Peapod Pink

"I Quit The Family"

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:48:00 +0000

You may have guessed...I have a flair for the dramatic. On bad days I often tell Daniel that I am going to throw myself down the hill behind our backyard. It's a comically small hill. It's a levy to be precise. This is his cue to start making my life easier...so that I don't...you know...roll down a small levy into the mud.

This threat, however, is not my primary dramatic catchphrase. My kids could all tell you exactly what that is..."I quit the family!" I don't say it every day...but I do say it at least once a week. They know that "I quit the family" means..."You are wearing Mama down with one or more of the following: fighting, extreme mess making followed by leaving the area for greener pastures, disobeying a specific and repeated request, any other variety of general naughtiness usually x 4". It's been a particularly heavy usage week for my catch phrase. Perhaps this means it is losing its weight. Time to find a new catchphrase I think.

Christmas Day 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:28:00 +0000

On Christmas morning we attended church, since Christmas fell on a Sunday. As usual, Julianne was not in the mood to be photographed afterwards. I swear she is not as grouchy as the photographic evidence generally indicates. Anyway, after we got home we quickly changed clothes and got down to the business of presents. The only pictures I have of Christmas Day are present opening because I spent the rest of the day cooking and serving dinner instead of taking pictures.

The Nooks were a big hit. Daniel had of course already pre-cracked them or whatever and installed Android. So, that is what they are running on them.

Leia and I had fun putting together this Lego set. She also now has the only Nintendo 3ds in the house. She really wanted an "iPad", but I told her that she had to finish kindergarten before getting her own tablet. lol. So I guess her birthday gift won't require much thought this summer.

As you can see some of these kids take after their mother. I'm not naming any names.

I am not gonna lie, there are about 80 more photos of the present opening. I'll leave it there though. I have a tendency to overdo it with the blog photos. Immediately following presents I ran around like a lunatic for an hour getting dinner going, because at this point it was already after 11am and we eat holiday meals around 3pm. Then it was time for Grammy, Grampy, and Uncle J to arrive. It went a little like this....

CHRISTMAS...PART DEUX! Are you kidding me?! We just got finished and Grammy-Claus has gone and dwarfed our tree. Dwarfed...our...tree...people. Okay, so technically I pre-approved these presents because it is easier to deal with a few large things than a million small ones when it comes to organizing the belongings of 4 children. However, I underestimated exactly what that would look like. It was hilarious.

This Razor electric scooter was a BIG HIT. Well, after she drove it full throttle and fell off 2-3 times and said she was never getting on it again for the rest of her life! Now it is her favorite thing in the world.

Why are there never any pictures of the adults when I am in charge of photographs. You can see who Percy's favorite person in the family is.

This is the only photo that I took later in the day. Xander is playing backseat driver and giving advice. I thought it was hilarious.

Well, that is all for 2011. We had the cousins over for New Years Eve. It was totally casual and I took no pictures. The kids enjoyed watching all of the illegal fireworks in our neighborhood. They were pretty impressive. Happy 2012 everyone. :)

The Interloper

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:51:00 +0000

I know I haven't posted Christmas day yet...but this picture cracks me up every time I look at it. Let's call it "The Interloper"...or "Middle Child Syndrome". I was just trying to take a cute photo of Jules and Xander snuggling on Christmas Day. Leia had other plans.

Christmas Eve 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:50:00 +0000

Christmas Eve. We spent Christmas Eve in our favorite way. Spending time at home together, just the 6 of us. We had dinner, read the Christmas Story in our scriptures, watched a short video, and the kids exchanged their secret sibling Christmas gifts. It was very calm. Which was great, because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, and we were hosting at our house...so Christmas day was a marathon of church, presents, cooking, more presents, eating, playing, etc.

Baking Girls and CCC #4

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:16:00 +0000

I did a substandard job of covering topics in photos over the holidays. Exhibit #1, I took this picture of my girls and I doing the annual baking for our holiday cake deliveries to a few friends, but didn't take any pictures of the wrapped up cake platters or delivery process. You'll have to use your imagination. On the upside...look at that little smirk on my baby girl. I could lick her little face off. "Look at me being cute while my sisters are doing serious baking work over here!"

Exhibit #2: 4th annual Cousin Christmas Crafts took place at the cousins' house for the first time this year. I took a few shots of the crafting going on, but no pictures of the finished crafts. I'm awesomely on top of things like that. We did some cute button Christmas trees on canvas (idea thanks to Pinterest), some 3 dimensional paper snowglobe thingies that I cut out with my Silhouette Cameo, and a cute reindeer flower pot thing that Aunt M came up with. The kids had fun, they always do. CCC is a tradition that they treasure annually.

Exhibit #3: I just loaded up my Christmas photos (138 of them) and found that I appear in precisely ZERO photos. Not that I enjoy photos of myself...but Zero? My kids will ask, where was Mama during Christmas 2011? Behind the camera, as always. :)

Merry Christmas 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:04:00 +0000

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from our family to yours!

Violin Trio

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:20:00 +0000

Jules played in a violin trio at church yesterday. It isn't appropriate to record performances in the chapel, but I did take this video of them practicing a couple of weeks ago. They did great yesterday in church, it sounded SO GOOD. This practice session was a couple of weeks ago, so it is rough, and the power flicked out momentarily. But, if will give you a general idea of what they played. I wasn't going to post it on the blog since there are 2 other children in the video who aren't mine...but I was filming the tops of their heads from upstairs with my low quality phone camera, in low light, lol. So, I figured it would be okay.

5th grade choir production

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Bella decided that she wanted to be involved in the stage crew for the 5th grade choir Christmas production. It was actually quite an elaborate production, I was very surprised. She was chosen to operate the lights, which she informed me quite excitedly, "IS THE BEST JOB IN STAGE CREW!!!" So funny. I guess it was an honor or something due to the complexity. I was also quite surprised when I saw her script for the lighting changes how complex it actually was. In my mind I thought she would just be flipping a few switches on and off, but no! It was definitely a lot of directions like, mid stage lights to 2.5 and whatnot. She did a great job though and there were no lighting mishaps, for which I was grateful.

We know she is Daniel's girl because she was all about being the lighting engineer and had ZERO interest in performing on stage....unless she is playing the piano. That doesn't make her nervous at all. Personally I was a big fan of stage time when I was her age. :) Not anymore.There was also a section in the beginning and end where she jumped up from the lighting booth and grabbed a prop, then ran into her place in line for a processional of sorts. She carried a star, marched up in the line, swayed back and forth, and tried not to make eye contact with the huge audience, lol.

So, that is now finished! I'm glad that she was interested in doing it and that her application to stage crew was accepted. It was a good experience for her all around. Merry Christmas! :)

Decorating Fatty

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 14:01:00 +0000

We kept it simple this year by forgetting to put on any ribbon or garland before we hung the ornaments. So she's looking a little au naturale. The above photo is from my phone, because my phone is killing me in the photo/blog department. It is so much easier to snap a poor quality phone picture and press the facebook button than it is to take real pictures, load them onto the computer and then compose a blog post about said pictures. My blogging has always been largely dependent on essentially journaling with pictures. So basically, my smartphone has been trying to kill my blog since a year ago September when I got it. Don't blame me! Blame the phone and its blasted convenience factor!So the girls and I fell in love with this slightly short and super fat 2 trunked Christmas tree on our tree acquisition outing a couple of weeks ago. It was a challenge to figure out where to put the star without a single top branch to work with, but it turned out fine. Unfortunately, our tree stopped drinking water 24 hours after we got it (almost 2 weeks ago now) and is dropping needles like CRAZY. Hopefully it will not be entirely brown a week from now when it is actually Christmas. I'm one who likes to get the tree down immediately after Christmas though...so it should be fine.
Trying to get Jules to smile for a picture is like asking for a kidney donation.

Belle was on star duty this year. The last 2 years Leia and Juli had that job. Next year, it will be Xander's turn...that should be interesting. Merry Christmas. :)

Bella Piano Recital Fall 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 20:58:00 +0000

We Ran Away to Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:54:00 +0000

What do people with 4 kids do after 7 months without a single date? If their mother/mother-in-law lives 3 miles away...they run away to Mexico. Maybe we're just lucky...but that's what we do. Here's a little secret people...cruises can be a cheap getaway if you live near an embarkation point...and we do. So, instead of planning a few days away nearby, booking a hotel, driving, figuring out some entertainment, etc. We just drove over to the port (45 minutes) and hopped on a ship for 4 days. No more planning required. We took like a grand total of 10 pictures, so there is not much to show, we mostly "relaxed" (foreign concept for us), read books, ate way too much, and reflected on the fact that we still actually like each other, which we occasionally forget...what with the 4 kids and all. Bad news I gained 4 pounds in 4 days (and I wasn't the only one)...good news, I've been home for a week and it fell off on its own. See...cruises have magical properties. You should try one. Very relaxing.This was the only picture of Daniel. He is not angry, he is squinting. That explains his eyes. His frowny mouth...that he was born with. Poor guy...people always think he's angry when he isn't.I totally folded this towel dog myself. Daniel was making fun of me for being so pleased with myself after watching a towel folding demonstration.

Halloween recap

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Here are this year's pumpkins. I carved a much simpler pattern than usual this year, and Bella's pattern fell apart while she was cutting it, so we just turned it backwards. Julianne was so tired that she didn't want to carve one this year. The little ones are Xander and Leia's designs. They drew the faces, I cut them out. Daniel hates pumpkins...so I stopped getting him one a couple of years ago.

We have what has turned into a bit of a tradition of making our own little pizzas and "witch's brew" on Halloween night. I served it with a veggie tray and some fruit.

I had to get a picture of Jessie and Buzz alone. I was so excited that they chose a matching costume this year. That never happens! Also, we had to get a picture with Percy in his Halloween sweater.

Before and After Trick-or-Treating photo.

Halloween 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:57:00 +0000

Jessie, a vampire, Princess Bride, and Buzz Lightyear

I've obviously been derailed from blogging due to the fact that I'm so far behind on posting that figuring out what to say is defeating me. I'm going to try to stop worrying about covering everything I've missed and just keep trudging forward with the updates. Let's hope I can get my act back together on the posting.

Leia's Birthday Party

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:53:00 +0000

I've given up Leia's actual birthday day pictures for dead. They are still on my mom's camera and I just cannot remember to get them off of there. So, here are the pictures of Leia's party! We delayed her party, by her request, until most of her friends were home from summer vacations. She changed her mind about the party location 3 times, but finally settled on Chuck E Cheese. So we made up some Tangled cupcakes and favor boxes and headed to Chuck E Cheese for a celebration.

She was a little leary about the whole giant mouse trying to interact with her thing at first, but she eventually warmed up some to the complete embarrassment.

Well, using your eye is one method for catching tickets in the ticket booth. She caught around 300 tickets. The giant ones are worth 50-100 each.

Rainbow center Pascal cupcakes. They were quite a hit, and a lot easier than the Rapunzel cupcake tower that she originally requested. I told her....I'll make the tower if that's what you want, but it might break on the way over to Chuck E Cheese, it will be very fragile. So, she changed her order. Thank goodness, because my name is not Buddy the Cake Boss and I don't have a guy to hold my cakes upright while I drive a van full of kids across town to Chuck E Cheese.

Overall, she was happy with her choice. We opened her presents when we got home since we were a little short on time to open them at Chuck E Cheese. The ink was barely dry on the Thank You notes and it was time to start school! Stay tuned for that.

Bella's swim season

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 01:08:00 +0000

As I mentioned, it was the year of the backstroke. We probably should have tried for prelims this year, but the girls were just DONE with swimming by the last meet and didn't want to compete in prelims. Bella was the most reluctant to swim again this year, but as with most things, she was glad that she decided to return to the team. She enjoys it, it is just super intense time-wise in the summer. She did well, but was taking the imperfections in her strokes very seriously and personally this year. She is for sure the perfectionist of the 4 children...I feel her pain.

Julianne's swim season

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:51:00 +0000

Julianne started her 2nd swim season with a lot more confidence than last year. She was the first one ready to sign up again this year. This was the year of the backstroke for our girls. They were backstroking like champions. Ribbons were collected, fun was had. Jules bloomed socially in her swim group more than anything this year. Last year she tended to keep to herself. This year there was significantly more talking and playing with the other 7/8 year old girls in her group. She's a fierce competitor at individual sports. She may look like a sweet potato, but trust me...she has the eye of the tiger when that buzzer sounds.

Swim Time 2011 Compilation

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:03:00 +0000

I just compiled the girls swim times from this season. There may be errors as I noticed there were several times listed under Leia's name for back stroke that I didn't include because I knew that she had not swam backstroke during those meets, certainly not in less than 1/2 the time it normally takes her. So, these are the posted results for their individual events. I did not include medley relay and free relay times because I didn't have times for their individual legs of the relay. Meet 1 was rained out.

Bella
Meet 2: Girls 25 free: 33.27Y (likely a recording error), Girls 25 back: 21.60Y
Meet 3: Girls 25 breast: 38.60Y, Girls 25 back: 23.00Y
Meet 4: Girls 25 free: 20.28Y, Girls 25 back: 22.91Y (fastest time in her group)
Meet 5: Girls 25 free: 20.31Y, Girls 25 back: 24.68Y
Meet 6: Girls 25 fly: 26.60 Y

Julianne
Meet 2: Girls 25 free: 23.81Y, Girls 25 back: 32.31Y
Meet 3: Girls 25 back: 31.51Y, Girls 25 fly: 38.36Y
Meet 4: Girls 25 back: 31.59Y, Girls 25 fly: 38.22Y
Meet 5: Girls 25 back: 35.42Y
Meet 6: Girls 25 free: 27.46 Y, Girls 25 back: 32.92 Y

Leia:
Meet 2: girls 25 free: 55.78Y (I don't know if this is accurate)
Meet 3: girls 25 free: 1:16.03Y. girls 25 back: 2:14.50Y (I was ready to jump in the pool and fish her out)
Meet 4: girls 25 free: 1:06.22Y
Meet 5: girls 25 free: 59.36Y
Meet 6: girls 25 free: 57.71 Y

Leia's Swim Season 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:44:00 +0000

This was Leia's first year on the swim team. She was actually on the practice team, but got moved up to the competition team after the first meet. She felt SO BIG when she got to pack her meet bag and sit in the age group tent with her her group. Thank goodness our wonderful friend was an age group parent for her group. It made it much less stressful to have my little munchkin out of my control for several hours in a crowded place.

The dives of the under 6 age group are always so hilarious.

We're working on side breathing without lifting your entire body out of the water and sucking wind every 3 strokes, lol. Still I'm very impressed with the fact that she can make it across the big pool at all considering she was only 4 and had just learned to swim a month before swim season started. 3 swimmers down, 1 to go on the water safety front.

She got lots of pretty ribbons, and other than overheating during the last 2 meets...it was a great swim season for her. Leia ended the swim season by turning 5! Her birthday photos are still on Grammy's camera though because my battery was dead, and her big party is not happening for a couple more weeks when the bulk of her friends will all be back from vacations. So, her birthday post will be delayed for the rest of the festivities. Next up on her list...KINDERGARTEN!

School Awards Ceremonies

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:44:00 +0000

So let's talk about my awesome kids and their school awards...ya know...before school goes back in a few weeks. Bella's awards took place in the cafeteria, so the pictures were all blurry as usual. She received the following awards: Honor Roll, Academic Excellence Social Studies, Academic Excellence Science, Academic Excellence Language, Academic Excellence Reading, TAKS Commended Math, TAKS Commended Reading, TAKS Commended Writing, Gator mail, Presidential Fitness, Texas Readers Club, and Citizenship.

Julianne's awards took place in her classroom. Here she is with her super sweet and loving Florida Gator teacher...loved her. Juli received the following awards: Academic Excellence Reading, Academic Excellence Math, Academic Excellence Science, Academic Excellence Social Studies, Honor Roll, Texas Readers Club, and Citizenship. (2nd grade doesn't take TAKS).

Someone finds award ceremonies extremely boring.

4 months

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:47:00 +0000

My house has been under serious renovation for 4 months. 4...months. Daniel is incapable of just doing a project. He must do 10 million side projects as part of the real project that take a 4-6 week floor replacement to a 4 month complete remodel. I actually had to take the kids and move out for 11 days because the entire downstairs was bare concrete with some tile...and that tile was loaded full of all the furniture that had to be moved off the bare concrete for grinding and leveling. It was unbelievable. We still need to put down wood in the piano room and Xander's room, and build shelves in the new expanded pantry. Other than putting baseboards back up and transition pieces at the edges...that is then end. I never...ever...want to do anything like this again. ever. ever.

But I digress, I just unloaded 2.5 months worth of pictures off of my camera and figured I had better start blogging them...or give the blog up for dead. Stay tuned...if anyone is still out there.

Swim School 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 11:53:00 +0000

Leia and Mr Chris F. after passing her float test day 2.

I don't think I ever blogged about Leia's swim school experience this year. It was intense. We went every day for a month, she passed off two levels of classes, passed a float test, and was ready to do swim team (practice team) for the summer this year. Overall it was a good experience, and I plan to take Xander there during the school year to get ready for next summer. He is excited about that.

The float test involved throwing her in the pool with all of her clothes and shoes on with varying levels of heaviness (day 1 shorts, day 2 pants, day 3 jeans). She had to float for 5 minutes or until reaching the wall and climbing out by herself to pass.

She passed! :) It was adorable. They ring a loud bell whenever someone passes the float test. On the 3rd day when she passed her final time she got a t-shirt and a bell. And a celebratory milkshake from Mama.

She's a swimmer now! It was a lot of hard work...for the both of us, and Xander who went there at 2:30 every day for a month grouchy and tired. But totally worth it.

Preschool Graduation

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Tue, 31 May 2011 21:58:00 +0000

Leia graduated from Preschool last week. Here is the photo evidence. She's so cute I could eat her like a cupcake. She has been asking when she gets to go to big school for 2 years...it's finally here! She is SO READY.

Xander was entertaining the grownups while we waited for graduation to start.

There was singing and dancing, diplomas, and cupcakes. Followed up by a playdate at an indoor playground.

Why do my kids look totally normal sized until you see them in a group of their peers...suddenly they are always the smallest one.

Leia and her teacher.

Graduation present from Grammy and flowers from Mama.

Girl dolls

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Mon, 30 May 2011 19:34:00 +0000

My son has taken to stealing his sister's polly pockets, doll house people and Barbie dolls. Why? Usually because Spiderman and the Piricks (Pirates) need female characters for all of their pretending. It cracks me up that he shouts in a deep voice when playing the boy roles and in a high pitched squeal when he voices the girls. Too funny. The girls are usually in peril and require saving of some sort. Too many superhero cartoons I guess.

Bella turned 10!

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Bella turned 10 last week! I can't even believe that she has been in our family for 10 years. On the one hand, I feel like she was just a baby. In other ways, I feel like the memories of just Daniel and I and her little self as our whole family were a lifetime ago. Memories are so strange that way. She is growing into a beautiful young lady. We are so proud of her.

She is kind, smart, responsible, beautiful, a great student, a great artist, not afraid to be silly, and not afraid to go after the things that she wants. Her current hobbies are piano, swimming, and all things art related. We know that she can achieve anything.

She decided to forgo a big party, or a family outing of some type this year for cold hard cash. So, we did cake and presents at Grammy and Grampy's house after church last Sunday. She was surprisingly thrilled with her presents. I guess we know her well. She had become fixated on the idea of playing the game Final Fantasy 8 (an OLD GAME) after seeing one of the characters pictured somewhere. That is typical Bella. She totally gets obsessed with things...cough...NERD...cough. The problem is, that it was a Playstation game...the only type of game system that we don't already own. So she had decided to use her cash to buy an old Playstation 2 system and this particular game. So, I decided to surprise her and went on ebay and got her the system and a bundle of games as one of her presents. Then I was able to order Final Fantasy 8 from Amazon (yay for Amazon). As you can see...she's thrilled, and now has a wad of cash still burning a hole in her pocket. Her other gifts included new canvases, a moleskine watercolor notebook, professional watercolor pencils, the 2nd Red Pyramid book, and 2 webkinz. She is excited to go on her annual birthday date with Grammy as soon as school gets out.

Her cake of choice this year was the usual Oreo Ice cream cake, but with the variation of mint chocolate chip ice cream instead of the usual vanilla.

Happy Birthday Bella! You're in the double digits now!

Powerless

noreply@blogger.com (Erika) — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:46:00 +0000

Leia has a super power, and it's called charm. She can charm your socks off, and I'm not kidding. It happens to me almost daily. She charms Bella into cleaning her room, she charms Juli into playing outside with her whether Juli wants to play or not. There are a million examples. Today was her last day of preschool, graduation is tomorrow. We were driving home (home is 1 mile away from school). She asked me what we were having for lunch. I gave her the usual choices, turkey/cheese sandwich, pb&j, leftover lasagna, etc. She said, "Hmmmm...okay...welllllll...I WOULD really like some Chip-a-lay ." That's Chick-fil-a for those who don't speak 4 year old. Then she smiled at me...with her tiny little teeth and her double dimple. Sigh. I then found my car turning around and heading way out of my way to get her some lunch. I rationalized that she is not the boss of me...I'm just agreeing because it was the last day of school...yeah...right. As we were driving AWAY from home I said, "Do you want Chick-fil-a chicken, or Whataburger chicken with the cookie? (I love that their meals come with a cookie instead of a piece of plastic flotsam.) To which she shouted from the back seat..."Wha-er-ber-ler!" Sigh. Boss. Of. Me.

*See above photo for more evidence. She charmed me into waiting in a 20+ minute line and shelling out $20 for this "Desert Queen" face paint job at Disney. Which resulted in being trapped behind the Animal Kingdom parade for another half hour while the rest of our family had dinner.