Sweet Moments

Families... they are the best. And family dynamics keep everything interesting. Here's a little glimpse into ours through a conversation that occurred over lunch one day...
Jack starts crying.
Someone: Jack, what's wrong?
Jack: Tyler called me a loser!!
Kelly: Tyler Wilson! No you didn't.
Tyler: (just a smirk on his face and a shrug of the shoulders)
Kelly: Starting to finish her scolding when Jack blurts out...
Jack: I'm not a loser! I'm a winner!!
Clay decides its time to pipe up...
Clay: Jack. Its ok. There are winners, and there are losers in this world. We just want to make sure we surround ourselves with winners. Etc etc etc.
Jack: Well I want to have a race to decide who is the best. I want to be on Brynn's team so I can win.
Tyler: Yep. Brynn is the bestest. I am the middlest. And Jack is the smallest.
Jack: I am not the smallest!!!
And the fun continued on from there :)

(Dylan, Steven, Tyler, Jack, Brynn) (Jack) (Dylan)

And that previous conversation reminded me of one from our last get together in Utah this summer. Brynn and Madison are best friends by day. But at night they are tired and emotional and start to cry instead of just going to sleep. Well one night the girls were of course upstairs crying and Aunt Katy said she'd go handle it this time. So up the stairs she went and then back down she came with a huge smile on her face. Apparently she asked Madison what was wrong. And Madison responded that Brynn was telling her that she wasn't perfect. And Brynn exclaimed, "What? She's not perfect. Nobody is. I just needed to let her know that." Oh man, my kids, where do they get this stuff from. I'm working on it - losers, winners, perfection, tact, humility, honesty, and zipping it. All of that. We are working on it.
But aren't we all so cute?!...

(Kate and Mommy) (Uncle TJ and Brynn sharing a moment)

(my brother Steven, baby Steven, my brother TJ) (Tyler, Uncle Steven, Jack)

One afternoon, while playing outside, Tyler was giving Kate a ride in the jeep. And it died on them. So I sweetly watched him make sure she was ok and buckled in. Then he went around to the back and slowly but surely pushed her (and the jeep) all the way from the street up to the driveway, all the way down the driveway, and into the back of the garage; stopping every now and then to adjust the steering wheel. Then he carefully unbuckled her, lifted her out of the jeep, set her on the ground and walked out of the garage holding her hand. Then she went and sat down on the stairs and he went and sat with her. I went over and told him how proud I was of him for taking care of his sister like that. And Katy saw and came and took their picture because they were too cute. And then he liked all the attention he was getting so he put her on his lap and asked Lyndsay to take their picture again...

Sweet moments. Families are the best. Did I say that already???

Busy Little Girl

I've kept it no secret that Kate is a very busy little girl. And mom made certain appropriate preparations for Kate's arrival; such as getting all sharp kitchen utensils out of the lower drawers, putting locks on her cabinets, gating off the music/computer room, etc. But even so nobody was prepared for the entrance of our little whirlwind. The first night we were there us women were down in the basement getting some beds set up and we made the unrealistic expectation that the menfolk were aware of this and that their job was to watch Kate. And when we got upstairs we found that she had worked her way on top of the kitchen table, spilled orange Crystal Light all over, emptied and spread the napkins, and was busily trying to open her package of Yogurt Melts (picture taken after clean up had begun)...

Needless to say she's a climber and it didn't go assumed from then on out who was watching her. Everyone kept their eyes and ears open.

And she and baby Steven had quite the relationship (he is 5 months older than her). They would be playing happily one minute and the next minute they were bullying or yelling at each other...

...but they were always very good at hugging and making up. She was full of apologizes for being a booger - its a good thing she's also such a sweet lover.
Oh, and she's messy too...

She made lots of messes...

...but thankfully she is pretty good at helping to clean up her messes (we've had lots of practice with this at home). And sometime she had great helpers.
Oh Kate. You are busy. You are trouble. But I'm sure Gramma and Grampa miss their recycling being spread all through out the house, and rushing in to get you off the table and re-push all the chairs in, or rewinding the toilet paper, and tripping on all the shoes you've tried on in random places, or searching through the trash for non-trash items before they take it out, but mostly especially I'm sure they miss getting your cuddles.

Acting like adults...

We have always read to the children. I have so many pictures of the kids piled around someone while they are being read to. Good memories. So when did that turn into this... Yep, Lyndsay, who is a regular reader to the kids, has an iPad in her hand instead - and the kids were loving it! We all showed up to mom and dad's house with our iPads and smart phones and always had them on hand. And the kids caught on quickly. They were always asking or playing with some sort of gadget...

We had to restrict playing time. And we tried to challenge ourselves to not have ours out when the kids were around - but that was a little hard sometimes. And sure enough when they caught one of us with ours the rest were quick to come out. Geez. You know its bad when they can fall asleep playing while their hand is still twitching...

But thankfully we tried to do most of our other crazy stuff after the kids were in bed so they wouldn't catch on to anything else. As much as we love the kiddos, its always a sigh of relief when they are all tucked into bed - it becomes our time. And we usually play games. Its what we like to do. Well, most of us - Mom is a little picky and Clay... well he doesn't love it so much. But we convinced him to play a few times. We broke out of our routine, with such high participation numbers, and played a few different games this get together. Like the Name Game...

And I don't know why this got started...

But bench pressing apparently can be fun. But Katy had to step in and show the menfolk how to stay tight, sharp and straight...

And arm wrestling...

... why not? Guess kids don't always act like kids and adults don't always act like adults.

Getting the kids outta the house...

The kids are always excited to get to Gramma and Grampa's, and they like us to show up before bed time so that they have time to head straight down to Gramma's toy basement to play. And the basement is a wonderful place for them and their loud chaos. But inevitably its important to get the kids out of the house too every now and then - for our sanity and theirs.
And this trip we had hoped for one thing... SNOW! Why snow? Well besides the fact that my kids thought Christmas had to be white, I realized that while we have been here for two winters already, and this is our last winter here, we have never been sledding. Which is awful! Especially when Gramma and Grampa's side yards have the perfect sledding hills. The weather forecast didn't look good. So not good in fact that I didn't even bother to pack boots, snowpants or even mittens! But we were so lucky, and one day we woke up to see it snowing!! The kids wanted to get out there right away but we made them wait until lunch time so that a little more could accumulate. And then we let them loose for some snowy fun and they loved it (despite their lack of appropriate attire and coldness). Even Kate got to go down the hill.


And the city of Bloomington has a great library with a great discovery area for the kids to play. So we went there and hung out. The kids role played, PJ taught Tyler how to look up and find Transformer books, then Tyler taught Jack everything he knew about Transformers, and Jack taught Tyler everything he knew about Star Wars, and we read. And the kids checked out books - and one of them was even a 'how to' in drawing sea creatures (mostly picked that one because it contained sharks) which they did at home later.



My kids had been asking to go ice skating before this trip. And they even went as far as calling Gramma and making sure she had a near by skating rink. Which she did. But us parents didn't love that idea, and they didn't bring it up while we were there, so we sidetracked them with bowling.


And then there was the usual out door play. We are always thankful when its not so cold that we can't go outside.
See the look on Brody and Kate's face... ...not sure who thought this was a good idea or who exactly was watching them but they were thrilled. And I don't think they even ran anyone or anything over - unlike Dylan who plowed Aunt Katy down who was innocently sitting in a lawn chair.
And Kate loved this Kitty... ...but my dad informed me that when its ears went down and it started evil hissing at her that I better end that fun. Which I did, and did again, and did again seeing as she kept following it.


And of course it couldn't be avoided...

...we certainly love us some McDonalds PlayPlace.