Agent Moroni

For family home evening tonight, Ellie was in charge of the activity.  She came up the lesson theme "Families can be together forever" and then went about making the game "Pin 'Agent' Moroni on the Temple" and made it all by herself.  We all had fun playing.

Lost voices and four kids

Isaac has been sick since Saturday night.  He's had a fever, stinky poop, and a horrible cough.  The only fun thing about this is that he has lost his voice.  It is incredibly cute.  Paul took him to the doctor a couple days ago and it's viral so we just have to wait it out.  He has been sleeping so bad and can't stay asleep because his cough wakes him up.  I took him for a 20 minute drive to get him settled and he fell asleep.  When his fever spikes, he refuses to take his medicine, so we have been sneaking it in some root beer and he drinks it right up.

This reminded me of a story.  I am not sure if I ever wrote it down.  I was at my parents house several months ago, maybe last year, and went into a basement bedroom and shut the door.  The door knob was broken and I was stuck inside.  The biggest problem was that I had lost my voice and could not call for help.  So I got to the ceiling somehow and started banging on it, hoping help would come from upstairs.  Meanwhile, upstairs, they heard my banging, but they thought, haha, it's just Kristen trying to be funny (and annoying) by banging on the ceiling.  Well I kept banging and after a while someone came down stairs and rescued me.  They all thought is was so funny because I couldn't talk at all.  Although I could talk in a really really deep voice.  

Sometime, I to play catch up on this blog.  For now, we get the Reader's Digest version.  We have four kids now.  Four.  Claire Elaine Duncan was born on May 1, 2013.  For four long months she screamed.  She had acid refux.  For four months all she wanted to do was be held.  Then it was like a switch went off and she is the best little baby.  She is happy and smiley.  She loves to play with toys all day long and will not snuggle.  She has to see what's going on and if she can't see, she will maneuver herself to make sure she can see the action.  If you look at her her whole face and body smiles real big.  She is already eating solid foods and loves them.  She also has started to scoot along the floor a little bit to get what she wants.  I have already rescued things out of her mouth.  Dallin and Ellie love to pick her up and carry her around, Heaven help us all.  Isaac loves her to peaces but doesn't quite get that she needs to be treated gently and not wrestled.  This is at home.  Any where else it takes her a while to warm up to and she is cautious about who she interacts with.  Man, I love this little girl.  I am so grateful that she is in our little family.  When the kids came to meet her in the hospital, Dallin was really touched by the spirit in the hospital room and is always commenting about how he feels the spirit when Claire is around.  We had Dallin's baptism and Claire's blessing at the same time.  It was a really neat experience.  My Grandma Breseman and her friend Doris were able to be there from Florida.  They are not members of our church so it was a nice experience to have them there.  

Grandma Breseman finally moved to Utah.  Then she broke her hip and was in the hospital and a rehab center for a while.  She is now back at her little apartment in Provo.  I just wish we weren't so busy and could go see her more often.  

Dallin is now in 3rd grade and doing grade.  His teacher said that he is one of the brightest kids in the class (and then he adds:  The smartest, too!).  He is doing really well and it's seems as though the "mean kids" aren't bothering him any longer.  I was worried about this as he was bullied a bit last year.  He LOVES Legos and speaks it fluently.  It is amazing what that kid can put together.  Intricate designs, that, of course, he leaves around for Isaac to come by and smash on purpose.  Then there's water works, followed by a brawl.  Dallin loves to read and we are trying to teach him not to skip words that are too hard.  He is reading Beyond Spiderwick right now with Paul as well as Wings of Fire with me.  He is always trying to do what is right.

Ellie is in Kindergarten and absolutely LOVES it.  She is so spunky and fun at home, but her shy, reserved side comes out at school.  She is still doing well.  She loves to do her homework.  She alos loves to sing and her life is a musical.  The other day, I was cutting Dallin's hair and Ellie gave herself the job of entertaining him so he didn't get bored.  She was jumping all over the place and so was Dallin's head.  I asked her to please stop because she was distracting Dallin.  She went and sat on a stool and with her arms folded and her head down, started singing, "Who am I?  I'm just distracting." over and over.  It was so cute and so funny.  She started laughing when Dallin and I caught her and laughed along.  She makes things fun.

Isaac is my crazy little 2 1/2 year old.  He loves to snuggle and watch TV, but he loves even more to get out side and play.  He loves to jump on the tramp and ride Paul's shoulders while he is mowing the lawn or pulling weeds, or going to the bathroom, or making dinner, or changing Claire's diaper.  The kids seriously lives on his dad's shoulders.  He loves to tease Dallin and Ellie.  I mentioned earlier how he loves to smash Dallin's Lego creations.  He loves candy!!!  He loves to eat food, period.  He is not a picky eater.  He always ends up on our laps and finishes our food for us.  He is a peacemaker in our home.  He will try to stop arguments all the time.  He loves to help out and know how to get a job done.

Paul is a good man.  He is always trying to get things done around the house for me.  He is working hard at work and working hard at home.  He is a good dad and a good husband.  I am always trying to kick him out of the house to go do something fun, but he feels guilty for doing something for himself and refuses.  That, and he doesn't know what to do with free time.  His phrase lately, is "I just need to get it done!"  He is my dish doer and laundry butler.  I'll be honest, ever since having Claire, I have had a really hard time getting back into the groove of house keeping and such.  He tries hard to pick up the slack.  He took the day off for my birthday yesterday.  It was nice just to sit around with him all day.  I sometimes like having sick kids because it gives us the excuse to stay home and snuggle up on the couch.

I am a mom to four kids.  'Nuff said.  Haha!  I started bootcamp again, but had to quit a couple weeks in and go to physical therapy instead.  I injured both of my knees.  I started an intense program way too soon after having a baby and my ligaments were still loose and I paid for it.  Literally and physically.  PT is $$$.  So right now, I right a bike, which is somewhat boring to me and it hurts my butt.  But it is what it is.  I had a really hard time with it all, but finally had to come to the realization that I have to sit back and take it easy for a while if I want to prevent surgery.  I am going to record this next story so that when Ellie is a teenager and hates me, I will make her read it.  The other day, I took Ellie with me to my birthday lunch.  Paul was with sick Isaac, so we didn't get to go on a date.  So Ellie and I are at lunch and I ask her what I can do to be a better mom.  She looks at me and kind of gasps in shock and says, "Mom!  There is nothing you can do better!  You are the best Mom I could ever have!!"  And then she gave me a great big hug.  It was so cute!  So 16 year old Ellie, I know you might not like me right now, but you used to think I was perfect.  

Ellie Ellie

Water falls and sunshine
Rain storms and flowers

Everything is soaked in suds and water and it makes one ka-ray-zay!  But if you are down and blue she will tenderly and compassionately tell you that she "will give you something that comes from a special place in her heart": a great big hug.

.

Fun Surprise

Friday, I snoozed my alarm a little too long.  With each snooze I kept hoping Dallin would magically wake up and come upstairs and hop in the shower.  I am not sleeping well at all, my body being stuck in one position, physically unable to roll over without some real effort.  Then comes in the squished bladder... When morning comes, I am exhausted.  Regardless of the circumstances, I get up and go downstairs to wake up D.  I turn on his light and he pops up like a jumping bean.  I feel lucky at this good fortune, instead of finding a cute little sleepy boy that unintentionally makes me feel guilty and sad for not letting him sleep in.  He jumps up and down on the old king size mattress and starts giggling, looking at a huge lump beside him.  I notice the lump but don't give any mind.  It's not unusual to find Dallin's bed piled full with 10 or so blankets.  Then he jumps on the lump and I see a head.  Paul's head.  It's almost 8, and he's typically out the door by 7:15.  I am surprised a little because he slept in, but not that he's chosen to hide downstairs in a big bed, where it's free of Ellie's almost nightly visits and kicking feet. 

"Surprise! " both Dallin and Paul say.  Paul had secretly taken the day off to help me around the house.  After we got Dallin and Ellie off to school he managed to do a few loads of laundry and dishes all while Isaac, my clingy-pants, hung on to him.

I had promised to take Ellie to Costco for samples at one, but at 9:30 Paul kept insisting that I get ready so we could go as soon as Ellie got home at 11:15.  Samples don't go out until 1, so I kept telling him to wait.  He finally told me that he had secretly gotten a babysitter from 11 to 12:30 so he could take me to lunch.  I finally got ready after that. :)

We dropped the kids off, went to lunch and then headed over to the antique mall in Springville.  We love look through places like that but don't get to often because we don't want to with kids in tow.  Too many things to break.  It was a fun lunch date.  After we picked up Ellie and Isaac and took them to Costco for samples and smoothies.

Later that night Paul made deluxe quesadillas while I ran out to the library to return movies and get some new ones...and buy movie treats.  I also accidentally returned my mom's movie to the library.  They called me the next day to see if it was mine.  :)

It was a great day, full of fun surprises and I even got to take a nap at one point.

Halloween 2012

Halloween.

The night before Dallin's Halloween parade at school, I ran over to Kmart to get him a costume.  He was being so indecisive and didn't want to be the Poptropica character that he had been for the ward party.  I found this Pacman costume, which he loved.  The next morning I ran over to the fabric store and bought enough felt to make the rest of us ghost costumes.  For less than $20 and a glue gun, I made 4 of us costumes, then I kicked myself for not thinking of making D's costume, and saving the same amount of money that I spent on the rest of us.  You live and you learn, right.  My solace was that D's costume is an Adult, one size fits all, so we can use it for years to come.

Here are all the Steele cousins on Great Grandma Steele's porch.  Every year she feeds us all pizza before we go out trick-or-treating.  (Ellie made a wardrobe change a couple time that night.  RIght now she's a hippie girl.)

 Then we attempted at taking one with my dad.  He's the bishop in his ward, so his costume is extra funny; mustache, tattoo sleeves, and he has a long, grey pony tail coming out the back of his hat.

 Our Pacman family.  We were all so tired at the end of the night, but had to make a stop at Grandma and Grandpa Duncan's house. 

We all know that in the game Pacman, the ghosts keep coming back to life...we give you a hint as to how they keep coming...  ;)

Fall is always a favorite in our backyard.  The farmer stops cutting the alfalfa in the field behind our house and he brings in all of his sheep to graze for a few weeks.  This year, there were a TON of tiny little lambs born right in our backyard.  One day I counted 24 lambs.  We all got a kick out of them.  They were so cute!