Sunday, December 30, 2007
Yesterday while eating breakfast we had the following conversation:
Noah (completely insulted) said, "Some people called me a diaper baby at the beach when I was two!"
To which I responded by saying, "Yeah but that was a long time ago. You should forget about it."
Hunter was snickering and giggling off to the side, spooning cereal into his mouth. And to him I said, "Oh yeah, Hunter. Think it's funny? Cause you've been a diaper baby at the beach before. I have pictures!"
Denver chimed in at this point, "I remember. . . from heaven or from Mommy's tummy. Whichever one."
"You can't remember heaven, Denver!" Was Hunter's comeback. "You've been vealed."
"It's not vealed, it's veiled." I shot back, giggling myself. "And some people think babies can remember what Heaven was like."
"I can remember too." Denver said. "It was white!"
Everyone was sort of giggling and snickering at that point and we debated for awhile when a person could no longer remember heaven and what we thought heaven might look like. Were we veiled when we were born? Or was it when we started talking? Or maybe it was when we could start remembering and retaining things? Then I suggested we ask Caleb, that maybe he could still remember cause he was just two. So we did.
"Caleb, do you remember heaven?"
An enthusiastic "Yes" was his reply.
What does heaven look like, was our next question to which he replied, "A garbage truck!"
After we composed ourselves, I asked, "Is it a white garbage truck, Caleb?"
To which he replied, "NO! It's a red garbage truck."
And now while Caleb probably can't wait to get there, I'm sort of wondering if Heaven's not a little overrated. I was hoping for a little more than a glorified garbage truck to live in after I die. How about you?
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The other day Denver came home from school and announced that Lexi wanted to marry him. "Oh," I said. "What do you think about that?"
Denver shrugged his shoulders and then stated, "Lexi's mom says she has to marry someone Jewish."
To which I replied, "Do you want to marry Lexi? You'd have to become Jewish."
Denver pondered for a bit, watching cars drive past our front window. And then he said, "Maybe."
Maybe he wants to marry her or maybe he wants to be Jewish--I don't know. Maybe both. Either way I've heard rumors that Lexi is pretty darn cute and Denver seems to have a pretty big crush on her. Speaking of marriage and crushes, did you know Mark and I have been married for eleven years today. Yeah, it's true. And guess who forgot. That would be me. But the good news is, I haven't forgotten how much I love him or how good the past eleven years have been. And I also haven't forgotten what religion I am or that I didn't have to become Jewish to marry him. And just the fact that I remember that much is a real, honest-to-goodness miracle. I love you Mark and Happy Anniversary.
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Monday, December 17, 2007
Would you puh-lease hold still for just one second? The doorways all have safety gates in them, the cupboards all have locks and everything else has been duct-taped shut and yet, you still find a way to get into trouble. But if you'd just hold still for one second. . . .
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Is it better to mop the kitchen floor in the morning and spend the rest of the day watching it turn into a big black sticky mess? Or is it better to mop the floor right before I go to bed so it will stay clean for longer than five minutes but no one will get to enjoy that fresh Pinsol scent or the fact that their socks don't stick to the floor, even if it is for just five minutes in the morning? I dunno. Either way the floor has got to be mopped daily. With three babies and twice as many boys who haven't quite grasped the concept of wipe your feet it just has to be done. Otherwise we may never unstick our feet from the floor and be housebound forever.
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Sunday, December 09, 2007
When church is your social life and you want to go so bad you'd even consider going with a kid that swears he's going to barf at any minute. And it's even more pathetic because church isn't even fun. It's actually quite horrid most of the time. But when it's the only day of the week you actually get to socialize, even the horrible stuff like vomit and six boys climbing all over the pew doesn't seem so bad. But I wouldn't know. Today I'm home with a kid that swears he's going to barf any minute and a sore throat of my own.
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Friday, December 07, 2007
leaving sounds much easier than staying.
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Thursday, December 06, 2007
More often than not I don't shower alone. Usually I have at least one but more like three babies with me in the tub and I've had up to six at a time. . . really. I'm used to it and it doesn't phase me anymore. I've forgotten what it's like to have the luxury of showering and going potty without an audience and it really doesn't bother me. The more the merrier seems to be our theme when it comes to keeping ourselves clean and that's just fine by me. But sometimes they start fighting in there and if you've ever been shoved in a shower you'll know that it can be quite slick and hazardous and there's definitely nothing more slippery than a naked baby lathered in soap sliding down the tub between everyone's legs. So the other day in an attempt to entertain fighting children in the shower I sprayed some shaving cream on the wall and wa-lah! Instant fix! And it didn't just fix the problem but it was really fun too. You can draw just about anything in the shower with a dallop of shaving cream, not to mention practice writing numbers, letters and shapes. And when you're done, you just hose it off (or if you have a spray bottle handy, let the kids do it themselves.) And it's white so it doesn't stain the grout or leave a big mess on the kids. So for the past several baths with the babies we've used a lot of shaving cream and we've added at least a few more cans of it to our shopping list. And I just wonder why I didn't think of this sooner. If you haven't, you definitely should or at least let your kids try it--they'll love it, I promise.
 
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Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Yesterday was our last day of Christmas Chaos. Can you believe it? It's only December 4th and we're done. We have absolutely nothing left on our calendar for the entire rest of December except Christmas. Our Christmas card is in the making. Our Christmas shopping is in the bag. It is the absolutely most bestest feeling in the whole entire world. I just signed up for Blockbuster online and my entire queue is made up of Christmas movies and romance movies and all I'm gonna do is sit on the couch with my kids and hubby cuddled in close and watch movies. And bake--a little. It's not really Christmas without gaining a few pounds from Christmas goodies. That said, here are a few pics from the four Christmas parties we attended this past weekend and a little (or maybe big) overview.
Friday (sorry no pics) Mark and I attended his work party. I hate going because I feel so out of place but it's just part of our holidays now so I almost always go and almost always end up having fun. The Rodgersons were kind enough to offer to babysit and they arrived extra early so Mark and I could do our Christmas shopping too. They brought pizza and I rented Home Alone and the kids were all set. Mark and I hit Toys R Us and Walmart and then headed for Pier 61 in New York City for food and dancing and socializing--okay Mark socialized and I stood there looking cold and cute--but you know what I mean. On our way home, around midnight, we received a phone call from June that Hunter was having a seizure. That's the first time he's had a seizure when we haven't been there, poor June. Noah came to Hunter's rescue again and helped June find and administer the sugar. It was a late night to say the least and we're ever so grateful to the Rodgersons for watching the kids so that we could escape and do our Christmas shopping together.
 Saturday we had two parties and were busy from sun up til sun down. GE throws a children's Christmas party every year at the Bridgeport Arena. There's always an ice skating show and Santa and presents and food. It's kind of crowded and always cold but we never let a Christmas go by without attending. The kids got their presents and we hurried in to see the show. This year Cyberchase's Harry was the MC which was sort of exciting because Hunter is totally into Cyberchase, or at least he used to be. We also got to see the acrobat, who used to play Barkley on Sesame Street, perform some pretty fun acts. After the show we had to run, literally, to our car so we could get home, load up the car and head over to the church.
Mark and I are the Activities Committee and this year we decided to have a "Night in Bethlehem" for the Ward Christmas Party. We had an awesome group of people helping us and it turned out really nice. Unfortunately we were forced to change the date from the 14th to the 1st and a local football championship interfered with our attendance but it went well nevertheless. We started setting up at noon and by four we were most of the way ready to go. We did a quick dress rehearsal and threw on our costumes and the night began. You can see more pictures at Sam's website (she's a real photographer) but here are a few of mine.
This was the Gift Shop, the Winery and the Toy Shop. Here people could buy wine (grape juice), gold, frankincense, myrrh, dreidels, and candy. We made all of our tents with pvc pipe frames in food storage buckets packed with rocks. Then we stapled sheets to the burlap gym wall and secured them to the pvc pipes with duct tape.
This was the Fruit Stand, Dairy, Bakery and Bread shop. Here people could buy clementines, bananas and apples, dates, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, olives (including authentic Greek olives--thanks Steve), cookies, Indian naan, rolls with honey, hummus, and bagels with cream cheese.
One of the authentic items we offered were pickled eggs, made by none other than Mark who made our house wreak of beets and vinegar for three days straight. I didn't get to taste one (because as usual, I was running around making things go) but I hear they were quite tasty. The color was pretty remarkable.
To add to the atmosphere we had a snake charmer, a matchmaker, and a roman guard. And of course everyone had to come dressed in Biblical attire. There were some very fancy costumes there and then there were my boys--can you say towels, sheets and some random ropes and strips of fabric?
  
Even though we had a small turnout, it still looked pretty crowded in Bethlehem that night. Everyone brought blankets to sit on and after paying their taxes (each family receieved a bag of coins and were required to pay one coin to the tax collector) and signing the census they were allowed to enter Bethlehem and buy their dinner. Then Mary and Joseph wandered through the crowds and a brief Nativity and Christmas sing-a-long followed.
This is the entire cast from the Nativity. Once again I heisted it off of Sam's website--thanks Sam.) We had the most perfect Mary and Joseph (thanks Torgersons). The entire Christmas Party committee worked really hard to put on this night for a less than ideal turnout(thanks friends) but I think it turned out really well and the people that did come had a wonderful evening. I've included the script here just in case someone's looking for a great Ward Christmas Party idea. We spent a whopping three weeks putting it together and had the entire gym, including stringing the lights, done in three hours. Not bad, eh?
Sunday was crazy probably because it snowed and also because we were totally exhausted from Saturday but we survived and had a nice afternoon watching TV and napping. Then Monday we had Hunter's Pediatric Diabete's Christmas Party. Kate the Elf was there, who is one of a very few people that makes me smile every time I think about her, and Santa with presents for each of our kids, and pizza and ice cream. We didn't get so many pictures because this is a very fast-paced party but I did snap these two, just because these are two landmarks we always have to visit when we attend the party at the Yale Pediatric Diabetes Christmas Party.
 
And that, my friends, is a wrap. . . for our entire Holiday Season. Whew!
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