Mel's Fantastical Insights

I know it is not truly Autumn time anymore but here is a catch up of what we did this autumn. First, the last three years we have gone to my parents in Idaho and picked apples. While there we also went to one the best pumpkin patches I have ever seen, in Idaho Falls. There were so many pumpkins, gords, and a train and maze for the kids. The kids loved it and to be honest, so did I. Then we had a really fun birthday for cousin Josh. He turned three and they had put together these really cute ideas for pictures. Alice kept sneaking into other people's pictures which I thought was awesome. She loved holding up lips in front of her face. Daniel tried on the clown nose and kept it on for quite awhile. My kids are pretty cute. For Halloween we had a small gathering of children over to make monster cupcakes and cookies. The kids had tons of fun and I think I would have had more fun except of course I was slightly disorganized. One day I will get with it, not for awhile t

My kids are sleeping and I am slightly bored. Not that there is a lack of things to do at my house. I could clean, put away laundry or do the dishes. I could even make dinner, ha! I even called Jason at work to chat. What a day. We find out on Friday how our little baby is doing. Jason and I have decided not to find out the gender of our baby, but I love to hear guesses and name suggestions. Unless of course we are having twins, which for some reason both Jason and I find ourselves dreaming (nightmaring) about. I guess we will get to find out soon. Summer has officially ended over here as has Jason's job in American Fork. He switched jobs in September and we are still getting used to his new commute. He works in Orem now and is liking it ok. New jobs are always hard. We are grateful that even after the switch in insurance we did not have to change doctors for me. Hooray! Daniel is still playing soccer, it ends this week. He has scored two goal

We went to Temple Square for a wedding reception. The kids loved wandering around temple square and splashing in the water. Alice came close to falling in a few times but never managed to actually get too soaked. Daniel started soccer. He is pretty timid out there but did manage to score a goal (that neither Jason and I saw) at his game on Saturday. He loves playing which is good. The only down side is most of his games are at 11:30 in the morning and it is so HOT! August of course means canning season. We had a canning party yesterday and still took forever to get just 14 pints done. The kitchen was cleaned up though as soon as I finished pressing tomatoes, which never happens, so I am taking that as a plus. My kids love to help and hated that there were other people here to run the food mills. I still have four boxes of tomatoes to do so anyone else who wants to come over this week, just let me know. I finally finished a craft! Sometimes I get them done so q

Baby Webb #3 is on the way. Here the baby is. We are going to try to be strong and not find out the sex at the ultra sound. So if you have an opinion, about the sex, feel free to share it. I am sure Jason will put a vote up. So far he wants names like "gunner" and "ruby." I told him Gunner might not go so well with Alice and Daniel, but who am I to stop an opinion? Oh wait. I was sick off and on for a few weeks but feel pretty good now. This is the baby at 10 weeks. We are about 13.5 weeks today. Due the end of February. I guess if we are lucky it could be a leap day baby. Daniel saw the baby in the ultra sound and was totally not surprised. His comment was "is that the baby I knew was growing in your tummy?" Alice was disturbed and cried and didn't eat for about two days. Then Daniel reminded me of a few months ago when he heard a voice from heaven telling him we needed another baby. He told me that "heavenly father w

There is a lot that has happened this summer. We enjoyed a great trip to yellowstone. The kids had so much fun and with all the late snow, we were able to see bears without binoculars! I would post pictures but truth be told, they are on Jason's computer and I have not yet retrieved them. Also we finally are getting the back yard started. Hooray! Only three and a half months after we thought it would get started. They scraped a lot of rocks and weeds today and they didn't even break a machine beyond repair. We'll see what happens tomorrow. Alice is learning how to ride her trike and she loves it. She finally is talking and singing more which is great but holy cow! She is very loud. Especially in the car. Alice is also finally attending nursery with no complaint. Daniel is still the man with questions. He is reading better and better and we are working on getting his numbers down and reading a clock. Our latest battle is still the ongoing battle with food.

My mom and dad invited us all kids to Easter at their house. Most of us made it. They had a whole weekend of fun planned for the kids. Thanks to mom and Tiff. The kids made bunny ears and little ducks and bunnies. They decorated cookies and played with cousins. My kids had so much fun. Then we had a wonderful easter egg hunt in which we found all but one easter egg. Daniel of course tried to get all the eggs before the other kids even realized what was going on. Alice did pretty good collecting eggs. Abby and Steph looking at their goodies. This is Alice in her adorable new dress. Thanks Steph!

Yes yes, well Alice's birthday was in April, so we aren't too far behind. As for tradition we went to the Tulip Festival for Alice's birthday. It was so fun. The kids loved being outside, I loved the gardens, and Jason, well he loves the food. We had the best pulled pork sandwich there, yum. Also there was clogging going on which the kids loved. Before it started, they just had music playing and lots of little kids danced on the platform. Our kids of course loved that. We keep trying to go back to the gardens, but the weather has been uncooperative. Alice got a trike for her birthday. We just took it outside last week and she loves when I push her around. This being our second trike, we bought the one with the parent handles. Alice helped make her cake, by choosing the frosting color. We put M&Ms on it and that was all she wanted to eat. Then she scraped her finger on it to get the frosting off and we just let her have fun. Soon the whole cake looked like

Okay so Daniel's birthday is in March. I know that it is May, and I wish that I could say we have been so busy, but mostly, I am just too lazy to find a spot for my laptop and put pictures on it and then blog. Oh well. Daniel wanted a space birthday. Jason and I painted his room and wall papered the space items on them. Our wonderful brother in law installed the ceiling fan. Daniel loves his new room. His cousins gathered "moon rocks" (newspaper balls) in his room before the presents were opened. Daniel wanted planet cakes. Thanks to borrowed cake pans I made, Mars, Jupiter and Venus, into cakes. We have discovered that Alice and Daniel love the frosting only. All other parts of the cake are useless to them. Oh well. This is Daniel's new room. I am not sure if we will ever paint again. Although, I am sure that will kind of be like how we say we will never go to Hawaii again.

I have noticed I take way more pictures of Alice than of Daniel. Is this common? I am not sure if it is on purpose or not. Alice liked Grandma Sug's house the best because she could just lay around and watch TV. Her favorite thing. It helped also that Grandma Sug has a stash of chocolate to bribe small children to her as well. My kids love chocolate. Daniel played outside a lot which was nice for his sleepy parents. Thanks Grandpa Stan! Daniel keeps asking to go back but then says "why do they have to live so far away?"

I have ten minutes until Daniel's quiet time is over which means the insanity will start soon. Daniel is having a hard time lately. One of the girls in his preschool class is mean to him, he never wants to go to church anymore because it is boring, he always wants to go to Grandma's house, and he whines constantly. Alice is talking more and her favorite things to say are "Daniel!" "Jason!" "Get down" and "Don't." She thinks everything is yellow or blue. But I just love when she yells at Daniel for me. She cries less and less everyday except when Daniel is mean to her which is becoming more and more frequent. Oh kids, they drive me so crazy. Lately I have been hating winter. My kids are bored, I am bored and I hate taking them places because they are pains. They aren't the kind of kids that come when you call, they run and think it is super funny. I know I know, if I put them in the stroller it would solve some problems

Usually I sit down to blog and can't think of anything to write about but today I have too much. Mostly today though I was reflecting, on this article called "Why I can't stop reading Mormon Mommy Blogs." My friend posted this on facebook (thanks Erin!) and I thought it was really interesting. Here is the sum up. This woman who wrote the article describes herself as a "childless, overeducated atheist feminist," who reads at least five "mormon mommy blogs" every day. Then she describes about the blogs, how they are different than other mommy blogs, and why she thinks she likes to read them. She also stated that she is not the only one who reads these blogs, but had many friends who also loved the Mormon Mommy Blogs. Then I started thinking about how grateful I am for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in my life. I love that our church teaches that families are not just important but essential to life and happiness. Jason read a

We had a big snow storm, Blizzard 2010 was about a week or so late. Here are my cute kids bundled up enjoying the snow. Here are some belated pictures of our Christmas. We had tons of fun and sad to say we have yet to sort out where all the new and old toys should go. Needless to say Alice's favorite thing was her can of crunchies. I love sugar cookies, and my kids love to help me make them and eat the frosting. This was Alice's first time being able to help us. She is very dainty, so she actually did a decent job. Mom and Dad gave us more cookie cutters for Christmas so my kids insisted that we try them out. We (I) ate a lot of sugar cookies this last month.

My kids are either really feeling the winter cabin fever or just wanting to drive me crazy. My guess is both. Alice is finally starting to talk more! She says "hewo? (hello) Bu-bye, and uh-oh," all the time it is so cute. She says more but I doubt anyone needs an absolute play by play. Daniel is finally starting to eat more than she does which is amazing. Their love of avocados has been renewed and we can't keep enough of them in the house. Alice is loving her bracelets that she got for Christmas and carries them in this little purse which is really cute. She also loves getting her hair done, but I am not so sure she loves that or just really likes to stand on the chair in my bathroom and play with the lights. Daniel is doing so good in preschool and is starting to read. The other day he sounded out "s, a, t....snake!" Not quite, but sometimes he gets it right. He wants to go to preschool everyday and I wish he did, but mostly we are glad he loves it