Water

Alex got himself a drink of water and noticed that it was running low so he took it out of the refrigerator and started filling it up without being asked. I thought that I would blog about this because it is so rare that any male notices something and does it right away:)

Father's Day

Today for Father's Day the kids made a gift certificate for "one romantic candlelight dinner for two." They made menus, made salad fresh from the garden, cooked potatoes fresh from the garden (okay I helped them cook all the hot things but they organized it), hot dogs and Dinty Moore stew from the can. They got all dressed up in waiter outfits and made us tickets for our reservation.

Then they started a "jacuzzi" hot tub for us (bath tub). After the hot tub they came in and gave us foot rubs. I'm not quite sure how I got treated so well for Father's Day, but I liked it. They were so thoughtful and creative. They even cleaned up some of the dishes after dinner.

I'm pretty sure that we have some of the greatest kids in the world:)

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to my sweet husband who is always there for me, my rock. I love how all you have to do is hug me and all my worries go away. I'm so proud of you and all of the hard work you do for our family. You are such a fun dad, and you are such a wonderful husband! I love you so much!!

And Happy Father's Day to my dad. Thanks for always being there to help us fix things around the house. Thanks for your awesome ice cream, for convincing us to buy an ice cream maker, and thanks for your delicious cookies and for teaching me to make them so that I can eat them whenever I want. Thanks for playing with my 2 year old so I can have a break because for some reason he behaves the best when he's with you! Thanks for being such a great example of what a father should be! We love you!!

And Happy Mother's Day to my mom, because I don't think that I did a post because I think I forgot. Thanks for your great example. I try every day to be as great as a mom as you were. You did so much for us, and you were always there for us. Thanks for teaching me how to sew, sorry it took me until I was grown to want to learn:) Thanks for playing with all my babies, and thanks for taking Ben for me when you can tell I need a break. Thanks for listening on the phone when all I do is whine, you always make me feel better!! We love you!!

And thanks to Kristin for doing a blog post for father's day so that I could remember to do one too!!

Happy Birthday Alex!!

6 months old

almost 8 years old!!

Should have posted this yesterday but we were so busy having so much fun celebrating Alex's 8th birthday! He is so excited to go to his first cubscout meeting tonight and wore his new uniform last night until right before bed. He also can't wait until his baptism next month.

Alex is a really great, loving, helpful, fun guy. I am so lucky to have him as my son! Love you Alex!!!

NIGHT 7!

Huge success!!

Thanks to grandpa Clift our bunk bed is fixed. So today Joel put it together. Benjamin was soooo excited to help daddy. He stayed with him the whole time. He got a screwdriver and was screwing in screws, and learning names of tools. So cute.

Then when the bed was finished he was saying it was "my bunk bed," and for those of you who know him well you might be shocked that he wasn't saying "baby's bunk bed." He tried to claim the top bunk, but once I put his Thomas the Train sheets on the bottom he was on board. Tonight Alex laid in the bottom bunk with Benjamin.

I went into the room to give Ben a bottle, he held my hand while I sang him a song. Then I said I would be right back. By the time I got back he was asleep cuddling Alex.

I must admit that "all you people" might actually be on to something. I actually stuck with this whole bed thing for a week and it has gotten easier and easier. However, I want to add that I have always had a hard time leaving him in his bed crying. I can just see him telling me when he's older that he has to take sleeping pills because he has abondonment issues from when he was 2. So, I made sure this was never a cry thing, it was an exciting thing. I stayed with him to comfort him, and left a little earlier every night.

Now I just need to keep up with it. 21 days I heard is how long you do something before it's actually a habit. But don't worry I won't blog for 14 more days.

Thanks for keeping me motivated to make this milestone!

Cupcakes

This was a mini cupcake.

This was a big cupcake.

I got this idea from my awesome friend Nikki. You divide your white cake mix batter into however many colors you want. I did three: orange, blue, and green. Add food coloring until you like it. Then you take a spoonful from each color and layer into your cupcakes. When the kids bite into it they will see a burst of color. It was so much fun, and so much easier than I thought!

Night 6

Success! It was a crazy busy day, Alex's birthday party, a baptism, and a wedding. I worked nonstop all day long on saturday! When we got home, Joel, without being asked, took Benjamin into his room and put him to bed so I could get a break! It was wonderful! He had to stay with him for a while, but Joel had a lot of fun singing a bunch of primary songs with all three kids.

Ben woke up around 6 a.m. but then went back to sleep and woke up after 8. Ahhhh. Joel was already gone for church for his first Bishopric's counsel meeting and I got all the kids ready for church by myself. And I'm guessing that it was extra blessings, but this sunday morning was much easier than we've had in a while. I'm going to go with blessing, not that for some reason maybe dad makes it a crazier morning. :)

Day 5

I was off at a friend's house helping her do a little clean up and Ben fell asleep cuddling Katelyn. Well they have a friend over so Ben is in our bed:( We'll try again tomorrow night.

Day 4--I guess I should say Night 4

Ben didn't get a nap today because by the time guests left there wasn't enough time before piano students started coming. So he was super cranky, and bossy, and demanding. After dinner he took a bath and then we went to his bed and we laid down. He snuggled me while I sang to him and he fell asleep. This might actually be working!

day 3

Ben is asleep on his own bed. No fits! I held his hand for a minute and then sat at the end of his bed and sang primary songs as he fell asleep. And I might add there was no bottle tonight either!!

Hard worker

I heard some banging around so I went to investigate. Ben got a knife and crawled under his little bike to "fix" it. (It's not broken)

I think he learned this from watching and helping Daddy and Grandpa Clift underneath our van changing the brakes. I guess his braking needs a little work! :)

Day 2

I think I'm going to have to count this day as a failure. I didn't give Ben a nap because I have friends coming over tonight and I want him to sleep. While the kids and I did a little school work this evening Joel took Ben into his room and they watched Polar Express and Ben fell asleep. Sigh.

I think I will move him to his bed though, so maybe this could be a partial count?

Sleeping

I think I will have more accountability if I blog about it. Ben fell asleep in his own room. Night one! (Okay he's done this before but it's always such a battle I always give up after night three.)

So my goal is one whole week and all you people out there say that that should be enough. He fell asleep in his sister's bed but I was holding his hand while he fell asleep. I put him down to bed and walked away. He came into me saying he wanted mom's bed and I brought him back in. I didn't even have to do any yelling and there wasn't any screaming on his part. Then I went back to my room. After I did a load of laundry and went to my bed he started crying a scared cry. His brother and sister had both fallen asleep. So I sat next to his bed and held his hand until he fell asleep.

I think I probably shouldn't have held his hand, but my goal is to be in there less and less every night. I am hoping I am strong enough to not turn this into a habit.

So now I am off to bed! Nighty night! There's no Ben in my bed!

Garden pictures

These are the potatoes. Potatoes were an experiment, and so far so good. Next year I will have to plant them more in the back because they grow so big they take away sunlight from the other plants.

Most of the garden. We have another section of our backyard that we are dedicating to the pumpkins. But some mole or something dug up the giant pumpkins that we planted. So this next weekend we have to plant again. We have pumpkins growing up in a random spot where we threw all the dead pumpkin plants at the end of last year. And they are growing really well. So I think I will leave them.
The plant in the front is squash, and a little plant behind it is the little strawberry plant. It was behind the potatoes, but it was dying so I moved it and it is coming back to life.

The spikey plants are the artichokes. They look good. No fruit or blossoms yet. This is another experiment. We have no idea what we're doing, or what it will look like. But so far so good.

Lettuce, carrots, and amongst the carrots is lettuce from last year. Makes for a delicious salad. Just had another one for dinner. I'm hoping this garden will help me to lose some post-nursing weight:)

Clock

I have been on a hunt for a clock that I love to go in this spot above my couch. (Speaking of the couch, I made those pillowcase covers. It was totally easy. And one of these days I will go back to the fabric store and buy a bunch of different fabrics so I can change up the look in my front room all year long!) While I'm teaching I always have to look at my phone to know what time it is. I wanted a huge clock here to take up most the wall. But they were all ridiculously expensive.

While shopping at Deseret Book getting new scriptures for Alex because he is turning 8, I found this clock, and loved it. It was on sale. And I love this saying! Families are Forever!!

Pizza

I've been following some fun food blogs, so I thought I would do a little dinner that we love and that is so easy to do. We do this for those nights that I teach until 6:00 and there's not much time before the kids start going through the cupboards for snacks so I better hurry and feed them dinner.

I'm pretty sure the directions to making homemade bagel pizzas are self explanatory! But just in case we just tried Bagel Thins, and really loved them. Usually we would do english muffins or french bread. I guess you could be fancy and make your own dough, but I'm not that fancy at this stage in my life.

You spread on a little spaghetti sauce. ( I usually have half a jar in my fridge from spaghetti the night before.) you could add spices if you want, but I don't.

Sprinkle mozzerella cheese, or whatever cheese you like.

Put on your toppings. Sometimes it's just cheese. This time I thought ahead and bought pepporoni.

Since there's no cooking of the dough, I put it in the broiler for about 5 minutes until the cheese is all bubbly delicous and golden brown.

The pizza was gone before I had a chance to take a picture. But here's what's left!

Church

Today Joel was called to be Elder's Quorum President. We're excited, and nervous, and I'm so proud of him! It was nice knowing you Joel! :)

Garden

We planted a garden again this year. We are growing pumpkins, squash, peas, carrots, lettuce, potatoes and artichokes. It is so great having our own garden.

We've had a couple of different plants pop up from last year. So now we have two different types of lettuce, and we will have have two different types of pumpkins!

Today for lunch I wanted a salad. I didn't have any lettuce in our fridge and since it's sunday I won't go to the store. But now I will never have to go to the store because our lettuce is delicious and I just sent Katelyn out to pick me a couple of leaves. I poured on some homemade ranch, and yummy! I'll post some pictures soon. Did you know that when you grow your own lettuce you don't pluck the whole head of lettuce? You can just pick off some of the leaves and it will grow right back!