Can You Think of a Commandment You have a hard time Keeping?

"Thou Shalt Not Kill"

This was the question I asked the girls at devotional this morning. I wasn't asking them to respond out loud, but Sarah had a quick response. Here I was thinking they might be thinking of "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother", no Sarah explained that she just has a hard time not killing people. So far the body trail hasn't made it back to her. She and I had a bad day yesterday (see previous post), and she said that she was going to kill me, luckily I made it through the night. Maybe that's what she's talking about. Am I raising a psychopath, a serial killer? Sarah keeps us laughing, she's especially funny when she's angry.

Check out our new blog!

The girls have a blog. They are always telling me what I should write here, and maybe I should write more than I do, but right now I'm just not feeling it. I have decided to give them a blog, and they can write about whatever they want. For now it is public, but it may go private, we'll see. They are super excited, so please go check it out here. I am sure they would love comments, to know that someone is reading.

You know, Ali.....

If you know Sarah you might have heard of Ali. Ali showed up about 3 years ago when Sarah was in preschool. She started telling us stories about her fairy friend Ali. I asked her preschool teacher if she had been talking about fairies or read a story about a fairy named Ali, she hadn't. Ali goes through things that Sarah goes through, hears about or wishes happened to her. Ali has a mom and dad. Her mom used to drink coffee until she stopped because they are Mormons and Heavenly Father told them to stop(just to be clear I may have a caffeine addiction, but its strictly soda). She has a little sister named Ruby who gets into all kinds of trouble that Ali has to help her out of. She also has a brother named Brian.

When Ali first showed up a was a little worried, because she seemed so real to Sarah. Anytime Sarah started in on an Ali story (You know, Ali-they all start the same) we would hurry and remind her that Ali was pretend. Now the stories start: You know, Ali-my imaginary fairy... I've stopped worrying about Ali, because I realized that she helps Sarah figure life out, and deal with what's going on around her. For example once one of our neighbors crashed on her bike, well then Ali crashed on her bike and was hurt and sad, but she was ok. I know that someday Ali will disappear, and that will be kind of sad. Ali reminds me of what an imagination Sarah has, and I hope that she never looses that. I thought I should take a minute to write about it, before we all forget about Ali.

Sarah's Birthday!

Sarah's birthday was on Wednesday. She is now 7! True to Sarah form she had very clear rules about what should happen on her birthday. First, "the color of 7 is green". I had no idea, but this meant that we had to have green pancakes for breakfast. I guess she liked the St. Patrick's day pancakes so much she invented a reason to do it again. Next rule, I was supposed to wake her up. This was a bit of a problem since birthdays are like Christmas and she was up much earlier than normal, so I failed on that one. Third, the balloons have to be pink and white. Check. We got that one right. Fourth, we had to have lunch at McDonald's, "the one that is almost to Smiths, and I get to tell everyone where to sit(at our house this is a big deal)" Check. Fifth, we had to see Monsters vs. Aliens. Check(totally cute movie). Last, she wanted a pink unicorn cake with a rainbow colored main. I made one for Shelby when she turned 5, so I was thinking I had this one under control too. I should have shown pictures to Sarah first. When she saw the cake it took her a minute to even figure out what it was -ouch. She apparantly had something else in mind, I guess I'm just not the cute cake makin' kind of mom. The more she looked at it the more she liked it.
After the movie we went to Walmart to get her a brand new bike. She promised that when she turned 7 she would stop sucking her thumb. We have told her that when she stops we will get her a bike. Well, the jury's still out on the thumb thing. She can suck it at night, I can't really stop that, and she's trying to stop so that's good. Yes, she's wearing a different outfit. I took this picture today. It was snowing on her birthday, so I didn't get any pictures of her with the bike on her big day.

So there you have it. Sarah is a 7 year old, no trainig wheel bike ridin' opinionated girl, that is trying to stop sucking her thumb. I can't believe it!

My Shelby

I've been thinking I need to do a post that is entirely devoted to Shelby. I look back at these pictures and others (I would have put up baby pictures if I had any on my computer) and think how did we get here? Where did my baby go, and how did she go so quickly? Something happens as kids get older, they leave the cute little kid phase and move on to something else that seems to get forgotten, or at least not ooooed and awed over like when they are little. As a parent I still think she is cute and amazing, but in different ways than when she was little. Life is way more fun, and we have much more freedom, I love that!

The bond between mothers and daughters is interesting to me. (My major in college was Family and Human Development so all family relationships are interesting to me.) It is especially interesting when a daughter is also an oldest child. I know I am hard on Shelby I expect a lot from her, more than I expect from Sarah. Part of that is because I have Shelby that does so much, so Sarah doesn't have to. I can honestly say that Shelby does not let me down. Sure I get frustrated and disappointed, but I also realize that I expect a lot of her, so I try harder to look past the frustration and I find myself asking for her forgiveness A LOT.

I, too am an oldest child. I know what that feels like. I love that when my dad talks about my birth he says that he was glad they had a girl, because Mom would have a friend. I don't know what my mom would say about the kind of friend I am, but I like how my relationship with Shelby is changing. We can have interesting conversations, and I enjoy that. I know that my mom relied a lot on me, and I think I helped keep our house running. Shelby definitely helps keep our house running.

Shelby is awesome because she is her own person. She knows what she likes, and doesn't care if she is different from her friends. She is a lot like her dad in that way, and many others. She plays WOW with Darren (even though I don't understand what they are talking about, its fun to listen to them and see the bond that they have-it would be interesting to hear him talk about the bond between a father and a daughter). She is the dog whisperer in training. She loves to read, her favorite is fantasy-just like Darren. What can I say? She's my Shelby, my sweet girl, and I love her!

Sarah -No Training wheels

Sarah has always loved to ride bikes. She got a bike for her birthday (I think) when she was 3 (I think-what a bad mom I am that I don't remember for sure, or maybe I'm just getting old). She has outgrown that bike, and wants a new one. Well, Sarah sucks her thumb. Darren and I have told her she could have a new bike (or scooter) if she stopped sucking her thumb. Bribery worked with my mom to get her to stop sucking her thumb, we hoped it was genetic. Skip ahead, Carter moves in with a bike and a scooter. Sarah is in heaven! Carter's bike is bigger than her old bike so she would ride it when she could. She got very good at riding his bike, the training wheels never touched the ground. With the nice weather last week all three kids wanted to be outside. Shelby has her awesome bike, and usually Carter picks his scooter over his bike, so Sarah would ride his bike. Well Carter's scooter was at Jared and Liz's and then it was in the trunk of Tiff's car, so he wanted to ride his bike. Mike adjusted the training wheels for him so he could ride. Sarah, being the little thinker that she is pulled Shelby's old bike out of the garage and asked Mike to fix it up for her. He lowered the seat, pumped up the tires, and tightened the handle bars. What a nice uncle. She took off!

This is my first attempt at video on my blog, I hope it works.

Sarah says that she will stop sucking her thumb when she turns 7, which is on April 15. We are planning to get her a new bike for her birthday. I could do a whole post about Sarah's thumb, I'll save that for another day-maybe.



This is Shelby on her awesome bike that she bought herself.

I've been tagged!

Mandi Tagged me (thank you, I love that you thought of me!) The rules are, go to your fourth folder, and fourth picture, and blog about that. Here is my Sarah (she's 18 months old), and Shelby's foot. Where has my baby gone? If you talk to her today she will tell you that she is 6 and a half and she can ride a bike without training wheels! I'll post pictures of that later. She turns 7 in about a month. She says the craziest things, like when I asked her to put away something that was too high her response was "I just have these legs", and when we watch The Biggest Loser, she works out and says "Its all about the current weights". I video taped her at about this age saying all the animal sounds, and other talents and I'm so glad I did, they grow up too fast! My kids are so fun at the ages they are now, we can do whatever we want, and I can even leave them home alone, but when I see pictures like this I miss them being little.

I tag Tori, Garrett, Hayley, and Ashley.

My Birthday is better than Santa Claus

I have been using Santa Claus as a motivation for my kids to be good since at least Thanksgiving, maybe longer. It never really works very well, and I have decided that my kids really don't care. One year Santa really did leave Shelby coal. When my parents came for breakfast on Christmas morning they had all of her presents and told her that Santa must have gotten mixed up. I wanted to see how she would react if Santa really didn't bring presents to her Christmas morning. She had presents from Mom and Dad to and that was it. Guess what! She didn't care! She was glad to have gifts from us, and there were the movies that Santa brought for the whole family, she was grateful for those too. She was very excited when Nana and Papa showed up with her presents, but that was when I realized threatening with no presents from Santa doesn't work for my kids.

Well, today is my birthday (I'm 35, doesn't seem quite right, but I'm ok with it.) The girls tried to make me breakfast. They made baked potato chips, Mike made Oatmeal. There was no fighting! They were very excited to give me the presents that they had made with construction paper, Popsicle sticks, pom poms, and glitter glue. Mike even got them to unload the dishwasher together, without fighting, by telling them they should do it together because its my birthday.

It should be my birthday everyday!

Walking Dogs

About a year ago, after reading Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion. I was trying to come up with a way that Shelby could earn money. Something that was real (not just me making up work) and meaningful to her. My brother in law, Mike, has a nephew that likes snakes. Tiffanie was telling me that he started selling mice to people with snakes. As creepy as that is, it got me thinking. What does Shelby love? Dogs. She has to walk Keno everyday, maybe she could get a couple of other dogs to walk too, since she has to go anyway, she could make money while she's at it. Darren and I also thought she could start paying for dance, not all of it, just $5 for every day of the week that she has a class. So if class was 2 days a week, she would pay $10 a month. She would also have money to pay tithing on. When I presented the plan to her, she cried. How could I be so mean. Mike talked to her about his money making endeavors when he was a kid, and she started to warm up to the idea. We decided we would make fliers and give them to people with little dogs. It has been wonderful! She has 4 dogs she walks each week plus Keno. She loves the dogs, and has hired Sarah to help her on days that she has more than 2 dogs to walk. She pays Sarah a dollar a week. I love what this has taught my girls. They have to be responsible to show up on time, they have to manage their money. Shelby has since opened a savings account that she pays 10% to each month. Plus, I have not bought her a single webkinz, she uses her own money.

I was so glad they stopped by the house last week with the dogs so I could get pictures of them with the dogs! Thank you to those that have been kind enough to let my girls walk their dogs. Their relationship with the dogs and the owners has blessed their lives and it touches my hear too.

Fairy homes

My girls, especially Sarah, love fairies. When we saw an article in Family Fun Magazine this morning on building a fairy house, they were totally excited. They quickly got dressed, ate breakfast, and cleaned up their rooms, so that they could get outside and work on their fairy houses. They used flowers from the funeral yesterday to make beds, and other fairy household items. Sarah covered the floor of her house with petals. I did feel bad that they didn't dry them to save, but this is what they wanted to do, and now they are preserved in pictures. To make the houses totally magical, they sprinkled them with glitter, and then spent the rest of the morning going in and out of the house to check to see if the fairies had been there. Some things had magically moved, so we know that they did come and visit.

Swimming Lessons

Swimming lessons have run our lives for the last two weeks. I chose to have the girls take lessons at Riverton Pool, since its fairly close and it was affordable. So we drove into town Monday through Thursday for lessons. I chose a lesson time of 11:45, so that we could have lunch at the park and then go back to the pool to swim if we wanted to.
I have lived in Eagle Mountain for almost 8 years, so I am conditioned now that if you go into town you must make it worth the trip so I packed as much as I could into my daily drives. Basically I'm exhausted. The 4th of July on Friday and a trip to Price for Taylor's Baptism made last week totally fun, but also exhausting. We were late for church on Sunday because we just couldn't move fast enough.
So this week is all about catching up on things I have let slide; housework, practicing piano, and blogging. Here are some swimming lesson highlights.
Aren't my girls fabulous in their matching swim suits? I love dressing them the same, its in my genetic make-up.
Here is Sarah leading her class in a game of "red light, green light". The color of the "light" determines how fast you kick your legs.
And now the most climatic moment of all. Its the last day of lessons, will Shelby jump off the high dive? She has jumped off the regular diving board, which took a lot of courage because the water was 12 feet deep. She climbed the high dive once only to turn around and climb back down. Are you on the edge of your seat with anticipation? Well I will leave you in suspense no longer.

She did it!

Dance!

Yesterday was the girl's dance concert! Shelby is taking a creative dance class, and she and the rest of her class got to choreograph their dance. It was a total 10 year old girl kind of dance, complete with Hannah Montana music. I loved that Shelby happened to have a flower that matched her costume perfectly (thanks Mandi). Sarah is taking Jazz, she danced to "Under the Sea", her costume is seaweed like. This is the perfect dance for Sarah since she dreams of growing up to be a mermaid. Also notice that they have curly hair! I battled through the tears (theirs), and put spongy curlers in their hair Friday night, don't they look great! They love dance and they love their dance teacher. It was a great show. It always cracks me up how the little 3 year olds always seem to have the biggest and loudest group of people there to cheer them on. What can you say they are cute! After the show we went to JCW's for shakes. Here are my girls passed out in the car when Darren and I stopped at Maverik for drinks (Diet Coke with grape flavor is surprisingly yummy!)

You are beautiful girls and I love you!

This is love!

My girls walk dogs four days a week. When the flowers and trees started to bloom they would often come home from their walks with these little flower gifts. I started putting them on my dresser in this candle lid. I always thought I would throw them away, I would think of the bugs that the flowers could be holding. The reason I didn't throw them away is that its Sarah's job to take out the garbage and I thought if she saw the flowers in the garbage she would think I didn't love them, or her. The kids are often devastated when they find beloved (to them) things in the garbage. Then, one day I was visiting with Mandi and she told me that Sarah (just to be clear Shelby and Sarah bring home flowers) had given her flowers after they had walked Sandy. I thought "that is love". I know my girls admire Mandi and that giving her flowers was Sarah's way of letting Mandi know. So, for now I wouldn't dream of throwing away my little collection of love.

Lord of the Rings

What has Shelby so engrossed? Well she is a kid parked in front of the TV so it could be any thing.



Its Lord of the Rings. When we came home from our Topaz trip I wanted to just relax and watch Fellowship of the Ring. So, that's what we did. I had to take a short break to speak at a fireside, but we finished the first movie later (much later) that night. We spent the next two evenings watching the other two movies. Shelby decided that she wanted to read the books. I thought "Sure, go ahead and give them a try". I read Fellowship of the Ring a couple of summers ago, and it took me the whole summer, and I had to watch the movie a couple of times, while I was reading, to figure out what was going on. I thought it was great that she wanted to give the books a try. Much to my surprise she has read all three books in three weeks! My question the whole time was "Does she understand what she is reading?", but she and Darren would discuss the books every night. I guess she knew what she was reading. She has now decided to memorize some of the poems that are in the books. I am floored! Who's kid is this? Oh yeah she's Darren's. I'm just excited about all the ways we can use this as part of school, its so awesome!

This is Sarah

My very independant 5 year old. She was playing with the condiments in the fridge, lining them up and making them come alive.

She opened the syrup this morning by ripping the lid off, rather than just flipping it open. She had to do it herself. You'll notice that she is drinking hot chocolate, I didn't take a picture of the tupperware lid that she melted on the stove while she warmed up the water herslef. Good thing we just invested in fancy smoke detectors.

She needed a bag to put her strawberries in after her jobs were done, and since the old box was empty she opened the new box herself.

Here she is in her fashonista glory. The rule is; if we aren't going anywhere whatever she chooses is great. Some things just aren't worth the fight.

I have to admit, life without Sarah would be a little dull, she keeps us laughing. She said during our job meeting this morining "that these stinky jobs are freaking me out!" That's our Sarah.