Sunday, January 29, 2012

A Visitor!!!

Nice view of a church in Warwick
 Our first visitor in England has officially arrived! My brother, Eric came on Thursday morning! Alissa, Broden, Parker and I left for the airport at 6:00am Thursday morning. Eric's airplane landed an hour early so he was waiting for us instead of us waiting for him, but that's ok!

So far Eric has been in bed every night by 7:30 or 8:) Tonight we are staying up and playing games though. I think he is all adjusted to the time. 

The kids were so excited for Uncle Eric to come! They were so willing to help clean and organize to have someone stay with us for 6 weeks. We set up the bunk bed in Broden's room and got some drawers to go under the bed. The office/craft room is all set up too so Eric can just work out of our home. Remi has still been going to school and Broden and Alissa have been suprisingly good when Eric is working. They understand they can't go in the craft room when Eric is working. All weekend they will ask if Eric is working if he is ever in the craft room using the computer. It's great that they are well enough behaved that it is working. Hopefully they keep it up.

Saturday morning we woke up and went to Warwick Castle. We left at 9:15 and were supposed to get there at 11:15, but after a huge detour we finally got there at 12:30. We spent the day at the castle and it was awesome. We saw all the towers, the princesses, the bird show and peacock gardens and some of the grounds outside the castle. What an amazing place. Still hard to believe that these buildings are 100's sometimes thousands of years old. One of Remi's friends came with us. She is also our next door neighbor and they have so much fun together.

Cool tower in Warwick town

Outside Warwick castle





climbing up one of the towers

climbing a the wall

climbing some more

Amazing views from the top

Beautiful view off the side.

playing dress up

Princesses posing



feeding peacocks







More fun trips to come with our visitor!!!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Lovin' life

Life seems to be back to the uneventful for a while and I love it. We spend our days reading, playing the piano, doing laundry, playing games, doing dishes, cooking and just being together and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Remi and Broden both started piano lessons in November and are doing great! They take them from a 12 year old girl in our ward and they love it. She is amazing! She played for the primary program and also got called as a ward pianist and plays in sacrament meeting. Such talent. Remi and Broden are really good and practice every day. They also do reading ever day. Broden is doing a book where he learns to read in 100 days and is a little over half way done and I love the results. It is an awesome book! Remi is also becoming quite the reader. She enjoys reading scriptures to us sometimes at night and always has books from school to read. Alissa also likes to do her "piano and reading." She'll sit down at the piano and talk about doing her piano lessons. Then she gets Broden's reading book and wants to do reading. We have done a couple lessons with her, but we are waiting a few months to actually do it hard core.

Parker is so fun these days. He has such a fun personality and is starting to babble things like dadadada, mamamamama, and this morning he was saying mimimimimi, which is how Alissa says Remi. He also likes to say GO and Ba(ball) while he is running and kicking things. He also is getting taller and loves to push the little kid chairs around to get things off the counter. He has succeeded in getting cinnamon rolls, brownies, cups of water, and a knife(scary). He also has learned how to climb out of his high chair and he will stand there and scream until you get him out or he will try climbing down. Sometimes he just sits on the tray in whatever mess he just made eating. This week he had lots of firsts! They are in the pictures below.

Broden kept yelling Parker is in the toilet.  We stopped what we were doing thinking he was playing in the toilet and this is what we found.

Literally in the toilet. Luckily we had just cleaned it.

Yesterday he learned how to climb on to our dining room chairs and on to the table.

And he thinks big people cups are really fun. I think he has spilled water down his front  6 times in 2 days. 
As hard as it is keeping up with him and 3 other little ones I love it. They keep me active and I like the challenge of trying to accomplish things during the day while being a mom. This week we cleaned out, organized and decorated the craft room(that was a 5 day job!) we reorganized toys(again) and made dinner every night without going to the store! I love trying to feed our family healthy meals without spending a ton of money. I love baking and coming up with new recipes that don't have oil and sugar or artificial anything in them. It is fun for me and even more fun when everyone eats it and likes it:)

My goal when I went shopping 2 weeks ago was to make the food last 2 weeks. It did! We only had to get like 6 things at the store. But now we are out of all fresh fruits and veggies and flour! It was nice to have meals planned for 2 weeks. I think I will do that more often. Now I just need to get the guts to ask someone if I can grind wheat at their house because I don't want to risk using my wheat grinder on a transformer. It's supposed to be hard on motors.

It's amazing how much of a difference it makes when we are trying to do what is right. Scriptures, church, prayers, FHE, all these things we have been taught our whole lives. Things still happen(see toilet picture) but we have a different attitude or perspective. Those things don't really matter when you look at eternity. They just give us a chance to laugh while we are learning. Things are still hard, but we know we can do it. We are promised that we won't be tested with more than we are able to handle.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

And so it begins...


 The Davis Family(Jenny's parents and children and their families) has started a 2 month health challenge that involved eating lots of fruits and veggies, exercising and other healthy habits. We are doing boys against girls. So We started this week and I went shopping for that on Monday. This is what our fridge, freezer and counter looked like when I was done. We are lucky our kids love salad because we had different salads 5 nights this week.

Frozen fruit for smoothies, yum!


 Broden and Alissa wanted to do my hair one day, so I let them. Then Broden wanted to take pictures and have a dance party. So we did. We did 45 minutes of Zumba, "air plane" Hokey Pokey, ring around the rosies, follow the leader and anything else that was good exercise. The kids loved it and I got a good work out. Remi wants us to do it again when she is here.
Playing "Quelf" This wasn't part of the game, its just Blake being silly

Playing "Quelf" with friends of Friday. Thanks for playing with us and for the pics Lauren!


All dressed up with our leg warmers.
Yesterday we got to go swimming at the Mildenhall pool, then go out for pizza. It was a perfect family day and we all had a blast!

Sunday, January 8, 2012

The week

We had a pretty low key week. Monday we let the kiddos have a sleep over (Alissa, Remi and Broden) in the living room on the air mattress. In the morning they enjoyed sliding down the stairs in their sleeping bags. I remember doing this when I was a kid. The rest of the week was same ol, same ol. I loved it! Remi went back to school and I got to stay here with Broden, Alissa and Parker. We didn't even leave the house until Thursday for Piano. It was great!

Friday was Parker's check up at the doctor and it took FOREVER! I'm not going into too many details because I am still really bugged. In a nutshell we completed his appointment and while there they had me fill out a postpartum depression survey, apparently I marked occasionally on a red flag question, so Me and all 3 kids got escorted up to mental health. The "escort" (nurse) stayed with us until the tech met with me while all the kids are being, well.... kids. Then the doc met with us and played the ask a bunch of silly questions game while the kids destroy his office. By this time we have been in the hospital for 2 hours and Parker is way over due for his nap and I am running out of snacks and entertainment. When we get done there we head down to fill up Alissa's script for an ear infection. Then to the lab to get blood work down. Wait in line 20 minutes to be told we can't do it because only Parker and I can go back and I didn't have somewhere else to leave the kids. So we head to get Parker's shots. 40 minutes and 4 shots later we are headed home.

Everything is fine. Parker is healthy, Alissa is healthy and I am fine. I realize doctors are trying to help people when they do those surveys, but they didn't even talk to me about it. I'm not so sure having a mom with 3 little kids go all over the hospital for 3 hours is going to "help" with anyone's sanity.

Friday night was much better. We enjoyed dinner and bowling with Ingersoll's for Drew's birthday, followed by a sleepover and some soccer in the morning.

Remi sliding down stairs 

Broden sliding down stairs

Playing soccer with Ingersoll's (the goal is what santa gave us for Christmas)

This little boy loves soccer. He will "dribble" anything. The big die, dice thing I made for primary, he dribbles it. The bowling ball when bowling, he dribbled it too.

Remi enjoying a game of UNO

Alissa even loves UNO

Broden has "UNO"

Our latest favorite pass time when it is cold or dark outside.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

London Date

Blake planned a date in London, called a babysitter and everything! We picked up the babysitter and left at 9 in the morning to drive to the Epping tube station. We rode the tube in and went to see the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey then Piccadilly Circus and China Town. Then we walked to Hyde Park and rode the Tube the Natural History Museum. Then we rode the tube back to Piccadilly Circus to get dessert at the restaurant and see the Christmas lights. It was such a relaxing day compared to last time we went to London. Lots of walking, but not pushing strollers and it was all at our own pace. 

We ate Chinease food for lunch by Piccadilly Circus, just before turning the corner to discover there was a whole Chinatown. Hmmm..... We probably could have had better food, but ours was good. At Hyde park we walked through the Christmas Market and checked out the ice skating. You have to reserve a time to skate:( This is the one thing I wanted to do is skate in Hyde park. Oh well. We headed to The Natural History Museum instead and same thing. All their skate times were later than we could stay. So we walked through part of the museum instead and just enjoyed our time together. 

For dessert I got some kind of layered pastry with strawberries and cream. I asked the name like 5 times, but didn't ever understand what it was called. It was delish the first half. Then it was just too much. It turned my tummy and I felt a little sick for about 12 hours. Blake had lemon cheesecake and was disappointed. Oh, well. 

We got home about 7:30 and the kids had been pretty good for the babysitter. They were all alive and so was she! They had sooooo much fun with her. They seriously love when we get babysitters. Now we want to go back to London to see a show. Hopefully Wicked!

Looking across River Thames at "The Eye of London"


Houses of Parliament and Big Ben




Westminster Abbey


Piccadilly Circus

Chinatown

Chinatown


Natural History Museum

In the Natural History Museum