family picture 2020

family picture 2020

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Bishop Gee

Yes, that title pretty much says it all. We had a big day around here, it's 10:30 and my husband still isn't home. I think it's safe to say that he's going to be pretty busy. I snapped this picture really quickly today when he was trying to head out the door for a meeting:

He's got his 'I'm humoring you' face on that says, "Come on, let me go. This is silly." He wasn't too keen about me blogging about it, either. So there you go. The rest will be between me and my journal:)

Shawn will do a great job. Me, I'm just praying that I can be strengthened to be able to deal with having him gone even more often than he already is. But it will be fine. It will be good. I'm actually pretty good at playing the supporting role - I am so thankful that I don't have to have his calling!

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

lots of snippets

-Kami and Maddie got into the play - they are super excited!

- I was at the highschool the day of the dance auditions, from 6-8:30. Kami was at a track meet and I figured everything would work out just perfectly because all last year they dropped her off at the high school. Well, unbeknownst to me, she got dropped off at 7:30, at the Jr. High clear across town, and couldn't get hold of me as my cell phone was dying (as usual, the big piece of garbage that it is). I finally found out about Kami at 8:00, jetted over to pick her up and got her back just barely in time for her to try out.

-I saw a repeating pattern of a real need around here and went and got a "smart phone". Do you know, I think that I can finally become a cell phone carrier now - I actually really like this thing! My kids like the feeling of security of being able to reach me at any time...


-Our pond suddenly rose Saturday night, and carried the canoes away with it - Kami and Caden had to perform a rescue mission early Sunday morning. Without their amazing help that they give me every Sunday morning, we ended up walking in during the third verse of the opening hymn. Woops. Probably would have helped if I had been getting everything ready instead of standing around watching the progress.


-Nolan got registered for Kindergarten yesterday. He informed me that next year he "will be all grown up" and I realized as I filled out forms that he will graduate in the year 2025. Why does that sound so far away, and yet arrive so quickly?!

-I tried to talk Nolan into staying home with me and never go to kindergarten, but he was quite adamant. I grasped at my last best argument, informing him that surely he would want to stay home with me, because if he goes to Kindergarten he will have to get a shot... He hardly hesitated- he chose shots over staying home with me!! "Shots aren't that hard on tough kids like me."

-While at registration Abram became quite grumpy - he's been trying out all sorts of moods lately. He looked at a picture of all of the students that was on the wall in the office, and with a huge scowl on his face said, "I don't like that picture!!" I said, "Oh, you don't? Why? Does it offend you?"(I like trying out words on him that he doesn't know or understand to see what he does with them.) "Yes. Fends me!" "Well, don't look at it then. You don't have to look at things that you don't like." He looked away with disgust, then suddenly turned and looked at it again and with a huge smile on his face proclaimed, "I LIKE it now!!" - I can't get enough of the way he moves and talks and tries to be as old as all the other kids.

-Maddie keeps the garage door decorated with tasteful, seasonal "welcome home dad" signs. They welcome him home whether he's already here or just returning from a trip.

-Isabelle has some serious daddy adoration going on. Everywhere we go, all over the house, there are love notes or signs for Shawn. One family home evening, during a lesson, she kept studiously working away drawing and writing on a piece of paper and wouldn't stop even though Shawn kept asking her to. Finally, he scolded her and took it away from her. Her heart was broken, and when he looked at it, it was a love note, to him, telling him what wonderful family home evening lessons he does, and how much she loves him.
Taped to his mirror:

Taped to the back of his chair at dinner time:
- Isabelle also posts signs for us:
- this particular evening our little organizer also had an agenda written out for each of us: 1. pray 2. song 3. lesson 4. acktivity 5. treat 6. pray 7. (talk about the lesson more.)

-Nolan and Abram have started playing together so well. I always love it when the youngest child finally gets old enough to actually join in on a "game" - as my kids call them - or should I say gets old enough to be coached through a game. Because really they just do and say whatever the older sibling tells them to do or say. And I always love to listen in as their plots unravel: Nolan to Abram, "Then you punched me." Abram makes a punching sound. Nolan to Abram, "Then the lava started coming!!" They make frightened sounds and run for their lives.

-I continue to find toys in the strangest places - here, were Abram's "army guys" when I went to put detergent in my dishwasher:

or cars precariously perched on each ascending tier of branches in one of our trees.

-I enjoyed a moment of humor the other day when Nolan arrived home from a play date, took off his shoes, and I noticed that he was wearing some socks that barely stretched across his heel. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that he was wearing some of those Old Navy socks that have the size printed on the bottom of the foot. The size said, "3-6 months". You might think your kids are ready to leave the house because they have their shoes on, but when you live here, you just never know!:)

- The boys were saying that they were ready for lunch today, and trying to buy a few more minutes for myself to get finished cleaning bathrooms, I asked them if they would like to go look downstairs in the food storage for something that looked good to them for lunch. I was thinking they would probably come up with ramen noodles, spaghettios, or macaroni and cheese, but they came up with two cans of tuna fish and two cans of corn. Nolan informed me that they wanted tuna fish sandwiches, corn, and chips for lunch. They helped fix it, ate it with relish, and Abram only spilled his milk two times. It's a joke at our house how often we have spills during meals - not always done by Abram. Maybe I will go buy sippy cups for every member of the family- we'll all be safe and Abram will decide that he wants to use one after all. ;)

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

True thespians

Kami decided last week that she wanted to audition for the community theater's "Helly Dolly". She LOVES this sort of thing and is our resident play producer. We've got a lot of fun family films that have been produced because she has lined the kids out with parts and costumes. Too bad there aren't any productions at school for her age yet!


My kids are so lucky to have so many talented family members around to mentor them! Her amazing aunt Suzette helped her get a song ready and gave her some tips. Then she even went with her tonight and tried out for a part as well! They had a great experience and both of them did really well. Kami is doubtful that she'll get a part, but is excited to be a part of a production - and it will be even more fun to do it with Suzette (and also Maddie who is going to audition tomorrow.)

Monday, April 9, 2012

Grandpa's fun toy

When I take the kids to their piano lessons with their grandma Gee on Mondays, I generally just wait for them to finish if I don't have any errands to run. If the kids are happy in the car, I read something while we wait. If the weather is nice and they want to play, I follow them around the yard. But the thing that really gets them excited is when grandpa Gee comes out and offers to take them on a four wheeler ride!
I was glad that I had my camera handy today to take this cute picture!

Caden's turn

Yep, Caden got his braces on this morning. He just had to get them on his top teeth, and for some reason they put different braces on him than they put on Kami.

Easter

I brought Kami with me this year to get some Easter things for the kids, and we had a good time assembling baskets and hiding them around the house. When Shawn and I headed off to bed we found these creations, by Isabelle, sitting on our pillows: (I think the brown one is a bunny:)

I did manage to get a few pictures of the kids, but not until after church and after an egg hunt out in our wilderness. Maddie was already out of her church clothes, Isabelle had had enough of her hair paraphernalia and the boys were well on their way to filthy!

Later in the afternoon we went to Shawn's parents for Easter dinner. Andersons, Suzette, Grovers, us and one of their missionaries from the Oklahoma mission were all there. There were a few different seating places to accommodate so many (about 27 bodies) and I took a couple of pictures before everyone was all settled in:

Around the table, back left to front: Ainsley, Gracie, Belle, Madeline, Abby, Sam, Sander, Nolan, Isaac
After dinner we had a concert and everyone that has been working up a piece, on the piano or violin, for festival, performed their pieces. This is never a big hit with the littlest members of the family, but they sat pretty quietly:
Meanwhile, Abram snuck off to clean up anything still laying out that looked remotely tasty:
And the second that the concert was proclaimed complete all the little boys jumped on Shawn:

Then Suzette started playing the piano and some of the kids gathered around to sing:

l-r: Abby, Ellie, Isabelle, Suzette, Kamille, Madeline
And those are some bits and pieces from our Easter!

How to build an arbor- it's a family affair!

I just had another birthday:

I had a picture taken with Caden, because he figured out a way to make me a sugar- free Devil's Food birthday cake. And boy was it nice to be able to have some cake!

This year Shawn built me a beautiful arbor for my birthday present:

He still wants to add some gates, but I think that is a project for another weekend:)

Anyways, it was really fun because the first arbor-building-day, Shawn and the kids worked together on it, mixing and pouring cement to set the posts- it was a beautiful day.
I was running the tiller on the garden at the time, and it was so great to see them all working together, that I had to have someone run and get me the camera and it seemed like every time I was coming down a row in their direction I just had to snap another picture. (I'll spare you posting all of them though!:)

The next day Shawn cut out pieces and set them all up in the garage to be painted. While a blizzard raged outside, we painted away!

Finally, on Saturday, which was once again a beautiful sunny day, I got up early and put another coat of paint on everything, we gave the kids instructions to paint the posts outside...


and Shawn and I headed to a stake baptism.

When we got home everything was ready to go, Shawn assembled it and - voila!! It looks great, and I am so excited about it!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

toilet talk

Well, it seems like Abram just got through the stage of getting into toilets only to be back into it again with a vengeance! Suddenly he is back into dashing into the bathroom every chance he gets because he "needs to blow his nose" and "drain the toilet" - his words for flushing the toilet.

If I'm not on the ball, he can easily work his way through a roll of toilet paper, but luckily the toilet never gets plugged up because he likes to "drain the toilet" so much!

Last week at the library the theme in the children's section must have been "potty books" because, holy moly, they sure had a lot of potty training books on display. Nolan determined that we should check a bunch of them out and get working on Abram. We got the "cars" theme toilet seat out, or as Abram calls it, the "Ka-chow" seat, and asked Abram if he wanted to try sitting on it. He did, but at the last minute as I was sitting him down on it, he changed his mind, straightened his legs and one of his feet ended up in the toilet. For the rest of the day he told everyone he saw that he fell in the toilet and that it was s-c-a-r-y!!

I haven't felt like Abram is ready, and have told Nolan this, but as I have said, Nolan is determined that it is time for him to learn. I have told Nolan that he can be the trainer and he is taking his role very seriously. Every day he "reads" Abe some of his potty training books:

Then, he asks Abram if he wants to sit on his potty seat. His tactic works about 50% of the time. When it does, he is ecstatic, because as "trainer" he gets to share in the rewards. (CANDY!!) This morning, Abram kept acting like he was going to sit on the toilet, only to keep changing his mind at the last minute. Nolan is very frustrated. Who knows? Maybe Nolan will miraculously train Abe...and hooray! I'd be ecstatic! But if not, Abram WILL eventually be potty trained, and Nolan will still feel like he managed to train him after a lot of hard work and effort, right? Meanwhile, it's pretty cute to watch this whole process and relationship between the two of them.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Time with grandparents

Kami has been anticipating general conference weekend for a couple of weeks now. My parents decided to start a new tradition where they take their grandchildren, that are about the same age, to conference with them. They started with the oldest grandchildren, plus my younger brother, Eli, who is only three years older than Kami. Turns out that one of the grandchildren couldn't come, mom and dad therefore had an extra ticket, and Caden was able to go along, as well.

Above l-r are: Caden (12), Kami (14), Ila (15), Abby (18) and Eli (17)

They saw all the sites on temple square, toured the Beehive house - Brigham Young's home - went to conference sessions and swam until 11:00 every night at the hotel and had a wonderful time with their grandparents, uncle and cousins.


The had tickets to the Saturday morning session, and got into the tabernacle for the Saturday afternoon session and also the priesthood session for dad, Eli and Caden.