Prayer

I often chuckle at my children's prayers as they tend to inform Heavenly Father what has taken place and what is going to take place rather than the traditional giving thanks for what they have and asking for blessings. One of Trenton's recent prayers was a little more traditional and ended something like this. . . . . "Bless our pizza because we are having pizza. And pizza is so yummy, but it's a little bit hot so we drink our spicy drink***. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen" It's kind of cute to hear a kid pray no matter what they say and their innocence just makes it that much funnier when they do end up being comical. ***For anyone not around my kids frequently this is what Trenton decided soda (or anything carbonated) is called and it has become part of our family's vocabulary.

The difference between boys and girls

I took the kids to the children's museum during Trenton's winter break from school. They have this little place for kids to paint their faces there and I always find it amusing to see their final masterpieces. All of the little girls there are usually walking around with a cute little heart or butterfly or a little kitten nose with whiskers painted on (cleary the careful work of a caregiver). Then there are my boys that just try to cover as much of their faces as possible before I ask them to let another child have a turn. The picture above is actually post Trenton cleaning off his face. I'll just have to wait another year to try my heart painting skills out on Brooklyn. I also don't make them clean it off until they want to so they went to the gym that night looking like characters from Lord of the Flies or something.

Zoo Lights 2007

The Oregon Zoo does this big thing called Zoo lights for the holiday season and we finally bundled ourselves up and went this year. When it comes to number of lights, I would say they've got temple square beat. It was just as chilly as Salt Lake though. Dave's dad (pictured above) is proof of the temperature and brutality of the windchill as he gladly placed function above fashion for the evening and adorned himself with a blanket, looking as if he were playing the part of Joseph or something.

Hopefully this dress looks better on Brooklyn

Before Christmas I was playing with Dallas' hair and decided it was actually long enough for pigtails. Well, it was all downhill from there . . .out came the bows and dress and soon Dallas decided he was pretending to be his good friend Macie. He has begged several times since then to be "Macie" again, but rest assured that this was a one time deal for me.

Although, I wasn't able to stop his Oma from putting makeup on him and his girl cousin over Christmas. One of my sons likes to wear high heels and the other dresses and makeup. . . . .should I be worried?

Fat Dallas part II

Seriously, where did he get these legs? (Sorry, as I find old pictures I can't help but share.) Stay tuned for pictures that were actually taken in the last month rather than two years ago =).

Prettige Kerstdagen

Two things have let me know that I have lived in Portland too long.

1. I bought and now use my own reusable grocery bags in an attempt to go green (okay the real reason I bought them is that I can fit way more groceries in each bag and it cuts down the number of trips I have to make from my car to our house after a visit to the store)
2. I bought, cooked and served a tofurky as a meal for my family (No, I am not going vegetarian or vegan or anything, just wanted to give it a try. My review: It was definitely just okay for me. I probably wouldn't buy one again.

If I ever make it to reason #3 which would be proudly displaying a "Keep Portland Weird" sticker, please come quickly and rescue me from this city.

Anyway, on another note . . .cultural rich Portland does have the perk of being host to a Dutch Store. Dave's mom is from the Netherlands (which makes our kids 1/4 Dutch . .pretty much the only pure blood they have as I am very much a European Mutt) so we like to stop in on occasion and pick up a Dutch treat and take the kids to go visit Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet at Christmas time.

Here are the pics from this year's visit. Don't the boys look cute in their wooden shoes that we got in Holland last summer.

Even in his sleep

Lately, my blogging seems to have a common theme of Dallas, and this one is not any different. Yesterday, I was amused not once, but twice by Dallas during the times that one would think to be calm . . . naptime and bedtime. We have this new "deal" where Dallas gets to "read" books with the lights on for five minutes before I turn the light off for his nap. Well, as you might imagine I sometimes get preoccupied with other things around the house and it takes me a little more than five minutes to remember to go back and turn off the light. Often he will shout for me to turn the light off, but yesterday he didn't and by the time I remembered on my own, I found him like this in his crib (and yes he is really asleep. In fact he slept right on through me taking this picture.) H e was the one who decided to take his clothes off after lunch and slip into his more comfortable pjs, inside out of course. Nothing like falling asleep to some quality reading. I am definitely convinced he is my son as I can rarely read a page without dozing off. And for the next picture. I woke from serious REM rebound sleep about 3:30 this morning to Dallas shouting my name. I stumbled into his room sure he just wanted water or something like usual, but instead it was his sad cry of "I super cold mommy. I super cold." This isn't the first time he has decided to strip off his pjs before falling asleep, however I recently showed him how to take off his diaper so he could do it on his own on before getting into the bath and for those few occasions he actually wants to use the potty(not a great lesson for parents to give their children in case you're wondering), and lo and behold this time he had truly stripped down to complete nakedness before falling asleep. Luckily or unluckily, he managed to "pee pee" during his sleep which I am sure woke him up. Awake, he was able to recognize he was both wet and cold. I did a quick sheet change and redressing with my eyes half open and he quickly went back to dreamland. I crawled back in bed and announced to Dave that our genius chlid had been sleeping buck naked and just peed all over himself. Dave, half alseep himself, kind of mumbled something about Dalls being stupid and rolled over. Parenthood truly does bring good reasons to laugh. The stories that Dallas's girlfriends will be hearing someday. I can't wait. . . .and I have lots of pictures for proof.

Just another crazy day!

So, I thought of the many titles this post could have carried. . . "Happy Thanksgiving" "Happy Anniversary" "5 years and 3 Kids Later" "A warm evening in front of a Cozy Blaze" But . . . .as life would have it, none of these fit quite right.

November 22nd marked our 5th anniversary and what a day it was. (I will interject here that Dave is a great husband and in the true spirit of the day brought home a beautiful bouquet of flowers and wooden salad bowl and tongs (as wood is the 5th anniversary object) along with some martinelli's the night before our big day). I guess we should probably consider that our special day as Thanksgiving day went something like this:

Wake up in our freezing cold house to 3 children who may never understand the concept of sleeping in. Leave Dave with all 3 kids while I go to teach a whopping class of 5 people step aerobics late in the morning. Come home to try and scramble to get the family dressed and my fruit salad made for thanksgiving dinner out at my uncle's house. While I am working on this, good old Dallas manages to dump two bottles of sparkly glitter glue out in two different places in our house which would have been much easier to clean up had our kids not recently broke our spot bot. While we're cleaning up this mess, Dallas keeps climbing on top of the counter to get baking chocolate squares from on top of the fridge . .shoving the whole thing in his mouth and then drooling nasty chocolate drool all over. We finally get out of there alive. Did I mention that Brooklyn, who is normally a very good baby is screaming through all of this? yeah, well she continues to scream at my uncle's house so Dave eventually leaves to find someplace open where he can buy infant ibuprofen. In the meantime, dinner is served and I'm still holding an unhappy baby and forget to even take the fruit salad out of the fridge (glad I spent the time to make it ha ha!!) Dave gets back in time to sit down to eat while everyone else is finishing up. We try and give brooklyn ibuprofen, but she pretty much spits it all back out. We spent a couple more hours there mostly just looking at ads and planning our morning for blackout friday. We decide to leave and are leaving the boys with my parents for the night so we get in the car and are on our way.

I check to make sure Dave has the ibuprofen because I grabbed the dropper which was the only thing still on the counter. He tells me he left it on the counter, so we drive back to my uncle's house to find out where it went. My motherly instinct led me straight to interrogate Dallas because if I had to put my money on what kid was behind its disappearance, it would be him, hands down. Well, Dallas in his slowly improving speech is able to answer my question of what happened to the medicine with" It hall gone, I drink it hall gone mommy" He likes to put an "h" at the beginning of any word that starts with a sort of vowel sound. Anyway, he shows me where he put the bottle and sure enough it is completely empty. (Now Dave is glad that he missed most of dinner to go buy ibuprofen so that Brooklyn can spit out her dose and Dallas can drink the remainder of the bottle undercover). We called poison control for well, let's just say not the first time. We're lucky enought that the amount wasn't fatal or anything. . just a little rough on the old kidneys which get the lovely task of processing twice the amount that any kid should have over a period of a few days. They were nice enough to let us know not to give him anymore in the next 24 hours! Good thing since we were all out anyway =). We eventually made it home that night and well . . we went to bed because we were getting up with the baby at 4:30 the next morning to go shopping. I think it will be memorable anyway. Memorable in the same way that my new years eve spent pregnant with Dallas sleeping in a twin bed with Trenton at my parent's house while Dave was in Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl is memorable =).

So what do we have to show after 5 years of marriage?
1. A picture of each of us on our drive home that evening. Doesn't Dave look cute with his "wow this is my life?" face?
2. Two really sexy sons and a cute little girl that had to put up with them. (Just for the record, Dallas put on those underwear, and if you're wondering if he is potty trained. The answer is only if pooping in those backwards underwear later on that day counts.)
3. A dream that perhaps this beautiful fire Dave built in our fireplace a few weeks ago can be a part of our anniversary next year (minus the billowing smoke taking over our house and giving it a nice campfire fresh scent for the next couple of weeks).

For those of you who like country music, I like to think of my life paralleling the country song "Just another day in paradise".

That being said, Happy Anniversary Honey, I love you and oddly enough wouldn't want it any other way! You're the best.