Sad story and misc.

Here are some pictures of my youngest brother Ethan playing football. He's a senior at his highschool, which I can't remember the name of right now. Here's a video of a few highlights too, iffen you're interested: Ethan's highlights

Wow--look at those muscles!!

If you know my family, you might have already read on my sisters' blogs that he got tackled and tore his MCL, so he's out for the count. So sad! He had a couple college football scholarships ready to go. But he's a punk, he can take it. Then again, he could end up like:

Uncle Rico: Back in '82, I used to be able to throw a pigskin a quarter mile.
Kip: Are you serious?
Uncle Rico: I'm dead serious.
How much you wanna bet I can throw a football over them mountains? Yeah... if Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would've been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind.

Uncle Rico: So what do you think?
Kip: It's pretty cool, I guess.
Uncle Rico: Ohhhh, man I wish I could go back in time. I'd take state.
Napoleon Dynamite: This is pretty much the worst video ever made.
Kip: Napoleon, like anyone can even know that.
Uncle Rico: You know what, Napoleon? You can leave.
Napoleon Dynamite: You guys are retarded!

Just kidding. We love you Ethan (not that you're reading this or anything)!! In fact, just the night before his injury, Jethro was in the tub playing with some tub paints that Ethne was given for her birthday from Grandma Bell , and he said, "Put a 3 on my chest! I want to be Uncle Ethan! A football player!" (Ethan's number is 3.)

In other news, I had a pretty productive day. I made bread, did dishes, finished all the laundry, changed sheets on everyone's bed, bought a new vacuum, and bought a new pair of glasses. But do you think that I have mopped my disgusting floor yet? No siree bob.
Brett was home all day, which is a pretty rare treat, and helped the kids do their chores and played with them and helped me and changed the oil in the car. It was a good day.

It turned very cold and wintery. Waaah! Dark and dreary, just like all the other winter days in Indiana. So here's a song to play to make the coming of winter a little more poetic:
Summer Again
Really, go listen--it's a *beautiful* song.


And here's a picture of Talmage and Jethro at about 3 months. Brothers? I think so. (Although Talmage certainly wins the hair-growing contest.)

I love Talmage!

Just in case I haven't yet made it perfectly clear how much I love this little bear cub, and shown how cute he is, here are some more pictures to sigh over.
Look at these grins! Actually, I can't ever seem to get it right when his smile is at his best--it's always difficult to try to elicit the smile and capture it at the same time. But you get the gist.

I love these ones of him in the hat. Shows his

So sweet!

The poor boy went to the doc yesterday and she declared that fixing his hernias was necessary. So he's scheduled for surgery next week. But he's tough, so he can take it.

Brett got the movie "Courage Mountain" from the library the other day so we all laid down in the front room and started watching it together. It was really quite fun, watching it together. We never watch movies all together. And it's a darn good movie; I've liked it for as long as I can remember. Good story, funny lines ("This is not a proper topic of conversation!"), girl hooks up with hot older guy, who also happens to be a hero and save her life. Good times. I recommend it for family viewing. Only, buy some popcorn before you do, because I really would have liked to have some while we watched, but our cupboards were bare.

My kitchen floor is decidedly the most disgusting it's ever been. I blame it on the fact that there are carpet remnants and carpet padding on it, which do not have a home. Yes, I probably could move them elsewhere while I mopped and then move them back, but that would be far too sensible. However, I did vacuum the car today. Thank you, thank you.

My oldest sister Megan always snaps my bra strap whenever I come to visit. Some things never change.

Why when you go to the bakery at the grocery stores do they offer free cookies to kids and not adults?

Well, I'm off to cut my husband's hair. Which reminds me of something funny. I was cutting Jethro's hair earlier this evening, and whenever I cut his hair he strips down to his underwear, and when I was finished and brushing all the hair off him I told him to brush off his underwear. And he started saying "my hairy underweary," and thought he was hilarious. And it kind of was.

Sneak Peek

I got to take pictures of this very beautiful family the other day, and I have to show off some of my favorites!!

I know the next two are similar, but I couldn't decide which I liked the best.

Oh, how I LOVE this one below!!!! Love, love, love!

Gorgeous Day

It was such a sensationally beautiful day today that when Jethro got home I decided to forget about doing the dishes and go to the park. It was gorgeous.

This is the sweetest picture! I love it.

All 4 of my kids, in the swings.

I decided I wanted some pictures of each of the kids and I, so I took some holding-the-camera-in-front-of-you shots that makes everyone look so glamorous. But look at Jethro's face---I LOVE it!

Happy Autumn!!

21 things for today

This is Talmage practicing his intimidating glare. Pretty good.

1. I really hate that moment in the morning when you’re in bed, mostly asleep, but you know that you really have to wake up, there is no more pretending that you can’t hear your kid(s) crying, and you have to take the plunge and come back to the real world. After that moment, it’s okay, but that one moment is really awful.
2. It’s even more awful when it’s cold in your house and you have to leave your warm cocoon of blankets.
3. In fact, there’s even a comic strip cut out and taped to the inside of one of the kitchen cupboards at my mom and dad’s house that has my name written on it and pointing to Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes, obviously). His mom is shaking him and trying to get him up and he says “I’m not coming out until it’s as warm out there as it is in here.”
4. There are lots of other comics taped up on the inside of the cupboards with all sorts of names written in.
5. In fact, when I went to Utah there was a new one up on the fridge with my name on it. It was a Zits, and the teenage guy (I think his name is Jeremy?) is lying out on his roof looking up at the stars, and his mom is leaning out of the window and says “Don’t you have a history paper due?” and Jeremy/Kayli says “Just putting it in perspective.” My dad clipped this one out for me because of how very frequently I would go out on the roof and chill when I was younger. It was very pleasant at night. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to, but you know.
6. On Sunday we forgot to turn our clocks back, and ended up at church an hour early. Oops. We blame it on the fact that we got used to Indiana never changing for Daylight Savings, and then switching a couple years ago.
7. But I confess, we’ve done it before. When we lived in Utah.
8. Better an hour early than late.
9. We took family pictures yesterday---I CAN’T wait to see them!!!
10. Far too few people hand out chocolate candy at Halloween.
11. Jethro was on a joke-telling kick last night. Things like, “What do you call a witch at the beach? A sand-witch!” He had a ton of them—it got pretty funny.
12. Then I told the funny joke, “What does a fish say when he runs into a brick wall?” and Brett said, “Dam” and then Jethro kept repeating it (cause EVERY joke was really funny to him by this time) and I thought, what in the world was I thinking? But I was kindof trying not to laugh too.
13. Also for some reason last night, Jethro said to Brett (first as part of a joke) “I fear you.” And all the rest of the night Brett and I kept saying “I fear you!”
14. I like numbering my comments because you really don’t have to have any preface or transitions—you can just randomly say whatever you want.
15. On Saturday I went to a baptism for a boy in our ward and played the piano, and then spent the rest of the day running errands. We went to a bunch of stores picking up things for Ethne’s birthday and the family pictures, etc.
16. Taking three kids with you on your ‘quick’ errands is ridiculous.
17. At the baptism, we came in a little early and the family was practicing singing “I like to look for rainbows’ (I don’t think that’s the title, but you know what I’m talking about), and Jethro looked at me with a big smile and said, “That’s my song! I love that song!” and it’s true. Whenever I sing to the kids before they go to sleep (which is not all too frequently I confess), he always picks that one.
18. Also at the baptism, a guy was giving the talk on the Holy Ghost and he started talking about how easy it is to get distracted, and how easily things drown out the still, small voice, and another guy in the congregation suddenly started playing his violin really loudly and the speaker kept speaking but you could hardly hear him. The violin player was sitting right in front of me and I’ll tell you, it shocked me when he started playing! I thought it was a cool little lesson.
19. When you were a kid did you ever try to be a spy and sneak around your brothers and sisters and see how close you could get to them without them knowing you were there? My brother Wyatt did it ALL the time, and we always yelled “I know you’re there Wyatt!!”
20. I don’t have anything I HAVE to do today except pick up a cd from the hospital of Talmage’s ultrasound to take with us to the doc tomorrow, but I really SHOULD do lots of housecleaning. The place is a mess. We need less stuff or more room or both.
21. A friend at church came up to me when I was holding Talmage and said something like, “So, is he for sale?” and I said, “Well, everything’s for sale if the price is right.” And he said, “Oh, I’d give you $25,000 easy.” I said, “Hmm, that’s tempting, I’ll talk to Brett about it.” But when I told the kids at dinner time they all voted to keep Talmage. So I guess we won’t sell.

Happy 2nd Ethne!!!

Ethne turned 2 yesterday, but we celebrated today. Here's Daddy lighting the candles--oooh, the excitement!

Here's a close-up of the cake I made and decorated. I do have to admit that my cakes were way flat, and I wanted a taller cake, so I put them on top of an upside-down cake pan and iced it so it looked like it was part of the cake. I'm a genius.She was very excited for her cake. In fact, she saw it before we ate dinner, and all during dinner she was crying for her "birday! birday!"
For some reason, the really "fancy" (Hazel's word) party hat I made her wouldn't stay on. Ruff. So you'll see in every picture her hand messing with it, trying to get it to stay up. Ruff.

Yum!! By the way, she really was excited about all this, even though she wouldn't smile for any of the pictures. Ruff.

Opening the present....who's the most excited--Ethne, Jethro, or Hazel?

Me playing with my CUTE boy!

Talmage, pretending he's a big 2-year-old. You can't fool us, you little trickster!

Playing with her farm (which I bought at a garage sale earlier in the summer). It was really cute when the little music came on she started dancing, and then everyone started laughing at her, so then she went a little crazy and fell back on the floor in a spasm. Silly girl.

She got to stay up a little bit later than the other kids, and she played with some food toys for a while, pouring me milk, and giving me a waffle when I asked for one. Then she started singing the clean-up song from nursery, which sounds like "Neen up, neen up," and put them all away in the bag they belong in. Then she said, "Room?" because they go in Jethro and Hazel's room. So I said yes, and she put it on her shoulder, walked down the hall and pushed open the door and put the bag away (and Hazel started yelling "Go out Ethne! We need to go to sleep!") and then she came back, and before she went out blew several kisses to Jethro and Hazel, pulled the door closed after her and walked back. It was so cute. I was thinking, just because you have a birthday you think you're entirely grown up? Cute girl. Here she is in bed ready to go to sleep.

And the cutest boy EVER.

A little story.

Once upon a time, there was a Papa Bear,
a Mama Bear,
and a Baby Bear.And there was also a little girl named Goldilocks (aka She-whose-mother-can't-stop-taking-pictures-of-her-because-of-her-unbelievable-cuteness).



You probably think you know the story, but this story is a little different because Goldilocks and the 3 Bears get along just fine, since there was no porridge, chairs, or bed. Besides, remember the picture of Baby Bear (you can go look at it again, it's that cute)---he'll sleep anywhere, even on the ground in the leaves, so he wouldn't even mind if Goldilocks borrowed his bed. So anyway, they all get along splendidly, as you can see.

(See the Baby Bear sleeping?)


And then Goldilocks and the 3 Bears went trunk-or-treating at their church, and everyone loved it, except that Papa Bear was grumpy the whole night because he didn't want to be a bear. So his mother had to promise him that next year he could choose his own costume (except maybe he'll have to wear something she picks out just for pictures. Because his mother is like that.)