March Road Trip

Vacation! Paul had the last week of March off, and since one of the reasons we wanted to match in Milwaukee was that we would have family close-ish, we took off to finally visit them.

But we did stop at Wisconsin Dells before seeing everyone. Wisconsin Dells is a random resort town with a population of about 2,600, but that has about 5 million visitors a year...and their claim to fame is they are the indoor waterpark capitol of the world. Random that such a place exists in the middle of western Wisconsin. So we joined the masses and spent the day swimming and sliding.

From the Dells we drove to St. Paul to spend a few days with Paul's brother, Aaron, and his family. The girls loved seeing their cousins. We didn't do much sight-seeing...still too cold. And what little we did froze our buns off.

This was the headache-inducing yellow room at a theater downtown. Here I stood on a thick piece of plastic hovering 6 stories above ground. Slightly unsettling.

From St. Paul, we drove south to Iowa to see my sister, Laura, and her family. Fewer pictures, since we mostly just spent time with the kids at home. But Niels did learn the love of sword-fighting from his 3 boy cousins.

We were there on Easter, so the kiddos searched for eggs in the snow.

And my wanna-be-chef husband made some creme brulee. But when flaming the sugar on top, we ran out of butane fuel. So Aaron and Paul improvised, using Aaron's plumbers torch to provide the fuel, and Paul's butane torch to keep Aaron's flame lit (the plumbers torch kept dying for some reason. So, although flamed non-traditionally, the dessert was delicious.

Spring might finally come

I thought I was prepared for the cold Wisconsin winters. I love snow. I love bundling up in scarves, hats, poofy down coats, boots, and gloves. And with a good road crew, the roads aren't too bad. I was ready for it. 

I was not prepared for winter to last 5 months.

So although 'spring' is already half over, the trees are still leafless, there are no flowers in bloom, and nothing is green. When the daily high is 39 degrees, what else can you expect? So we have remained indoors while the southern part of the country enjoys a cool, green spring spring. 

During the end of March, with snow still on the ground, we were first starting to feel the itch for spring to come. The girls wanted to throw a "spring surprise party" for Paul when he came home. We spent the day making flowers and butterflies and bunnies. When he walked in, we held up our flower masks and danced to the song "It's spring, spring, spring again," a terribly cheesy song that the girls love. It was definitely a surprise for him.

We pretty much stayed home and enjoyed this cute boy...

...who likes to perch on the ledge to watch TV, turning on and off the Blu-ray player, cable box, and XBox.

And Anna is my precious middle child. She is a snuggler. And when I told her to pack her panties for our trip to Minnesota and Iowa, she got to work organizing them all. Love her.

Trap time

March...St. Patrick's Day. If you are a seasoned reader of this blog, you'll know what that means in our Iverson house - lots of corny, green decorations, an unexplained obsession with trap building, homemade root beer, and candy.

Paul tried his hand yet again at making his father's homemade root beer. And some how it turned into a root beer slushy. Oh well. The girls loved all the "smoke" and the slushy was still tasty.

We threw our 4th annual trap building extravaganza. We ate some amazing Reuben sandwiches, colcannon, corned beef brisket, and soda bread. Delicious as always. 

Our trap this year was primarily Hattie's plan. Ever since Valentine's Day, she has been asking what we were going to do for our trap. (the girl is obsessed with holidays. She's always asking when the next holiday is and making decorations) In the mornings during breakfast she would come up with ideas to try to lure the leprechauns to our trap, how to trip the trap, and how to secure them in the trap til morning. Having built a few traps myself over the past few years as an Iverson, I tried to help her think of something we hadn't done before. So she came up with this: Hotel O'Niels. Lure him in with lots of green and gold stuff, and certainly a huge glass of root beer. Then we would give him something to make him fall asleep for the night. So yes, she decided to drug him.

But what would we put in the root beer to put him to sleep? Smarties of course! They would send him into a sugar-induced coma that would knock him out for the night. Hattie thought it was great. She even practiced dissolving smarties in water a few times before actually building the trap.

 Anna was primarily in charge of decorating the outside of the hotel room.

She was particularly proud of this golden wire draped with tape. Nice aesthetic touch.

And Hattie and I worked on the inside of the room.

Paul build a huge green hat to put the hotel room on. And voila - a high-rise hotel room.

The Burroughs family made a trap with a fancy umbrella and lounge chair...but not before the leprechaun crossed hole in the ground covered by palm leaves!

And Aubrey decided to make her trap so warm and cosy that the leprechaun would never want to leave! 

If you send Paul to Wal-Mart

If you send Paul to Wal-Mart to pick up some pictures, he'll walk past the bananas. Thinking of Niels, he'll gets some.

While in produce he'll see the guacamole. Seeing the guacamole, he will think of chips.

When he sees the chips, they will remind him of white salsa con queso dip. He'll probably grab some. 

After wandering to the chip aisle, he'll spot some Oreos..."For the girls," he'll justify.

Being halfway into the store, he will figure he might as well go all the way to the back to get some yogurt. 

On the way, he'll see some bay leaves...and some fennel seeds too. 

When he picks up the fennel, he'll see a crazy Wal-Mart shopper that he should take a picture of. 

Thinking of pictures will remind him of his original assignment. 

And chances are, when he leaves the stores, he'll won't get celery, which we actually needed.

Surprising productivity

How does it happen that some days are remarkably productive? This morning I did the usual routine: breakfast for kids, unload dishwasher, load breakfast dishes, dress kids. Some days that seems to be the end of my productivity. The rest of the day slowly passes between diaper changes, attempts to start a project, constant tidying, mealtimes, clean up, and bed time. Every day Paul calls me on his commute home from work and invariably asks how the day was and what we did. Sometimes I know that I did something, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. The house is a disaster, I didn't cook dinner, and I am still in sweats.

Happily, today was different - after the usual morning start, I got some laundry started, crossing my fingers that with a bit of luck I might actually wash it all today, and, with a miracle, have it folded *and* put away by bedtime. Hattie stayed home from school, having vomited on Sunday evening. So while she would have been at preschool, we instead did school together. She loves doing math. We've purchased a few math workbooks from Wal-Mart & Target. She eats them up. She will often finish a work book in a day or two. While she rarely volunteers to do a reading lesson, she'll jump at the chance to work in her math workbook. Suddenly the 20 minutes I had planned for math time had turned into an hour.

We were interrupted by my phone chiming, tell us it was little cousin Rachel's birthday. Which led to a 40 minute FaceTime party, playing hide-and-seek, Swiper no swiping, and singing happy birthday with Luke and Rachel.

Then lunch for kids, planning an FHE activity, making cookies with Anna, folding a few loads of laundry, fixing my hair, reading with Hattie, reading my scriptures in Spanish, folding more laundry, making dinner, washing dishes, and folding yet again. Kids to bed at 7:15, more folding. Now I am even blogging. What happened that made today different from other days? I didn't necessarily wake up this morning, randomly determined to be productive. I feel like I always have intend to be productive - even if my productivity is focused on spending time with my kids and forgetting about the house for the day. (Did I mention that the kids didn't even ask for TV today? That really made me feel like super-mom. How did I get stuff done and not entertain them all day?)

So if you know the secret to how you pull off your productive days, please let me know.

And the laundry is completely put away. Check.

Inspired by creativity

As I've tried recently to keep this blog up-to-date, I've endeavored also to be more diligent in reading my friends' blogs...heck, if I want more comments, I'd better give 'em out myself. In so doing, I rediscovered that some of my friends have awesome blogs.

There is Elise, who, as a mother of four in Carlsbad, NM, has the funniest stories about motherhood, Kristina in Lubbock, TX, who finds humor in everything, Miranda in Austin, TX, whose writing brings me back to days with her on the mission and in Provo, and Wendy in Washington DC, whose stellar wit and vocabulary always leave me searching for a dictionary. These women are all amazing writers. I feel like I'm right there with them through it all, and it makes me miss these dear friends very much (sigh). 

Now I'm not one who constantly compares myself to others. Trust me, it is damaging to everyone. But reading their blogs did make me wonder - does anyone read my blog for the fun of it? Do they keep reading old posts from a year or two ago just because they are so awesomely written? Or is my blog purely informative on our rather mundane life? 

I'm not an incredibly gifted writer. During my first semester at BYU the only thing I knew about my undecided major was that it would NOT be writing-intensive. Oh the irony. After four years of whipping out critical analyses week after week, I think I started to develop the talent - a five page paper got to be a breeze. But that was 7 years ago. Whatever writing skills I developed seem to have dwindled. Gosh, even writing by hand for too long makes my hand cramp up. 

So what does this all sum up to? My attempt to add some spice to the blog...more stories, less travel-log. More musings, less information. Hopefully I won't look back on this post in 6 months and roll my eyes at my failed commitment. But at least it's a start.

February came and went...

How has February past already? Not that I am complaining - Paul has been on a month of internal medicine, being on call every 4 days with no Saturdays or Sundays off. So I am glad that this month is 3 days shorter than the other ones. Here's a little of what we've been up to...

Okay, looking at this picture I forgot that Paul did have one Saturday off, during which we went to Home Depot for an ice spreader. It happened to also be the free craft day. The girls had a blast building their own Valentine holder. They can't wait for this Saturday - going back to see what the St. Patrick's Day craft is :)

Disaster struck. We have had 5 or 6 decent sized snow storms this winter and it finally caught up to us. Apparently the gutters around our entry way were rather clogged, not allowing all the melting snow to drain properly. So when the melted snow froze again at night, it back up UNDER the shingles. Something called ice damming. Then when it melted, it entered our entry way. This has made me VERY ready for spring so we can get a new roof, a snow and ice shield, and repair whatever damage has been done in the attic (possible mold, etc.) It also damaged the electrical circuit to the front of our house, so we don't have any light in the entry way or kitchen. Gratefully, our kitchen outlets are on a different circuit, so I can still cook dinner.

Paul had Valentine's day off, so as the extremist that he is, he created quite a party for the girls. Between Party City and WalMart, we had flowers, balloons, heart-shaped pasta, and red velvet cupcakes. He even bought a kit to make chocolate covered Oreos. The girls loved it, and I was glad that his day off we were able to do something fun with the girls.

 Anna sneaked Oreos all day. Every time I saw her, she looked something like this.

I took them to see Disney on Ice...of course, they were in heaven. Paul later took them to the circus...sorry, no pics.

With the cold, snowy weather, we really stay home most days and try to stay warm. Niels loves the dishwasher - standing and taking all the silverware out that he can, and banging all the dishes together. My chubby boy is nuts, but I love him.

Despite our leak, I love all the snow! I just need a snowblower so it doesn't take me more than an hour to clear our driveway (it has been snowing for the last 24 hours...I'm going to have to shovel again.)

Typical silliness...Anna was "ice skating" on wet wipes.

 

And we whipped out our St. Patrick's Day decor...the girls are already planning our trap!

 Anna has joined Hattie in the creativity department. Here she wrote her name...right letters, wrong order. (Couldn't get the images to upload in the right direction)

And here are her first stick figures :) Love the huge grins.

And to conclude the post, I just wanted to highlight my very annoying "new baby growth" hair. Anyone else hate this as much as I do? Getting tired of trying to tame it down every day!