Sunday, December 26, 2010

Halloween

Finally here are some Halloween pictures. We had a fun time this year.

Here's Doug putting up our cobwebs... I'm not sure he was happy with the job, but that's what he gets for being over 6 feet tall and for marrying a wife who's a lot shorter.

Here's my favorite ghost house. I had to actually have a candle party several years ago to get it, but I love it. There's a ghost up top that spins around when you have a candle burning in it.

I actually made this pumpkin at Super Saturday this year. I'm not sure it turned out all that great, but the material is cute.

We made sugar cookies. Don't be alarmed. The colors on your computer are working just fine. The cookies are actually yellow. That's what happens when you convince yourself that it was the blue food coloring that the kids used up a few weeks ago when in fact it was the red. Then when you want to make orange frosting you can't do it so you have to settle for yellow.



This is Adam eating his cookie... Well technically he's licking the frosting off of his cookie. He also eats peanut butter sandwiches this way. He insists on having them open so he can lick off a bunch of peanut butter before eating the bread too.

Here's our little Bob the builder, fairy queen, and knight. I know Mary does look more like a princess than a fairy, but she insists that she's Queen Titania, the queen of the fairies in some books she loves to read. Queen Titania doesn't actually have wings in any of the pictures. Don't ask me how she flies.



All in all we had a good time.

Flashcards

So I finally have a few minutes to update the blog a bit. I'll get to Christmas later some day, though probably not today.

Mary's been learning multiplication this year in school. She started just a bit at the end of 2nd grade so we worked on them during the summer as well. Her math teachers this year had them all make flashcards to work on the stuff at home. Of course they were plain and boring because they were just written in pencil on plain index cards. (I certainly don't blame her teachers. They have enough to do without making fancy flashcards for everyone.) It was torture to get her to do them several times every day. So I had to come up with an alternate plan.

I looked all over the internet for some fancy flash card ideas, but I couldn't find anything I really liked. So here's what I came up with.


I cut up sheets of different colors of construction paper and wrote the problem on the front in different colors of marker and the answer on the back and then I laminated them.

Then I stick them to the wall with blue painter's tape. Then as she does each one she pulls it off the wall and throws it on the floor. Sometimes I make patterns on the first set, but on the other sets I usually just put them back however I happen to pick them up. Frequently I time her to keep her on task.

The first part of the year they worked on 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 10s. Then they went worked on fractions and geometry stuff for a while. She got pretty good at this and could do a whole set of all of them in 2 minutes.

After Christmas break they're moving on to the rest of them.

Apparently she made them look so fun Alex wanted to get in on the action. Since he's in kindergarten and learning to read we decided to go with word flashcards for him. Mary made a lot of them for him.


He loves rhyming words so we usually make them up in sets.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Dinosaurs!


Mary's class studied a lot about dinosaurs during November. They even made their own fossils! We never did fun stuff like that when I was a kid. Of course we got more recess so maybe I shouldn't complain.

Thanksgiving


For Thanksgiving this year we went to visit my parents. Technically it was Doug's mom's turn to have us, but she kindly let us go to my parents' house because they are leaving in January to go be missionaries in Mexico City. We'll go see her next Thanksgiving.

Before we left I got one of my birthday presents a few weeks early and got a new camera at Big Lots for $40... Not the best camera out there, but who really wants to spend over $500 just to get an awesome camera when I'd still manage to cut people's heads off and stuff.

I was a little camera happy on the trip down (and then forgot to use it much later), but here are a few cute shots of the kids as we headed south.

I love sleeping kids!


She wore her soccer shirt and soccer shorts from almost 2 years ago rather than wear the burgundy colored pants I bought her a few weeks ago... At least they came from a thrift store so I don't feel too bad about it.

That's my boy!

Mary and Alex both love playing with my mom, especially Mary. I had to remind her to let Grandma get other stuff done.

I didn't get any pictures of them playing Go Fish, but I bet they played it a minimum of 50 times. Alex has an uncanny knack for winning even when he shows everyone his cards on a routine basis. (I don't think it's all pity either.)

We had a great time. The weather was excellent aside from some wind. As always the food was top notch, especially the pies. I detest making pie crust so we don't get pie too often, but my mom makes the best. Don't let her modesty fool you!

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Fact or Fiction??


Several months ago I came across an article in a magazine at the doctor's office or some type of waiting room. It had a whole list of "myths" that your doctor will tell you. One of their so called myths was kids getting a "sugar high." According to them kids don't really bounce of the walls if you give them too much sugar.

I beg to differ...

Today Alex was fortunate enough to get a rootbeer. It's an extremely rare occurrence that I let my kids have pop (you say soda, I say pop).

Not long after he was bouncing up and down in front of the TV flapping his arms and making funny sounds.

A few minutes after that he came in my office and seemed to be trying to pull his own ears off. After repeatedly telling him to stop it to no avail I simply told him that if he couldn't stop pulling on his ears he'd never get pop again... He immediately stopped.

So you be the judge... Sugar high, fact or fiction???

Friday, November 19, 2010

Dear New Socks,

I confess I'm extremely disappointed in you. My old socks suddenly all fell apart on me so I went out in search of new socks to keep my toes warm now that it's finally cold here in Colorado.

I was excited when I saw you in the sock section at Walmart. It was love at first site when I discovered that in the same package as my regular white socks I could get a pair with a blue edging around the top and a pair with orange edging around the top. Two days after finally seeing an exciting Denver Broncos game (we've been waiting for weeks) I figured it was fate that I found you.

And now three days later I've discovered your true colors.

I can't believe you allowed me to slip and then bounce all the way down the stairs carrying a basket of laundry. My arm still hurts by the way. Let's hope it holds up for an afternoon of typing about spines and hepatitis. Not to mention I have several more baskets of laundry that are calling my name. They too want to be carried up and down the stairs. I'm also not pleased about the ugly scrape on my arm. Thankfully it's not oozing blood.

I'm afraid I'll have to keep you covered in shoes more often.

Your former friend,
Rebecca

(P.S. My friend Katie wrote an enchanting letter post the other day on her blog. I haven't been able to get it out of my head so my posts are shamelessly copying hers. I'm too lazy to put a link to her blog if you don't read it already. My arm hurts remember? But she's the "For Whom The Bell Told" link on my blog page to the right.)

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Dear Blog Readers

If there are any of you left...

The Chapmans are still alive.

We're just crazy busy.

And I'm crazy tired ALL THE TIME!

Diet Mountain Dew sometimes helps, but the Diet Dr. Pepper did nothing for me today.

Diet Pepsi tastes too diety... I can't get past the aftertaste.

Maybe someday I'll update my blog again with stuff besides videos I found somewhere else.

Now I better go push Mary to finish her homework so I can go set up for a Relief Society dinner then enjoy the dinner then clean up the dinner then come home and do more work...

On the plus side... The boys haven't burned down the house and we have no broken bones.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Thursday, November 4, 2010

A Child's Prayer


Last night as I was getting the kids ready for bed I reminded Alex that he still needed to brush his teeth and say his prayer.

Adam said, "I want to pray."

He ran over to the and faced the wall and folded his arms. (Yes, we're still working on the kneeling thing...)

His prayer went something like this.

Heavenly Father,

I dink water.

I bush my teef.

Jesus Christ, Amen.

Mary and I got a good chuckle out of it.

On a side note, he does not pronounce Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ perfectly. I just feel weird misspelling them on purpose...

On a not so adorable note. After I got the kids to bed I came down to my office to finish off my work for the night. Right in the middle of my typing a huge spider (no, not a tarantula but still large) suddenly dropped right onto the desk in front of me. After I recovered from the shock I grabbed my shoe and smashed him and then flushed him. I do not participate in the spider relocation program. I might do that for a ladybug, but they seem to know their place and stay outside.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Choose Your Own Lyrics


We've been spending a lot of time in the van since school started several weeks ago. So of course we listen to the radio a lot.

I'm a channel surfer. I hate listening to commercials on the radio, and there are plenty of annoying songs out there. The boys will frequently say, "This song, Mom!" as I'm cruising through the channels. (I think that's mostly so I don't stop on talk radio, though I've given up political talk radio because I don't want to explain why I'm mad at the radio so it's just occasional sports talk radio I cruise through. Alas, the Broncos are stinking up the joint too so sports radio brings up few pleasant discussions either.)

Alex loves music. The songs lead to some interesting conversations, but I'd rather talk about the songs on the radio then explain why nasty black smoke is belching out of the back chimney of the funeral home occasionally when we pass by.

One day he was singing, "I want to kiss a girl." I explained that he's only allowed to kiss me for now but no other girls. (I did get kissed on the playground when I was in kindergarten so it's not too far fetched.)

One day he said, "Mom, what does 'I'm falling to pieces mean?" Adam sings that song too, but for young boys the song has no meaning.

Recently when he demanded a song (that frankly I don't care for) talking about a little white church he said, "Mom, I have a little white shirt on!"

Maybe some day he'll grow up and insist that a song Mary's listening to is using a certain swear word even when it's really saying "toucha," but maybe that could only happen during an era when Genesis was popular. I think we can all agree that should not be brought back along with all the 80-90s fashions, right?

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Mary's Poem

This week Mary wrote a poem for one of her school assignments. The class did work off somewhat of a template like telling them what lines should rhyme with each other, and then the last couple lines were all the same I believe. She mounted it on construction paper and decorated it. Here's what she came up with:

By Myself

When I'm by myself
and I close my eyes
I'm a white cat
I'm a flower hat
I'm a purple car
I'm a granola bar
I'm a white and black dog
I'm a real long log
I'm the color red
I'm a fan of my bunkbed
I'm whatever I want to be
An anything I care to be
And when I open my eyes
What I care to be
Is me

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Looking For a Good Book??


Have you ever picked up a book and gotten really into the story....

and then...

unexpectedly...

here comes a graphic sex scene...

or a load of profanity...

or a ton of violence...

You're already into the story, but you don't want to finish because you really don't like all the added garbage???

Why have you wasted your time reading a book that you've now chosen not to finish??

I feel your pain.

Fortunately, I've found a blog that will help you avoid that.

Good Clean Reads

The writer is actually my friend Kim. I've known Kim since kindergarten. (She even probably knows I was 9 before I learned to ride a bike...) Of course after college and not living in the same place for several years now we only see each other in the summer when we both go visit our families.

So thanks to the wonders of Facebook I've now discovered that Kim runs a good blog. She's done a ton of book reviews and gives each a rating system. (Click on the Rating System tab for an explanation.) I did pick up a book the other day at the library and started reading it (The Time Traveler's Wife) and after a while started noticing I wasn't a fan of the language and sex. So I went to Kim's website and lo and behold I found that book in the "Read At Your Own Risk" section. Sounds like the book was going to get worse so I just took it back to the library. Kim couldn't finish it either.

For the rest of the book lovers out there... check out Good Clean Reads. I think you'll be glad you did.

Happy (clean) Reading!!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Obsessed

My boys (particularly Adam) have developed an obsession. If you'd like a hint, just look at their pajamas.

It started innocently enough. A few months ago Adam finally got to watch Cars. Typically this only got turned on in the afternoon while he was napping. Adam's always been under the impression that cars should be driven at a high rate of speed. (Not sure how he decided that, but one of his first sentences was, "That car really fast.") So it wasn't much of a stretch for him to love a cartoon about a race car.

I'm not a rookie parent so I get it that kids become obsessed with movies. At least this one is a movie I actually like not like the Care Bears Movie II, right Dani? (Whoever actually did accidentally tape over that should be eternally praised!)

The obsession got kicked up a notch though when Adam came across a bunch of toy Lightning McQueen cars with all his buddies in the toy box. Suddenly Alex remembered his great love for all things Lightning McQueen. So we had fights most of the summer about who got to play with which car. There are about 15 so you'd think that each could be happy, but oh no. For example, even though we have 2 nearly identical Lightning McQueen cars all decked out in Dinoco gear they still have to fight about who gets the one with the blue rims and who gets the one with the Piston Cup rims.

Fortunately, now that school has started Adam gets free reign of the cars while Alex is at school.

Fortunately, I'm becoming good at finding them even when Alex tries to hide them in the back of the van before getting out at school.

On another positive note, at least in between transcribing notes on exciting things like kidney stones and liver disease I get to hear things like...

Maybe you should have thrown him in a cactus a lot sooner.
Then quit yapping and start fixing.
Punch me, Guido. Punch me in the face.

and Adam's favorites...

Speed. I am speed.
Pit stop.

And who doesn't love to hear about tractor tipping???

P.S. This didn't turn out as entertaining as I'd hoped so I apologize to all 8 of my followers. At least I'm not boring dozens of people, right?

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Mary's Baptism




Sometimes I still can't believe that Mary's 8. It really doesn't seem like it's been that long since she was a teeny little thing and I was a nervous first time mom. I guess we've both learned a lot along the way. And I'm sure we've got quite a few more lessons to learn along the way.



Yesterday was a very special day. We got to see Mary get baptized. She's such a sweet little girl. She was so excited about it all. She really has matured in many ways this past year, and I see her becoming more responsible and helpful all the time. It will be a joy to watch her continue to grow and develop her talents. Our Father in Heaven must be a million times prouder than I am. I've thought often this weekend about how much he must love her and how many blessings he has in store for her.



Grandma and Grandpa were able to come up for the occasion also. The kids had a blast with them, though I'm pretty sure they wore Grandpa out. They kept begging him to play the "throw us on the couch" game. He was a good sport though. Adam kept asking to "get in the water."

Monday, August 30, 2010

Back To School

I apologize in advance for the quality of these pictures. On a teeny Blackberry screen they looked OK, but now I see they're a little fuzzy.

Anyhoo... It was pointed out to me today that I haven't been keeping up with my blog very well. I confess my blog creativity (the small shred I had) has taken a summer vacation. Maybe it will come back soon. I admit I like my blog better than I like Facebook. (I could do a whole post on the "joys" of FB. Maybe later.)

So today Mary and Alex finally started school. I think we're in the only school in the country that hadn't started yet. I had good intentions of waking the kids up early all last week to get them back in the habit of 6:30 awakenings, although who am I kidding. It's not that much earlier than they had been getting up anyway. And I was lazy. It's not that I got to stay in bed any longer. I was getting up to work out anyway and to Adam 6:00 is sleeping in... I've got to get that boy trained better.


Alex was particularly excited about school. He barely ate half a poptart before he ran to get dressed. As you can see, he could hardly wait to get out the door. He only has half day kindergarten, which is fine with me. I think he'd struggle going the whole day since he's got so much energy. He was just a teensy bit hesitant when finding a chair, but he wasn't worried at all when I left the classroom. He had a blast. He talked my ear off the whole way home, which is a nice 20-25 minute drive.

And I'll have to take a picture of Mary again later. The one I just tried to put up was so fuzzy you wouldn't necessarily know it was her unless I told you. She's in 3rd grade this year. She's excited, although she was bitterly disappointed when she found out that her best friend was in the other class this year. They've been together since kindergarten.

Adam wanted to stay at school too. We were gone all morning until we picked Alex up so he didn't have a chance to realize that he'll be home alone. Hopefully he'll adjust just fine once he realizes Alex won't be taking away every toy he tries to play with.

I'm excited for school to start too. I love hearing them talk about fun things they're learning. It almost (but not really quite) makes me miss my own school years.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Mary's Birthday

I can't believe it, but my girl turned 8 on Friday! She's still a tad on the young side I suppose. Most of the kids that will be in her 3rd grade class turned 8 last year during 2nd grade.

We didn't have a huge party. We just let her invite her best friend from school, Katelyn, over to spend the night. Doug's mom came into town for her birthday as well. We went and grabbed some pizza from Cici's (3 mediums for $9.99) and took them to one of the city swimming pools. The pool is a pretty good pool. They have a regular swimming pool with lanes to swim laps and a couple diving boards. Then they have more of a kid pool that's only about 3 feet deep. It even has a huge water slide that goes into it. Mary and Katelyn had a blast doing that. Alex didn't want any part of the slide. He's never been quite as comfortable in the water as Mary has been. They also have a little playground kind of area with water spraying out everywhere. There was a little slide there too so Adam spent most of his time there. The lifeguards kept yelling at the boys to stop running. Adam of course didn't listen. He'd just get so excited to go down the slide again that he'd take off running. (Kids only go slow when their parents are in a hurry anyway.)

After we swam for a while we came home and had cupcakes. Mary and I found an easy recipe on Kraft's website for these flowery cupcakes.




Basically you just take a large marshmallow and cut it horizontally into 5 slices (or 4 if you're lazy) and them arrange them in a flower shape with a mini marshmallow in the middle. Then you sprinkle them with colored sugar sprinkles. They were so easy. We used the new pink strawberry marshmallows because they're a teeny bit prettier, but I think white ones would look nice too especially with the sugar sprinkles to give them some color. My kitchen shears did get rather sticky, but they wash off so it's no big deal. Katelyn came over right as I was getting ready to frost and decorate and the girls were excited to play with Mary's new present so I ended up doing them all myself, but they're totally easy enough for kids to do.

Anyway, we had a great time and Mary didn't even get totally exhausted and grouchy like she did at the previous sleepover.

Catchup

So today I'm catching up a bit on my blog. I've been busy the past few weeks with school shopping and work and planning Super Saturday. We've also had some stomach flu somewhere in there too. I believe that's gone through all of us so hopefully it's moving on. I expect things will get crazier in about a week. Mary and Alex start school on the 30th.

A couple weeks ago Doug decided we should make homemade soft pretzels for his home evening activity on Monday night. (We have a more spiritual/religious lesson on Sunday and then play a game or do some sort of activity on Monday night.) It turned into more work than I realized because I hadn't fully read the recipe until that afternoon when I got the dough started. You have to shape them, bake them a few minutes, boil them in salted water, put melted butter or eggwash on them and season them, and then bake them again. We had fun and they tasted pretty good, but it's certainly not worth the effort on a regular basis. We did some salty ones and some cinnamon/sugar ones. Here are a few pictures of it.






(This is right before they were baked the 2nd time. Ours did stay kind of pale. I think it's because we used melted butter instead of egg wash. All that really means is we might not be able to sell them, which is totally fine with me.)


The boys got haircuts a few weeks ago. Alex usually likes Kathy, our stylist, to spike his hair. Adam decided he wanted his hair spiked this time too. He kept rubbing his hand on the top of his spikes. (No, I don't have a picture of Alex with spikes. Maybe next time.)

To end... Alex managed to get a hold of the Blackberry and took a lovely picture of his eye. Enjoy!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Our Vacation

This picture really isn't from our vacation. It's just Adam looking cute carrying Tiger around in his backpack.

Our vacation this year unfortunately only lasted about 4 days. We went back to my parents' house. My older sister was there with her kids and my youngest sister was there for a few days. My younger brother was there too since he lives in the same town.

For those of you who don't know... I'm from a teeny town in Southern Colorado called Manassa (about 1000 people and 1 mile square). Since Manassa was settled by Mormons in the 1880s it's a little bit like towns in Utah sometimes. We celebrate the 24th of July there too because that's when Brigham Young and other pioneers reached the Salt Lake Valley.

So we celebrate with parades, rodeos, lots of food, a carnival, fireworks, etc.

Some people (like Doug) make fun of the parade because we watch it go through town and then back again on Friday morning. And then we watch it do the same thing on Saturday morning. However, I do point out to him that at least the parade has nice floats and stuff unlike the parade where he's from in Craig, CO, that has a bunch of guys driving their off-roading vehicles and a bunch of old guys driving their ancient tractors through town.

Here's a few pictures of the parade.

This is the Miss Pioneer court float. I admit I was once part of such a float. I feel like that Hope Floats movie where Sandra Bullock takes her daughter back to the little town she grew up in and her daughter asks her if this is where she was the "cream of corn."

1950s soda shop stuff seemed to be a bit of a theme this year. There were about 3 like that. This one was probably the best.

The alien one was a big hit with my kids also.

My kids also enjoyed the snowman.

The Little Mermaid one was our favorite. I didn't get a great picture of it, but the boat moved up and down, the dolphins were squirting water, bubbles were blowing out the back, etc. It was pretty impressive.

This is Alex enjoying an Otter Pop. We love it when local businesses or politicians throw candy, but the popsicles are especially nice on a warm day. (My grandpa, age 91, is sitting in the background.)



The carnival isn't exactly worth spending money on, but my dad always spoils the kids and gives them a few bucks to spend there. Mary was too busy playing with her cousins to ever go on any rides so she added her money to her stash. Doug took Alex to ride a few, but I had the Blackberry so we only got pictures of Adam riding. He had a great time at first. There was a train ride on a little track that he wanted at first, but then he saw the alligator train and wanted to ride that. It was really more of a little roller coaster so after a while he got tired of that and wanted off. We did do the carousel later, but it was too hard to try to take a picture while I was riding with him.

We did have a good time. Adam was sick a lot of the time and Alex got sick the last day with strep throat, but thanks to amoxicillin he's doing much better.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I'm just uploading some random pictures because I finally copied some of them over from Doug's phone.


Alex was the only one who got to visit Santa this year. When we went to Manassa for Thanksgiving he got too close to the fireplace and melted the back of his jacket. It was getting too small anyway so not a huge loss. We took him to Walmart in Alamosa and there was Santa sitting on a stack of cases of Coke so we let him talk to him. Santa looked vaguely familiar to me. Not sure who he was though.



We made a hopscotch game in the basement this winter. It's just electrical tape covered by packing tape because the electrical stape doesn't stick to carpet all that well. Anyway, it's now mostly gone except for a few random numbers. It provided some fun for a while. (Yes, it's all crooked. We're not professionals here, ya know.)



This was the boys' birthday cake. Again, I'm not a professional, but it's not too shabby. Even better, it has Oreo cream filling in the middle. (If I posted this before, oh well. I'm too lazy to go back through all my posts and see.)



Mary likes to go to bed with her light on so she can read books and stuff. When I went in to turn it off one night she looked like this! We woke her up a bit when we took it I think, but it was worth it.



This is Mary and her best friend from school. We had a sleepover the last day of school. They got their faces painted at the end of school picnic. Then they stayed up forever playing Oregon Trail. (We got an ancient copy, we're talking Windows 95 here, from someone, but Mary LOVES it.)