Soccer Season

Yesterday, I was grinning to myself while I washed the counters and Alexis was vaccuming the family room. I was thinking how great it is to have a slave, I mean helper, in training to do chores. (How great will it be when I have three little Cinderellas that can help tidy up as least as much as they mess up!) Just as the fantasy of kicking back while my kids clean up for me was beginning...I was abruptly woken from my daydream by the sound of the vaccum eating its own cord (luckily, it's nothing a little electrical tape can't fix)! Guess my celebrations were a little premature. :)

Other exciting events around here include the beginning of soccer season! Alexis is on a team with fellow Kindergarteners from her school and having a great time running around on the field in cleats and shin guards chasing kids for a chance to kick at the ball. (The ball, by the way, is more often "out of play" than in bounds.) She has been enjoying it so far and is gearing up for her first game next weekend!

Alexis also recently got to attend "Donuts with Dads" at her school. That was a fun special morning for just the two of them to visit over donuts and juice and choc. milk. It's so fun for me to remember the way I looked up to my dad as a little girl (and I still do) and how special he made me feel, and how sureal it is now to see Lexi looking up to Adam in that very same way.

Taking me back in time

This weekend was a "blast from the past." If ever we'd wanted to try and plan to recreate a weekend from our years of "younger love," this would have been it. It was not our anniversary or anything, it just happened this way and what fun. Adam got us tickets to go to a Good Charlotte concert, which was SO awesome! We had such a great time rockin' the night away. We used to love listening to that band back when we first started dating so it was a memory jerker just for that reason and was a ton of fun besides. Here are a couple fab. cell phone pics from the event:






Following our rock concert, we headed off to 7-11 for a slurpee. Another time warp! Adam used to take me out for Slurpees after putting practice at Mulligan's. We did this many, many times as dates. I use to wish he'd bet me a kiss for a good putt instead of a Slurpee some time...and eventually he did!

Last, but not least, there was Nutella! This was the ultimate flashback! I don't know why we hadn't thought to do it before, but we saw a jar of Nutella at the store and brought it home to make crepes, much like the ones we ate on our honeymoon 7 1/2 years ago! After just one bite, I closed my eyes and I was back in Paris, on the streets near Montmarte eating my crepe! What fun memories and a fun weekend remembering them.


Je t'aime mon amour!

A Princess in Training

Today, Alexis and I were looking through her book order form for school and I offered to buy her one book and told her she could buy any others she wanted with her own money. She "hum-hawed" about that for awhile (she really doesn't like spending her money) and eventually picked one out that looked fun but didn't cost too much. We got the money out of her bank and filled out the order form and I noticed Lexi playing around with her bank again. Amazingly, although we had taken out the only five dollar bill she had, there was another five dollar bill in her bank just a few minutes later. I asked her about it and she came up with some story about how she'd been keeping another five dollar bill somewhere else and now that she used the one in her bank, she was replacing it with this secret stash. I didn't get upset (viusally, anyway) right off the bat but keep up the questioning so that I didn't accuse her if she were really telling the truth. The further she got into her rather elaborate "story" the more suspicious I became until I eventally cracked the case and figured out what had happened. I was broken -hearted to discover that Alexis had stolen money from Aubrey's bank and then lied about it! My sweet little girl! You want SO much for them to make good choices and hope you are teaching them good things and then when they do something like this...well, it hurts. I can teach her how to read but how do I teach her to have a good heart? I left her alone for a few minutes to think and when I came back, she was on laying on my bed with tear streaked cheeks and sobbed, "I feel like Katie! She stole the Widow shoemaker's pie and lied about it like I did to Aubrey!" Katie is the main character in the wonderful book, "Daughter of A King" by Rachel Ann Nunes. If you don't have it, you should! We have read this book to Alexis dozens of times and we talk about it and use the principles in the story (which are those of the gospel) often as we talk about our choices and actions and how we want to act like princesses so we can return to the "Crystal Palace" one day. Although we talk about it regularly, we haven't read the book in a little while so I was surprised she thought of that incident in the story. I was glad Lexi reminded me of the story to help me decide what to do next with Alexis. (I wanted to be really mad at her and call her daddy at work to think up some great punishment!) I thought for a moment, "what did Katie's parents do in the story?" We had a good talk and took care of the necessary apologizes and moved on and I will keep up my hope that next time she gets a crazy idea to do something like that, instead she will think about it and choose not to do it in the first place!

My littlest girly girl

Allie is growing up fast! She nearly 17 months old and is leaving baby-hood behind and quickly entering toddler-hood...and causing a great deal of trouble along her way. She is into everything and climbs like crazy. My barstools can no longer be near the counter or table and since she is learning how to push the stools around, I can't leave ANYTHING on the counter either. My cupboards are always emptied out (the child locks keep breaking) and she has learned the "N" word ...NO! She does still have a very cute side and is learning a lot of fun things too. She loves to "sing" and "jibber jabber" and is actually learning quite a few words. She recently cut through seven new teeth all at once! She is very much into girly things. She loves purses and lipstick and especially painting her toe nails. In spite of the terrible twos on the horizon, she is still my little sweetheart!

Box Tops

Alexis is loving Kindergarten (she's a little tired after a couple weeks without a nap but is otherwise great). She has met several new friends and it is true that Kindergarten is a place to learn the rules of life as the poem says. Every day she comes home with some new "catch phrase" to remember a rule about this or that. She is also learning all sorts of cute little songs about colors, numbers and letters. Fridays at school are "cooking day" and that is high on Lexi's interest list; she's been counting down until Friday all week. Another thing that Lexi has been busy doing is scavanging through my cupboards looking for "box tops." She is collecting them for her school and would love help getting more. She would like to invite her grandmas and aunts and uncles and friends to clip any box tops they come across and send them her way. They can be found on hundreds of products including General Mills cereals, Ziploc bag boxes, Kleenex products, and many more. A complete list of participating products can be found at www.boxtops4education.com
Thanks in advance for your help!

Vineyard

This past Saturday was the annual Grape Harvest at the LDS Church's Vineyard. The grapes are harvested and sun dried for use as raisins in the Church's humanitarian aid program. Adam and I have both had the opportunity to serve there over the past couple years at various times of the year and during varying stages of the grape growing process...from training the vines, to prunning, to harvesting and rolling up the "trays." It has been really neat to learn a bit of what is involoved and to have a hand in helping out.

For this stage of the process:
the grapes must be picked...

and collected in a tub...

and then laid out to dry in the sun on "trays".


(Hey Austen, I think that might be you in the background of the first picture!)