ready for fall break

We've got first quarter of school behind us and the boys are out of school until October 20th. I met with Burke and Hewitt's teachers this week and both boys are doing excellent! I am ready for a break from school as well as soccer!
Here's Hewitt running to greet me after school. Can you spot Burke in the background walking with his friend?

Our kids still get up pretty early (it averages around 6:30) most days. Burke and Tosh had time to jump on the tramp together for about 30 min. before school one day. Morning is still the only time it is cool enough to play outside. We've had record breaking high temperatures for the past couple of weeks. I am officially tired of above 100 degree weather!

Tosh is so goofy and entertaining. A couple of my favorite things he says often are:

"I am the best!" He says this with a Spanish accent like Jack Black in "Nacho Libre." He obviously hasn't seen the movie so he's had to have heard Rob say this or something...

"I'm easy at that!" He means that he is good at something, or that something is easy for him.

He has also been very loving and will tell me things like, "I love you, Mommy" and "Can I snug with you?" out of the blue.

Tosh often wants things "just like Burke" these days.

Liv is still keeping busy climbing on things and pulling things out of cupboards and drawers. One of her discoveries was an old Yoga VHS tape that I bought years ago from a neighbor for 50 cents at a garage sale... While I was doing laundry this week, I came in the laundry room to find Tosh trying to copy the yoga poses.

Blurry, but still cute.

Liv and Tosh love playing in these clothes hampers. This photo is hard to see, but they are giving each other kisses.

For about 25 years, I have looked forward to doing pigtails on a little girl. The day finally came.

All week I've been telling Liv, "Let's go do your hair!" And she completely cooperates.

See? I'm a little obsessed with girl hair, but it's so much fun and I think she looks so cute. I noticed last week that Liv's eyes are not so blue anymore. I was really hoping that they'd stay Rob's color, but it looks as though they are turning hazel. Oh well. Darn my dominant genes.

And my favorite photo of the week that I L.O.V.E. , and was lucky to catch:

the latest comic by our favorite author

Hewitt is into comic books lately (both reading, and writing his own). He came straight home from school on Monday and did this in one sitting:

(Hopefully you can read this book by clicking on the photos for a larger view. My favorite is the illustration of "Super Guy" changing back into civilian clothing...).

Good work, Hewitt!

hurray, it's fall!

A few random highlights from the week:

Tosh was so tired last Sunday that he actually fell asleep at the dinner table


Liv has enough hair for a tiny ponytail...every time I comb her hair she touches the top to make sure there isn't a clip, but she didn't think to search the back of her head!

Hewitt drew this photo of our family and then Tosh added our magnet faces while it was hanging on the fridge!

Burke usually plays defense in soccer, but his coach had him play "forward" for the first time yesterday. Burke scored his first goal! He looked pretty shocked afterward. He commented later that "Dad is always yelling during the game, but really yelled after I scored that goal!"

During halftime at Hewitt's soccer game yesterday, he entertained all of the kids on the team (and some of the parents) by telling stories including the time we found a frog in our pool. He got on the ground to demonstrate a frog stroke and the kids were all laughing and very amused. Quite the entertainer, that one.

My friend Jessica (from my hometown) was here this weekend for a friend's wedding and stayed with us Saturday night. We sat in the pool for a bit in the afternoon and then went to the Relief Society broadcast together (btw, I LOVED Presdient Monson's talk) before she went to the wedding reception that evening. She is the sweetest and even brought gifts and treats for the kids (and us).

The boys had fun playing with her phone and driving in her rental car-- a red Ford Mustang convertible. Rob took Hewitt for a drive first, and then I tagged along when he took Burke and Tosh out for a short drive.

They LOVED it! In fact, Burke says that he now wants to be a race car driver, and wants to go for another ride in a convertible for his birthday, ha! p.s. Burke announced to us that he is now 100 months old.

Wind in the hair!

Burke was smiling the entire ride.

I took some photos out of the (dirty) side view mirror...

and happened to catch this HILARIOUS one of Burke:

A "Women's Choir" sang a musical number in church today (called "Mountain of the Lord"). It was all of the women that usually go to choir and also as many of the young women (and their moms) that we could get. Since my talented friend Jessica was staying with us, I had her join the choir for the day including the early 8:15 practice before church. I was able to get all of us ready for church and there on time without Rob. He was at a different building for 7:00 meetings and generally gets to our church building by 9:00 for Sacrament Meeting. Rob's meetings ran late today and he didn't walk in until 10:00 (he missed the choir piece including my short solo, but no biggie). At the time Rob walked in, Liv was standing on my lap facing me and noticed Rob in the back right away. She started squealing and giggling like I could not believe. By the way she was pointing to him and laughing with delight, one might have guessed that she hadn't seen him for a week! It was truly priceless and I so wish that we had that on film! Several people commented to me after about how "darling" and sweet her reaction was. What a cutie. She sure loves her daddy.

Her little face looked something like this during church today:

happy "grandparents' day"

I'm starting to get into the groove of two kids with homework and lots of things going on after school. It's still crazy some days and 3:30-4:30pm is the most challenging part of my day. All four kids are awake and needing my attention. I'm trying to keep Burke and Hewitt focused on homework, keep Liv off of the counter tops and from getting into everything, fix dinner, and keep Tosh busy without him sneaking off to turn to some media source. He's figured out how to turn everything on (tv, dvd player, computer, wii, etc.), so I have to keep everything unplugged and under password if possible...

I don't really keep treats in the house, and the other day I resorted to the only thing I could come up with at a point of desperation around 4pm. If you can't tell what this is, it's a big spoon of peanut butter with a handful of frozen chocolate chips on top. What can I say, sometimes you gotta give in.

Burke's soccer practice on Monday overlaps with cub scouts. He misses the last 15 minutes of scouts and only gets about half of soccer practice. To make this work, Burke wears his shin guards and cleats to scouts. After he got ready on Monday afternoon, I heard Burke say, "Is it half man, half gorilla? No, it's half cub scout, half soccer player!" He is such a goofball. Half man, half gorilla? Funny kid.




We let Liv go for it with a half-melted cookie Rob brought home from work the other day. She loved it. The mess was mostly contained to the face and fingers.


This is a posed smile with eyes closed on purpose:

A woman that I visit teach (her husband is actually my third cousin; we have the same great, great Grandfather Hatch!) is really good at making balloon animals and always offers to make something for the kids. Isn't this a cute airplane? She made one for Tosh last time we were there and the handle popped as we were getting into the car. Tosh had lots of fun with airplane #2(for about 20 min) until someone stepped on it and the wings popped. Oh well. He'll most likely request another airplane next month.



Friday was "Grandparents Day" at the boys' school. I was able to stop by both classrooms even though Burke told me several times that I didn't need to go. When I got to Hewitt's room, they were just about to start their program and he was doing a very nervous scan around the room. When he saw me, he got a huge smile on his face, then raised his hand and told his teacher, "My mom is here now, but she isn't sitting in my seat." The other parents and grandparents chuckled as I quickly made my way to his kindergarten-sized chair. I made sure to take some video of the program for his grandparents:

After the program we worked on a few activities together. In keeping true to myself and my reputation, I got teary a couple of times thinking about how quickly Hewitt is growing up, and how much we miss Grandma and Grandpa Dunning and Grandma and Grandpa Pete. I thought I'd share a page from a book that Hewitt made. I was a little confused when he started to draw a frowny face and when I asked him why "Grandpa" was sad he said, "This is us saying goodbye to each other." Sweet Hewitt.

Today was our primary program at church. Hewitt knew and sang most of the songs and did well on his speaking part. Burke was assigned a talk and wrote most of it by himself (he actually forgot to bring the talk with him-even though I had handed it to him-and so I scrambled to re-write it for him before the program started). The boys really did a great job and it was evident that they have both matured since last year. The funniest part of the meeting was actually when the Bishop got up to close the meeting and said something about "peace" and Tosh loudly said, "Piece? A piece of what? I want a piece!" We had a good laugh (along with the people sitting in the row behind us).

in high speed

We had such a nice and relaxing Labor Day weekend. Here is a photo of Aunt Alisa and Liv:

And one of Uncle Kevin doing the "helicopter" spin with Hewitt:

In contrast to last weekend, I feel like someone just hit the fast forward button or something. Things have really gotten busy. Rob is starting to have a lot of different meetings (work meetings during dinner time/evening and lots of new church meetings in the evenings). Soccer is also taking up lots of time (three nights a week and a big chunk of Saturday).

Burke has spent the last couple of weeks researching his birthstone for a big school project due tomorrow. I'm so happy to finally have it done. It really took some great effort on my part to try to assist Burke with his project without taking over. I am realizing that I am a bit of a perfectionist and a control freak! It's hard for me to let him do things his way, but hopefully I'm getting better at it. He had to make some sort of "Rock Star Bling" to represent his birthstone and a poster too. We've worked on it every day and spent a couple of hours finishing it up yesterday.

Here are his "Emerald Bling Drumsticks" and the poster for his presentation:

Liv is convinced that she is a big girl. She is obsessed with climbing up on the stools and counters. I've moved her booster seat over to one of our stools at the bar because she was constantly up there. She is drinking from a regular cup now and getting a little neater when eating. I was trying to get her to say "shoe" the other day and kept saying it over and over and had her watch me say it. A couple of hours later, I said it again and she said, "shoe" as clear as a bell. Of course I have not been able to get her to say it again. None of our kids have been in a hurry to talk. She says "more," "mom," "bunny," and "bye" all the time now. The next word I am going to work on is "please." We'll see how that goes. I caught her coloring the other day, and when she heard the camera, she looked up and gave me her "pose-y" smile. I love that little face!

Tosh has been acting exhausted lately. He must be growing because his shoes are suddenly too small again. He took a nap both Friday and Saturday and it was like I had forgotten how happy he could be after getting enough sleep! I pulled out the Play-Doh for the first time in weeks and T and H stayed entertained until it all started drying out.

Hewitt scored some goals at his soccer game yesterday and was able to go to a birthday party for a girl in his kindergarten class. Rob took him to the party and reported that he played with everyone and seems to be somewhat magnetic. We're starting to talk about what to do for his birthday in a few weeks and every time I ask him who he likes to play with at school he always says, "I play with everyone!" We're not inviting the entire class, so we'll have to figure something out.

To wrap things up, I thought I'd show a couple of clips of the kids dancing that I filmed yesterday. The first one of Liv is really dark, unfortunately. She LOVES to dance and loves the song "Fireflies." Enjoy!

central vac: i just met you, but can't live without you

Our industrial-style upright vacuum started dying a slow death last month. Technically it still worked, but the suction wasn't what it used to be and the sound was deafening. We took it to be repaired and learned that we could buy a new one for the cost of fixing it. Unfortunately the same could be said about our central vacuum; zero suction, lots of noise. It hasn't worked since we moved in, and never having had one, I was just fine with my upright with extra long cord.

We started shopping around for vacuums and eventually thought to look into repairing the central vac. The first guy that came to look at it tried to sell us the "Mercedes" of vacuums (a couple thousand). He told us that our current vac was garbage and needed to be replaced. He was persuasive crossing into pushy, "You don't know vacuums (imagine with thick accent). I know vacuums!" Rob did some online investigation and found out that ours is actually a good model and so he called a different company that could repair it. We were able to replace the motor and get a new hose for the price of a standard upright, and voila! I LOVE IT! I am now asking myself the question the repair guy told me I would ask: How did I ever live without this?

The kids love using it because it's lightweight (and let's be honest, it's a novelty) and because it plugs into each room. It's quiet, has great suction, and makes the floors look great. There is a special attachment for my tile and it makes me never want to use a broom and dust pan ever again (let alone the three to four times a day that I'm used to). I realize that this is something odd to go on about, but it's creating more joy in my journey.

Look, Tosh cleaning up his own mess:

Look at that smile. We could do infomercials! :) And there you have it.