keeping it real

my dear friend darilyn tagged me. at first, i was not very excited because it required me to share pictures of parts of my life that i like to be kept private.

the rules: you must take 10 pictures of the following things right away without straightening or cleaning (that's the part that worried me). then you tag 5 others.

i was a bit concerned about the state of at least 6 of these things, however, as i walked around the house snapping shots i was repeating in my head, "thank you, mitch! thank you, mitch! i love you!" you see, on memorial day we woke up (very late in the morning, almost the afternoon because of our 2 am game night) and mitch said, "i think we should have the girls help clean the house and teach them the value of working together." i was like, "uhh, ok?" not my idea od a fun day off, but today, i praise him for his foresight!

1. the fridge
you'll notice that it is back in it's rightful position atop the freshly laid tile by aforementioned, wonderful husband. notice all the left overs? love the leftover because it means i don't have to cook tonight!
2. your closet
pretty boring!
3. the kitchen sink
you'll notice that i actually got around to doing that huge pile of dishes from my previous post! boy that felt good!

4. toilet
pristine! thanks to lala's toilet cleaning on monday. also, thank you to lala, she actually flushed the last time she used the toilet so there are no unseemly "treats". she has a hard time remembering to do that, but at least she washes her hands!

5. your favorite shoes
my favorites are plain black flip flops, but i left mine at the gym awhile back and just haven't replaced them. so, these are my current favorites until i make it to the store again.



6. favorite room
and from the state of our bonus room, you can tell it is everyone's favorite room. i SO wanted to put things away before taking this picture, but i restrained myself. just keeping it real!


and during the cold winters here in the northwest we L.O.V.E. our wood burning stove in the bonus room! so toasty! one other reason i love this room: mitch added it on to our house a year after we moved in! it was a great addition seeing as if we are not eating or sleeping, we are in the bonus room, although sometimes we even eat and sleep in there too!


7. what your kids are doing right now
nani and lala are climbing the muddy hill (it just stopped raining minutes ago) in our front yard with their friends alexis and brandon.

and this cute little thing...

is thankfully sleeping behind this door! and if you think i am going to go in to take her picture and risk waking her up, you are crazy!

8. laundry pile
this is the pile that needs a foldin'

9. self portrait
10. dream vacation
castawy island, fiji. of course, we would scuba dive and we would leave our kids with tutu lady!

i tag malia, michal, jess, allison, and ashley.

mother of the year award...

definitely goes to me, right now! we just realized that lala's preschool end of the year celebration was today at 4:00! actually it was lala who realized it! it just about broke my heart! we were all excited about it and looking forward to it, but we totally spaced it!

so, we are off to the ice cream store, after which, i will curl up on the couch in the fetal position and cry! how could i be such an irresponsible mother!?

a little blogging break

we have been very busy the last week, but i have had no time to post about all of the fun things we've been doing! and i am still unable to do a full post of all the activities just yet because winkflash is having another flat-rate book sale! if you remember awhile back, i did a book of our sabbatical pictures and i had to take another blogging break back then. these deals are just way too good to pass up!

this time around it couldn't have come at a better time! as soon as i finished editing the photos from ross' graveside service mitch said, "you should put a book together for the barfuss family." i had also been thinking the same thing. that night, i looked in my email box and there was an email from winkflash telling me about the flat-rate sale ending may 30th! i couldn't believe it! i was so excited!

so, this is what we have been up to in between working on the book~~

*nani and lala have been morphing from cocoons into beautiful butterflies in their dance recitals:



*we've been planting some of these:

*while discovering this cute little guy in our flowerbed:

*the girls and i have enjoyed a bit of this:

*while mitch has been working on this:

(that is the back of our refrigerator in the middle of our kitchen)

*mitch is replacing the wood floor under our refrigerator with tile because our lovely kenmore piece of crap refrigerator from sears has been leaking! (we highly recommend staying away from both that store and that brand! but that is a whole separate story!)

*and because of this project i sadly have been unable to do any of this:

however, we did manage to get in a game of this:

and a couple of games of this:

and, of course, two games of this :

all before 2 am monday morning!!

so, i will tell you more once i have caught up on some sleep and i finish the winkflash book! oh, and i guess i should think about doing those dishes, or at least have the girls do them!

a big truck sure is useful

we all know that a big, powerful truck is always handy to have around. that is the reason we bought our dodge ram, long bed, extended cab, diesel truck several years ago! mitch said that we got it so we could make friends because you know that the guy with the truck always gets called to "help out"! so far it has worked!

here are some of the reasons why we love our truck:
*it pulled our fifth wheel around for 7 weeks on our sabbatical last year
*it helped while landscaping our front yard and backyard as it hauled tons and tons of dirt, gravel, allen blocks, sod, plants, rocks, .... well you get the picture!
*it moved a bunch of junk, i mean stuff, to our storage unit
*it helped haul big power tools here and there
*it's good for taking trips to the dump
*it's moved several people into new homes
*it has been mitch's "tent" on several young men camping trips

over the years we have found new and exciting uses for our truck, however, this weekend we were honored to find yet another use for it!

if you remember, back in march our ward family lost a young hero when 16 year old ross barfuss went into the ocean in an attempt to rescue a stranger in the surf (go here and here to read the story).

well, about a month ago they found ross' body and the family was able to bury him this past saturday. when mitch found out that the dna test came back positive for ross, he went to the family's home that night. as they planned for the dedication of the grave site, the family didn't feel like a hearse was ross. knowing how much ross LOVED mitch's truck, they asked if mitch would carry the casket to the grave in our truck. we were absolutely honored that they asked this of us!

mitch recalled a time when ross ran up to him in the church parking lot during a youth activity and excitedly said, "mitch, i love your truck! i'm going to have a truck just like it someday!" it only seemed appropriate that ross would get one last ride in the truck that he loved so much!

not only was mitch able to drive the "hearse", but i was equally honored to photograph the event! here are some of my favorites:

we have truly been blessed to know the barfuss family, and our prayers continue to be with them! "rest forever from this world, ross! may angels lead you in."

bummer!

computer is on the fritz! been like this since friday! don't know when i will be back, so don't forget me!

it's pretty pathetic how dependent upon the internet and computer i have become! i don't know what to do with myself!

hope to be back very soon, i'm starting to suffer from these weird muscle ticks and spasms!

why is it?

last week, lala was the superstar in preschool. they wanted some pictures of her to put on the superstar board. as i went through our files of photos on the computer, i was reminded of what a cute baby lala was. i found baby pictures and toddler pictures and current pictures of our sweet lala. then, i started looking for pictures of lala and her sisters. it was then that i realized that i didn't even have one recent picture of the three girls together.

why is that? i have pictures of lala and nani. i have pictures of lala and kawena. i have pictures of nani and kawena. but, not one picture of nani, lala, and kawena.

after church that week, the girls wanted me to do a photo shoot of them because they were all matching (well, nani and lala were matching. the baby just had a blue dress on in an attempt to make her look like she was matching). i thought, "hey, this is a great opportunity to get pictures of all three of them in the same shot!"

it was during this photo shoot that i remembered why i didn't have any pictures of the three girls together!

why is it that when you are trying to photograph three very active girls that in every single shot at least one of them is not looking, or not smiling, or goofing off, or getting annoyed with someone, or....you get the picture?!

well, this time it was no diffrent! let me walk you through our little photo shoot! (the rocking horse prop and the location were the girls idea!)

uh, okay, why did i even take this picture? what is up with lala's hair? that would drive me crazy if my hair was in my face like that! doesn't seem to phase her! we need to get that hair out of her face pronto! nani and kawena look great, though!

the hair looks much better, lala! but, kawena looks like she is getting smashed by lala. nani, while still smiling for the camera, is trying to unsmash the baby by pulling lala back! but lala looks cute!

then there is this one! not too bad, except for the part that you can't see all of lala's face!

by this point, nani's smile is getting a little wilted and kawena's finally had enough of lala laying on her. looks like kawena's about to backhand lala! but lala does look pretty cute, though her head is a little off kilter!

now, at this point, i think they'd all had it and they were just getting a bit silly. nani looks like she might be trying to straighten her sisters out, but kawena and lala are just having too much fun to care!

then, there is this one! this is definitely my favorite picture of lala! i don't even know what is up with her face here! and her hair is creeping back into her eyes!

of all of the shots i took, this one was the very best! if only lala's hair had stayed out of her face....and i wouldn't have minded at all if she would have leaned in a little more to her left! but i'll take it!

and the winner is... darilyn

okay, so there wasn't a competition. there wasn't even a contest. and, unfortunately for darilyn, there is no reward, except maybe the joy of knowing that she correctly diagnosed nani's rash!

on friday morning at around 10:30, i got a call from the school saying that they had nani in the health room. apparently, she had fallen asleep in class and just looked really worn out! so, the baby and i jumped into the car to bring nani home! she pretty much slept the whole day, waking only once to go to the bathroom.

saturday, she wasn't quite as tired, but halfway through the day she came down with a rash all over her body, but no fever. mitch and i were trying to figure out what it could be. was it chicken pox?

sunday, she seemed better, but the rash hadn't gone away. it hadn't blistered either, so we figured it wasn't chicken pox! phew! but talking with my dad he said it could be the measles!

this morning she woke up with the rash, plus a cough, but still no fever.

we got an appointment in the afternoon with the doctor. sure enough, just like darilyn said at church on sunday, she has strep throat with a scarlatina rash. it's basically a fancy way of saying scarlet fever. so, now she is on antibiotics for the next ten days and will be able to return to school this wednesday! i know she is feeling better already because she was teasing her sister a lot today! that's always a good indication that a child is on the mend, isn't it?!

the bad news.... it is highly contagious. the doctor said that in a family of four, two or three will get it. now, we are watching the two other girls closely to see if they come down with it and hoping that it stops with nani!

good job and thank you, doctor darilyn!

girly mama

before we had children, i just knew that our first child would be a boy. there was no doubt in my mind! i'm not sure why i was so convinced. maybe it is because i am a second child and i have an older brother, so i just assumed that's how it would work for us!

when i became pregnant we called the baby "he". when we went in for the ultrasound and the technician told us we were having a girl, i didn't believe her. these were my exact words, "are you sure? can you check again?!" until nani was born, i still secretly knew that we were having a boy! expectations die hard i guess, right?!

well, i'm sure you are all aware of the fact that our first child was NOT a boy. our second child, NOT a boy. our third child, NOT a boy!

don't get me wrong, i absolutely L.O.V.E. having three girls. i dream of the day when we can have "mom/daughter" weekend getaways, and i look forward to being there for when our grandchildren are born. i am excited that they have each other and that they are close in age.

i have a problem, though. you see i am not a really girly mom! growing up i always had more guy friends than girl friends, again i credit this to having an older brother. i hung out a lot with my brother and his friends! i wouldn't go so far as to say that i am a tomboy, but i am definitely not a girly mom!

i don't paint nails, unless the girls beg and plead, and i only do it to get them to stop asking! i would much rather send the girls to school without fixing their hair, but i don't! i don't do the dress-up thing, the only time you will see me in a dress or skirt is at church! i only wear make-up when absolutely necessary, you know like when i look like death warmed over, which seems to be happening a lot more as i get older, or i go to church! i don't really do the jewelry thing, other than my wedding rings and my one pair of earrings. so, do you see my problem? if the girls want the "girl stuff", they are pretty much on their own.

so, this morning lala came home from preschool with some nail polish that she picked from the "prize box" at school. immediately, she asked if she could go into the garage and paint her nails (the garage provides mess control and helps me to not freak out about nail polish on the carpet). she grabbed some paper towels and several bottles of nail polish and headed downstairs into the garage. when she came upstairs this is what she proudly showed me:


i know, she did a pretty good job for a 4 year old, right?! although, parts of her hands and toes look vaguely like something you might see in a low budget horror film!

she quickly disappeared to the upstairs and 5 minutes later she came down with this look on her face (notice the nail polish on her cheek!):
and exuberantly exclaimed, "i am pretty much like a mom, now!"

me: "and why is that?"

lala: "because my nails are painted and i have sparkly lips!"

i am still trying to figure out why she thinks that is what makes a mom, because she doesn't see those things on me!!

all around the watering hole

i snapped this shot last night as i sat watching the girls brush their teeth just before they went to bed. i was sitting in the hall outside the bathroom thinking about how sweet the scene was. it made me excited for all the fun these three will have as they grow up together. however, i am realistic in the knowledge that it will not all be smooth sailing and fun times. teenage years...not looking forward to that!

but for now, i am enjoying these sweet moments between sisters!

secure in his manhood (or should i say boyhood?)

yesterday, our house was crawling with 8 children from the ages of 18 months to 7 years old! it was a very exciting day for all involved!

however, sometimes, when there is so much excitement you don't want to miss out on any of the fun. and sometimes, this means potty accidents, especially for those newly potty trained!

as i said, it was a very exciting day and this little guy didn't want to miss out on any of the fun. the problem is, as most of you know, we have no male offspring in our home! so, when a cute little boy has a "little accident" in our home, he doesn't have many choices outside of pink! so this is what you get:

i was very pleased with lala's willingness to share her clothes with her friend. she excitedly took him up to her room and was so thoughtful in her choices. you see, these pink pants were the perfect choice for brandon because the bottom of the pants zip off to make capris. brandon is shorter than lala, so all she had to do was zip the bottoms off and these "capris" became the obvious best choice!

who cares that they are bright pink and he is a boy! apparently, he is secure enough in his "manhood" to not care! at least she did let him maintain some dignity by giving him a blue shirt, just don't point out the cute little pink flowers along the bottom!