The Entertainer

It's hot and I don't feel like melting at the park or outside at all for that matter. We just spent an hour cleaning up this hole that was ravaged by 3 bored kids since school got out, 1 day ago (I'm in for a long summer unless I get brave and plan some activities). So we now have a semi-clean house and I walk into the kids room to find Logan dumping a puzzle book all over the floor. It doesn't take long for that kid to have every toy in sight out on the floor. I ran over to help him put it away because we were going to have lunch. Here's the conversation that followed:

Mom: "Aahhhh Logan! You are not supposed to climb the furniture to get toys. If toys are too high than you need to ask Mom or Dad."

Logan: "I'll just get a chair and I'll climb up, up, up (climbs in the air with his finger man) to get it."

Mom: "If you climb up on the furniture again you will spend a timeout in the corner."

Logan: "Then.............. I'll just run away to Santa."

Mom: *laughing*- I couldn't hold it in

Logan: "When Daddy gets home I will go visit Santa."

-not sure why Daddy has to be home first, but the Santa thing took me completely by surprise. I hope he doesn't think about running away all the time- the kid's only 3! He is at the age where it's always a surprise when he talks because who-knows-what comes out of his mouth at any moment.

For example:

We were putting on jackets and shoes for an impromptu after-dinner walk when Logan walks towards me and says, "Can somebody zip up my jacket?"
"Who's somebody," I said.
"Mom, can YOU zip up my jacket because I'm just a little kid and it's too hard for me."

You couldn't tell from his vocabulary and personality that he isn't much older than 3. Lately I have to remind myself to give the kid a break when he acts his age.

hello blog. remember me?

I'm not sure why it's been so long since I posted an update. Besides being busy, I haven't had the motivation to write, edit photos, or keep the blog current. I've also been reading a lot more with the little spare time I have.

So most of all for my sake, and to let everyone know what we've been doing, I will attempt to catch up on the last month.

Tangent- it's 11:30 AM and already Logan has;
tipped out the 2 baskets of clothes I folded last night
dumped the bucket of Legos all over the floor on top of the clothes
crept in and woke Sydney up while avoiding cleaning up the Legos
poured milk on his head and all over the floor "because he was thirsty" (?)
snuck pieces of cheese from the fridge and left the bag open
had 2 timeouts in the corner for directly disobeying
got caught slathering Dad's deodorant on his lips in the bathroom and giggling from the tingle

I am suddenly reminded of the saying about keeping your friends close and enemies closer. Well that's kinda my strategy for the rest of the day. Logan is going to be my buddy and helper today so I can keep a close eye on him and avoid more chaos. gotta go- he left the room and it's too quiet.........................

I'm back.........a day later.

So, I found Logan on Jessie's top bunk, taking down glow-in-the-dark stars from the ceiling so he could chew the white stuff that sticks them to the ceiling like gum. The kid was possessed yesterday! I had to go out for a few things and I was worried how Logan was going to behave. Thankfully all was well but he fell asleep on the way home. Nowadays, if anyone naps they will be up too late that night which then throws off the next few days of sleep schedules. I couldn't wake him up so after a short snooze he woke up and we had a picnic dinner out front. While I was inside talking to Daddy on the phone, Toby interrupts with, "Mooooommm, Logan peed on the sidewalk!" Aaaaaahhh! Sure enough, I look outside into Logan's big brown eyes standing next to a ginormous puddle of pee seeping into the concrete. Remember folks, we manage an apartment complex with a courtyard in the middle. Who knows what tenants walked by or saw him out their window. Whatever, right? He's three and even though I was slightly flustered at all his craziness, the kid makes me laugh and certainly keeps me on my toes. Yes, he was up until almost midnight too.

Monday night is Family Night! We had a memorable one tonight. The missionaries from our ward came over to dinner. Turkey tacos with fresh guacamole were on the menu when we realized it was Cinco De Mayo. Ole! and muy bien! Logan was sitting across the table from Elder S when he asked to move so that S wouldn't see him eat.?? Silly. Logan was so tired and weird because he napped yesterday, was bouncing off the walls at midnight last night and exhausted today. It's a vicious cycle when he naps. The chillies were their usual hyper selves that wanted to talk the entire time since the Elders walked in the door.

Introducing Adam and Eve...................and the story of the Creation as told by our kids tonight. Logan was pretending to be God when he said, "we need to build the Earth. We need a hammer," and he reached in the Little People bin for Eddy with the wrench to build Earth. Toby got out all the boulders and stuck them in a pile- that was land. Jessie was the animal keeper and arranged all the animals on the Earth. Logan kept taking animals away from the Earth, making Jessie mad, when Dad said, "it's okay Jess, Heavenly Father can have a pet camel!" Chillies thought that was hilarious.

Considering it was getting late and the kids were at the end of their time as sane human beings for the day, we had a good time and they asked lots of questions. Important stuff like, Does that mean Adam and Eve were the only ones not born to live on the Earth? and Were there owls back then? Did Adam an Eve have a pet? and my favorite Did Adam really have blond hair? Could he ask God to change it if he didn't like it? Huh, if only it were that easy sometimes.

Happy Business Acquisition Day!!

So, Dave reminded me this morning that today is the 1 year anniversary of his purchase of the practice. Where did the time go? It doesn't seem possible that it has been 12 months. We are just getting the hang of owning a business and learning how to grow the business. Lots of fun stuff ahead for Dave with the practice too. I'm so proud of him and all he is accomplishing. It's awesome to know that he loves to go to work everyday and helps people (especially our family) doing so.

Dave didn't see patients today until 4 so we finished up an apartment for the tenant to move-in today and ran to Walmart for a few essentials. The rest of the day was crazy with kids in and out to various places. By the time kids were in bed neither Dave or I had eaten dinner. We celebrated the business by getting burgers & fries from Chili's takeout. Happy anniversary babe. Here's to being in the black since month one!!

R.I.P. Lincoln

We've had a lot of extra activities going on that really helped the month fly by. Last Monday we had the sister missionaries over for dinner. All the kids, especially the boys, love to have the sisters here for dinner. They show off all their tricks and Mom and Dad can barely get a conversation in all night because they all want to talk at the same time.

On Tuesday, Jessie had a concert at school for Music for Minors where the kids shared all the songs they learned this year. Jessie took her job seriously the entire concert. She knew every word of the songs and seemed to furrow her brow in concentration during the fast ones. I took Logan and Syd, who was sleeping in her car seat. Dave took Toby to his soccer game that night which made things easier on me at the concert. I happened to remember to take a small bag of Skittles in case I needed them to keep Coop quiet and interested. It was a good thing because half way through the concert he was ready for bed and started to get disruptive. I opened the bag of Skittles and told Logan to tap my knee quietly if he wanted another one. Worked like a charm and he was quiet the entire time. Just to keep things in perspective, unfortunately, sugar makes this boy tick. I call him my candy bloodhound and we don't have it in the house that often. We played at the park a little while after and headed home for bed.

On Wednesday, Jessie and Toby had a special surprise because they got to go to an Oakland A's game with their Thompson friends. We swapped our 2 oldest for their 2 youngest so they could enjoy the game without little ones to take care of. Dave and I were a little worried about Toby being at the game. We call him our sight hound because he will bolt through a crowd to get to what he wants without even thinking about asking Mom or Dad. Dave suggested to the Thompsons that it might help if they took a rope for everyone to hang on to through the crowds. They did and it worked great. Jessie liked cheering , "Go A's!"with her girlfriends, and Toby like watching the score board and the players, and eating food with his buddy Milo.

Logan was so excited to have his bff Niah over the same night. They played house, ate dinner, had tickle wars with Dave and watched 101 Dalamtians waiting for Thompsons to get back. Logan thinks Niah is the cat's meow. She is a little older than him and sometimes she likes to push him away. literally. We were at a spaghetti feed fundraiser for the Young Women at church on Saturday when someone related a confrontation between our little friends to Dave and me. Niah was running to keep up with Toby (the official 3rd wheel in this "love triangle") when Logan called after her to wait for him. She turned around and pushed Logan who fell down and said, "but I like you Niah!" as she ran to catch Toby. Tragic.

And speaking of tragic. My Mom's car blew up on Monday. I got a call from her Monday afternoon that she needed a ride to Costco to buy stuff for our BBQ because her car was fried, literally. She was just driving away from home when it decided to smoke and catch on fire. She reversed back into the driveway and called Tom out to help her take care of the smoke. Little did she know it was going up in flames. Dan drove up at the same time and he and Tom emptied 4 fire extinguishers on it plus water from the hose before the fire department came and helped them put it out for good. That marks the Lincoln's final resting place. Thankfully, no one was hurt, the gas tank didn't explode, and the neighbors property wasn't damaged in any way. The neighbor is directly related to the wicked witch of the west so that's an important one. She would have made my parents lives a constant b@#chfest if that happened. Mom's stereo system seems fine which is a good thing because I think it is worth as much or more than the car- before it got burnt to a crisp. Jessie and Toby thought is was cool that we watched the whole episode back on the security camera for family night. Reality TV at its finest.