Assistant Mom

Sometimes it is nice to have an assistant Mom. The last few mornings Jenna has taken it upon herself to get Korinne dressed and ready for the day. She even changes Korinne's diaper! (She does leave the stinky ones to the professionals, however). This is nice because Korinne is determined to dislike anything I pick out for her. Even when she picks out her own clothes she goes through 4 or 5 things before she actually leaves them on. This is an area where Jenna has some serious clout. Jenna (a.k.a. the fashion diva) only has to say, "Korinne this would look SO cute" and Korinne is sold. Yesterday they popped down the stairs in matching outfits. Jeans with dark purple shirts. They were happy, I was happy. Then, in her attempts to leave no assistant Mom duty undone she took it upon herself to teach Korinne about the alphabet. Here they are on the computer doing their lessons:

(On a side note, for any of you Kindergarten Moms there is a fabulous website http://www.starfall.com/ that is great for reading)

It was at this time I went upstairs to get something and saw that Jenna had made my bed. It wasn't perfect, but she did a pretty good job!

So, I've decided my assistant Mom is a keeper!

And now let me say a few words about Korinne. Korinne is at a stage when it seems like every morning she looks a little bit bigger and a little bit older. She is growing too fast for me! Her hair had gotten really long and we were thinking about taking her in for a haircut. Yesterday she got gum in her hair (normally I would spend a few minutes talking about how much I HATE gum, but I will spare you my soapbox speech at this time) so I took it as a sign and before we could even take "before" pictures she was off to get her hair cut. It looks super cute, but she still insisted on ponytails this morning, so I did my best.

Isn't she looking a lot older these days?

Fashion??

What does a well meaning husband get when he purchases sunglasses online for his wife on her birthday?

I got them in the mail today and opened the box while Adam was away from home. What do you think? Do they look like me???

When he got back I put them on and walked into his office. As soon as he saw me he burst out laughing. Ahhh, I thought, I see that we are on the same page here. We laughed and laughed and said all of the usual "would you like some face with your sunglasses?" jokes. He said that he got the ones that weren't considered over sized. Well, I would really hate to see the ones that ARE over sized then! Needless to say they are going back (which is why I had to leave the tag on in the picture). It was good for a laugh, however. He got me 2 pairs and the other one is much better so I'm going to stick with it. It was a very thoughtful gift actually. I've been wearing a pair of slightly broken, totally out of style sunglasses my sister-in-law gave me 4 1/2 years ago from an unclaimed lost and found at a campus police station. It really is time for a change.

I'm fashion challenged enough to know I can't pull this look off. I'm not nearly rich or famous enough to wear ugly sunglasses.

Heart Heads

Last night just before I went to bed I went and checked on the kids as usual. Jenna has always been into clothes and it is not uncommon for her to lay out an outfit of her choosing the night before she plans to wear it. Last night I had to chuckle when I walked into her room and saw her clothes laid out with her heart shaped pillow as the head of the outfit.

She even went so far as to make sparkle eyes and a smile.

The kids always keep me laughing. What's next?

Did you feel it?

I'm pretty sure that at 11:53 a.m. today the earth stopped turning for just a millisecond, did you feel it? That was the exact moment that I turned 32 years old. Yea for me! Adam brought me breakfast in bed. A cup of hot chocolate (essential), a glass of orange juice (you can never get too much vitamin C), and 2 packages of Little Debbie Nutty Bars. The most perfect breakfast EVER! (You do realize that calories don't count on your birthday, don't you?) If you don't know me that well you may be taken back by my weird breakfast preferences. You see, I've been weird about breakfast for a LONG time. I totally grossed some college roommates out by eating bean burritos with cottage cheese globbed on the top at 6:45 in the morning. I prefer dinner leftovers to ANY kind of traditional breakfast foods. If there happens to be candy or chocolate in my house (which I don't let myself keep very often, obviously) it is the first thing I eat in the morning, and cold pizza for breakfast on Mother's Day is getting to be non-negotiable. At first I wanted chocolate cake donuts for breakfast on my big day, but the Little Debbies were on sale so I made the last minute adjustment. As long as it is super chocolately, I'm totally flexible. :-)

Having a Tuesday birthday was perfect because on Tuesday nights kids eat free at Firehouse Pizzaria. It's close to home and uber-yummy and we don't know any good babysitters around here yet so it worked out great to bring the kids along.

The waitress brought out waters for everyone and then the girls got root beer with their kids meals. The next thing I knew Korinne looked like this:

Water on the right, root beer on the left. She's a funny kid. Oh, and if you ask Korinne about today she will tell you that it was HER birthday and she is turning 6. By golly that's her story and she's stickin' to it!!

Thanks for all of the B-day calls, e-mails, cards, and facebook greetings! It has been a great 32 years and I'm looking forward to many more!

U-E-Yea!

With Thursday and Friday off from school we had a few days to play. On Thursday some friends from our old house came up to visit. Jenna was thrilled to play with Elizabeth, Korinne and Amelia were up to their old tricks, and Britton and Heber had fun playing basketball , soccer and riding bikes. It was fun to catch up with Kimberlee. She was a trooper to come and we loved it!

Adam surprised me on Thursday night by arranging for my parents to take the kids and taking me out for my upcoming birthday. Our original plan for Friday was to take the kids to Lagoon, but the Lagoon plan turned into the Jungle Jim's plan when we found out the tickets we got from a friend were no longer valid. I think the kids still had fun, however. It took Korinne a long time to warm up to the idea of going on the kiddie rides, but once she finally did, she had a great time. Jenna is the daredevil of the group, she is game to go on anything.

I spent a lot of time in my Mom's home office getting her caught up on everything while the kids were playing. We went on a few errands and then came back home on Saturday afternoon.

Korinne has become our little hair dresser. Whenever I am sitting on the floor for any reason she runs and gets the spray bottle and a comb so she can do my hair. I'm fine with having her comb and play with it, but she always wants to spray it over and over again until it is dripping wet. She is a funny kid.

Dishes

Last night it was Jenna's turn to do the dishes. Jenna can be very particular about things. When she is in the mood to clean-watch out! (Unfortunately she isn't always in the mood, which is a bummer because she is so good at it when she is) I was helping her unload the dishwasher and handed her some of the kids cups and plates that go in a special drawer that the kids can reach so they can always get what they need by themselves. It was in total disarray, of course, and Jenna couldn't stand to leave it like it was. She wouldn't finish unloading the dishwasher until it was arranged like this:

Surprisingly Korinne wanted to help Jenna with the dishes so she got out a stool and put it next to Jenna's step stool and started helping Jenna load the dishwasher. They didn't know I was filming them, but I was getting such a kick out of the way Korinne was just throwing everything in the dishwasher and how excited she was to be such a "big helper."

I went upstairs to show the clip to Adam and by the time I got back Jenna had realized that the "Jenna rinse, Korinne load" plan wasn't working too well. She told Korinne to rinse while she fixed the loading situation. Korinne thought this was a great plan as it allowed her to play in the water and have full control over the hand spray apparatus. (Notice how she took off her shirt because it was too wet to keep wearing)

I know this is kind of a random post, but these are the small things I want to remember. Korinne has never seen a kitchen sink she didn't like to play in and Jenna is really developing her organizational and cleaning skills. I can pretty much guarantee that Britton was off playing something sports related with Adam. It is all so predictable now, but before we know it it will all be different. Here's to the normal, everyday things that make our lives great!

The Yuckies

That is what my sister calls it when someone gets sick. Wednesday night I started not feeling well. I figured it was something I ate at a Stampin' Up thing at the neighbors house, but when Jenna came in between 3 and 4 a.m. with the same thing I knew it was some kind of bug we had picked up. It was the kind that keeps you up all night throwing up. Now, many of you have told me that whenever you get such a bug and are throwing up you think of me. And really, it is SOOO flattering to think that I pop into your head at the moment of your greatest misery. I often hear something like this, "I was throwing up and I thought about you and wondered how you survived so many months of this." Well, to tell you the truth I thought the SAME thing in the wee hours of Thursday morning. "How DID I survive so many months of this?" With all 3 pregnancies I was throwing up 5-12 times a day for months on end! Anyway, I survived it then and I survived it yesterday. Jenna had the 5 hour bug, I got the extended 36 hour version of it, but we are both fine now and happy to be back. Can I tell you how much I love having Adam working out of the house? I was down and out yesterday, but he was able to step in and take care of all the little things and still manage to get his work done. It was great.

October Sweet October

I love the month of October. Everything about October is cool. It's gorgeous outside, kids are still excited about school, it begins with General Conference, my birthday is in October (a.k.a. the "national day of rejoicing") and it ends with a holiday where everyone gives out free candy. What's not to love??

Speaking of General Conference I was so excited when President Uchtdorf announced that we would be hearing from Elder Carlos A. Godoy of the Seventy. He was called to the Seventy last conference so I knew we would get to hear from him eventually, but I had no idea that he would be speaking so soon! He was such an incredible Mission President so it was quite surreal to see him standing at the pulpit at General Conference. I admit it made me cry to see him there. I've always had such a great love and respect for him. It was the first time I've heard him give a talk in English--he did a great job!

He'll always be President Godoy to me.

Other notable events this week: My parents moved, my brother moved, my sister is moving in a few weeks. . .do you see a pattern here? We figured that in the space of a little over 2 months we have had 5 moves on my side of the family. So my brother in Florida and my sister in Texas are the only ones on my side who DIDN'T move. Crazy stuff.

Korinne was brushing my hair during conference and wasn't being very gentle. I winced one time and she put her face in mine and with a kind smile said, "You're Ok, Mom" and then went right back to pulling my hair. It made me laugh.

Daddy's Girl

I just finished changing one of Korinne's stinky diapers. She is cooperative about 5% of the time, but I was in luck today when she seemed responsive to my FIRST request to change her. She was all ready to go when I realized I needed wipes so I ran downstairs to get them and was tickled pink when she was STILL being cooperative upon my return.

"Korinne, I'm ready now, and you're ready. . .we make a great team!"
She looked at me and furrowed her brow and said, "But I'm on Daddy's team."
Uh, right.

Once a Daddy's girl, always a Daddy's girl.