Our Family Story

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Hot Summer Day

One of my favorite things to do in the summer as a child was to jump on the tramp with the sprinkler under it. Wahoo!
Loads and loads and LOADS of fun!

Avery, Quinney and Madelyne were having a blast!

I tried to get them to lay their heads together in the middle of the tramp where the water was coming up all at the same time.
"All at the same time" is the key folks!
You can see how it turned out. A little more difficult than I thought. . .

After many spoiled attempts I finally just had them lay on the bellies instead. :)

Avery, Quinn and Madelyne were having a hay-day pouring water down the slide with their watering cans. They darn near burned a hole in their suits they were sliding so fast! :0

It worked out nice for Kristen too because with the slide being wet, Savannah could no longer get any traction to climb up the slide. Much to her dismay, she remained safely at the bottom. :)

Awww! Another fun summer day!

Splash Park

I think we picked one of the worst days all summer long to go to the splash park! It was cloudy and windy and once the kids got wet, it was cold too.

It even started sprinkling while we were eating our picnic lunch. I kept asking if we should leave and come back another day when it was sunny and warm but, NO WAY was the answer. They were gonna play at the splash park no matter what.

And so they did. . .

. . .for about 4 minutes and then they were soaking wet and freezing and wanted to go home. :)

Pioneer Day

The Mendon 24th Pioneer Day Celebration was as fun as ever for the kids this year! One of their favorate things is the "fireman hosedown"! Wahoo!

They all got soaked!

Avery and Quinney went on a pony/horse ride. Good thing they didn't notice the saddle sliding off of one of the horses and the two kids that were riding it falling off right before their turn or they'd a changed their minds in a big hurry! :)

Quinney wouldn't go for a ride unless Grandpa walked right beside him. :)

This kid had no interest what so ever in riding the horse. He was as content as can be just licking up his ice cream cone.

We did however get him to sit on a horse just for a picture. Can you see concern/terror on his face? He wasn't so sure about it. Any longer on that thing and he'd a broke out in tears! ha ha!

Look at the two beauties decked out in matching patriotic attire. . .

That's right ladies work it. . .

. . .work that camera!!

Minus the fact that Hayzen whinned or cried and whinned or cried AND WHINNED or CRIED almost the entire time, we had a great day! :) And let's be honest, we were ALL filled with joy and very much relieved when he finally fell asleep! Phew!

In his defense though, he wasn't feeling too well, so I guess he's allowed to whine and cry a little. ;)

Another fun 24th celebration to remember!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Lesson Learned :/

I decided at the last minute to put a few things in Julie's craft booth at the 24th celebration.
So, I spent all week making these beauties. . .

I really felt like my house was a fabric/pillow factory there for a few days!

And making all these adorable rosette flower frames. . .

I loved the way the vintage ones turned out! :)

Aren't all the pillows and frames cute? I was a busy bee!

Here's the booth with all our handcrafted goods.

It turned out to be a family affair! ha ha! Dad put in a few of his gorgeous hand woven rugs, and Mom slapped in some of her handy-dandy crocheted hot pads. :)

Doesn't it look like fun?

Well, it was until all my hard work didn't pay off! :(
Yes, that's right I said DIDN'T. *sigh*

Only one of my frames sold. Only one, that's it! No pillows, no nothing. Just one measly rosette frame.

It didn't take long to realize that I was going to be packing up as much stuff to take home as I packed up from home to take to the booth. Do you get my drift? Yeah, unfortunately it was one of those kind of realizations.

:/ --this is me, about ready to cry!

I quickly began to think about the past week and how I had spent every waking moment slaving away at my sewing machine and/or hot glue gun. All the 'So You Think You Can Dance' and '48 Hours Mystery' episodes I had watched with needle poked and soar fingers whip stitching all my 16 pillows closed.
{Thank goodness I ran out of time or I may have made more pillows, I really was planning on making more, you know. And really cute ones too, course I thought they were all cute. Doesn't anyone else? :)}

All those times that week I had shooed my kids away to "go play", "go swing", "go ride your bikes, Mama has to get this done", you know, those sort of shoos, came rushing back to my mind. I felt sick. I hadn't done one fun thing with them all week, they were pretty much on their own to entertain themselves.
{Except I might have turned on a movie or two for them so I could have more 'alone time' to get more sewing done. Wasn't that sweet of me? Ugh!}

I had neglected my 'life' for a whole week, Monday-Friday all for nothing. Nothing. A big whopping nothing. Thinking about that made me feel guilty and sad. And then the more I thought about it, I felt flat out embarrassed too. Big flop, HUGE! *sigh*

and another *sigh*

On the bright side though, I learned some very valuable lessons.

1. I'm much better at being a Mom than a Saleslady anyway. {That is if I don't have a major sewing, crafting, hot glue gunning, gotta get it all done if 5 days, sort of project going. Then and only then, will I be a better Mom than Saleslady.} :)
2. I will not be trying to sell any of my homemade goods anytime soon--no matter how cute and adorable I think they might be. . . see valuable lesson #1.
3. People might not be as fanatical about changing out their couch pillows for each season/holiday like I am. Who knew?
4. People ie: husband, kids, parents, sisters, best friends, best friends Mom's are all there and willing to make you feel better about yourself, your skillz and your homemade goods when you need a little boost in your step.
5. I have birthday and Christmas presents for everyone for the next 7 years! :) Hooray!

Lessons learned my friends. Lessons learned.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

"That was easy!"

You know the commercial that has an "easy" button you push to make things easier? Well, I feel like I just pushed it!

Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell ya why! Because Hayzen pretty much got rid of his binki all by himself. Yep, he did. It was SO easy!

I was planning on taking the plunge at the end of the summer when all of our planned "over-nighters" were over. But before I knew it, the binki was gone, completely gone.

You see what he's doing in this picture here. . .

He started chewing on his binki's. In fact, he chewed on them so much that he managed to chew right through them. And once they had holes in them, he didn't want them anymore.

We were finally down to his very last binki. He had been chomping on it all morning and it had some huge craters in it. When it was time for his nap I laid him in his bed. He immediately stood up, set his binki on the little table next to the lamp, laid back down and went right to sleep without a peep. Whoa! I was thinking to myself, "well that was easy, but it will be a different story at bedtime."

Guess what? It wasn't! He did the exact same thing at bedtime with his binki and that was that. Never touched it again. Can you believe it?

After that next day I made sure I took it off the table when he wasn't looking and threw it away. Wouldn't want him to suddenly see it and decide he wanted a binki again. :)

Easy as pie, right?! Yesssss, I did it! ...err, I mean, HE did it!

Thank you so much my sweet son for saving your Mama lots and lots of un-needed anxiety and worry about taking that bink away. :)
You're the BEST binki-free little fella around!!

A Great Season

Quinn had so much fun playing T-Ball this summer. He loved it and looked forward to his 2 games every week. It was so fun to watch him get into it and play his very best.

Here's his team: