A Day at the Pool

We spent the day at a friend's house and went swimming. I used to LOVE swimming. I even taught swimming lessons at a private swim school for a summer. Not so crazy about it anymore (since my insulin pump connector doesn't stick as well after swimming for long periods of time). Anyway, I always figured I'd just teach my kids to swim, but since Isaac is scared of any drain or hole in a pool and would rather do his own thing splashing on the top step, it has been virtually impossible to teach him anything. So, I was planning on starting swim lessons for the boys this summer until Sethy begged me to get into the water today. I was amazed when he actually jumped in the pool to me. (His brother would NEVER do that!) So, I figured I'd try a basic intro lesson. He took right to it! It was just like I was teaching again. I guess I'll try teaching Seth and maybe Isaac will want to go along. We'll see what happens this summer!

No Fairies or Princesses Allowed!

Only Army Helicopter Pilots, Astronauts, Garbage Truck Drivers, Police Officers and Firefighters!

I don't know what I'll do if I ever have a girl!

I'm SOOOOO excited! This is Isaac's first real sign ever! Normally he just writes a few Ts, Os, and Is and then tells me what the sign says. Tonight he came and asked me to make a sign that said "Fire Truck Closed". So, I told him he could do it and I would spell it for him. These are the first R and Ks I've seen him write. He's getting so big!

I've Seen the Light!

I'll never look at food the same again! How can I ever eat "regular" pancakes from now on? Okay, it's not that serious, but I did have a major paradigm shift today.

Normally I have to remind Matt to put vegetables on his plate, and I usually don't even fight my boys. Now we can finally have vegetables in the Jones house! I'm so excited thanks to Jackie and the sneaky chef!! My friends have been talking about The Sneaky Chef for quite some time now and today I finally made the golden pancakes that I've been wanting to try for forever (since we often eat pancakes for breakfast).

My friend, Jackie, put together a little taste test trial for park day today and all the food was great! Using the orange puree I made pancakes with carrots and sweet potatoes that Sethy gave his "mmm mmm" approval for. I would only suggest one difference in making the puree. I grated the carrots and sweet potato in my food processor and then, instead of boiling them, I steamed them in the microwave (5 1/2-6 mins) and put the steamed water back in the puree to keep most of the nutrients in it (why am I going to boil them all out?). I used a sweet potato instead of yams because sweet potatoes have less sugar and calories and more iron and protien. You cannot even taste a difference when I mixed it with my Krusteaz mix. My friend did the Deceptively Delicious pancakes which are much sweeter with yummy spices.

After realizing how EASY it is to make a puree I'll be trying some of the other ones and using them for breakfast lunch and dinner WITHOUT having to change my personal cooking style (i.e. cooking using frozen, canned, and boxed food)! Thanks again Jackie for getting me to try this!

Memorial Day Weekend

What's a three day weekend without a Disneyland trip? And what's a Disneyland trip with out my friends who have a "fast pass" card for every ride? We've gotten so spoiled that it's almost not worth going to Disneyland without them! Here's a picture of us pirate princess cowgirls posing for the camera.

One of our favorite places in California Adventure is the Brother Bear adventure course. The boys could play all day there and it's a nice and cool place for us all to hang out. Here's a pic of Isaac on the tire swing thing.

The next pic is of us on the Grizzly River Run. This was Isaac's first time and he was fine until we got off the ride and his 'underpants' were all wet. It didn't bother him that his pants were wet, though! Isaac may be timid about many things, but I'm so glad that he's not at all when it comes to rollercoasters and rides. Same with Seth. Right now the only roller coaster he can ride is the Matterhorn. I can't wait until he gets taller so he can go on all the other ones with his big brother!
We spent a beautiful day at the aquarium and started to use some of the booty I won from the preschool raffle. We also had a nice sunday dinner at grandpa's house. We had such a great weekend together as a family. It's always so sad to end those mini vacations. But I guess I can wait four more weeks for Matt's summer vacation. YAY!

A Snakey Story

Isaac had been playing the past couple of days with a wooden snake that his cousins had brought from Grandma Lee in January. He had become quite attached to "Snakey". Snakey even had many babies named blacky, redy, whitey and the like. Things were going fine until Isaac brought Snakey in to me almost split in half. We called Grandma Lee and broke the sad news to her and asked if she could find another one. So I taped him and Isaac seemed ok until Seth pulled it apart. Then the drama began. He brought me to the snake and told me that "Snakey died on the cross." (He had taped the snake to a telephone pole from his train set.)

Then came the tears. Oh, the tears! He can turn them on like water works. At first it was a whiney cry like the "broken toy" level of sadness. It then turned into the most melancholy, sad cry as though he had lost a life-long friend. He was really grieving! Then I heard him pray and ask Heavenly Father to fix Snakey. I was a little worried, but he didn't check to see if he was whole again. Whew! THEN he gets on the piano and starts slowly playing one note at a time for about a minute. (The only other time he's really played the piano was last year when he played a sad song and with tears streaming down his face, he sang-ish "Gramma Lee's gone, gramma Lee's gone". Both of these video files are too big for me to post for now, hopefully I'll figure out how to post them!) After hours of crying and in an effort to ease the pain, we went looking ourselves for a snake. I spotted this rattle snake that is longer than Isaac at a thrift store. I was worried it might be hard to find another wooden snake, but he seems quite taken with this one. He even named it after Snakey! (Wouldn't you think such a creative boy could come up with a better name than Snakey!) By the look on his face, you would never have believed he was so sad just a few hours ago!

As you can see below, he loves Snakey very much and is taking good care of him.

Feelin' the Burn!

That is...the red carpet SUNburn I got at the Americal Idol Finale! OUCH! But it was worth it to get all those handshakes fresh off the red carpet.

Talk about FUN! We didn't have to stay in line too long before they gave us our tickets for the Nokia Theatre. At which point we walked around and took a picture on the red carpet before they kicked us off. We had nothing better to do, so we were the first people to get behind the bars of the red carpet and faithfully stayed 'till we were fried to get as many celeb sightings in as possible. We shook hands with former Idol contestants Kim Caldwell, Justin Guarini, Melinda Doolittle, Constantine, Jasmine Trias, Chris Sligh, and saw Bo Bice.

We then went into the theatre and grabbed a snack and enjoyed the airconditioning. I wasn't thinking much about the show up to this point, but boy was I in for a surprise! What an amazing show! For those of you who saw it, imagine how good it was on tv and magnify that times 10. I was amazed that they never even showed the huge beautiful stage throughout the whole show, all you ever saw was the stairs behind the singers. There was so much more going on! It was amazing! All of the performances were incredible, but the best by far was George Michael. I couldn't believe he was there! Not that I love him so much, but he has one of THE best male voices and he sang one of my favorite songs, "Praying for time" off his Listen Without Prejudice album (listen to it from my playlist). I was beside myself the whole time and the entire audience was mesmerized. Of course, I'm glad Cook won, since he was the best performer/musician. I'm so glad we got to go! Thanks ladies for the good times!!!!

The Power of Meaningful Prayers

In most cases, getting our boys to be reverent for any amount of time over 2 seconds during a prayer is a major feat. This is especially true when we ask them to pray or they haven't volunteered.

Well, a few weeks ago I was at the computer and the boys were playing and running in and out of my room trying to chase and get the monster. This went on for quite some time with them running back and forth through the house and my room. At one point they had been playing in my room for a while when it suddenly got much more quiet. As mothers, we know that no noise is worse than most noise. So, I looked over to see what they were up to. At that moment I witnessed both boys standing at the foot of my bed with arms folded, heads bowed and eyes closed! This was a first! Curious as to what could warrant such reverence, I listened to Isaac's prayer. I only caught the end of it and by that time Seth had joined in the praying so it was even less intelligible, but it was some type of pleading for divine help in catching the monster. It looks like all they need is a little more purpose to their prayers!!!

A week ago I was feeling really sick to my stomach and thought I might not be able to go somewhere with the family. Isaac overheard me talking to Matt about this and asked if I felt sick to which I said yes. A few minutes later he came running up to me with his bright smiling face and said "Prayer!...Let's pray!" I agreed to go along (of course), not knowing what he was doing. So he climbed up on my bed and knelt down and said, "It's my turn." What followed was the sweetest prayer asking that I wouldn't have a tummy ache. So sweet! And I didn't even think about it, but I felt fine the rest of the day!

So, we just had some of the boy's friends over for two nights. AMAZINGLY, Isaac offered to say the prayer many times (saying some of the best prayers I've heard him pray) and would remind us to pray if we forgot.

So, is he getting bigger and more mature? Or does he just need a really good reason to pray?

A Fun-Field Weekend

This weekend it was our turn to watch our friend's boys while they went on vacation. We had a tom of fun! When our boys found out that their friends were going home with someone else tonight they were very sad.

Dropping Hints

I'm really not usually this bad, so that is why I'm posting this and the previous post. But a situation I found myself in last night MUST be posted. For the past few weeks I have not done any real grocery shopping other than costco staples and a few other things. Needless to say, we've been eating out a lot lately. Well, last night I finally cooked dinner. I don't know what Isaac was thinking I was doing in the kitchen, but when I came in the living room and said, "okay boys, it's time for dinner!" Isaac perked up and asked with bright eyes, "where are we going, mom?" I couldn't believe it had gotten THAT bad! His happy countenance quickly changed once he realized exactly what the combined look of shock and dissapointment meant on my face.

One of my favorite past quotes of his was over a year ago we were eating chicken nuggets for lunch at the table at home and he looked at me with a smile and wide eyes and said, "I've got the idea! We make our own food!"

Today he asked me to make him a jelly sandwich. In my usual joking sarcasm I asked, "Who do you think I am?" He replied, "A mother."

Isaac is getting pretty good at dropping hints these days.

CAUTION: Hard Hat Area!

Does anyone know where I can get one of those signs for my house?

Let me back up. You need to know I'm an all or nothing gal. I am a nothing gal in most areas of life (i.e. cooking, exercising, eating). But probably the biggest area is cleaning (not suprising to those of you who know me). I HATE it! I will do anything to avoid work of any kind, especially cleaning house. However, the very few times I do clean, you'll find me cleaning out the grooves of the refigerator door magnet with a q-tip and the like.

Our house is in a continuous flux between really messy and only mostly tidy. This past week marks the messiest it's ever been outside of home improvement projects or major ward activites. Knowing this will help you understand these next two statements from Isaac.

Yesterday we went to a friends house for a Mother's Day dinner. They have a brand new beautiful house. As I was helping Isaac in the bathroom he said, "Erica's house is...is....clean! (pause) Why is it so clean?"

And then this morning he had his construction helmet on and asked, "Mommy, you know why I'm wearing a garbage helmet?....It's so some hard garbage can't fall on my head when there's garbage in the house."

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Day and Night

As these two boys grow closer together, I am continually finding more disparities between them. I suppose it is a reflection of Matt and I. Although Isaac looks like me, he has the majority of Matt's characteristics, while Seth has many of mine. Aside from the obvious blue eyes/brown eyes and physical characteristics, their personalities are practically complete opposites. The following are a few examples to illustrate:

Isaac came into the world healthy as can be, but I had to have magnesium, a 4th degree episiotomy and a 2 pt. blood transfusion/I had no problem giving birth to Seth, but he had mild shoulder distocia, low blood sugars and was in NICU for days until his heart completely closed.

Isaac has no real need for sugar. He passes on many sweets/Seth can hear a candy wrapper from miles away and will not relent until all the chocolate chip cookies are completely gone.

Other than with dirt, Isaac can't tolerate being messy or sticky/Seth revels in messiness.

Isaac is on the construction crew/Seth, the demolition squad.

Isaac covers his eyes in anticipation of a crashing "wave"/Seth willingly touches creatures at the aquarium. (Can you believe people often ask if they're twins?!?)

How can I equally and whole-heartedly love two perfectly opposite boys so much?

24 Hours With Gramma

We got to spend 24 hours with Gramma Lee, so we decided to go see Wayfarer's Chapel in P.V. where my youngest sibling will be geting married next summer. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Jr. I can't believe in the years that I worked nearby, I never went to see it. It is beautiful.

Then we went to my favorite Thai restaurant and finished the day with a trip to the Cabrillo Aquarium in San Pedro. So much fun in so little time with Gramma!

F.H.E. after McDonald's

Can this count as our lesson for Family Home Evening?

Sorry, I was recording because I didn't have a pen and was planning on writing it down, so there's nothing to see but our garage!

Amanda's Baby Blessing

We're So Glad When Daddy Comes Home!

Glad as we can be! Matt has been going to scout training every tuesday night for the past 4 weeks along with his usual wednesday night mutual. Somewhere in there he went on an overnighter scout training and had parent teacher conference at his school. I was surprised when Isaac asked where daddy was last night. It only took him a month to notice! And Seth cried when Matt came home to drop off a dolly (from helping someone move right after work) and walked right back out the door to go pick up kids for Young Mens. I called daddy back to give the boys a kiss and promised that dad would say goodnight to them and they were ok. So when Matt came home today he spent a good 45 minutes or so wrestling with the boys. I love my family!

I Scream, You Scream!

If you have already read this post, then you know that I'm not a real icecream fan. But even I scream for icecream when it's 31 Flavors for $.31! We didn't get there in time to go in with our friends and didn't want to wait in the line, so we just went to Rite Aid next door. The boys didn't care and since neither place has mint chocolate cookie, I wasn't heartbroken.

You should have seen how fast their toys dropped as soon as I said "let's go get icecream". They got so excited that it made me feel guilty that I never really take them to icecream. What kind of mom and I?

Isaac Saves the Day!

"Gramma 'Lissa" got locked out, so Isaac came to save the day prepared with his tools and fireman hat.

Our Hero!