BINGO!

Tonight the kids elementary school had a Bingo night. It was such a blast! I've never really actually played Bingo for reals so it was really fun! Well I was sitting next to Christina (4) and I was helping her with her cards and guess what! She got the very first Bingo of the entire night! It was so cute! Of course she didn't really realize at first what was going on but she definitely loved picking out her prize! Poor Connor (6) had been sick for the last couple of days and was so excited to go to Bingo that he was so sad that he didn't get any Bingos...I felt sooo bad!

Caroline's Birthday!

Today is Caroline's 9th birthday! Here are nine things I love about her!

1. She is an amazing sister, you can tell how much her brother and sister just love her!

2. She is a huge helper! I don't know what I would have done without her when I first started because I was always asking her how to do things and where things go!

3. She's a great Bass player, I love going to her bass concerts in the family room and listening to her play!

4. Caroline knows how to have fun, whether it be playing games, dressing up her dolls, playing with her siblings, acting silly or just making faces...

5. Caroline loves to read! This girl would seriously read all day I'm sure if she was allowed to! Instead she just stays up really late reading in bed!

6. She's super smart! Caroline loves school and does so well in it! She loves doing science experiments at home and creating things on her own.

7. She's tall! Caroline could be a model someday because she is already so tall! I better start practicing volleyball with her so that she gets a great advantage!!!

8. She's an amazing pancake maker! She'll put anything you want in them as long as you order it! If you ask she'll even pour your syrup for you!

9. Caroline is an amazing girl! She loves you who for who you are and wouldn't want you to be anyone else, she has the kind of personality that makes you want to be with her and she's so kind to everyone she meets!

Happy Birthday Caroline! I hope you have a wonderful day!!!

My First Snow Day!

Today was my very first snow day EVER! Well of course that's because growing up in Mesa, AZ doesn't really give you a good reason to have one... I had always imagined snow days being a little more fun though, of course that was because I didn't imagine that I would be the grown up taking care of three kids!

The kids wanted to play in the snow so we got all bundled up for the cold and went outside and played for awhile. Me and Caroline made a pretty big snowman, who knew that snow could be SO heavy! Caroline was laughing at my horrible snowman building skills because basically I have none! I was always the kid who stayed inside the cabin when my siblings were playing in the snow because I didn't want to to get wet and cold! Of course now I live somewhere where it's cold and snowy! You get used to it!

Well after we played in the snow the kids stayed warm under a few blankets and watched a movie while I (and sometimes Caroline) worked on Caroline's science fair project. Her project basically told you how you would be a different age on another planet because we measure our age by the Earth's revolutions and so for instance Mercury revolves around the sun in only like 88 days so we would be a lot older just because the year would be 88 days instead of 365...get it?! And on the farthest planet we would be like point zero something years old just because it takes sooooo long for it to go around the sun! Basically this was Caroline's mom's science fair project, then mine, and then Carolines, if you put it in the order of how much work you put into it... but it was fun learning about all of this stuff

Stew Leonards!

Ok this post is for all of my readers from the West! Here in Connecticut there is a store called Stew Leonards. I guess it's the biggest dairy store and it was on "Ripley's believe it or not". I went there for the first time today and I seriously didn't know what I had walked into! It's like Ikea in that it doesn't have grocery isles, but it goes around and around and you go through all of the areas, I was just hoping I would find what I needed because I was sooo confused! But here are a few pictures that made me laugh when I saw them so I had to take pictures with my cell phone!

This picture made me laugh because it made me think of Krispy Kreme, except no donuts, just milk...

And of course what kind of store doesn't have singing milk? These things were actually moving and singing...

Braids!

Today I got a tiny taste of what my mother must have gone through with me! Normally it's very hard to do Christina's hair but if you get her sidetracked then it's not too bad. Well as we were watching tv she didn't seem to care that I kept playing with her hair, so I started to French Braid it. Well it looked really cute when I was done so I wanted her to wear it like that to school! But she kind of freaked out and didn't like that her hair was in "knots" as she called them and wanted them out! The braids looked better than this but this picture is after she had tried to rip it out a few times:

I realized what I had done to my mom because when I was little I would scream everytime she would try to do my hair and I hated to sit still for it... Mom, you can do my hair now if you want to...

Gracie!

How could I not miss this face?! This is my neice Grace, she turned one in December, she is such a doll! I wish I was in Arizona so that I could hug her and kiss her and play with her! I'm so sad that she probably will have no clue who I am the next time she sees me!

I showed Rosalind (the mom I work for) these pictures and she said that she could see the family resemblence and that Grace looked like she could be related to me, so I guess if everytime you look at me you just want to hug me and kiss me too, then yeah I guess we do look a lot alike!

I guess one of their neighbors was babysitting her and she took these pictures, I'm so glad, I love to see pictures of the kids growing up...

3 little monkeys jumping on the bed...

Here's a few little reason of why I love my job:

This morning after I went to the bathroom I left my door to my room open and it was so cute because I could hear that the kids had all gotten into bed with their mom and they were making up songs about the monkeys in the bed and putting their names into it. Caroline (8) really liked the verse were Connor (6) fell off and bumped his head and her momma didn't call the doctor, haha Rosalind (their mom) didn't think that verse was very funny though! Caroline really likes making rhymes or substituting words into songs, for some reason she really loves to subsitute Connor's name too... It was fun to just lay in bed and listen to their cuteness...

Very soon after all this singing and laughing they each slowly found their way into my room since the door was open, Caroline got some Rook cards from my closet and she and I played a few rounds of "Go Fish" on my bed while Christina (4) just sat and watched and laughed whenever we sayed "Go Fish!", she is so cute!

Another thing that I got to do was after a TON of persuasion I got Caroline to say she'd let me curl her hair for church! All I had to do was owe her 5 minutes of back scratching, 3 smarties candies, and she got to watch a movie on my portable dvd player while I did her hair. Well her hair turned out SOOOOO cute! I even hear she got some compliments at church about it... I'm amazing, I know... Hopefully next time I won't have to owe her so much to do it, because I know she loved the attention she got!

The Garbage Museum!

Today Christina (4 year old) and I went on a field trip for her preschool to the Garbage Museum! I'm not making this up, there really is a Garbage Musuem! The picture below proves it!

It was a pretty cool place! They started off by telling us ways that we can use the food we don't eat to make soil. They showed the kids how you can put fruits, veggies, egg shells, etc into an outside or inside container and that the bugs will make amazing soil for you! This is the top of a little place that you can go inside that has fake bugs and fake food in it that you can touch, the top has ants, snails, slugs, and worms crawling on all the food and soil.

Here's Christina inside touching I think a slug...

Then they showed us this container that you can have inside your house that has red worms in it, this is also for soil purposes... It was pretty gross, they wanted us to smell it, it smelled like dirt, which is the point they were trying to get across, basically they were saying that it is insect poo, but it's amazing soil...

Ok right when you walk in you see this guy, this is Trashysaurus. He's made from only stuff that this one guy found dumpster diving. Some of the stuff looks brand new and some of it definitely should have stayed in the trash! It weighs 2 thousands pounds because I guess that's how much garbage the average person throws away...I don't know...

Here's his side:

Look at that poor little doll stuck in there...

Here's Christina hugging the dinosaur's leg

And here we both are in front of him...

I have no clue what this is, but it was pretty cool because that's all soda cans...

Here's Chrstina being such a good student! This is when they were teaching us about recycling and what all can and can't be recycled, I learned a lot! Well of course I'm kind of a dummy when it comes to recycling so there technically is a lot that I need to learn!

Here's where all the stuff gets dumped off of the trucks before it's sorted

Here's a truck dumping stuff...

The kids loved looking through the windows...

Here's the huge piles of Cardboard...

These are soda cans...

Those are only milk jugs...

Detergent bottles...

Me and cute Christina! This was right after we watched a movie about recycling rex, a dinosaur that learns to recycle to save a field from become a landfill...

And then here's Christina's "Please stop taking pictures" face on the bus ride home, she was really tired...

My room!

Well here are some pictures of the walls in my room! I didn't actually take pictures of my bed and stuff because they were kind of messy! But I've actually been keeping my room really clean lately, I love it when it's clean because then I don't have to worry if the kids want to come in or if my friends where to come over, better safe than sorry! So let's see what's on my walls!

Wall #1: My Mormon Wall!

It's hard to see exactly but this wall has a pic of the Prophet Thomas S. Monson, a picture of him and his counselors and a picture of Joseph Smith. The quote by the picture of Joseph Smith says "You knew he was a true prophet of God because you could not be in his presence without feeling the influence and Spirit of God which seemed to flow from him almost as heat does from a stove, You could not see it, but you felt it." -William Henrie, I got the picture and the quote from my 2008 calendar. And right next to the picture of Thomas S. Monson it says "We Thank thee, Oh God, for a prophet". On the other side is a picture of the beautiful Mesa temple, the family proclamation, and an amazing quote I memorized when I went to girls camp a couple years agob as part of the staff (not as a young woman)! The quote is, "I see young women, radiant in the beauty of youth, whose virtue is more precious than rubies--young women who are bright and who study with enthusiasm and diligence to learn the word of the Lord and also to equip themselves to take their places with honor and ability in the world in which they live. I see young women who know the word of God and can quote it; who know the standards of the Chruch and live by them; who have a sense of worth and a wondrous sensitivity to the beauties of life and nature, music and art; who treasure truth and seek to enlarge their understanding of it; who have determined that worthiness to enter the house of the Lord for a divine endowment and an eternal sealing is the most desirable of all goals. Can anyone doubt that there is something divine within such?" -Gordon B. Hinckley

And then all the way to the left of the picture by my door is a calendar that my mom made for our family with family pictures (I love it!) and right above it is the quote "Don't give up what you want most for what you want for the moment" and above that is just my daily schedule!

Wall #2 My Friend Wall!
For any of you who have ever been my roommate you know that I love to put the letters I receive from back home on my wall! So here I have a couple letters from my friend Mallory whose on a mission in Korea and some pictures she's sent, then I have my sister's wedding announcement, my neice's baby announcement, a card from my mom that came with a package she just sent me and a couple pictures. So...you know you want to send me a letter so that this wall gets filled up! It also has a quote that says "A friend is someone who knows you're a good egg even though they know you're a little cracked!"

Ok on the other half of Wall #2 is my New York City Wall! Soon this wall is going to be full of all the stuff I've done in New York City! So right now it has my Playbill and ticket from "Wicked", pictures of the Rock and the tree at Rockefeller Center, I have a map of the subways with my metrocard, The playbill, ticket, and 3-d glasses from the Radio City Rockettes show, my ticket to the museum on "Night at the Museum" and a pamphlet from there, and of course I have some skylines of the City!

Wall #3 My picture wall!

I did this once before up in Idaho but basically this is just a bunch of pictures that remind me of some really fun times! I need to get some more new pictures, a lot of these are a few years old!

Wall #4 my closet!

Haha I don't know what I'll do on this wall yet, but I'm sure it will be great! But in the meantime my clothes are organized by the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and no I'm not crazy, it just makes it easier to find shirts!

MLK Day!

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr day so that means that the kids didn't have school. So Rosalind (the mom) decided that she wanted to take the kids to learn how to ski, I'm glad that Rosalind didn't want to ski because that would mean I would be skiing too and I haven't done it in so long that it's a very scary thought! Well we went to Mt. Southington, which is closer to the center of CT, so it was over an hour away. The kids were so excited to ski, it was cute! Well after taking all of the time to sign them up for class, get their boots and skis, and get them to their class I was ready to sit in the lodge and read my book! So Rosalind and I spent a good part of our day in the Lodge. Connor (6) and Christina (4) only had an hour long lesson and Caroline's (8) was 2 hours, so Connor and Christina came and ate with us after an hour, then when Caroline came back she took her ever lovin' time eating, Christina fell asleep on my lap while we waited for Caroline, I almost fell asleep too! They all loved skiing and want to do it again! Connor was even saying that he wanted to go again today after school. Well on the drive back we hit traffic and then it started to snow! What is it with this place and snowing so much?! So it took us even longer to get home and I was tired, it had been a long day full of hardly anything, you know how those days are? It's ok, I had fun, I love talking to Rosalind and there was definitely plenty of time for that because of all the driving and sitting in the lodge.

Well FHE was canceled because of all the snow I think, it's ok I might have been too tired anyways, I fell asleep at 10:00pm because I didn't have anything to do and I was tired! So I got 10 hours of sleep!

Better Off Dead!

Well Saturday night I went out with Steph, Kelly and one of their guy friends named Corby (don't know if I spelt that right!). We went to Outback Steakhouse and there was like a 50 min wait, so me and Kelly went over to Borders which was right by it and started looking around. It was pretty fun to waste our time there and I even ended up buying a journal, another new years resolution of mine! I want to remember everything I do this year, so I better write it down! Plus it will be better than this blog because then I can write all of the personal stuff that I would never share with you guys! Sorry. Well after a while we went back to Outback and ate, then when we got out of there it was like 10:30pm and we went to Steph's house to watch the movie "Better Off Dead", it's an older movie with John Cusack and it's really, really funny! Only problem was that my contacts were getting so dry so I would have to close one eye then close the other as I was watching it, finally I was so tired that I just closed them both.... so I missed the last half of the movie, it's ok I'll probably buy it because it was soooo funny, then I can watch it again! Well I got home around 1:30am and it was starting to snow, then the next morning I got out of bed at 9 and it was still snowing pretty good, lots of new snow...ugh!

Cuteness!

Here are some really cute pictures of us having fun yesterday morning! I braided Caroline's (8 year old) hair, it looked really cute if you looked at her from the front, but she had moved SO much while I was doing it that it looked bad in the back because it was so loose. It was so crazy because one moment she'd be sitting there the next she'd be practically laying on the ground, one moment she's looking one way, then next she's looking the other! But when I was taking her braids out Connor (6 year old) wanted me to put his hair in ponytails because I had done Caroline's hair...so I did! Here are the two different ways that he had his ponytails:

Nice Huh? He loved his ponytails and wants them again next week! I told him that he could have ponytails the next time I put my hair in ponytails (which technically is never) and he looked at me and said, "Tuesday?"...nope Connor not on Tuesday...

Here's me and the girls, it's funny how we all have our bangs in our face, of course it's not on purpose, it's just early and none of us had done our hair yet!

Me and Christina doing funny faces!

LA Fitness

Well after going to LA Fitness like three times and talking to the management each time I finally got my membership transferred on Tuesday to the location here in CT! Sometimes LA Fitness surprises me with how unhelpful they are, it was amazing how hard it was to switch my membership! But I have a friend here who has a membership also so we went together on Tuesday and Wednesday and I went by myself on Thursday. I would have gone on Friday but we took the car in to get the tire fixed. But here's my goal! I want to work out 5 days a week from now on! So hopefully if I go every day during the week I won't have to go on Saturdays! So we'll see if I can do it, I think I can. I've already found that it's easiest for me to go to the gym if I have my bag in the car when I take Christina(4 year old) to preschool and go from there, because if I'm home I won't feel like leaving... So here's one of my new years resolutions for all of you to see, make sure I follow it!!!


This is what I look like now:




And this is what I'm going to look like soon:

You've got to be kidding me...

So today can't just be a Tuesday, something has to happen to make it special...don't worry something did. And as I'm sure you can tell by my lovely picture (which as you can tell from the background is not CT because it would be all white) I got a flat tire! So today I switched cars with the mom and I was driving the 4 year old to Preschool and I was thinking, there is no way this car makes that noise usually...what the heck is that noise? So we got to the preschool and I walked around to the side of the car that the noise was coming from, saw my tire and really wanted to cry, here's what went through my mind "REALLY? WHY DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN RIGHT NOW?! WHY DO I HAVE THE BEST LUCK?!" So I took Christina into school and walked back outside and just kind of sat there looking at my tire, hoping that some father would offer to help, I was in luck! Well after looking for the spare, finally finding it in a very random place, struggling to get it out, and finally putting it on all in the cold might I add, after all of that I had only wasted an HOUR of my life! Haha, I pretend like it was horrible but I actually really don't care too much, I'd much rather it happen to me than to the mom who usually drives the car, she goes a lot farther than me and I didn't really have anything I HAD to be doing right then... now it's just the annoying part of having to take it somewhere to get a new tire and taking the time to get that done...oh well...