Seven-Year-old sayings

During a Family Home Evening lesson we were having last night Garrett was in charge of a game of decisions. He read us out different scenarios and we had to decide what was the best "tool" we could use for that decision - teachers, parents, prayer, fasting, leaders, or scriptures.

On one of Daddy's turns, the situation was that a little boy always walked straight home from school but one day his friends wanted him to go to the store and shoplift a piece of candy with them instead...which tool could he use to stand up and do what was right?

Scott started laughing at how ridulously easy the scenarios were. Owen joined in and said, "Yeah, all it takes to answer these is a little common nonsense!"

I've had a birfday, shout hooray!

Age has never been a big thing for me. I don't get upset like most women do about people knowing how old they are. I don't mind if everyone knows...it's better that they do because all too often I forget my own age and need help from an outside source to figure out how old I am when I'm asked. I usually have to think about how old my sister is and then subtract five from that to remember how old I really am. The funny thing is, that she has to do the reverse to think of how old she is! She knows how old I am and just adds five years to that!

I think I'm like that because my mind must have stopped maturing around 21 or 22. That's where it stopped keeping track of how old I am each year. I still feel a little awkward in my own skin, like I'm just starting out on my adult life, and like I still have so much to learn.

Maybe that's a good thing!

This year I had a very pleasant birthday. With all our big purchases lately (namely a new house, a Prius for Scott to commute in, and a new washer that can be on the second floor and won't shake the house the bits), I was ready for a laid back birthday.

I woke up and Scott had already started breakfast. He had wanted to make crepes, but he thought he would cheat and use pancake batter instead of making crepe batter. The result was that they just turned out to be thin pancakes! He also made grits with scrambled eggs and sausage in it. It was nice to not be in charge of making breakfast! And with it being on a Saturday, my birthday gift to me was not doing our normal Saturday morning deep house cleaning after we ate - the kids seemed to really appreciate my gift to myself!

Then Scott took the boys fishing and Teagan and I went to go see the movie Hunger Games together (Duncan tagged along too because he isn't quite a boy yet, he's still a carry on accessory of mine!)

After enjoying the movie, Tig and I went to Carl's Jr. for a Jalapeno burger and an Oreo shake and then went to visit our nearest oriental market. The market is about half an hour away and this was our first time going there. It's on a not so good side of Everett, and was sorta tiny, but I was so glad to finally get the Thai fresh/frozen ingredients that are staples around our house!

When I got home I got the first of my birthday gifts. Emmy, who had been singing "Happy Birfday to Mommy" all day long, came running up to show me my birthday gift. He had transformed himself into birthday card and written all over his body! He did have writing on his face too, but I had washed it off before I took this picture.

According to him, one leg says "Happy Birfday to Mommy Kristina" and the other one (the one with the big part on the knee) is a 'birfday hawrt' that says "I wuv you Mommy, wuv Emmett Erick" The parts that were on his tummy that you can't see is a picture of he and I; complete with smiles and hair and everything!

For dinner we were supposed to go to a neighbor's house for a work BBQ, but it was cancelled at the last minute, so I was last minute planning a meal for dinner. Luckily I had all that fresh produce on hand, so we had stir fry and Tom Ka Guy (a Thai coconut soup that is heavenly!) and Ginger tea with rice balls. Yummy yummy! (My traditional birthday meal of manicotti was postponed until next weekend when we are having the sister missionaries over to celebrate their birthdays as well. One of them shares the same birthday as me, while the other one's birthday is on Friday. So I invited them over for manicotti and cake on next Friday as a massive birthday party for all three of us.)

After dinner I got to open my gifts. Teagan had picked me up a pretty pair of green chopsticks from the market earlier that day and had given them to me early so I could use them with my stir-fry.

My mom had made me one of her legendary berets. Mine is a floppy relaxed one that Teagan and I both love!

 She also gave me fun new cookbook to use. On Sunday we had a couple of snotty nosed kids who we didn't want to send to church to share their germs, so we had Teagan stay home with them. We came home to find her donning her apron making some Pumpkin Gnocchi cookies from my new book! The house smelled delicious!

I had friends e-mail and facebook birthday wishes to me. I got to talk to both my mom and my sister for a good amount of time. My dad called and chatted for a few minutes. I got to go on a girl date with Teagan to a movie that I was really excited to see and I found some tried and true ingredients that I haven't gotten to use for three months.

 It was a great birthday!

Happy Pi day everyone!

How did you celebrate Albert Einstein's birthday? It's also Pi day - 3.14 - so we fittingly had a 'pizza pi'!

 And for dessert we had these. Do you know how these little pies on a stick fit in today?

these pies are squared!!!!  Get it?.... as in circumference equals pi r-squared. hahahaha! They were delicious little nutella and raspberry jam pie pops!

Hope you all had a fun, math-filled day!

Some Six-month Shots - not the bad kind

Once again, time has flown by too quickly and I am so appreciative for my camera and being able to capture some of the moments that I don't ever want to forget.

My little Sparky man turned 6 months old and I snagged a few quick shots on his half-birthday. Now here it is almost his seven month birthday and I am just now getting them up...does anyone know where the 'slow down' button is? I just need to catch my breath for a second.

Ahhh, I love those blue eyes of his! Match those with that quirky little grin he gives all the time, and he just melts your heart!

  He is such a happy little guy! He was just getting his two bottom teeth when we took these pictures.

The block one didn't turn out quite like I pictured it in my head, I had to act quickly and keep him farther back than I wanted because he kept grabbing the blocks. The idea was there, but I think we will try it again sometime when I am not throwing it together so quickly.

 I love his little serious face...he makes this look a lot; like he is really pondering what's going on around him...deep thinking, little man!

 And what would an impromptu photo shoot be without it being hijacked by a sibling or two?

 My two blue-eyed, bookend babies.

A look back: Craft day at grandma's ~ four years ago

Tonight I was going through my saved drafts of posts that I have started but never got around to finishing, and the very last one was this little gem. It was all the way written, so I'm not sure why it was never posted. It was fun to reread our fun time at Grandmas with Aunt Katie's kids and to look back at how little they all were four years ago. This was from March 28,2008.

"Okay, the older kids are in the process of taking their tests for the week, so I thought I would try to sneak a quick blog in whie they are pondering the imponderables of 5+ digit long division (for Teagan) and borrowing multiple digits (Garrett). A day time blog entry, who would have ever thought it was possible?! Here is one of our fun activities that we did while at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

While we were there for a week, Grandma had the brilliant idea of doing some crafts with the kids and having them repair her old bird houses, make some new ones, and to fill all the feeders. So Grandpa set up a make shift table in the backyard and Grandma gave all 5 kids an apron of some sort to wear and then we set to work. Teagan and Natalie both wanted to start out by painting one of the feeders, so the each took a side and painted away. Garrett and Zerin were a little harder to rein in, but when Grandma brought out a saw, a hammer and some nails, both boys zeroed in on them and were fully interested! Teagan was also very interested in weilding a tool, so she abandoned her art and let Natalie take over. Grandma let each kid take a turn sawing and hammering and they all loved it!

After the nails had been hammered in and every piece of wood that was big enough to cut had been cut, we started painting pinecones with peanut butter and then covering them in birdseed. The kids seemed to have fun with this, but the unanymous vote for the favorite part was the pouring of the birdseed to cover the cones! All five of the kids loved playing in Grandma's huge bowl of seed!

The kids had also collected all of the pinecones in Grandma's yard and she helped them make a bird house out of them. Then the girls decided that all the houses were a little too drab and they used some fake flowers and a glue gun to beautify Grandma's bird houses.

At the end of the day, we were sure that we felt lots of little birdie eyes watching us in eager anticipation for when we would hang everything up and leave. We even thought we heard some birds playing rock, paper, scissors to see who got the use the big house first! We had the kids hang up their pinecone feeders, fill all the other feeders and put the bird houses in the trees where they belonged. The backyard looked like a KAO campground for birds - it had all the amenities a bird could ever ask for; a bird bath, multiple choices for houses, free buffet cones... what more could a bird want?

That night, sure enough, we heard many more birds outside than we had heard the whole time we were there! Great job kids! You're A+ people in the bird world!"

Who said 13 was an unlucky number??

For as worried as I was about having a teenager in the house, the first day of it has gone wonderfully!

Last night I stayed up until about two getting everything ready for Teagan's birthday - setting the birthday table with a table cloth and party balloons, hanging streamers on her bedroom door, wrapping gifts, preparing the birthday souffle, etc. It doesn't usually take me that long to get everything done, but the two little boys were up with me for most of that time and are serious time delayers! Duncan is sick again and his snuffly nose wasn't letting him sleep well, and Emmy is fevering again and was as clingy as velcro on shag carpet!

 This year I went a step further in my birthday morning fun for her. I usually blow up the number of balloons that they are turning and hang them around the birthday kid's room, and for Tig, I Saran wrapped her closed bedroom door and trapped her 13 birthday balloons between the door and the wrap; so when she woke up and opened her door, all the balloons would jump out on her! It worked like a charm and she loved it! And since she is in such a big polka dot phase right now, her balloons were appropriately polka dotted!

She woke up before 6 (which was understandably before I woke up) and found a little bit of snow on the ground. She was excited about that too for some reason .

After her door exploded on her, she took a quick shower and got into her birthday attire - a crown and a sash that says "Birthday Princess". Then she started her school and was finished with it before 7:30! I woke up to a smiling and clean birthday girl who had already finished her whole day's worth of school. I was impressed with her new teenage self!

Her birthday menu for today was:
Breakfast - Granny's breakfast souffle, OJ, and Bacon
Lunch - Spaghetti - Pig out style (eaten with your hands behind your back using your face only - we can only do this when Daddy isn't around! He thinks it is gross but it's a tradition that was passed down from my dad!) , Ginger tea with rice balls, croissants

this is the ginger tea cooking! It smells so good and is even healthy for you!

Dinner - Lasagna or manicotti (we did lasagna because manicotti is MY birthday dinner tradition), cream soda, fried eggs, and pineapple upside-down cake

 I even tried to make the cake look like it had polka dots on it, too!

Before dinner, Scott and Teagan went on a Daddy/daughter date to go pay for his new car and stopped at Micky D's on the way and got shakes fries. (Scott needed a little commuter car for work, so we picked him up a cute little Prius over the weekend.) She was so excited for that one-on-one time with him!

Then, after dinner, we did presents and cake! Tig and I were in a super silly mood after a day filled with fun games and playing around for most of it; we were cracking jokes at  Daddy for his camera skills and that is why I am mid-word and she is laughing.

 Emmy loved the gift he gave her. He loved it so much that he 'helped' her get it out of the plastic bag it was in, and then proceeded to 'help' her eat all the candies in it! Poor Tig didn't even get one!

 Teagan loved her gifts. She got new, colorful socks; a girl Lego set; The Lorax book by Dr. Seuss; a book titled Swindle from Garrett; 13 polka dotted kisses (air filled Hershey's kisses) inside a polka dotted make-up bag with two polka dotted hacky sacks all from Owen; a Mater toy truck from me; and a Mater PEZ from Emmy.

 Her Granny made her two beautiful hats that Teagan adored! Granny didn't know it but Teagan tries on the berets every time we go to Wal-Mart or  Target and has wanted one for a very long time; so these two berets are already very much loved and appreciated! She has already planned her outfits for the next two days to coordinate with which hat she will be wearing.

 They were a big hit! We couldn't decide whether Duncan looked more like a Rastafarian or a 'sroom from Mario!

 Her big gift from us was a new comforter for her Queen bed that Grandma passed down to her. All our comforters and blankets were too little, so she needed something that could fit her new bed size. We also got her a super soft and fuzzy purple round rug to match. I told her we will also get her a dust ruffle for the bottom of her bed and that I want to paint her room as soon as she decides what kind of dots she wants in it.

 She was so excited to be in her new, stylish room that we almost forgot about the cake...

 Almost. Emmy remembered. He also helped Teagan blow out her candles!

She passed out invitations to four of her friends to come to her Polka Dot Party next Friday, so she will be having a friend party next week. I think it will be a good chance for her to get to know her new church friends.


     She came as my first playmate and continues to be my best friend. It's been mostly her who has helped me not feel so lonely here in Washington without any friends - with her as my friend, I don't need to look a whole lot farther. She loves playing games as much as I do, and is growing into a fairly evenly matched competitor for me.
     She reminds me of what I want to be when I grow up - confident, adventurous, open. She is also humorous and brave and caring. She is friends with everyone she meets and isn't afraid to do hard things.

     She loves to make me happy and be near me; which I love. She gives me a back rub whenever she can; which I love. She is self motivated, thrives on learning, and loves reading; all of which I love. I thank Heavenly Father for her every single day!

So, for our first day of having a teenager in the house I've seen increased responsibilities, early school finishing, lots of laughter and fun, and my beautiful baby girl turning into a wonderful young woman. Yeah, if this could keep up for the next 5 years, I think I might just make it through having a teenage daughter around!

Happy 13th Tigger Ruthie!