Maybe I'll Move to Australia

My life since Monday makes me think of the children's story "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," but my "day" is lasting all week.

I took Jenna to the doctor for her 2 year checkup on Monday and she was perfectly healthy. She's 27 lbs. 9 ozs. (78%) and 35 inches (81%)! Yes, a big girl! She woke up from her nap later that day and had a fever--100.5 degrees. How in the world did she get that if she was perfectly healthy? And she didn't even have a shot! The next day, she was fine.

Later that night, I asked Jarren to go and get his pajamas on and he forgot that he left a little dinosaur outside, so he ran outside in only his underwear. Apparently at this age, clothes aren't too important.

I needed to go grocery shopping yesterday and everything went wrong. I couldn't find the keys, Jarren's shoes, my list, etc. We finally went and three of the four kids were HORRIBLE!! Jenna wouldn't stay in the cart. Jarren and Kristen wanted me to buy everything they saw and kept trying to throw things in the cart. They started fighting and crying and screaming. I guess I'm mean because I'm not going to fill up the cart with junk food. I managed to get a couple of things in the cart, but had to get a neighbor girl to come and babysit later so I could finish. And I lost the keys again. Kendall was sweet--he asked if he could choose a few things to cook for us for lunch. He chose Italian sausage with cheese and strawberries.

Last night, Jarren and Kristen went over to the neighbors. They have a wooden skate ramp and Jarren decided to slide down on his tummy and got tons of little slivers all over one part of his stomach. I heard if you put glue on and let it dry, you can just peel it and they'll come out. I tried it, but not all of them came out. Poor kid! I need to try some other things, because the needle and tweezers aren't working either--too traumatic I guess.

Just before bed, I went to open the pantry and the door fell off. It's big and heavy and almost fell on me. I'm just so glad it didn't fall on one of the kids.

We all slept in until 9:10 this morning and Jarren has preschool at 9:30! He was a little bit late, but we made it! Jon's out of town on business and I swear when he leaves, everything falls apart. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day. If not, maybe I'll move to Australia.

Dancing Queen

I almost forgot to put these pictures of our dancing queen on here! Kristen had a dance competition last Saturday. She was in two dances--a cute one to "Wishin' and Hopin'" (in the purple dress) and her whole dance school did a production number set to Peter Pan--she was a crocodile.

The production number took 1st place. The older girl who leads the crocodiles out broke her arm and the girl who took her place didn't know where to put them and so they danced off in the corner at first and then spread out, but it was still cute. Just me and a few other moms were having a cow, trying to figure out how to get them to move to the center.

The other dance took 2nd. This was the first competition for some of the girls and one poor girl got confused and didn't know where to go. But it was still just so cute! If I can figure out how to put video on here, I'll put a clip. But don't hold your breath....

Kristen had a lot of fun, but it sure was a long day for me. :)

Update on School--Maybe There's Hope...

Jarren still says he HATES preschool. He only has 5 more times and then he's done and he always seems to have had fun, but it's so hard to get him there. I've been dreading Kindergarten because it's like preschool, but it's every day and they obviously learn more. I've been feeling like I'll be fighting him with school until he graduates from high school.

We had a Kindergarten orientation last Friday morning at the Elementary school. They divided the kids into three groups, based off of the color of their name tag, and they went with one of the teachers while the parents sat in a meeting. They were gone for about 45 minutes and Jarren will NOT talk about what they did. After they brought them back, they got a packet of Keebler Elf cookies and we went home. But he came running up to me and said, "Mom!!! That was AWESOME!!!" and he keeps asking when he gets to start going to Kindergarten. Now I have hope that things will get better.

Happy Birthday Jenna!

It happened yesterday--my baby turned two years old!! Jenna woke up and saw the balloons, so we sang the happy birthday song to her. All day long at odd times she'd burst out into song (even inserting the "happy birthday dear Jenna" part).

After we dropped Jarren off at preschool, Kendall, Kristen, and I took her in for her birthday pictures. They gave her a flower to hold and it fascinated her for a long time. I was expecting to get maybe one picture, but they let her sit on my lap for several of them, so we got more than I thought we would.

Kristen had a mandatory dance practice and Jenna had so much fun running around chasing this little boy and climbing up and down the stairs with Jarren.

I think the older three kids had more fun opening gifts than Jenna did. She loved what was inside and wanted to sit and play with it, but someone would rip open another gift for her. She got some fun gifts!

Now for the cake....Jenna has a bee toy that used to be Jarren's, but she loves it! She talks to it and treats it like a baby. I was trying to think of what kind of cake to make her when I thought of a bee cake. I showed her some pictures online of bee cakes and she got excited. The night before her birthday, I was looking to decide which one to make and she started saying, "Bee cake. No yellow. I don't. I want pink cake." So after a few seconds of questioning, I think she was trying to tell me that she wanted a pink and brown bee cake. Hey, it's her birthday, so that's what I made--just in case anyone's wondering why it looks like a blushing bee. :)

Of course, it all tasted better with her dancing around on the top of the table. Jenna was thought it was kind of neat to have candles in the cake, so she got ALL of the candles and put them in her piece of cake.

I think she had a fun day--it's hard to believe how fast the time went--two already!

Fun Trip #1

Kristen, Jarren, and I are back! We had a lot of fun visiting my sister and her family. We did a lot of fun things and had some good visiting as well. And we played a lot of UNO! Jarren got into this things where if he got a wild card, skip, reverse, or draw two, he'd hoard it in a little pile and refused to use it. Well, that was fine until the deck ran out and we had to shuffle again--then there were less of those cards to go around. It was funny! Kristen was such a good babysitter--she was always so helpful.

We went to this really cool train museum. The trains were real old ones and HUGE!!! We also took a train ride along the river. Jarren LOVES trains, so he was in heaven.













We also went to a park and fed the ducks and played. The zoo was another fun activity. There were some different things than our zoo has--like flamingos, kangaroos and wallabies, and stuff like that. They had a little playground there that the kids had fun playing on.











We tried to go swimming, but all the outdoor pools are still closed, so my brother-in-law bought a blow up pool and the kids had a blast in that!


We went to a Jelly Belly factory. It smelled soooooo good!!!!! And it was very interesting. Of course I had to buy some to bring home. Yum!

Our plane ride home wasn't a lot of fun--first of all, it was delayed. Secondly, we hit some pretty nasty turbulence. They wouldn't let us land, so we circled around and around in clouds and turbulence for about 20 minutes. It was really windy so I guess they had to reconfigure landing patterns and we were rocking and rolling right up until we were actually on the ground.

Overall though, it was a very nice vacation!!! We all had a lot of fun!

Vacations...

Today was the last day of school for Kendall and Kristen....until May 19. We are on year-round school and with the track we're on, the kids get a break for 3 weeks in August, November, February, and May and the whole school is out for about 3 1/2 weeks in July. I guess this break is just a few days early, but that's okay.

Tomorrow morning, Jarren, Kristen, and I are going to visit my sister for a few days. We are soooo excited! Jon and Kendall will be going to visit his cousin back East for a week in mid-May. And then Jon and I get to go to Germany for 10 days in June!!! Thank goodness for Grandmas (they'll both be watching the kids for us)!!! Hopefully, I'll remember some of the German I learned in high school and college. Oh, Jon travels a bit for work and this trip to Germany is a business trip (his 4th one there) and I get to tag along. YAY!! (Can't tell I'm excited, can you?)

We should have some fun stories and pictures to post after all of these trips. :) Ciao!

Funny, random things....

Jenna has this thing lately where she'll call me, "Mooomm?" And when I answer, "What?" she'll say, "Nine, thirteen!" I say, "Nine, thirteen?!" and she'll reply, "Ten, eleven, twelve!" I have no idea what she means by this, but it's a fun little game for her.

I gave her a little bowl of trail mix the other day and she dumped the whole thing out on the floor. I said, "Jenna, why did you do that?" She just looked at me and said, "Because." She's always asking why--I really didn't think she was old enough to be in the "why" stage, but maybe she is.

Jenna's name means "small bird" and she loves birds! We have some robins with a nest in one of the trees and the parents will come down and find worms in the lawn and Jenna runs to the window, calling out to them. We let her outside and she chases them around saying, "C'mere cute birdie!" Then when they fly away, she cries. She just wants to hold one sooo badly!

We have some good friends, the Hansens, who live across the street. I was combing Jarren's hair a few weeks back and said, "Wow! You look so handsome!" He whipped around and said, "Hansen? Why am I a Hansen?"