No More Monkeys!

Wedding Recap

Well, we're finally home. We have been for almost two whole days and we're still recovering. I've slept like a log for the past two nights and I'm still exhausted. Handsome Face went to bed at 7pm last night and didn't wake up until 8:40am. My kids NEVER do that. Oh, and my living room is covered in duffels, bags, and boxes, their contents streaming across the floor. I'll clean it up someday. I've given myself leave to not really do anything important for awhile. We're all just tuckered out.
Here are a few highlights from the trip. We went to St. Louis for a very quick, two and a half day visit for the wedding of my sister-in-law, Sheri.
Here the kids play checkers with Daddy outside Cracker Barrel while I cleaned out the car. This was something like 18 hours into the trip to St. Louis. It's a 22 hour drive, plus the added stops that are required when traveling with two small children. It wasn't fun driving all that way, but it wasn't awful. The worst part of going out was Handsome Face getting a hold of the Pringles while we were on our way to pick my husband up from work and then promptly throwing up. So gross. Good thing I covered the car seat. It helped - but not much. The other worst part was that the kids didn't go to sleep that night til really late.
After we got back from the Temple for the Endowment session, we found the kids in the basement, happily playing with the coveted toy car.

And here's the wedding. Cute Girl was a lovely little faux flower girl. Her Grandma does dress her up awfully well. Isn't she just cute? And I love Handsome Face's knee socks and caterpillar sweater vest. Hopefully you can get a good look at Cute Girl's hair. I didn't post pictures of it before because the wedding hadn't happened yet and it felt like cheating. She'd been running around all morning though so it's kind of tousled. Oh well, she's three, whatcha gonna do?

Handsome Face just loved his Uncle Bret. But my kids always love Bret so that wasn't surprising. He especially loved burying his face in Bret's hair. Cute Girl with Uncle Ryan. I swear these two were inseparable for the whole trip.

Handsome Face was so plumb tired out that he fell asleep on the way to the wedding luncheon. He ended up with a fever by the end of the reception and then threw up all over my dress while I attempted to bathe him. Luckily, Aunt Katie was there to help and wash the girlie while I rocked my boy and he got a blessing. He's still not feeling well. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Cute Girl hugging her first-cousin-once-removed Stori. Aren't you impressed that I know that? Stori is seven but the littlest thing in the world. Cute Girl is just as big as she is!

And I just noticed that there's not a single picture of the Rocket Scientist. He was there, I swear. But for once he had the camera and I got to be in the pictures.

I've been too busy getting ready to drive cross-country to post anything lately. But here's something finally. We did a trial run of Cute Girl's hair for the wedding on Sunday. We are growing out two layers of bangs, so her hair is kind of crazy. Here she is Saturday night with sponge rollers in her hair. She actually left the alone and she was very pleased with her little curls the next morning. She has very long hair but when curled it turns into a Little Orphan Annie bob. Too cute.

They're just too cool

Fun in the Tub

We didn't have such a great day yesterday. At least the bathtub bought us a brief period of relative calm.

Need some extra cash?

This is my favorite article of the day. And I don't have a single one of them.

Lots of flooding in Indiana. My mother's house has turned into command central for her ward. We're praying for them. And hoping that the forecasters are wrong about the rain and tornados to come.

P.S. It happened on her birthday. Now that's just rude!

Trip Planning

We are driving, yes, driving, to Missouri in two weeks for a family wedding. I am impatient to get going. I'm dreading - ok, I'm terrified - the 22 hour car trip with two little ones and so I just want to get it started and over with it. I've been trying to prepare for the trip in the past few days but other than research and list-making, I haven't gotten very far. But I did just receive these in the mail today.

You can find them here. My mother-in-law had one and I fell in love with it and just had to have my own. This evening the Rocket Scientist informed me that we'll have to get more when we have more kids because otherwise everyone will just be jealous. They're that cool. And super soft. Handsome Face thinks it is fun to cuddle up in them.

And to get ready for our packing, Cute Girl and I covered diaper boxes in paper and decorated them. It served no practical purpose, but made me feel like I was doing something for the trip and let her color and get marker on her clothes. Everybody's happy.

Clean Up, Clean Up...

Everybody, Everywhere! In the past few months I've been trying to implement several new strategies to be a better mother and more efficient housekeeper. I find that one of the hardest things about being a stay-at-home mom is balancing my chores with time with my children. If I'm cleaning I feel guilty about not being on the floor building block towers with my munchkins. When we're in the toy room I'm constantly thinking about the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. So what to do?

I started by re-doing my chore chart. I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to cleaning my house (who else do you know who uses a toothbrush to clean window tracks?) but I have come to realize that I just don't have the time to as thorough as I'd like. My house is just too big. (Side note: don't buy a two-story, three bath house until your kids are old enough to clean it for you!) So I had to give myself a break. Instead of doing my chores on a weekly basis, I'm now doing then on a two week cycle. It chaffes to think that my bathrooms are only being cleaned every other week, but in reality, it's happening more often now than it was before. I'm no longer stressed by the huge workload in front of me. I have one or two things that have to be done on a given day and everything else can just wait its turn.

And to reduce the guilt while cleaning, I started trying to get my chores done while Handsome Face was in bed. It's just easier. Cute Girl has started to help too. This takes patience. Her "helping" usually justs drags the work out and she sometimes contributes to the mess more than reduces it, but we're developing patience. I keep telling myself that. I know that it's important to allow her to help while she's young and wants to do chores because it fosters independence and teaches responsibility and skills. And sure enough, she actually is doing a better job at washing dishes. I hardly have to go over them at all.

And we're spending time together. I try not to focus on the job-at-hand too much so that I can ask her questions and see what she thinks about things. Or I try to sing Primary songs. Anything so that our time is quality time. I'm not too good at this yet - I'm still driven to get the job done and I forget to engage her in conversation. But again, we're working on it.

But we have seen benefits. Aside from Cute Girl becoming more adept at washing dishes, she's also learned to love doing it. We had a Family Home Eveing lesson on work and who had what responsibilies in the house and how working together makes jobs fun. Since then, whenever we do chores together she pauses and asks, "Mom, is this work?" And that opens up opportunities to review our work lesson.

And on one last note, yesterday I asked her if she wanted to go play in the toy room or clean the bathroom. She opted for the bathroom. Go figure.

Paper Cutting
Spaghetti Eating

Yesterday I got reprimanded by my mother-in-law for not posting in the last week and a half. And I must admit, I have been remiss. But the last week has just been a crazy circus around here without much actually happening. And I haven't been taking pictures and who wants to see a post without pictures?
Well, here's a recap of last week which will probably be boring but I've nothing better to blog about...
We had a four-day weekend over Memorial Day. So nice. We went garage saleing/thrift shopping. I got a cool old wooden high chair (no idea where it's going yet), Rocket Scientist got the old school game of Life (I didn't remember it having so many rules!), and Cute Girl got three new Curious George books (we have them memorized already) among other things.
Last Sunday church got moved to 2pm to make room for a fourth ward in our building. On Monday we played outside, decided to pour a concrete slab in the backyard to extend the patio, and barbequed hamburgers. Oh, and I made a lovely cherry pie in honor of Memorial Day and ate it all week long, thereby negating any weight loss made over the preceding weeks.
The week was filled up with cleaning, budgeting, coupon/sale searching and grocery list making, and playing phone tag trying to get a hold of all four of my inactive visiting teaching sisters. I went to a Girls' Night out at Olive Garden and a RS bookclub that I found was just not for me. I was busy. And my husband had to go out with the missionaries so we didn't spend a single weeknight together. But on Friday we made up for it. We had movie night and watched Arthur and the Invisibles over our bbq pork sandwiches. Cute Girl loved it. While we were all enthralled, Handsome Face got into the garbage and started eating her leftover fajita from the night before. So gross. Once they were all in bed I got to watch The Importance of Being Earnest. So fun!
And that's it. Boring but busy.