This Guy....

 ...has such a good heart.  Lately he's been easily frustrated and upset, but it never takes long for him to go back to his sweet, affectionate self.  He'll cuddle me and tell me I'm the "best mama ever" or the "comfiest mama ever".  He hates to think about me getting old.  Sometimes he says "Mama, I hope you're never an old lady."  or "Maybe God will make you never get old."  I always tell him I hope I DO end up old someday.  (But I don't mention it's because I don't want the alternative.)  I try to tell him happy things, like how I won't mind being old, and that I'll be an AWESOME Grama for his kids some day.  But he doesn't want to hear it.  Ha.  I don't know why it freaks him out, but it makes him sad every time he thinks about it. 

More Wise Words from Paige

We went back this morning.  As we drove Jess back to work Cason asked "Can we go see our cute house tomorrow?"  I told him that I'd already been planning to go visit again after we dropped daddy off.  So we did.

My heart still believes we're going to live in it, even though my brain says it's not possible.

I love the white picket fence, and the cute little gate.

The cute little steps up to the porch, where I picture the pumpkins I'd put there in the fall.

I told Paige to wear tennis shoes instead of sandals, so she could run around the yard and explore.  She one-upped me and wore a pair of cleats.  Ha.

 She noticed the bell she'd want me to ring at mealtimes.

I love everything about the porch.  Plus it's big enough for me to have a porch swing AND some rocking chairs.  Am I an old lady?

I love the screen door too.

 I love all the moulding and the floors and wallpaper.  I'm moving in, whether we own it or not.  I saw a couple people looking at it as they walked by and wanted to yell at them to stay away from my house.  Haha.

Cason already calls it "our cute house", so we might as well.  Plus I'll die if we don't.  When we came home I was watering my flowers out front while the kids played.  I was still talking about it, and Paige groaned.  I asked her "WHAT!?"  She goes "It's not about living in the house you want.  It's about just living."  Pretty much blew my mind.  I guess "Wise Words from Paige" will have to become a regular installment on my blog.

She's right.  Some people think they're not living if they don't travel and there's not a whole lot of excitement in their lives.  But I just had a moment, washing dishes, with Pandora playing, and I glanced over at Paige and we both realized we were sort of doing a little shoulder dance thing, so we smiled at each other and started doing a little jig.  It lasted a couple of seconds and then we both kept doing what we'd been doing.  We have those moments every day, and I love them.  But not gonna lie, I would like to have those moments on Oak Street.  :)

The Camera is Found

Jess found it for me!  I'm glad, it had some good pictures and video on it I hadn't put on the computer yet.

I liked these ones from last week of Neely playing out front with a bucket of water.  She loves her some water.

Speaking of which, Mollie had us all over while Michael and Noel, Skifter, Sarah, Liam, and unborn baby boy were in town.  The littles got to play in the pool.

 

Everybody else ate and visited.

 

Jess learned some more moves from Noel.  Just in case I ever start a fight he has to finish.  Ha.

 

He and Chris were so happy to be reunited, even though they pretended they weren't.

  

Caso had his first ever splinter removal by Uncle Junebug(Tim)

A couple days later Jess abandoned us for Dallas, for 5 days of conferences for work.  :(  The kids and I weren't too happy about it, but we lived.  Although now Neely has cried in the mornings when she wakes up and he's gone.  She's never done it before this, so I think she might think he won't come back for days again.  She cries and calls him, staring at the front door.

When he's gone it's always obvious what a big help he is.  Even when he's not actively helping clean or whatever, I can get way more done myself, just knowing the kids are fine because he's watching.  Our house was destroyed while he was gone.  And I was trying to multitask all the time, and ended up doing things like putting pajamas on Neely while talking on the phone, only to hang up and realize she was wearing Cason's pajamas.

 We had a couple of sleepovers, Lily one night, Alex and Faith the next.  Thursday  Grampa and Grama Trudi took us to the aquatic center in Lake Havasu.  They'd planned to take the grandkids, and then we remembered Chris, Sarah, and Liam might want to go, so we asked them too.  We figured they'd be too busy since they were only here for a week, but at the last minute they decided to come.  We had lots of fun.  Cason got to ride with Grampa and the boys, even in a booster seat.  He loved that.

 

Girls rode in our pilot.

 

It was so fun, we'll be going back there for sure.  Alex and Faith loved the big slide.  Paige didn't want to try at first, but eventually she went, and loved it.  She probably went down it 10 or more times.  Cason was nervous to get in the water at all at first, but once I lured him in he loved it too.  Liam and Neely are both big time water babies, but in different ways.  Liam grins and splashes and runs around kicking the waves.  Neely splashes a little, but mostly likes to just be in the water, especially floating on her back all relaxed, and says she's a "fishy".  I didn't remember my camera(this is before it got lost), but if you want to see a few pics, Sarah posted a few.  Thanks Sarah!

Now Jess has been home since Saturday.  He always brings us little souvenirs, so we'll forgive him for leaving.  Ha.  He found me a couple chococat things, and the kids all got little toys too.

"Happy Day", Sad Day

Well, I've had plenty to blog about, but haven't been able to find our camera in several days, so I haven't had pictures.  :(  I really hope I find it.  I don't go a day without taking pictures of the kids, usually.

Neely's been doing funny things lately.  She's added a "YEP!" to her "MMMMHMMMM!" thing.  Like this morning, she woke up just before 7, and started begging for daddy.  I kept telling her "Daddy went byebye."  She just cried, and kept pointing toward the living room, begging.  One time she went "Daddy?  mmmmHMMMM!  YEP!"  while she cried. 

The other day she also looked at Gia, who was lying on the living room floor, and said "Gia.  Horsey.  Cowboy." and climbed on her back to ride her.

 She added on to her "Thank you." also.  For a while she was saying "Thank you.  Happy!" when someone gave her something she wanted.  Lately she says "Thank you!  Happy day!"

And she counts to 6 now.  She is always learning from her siblings I guess.  She says "One, two, fwee, foy, fie, SICK!"

Yesterday wasn't my favorite day ever.  It wasn't like anything serious was wrong, but a bunch of little things.  To start with I didn't feel very good, Paige and I seemed to be getting a bug starting on Sunday.  Then we were hanging out in my room in the late afternoon, and Cason was playing with my hair.  After a while he told me "I'm just gonna cut OOOONE more."  So I turned around really quick and saw him holding a pair of scissors and an 8 or 9 inch long piece of my hair.  As soon as he saw my face his expression changed and he realized it wasn't a good thing.  Ha.  He got all nervous.  I just said "Oh, it's okay, I'm not mad at you, I just didn't want my hair cut.  You should NEVER cut someone's hair okay?"  He relaxed a little and smiled and said "sorry."  Thankfully it's a piece from underneath, but it does show when my hair's up.  I guess I'll just clip it up until it grows out.  In about a year.  Ha.

Then we drove downtown when Jess came home, and my dream house I always go look at is for sale.  For a price we could probably afford if I hadn't rushed into buying our current house.  That sent me into a depression for the night.  It's SO cool.  It has original wood floors, windows, almost all the doors with the awesome old style locks.  The yard is gigantic and Totoro-ish, and there's a cool little building that could be storage or a potting shed or a playhouse, probably the playhouse if we lived there.   A cute front porch that had me sold on it before I ever got the chance to peek in a window.  We were just driving by it a couple months ago, talking about how it probably wouldn't be available for a long time, and now it is.  I feel like it was meant for us, but we're pretty much trapped, so it must not be.  I really thought it was fate when I saw this little bell on the porch.  It would be a perfect dinner bell, and Paige is always asking me to ring a bell when it's time for them to come eat.  Ha.  How can it not be our house?  Don't some of you want to invest in a home and then let us rent it from you?  Ha.

When we came home and I was struggling to be happy, Paige was telling me "Well, let's not be sad about it, let's just save our money and then when we have enough we'll buy it."  I told her "Yeah, that's a great idea, but I'm just sad because someone will buy it long before we can save enough."  She  goes "Well, we should still try.  You shouldn't not do something, until you know if it works."  More wise words from Paige.

Since I have no pictures, here's one from a couple weeks ago I liked.  Gia and Cason were running around the yard wildly together, and then stopped to watch a lady walking her dog.

Little Grown Woman

Paige talks like such a little grownup sometimes, and is always dead serious.  It cracks me up.  3 quotes from the last week:

1)  Talking to Neely, who was upset with her mama and crying angrily:  "Oh, come here Honey Dipper.  It's okay.  Come tell me all your issues with mama."

2)  Talking to Daddy, who'd just found Alphie the robot in the living room:  "I could've SWORN I put him in the car."

3) Playing with Cason, with toys:  "I assume YOU'RE the oldest dinosaur?"

All Sorts of Things

I guess I'll have to accept that I can't always blog daily any more.  :(  I don't like it though, I always feel like I'm forgetting to record things they've been doing and saying that I'd like to remember.  

One of Neely's new things is to say "THANK YOU!  HAPPY!" when you give her something.

She's still sleeping with us, but starting to get the bedtime routine a little bit.  She even cozied up with Caso the other night and let him "read" to her a while.

                         We've been spending time outside, on the playset or drawing with chalk.

 

Or wearing helmets and pushing T-Rex in a stroller.

 

Paige and Cason have also been doing jobs to earn money.  Paige saw the new Brave Barbies at Walmart, and one even came with the horse.  She begged for it, and Jess told her if she would work hard all week, doing some little jobs and keeping her room clean, she could get it on Friday.  There was only one left with the horse, and from our experience Walmart is NOT very quick to restock anything.  So Jess snuck back and bought it secretly, and we hid it at Grama's house all week.  Cason wanted to work to buy something too, so all week they helped me with laundry, washed windows, watered plants, etc.

 

 Caso bought a remote control Mario Kart toy on Friday, and Paige got her Brave, and her horse Angus.  She was really excited, and made me take this picture of them.  Ha.

 

She wants Angus to be a girl instead, so she told me she was changing the name to Amos.  I said "That's a boy name too, actually."  She goes "Oh, how about Anus?"  Hahahhaahahaha.  I told her that might not be the best choice, and as usual, she wanted to know why.  Ha.  That was a fun talk.  

I've been trying to get the kids to draw and color with me more, because it's something I could sit and do with them for hours.  Caso usually colors a couple of quick robots and then abandons us.  So the other day I tried having him draw something along with me, in steps.  She he and Paige and I each did a cat, and I love how theirs turned out.

 I just did a little cartoony cat, one step at a time, and he seemed to have more stamina with it broken down into parts.  He did a really cute drawing of a cat too.  I love the little stick front legs.

Neely still loves her Hayao Miyazaki movies, especially Totoro, or "Toe-roe" as she calls it, and Kiki.  When she watches them, she usually has this happy look on her little face:

She really likes cats, and especially the black cat on Kiki's Delivery Service.  His name is Jiji, and she talks about him a lot.  Hello Kitty is cute and all, but my favorite is Chococat.  The other day Jess bought me a little stuffed Chococat at the store.  He went to put it in the cart and he said Neely got excited and grabbed it, saying "JIJI!"

 

Paige started piano lessons two weeks ago, with Nicole's mom.  She loves it so far, and tells me all about C and D and F and how nice Miss Carla is, and how it's hard to remember to use her right hand too, because she always feels like using her left only.  Miss Carla lives in our neighborhood, which is nice.  We can just walk Paige down for her lesson.  After we pack up our stuffed cat and Batman toy.

Neely's hair looks like this each and every morning:

Qui

Quite a while ago Paige asked us why there's no Kids' Day when there's a Mother's Day and Father's Day.  We told her we'd make one up.  We finally did on Friday.  It was nothing big, we just gave them little gifts from the dollar section at Target, some balloons and a yummy breakfast-chocolate muffins and/or cinnamon rolls.

 

They were really happy.  Neely tried to sleep in, but finally the kids woke her up to give her her little gift.  She did that cute baby stretch with the puffy lips...

...then opened her eyes and kind of freaked out when she saw her little pink rubber monster toy.  She slapped it away from her face and said "NO!"  Haha.  She liked it a few minutes later though.

Tunnel of Terror

Today and all evening Paige and Cason were playing especially well together.  They ran around the house together, being really cute and creative.  The last thing they did together tonight was make an "amusement park".  It was really just one ride, a scary one.  The only scary rides they've been on are the ones at Disney Land, so I was seriously impressed by the one they made.  They built a long narrow fort, by putting a quilt over two rows of chairs.  We didn't know what they were doing until it was all ready for us to take the ride, so they did it all completely on their own.

The first time through blew my mind.  They set themselves up kind of inside the blanket, but behind the chairs, Paige on the left side, Cason on the right.  There was a "spider attack"(a black toy on a string, that they dropped near us along with a scary sound), a "scissor attack"(Cason stuck his hand through one of the chairs, scaring you with "scissors" and making a really good sound effect to go along with that), a "ghost attack" (a pillow case on a string that Paige dropped down near me), and at the end, a "dinosaur attack", which was just the head of the Rock'n'Roar Dinosaur being rolled toward me.  Cason also had a little flashlight he flashed on and off at the perfect moments. They both were seriously SO good with the sound effects, it was almost actually kind of scary. 

I wish it had been in the day time, so I'd have been able to get decent pictures or video of it, but the audio is pretty entertaining on it's own.  It was my second time through though, and they knew I was filming, so it wasn't quite the same, and Caso left out the "scissor attack", but oh well, still fun to listen to.  Paige accidentally drops her ghost at the end and is obviously disappointed.  Ha.


I love our creative, hilarious kids.