Must Read!

I should be blogging all those pictures--all 5 of them--I took in March and showing you how cute and talented my kids are and how we actually traveled to somewhere with sun and not this endless, endless snow that we have here at home. But, instead, I am showing you this. I know we can be food snobs over here, but this is ridiculous and disgusting. That's not to say I haven't eaten at or enjoyed some of these restaurants before (oh Macaroni Grill focaccia, how I love you). I do think that the old adage, that knowledge is power is the point of this article, though. All our best and some pictures to come sometime in the future!

February

February is the month I would like to forget about. If I could pick just one month each year to get rid of, it would have to be February! It is just so cold here! I know it's cold almost everywhere, but still, we're chilled through and through and getting so very tired of snowsuits and hats and mittens, etc. etc. Also, for those of you who know Cache Valley, the inversion. It's just gross to go outside and smell the air. There's something wrong about that. My kids are truly trying to be good sports, but what we all really want is to go outside! That's not to say we don't get out for a walk almost every afternoon, but it's just not the same as playing outdoors unencumbered by layers of down and water repellent fabric for hours on end. Hadden's newest obsession is Lego's, which is not helping my cabin fever in any way. It feels more like a slow and cold form of torture to put together houses, cars, planes, helicopters, etc., etc. day after day only to have them immediately smashed by a loving but not so very gentle nearly 2-year-old. And then there's the stepping on the forgotten pieces, you know the ones that you thought you picked up out of the rug, but apparently you, well, didn't; only to find them embedded into the tender skin of your feet? Yikes, am I just complaining? What I meant to do was post these pictures of how we are managed to survive February despite it's best efforts not to let us. Hope you are all defrosting, wherever you may be!

Truly, Calla is happy nearly all the time. I don't think she actually remembers summer.

I think we were super bored this day and Hadden took to trying on extra sunglasses. I really cannot remember why he thought it was so funny to wear them with only underwear, but it was funny.

He then, of course, had to run around the house. I particularly love how fierce his face looks. He is generally very fierce lately.

Even the deer are getting tired of scavenging for food underneath all the snow. These particular deer were right outside Calla's window when she was getting her diaper changed. She looked up and said "deer," and Chris looked out the window to see these two right up next to the house. Hadden came running and pretty soon we had scared them into the neighbors yard, which is where they are in this picture. They then jumped over the fence, at which point Calla started to cry uncontrollably and kept saying, through her huge sobs, "deer" We think she was actually terrified, poor girl!

The other day Hadden informed me that it was Dimple's birthday. Dimple is the little stuffed dog in the above picture. Hadden has never been much of a stuffed animal guy, but Dimple is by far his favorite. I decided to humor him and made cupcakes for Dimple. Hadden insisted that Dimple eat dinner with us (he has a bowl of soup and a bowl of water) and then he had to have a birthday candle, which Hadden was all too happy to blow out for him.

And this is what the kids were doing this morning while I was getting ready for church. Chris has to be at church at 7 a.m. every Sunday, so we all fend for ourselves and reading books in our bed is one way to keep them from fighting with each other while I get ready. Hadden put down his age-appropriate book and mischievously said to me, "Mom I am going to read a vampire book to myself! It's the one with the apple right?" I, of course, thought this was hilarious. For the record, he has no idea what a vampire is, just that I happen to have a few books about them and that I've read them a few times. Maybe we'll get out a little more in March!

Hadden Skis!

Here's what Hadden and Chris were up to today.

"Can't We Have Anything Nice?"

Do you remember your parents, most likely your mom, saying this repeatedly when you were a kid? My parents are very big on taking care of the stuff you have so that you don't have to buy it again. I'm pretty sure that not taking care of your possessions is my dad's #1 pet peeve. It is definitely mine. I realize that I am a little fanatical in this respect, especially in today's disposable society. Chris is much less worried about stuff getting broken and needing to be replaced.

So, can I just take a minute to vent/beg for ideas? Hadden is like a tornado around here. He runs, jumps, crashes, bonks, yanks, throws, and stomps on anything he can get near. We have repeatedly explained the reason that we have rules around the house is so that people don't get hurt and things don't get broken. I feel, however, that everything we have ever said on this topic has been lost on him. Aside from the zillion or so times a day he accidentally (or not so accidentally) hurts Calla, it seems like he is on a complete destruction spree lately. Yesterday, we were trying to be outside so as not to go absolutely crazy, and Hadden decided to take the "big car" (the kind you pedal Flintstones style) down the driveway at top speeds while Calla was hanging on to the back. She couldn't run that fast and was holding on by her hands while her knees dragged all the way down the driveway. Mind you, I was chasing them screaming "stop, stop, stop," to no avail. By the time they reached the bottom, The knees on Calla's hideously expensive down snowsuit were worn down to almost nothing. "At least it wasn't her skull," I kept trying to tell myself.

Then, this morning, I was trying to clean up breakfast and make yogurt, while the kids ran around in their underwear and diaper (They love to be naked, and I rarely indulge them, so I was trying to be nice). After about 10 minutes, Hadden came in and said he needed me to come see something. Well, it turns out that something was one of the brackets from Calla's curtains torn from the wall with a 6 inch gaping hole where it used to be firmly attached. In order to fully understand my fury, please understand that Hadden has already broken the valence and the open/close stick from his own blinds, which are only 2 years old. We have forbidden him from touching any window coverings at least 50 times each day and have resorted to pulling most blinds all the way up and hiding the cords during the day since he was one. Needless to say, I flipped out when I saw the hole in the wall. After he had spent a long time in his own room, I made him go to the bank, withdraw money from his savings account and go to Lowes and buy the materials to fix the wall. Hopefully we can remount the curtains after we fix and repaint the wall, though they will have to be mounted lower on the wall since that spot will no longer hold the bracket weight, being that it's made up of only Sheetrock mud and not of any substantial material!

So, is the answer, "No, we can't have anything nice?" Or, is there some way to teach a four year-old boy not to tear the house and everything in it apart bit by bit? Please, enlighten me!

Fun Park

Because I am too cheap to pay for a blog book and because I already have a photo printer and digital scrapbooking program, I am going to try posting some scrapbook pages and see how it works. You can click on the image to bring it up larger. You don't mind doing that, right? Just one little click? Feel free to let me know your opinion. Here are some shots from the Fun Park with the kids a few weeks ago. Hadden has become a pretty good little roller skater. They had lots of fun with Grandma and their friends Jack and Piper.

Disneyland!

To make a long story short, Chris and I had ski/snowboard plans for our anniversary and then it decided to rain, so we got all bummed out and decided to plan a last minute trip to Disneyland instead (It was 24 hours from the time we had the idea until the time our plane took off!). What were we thinking? Hadden had the time of his life. Calla on the other hand was scared of just about everything. The only thing she liked was the carousel. We rode it about 100 times! I will not subject you all to the many and various resons why I hate Disneyland. Instead, I will just say that it was really special to see Hadden meet the "real" Mickey, Buzz, Donald, etc. And, P.F. Chang's Chicken Lettuce Wraps...sooooo yummy!

The Magic Castle

Ice Cream in Containment

On our Anniversary outside P.F. Chang's. Did I mention the lettuce wraps?

The "real" Mickey

Bear hug

I felt so bad for Calla! The only character she would have known was Pooh, and she fell asleep in the line to see him, literally 2 minutes before we got to him. Oh, well!

I had to include a picture of the only thing that didn't make Calla cry...the carousel!

A Muggle No More

This may come as a shock to some of you who previously had to be subjected to my many arguments against reading the Harry Potter books, but I just finished the final book in the series. And...I must repent. I liked them. They haven't made it all the way to the top of my favorites, but I did have a seriously hard time putting the last three down. So, please excuse my absence from blog, email and phone calls. Also, the backgroud sums up how we all start to feel about the weather around here every January!