Milestones to Note

Good Thing #1 and teacher survived 3rd grade.

Good Thing #2 and teacher survived 2nd grade.

Good Thing #3 and teacher survived kindergarten.

Some Things to Smile About

A daughter who won't wear pony tails and the cute clothes I set out for her.

Resourceful kids

A sure sign that someone is too old for a bottle.

A baby that makes me want to have a baby.

And weather warm enough to play outside in.

What I've Been Watching

Seen anything good lately? I've watched the following smut over the last couple of months thanks to Netflix:

Pushing Daisies season 2- Kind of a fun show
Wuthering Heights (2009 Masterpiece Classics Version)- better than the book, that's for sure
King's Speech- I'm sure you know there is *some* bad language, I thought it was a nice story
Time Traveler's Wife- I liked this. DH was at work so it was all me.
Robin Hood (2010 version)- I liked this too. Again I watched it alone.
Big Bang Theory season 2- This show is pretty funny, however the character Penny ALWAYS says, "God," which bugs me. Also there is a lot of fornication and talk.
Collision- This was an entertaining Masterpiece Collection movie. Kind of a cool story.
Parks and Recreation season 2- Funny like The Office.
Downtown Abbey- Another Masterpiece Collection which was pretty good, however there is some homosexual activity.
Ugly Betty seasons 3-4- I liked this series until Betty got pretty and then they played up the homosexual stories.
Toddlers and Tiaras- Pure entertainment and something I could watch to convince me I'm not such a bad mom after all.
Harry Potter 7- I know last person on earth to see this. Kind of boring like the first half of the book was. Looking forward to the final movie.

Day 89

Take that bad run last Saturday! Today's run went great. The weather was beautiful. I had music. My phone app worked. My confidence was back. And, I started to feel slightly guilty about the allusion to cuss words in my previous post. Happy day.

Mother's Day

GT #1 woke me up at 6:00am to ask if he could make breakfast. His first gift to me was going back to bed until 7:30 at which time I told him it would be ok to make me breakfast. The boys decorated the table with their cards and gifts and also hung a "Happy Mother's Day" banner up. Gabe had yet to come home from work yet, so they went about making letter shaped pancakes on their own. They found cookie cutters in the play dough box, and were originally going to write "Mom Rokz" since they couldn't find the right letters. I encouraged them to stop after the second "m" since the cookie cutter was starting to melt. Motherhood takes a lot of patience. I've got to remember that most of what my dear children do comes with pure and good intentions.

The Friday before I went to GT #1's classroom to see his Mother's Day program. His class sang some songs, recited poems, drew our portraits, and served us punch and cookies. There was a song they sang that got me thinking. It was about giving hugs. It is really easy for me to spend time with my little children, because they need me so much. I'm constantly hugging, touching, tickling, playing and reading to them. I don't do that with my older kids. I find it a lot harder to give care to them, as they don't need me in the same way the baby and toddlers do. I think it was good that I was able to tell my dear oldest child that I love him, and that I always want to give him hugs no matter how old or big he is. GT #1 also touched my heart with this little note which brought tears to my eyes:

I've got some good kids. I'm a lucky mom.

Day 83

4 more weeks of marathon training down. 4 more to go. I've now run 322 miles.

I see a lot of things while I'm running; really huge nests in the river bottoms, fields of seagulls, the cutest little calves, deer, and the blue stakes writing pictured. The funny thing is when I see that writing I sure as heck am not thinking "Blue Stakes." I am feeling this, and it isn't pretty. The last 4 long runs were not that great. My long training runs were to be 16, 16, 17 and 18 miles long. According to my gps they were 15.9, 16.09, 16.81, and 15.5. Yesterday's run was a total fail, thus the 15.5 instead of 18. I blame the rain, wind, wrong turns, gps/watch/phone that didn't work, and plain old discouragement. I'm looking forward to being done with the whole thing. Just a mere 20 mile long run to go, 2 weeks of taper runs, and the marathon left.

Milestones to Note

Three big accomplishments occurred recently.

GT #5 started attending church nursery

GT #1 received his Cub Scout Bear Achievement

GT #4 wore pigtails for the first.


All big deals in their own right.

Funny Kids

We've reached the wonderful age of "I must have my shoes on, and I must go outside." GT #5 is no slave to fashion. He'll wear whatever he can find, even sister's princess sandals.


Special thanks to the cautious drivers, good neighbors, and kind strangers who have watched out for my wandering baby.

April Happenings: Part 2

Everything else that happened in April:

We froze our tooshes off at GT #3's soccer games. He tried playing the sport with his hands in his pockets. All but 1 or 2 games were miserable.


Our California cousins were in town over conference weekend. We loved hanging out. I loved having the girlies over to get our toesies painted.

Wednesday of Spring Break we attempted a hike up Payson Canyon. It was closed but we walked up the road and threw sticks and rocks in the river. Thursday we went bowling at Fat Cats and ate at Costa Vida (thanks to reading reward coupons from school) and visited the BYU dinosaur museum. Friday we met our cousins and G-ma Baugh at the Living Aquarium.




We had a fun Easter weekend. The Easter Bunny at our house was off candy this year, so the kids got play dough, crayons, notepads, and an art book (and a couple goodies). They got their candy fix at G-ma Baugh's and at Aunt Shannon's.

Good Thing #3 celebrated his 6th Birthday, thus disrupting our pattern of a 9,7,5,3,and 1 year old in our family. He had an animal birthday party with some friends and at night both sets of grandparents came over. He was very pleased with his gifts (currently a bit obsessed by all things geographical, flags, and license plates)



The big boys also participated in a weekly fishing class, GT #4 finished up preschool group, and GT #3 had a Kindergarten egg drop (success). I continued marathon training, weight gaining, babysitting, and family managing. Gabe continued working his guts out.