Victor my Teddy Bear

I was lying down on my bed before going to sleep one night when I noticed my very old stuffed animal, Victor. Victor was given to me in 1982, I had barely turned 6 years old and had lost my Dad about a month ago. I can't remember who gave it to me but I do remember aunts and uncles asking me what his name was going to be. I told them his name would be Victor in memory of my Dad. This bear has the saddest face that you have ever seen and at that age we can come up with the craziest ideas about everything. I told everybody that he was sad because my daddy had died :) I remember most of the people in the room got really sad and started to cry, I didn't understand what the big deal was then. This Teddy Bear has been there for me ever since (except for a couple of years) and he has heard me cry, laugh and knows all my secrets. When ever I was sad or had a hard time at school, I would hug him and everything seemed so much better. I didn't tell anybody I slept with him at night and my Mom thought it was a foolish thing to do. I had a huge collection of stuffed animals before I got married (more than 20) and it was hard for me to leave them behind, but Victor was coming with me no matter what. My Mom saw it in my suitcase and told me to get it out and to realize that I was a grown woman about to get married and to not bring it with me. I agreed to it and left it behind. Of course that very night I realized what a big mistake that had been. Time went by and I still missed him, specially when I didn't have anything that reminded me of home and then one day I met this sister that had a box full of stuffed animals and told me how she kept them all since she was little. I didn't feel so silly anymore and decided that I wanted my Teddy Bear with me, so when I went back to visit my Mom for the first time, I was a woman on a mission. I told her how much the bear meant to me and that I was going to bring him back with me and I didn't care if she thought I was silly, she actually helped me look for it and we found him all dusty and still sad, but I was happy. My mom washed him and got it all fluffy again, we gave it to Shayna to play with it and I think that is when my Mother finally realized that this silly old bear was very important to me. He is been back with me since that day and I am not planning on letting it go again, yes I might be silly or childish, but this bear helped me through some tough times.
So here is a picture of Victor, 27 years old, about 10" tall, dark brown and tan with the saddest eyes that I have ever seen. By the way, I don't hug him at night anymore, I have Dan now.

Guys hitting on me or just being nice?

These are random things that people told me a while ago.

1. I took the kids to the Health Clinic to get their shots done so they could get accepted in school. The doctor that checked their weight and everything else was telling me how healthy the kids were and in the middle of that he said the following: "Tristan is a little guy but he is growing accordingly...eh you smell good", I thought I didn't hear him right so I asked him what he had just said, to what he replied "you smell good" again. I just said "thank you?" and we continued with the kids charts....

2. I went shopping for a light sweater for Shayna when the weather got a little cold. I went to a thrift store to look for a good deal but I could not find the coats ans sweaters so I asked this guy for help(a very young guy)and he walked me to the right spot, while looking through the racks he asked "Are you married?" my answer was "yes and I have four kids", then he said "You are pretty!!!", again I just said thank you and then walked away which appeared more like running :)

3. A guy came to the house to try to sell magazine subscriptions, I was sick at the time and probably didn't look my best, I had Tristan hanging on my leg and Aaron sitting on my hip. I opened the door and the guy said he was sorry to wake me up (I wasn't sleeping) and then he said "I know you are busy running a day care and all..." I just had to stop him and told him that these were all my kids, he kept saying I looked too young to have kids AND so many of them. Give me a break they are only 4, but then again I am not in Utah anymore and people think is weird to have more than 2 kids.

So the first two took me by surprise and I just couldn't help but to laugh by the time I got home and tell Dan all about it, I guess it is kind of nice to think that even after having 4 kids some guys might think that I am pretty or that I look young. Dan told me to post these little experiences because he thought they were funny and he keeps bugging me about it telling me "you are pretty" with a funny voice.

Tinker Bell Mural for Shayna

As a special present for Shayna I told her that I would try to make a mural in her room, I didn't want anything big just something pretty for her room to make it look more girly. Since the room is not that big I don't want to paint the walls, but I think that having this new mural (I guess it's not really a mural since it's so small) makes the room look so much better. I took advantage of Aaron's afternoon nap and it took me almost 3 hours to get it done. It was so cool to mix the colors to find the right shades for the color of the skin, dress and wings. As always I am not 100% happy with the result but Shayna loves it. I am including a picture of the colors all mixed up, Shayna thinks it's really cool and she also thinks I am a great artist (in my dreams).

My funny kids.

I was just looking at my picture collection and it made me think of a couple of things about my kids. Victor recently lost his second tooth and as always he made a big deal out of it, he kept complaining about how much it hurt and he didn't want to eat, it was literally just sitting there and all I had to do was pick it up, it came out really easy. He was a much happier boy after that and now has a very cute smile minus the teeth. Shayna and I share a love for pets, like I have mentioned it before my little bird does not like me and she seems to like Shayna a lot. One night I dared Shayna to kiss the bird and she was going to do it, but I got a little scared the bird would bite her so I stopped her, I was able to take this cute picture though.



Aaron has been sucking on his thumb pretty much since he was born and he loves his blue blanket, he wont let that blanket out of sight and when he doesn't have it he freaks out. I make sure we have when we go places because it calms him down if he gets hurt or if he gets sleepy. My kids have been watching a lot of the Charlie Brown cartoons and I noticed that Linus looks kind of like Aaron, he sucks him thumb and he has a blue blanket, isn't that funny? Maybe I'll start calling him Linus from now on :)














Tristan hates cleaning or picking up his own mess, but he loves to use the little hand held vacuum. He would cry if I don't let him do it. One day he vacuumed everything in sight and this is the end result.

I know that we take way too many pictures, but some day when they are all grown up and gone that is all I am going to have left of them. I love my babies :)

My busy life!!!

I could have an easy and not busy life if I wanted to, but I guess that would be boring. I have been very busy working on some projects since last year. I told myself that I was going to get my house organized and I will. It is taking some time but it will happen. Today we got rid of our extra living room set (the green sofa and love seat we had upstairs back in Layton). We offered them for free but nobody showed any interest in it. We were trying to sell them for months now and finally somebody came to pick them up. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Now I can try to figure out what I want to get for the foyer, which is huge. It feels like a wasted space right now with nothing there. I would love to get one of those benches that open up so we can store backpacks in it, and also hang the coats on it, they are really cool and expensive but I have my eye on one that I saw at Big Lots that is cheaper. I have been trying to organize my pantry as well, which is turning out surprisingly well (pictures will come soon). I made a special request and I got a cool sewing table for Christmas. It makes cutting and sewing so much fun. I worked on my first project right after putting it together, a cute backpack for me. I feel very proud of myself because it doesn't look homemade (at least that is what I think). We have been enjoying our Christmas presents a lot. We are polishing rocks with Shayna, we've recycled some paper, and have put puzzles together. We have also enjoyed the outdoors when the weather is nice. We had a picnic to have some fun when the kids were on their winter break. I also made a kite for the kids just like the ones I used to make as a kid. I am very proud of that because it actually worked. It could have gone very high but we ran out of thread.
Cleaning: I hate it, but it has to get done, I absolutely hate cleaning bathrooms and I love my bathroom but don't particularly like the sliding glass doors. They require a lot of scrubbing thanks to the soap scum. Shayna mentioned something about a new product that came out and I decided to try it out, it is the Scrubbing Bubbles Mega Shower Foamer, I love the regular Scrubbing Bubbles so I figured it would work just fine and it does. I am posting some before and after pictures of my shower doors, I really didn't have to do any scrubbing. I love to let people know when a product actually works.
Church: I am now the Senior Nursery Leader, I am sorry if I am not that excited but last year we had up to 18 kids (11 of them are now gone). I am now in charge of the whole thing and it is a little overwhelming for me. It is one thing to go and do what you are told, but to be in charge is jut too much for me right now. But it went well last week, I will probably end up teaching every Sunday since everybody else seems to always be gone visiting family. This is what I have been up to. It's not much, just your regular mom stuff and even when I feel down my kids can make me laugh and suddenly life doesn't feel so stressed out. Now that the kids are in bed we are going to enjoy some TV shows since that is the closest thing to a date that Dan and I can get these days. I keep uploading the pictures all weird, I hate it.

This is my backpack.



Here are the kids at the park eating a healthy lunch.


This is the new product that I love.

This is the after picture...

and here is the before picture.

Shayna and Tristan trying out the kite.

Shayna's first Spelling Bee

The day before winter break, Shayna's teacher sent home the booklet with all the information about the Spelling Bee that was going to take place at her school. I thought they had a couple of months to get ready for it, but it wasn't the case for Shayna, it was today and we just barely found out yesterday that we could attend to it. We spent some time studying the words and trying to learn how to pronounce them and the meaning of them, they had some very weird words that I have never heard of like kovsh, bandersnatch and many many others. I told Shayna not to be nervous and to do her best, it was just a cool experience to go through since she was the only one elected out of her class. They had 30 participants and she passed the first round, after that only 12 remained, she got a very hard word on the second round and didn't make it to the final round, by the way the runner up just got lucky because she got a very easy word (safari). The finalist now moves to the regionals and from then they go to Washington DC for the Nationals. I know that they could have let us know about this way ahead of time, but for being her first time she did great. I have to say that she is a very brave little girl to stand in front of so many people, the competition was between 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. Next time we will be prepared. The pictures came out all backwards but you get the idea.

On the way to school we just put Aaron in the car and he tried to get out of the car seat, this is how he had to stay for half the way there, he was to scared to move, I know it is not safe, but hey it takes longer to strap him in than to get to the school.


After the first round.



Shayna's turn to spell.


The entire group before the Spelling Bee



Shayna's new look.

Happy New Year!!!

2009 is finally here and we are excited about what this year might bring to our family. We ended the year by celebrating at our house, I didn't want to go anywhere other than stay home and be with my family. We invited Steven and Amber over to share our dinner with. We had duck and a turkey roast, I just felt like doing something different this time. It was a very good meal and afterwards we played charades and Cranium (family edition) and we also had fun playing the Wii with Steven and Amber. The Wii was our gift to us for Christmas and we have been enjoying it a lot. All in all we had a great night and even enjoyed a nice display of fireworks in our neighborhood. We hope all is well with everybody and now hopefully we can all go back to our normal lives with no more celebrations, I need a break :)