Power of the Priesthood

I did not have a chance to write last week since the girls and I all went down to Denver right after 2nd hour for yet another Dr appointment. In other words, the following account is from memory two weeks ago, with my mom brain, ya know! Yeowch

The kids all started some sort of after school activity right after Labor Day. Amelia has Piano with Mrs Raymond on Monday at 5 and ballet at 6, Evelyn has ballet on Wednesday at 4, Thursday is PT for Mia and gymnastics for the boys. The busy afternoons make it challenging for me to get dinner ready. I need to use the crock pot more instead of my normal last minute scurry. I am trying to rearrange the schedule a bit so Mia has piano on Thursday and PT on Wednesday. That way she does not have something every day since her homework takes an hour or so. We did homework at the park, the memorial garden, and the hospital that week. The little kids enjoyed our afternoon jaunts. On PT day we hunkered down in the van while a hail storm battered the vehicle. Evelyn was quite traumatized by all the loud pings. Shortly after the hail a gorgeous triple rainbow showed up in the sky. Evelyn danced in the puddles singing a song about pretty rainbows. She adores rainbows. I was sad only one rainbow showed up in the panorama I took. The sky that night was unbelievably cool with red tinted clouds clear to the horizon and 3/4s across the sky dome.

Josie is now sleeping unswaddled. She went from quite restless to sleeping the entire night. With several baby food meals, nursing, and sleeping with her arms free she is now sleeping all night. She learned how to find her binky in the dark! I love, love, love waking her up in the morning to find her arms cradled around her binky and another binky on her face. Silly girl! She is sitting up quite well now. So far she is eating baby food at noon and for dinner.

After school on Thursday I picked up Everett's backpack to find it was leaking something sticky. I quickly found his lunchbox was the source of the problem. He saved his chocolate milk from lunch to finish drinking at home. Too bad he already opened it. He was also quite upset his teacher would not let him count past 9 when he could totally count to 100. Earlier this week his homework was to count as high as possible. He got distracted after 111 because Phillip kept making fart sounds.

Evelyn's newest trend is to dump anything she can. I spend all day cleaning up small piles she's dumped (aka helping Evelyn clean up her messes). Last week the piles she made were more than small. One day she got extra angry so stormed to her room for timeout. I checked on her a couple moments later, she was pulling books from her bookcase. She noticed me and started pulling off books from the shelves even faster. I told her she had to clean up the mess to get out of time out. Great goodness, she ran to the door with her teeth and claws extended. She went on a rampage through the house pushing Josie over, hitting Phillip with a broom, pulling Everett's hair, and unplugging the piano Amelia was practicing on. I finally sequestered her in her room by attaching a bungee cord around her door handle and secured the other end to my door handle. It was intense. Since then when she gets angry she gets violent and destructive. My solution was to drag in an extra car seat and strap her in until she gets control of herself. It is very effective! Once she stops crying and apologizes she gets a nice hug, snuggle, and then helps me clean up. What a live wire.

Have you ever seen the famous "Soccer Flop"? By definition flopping is : In association football, flopping is an attempt by a player to gain an unfair advantage by falling to the ground and possibly feigning an injury, to appear as if a foul has been committed. Flops are often used to exaggerate the amount of contact present in a challenge. Well we have a family flopper. Evelyn is a total flopper. If she lags behind instead of running to catch up she will very slowly pretend to trip then sit on the ground. She cries until I either walk farther away or come back to help her up. She carefully trips over her feet then laughs at herself for tripping. She softly touches something sharp then waits to cry until someone notices. It is about the silliest thing I've seen in a kid. This week she pretended she was stuck because her shoes were not on, then instead of getting them on she "tripped" over them and muttered silly shoes!

Friday night the boys attended the Father and Son's camp out. Phillip and Everett were beside themselves when they got home and realized it was finally camping day. Everett whipped out a backpack and stuffed 6 pairs of undies, a pair of swim trunks, and some socks. I helped him add a couple other necessary items. I heard they had a great time waving around smoking sticks, cooking dinner over a campfire, and play "fart worms" in their sleeping bags. Poor Phillip did not sleep well, he was too hot, had to pee several times, and woke up when the trains rumbled by.

The girls kicked off our boy vacation with a walk to Oya Grill for dinner. Amelia is especially fond of that restaurant and it is only a few blocks away. We spent a good hour pampering our feet with pedicures. Evelyn was very excited to discover my extra makeup drawer. I let the girls apply make up while I worked on the nail polish. Evelyn ended up with black raccoon eyes. Amelia painted my toes last of all. She did a good job! We popped some corn and watched Barbie Starlight Adventure together. Evelyn soon crashed on the couch. After the movie Amelia slept in my bed. We had a silly time playing with the face masks on Snapchat. Our favorites were the panda and deer masks. Next morning we took some donuts to the park for a morning treat and excursion. By the time the boys got home Amelia was leaving for a long play date with Katelyn. I spent most of the afternoon cleaning the van, the carpets, the interior, and giving it a close clean up. The kids went with me to the car wash. I power washed the bugs off the front and used the high-powered spray to clean the removable carpets. I think the van looks at least 10 shades lighter now.

Sunday the kids performed in the Primary Program at church. I could hear Amelia sing at times! Evelyn was in heaven since Justin got to sit with us for the first time in forever. The kids sounded so amazing with each song. They practiced hard and long, the result was very pleasant. We all got a laugh when Everett delivered his memorized line, "God can help us through the power of the priesthood." He sounded like Sylvester the Cat, spit and all. I think the microphone was wet after his Power of the Priesthood. Amelia slicked his hair to the side before church with water and hairspray. He looked the part of a cute gentleman. Amelia read her favorite scriptures Mosiah 18:8-11 about Alma baptizing at the Waters of Mormon. She was so distraught the night before because we could not find her baptism notebook where she had written the scriptures down. She was so relieved when we found the notebook.