A Taste of My Children

No. I do not really want you to taste my kids. That would be cannibalistic, which is a life style that I STRONGLY disagree too. It was just a way of saying that I'm going to attempt to tell you what my kids are like in a nut shell for those who have never actually MET my children. (Also a bit of a heads up for Cassie, Tami, and D) But once again, my children are not really in nut shells...it's just a saying.
LYDIA:
Lydia is ALL girl. Which is new ground for me. She LOVES clothes. I have to get her approval before I buy her almost anything, unless I can convince her that it's cute before she voices an opinion. She has to pick her outfits, and she does, as many as 7 times a day. Dresses are her FAVORITE. Well dresses and pj's.
She tries so hard to be obedient. But sometimes she is a little spacey, and forgets. When I ask her to do something or get something for me her response is almost always "Of course" or "that sounds like GREAT!" She likes to sing. She likes to be the boss. She LOVES people. Any girl that is under the age of 12 is AUTOMATICALLY her best friend. She already flirts with boys. But people older then 12 are usually her friends too. She says hi to everyone, no really EVERYONE. AND she will sit and have a conversation with just about any stranger. But she also seems to be able to sense personalities. Some people just don't feel right to her, I guess, and she seems very leery of them. It's very interesting.
Lydia has 2 speeds, "Fast" and "Off" she loves to run (not from me) and often likes to be crazy, which, according to Lydia, by definition means running around in circles squealing. She has a problem remember when it's ok to scream and when it's not. When she overly excited (mad, happy, hyper, whatever) it comes out as a scream. A very ear piercing scream.
She loves to tease and be teased. She gets this throaty laugh that she can't control from teasing (or being teased) It's one of my favorite things. She also likes to eat. She is a social eater, and a bored eater. But a good eater.
She still needs a nap every day, and the only way I can get her to take a nap is by "tricking" her into it. Going back to the two speeds, I have to get her to willingly lay down and just STOP for a few mins. WE have quiet time when Danton goes down for his afternoon nap. The rule for quiet time is we watch my show for 15 mins, and IF she lays down and is quiet we will THEN watch her show for an hour. My show is the country music channel. It's just country music videos. It holds her attention enough to watch it and relax, but it's not interesting enough to stay awake to watch it. She loves music as much as her Mom, so this is about the only channel we can to quiet time with. See the thing is IF she lays still for 15 mins (or less sometimes) she will fall asleep. It we make it to 30 mins and she is still awake, she isn't going to fall asleep anyway so we switch it to her show.
Oh, how could I forget. She is beautiful, AND gorgeous. If you don't believe me, just ask her. She will tell you she is. She also loves tiny things. Only she says tiny with a Brooklyn accent. If something is tiny, it's also cute and some how irresistible to her.
She loves music as much as I do, and seems to have it running trough her has as much as I do too. Sometimes you will see her randomly start dancing. There is no music, at least not that WE can hear. When I play one of my instruments I have to pull one out for her so she can play too. She always wants to go to Karla's house with me when I go tap dance. And she has tap shoes that she loves. And I love that she loves them. :)
Ok, maybe I will do Danton tomorrow. This was longer then I thought it would be. and I keep thinking of stuff that I left out. So I will end with this. Lydia has a BIG personality for a little 3 year old.

And now I must go see what all that screaming is about (only this time it's Danton)

These are a few of his favorite things

My kids don't really care for toys. They are fun for a little while, and they do have their favorites, but mostly they like my kitchen utensil drawer.Danton seems to favor things that look like they could be a weapon, or things that look like they could draw blood....
Or things that HAVE drawn bloodmost of these things have found new homes in random cupboards in my kitchen. So he has settled for shinny things....and he has bent a few things out of shape, and bit the heck out of others.
Well I guess I have been officially welcomed into having a little boy.


Lydia still loves helping in the kitchen (and wearing dresses...no clue where THAT came from)

Relief Society Spring Break

Friday and Saturday we had a relief society spring break down in Branson. The theme was love. We had a presentation about loving our selves, and seeing our selves through different mirrors and being able to see our self the way Christ and Heavenly Father see us. Then we listened to a talk about the different love languages. How people show love and understand love, (through gifts, time, service, words, ect) and being able to learn to understand how to show love to someone through their love language, it was really cool.
Then we had activities based on Love. Loving our self with pampering activities, and loving others with sending packages to our troops. (I for one didn't care about the pampering activities, but I didn't really care what we were doing, I got to have the night off and visit with friends. )
The next morning the surrounding stakes were invited to join us and we had Sister Alred (first counselor in the General RS Presidency) come and speak to us. She talked a lot about the history and importance of RS and a little bit about missionary work. And we had an awesome musical presentation as well. It was over at noon. Very uplifting and lots of fun.
THEN Sunday was my ward conference and guess who was able to come...Sis, Alred. So i got to listen to her in Sacrament meeting as well. But I had to sub in nursery so I wasn't going to get go to RS, BUT the sister who I was subbing for was able to come for the last hour so I DID end up getting to go. Sister Alred had a late flight so she was able to attend (and speak in) RS also. It was a very cool weekend.
We have a lapel mic that is usually used in the RS room for the speakers, and when the Stake Pres got up to speak toward the end of the meeting he didn't really want to use it. He asked a couple times if everyone could hear him fine and was about to go on with speaking when Sis Alred piped up and said
"No body answered cause no one can hear you"
Maybe you just had to be there, but it got us all laughing

The MEET

We have hyper active smoke detectors. Infact they shouldnt' be call smoke detectors at all, they should be called HEAT detectors. Or smoke Freak-er-out-ers. There are times when I'm making dinner that I have to use both the toaster oven and the regular oven at the same time casue we only have one rack in our oven. As I was cooking with both after I opened one of the the freak-er-out-er went off, which triggered the OTHER freak-er-out-er up stairs so Mark fanned one while I opened the window and turned on a fan. We finally got it to stop, but then again I wasn't done cooking and when I opened the door to the other oven they went off again.
We finally took out the batteries but the stupid things have a BACK UP! so we ALSO covered the speakers with duct tape. Eventually they were just doing the "hey don't forget to put the battery back in me" beep.
Our little Lydia has very sensitive ears. Danton pretty much ignored it, but Lydia had a very worried look on her face and her hands over her ears. She was still a little scared of it. Not that this was anything new. They feel the need to be heard at LEAST once a month and often every 2 weeks. One day I opened the toaster oven and a piece of food had fallen off and was getting nice and black which set the alarm off. I took the battery out and as it did it's reminder call Lydia was less then pleased so I tried to make it "fun" I tried to duplicate the sound by going "MEET!"and I Lydia started doing it too. It made it better for a little while.
So back to a couple weeks ago with the batteries out and the duct tape on, I wish I could remember exactly what Lydia said, but I don't. Basically she scolded the freak-er-out-er something to the effect of
"No meet! Don't do that! Mom, I don't want it to meet"
So that is it. We no longer have a smoke detector or a heat detector, or a smoke freak-er-out-er, we have a MEET.

Making Bread

So I realized lately that I really enjoy making bread, and I especially enjoy eating it fresh out of the oven. Sunday I was assigned to bring bread to the family dinner. I made a recipe that I had only made once before, focaccia. It's an Italian herb bread...which I also really love Italian.
So my Focaccia bread on Sunday turned out PERFECT. I couldn't get enough of it. Last night I decided to make some more to go with our spaghetti and sausage meatballs, and baby spinach salad...YUM.
Well while I was working with 3 pots on the stove, and putting together a salad, the bread was cooking in the oven. Mark started telling me some jokes, and all of a sudden I realized the my timer for the bread wasn't' ticking. AHH! I never heard it ding. I got the bread out as fast as I could...but I was not pleased. It wasn't TOO dark, well the cheese was. You put mozzarella on top and it was black. My crust was more than golden brown. :( My stupid oven is hyper active and cook like 25-50 degrees hotter then it says it is. Yeah, it still tasted fine, but it wasn't delicious. I HATE it when I do that. I usually like to redeem my self when I screw something up in a simple way like that and I make it again in less then a week. So I told Mark we would most likely have Focaccia again soon.
Well on the bright side, we will have Focaccia again soon! :) Yay! ...it's so yummy. I think I want to use it for a sandwich......
That is how I perfected my cinnamon rolls. I made them a lot one winter and ever time I'd make a simple mistake and didn't like how they turned out (just cause I'm picky with my own cooking) so I'd make them again in about a week to fix my mistake.
Mmmmm. I love bread.

Lydia likes Family Home Evening

This morning as I was eating breakfast, Lydia had already finished and was playing in the living room.
"These are the scriptures. I read my scriptures. Chapter 8: And it came to pass..... these are the words....and his Father"
She read her scripture for a few mins, I don't remember everything she said, but it was cute. Then I hear her talk about Family Home Evening,
"He is my Heavenly Father, and this is Jesus. ...You put your hand over your eyes." (we talked about Jesus healing a blind man this week, and we put our hands over our eyes to show her what being blind is)
"And the Nephites, and the kids." Again I don't remember everything she said but we talked about Jesus coming to the Nephites and blessing the children. She continues to talk about it and then she went back to talking about the scriptures.
It was very cute, and it's nice to know that even at 3 the she enjoys FHE and she is actually getting something out of it. Later she came over to me and said
"Mom, these are my scriptures, can we read them?"
Well you don't want to say no to THAT one. :) So we read scriptures this morning. :)

Tap Video

Here it is! I'll bet working on getting my other tap routines up on my blog this week too. We aren't too bad for just finishing the routine the day before huh. :)