Thursday, May 28, 2009

Random things

London loves to have parties with all of her animals. On this day it was Bambi's birthday, and she wanted Guinevere to join her. She put a large lego-like toy in front of each guest as a plate, and then gave them each a wooden bead for cake. Guinevere found the whole thing quit interesting. Those are Jacobs legs. He is throwing a fit because he was not invited, and he wanted some cake. I finally convinced London to include him, and all was well. Yes, I have to comfort my crying children about not getting to eat fake cake.


A lot of people can not believe that I take all four of my kids grocery shopping and to pediatrician appointments. They think I must be crazy (and maybe I am), but I really just don't have a choice in the matter. I do have the option of bathing them at separate times, but it is just so much faster to do it all at once. A little crazy, but faster. I usually try and get one of the older kids to hold Guinevere, but Joseph threw a fit when I gave her to Jacob. Joseph has really taken a liking to her. Maybe he still understands her when she babbles?


Guinevere has just recently started liking taking a bath. She is smiling even though Jacob keeps dumping water on her head.

Life is a little crazy with four kids under the age of 5, but it is also a lot of fun.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Camping

We took our first camping trip of the season. This was a first time Joseph has ever gone camping. Guinevere stayed at home with Nana. I think taking babies out camping is just too difficult. It was great to get out of the heat and up into the cool mountain air.


The kids enjoyed playing in the dirt, and climbing on all the rocks while Rob and I got camp set up. Once the fire got started though it was hard to pull there attention away from it. Here is all the kids mesmerized by the fire that Rob got started.


This is just a sample of how dirty the kids got. Joseph just could not keep his hands off his face.


The kids were really excited to roast marshmallows. Rob helped each one roast a marshmallow to put in there smore. Then Jacob said he wanted just a marshmallow, not in a smore. We gave it to him and he said he did't want it because it was dirty. He did not like that I had taken the time to carefully make it golden brown for him. I guess roasted marshmellow is an aquired taste.



Here is Joseph getting his first taste of a smore. I am not sure if he liked it or not since half of it ended up in the dirt and he was not upset about it.


It took forever to get the kids to finally fall asleep. You would think all the excitement would have tired them out. Once we all finally got to sleep Jacob woke up twice durring the middle of the night. The first time he was cold, and wanted us to turn the light on in the tent. We turned on the flashlight and tried to get him to sleep in his sleeping bag, or under one of the extra blankets that we had brought. It took a while, but we finally got him back to sleep. Then he woke up around 3:30 am just screaming. He was unconsolable and screamed for about 45 minutes. Of course he woke up his siblings, and even though we tried, I don't think they ever really fell back to sleep. I don't think the campers next to us were very happy since they were packed up and gone by 6am. Here I am a not so happy camper tending to the breakfast fire.


We decided to take our cast iorn cook wear out and make meals over the fire. Our griled cheese sandwiches for dinner turned out great and were a big hit. However, the scrambled eggs, bacon and biscutes for breakfast took too long for the kids and then they hardly eat any of it. Robs biscutes came out a little burnt on both sides, so Rob tried to convince them to just eat the middles out of them. They did not like that though. Rob and I thought breakfast was great, and we were pretty proud of ourselves.


After breakfast we cleaned up and went out on a hike. Here is the view from the top. London loved looking throught the binoculars that we brought with us. I could not even get her to put them down for the picture. The hike was a little shorter then we were hoping for because Joseph kept sitting down on the trail and refusing to walk.


The kids were a little winy, and did not care for all the bugs, but I think overall things went pretty well. Rob hopes to go camping once a month over the summer. I am hopeful that the more often we camp the better the kids will get at it. If anyone has some good suggestions of fun activies for small children while camping I would love to hear them. Happy trails!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

1/2 Marathon

In order to get back in shape and lose my baby weight I am doing a half marathon with my sister and some other ladies who have recently had or are about to have a baby. Granted this is a first baby for them and my 4th baby, but I think I can do it. Rob got me a treadmill for Mother's Day so that I can work out at home. My goal is to walk 5 days a week, but for the last two weeks I have only done it 4 days a week. The race allows you only 4 hours from the gun time to finish the race. However since it is a very popular race they have a wave start. So we may only get like 3 1/2 hours. Our goal is to be able to do 4 miles per hour. Currently I only work out for 1/2 an hour and I can do a little over one mile. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I am confident that I can do it. The race is not till January 17th. I will keep you all posted about my progress. They say the best way to achieve your goals is to tell people about them, so I am making my goal as public as possible. I need a lot of motivation and support. Anyone who would like to is welcome to train and fly down and do the 1/2 marathon with me.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Jacob is 3

I can't believe that Jacob is already three years old. How the time flies. Three seems to be a transitional time for Jacob. Sometimes he takes naps, sometimes he does not. Sometimes he acts like such a big boy and wants to be so helpful, and sometimes he acts like a huge baby (can't put his own shoes on or go to the bathroom by himself). He is also very strong willed. Good luck convincing him to do something that he does not want to do. He has quite the temper from time to time as well. We are going to have to better help him learn how to express his anger before he gets bigger and stronger then his dad and I. That is probably about 12 years away, but I am already thinking about it. I love him to death, and can't imagine life without my little helper following me around the kitchen wanting to do everything that I am doing.

We had a small party at home to mark the occasion. I did not have much time to decorate the cake, so I went with a simple football design. Jacob wanted a lion, but I was not that motivated. This is the first cake I have decorated entirely by myself.


Jacob blowing out the candles with a little help from London.

He was really excited about the set of 5 cars that he got from Aunt Barbara. He wanted to just play with them instead of opening the rest of his gifts.

He was super excited about the big boy bike he got from his Nana and Aunt Brenda though.


All in all, it was a great party.