Food

A few days before the previous fiasco, I had just looked through the pictures on my cell phone and had to laugh:

Food pictures. Lots of food pictures. Can you tell I love strawberry season in Miami? We try to eat as many as possible. I made a strawberry torte with meringues in various forms - layered like a cake, individual servings made in cupcake tins, and crumbled up with strawberries, whip cream, strawberry sauce and lemon curd (I thought I was making that last one up, but who knew it was a real dessert called an Eton mess). It was the first time I'd made lemon curd however (to find something to do with all the leftover egg yolks after making meringues), but wow, it will definitely not be my last. I could probably drink the stuff. Made for a fabulous trifle. I also made various forms of strawberry sauce (cooked, uncooked, strained of seeds or not). I attempted freezing some to last us past strawberry season but it never made it that far. I also made the best darn fresh strawberry filled cupcakes (think loads of strawberries with some cream and marshmallow fluff) with strawberry icing. They tasted unbelievably like a strawberry milkshake.

Then it was over but along came my other favorite season - mango season. I am so jealous of all my friends who have mango trees right in their yard here! Too bad wherever we move isn't looking likely to be a mango-growing kind of climate. I would love one of those in my yard. We've eaten lots of fresh mangos, mango and black bean quinoa salad, and a lot of mango and black bean salsa - sometimes with roasted corn or tomatoes, or with avocados (another favorite Miami seasonal food). The abundance of these will be on the top of my (ahem, brief) list of things I will miss about Miami.

You'll also see I made a few variations on a moose munch caramel popcorn recipe - with milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, you name it.

I realize this may be lame to listen to someone drooling over food, but well, eating probably comes in a close second to my family of things I love in this life. And maybe someday I'll look back and be inspired to make some of them again. Besides, what else am I going to do with all those pictures?

Worst Mother's Day ever

Guess what my kids gave me for Mother's Day?

Lice.


That's right.  In what was, I hope, the worst Mother's Day weekend of my life, we discovered that yes, we had five cases of lice in the house.  I'm sure your skin is crawling just reading that, so if you must you can stop here.

Let me back up a few months. One weekend we went out of town and came home to an ant infestation in the house.  Like thousands of them. I was so grossed out. Having been through this before years ago, I immediately called pest control because I wasn't going to live my life like that again. I hate having all that pest control junk in my house though - it made my mom sick from the smell and makes me so paranoid that my kids are crawling around on these floors that have pesticides all over them. Hate it, hate it and live in fear that I've now poisoned my whole family.

Not even a couple of weeks later, we found weevils in our cupboard.  That was infuriating. The ants were annoying and creeped me out, but they weren't in my food.  I had to go through everything in my entire house piece by piece and threw out a TON of food.  That was where being a food hoarder in the name of food storage came back to bite me.  It was painful throwing so much food away.  The rest of my food was left all over my counters and scattered throughout my bedroom because I was not putting food back in until those things were gone. But even with all the food out of my cupboards those dang weevils still kept coming out of the cracks in the cupboards for over a month. Maybe they were coming from another apartment? Who knows, but that's a long time to live with no counter space and especially for someone who goes crazy in a messy house. I literally had a constant stress level for a month just seeing all that stuff not in a proper place. Not to mention the nightmares. For weeks.  If I know you, you were probably in my dream at some point finding weevils in my house, pointing out all the places all over my house they were starting to come out of.  Oh, it was an awful month of sleep. Those things are creepy. I even got the pest control guy back and he sprayed all over the cupboards.  I spent hours later washing all that stuff off every surface of my cupboards so I could feel safe having our food in there again. Such a pain.

Finally, finally, finally, they went away.  I went to Home Depot and told the guy that I wanted something to seal off the cracks in my cupboards so nothing came through the cracks and into my cupboards anymore. He gave me something and I went home and spent a tedious evening filling all the cracks with it. Then read the back of the label and saw that it had a huge warning label that stuff in it was known to cause cancer and reproductive harm.  Are you kidding me???  And I just slathered that all over the cupboards that are housing all the stuff that's going to go into my babies mouths?  And then it said you needed some something-approved mask to sand it down so you didn't inhale it. Well, I didn't have that kind of mask, I still sanded it, and that stuff was all over my cupboards. Here I go poisoning my whole family again.  I finally decided to go through and put something else over it to seal it off so at least it wasn't exposed. Oh the hours of my life I'd spent combating bugs.

At last I could get my food off the counters and back in the cupboards and thought my months of tedious, time-consuming bug ridding strategies were over.

And then the roaches came.

I have never in 4 years seen cockroaches in our apartment, but they came.  And they came, and they kept coming.  They would creep you out when you got up in the dark in the middle of the night. They would crawl all over the toilet making you live in fear of ever going to the bathroom again, let alone in the dark.  It seemed to coincide with some work they were doing on our building, so maybe they were displaced, but oh my.  I finally got pest control again.  I couldn't live like that. Between the ants, weevils and roaches, I had pest control here 4 times in 2 months.  Oh the pesticides.  At least I insisted on no more sprays.

SO. I finally had gone THREE days without the roach problem!  The Friday night before Mother's Day I had the young women from our ward sleep over.  I have never done that. I've never even had them to my house before, let alone have a sleepover, nor have I probably had a sleepover in my adult life.  But this happened to be the night I did it.  Ryan took the boys camping.  And then called me in the morning:  "Cash has lice."  Oh no!!  And I have all these girls sleeping all over my house?  On the boys beds?  Heads on the couches??  And my kid has lice??!  Ryan said he was coming home right then, but I tell him I want to get all these girls out before he comes home so we're not exposing them all to it any more than they already have been.

As soon as he gets home I take Cash straight out to the balcony for as short of a haircut as I can stand. I asked Ryan if he had checked the twins and he hadn't. But as I'm out there cutting hair he looks at me and nods.  Oh goodness. As soon as we can all the boys, including poor little lice baby, have a lice treatment on them.  Later that night we tried another one. Ryan and I even did one for good measure. The next day we got a prescription one for all the boys - according to the CDC the only one that actually kills the eggs too, not just the bugs.  But of course now I'm freaked out again - more pesticides. This time on everyone's heads?  We are all surely going to die of something someday from all this.  But trying to get this out of four kids I wasn't messing around. At least three treatments later I was feeling pretty good about them.  Although I'd spent all Mother's Day combing and picking through hair, washing, cleaning....we were exhausted.  As soon as we had finally gotten everything taken care of and the boys in bed I finally had time to stop and think.  And realize...I'm itchy.


Sure enough, Ryan checked and I was positive.

OH. GROSS. ME. OUT.

Seriously?? My one good feature?  And now it was going to probably get thrashed dumping all these pesticides on it?  So out I was at Walgreen's at 1am getting the prescription stuff for my hair.  Which took 3 bottles. And we later realized was draining $200 a bottle out of our FSA and we'd now used five bottles of it.  The next night Ryan stayed up until 4am picking junk out of my hair after I'd had time to do that treatment.

We often get complimented on having a family with great hair. Until you have lice. Then it comes back to bite you  with a vengance being a family with so much hair!  I had contemplated buzzing Cash's hair and just getting it over with, but when the twins had it, I said there was no way I was cutting their hair. Then the baby, then me.  Nope, buzzing was not going to happen. I wasn't going to let those dang bugs make me mad for the next 6 months having to look at bad hair to top it all off.

I can honestly say we're not sure we've ever been so miserable. Between the washing, and the boiling and the vacuuming, the hair treatments, taking out and cleaning all the car seats, and the couches, and washing every item of clothing in their drawers, bleaching down the house, washing everything anyone came in contact with, hour after hour picking through 5 heads of hair to make sure not one egg was left, combing and combing through with the nit comb...I thought we were going to die. We were seriously up until 2am, 4am, 1am every night.  I'm sure we were super overly cautious, but I was pretty impressed with how fast we got rid of five cases of lice. That stuff can linger for a long time.

Now the twins on the other hand - I don't think they had a clue anything was wrong. Not even one complaint of itching, not a word as we yanked through their hair with a comb - all they knew was they got to play an awful lot of video games for a week so they would sit still while we picked through their hair! And so they wouldn't leave their designated square of hardwood floor so they would stay out of the bedrooms and off the couches.  :)

I have to give it to Ryan though - he was vigilant. He's the kind of guy that is happy to leave the dishes until tomorrow, not one given to thorough cleaning, one that won't miss sleep for anything - he just kept going and going. I'm sure it was all in the name of self-defense and self-preservation, but seriously, the guy picked through my mounds and mounds of hair night after night after night.  Granted, I lost about a quarter of my hair in the process and I'm going to have a lovely halo of broken hair all over my head, but he did get it out.

Seriously though, I am so dying. Every time I am so grossed out, skin crawling, hair standing on end, weeks of nightmares - I think it can't get any worse, any more skeevy, and then it does. Ants, weevils, roaches, and then lice.  I really think someone knows my weakness and is throwing this at me deliberately!  And I swear we are like the worst parents ever! Cash had been telling us his head was itchy and I'd looked through his hair multiple times - I think I really just had no idea what I was looking for. How would I know??! I've never seen this stuff before!

And I love that they send home a lice notice when someone in the class has it.  Cash is absent for two days and then shows back up like this:

Subtle. Real subtle.

Oh Miami, just another strike against you.  What pest doesn't thrive here?

Ok, ok. Maybe I am supposed to find the good out of all of this. Well, like I always say: the family that picks together sticks together.

And hey, at least I made you all glad you're not me.  :)

Over it

I feel like the teenage years were about finding myself.

20s were about becoming myself. You know, really developing those characteristics that would come to define me.

Well, I feel like in my 30s I'm just over myself. 

I remember seeing those moms in this age frame - they didn't socialize with the younger moms as much, they were always off doing their own thing, and well, just seemed preoccupied.  

Oh, they were. And guess what, they didn't feel bad about it or left out like I always thought they did. They were just on to other things that had taken more importance in their lives.

Yep. I've hit that age where I'm just over feeling like I have to be at every social event so I can keep up with everyone and not feel left out. I'm over worrying if I look a certain way, or what other people will think of me, and I'm just preoccupied with naps and school pick-ups, feeding little bodies, taking care of church responsibilities, and trying to squeeze in some time with the hubby once in a while. I'm over feeling like I need to deprive myself and hone a perfect body so I look good - because really, who would notice or care?  I'm definitely over being embarrassed to go out in public straight out of bed, :)  and I'm definitely over thinking I have it all together like I probably thought in my 20s!  Seriously, how hard is it to get your own little self out of bed and ready in the morning and just walk out the door?! HA! 

I talked to a friend recently that I knew from our time in New York - I was really almost embarrassed, like practically ducking my head and feeling like I needed to apologize to her that she knew me in my 20s.  I'm sure I totally thought I was so put together! How much I have changed since then!  I felt like I had to explain that to her ... yeah, I'm really a different person than I was 5 years ago when we left New York.... She laughed a knowing laugh too, reading my thoughts exactly. "Yeah, I remember when we would come to your house and you'd be all concerned when the girls would be playing near your coffee table that was really nice!"  Oh brother.  Um yeah, that thing left our house long ago and we have nothing but junk and hand-me-downs in our house full of boys. (Granted, I really did love that coffee table.) But it really hit it home to me how much things have changed, and how much I have changed in just a few short years. And it was a silly, yet perfect example of just how differently I value things now and what matters and what doesn't.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I know you have to still do things for yourself at this age, exercise, feel good about yourself, get out of the house once in a while, do something other than mothering so you don't feel like you lose your identity; it's just that you don't care about shopping for a fabulous outfit as much as you care about whether or not your baby is getting enough iron or your kids are able to get outside and run around. And it seems this is the age when everyone I know on facebook is training for marathons or getting into some new craze - so it must be that you do need to re-invent yourself to some degree or at least hold on to something to give you some description as an individual. Maybe that's what blogging was for me, but heck, I'm kind of even over that now too.  Who has the time to be witty and funny and learn all that cutsey blog lingo like I heart everything and (read: whatever it is I'm really implying)!??!

So yep, I'm good where I am. I'm happy worrying about things that definitely feel more important to me than the things I used to worry about. I like the wisdom. I like the status. I like being in the position of all the women I looked to for advice and example when I was a newlywed and a new mom, (although I certainly don't feel as successful at it as they were). I like the stride we've hit in our married life - where my husband doesn't realize why things are the way they are in our marriage, but I've deliberately done them because I know it avoids conflicts and keeps sanity. (It only recently occurred to him - why do I always give the kids a bath??  Because I have learned after all these years that if you clean up dinner and the kitchen, I will be angry at what a lame job you did and mad that I have to go re-do and finish everything you didn't do; whereas, I don't care how you give the kids a bath and get them in bed as long as it gets done. See?  Problem averted! Wife is a genius.)

Life is good.

Anyhow, anyone know what's in store in the 40s? Cause right now I just see it as a sort of dismal decade when you contemplate trying to return all those body parts back to where they used to be.  :)

Easter

Here are pretty much the best pictures we got at Easter and Diesel's first time at a splash pad.

 

Seriously, check that out ladies.

My friend made this cute marshmallow garden.

Hanging in there

Life is crazy. I get this image in my head of someone being dragged behind a boat with no water skis on and just nod my head thinking, yeah, that accurately sums up how I feel.  I feel like every day is a race against the clock for me to see if I can get everything done that I need to and the further the day goes, the longer my list gets and I flop into bed sometime after midnight, half of what I need to do still undone and wondering if I can wake up and do it all again tomorrow.  And I do. And then wonder the same thing again as I flop into bed the next night.

I'm going to attempt blogging from my phone and see if it might just be faster than thinking I'll get around to downloading and posting pictures from my computer, besides the fact that the pictures on my phone might paste a good picture of my life. I'm pretty sure I can't control these in any sort of order but it's better than nothing so I'll just put random descriptions.

Time at the park just outside our house with friends.

Afternoons at the children's museum after we pick up Cash from school trying to burn off some energy.

Grandma coming to visit.

Minivan mom in the car as always.

And the world from Phoenix's viewpoint - about a million pictures on my phone looking up his nose as he holds the camera and takes pictures of himself, pictures of mom just out of bed, mom doing the dishes, mom after church in a messy house, mom trying to exterminate bugs from our cupboard for the hundredth time, Diesel yelling for someone to finally pay attention and come get him out of his crib, (not to mention a million pictures of the ceiling, floor, etc).

And crazy baby in the fridge. Phew, how did I do two of these? Although the twins were too fat to be moving still at this age and this one is too mobile for my taste!

And oh, too bad I already deleted the pictures of me up at girls camp with the girls from church all dirty and make-up-less doing silly things trying to tap my inner- teenager. (Oh wait, I found two! Oh what a dork. I can't believe I'm posting this ugly one of myself - so out of practice and such bad form!)

And Ryan took his boards this week. I'd say I'm glad it's over but then he left for Minnesota!

 

Bunk bed

I probably never ended up mentioning how much I love the bunkbed we got the boys. Twin over full with stairs and a trundle bed underneath.  Back when we were re-arranging all their rooms and the kids requested to sleep in boxes I was wondering why in the world I was even bothering spending the money when they all seemed fine sleeping like this! (Until they woke up in the middle of the night screaming their head off because they couldn't figure out where they were.)

But then the bunk came and before we got the top mattress in, it was so stinking cute to see them all three lined up sleeping like this.  Sometimes they still do it just for fun. 

The twins still sleep oriented like the above picture on the bottom bunk and Cash sleeps on the top.  And until Diesel baby gets big enough for the trundle, Ryan will keep it warm for him when he gets kicked out of our bed for being too wiggly.  :)  

We love it!!  I hope to keep them like this as long as possible! Even when we finally have a house I'd rather just keep them all together and have more space for a playroom or whatever.  So if anyone comes to visit your whole family can compactly fit in one cozy little room in our place!

Funny faces

A while back I saw this post about having fun laminating faces and using dry erase markers with them. We tried it for preschool and it really is pretty darn funny. I took it a little further though - we had talked about ourselves and made faces in the mirror and some other things and then read "The Mixed-up Caterpillar" and talked about how he tried to be like everyone else but wasn't happy until he was just himself. I had made extra copies of their pictures and just some other facial features and stuff from online, and so then I brought one out and would demonstrate something like, "What if we put so-and-so's hair on Phoenix? Or this person's eyes? Or her mouth? Would we like him to be all mixed up?"  Of course everyone thought they looked so crazy and liked them better how they are. Then we let them play with dry erase markers and with putting other silly things and other people's facial features on themselves and had lots of fun. It really is funny. Turns out though my boys are especially averse to seeing their faces disfigured!  They didn't mind doing it to each other's though. :)  (And Cash was a better sport about it.) I keep thinking I need to make one of Ryan and I because I'm sure they'd have a pretty good time making us look crazy.

  

 

Cash with Ashton's lovely hair:

May the Force Be With You

We had the funnest birthday party for the twins last weekend. Since we've had Disneyworld passes this year, in one of our last trips to Disneyworld we watched them do their Jedi Training Academy that they let a certain amount of kids sign up for each day. It was such a great idea I knew we had to do it for the twins birthday party, so I suggested a Star Wars birthday party to them and they heartily agreed. We've been on so many Star Wars rides at Disneyworld and have started letting them watch the movies that they are definitely into it. And it was a theme I could get into and be a little more excited about than some other kid-themed parties, because hey, Star Wars is cool.

My pictures are terrible because we had someone film with our camera, but didn't get any still shots. So yes, these pictures are me playing the movie back on our tv and taking pictures of it with my iPhone. But hey, you get the idea.

Ryan and I tried to get into character - he was Obi-Wan-Kenobi, and I was, well, his assistant. Another Padowan? I'm not sure what I would be, that's just how they did it at Disneyworld, although the night before I realized I was mad I wasn't being Princess Leia.  Who doesn't want a shot at wearing those side buns??  Ahh, next time. Anyhow, we got our Star Wars theme music playing and marched the kids out to the training platform. Surprisingly, they very dutifully stayed on their marked Xs.

The Jedi master then had them repeat a Jedi oath, explained a little about Jedis and demonstrated how the force can even help you do cool things like make a card float in mid-air (if any of you know Ryan and his awesome magic tricks, you know those have to be thrown in there somewhere)!

Then he talked about how Jedis wear the Jedi robe - believe it or not, in my first sewing experiment ever I actually made three of these - one for Ryan and two I figured the twins could wear and then could be passed around.  The craftsmanship would make any of my sewing friends die of embarrassment, but hey, the overall shape was there. After the robes, of course what does any worthwile Jedi have??  Light sabers of course. But oh, surprise, surprise. Just like every birthday party I've ever worked my tail off to throw for them, my very own kids are always the only ones who throw a fit and won't get into it!

Refusing the Jedi robe and light saber. Seriously?  Well, everyone else was stoked with their light sabers, although I didn't realize it would be so bright outside that you couldn't see how cool they looked all blue and lit up, but whatever, they didn't seem to care.  Everyone was taught how to activate their light sabers with a quick flick of the wrist and we were off on our training. Cash was a very dutiful student.

  

He taught them their training sequence - go for the right shoulder, left shoulder, duck, spin attack, right leg, left leg, and go for the head. It was great. Some were very serious.  And some were a little clueless. :)

But then suddenly Obi-Wan Kenobi felt a disturbance in the force...the music changed, and the kids were rushed over to the side... as DARTH VADER appeared.

Then to defeat him they each had to take a turn fighting Darth Vader using the training sequence they'd just learned (or not, in many cases. :)   Cash was brave enough to be the first one to fight.

Some were very brave:

  

Some seemed a little confused. :)

Some were a bit intimidated!

Some were GRUMPY!

  

And some just had total meltdowns.

But were finally somewhat coerced. :)

Some never did it, but truthfully when I was down at their level and looked up at Darth Vader I was like - ok, yeah, that could freak me out too if I was your size!  I was bummed you couldn't see his red lit up light saber, but then realized it was probably a good thing - that could have been even more intimidating!

Then Obi-Wan had to face off with Darth Vader. Seriously, check out the form.  :)

 

But then things went downhill...

And the younglings all had to come to the rescue.

The kids were all awarded certificates for completing their Jedi training and Phoenix and Ashton were presented with a double light saber.

Then we celebrated with cupcakes.

That magically seemed to fix everything.

But really, I can't think of a more perfect little boy party - adventure, a bit of adrenaline, light sabers, fighting, and an open field to run around and have light saber battles in after.

 

And thanks to our friend James who is such a dang good sport!  Seriously, watch out who you're friends with cause you may get friends who ask some pretty crazy favors!  This is the same guy that took a twin as a lap-rider on a cross-country flight for me (I chalk that up to the fact that he doesn't have kids - had he known what it was like he would have never said yes!), he's watched our kids while we've gone out of town, and he was the one a few weeks ago who watched our kids all day while Ryan was in conference and I had to run a garage sale for the young women, and then came back to the rescue that night when our babysitter went into labor.  He now can add Darth Vader to his list of credentials!

All in all it was a great birthday for my two crazy 4 year-olds!