The Amelioration

We were talking about different things people are good at or can do. Amelia's comment, "I am really good at throwing up all sorts of ways!!" Yep. Glad she has turned a negative into a positive.

Why is it that kids get the worst bruises, scrapes or cuts, rashes or take scissors to their hair right before you are supposed to get pictures done??? I wanted to attempt to take a very overdue family picture this weekend. Ben had a little incident with a solid wood chair right above his eyebrow. You know the kind that indents so hard it cuts them. Yeah. That's not going to be gone by Sat!!! Sorry for the terrible webcam pic that makes it so hard to see, but you get the idea. **Sigh*** And this is why we haven't had a family pic done in 3.5 years!!!!

.....or does anyone else feel like why do I even bother???? Why bother:

I guess the older they get the less pictures we take?!?! Not one of them really turned out, but here's our collage of Halloween events. The kids were Rapunzel and Flynn Rider from the movie Tangled. Hope you all enjoyed your Halloween. We had lots of fun!!!

My kindergartner is on her first field trip today!!! She is beyond excited to ride a school bus for the first time. They are going to a pumpkin patch. Hay ride, corn maze and pick your own pumpkin. I wish I was there to see her excited giggles, wiggly little legs and uncontrollable smile. These are her school pictures!!! I wish I had mine to show you the similarities. Just imagine adding huge bangs and darker hair and that is what mine looked like. That is NOT her real smile!!! The class picture is more accurate. I should have known she was going to be in the front and put her in pants that are a better length. She insists on wearing socks with her shoes. But I think it just makes for cuter memories!!

It's like I'm back in the TSC computer lab downloading songs from Napster when I should have been studying!!!!

A few months ago Philip wanted to do a taste test night. He went to the store and bought an assortment of snacks with different flavors. We lacked blindfolds so we tried wool winter hats, but this picture is about how long they lasted on their heads. It was July!! They both thought it was hilarious to close their mouth and have us put food in it. Now both of them are addicted to doing this and make each other "test" food all the time and occasionally I hear a sentence I dread, "mom, close your eyes and I am going to put something in your mouth" all sing-songy and then pop goes in a curiously warm fruit snack, or a soggy cracker. Gross, but still cute.

This is Ben's toy. The way it came about our family was very lame and dramatic, but it has slowly become one of his favorites right now. (I will spare you the long story of me alone on a trip to UT, stopping at a McDonald's in Primm for lunch, multiple fits about not getting the right toy, food, drink, you name it and a middle aged very annoyed man loudly criticizing me to his partner so everyone could hear his disgust in children and people who shouldn't have them, namely me!!!! Not kidding). But aside all that, what I love is what he has named him, Powerful Dog. I think it might have derived from the movie Up because it looks like the scary dog on there, which was one of the reasons he didn't want it at first. We have some great names for the toys in our house and all are completely their own. Enna, Buster, Princess, Powerful Dog, Ramasaucy and Petty (Philip's personal favorites), back it up guy, gray guy, van-truck, hospital bear..... It goes on. Amelia takes the more creative approach and Ben is a more call-it-as-I-see-it namer. But I live to hear the names of their toys and imaginary creatures.

These are my kids legs, side by side. They fell asleep next to each other today and for some reason I love the contrast of their skin so I had to snap a pic and share how tan she is and how stark white he is. In my family Amelia is considered pale!! So does that make Ben albino??

Here's all their cousins on my side (minus one) to show you what I mean. I also love this pic because he is freaking out, my nephew is just so happy to hug him, my other nephew is trying to calm him down by rubbing his leg, and Amelia is perfectly posing for my sister's pic totally unphased by his drama.

That's all it took for Amelia to violently shake free of my hand when she approached her classroom. Obviously she didn't want her teacher to see us holding hands. My heart dropped a little. Luckily she had no problem giving me a big hug and kiss and yelling out "I love you" so I will just chalk it up to the fact that she doesn't like holding my hand (which she usually doesn't like to hold hands even as a baby, she was always breaking free to do it by herself) and not that she has already out grown me!!!! This is a pic of picking her up after her first day of school. Her face looks like this every day after school. Grinning ear to ear.

Amelia went to Kindergarten today!!! She could hardly get to sleep last night and was up at 6:30 this morning because she didn't want to be late. I was starting to think she was abnormal because she has been so excited (for nearly a year now) with no sign of nervousness about school at all. Just sheer excitement. I finally got to see a little glimmer of normal first-day-of-school-nerves when she told me that she couldn't finish her bowl of cereal!!!! That's a pretty big deal for her. She's usually a 2 bowl girl and I have to cut her off. But she put on a good front and didn't admit to anything less than total excitement. I like this series of pictures because it shows her from the leaving our house to where we leaver her at school.


This is her making her way to her classroom. Notice the hand wringing!! It slowly progressed to nail biting!! But she still is smiling.












This is outside her classroom.















And this is her classroom. She was one of the first kids there, so she got to pick her seat and she chose the table with no one at it in the front of the class. She was really starting to loose the smile at this point. Luckily she had to wait about 10 minutes or so until the teacher started and the parents were asked to stay the first 10 minutes after that to go over what to expect. I think this really helped because by the time we were ready to leave, she looked bored and ready to do something. I had given her a kiss and said my goodbye's when she first sat down, so I made Philip go up to give her a hug and kiss goodbye (so I didn't break down crying in front of everyone) and she waved and blew me a kiss and was smiling and that was it. Just like that we got down graded from the most important people in her life to sharing it with someone else now!!! I held it together just fine. I think Philip was more emotional about it than me!!! Now I just wait to go back.


Guess what the first thing Ben did when we got home???? Get Amelia's Jessie doll, a toy he is typically not allowed to play with. It cracked me up how he is wasting no time taking advantage of free reign of the house.

..........Just turned 5!!!!

And to celebrate, we had an entire weekend of festivities for her. She has been wanting a Tangled birthday since she saw the movie almost a year ago!!! I am always happy to oblige especially when it's a theme I can sew and bake for. To kick it off, we went to the zoo and she got to feed the giraffe. She was so excited and did a great job not dropping the lettuce or jumping back, which is surprising since she is terrified of cats and chihuahuas. It's really hard not to just reach out and pet the giraffe, but I managed. Our entire day was choreographed around the Tangled Soundtrack: in the car, at home, and spontaneously a capella if there were no electronic devices. Amelia is very robust in her singing. After being henpecked all week about when she gets to open her presents, we decided to let her open one present Saturday and Sunday. She basically knew and saw almost all of them, so it wasn't too big of a deal. She was really excited to get a Rapunzel doll from Ben and was a great sport about acting surprised when she opened it, since she had very specific instructions for Ben as to which doll he should get her and how to wrap it up. He was very accommodating (of course). The doll accompanied us on all our activities!!















Next, she got to be recognized at her church class on Sunday. This entails getting to stand up in front of everyone, wear a special birthday hat, have them read special things about her, give her a big birthday sticker, sing to her and give her some candy. Seriously, she thought she was a superstar. She could not stop grinning all day. I didn't see it, but I heard about it and it was pretty cute how excited she was. You can see the sticker in one of the pictures. It stayed on the entire day!! Then she requested that as a family we watch Tangled with previously mentioned doll which she used to reenact all the parts of the movie!!! She loved it.

Since today was her official birthday, we did cake and all that amidst running around getting last minute forms for school (can I just say sending a child to school who requires medicine is a quite a chore and with all her food allergies it is terrifying. You have to totally trust that they will protect her and that they understand how severe it is while also not making too much of a deal so she is not considered "fragile" and left out of everything......hmpf, it's exhausting mentally). Amelia helped me decorate the flowers on her tower cake. She also requested that we eat hazelnut soup, which if you don't know, is Rapunzel's favorite thing and her mother makes it for her on her birthday. Since Amelia is allergic to nuts, we used chicken noodle!!! She knew I made her a Rapunzel costume because she had to have it fitted on her multiple times, but I did all the details while she was asleep, so the final product was a little bit of a surprise. She wanted to wear the dress while she ate her hazelnut soup!!! It was a great day and a great end to our summer.
A few fun things about her:
She is not shy of the camera and hams it up, poses and all.
She loves being fancy and all things girly, pink and sparkly. Think real life Fancy Nancy on our hands!!!
She loves being a "mommy" to dolls, animals and Ben
She may have a bigger sweet tooth than me!!!
I love that she believes I can make or fix anything.
Although she is the first to fight and torture Ben, she is the first to stand up and protect him when we go anywhere.
She has tons of energy and loves learning and life.
She said 0n her birthday questionnaire that she wants to be a mommy when she grows up and her favorite holiday is her birthday. I couldn't agree more!!!
She is so excited to start Kindergarten tomorrow she can hardly sit still. She got to meet her teacher today and see her classroom and she is ready to go to school, without us, she reminded me!! Good, then no one has to see me cry as I watch her grow up right before my eyes.
I love this little girl and will miss her all morning while she's gone (or at least for the first week or so until I realize how easy it is to just have 1 child at home again:)

Ben is terrible at remembering names. He can never tell us who he has been playing with. Today he was naming off (in a prayer) who he was glad he played with..."T.J, and green girl". He was referring to a little girl wearing a green dress. It made me stifle quite a laugh!!

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I walked into my "dining room" (it's more like a corner and the only table that fit is my craft table so please don't think this Lifetime plastic table is my idea of an appropriate dining room table....we just make do, and please ignore the gross crumbs everywhere also!!!) Sunday after a little nap to find this. I thought it was pretty great I had to share. I really love my boy and his creative play. And I love when I see that my dollar bin, potty training bribes are totally worth it. We are diaper free (during the day) for a few weeks now thanks to these guys and a pad of stickers!!! Ben reminds us that these are nice army guys and they don't fight with each other. And the ones who are kneeling with missile launchers, those are actually guys who fix your tires or puts gas in your car. The one aiming a skinner gun at hip height lives in a fire station. The other one holding a gun at hip height lives in space and has a gun. The man holding a walkie talkie just always calls his friend. The one on one knee lives on a farm and helps ducks get back in water. How sad will it be if he really learns what they do?!?!

My baby is 3 now and he is just as adorable and cuddly as the day he was born. He is funny and very into pirates, lasers, cars and anything to do with a movie he has seen even once.
Enjoy this sea of pictures from Ben's pirate extravaganza!!
The day started off with a hunt around the house to find a treasure in the mailbox.....a pirate shirt for his day of pirating. The bottom left pic is Ben giving you the pirate eye and the next 3 beside it is his tough guy/pirate/super hero stance. It's also what he does right before he runs really fast, don't ask me why!!

Next, off to the zoo where Ben got to feed a giraffe lettuce. He was not at all interested in the idea when we first proposed it a week ago. He slowly warmed to it and last night, finally resolved that he wanted to do it. When we arrived at the zoo, he as on a mission: feed that giraffe!!! He wanted dad to go with him (lucky). I love this series of pics. The bottom left picture was right after he fed it the first piece. He is laughing and saying, "the giraffe licked my hand". He wasn't at all scared and was so happy. Look closely and you can see it's long tongue licking him.

Next, a train ride around the zoo (a total lame rip off, but it's his birthday right!!) and cardboarding down the hill. Can't make a trip there without the cardboarding. I can't say it enough, this is the most beautiful zoo ever. The giraffes have beach front property, at noon it was 73 and blue skies. Santa Barbara is what I imagine heaven to be like.

And last but not least, home for birthday cake and presents. Amelia's MM's (see my last post for the explanation). Although Ben doesn't seem excited in the pic (mainly because Amelia was touching him and he didn't want to be touched) he was so thrilled to get his very own bag of MM's. I (with the help of a few little hands that "tested for poison") made a pirate ship cake with a very sorry attempt at cake pop pirates. Borderline cakewrecks people, but I am posting it anyway because who am I impressing. Kudos to bakerella (the creator of cake pops) for the patience and total attention to detail to make these little creations. I couldn't even get my candy melts to melt properly (granted I have no microwave, so I am blaming it on that). Not a skill for me I guess. The ship was a hit. I managed to keep the finished product a surprise from Ben so he is seeing it for the first time in the pic at the bottom right corner. Amelia wrapped his present in homemade wrapping pirate paper and it was too cute to not show her writing and drawings. Ben got a cape that Amelia and I made while he was napping one day (inspired by my sis-in-laws capes she made for her boys while I visited her at the cabin). I was so proud of Amelia not spoiling it for 2 weeks!! He has yet to take it off. The pic on the bottom 2nd from the left is him seeing if it makes him fly!! His response: "it does make me fly!!"

When all was said and done, I have to say, this pirate birthday stuff was one of my favorite to plan and execute. But it's easy to do something to get to see this smiling face!! Happy Birthday Ben!

It's Ben's birthday on Saturday and Amelia loves birthdays. Every day she has run to calendar to see how many more days until Ben's birthday and tries to get him excited about it. I think she has enough excitement for both of them!! We took a trip to library last week and got a birthday book, "A Birthday for Frances". If you haven't read this author's Frances series, you are missing out. They are fantastic. here you can look at it more. To sum up, Frances decides to buy her little sister a Chompo candy bar and 2 gumballs with all her allowance for her birthday. On the walk home from the candy store, Frances accidentally eats the gumballs and then decides that her sister is too little for a candy bar and maybe she will just eat some of it and give her what's left. She resists and in the end she gives her sister the uneaten Chompo bar and an IOU for 2 gumballs and is really glad she gave her sister the candy.
Amelia was counting her piggy bank money yesterday and decided that when we went to the store, she wanted to buy Ben a present with her money (she had about a dollar in change). I didn't want to squash her generosity, so I told her she could buy something and I would pay for the rest. Then Phil had a brilliant idea that she buy him some of his favorite candy, MM's is what we call them, like Frances and the Chompo bar. Amelia ran the entire length of the mall to Target to get it. She had her purse with the money inside and the checker was so sweet about it. Then she wrapped it up in a bag and put it in her purse to hide it then ran all the way back to the other end of the mall to find Ben and say she got him a present but he can't look!!! It was the cutest thing I think I have done with her in a really long time. She keeps going to her purse and checking that it's there and then hiding it then changing the location of where she is hiding it so he doesn't find it. Waiting another 2 days is so torturous for her. I am so proud she hasn't spoiled it yet.

Anyone who knows me knows I need a minimum of 80 degrees to feel warm and it has only reached that like twice here. I was so excited to see that we are reaching upper 80's this week and then when it hit, I quickly realized that 70 degree weather is probably more comfortable for our house. (no a/c or ceiling fans!!) It was so hot in the house, the only other alternative to napping the day away in a pool of your own sweat while trying to wake from what feels like a comatose induced sleep, was to set up the slip in slide. It was no match to our solar heated pool last year but a bargain deal at Target!!! I took it to UT and tried it out with my friend's kids and the girls had a lot of fun. Ben wouldn't get in because it was too cold. The hose we were using there was irrigation water which I believe is basically snow melt, so it was FREEZING. I don't blame him. It was much warmer here. Amelia had a blast sliding on her butt and army crawling through it and then crap crawling through it. It was almost like she had a work out routine of different moves she had to complete down the slide. Ben sat on the sidelines for the first hour, deciding if he really wanted to get wet.

For some reason telling him he could get his rubber duckies from the bath and put them on the slip in slide was a total deal changer. I think little kids in water of any kind is the cutest.

The best is seeing them all wrapped up in what they call "bear towels". This is them pretending to be bears and growling at each other.

Enjoy keeping cool where you are!!

Me and the kids spent the last week on a little impromptu vacation to UT. Ben managed to throw up 7 times on the way there and made it 6 times in the bucket without us having to stop. I think that's pretty impressive. They liked finding rocks and getting filthy, but walking more than a few steps in the hot sun was too much for our, as Jim Gaffigan would say, "indoorsy" Ben. Check out his sweaty, hot, little face and his filthy feet here.















There was still lots of snow on Cedar mountain so we had to stop and touch it. Ben told me that, "I think we should be wearing mittens and snow shoes." I guess flip flops and crocs are not snow appropriate attire, but I will have to agree that although it was only an inch of snow in 3 foot patches and it is JUNE, it was still way to cold for my California family.

I attempted to get some nice sibling pics of them but after so many attempts with grumpy, dirty, sick kids, this is the best of what I got.

They are still pretty cute, mismatched, hair everywhere, dirty little faces and all!!

We went thru an automatic carwash with the kids a few days ago and when we drove out after it was finished Ben said very matter of factly, "well, that went well". Not a phrase you expect to hear from a 3 year old.
Philip later that evening was stating that Amelia was going to make a great lawyer because she is always trying to find the loophole and do what you didn't say instead of following the bigger picture idea you are trying to convey. He said her first case will be her emancipation from us. She asked what that meant and he said he didn't want her to know to get any ideas. She says, "just tell me......I'll give you some candy if you tell me". See what I mean.

This is what the month of May grows at my house every year.

Guess what you get when you add this : My adorable Amelia















with this: Goat cheese swirled brownies. These might be my new addiction. They are better than cream cheese, I promise. (tried to do a dairy free cheesecake option for her and she said it was delicious when she took the first bite, then the second one made her throat feel "weird")

You get this: A total allergic reaction that gave her hives from head to toe for hours!! I guess you add goat's milk to her never ending list of allergies.


BTW: We gave Amelia a digital camera to use and she is becoming quite the photographer for a 5 year old. The top picture she took herself with the self timer. I am working on compiling a collage of her best work, so wait for that.

I think Ojai has left an impact on Ben. He has found himself bonding with the drum circle crowd and taking to listening to reggae music.

I secretly love spam (still). We ate it almost daily in the Marshall Islands and when we came home, we bought some for our "food storage". Did you know you can get like 8 cans in a pack at Costco!! When I replenish ours, I sheepishly pick up the pack and bury it between some fresh veggies or fruit. It's the same feeling you get when you let your toddler drink soda. You know you shouldn't and it makes you feel and look like like total trash, but you just can't help yourself. (and just so you don't worry, this is my 3rd time buying it since we have been home, so we've gone through like 12 cans in 6 years, that's only twice a year we dip into it. Not too shabby!!) We occasionally pop open a can to "rotate through" the stock, but we are totally kidding ourselves. That stuff expires like in 7 years from when it's made, and even then, it's probably fine to eat. We just occasionally need a little Spam. Spam stir fry, or Spam and pineapple "pizza" or just plain old Spam and rice with Sriracha sauce. Yum.

My kids play mommy and "sweetie". The sweetie is the kid. I think it is pretty cute to hear them call each other sweetie. Usually Ben is the sweetie and is happy to pretend to go take naps!! Have I mentioned how much this kid likes letting other people do stuff for him and how much he likes to sleep. I like this collage for 3 reasons. You can see how happy Amelia is being a "mommy" and how happy Ben is to be the "sweetie", and third, if you question how white Ben really is, look at the background color. That is the eye dropper color of his back!!!!!