Fare Thee Well, Winter

Oh how my heart longed for those days of white
Bringing to my mind warm cocoa and Christmas Lights
And as the flakes fell from the smoldering clouds
Children's laughter could be heard all around
The fluffy new blankets of glistening gleam
The sleds and snowmen and long winter's dream
We joyed in the newness and held it neatly to our pleasant delight

And thus winter came and oh how it stayed
Taking the sunlight on it's relentless tirade
Of COLD winter winds and blizzarding skies
And red frozen noses and watering eyes
When finally the newness dies
And the laughter turns into whimpering cries

Enough Winter!
Let it be done.
You have become the infected splinter
In my soul's search of fun

My love has faded and is fading more still
Please leave me before you can kill
The good memories we have made
And the desire I'll need
To call for you when my heart bleeds
To make the big trade
From cold autumn breezes
To winter induced sneezes

Fare thee well, Winter
I hope you'll forgive me
For my poor fickle heart
Please don't come back Bitter

Fare thee well, Winter. Farewell.

random MOdgE pODGEDY

Jeremy is out at a scout camp tonight...Poor guy it's supposed to drop to like 29 degrees tonight. So here I am on a Friday night completely dateless thus you the internet public get my randomness and boredom. (Please contain your excitement.) I was just going through my picture files and decided to post the things I thought were important enough to take pictures of. Although this really isn't a fluid post at least you'll get to see what we've been up to.

St. Patty's day
I have since learned that I was not very creative in my approach to St. Patrick's day and there is so much more than just green but nonetheless Green we did have.

Will was able to demolish a scrumptious green doughnut and felt oh so good about it in his adorable green frog bib.

Macey's had green french bread and I couldn't think of anything more fun than green french bread pizza. It was yummy although Lizzie commented that after the pizza sauce cooked into the bread it looked a little bit like slime but delicious slime.

This has to be my favorite. Abby has decided to be a ballerina for the past month so on St. Patty's day she had to wear her tutu with her green. It was priceless.

She is quite the dancer and had just finished a beautiful pirouette when I snagged this photo.

Randomness #2

After watching the Oscars and repeating a tutorial on Jennifer Anistons Hair do for the Oscars I've since copied it on my girls heads. Lizzie looks so adorable in it and it's so easy to do and stays put all day long it has now become the hair-do of choice for my girlies. I think it really complements Lizzies face and lets her hair be down without it all over in her face. ( I can't stand hair in peoples eyes and I have issues that when my girls have hair in their eyes they look homeless and unkempt.) So this is how my baby girls have been looking lately,


I didn't get a very good shot of the top of her head so I had to redo the shot while she was eating.


Yes Lizzie your mom is way messed up. It's better that you learn this now then when you're 42 and in counseling.

Abby sports the hair-do as well but she's not too cool with the curling iron so we just have to blow dry her hair. Still she is quite adorable.

Final Randomness

We sold our kitchen table on KSL in just a matter of hours. Jeremy had picked out an awesome new table with matching chairs (for the past 3 years we've been using metal folding chairs, super cool right?) And we simply didn't have room for another table in our house. We were kind of sad to see this first real kitchen table of our go but we'll always have our memories. (K this maybe really dumb to some of you but I'm really that pathetic I get attached to everything in my house.)

I'd give you a title but all the ones I think of Make me CRY!

So you see this Little guy? He is seriously why I got into the whole mothering thing (ok maybe an exaggeration I have two other reasons why I got into it but this post is about this particular reason). I'm not sure if it's because he's a boy. Maybe it's because he's my third child. Maybe it's a combo of the two but this boy is so incredibly busy. He's learned how to climb onto everything and anything. He runs all around the house constantly. But my favorite Will past time is trying on shoes. Mostly because the shoes in this household tend to be on the more womanly side and thus my mini man has learned how to look oh so fetching in my best pair of high heels. But when he found my running shoes I figured I could take pics of him and not worry about the shame it would cause his manly state.


He's perfected the sit down method for shoes but my shoes were still tied and so he had to change his approach.

He's getting a good step into it.

And now he's realizing that i'm taking his picture and gets his best manly face on.

And now he's getting his run on. I hope and pray he has his Dad's natural running form but at least I'll be able to say that it all started in my shoes.

But as I looked at these pictures Something was bothering me and finally I was able to pin point it.
His hair has been driving me bonkers. After having two adorable little girls once the hair starts getting like this it starts getting braided and pulled back into adorable pigtails and other such girly nonsense. I would comb it in the morning while I was doing the girls hair but Will really likes to comb his own hair so about 2 seconds after I comb it you can't tell that the effort was even made.

And thus the decision to go from Baby Boy to all Boy was made. I pulled out the clippers and Jeremy pulled out the camera. He was all smiles to begin with. Afterall he loves to have his hair combed.


Then he heard the buzzing of the clippers and all was not so smiley any more.


And then we ended with this......
And some of this.....
As soon as we were done I grabbed a sucker and he was contented for a moment or two. His sisters were more than willing to smile for the camera but Will I think felt a little side swiped.
I probably would feel confused to. I combed his hair all the time and gave him great attention too. Why on earth would I ever do something so drastic as cut his hair. To be honest I'm sad but at the same time his facial expresions have increased a whole bunch and he's getting away with a lot more because darn it he's just so cute.

This is goofy face. I caught him just before he was about to climb on top of our kitchen table.

See if he smiles he knows he'll get out of it with nothing more than a hidden smile from me.

I love his super long eyelashes and they seem to stand out even more now that they're not fighting his hair for attention. (Is it wrong to be jealous of your baby boys eyelashes and covet them deep in your heart?)

And POP you can't fight with his eyes now. Ahh man I feel sorry for teenage girls they are all going to get into major fists full of hair and nails all over just to get a date with this one. SNAP!

Photosaurus

Lizzie's preschool class, a couple of weeks ago, took a field trip to the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum. Now I love Museums as much as the next person but I always end up being disappointed by the end. I mean a couple of fossils and a picture or two of what people think the dinosaurs may have looked like and if you're lucky one full skeleton . As we prepared for this trip I tried educating my kids as much as possible about dinosaurs and prepared myself for mild disappointment. Let me just say ummm disappointment??? It was the most amazing Dinosaur museum I have ever ever ever seen. I was beyond THRILLED of all the exhibits and all the hands on activities for the kids. The two hours we spent just flew by and I would not hesitate to ever go again. I guess you can always tell a fantastic place by the number of pictures I take. I took over 150 pictures and have narrowed the selection down to a mere 30 or so. Now I know this is major picture overload but you all need to go to see them yourself. My pictures don't even do it justice. Even if you don't have kids this is such a cool place to go. And now for your viewing pleasure the Thanksgiving Point Dinosaur Museum:



The museum is so kid friendly they have little hand signs everywhere and Abby soon discovered where ever those hands were she got to do something fun. This was a cast of a fosilized shell that opened whenver you touched a button.

When I was a kid in school our dinosaur field trips ment loading up a bus and driving twenty minutes or so to the spot where this steagasaurus foot step was found. Super cool to see it again and be able to run our hands all over it.


This amazing dinosaur was all put together for us to walk around it was so HUGE. The kids had fun seeing how small they were compared to it.

Abby even curled up with the dino's foot and gave it a happy lick. (gross I know but she's had a thing about licking stuff lately with sound effects included)

They had this super cool sand/water table where all the kids could experince erosion on their own. This was only half way through the museum and we almost had to bribe the kids to come see the rest of the awesome exhibits.



Lizzie loved getting her hands all dirty. I loved that she was learning while they were getting dirty.


This picture of Abby makes me laugh.. She was playing with the dinosaurs and watching them get washed away with the sand when this older boy started pushing her around and trying to take away the dinosaurs she was playing with. Right after I snapped this pic little Miss Abby and all of her fiesty i ness let him know he was not to touch her anymore and he could take his bossy nature else where. *SIGH* She is going to be just fine in this world.


Will was so patient to be pushed around in the stroller while he watched his older sisters run from place to place. But as long as he had his one foot in his hand and his thumb in his mouth he was a happy camper.


They had another station where the kids could build their own dinosaur. Lizzie fell in love with her meatiousaurus she knew this dinosaur would eat meat because of his sharp teeth.


This was a really cool exhibit that showed two T-Rexs. They placed all of these dinosaurs in such a cool way.



They showed how dinosaurs and sharks are related and had this giant head on display, needless to say Abby now has a healthy dose of shark fear. Even as I was posting this picture Abby said "Sharks are scary."

We had our friends the Dye's tag along and unfortunately this is the best picture I had of all of our kids together. But Jackson had a healthy dose of space between him and the Shark Abby soon picked up on his wisdom.

They had this great mamoth which Abby insisted was an Elephant and even made elephant noises at it to see if it would call back. I will have to admit that I liked the mamoth they have on display at the Price dinosaur museum better.



At the end of the museum they had some dig pits where the kids could unearth their own discoveries Will discovered he liked the taste of sand but didn't care too much to play in it.

I felt so lucky to have Jeremy there with me. He was just as excited about the exihibts as the kids and insited on taking pictures of every single bone, fossil and picture.

This was a great display as well and Lizzie had just learned a song about the Triceratops and sang it to me. She was slightly disappointed that I didn't know the song as well.

By the end of the museum we were super glad we went and would go again in a heart beat. So if you're ever wondering if it's worth the money to take your kids to this museum you get a exstaic YES from me. It's worth every single penny!

Dear Spring

Dear Spring,

Hey, long time fan first time complainer. So Spring, I know that you and Utah really have a hard time together and you try to stay away from here as long as possible but I have to admit the tease you gave us last week made me want you pretty bad. I'm begging you please, please, please put aside your petty differences with Utah and it's everwinter state and come stay with us. You see we paid these guys
Lots of money to do this to our backyard.


And when they were all done this is what we got.



Now you maybe saying "big deal. it's a fence." but to me a mom of three wonderful and charming children, this fence is a lifesaver/sanity/mess saver/ peace of mind giver.
See little boy can't run out into the crazy busy street.


And little girl with pigtails can't run away only to find her in neighbors garage torturing cats and destroying organized piles. She's instead learning how to make sand castles out of dirt and discovering where worms come from.

Big girl thinks it's great to play in a backyard and not have to worry about big kids coming and destroying her clubs and therefore she's having much more fun.

And this garden box can actually become a garden box where as mommy of 3 active children can garden while they stay within eye sight.

So please spring, on behalf of little boy, girl in pigtails, big girl and mommy of 3 I implore you please come quickly. I desire nothing more than hanging out in our newly fenced backyard and taking walks to the park and picnicking underneath trees and watching my big girl swing across the monkey bars and twirling down twirly slides. But I can't without your cooperation. So please come quickly make the grass green, bring out blossoms, take the chill off of my shoulders and bring with you the joy that has fizzled out of winter.
Thank you and Sincerely yours,
Andrea