What's been going on thru 8 March 2009...

Sunday 8 Mar 2009

Well it’s already the end of the first school quarter and time for spring break. Our big plans include a trip to California next weekend for Kevin’s, Troy's nephew, baptism. Rachel got a friends and family rate certificate for a Marriot hotel, so we’re staying at the Marriot Residence Inn. We were originally going to stay through Tuesday night, but decided to go to Sea World on Monday and come home on Tuesday.

Katie
Katie presented research on Buzz Aldrin last week. She made a story board with some pictures. For the presentation she wore an old wool military coat that Rachel has. She enjoys the presentations more than most students, I think. She practiced and practiced. Troy and Rachel have always thought that her true calling in life is to be a lawyer.

Emma
Emma has been fighting allergies and colds lately, so she hasn’t been very happy. She's had a cough for a long time which prompted our pediatrician to put her on a steriod nasal spray. It hasn't helped her mood much, but her coughing is less. Now we need to pick which Emma we want: Grumpy coughing, sniffling Emma or grumpy, allergy-free Emma. Hmmmmm, not a big difference...

Claire
Stubborn Claire Story
The other night Troy dished up ice cream for dessert. Troy served Claire first and then dished some up and handed it to Katie. Claire saw Katie’s portion and immediately complained that she was slighted because she got a smaller portion. Troy told her that Katie is a bigger person, and so she is allowed to have a slightly bigger portion. That didn’t seem to matter to Claire, however, who continued to cry, whine and complain. While enduring her complaining, Troy and the other kids quickly finished their desert and then everyone except Claire went upstairs to get pajamas on. Finally, seeing that there was nobody left to complain to she reluctantly ate her ice cream. Being the third child has made Claire learn how to inflict the maximum amount of annoyance and discomfort into just about any situation she doesn’t agree with. Sometimes it even happens during dessert. (Hi. Troy wrote the stuff above, but this is Rachel now, and I have to stand up and defend third children everywhere! We are just products of our environment! That, and mean older siblings who always seem to get everything cool! Thank you.)

Zach
Fortunately Zach has been getting a little better about lying down and going to sleep at night.

Cousin Haydn comes over for Rachel to take care of once or twice a week. They love playing together (well – except for when they are fighting over a toy, or a whose turn it is to swing…) and it is fun to watch them talk and jabber to each other. They carry on pretty in-depth conversations, and even if the adults don’t know what they are saying, they seem to understand each other most of the time.

Zach’s mis-adventures
Whenever Zach gets bored, he’ll get a chair and look up on one of the counters to see what kind of new goodies people left out. One day last week as Rachel came down the stairs to check on him he covered his eyes and yelled out “Stop Mommy! Don’t see me!” Rachel had caught him with his hand in the jelly jar, but this time it was petroleum jelly (Vaseline). He found a big jar of it somewhere and proceeded to smear it on the table, some on the floor, some on the chair, etc. Only later that night when he returned to the scene of the crime did we find another spot that he smeared on the wall. We were still wiping up walls and floors Saturday night – trying to get it all up. Fortunately he didn’t put any in the carpets – that would have been impossible to remove.

It’s a very good thing that his partner-in-crime/buddy Haydn is only here one day a week. We’ve noticed that with two boys wandering around there are inherently twice as many bad ideas. Those days, Rachel plans on getting nothing else done.

Rachel

Rachel and the stake primary presidency hosted the ward and stake pinewood derby races yesterday. Once again they had a great time- almost as much fun as the cubscouts who actually raced the cars, I think. She was at the church from 6:30a-9:30pm without seeing daylight. The stake monitors the 8 individual ward races and helps out if needed but the big event for them is the Stake Finals Race that evening. Each year Rachel seems to add another cool thing. Last year was the remote-controlled blimp to fly over the track. This year, she asked a member of another ward to come project the results of each race and racer point totals on the wall over the track so everyone could follow along. She's already coming up with something for next year. She's wondering how the church feels about celebrity endorsements...

Rachel is looking forward to her trip to New York – alone. She will meet up with her high school friend Gwen Lytle who manages the Marriott in Times Square. Gwen says she can get tickets to David Letterman and they are planning a host of other fun activities.

Rachel is not quite as anxious for our trip to California. Travelling with 4 kids is still a lot of work.

Rachel is definitely NOT looking forward to all of the kids being home during spring break. Trying to keep them all out of trouble all day is also a lot of work. With all of the Primary stuff going on, she hasn’t really had a chance to sit down and plan fun crafts and activities yet.

Troy

Usually, trying to get everything done before vacation is difficult. Troy is hopeful that this week won’t be too bad, however, because he has 4 whole days of work, AND his boss is also on vacation.

With Rachel busy with stake Primary meetings and activities, Troy has had plenty of quality kid care hours lately. Thankfully, the kids are a little more cooperative when Mommy (A.K.A. “Good Cop”) isn’t around to complain to regarding Daddy (A.K.A. “Bad Cop”) making them do chores.

Yesterday we did a lot of house chores, but we also went to the local nursery and got some veggies for the garden. We planted some tomatoes, peppers and summer squash. Hopefully it stays cool for a couple months longer while the veggies grow.

A couple weeks ago Emma was invited to a birthday party at the local roller skating rink. Katie is getting pretty good on her roller blades, so she has been asking to go to Skateland for a while now too. Troy decided to take all 3 girls down to the rink for the evening and help them skate. As noted, Katie brought her own skates and did very well. It was Emma’s first time on skates, however, so Troy walked around the rink a few times with Emma clinging on to his arm. Claire and Troy played some video games and then she decided she was also ready to try skating. She laced up her rented skates and she and Troy made around once before she was tired and ready to go back to the video games. Everyone had bruises on their legs and rear-ends after a couple hours of skating, but in the end they said they had a good time.

Well, that should do it for now. The trickiest part about these updates is remembering all of the weird and wacky things that 4 kids do all week. Until next time – take care.