Mary's Mother's Day Poem

Mary wrote this poem for Marby for Mother's Day. I loved it so much it made me cry and it wasn't even for me!

When I think of you there's a smile on my face.
For you brought my father to the human race.
You raised him and loved him and he soon met a girl.
Then later on their relationship unfurled.
That girl became my mother and I love her so much.
And it all started with you and I feel so touched.

She's All Grown Up!

Lydia has been an avid thumb sucker since she was just a couple months old. It has been such a comfort for her through her recent trials, but her Daddy and her siblings wanted it to stop. Me on the other hand could have cared less, but I was sick of hearing the rest of the family complain. I would often hear from Adam, "STOP GETTING YOUR THUMB JUICE ON MEEEE!!!" David of course, was worried about her sucking her thumb at kindergarten next year. So, I came up with a brilliant idea that I am still in shock that it actually worked. Lydia has been sad since we sold our Degu last month and said almost daily how she'll never have a pet that's her very own again! So, the only pet we are willing to get at this point in addition to our two cats and a gecko, is a simple Betta fish. We told Lydia that if she didn't suck her thumb for a whole week she could have her very own fish. She totally bought it and it was just the right motivation for her. Anytime she felt like sucking her thumb I would either put a band-aid on her thumb or get her something to munch on. She was so good about telling us when she was tempted and that week was easy breezy! She only needed a bandaid on her thumb for the first three nights, and other than that she only needed a few extra snacks to satisfy that urge to have something in her mouth. Of course David told her if we catch her sucking her thumb again, he'll flush it down the toilet. Don't worry, I'll make sure she has a few chances before resorting to such drastic measures. We're so proud of her! Here she is with her new pet Betta fish, Rainbow.

Joy's High Honor Project

I hope you don't mind me bragging a bit about Joy in this post. I think she deserves it! At the beginning of the school year, those with high enough grades were presented with the option of doing a high honors project. They could pick any subject they would like to do it on, but they had to work on it for at least 30 hours plus an additional 10 hours of community service relating to the project. Of course, my over-achiever daughter dove right in! She decided to do it on History and make a mural of the history of the US. Another requirement is it had to benefit the city of Mapleton (where her school is located). She started it in October, 2010 and finished the end of March, 2011 and worked on it a total of 55 hours plus the 11 hours community service, then she had to write a full page report about her experience with it called a reflection. I have to say this was done all of her own will and motivation. In fact we had to discourage her from spending even more time on it than she did. See, she had a plan all laid out of how she wanted to do it thinking it would take her about 30 hours. After she had gotten about 40 hours into it, we had to make her simplify some of her plans, otherwise it would have taken her 70+ hours! Once she was done the mural, for the comm. service, she spent the next three weeks going around to almost all the history classes in her school (there are 1500+ students in her Jr. High) presenting her project. She had a little speech explaining it and then would answer questions. Then she had a pre-final presentation where she presented it to all the history teachers in the school (about five) and the principal, and then a final presentation where she was able to present it to her extended family. It turned out to be 12.5 feet long and too wide to fit in a laminator, so I had to laminate it by hand, which was very hard! So, here's her masterpiece!! Make sure and click on each picture to look at it bigger so you can see the details better.

The first third. She drew each state and labeled it with the capital and postal abbrev. Those represent the stars of the flag.

The second third. The stripes along the bottom have descriptions and pictures of the wars, and sketches of all 44 presidents

The last third has sketches of important symbols of our country, Utah, and Mapleton city and some information.

All 12 1/2 feet!

Here you can see some of the details better. I love the drawings of the presidents. The hair on some of them is hilarious!

Most of the students did English projects where all they did was read a book and write a report on it, and no one had done a History project for several years, so the teachers were all really excited about Joy's project. They said they were amazed with everything she did on it and had never seen another in comparison.
This doesn't affect her grade or give her extra credit or even go on her record for college since she's only in 8th grade. So, what does she get for doing this? A really cool plaque and a trip to Hogle Zoo. She's very excited for her reward, but as for me, that wouldn't have been even close to motivate me to do anything like that! I am in awe of my daughter!

Easter - April, 2011

Easter was really nice. No one was sick, we had a nice meal with Nate and Josh, and it was really fun seeing Hazel's reaction to her candy and presents.
Adam had been wanting a dragon lamp for awhile since his lamp had broken and I think I found the coolest one out there!

Mary wanted a coloring book and I found some really detailed adult coloring books and a colored pencil set.

I had to get Hazel a Wiggles book and a duck to add to her collection. This was the biggest duck I could find and she absolutely adores it! It's so cute seeing her walking around with it.

Lydia got a cute doggy purse and a Tangled water color painting book. That's her favorite movie and she has most of the lines from it memorized.

Joy is really growing up because she mostly wanted money, so we hid some in a few eggs, and she got a new Manga book.

DIE LICE DIE!! - April, 2011

Even though I have always feared getting lice, I never really thought we would actually get it. I just thought I was being too paranoid and that Heavenly Father knows that, that would be too much of a burden on me. HA! Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha!!! I have got to stop having "worst fears"! This is not the only worst fear I have had to face in the last few years! So, Mary came to me saying her head was itchy and I didn't think about it too much with her history of psoriasis. I just told her to make sure and use the special shampoo next time and that was it. Four days later she said, Mom, my head is still really itchy. I've always had the haunting word "lice" stuck in my head, and I'll check the kids here and there for it, so I checked and I really couldn't believe my eyes! I just stared for a few minutes not wanting to say it. When I finally did, it took Mary several minutes to believe me, then she started bawling! She didn't stop for an hour while David went out at 10pm that night and picked up the lice treatment, and I'm about to have a breakdown. We treated her, two days later, still live lice in her hair. The treatment says it kills the eggs, but it doesn't really, because these had just hatched. Soooo, I went on line and found that you can kill the lice by smothering them with mayonnaise or oil. The mayonnaise treatment is the first one I saw and I immediately grabbed it and totally soaked her hair with it, then wrapped it with a Walmart bag. After I already put it on, I went back and read that you have to leave it on for at least 6 hours because lice can hold their breath for a very long time! Poor Mary was dying, and Lydia said " this is the worst day I ever smelled!"  But, it doesn't kill  the eggs, it seems nothing does, so I spent 3 hours that night checking every single strand on her hair and pulling out dozens of nits. Then, in case I missed any eggs, I had to do the olive oil treatment (in place of the stinky mayonnaise) every other day for a week. I did it on Joy a few times too because I thought I saw one on her too. I lost an entire week to this, constantly cleaning, boiling, bagging things, sleepless nights, picking through hair, and around 50 extra loads of laundry. Now that it's all over, I'm more paranoid than ever about getting lice again! So here are my poor daughters being subject to my torture!

Mary's 12th birthday & other happenings - March, 2011

It's hard to believe I have two girls in Young Womens now. Mary just couldn't wait and talked Joy and I into letting her go to several activities a month before she turned twelve. She reminded us about 10 times a day every day for a week before her birthday that her birthday was coming up. I literally have never seen more excitement in a 12 year old!
She got a huge new scooter and some coin collecting supplies. She's getting quite a collection now.

They had a Dr. Seuss day at school and with Mary being in student council she performed a Dr. Seuss skit at an assembly. This was her crazy get-up.

We had gotten a new vacuum and this is the box it came in. It kept the kids occupied for hours! Lydia colored and decorated it, and even slept in it one night. Hazel just sat in there for over a half an hour several times perfectly content. Gotta love easy entertainment!

I just had to include this picture of Hazel cause her smile is just soooo cute!

 Lydia's smile here is hilarious. This is what she does in half the pictures I try to take of her and she doesn't even realize it.