Category: Family Fun (Page 24 of 25)

Wow!

I don’t know about you, but Birthdays for me are kind of a let-down. I work really hard to make sure my kids have fun, special birthdays, and always remember my hubby’s birthday, too. With my birthday being at a very inconvenient time of year (4 days after Christmas–eek!), it’s often forgotten and most usually glossed over.

So yesterday, I was feeling kind of down, anticipating that my DH would once again underwhelm me with his casualness, and I complained about how my birthday was such a non event. I’ve been quizzing the kids “Do you know when Mommy’s birthday is?” the answer was usually not specific, or just plain no. Ryan told me not to get depressed yet, it’s not even my birthday, and who knows, it may go really well.

I must sincerely apologize to him, because he really pulled it off this year. When John woke up, Dad got him up and changed him, and made him his “p-butter toast” that he wants every morning. Then he got the kids up and they made me breakfast in bed that was even yummy (scrambled eggs with ham!), and they all brought it up on the “you are special” plate on a tray. The kids had all made cards and Megan even gave me a present that she bought herself, a black purse with a pink P on the front. I absolutely LOVE IT! I love the fact that she picked it out herself, and it’s a really cute purse! Ryan said, “I’ll give you your present when you come downstairs.”

So, after eating my breakfast in bed (alone), I took all the packaging off the purse, and brought my tray down to the kitchen to see my kids eating breakfast. Then I looked up and saw—-

A Brand New Refridgerator!

Right there in my kitchen. It wasn’t there last night! How did he do it?

Wow! A new fridge! The kids were all jumping out of their seats with excitement, and Ryan was so shocked that I didn’t know, and told me the whole story about how it was ordered but not here in time for Christmas, and he had to pick it up since he couldn’t risk having it delivered when he wasn’t here, and how he drove the whole way from North Salt Lake with this big fridge in the back of his little truck, and how he hid it in the neighbor’s garage, and how he and his friend Larry brought it in last night after I was asleep, and he couldn’t believe I didn’t hear them making all the noise. I seriously did not hear a thing! He took all the food out of the fridge and freezer, threw a bunch of stuff out, and transferred it to the new clean fridge without me knowing it. I am so impressed!!

So, I must say, he really surprised me with this one, and I must let him off the hook for all the less than wonderful birthdays I’ve had in the past (like him saying he couldn’t possibly be ready by December 29, so we would celebrate on January 29, instead. Come to think of it–that year I believe he got me a freezer. Do I sense a trend here?).

The kids and I are going out to do something fun now. We’re hoping to catch a movie, and then Ryan and I will have a date tonight. So, everyone, the Birthday is a success!

Here’s my girls in their new Christmas pajamas.

After all the preparations, parties, concerts, buying, hiding and wrapping of presents, listening to, singing, and playing Christmas music, eating lots of food I shouldn’t and having so much holiday fun, it’s hard to accept the fact that Christmas is over, and I’ll have to wait a whole year for another Christmas. I guess it’s the after Christmas blues. Oh well, on the bright side, the weather is nice, no inversion has set in to make us depressed, and we have all these new toys to keep the kids busy, right? What I NEED to do is start my diet, get out there and exercise, and clean my house. What I am doing is shopping around for a replacement dual screen dvd player for the car, since the one I bought for the kids didn’t work, and when I took it back to Toys-R-Us they didn’t have any more. Any suggestions?

How do you handle the after Christmas blues?

Here are the three youngest rugrats, just as cute as…well, gingerbread! This was taken after Natalie’s 1st grade play, “The gingerbread boy caper,” which included such well loved songs as “Gingergread Rock”, “Oh where, oh where has the gingerbread gone,” and “Oh Gingerbread”.

I took four kids to the Hale Center Theater in Orem last night to see Beauty and the Beast. Other than Jenna, who squirmed around and complained through the first half, and squirmed around on my lap until she fell asleep during the second half, the kids really enjoyed it and had a good time. It’s considerably longer than the Disney movie they made it from; they’ve added lots of new songs. So, it was a LONG time for them to sit still, and I’m really proud of how well they sat still and were well behaved. I didn’t enjoy carrying Jenna out to the car after it was over (that’s what Dad’s for, right?), but other than that we had a great time!

In other news, our digital camera has really bit the dust. It wouldn’t open or close all the way, and displayed an error. Ryan couldn’t figure it out, so he took it apart. Now it’s just a bunch of camera peices in a ziplock baggie. So, of course, since I have no camera to document anything, John took the opportunity yesterday to cover his face and some of his hair with Mascara. So, not only do I not have a picture of it, I don’t have mascara. So if any of you would like to donate your old digital cameras to our cause, we’d be sure to give you a receipt and you could write it off as a charitable donation. Sounds like a good idea to me!

Let the soccer games begin!
Saturday marked the official opening of soccer season around here. I’ve got two girls playing soccer this season, which is one less than the three we had in the spring. I finally told Cole that he was too old to play recreational soccer, and unless he wanted to play competitively, he couldn’t play. He was ok with that, so it’s good that we only had two games to attend at exactly the same time on Saturday morning. Or, I should say, two games for RYAN to attend at exactly the same time. I don’t know why it is written in the stars that games will always be at the same time, but they just seem to be. I had a rehearsal for Bells, so I was nowhere around to transport kids, but luckily the neighbor is Natalie’s coach, so he took her to her game. Ryan went to Megan’s game, and I hear she was on fire. She scored a goal, and her coach said she was really proud of her giving it her best. She’s quite a runner! Natalie tells me that her team scored 17 goals and won. (Her coach informed me it was more like 2 goals, and he thinks they won.) So, everyone was happy with their scores.
(Jenna took this picture, by the way, of Megan taking a much needed break during her game)

Megan, Cole, Sarah and Jacob all entered items they had made into the Utah County Fair. Cole and Jacob did Lego sculptures, Megan entered a watercolor picture and Sarah and Megan entered a book they had written and illustrated together. So, we all went to the Fair on Thursday to see their stuff, see the animals, and generally experience the fair. They were all thrilled that they had won something (they were quite liberal with their ribbons), and will be thrilled to get the cash (I think it’s $4 for a first, $3 for a second place).

Here are some pictures of the kids at the fair, if you click on this link. Sorry I didn’t actually post them, I’m still a bit rusty on that. They also enjoyed a pony ride, and John absolutely loved riding the ponies. I could hardly get him off, but finally let him pet the pony and say “goodbye Horsie” and he was ok with that. We didn’t ride the yucky expensive rides, nor did we buy the fatty expensive food, but I think the kids had fun, just the same.
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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!

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.

I’m sitting here typing with one hand with a tired almost falling asleep little boy named John on my lap. He’s holding his singing Barney, and he keeps squeezing Barnye’s hands so Barney will sing. “If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a rain that would be…..” He’s oh so tired because the only nap he had today was on the way home from American Fork (dropping off kids at an art class). The transfer from car seat to crib didn’t work too well. He’s snoring now, so we’ll see if the lap to crib transfer works this time.

–time passes—

He slept past the kids stomping loudly on Step Mania, and on the way upstairs to his room, but when I put him down in his crib he woke up and started crying. Ugh. I asked Ryan to go and pick him up this time. Thankfully I have a great husband who will take his turn holding cranky boy. Now if I could just get those Barney songs out of my head. “I love you. You love me. We’re a happy family….”