Twelve days of Christmas Hurricane style

The following song adaptation was composed entirely by the kids to commemorate the wind storm of 2011.

On the 1st day of Christmas, nature gave to me, winds of a hundred and three.
On the 2nd day of Christmas, nature gave to me, two crashing playgrounds.
On the 3rd day of Christmas, nature gave to me, three flying tramps.
On the 4th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, four falling semis.
On the 5th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, no elec-tri-city.
On the 6th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, six glowing flashlights.
On the 7th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, seven fallen trees.
On the 8th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, eight flying shingles.
On the 9th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, nine lost garbage cans.
On the 10th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, ten scattered tools.
On the 11th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, eleven piles to clean up.
On the 12th day of Christmas, nature gave to me, twelve loving neighbors.

Christian's Family Totem

Christian made this on a toilet paper roll for an assignment at school.  I was really touched by the way he sees each of our children's roles in the family.

(click to enlarge)

Emma's Testimony

As a regular part of our Family Home Evening, we have started to encourage each member of the family take a turn bearing their testimony.  It has been an incredible experience the last few months.  Paul and I have really been touched and learned so much from our children. 

One such experience was when Emma said, "Even though I try really hard to be good, I still make mistakes."  "I am thankful for second chances."

I too am thankful for second chances, especially as a parent.  I try really hard to be good but I still make lots of mistakes.  I am thankful for forgiving children who don't hold grudges and still love me with all their hearts.  I am also thankful for an understanding and forgiving Savior who listens and accepts my heartfelt repentance, even if it is for the same mistakes over and over again.
What wisdom there is to be found in the testimonies of children!  Oh, to be like a little child.

The Leprechauns came again!

Did you know that leprechauns visit us at our house?  They do!  They come during the night.  This year we discovered a new secret... if you draw a picture of a leprechaun and leave it in your shoe outside your door, the leprechauns will take you picture and leave you a treat.  We should have copied our pictures before the leprechaun took them.  We will have to remember next year.   They were really cute!  The leprechauns left us rainbow licorice and Rolo gold.

They also left us a treasure hunt!  The night before, we always leave our little pot out on the kitchen table.  When the leprechauns visit they fill the pot with toys and gold coins and then hide it.  Their footprints lead us to the first clue of our riddle treasure hunt!

The excitement didn't end there!  During our green St. Patrick's Day dinner we had another surprise.  We were busy eating our green linguine, broccoli, asparagus, green grapes, apples and kiwi with sourdough bread, when from the chandelier, one of the light covers and lightbulb fell onto the bread plate in the middle of the table shattering everthing and spreading glass shards over the entire surface of the table!  It seems the ring securing the light cover failed and it all came down.  Needless to say, dinner was over more quickly than anticipated.

New additions to the family

First, some background.  I served a mission in Guatemala, in a very primitive area.  Think National Geographic.  No electricity, indoor plumbing, or air conditioning.  In one house, the walls didn't even meet the roof.  So...we had our share of critter adventures.  We had tarantulas, scorpions, bugs of every kind, including fleas.  And, we had .... RATS.  They were big, ugly, mutant rats.  In one of our houses, the rats tunneled through the concrete cinder blocks to build nests in the walls.  In another house, a mama rat had her babies in my companion's suitcase, chewing through all of her expensive sweaters.  Don't ask me why she had sweaters in Guate but they were pretty before mama used them to cushion the nest.  The stories behind these critter adventures bear telling at a later date along with a frog and cockroach stories from Puerto Rico.

Fast forward to a viewing of the movie G-Force in which Jordan gets the idea that having gerbils would be the greatest thing since the invention of disposable diapers (my comparison of course). Which, by the way sits at the top of my list of accomplishments.  Man on the moon?  pshaw, that's nothing compared to industrial poop catchers.  Anyway, I am sure he pictured his gerbils running around all over the house in the gerbil exercise balls.

So... I am trying to get used to the idea of small rodents in the house, trying to picture them as SMALL, furry, cuddly, little things when my sister Laurie tells me a horrific story about one of their gerbils chewing the face off the other gerbil.  Now I am picturing my sweet, tender-hearted 8 year old making that discovery and the nightmares that would follow!  That would be MY nightmares I am referring to.

Then my loving, helpful, sister proceeds to inform us that the best pets they have ever had were...RATS!!!  She told us how friendly and intelligent they are and that they would sit on her son, Trenton's shoulder and snuggle up to his neck.  This picture in my head, sent such shivers up my spine, my head just about spun around like the unfortunate girl in the Exorcist!  Given my history with mutant, scary, disease ridden rats, I am sure you have an idea of the extent of my reaction.

  Since Jordan was able to talk, he has been asking for 

a pet that he could play with.  He used to pray daily for a dog, but Paul and I are allergic to both dogs and cats and frankly, I don't want a dog.  As any parent can tell you, if you buy a pet for your child... you personally have a new pet.  Over the following couple of days, I became more used to the idea of rats.  Well, Santa must have taken that as an agreement and brought "Shadow" and "Sparkle" for Jordan.  



Shadow is dark brown and Sparkle is white and brown





It's amazing, but the idea of having rats in the house on purpose is more shiver inducing that actually seeing them and trying to interact with them and train them.  I have to admit, they have very distinct personalities and are soft.  Jordan loves them and can't wait until they are trained enough to play with him. 

Now, if only Shadow would stop biting me every time I get anywhere near her!  My fingers are full of holes and bandaids!

We've decided to name him Nick

When I suggested we name this doll Nick, Christian, our Harry Potter fan looked confused for a second and then laughed really hard saying "Oh Mom..."

Conversations from the car

We decided with sick kiddos, cold nights, and plenty to do around here, that we would forgo our planned camping trip in favor of a stay-cation.  Our itinerary included the following:

Thur.  Paul worked half day, then we went to Boondocks for some miniature golf and to Pepperbelly's in Kaysville for dinner.  We then went home to watch "Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue" from Redbox.

Fri.  We drove into Gateway went to Jason's Deli for lunch and the planetarium for the dome movie "Attack of the Space Pirates".  Then we walked over to Discovery Gateway to play for 3½ hours.  Amazing how tiring sitting all day can be, but we had a blast.  We went home and grilled steaks for dinner. 

Sat.  After fighting over getting jobs done (lest you think our days are all rose colored), we drove to Snowbird enjoying fall in all it's glory (my favorite part of the whole weekend) (and yes, I like to use parenthesis every chance I get).  We then had a picnic on the patio. Snowbird was having a food drive and so for six cans of food we all rode the tram to the top and looked over the surrounding valleys while the kids built walls from rocks.  We then walked along a fun little trail to the playground.  It is a great playground with the most amazing view.  We played, tagged, and the kids added their own improvements to a fort/den someone had built just off the path in the trees.  We ended our day at Joe's Crab Shack (Paul's favorite part of the weekend).  Whoever came up with the idea to put a playground area in a REAL restaurant was a genius!  We ate good food (crab takes a while to eat) while the children played!  It's a bonus that the kids like seafood too.

On the way home today, these were some of the things heard from the back seat.  Keep in mind that these are overlapping conversations.  No one actually takes turns talking.

Jenna: "Watch out Mom, the brave squirrel is coming!"

Mom: "What will the brave squirrel do?  Why do I have to 'watch out'?"

Jenna:  "He will kill us" (I attribute this to having older brothers??!!)

Mom:  "Why would he do that?"

Jenna: "Ummm"

Then Emma pipes up:  "Mom, my top lip is spicy."

Uncontrolled laughter from Paul.

In the meantime, from the back seat, Christian chanting:  Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, antidisestablishmentarianism, qugzuang..... (he is fascinated by long words)

Jenna: "It's okay Mom, the nice squirrel is coming."

Mom: "Oh good, what is the nice squirrel going to do?"

Jenna: "He's going to kill us."

Mom:  "That's not very nice."

This does not include the "Oww", "Ooch", and "Ahh"s coming from the back seat in a never ending game of how many subtle (and not so subtle) ways can I torture my brother, which resulted in our "hands up" consequence which we find very effective!  If they work their way through "keep your hands to yourself" warnings, we then say, "hands up!"  Which means they must hold their hands up above their heads until they are told they can lower them, or we reach our destination.

Paul just informed me of some riddles I missed while dozing (I tend to do that in the car) on the way up the mountain.  Christian was telling riddles to which Jordan would answer something to do with farting.  Every. Single. One. (That's fluffing for some of you, we used to try... some days I still do)  For example,
Christian: "...so, how did he get the handcuffs off?" 
Jordan: "uhh, he farted?"
This was then accompanied by raucous laughter.  I'm glad I wasn't coherent for that part.  But hey, they are 8 and 10 year old boys, and no matter what their mother says, anything to do with bodily functions is hilarious.  I just hope with coaching and some maturity, they will eventually grow out of this genre of humor...  Or maybe not.

Anyway, it has been a wonderful weekend with many quality memories made.  Sometimes it is nice to have low stress days when we can come back to home base and sleep in our own beds.  Although, I think I need a few more trips to the mountains to get my fill of Fall before it's gone!

I am grateful

I am so grateful for the wonderful neighborhood we have moved into. We were sad to leave our old neighborhood and it was hard to hope for a great experience like that to happen more than once.

One of the most amazing examples of neighborliness was the day we laid our sod. We started at about 2 or 3 pm on a Friday. The first person to come was our then unknown neighbor, Mike, from down at the end of the street. He had noticed the pallets of sod in the street and thought, "they're going to need some help". He stayed with us to the end, about 5½ hours later! His son came for a while and his wife came down later when she got off work. As the day progressed we had family come and go and we are sooo grateful for their support. As we continued it started to rain. Our wonderful next door neighbor sent out the boys (hers and ours) to knock on neighbors' doors and ask for help. I had no idea until people just started showing up. How busy were their lives that day? What excuses could they have used? Would I have dropped everything and come to lay sod? By 5:30, we had 20-25 neighbors laying sod in the rain. There were men, couples and even quite a few women whose husbands weren't home, so they came alone! These people know how to work! We could never have completed our yard without them. We laid 9,000 sq feet of sod that day and it looks great!

I find that experiences like this fill me with profound gratitude and wonder at being led to such a wonderful place. God's hand is in the details and his angels do exist. I also have to stop and ponder what type of neighbor and friend I am striving to become. I still have a long way to go. It's a good thing our loving Heavenly Father has given us a lifetime to get there.

Taking time to capture "a moment"

This was one of those moments that I am grateful to have captured together as a family. We all dropped everything we were doing to go out and marvel at this incredible rainbow, discussing where it ended, leprechauns, what rainbows are made of, and whether we could make it to the end. You can't see it in the picture, but it was a double rainbow, so we talked about the reverse order of the colors. When it had faded, we all went back to what we were doing but felt that much happier from sharing the moment together. This worked for us.

Our Summer Bucket List

I saw this idea on a blog and decided it would a good way to keep us motivated to do fun things together this summer. It also gives tangible evidence contrary to the "we never get to do anything fun" comments. We began with the disclaimer that this is an idea only list and by no means a guarantee! We have already checked off a few items. Although it is somewhat childish, this also helps me feel a little better about being the "mean mom" who makes their kids do chores during the summer.

We have been talking about "team Bruderer" and how we need to work and play together as a team. Last night for Family Home evening, we had a short intro and then went out to work in the yard. While Dad mowed, the kids and I weeded and replanted peppers that were destroyed in the worst wind storm last week. Because it was light for so long, we were able to work until 9:30 or 10. After we cleaned up, we took a couple of blankets out on the lawn and did some not so serious stargazing. We also did plenty of squirming and giggling. (Gardening, check. Stargazing, check. Summer fun, check.) We talked about constellations, and the possibility of other solar systems with planets with people on them. It was interesting to talk to my 7 and 10 year olds about the nature of their Heavenly Father, that we are His children and that any other children He may have on other planets would probably look like us rather than little green men. Christian then went so far to suppose that Heavenly Father would want them to know of the plan of salvation too and therefore they would probably have scripture too. Scripture written by different prophets. It's amazing where a conversation can lead. Paul and I have decided that this will be a fun, productive summer solstice tradition.
We will be making this list work for us and having a lot of fun doing it!

Tender moment...

A couple of weeks ago, Paul and Jenna were snuggled up on our bed talking. Paul had named each member of the family by name, asking if "they love Jenna" to which she answered yes. Then she wanted to ask him questions so she went through each member of the family by name asking if he loved them. Then with all the seriousness a two year old can muster, she stroked his face with her little hand, looked deeply into his eyes and asked, "Daddy, do you love your armpits?"

In the deep, deep part of Daddy's pocket...

One day, Emma was looking in the pocket of Paul's dress shirt. She said, "that's a deep pocket". Evidently, this fact got her thinking about what could be in the deep part of that pocket. It all started with the bunnies. She told us that there are bunnies that live in the deep, deep part of his pocket and...

they "have chubby cheeks like this" "and big eyes like this"

"and eyebrows like this"

"and ears like this"

Then she proceeded to tell us about the walking refridgerator that gets food from the restaurant and then walks around giving out food.

She talked about this imaginary world in the deep, deep part of Daddy's pocket for about 20 minutes, describing all the details. Unfortunately, I didn't take notes imediately and when asked about it a couple of hours later these were the only parts she or I could remember. What a fun cute imagination she has. Often times it is not fun to have VERY dramatic kids, but when they have a good story to tell, it is hilarious!

Super not-so-secret identities

Paul reminded me today of the super identities he gave the boys a few months ago. We still haven't determined whether these identities make them super heroes or super villians. Usually it depends on the state of our sense of humor. Christian is Captain Obvious and Jordan is his sidekick as Literal Boy!

Gold, Frankincense, and Mold

We were telling our traditional puppet Christmas story (I had to copy my sister Laurie's puppets. Aren't they adorable?) when Paul asked if any of the children knew what gifts the wisemen brought. Christian piped right up, and as fast as his tongue could blurt said, "gold, frankincense, and mold". He knew the real answer but his tongue was running faster than his brain at the moment. As I thought of this a few days later, I smiled with chagrin to think of the times my tongue has run away leaving my brain behind.

Too Many stories, too little time...

There is a contest with lots of great prizes over at We are THAT Family. The contest is perfect for us. Entrants must attempt to prove that they are THAT family, you know the ones... So in a monumental effort to put off packing until the verrry last minute, I decided that I just must enter this contest. Although I have many new and inspiring stories yet to blog about, the ones that make you think, "I hope I never have to deal with THAT!!" I have yet to write the babysitter story, which is going to prove to be a masterpiece tribute to being THAT family, it will have to wait until post moving chaos. As for my submission and the wry amusement of many members of my family, I humbly offer the following past entries:

Our Royal Family (according to Emma)
Our Little Schemer
How we got a Cherry 7-up stained ceiling
NO idle curiosity here
A Jordan story
A Jenna Day
The Christmas Story
Paralyzing Glare
What are they Thinking?!!

The sad... proud... embarassing... (don't know how to feel about it) part is, that these are just a small sampling. Keep browsing under kid's stories, parenting and each child, you will find oh so many more!

Don't forget to check out the side bar featuring some of the things our children have said!

If we do not qualify to be THAT family, I don't know who does!

One of the stories you've been waiting for...

I know, your blog reading faces are turning blue from holding your breath for this one. While my hubby is off having some male bonding time with his brothers and nephews (I am so NOT even jealous of the copious amounts of practical joking that goes on at this annual aromatic fart-fest. I'd rather wrangle 4 kids by myself any day.) I decided to tackle one of the psychologically damaging experiences of the summer. It was the defrosted freezer incident alluded to here.
In July, we traveled to Colter Bay for a wonderful family reunion and took time to drive up through Yellowstone. It was great except for the last 12 hours or so and then the week following, but that is another story for another day. Today's story took place the day after we returned to find the circuit that was connected to our large freezer that my parents have generously consented to have in their garage, had been tripped while we were gone! Now, to fully appreciate this catastrophe I must tell you that we bought a ¼ beef last November and still had about 30 lbs. left.
Well, at least 90% of that cow had completely defrosted and was dripping meat juice everywhere! Paul was working, not to mention sick, and so it fell to me to clean it up! Most of the meat was still cold and didn't smell spoiled so we decided to refreeze it rather than just throw it out! That cow was a pricey one! Well, I tried to take all of the meat out, clean the freezer and put it back in, but as I am sure you guessed, it just made new puddles of that glorious meat juice. I thought about just turning the freezer on, refreezing the meat and then trying to clean it up but realized the packages would just freeze to each other and the shelf. So, I had Paul buy gallon freezer bags and repackaged all of it! It took me hours in the mid afternoon July heat! I was so relieved to finally finish and take a shower!
Now, you may think this is the end of the story, but oh how wrong you would be! The sheer grossness, grossosity, (I know it's not a word, but real words are failing to express the level of ultragrossness) has just begun! The next day the garage started to stink but it was a really busy day (too much vomit clean up to do) and I just couldn't get up there. The next day it was worse! By the third day Mom was practically gagging as she mentioned that it seemed to be getting worse and I practically passed out upon entering the garage. So I ventured back to the freezer to try to discover the problem. I thought maybe some of that lovely juice/water had spilled out of my bucket under the freezer as I was cleaning. No such luck! Unbeknownst to me, there was a drip pan!!! Our freezer is equipped with a handy-dandy drainage hole in the bottom that drains into a drip pan hidden cleverly behind a plastic grill. It was brimming full of an indescribably disgusting sludge that had been brewing for many days in the July heat! Imagine your worst and then take it down a couple of notches. I am cringing as I type this 2 months later!
What to do? What to do with it! I couldn't just dump it somewhere so I opted for the toilet but that meant bringing it into the house! Oh the horror!! As I tromped through the house with my bucket of sludge from Hades, Jordan had the gall to say, "Mom you REALLY stink!"
After scouring the bucket and drip pan, putting baking soda all over the garage, and taking one of the longest, hottest showers of my life. The ordeal was finally over.
Now that it is finally recorded for posterity and my therapy, I can move on! :)

We wanna be cowboys

We had a fun ward activity on Saturday. It was an oldfashioned hoedown. There were 3 legged races, a tug o' war, a duck pond for prizes, great down home food, a hay ride, and horses to ride. The kids absolutely loved the horses. We couldn't get Jenna off!

Summer adventures continued...

I have enough material through this summer for a novel series however, I thought I would condense a little and let some of the experiences speak for themselves.
For example, I think you can imagine the clean up involved in a cracked 42 oz bottle of bubble solution slowly leaking into the carpet. Or a toddler with the stomach flu doing her thing on both the leather couch and upholstered rocker, neither of which actually belong to us!
There is a dent in the wall where the doorknob hits from a particularly enthusiastic entrance, the grass is wearing a little thin as we trample around to the back door and the kids continue to sneak-eat the cherry tomatoes out of the garden.
The fish have somehow survived in spite of their near death experience but we lost our last frog Zippy about a week ago. You will probably not be surprised to know that I miss him more than the kids because I was the one who took care of him. We had a unique bond. I have a habit of going in to see my sleeping children before I go to bed. At the end of each day I need the reminder of their innocence, beauty, and my love for them. Anyway, frogs are nocturnal and Zippy was at his most active about midnight. I would silently greet him and watch as he perched on the edge of his water bowl after a refreshing dip. I miss watching him watch me and pondering what he might be thinking. I know, you are astounded at the depth of my ponderings at that time of night.
This is also another superglue testimonial! Emma was chasing Jordan across the street, tripped and fell, and gouged 2 holes in her forehead. We pulled out the superglue again and things seem to be healing well!
And finally (for now) we had the fun adventure of taking down the entire clothes rod and upper shelf in our bedroom. I guess maybe we didn't thin our wardrobes enough when we moved :) The screws pulled right out of the wall.
There are also a few more stories which demand more detail in the telling. I will leave these for a future date when I am more emotionally prepared to relive them. Let's just say one involves a babysitter who didn't know how to say no to science experiments, and the other involves a defrosted freezer that still makes me cringe in horror. Another will recount the beginning of the vomit story which happened to take place in our trailer... on vacation... from the top bunk.
Needless to say, we will have some spackling, painting, and a whole lot of cleaning to do when we move out of here. We are determined to leave this basement in the best shape we can (I mumble with bowed head and a look of penitent chagrin on my face).

Memories

We were sitting around on Sunday thinking about all the memories we have from the old house. I thought I would get them written down in a semi-permanent place. Since I spend much more time here than in my journal, here it is:


Paul

• throwing kids into the Love Sac
• kids jumping from the basement stairs landing into the Love Sac
• storing all our Christmas decorations in the basement shower
• kids racing from the fridge to the couch with Jordan yelling "Look out guys, I'm gonna go speed!"
• how beautiful our Christmas tree looked in the front window
• games of HyperDash in the back yard
• process of landscaping the backyard including the kids playing in the thatch, tipping over the bobcat, laying railroad ties (Brooke being 5 months pregnant), laying sod, building the playset, digging out the old sandbox, planting the garden and the apple tree that we never got an apple from
• golfing with whiffle balls
• how the kids would get up on the wall and spin around the fence posts before the fence was put up
• kids deciding the pantry was the romantic place when they caught Mom and Dad kissing in there and would shove us in there any chance they got
• playing hide and go seek - we would list the places we looked aloud "not in the closet" Jordan would yell "no" from his hiding place as we said each place we looked

Brooke

• how much the kids loved jumping on the trampoline with the sprinkler underneath
• themed birthday parties: pirates, frog, shark, princess
• kids playing on the fake rock in the front yard no matter how many times we asked them not to
• our Jumanji garden
• Jordan spending the majority of his outside time in the raspberry patch eating. Once I sent out a bowl of raspberries for him to pick more, the bowl came back empty, he accused "You know I love raspberries too much!"
• the sandbox provided many pockets full of sand to dump on my bed as I sorted laundry
• building snowmen in the front yard
• watching the kids blast off to the moon on the rocket rider
• how proud I was about putting up the chain link fence (with my Dad's help)
• Paul hurting his back multiple times shoveling snow because we didn't have room to store a snowblower in the garage

Christian

• my favorite place to hide was under the table between the couches
• unwrapping Christmas presents under the Christmas tree in the living room
• cutting down the quakie in the front yard

Jordan

• having a Christmas tree for a night light
• counting lights on the tree until I fall asleep
• doing flips into the love sac
• Christmas quilt tradition in the living room
• raking leaves and jumping into them

Emma

• sliding down slide into the leaves
• boys pulling Emma around the yard in the little blue sled

Living Small and Trying to Laugh - part2

As promised, here is the next installment in the 3 part story, of the things we have managed to do to the carpet in my parents' basement, which happens to be a small part of a bigger and wilder tale.... Murphy's law (Murphy visits us often, such as here and here) bites in small spaces.

I was sorting laundry during my weekly assault on my mother's washer upstairs. I had my batches sorted into baskets on the bed to be toted upstairs. I carefully balanced the bottle of bleach in the basket of whites, ready to lift and carry, when as so often happens, my attention was drawn by an emergency, real or pretend, perpetuated by my children. I returned no more than 2 minutes later, to find the basket had overbalanced and fallen to the floor. I then discovered much to my dismay, that in a rush I hadn't replaced the cap straight on the bottle and it had splashed and leaked all over the carpet. I blotted, and blotted, and tried to dilute, only to discover that after about 10 minutes, the beautiful warm brown with gold highlights colored carpet, had a 3½" circle of bright tiger orange with spots of the same color dotting the surrounding area. I was sick! I felt like the naughty teenager again as I waited for my parents to come home so I could confess what I did!

Once again, they were very understanding and forgave me quickly as I described my research into possible solutions for repairing the damage and intentions to pay for said repairs. I am grateful they saved the scraps from the installment of the carpet so that we had a better chance of a match instead of trusting fate in getting a dye lot to match. We know how well that usually works out and with Murphy firmly planted in our corner, we had no chance. So, a knowledgeable man came, cut the carpet and patched the area. We were pleased with the results and are now awaiting the bill.