History in the making/Disrespecting Houston: Funny Ollie Quotes

Last week we mentioned to the kids that Daniel was going to be speaking in church on Sunday.  They were pretty excited when they heard the news, but I didn't realize just how big of a deal it was to them until Saturday night.  We were sitting around eating dinner, and out of the blue Oliver said, "You know, I think tomorrow is going to be a really historic day for Dad!" 

Daniel and I were laughing so hard.  I don't even know how my 7-year old knows how to say things like "really historic day".  The funniest part was that Ollie was kind of right - Daniel's never given a talk in our ward, and he even wore a tie, which he never does.  It was a historic day, indeed. 

I found some other quotes from Ollie that I had written down on a little scrap of paper during the summer, but never got around to posting:

1)  Oliver loves maps and anything to do with geography.  He is always studying the map of the United States that we have on our kitchen table and looking for cities with funny names (his favorite is Truth or Consequences, in New Mexico).  Anyway, once after looking at the map for awhile, he asked me, "Is Houston a big city?"  I told him that it is, and he gave me a really surprised look and exclaimed, "Oh!  I did not realize that; I'll treat it with a little more respect from now on." 

Haha!  I honestly had no idea he had been disrespecting Houston in his mind. 

2)  Once when we were walking to the pool to go swimming, Oliver had taken off his shoes (they were hurting his feet) and was walking barefoot.  The ground was pretty hot, and he complained to me that his feet were getting burned.  He then paused, gave me a funny look, and said, "Well, I guess that's just what life is all about - getting burned!" 

Where does he hear this stuff? 

3) "Wouldn't life just be sooo much better if you had the force?"

October pictures

I always like to post some of the extra pictures from each month that weren't really worthy of a post all by themselves.

Here are Rachel, Lizza, and Henry at Crowe's Nest farm (a fun place to go and see farm animals).  We got to see a cow being milked, and Henry about died with excitement.  I guess this outing could have qualified for its own blog post, except most of my pictures turned out like this (I have awesome photography skills!):

They also had some wild and exotic animals there, like ostriches!  We went on a little hayride behind a tractor, and stopped to check them out.  There was a little baby ostrich that was so cute.  I guess the dad ostriches are the responsible caretakers of the bunch - at one point all the grown-up ostriches took off running really fast across the field, and the baby was trying hard to follow them, but got a little lost and was left way behind.  The dad noticed and went back to find the little guy, and then we all cheered as they came running up together.  It was very funny to watch:

Henry is really lucky to have a lot of high-end toys.  Here he is with one of his favorites, called, "Try to stick the little popsicle sticks through the slot in the cashew can lid!"   What fun!

Oliver catches some sort of creature pretty much every day as he walks home from school.  Here he is with a little teeny frog (on top of a penny, which he also found on the way home):

He wanted a picture of both the frog and the penny, so we could see just how little it really was:

Pancakes - a Saturday morning favorite:

Lizza loves breaking hers up into little tiny pieces:

Henry noticed that none of the other kids were having plain pancakes, so I let him try dipping his in grape syrup.  He was thrilled with the idea, and started out with such careful little dips, I really thought he'd make it through with no mess:

Haha!:

Tristan and Oliver always have grand after-school projects that they come up with.  One of Tristan's was to make Rachel a "Super-girl" costume, completely out of cardstock:

She even had a jet-pack on back:

Henry loves helping me vacuum.  He feels he works better with a toilet seat around his neck:

What is it with my kids and toilet seats? (flashback picture, July 2007):

Me and the kids on my 29th birthday.  I decided to skip the cake, and made myself a key lime pie:

King Henry with his two loves - a book and a dog:

He is all about books these days:

Rachel and Lizza playing the Memory game.  I've started playing it with them in the evenings when the boys are gone with Daniel at football practice, and it's become something they really look forward to.  Lizza caught on a little too quickly, and can now beat all of us (seriously):

Rachel's Motivation to Have Kids

Rachel always tells me she wants to be four things when she grows up: "an artist (very likely), a ballerina (doubtful), a bike rider (she still has training wheels), and, of course, a mom."

She loves pretending to be a mom. She and Lizza are always playing what they call "the family game", in which they pretend to be all sorts of different people in different families. Rachel usually ends up getting to be the mom.

Anyway, yesterday they were having a discussion about kids. Elizabeth had gotten the wild idea that when she's a mom, she's not going to have any kids, and Rachel was getting all annoyed ("Lizza, that's not even possible! Tell her, Mom!") Rachel then assured me that she definitely wants to have kids when she's a mom. I asked her why. I'm not really sure how I expected her to answer, but it was not this:

Rachel: Well, I want to have kids for two reasons. One, if I don't have any kids, there won't be any reason to stay home all day. And two, I don't want holidays to just be dumb.

Me: What?! What do you mean? Why would holidays be dumb without kids? (Yes, I was ignoring her first reason. And also ignoring that she said "dumb", a word not usually allowed.)

Rachel (rolling her eyes at me as she pointed out the obvious): Are you serious, Mom? Think about it - Halloween would be sooo dumb! Do you think I just want to walk around all by myself? How will I go trick-or-treating?! I need kids for that!

Silly me - I guess I have been taking my kids for granted. And Elizabeth better start re-thinking her mom-with-no-kids plan, or she won't be getting much candy when Halloween comes around.

I really do think Rachel will be a good mom, though. She is very good at taking care of people. She always helps me with Henry, and when Elizabeth got her shots and her legs were really sore, Rachel carried her around the whole day.



Awhile ago she got some hand-me-down shoes that were way too big for her, but she absolutely adored them because 1) they had high heels, and 2) they passed the "click, click, click" test on the tile floor. I put them in her dress-up box instead of out in the garage with the too-big clothes.

Somehow they became her go-to "mom" shoes, and she wore them whenever she was playing the "family game":

I love the hand on hip in this one:


Only a real mom can pull off that whole swimsuit/high heels look so well:


In her mind, the mom shoes make any outfit better:


Whispering some sort of mom advice to her "little one":


??


She does okay without the shoes, too:

The proud mother of triplets:


And my personal favorites - just some busy moms talking on their cell-phones while pushing their babies around (and wearing dishcloths for aprons):

I doubt these poor moms even have time for trick-or-treating!

Halloween

Pre-Halloween excitement:

Clockwise, starting from top left:

1. Ghosts, bats, and jack-o-lanterns hanging over our kitchen table. The kids created this all by themselves at the beginning of October, and they've been super pleased with it all month. I got so used to it, I forgot I can take it down now that Halloween is over. It might become a permanent decoration.
2. Mini-pumpkins that the kids painted. Only Tristan's pumpkin (the greenish one on the end) was left bare, because he claimed he "wasn't really into painting pumpkins anymore." Whatever.
3. Elizabeth trying to be very brave and reach into the gutted pumpkin to grab a seed (the kids are always grossed out by the stringy pumpkin guts, so this year I offered 10 cents to anyone who would reach in and grab out a seed. It almost wasn't worth it for Lizza, but in the end she decided she couldn't let everyone else be braver than she was. Mostly she just wanted 10 cents though.)
4. Triumphant Lizza with her pumpkin seed.
5. The door of the girls' room. I told Rachel and Lizza they couldn't hang their Halloween drawings all over the house, but they could hang whatever they wanted in their room.
6. Creepy spider web. I always feel bad that I don't do more holiday decorations for the kids (see here and here)- they were thrilled (and shocked) when I bought this spider web and hung it upstairs by their rooms. $2 goes a long way when expectations are low, I guess.
7. Tristan made an awesome Halloween bingo game for us to play.
8. Rachel bravely reaching into the pumpkin.

Posing with the jack-o-lantern:


Rachel, Lizza, and Henry getting ready to go to a party (they were waiting at the window for our ride). This was one of Lizza's many costumes - we went to a few different Halloween events, and every time she would grab something different out of the dress-up box. I think here she is a ballerina queen (Rachel's a dancer, and Henry's a pirate).


Rachel won the oreo stacking contest:



Halloween Night:

Tristan. Pirate.


Oliver. Pirate. He lost his first tooth a few hours before we went trick-or-treating (he pulled it out himself) and was very pleased with the authentic pirate look it gave him.


Rachel. Dancer. She's never been in any dance classes, but recieved this little dance outfit as a hand-me-down, and there was no talking her out of it. (I tried - the original plan was for them all to be pirates).

And of course, because she's Rachel, she added a special twist - she was wearing this weird necklace thing with a big fake pink watch attached to it. She told me it was her special dancing watch that let her know when it was time to start dancing. She made a big point of checking it all the time, and requested that I get a picture of her looking down at it.

Elizabeth. Pirate princess.

She wasn't sure how she felt about the clip-on earring. Rachel, on the other hand, was thrilled to learn about clip-ons. Both she and Elizabeth have vowed that they will never get their ears pierced and will just "wear bracelets, necklaces, and rings to be fancy" (not a moral stance - they are just scared of the pain). Rachel has now decided that her future will be in clip-ons. I told her she might change her mind when she's older, but I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Henry. Little pirate baby who wouldn't stand still for the camera.

The whole gang getting ready to go - four pirates and a time-conscious dancer:

We let Henry go out trick-or-treating to a few houses before I took him home and put him to bed. I thought he would get the hang of it and be excited about getting treats. He wasn't. He was just excited to run around through people's yards. He did go up to a few doors, but he'd always turn around and run away before he even got any treats.

Handing out treats after they got back - one of the highlights of their evening:

The Day After:

We always do a candy "draft" after Halloween that the kids (and Daniel) take pretty seriously. All the candy is combined and then sorted into different types.

Daniel then gave a little pre-draft talk, touching on different draft strategies, and also letting the kids know what some of his favorites were ("This is a Butterfinger. If you choose this, you will get a spanking because I want them all. These are suckers. Some kids like them, but they are gross. If you choose them, that is unacceptable and you will be out of the draft." Etc.) Poor Elizabeth was nodding her head solemnly through all of this - I had to quickly explain that he was joking.

Then a draft order was determined and each kid got to choose 15 pieces, to be eaten whenever they want. It's funny to watch what they do with it. Lizza plowed through 4 or 5 of hers right away. Tristan has decided to save all of his, and only eat a few pieces on the weekends, and none during the week. The other kids are somewhere in between.

And I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do (Daniel and I got all the leftovers).