Oh NO! Mr. Peeps!

Yesterday I was in my room and Livy came running in, in a panic.

"MOM! Mr. Peeps fell. Morgan accidentally knocked him over."

You see, our Mr. Peeps (elf on the shelf) is different than other people's.  He looks like Santa and is made of wood and is not allowed to be touched.  If you touch him…he goes away.

So I rushed in to find Morgan bawling, Owen standing in awe, and Mr. Peeps face down on the couch.

It looked like a crime scene….albeit a hilarious one.

Morgan was certain she had killed him.

I ushered the kids out and told them I needed to help Mr. Peeps up.  Morgan went back into her room wailing.  Really, you would have thought Jersey had died or something.  I "helped" Mr. Peeps up onto the shelf where he felt safer and explained that to the kids.

No matter how many times I told Morgan he was okay and that he wasn't going to go away (I think that was her fear) and that Mr. Peeps knew it was an accident, she would not stop crying.  It took a good 10 minutes for her to calm down and realize all was well.

Yikes.

Halloween 2012

Halloween.

It's come and gone.

I always like November 1st.

There are plenty of things I don't like about Halloween. 

But lots that I do.

I love the weather.

I love the sense of community with everyone out and about.

And I love how excited my kids get about their costumes.

Morgan wanted to be "Midget Joe" this year (a Dayton Family folklore character), but when I came home from the store with things for the other kids' costumes and explained they don't have "Midget Joe" paraphenalia at the store she was disappointed.  I told her they do have a devil costume or a cat costume, and she got very excited and wanted to switch to a devil right away.

Livy of course helped her put her "outfit" together as Morgan explained she wanted to be a "cute" devil.  And then she proceeded to tell me through the evening about other devil costumes she saw that "didn't even look like devils."  Clearly she is the real deal and they are not. (I must say, this costume is fitting for her at this stage in her life.  Hard, hard, hard this one has been!)

I think Owen rocked the Werewolf costume pretty well.  He really likes to stay in character when he wears a costume. :)  He didn't even recognize himself when he looked in the mirror.  It freaked him out a little bit.

Olivia's number one goal every Halloween is to scare her cousin Tatum.  She can't wait to get her make up on and look scary so she can run over and freak Tatum out.  As we get ready she devises all kinds of plans to sneak into Tatum's room and scare the heck out of her.  She doesn't ever carry them out, she just likes to talk about them.  She couldn't really talk with her teeth in and her jaw started hurting from holding them in all night.  But she would not take them out…it would "ruin her costume."  So committed that one.

Ready for Trick of Treating.

Everyone in character?  Good.

Dividing up the spoils.

Until next year…..

Totally Gross Party...

Owen turned 8 on Thursday.

Today we had his "Totally Gross Birthday Party".

And it was….totally gross.

They grabbed gummy worms at the bottom of whip cream…using only their mouth:

Morgan actually won this one.

Who doesn't want to shove their face into whip cream?

They pulled body parts out of "brains".

They grabbed marbles out of ice water with their toes.

They smelled baby food in diapers.

They ate baby food too. (well, some of them did)

They searched for cockroaches in "barf". (this one made me want to barf)

They had a grand old time.

And then we had cake….

 A TOTALLY GROSS cake.

It makes me nauseous just looking at it, even though I know it's made of yummy things.

Making a wish.

I gave everyone matching T-shirts that said, "That was TOTALLY GROSS!" on them.

Crazy kids. :)

And then it was over and I realized once again….

This boy is growing up.

Oh how I love him. :)

The Case of the Broken Violin...

Everyone loves a good mystery right.

Especially at our house.

My kids love to sleuth things out.

So a few days ago Olivia opened her violin and I heard a scream from the other room.

I thought she might have broken her leg or something.

Instead she had opened her case to find her violin looking like this:

Since we had just been gone on Fall Break for a week it seemed very strange that it just broke sitting in it's case.

The kids started sleuthing right away. (okay, and me too!)

Immediately they thought of Crew and Dane…3 houses away. Boys who love to be destructive.

Olivia was certain it was one of them.

Shane told her several times he didn't think that was possible because Crew wouldn't really be capable of zipping the case back up after breaking it and Dane just probably wouldn't.

We continued to think of possibilities and then Morgan, in her very sure way, told us all what had really happened.

"It was Jersey"…the dog.

"How do you know?"

"Because I looked her in the eyes and she looked back at me with sad eyes….and then she licked me four times."

Well, I don't think there's ever been a more clear-cut case.

It was the dog!

Snoring vs. The Jiggly Leg

I sort of wondered if Shane's Jiggly Leg would go away when he got his new knee.

The answer is no, it didn't. :(

At 3:38 am it was in full swing again.

Jiggle-jiggle-jiggle.

Aghhhhhhh!

It gives me anxiety because I can't stop counting between jiggles.

It will shake the whole bed and then I start counting, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5…." and I just wonder if it will be right on the same jiggly schedule every time.

It generally is.

At 3:40 I lovingly reached over to him, put my leg on his jiggly leg and put my hand on his chest to get his attention.  Then I whispered, "I love you, but I'm going to have to cut off your leg."

He said sorry and rolled over.

Then I sat there wondering if I would prefer snoring over the jiggly leg.

Which would be better?

I finally settled on the jiggly leg because it's quieter and it's attached to a really cute guy.

…And then I went back to sleep.

(*You'll be pleased to note that Shane's leg is still intact as well.)

The Champion

You probably think I'm writing about a person.

I'm not.

I'm writing about our toilet.

It's called The Champion.

About a year ago we replaced the toilets in our house because the ones that were here when we moved in were gross.  Shane said, "If we're going to get new toilets let's get really good ones."

So we went to Home Depot and said, "Give us your best toilet."

That is where we got The Champion (it is literally called that on the box).

It touted being able to flush an entire bucket of golf balls at once!

I'm not sure if it can really do that, I've never tried, but it can get my 9-year old nieces doo-doo down without clogging, which is more than I can say for our other toilets.

But all of this is neither here nor there, my point in talking about The Champion is its height.

It is a "chair height" toilet.

This means a couple of things.

One, my feet can't be flat on the ground when I sit on it.

I hate that.

I feel like a five year old with my tippy-toes touching the ground.

But number two, this is what I hate most of all, I have gotten used to this "chair height" so when I go to sit on any other toilet there is a millisecond of panic that shoots through me thinking that somehow the toilet I was about to sit on disappeared because my backside should have hit it by now.

Then I am rudely jarred out of this panic because I hit the toilet harder than a person normally should.

It's not pleasant.

And I'm thinking that The Champion isn't such a champion after all.

Too much information?

Oh well.

Taking Over the World… :)

What's up Zaharis?

That would be ONE...

TWO...

THREE! 

That's right….All three of my awesome kids got selected to student council as their class representatives.

It all went down exactly as I would expect.

Olivia wrote reminders to herself about writing a speech.  

She thought about it and wrote out what she felt was important.  

She wanted to let her class know she would represent them well.

She delivered her speech with confidence.

She won by a landslide.

Owen decided the night before that he'd like to run.

Olivia wrote his speech for him.

Olivia made him practice his speech several times.

Olivia chided him the morning of his speech for wearing sports shorts instead of looking nicer.

Owen reluctantly changed his clothes to appease his sister.

He won--I'm guessing by a landslide.

Morgan didn't write a speech.

Morgan simply raised her hand and said she'd be interested in doing it.

Every other girl in the class raised their hand and said, "I vote for Morgan."

She won--by a landslide of girl votes.

All three of them did this on their own.

"Why do you think people voted for you?"  I asked each of them.

Olivia: "Because I get good grades."

Owen: "Because I have good actions."

Morgan: "Because I'm really nice and everyone loves to play with me."

Morgan is never shy about her awesomeness. :)

Congrats to my babies!

Represent.

President Scar...

Every time I hear Obama speak and look at what he has done to our country while in office I can't help but see in my mind Scar from the Lion King promising all the Hyena's as much food as they want.

It sounds so good!

Who doesn't want food you don't have to work for and the ability to be lazy and do whatever you feel like while someone else takes care of you?

We all deserve that, right?

The only problem is... that doesn't work.

Before long the food runs out and all you have are a bunch of fat hyena's (soon to be starving) complaining that nobody is taking care of them.

I know Obama tells people what they like to hear but he has shown us over the past four years that, just like Scar, he can't change the "circle of life".

It is what it is.

The "something for nothing" philosophy can never work and before long we will all be paying for it one way or another.  (and we already are)

There has to be wisdom and order and Barak Obama simply doesn't understand that, which means he does not understand how to run a country.

Clearly.



"I don't want to live in a country where everything is free but us." --Paul Ryan

Hey Shorty, It's Your Birthday!

My baby turns 6 today!

This year I went with a turtle theme because they have tortoises at Zaharis and you can buy baby tortoises for $40.  Morgan REALLY wanted one.

Dane got one.

But I said no.

I know, I'm mean.

But to show her I really love her lots we got her as many turtle things as we could.

I made her a turtle cake.

And decorated all festive like. 

She liked it.

A lot.

And she liked her new turtle friend "Fluffy".  I told her he's way easier to cuddle than a live tortoise. :)

Morgan is one of the funniest, spunkiest, most confident little girls I know.  She makes me smile every day.

The other day I was recounting stories of Olivia when she was a baby.  I had tons of them.

Morgan kept saying, "Tell one about me.  What did I do?"

I felt horrible because I could hardly think of anything.  Morgan was a baby at the hardest time in my life and my brain simply didn't store a lot of her baby-hood.  I do remember she was an amazingly good baby, she drooled a lot, she would never take a bottle (just mama), and she always made me smile.

There are plenty of things I remember about her now.  Like her uncanny ability to make up the perfect names for animals (Livy will even ask her to name things she gets because her names are always so cute).

She also makes up words and just incorporates them into her daily language.  We have to know how to speak Morgan around here.  For example, about 2 years ago, when she was either 3 or just barely 4 she told me she needed to go "Flickey".

"Flickey?  What's that?" I asked.

"That's when you have to go pee AND poop."  She had fully created the word, had a definition for it, and used it like we all knew it.  And she still uses it…well, we all use it now.

Just yesterday she created another word.  When I picked her up from gymnastics she exhaled all tired like and said,

"Whew. Well that was just piff!"

"Piff?" I asked again, "What's piff?"

"You know, when something's really hard or tiring."

Oh well of course, silly me.  Who hasn't had a day that was just piff?

She continues to be obsessed with animals.  She's gone from wanting to be an animal when she grows up to wanting to train them or own a pet store.  The latest thing she's told me she wants to do is teach animals how to swim…most especially "mouses".

She's smart, logical…very logical, straightforward, happy, and goofy.  Not many people really know Morgan because she doesn't open up for just anyone.  She's quite selective.  But once you're in her inner circle she is very loyal.

We sure love this girl and I feel very lucky to be her mom.

Lessons from Bambi...

The other day we watched Bambi.

It taught us some lessons.

Owen constantly complains about dinner.  He hates it, it's disgusting, he doesn't want to eat it.

After spewing these words out of his mouth Shane reminded him to just keep his mouth closed and channeled Thumper by saying,  "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Owen then realized that Bambi actually teaches us a lot of good lessons.  "Another lesson," he recounted, "is that we shouldn't shoot animals because look what happens."  We all solemnly nodded our heads thinking about poor Bambi's mother.

And then, perhaps another lesson I hadn't really thought of before, Owen said, "And it also helps us to see how Abraham Lincoln must have felt."

Mmmmmm-kay.  I hadn't really thought of comparing the shooting of animals to the shooting of presidents before, but I can see a connection here I guess.  Good point.  May we all refrain from shooting animals AND presidents because "Look what happens."

Bambi is so much deeper than I had ever realized.

Thirsty?

While we were at Greer Shane was pretty well confined to his bed a majority of the time.  The pain and the pain medication left him in a pretty bad state.  So let's all just remember that as I tell you this story.  He looked a little like this. :)

One morning he was clipping his fingernails into a cup.  He didn't want to get up to clip them but he didn't want them all over the bed either (which I appreciated), so the cup was his solution.  I, however, told him I thought it was disgusting that he was clipping his nails into a cup.  It just grossed me out.

Fast forward to the late afternoon.  Shane was still in bed and needed me to get him some pain medication.  I got his pills and grabbed "the cup" off the night stand, not remembering anything from earlier in the day.  I filled it with water from the bathroom faucet and gave Shane his pills without another thought.  He thanked me and started drinking and then started spitting the water out, back into the cup.  I thought he was doing this because I got the water from the bathroom faucet and not from the kitchen but it still seemed like a  big reaction to me so I asked, "What's wrong?"

"Just take this away please." He frantically handed the cup out to me.

"Why?" I asked again, still not understanding, and then it hit me.

AGHHHHHHHH!!!   SICK!

My dry heaves started to kick in and even more so as I dumped out the water and fingernails into the kitchen sink and had to wash them down. (okay, I'm still dry heaving as I type this. so gross!)

He claims he didn't actually drink any, he just happened to glance down as he started drinking and saw the fingernails floating all around.

So let this be a lesson to you...no fingernails in cups I tell you!

It's just safer that way.

The Shiny New Knee...

Most people don't know that Shane has had chronic knee pain for the last 17 years of his life.

Chronic, constant, unrelenting knee pain.

He tore his ACL at age 21 and didn't get surgery for a year.  And when he did get the surgery it went bad…very very bad.  It caused massive arthritis and bone spurs so severe that just walking was  painful.  Heck, just sitting was painful!

He rubs my back, I rub his knee.

He has done all he can to work through it and live as normal of a life as he can.  He's run and biked and played basketball and volleyball and everything else, always paying for it in a major way the next day/week.

He worked diligently to try to keep it strong but it just kept getting worse and worse, the pain more and more severe until he finally made the decision…"I've got to get the surgery now."

Most doctors don't like to do total knee replacements on people under 40 years old because they only last a certain amount of time, but Shane's knee is so bad that the doctor agreed it would be good to do now.

Unfortunately when you decide you want the surgery "now" you have to figure out a time in your life that you can have a month or more to recover and you have to get on the doctor's schedule and "now" for us meant about 6 or 7 months after the decision was made.

It felt like it was never really going to happen, but wouldn't you know it, it actually did come.  It came on Monday, July 16th at 8 am.

Shane got himself a new knee.

The recovery has been rough, though not many people outside our home would know it.  He has shown up to the kids' 4 hour long swim meet (2 days after getting home from the hospital), to the Pioneer Day celebration at the ward, and to Sacrament meeting today.  At each event he put on a smile and talked to everyone who had questions but I could tell he was putting on a good show.  He was kind and good natured through it all.  Nevertheless, the minute we walked through the door he collapsed, so exhausted and in so much pain he could barely move.

I told him today that perhaps he shouldn't do so much and I think he now agrees.

There is a long road of recovery still ahead, but the promise of being able to use his knee, not only to do things he hasn't been able to do in years, but to live without chronic pain, is something that makes him so excited he can hardly stand it.

It makes me pretty excited too.

I'll make sure to post a picture of us playing tennis, snowboarding, and hiking Kilimanjaro some day.

At least now it's a possibility. :)

Room Rules...

Listen, when you live in a house full of one brother you have to have some pretty strict room rules to make sure everyone is on board with your standards.  Leave it to Olivia and Morgan (but we all know mostly Olivia) to make sure things are clear.

Several months ago she posted this sign on her door:

I believe my favorites are:

#4--No Smoking (you know, since most of us here have a problem with that she just wants to make sure we keep it outside I guess)

#8--No picking noses (just a general good rule of thumb)

#11--No Junking…so important that it had to be added as rule #11 of "10 Room Rules"

Owen couldn't stand idly by without a few rules of his own so he created a sign as well.  It looks like this:

I know it doesn't have quite the flare that Olivia's and Morgan's has but I think he gets his point across pretty well.  

Maybe Shane and I should create some room rules of our own.

I have a few ideas…

The Jerz….

(Photo by Damian Dayton)

People who blog about their pets are so annoying.

So sue me.

This is Jersey.

Damian took a bunch of candid pictures of my family one day and one of my favorites was this one of Jersey.  That's when I knew…I really love my dog.

I never understood people who loved their dogs "like they were part of the family".

We had dogs growing up, but they were always backyard mangey mutts that weren't allowed inside.  I'm not exactly sure why my parents had them because none of us seemed to appreciate having them.

Nonetheless, because of this experience I never intended on having a dog.

Then I had to dog-sit the litter of puppies that Jersey was born in and Morgan and I fell in love with Jersey ("the cow puppy").

She was just so cute.

With some finagling I talked my dad into letting us have Jersey at the apartment and the deed was done.

We became a dog family.  An INSIDE dog family.

Unheard of.

Since then Jersey really has become a part of our family.  I can't imagine life without her.

In the beginning I told Shane I couldn't bring myself to fully love her because she could get hit by a car or run away at any time and I didn't want to cry over a dog.   But somewhere along the line she worked her way into my heart anyway and if something happened to her I really would cry…a lot.

She's the best dog.

I know there are a lot of people who don't understand loving a dog like this and all I can say is, I get it…

….but you're really missing out.

Remember, they are learning...

I had a good friend visiting this weekend.  While she was here we talked about the fact that everyone has their own parenting style.  She asked me what my "style" was and I explained a few basic ideas I try to stick to:

• Say "no" as little as possible, but when I do say "no" know why I'm saying it.
• Be gentle but firm.
• Give/show lots of love.

I was realizing later that there is one overarching idea that governs my parenting, especially when the kids are acting up.  It is this:

Remember, they are learning.


If I can remember this while I am parenting I can always parent in a better way.  I can remember that they are trying to figure things out instead of being irritated that they don't already know it.

Here is a simple example.  When Morgan is lying on her floor crying because making her bed is "just too hard" I have several approaches to choose from:

1.  I can white-knuckle patience.  This never goes well because inevitably I will be "nice" at the beginning and then when she doesn't change her behavior, and fast, I get irritated that she doesn't appreciate how "patient" I'm being and then I parent poorly.

2.  I can just get irritated that she's whining and crying about a task as simple as making her bed and bully her into doing it. "Just make it now before I give you something to really cry about!"

3. I can be degrading. "Look, we all have to make our beds, it's not like it's hard to do. Just wait until you have to take care of a whole family, then you'll know what hard is."

But here is what I try to do (I'm not always perfect at this, but I do try):

4.  I look at Morgan and remember things that feel hard to me.  Times that I want to cry or have cried because things just seem "too hard".  I have to get to that place emotionally before I proceed or else I will still be in "white knuckle patience mode" and it will be fake. Once I get my heart to the right place emotionally, then I lay down on the floor next to her and say, "Sometimes making your bed just feels really hard doesn't it?"  and she'll say, "YES!"  And I say, "I know.  Sometimes I hate making my bed."  Then I'll gather her in my arms and tell her it's okay to feel that way.  Then I tell her we should cry really hard about it for 1 minute.  "Let's try to get all our crying out and then we'll make the bed."  Usually she finds it quite hard to cry at this point because she already feels so much better being validated in her emotions.  And if she tries to cry she ends up laughing.  And then making her bed doesn't seem quite so hard.

She's learning.  She's learning how to deal with emotions.  She's learning how do tasks like making her bed.  And if I'm just yelling at her instead of teaching her, how will she ever learn?

I try to remember this when my kids:

• Can't sit still.
• Fight with each other.
• Spill the milk.
• Have messy rooms.
• Don't listen to me.
• Are dishonest.
• Cry over things that seem small.
• Want to "help" me with things.

And more.  

They are learning.  And if I can remember that they are learning and I'm their teacher then I take my role more seriously.  If they are struggling then perhaps I need to step up my teaching.  

I also try to allow TIME for the learning process to happen and not expect perfection when a lesson has been taught.  

Some things take awhile to really learn.

…Like parenting. :)

White and SO Nerdy...

So I've noted, as of late, that it's actually kind of cool to be "nerdy".

Everyone claims, "Oh, I'm such a nerd.  I love comic books and movies like "The Avengers".

Geek chic is way in.

People, when nerdy-ness is the norm, it's not nerdy.

I think we have lost site of what true nerds look like, so let me help you out.

They look like this:

And they do things like this: 

True nerds spend their weekend, while their kids are away with their dad, staying home and putting together a "mystery puzzle".  

This puzzle had a story and a code we had to crack... and crack it we did!

We had two weekend-nights completely kid free and Shane said we could do anything we wanted and I said, "I want to stay home and do a puzzle and eat brownies and ice cream."

Luckily Shane likes to do that too!

So if it's cool to be a nerd then Shane and I are the coolest.  Unfortunately I think it's only cool to be a certain type of nerd and I do believe I have missed the boat on that.

Oh well, truth's out…

I'm a nerd!

…And shut your face if you're making rude comments like "I already knew that."  You can only know it once I reveal it. :)