Author: Superpaige (Page 178 of 180)

A picture is worth how much?

July 12, 2005 / Superpaige / 0 Comments

Today we took the kids to Kiddie Kandids. Ugh.

After all that work of getting everyone dressed up, doing their hair so it doesn’t look like they just ran a mile, and then making them all sit still, it hardly seems worth it as I leave with my two measly pictures. It’s just easier to take one child at a time, I guess. Then they get their own moment to do different poses, instead of having all group shots. If one kid looks dumb, I’m not buying.

Oh well, I’m just trying to preserve the special memories of their youth with quality portraits, or something like that.

A good man is hard to find

July 11, 2005 / Superpaige / 1 Comment

Can I just say how thankful I am to be married?!
And not just married, but married to a wonderful guy, and happy with my marriage?
What brought this thought, you may ask? My friend, Robin, who is divorced, is living with us for the summer. And just seeing what it’s like meeting guys with on-line dating profiles, dating, and hearing about the kind of guys that are out there looking just makes me realize that I don’t want to be out there dating–ever! I wish her the best of luck and I would really love to see her and the other girls who are single out there find that wonderful guy (I know it happens), but it won’t be easy. So, be thankful for the man you have! I know I am!

Life is just a scavenger hunt

July 8, 2005 / Superpaige / 0 Comments

Always the organizer of fun, I put together a little neighborhood scavenger hunt. I don’t think kids today know the value of a good old fashioned scavenger hunt. The bad thing was that it was about 100 degrees and I’ve got 30 kids running all over the neighborhood at 3:00 in the afternoon. Oh well, they survived. Here’s the list of what they were supposed to get:

a lifesaver candy
bandaid
a Happy Meal type toy
a receipt
carrot
otter pop wrapper
envelope
a bad photo
piece of string
greeting card
a sacrament meeting program
a coin from 1975 or before
a post-it note
junk mail
one sock
a new diaper
something pink

Afterwards, they all got Otter Pops and suckers. Fun!

You gotta have art

July 7, 2005 / Superpaige / 0 Comments

The kids entered the Steel Days Art Contest in American Fork, and I’m quite proud of them. I just went down to the Library, where the entries are displayed, to see if we need to go there for the awards and artists’ reception tonight, and was pleased to see that 3 of the 4 entries have won awards. Jenna and Natalie each won a 1st place, and Megan won a 2nd place. Cole, unfortunately, didn’t win anything for his quick cartoon drawing of a “pot gut” (Rocky Mountain Groundsquirrel, for those of you not familiar with that term), but I honestly didn’t expect him to win anything. The competition gets stiffer the older you get.

I think it’s a good thing for kids to enter contests like this. They should experience both winning and losing while they are young, so they aren’t so afraid of losing later on in life. If you haven’t experienced a few “safe loss experiences” you might be afraid to try because you are afraid to lose.

Remember those goofy junior high school talent shows? Same thing. We tried out, thought we might not make it, and were suprised when we did make it, although we probably shouldn’t have–those were horrible skits!

Another thought about school–remember the class American Problems? I’m reminded of it every day when Megan practices the piano. Beethoven’s 8th. In my mind I’m hearing: Thou sparks from flame immortal, Chariman brought of noble birth. Born with fire a mighty leader, guide thy peoples of the earth. Let thy magic bring together…..

What’s in your mouth?

July 5, 2005 / Superpaige / 0 Comments

It’s amazing the things I have pulled out of John’s mouth.

The list includes:
*Marbles
*Barbie shoes
*Rocks
*crayons and parts of crayons
*paper
*little tires from a tiny remote control car I gave Ryan for Father’s day
*money
*wadded up kleenex
*elastics for hair
*plain elastics
*yarn
*dental floss (still on the little roll)

There’s certainly more, but I can’t remember them at the moment. Excuse me as I go to find what he’s chewing on right now.

Independence Day

July 5, 2005 / Superpaige / 0 Comments

Fun fun Fun! Summer is all about the fun, right?

Yesterday I took the kids to the Dinasaur Museum at Thanksgiving point. Since I didn’t take John with us (he was home having a nap), it was pretty easy with just the four kids. They played for a whole hour at the sand and water “erosion table”. I should have brought a book. It was nice to see them working together and having so much fun. I bought a year long pass so we can now go whenever we feel like it and not have to pay and extra. With 5 kids I only have to go 3 times to make it worth the pass, so I’m sure we’ll get our money’s worth on that one.

Later, after a great job of washing and cleaning out the van, we went over to our friend Tess’ house for some low key fireworks. Ryan liked the fact that David’s brother’s wife is from Brazil, and her mother was there visiting. So Ryan had a native Brazilian to chat with. Everyone else liked that there was one more person to translate for her.

We had a fun time and are greatful for friends who help us have fun and enjoy our holidays.

I hope you all had a great Independence Day, too!

Camp-O-Rama

July 3, 2005 / Superpaige / 1 Comment

Well, Camping was certainly an adventure! The kids had an absolutely fabulous time. So much fun that I almost wished we had come up for Thursday night, too. But not quite. It was very cold at night, and even inside the tent trailer and inside my sleeping bag I was freezing. I was happy to pick up John and put him in the bed with me when he cried because he could warm me up. When Ryan came to bed (he’s on the late schedule, remember, and doesn’t go to sleep until at least 2 hours after me) I was glad for his warmth, too.

But beside the cold at night part, we had fun chatting with cousins, hiking around in the trees with the kids, keeping John out of the stream (at one point I tied the long rope to him to make sure he wouldn’t go into the stream), doing crafts with the kids, and eating. The diet was thrown away for the camping time, and we all enjoyed the good camping food. We didn’t get to nearly half of the craft things I had planned, but that’s ok. The kids were happy just playing and playing in the dirt and water always ranks higher than crafts.

All in all it was a successful trip.

But the best part was that when we came home, the cleaning elves had come and cleaned up my house–including my pantry!! Now I know that I have 13 boxes of microwave popcorn and 17 different kinds of cereal–and they are all organized! It’s wonderful!

Tomorrow we camp

June 30, 2005 / Superpaige / 2 Comments

Friday night we are going camping. So, that means today will be spent figuring out:

Food
Clothes for 7 people
Back up clothes for 5 of those 7 people
Crafts for the reunion (yes, I’m in charge of the crafts)
digging out the tent trailer that is burried under a winter’s worth of crap in our garage
figuring out how to use the tent trailer–it’s on loan from my parents
sleeping bags, flashlights, etc.

hmmmm. It’s so much work to “rough it” isn’t it?

Wish me luck!

I love a parade

June 28, 2005 / Superpaige / 1 Comment

Parades are fun, aren’t they? Just last week we took the kids (all 7 of them) to the All Horse Parade in Lehi. Lots of pretty horses and (the most exciting part) people throwing candy! That got the kids excited about our:

First annual Neighborhood Bike Parade!
I organized a bike parade for our neighborhood, and surprisingly, we had a great turnout! I bought four rolls of crepe paper to decorate with, gave the kids some tape and balloons and streamers and told them to go out to the garage and have fun. Two short hours later and they all had bikes or scooters decorated. There’s also a lot of crepe paper on the floor in the garage, but that’s no big deal.

So, at 7:00, we all headed over to the designated starting house, and the kids rode proudly through the neighborhood. They did have to ride the “route” a couple of times so the parents could all walk down to the other end of the neighborhood and set up the ice cream social part of the bike parade. We had plenty of ice cream and people took a while to chat while the kids played.

We did have one casualty, however. Somehow Cole collided with another kid on his bike and Cole did a big wipe out. He skinned up both knees pretty badly and bruised his elbow, but thankfully he’ll survive. He needs a few battle wounds to make him tough, right?

Overall, I’m proud of myself for organizing it. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and I hope we can make it a yearly event.

I’ll see if I can get some pictures up here soon, but I kind of need Ryan for that.

Garage Sale

June 26, 2005 / Superpaige / 0 Comments

I love a good garage sale. Much of my house has been furnished by garage sale finds. But having one is totally different. It hardly seems worth it to drag all your stuff out to the yard and try to organize it into attractive piles and then spend the whole morning sitting there while people pick through your stuff. But at least we had a fun time with the neighbors, the kids each purged 5 items (that they know of–I purged quite a few more for them) each, and got the joy of having a little money in their pockets. The kids also enjoyed selling rice crispy squares and suckers, and now they think they are rich.

So, now here I am, a little sunburned, but satisfied that I got rid of at least one truck load of stuff, and that none of it (except two things my kids saw before they sold) came back into my house. I really need to be better at getting rid of things that don’t belong here anymore–Melinda is my idol in that respect. But I’m proud of myself for at least trying.