I blame it on May

The lack of blogging for the last while I blame completely on the insanity of the month of May.  It was a great month!  We found a house to rent…

It is small but it is very nice, close to our parents and it has a huge backyard!

 

We celebrated my sister, Celsea’s high school graduation:

 

We celebrated Scott’s brother, Dylan’s high school graduation:

I love this picture!  So sweet. 

 

We did spend a little time at home but didn’t feel the need to do anything too exciting:

 

Well, maybe Boston thought being at home was kind of dull…

Boston chose to spice things up by becoming extraordinarily mischievous this month.  He is BUSY all the time.  More so than Stephen ever was at this same age.  He is constantly doing messy, naughty things.  Funny sometimes but occasionally very dangerous and aggravating.  For example: climbing in the laundry basket in Stephen’s closet and getting stuck (you can’t tell but it is on top of a box), putting Desitin in his hair, or playing in the toilet.  Those things are funny/kinda gross.  But do you see the innocent-looking rocking horse?  It is very rarely ridden as pictured.  Mostly it is used to reach things.  He can climb on the kitchen counters by using the horse as a step-stool.  I found him with scissors in his hand on one occasion but usually he is trying to get a cup to get a drink of water which he then ends up spilling all over.

One day he somehow managed to grab a bottle of Nair that I had put on my (very tall) bed and applied it to his hair!  I freaked out about that one, having visions of his hair falling out but mostly being worried about it getting into his eyes and burning them.  Luckily, it didn’t seem to harm his hair – it never fell out and I managed to wash the Nair out without it running into his eyes.

 

So now we just have to watch him like a hawk and if he is gone or quiet for more than a minute or two it’s “where’s Boston?” in a a slightly panicked voice.

Easter Sunday

Easter fun – finally, pictures of hunting for Easter eggs!  First we had to search to find where Mom hid the Easter baskets.  We don’t do the whole “Easter Bunny” thing so they know the candy and gifts were from Mom and Dad.  I made the boys some little personalized quiet books.  I got the idea from this blog.  You can download the cute little scrap book pages and add your own pictures.  I made Boston and Stephen each their very own.

There they are, in Dad’s closet.

 

See Stephen’s quiet book peeking out of the top of his basket?  I don’t think Boston was quite awake yet…

 

Later at the Smith’s house Stephen got to hold little “Chirppy.”

 

 

Easter egg hunt!

I can’t take it with me…but I can take HIM with me!

As we are preparing to move to our new-to-us home I have developed a new motto “it’s just stuff.”  This has empowered me to part with many things that I have been holding on to.  I have already thrown away and given away many things, most of which I already forgot I had and will never miss. I keep thinking about the slightly short-on-storage house and then I just give/throw away what ever I am holding. 

One closet cleaning lead me to my old ballet costumes.  After 16 years of dancing I had quite the accumulation of lovely costumes  They had been taking up almost half of Boston’s closet and finally I sat down and looked at them and picked a few out to give away.  The rest (the prettiest), I stored carefully in a new plastic tub along with various Halloween costumes, snapped the side handles/clasps shut and carefully labeled it “costumes.”  If I should ever be blessed with a little girl, she would love to play in them.

We took a load of boxes over to the new house tonight.  The costume tub was placed on the top of the stack and we went on our merry way.  Upon arrival, I noticed a maroon bit of fabric draped across the top of the load and my eyes trialed up to the now lidless costume box.  To my horror the tub was now half empty (definitely NOT half full) – and what should be missing but the three lovely ballet costumes that I had placed on top!  Somewhere along the 10 mile drive, the lid had blown off and I lost my costumes!  I cried because I was so sad and frustrated that chance would have it that that tub would be on top instead of a box that was taped closed or full of replaceable things.  But no, it had to be the ballet costumes.

On our way home we retraced our route going 35-40 mph instead of the usual 45-55 mph, carefully scanning the side of the road for any sign of the costumes.  We found a gold sash for an ugly pirate costume I made myself, a lace hair piece that went with one of the costumes, and the lid of the box.  NO costumes.  Twenty years of careful preservation and poof – gone.  This is when I have to tell myself over and over, “it’s only stuff…you  can’t take it with you.”

Now to the positive side of the story.  Scott is going on a backpacking trip tomorrow and so he ran to the store pick up a few things after our return home.  He was gone for a long time and when he got back he said, “someone took them.”  “Huh?”  He then proceeded to tell me how he drove all the way back to the other house and searched for the costumes again!  He is now convinced that someone saw them beside the road and picked them up.  I hope whoever found them has a darling little girl who is on cloud nine playing with her pretty ballet costumes.

What a sweet, devoted husband I have!  He felt so bad about me loosing my ballet costumes that he spent a good 40 minutes searching for them again.  It is now 11:40 pm and he is still trying to get everything ready for his trip.  So tonight I lost some valued possessions but was reminded of what a treasure I have in my wonderful, supportive and thoughtful husband.  I love him so much!  What a blessing it is that the real treasure, my husband and family, I CAN take with me!

Suddenly I realized that Easter was a month ago

I was looking at my blog and realized that my last post was about Easter…kind of the same thing as having my Easter decorations out until just a few days ago!  Ha ha!  I have been pretty preoccupied and busy lately.  We are going to be moving in July and that fact has taken over my life and completely consumed my brain.  I find my self going back and forth between the plan of cleaning and organizing the whole house before I pack up or organizing and tossing clutter as I pack.  At the rate I am going it will definitely be organizing and packing at the same time but that bugs me for some reason. 

I am excited for the change that the move will bring but also very very sad because we love our ward and our neighborhood.  We are moving just 20 minutes across town to the middle of Mesa  - Gilbert and Southern.  We will actually be renting a house in Scott’s parents ward!  There are a lot of pros and cons to the whole thing but I have to say that the most exciting part is that we will finally have a big backyard for the boys to play in!  Also, we will be so much closer to both of our families which is nice since we spend so much time driving back and forth across town visiting them. 

We have done a whole bunch of other stuff the last month (or two?) but I will have to upload the pictures to remember everything.  That is why I must blog – otherwise I would never remember anything!

The Easter Egg Hunt and the (totally unrelated) Cursed Jello Salad

This post will not be filled with darling pictures of my children picking up Easter eggs or posed in brilliant green grass wearing matching springy colors.  I just wanted to write about our ward Easter egg hunt and the cursed jello salad.

Ward Easter Egg Hunt and Potluck Picnic:

Since it was my idea (no activities committee anymore you know) me and my counselors planned it – I have never had to plan a ward party – only Primary activity days!

We had it on Friday night at the church since in Arizona, outdoor picnics at this time of year are rather sweaty.

We stuffed almost 500 plastic eggs with candy throughout the week.  (I heard a rumor that a ward in our stake had an Easter egg hunt with 5,000 eggs!  What the heck???  Is that even possible?)

Everyone brought blankets and sat on the floor in cultural hall.

Yes, it was a potluck.  I tried reeeaaaallly hard to convince the men in ward council that it wasn’t necessary to feed everyone at each ward party but they reeeaaaallly wanted food there.

We all but ran out of food.  Quite a few people came who didn’t bring a dish to share, which is fine if you are not planning on eating and/or feeding your 3 children….  Others brought food but when your assignment is “main dish” and you show up with desert (no matter how scrumptious) it just doesn’t quite cut it.  So my wonderful new counselor rushed out on an emergency pizza run.

Thanks to Scott and a few other men who were trying to avoid the chaos inside, all of the eggs were hidden around the church building.  No, it is not too hot here for an outdoor egg hunt as long as you are only outside for a short time, as the sun is going down, and there is not any chocolate in the eggs!

I was shocked at how many people came to the party – well over a hundred which is excellent for our ward. 

Finally we turned them loose on the lawn – ages 0-3 in one area and the older kids in a different area.  This is where you should picture adorable pictures of my children with their Easter baskets full of brightly colored eggs:

 

Can’t you just picture them?  Ahh yes, since Scott and I were so busy we got no pictures of the party at all!  Sad day.  Luckily, they get a second hunt at Grandma Smith’s house tonight maybe we will snap a few pictures then.

Can I just say that I am so glad that party is over??

 

The Cursed Jello Salad:

Have you ever had that scrumptious jello salad with the pretzels, creamy stuff and strawberries?  It is so very yummy.  One website accurately describes it as “An unholy marriage between pretzels and JELL-O, with a healthy dose of Cool Whip and cream cheese spread on for good measure.” 

Somehow Scott and I have become the official jello salad makers for both of our families.  This recipe is usually requested at Thanksgiving and Easter and when I ask “is there anything I can bring?”  It usually goes something like this….”oh, umm, you know what sounds good is that pretzel jello salad.”  So, like a dummy I say “sure thing!”  It is not my recipe – I don’t even know where it came from and while it seems simple, it NEVER is.  Literally every time we make this salad something goes wrong:

• forgot to buy ingredient = late night trip to Walmart
• can’t find recipe = frantic search through every paper in my messy collection of recipes
• pretzels are not crushed enough = horrible texture
• failure to seal cream mixture over pretzels before pouring jello on top = jello leaking into pretzels and a soggy, gross texture

Since this Easter is the last one at home for my brother-in-law, Dylan, before he leaves on his mission, we decided to humor him by bringing his favorite pretzel jello salad.  We figured that we have made every mistake in the book on this one already so we should have it down to a science.  So, late last night (maybe that is the source of our trouble – trying to cook at 9 or 10 at night?) we began the labor.  Everything was going very well.  We had all the right ingredients, the pretzels were crushed to a perfect texture, we even planned it out so the jello would be partially set before pouring it over the creamy stuff, preventing breakthroughs to the pretzels. 

Then, it happened.  A little misread and three cups of sugar mixed with cream cheese and cool whip later (instead of 3/4 cup sugar) we had a veeerrry sweet goo, totally unpalatable and unusable. 

• three cups of sugar instead of 3/4 cups = late night trip to Walmart for cool whip and cream cheese

All I could do was laugh and laugh.  I don’t think we will ever make this stuff again!  And no, I am not going to share the recipe with you.  You can google it if you are a glutton for punishment.  Besides, our copy of the recipe is obviously cursed and you don’t want any part of that!

Boston is two!

A few days before his birthday we redeemed his free kids meal at Red Robin…he loved the balloon they gave him but couldn’t figure out why all of those people were singing to him!

 

We had a family party at my mom’s house.  She made some of her scrumptious homemade pizza.  I helped a little too – hence the tractor apron.  What other kind of apron does a mom of two boys wear?

 

Waiting for his pizza….

 

King for the day in his new “Cars” chair.

 

Who needs toys when you have giant monster bags?

 

Always the clown…

 

Checking out his giraffe cake and smiling affably as we sing “Happy Birthday.”

 

Yellow buttercream frosting with orange fondant spots.

 

He was very intense about the candle blowing – here is is taking a very deep breath.

 

He blew them out in one try!

 

I know everyone says it as their kids grow up, but seriously, where the heck did my baby go?  I still think of him as “baby Boston.”  He is such a joy in our family and we are so glad he joined us two years ago. 

Proof!

You know that feeling mothers get when their baby is growing up and everyone starts referring to their baby as a little boy or a little girl instead of a baby?  Call it denial, call it nostalgia, I was really having a hard time with it until I walked into the den and found Boston thus occupied:

I think it should be clear to anyone that Boston is still a baby!

He kept saying “awww baby.”

In case you were wondering we had lent the infant seat to a friend for a few days…it was waiting its return to storage.

No one can deny his baby status! 

 

Okay, maybe his developing personality indicates that he really is growing up as proven by the following:

Mmmmmm Peanut butter sandwich!

Hair style: courtesy of Uncle Allen.

Maniacal facial expression: 100% Boston!

This little guy is seriously bursting with personality.  He is so goofy, and mischeivous.  I remember when I was pregnant with him I was blow drying my hair one day and out of the blue a clear strong impression came to me, “This baby is going to make us laugh.”  I turned to Scott and told him right away about that impression.  We are finding it to be true more and more as he grows.