Singing Measles

Oh how I wish I had taken the camera to church today. I'm the primary chorister in our ward and sometimes you do something that you just know rocked! Today was one of those days!

When singing time was turned over to me, I hid behind the piano and stuck dot stickers all over my face. When I came out, I told the kids that I wasn't feeling very good and that my face was all itchy. I asked them if they could see anything on my face and of course they took great pleasure in pointing out that I had dots all over. I told them I had the Singing Measles and that they are very contagious. So as we practiced our programs songs that we have learned so far, several of the primary presidency, as well as myself, walked around and put stickers on the kids that were singing. I have never seen these kids sing as well as they did today. They ALL wanted stickers, even the oldest boys. By the time singing time was over, they were all covered in dots. We have sacrament meeting last and many of the kids still had their stickers on. The Bishopric member who was conducting even mentioned that many of the kids weren't looking so good and hoped that they would get better soon! It was really cute and a great success. I just wish I had taken a picture of all the kids covered in dots!

Sunny So Cal and Easter, What a Way To Spend a Weekend

Note: Scott and I seem to have a mental block against the camera. For Moab, we forgot it completely. For this trip we managed to get out the door with the camera, but didn't realize until we got there that the memory card was still sitting in my computer. So the pictures that are here are pretty much it. We were just lucky that the camera would store any at all! Next time, hopefully, we'll get it right!

This year for Easter we headed to sunny So Cal. I think this is the first time we've had Easter with my family. It's only because of the early Easter this year. I think normally my kids are going back on track, so we don't bother to make the trip. This year my kids are just going off track so the trip was very possible.

Scott got to go on two bike rides and went golfing with my dad, so he was pretty happy. On Saturday, I had a great day, too. My sister April's best friend, Michelle, got remarried to a really great guy. April did the flowers and while my mom and my sister were at the temple ceremony, my niece, Elyse and I delivered them to the house were the reception was. It was quite the adventure because we took my sister's car and I swear it's possessed. We managed to get the flowers into the house and then the car locked itself with my purse, Elyse's purse, the keys, and the spare keys inside! I'm not lying, we didn't lock the car, it locked itself. So then my sister gets there and has to call triple A, of course, she's just happy that all the flowers made it inside. As the truck is pulling up to the house, some other guest hits their remote to lock their car and my sister's car unlocks. Are you kidding me? Anyway, Michelle looked beautiful and really, really happy! Thanks for letting me crash!

Saturday night we went to the Irvine Spectrum and had dinner at Johnny Rockets. The kids got to ride the Carousel there and Zoey had the death grip on me as she said "Whee" with a terrified look on her face. Boy, have we got her trained.

Sunday morning, the Easter Bunny managed to find my parents house, even though, he hasn't been there for a while. We attended church with my parents, always a fun thing for me. My parents have lived in the area for like 30 years, so I know half their ward. I get to see my YW leaders and former Bishops. It's fun.

Here are my kids in their Easter finery. And no that's not what I had originally planned for Regan. I ran out of time (and you all thought I was crazy for starting in January!) and the alterations I needed for Regan's skirt didn't get done.

The Easter bunny doesn't leave a lot of candy for our family. The kids usually get a toy with a little candy thrown in. Although, with four kids now, it sure looked like a lot of candy. Here is Regan with the newest addition to her Littlest Pet Shop collection.
Hali got what she wanted most: the singing Sharpey doll. She's from High School Musical, in case you didn't know.
Porter LOVES pirates. He got this little pirate guy with all sorts of pirate gear. It's kind of sad that the pirate didn't make it home with us. He must be searching for treasure over at the McCusker household. He'll probably find it there, too.
Zoey actually got a little stuffed cow. (It's cuter than it sounds.) But she was much more interested in the microphone that came with the Sharpey doll. That's all she does now. She walks around the house with the microphone at her mouth and sings her little gibberish to the tune of Fabulous. So now when she becomes a famous singer, we can show pictures of her at the age of 1 1/2 singing!
Ok, I just had to add this picture, because she was just so happy to have this drink. Zoey loves nothing more that having a soda to drink. I think she spends a little too much time with her daddy.
Well, we had a great time in California. We actually didn't go to Disneyland this time ( I know, it's totally a shock.), because it's Spring Break and I didn't want to pay $300 just to stand in a line. Go figure. The weather was so great and the kids got to go swimming in the jacuzzi. (The pool wasn't heated and was way cold.) It's always great to spend time with grandparents and cousins, although I'm sure my mom wasn't all that happy that I was there, because I made her go to the fabric store and actually sew! Shudder. HEHE. I love you, Mom!

Happy Birthday.

Last night we had a family birthday party at Mike and Amy's house. Their daughter Jessie has her sweet sixteen this week and of course I'm having my 30th on Friday. Ok. So it's a little more than 30. :-( Anyway, we had dinner and cake. Unfortunately, the party was interrupted by a phone call earlier in the day. See, Scott's dad is in a home for Alzheimer's and the home called and was concerned about Jerry's health. Amy and David (Scott was sick and didn't think it was a good idea to go to such a public place) took Jerry to the emergency room and waited for hours to find out that Jerry was perfectly fine.

Here is the cake. It's an ice cream cake with red velvet cake and cake batter ice cream. It was so good.

Ok, dorky picture. Scott had just taken a picture of me from the side, when I wasn't paying attention. I told him that you don't do that to women. So I was showing him an exaggerated pose that is more flattering and he took the picture! Rude.

Zoey really liked the cake.

Mike always seems to have a closet full of masks that he likes to take out and scare the kids with. This was a new one that I'd never seen before and frankly, it's really creepy. That's Regan underneath the mask.

Super Dog!

Porter decided that the dog needed to play dress-up. So, his superman cape was called into service.

Girls Bonding Day

Saturday morning was the Disney Princesses on Ice show at the Energy Solutions Center in Salt Lake. My sister in law, Natalie, put on her blog that she wanted to take her daughter, Sara, to the show and wanted to know if anyone else wanted to go. Heck, yea! I love these shows and love to take my kids. So, Regan, Hali and I tagged along.

Here are the girls out in front of the arena. Sara was beyond adorable and so fun to watch during the show.

Hali, Regan and I enjoying the show.

This is just to show how close we were. Natalie got great seats!

Ok, I know it's hard to see this picture, but this is one of the dancers from the Cinderella ball scene. I kept looking at the girls costumes and thinking they looked like can-can girls. It kind of ruined the moment for me.

We had a great time. The show had seven princesses, so pretty much they all got covered. It was a great show and it was fun to just have my two older girls with me. I didn't have to deal with Porter or keeping Zoey entertained. I could just enjoy the show! It was a lot of fun.

Male PMS

I've come to the realization that women (and girls, trust me, it starts at about the age of 2) aren't the only ones that experience a surge of hormones. For women, it's PMS and it hits once a month. We get all emotional and irritable and frankly, a little bit crazy. Well, folks, I'm hear to tell you that boys experience this, too. It's a surge of testosterone. And it doesn't happen once a month, it's a little longer than that. But boys don't get all emotional and irritable (although, crazy does factor into it), they get destructive! Porter, I swear, goes through cycles. Last one was (hold on, let me check the blog) in November of 2007. Jeez, if he went through this once a month, he'd spend a lot more time chained up in his room. And mom would have been admitted to the loony bin a long time ago.

So Porter is going through destucto time around here is week. Check out what he did to my car. My car, I might add, that I've had about 6 MONTHS!
This was done with a marker. The most amazing thing is, I was in the car the whole time he did this! We have to get to the girl's school about a half hour before they get out in order to get a parking space. The parking lot is so small! So, luckily, we have a dvd/tv thing in our car, so Porter watches movies and I usually bring a book to read. I guess it was a good book, cuz I didn't notice a thing!
We got lucky. It was a dry erase marker. Just a little scrubbing with a baby wipe and it came right off. Well, mostly. A few places were stubborn, so I'll have to find some good cleaner to take the rest off.
And he wasn't done with the car. The purple streaks on the couch are finger nail polish. Hali is obsessed with it and didn't put it away. So Porter was painting his nails ON MY COUCH and spilled. Yeah. Mom was real happy about that. We won't even mention what Dad thought of the fact that Porter was painting his nails.

I think that as a boy gets older, he's got more outlets for this sudden burst of testosterone. You can go for a run, play a sport, ride your bike, and when you're married there is always that other outlet (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Porter just doesn't have anyway to get it out, besides total annihilation of my things. Man, that kid needs to get into school.

Madame Mullin's Wax Museum

Last Friday, Elk Meadow Elementary 4th grade became a wax museum. The kids were required to read a book about a real person, write a report and then come to school dressed as that character with a poster describing who they read about and what they are known for. Regan choose to do Clara Barton. I had never heard of her, but Regan had read about her in a Magic Tree House book. It ends up that Clara Barton was a nurse during the Civil War and started the American Red Cross. Huh.

The kids were in the gym and parents were invited to come and see. They had to pick a pose that they thought represented this person and pretend to be a wax figure. That meant no talking, even if an adult spoke to them. Regan found this rather difficult.

Here is Regan in her costume and her "pose".

Regan found it particularly difficult to be quiet, because the teacher put Regan and her best friend Karli next to one another. We had two giggling statues.

Only the 3rd graders were allowed to come see the wax museum, but since I was checking the kids out right after to leave for Moab, I went and got Hali early so that she could come see Regan.
I was actually quite proud of Regan for picking Clara Barton even though I was skeptical about finding any information about her. She was the only girl doing Clara Barton. All the other girls were Amelia Earhart, Pocahontas, and Helen Keller, so Regan really stood out. It was really cute to see what people came up with. Some parents get really elaborate with the posters!

Moab

Note: Due to a temporary breakdown in communications, there are no pictures of our time in Moab. And of course there were MANY picture perfect moments that will be forever lost.

Since the camera was left at home, I thought that I would talk about our trip, by describing what pictures we would have taken, if we had brought the camera.

#1 would have been of the campsite. We stayed at this really nice RV park just outside of the town of Moab. We had this little grassy area in front. I probably would have taken a picture of Scott standing in front of the Camp Chef stove with a spatula in his hand. I love camping just for the fact that Scott does ALL the cooking. He loves it and so do I.

#2 probably would have been Amy and Jeff (Scott's brother and sister) coming across the finish line. The whole reason we came to Moab, was because Amy and Jeff ran in the half marathon there. Jeff's wife, Lori, and daughter, Katie, ran the 5 mile race earlier in the day.

#3 more pictures of the kids enjoying the time there. Course, it was really cold, so they would have been bundled up, especially at night. It was a bummer that it was so cold. We didn't get to hang out at night and play games. There were just too many of us to fit into one trailer. But we did actually get to do 'smores. Thanks to David and Scott for standing out in the cold to roast the marshmallows!

#4 would have been my personal favorite picture. Me, holding a screaming baby, while vomit dripped off of me onto the floor. I think that Zoey has something programmed into her. Camping=Vomit. She woke up at about midnight crying, not really hard, but enough to get us up. So I pick her up with the intention of just putting her in bed with us, so that we could sleep. I just sit down on the bed and out it comes. I quickly stand up and Scott jumps up to get some paper towels. Zoey is still upchucking and Scott tells me to take her outside. Yeah, right. It's like 15 degrees out there, I'm in my pajamas and I'm wet. I'll clean it off the floor, thank you very much. So picture this. I'm standing in a pool of puke, it's dripping off my clothes, I'm holding a VERY upset child and Scott just stands there handing me paper towels. Hello! Could you maybe take the child and clean her up so that I can clean myself up? So I put Zoey down, strip off her pajamas, and he STILL doesn't take her. I finally get huffy about the whole thing and shove her at him! Scott takes her and puts her into new pajamas, while I'm trying to clean myself and the floor, which is really slippery at this point ( I know, eewww! You didn't have it squishing between your toes!). Scott did redeem himself, by sleeping in the same bed with Zoey, partially to keep her calm and partially, because half of our bed had been puked on. I cleaned up as best as I could, but I wasn't willing to sleep on that part. Luckily, the RV park had laundry facilities so we were able to wash the sheets and my pajamas. Just too gross, I know.

So there you go. I'm sure at this point you're glad we didn't have the camera so you wouldn't be subjected to seeing me covered in vomit. And I would have posted it, too. The next night Zoey did well, so there is hope for her, yet. We hope that pretty soon she'll get used to the trailer and we won't have the trauma. We did have fun, trying out the trailer and seeing the beautiful scenery in Moab. It was really nice just to get away for a few days. And the kids had so much fun playing with their cousins. And thank you, Emma. You were very generous with Hali, but you really didn't have to buy her so much stuff! Next time, we'll buy you some things, k?

Ahh, Those Were The Days...

I know a lot of bloggers love to do Flashback Fridays, well, I thought I'd do a Flashback Wednesday. See a couple of days ago I reconnected with an old high school friend of mine (hey, Boan!) and I've been reminiscing ever since. I went down into my basement and started going through old pictures and started laughing! I've always been mildly insulted whenever someone rips on 80's fashion. Well, not so much anymore. I have the pictures to prove that fashion in the 80's was interesting. And then very painfully, I realized that this year will be my 20th high school reunion. Ouch. Not that I'll go. I didn't go to my 5th, 10th, or 15th, so why would I go to the 20th? Anyway, here are some fabulous pictures of my awkward teenage years. Feel free to snicker.

This was my debutant ball. I know. Our stake every year had a debutant ball for the girls who turned 16 that year. And they went all out. We had dinner and dancing and we were presented on stage. We had to have a date and danced the first dance with our fathers. My dress choice was gorgeous, don't you think? My favorite color was always yellow, and I guess, I thought that would translate well into a formal. I learned.

This was my Senior Prom. Well, this was at my house before the prom. My friends and I decided that we wanted to go and just have fun and seeing as none of us had a boyfriend, we all asked friends to go. That's me on the end with the puffy helmet. My date was Boan Rubalcava, whom I just recently reconnected with. I have an even better picture of you, Boan, at the debutant ball. Maybe someday I'll show you! HaHa.

I was actually on the swim team for two years in high school. And be nice. Big hair was really "in" in the 80's.
This picture was taken for the Trabuco Hills High School yearbook. It was for a section about friends. I guess we thought that we were cool and funny to put the prison numbers in front of us. And wow. Again, the hair.


This was another yearbook picture. I loved that hat. I was really into hats. I had a thing for Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles. I thought she was SO cool. The yellow marks are for the sizing in the yearbook. They actually cut out my friend and just put me in. I'm rad, I know.

Well, that was fun, if a little embarrassing. Maybe next week I'll work on those mission pictures! I keep in touch with several old companions and it would be fun to see some more scary pictures during that period in my life, too!

A Room with a View Continued....

I know, it's been a LONG time since I've posted an update of the temple. Probably, because we haven't been able to see it in a while, what with all the snow. So I'm taking advantage of a sunny day and posting a picture of our view. Pretty nice, eh?

If you click on the picture you can see it in more detail. Just a thought.

Hali's "Beauty" Salon

So, what do you think? Ain't it bee-u-ti-ful? Maybe, I should keep this as my new look.
I was on the phone yesterday talking with my mom, when Hali decided that I was the perfect model for her hair salon. I thought it was so great that we had to take a picture. I think Regan and her friend Karli, were shocked that I would actually take a picture of my stunning self. I just figured that there aren't enough pictures of me on the blog, so what the heck. And frankly, I think that this is the BEST picture to post. Don't you?

Our First Trailer Adventure....Sort of.

Our first trial run in the trailer was not so good. It's a good thing we were only in our backyard. Yes, our backyard. We were just a little too antsy to wait for next weekend, when we do the real thing in Moab. So we dragged pillows, blankets and put the kids in warm pajamas to start our little camping adventure. We somehow rigged our portable DVD/TV system and settled in to watch a movie.

Zoey thought it was the greatest thing at first. She walked up and down the isle, laughing all the way.
She wasn't too hard to get to sleep. We have "trained" her to take a bottle every night before bed to fall asleep. Yes, I know. Definite no-no. But by the time you get to the forth, you do the easiest thing you can to get some sleep. But at about 12:30 she woke up and FREAKED out. She was so scared that she wouldn't even settle in bed with us. So I took her into the house and put her into her own bed and I got to sleep in mine. HEHE!

Porter and Hali shared the bottom bunk. There was plenty of room for the both of them. Hali, the little sleeper, was out fast.


Porter is channeling his inner bunny here. Seriously, what is he doing? Earlier in the day he licked the mud off his shoe (eww!), so maybe he is feeling the effects.

It also took us a while to figure out why the power in the plugs weren't working. It end up that the outlet on the house that we had plugged the trailer into wasn't good. All I can say is that next weekend sure will be interesting!