Don't you love it when brothers love each other?

Levi has decided (now that he has a "big boy bed" that is easy to get in and out of) that he loves to sleep with his brother. More often than not, when I go in their bedroom to check on them, Levi has climbed in with his brother Jacob. The practical side of me thinks "Pick Levi up and put him back in his bed, they will both sleep better..." But the tender heart side of me is just so happy that they are happy to be close to each other. And when they share a bed, no one comes in to get me up in the middle of the night because they've had a bad dream.

Oh, by the way, ignore their red faces... Levi had a fight with his dump truck (he face-planted into the metal truck while pushing it at high speeds down the hallway) and Jacob has a dry-skin rash. He won't stop licking his lips!!! Just feel the love!

Christie vs. the smoke detector

I know it's been a while since I last posted anything here on my blog. It is so discouraging when I know there is so much that I want to document and I start feeling like there is too much and I don't have enough time, so then I just get further behind, and it becomes a vicious cycle... I have decided to just get back on the wagon, and start posting again... And eventually I will post about last summer in Nauvoo, or our camping trip to Goblin Valley, and maybe even Christmas! But as a warm up, here's my story about our smoke detector adventure...



The smoke detector and I had somewhat of a disagreement last night. You see, I went to bed, really tired and ready for a good night's sleep, but my feet were cold. Being tired, I thought "I'll just lay here, surely I'll warm up..." Of course, that didn't happen, and I lay there cold wishing my feet would get warm for about an hour. It is a good lesson as to why one should never make important decisions when they're tired. I think of it this morning, and go "Duh, stupid, get up and put some warm socks on..." But when I'm tired, all rational thinking goes out the window. Finally, I go to sleep, and have happy dreams about baking bread in the crock pot (it was a dream, it doesn't have to make sense.) In my dream, the timer to the crock pot goes off. "Chirp Chirp." I get open the crock pot and start spooning out the bread (once again, it's a dream...) and the timer goes off again. "Chirp Chirp." I start to get mad at my crock pot, when the timer goes off again. "Chirp Chirp." I open my eyes, and the timer goes off again. "Chirp Chirp." I realize that it's the low battery warning in our smoke detector, so I nudge Aaron and ask, "Do you hear that?" "Chirp Chirp." He mumbles yes, and I assume that means "Never fear, love of my life. I will save the day and stop the chirping." I was obviously mistaken in my assumption, for mere moments later, my sweet bedmate is snoring. "Chirp Chirp." "Chirp Chirp." "Chirp Chirp." "Chirp Chirp." The same rationale that made me lay in bed for over an hour with cold feet took over. "If I face away from the sound, it will go away." "Chirp Chirp." "If I pull the blankets over my ears, I will be able to go back to sleep." "Chirp Chirp." "If I just think happy thoughts, all will be well." "Chirp Chirp." "If I wait long enough, Aaron will fix this..." "Chirp Chirp." Finally at 3:30 am, I jump out of bed growling at the stupid "Chirp Chirp." I go to the laundry room, find a new battery, start a new batch of laundry (after all, it wouldn't be mothering if I weren't multitasking), grab the step stool, and go stand under the smoke detector to listen for the "Chirp Chirp." The offending detector is located in the hallway. "Chirp Chirp." I climb up the stool and remove the old battery. "Chirp Chirp." I try to install the new battery and realize that I am blind, so I go back to find my glasses. "Chirp Chirp." I can now see where the positive and negative go an click the battery in. "Chirp Chirp." What the Crap!?!? I push the reset button. "Chirp Chirp." I push the "hush" button. "Chirp Chirp." I push the test button. "Chirp Chirp." I yell at the detector. Aaron, now roused by my cursing at the detector, asks if I need help. "Seriously? I needed help 3 hours ago when this all started!!!!" "Chirp Chirp." Aaron comes out in his underwear and asks me if I have the battery in correctly. "Chirp Chirp." "Yes, do you think I'm stupid?" (I'll admit, patience was gone at this point.) "Chirp Chirp." Aaron takes the battery out, re-installs it, and is rewarded by a "Chirp Chirp." He pushes all the buttons I have pushed, only to hear "Chirp Chirp" coming in 10 second increments, instead of the 30 second "Chirp Chirps" we've been hearing all night. So he takes it off the ceiling to look at the hard-wiring. "Chirp Chirp." Yup, still connected. "Chirp Chirp." Sadly, the connecting plate has also come off of the ceiling, so I go out into the garage to get screwdrivers to reconnect the thing to the ceiling. "Chirp Chirp." We get it all put back together, reinstalled, and it won't stop chirping!!! So finally Aaron decides to disconnect the whole thing. He takes it off of the ceiling again, and uses the screwdriver to disconnect the wiring. "Chirp Chirp." Thoroughly annoyed, he turns it over and takes the battery out and hands it to me, smiling because that should solve the problem. "Chirp Chirp." "Chirp Chirp." REALLY??? THE THING HAS NO POWER SOURCE!!!! "Chirp Chirp." At this point I don't know whether to laugh or cry, so I do a little of both. We decide that it is possessed, toss it into the garage, and go back to bed. For all I know, it's still chirping happily out there.

So there. That's the most interesting that's happened to me recently. How about you all?

Snowball fight!

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Gotta do at least one jibjab at Christmas time!
Besides, can't you see my boys doing this in real life?

Jacob tries his hand at hairstyling

Sweet Jacob must have been duly impressed with his last haircutting experience, because he decided to try his hand at the haircutting profession. Thankfully (this is the month to be thankful, right?), he practiced his skills on himself. I'm also thankful to have a boy, because what would I do if a daughter did this to herself???

Jacob's handiwork:

Mom trying to "even it out":


Jacob was actually happy with the end result:

Levi wanted to shave his head, too, at first:

But then decided that he was happy with having hair after all:

Halloween pictures

I just thought I'd post these while the sugar rush keeps me going...
We had a fun Halloween! We waited until Halloween to carve the pumpkins (yeh, we meant to do that... it was the plan all along...) Jordan used the natural scarring on his pumpkin to make it look as though his pumpkin had a scar through his eye. Zachary made his pumpkin's eyes a little lopsided to make it look as though it was a little "mentally unstable." And, yes, the pumpkin is intentionally "drooling." Caeden wanted to be a little creative, so he tried to follow a pattern of a skull. It turned out really neat - especially with the light on inside!
Aaron took the kids out trick or treating while I stuck around here and handed out candy.
Jordan was a body builder,
Zach a zombie surgeon,
Caeden was a dark ghoul (sorry, you've got to look up top to see him - he was too fast getting out the door for his individual portrait),
Jacob a dinosaur,
and Levi an elephant.
Aaron commented that Levi got his mom's sugar loving genes...
We picked up lollipop sticks all night long!

After all was said and done, everyone brought in a pretty good haul of candy; and after such a busy day, ending with a good tooth brushing, the boys slept really well last night! Hope you had a great day, too!

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone is having a great day! We started out the day with pumpkin pancakes. They were so yummy, I wanted to post the recipe online ~ just in case I lost my copy, and also to share it with everyone who likes us enough to check out our blog every now and then...
Our (new) traditional Halloween breakfast
Pumpkin Pancakes
2 cups all purpose flour
3 TB brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cup milk
1 cup pumpkin
1 egg
2 TB vegetable oil
2 TB vinegar
Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl; all the wet ingredients in a second bowl. (Use a blender to mix the wet ingredients.) Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and cook on a medium hot griddle. The batter is a little thick, but the recipe cautioned against trying to thin it out using extra milk, saying that it would dilute the pumpkin flavor. Just spread it around a little on the griddle. Another hint given in the recipe was to let the batter set for about 5 minutes before cooking in order to let the vinegar fully react with the baking soda so that the pancakes would be nice and fluffy. I did, and they were! I like them better than IHOP's pumpkin pancakes.
Hope you try these out! If you do, let me know what you think!
Now I'm off to prepare for the sugar rush...

Is it really that time of the year?

This is what we discovered when it was time to send the boys out the door to school Tuesday morning:


We knew it was coming. Even mowed the lawn on Monday for the last time. Picked up the soccer cones and sand toys, pulled the last surviving plants from the garden. But it still throws me a little to look out and see this.
Jacob, however, couldn't be more excited!He got all his winter gear on and ran in circles for 20 minutes, just loving "my new season!" He gets a little frustrated with me when I try to explain that it is still fall, so now I just concede that this is "winter weather."

After the boys all were home from school, the snowman building began.We didn't get a ton of snow, but just enough to make a few of these frosty fellows for our yard. I love that they love to play in the snow. I just hope it lasts...

Levi's idea of entertaining himself

Guess he was hungry for some oatmeal...

I followed the sounds of a giggling boy, knowing that sounds like that coming from the kitchen wouldn't be good. He was throwing oatmeal up into the air and laughing as it hit his head. As soon as I said his name, he knew he was in trouble. Smile was gone, and he sat still as if thinking "maybe she won't see me if I don't move."

Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of something like this without laughing at your child?

I guess the swine flu has everyone scared...

Why haven't I posted for a month?

disclaimer: Please know that I love my boys... I'm just doing some theraputic venting, because I know one day I will be able to look back and laugh... but right now, it's just not funny!

Today I decided I wanted to catch some news before lunch. I go downstairs to the basement family room and watch the weather, and soon Jacob comes down to hit a ball around with this plastic hockey stick thingy. After 10 or 15 minutes, I think out loud, "I wonder what Levi is doing?" I could hear his little feet pitter-patter across the floor above me, so I wasn't too worried about him. Jake casually mentions "He is feeding our Thunder-fish."
"HE'S WHAT????!!!!!!"
Now, you have to know, our fish, named Thunder (don't ask me why he's named Thunder ~ the boys named him) was a door prize that the boys got to bring home from a pack meeting back in February 2007. I was told by a scout leader, "Don't worry, it'll only live a few days...", so we took him home, named him, fed him (I'm told this was my mistake), and loved him. That was over 2 1/2 years ago. He gets excited at his mealtime, and even comes to the glass and wags his tail-fin whenever we go look at him. Ask my dad - this fish has personality! And we've grown somewhat attached to him.
So I run upstairs, and discover the whole bottle of fish food has been dumped in the tank. Thunder is barely visable in all the disgusting gooey mess, and I start racing to get the punch bowl filled with clean water and treated so I can get Thunder into a place where he can breathe, and where he can chill out while I scrub out his tank. (yes, he's grown big enough to need the punch bowl as his temporary home.) Meanwhile, I go ballistic on my boys and put them in their room while I scrub plastic plants and castles. About an hour later, after the filter is de-gunked and finally reassembled, I go to the boys' room to check on them. They've taken all the folded, sorted, clean laundry out of the room next to theirs, dumped it on their bedroom floor,

emptied out their dresser, and every thing off the top of it, un-made Jacob's bed,

and to top it all off, they've gotten a little neck-pillow-thingy that has all of those itsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny foam beads in it out of my "to be repaired" pile (of course, it needed to be repaired because there's a HOLE IN IT that causes those afformentioned beads to fly all over whatever room they may be in and stick to everything with that lovely static cling that they have)... Ugh!!! So then I put Jacob and Levi in corners where I can keep an eye on them, and try to do some damage control. I find the neck pillow stuffed in the vent in their room (I guess Jacob started to realize that he might be in deep doo doo when those beads started flowing out of the pillow), so I pull it out and mention that "WE DON'T EVER TAKE THE COVERS OFF OF OUR VENTS!!!! STOP DOING THIS!!!"

"But mom," he says, "my little ball went down there and I needed to get it."

"IT WOULDN'T HAVE GONE DOWN THERE IF YOU WOULD HAVE KEPT THE COVER ON!!!" Yeh, I've kind of lost it at that point.

Now here we are, 3 hours later, it's time to pick Jordan up from the bus stop, my kitchen is a mess, I need to vacuum out the vents - the same vents where Jacob said his ball is, but I've found no ball, just kleenexes and granola bar wrappers -the few batches of laundry that have been done have now been voided out, since I have to shake the foam beads out of them and re-fold them, Levi has another poopy diaper (we can get him to pee in the toilet, but not poop), and they have the gall to ask me when they get lunch!!! Really? Are you Serious? Did I mention I just went to the bathroom and sat down on a seat covered with PEE?!!


So if you ever wonder what Christie is up to and why she hasn't posted recently, just remember, I'm the mother of 5 boys. Let your imagination run wild.