making memories

Monday pictures:

Amanda and Pace and I went to visit one of our sisters, Lisa Foust.  She wasn't home, but we had a good time sitting on her front porch and visiting!  Amanda has been a member of the church one year next month and she is amazing.  She is also my secretary in Young Women:

I try to tell the kids not to give Pace attention when he is pouting....:

When we play games outside, Isabelle says that we are "making memories".  Here we are playing soccer at the park beside our house for the FHE activity:

One of my Young Women, Julianne Jones happened to come by with her dog and join us for awhile, which is why Pace has a dog below:

Tuesday is violin lessons day for Isabelle.  We drive to LaGrande after school so that she can learn from the best! (my sister Ivy of course).  I took some pictures of the hills while they are green for Caden:

During lessons the kids usually have a lot to show me.  Marji wanted me to take this picture of her after I put a flower from their snowball bush into her hair:

We made it back home in time for me to hurry to a Relief Society activity; yoga.  It was pretty fun.  The night was beautiful afterwards, so Shawn and I went on a walk around town - one of our favorite things to do in the evenings after the little kids are in bed and the older kids are doing homework.  I got this picture while we were paused for Shawn to take a call from the bishop:

Wednesday:

Isabelle is obsessed with cell phones.  She knows which kind of cell phone anyone has, and wants an iphone 6 REALLY bad.  I'm sure she'd want an even cooler one than that, but has decided that model would be the most realistic for her to actually get.  She asked last week if there was ANY possibility that we would ever actually get her one?  I replied that maybe if she could show that she was responsible enough to get all of her responsibilities taken care of without me nagging her every step of the way we would consider it!  She has been really hard to PUSH lately. 

She took my reply very seriously and has had a perfect record of getting everything done.  She reads her scriptures and cleans her room every morning.  This clean room was unheard of before!!:

She gets home from school and gets right into practicing violin and then piano and then doing all of her homework.  She can't believe that she always has free time from 4:30 on now!  Before she was still dragging along at 9:30.  I told Shawn that we really may need to consider the phone since it could be a really positive motivator for her.  Of course, she would have to keep this up for a LONG time and then continue to do it after she got one...

I made some free time this week (which means that I let part of the house remain messy) and did a review on how to make all sorts of flowers out of buttercream frosting.  I took a wedding cake decorating class when Caden was 1 and haven't used my skills much since then.  Suddenly I am interested in getting good again.  This was a start:

Friday:
Mom called on Thursday and said that all the boys and dads in the family were going to father/sons outing and invited us to a mother/daughter outing.  We had so much fun!  We made a craft where you put a plant inside of some moss - I didn't get a picture, but there's two of them hanging from the shelf behind mom and kelly:

We played "he said/ she said per the youngest girls request, about three times.  Then the teenaged girls showed us what the cool dances are these days and we showed them what they were when we were in high school🤣

I recently realized that I don't have any pictures with my mom so I fixed that!:

The next morning, Maddie and I and Katie, Emmie and Gracie and Eli - who missed Father/sons for a date - went on a hike to Vernon Stewarts cabin. I had 10,000 steps in before we even headed for home before lunch! This was a picture I took heading back down the mountain:

Shawn got our climbing rope hung up this week and Abram and Nolan have been climbing it nonstop.  They are the only ones that can shimmy all the way up.  Nolan is even getting fancy and learning to climb entirely with his arms and not using his legs at all.  He can't yet make it all the way up that way though:

They climb two stories and it makes me dizzy to watch them from above:

Nolan had the famous "Human Growth and Development" talk at school recently.  They must have done a really good job presenting it because Nolan came home SO excited to go through puberty🤣 He keeps asking when I think it will happen?!?? He can't wait to shave, have his voice change, and GET BIGGER MUSCLES!!!  He is really motivated to be doing what he can in the muscle-making department, and works hard at growing muscles every day.  He does a certain amount of chin ups on our chin-up bar, then makes sure to climb the rope at least 8 times! He also went running with Shawn and Maddie when they went this week.

Isabelle got enough people pulled outside this afternoon to "make memories" playing Four Square.  I think the memory that was made was of Abram losing the ball and having to chase it half a mile down the road before he could catch it, we live on such a steep hill:D

Mother's Day 2018

Happy Mothers day everyone!!

Our day began bright and early around here- painfully early!  Kami had said that she would be calling us at 6:00 her time, and when we figured out the time differences, that meant 3:00 am for us.  Shawn and I got up at 2:50 to make sure things were ready and then we waited and waited....and waited.  She finally got on Facebook messenger at 4:20.    It was soooooo good to see her!!  Always makes me a little teary and afterwards I had to take some Benadryl so that I would stop thinking about it and be able to go back to sleep. We woke everyone up and I was so excited that I was wide awake, but a lot of the kids said later that they were totally out of it during her call....Pace wouldn't even open his eyes to look at her:( Which he really regretted later...


Caden called after church and everyone was so lively by then that we had a hard time hearing each other, but boy was it good to talk to both of my missionaries and see that they are doing well!

I got a lot of pampering thanks to this quiz that Isabelle gave me last week:

She is such a planner and after getting my responses was the resident expert to help everyone know what to get/do.  I went for the spa- like stuff which was perfect because I was so sleepy today!

In church I think I may have broken some rules doing this, but I couldn't resist sneakily taking some pictures because my three boys were standing all together while the primary sang to the mothers in the ward:

The song ended just in time because Pace had suddenly realized that this was a great time to show off...:D

The week was consumed with the frozen cookie dough YW camp fundraiser.  Tuesday night we mixed all the cookies:

Then spent a good portion of Saturday making deliveries.  I had a lot of people that were skeptical of this activity, but we made more than the amount that we need for camp and it was relatively painless.

There is something going on every night around here; I don't know when Shawn will be able to start building our kitchen. Monday was FHE, Tuesday we had the Munt family over for dinner, Wednesday was mutual and scouts, Thursday was Isabelle's last track meet of the season and Emma Wares birthday party.  I helped Brittany with this cake for several hours:

She had made all of the bubbles, and I assembled it while she did other things.  This party was a huge deal and no detail was overlooked.

I guess now that I have been a mother for 20 plus years I am finally getting it a little bit because I usually see a mess and want to clean it up ASAP!  But this week I walked into a pile of Pace's toys and it made me so happy that they were there cluttering things up:

For one thing, he was playing in the kitchen so that he could be close to me:

He never plays well when he is all alone, so when I'm being a "good mom" I try to think of cool things for him to do.  He is REALLY GOOD on his little blue scooter!  I set up cones all the way around the sidewalks for him to weave in and out of on this particular day:

lilacs and snowballs

Looks like there are lots of Pace pictures this time.  

Pace likes to "help" with homework:

Cute, heart- melting things he said this week were, "I can't wait to show my kids what you look like!  And I'll be like - Mom, you're the BEST mom!!"  "I can't wait to have kids!!  HOORAY!!!!"

Pace and his wonderful speech teacher, and our neighbor, Laurie:

Another Pace comment: "Mom, I always thought pirates talked like this...ARG!! Pull the anchors!!"  Me: "Well, how DO they talk?"  Pace: " They talk Spanish like this (gives imitation that sounds like "pull the anchors..."

snack time on the deck watching Pace eat with a watermelon scoop:

This snack time happened shortly before I started working in the yard.  Pace was playing beside me with some of his tractors and "guys".  I tuned into the game he was playing when I heard him say, "Oh no!! President Nelson just got ran over by a tractor!!"  Luckily Captain America was on site for a rescue...

One hot day, Pace told me that he wanted to have a water fight.  Right after that, Shawn told me that he was coming home for lunch, so Pace and I walked down to the church, pretended we were spies until we saw him coming, and then ambushed him!:

Pace at soccer camp:

I watched the Faust girls last weekend while their mom, Lisa, went to Time Out For Women. They were easy girls to have around and the kids enjoyed them. Isabelle and Abby with LOTS of slime:

They took turns applying makeup to each other....blindfolded:

Pace and Lexi:

One of my Laurels, Ashley Bloom, asked Maddie and I if we would do her hair and makeup for two of her proms. She brought pictures of hairdos and we copied them.  Maddie is awesome at hair, btw. She loves being able to work with straight hair because her curly hair is the bane of her existence.  We recently got an "express blowout" at the salon to get rid of the frizz in her hair. She wore it straight for two weeks and the first time she wore it curly, Nolan thought it looked really good but worded it ALL wrong.  He said, "Whoa!  You're wearing your hair frizzy today! I love it!!!" Maddie looked less than thrilled... I informed Nolan, "No one thinks that frizzy hair is a compliment."  Nolan said, "I thought curly and frizzy hair were the same thing!"  It must be confusing to be a boy and try to figure out all the proper things to say to girls!😄

before:

during:

afters for the first prom:

afters for the second prom:

We went on a family walk on Sunday evening, which is a usual family activity when the weather is nice.  This time we found Pace Lane:

I love all of the fresh flowers that we bring in from the yard every single season but winter!:

Aaron Ware gave us an Apple TV that he didn't want and came up to help Shawn figure it out. We're going to put it in our bedroom:

Aaron bantering with Maddie - he has found a sensitive topic because everyone has been telling her lately that her hair is really red.  Aaron adds that it is "fiery red" and he should be glad that Maddie doesn't have a slate to break over his head😄. They also argue about who has more fashion sense....:

Pace discovering how to make volcanoes:

The track meets were great this week- the boys won lots of races, but their meet was the same time as Belle's so I went to Isabelle's and Shawn went to the boys meet.  Picture of Belle running with her friend Treasure.  They passed this girl.  What a cutie: