Volume VIII, issues viii and ix, November and December 2012

November 2013

Some of our friends generously invited the nine of us over for a pleasantly competitive Pie Contest before Thanksgiving. We decided to go for style rather than substance as a ridiculous requiem to the timely demise of Hostess only days earlier.  We used home-made chocolate and vanilla mousses (meeses?) to glue the disgustingly caloric layers together and the kids present inhaled it with guilt-free gusto and showered us with shameful votes.

Admittedly our dessert wasn't a pie, and it played on sugar-laden pathos rather than baking skills, but that didn't stop us from taking home first prize! It's a major award! Not only can I wear it, but I can also eat out of it and defend myself with it and use it to discipline small children and cheeky adults.

Before I was married, I told my Mom, "If I ever make my kids wear matching clothes, please shoot me!" Now I wear a bullet-proof vest and egg on my face to family reunions!

Holden sailed through his first year as a teen with ease, with temperamental transitions and wavy mood swings affecting not his personality but his hair (see photo above). Adding a little squirt of gel to the spikes in his hair in the morning made them spiral out of control by afternoon and his friends started calling his coif "The Wave." Holden reported to me one day after school that as he was walking down the junior high hallway (shudder, shudder), he overheard one girl say to her friend, "I want to touch that kid's hair."

He said that he wanted to turn around and say to his admirers, "That kid has a name."

I promptly gave him an appreciative pat on the back and a haircut.

Soups of Pumpkins and Peters

One Monday I asked Peter if we should have a giant cookie for our Family Home Evening treat. He was silently thoughtful for about ten seconds and then said, "Why don't you make TWO giant cookies and then we could make a giant ice cream sandwich?" Well played, my son! Who wouldn't want to consume a monstrous cookie-ish confection as big as their head?
* * *
While staying at my parents house for Thanksgiving, Peter suffered through one of the worst colds he's ever experienced and was startled when he woke up one morning and couldn't speak. He croaked, "My voice is broken!"

That night he screamed out in the dark when he thought he couldn't breathe, so I got out of bed to rush him into bathroom so he could breathe in some steam. He sweetly pitter-pattered back to bed a few minutes later. In the morning, he said sadly, "My voice is still broken, Mom. Bytheway. . sorry I woke everyone up."
* * *
Peter loves to give a sort of "dream report" when he wakes up. Last week he spun a sleepy yarn about how he was being attacked by brains that had eyes and squid-like arms. After describing the violently cerebral war, he said calmly. "Do you know how I know it was a dream? Brains don't have eyeballs."

Christmas 2013

Christmas Prayer

One night as we were opening the cute cardboard door on our Lego Advent Calendar, there were shrieks of anything but Christmas joy when the kids uncovered an empty compartment. Peter had been trying to peek and had somehow relocated the legos to a different compartment. All wasn't lost, but we still had to endure a lecture about sharing and patience and taking turns (I really don't like giving the lectures either). 

While saying the family prayer that night, Ethan said, "Please help us not be overtaken by greed. "  

Celebrity-ating in Style

Eric and I were invited to a Christmas Costume Party early in December and the invitation said to wear our "Best red and green." We couldn't resist. You should have seen us giggling and carrying on as we carefully planned each perfect detail of our costumes for weeks before the party. I have to say that conjuring up the costumes with Eric and then posing for this picture were two of the highlights of my holiday season. I had been practicing my "joyously evil ambulance chaser" expression for days to get it just right.

Marie's cute pronunciation of "hand sanitizer" inspired is to make these goodies to share with our neighbors and friends. I loved watching the kids at each door, belting out Christmas cheer, Marie popcorn-ing as she sang. Because I didn't want the delivery of the gifts to take until the new year, I suggested that maybe they didn't need to sing at every door. After the next rousing chorus, Eve returned to the car and said resignedly, "Sorry. I can't resist singing."

Eve lost one of the screws to her glasses right before her class Christmas program, so she jimmy-rigged a paperclip, Macgyver-style, to hold her glasses on. You'll also notice in the photo that she removed the bow from her hair and added it to her Santa hat for just a touch of feminine flair. 

* * *
Eve has started experimenting with language in a way that makes my poetic heart flutter. Rather than just calling us by our given titles, she'll say things like "Mom of all Moms, can I have a snack?" or 

"Charlie that I know and love, you are so cute." 

* * *
Her fingers are itching to start violin lessons and I told her that if she was exceptionally good, I'd let her start on her birthday. She sighed sadly so I told her it wasn't a long time to wait. She replied, "In my time it is."

* * *
Since she learned how to sew this summer, Eve is constantly found in her room with a needle and thread, huddled over scraps of fabric (and her brothers are constantly found yelping and pulling needles out of their feet. Oh! The memories!). She makes stuffed animals, purses, doll clothes and anything else she can piece together with a little thread and her vivid imagination. She sewed hand-made gifts for family members for Christmas, and even created a special "Idaho" for Charlie (bottom right) with paper, stuffing and staples.  

I was filled with extreme glee when I realized that we could have a Christmas quartet this year. It was the stuff that my nerdy adolescent fantasies were made of. Being surrounded by three handsome string-playing fellas was almost more than I could bear as we filled up the house with Christmas melodies for the Sunday before Christmas. We played as a quartet for a while and then I switched to the piano and accompanied Caleb on his viola and then switched things up and accompanied some duets with Holden and Ethan on their cellos. Then Eve wanted to play the piano and Caleb figured out how to play with her. By the time we finished and looked at the clock, we realized our jam session had lasted for three hours.  Oh what fun, indeed!

We brainstormed about what we could call ourselves and my first suggestion was "The G Strings." Eric and I laughed whole-heartedly until the boys wanted to know what was so funny.  I'm thinking that maybe "Me and My Bows" might be more family friendly.

Eric snickered each time we finished a song and told us our look at the camera said, "We. . . are. . . performers!"

Halloween 2012--The Flintstones!

 Folks have been telling Eric he looks just like Fred Flintstone for years, so I knew this was an inevitable Halloween scenario. I was just waiting for that Flintstone feeling to surface, and this was our year!

If you look at the photos and think that we're making silly cartoon faces, it's because we are!

Volume VIII, issue viii, September 2012

One Small Step for Charlie Kind

We were extremely proud of Charlie for learning some mad new skills in September!

Charlie learning to Canoodle with his Lunch. 

I heard raucous laughter from both the bigger kids and Charlie and ran into the living room to see what was causing such an outburst. This is what Eric was doing to entertain our innocent little chap.

The Jackson Three

In early September we took our annual late summer trek to Jackson Hole. We honored our trio of traditions as we hiked to Taggart Lake, swam at the Rec Center in Jackson Hole and ate ribs at Bubbas. Satisfaction!

Eve's Observation

I was involved in some project that demanded something orange, sweet and stretchy. (I don't even remember what it was. Weird.) I asked Eve, "Do they make orange fruit roll ups?" She responded thoughtfully, "According to my kid instincts, I don't think they come in orange."

Marie's Artistic Sensibilities

   In the beginning she says, "I'm Marie d'Evegnee and I'm gonna play Twinkle Little Star Marie." After that, it frankly gets a little morbid. She sings it with such cheer though, don't you think? (I'm glad she went to the "doctor," but it honestly sounds like it might have been too late.) But at least her friends help resolve the existential dilemma when they demonstrate their humanity as they say, "C'mon. . . guys, what should we do?"
   Marie's poetic soul also emerged the other day when she was upset and she observed, ""When I cry, it's raining in my eyes."

             If you think that I have fun getting her dressed for preschool, you might be right!

I don't know which is worse--the fact that they make such great dorks or the fact that they look much more like their Hafen side in all of these photos. It just comes so naturally that I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed. 

Peter's Prayers
   Peter's prayers have been evolving from their toddler stage to their Hugh Nibley stage. Earlier this year, Peter had a primary lesson about the prophet Nephi building a ship to cross the ocean to come to America. That Sunday night, Peter prayed with all sincerity, "Please help Nephi build his ship." Peter continued saying this same phrase every night for months, and even though we know from the Book of Mormon plot that Nephi's boat got the job done, his honest anxiety for Nephi's project made us hope that somehow prayers can be retroactive.
 
   This summer, Peter started to pick up on the fact that he can pray about different things that have happened during his day and that he doesn't need to say the same things in every prayer. When Eric came home from his trip, he gave each of the kids souvenirs from his adventures. Peter received a plastic axe from Mount Vernon that was filled with tiny candy cherries. In his prayer that night, Peter said, "Thanks for my present from Dad. . . which was the AWESOMEST of them ALL!"

    It was difficult for Peter to endure the long countdown to his birthday, so we started telling him how many days he had left each night. A few days before his birthday he prayed with passion, "Thanks that in four days it's my birthday. . . and then three days. . . and then two days. . . and then one day and then it's my birthday! And THEN. . . just around the corner is HALLOWEEN!"

   He opened his bright blue eyes and gasped as he cried out, "Hey! That's just like talking!"
 
   I leaned down and kissed his thankfully still-chubby cheek goodnight and said, "Yes, Peter, it is just like talking and Heavenly Father loves it when you talk to him that way." How could I not be head-over-absolute-heels in love with that kid?
 
   The night of his birthday party, Peter gratefully sang out , "Thanks for my awesome, AWESOME party!"

                        Avengers Parties with a Vengeance

    For our two September boys' birthday bashes, I thought I'd multi-task and have both parties on the same day. I honestly thought I was being somehow smart and savvy. Don't ask me why. I just remember thinking how brilliant I was because both boys would have the same theme and apparently there was something smart about that. And I'm not ashamed to say I was wrong. Dang wrong.

    What they don't tell you in the "Don't-Be-Stupid-and-Have-Two-Birthday-Parties-in-the-Same-Day Handbook" is that you will actually do twice the work and will stupidly render yourself twice as awesomely tired when you're done. Really, it's simple math. Two Parties= Two Party Hangovers. At the same time.

   Now that my confessional of idiocy is over, I will admit that both parties were fun. Dang fun. (Which is the problem with over-doing things in general. Your regret at having done so much will pretty much be exponentially balanced with how much fun you had. And that explains my party-planning philosophy.)

Here are the invitations:

 Peter and Marie and I delivered the invitations in a flurry of neighborhood flags on September 11th. I teared up a little as I watched my little super heroes joyfully run down the street with the colors of freedom waving all around them. As they looked at the flags, Marie wrinkled her nose and said, "Hey! Our costumes match the flags! Why, Mom?" As I explained to them the meaning behind those stars and stripes, I was emotional and extremely proud of our country and what it represents on so many levels.

Even Charlie got to dress up for the occasion. 

                                              I didn't think it could get any cuter than this. . .

                                                         . . . until they did THIS.

Another September highlight delightfully plunked itself in the middle of all of the Avenger madness, and that was the honor of meeting the long-awaited Zoey Hinckley. She had nine adoring fans waiting in line to hold her like she was royalty. Welcome to Zoey and congratulations to Wendy and Spencer!