Hijinks and High Tea (Image Heavy!)

I've been promising pictures for a while, so buckle up, because here they are!
Be prepared for a lot of random stories.



To explain these first few pictures:
For the past few weeks there had been too much yelling (from The Momma) and too many consequences (doled out to The Littles)(generally involving toys and their un-picked-up state), so I decided we needed to have a fun day. No pressure and much indulgence of the imagination. Thus the Imaginary Friends Birthday Party was born.

Here The Eldest is enjoying a cream-cheese frosted raisin applesauce cupcake. She is a wizard princess, and her imaginary friend's name is Clarabell.

Miss Bubbly the Cowboy Princess is enjoying a drink of pink milk (made with a generic Kool-Aid knockoff--it was too sweet but the kids loved it anyway)--having just told us what Sally, her imaginary friend, had to say about the party.
Hats, wearing one of The Momma's necklaces, perfume, and costumes were mandatory.

Here's the setup--the girls helped me arrange the flowers in various containers and I even dug out one of my wedding presents to arrange the food on. Notice the tablecloth. I never use my tablecloth. This was DEFINITELY a special occasion.

A closeup shot of the goods: pink milk in one of the kids' teacups, the aforementioned applesauce cupcakes, lime wafer rolled cookies, and pumpkin cookies with chocolate chips. YUM!
I totally ruined their dinner. But The Eldest and Miss Bubbly (and Clarabell and Sally) declared the party a success, so overall, it was a win.

As I was uploading pictures from the camera onto the new laptop, it pulled up quite a few blasts from the past, many pictures that I thought I'd erased years ago, including this one. Anyway, here's my crew wearing swimming diapers and a too-small BYU knit cap. Adorable, aren't they? This would probably be in the early summer of 2006.

A few days ago, The Hub was giving me some alone time by watching the girls while I read in the other room for a while. He realized that he'd sent Miss Bubbly to get dressed and she was
a) taking too long
b) being too quiet.
So with a little investigation, this is the small personage he ended up sending to my room. I had a very good laugh.


One of my breakfast specialties is chocolate chocolate chip scones. I don't make them often--no more than once every 10 days or so--and I tend to end up with unusually ornamented offspring.
Here we have the chocolate vampire:

And if you've seen The Dark Knight, you might recognize this chocolate imitation of The Joker:


And last, but never least, here is our Miss Bubbly, being pouty. Pay attention to her choice of seating.
Yep. She's sulking in a Barbie horse carriage. And yes, the wheels managed to stay on.

So there you have it. We've been busy this week, making the house more homey--we now have curtains!!--and getting organized and being social. We haven't gotten callings in our new ward yet, though I officially have one visiting teachee. And we've joined the ward choir--that'll be interesting come performance time. Can you trust a five-year-old to keep a three-year-old contained in a pew for eight minutes while both parents are on the stand, singing?
I don't know either.

I'm off now to enjoy my peach soda and my slice of a giant chocolate chip cookie with nuts. Good night, and Good Eats!

The Other Rewards of Moving

The past three weeks have been an education in paring down and truly living in simplicity. We've made two trips to Goodwill to drop off sizable amounts of Things We No Longer Need (though I am stubbornly holding onto the girls' baby clothes) and we're planning a third trip. Yikes! Why didn't I get rid of this stuff before we moved? NO idea.

Anyway.

Part of this purging was going through the girls' toys. My goodness, they had a lot of toys. That right: HAD. I involved them in the purging process and they willingly said goodbye to many toys that they no longer played with. Did my best to explain that their old toys would go to a place where children who didn't have any toys would have access to them. Hopefully we're getting the idea of charity across.

So as we went through the girls' toys, the thought crossed my mind several times that maybe a gift-giving suggestion list might be a good idea for me to post. Feel free to ignore it if you so desire or if you don't find the list helpful.

Gift Guide:

1. Homeschooling text books. (Email me if you want a list. Oh yes, I have a list.)

2. Wooden blocks--the shaped kind, not the alphabet kind. We already have the alphabet ones.

3. Dress up clothes--hats, gloves, fancy scarves, fancy dresses, fancy shoes, capes, masks, fabulous costume jewelry. Miss Bubbly wants a Peter Pan costume, a pirate costume, and a cowboy costume for her next birthday--she's mentioned this several times in the past three months.

4. A chest to put all the dress up clothes in!

5. A globe. The one we have now is three inches in diameter--it's not easy to point out countries like Uzbekistan...can't see the name.

6. Quality art supplies--good paint brushes, paints, paper, colored pencils, and so forth. And a box to put them in.

7. Books, books, glorious books!

8. Bookshelves. (Just kidding.)(Mostly.)

9. Movies! Specifically, the kids love Toy Story 2 (Miss Bubbly would watch it every day if she could), the Barbie movies (which are smarter than you'd think they'd be), Kung Fu Panda, and Meet the Robinsons.

10. Toys that allow the imagination to soar, crafts to stretch their creation skills, that kind of thing.

11. Stickers. I hate to say this, because then they end up all over the house, but the kids love them. Foam stickers especially.

12. Clothing, of course!

13. Anything handmade. We like reasons to be sentimental about gifts.


I really hope this guide is helpful. If it is, let me know and I'll keep it updated. Well, as updated as I keep things.


Anyway, so now we've got a manageable cache of possessions and nothing extra, which is nice. I like having closets that actually have a little wiggle room in them. (I should probably work on paring down my costume collection next. Gulp.) And look for pictures in the next entry! Miss Bubbly's been amusing herself with foam stickers and impersonating The Joker from The Dark Knight (not that she was aware of it).

Things to Remember When Moving

When you move, know that you will unpack in this order:
1. Toilet paper
2. Pots, pans, dishes, food
3. Toothbrushes
4. Beds

Everything else can wait a few days while you take stock of your surroundings. And with a little determination, a week without internet, and a box cutter, you can eliminate half of the towering cardboard stacks in your living room, especially if you already know where your tools are so you can reassemble your furniture.

It takes more than a week to get the stale smell out of your living quarters, but less than a day to get used to it.

When packing, WRITE DOWN WHERE YOU PUT THE REMOTE. This will save your sanity when you unpack.

As you fill the last boxes, don't leave things behind that you think you can easily replace. The more easily you think you can replace them, the more headache-inducing it will be.

Number your boxes. Label them thoroughly. Keep a list. Check it twice. Then, perhaps, you won't lose any boxes in your transfer between residences. Also, write down the stuff you got rid of as you got tired of packing, because after you move, you'll be convinced you're missing a box, despite the checklist, because you can't find such-and-such thing. Such-and-such thing is probably happily living at someone else's house, having been shuffled through the local thrift system.

We like our new apartment. We really like our new ward--they're very friendly, and very small. We'll be needed here for sure.

The Hub's job is going well--he's been in training all week, and that's all I know. He'll have to post about his new job himself.

And there you go. We're happy, we're healthy, and we had to buy a new remote. The end.