a glimpse into luke's world

As mentioned earlier, Luke is completely obsessed with vacuums.  I decided a few weeks ago, to take pictures throughout the coming days, of what Luke does.  It has become normal to us, but every once in a while I really look at what Luke is "playing with," and I crack up with how not normal it really is.  I decided to document it as best I could.  So, here are some pictures of Luke's world the past few weeks.

using extension cords, he stuck one end in to the top of his vacuum, and "plugged it in" to the kitchen drawer.

He also got another cord from somewhere and "plugged the vacuum" in to the couch. This also ended up being quite the tripping wire!

He found the carpet cleaning vacuums at the grocery store.

He tried to get the carpet cleaner vacuum

This vacuum got something terribly stinky in it one day, so I put it in the garage.  Luke brought it back inside, and now carries it everywhere.  He lovingly refers to it as the "stinky vacuum."

Luke took apart our shop vac, and hooked the hoses all over our house.  I can't tell you how many hoses and cords I trip over every day.

He plugged our everyday household vacuum in to an end table.

Shop vac hose plugged in to a drawer.

When Luke plays he does not make car noises, or fighting noises, or flying noises, or shooting noises.  Nope, he makes vacuum noises.  Seriously, he does.

Luke hooked two vacuums together, and then shoved one of them into a drawer.

I tried to get him to play with something other than our vacuums and tools, so he grabbed Mary's microphone and made his own vacuum.  He pushed this around ALL DAY, making vacuum noises, and bashing our shins over and over again.

This is not staged.  He literally slept with one of his vacuums.

Another vacuum invention.

Luke's absolute favorite place in our house...the gadget drawer.  This drawer is full of batteries, screwdrivers, cords, and all sorts of small tools.  Luke gets in to this numerous times a day and invents all sorts of stuff.  Usually, he fills his pockets full of batteries and screwdrivers, and goes around "fixing" all of our vacuums.

 

Found Luke asleep with a screwdriver after a long day of fixing vacuums.

We went to a trampoline place last week, and Luke refused to jump...until he found two "vacuums," drug them across the building, and jumped with them for the next hour.

Luke took apart our flashlights one day, and then got into his favorite gadget drawer and invented his own mini vacuum with flashlight parts and batteries.

Another vacuum invention.  He pushed this all over the place.

 

So there you have it.  This is only a tiny piece of Luke's daily activities, but I thought it was worth sharing. 
This boy will probably grow up to invent and build rocket ships, or invent the worlds most amazing vacuum.

did you know?

Last week, Mary brought a note home in her backpack saying that her teacher wanted to spend some extra time with us tonight at SSP's (parent teacher conferences).  This sent off some alarm bells in my head, so I decided to gently ask Mary how school was going.

As soon as I asked her, the flood gates opened.  I was blown away with everything that Mary unloaded, and the tears she shed, and my heart was broken.  She had been struggling a lot, and had kept it a secret.  She got really behind in math, and was having to stay inside during recess in order to try to do math problems that she couldn't solve.  She was hiding her spelling tests from me, because she was embarrassed, and she was just a mess.

To top it all of, she had lost her glasses months ago, and was too scared to tell us.  She keeps them in her desk at school, so we had not idea she wasn't wearing them. She hadn't been able to see much in her classroom for months.

There is a lot more to this, but I will stop there for Mary's privacy and for the length of this post.

Mary is a smart girl, and we have never punished her for struggling with a school subject.  This was a case of Mary's guilt prone personality, not being able to see, and getting too far behind to be able to catch up.  All of this combined, did a big slam on her self esteem, and she was feeling dumb and self conscious.

It was so heartbreaking.

I called her teacher, Ben and I both had some really good, long talks with Mary, she knows that we are here to help her and that no one is mad at her, we have a new homework schedule all lined up, and Mary got contacts!

We were a little nervous about her being too young for contacts, but I made the appointment anyway, and Mary was soooooo excited!

The eye doctor told us that Mary's glasses wouldn't really be helping anyway, because her eyes had gotten worse, and he said that Mary was the first child he has ever seen to get her contacts in and out on the first try.  That's my Mary.  Where there's a will there's a way.

After one day of having her contacts in all day, I kept on hearing things like this...

"Hey mom, did you know there is a mountain behind the Thorne's house?"  (my jaw almost hit the floor.  How did she not see that before!)

"Mom, did you know that those things hanging down at the tumbling gym are actually banners with names on them?"

"Mom, did you know that my teacher writes our daily schedule on the board every day?"  (she has done this all year)

The past few days, Mary has come home with more and more "revelations."  It is half heart breaking to me that her eyes were this bad, and half wonderful to me that she can now see all of these things!

I am really excited to see how much improvement Mary will now have at school, and in her life in general.

So, there you have it.  My 10 year old is wearing contacts...and loves them.

go big, or go home

Mary had her first cheer competition and her first tumbling meet of the season on Saturday. Yup, both events on the same day, different city's, but same day.

And of course, both were scheduled to be held at the same time as well.  Joy.

Mary's tumbling and cheer coaches juggled things around, and found a way for Mary to be able to attend both, but it was going to be tricky.

Saturday morning was a rush of getting kids out the door to the gym with Ben, and getting Mary all ready for her cheer competition while dealing with a sick Molly.  Sweet Molly has had a nasty cold all week, and Saturday morning, it seemed pretty bad.  Molly wasn't getting enough air, and it sounded like the "Crud" had moved into her chest.

Ben got the boys out the door, as I tried to hold Molly and apply Mary's mascara and eyeliner (required for the cheer competition).  Poor Mary's makeup was a mess, so I finally just told her to try it herself.  She applied it perfectly!  I guess I underestimated my 10 year old when it came to applying make up. 

Next up was the hair. We were told to do a high ponytail with a "poof" in front. We are not "poof" people, and it took 5 times before we got something that somewhat resembled a "poof."  When all was said and done, we slapped a bow the size of my head on top of Mary's "poof", and we rushed out the door with Mary looking like someone walking straight out of whoville!

Oh, the things we go through as girls.

We started to get in the car, when I glanced down at Molly, who looked terrible.  I had to make a fast decision of whether or not to take Molly to the urgent care, or get Mary to her cheer competition.  I decided to call our neighbor who is an ER nurse to see what she thought.  She had us go to her house, where she listened to Molly's breathing and looked her over.

During that short amount of time we were out in the cold air, it had helped Molly's breathing tremendously.  Our neighbor said we could make it to the cheer competition, where I planned on meeting my mom, dropping Mary off for the warm up, and then taking Molly to a doctor.

Thanks to my GPS in my phone, the trip was smooth sailing, "(aside from numerous phone calls to and from our pediatrician, Ben and my mom) until we walked through the highs school doors, where we walked in to little girl paradise, and man's worst nightmare.

  There were high ponytails, mile high poofs, hot pink lipstick, glitter, screaming loud music, and cheering, flipping, and jumping girls EVERYWHERE!!!!!   It was quite the sensory assault. There must have been somewhere around 100 cheer squads there ranging from 8 girls up to 20 girls in each squad.  Not to mention coaches and parents.  I literally walked through a cheer squad and started choking on spray glitter.  There was a glitter cloud hovering over them.

There was not one shred of testosterone to be found.  Aside from one dad who had a shirt on that said (in the front ) "Cheer Chauffer"  On the back it said, "Duties:  load the car, load the girls in the car, listen to the music, watch the performance, plaster on a smile, and repeat."   It made me laugh out loud.

By some miracle, Mary's cheer coach found her and whisked her away through the glitter and screaming, to some place where they were going to warm up.  I spent the next 20 minutes bashing my way through hoards of people with Molly in her carseat, trying to find a place to sit in the blazing hot gym with music blasting so loud I thought my brain would explode out of my ears.  The entire gym reeked of hairspray.

I finally smashed my way into a seat, and prayed that Molly would not have get to a doctor.  I didn't think I could make my way back out of there.  Luckily, Molly was asleep.  How she slept in that place, I will never know, but she did, and I was thrilled.

My mom made it about an hour later.  I was so relieved to see her.

We watched lots and lots of squads perform/compete, while we waited for Mary's squad to compete.  It was actually so much fun watching everyone!  There were some amazingly good squads doing some crazy cool tumbling and really hard stunts.  There were also some adorable little squads with tiny 4 and 5 year olds doing cute little dances and stunts.  I found myself having a great time, aside from sweating to death in the hairspray sauna.

I got out Mary's ipod to make sure I knew how to record with it (Mary wanted me to record it for her), and it was locked.  I didn't know her pass code.  I tried everything I could think of, but nothing worked!  I frantically tried to find Mary, but there was no way to find here in the mobs and mobs of high ponytails, poofs, and big bows.  I did see her walk by once, but I was so busy gawking at the loads of makeup they had put on her, and her crazy high poof, that once I finally pulled myself together enough to call her name, she couldn't get to me.  Unfortunately, this performance was not recorded on her ipod. 

Luckly, I had my phone all ready to go though.

Finally, it was time for Mary's squad to perform.  Mary was so nervous, I thought she was going to throw up!  The poor girl.

They did great!  Mary is a flier, and she was so worried that her stunts would fall, but they all held solid, and she did great.  I was so proud of them.

Half way through the performance, Ben called my phone, and it shut off my video camera.  I ended up having to turn off the call, and then turn the camera back on.  I missed some of the performance, but had to laugh at the timing of it all.  With all of the hours we had been sitting there, and the tiny window of 2 minutes that Mary's squad performed, I couldn't believe that would happen to be the time I would get a phone call!  Crazy.

As soon as the finished their performance, my mom and I had to bash our way through the hoards of people, grab Mary, take a few fast pictures, and blast our way to the car.  She has less than 30 minutes to be in another city, changed, and competing for tumbling.

flowers from grandma

I frantically blasted my way into the bathroom that was truly under a such serious assault of spray glitter, hairspray and perfume that I could see the cloud of it before I even walked in.  I couldn't even breathe in there.  I made Molly a bottle as fast as I could, and we rushed out to the parking lot where...

I couldn't find our car.  Joy.

I pushed the beeper on my keychain while we walked all over, and finally found the car!  My mom decided to follow us.

I punched in the new address in my GPS, told Mary to do her best to change into her leotard in the car, and we were off.

It was lunch time and Mary was starving, so we blasted through a McDonalds drive through, and then made our way to Farmington.

Poor Mary was wiggling and squirming all over the place trying to get changed and feed a hungry Molly. 

Mary rubbed her makeup off as best she could, and took her "poof" out and her ponytail.  She went to grab the bag of hair stuff we brought for her, and realized that she had left it at the high school.  gggrrr

We pulled into the hotel where the tumbling competition was, and there was not one car there!  We had one minute left before Mary was supposed to compete.  I frantically called her cheer coach, her gave me the number of her tumbling coach, who told me I was in the wrong place.  aaaggghhhhh!

I put in the new address in my GPS and took off.  5 minutes later we pulled into a prison.  I was pretty sure the competition wasn't there!  Once again, I called the tumbling coach, and we wound our way through a chicken farm, a theme park, and a prison before we finally arrived.

Mary jumped out of the car and was ready to run in there, when I saw her bright white sports bra hanging out of her black leotard.  In tumbling, you can loose points for that.

Mary tried to wriggle out of it in the parking lot, but it wouldn't work, so I grabbed Molly and our stuff, and we all ran in to the building.  The bathroom was too far away, and we didn't have time, so my mom took Molly and Mary and I smashed into the elevator.  I closed the doors, pushed some buttons and told Mary to change in there.  She was half way undressed when the chime dinged and the doors opened.  There was Mary, half way undressed and a crowd of people waiting to get into the elevator.  I frantically pushed the button to close the doors, said sorry to the people, and we started going back down.  Mary was trying to get changed, but her arms were stuck in her leotard.  We got to the bottom floor, Mary's one arm was hanging out of her leotard and her sports bra was over her head, and the doors opened.  There stood my mom with Molly.  I waved, pushed the buttons again, the doors closed and we headed back up.

We did this a few times before Mary was finally free of her sports bra and ready to go.  We did the best bun we could with her hair, without any brushes or combs, and sent her on her way.

My mom, Molly and I collapsed in some chairs and waited for Mary to compete.

She was able to just compete with whatever group was doing the event at the time.  She was given a medal with her score on it, and then we had to find the papers with everyone's scores on them from her age division (they had competed earlier) and find out where Mary placed.

I was so impressed with Mary's ability to switch gears so quickly.  She was able to get her head together and focused on what she was doing enough to compete all three events the best she could.  She is a great athlete!  I love watching her tumble.

She tied for 3rd on floor, took 7th out of 14 on trampoline, and 5th out of 14 on double mini.  She did great!

She has the cutest warm ups.  You can see the pants, but she also left the jacket at the cheer competition.

Somewhere in all of that, we looked at the clock and saw that it was 4:00pm, and no one had eaten since breakfast!  My mom and I bought some food from the concession stand during one of Mary's breaks, and it actually was pretty tasty!  We found a place where we could change Molly, and another place where we could let her stretch out.  She was all smiles and giggles once she was able to stretch out.  She was an amazing sport through all of this, especially with being sick.

Luckily, with all of the juggling around, and the periods of being outside in the cold, we were able to keep Molly breathing comfortably.  Motrin also works wonders.

When all was said and done, we got back in our car, said goodbye and thank you to grandma (I love it that she was able to come, and that Mary will have memories of her grandma supporting her), and headed home.  It was then that I realized that I had left the can of baby formula in the bathroom at the cheer competition.  (insert forehead slap here).   The high school was closed by that time, so I prayed that Molly would sleep, and she slept the entire way home.  Man, we were blessed!

Our heads were completely spinning, but through it all, we had a great time!  I loved having a day with my girls, even if it was nuts.  Lots of memories were made for sure!

I was pleasantly surprised to come home to a house that wasn't trashed, and all of my boys who were playing a and happy.  To top it off, Ben had lined up a date for us that evening.  Yeah I know, he is pretty amazing. 

And just in case this wasn't busy enough, we get to do it all again in February.  Yup, double booked again.

Go big or go home!

4 month well baby check up

Molly had her 4 month check up today.

Some stats:

Weight:  13 lbs 14 oz  (39th%)
Height: 25 inches (68th%)   By far our tallest baby!
Head:  16.25 in  (66%)

Molly has a nasty head cold, that keeps her nose completely stuffed, so she can't eat or sleep well (which has made for some LONG nights), and she and mary got a nasty stomach bug today, but other than that, she is healthy, and doing great!

Molly didn't cry once during the exam.  The doctor poked and prodded, and she just laughed, smiled and talked away.  The nurses and doctors went nuts over her and hung on to every smile and laugh. 

She didn't even cry for her three immunizations!  Her face crumpled, and she made the saddest face ever (both nurses felt terrible) but she didn't cry.  It was amazing.

I am the idiot that finally made her cry by pinching her leg in the car seat buckle after the appointment.  I felt so terrible.  The doctor and nurses teased me for being the one to make her cry after all they had just done to her.   Go mom.

Molly is tall and very strong for her age..  She is still hanging on to her dark hair, and darker toned skin.  So crazy!  The doctor said he hair will turn blonde, but to enjoy the brown while it lasts.  I told him not to worry... I savor every little thing right now.

I read an article recently about a mother her had her last child, that summed up my feelings with Molly Grace perfectly.  It is not meant to be negative or a downer, but it explains how I have felt.  She said something along the lines of, "All of her firsts are lasts for me.  The last first smile, the last first roll over, the last first giggle, etc.  It can be a heart wrencher."

Perfectly said.  I am savoring everything.

own it

Mary was up sick most of the night, and finally ended up throwing up this morning.  Molly joined in the fun as well.  Sam stayed home feeling "queasy" and I am not feeling so hot myself.

Naturally, we are all home today, ALL of us. 

I got out the pillows, blankets and movies, and we just hunkered down...until I remembered that I am bringing dinner to a friend tonight, and I had to get to the store.  I couldn't leave anyone home really, so I loaded all of my little ducklings into the car, prayed for a miracle of not breaking anything, screaming tantrums, begging for everything in sight, puking in the isles, or full blown chaos, and we went on our way.

The Lord can be merciful, and we actually were in and out of the store smoothly and quickly.  I loaded all of my kids on the cart, to try to prevent spreading germs, or losing anyone.  Mary obediently walked right next to me, looking very green in the gills.  Poor kid.

As we walked around the isles, numerous people stopped and commented on my cart FULL of kids.  We became quite the show.

As we walked outside, there was a huge group of teeneage boys with their cell phones out taking pictures and completely gawking at this...

No, not the old lady's bum....the car

 I know nothing at all about cars, but this must have been an amazing one, because aside from the boys surrounding it and drooling, employees were coming out of the store to stare and admire the car as well.  Grown men were "sneaking" pictures of it with their phones, and literally just staring in wonder.

I was parked close to this car, and I had to walk right through the big crowd of teenage boys.  So, I gripped my cart full of children and plowed on through the lanky awkward, smelly teenage testosterone filled human beings saying, "they are selling kids on isle 5, get them while their hot."

Right behind me was a man in his 50's.  He was dressed incredibly well, he smelled amazingly good, his hair was perfectly trimmed, he walked as if he was gliding on water, and he ever so smoothly pulled his keychain out of his pocket and pushed his button to unlock "the car."  Every head in the parking lot turned to stare at him.  He pushed the button again, and I swear it was for dramatic effect. Pretty sure his button worked the first time.

Then William screamed, "Mom!  That car is so small, is it from Mario Cart?"  In return Sam poked him to be quiet.  William thought Luke poked him, so he smacked Luke, which resulted in a long, loud, and extremely high pitched scream from Luke.  As if written in a script itself, right at that moment Mary started dry heaving, and I was frantically throwing stuff out of grocery bags, yelling "hang on Mary, try to hold it in," so Mary could have a bag to barf in. 

All of the heads turned from the fancy man with his fancy car, to me and my cart full of children.

I could see the wheels turning in the minds of these teenage boys as they looked back and forth from this fancy man and his fancy car, to me and my cart full of children.  I could see their thoughts playing out right in front of me.

"Fancy car, fancy life, cart full of kids and Pathfinder.  Back to fancy car, fancy life, and then cart full of kids and Pathfinder.

I chuckled a little, put the kids in the car, sauntered over to the still gawking crowd watching this man put his bag of groceries in his trunk that was the size of  my foot, and proudly declared,
"I wouldn't change my life for the world." 

I got every reaction in the book, from nods of agreement, to laughter, to completely blank looks, to shaking of heads.

In Ben's words..."If you choose to do something, own it."  And I did.

i have a problem

a big problem.

grabby

Molly is in the grabby phase. 

Her favorite thing is hair.  Mine and Mary's hair seems to be the preference.

She grabs our hair every single time we hold her.  There is no exception.  It is easy to forget she has a handful of our hair when we are holding her, but we get a nice painful reminder when we try to set her down or hand her to someone.  She has a serious grip!

I have resorted to wearing ponytails lately, but this is what happened instead.

She has her fingers tightly curled around my dangly loop earring!

Tonight, I took my earrings out, and what to you know.... I picked Molly up, and she got a nice firm grasp on my ear. 

Silly grabby girl!  We love her anyway.

let it snow

On Monday morning, I drove to Park City for an appointment.  When I arrived, there was no snow on the car.

One hour later, after my appointment, I came outside to this.

The size of the snowflakes coming down was absolutely fascinating!  I have seen my fair share of snow storms, but I can honestly say I have never seen snowflakes this big!  It was beautiful.

I walked back into the hospital, and asked the ER doctors if the road I needed to take to get home was closed.  They looked it up for me, and said the road had just re-opened, but was still pretty bad.  They looked like they were prepping the ER for a disaster, so I asked them if they were getting ready for a  lot of car wrecks. 

They chuckled and said, "Actually, we are preparing for the ski and snowboard accidents."  The hospital is the closest to the ski mountains, and it was definitely going to be a big powder day.  I just shook my head, knowing full well that Ben was probably pacing the floors back home waiting to get out there himself.

The storm was definitely a pretty one. It was really cool and peacefully serene, until I tried to get home.....in this.

Don't worry, I was literally driving about 10 mph when I took this picture

The drive to get from Heber to Park City is on a highway, that is full of big hills and turns.  It takes second priority to the canyons when it comes to getting plowed, so the road was BAD!  By the time the plows did come, the road was so bad, that they had to close it again. Normally, there are a few cars on the road at a time...notice the lane to the left.  Yup, that would be due to the 6 car wrecls that I saw during my drive home.  The car right in front of me in this picture went off the road minutes after I took this picture.

I came home to Ben, who had a gleam in his eye the size of the grand canyon, and had his snow skis out and ready to go.  He was like a little kid on Christmas, it was great.

Our neighborhood was beautiful!

The kids came home from school, and immediately put all of their snow gear on.  I didn't see them again until dinner time.

Sam spent 4 hours making this snow fort with his friends, and snowmen sprouted up everywhere.

  This was definitely an amazing snow storm!

face off

This is Spencer.

Spencer is Sam's beloved bearded dragon.  He is pretty much the love of Sam's life right now.
Sam loves to take Spencer out of his cage and play with him.

Unfortunately, the other day, as Sam was playing with Spencer, William accidentally stepped on him.

After 5 minutes of Sam bawling his eyes out, he was finally able to tell us what was wrong. He told us that Spencer had been stepped on, and that his back legs were sticking up, and that he heard a crunching sound.  (we can all gag now...bleh!)  He thought Spencer might be dead.

Ben got the good fortune of going upstairs to inspect.  Can you even imagine! I get the shudders just thinking about it.

To everyone's relief, Spencer was alive, however, his legs really didn't look great. We brought his cage downstairs, cleaned it out, gave him fresh food and water, plugged in a new heating lamp, and tried to make him all comfortable.

Fast forward to today.

After keeping a close eye on Spencer these past few days, we decided that Spencer needed to be taken to Petco, so that someone who knows a lot about bearded dragons could tell us what might have been damaged.

Oh, the joys of being the one who is home all day.  I get to be the one to take him in.  Normally, this wouldn't be a big issue, but there is one small problem.

Spencer hates me.  With a passion.

Every time I even look at him, he flares up his nasty beard thing, opens his creepy mouth as wide as he can, sticks out his gooey long tongue full of cricket guts, and hisses at me.  It is pretty much a sight straight out of your worst nightmares.  Naturally, my boys think it is amazing, and are always asking me to walk by Spencer, so he can freak out at me.  Oh, the good points I am racking up in Heaven for this one.

Of course, whenever Sam picks him up, or Luke looks at him, or Ben holds him, he just sits there, perfectly calm.  But no, the second I walk in, it's all hisses and flares. 

I'm really not sure what I ever did to him, besides pay for him, bring him to a great home with a boy who adores him, clean his nasty cage, remind Sam to feed him, buy his nasty crickets, keep said nasty crickets alive in the stinky cricket house I purchased, feed the nasty crickets to keep them alive in order to feed the creepy lizard, and buy him endless heating light bulbs, because we can't seem to keep them intact for more than a week.

Other than that, I'm not sure why he loathes me.  Nevertheless, we pretty much hate each other.

So, imagine my joy in knowing that I had to get him from this...

into this,

in order to get him to Petco, to see how badly he was hurt.

I begged and begged William to do it for me, but he was determined to see "the funny lizard face" that Spencer does when I get near him. 

I spent a good part of the morning staring Spencer down, and willing myself to pick him up.

I would stick my face up to the glass of his cage and speak sweet nothings to him. "Hello there Spencer (gulp)!  How were your crickets this morning?  Are you going to let me pick you up (cringe)? Good Spencer."

He would just do this.

so creepy!

It was a face off.  We just stared at each other.  I completely dried my eyeballs out in the process.  I swear this lizard never blinks!

At one point, I slowly started moving the lid off the cage, and Spencer slowly slugged his way into his hiding place.

Not cool Spencer.

Finally, I mustered up my courage, took a few long sips of ZipFizz to get my adrenaline going, and I stuck my hand in the cage.

Spencer just stared at me.

I slowly grabbed him and picked him up.

Nothing.  No hisses, no flaring, no tongue out.  Nothing.

I figured he must REALLY be hurt.  I slowly lowered him into the little box (with a nice warm towel inside, um yeah, and he hates me?) and sighed a huge sigh of relief.

William, who I hadn't noticed had been watching the whole thing, very loudly moaned "Oh man, I wanted to see him bite off your finger."  He then very dramatically shrugged his shoulders, grabbed the box with Spencer in it, and got in the car.

To make a long story a little less long, Spencer is perfectly fine.  Yup, that's right, perfectly fine. (insert eye roll here)

He was just in shock and moving slowly.

I brought him back home, and put him back in his cage.

He thanked me with a nasty flare and a hiss.

I just stuck my tongue out at him.

And we are back to normal.

william's church necklace

Oh, I love the way a 4 year old thinks.

miss molly grace ...4 months

Molly is 4 months today.

 

She is such a happy baby!

 

She is in the "grabbing" phase, and her favorite thing to grab is my hair and earrings.

She is getting into a very consistent sleep schedule.  Usually asleep around 8:30, awake at 5:15 for a quick snack, and back to sleep until about 7:30. No complaints here!

Molly smiles so easily, and her giggle lights up the room.  She is blessed with a happy heart, which in turn blesses all of us.

Molly has also started playing with toys.  She has to concentrate really hard in order to grab a toy, but she is getting better and better at it.

We love her so much!  She is beautiful, inside and out.

trip to jojo's

Last week we decided to head to Boise for a few days to see Ben's family.

It was our first long car ride with all 5 kids, and it was also stormy.  We were nervous.

We were pretty lucky though, and the drive went really well!

We packed a lot in and had a great time!

We headed out Monday, after Mary's tumbling and cheer practices, and got there late Monday night.

Tuesday, Ben went to lunch with his best friend, Doug, and then he and his brothers and dad went to dinner.

During that time, we took the kids to a trampoline place, where they had a blast!

The kids always look forward to playing with their cousins when we go to Boise, and their cousins joined us at the trampoline place.  They all went full speed ahead for 2 hours.

The next day we went to the Discovery Center.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures, but the kids had a lot of fun with their cousins, exploring all sorts of things like a giant bubble, a bed of needles, making rocks, using a real weather station, and so on.

Both days started out with a breakfast fit for a king.  Ben calls them "cowboy breakfasts." Grandpa Lonnie can make some amazing breakfasts.

That evening was New Year's Eve.  Grandpa Lonnie pulled out all sorts of "musical instruments" and let the kids go at it, until all of our ears were ringing, and no one could think straight.  We had guitars, a microphone, a cow bell, pots, pans, and harmonicas. The kids LOVED it!

After the "concert" "Uncle Dan had the idea to pull out some slides and watch them.  It was so neat to see Ben's life as a kid, through pictures.  All of those Maynard boys were adorable, and I could absolutely see so many features that have been passed down to my own children.  It was really neat and sentimental for Ben to see those pictures.

 I was able to get to the gym that day, and hit up Target and Hobby Lobby, so I was happy as a clam.

We said goodbye to 2014 and were sound asleep as 2015 rolled around.

It was so fun to watch the kids make memories and have so much fun with their cousins and grandparents.  We could hear them staying up late giggling, daring each other to pull teeth out, watching silly youtube videos, telling stories, playing hide and seek, and doing the things kids do.

It means so much to Ben and I that our kids get to know their family, and the roots they come from.  A lot of who I am, and what I believe was shaped by visits with my cousins and family, just like this one.  We feel so blessed that our kids will have this experience.

Family is everything.

mary

Mary filled this paper out at school, for her Birthday.  I love it, because it shows her personality.
Notice the mustache on the self portrait!  hahaha

One of the facts about herself she wrote: " I am pure awesomeness!"

She cracks me up.

Love that girl!

when boy meets vacuum

Luke loves vacuums.

Actually, that is a huge understatement.  He is completely obsessed with them.  Truly.

I haven't posted about this, because I feel like there is just no way to truly convey Luke's vacuum love/obsession. 

It is hilarious, crazy, at times frustrating, and pretty astounding.

He prefers vacuums over anything.  We have yet to find any toy that will capture his attention, interest and heart, in the way a vacuum does.

Luke can find a vacuum ANYWHERE!  His favorite room in the church building, is the custodian closet.  It houses about 5 large vacuums, and several small ones.  It is literally Luke's Disneyland.  He will go in there and just stare at the vacuums in wonder.  Then he will gently touch them and look at them.  Finally, he will try to push them out of the closet and around the halls.  He succeeded with this once, as our ward was ending and another was beginning.  The halls were packed with people, and there was little Luke, plowing through everyone with a vacuum twice his size, completely overjoyed!

Luke goes there every single time we attend church, and rarely leaves the building without hugging the vacuums.

Every store I take him to, he can sniff out a vacuum.  If I let him run free (which is extremely rare), he will make a mad dash for any back room or storage closet, and amazingly finds a vacuum almost anywhere!

Whenever we go to someone's house, Luke immediately locates the vacuum, and will pretty much vacuum their entire house, if they let him.  This makes conversation difficult, when there is a constant vacuum noise in the background.
If we decide that we all can't stand it anymore, and the beginnings of headaches are forming, we will not let him plug in the vacuum, so he will just sit and stare at the vacuum and take all the parts off, and then put them back together.

About a month ago, we were driving home from the gym, and Luke started banging on the window and screaming, "VACUUM, VACUUM!"  I glanced out the window, and sure enough, someone was having a yard sale, and there was a huge shop vac sitting in the yard. 

We don't have a shop vac, so I pulled over, bargained a little, and we came home with a shop vac.  Luke insisted on sitting in the back, right next to it, the entire way home.  If I had really thought it through, I would not have bought Luke anything for Christmas...because nothing he got even compares to his love of his yard sale shop vac.

We all think it's cute, until we are trying to play a game of CLUE, and in walks Luke with his buddy shop vac, and he sucks our entire game right up.  Not cool!  Mr. Shop Vac has also been the home to numerous binkies, chap sticks, marbles, toys, food items, socks, shirts, homework, car keys, and pretty much anything that ends up mysteriously "missing."

In a tragic event that Luke does not have access to a vacuum, he will make his own.   He does this numerous times a week.  He usually goes through all of our drawers with tools, or nick knacks in them, and puts something together.  Most of the time I am completely amazed at his engineering, some times, I want to rip my hair out with the constant emptying out of drawers.

This is today's "vacuum."

 He hooked Ben's camelback up to his toy car.

 He pushed this car all over the house, with the camelback hooked to it, making vacuum noises. 
Yes folks, vacuum noises.  Not car noises, or shooting noises,army guy noises, or dinosaur noises.  Vacuum noises.  Yup, that' my Lukey.

I usually don't mind this. 

What I DO mind, is when he goes through the pantry, grabs the messiest food he can find (crackers, cereal, flour, etc) and dumps it all over the floor, so he can vacuum it up.  Luke's "vacuuming" usually results in me vacuuming, which he loves, and so the cycle continues on. 

Yesterday, we went to Petco.  Kid wonderland...right?  There we were, completely surrounded by cats, frogs, lizards, snakes, fish, and every animal under the sun that kids go nuts over. 

And this is where I found Luke.

Sucker in his mouth, and a HUGE vacuum. 

Paradise.