The Trials of a Busy Mom
My talented artist sister Amy did the artwork for Music and the Spoken word on Sunday. This is her third time in three months that they have asked her to do this, so I hope it’ll be a regular job for her. When she told me that she was doing some paintings for their Thanksgiving show, I was excited. She gets to paint the Mayflower and some pilgrims reaching the country.
In fact, here’s one of the paintings.
About a week ago, a friend called me and said, “We’re going to go and rake leaves! Come with us.” Since we live in a newer subdivision, none of us have big old trees with lots of leaves, so we don’t really get to experience the fun that is raking leaves. So we tossed the kids in the car and drove over a few streets to an older street in our ward, and got out the rakes. Actually, we don’t even own a rake, so we asked if we could use theirs. It was a glorious fall day with the sun still shining and the kids had a wonderful time raking leaves with their friends.
Did I say raking? I meant playing.
Can you find Paige?
Or Natalie?
We had so much fun the kids didn’t want to stop. They raked up ALL the leaves they could find in this one yard, and also from the gutters and even the house across the street. They wanted to go back the next day!
We had to bring 4 bags of leaves home to put in our garden, according to the kids. I don’t think we really need that for mulch, but who was I to say no to a few bags of leaves. The problem wasn’t the leaves in the bags, however, it was the amount of leaves the kids tracked into the car and the house. When they undressed that night, there were even leaves in their underwear. I had to vacuum out the car, since the crunched up leaves were attaching themselves to EVERYTHING.
It was a fun fall free for all!
Before we leave Halloween and all the fall fun behind, I need to post a few pictures of my family. We had a fun Halloween, with lots of festivities. We started with cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. 
It didn’t take us long to give those away and EAT the rest. Believe me, there was a lot of cookie eating going on.
Then there was the great pumpkin carving fest of Monday night, which was the usual gooey, gross experiment. Everyone was proud of their creations.
Tuesday was a ward Halloween party, and even the parents got to dress up. If you can’t tell what everyone is: Megan is a pencil, Natalie is a devil woman, Jenna is a leopard, I am an escaped con, and John is a zebra. Ryan even dressed up as goofy. It was a lot of fun, although some of us got tired before it was over.
Then on Wednesday, we had the school parade: 
The class parties, and the halloween play.
And then the trick or treating!
I don’t have pictures of the large amount of candy they all brought home, but I’m sure you had similar piles of booty at your house. It was a fun Halloween, and we enjoyed every minute of it!
We are back from our vacation! We had a great time. We did some things right and some things wrong on this trip, and to share what I’ve learned and enlighten you so that you don’t make the same mistakes, here we have our list.
Good things
**I bought lots of snacks from Costco before we went. The most helpful were the Sunny Delight bottles. They have the little pop up drink tops, and the kids could keep them in their fanny packs and have a drink when they wanted. They also enjoyed the granola bites, ritz bits packages, and the fruit snacks. Plus, then we didn’t have to spend as much money in the park on snacks.
**I packed extra socks and at least two pairs of shoes for each child, so that if one pair made their feet hurt one day (or got soaking wet) they had another pair to wear the next day.
**We stayed with some friends of ours in St. George on the way down. The kids LOVED playing with friends, it was a free place to stay (with breakfast included), and it was fun to see them again. They also invited us to ditch our hotel and stay with them on the way back, but we didn’t want to impose TOO much. When they insisted we come for dinner, though, we readily agreed.
**Birthday badges. Always a fun thing, and then you can get those free tortillas from the tortilla factory in California Adventure.
**Fast passes. Because there was a mix-up when we were entering and they wouldn’t let us use the tickets I had bought on line and sent us to guest services and then guest services told us we didn’t need to come to them, but should be able to use those passes at the main gate and it was a general pain and a run around (whoo–long run on sentence, isn’t it?), the lovely Jen at guest services gave me a fast pass for any ride we wanted for the whole party. It wasn’t the magical fast pass by any means (which I tried and was SO close to getting TWICE, but no go on that one), but it saved us some time going on Space Mountain (and by “us”, I mean everyone ELSE who went on space mountain. Although I did brave quite a few yucky rides this time, that isn’t one of them). We also used fast passes on lots of other rides, saving us lots of time, I’m sure.
**Meeting friends! I have a roommate from college who lives about 3 hours away from Disneyland, and they have annual passes. So, when I ask if they’d like to meet us, their answer has always been yes. I guess they go about once a month to Disneyland, and they don’t get tired of it–imagine that!
So, they met us there on Friday, and their two kids are the same ages as Cole and Megan. They had a BLAST together, and it really gave them something extra to look forward to. On Saturday night, when John was asleep and Jenna had been begging to just go back to the hotel for about an hour and a half, we decided to call it quits for the day (we’d only been there for 11 hours, I can’t believe they would be tired!). Our friends were nice enough to keep Cole and Megan with them for another 3 hours. Then they didn’t have to be slowed down by “the little kids” and could go on all the fun rides they wanted (at least until California Adventure closed. Then they realized that we had taken their passes with us, so they could not go over to Disneyland without those passes and just made their way out of the park). I’m glad that our kids can be such good friends, even if it’s just for those couple of days at Disneyland.
**We rode three rides that I had never ridden before. The finding Nemo ride, which is new, of course, was one. We ONLY had to wait an hour for that one, and apparently that was a “short” wait. Everytime we saw the line or talked to anyone else who had waited, they had to wait longer. Another ride was Peter Pan. I don’t know why I’ve never ridden that ride before. There were probably long lines and we didn’t think it was worth it. But that was a fun ride! Same thing with Pinnochio’s Daring adventure, or whatever that one is called. First time for that one, too.
**And the Block Party Bash.
I just LOVE that parade! There was no one in front of us, so John and his little cousin, and all the little kids were just dancing the night away with Boo and Sulley. It was so much fun! If you’ve never watched that one, it’s one to catch. And I love those army guys! 
**Earplugs. With seven people in a hotel room, it’s nice to have a set of earplugs to drown out the noise of everyone breathing. Not that I want them to stop breathing, I just want them to be quiet about it. 
**Ziplock bags. Helpful for keeping your stuff dry when you ride the Grizzly rapids ride, and also great for all those snacks.
**Character breakfast. We splurged on a fancy character breakfast on Sunday at the PCH grill. Lilo and Stitch and Minnie and Max were there to take pictures with (the only character pictures we have, by the way, since they all had extremely long lines). It was also a fabulous buffet, with everything imaginable to eat for breakfast, even chicken nuggets! I don’t really consider chicken nuggets to be a breakfast food, but there were some members of our party who enjoyed them for breakfast. After making the kids skip meals and living only on snacks for a few meals of our trip, it was nice to be able to say, “Sure, have more bacon if you’d like,” for once. And eat they did. I think Jenna had about four pieces of sausage, Cole had about a pound of bacon, and lots and lots of Mickey waffles and pancakes. Even though it was a LOT of money to spend on breakfast, it was fun, and I’m glad we did it once. Besides, then we could skip lunch, since we were all so very full.
Some Not so Good things
**I bought some “Sparkling Rain” flavored carbonated water (a whole case of it) and NOBODY liked it. Yuck. I still have most of a case of it, if anyone’s interested.
**Jackets. Or the lack of them. For some reason one of the kids didn’t end up packing a jacket, even though I’m pretty sure I put it in the bag for them. So on the cold or rainy days, it was not good for her. She had to wear just a long sleeved shirt over her t-shirt, and then on the rainy day, she had to wear a jacket of John’s that was too small for her. I wish I had made sure that every single person had a sweatshirt, a jacket AND a hat.
**Lines. As I said before, we took 1/2 of Utah with us to the park, and the lines were long and obnoxious. Enough said.
**Traffic Jams. We hit some kind of traffic jam on the freeway going through Las Vegas, and we should have just gotten off. Thinking it would clear up any minute, we stayed on the freeway. For an hour. Dumb. We should have just gotten off right then, drove through the city, and then gotten back on.
**Stroller rental. Even if you can get a free stroller rental in the park, you really should just bring your own from home, anyway. My brother-in-law, who we were traveling with (he won a trip, too!), told me that he could get two free stroller rentals each day with his Disney Visa, so we wouldn’t need to bring a stroller. Great, I thought. Less to pack. But you can’t get that stroller until you are inside the park, so what do you do with all the snacks, jackets, and general crapola that you schlep into the park with you until then? You carry it, that’s what. And what do you do with the child when he falls asleep in the park and you can’t take the stroller out of the park? You carry him, that’s what. So, even if you CAN get a free stroller rental, you really should just bring your own if you have a child 4 or younger. I should have thought that one out better.
Overall it was a fabulous trip! We had so much fun with our kids, and I am so glad we were lucky enough to go. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with the washing machine.
**I should never have told the kids we were going to Disneyland. Now I’m bombarded by questions about a thousand times a day. “When are we leaving?” “How much school are we going to miss?” “Am I going to have to miss my fieldtrip?” “Where’s my suitcase?” And then they all proceed to “Pack”. But if they pack, that just means I’m going to have to unpack, make sure they have the right stuff, and then pack AGAIN. I asked them to please put the clothes they wanted to take on their beds, but that didn’t happen. So, today, I will be packing, buying snacks, finding a home for our pets while we are gone, etc.
**General Conference was Awesome. Great talks, and great music. If it weren’t for my kids constantly making too much noise, it would have been perfect. But they listened to some of it, too, and hopefully they learned something. My favorite talk? President Eyring’s Sunday morning talk. And Sister Beck’s.
**Did I mention that we had a very large TV in our family room? Well, we do. 
A broken, unwanted 60 something inch tv that weighs 300 pounds. It’s been in our family room for a few weeks, now, and this weekend Ryan got it working well enough (he says it’s not quite right, yet, but it looked ok to me), and so we moved the old tv out, disrupting our entertainment center. We had to take EVERYTHING out of the shelves, putting it all on the kitchen table. I’m amazed at how much stuff that thing holds. Well, with the big old tv there in the middle, that eliminates the middle section of the entertainment center. So, I spent the weekend rearranging and trying to find other homes for all the photo albums, videos, scrapbooks, and ‘stuff’ that used to occupy those shelves. I’m not quite done. But now the old tv is up in our bedroom (wa-hoo! The channels don’t end at 35–how exciting!) and that tv is going down to the basement. Poor Ryan, he had to do all the hauling, and now his back is sore.
**This morning as I was putting in my time on the treadmill, I turned on the tv and AMC was playing “Pretty in Pink”. Who doesn’t love that movie?
**The winner of my book give away is Cynthia. Congratulations, Cynthia!
This morning, as I was leaving Curves for my morning workout, the phone was ringing when I opened the car door. I answered it quickly, thinking it had to either be Ryan calling from Denver, or one of my kids calling about an emergency at home.
“Mom,” it was Megan.
“Yes?” I panted.
“That giant balloon pig just landed in the next door neighbor’s back yard!” she told me excitedly.
“I’m on my way home. I can see it!”
And sure enough, there was a giant hot air balloon of the big pink pig that says Bank of American Fork right there in the neighbor’s back yard. And all the neighbors gathered around to see it. By the time I got my camera, it had taken off and was up in the sky, so I didn’t get a good picture. But that’s sure an exciting way to start the day.
I had to herd the girls back inside to get ready, and John ended up playing outside with his friends in his pajamas, but it’s all good.
First, I’d like to thank Ryan for posting that picture on Saturday. And then if you wanted, you could look at all 100 pictures we took that day. I can’t believe we took that many pictures! Well, we did give Cole the camera during the present opening, so we did get some pictures like this:
 We’d like to thank Julene for making that fun fire hydrant cake! I was looking at it and I said, “you forgot a letter.” “What?” She thought I was kidding, but sure enough, if you look closely, you’ll see:
that we’re wishing him a Happy Birtday. No worries, he’s four. Julene could not believe that, and started thinking she could take some of the white frosting and squish an h in there, but we wouldn’t let her. This is her first ever lettering mistake, after all. So, yes, we have to embarrass her and point it out. Cause we’re so nice that way. Anyway, all the kids wanted fire hydrant pieces (made from twinkies!) and loved the cake.
We really enjoyed the fire station mini tour for the kids. John even got to sit up in the drivers seat.  
And Cole got to try on the suit. He didn’t really want to, but we made him. Because we’re such good and loving parents. 
All the kids, even the big ones, seemed to really think those fire trucks were cool. And it was free! I did take a giant cookie and a thank you note, which they seemed to appreciate, but they didn’t charge me anything for the tour.
  They also enjoyed the pinata. But what group of boys (or girls for that matter) doesn’t enjoy hitting things with a stick with the intention of breaking it to get candy out of it. Whoever invented the pinata was really brilliant. 
 
I also just have to tell you a little bit about the skit we did for school on Friday. I had to do a little introduction to the Reflections contest for the school, and I decided to just have Megan and her friends do it for me. When I was trying to write it (last Monday–yes, I plan ahead), I was just having a mental block, so I started thinking about what costumes I actually have. Well, we have a huge Nemo costume, and everyone has one or two witch costumes, right? So, I wrote the skit around that.  Four witches and a fish.
They did such a great job! I may never have to be in my own skit again!
 
And we had a bunch of parties/dinners this weekend, too. Friday night I got together with my dear friends for dinner; always fun! Saturday night we had my cousin and her husband over for dinner, then Monday we went over to our friend Tess’s house for a wonderful barbeque. We tried our hand at making homemade ice cream. Even though we didn’t have quite enough ice (the grocery store was out, can you believe it?) it turned out yummy.
But the festivities end today. Ryan will be out of town for the next week and I will be singlehandedly managing the household. And lucky me–this week we have two soccer games, two soccer practices, two dance lessons, only one piano lesson, four days of early morning band or orchestra, scouts, and a ward party. So far. Wish me luck.
Where have you been, Paige? You post three posts on Friday and then you abandon us for three days–what gives?
Well, don’t you wish you knew! I’ve been kind of busy here, folks. Since I blogged last, we’ve: driven up to Smithfield for Ryan’s nephew’s “mission farewell” on Sunday, then drove back in time to go to a neighborhood potluck dinner (too much food!); went to a friend’s 40th birthday party and the kids ended up playing in the ditch until they were soaking wet; I went to see the Nanny Diaries with some friends; John and I went to the zoo with friends Melinda and Will.
I’ve also been working on a skit for the reflections kick off assembly. I’ve got one written now, and I’ll tell you it’s a riviting script with four witches and a fish. Stellar writing, that one is. I’ve also got to get the handouts ready, figure out when the due dates are, and get everything ready for Friday. Am I remotely ready? Nope.
I’m also planning John’s birthday party for Saturday, and we finally went today and bought the invitations and filled them out. We’ve delivered 6 of them, and he’s bugging me to deliver the last two. We’ll be going to the fire station to take a look at the trucks. I’m sure I’ll tell you all about it and include pictures of the excitement.
And, I’m working on writing an article for the upcoming “Keeping Tabs” newsletter. That’s the tabernacle choir’s semi-annual newsletter, and for the last couple of issues, I’ve written an article about the bell choir. Have I not mentioned this before? Oh. I don’t even really remember how I met the editor, but we started talking, and I must have emailed her a picture she asked for, or something. But later she emailed me and asked me if I wouldn’t mind writing an article about what we are doing in the bell choir. And she just keeps asking me to write one. Probably because she doesn’t know anyone else to ask to write it, but I’m ok with that. She even listed me as an “associate editor”.
Can you believe that? Me an associate editor? You can actually read the whole little article I wrote here, if you are interested. But I’m rambling (what else is new?). So, like I said, I’m working on another article for that.
So, I’ve been a little bit busy and haven’t gotten to the blog. And my son seems to think he needs to use my computer every moment that he’s home. School project? Whatever. What’s your excuse?
If this isn’t the sickest looking chicken I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is. I don’t know much about chickens, but all the others looked healthy and happy, and this poor little thing looked like it had just gone through the washer and the dryer.
“Mommy, can we get a sheep?”
Or better yet a pony!?
Or maybe a goat. Look how sweet this one is!
Whew! We’ve had such a fun time with our guests here to constantly keep us busy. With friends and family visiting, you try to do as much fun stuff as you possibly can. 
Since they drove all this way (from Arizona) to visit, and this is their vacation, we don’t want them to be bored, so we do as much as we can to keep them (and us) going. Some of the things we’ve done in the last 3 weeks include: 
camping,
the dino museum and the children’s garden at Thanksgiving point,
a couple of family parties, a neighborhood party, swimming,
waterslides, Boondocks, 
lots of perler beads 
and lots of legos, eating out,
eating in, and lots more fun stuff. Robin and I even went to the mall and had a mini makeover! 
That’s Julene’s step son Elias 
working on my face (oh, and that’s my new haircut, by the way)
I’m a little exhausted.
(Here’s the kids at Harry Potter day at the library. Can you guess who Cole’s dressed up as?)
But now, everyone is gone, and we have a mere 3 weeks until school starts. And I think I’m done entertaining my kids. They can sit around and read, play with friends, and generally be bored if they chose to! They need that lazy summer time of just laying around the house with NOTHING to do for just a little while before the rush of back to school. And I need to get my house cleaned up again. So, if you need us, we’ll be here. (Well, not exactly all the time–we do have the Highland Fling this week, and Cole’s going camping, and John and Jenna are starting up a little craft class. So, maybe it won’t be quite so boring, but at least I won’t be trying so hard.)
© 2026 Superpaige's Pad
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments