Jealousy Rears its Ugly Head

Yesterday wasn't the best of days. In fact yesterday may have made it in the top ten- What in the world was I thinking having these children- days. The girls were just having a serious obedience/respect problem. There are multiple stories that I could tell but I will give you a quick glimpse of the highlights: a bag of rice dumped on the ground, a bag of sugar dumped on the ground, and the vacuum cleaner taken apart and the bag emptied on the ground. I think those are a few.

Later, right before dinner, Lizzie got in trouble for putting her hands in the potatoes. Just as she got sent to time-out I looked over and saw Addie waiting for me to look at her. As soon as I did she poured her glass of water all over the same potatoes.

Because of the events of the day Nick started giving them a nice lesson on respect and listening to your parents for family night. It ended with Addie kicking Nick in the shins and several people in tears. At that point Addie informed me that she was so bad because I give Lizzie and Rachel attention all day long but I never give her any at all so she had to be bad. Most days that would have made me feel bad but yesterday after singing with her and reading with her and playing with her I didn't really feel too much grief over her statement.

At the end of the day we had a long talk about jealousy and getting attention for doing the right things though and then I sent her to bed. Before long Addie came back and said "I can't find Lizzie in our room." We had a lock on the door so Lizzie had to be there. We finally found her underneath Addie's bed sound asleep. We dragged her out after laughing and taking pictures. A couple of hours later we went to check on them and couldn't see Addie. Based on the day we knew exactly where she was; underneath the bed fast asleep.

I took out the camera and took a picture so I could show Addie in the morning that she was just as funny as her little sister and made a mental note to praise her just a little bit more.

Attention, Leprechauns, and Winter

You might be asking yourself, "What do those things in the title have to do with each other?" The answer is nothing but they are in this post together because it is my blog and I want it that way. So, without further ado...

First things first; Rachel is 4 months. Yeah that went really really fast. She is easy and good and, I hate to say it, but sometimes I forget she is around. I have a feeling that now that she is waking up more that might end. Yesterday I had just finished feeding her and she had had a really good nap and she started crying. I was very confused for a while. I kept wondering what was wrong with her. Then I realized "Oh, you want attention." Imagine that, needing more than food and sleep to be happy. Weird.
Next, Addie and Lizzie had a fun time trying to catch their leprechaun. I love that they are discovering holidays and getting excited. I also love that a couple of gold foil coins and some finger paint go so far toward making them happy.


Next, Nick and I have a babysitting exchange on Friday nights with three other families. Three Friday nights a month we get to go out and one night we get all the kids. It works really well despite the chaos of the Friday when we have them all. A couple of weeks ago we used the time to go cross country skiing in American Fork Canyon. Rachel came with us and didn't seem to mind the cold at all. She did make Nick fairly warm under all of those layers but it was great to get out and do that. It is weird to think that winter is ending and our chances to go skiing and other cool things like that are running out.


Lastly, Nick also took the scouts snow camping and surprisingly he didn't seem to mind the cold either.


So that has been our lives as of late. A little bit of a hodge-podge of activities but that's kind of the way life feels right now; and that isn't altogether bad.

We Love Visitors

Reza came to visit and Nick got to spend a great day skiing with his friends at Snowbird. The girls were just a little excited that Reza was sleeping over. This is what I found Sunday morning. Thanks for being a good sport Reza.

St. George Walkabout #2

OK, Crystal Island.

Disclaimer: Crystal island is more like an abandoned gypsum mine in the middle of the desert than an actual island. Come to think of it, it is exactly like an old abandoned gypsum mine out in the middle of the desert. Apparently those two things are similar in a four-year-old's mind.

We heard about this from Natalie's cousin. It is probably one of the craziest things I have ever seen. The directions came from a 12 year old and we didn't know where we were going so we had a bit of a hard time finding the place. The end destination was described as "shiny hills out in the middle of the desert." That was very open to interpretation. We stopped at about every broken bottle on the side of the dirt road, thinking we were there. Finally we turned a corner and saw this...

That made us feel kind of silly about stopping at the broken bottles. This place was crazy. Seriously, I have never seen anything like it in my life. When you walk past those first hills you see this...
That is the old pit where they dug the stuff out. The hills you see from the road are the tailings of the old operation. This place is very worth the short trip to get there just to see it. However, if you do go, be aware that there are also some pretty wild natives roaming the place as illustrated below. Just watch out, they can be scary.

We had a great time here trying to get some of the crystals out of the layer in the wall. We also had competitions to find out who could find the biggest/clearest crystal. I was the judge. I also always won. Weird how that always seems to work. The girls loved it and we learned the important lesson of staying away from the two unexploded sticks of dynamite left from operation. If you don't teach your kids not to play with unexploded dynamite, in my opinion, you have left them ill-prepared for the world in which we live.

In light of the previous fact, when a family came and setup a campfire in the middle of the pit, we decided that it was time to go. Thankfully, I did not hear of any fatal explosions on the Utah Arizona border for that weekend so I think they were OK.

In parting here is a pretty classic picture of the girls, both with their typical facial expressions.

As you can see, we all had a great time on our walkabout and can't wait to go on more exploratory adventures...


... And there was much rejoicing...

St. George Walkabout #1

For our most recent trip to St. George we decided to go explore and find some things we had never seen before. It definitely took some work and a lot of patience from people following us on the wild-goose chases (wild-geese chases?) (We weren't even looking for a goose, let alone geese. For that matter why, if a group of them are geese and one is a goose and a group of sheep are sheep, isn't one sheep a shep? I am confused. Where was I? Oh yeah...) We found some very cool things. Such as...

The alien guy was by far my favorite although it gives Natalie the creeps.

As you can tell the girls did not enjoy it at all.


These petroglyphs are about a mile hike away from a parking lot out past Ivins. Very worth the trip. We of course took this opportunity to teach our kids all about past cultures and respecting cultural diversity. They came away from the experience greatly enlightened and glowing with the fire of knowledge and understanding. Either that or they enjoyed jumping around on the rocks and making up names for the drawings. I wasn't sure... In any case after this experience Addie and her cousins went out to a rock behind casa de Randall in St. George and colored all over it with chalk saying that they were making petroglyphs. Sadly we do not have a picture of said rock as drawings made in sidewalk chalk are slightly less permanent than petroglyphs. Sprinklers can be very bad things.

Next post = next adventure = what Addie termed "Crystal Island." Stay tuned...

A Two-Year-Old's "Logic"

Today Lizzie has been two years old. I think we all know what that means. After several problems I finally told her, "You need to listen. I am the Mom and you are the kid." She looked and me and said, "I not a kid. A baby goat is a kid and I not a goat." She then went back to doing exactly what I was telling her not to do.