rylie's swim time snack

so rylie loves to eat chalk, which is especially awful at swim time. today she ate some green sidewalk chalk and so she looked a bit like a wet baby clown. i love her dearly, but she is a tad more mischievous than the other two were at this age...

Strawberry Picking

Well, we had a wonderful morning picking strawberries last Saturday...Rylie ate a zillion along the way, and crushed as many with her chubby fingers trying to "help" pick them. We filled four gallon buckets full in no time at all - it was a beautiful sunny morning and we worked our row pretty quickly. Washington Farms has a great little playground for the kids to enjoy after all the picking, and a super fun rope swing. Even Dan took a ride on the rope swing - and held Rylie for part of the time, which she LOVED. Unfortunately, Olivia had an allergic reaction to something, and she broke out in hives all over her body, so we had to cut our morning short and grab some benadryl on the way home. Poor gal. It was super fun, though. And we got 3 batches of freezer jam, 2 gallons of frozen berries, and a delicious strawberry shortcake (not to mention the fresh berries for lunch, dinner, and breakfast.) Yummm...

Fun times with John and Lindsay

And don't forget Bailey! Pretty much all last weekend all we heard from the kids was "Baaaaileeeeey!" I'm so glad that they love that puppy now. We had so much fun when John and Lindsay came down - I showed Linds the house and we spent most of the morning "redesigning" the house and the yard. It's so fun to have such a smart, stylish sister. Then we took the afternoon to play at the botanical gardens. And aside from poor John's allergies, we had a great time. The kids had so much fun running around and playing with Bailey and racing uncle John. We do love to be here near our family. :)

rsu

I just want to say that I'm working on a "bachelor's degree" in business and economics from our "relief society university (rsu)" enrichment program. I'm learning a lot so far, and so I'll probably be updating the blog with the things I learned. Tonight I learned a cool new budgeting method, and I'm excited to try it out. That's all I wanted to say. Nothing big.

a row and a wow

So Olivia and I had a little tiff yesterday morning about whether or not she should wear her jacket for our morning jog - It was 35 degrees when we left the house. I literally wrestled her into the jacket (I'm not proud of that...) and 5 seconds later she had it off. I was so frustrated and so I just threw the jacket into the back of the stroller, buckled them in, and set off. The air was brisk and I confidently waited to gloat when she told me she was cold. But I kept jogging and waiting, and she kept talking about the birds and the flowers and didn't mention the cold once. Halfway through the trip, she asked, very logically, "Mom, why can't the kids just do what the kids want to do, and the grownups just do what the grownups want to do?" Makes perfect sense. I realized that perhaps I need to trust her a little bit more, allow her the freedom she really wants to make her own decisions and live with the consequences. There was really NO need for me to wrestle with her to get her to wear a jacket... I'm impressed with how simple her comment was, and how expressive it is of her 'condition' these days. I plan to relinquish my desire for control and offer her a bit more freedom. Hopefully, this will work for our good and give us all a little more...peace. :)

Tucker's Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Tucker! I can't believe I have a six year old. He's such a great kid, and today was a fun day for him. We had a little family party before I had to go to mutual and he was so excited about each one of his presents...all but the shirts for school, at which he gave a crooked smile and a half-wink. I'll have to post pictures when I get them downloaded. I am so blessed to be Tucker's mom.

Also, I just want to say that I love working with the youth at church - they are remarkable, wonderful kids. And sometimes when I'm with them, I wonder what I was doing all that time I was a teenager. :) I love my calling.

Spaghetti: Dinner AND a Show.

We had a fun family dinner last night, with all of us laughing hysterically at Rylie enjoying her spaghetti. I'm so glad I took off her shirt. :)  She had noodles in her nose and sauce in her hair - eventually giving herself a uni-brow look. And once she saw that we thought she was funny, she was cramming it in faster. Dan took some video, too. Once we get some space on our hard drive again (our computer is old enough that it has less hard drive space than Dan's iPod) we'll upload some of the movie clips and share them.

It's not often that we get to eat dinner together these days, with Dan's travel and work schedule and my evening teaching and tutoring and mutual. It's nice that when we do get to eat together, it's an...experience worth remembering. :)