Majestic's First Piano Recital

Meg had her first piano recital on Saturday Dec 10th. She was so cute. She played 2 songs

First song was, "Hot Chocolate, Whipped Cream Day" by Faber

Second song was, "Oh come, Oh come Emanuel" arr. Leaf.

She worked SO hard on these songs. When the recital was over, she told me that she never wants to look at these songs again!

Meg's Princess Party

Meg is turning 5! She got her first birthday party and chose to do an all girls princess party. Each girl got to dress up as a princess and came over for pizza and games. They had so much fun decorating princess hats, playing poison apple (hot potato), and musical chairs.

Princess Balloon Fun...not to be confused with Princess Baboon Fun.

Craft time means time for the parents to catch their breath.

A wicked witch dropped off a poison apple that the girls got to play hot potato with.

Majestic loved her cake. It had plenty of strawberries.

Yummos. Everyone is liking their cake.

All the princesses enjoyed the party and Majestic made a fine host. She kept everyone involved and laughing together. Look at how engaged everyone is on her conversation. :)

And ice cream...

Musical chairs was a first time for a couple of princesses. They picked up on it quickly. Everyone was polite and I think one princess gave up her chair because another princesses didn't get one.

Halloween Gingerbread House

Annica gave us a Halloween gingerbread house and it was fun putting it together.

The kids were so excited to get started

They were putting candy on it everywhere

Finished project

We had fun putting it together. The kids only ate a few pieces of the candy while they were decorating.

Meg

Meg said the sweetest thing to me the other day. I was worried about her asthma flairing up again, and kept asking her if she could breath normal or not. She said she could. I then told her that if she ever couldn't breath normal then she had to tell me because she was the only one who knew if she was breathing normally or not. then she said this:

"Well, there is one other person who knows if I am breathing normal or not." I said, "who"? and she smiled and said, "Jesus".

Oh, it just melted my heart. She was so right.

Meg and Q

Here are some pictures of Meg and Q before church on Sunday.

Karate School

Scholar calls it Karate School.

They let Scholar in early, he is in the 3 and 4 year old class.

Both kids are in the same class until Meg turns 5.

Getting ready for the first day of class.

I had to hem their outfits to make them fit better.



Showing off their moves


They are not wearing their belts because they were not allowed to wear them before class because they had to earn them on their first day. It was so cute, they did a ceremony and the kids got to open the belts and the instructor got to give them a speech about trying hard and getting different belts, the kids just loved it!

I need to do my chores!

That is what my kids have been saying lately before bed. I need to do my chores so I can get a gumball!

I was at target the other day and saw this gumball machine.
I started tossing around ideas of how I can use it to help my kids do their chores. I ended up coming up with this:

I thought I could put rewards on it and then they get to pick one every night before bed if they get their chores done. I sat down with the kids and asked them what chores they wanted to do and gave them some suggestions. This is what we came up with.

Meg:
Clean room
Brush teeth (2 times a day)
Clean living room
Take meds (2 times a day)

Q:
Clean room
Pick up toys from family room
Brush teeth (2 times a day)
Go potty in the potty

It was been so wonderful to hear my kids say, "I have to do my chores tonight!" they love getting a gum ball out of the gum ball machine.

The rewards are really easy and simple to do. they are something like this:

Get a treat before bed. (like 1 star burst or something small)
get a snack before bed. (like pretzels or something that isn't candy)
get a special drink before bed ( 1/3 cup of apple juice or something in the fridge)
get to stay up an extra half hour with mom
get an extra story before bed
get a story and a song before bed

I did 2 of each of the rewards so there are 12 balls. I used masking tape to write on and then taped it to the ball so I didn't ruin any of the balls.

The gum ball machine is a toy for small children. The gum ball are toy balls and it doesn't cost any money to get one out. The brand is 'Sugar Chute' I got it for 15 dollars at target.

Tiffy Long Stoffy

Meg insists that Pippy Long stocking is pronounced Tiffy Long Stoffy

We have had so many talks about how its not but after all, she knows everything at her young tender age.

She just cracks me up!

Be good or I will take you to Walmart!!

Thats what we have been saying to Meg the last little while, she is terrified. Here's the story...

Saturday we went to see fireworks. All they had there for potties were the blue porta potties.

I thought this would be a problem because whenever we go somewhere she is very picky about which potty she will use, she will check them all and use the cleanest one in the bathroom and on occasion she will refuse to go and say she can hold it till she gets home. She is very picky.

So at the fireworks, she has to go. Heber takes her, waits in line and goes in with her. She freaks! All the people in line behind them can hear her screaming and freaking out! She decides to hold it until we get home.

Well today somehow she mentions Walmart. I politely tell her that we don't use that word in our family. (as most of you know, we don't shop there and often call it the unspeakable)

Meg starts asking questions like, why don't you like it, stuff like that. Heber tells her that all the blue potties are at Walmart. she gasped in shock! I decided to try Heber's dad's tactic and tell her that if she is naughty we will take her to walmart and make her use the blue potties! We laughed, meg was scared.

I think she will be extra good for a while.

Drive to Sundance

(Random picture of Meg last year on the 4th of July making a face)

I have declared Saturday and fun day for the summer. Its the day we can all be together and do fun things as a family. I wrote up a list of things that we can do as a family and we are going to try to fit them all in this summer.

Today we decided to drive to Sundance. I have never been there before and wanted to see what is out there. We packed up the car with snacks and took off for a drive.

It was beautiful. There was so on the ground. It was weird to see snow in May.

On the way home Meg was upset that we didn't get out of the car at all. She wanted to walk around. She asked me. "why did we even go up the the mountains anyway?" and I said, "because I wanted to." and she said, "so we all had to go just because you wanted to?"

I was speechless, and laughing at the same time. She is so smart.

And yes, we all had to do it because I wanted to. I am the mom.

Meg Meets Cinderella

Meg got to meet Cinderella and tell her that she is going to come visit her at Disney Land some day.

She even got to dress up in one of her princess dresses for the day.

Meg's Prayers

Its always fun to let Meg say the prayer because you never know what she is going to say.

Last night when Meg said her prayers she said, "please let tomorrow be a school day 'for real'.

and today in her prayer she said " please bless that my birthday wont take too long to get here."

Such Good Helpers...

Meg and Q got up this morning and decided to help out by unloading the dishwasher for me. the problem, the dishes weren't clean!

Kids!

Meg was watching tv and during a commercial I told her to go and pick up 5 toys in the toy room. she said I cant! I said why cant you? and she said: Because the tv said not to go anywhere! The tv said!

We were at the rite aid drive up to get a prescription and had to wait longer then i would have liked and all of a sudden Meg said: this is not working for me! its just not working! its taking too long!

I asked meg if she wanted to do something fun today and she responded: Ya! You have 2 choices mom! You can either go to the little star, or chuck e cheese! Those are your choices!
(little star means Carl's Jr play place)

The other day Meg was playing a dog, and she told me that I was a cat, and she started growling at me, and when I didn't respond as she expected she told me that Cats are nervous to dogs!

Q loves balls. He loves to play basket ball. He will throw the ball into the basket and say Almost!, or So close!, if he misses, or Yay if he makes the basket and he will clap for himself.

Q is such a climber! he will climb on anything he can get his body on top of, and if he gets stuck he will just hang there and say help!, help!, or help me! until someone comes to "rescue" him.

If you ask Q what he wants to eat, he will say cake!

We decorated for Halloween yesterday and it was so fun to see the kids expressions to be so excited about Halloween! Meg loves to get scared, and i haven't been able to tell if she really is scared, or if she is just pretending. I love the innocence of children!

Megs growing up!

Yesterday as I was making soup for dinner, Meg came into the kitchen and asked Whats that? I said, soup for dinner. She said. Well I am not going to eat that soup! I had a daughter and I fed her that soup and she died!

(after she ate the soup for dinner she said that it was really yummy and it was even better then the kind with toast! (grilled cheese and tomato soup))

Meg woke up sick this morning... Should I be worried?

I sent Meg to her room to get into her pjs and she got up there and started crying. I ran up to see what was wrong and she said she hit her nose on the cupboard. I was like huh? how does that happen? she said, I was walking with my eyes closed because I wanted my room to surprise me but it didn't!

Megs School Orientation!

I am so excited for Meg to start school again, probably more excited then she is. Today was her orientation where she got to meet her teacher and see her classroom and her cubby. Her new teacher is Miss Emily and she is in the same class room as she was last year so that will be nice, but she was really confused to have a different cubby then she did last year so hopefully she will catch on quickly to the new change.

Miss Emily was so nice and was really fun with the kids. She told me that all the other teacher were jealous when they found out that she had Majestic in her class, they all love the name Majestic. she said, I am the lucky one! I get Majestic!

I am so excited for this school year and excited for Meg to learn and grow. One of my favorite things is to pick Meg up from school go home and talk about her day before I start dinner. Another favorite thing is to get new school clothes! I gave meg her new clothes so she could pick something to wear today. She was so exited! Another thing I am looking forward to is the first day of school. Her first day of school I let her pick whatever she wants or dinner, (I am guessing she will pick pizza) She can pick whatever she wants, I can make it or we can get take out. I try to make her first day of school so special. She starts school next week so I will be posting more later.

I am also excited to get some one on one time with Scholar. I love getting to spend time with him alone. It will be so good. I cant wait for school to start, we will all get to learn and grow!

2 Sick Kids

I am taking care of 2 sick kids today. Q has been throwing up all night and Meg went to the dentist to get cavities filled.

Q started getting sick yesterday at Heber's family's party. he threw up 3 times at grandmas house, 2 times in the car on the way home and 1 time in the bath tub when we got home and 1 time after he went to bed about 10. He has been sleeping all morning with a fever, poor thing.

Heber watched Q while I took Meg to her dentist appt this morning. She needed 2 cavities filled but ended up getting 4 filled! I feel like a horrible mother! She did really well at the dentist. She started off bad and the dentist asked me if I wanted to wait to do the 2nd one but i said just do it and then I told meg to chill out! in a nice way of course and then she calmed down and we were able to finish and were so proud of her. She did great!

The dentist told me that the nitrogen helps with asthma, it clears the airways, so I am hoping that it helped her.

I woke up feeling like Q looks today so hopefully I can take care of my kiddos and myself while Heber is on vacation at work! (just kidding, I know Heber works hard to provide for our family and he does a great job at what he does,we love him!)

Do you have a question?

The other day Heber got the kids breakfast and while Meg was eating her apple jacks cereal she raised her hand high up in the air. Heber asks, "Do you have a question?" she replies, "No, I just like pickles!"

Does superb mean its a good idea?

I had this conversation with Meg yesterday while we were running errands. I thought it was cute.

Meg: Can we get a cookie when we go to Macey's?
me: I think that would be superb!
Meg: (Silently thinking for a bit then asks), Does superb mean its a good idea?
me: Yes it does.
Meg: Yay! We can get a cookie when we go to Macey's!

Meet the Pickup Fairy and the Star Fairy! (how to get your kids to pick up their toys)

I have been struggling to get Meg to clean up her toys forever. She always needs help, or cant do it, or its too hard! Well yesterday I was reading my parenting magazine and this mom had the coolest idea. The Pickup Fairy. I changed it up a bit to fit us better, but Meg is so into princesses and fairies and magical things I thought it would be perfect for her, and so far (one day) it has been great!

Meet The Pickup Fairy- She is a grouchy fairy who lives in the woods and loves to come in the middle of the night and take toys that are not put away. She likes to give the toys to other kids in need. She always calls mom first and mom can say yes or no for her to come or not.

Last night Meg didn't get her room cleaned, but she cleaned everything else so well that I thought it was a great start and would give her a break. I told her that when the pickup fairy called I would tell her to not pick up the toys in her room. She was happy and went to bed.

This morning she was asking about the pickup fairy and I told her she better clean her room if she wants to keep her toys today because the pickup fairy wasn't going to let it be messy today. She said I better clean it right now! and she did! I was shocked that she was so willing to do it by herself that I thought it was time to introduce the Star Fairy.

When I was younger my dad would leave us treats under our pillow and they would always be from the star fairy. I always wanted my kids to get treats the star fairy so I thought I would tie it into the pickup fairy story.

Meet the Star Fairy- The Star Fairy is a nice fairy who is friends with the pickup fairy but wants to help the kids keep their toys so every once in a while (like once a month or so) she will sneak into the children's rooms and see if they are clean, and if they are, she will leave a reward under their pillow. I dont like giving my kids candy in the morning so I said reward so it could be something other then candy.

Meg was so excited and wanted to look under her pillow right away so I had her run something downstairs while the star fairy came and put a reward under her pillow, she was so excited!

anyway, it seems to be working really well for her and I am happy I don't have to pick up after her all the time. I will let you know if it continues to work.