninnie, as she's called:



(I love watching her add the hair, she just goes nuts and says, "Ninnie has LOTS of crazy hair!" I can't stop laughing about it.)



Oh, and to make Ninnie feel better, here is one of her senior portraits. As everyone can see, she does not have hair growing out of her chin and nose. In fact, she is very beautiful and has hair most girls would give an arm for. So please Ninnie, don't be offended.

"Cherish is a word ..."

Since hearing that a friend of ours suffered a heart attack over the weekend, I have not been able to stop thinking about what happened, and in particular, about how it affects her kids. She is recovering well, which is an absolute miracle, but we didn't know that yesterday, when we taught her 5 year-old son in our Primary class. Unexpectedly, my eyes kept welling up with tears as I looked at him or heard him announce that it's his birthday this week. It was really breaking my heart and made us feel the responsibility of being his teacher so much deeper. And as I couldn't stop thinking about it, I've felt such a need to hold my girls a little longer. Thanks to all the reflecting, I didn't even get mad when they woke up WAY too early, and am so grateful because I pulled them into bed with me instead - one on either side. I think I might have fallen asleep (hard to believe with the crazy loud surround-sound binky breathing going on), and when I opened my eyes, I saw that they were stretching their arms across me to hold hands with each other. I wish I could've pressed pause on that moment (and thus have avoided the tantrums and lack of patience on my part that came later as my sensitivity wore off). I just needed to write to remind myself to really cherish moments like that. I try to tell myself that all the time when I'm frustrated and not handling "situations" as well as I should. I just hope my family never doubts how much I love them.

Goodbye Cable, Hello Internet!

So the time has come to say goodbye to Cable TV - really meaning that I will miss John and Kate Plus 8, What Not to Wear, Sportcenter's Top 10, Fox News, NBA games, and the occasional movie on tv. I gave Cooper cable for his birthday, but it was just through the end of the Blazer's season - which, seeing as they didn't make the playoffs, is over. Hopefully this means less vegging in front of the tv (unfortunately Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs are still available on our tv, meaning it will be on more than I would hope)!
However, in its place we have finally left behind the Dark Ages (as my sister said) and have the internet! Meaning I can actually blog when I want to, look up random trivia we're arguing about, check my email more than once a week (I'm really sick of there being like 30 new emails to look at!), play Text Twist, and whatever else it is that people do on the internet. Yet since they counseled moms not to waste too much time surfing the internet at conference (does blogging count?), I will try to not spend every spare second sitting in this chair (define "spare second" please). And it means I can post fun pictures of us. So here goes!

Here we were enjoying "swimming" in my parent's hot tub today after the longest day of weeding in the history of the world - but hallelujah for finally having a sunny day ... which we spent doing yard work. Wahoo.
She loves this, I find her here ALL the time!
And here too, which I think is as funny as she does.
Now this, is just totally freaky. It appears to be one of those things that somebody thought was a cute idea, but it doesn't really work out the way they imagined. I hate this binky.
And how could my little Yenta not be cute? I am sorry Jenelle for the lack of pictures of you today - the preference I'm showing Meri might have to do with the fact that you've been caught out of bed half a dozen times already tonight. For the love, can't you please just stay in bed???

Pictures from Mexico!!!

Here's a little slideshow of the best pictures from our trip to Mexico. We had a blast! It was a little hot and sweaty, and we always smelled like sun block, but the accommodations were amazing, the company was great, Meri was an angel, and we really got to do everything we could have asked for (including the super fast crocodile slides into the refreshing pools). We were both having constant mission flashbacks as I was always speaking Spanish and we were wandering through Brazil-like slums, which we both loved. My only regret is that I didn't have Spanish pass-along cards - I know, I'm a nerd but the fact that I spoke Spanish led to constant discussions about the church - including our taxi driver that drove us to the airport who nearly started crying as he talked about his 2 year old that had died. Broke my heart. Hopefully missionaries find him, or he actually goes to http://www.mormon.org/ like we suggested. And honestly, Meri put up with everything we tried to do with a smile on her face - dazzling all the Mexicans with her sparkling blue eyes. Now however, I think Meredith is bored to be home. But we were thrilled to be back with Jenellie - we REALLY missed her but we all made it, even through the crazy long trip back on the tiniest plane, which was miserable. But I can't complain, we got to go to Mexico!

Reasons for Rejoicing!

In the words and decibel level of my exuberant Jenellie, “Hip Hip Hooray-yay!” We have good news! Cooper got accepted to the MPA program (Masters of Public Administration) at PSU – which we’ve been waiting to hear for forever. Now we basically have a lot of discussing, praying, further researching, and number crunching to do to figure out for sure if we’re ready for this and if we’re headed down the right road. Does this mean we know what we want to be when we grow up? Hah. Pretty much it means a door has opened and we think we like the view. I’m excited. I think Cooper is too.

On a less life-changing note, I have finished my paintings for the show, which at least deserves a really lazy night of lounging around, doing nothing to celebrate. Or something gooey and chocolatey. I have a total of eight for the show (the two buildings on the hill and the English garden weren’t accepted) and I’m really relieved to be done. Now, of course, we have to start spending our tax refund on matting and framing the lot. But no need to dwell on that sour note – here are the last two images that will be included:

Proud Art Mama?

So Jenelle LOVES to color! That, eating, and doing puzzles pretty much fill about 90% of her day (amazingly enough, she has yet to get bored of the same puzzles day in and out). But back to the coloring – she’s getting good. She does these hilarious little smiley faces, which she’s incredibly proud of, writes letters (probably on accident) which make her crazy excited when she notices, and has even begun to color within the lines. To the right is a creepy monochromatic example:

Here’s where I go from being proud of her blossoming art skills to totally speechless. Yesterday while she was coloring with her markers I told her I was going to just run out and get the mail. In the time it took me to run across the street and back (literally 30 seconds), she colored every square inch of white on the high chair. With red marker. Not sure what she was thinking. Or how she did it that quickly. After cleaning it, I laid down on the couch and told her I really needed a 2 minute nap, and please, please, be quiet (has that ever worked for any of you??????) After turning on every musical toy within sight, she announced a desperate need to use the bathroom. Sitting up frustrated, I noticed everything else that she’d done while I crossed the street – mainly, the carpet and the wall. She’s totally never done anything like this before and I am so baffled. First – why did she do it? The other day when she did something she knew she shouldn’t have done, I asked her why she did it and she said, “because you left the room and you weren’t here.” Honestly she said that to me. So that probably sums that up. But as to how she went from peacefully coloring princess pupils to covering my house in red marker … I mean honestly, she must have gone very suddenly insane and colored everything in sight as frantically as possible. So my question for all you moms is, when I am more experienced at this mothering thing, will I understand what my kids are thinking? Or what makes them tick? Or will I at least have any idea what to say when they’re crazy? Oh and I have learned that I am not made out of the same serious art material as my professor that told me he was so proud of his kids artistic expression when they first drew on the walls in his home that he took pictures and couldn’t punish them at all. I guess I’m just not that hard core.

Less Ice Cream, More Exercise

We have been crazy sick around here for the last two weeks – starting with me. I have sure learned that mom is NOT allowed to be sick! It really, really, really sucks. So we basically never left the house and I haven’t even been able to blog! Gotta say I missed it. But that’s okay, Jenelle’s always here for a good pick me-up. Yesterday while sitting on the toilet, she patted her chubby bare thighs, jiggled them around a bit, and declared with obvious pleasure:

“Hey Mama! My legs are BIG. Like yours!”

Things I've Learned from My Kids

Yesterday while I was trying to take a nap while listening to the girls take turns protesting their undesired nap sentence, I started to make a list of things in my head that could either drive me crazy or make me laugh and love them more. And believe me, they do both. So, eventually I gave up trying and wrote down my list. I decided to title it: Things I’ve learned from my kids.

1. “F is for Goldfish.” “P is for Tato.”
2. Reasoning with a 2 year-old is a good idea. It goes like this: “Close, but F is for f-f-f-fish.” “Actually, (pointing at the picture) “it’s a goldfish.” “Yes I see, but remember the f (pointing at the letter above the picture)? F is for f-f-f-Fish” “Actually Mama, it’s a goldfish.”
3. “Now lie down and don’t get out of bed again,” really is an invitation to begin rearranging everything in the room the moment I shut the door. Or even better, today it meant, “Please find an obscure water bottle that you stashed under your bed who knows when, take the lid off, and dump the water all over your bed. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to cry about it because I should never have got the idea in your sleepless head in the first place.”
4. “Come here Meri, let’s change your bum,” means “Turn and run for the hills! Run Meri Run!
5. “Look where you’re going” is usually followed by a loud thump. And tears.
6. “Shhh! Quiet!” means you should yell, “WHAT??” And along with that, when I say “Time to go home” at the park, I really mean that I’m eager to test out my parenting skills and since nobody is looking yet, please throw a relentless and very loud tantrum.
7. The lyrics to “Joy to the World” are really “…The Earth receive her keys! Let every hearty-heart, prepare wif him a roomy room…”
8. “Weeding” means different things to different folks. To Jenelle it means shoveling endless amounts of dirt into Mama’s weed bucket. To Meri it means picking up handfuls of dirt, seeing how it tastes, and throwing it in disgust at the nearest passer-by. Honestly, what did you expect it to taste different than the last time?
9. Worms are “sooooooo toot (cute)!” unless they get close.
10. There is an invisible giant haunting our hallway. Oh, and an occasional zoo. “Jenelle, can you go get such and such from your room?” Pitter patter, pitter patter – “Ahhh! An elephant!” “Jenelle, there’s no elephant.” “A hippo?” “No, the hippo’s at the zoo too. “Ahh! A monkey!” “Oh boy.”
11. Spaghetti should always be eaten shirtless.
12. Giving food to Meri on a plate is not the civilized thing to do. Quite the opposite in fact. She finds it quite rude, and therefore, immediately picks it up and dumps the contents off every time.
13. Kids have a special radar. If mom and dad begin to snuggle, off goes the alarm, and everybody wakes up and cries regardless of the time of day or night.
14. Wearing curlers makes me “so, so cute … like a cow.” And in case I was confused, she followed this statement by mooing at me.
15. Crackers go well with any meal (although, I have to admit, I already knew this – and they really hit the spot after chocolate ice cream).
16. Somehow my words change in midair before they enter my kids’ heads. For example: “K’I have some juice?” “Yes you can. I will get you some as soon as I finish changing Meri’s bum.” “K’I have some juice?” “Yes, just a second.” “Can I have some juice??” “Jenelle, please wait.” “K’I have some juice???” “Jenelle! What did I just say?” “Yes, I can have some juice.” “That is not what I said. What did I say?” Short pause. “Can I have some juice now?”
17. What Mama is eating, even if it’s the same thing, always looks SO much better.
18. “Please put that down,” or “don’t play with that,” translates to “Hurry! Play with it as quickly as you can before mom takes it away!!!”
19. An ankle is really called your “gunk.”
20. Figuring things out with kid #1, does not at all help for kid #2, which is one of life’s real cruelties – it just doesn’t seem fair.
21. Don’t ever disrupt the nap schedule – it always backfires. I just wish they wouldn’t disrupt mine.

To be continued later because the kids have noticed me on the computer, and the noise of the keyboard is a temptation not to be overcome - #22.

New Paintings!

Alisha's been working really hard, and we wanted to give you all an update on her progress. So here are the paintings she's turned out in preparation for the show. So here you go! (I'll get them on the web site soon.)

All Tied Up

You know how sometimes you just want to tie your kids up? Just kidding, what a horrible thing to say - who would ever want to do a thing like that? And what's more, who would actually do it?



And this is her, "I'm a scary monster" face with monster hands included, in case it wasn't immediately obvious:













On second thought, it might not have been the smartest idea to teach her how to tie me up. That's one of those things that could come back to bite me, or an unfortunate babysitter, sometime in the not-so-distant future. But she did have fun taking the picture by herself (with me trying to keep myself in the picture as she moved it all around).










Don't even ask what the stuffed animals did to deserve this kind of treatment. Especially the poor hanging monkey.












Then when that fun had run its course, we moved on to create these breathtaking masterpieces:


So there you go daddy. This is what we do all day while you're at work (or at least it's what we do while Meri is taking an awesomely long nap and I'm avoiding any and all housework with amazing skill)!

Meri's First Birthday Pics

In case you weren't convinced that we have the prettiest girls in the world:

https://www.smilesbywire.com/home.asp?AC=LTPP0102107510JCP

Click on the link, and enter "Alisha Whitman" in the customer name field. Jenelle wasn't supposed to have any pictures, but she jumped in front of the camera and started hamming it up. Life is good.

Best Weekend Ever

Talk about blogging delinquents! I suppose that's what happens when Alisha paints as much as she does--I would expect this to continue for some time. Another side-effect is that you get me blogging instead of her, which isn't good for anybody. Regardless, here we go.

Last weekend, Shaun, Janelle and Preston (note the A in the name to avoid confusion in the rest of the post) came to visit us. Shaun and I go almost as far back as Alisha and I go, so that's saying something. They live in California, unfortunately, but I'm convinced that's not permanent. Regardless, we had a fantastic time with their visit. We had a blow-up bed in our living room, 3 little ones cruising around, played games, chatted well into the night--you know, the sorts of things that friends do. Jenelle finally returned Shaun's love (when we all lived in Utah she was scared to death of him), Preston loved us (he doesn't like strangers) and Meri, of course, loved the new faces. Here's a little taste of the fun that was had:


And here's a little something for Shaun, because he was giving me a hard time about not posting anything of their visit yet. Here's your boy, in all his pink sparkly glory for all of the world to see:

Let this stand as a warning to any of you with boys who want us to babysit. I only know girls.

Our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream ...

Meredith turned 1! Honestly, it really can't be possible. For some reason I'm hanging on to her being a baby a lot more than I did with Jenelle. She's just my sweet little darling that loves to cuddle with mommy. Can that last please?? With all the trials and chaos of this last year, I feel like I missed out on so much because I was busy on just making it, and now I blinked and she's 1. It has been a crazy year - the hardest of our lives, but we feel like we have been blessed so tremendously and hopefully have learned all we needed to. Anyway, back to my adorable 1 year-old.

Let the fun begin! I don't really think wrapping paper was made for 1 year-olds. As the picture on the right shows, she got tired of me trying to make her part of it pretty quickly.










But we have a winner! I had picked out a baby doll with a binky and as soon as she saw it she just pointed like this, as if to say, "I'll take that one. Yes, could you please remove it from its bag please." And then she proceeded to carry it around the rest of the night and pat its back. Hopefully this will be the end to the contention in our home surrounding Jenelle's very similar looking baby with a binky!










And the cake! You can't really tell but we have here a desert island with gigantic fish swimming around with little gummy bears enjoying the sun and trying to escape on rafts or in life preservers. The kids didn't really think it was as funny as I'd hoped.









And despite her dainty, tiny little bites, she did end up with some cake on her face (she picked at it very slowly, licking her fingers as she went). She still has blue boogies. I'm just not sure where the kids that just plow into the cake come from. Jenelle wouldn't touch her first cake, even when we shoved it in her mouth, and Meri liked it but didn't get overly excited by any means. Oh well. Happy Birthday darling! Let's hope this next year goes a bit slower!

I got friends in small places ...

I'm really not sure what's so attractive about really small places that are going to be impossible to get out of, but I don't think my kids are the only ones that just can't resist the temptation! Cracks me up every time. I just think it's hilarious. Although, they tend to disagree. I wish I had more pictures because Meredith is constantly getting stuck in the weirdest places. The trunk of Jenelle's Elmo car (who knew there was a place so small that her behind couldn't fit), bath toys, etc. Jenelle once crawled under a chair with incredibly low rungs and hadn't yet discovered how to crawl backwards. Didn't know it was a separate skill. But here, Meri had the same problem (stuck underneath a small trampoline):










She can sometimes get out of this, but it usually involves a face plant and tears:












And when I grabbed the camera, Jenelle had to join in, but Meredith was very legitimately stuck. Oh, and I've found her in exactly the same position half a dozen times recently. Apparently that whole learning from our mistakes portion of her brain isn't fully developed. But then again, whose is?

New paintings, no sleep

So I promised I'd post pics of what I'd be painting. I haven't taken good pictures yet, so the colors are pretty washed out and not good quality, but you can get a general idea. This first three are thanks to Raina's recent Europe trip. This one I like:













This one I did three times and am still not super happy with:










This one I've since finished (during last night's Blazer game - which really didn't help stress levels any), but am not at all happy with:













This one comes from my mother-in-law's recent Europe trip. Hey, it's a great thing that people I know travel! Parts are okay, overall it just seems so-so to me, but on the plus side that means I don't hate it:













In this one, the background has more of a green color in real life. Sometimes I really like it, sometimes I don't. And most of the time, I just really love painting flowers, but am scared of ending up as "one of those female painters," who only paint flowers or flowery, feel-good subjects. I think it might just be a little bit of the arrogance the art department always shoved down our throats about Thomas Kinkade being the root of all evil in this world, and I'm not really planning on going down in history or anything, but at the same time ... I don't know. Anyway:













And this one has a lot more of a blue-purple background then you can see:












And if you're wondering, I only get to paint at night when the girls go to bed. So I don't sleep anymore. Hence I've been sick for eternity. And just maybe, this is how Cooper found us when he got home from work last night:










Yes, I was sleeping in Jenelle's bed. In my defense, everybody is clothed and pretty happy, nobody's crying, causing harm to body or house, and the rest of the house was at least picked up. Tee hee.

Wahoo! A video!

So I've been wanting to post a video for forever, but being a bit more complex than my normal posts, it hasn't happened till now. Thanks to Cooper being bored every night as I paint, here's a video!



I love the way Jenelle sings "joy" and her cute little coy, leave you wanting more kiss. Oh and the look on her face as she pretends to hug. Basically, that's why Coop can't wait to get home each night! And the second segment, the tackle was one of those wonderful accidents you get on tape, and the somersault is perhaps the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. She really is slightly more coordinated than that! And the final segment shows Meredith's unique little dance she always does now when she gets excited about some music. I love it! She just spins and spins until she falls over. Usually I can't get anything on tape - one of the really big tragedies of my existence. Anyway, hope you enjoy! Oh and by the way, does everybody else's kids think their family home videos are the funniest things in the world?