Scooters, Paint, and ofcourse Mexican Jumping Beans

So I have been really behind on my posts, so here are a few catch up pics...

Hiram and Noah meeting our newest pets.. the mexican jumping beans- which I found out were indeed not a joke.

This is our friendly neighborhood butterfly that spent the day with us. He was quite friendly.



Noah painted a picture of Mommy (red), himself (yellow) and a professor he spent a little time with while Mommy talked to his class (blue)
Luke and Jonah having fun on their new scooters out on our neighborhood walking trail.

Happy 2nd Birthday Luke & Jonah!

We celebrated Luke and Jonah's birthday party yesterday. I'm sure they had very little understanding about what was going on other than a couple things. . . they could finally eat the cake, and all those presents coming in were for them. They got a lot of fun things including pink doll strollers (yes, pink) that all 5 boys squabbled over most of the night. Here are a few very poor photos and a couple equally low quality videos :) We had a great time.








Noah had fun.
Aunt Tiffy and Uncle Rick


There were a lot of little hands. . . and a lot of big screeching.

Luke riding his new scooter.

On the naughty list- IN BIG RED LETTERS!

(Luke steals the show on that last photo but make sure you check out Jonah's face)

(clean up)


I'm pretty sure I don't need a whole lot of text for this posting. . . Think of it as a photo tour of recent events. Just prior to this was about a dozen walls covered in bright orange crayon. And a lot of things I don't really care to remember and didn't take pictures of -- Like their own creative chex mix. . . made with chex (of course) and lawn fungus killer (... of course) The Lady at poison control just laughed.


At least I can say that the big brothers weren't coloring on the walls!

Next up... Frying eggs on my window seat. . .



This would be a picture of eggs cracked into their ball popper toy.


Keeping with the cuisine theme. . . They were already cleaning up when I caught them this time.


Do you know that Parmesan cheese NEVER comes out of carpet- or a vacuum?

So I guess this was all just preparatory to the one day marathon. . .


You know when you wake up to this . . .
(there are 13 SOS pads in there) you should be on high alert for extra mischievous behavior. . .

Instead I decided to make a cake, and here's what happened. . . .

First came the poop in the bedrooms (yes plural). . . A lot of it - ground into the carpet thanks to the helpfulness of my baby-boys and the container of wet wipes they used to try to clean it up. I actually found him sitting on my new table butt naked (and of course not really wiped very well) Update: Both Jonah and the table have been thoroughly cleaned.


This would be Jonah after I duct taped his diaper on. After hunting for missing diapers all morning and following the poop fiasco it sounded like a good idea. And it worked great until I changed his diaper later and omitted the duct tape. . . (I'll get back to that later)


So here's the next installment of twin terror (same day)
At this point I wasn't even cooking anymore! This took them all of three minutes by themselves.


Here are the "Great BBQ Lakes" Luke and Jonah created on my carpet. Pictured here are bottles of BBQ sauce, ketchup, pomegranate juice and maple syrup. Not pictured is the sweet relish and the now half empty bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Also not seen in the picture is the Jackson Pollock on the wall and slide. Luckily most of the mess was limited to the board there on the floor (how considerate)

So I wiped up what I could, made a feeble attempt with a bottle of carpet cleaner and gave up- opting for my Mother in law's carpet cleaner later. Instead I headed downstairs with the boys to clean up the Lego mess in the play room. After pulling teeth we were just about done collecting a bazillion little legos when Jonah (maybe it was Luke?) ran over and dumped out the poorly guarded box. Square one. And then, not quite sure how this all happened- but Jonah ended up naked again and peed in a big rubber bin. He filled up the bin pretty good but I ran him to the toilet anyway for good measure. Nothing- so I put him down (stupid Mommy) and figured I was safe to run up and grab him a diaper. Came back down to find that he had miraculously grown a second, full bladder and had emptied it on the big pile of legos. It was about this time that I found out . . .I was pregnant!!!


Just kidding, (yeah I know not really funny- really not funny actually) I mean I found out that the Missionaries were coming for dinner at 5, not 6. At it was nearing 4:30 with nothing to eat and nothing to show for my day but a procession of digested and digestible disasters, and a house that smelled like a bad hot dog stand. I made the executive decision to order pizza and put the twins to bed as early as I possibly could.
p.s. after about an hour with one of those carpet cleaner vacuum looking things Mark got the carpet cleaned... mostly.

Such a Slacker

So now that it is the eve of the first day of school I figure I should maybe write a bit about the summer that I have basically neglected. . .

First of all the twins are about to turn two and I can see they are going to be good at it. Jonah has been getting quite comfortable throwing about the classic five finger stop signal along with a crusty look and a firm "No." (Which still sounds a bit like "Nuh") Jonah, I have to say is usually pretty cute about it. But if you want a serious attitude you go to Luke. This kid takes the metaphorical cake for dishing out man sized rejection- A narrow glaring look, lower lip sticking right out there and best of all the elbow. It's like the toddler version of giving someone "the bird." Start at a distance and watch the arm slowly reach across his body untill you have breached his bubble and his elbow is raised fully to his face and shoulder pulled as far from you as he can get it get. He's quite generous about giving people "The Elbow." Pretty much anyone but Mom (Me) can expect to get it on a regular basis. The only cure I have found is to tell him that you are leaving and then he gets all sweet and says bye bye , smiling and waving. What a little stinker! Not for the faint of heart or those lacking in self esteem.

They still like to play together a lot but I think their time is equally spent fighting- maybe more time spent fighting. I have pried open more white knuckled fists full of hair than I care to count. So they may be balding as toddlers (they are ferocious hair-pullers) but they still have a lot of fun together and are crazy- cute albeit sassy little monkeys.

Hiram starts school tomorrow morning. He's starting a new school but is excited despite missing his kindergarten teacher. I'm sure he will have a great time. He was thrilled to see he has a smart board in his class again this year- a rarity in our school district I guess) Really though I can not believe how quickly the summer came to a close but I am sort of looking forward to a change of pace. Just wish it didn't require so much time away from my boy. Such a good kid.

Mark is scheduled to start his MBA next week at CSU (two nights a week for two yrs) and Noah starts preschool the next week at Hiram's Elementary school. He will also be going to our favorite preschool on his free day (Bright Beginnings Preschool- best teacher ever aka Gramma)
but needs to attend his other school for the speech therapist. He's also doing private work with one of our good friends who is absolutely wonderful. (Yes I am plugging for preschool and speech therapists here so let me know if you need one or both :) )

Life for me has been what it usually is- running in circles trying to improve the house, myself, my kids. It's hard to feel like I am getting ahead instead of putting out fires all of the time but I know we are making progress. Actually we put our front yard in (good bye to the lovely field of weeds we've been mowing for the last couple months. Mark built me a beautiful column thingy to cover our sad little pole. It fits the house nicely. He and Hiram and Noah also surprised me with a truck full of flowers and fruit trees that they stopped off to purchase with the last load of mulch. They like to think of ways to make their crazy Mom happy and they do a great job.

We are getting to know our new ward now and enjoying new friends as well as seeing our old favorites. Our congregation is growing so fast there is a constant influx of new families. We must have read in the records of six families today and I know of at least two others who haven't gotten theirs in yet. Every week there are more and more. I assume it should slow down when school starts but I say the more the merrier!

We had a beautiful family wedding last week and got to see a lot of long distance relatives. That was a lot of fun. I got to remember how much I like dancing with my husband- especially when there is a baby sitter! We also went up to Steamboat for about a day and aside for the ride there and back we had some fun. We did a little swimming, a little mini golf, smidgen of biking. But I have to say then most fun was probably putting the kids to bed (duh) and staying up way to late playing canasta- well, winning canasta anyway :).

Memorial Day Fun- just some photos for now

Notice something about Luke in the next 4 photos..