Missionaries

This morning, I had a Young Women's presidency meeting. I had to bring all three of my kiddos. Which is not my favorite thing to do. The meeting was at 9 am at the church. Ugh. I'm not a morning person, and neither are my kids.

Monday is Preparation day. Basically, the day the missionaries have to get ready and gear up for the week ahead. Also some time to dress down and just be young adults. Minus dating- they can't do that. Because it was their day off, there were several sets (4? 5?) of missionaries at the building where we had our meeting. Including a set of sister missionaries. They were cooking breakfast together. They fed my girls food, gave us the leftovers, and entertained my girls during my entire meeting. Lacy was especially enamored with the sister missionaries who were there. She gave one sister a nick name ("superstar," and my Lacy's nickname is "sparkle") and they formed a girls club, which included my girls, the sister missionaries and one Elder (he was included because Rose asked on Saturday if he was an old lady when they came to our house).

Anyway, I'm so happy for the service they provided me while I was fulfilling my calling! Sure made my meeting go so much easier! AND my kids weren't bored. But, Sisters, I bet you'll soon realize it was a mistake to exchange phone numbers with my daughter, since she's already called you twice. The meeting got out two hours ago. Sorry about that.

Tape starts with... what again?

Conversation just now...

L: Mom! Rose can count to eleven! Eleven starts with A, right?

C: No, eleven starts with E.

R: (holding a giant roll of tape) TAPE starts with ELEBEN.

OK, maybe she doesn't exactly get the letters/numbers thing yet, but she's trying!

Favorite Colors

Apparently, being bombarded with pink and purple hasn't influenced my daughters' color preferences. Rose has recently announced that her favorite color is blue. And Lacy? For a long time, it was purple. Then she discovered that many of her friends love purple as well. To be different, she decided that her favorite colors are actually red, brown and black. And she specifically said that she likes those colors because nobody else does. She's a girl after her mother's heart, she is.

Cinnamon Rolls

Dave bought cinnamon rolls in celebration of a possible career change and the fact that he will likely be going back to school (soon) so he can become an apprentice of this guy who is a funeral director, and eventually become a funeral director himself someday.

Lacy and Rose were eating some as a snack, and Rose asked if mommy made them.

Lacy said, "No, mom didn't make these. Mom's are gooder."

Kids cuteness

"I'm as hot as a snickerdoodle!" -Lacy, today after her bath.

Lacy has been really cute today. She was playing that she was a mommy and first gave birth to baby Elizabeth. Then, surprise, Elizabeth has a twin sister, Charlotte! Finally, a third girl came into the world, but I can't remember what Lacy named her. Then she asked Rose to watch her children because she had a very important meeting she needed to attend. I asked her what they would eat while she was gone, and she said, well, they can have formula. Which really, really surprised me because lately she's been quite the lactivist! I questioned her about it, and she said, "Mom, it's just for pretend!"

Suddenly, she was a queen, and she was making clothes with swatches of fabric. I was *this close* to getting her a simple sewing machine for Christmas, but I don't think she's quite ready for that yet. I think I'll teach her how to knit first.

I've been under the weather for the past two days, and can I just say that my mom saved the day by getting Rose a collection of children's songs and music for Christmas? I didn't much feel like reading to the kids tonight, but I was feeling guilty for not reading as much as I should lately and for excessive use of the TV (we actually skipped TV-free Tuesday this week- shame on me!), but I was able to put on a story CD for the kids tonight at bedtime, and now I'm feeling just fine about it! No guilt whatsoever. In the collection is three or four CDs of just stories, including many famous fairy tales, Peter and the Wolf, Peter Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland (condensed version obviously) and several others I hadn't heard of before. The other day, Lacy just sat and listened to stories for about an hour. I'm sure these CDs will get a lot of playtime in the next couple of months!

Wish Lists to Santa

Here's what my girls have asked Santa to give them:

Rose:
Piano
Doggy
Choo Choo Train

Lacy:
Wedding Dress
Veil
Cake Topper

Lacy's a bit obsessed with getting married lately. The other day, she packed all her clothes in a suitcase and told me she was moving to Utah because she was getting married and her husband had a job in Utah.

Conversation in the car today

Lacy: I'm going to get married in the Seattle Temple!

Rose: I'm going to get married in the PARTY Temple!

Um... I don't think there's a party temple my dear... but at least you're planning a temple wedding! Even if you are just three years old!

Happy Fourth

Tonight on the drive home from my parent's house (oh yeah, my parents got home from their mission to Germany on Wednesday, so we've been over there every day since then), the Star Spangled Banner came on the radio. Rose yelled to us, "It's my FAVWIT!" (favorite) which was our cue to turn up the volume. She listened happily to the whole song.

The Booger Dilemma

A few nights ago, Lacy and Dave were home on their own, so at bedtime, Lacy snuggled down with her daddy in our big bed. She picked her nose and had a big booger on it, then asked Dave, "Daddy, what do I do? I've already brushed my teeth!"

Um...

The Big Question

Lacy asked me yesterday how the baby got into mommy's tummy. I knew that question would come someday, but honestly, it threw me for a loop! I told her something along the lines of, Daddy has a seed that goes to mommy's egg, and then that is a baby, and it grows and grows and grows.

Telling Lacy

It was really fun to let Lacy know that I was pregnant. I really wanted to tell my sister first (after Dave, obviously), so it was fun that we had her in our car driving up to Zion's camp a week ago. They had too many passengers in their car, so Les was the one voted off the Suburban and sat between two carseats in our van. Leslie got in, and I said, "So, I have a special secret to share. Do you want to guess what it is?" Leslie's eyes got big immediately and knew exactly what I was talking about. Since we weren't exactly trying, this was unexpected news, for sure! It took a little while for Lacy to figure it out. OK, we told her. But she didn't get it.

Finally, after about a half an hour or so, I said something about how "the egg hatched" and finally it clicked. MOMMY IS PREGNANT!!! Suddenly she couldn't stop talking about how excited she was! "I'm super very very very very very very ONE HUNDRED excited!!!" When we got to the camp site, within about 5 minutes everyone in our group knew we were expecting. The next day, when other people began arriving, they all knew within minutes of arriving as well.

The only reason she didn't end up telling every living soul at church the Sunday after we went camping was because it was Rose's birthday, and she told everyone that news instead! But she's starting to spread the news to her teachers in Primary now that Rose's birthday is over.

Where are you going again?

Lacy's grandma has been talking to her about taking her to Leavenworth after she gets back from her mission in Germany. Lacy is very excited about that! But she's a little confused about where she's going.




Lemonwars. Yes, Lemonwars. Oh, and Turner's not going. Poor Turner.

And yes, that's a carrot she's eating. My kids take whole carrots out of the fridge and eat them, a la Bugs Bunny.

Her bags are packed, she's ready to go. Fortunately I'm still behind on laundry, so even though she put every single article of clothing that were in her drawers in her backpack, it wasn't too many!


Of course, books are of the upmost importance, so she took books with her. Especially since Grandma sold it to her with book reading while there! Good thing she didn't say anything about possibly seeing "Sound of Music," too!

Now she's having a sweet day

Lacy woke up happy (albeit early) this morning. She asked me some questions about her laundry, as in, why the heck are all my clothes dirty.

"I'm sorry honey, I'm a bad mom."

"You're not a bad mom. You're just crazy."

So there you have it. That's her way of making me feel better about getting behind on my motherly duties.

About Nestle:

Lacy just told me, "Nestle kills babies, but not Leslie." HA!

Stop to Smell the Flowers

Every time we go grocery shopping, Lacy has to smell all the flowers in the floral department. I don't mind, I think it's rather darling. And most people who see her smelling the flowers smile as they pass by.

Lacy absolutely LOVES roses. Last time we were there, she exclaimed excitedly, "Mom, LOOK! They have ROSES!"

Rose, confused, replied, "My flowers?" I think she was expecting to get something from the flower shop after Lacy's exclamation.

I tried to explain that she is named Rose and those flowers are also named rose, but I don't think she quite gets it yet. Of course, some amount of confusion with names in our family is necessary. I did, after all, name my oldest child the same name as the town in which she was born (for a while, she thought that the library actually belonged to her). As my brother likes to say, at least she wasn't born in Humptulips.

This gives a whole new meaning to the brand name

Rose thinks that because we used this red marker to draw around the boarders of her swollen glands, she now can draw on herself with this same marker. So draw she did. And this gives a whole new meaning to the name "RoseArt."

Of course, Lacy couldn't resist a photo op.

Lacy the Yoga Instructor

This evening Lacy had Rose and I do a yoga session with her, with Lacy being the instructor. It was hilarious to watch her. She kept changing her name and introducing herself to me by shaking my hand. At one point her name was Willow. She actually had us do a couple real yoga poses, and she made up a bunch of her own that were similar to real yoga poses. She called one the caterpillar and another butterfly (which isn't the same as the actual butterfly pose she learned in gymnastics, this one had us sitting down gently waving our arms in the breeze). I showed her a few poses while we were at it. She rejected the idea of cat and cow, downward dog and mountain pose, but was excited to try child's pose and tree pose. She lost her balance with tree pose, but with my help she was able to do it correctly. While she was speaking, she used a very calming, low voice. I seriously was about to bust a gut it was so funny, because it was EXACTLY like every yoga class I've ever taken! Minus the running around the room yoga moves that Lacy, I mean Willow, took us through. I think there's a kid's yoga class at one of the local park and rec programs. I think I'd better sign Lacy up. She may have found her calling. And I'm only half joking.

My Funny Lacy

• Conversation between Lacy and me just a minute ago: "Mom, Let's talk about babies. First of all, do you want a boy or a girl?" "Well, I like girls a lot... But I also like boys...." "How about we have a hundred of girls and a hundred of boys." "Lacy, I am NOT having that many babies." "Not all at the same time! I know! How about we have TWINS!" She continued talking about babies and baby names for 10 minutes or so. She's obsessed. And I'm not even pregnant or anything. She just loves babies and wants a baby sibling.
  
• Today is Dave's mom's birthday. She passed away in August 2005 when Lacy was a wee one. Lacy asked me today if it was anybody's birthday, and I told her that it was Grandma Kathleen's birthday. She excitedly confirmed that fact with her dad and came back it, "It IS Grandma Kathleen's birthday! I'm going to say a prayer to wish her a happy birthday! (folds arms and bows head) Happy birthday Grandma Kathleen. I hope you have a great birthday. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." Very sweet of her to wish her Grandma a happy birthday. I hope she's looking down on her sweet granddaughter smiling today.
  
• Lacy was hungry and told me, "Mom, I'm hungry for a snack. Something with a lot of sugar and ice creamy." "Hmmmm, how about some yogurt?" "No! (jumping up and down) ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!" She accepted the yogurt eventually and even asked for seconds (which is why I buy it in bulk, but I'm considering making my own like my cousin Jessie does).
  

Charmin Ultra Strong

We are not really a Charmin family. I like to buy other brands of toilet paper because Charmin is too darned soft and pillowy for me. But Dave was given a half a bag of Charmin Ultra Strong the other day so I'm using free toilet paper. So far so good.

As soon as Lacy saw the package of toilet paper, she exclaimed, "Charmin Ultra Strong!" We hadn't told her the brand of this bag of toilet paper yet, so I assume she got it from commercials. They do have really cute commercials, you know.

Last night Lacy was coughing a lot. I came in to check on her. She asked me, "Mom, can you get me some Charmin Ultra Strong please?"

Good grief. This was at midnight and the girl was half asleep! Talk about brand loyalty! I guess the Charmin commercials are doing the trick. At least for her.

Lacy is now banned from commercial TV for a while. She's been sick, so she's allowed to watch TV a bit more than usual. She's been watching PBS and movies exclusively.

The girl loves her clothes

We had family home evening tonight (we weren't home last night), and we played a game of strawberry jam (similar to hide and seek, except one person hides and when another person finds them they hide with them, "jamming" everyone in the hiding spot). Dave, Lacy and I were all waiting for Rose to find us. Since she's two, we were trying to give her hints, such as "Roooose! Rooooose! We're over heeeeere!" Very subtle hints, you know.

Finally she found us. She had changed her clothes while all the rest of us were hiding! She is so obsessed with clothes, changing her outfits, and dress-ups. She then changed her clothes again while we were reading scriptures. I guess she's always going to have to share a room with Lacy so that Lacy can find her clothes, since I'm sure Rose will constantly be borrowing them! Either that, or get a padlock for Lacy's closet.