Nuts night at Kari's House - May 17, 2014

Saturday - May 17, 2014

Kari invited us over for a nuts night.  My sisters and I haven't gotten together to play nuts for a long time, so I was very excited to go.  The bummer is that it was only going to be Linda, Missy, Kari, and I.  Shelley and Kristy both couldn't make it.  Then, Missy ended up getting sick and she had to cancel.  It was still fun to go and see some of my sisters.  we never ended up playing nuts.  We spent all of our time talking.  Missy stopped by to drop something off.  She didn't stay long because she didn't want to get anybody sick.  But we all stood outside and visited for a while, while she was there.

Kari had to work that day, so we couldn't start our nuts night until 6:30pm.  We decided to come early and play a little until it was time to meet at Kari's.  We went on a little hike.

 Our little ones had always wanted to go to a Toys-R-Us.  We don't have one of those stores anywhere near us, but the kids would see commercials for that store and they always thought it would be the coolest store ever.  At Christmas time, I was able to take Alissa and Brinley to Toys-R-Us in Salt Lake, but Parker wasn't with us, so now He and the girls have been wanting to go, so Parker could finally see what it was like.  Alissa and Brinley told him about what an awesome store it is and he's just been dying to go.  Since we had time before we would meet at Kari's, we decided to take the kids to Toys-R-Us.  Parker was so excited!  He had $5.00 that he got from Grandma Mathison for his birthday.  That made his trip to the store even more exciting.  The kids love that store.  There are so many toys!  a lot of them they didn't even know existed.  We spent as long as we could wandering around and looking at all the toys.  Parker bought himself a toy that spins a tire and sends it shooting really far.

We left Toys-R-Us and headed over to Twin Peaks Elementary School (my old stomping grounds) to play on the playground and let Parker try out his new toy, while we waited for it to be time to go to Kari's house.  Parker's new toy was really fun.  He had fun playing with it.  Roger and Parker played basketball for a little while and Brinley and Alissa tried to bury themselves in the rocks.  Kari called when she was almost home, to let us know we could come over.  Roger and Parker were just dropping us off.  They helped us get all our stuff in then they left to go to Roger's friend, Dan's house.  Parker and Roger had a fun night of hanging out with Dan.  They went out to eat and stayed up late playing video games.

Alissa and Brinley had a lot of fun playing with Cousins.  Kari's ex-boyfriend's daughter, Kaylie was there.  So, Alissa had a friend her own age to play with.  Kaylie's step Brother came Also.  He is also the same age as Alissa.  Then Damen and Kiara came home and Linda brought Mathew with her.  Pretty much Alissa played with Kaylie the whole time and Brinley played with her cousin Mathew.  All the kids spent most of the time outside blowing bubbles, playing with the tether ball, or riding bikes, scooters, and skateboards.  They had a lot of fun.  I asked Kiara to help me come up with a new hairstyle.  She thought I should color my hair a darker color.  I'm way too afraid to do that.  I always am wishing my hair was lighter though, so I decided to have Kari add some highlights.  I ended up getting a headache.  That's why we ended up sitting outside.  I was too hot sitting inside and it was making my headache worse.  By the time we were done visiting outside, though, my head was killing me.  

I am so frustrated by my headaches.  I get them almost every time we go to Salt Lake.  I'm pretty sure they are related to my emotions.  I know when I get angry or fussy they get worse really fast and they get so painful that my tummy starts to hurt and I feel like I need to barf.  Since, I discovered that, I can usually keep my headaches from getting too bad.  When I find myself starting to get fussy over something, I quickly talk myself out of it and convince myself that it's okay.  But the headache is still there, it's just not as bad.  I wish I could figure out how to keep the headache away completely.  It is so frustrating that I almost always have a headache when we go to visit friends or family in Salt Lake.

Anyways... I was so relieved to finally go to sleep when we were done talking, since my head was hurting soooo... bad and I knew the best thing to make it go away was sleep.  Kari keeps her house really cold at night, which I love!  So, I slept really well.

 Kari bought these cute dresses for the girls.  Alissa and Kaylie loved their dresses so much that they decided to keep them on and wear them while they played.

A Bubble Party With Brinley's Class - May 16, 2014

Friday - May 16, 2014

Let me just tell you, I do not enjoy being a room mother.  This is not the first time I've made this mistake.  When Alissa was in Kindergarten, I signed up to be a room mom and because my name was on the top of the list, I got to be the head room mom, which means, I'm in charge of calling and organizing things with the other room moms to help plan the activities that we are asked to do.  The first time I did it, I didn't enjoy it because, I still had 2 little ones at home and I was doing daycare, which made it really hard for me to plan and help at these class activities.  It was really stressful, but I fought through it and did it anyways, with the vow that I would never do that again.

At the start of this school year, I thought, well.... it wouldn't kill me to sign up and help in the kids' classes this year.  I don't have any little ones at home all day anymore and I'm only babysitting one little girl and it would be easy to bring her a long with me.  Also, I convinced myself that the kids would love it, so it was the right thing to do.  I had completely forgot how much I disliked it the first time.  So, I signed up.  There were a lot of room mom's in Parker's class, but only me and one other person signed up in Brinley's class.  I just happened to be on the top of the list in Brin's class, so I got stuck being the head room mom.  

As a room mom, we are required to plan 2 class parties a year.  We provide a treat, games, and an activity.  The head room mom in Parker's class was super motivated and decided that we needed to plan a party for every holiday and for the teacher's birthday.  That was definitely more than two parties.  I was not thrilled about that. I was kind of a stinker and avoided helping out at most of the parties.
I was the head room mom's in Brinley's class, so we only did two parties.  We did a Fall party and an end of the school year party.  The end of the school year party was because I realized a little too late that I hadn't planned a second party yet.  The first party I did with Brinley's class, we made a craft that left a big mess in the classroom.  I felt bad about that, so I tried to come up with something that wouldn't leave such a big mess this time.  The idea I came up with was to have a bubble party.  We would be outside blowing bubbles.  That way, the classroom wouldn't be such a mess.
I brought 5 or 6 buckets of homemade bubble solution, a container full of traditional, store bought bubble wands, a bag full of homemade snack bubble wands, and a container full of our big bubble wands that I made last week.  The kids had a lot of fun.  The other room mom wasn't able to make it, so it was just Brin's teacher and I helping the kids.  We spent the majority of our time trying to untangle the big bubble wands.  We'd get them fixed just in time for the kids to bring us more tangled wands.  While we were untangling wands, the kids started putting the bubble solution on each other, then on themselves.  The bubble solution had corn syrup in it, so all the kids were a big sticky mess by the time we finished.  The teacher sent them all inside to wash the bubble solution off, while we cleaned up all of the bubble stuff.  then we went to the classroom, where the kids got to have a cookie before the bell rang and they went home.  The other room mom is Brinley's friend, Onika's mom -Hollie.  She had been planning to help, but ended up getting sick, so she dropped the cookies off at my house before I left.  It was a bummer that she couldn't have been there to help, but such a relief to not have to worry about getting a treat for the kids.
Since, I was at the elementary school at until school got out, I wasn't able to pick Alissa up from school.  She wasn't sad about that, because that meant she'd get to walk home with Erin, who lives right across the street from the elementary school.  So, after school, we waited and played at the playground until Alissa got there.  Her and Erin took an extra long time walking home, but it was okay.  Brinley's friend, Onnika stayed after school and played on the playground with Parker and Brinley while we waited for Alissa.  Erin got permission to come and play with Alissa at our house, so we all piled in the truck to go home.  First we had to drop of Brinley's friend Onnika.  They were sad that Oni couldn't come to our house also, but Brinley was grounded, so it couldn't happen.
Erin got to stay for a late night.  After Roger left to work, their friend Sydney came over and she also got to stay for a late night.  Those were some pretty excited and happy girls.  You should have heard the squealing.  Anyways.... they all a lot of fun.

More Bubbles - May 10, 2014

Saturday - May 10, 2014

The girls spent the morning outside blowing bubbles.

Bubbles - May 9, 2014

Friday - May 9, 2014

I made some really cool bubble wands and some bubble solution that I found on Pinterest.  We had so much fun playing with these bubbles.  The wands make really large bubbles.  I thought it was so funny to hear hear the kids getting so excited about how large the bubbles were.  Each time somebody did one, I heard a lot of, "Wow!" "No way!"  "Oh my gosh!" "That was awesome!" and a lot of excited laughing over how cool they were.  These bubbles were very entertaining.  The kids spent most of the evening outside making these bubbles.

 Brinley got a little upset and frustrated, because her string kept getting tangled and she couldn't figure out how to get the bubbles to work.  That's why she's making the sad face in this picture.

 She didn't give up and was able to figure it out1

Hairstyles - May 5, 2014

Monday - May 5, 2014

Brinley and Alissa have been wanting me to style their hair a lot lately.  I love it, because they normally don't want their hair done.  Every time I style their hair, they have me take a picture to help them see the back better. I've pinned a lot of cute hairstyles that I'd like to try on Pinterest.  So, in the morning, they look through the pictures and chose what hairstyle they like the most, and that's how I style their hair.

The Spiral Jetty - May 3, 2014

Saturday - May 3, 2014

We went out adventuring today.  I love going on adventures with my family!  We always have so much fun and Roger always comes up with the funnest things to do.  He was searching online looking for an adventure for us to take the weekend and he found this...

The Spiral Jetty!

The spiral Jetty is an earthwork sculpture created in April 1970 by Robert Smithson.  It took him six days to construct this.  When the water levels are normal, the Spiral Jetty can't be seen, but when there is a drought and water levels are low, it can be seen again.  3 years after this was created, the water level went back to normal and the Spiral Jetty was underwater for 30 years.  In 2002, drought conditions made the Jetty visible again.  

We found a website that advised to check what the water level is, before you go.  The water level needs to be below 4,195 feet.  We went to this website Here to check the water levels before we went.

I had so much fun visiting the Spiral Jetty.  It was so interesting to see.  There were so many different textures on the ground around it, I feel like we spent most of our time just looking down at the ground.  When we got over to the water, it looked like all the rocks were covered in ice. My friend, Jenny Springman came to visit and go adventuring with us also.  It was so fun to have her come with us.

 We brought Salad in bags.  So, we set up our chairs to relax and eat.  The salad in a bag was yummy, but didn't work out as well as I had hoped.  The bugs started swarming shortly after we got settled.  It was too hard to eat.  I kept feeling like I was eating bugs.  So, we decided to hurry and get in the truck.  The only problem was that our feet were all covered in salt.  We laid some towels on the ground, then Roger poured water for each of us to washed our feet.  When the kids got in the truck, they realized there was a bee in there.  Roger kept telling them to just get in and shut the doors, to keep all the other bugs out.  But, of course, no one wanted to be in the truck with the bee.  The bugs were just flying in like crazy every time the door was open.  Eventually we got the bee out, but when we all were hurrying in a big mosquito flew in.  Needless to say, there was a lot of screaming and crying as we all tried to get settled in the truck and go home.  Roger rolled down all the windows as we started to move to help blow all the bugs out, but that big mosquito wouldn't leave.  It flew under Alissa's seat.  I didn't want to freak her out, so I didn't day anything.  Shortly after, It flew out and landed on Alissa's leg.  She started screaming and freaking out as she was swinging at it trying to kill it.  Parker started hitting it also.  By the time they finally killed it, Alissa was crying.  The drive homw was just really funny.  Eventually all the bugs flew out, everybody calmed down, and we had a nice drive home.  The nice thing about having Jenny Springman come with us was that Roger had someone to debate stuff with.  Roger loves to have those kind of conversations and I kind of think Jenny likes it to.  So, they had a nice long conversation about eating meat.