help!

so guess who thought she would be clever and rearrange the links to blogs she reads? yeah except i deleted everyone before i wrote down their blog addresses. so- if you read this and you know that i read your blog will you please leave me the address to your blog in the comments or email it to me. please!!!!!

scary stories?

SO when Kerry put the kids to bed tonight, he told them scripture stories. He told Hannah about Ammon, and told Jared about the Stripling Warriors. He came downstairs happy, and the kids fell asleep relatively fast. About an hour later, I hear someone crying, and Jared walks downstairs sobbing! I scooped him up and asked him what was wrong. "Daddy told me a scary story, and I had a bad dream." Who knew the Stripling Warriors were scary?!
Apparently, what Jared got from the story is that the bad guys hurt the little boys. SO Kerry put him on his lap and tried again. He talked about how the boys weren't little like him, they were big like uncle Jordan. And only some of them got hurt, and none of them died, they won the fight and beat the bad guys. HE said, "it's good when the good guys win the fight, right?" (or something like that) and Jared turns to him in all seriousness and says, "Yeah, If you win the fight you get the girl!" yep he's got his priorities straight!
I told Kerry maybe we should stick to the non-war chapters of the book of mormon for bedtime stories for a while.

robots

So for a school project zach had to build a robot out of things we had around the house. the rule was that u couldn't buy anything (after seeing some of the robots other kids made I am pretty sure some parents cheated on that one, but I digress) anyways, so Zach started collecting things he wanted to use: a cereal box, foil, etc. He drew up a plan- I so wish that I had my scanner hooked up cuz it was so precious- which told all the materials he would need and where he wanted to put them all. He had to make a coulple of substitutions, but he was very happy with the results. Kerry and Zach worked hard putting Zac-bot together,(and Jared supervised)

but when they were done they thought something was missing, so Kerry came up with the idea to add some teeth- removable teeth! He used a partial he had hanging around the office. I personally think it is disgusting, but he assures me that it had never actually been used in someone's mouth. So we'll go with that. Needless to say, Zach thought it was awesome!!!
so meet Zac-bot:

the frog is actually his heart, I'm not sure how that works, but like i said it was all Zach's design.

behind again

Once again I am hopelessly behind in blogging. A lot had been going on in our lives, lately, and I have not had my camera as handy as usual- go figure. And since I blog based on the pictures I have, I probably won't be blogging about it all. And since I haven't blogged in a while I will have older things to post about. So here we go with yet another marathon blogging session: or at least I plan to. I do actually have to take the kids to school and run a million errands, so it might be put off once again- sigh.

okay maybe don't eat your veggies!

So, after a few days of patting myself on the back for my brilliant veggie strategy, I'm thinking I might need to rethink it. A couple of days ago I tried green beans, which FYI are one of my fav veggies and one that I thought was pretty kid friendly. Well, I forgot that i am raising the drama queen of the world! The boys did fine- Jared made the cutest grossed out face each time he ate one- but they did fine. In fact, Zach figured out the system and after enjoying a small bowl of cookies and cream ice cream asked, "Mom, if I eat more green beans can I have more ice cream?" Well I had to think about that for a minute, but decided okay that would be fine. He ate 2 more helpings of green beans and had 2 more bowls of ice cream! Hannah on the other hand, gagged on each green bean. Seriously gagged- it channeled the days when mom would make me try a snowpea! yuck. SO as I am having my snowpea flashback I realize this is going to be bad. I tell my sweet girl, "Hannah you don't have to eat those." I want to say that she can just have the ice cream, but how would that be fair? I mean, the boys ate theirs and I didn't give her that many...oh being a mom is soooo hard sometimes. But Hannah is determined she is going to get that ice cream. She eats all but one and then says she has to go potty. She comes out of the potty saying her tummy hurts and she better lay down for a little bit. She then declares that she must be allergic to green beans so she can never eat them again. But as I am making her bowl of ice cream Zach chimes in, "But she still has a green bean on her plate! She can't have ice cream yet." oh brothers!!! So she drags herself off the couch and over to the table whining, "but mom I am allergic to green beans...i can't eat even one more!" Then her knight in shining armor comes to the rescue (as usual, man that girl knows how to work him) "Hannah," dad says, "How about I eat half and you eat half, then you can have ice cream?" Well half to him was the entire thing except for this teeny-tiny piece. But oh well she ate it, and was soo happy when she got her ice cream.
Then came the part that I remembered so well as a young girl. She decided she could eat more green beans in order to have more ice cream. I'm not sure why I even let her try, I think there is this morbid part of me that wanted to see if she could keep them down. Anyways, I'm sure you can guess what happened. Mid-bean she starts to gagg again, but this time it all came up- the ice cream, the green beans, all of it. And my poor sweet baby started crying because she thought I was going to make her eat more, because the ones she threw up didn't count! So, our veggie policy is out the window. But I still want them to try veggies so any ideas? And once again that Mother of the Year award slips further from my grasp...Seriously, I am like Susan Lucci and the daytime emmys (oh wait she did eventually win, didn't she? maybe there is still hope for me then)

Eat your veggies!

SO being the normal mom that i am- you know guilt ridden and feeling inadequate- it was really bugging me that my kids don't eat their vegetables. So I have discovered a simple, but effective way to get them to. I grew up with the "try-a-little-of-everything" method which did introduce things, but my big brother, Stephen, found a loophole, he took it literally: one pea, one piece of lettuce, one green bean, etc, and to me that defeats the whole idea. So I channeled the days of yore and have introduced a novel idea to our dinners: DESSERT. It is not something that they have to eat, but it sure is yummy. SO now, I put a serving of veggies on their plates (a kid size serving, mind you) and if they eat it all, they get dessert. If not, they don't. the choice is up to them. So far it has worked with peas, brussel sprouts (or muscle sprouts as Jared calls them), and spinach. And guess who loves spinach:

and guess who doesn't:

He doesn't really like the new deal, he has never had to eat his veggies, in fact in his house veggies are corn, but he is a trooper. That is a mouthful of spinach you are looking at folks. And I am pretty sure that he only ate it because I reached for the camera- but hey whatever works.