Throwback Thursday - flying games

When I was probably around 5 I took dance lessons from a lady who lived near us. She had a real dance studio in her house with giant mirrors. I was never very coordinated...I'm still not! Years later my friend's little sister told me that the teacher had made one of our class pictures into wallpaper in the studio & there I was in all of my 5 year old uncoordinated glory!! One of the only things I remember about that dance class was when Miss Mary Jane (yes I totally thought the shoes were named after her!) would put us on her feet and give us airplane rides.

I've adopted the airplane rides & have fun giving my kids rides (sometimes I go a little crazy and there have been a few heads thump on the ground...remember the coordination problem?)

I believe that this may have been Chloe's first ride...I'm not sure how much she likes it!

In other news...I was playing a game with a 3rd grade boy at school. His question read, "A brown cow gives white milk. REAL OR MAKE BELIEVE?" He immediately answered, "Make believe! Brown cows give chocolate milk!!!"

Throwback Thursday - Cannons

A few years ago my parents were serving a mission in Washington DC, so we took the opportunity to take our family on another visit to our nations capital. (I heart Washington DC!) I had been there a number of times as a youth...business trips with my dad (one time was shortly after my mom passed away and we all have fond memories of that trip and nightly gigantic sundaes at the hotel restaurant), with Close-Up in high school, with 4-H in middle school (that one my friend Jennifer Duke and I missed our plane thinking that it was on Sunday and not Saturday...they called and asked where I was and I replied "mowing my lawn" followed by a scramble to the airport...what an adventure!), another time we took our family there for a temple trip when we lived in Boston (that was our closest temple).

This time we packed up 4 kids to fly across country. It was the first trip we had taken with diabetes in our life. Ellie had been diagnosed in February and it was now April. She had only been walking again for about a month.

It was fun seeing all of the same things and taking my kids there. We did go out and see some new things as well. We drove out to Gettysburg and saw where all of the battles were fought...it was amazing!! At each stop they had different cannons along the grounds. The kids immediately ran to the cannons and we took a lot of fun pictures of the kids and even some fun family shots.

At the last stop one of the guides came over and asked us not to climb on the cannons. They were authentic civil war cannons!!! I felt sooo bad! I had no idea because there weren't any signs about them and they were EVERYWHERE

(I thought they were replicas put there for this very purpose!)

Apparently they now have signs there saying to not climb on the cannons.

I'm all Cracked Up

My kids have been cracking me up lately.

Ellie was looking at a Spiegel catalog that came to my house and there was something that I "needed" on almost every page. Then she hit the shoe section. There before her very eyes were a pair of GOLD shoes. "Mom, you could get these and wear them to drive me to SCHOOL!!!" (wow I must have a pretty exciting life if THAT'S where I'm wearing some gold shoes!)

Ellie has a friend named Ellie (who's dad is named Scott). She was over for a playdate one day and I was listening to them talk. My Ellie started talking about having "chocolate hair" and wishing that she had "vanilla hair"...it reminded me of Drew when she was 2 saying "Mom, why do you have bwown hair and Jossie has bwown hair and Austin has bwown hair and dad has bwown hair, but I have yewow hair? I wish I had bwown hair too!"

My friend Karen and I trade picking up our Ellie's from school. When I want to scold my Ellie in the car I use her full name "Ellie Bassett". After saying something along the lines of, "Ellie Bassett stop kicking the back of the seat!" Chloe said, "She not Ellie Bassett, she EL-LIE!" (Normally I can only understand about 1/3 of what she says if I'm lucky....I guess that's what made this so funny to me, because I understood the whole thing--she REALLY must have been upset!)

My boy turned 15 yesterday!!! I really can't believe it. I wanted to make a movie of our awesome spanking machine, but the camera that does that wasn't here & we've lost the other one. Scott had the zoom lens on the camera so all of my pictures I had to take across the room & they were still head shots. The night before I wasn't feeling well & was VERY tired (no not pregnant...seriously people! just getting over the flu), so I didn't get the birthday decorations out for him to come out to. I could see the disappointment on his face when he got up in the morning. So I had to make it up to him...I decided to clean his room & do his laundry for him. Then I was trying to clean up the house & get the decorations up when he called & said that his cross country (if you talk to him though call it "track" it gets his goat & is so funny!) practice was over. So I made him wait for a bit & then left Joslyn & Drew to put the streamers up. He was pretty happy with his surprise (and VERY happy there were decorations!)...and it made me laugh. I told him that there weren't that many 15 year old boys who would be happy that their mom cleaned out their room while they were at school...he really didn't get it--WHY would they be mad about something like that?!?! I love that kid!

Here is Austin getting a Subway gift card (thrilled eh?)

The video game he's been dying for--and it even works with VISTA!!

Austin is trying to think of a wish for Drew who just bumped him on the head.

A nice shot of the spanking machine.

Throwback Thursday . . . What do you wish??

This is a classic picture of Drew happily enjoying one of our family traditions. Joslyn is giving Drew her present (for her 5th birthday) while she chants:

Heavy Heavy Hangover

Thy Poor Head

What Do You Wish

With A BUMP

On Your Head!

Now Drew has to figure out something that she wishes special for the gift-giver for that upcoming year. I'm sure you've all played it!

We've been in the house close to a year in this picture and there is still nothing on my walls and we barely had any furniture at that point!

(Now I have LOTS on the walls and TOO much furniture!! lol)