for Olivia

Just so you know, I ran a 5K on my treadmill yesterday. I will not disclose my time, I just want you to know that I'm good to go for our 5K in April and I can only get faster at this point.

Now don't get me wrong; I don't have any dilusions of actually beating you. I mean, this is who I'm running with...



Just know that I will start with you and I will eventually finish, and you will get to cheer me across the finish line.

Because at that point you will have no doubt stretched, showered and changed clothes.

You should have plenty of energy to cheer your loudest.

I love how he calls it "crochet"

and the mallet he calls a hammer.

I have lots of pictures I'm working on to post, but I'm trying to moderate my computer time. Between photography and blogging I could use up all my free time on this thing if I'm not careful:).

So, more pictures to come...eventually.

and now since we've had a break from the birds...back to the birds.

Oh birds, you fickle, fickle friends. If only you knew what you do to me...

They are gone. Not a trace. No flowers, no note, nothing!

I honestly don't know when they left. Saturday they were buisily making a cozy shmozy nest, and Sunday; nada.

If anyone has any insights on the innerworkings of the "bird brain" I'd love to listen. The only thing I can figure is that the nasty weather the last few days scared them off.?

What's wierd is that there's not a trace of them left. The other day I saw that a big portion of their nest had blown down in the night, but that didn't seem to deter them. They just pressed on. Saturday looked like this:

So I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe they'll be back. And maybe all my hopes and dreams for a baby-bird Spring are dashed to pieces.

The least they could do is pick up the phone. Don't they know I'm worried sick?

why it's impossible for me to do anything...ever.

I went into the other room to check my email, and this is what I came back to...

If you're worried that they are burning themselves on hot chicken nuggets, fear not. I was heating up the oven the put them in...these are frozen. Yes, apparently my children were THAT hungry. Although the look written on Alex's face is all, "I know I'm standing here, but I totally didn't pull the step-stool up to the counter for Lily so she could sample the frozen nuggets. uh uh, not me."

They're a little trouble-making team, is what they are.

bird-watchers log; day 3

I think the nest is coming along quite nicely.

It appears they've decided to stay. I did a little happy dance in my kitchen.

See, this is what happens when we stop having children. We start living vicariously through the birds.

Also, my sister's dog just had 4 puppies.

That is another blog entirely.

bird-watchers log; day 2

They came back.

I noticed this morning that one of the birds was flying up into the nest again with more twigs. So I left them completely alone this morning. Later, I thought they were gone again so I decided to climb up on a ladder to see if there were any eggs.

I can hear you all screaming now...DON'T DO IT! THEY'LL PECK YOUR EYES OUT! But, lucky for me, there he was just sitting there patiently. So I didn't get close. I set the ladder up on the other side of the yard and used my telephoto.

I know this is just riviting reading for you.

I didn't see any eggs, but it was a cool birds eye view ha ha! (Oh my goodness, did I just say that? I keep getting lamer by the minute.)

So I don't know if they've decided to stay here or if they're still just trying it out, but I've been thinking about bribery. Do you think birds go for that? I think I have some quilt batting in the basement; maybe I'll scatter it throughout the lawn. That's got to be like the hight of luxury in nests. Or maybe...ooo, I just remembered I've got sunflower seeds. Gotta go.

Beka out.

our new wide screen television

And Noggin's got nothin' on this channel...

Some birds have been building a nest in our backyard, which is something I've never watched before. We spent most of the morning outside watching while one bird protectively sat on the eggs while the other would go and painstakingly test each and every twig for softness and other nest-like qualities and take it up to add it to the nest. It's so interesting to me to watch them focus so intently on the task at hand. Very maternal, if you ask me. It reminds me of my friend who has been remodeling her house in her third trimester of pregnancy.

In fact I'm thinking of naming the female Amy Hummel.

After a while I went back out to see what they were doing and I noticed that no one was on the nest! I'm a little worried that they realized that having their home so close to ours was driving down their property values significantly and so they, therefore, left to find other real estate. But I really hope not. I really want to hear the little baby chirping in a few weeks!

And just in case you were wondering if I had no life...confirmed. I don't.

doublemint twins

Alex and I were walking out the door this morning when I realized we were dressed exactly the same...all the way down to the shoes!

I guess great minds think alike.

After my mom took that picture Alex wanted a picture with her.

And then Lily had to get in on the action. It was like a wedding reception, for crying out loud!

the perils of blogging

tagged!

A. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning

B. Each player answers the questions about themselves

C. At the end of the post, the player tags 4 people and posts their names, then goes to their blog and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they are tagged



10 years ago I was:

um..let's see...that was 1998? Getting married and going to school...in that order.



5 things on my 'to do' list today:

1. Bake sugar cookies for Valentines Day

2. finish the valentines for Alex's class that he started and didn't finish.

3. Get Alex to and from pre-school (although Megan helped with the "from" part today. Thanks Megan!)

4. Build two towers out of blocks. One for Alex, and one for the bad guys who live next door.

5. Clean the house and get ready for jake's and my hot valentine date (which turned out to be going out to dinner at the "Lucky" chinese buffet because we both were in the mood for chinese which never happens because I have this funny quirk of wanting reassurance that my arteries will still allow blood flow in the morning. So I know that's like, truck driver-quality gormet and really not overly romantic, but there you have it.)



Things I would do if I became a billionaire:

1. spend my life trying not to act like a billionaire.

2. take lots of classes about whatever I want

3. give some away

4. The funny thing about this one is that you kind of automatically assume that if you had money you'd somehow have all of this leasure time to go with it, which I doubt is true. So my life would probably not change a whole lot. We would probably just spend the leasure time we did have doing cool things as a family and creating memories together and trying as hard as we can not to mess up our spoiled rotten children.



3 of my bad habits:

1. I want to say YES to everybody and I automatically take the blame for whatever goes wrong. Pushover, I know. I'm sorry...there I go again!

2. I'm a know-it-all. And not because I actually know it all. I just get excited about things and it comes off that way sometimes.

3. Sometimes I go home from parties or large gatherings and spend the whole rest of the night thinking to myself, "Did I really say that to her?" Because thoughts don't quite fully form in my head before they come out of my mouth.



5 places I've lived:

1. Northern California for 17 years

2. St. George Utah for 10 years

3. Logan for 3 weeks (I haven't lived in that many places, so I had to add it. I almost went to school there and then didn't.)

4. Provo Utah for the happy-valliest 3 years of my life

5. See, I'm not that old...I haven't even lived in 5 places!

5 jobs I've had:

1.Snow shack executive operator

2. Bagel delivery and logistics

3. Fat Farm assistant in charge of towel hand-outs

4. Bakery manager and official taste-tester

5. RN

Things most people don't know about me:
I blog. I have no secrets.




You've been tagged:
Amanda
Sarah
Marie
Jamie

clearly in need of a paradigm shift

Move over Seth...there's a new stache in town

For some reason whenever Jake shaves his beard he loves to FREAK me out by non-chalantly walking into a room looking like THIS...




Yah, like I'm not going to notice.

Don't worry Seth, it's coming right off. You'll be on top again soon.

Ernie and Lily: Heart to Heart

I just loved watching Lily with the puppets.

kickin' it old skool in the GGG

That's Grocery-Go-Getter for all you homies out there...

I spent the weekend in Phoenix with my BFF April and my brother Mike and his wife Barbara, et.al. We had a great time down there. It neared 80 degrees both days we were there...perfect! And that thing I can't stop talking about? Oh, it's that the hotel messed up our reservation and so we got a totally nice suite for a totally nice price. I love it when stuff like that happens!

We all had so much fun. We made absolutely no plans, so we just let the kids jump on the trampoline and light-saber their little hearts out. It was exactly what we wanted... a nice, fun weekend for the kids.

The drive left a little to be desired, however, but we figure that just builds character. The worst part was that we forgot the hard drive with all of our movies on it so the kids were left with the Underdog movies we had in the car. Of course they could watch them for 9 hours straight and not bat an eye, but we were pretty sick of them long-about Flagstaff.

We figure we must know EXACTLY how the pioneers must have felt.

So on the way home we grabbed some Redbox movies for our own sanity. Aint technology great?

Here are some pictures in no particular order.

Lily is such a little ham. She was so funny on this trip. Here she is eating hamburgers at April's.







Rachael, Lincoln, and Lils



Here are the "guys" watching Star Wars on the computer. Don't you love how Matthew's hand is resting on Alex's shoulder? So cute!






April's Tommy and Meg jumping on the trampoline with Lily

It's not very often you get my full braces...feast your eyes.

My Alex

Oddly enough (and yet fittingly) this is the only shot I got of April. Sorry, Ape, I'll get you next time:)

Alex playing firefighter at a children's museum in Mesa

At the museum they were having a Jim Hensen exhibit which was really cool. I would have loved to have seen more of it, but we lost Alex while we were there. He ran back to the art museum to play firefighter some more. It freaked me out because he's not one to run off. Hopefully this doesn't become a new phase...

Aaaaanyway, they had a place for kids to do a puppet show.

But as fun as the trip was, the real adventure started on the day we came home. Alex woke up really sick with a cold and didn't want to get out of bed. When we got him in the car he said he hurt too bad to sit up, so he laid down in the back the whole way home...poor kid. (don't call child services, I swear ALL our parents used to do it:) So then, as we were crossing the Hoover Dam Lily got car sick and threw up about 3 courses. When we got out to survey the damage and I realized that my cleaning arsenal was limited to baby wipes, we ended up throwing away all of the clothes she was wearing AND her carseat. Yes, it was that bad. So we put her in Alex's carseat, which doesn't have a harness because he uses the seatbelt. Well she got out of that in about 2 seconds, so I sat in the back and held her; which I think is probably a little like trying to contain a tornado in a 7-passenger mini-van. She kept going back to where Alex was laying and pulling his hair. I'd say "be nice" and she'd say, "ya, I nice." Ya right.

Anyway. We're home and this is how Alex looks...

Poor guy.

It's good to be home.

confidence

"Beka, I love you no matter how '30' you get."

Thanks babe, that's all I need.

month 51

Alex, it's been a big month for you, big guy.
We started out the month, and the year by having your tonsils removed.


Barbaric, I know.





But you were such a champ, and even though we had a rough couple of weeks you bounced right back. And now you love to talk about your tonsils and how now you have big holes right where they used to be (gross...those close up eventually, right?) In fact, you are so impressed with yourself that as you're explaning your tonsils--what they are, what they do, and why yours are gone--to random people, that there usually comes a point in the conversation where you ask them to open their mouths so you can see their tonsils.

And I loved it when you said, (in front of my visiting teachers)"If Dad has his tonsils out, why does he snore so loud?"

I think at some point we're going to have to have a little talk about "ice breakers" and what is acceptable in everyday social conversations.

Actually, an unforseen benefit to having your tonsils out has been this new curiosity of the human body. It started out when I grabbed one of my nursing books to show you what tonsils look like, and it just snowballed from there. It got to the point that you were wanting "Human Anatomy" second edition, Martini and Timmons read to you every night before bed.

Cover to drawn-out, anitomical, cover.

So after a couple nights of hoping beyond hope that we wouldn't accidentally stumble onto "reproductive anatomy" and get inundated with "what's that?" We finally went to the library to get you some, how can I put this, kid friendly books on human anatomy. You know, Miss Frizzle, and the like.




That has worked much, much better for our purposes with you.

We also took you on your long-awated snow trip this month. Your Aunt Sarah got you a sled for Christmas and you were just dying to try it out. You had a great time in Pine Valley after waiting nearly a month after Christmas to go.

And then, of course it snowed in St. George like a week later.







This has also been the month of friends...like every month. I think you're learning how to be a good friend...at least I hope. You are able to spend longer hours playing, often coming home because someone has to run an errand or go to grandma's house...not because your bawling because someone was mean. I'm proud of you for being so grown up.

But we do need to have a sit-down with you and Avery about the perils of "parking" and the like.


And the Star Wars thing? Still big. Still very, very big.
Mostly this month I have been amazed by your curiosity. Your ability to ask questions and put 2 and 2 together. Some questions you've asked this month:

Why do brains have wrinkles?

why do girls have babies?

why don't boys have babies?

Is a flu a kind of fly?

What's inside the earth?

where does the sun go at night?

why do bees sting?

are bones made out of plastic?

You also sing head shoulders knees and toes, only insert "brain" for head. It's quite humorous.

And it's like this every day...all day. Question after question. But they're thought-out. You remember everything you're told and you build on that knowledge with more questions. It's an awesome thing to witness.


You've also made some big accomplishments this month. You recited the first article of faith, you buttoned your own shirt, and you get your own bananas. Open 'em up and everything.




And let's not forget to mention that you're a very handsome Superman.

You're even talking like a super hero. When I ask you to put your bowl in the sink you shout, "No...NEVER!" as if I'm Darth Vader and I've just invited you to join the dark side.

It's been another adventurous month, Alex.

I love you, buddy.

month 19

My sweet Lily. 19 months old and growing up so fast.

You have been really learning your words this month...thanks in no small part to your older brother who is such a good little teacher--even when he has his own agenda. This month you have learned "hair", mostly referring to mine which is still one of your dearest comfort objects. You've also learned, "water", "snow", "wee (winnie) the Pooh", and my personal favorite so far, "what's that?" because it shows off that adorable little emerging sense of wonder and curiosity that you have.

I've also noticed a lot more babbling out of you since our new-found resolve to turn off the T.V.

After Alex had his tonsils out and was laid-up for two weeks not feeling like doing ANYTHING but watch TV, we finally decided to make it an earned privilage only. It was one of the best parenting decisions I've ever made.I've noticed, among other things, great developmental change in you in the few short weeks that we've had it off.

Sure, it could be coincidence, but I kind of doubt it. As much as I tried to keep you away from the TV while Alex was recovering, I couldn't keep you away completely. And those first few days after it was off you did a lot of pointing to the TV and grunting. But once you got over it you were suddenly asking for water by saying water instead of mumbling and pointing to the cups. When I would say "no" to you for doing something you shouldn't you would look at me, turn your palms up and ask, "why?" (ya, that could be a whole other blog).

It's like the TV isn't doing your thinking for you anymore (sorry Noggin, your indoctrination days are over).

You've really been pushing your limits this month. Actually, you've always pushed your limits, but as you become more independent it just gets that much more interesting. And as much as possible I let you do your own thing. It really helps the overall harmony of our home if I pick my battles with you.

For example, if you want to pull out your pigtails the minute after I painstakingly put them in, that's fine.

You want to bang on pot lids?

You betcha.

You want to eat your cereal with a whisk?

You have my blessing.

But certain things that you love to do (like playing in the toilet and picking around in the garbage) are just simply off-limits, and that's been hard for you to grasp when you just know there's a magic treasure down there just waiting to be found.You are a girl who is marching to her very own drummer. I can't wait to find out what your passions and interests will be. While you love to follow Alex and

friends around, you definately have your own interests. I hope you always remember that it's OK to be a little different from the crowd. It's important to have your own interests and talents...even if they seem a little different. I think that talents are one thing we will not find in short supply with you, little Lil'. I love to see the wonder and spark of discovery in your eyes. And in being yourself you will find that people will be drawn to you and want to know what makes you "tick".

And then when you find yourself alone sometimes, that will be OK too, because being alone with a mind like yours will never be boring.

I have to add that this month the whole superhero thing has had me in stitches. When you wore Batman to storytime at the library I loved to just sit back and listen to everyone say how cute you were. And, of course, you had no clue that they were talking about you. You were just doing your thing, as always.

The other thing that has amazed me lately is this hero-worship you have developed

of your brother. You love to check out what he's doing and just...be with him.

It is the most adorable thing to watch you two bond and have fun together. Of course you have your less-than adorable moments as well, but I can tell you guys really love each other. This is one of the most important relationships you'll ever have in your life, and I hope you'll always love and respect each other. You will learn so many valuable lessons together and share many "firsts." You two are connected in a very real way.

I love you Lily, and I can't wait to see what this month brings.