3 Brides!!

Doesn't every girl dream about their wedding from the time they can walk and talk? I know my girls do. Lucy marries someone new every day. Lately her husband is Derek. I have caught her in the shower pretending to shower and when I ask her what she is doing, she says she is showering with her husband, Derek! Don't worry we had a talk with her.

Ellie, Maggee, and Lucy love to play dress up at Grandma Karol's house. This particular day, the three of them came out humming the tune Here comes the Bride. Of course, I thought it was cute and laughed. Tyler, on the other hand, didn't think it was soo cute. He told them they are too young to even think about these kinds of things. Tyler is going to have stress heart attack with how much he always worries about these girls and how protective he already is!

Valentine Blues

I have to give all credit for Valentine's Day this year to Tyler. I do usually try to plan something fun and out of the ordinary for us but I just didn't have it in me this year. One year a group of my friends and I planned a scavanger hunt for our hubbys. We sent ransome notes to their work saying their wives had been kidnapped and to follow the clues if they wanted their wives safely returned to them. That year , by far, has been one of my most memorable valentines with Tyler. They had to go to various places around town and perform dances and songs in order to receive their next clue. In the end they found all of us wives tied up together. We went to dinner and played games. That year we were living with Karol so Tyler and I got a room to stay in down in Provo. This year, I am ashamed to admit, I did absolutely nothing! Usually it's the wife complaining that the husband didn't do anything. I have felt soo crappy these last few months and these last few weeks inparticular. I really wanted to plan a fun date wich would include maybe an afternoon movie and then an earlier dinner.

Philip had a bball game saturday morning and tyler told me to stay home and rest. After they had left for the game, I got out of bed to go down stairs to take my meds and low and behold there was a box full of roses for me! Tyler said that he only ordered a dozen but 17 came. They were different colors. They also came with a small hear box of chocolates. I felt horrible because I didn't even get him a card. Boy did I blow it this year! When they got home I told Tyler that I had wanted to take him out but I just didn't think I would make it. He was soooo understanding. We stayed in all day with the kids and watched movies. That night Tyler made a candle light dinner for me and the kids. What a sweetheart! So I guess I can't say anything the next time Tyler forgets to give me a card or take me out for a special occassion,or.....gives me a can opener!

Tyler didn't just stop at Valentine's Day. I just kept feeling worse and worse so early sunday morning (3:30am) I woke Tyler up and told him I couldn't stand it anymore. We headed down to St. Mark's and I had a spinal tap done. Boy does my head feel better now. Tyler was so patient with me and held me down so my body would stop shacking, and held my hand during the whole procedure. So today is Tuesday and I have been in bed since sunday morning and Tyler has taken over the house and the kids. Thanks to Karol who came and did some cleaning and all of the kids's laundry. I must confess that tyler has put up with poor housework and no laundry really being done for quite some time now. Philip's birthday is today and Tyler made his birthday dinner. What a man!!! and...........he is MINE!!!

Passing Notes

Passing notes happens on a weekly basis at our house. A lot of times Tyler and I will wake up to whispering and laughing and then footsteps running down stairs. I will get out of bed and there will be notes that they have slipped under our door. This first one is from Ellie.

Dear Mom, I cleaned my room when I got up because I thought you would be happy. And that you wouldn't have to tell me over and over again. And one important thing about you is that you are a SPECIAL girl. And you are the best mom EVER! Love Ellie

P.S. Please write back.

This next note is from Maggee.

To Dad From Maggee. We want to have fun today. from Maggee. Phililp wrote for me (Maggee)

This last note is from Philip

Dear mom and dad

Will you please slide it under Maggee's door and when we mean "it" we mean the paper to write back on. Thank you

Love Phil and Ellie

There is one note missing that is an important one and Iam not sure what happened to it. I thought I had kept all of them, but like I said this happens very frquently so I have lots of notes laying around from the kids. Anyway, the note that I can't find was talking about how the kids wanted to do something fun that day (a saturday). We would write back to the kids and run down stairs slip it under Maggee's door and we could hear them laughing and getting excited that we had written them back. Tyler and I would run back upstairs and shut our door and wait for them to write us back. The last note that was passed asked if we should keep writing notes back and forth to discuss what fun activity we would do that day as a family or if we should just have a family meeting. We wrote back and said a family meeting would be fine.

Notes are left all over the house to different members of the family. The kids will write notes to each other or Tyler and I will wake up to notes on our bed from the kids just saying that they love us. I always try and put a note in their sack lunches. One morning, as I was writing their notes telling them to have a good day and that I loved them, I started wondering if they even noticed them because they never mention them. Just as I was thinking this thought, Maggee came into the kitchen to check on her sack lunch and said, "oh mom, don't forget my note!" I just smiled to myself.

My kids are growing up which makes me very sad, but I am glad that they are still young enough to think it is "cool" to write notes to their mom and dad!

My baby is 4!!!!

This post is about a week late, partly because I think I am in denial. Lucy turned 4 on January 25. My life with babies and toddlers is gone. Hard to believe and hard to accept. Lucy has always been very very different then the rest of my children. Tyler used to always joke that we needed to stop because Philip and Ellie were always so mellow, then Maggee was a little bit more.....I guess I should say, Energetic!! Then Lucy is, at times, undescribeable. We often wondered what the next one would be like. There is no denying that we all give in to Lucy and she steals your heart once she decides that she likes you. There is no other way to describe Lucy other than she is just Lucy!!

The only thing Lucy really wanted for her birthday was a sleeping beauty dress. This exact specific one. There was no fooling her into a different one. Believe me, I tried. I took her shopping with me the day I bought her this dress. We went into the disney store and she walked right up to this dress. Well I will say that this dress was not cheap. I told her we should go to other stores and look. We left and she was not happy. After shopping around for a while, I discovered that the price wasn't as bad as I thought. So karol drove me back to the mall. She stayed in the car with Lucy while I ran back into the disney store. Mind you this whole time Lucy has had a dirty look on her face because she didn't want to leave this store in the first place. I told her I just had to run in really fast and I would be back. I didn't think she would know where I was going since we were at the mall. I came back to the car and Lucy had the biggest smile on her face. I asked her why she was so happy all of a sudden and she said because she knew I had gone in and bought her her dress. I told her I didn't, and that I did recheck the store but they had sold all of them. She just laughed and told me she knew I had her dress in my bag.

Lucy with some of her cousins who helped her celebrate. Lauren, Ellie, kyla, Maggee, lucy, Philip, and Rachel.



Lucy with all of her presents. She was not soo happy right when she woke up that morning. I thought she would be because she had been counting the days down to this day. She woke up with a scowl on her face. Some family members called first thing in the morning to wish her a happy birthday but she refused to talk to them. In fact, she cried all morning long while we were trying to get her ready for church. After she got out of the shower and she was all dressed, Tyler made her call everyone back and apologize to them for not being nice. Once she did that and she got to church her birthday mood was in tact.

Grandma Karol made Lucy this cute blanket for her birthday. So the party would not have been complete with out a slumber party. Aunt Olivia, Maggee, and Jayne enjoyed this the most out of the party. Jayne is holding a microphone that Lucy got for her birthday. Lucy sings at the top of her lungs. If you call our house around 9am every morning you can hear her singing all the mama mia songs! She knows them all.

We couldn't end the party without Grandpa George's birthday spankings. Lucy laughed through the whole thing.

Lucy, at the moment, is obssesed with Sleeping Beauty. She marries Prince Phillip every day. Her favorite characters in the past have been, the black spiderman, darth vador, and Iron Man. I tried to convince her to be a princess or something really girly for Halloween but she just had to be spiderman. So I was pleasantly surprised when she finally wanted something girly for her birthday.

Dentist Fun

This week has been pretty eventful. Actually, no it hasn't. Just the same old same old usual every day mom stuff, which is great! The kids all went to the dentist this week and that was a little adventure. All four had to have some work done. Philip had some teeth come in in the worng places so he had to have some teeth pulled to prepare for braces. Ellie's mouth is too small for her teeth so she had to have two teeth pulled so that the permanent ones waiting to come in actually could. That is a total of six teeth pulled for her because of this problem. My poor kids just don't lose teeth. The roots on those teeth are so dang long! Maggee had an absessed tooth that had infection. She never really complained about it so i didn't realize it was as bad as it was. Lucy had a few little cavities. Now, I know you are all thinking that I am probably not teaching my kids, or making my kids brush regularly. That is not the case. My kids LOVE brushing their teeth. I was a little embarrassed sitting in the dentist office with them and hearing everything that had to be done.


This is one of Ellie's teeth and tyler is holding onto the root of the tooth. Now that is one long root!!

So Ellie and Philip go first. Well with pulling their teeth they had to have guaze pads in their mouth and for the first little while a lot of blood is coming out of their mouth. Poor Lucy took one look at this and had a look of terror on her face. I assured her that that would not be done to her. Luckily we gave her the sedation medication before we left so that mixed with the gas she did pretty well. They had two chairs open that were being used on my kids. The one chair had a really nice lady that was pregnant helping the dentist, and the other chair had a really nice bald man that was helping the dentist. Now you would think that Lucy would automaticaly want to go to the lady's chair. No, she wanted to be with the bald man. She kept telling me "mom, that man has no hair. Just like my dad!!" I guess she felt connected with him. The problem was, Lucy was assigned to the pregnant lady's chair. Finally I convinced her to go to her chair but it took a blues clues blanket and she had to take her shoes off. I guess she needed to feel tucked in and safe before her work began.

So the day was long and not to mention the weather was horrible!!! I must admit I was a little scared driving. The kids did not look too good after the apt. was done so we took them home and grandma karol came over and stayed with them while Tyler and I went to their parent teacher conferences without them. I must say that I really liked not taking the kids. We were able to talk with the teachers about things that we probably wouldn't have with the kids there. I found out a lot of secrets about my kids that may be good blackmale material later on. We did get good reports from all three teachers and good grades were achieved by all of them.

Maggee's parent teacher conference was probably my favorite visit. Her teacher is great. Now anyone who knows maggee knows she is a wiggle worm. Her teacher has always told me that her students never sit for more than ten minutes at a time at their desks. It is still a little hard for first graders. In this visit, her teacher told us that she has had to have the kids at their desks a little more. I said that was probably torture for Maggee and she said it was at first but then she decided to give her a BIG chair. That way she can kick her leggs and swing them around as much as she wants while she is sitting. That way she is still getting her energy out of her body. Amazing. I never would have thought to do that.

So today Ellie and Maggee are home from school because of their mouths still being pretty sore. I thought I would be a good mom and make them their favorite, blue berry muffins. Lucy sat on the island to watch me make them. She asked if she could have some batter and before I could even answere her, she had gotten her own fork out and stuck it in the batter for a taste. Well it got to the point that she was taking way too much. I told her that if she did that again I would take the fork away so fast. She replied with, " I will just hold on to it soo tight mom!" I admite I didn't say anything back cause I didn't expect that responce from her. I did expect a dirty look, or stomping off. She said it soo nicely too! At least she is learning to control the tone of her voice, right?

Sisterly Fun

So there only remains three more weeks of nursery and Lucy still won't go. So I bought her a little makeup kit and stuck it at the top of the fridge. I told her that it would stay there where she could see it until she would go to nursery. She did it even if she only went for three weeks. The only thing that works with this child is reasoning.....and when that doesn't work...BRIBERY!We got the makeup down and the girls had a blast and wanted to pose for the camera. (Lucy was in a good mood that day so she was willing to share.)

The makeup doesn't show up that great but believe me it was everywhere. Of course they have their arguements but for the most part my kids get along pretty well. I love that all three of these girls are so close in age. I know I probably won't be saying this when the teenage years roll around so I will enjoy it for now.

Some More Catching Up

Over Christmas breake my kids were all lucky enough to get fifths disease. Poor Lucy got the worst of it out of everyone. To this day she still has blotches of it in random places on her skin. Philip and Ellie just got the rosie cheecks and Maggee later broke out with the rash also. I even wound up with the wonderful rosie cheecks for a few days and caused great headaches for me. The kids loved that they got almost an extra week of christmas break with no school.

Right before the christmas break Ellie had a class program. They all took apples to school and let them dry out and made an indian head out of the apple. Put a stick in the bottom of the apple for the body. The body had paper rolled around it that you would unroll and it had and indian story written on it. I was not able to go because of my head but that was ok because it was even better to have dad there all to herself.

Ellie and her apple Indian man. She was soo proud. She said that no one elses in the class looked like hers.

Ellie and Maggee had the opportunity to do an after school activity and participate in a sleeping beauty play. For a whole week they stayed at school until 5:30. They loved every minute of it, even though it may not look that way on their faces in this picture. They were soo nervous but they did a great job! They were sooo sad when it was all over with.