It's a new year

Welcome to the new year! Life continues on at our house, even if I'm not taking time to share much here. After 3 and half months of quiet I am hoping to come back to semi regular posting.

January has been a pleasant month. It started cold, and then a little snow came-that melted the next day, and then the weather turned rather warm, well winter-warm - in the 40's. It was warm enough that the kids started dressing in shorts and I had to remind them to take a jacket with them.

At the beginning of the month we went to Sun Valley and went ice skating. The kids were awesome skaters, even though that was their first time on ice.
Tom and Charlie have been reading like crazy in the Harry Potter series. Long ago I bought the first five books of the series, but a couple weeks ago had to buy the last 2 books so my little book worms would have them to read. It's amazing to watch them read through such large books - 700 +pages. At school they earn points for reading books and they both have read double the amount of the other kids in their classes.

Henry is so cute. I don't know that any other word can sum it up - CUTE! He is a smiler and smiles all the time. He loves being held, and if he is put down he prefers his bouncer that he is upright in.

Matthew had a birthday and is now 2 years old. He loved blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.

I got a little behind in my project life scrapbook pages, so I haven't printed last years book yet. I'm trying to hurry and finish because I'm excited to look through it and relive last year and read and remember all the little things that elude my memory.

I'm wanting to not get behind in this years project life documentation, so I do "this week's pages" and then do ones from last year that I am missing as I can. That is one reason it is taking me so long to finish last year. It's definitely better to stay current, and, or, keep better notes. November and December's pages aren't going to have as much detail because I didn't keep notes and I don't remember much of the little details.`

last day of spring break

Today was the last day of spring break and what a beautiful day it was - sunny all day long and it got up to 82 degrees. This morning we spent some time in the backyard cleaning up and getting the garden area ready. I wanted to plant tomorrow, but then someone told me it is supposed to get really cold this weekend - maybe I'll wait a week. The kids have been looking forward all weak to going to the Cotton Mill Park. It is farther away - only 20 minutes, but compared to the park we usually go to that is only 5 minutes away, it is far - so we don't go very often, but the kids love it so much. It is a fun park, there are some very unusual toys to play on. There is also a great hill for rolling down - one of Tom's favorite things.
St. George is getting more parks all the time, so a favorite thing for many is to try out all the different parks. My kids name them according to their own connections - grandpa's park (the Bloomington Hills Circle Park) near where grandpa used to live, Steve's Park (Hidden Valley Park) because it is near uncle Steve's house, Dallin's park (Vernon Worthen Park) because that is where cousin Dallin had his birthday party 3 years ago, Tylers park (Bloomington Hills north park) near where their friend Tyler lives - and other parks don't have such descriptive names that I remember them, but really there are about 6 different parks we frequent and then there are at least 4 other parks we go to sometimes. One of my favorite parks is by Coral Canyon, which is far from our house, so we have only been a time or two. I guess because my kids are young and the days are so nice in St. George we spent a fair amount of time at the park.

Digital scrapbooking

My friend Heather inspired me to make a new chore chart. The last one I made for my kids was just words because I didn't have any cute stickers or graphics (these are from The Lily Pad). I'm going to laminate them and then they can make x's on the empty spaces when they have completed their tasks. I'm really hoping to help them develop some good habits. So far we are hit and miss, which I know is my fault, I'm hoping this will help us all be more consistent.


I am teaching a photoshop elements class for a Relief Society enrichment activity so I have been putting together a class outline. The above page of Charlie was the result of me learning about masking - what an awesome time saving feature that I never knew about. This pink page below of Becca is my sample of what we will learn to do in the class. Since it is a beginning class I made up most of the page and the class will just learn how to add a photo and the text. If any one sticks with the class then I will show more details and skills.


However, today I found a great resource for those of us who are trying to learn digital scrapbooking using photoshop elements. Two Peas in a Bucket (a digi scrapbook website) has free video tutorials which are amazing. On the right side of the page is a section called class lessons and so far they have 7 lessons posted. It is incredible to watch someone doing it rather than trying to read it out of a book, or even someones post online. My skill level has increased much just today from watching some of those videos.

Happy Groundhog Day

Baby Lydia is wishing you a "cool" day.

These photos are courtesy of 4 yr old Tom (who is convinced that on his next birthday he is turning eight. In fact, today he had a tape measure he was using to measure how old the other kids were). Tom put the sunglasses on Lydia and then insisted that I take a picture. I told him to go get the camera for me and when he came back he decided he needed to be the one to take the picture - he then proceeded to take pictures of many other things around the house. Kids love cameras. I love digital cameras - I would never have let him run around the house taking pictures of whatever he wanted with a film camera. Digital is fun because they can see on the camera screen what they took a picture of and then the pictures can be loaded on the computer for them to see their artistic work - all at no cost.


So, my challenge for myself is to eat wholegrain breakfast, which is going great, but dinner was a little lacking. Jeremy went to work tonight before I made dinner, so I gave the kids leftover macaroni, which they love, but I do not, so I didn't eat anything. I didn't know what I was in the mood for, I did eat a slice of bread. So, just now, realizing that I didn't have dinner I settled for a cup of hot cocoa and will call that good enough for tonight. I'm too "moody" sometimes when it comes to eating and fixing food. The rare times that I make a weekly dinner menu I don't usually stick to it. I wish I had a gizmo like the Jetsons had - like a vending machine, but for dinner, type in the code and walla - dinner.

I'd really be fine if our bodies only required feeding once a day, or maybe once a week.
Have you ever pondered why eating is so constant - I mean, we only go to church once a week, why not only eat once a week. I actually have pondered on this before, and as much as I would like to give up eating I know that there is purpose in the need for "constant nourishment" for our physical bodies. The Doctrine and Covenants tells us that all things physical are spiritual also. The constant need for physical nourishment is a reminder of the constant nourishment that our spirit also needs. I enjoy spiritual nourishment and meal planning more than I do physical, however, I still find the same struggle with getting it in - ie, making it a priority.
I think my next challenge will focus on spiritual nourishment.

Today

Tom, aka. Max
The first picture is Tom, who is endlessly changing his name. A few weeks ago his recent "new" name was "Max" as shown by the letters on his forehead. He found some letter stickers and put them on his forehead - "so people know my name" he declared. Of course, why not, maybe we should all paste our names on our foreheads. I know it would help me out very much - I am so bad with names. Even with people who I know, I still will blank on people's names time to time.
The stickers from Tom's forehead were transferred to his Christmas stocking so that Santa would know his new name and be able to give "Max" Tom's gifts.




Today was the first day since in a while that I got out my camera. I wanted to take a picture of our new fish tank that we bought at the DI last night. We got two goldfish months ago and they lived just fine in a small fish bowl. Last night when we were at the DI Jeremy found this fish tank, with all the "trimmings" for $20 and decided that since he was the one who loved and cared for our fish, by weekly cleaning their tank, then he could be the one to decide that not only were the fish worthy of a larger tank, but they should also get some friends. We didn't buy any new fish last night, but I'm sure that will happen soon.

Our Fish
It's true, that if it weren't for Jeremy cleaning out the fish bowl they would either be swimming in the dirtiest water ever, or they would be dead. I figure I have enough to do without having to clean a fish bowl.
Our fish are strange fish. When they lived in their small bowl I noticed that when I would feed them they would swim to the bottom of the bowl and then wait until I was out of sight until they would come up and eat. They did not like to be watched when they were eating. Now that they have lots of room to roam and places to hide it is even more evident that they do not like to be watched. When anyone comes near by they dart back and forth very quickly and then "hide" by the plant. I say "hide" because it isn't really hiding at all. They turn their face toward the plant, but it's not like they go behind it or in the middle of it, they just face it and then just sit there until we walk away. I never knew that fish could be so entertaining. It really is interesting to observe them.

Recent photos

I have been going through my pictures and realized I have a lot of pictures I've taken recently. I thought I should put some of these on my blog for family to see.Grandma Smyth stayed with us for a few weeks after baby Lydia was born. Here she is with Charlie and Tom.

Grandma Smyth with Becca and Lydia.

One night Jeremy was putting Becca to bed and he laid Lydia down by Becca - it was too cute to not take a photo of them together.

Every once in a while I try to do Becca's hair. I tried hair rollers, but all they did was make her hair extremely poofy. This was worse than her normal hair, so I wet the poof down and let the natural look be the look of the day.
One day a few weeks ago I heard the kids all laughing together and found them on the front lawn enjoying ice cream. They had carried the baby and her chair outside and luckily didn't try feeding her any of the ice cream.

Sweet sleeping baby Lydia.

Charlie loves his baby sister. He is always carrying her around and playing with her.

What a sweet face. Lydia is an angel baby. She is just happy to be - but don't leave her alone, she loves interacting with everyone.

Cousins

I haven't done much on my computer lately. I was on such a roll last month, and this month has been so sparse.
A few weeks ago was the Smyth family reunion and I took this picture of my two boys with three of their cousins (Spencer's kids). Richard's family wasn't able to come, so we were 3 cousins short. The five cousins pictured are very close in age and have a lot of fun playing together. I wish, and they wish, that we lived closer so they could get together more often.







I spent the morning doing a quick clean of the whole house and ended with mopping. Mopping is such a chore - I have about 1000 sf of laminate flooring and it is such a workout. Now, 5 hours later after mopping I am still tired. I remembered why my good intentions of mopping more often never happen - it's too much work to mop more often. I really want to put in carpeting in my family room - that would eliminate a fair amount of work. I do love when my house is all clean. I'm trying to get into better routines so that it doesn't pile up and become such a huge chore to clean. In efforts to get my children more involved in daily cleaning I've set up a point system that they have to earn a minimum number of points just to be able to play and then they can earn even more points if they want to do something big, like go for and ice cream or go swimming or such. They earn points not only for doing a chore, but also obedience points for doing it when I ask (ie, not dawldling and telling me just a minute 500 times) and they also get attitude points when they do it with a good attitude.
It's been great so far. Last week when Charlie asked if he could go outside and play I asked him if he had earned his daily points yet, he still had to earn one more point, so he asked what he could do to earn that point, and then he quickly did it so that he could go outside. I also like that this way we can focus on one or two big activities for the week to work towards "remember, we are earning points to go swimming on Thursday", etc. It helps keep them motivated and it helps so that I don't have to tell them "no" all the time when they ask to do this or that.

Char hair cut

The boys got haircuts this morning so that we could get rid of their unruly hair - It was getting so long. Charlie hates getting his hair cut and always makes a huge ordeal of it. Today, with help of bribery of a piece of gum, and lots of begging on our part, we got him to sit and he was very good for the whole hair cut. He liked when dad had shaved the top and the sides were still long. After he got the top and sides done Jeremy wondered if he should leave the back as a mullet (not really, what an unfortunate hair style). Tom always does well and has no problem with getting his hair cut and it only takes about five minutes for him.




I found a link to the BYU Women's Conference that has 'virtual sharing stations' where women have posted lots of ideas about various things - definitely worth taking a look at. I love BYU Women's Conference and wish that I could ever go - I could have this year if I would have planned it out ahead of time, but I didn't know about it until the day before.

Another great link I found is and index created on Sugardoodles website for Sharing Time from the Friend.

Strapped In

The look on Becca's face is what made me want to make this scrap page - otherwise I probably wouldn't have taken the time to write about Rebecca's non-love of her car seat.

The look on her face reminds me that there really are lots of things in life that we endure, or put up with but really don't want to. I think one of the great things about being an adult is we really do have more control over our own lives than when we were little - at least to a certain extent. But even the things that can make us feel like we are putting up with, but not enjoying life, are up to us and our attitude. Attitude, and how we mentally approach a situation makes all the difference. I'm trying to develop more of a "Pollyanna" attitude (remember that movie) over the mundane things in my life (ie. housework) and find the joy and enjoyment so that I'm not just strapped in and enduring.

As a side note - I used photoshop elements a while back to create the effect on this photo, but for the life of me I don't know what I did. I really love how it looks, but I have no idea how to duplicate it. I guess I need to pay better attention, or take notes or something so that I remember what I learn.

Lunch

Before


Today's assignment for my digi scrapbook class was to use a template and add paper and pictures. The page on the left is the template original. I wasn't loving it, so the page on the right I left out a few things and I like the results much better. I'm all for simple and not getting things too complicated. I really didn't care for the weird curl on the template and was happy to leave it out. This still isn't a favorite layout of mine, but I definitely like the redo better than my original try. The whole concept behind templates is they are supposed to be fast and easy - this one wasn't for me - I think I spent the most time on this layout over all my other layouts - I think because I was trying to figure out how to make too many elements work together and it wasn't flowing for me.

The theme of this layout is "lunch". As long as lunch is cheese tacos or sandwiches lunch goes smoothly - no complaints from the kids and easy for me to make. So on the days when we are out of bread and tortillas we often do ramon noodles, which isn't a favorite for me, or I feel kind of lost and don't know what to make. The weird thing for me is I could eat sandwiches every day for lunch and have no problem with it, but if I had to eat the same thing for dinner each night I do have a problem. Why is that? Why do I need variety for dinner, but don't care at lunch time? Just something I have been wondering about lately.

Today is Jeremy's birthday! Happy Birthday love.

It's hot!

I actually scrapped a page that had a picture of me. This photo was taken by Charlie in January. I was highlighting the fact that I have on warm socks and slippers and a jacket and am sitting in front of my heater (and fireplace, but there is no fire in the fireplace).
Well, now that it is hot like a furnace outside I am purposefully making my house cold and definitely am not wearing socks. Yesterday and today it's been over 100 F. Too hot too fast. I don't know what I'm going to do with my kids all summer. Once 10 am hits it's too hot to go outside. I usually take them to the park in the afternoon - now I'll have to take them as soon as they wake up (not really I won't, but in order to enjoy the park and not be too hot that is what time we would have to go).
In the past we've been able to go over to Jeremy's parent's house and go swimming all the time, but they are renting out their house and living in Pine Valley full time. Maybe I'll just go join them up in Pine Valley. It is about 20 degrees cooler there and mountainous and beautiful and the boys would love it. I am going to visit my parents in Idaho and spend a week or two with them, so that will be a nice break.

Remembering

One thing I've realized as I've been doing scrapbooking is it is hard to remember much detail from events in the past. As I was doing Becca's 10 month page I really didn't know what to write. I would say that the most important thing to be doing right now is writing down details as they happen, because I just don't remember later on. I know when I look at Tom's or Charlie's baby pictures I think, "cute picture", but I don't remember the specifics of that age.

This morning I had to be to church early and let before the kids were ready for church. Jeremy was lucky that he had my two sisters to help him in getting the children ready. When they showed up to church and my boys came walking up to me in their suits I thought, "my, what handsome boys I have".

Becca has a new little dance/walk that she does. She swaggers back and forth and saunters around. Little sassy girl. actually she has a lot of attitude lately and throws fits when she doesn't get her way - I guess she has hit 18 months old (next week actually) - tantrum time. Becca loves toothbrushes. She is constantly stealing someones out of the bathroom. She now has one of her own to chew on, so hopefully we won't have to hunt and search for the other ones anymore.

Tonight we were reading in Helaman of the Book of Mormon about Nephi and Lehi when they were put in prison and the still small voice comes and talks to the Laminites. I asked the boys who the still small voice was and Charlie said, "it's the Holy Ghost. I have a song I made up" and he proceeded to sing a cute little song about the Holy Ghost and how he whispers to us if we are doing something bad and he helps us have good feelings. It's moments like those that I know that I am doing something right as a parent. It's so fun to watch them grow and gain knowledge and understanding.

3 Month Old Becca

I have been going through my digital photos - all 6000 of them - organizing them and trying to decide which ones to scrapbook. I never have made books for my kids and I would like them to have at least a few photos and memories from their childhood. 

Digital scrapbooking has just opened up a whole new world for me. This page of Becca only took me about 20 minutes to do.  I want to try to do a page a day - so not a lot of time involved, but a lot of results to show for the little bit of time.

One thing I'm trying to do is go through my photos and decide which stories to tell through which photos. I have a list of about 20 so far and the only reason the list isn't longer is I haven't gone through very many photos yet.

Tom and Charlie went on Fathers and Sons last night with Jeremy and his dad, Scott, and his brother, Brad. The boys love fathers and sons. Ever since they went last year they have been looking forward to the one this year. Charlie was so sad that it wasn't longer than one night - he wanted it to be a week long. They went up to Kolob - about an hour away. They had dinner with the ward, but then went and stayed at a friends cabin instead of sleeping out - Jeremy said it gets to about 30 degrees at night - I wouldn't want to sleep out either. Charlie said his favorite part was fishing and catching crawdads. The boys came home dirty and I sent them straight to the shower to get cleaned up before I spent time cuddling with them and telling them how glad I was that they were home.

My sister Susan is here for the weekend. We didn't plan a girls night out last night while the boys were gone because she was supposed to do something with friends, but it fell through last minute. I guess I'm getting old and boring because when she asked what we should do I thought, well, maybe a movie, but there was nothing to see, and I had no other ideas than that. If it doesn't involve kid stuff I feel lost - I don't know what to go do - especially at night. At night is when I try to fit in all the things I want to do, like my computer stuff or catching up on housework, etc. I think the problem is that I am fine with being a boring person - I don't require much to keep me occupied and satisfied - a good book, a project and I'm good to go. I do like playing card games and table games, but usually those are more fun with more than two people. Regardless, we had a nice night together and went and got some ice cream, yum.

Becca watches the bike riding

I created this whole layout from scratch - it was not a template - yay! for me. I'm learning so much. It does take longer to create this kind of page than the one I did earlier of the boys, but this was fun and a stretch for my creative side.

Becca was so cute this morning as she sat on the sidelines watching Tom and Charlie racing down the street. Really, she wasn't paying much attention to them, but she sat on the side for a long time like she was in the cheering section.

Riding Bikes

Charlie and Tom spent the morning taking their bike to the top of the hill and riding down together, again and again.
I took a ton of pictures, I was inspired by Heather's story boards on her blog as a fun way to show multiple pictures and let them tell the story.

Our Day

Yummy!


We made cinnamon rolls today. I've only made them once or twice before. They really aren't very hard - I don't know why I thought they would be. The boys love to help 'cut' them. We use dental floss to cut through the dough. Charlie remembered this from last time and ran to get the floss when I started to roll the dough up. They did a good job and I only had to help with floss placement so that they didn't make the roll size too big.
Becca showing some attitude - she's doing too much of that lately - little miss attitude.
Here is princess Becca. She found the hoop somewhere (I really don't know where she got it from) and put it on her head. Every time she would tip her head up it fell off and she would retrieve it and put it back on.

The boys wanted to make jello - they each wanted their own flavor, so we made two pans of jello and made it jiggler style so they could cut it out with cookie cutters.

Our new pet

This is Thumper, our new pet bunny. My cousin Jacy has bunnies, and the boys loved holding them. I felt bad that the boys have been begging for a dog, but I just can't commit to that. A bunny seemed a much better option. So far the only problem is the boys love it too much. They are always carrying it around and are fighting over whose turn it is. Thumper puts up with the boys affection, but I don't think he really likes it. I think he prefers to stay in his cage, away from loving arms of little boys, but I am impressed with how patient the bunny is and how tolerant he is.

Charlie and Tom do everything with the bunny. They love to hold him and watch tv. I thought this camera moment was so cute when I walked by and saw the boys reading a book to their bunny. They would love to sleep with the bunny, but I draw the line there, mostly for the sake of the bunny. In fact, today I announced it a day of rest for the bunny and only let the boys have the bunny out for a short time. I think if the bunny is going to survive the love of my boys, I'm going to have to impose time limits.

Becca is a true Taysom

Becca is a true Taysom because she loves to ride on a tractor with daddy just as much or more than the boys do. This was expected with the boys - that they would love boy things, such as tractors and dirt. However, I didn't expect Becca to love tractors so much.
Yesterday Jeremy borrowed a tractor to grade our backyard (I'm hoping we'll be ready for grass in the next couple of weeks). Becca was helping me with the garden, but kept wandering off towards the tractor. Finally Jeremy stopped and let her sit behind him on the seat. For some reason the motion of the tractor always puts our kids to sleep. Soon enough her head was bobbing around and Jeremy stopped so I could get her and put her down. I got her into her bed and she seemed like she was going to stay asleep, but a minute later she was wide awake and I took her back in the yard with me. She wanted on the tractor again, and after 10 minutes or so she was asleep again. This time I just laid her down in the yard to let her keep sleeping. But again, after a minute she woke up. She wanted back into the tractor again. This third time, when she fell asleep again we just let her stay in the tractor and sleep bobbing around as Jeremy kept working.

Happy Birthday to me

Yesterday was my birthday - number 32. We have a fun tradition we've started in our family - Jeremy started it last year on my birthday. He got the table cloth and party hats and balloons and set it up in the morning. Then he came in my room with the plastic princess tiara and wand and the boys told me that I was a princess. We went out the decorated table and had birthday cake for breakfast. The kids loved it so much that we did it on their birthdays. Now they think that it isn't a birthday unless you've had cake for breakfast. It's a fun way to start the day, but maybe not so nutritious. So this year I made muffins and then frosted them - to kids that is a cupcake - it looks like one, and it still has the most important part - the frosting.Becca joined in on the fun early and assumed her normal favorite spot on top of the table. The table cloth got rearranged a few times until I got her strapped in her high chair.
Charlie refused to smile - I can't remember why, but I do remember Jeremy asking him if he would smile and Charlie said "no".
The fun thing with doing cupcakes is that everyone gets one to blow out. Right after this picture was taken I put one cupcake in front of each of the kids so they could blow it out. I remember when I was a kid and my little brother Mike always had to blow out the candles, no matter whose birthday it was. So the candles would get lit one time for the birthday person and then re-lit for Mike to have a turn. This way - with cupcakes everyone gets a turn at the same time.
Becca loved the frosting. After she had licked it all off she wanted another cupcake.
The boys wanted to get me a dog for my birthday - they were sure that would be the best present ever. I assured them I did not want a dog. Jeremy was trying to appease the boys so he bought this birthday card that had a picture of a dog. Tom carried that card around all day.
This is Charlie's stuffed animal, Sasha (Charlie and Tom call him Tasha). Charlie decided that it was Sasha's birthday too and that Sasha was turning 6 years old. He made me give a cupcake for Sasha to blow out. Happy Birthday Sasha. ( If we were actually counting from when we got Sasha she is actually 9. I say she, because when Jeremy and I bought her at Costco I thought she was a girl bear and named her Sasha. When Charlie was two or three he took over on Sasha and called it a he and calls him Tasha. I still call it Sasha, which is a Russian name that is a boys name and a girls name. Poor Sasha, I hope he/she isn't too confused.)