Grey

Our little Grey is 18 months old! He is growing up way too fast. He went in for his 18 month checkup this week with Dr. Hatch and all is well! He is a little on the skinny side weighing in at only 19 pounds 13oz. Dr. Hatch actually suggested a little less Diet Dr. Pepper and a little more whole milk! Can you believe it? The nerve. He is such a sweet boy and we are all having so much fun with him. He loves his siblings and mimics everything they do. Which can be good or bad. He still loves to snuggle especially with mom and dad in the middle of the night! He is running around and saying more words every day. We just can't get enough of him!

Not enough Laundry!!

Well, it finally happened....my dryer broke! Yipee! For those that know me know that I have been waiting for this day for years. I could not bring myself to get a knew washer and dryer until one of mine officially broke! I would feel too guilty. I even called the repair man out to deem it officially dead before I spent the money! After an entire week of research-which led to weight gain and a marriage and one friendship in jeopardy (thanks to my inability to make a decision)-I finally made my choice and here they are. Love the steam features and the size of the washer (4.4). I would like to thank Consumer Reports and all the people online who complain and praise for helping me make my decision finally! If you ever need to know anything about a washer or dryer let me know. There is only one problem now, I am too caught up. There isn't enough laundry to do!

Silly Holidays

St. Patrick's Day means an all green dinner at the Holyoak House. Usually this means green pancakes but since everyone was expecting that I went with something different. Maybe a little too different. We ended up with green pasta that looked so odd I even had a hard time eating it. We also had a list of things we NEVER have in our house for dinner like 2 different kinds of jello and green Koolaid. Way too much green.
April Fools Day meant more food fun. We had cereal for breakfast that I had secretly put a drop of blue food coloring under before the kids added their milk. Claire -who by the way is pretty ocd- was totally freaked out and refused to believe our milk wasn't bad! Too funny. For dinner we had "cupcakes" that were actually meatloaf with colored mashed potatoes on top! This is actually a mean trick because my girls really thought they were getting cupcakes for dinner at first glance. Carma handed over her cupcake after taking one bite and said "mom this cupcake is disgusting". Too cute. Mike actually had a very hard time eating all this fun food since he has an odd phobia of things that aren't the color they are supposed to be!
I would like to thank my friend Alexa -one of the best mom's I know- for the best April Fool's Joke of this year..........I taped down the on button to the sprayer on the sink and then asked Mike to rinse something out for me! So much fun!!! The best part of it all was when Mike thought it was caught on a lid and did it a second time! What am I 12?

DRAMA

One day last week Claire had a rough day and got her 3rd strike which in our house means 1 hour early bedtime! For those of you that don't know Claire very well let me tell you..... she does not handle negative things very well. We joke all the time that she is going to need anti anxiety medication by the time she is 7! We laugh about this because we don't want to cry. Claire is very much a perfectionist and rarely gets in to any kind of trouble so you can imagine how 3 strikes in one day was the end of the world for her! When it was time for bed she very slowly and dramatically went up to her room where she threw herself on her bed and cried very quiet yet heavy cries. Finally after about 10 minutes I really wanted her to go to sleep and knew she wouldn't until she felt all was back to normal. I took my camera upstairs and started shooting and this was the result. I knew there was no way Claire could stay upset with a camera in her face!

Harrison goes to Alaska!

A couple of weeks ago Harrison got a fabulous opportunity when he was invited on a five day trip to Alaska with his friend Kaiden. We were a little apprehensive at first and actually almost said no ( Mom did not like the idea of him being so far away for so long) but then we realized that we were NEVER going to take him to Alaska in the middle of winter and it was too good to pass up. Kaiden's mom Jennifer has a friend who lives in a beautiful home in Alaska and was gracious enough to host them all. The boys had a great time shooting guns, four wheeling ( in the snow??) and seeing wildlife. We are so grateful that Harrison was able to have this opportunity and will ever be indebted to Jennifer! He had a great time. We all missed him a ton and decided we like him a lot and think he should stick around a while!

100 Pieces of Gum!

February 3rd is our schools 100th day of the school year. Claire's first grade class is celebrating by making posters with 100 objects on them! Claire decided she wanted to do 100 pieces of gum. That was fine until she decided she wanted to spell out her name with the gum! We were a little confused about how to do this with gum sticks. I suggested we use something else ( beans, noodles??) but she was very excited to use the gum. We ended up chewing the gum to make her poster! Gross I know, but she got to spell her name and use the gum! We started chewing with just Claire, me, and Carma and our jaws quickly got sore. Harrison just happened to be going to piano lessons at the McGary's so I loaded him up with gum sticks and a tupperware in his piano bag. Thankfully,all the McGary kids were not totally grossed out by this and dutifully chewed and collected for us! We would like to add a very special thank you to Chase McGary for adding some of his own gum collection so that we would have more colors than pink and purple. Notice we only got to the Y in Holyoak with 100 pieces which is why the O, A, & K are written in. This might go down in history as the most disgusting school project ever. I am sure Claire will have the only poster with "ABC" gum on it even though I am sure it is some sort of health code violation to even take it in to the school!

Claire,her doll,and Carma's giant fit!

Oh! the reverence and stillness that the Sabbath Day brings.... that is funny! This is Claire and her American Girl doll that she loves so much in matching outfits! Claire loves to wear the same thing as her doll and this is the only true matching outfit they have. This picture was taken last Sunday before church. Claire was very excited to wear her matching dress to church. The problem started when Carma asked where her dress was? "Oh, you don't have a dress like this you have a beautiful purple dress with a long purple coat just like Madeline (she loves Madeline)" That was the wrong thing to say! This started a good 30 minutes of the following:
Carma: "You hate me and want me to be ugly."
Mike: "You could never be ugly Carma you are beautiful."
Carma: "No I not. I don't have a black dress."
Mike: "You have a pretty Madeline dress."
Carma, now screaming: " I no like you! I don't want a Madeline dress! I hate you!"
The bedroom door slams!
You get the picture. Like I said.... The joy of Sunday