Mama never said there'd be days like this

Ken and my mom said I need to document this moment. Personally I would like to just forget it and never think about it again. At the same time I know there is an important lesson to be learned by the whole experience. On Monday I was rushing to get the kids to school. In the rush I didn't properly buckle baby Huck into the stroller. As we were walking without my realizing it he was slipping. One second I was walking along talking to the kids and the next second I heard a terrible sound and the stroller stopped. It took me a moment to realize that he had slipped under his tray and had banged his face on the pavement. When I picked him up his mouth was full of blood (later we realized he had simply cut his lip) but mouth cuts bleed so much. Luckily it had happened right next to a friend's house. I scared her to death when I banged on her back door, but she was able to help me with Huck and I was able to send Midge and Leo on to school.

In the end he is fine, although he has fear issues with strollers now. This entire experience was a wake up call for me that I need to slow down more. I felt so bad that Huck had to be the one who got hurt in teaching me this lesson. The fact is that often I look at my daily life as one big to do list. I race through the events of the day looking at each task as something to accomplish. In the process I am forgetting the moments to be lived in the process. I am learning I need to realign my priorities. I feel like I have had several experiences recently that have shown me I need to do this, hopefully I can just learn this lesson without any more visible reminders. Rather than rushing through the day I need to enjoy the most important things. Of course certain things need to get done and there are times schedules have to be followed, but not at the expense of myself and my family.

I am grateful that Huck had minor injuries, despite what happened to him. As proof that Huck is fine here are some of his latest photos.

He is so close to crawling. He gets frustrated because he can't move exactly how he wants to. Frequently he will find himself going backwards when he wants to be going forward. He also loves chewing on his toes.

I think he is going to be needing a new haircut soon.

Our next little reader.

Preschool Happenings

This week preschool was at our house. It makes the schedule a little crazy at times, but we had so much fun. Little Miss was so excited to have her friends come to her house for preschool. I wasn't sure how she would do, but she was a great help.

This week we were talking about following directions so we decided to take a "trip" to the bakery. We pretended that we got on a bus and drove to the bakery. The kids loved pretending and they humored me with a photo. It was so cute to see them sitting in their seats. They even pretended to buckle up. They helped me drive, pointed out animals to watch out for, helped me look both ways, and honk the horn.

When we arrived at the bakery we talked about how in order to make bread we have to follow directions or the recipe won't work. The kids had so much fun making their bread loaves.

We then baked the bread and had a yummy snack.

Staying Busy

This past weekend Midge was able to go with Ken to visit his mom in Sunriver. They were able to fish at East Lake and help out his mom winterize his house. While they were gone I took the kids up to my parent's house for General Conference. While there we helped out in the garden. Saturday was a beautiful weather day and we were able to harvest a lot of produce.

Leo is such a great worker. Little Miss is a great delegator. She kept pointing out what she wanted the rest of us to pick. Notice that she is actually wearing pants. This is the first time in weeks she agreed to wear pants. Of course it only lasted for a few hours and she was back in a dress.

Those are potatoes in that wheelbarrow. Some of them were huge.

The kids had so much fun with Papa's oak leaves. They kept trying to find the "eggs".

Baby Huck is getting so big. I love kissing his sweet cheeks.

Every time I get the camera out now he tries to grab it. Makes picture taking so much fun.

He is in the first stages of crawling. He will get up in this position and rock back and forth.

He tries this position a lot as well.

Last FHE we went to Sweety's. It is a really cute yogurt shop downtown. The kids love it because you can build your own ice cream dessert.

Huck loved it and was so mad when we ran out. You can see that he grabbed the spoon and tried to savor every drop.

Sunday Fun!??

I have a confession to make. I don't know about the rest of you but Sundays are hard days around our house. There I said it. At this point in our lives Sundays are not the restful days they once were. Often before we leave for church it is crazy before we even get out the door. We try to get things organized the night before, but there is still a certain level of chaos that can't be avoided. Plus 9:00 church is never easy with four little ones. Then when we get home from church the kids just seem to go a little stir crazy. We try to think of reverent activities, but at some point our high energy kids just seem to loose it. Tempers start to flare and teasing, tears, and tantrums ensue, and then there are the kids reactions :)

Today we still had the dreaded triple three appear, but for a brief moment there was also laughter and bonding as a family. No there wasn't anything spiritual during this brief moment, but we did have fun as a family which is much better in my opinion than having to break up a squabble. Below are the products of playing around with photo booth on my Mac.

Gotta love a Mac.

We love the above the photo of Ken because we think he looks like a disney cartoon character.

We are seriously considering the potential of a future family Christmas Photo.

What do you think?

We even got Little Miss to participate when she woke up.

Remember how I said Sundays are hard. We had just gotten the kids to bed and breathed a sigh of relief that we had survived the day and Leo came flying down the stairs crying. Once we got him calmed down he told us the toilet was flooding. We raced upstairs to find the entire bathroom flooded. When Ken raced back downstairs to get tools to shut off the toilet he came back upstairs to tell me the water was coming through the ceiling in the kitchen and dripping on to the dish washer of clean dishes that I had just opened the door of to let the dishes dry out. Seriously what is it with us and Sundays!

Family Life From the Eyes of a Six Year Old

Earlier this week we had the Open House at school. When I went into Leo's class the teacher had me sit at his desk and this paper was lying on it for us to read. Leo wrote this himself and drew the picture. The writing says:

"I like my mom and my dad. My mom and dad play tickle monster."

The game tickle monster is a very elaborate game with complex rules. It involves mom and dad running around the house trying to catch the kids. The kids must run as fast as they can to avoid getting tickled. The game ends when either a kid or parent collapses, whichever happens first. Isn't it always interesting to see your family through the eyes of your kids. The drawing shows the couch in our sun room, which plays a very important part in the game because this is the safe place for the kids to go. Of course they only get 10 seconds to rest!