Flashback Friday!

pictures January 2006

These pictures capture so well how I remember Sophie at this age... a feisty girl with a black eye wearing a tutu (who recently cut her own hair into a mullet). Love her.

Laughing on the inside

Because Sophie hates being laughed at - and because she's so darn funny (not a fun combo for me) - I have to do a lot of laughing on the inside. I heard her say to a friend that was playing with one of those paddles that has a ball on a string connected to it, "Mind if I have a go at it?" I was cracking up on the inside. Where in the world did she hear that?

And a few, but notable, things that I failed to document over the weekend:
*Miles knocking a cup of chocolate milk out of my hands and right onto my dinner plate - before I started eating - because I told him he had to eat some dinner before drinking his milk.

* Nora yelling in her sleep, "NO Miles! Miles! NO!" For a second I thought Miles had climbed into her bed or something. But the night before that it was, "Sophie! NO! Don't take it from me!" She has such funny sleeping habits.

* Nora swinging a yard stick around and knocking some stuff off a shelf and breaking my favorite sign. I'm sure a little wood glue will do the trick, though. When I get around to it!

* The missionaries came over to teach us a lesson and Miles fell asleep sitting on a kitchen chair looking at a book. So cute!

* Going to the ward potluck after church on Sunday and Sophie goes right through the line all by herself and takes a seat the the table where all the Young Women are sitting like they were all saving that seat just for her.

Flashback Friday!

My friend Ann does this on her blog every Friday so I thought I would give it a try because I think it is a fun way to get some memories recorded that were in the days before blogging. So here is my first installment of Flashback Friday!

August 2006 - San Diego Vacation with the Beagley Family!!

We booked our campsite on-line and were a bit disappointed to pull up and find it was a gravel drive-through... but it worked, and you can't beat 16.00 a night! The first night was rough, we had flat air mattresses and crazy people for neighbors - who alternated swearing and listening to the bible on tape all night! We told ourselves if it didn't get better we'd find a hotel! The camp even bathrooms with showers not too far from our site. The showers only had cold water working the first three days we were there, so the kids bathed like this:

Daddy and the girls

Sophie We found a dead snake nearby and Sophie thought it was pretty neat. I love her cute, puffy camping face in this picture!

Nora and Kirsten hanging out in the strollers. There was so much dirt around and they were very good about "playing" in their strollers.

Jannika and Sophie - the two princesses showing off their glamour.
The Beach!!

Oh, how the kids loved the beach. They could've played at the beach all day every day for the entire week and been happy.

Cute baby Nora

The poor babies would get soo tired. It's not easy to nap on vacation. I love this picture because Nora has her binky and is rubbing her ear like she did until she was three years old!

The dads taking the kids out to find a good spot. It's not easy to drag a stroller through the sand. I'm sure I went and helped Brian right after I took this picture!

Sea World! We decided we were too cheap to go to Disneyland but would do Sea World instead!

I found these two dolphins at a thrift store - they were even official Sea World dolphins. I think I got them for .50 a piece, which beats the 14.99 they cost at Sea World!!

Nora was quite excited about this penguin that squeaked.
This was taken before we got soaked by Shamu!! We stopped by the San Diego temple. Love these cute girls in their matching hair-do's.

One of the "highlights" of the trip was going down to Tijuana, Mexico. Brian had been told by someone that there was a town you could go to that was about 20 minutes from Tijuana and for really cheap you could take a trolley in and not hassle with driving in the horrible traffic at the border. We decided to try it... but we were thinking it would be a quaint little trolley but it was really just a train and it took over 45 minutes to get there. We hadn't even packed anything for the kids to do because we thought it would be a fast trip. It ended up being a looong ride but we survived (barely). Here is Sophie, Janel and Kirsten on the train.

On our way out of Mexico we were going through customs or whatever and neither Janel or I had brought our I.D.'s or birth certificates for the kids. They guy letting people through luckily just thought we were idiots and let us through! This was right as we were about to drive away and head home. It was a great vacation with great friends. We need to do it again!

Today...

* After Nora took a bath tonight she insisted on wearing 10 pairs of underwear to bed under her pajamas.

* Miles coming into the office earlier today yelling, "Dot ord, dot ord!" It took me a second to realize he was saying - dot org (as in pbs.org)- He really likes watching Nora play computer games! Maybe a little too much lately, it's been a busy week!

* Sophie was watching some of the couple's figure skating with me (not today - but I forgot to post this!) As we watched there were a few falls and just before I sent her up to bed she said, "Mom, no matter what I do my entire life - I will never do that!" It made me laugh because when I was little watching the Olympics made me dream of being an ice skater or a gymnast - not necessarily at the Olympics - but at least at some level. Then she said, "Because if I fell in front of everyone would be sooo embarrassed!" That's my girl. She gets embarrassed so easily!

Laughter

If laughter is the best medicine than people with kids should be super healthy. Not a day goes by that my kids don't have me laughing out loud. Today's most memorable moment came after the kids were already in bed for the night. Brian had a late night at school and I was cleaning up when I found a pile of nuts & washers on the kitchen counter. What?? I was very confused, all our tools and such are down in the basement and I knew no one had been in the laundry room - except me. I could not figure out where in the world these had come from. My main suspect was Nora so I went in and showed them to her in bed and asked if she knew where they came from. She immediately looked very sheepish and said, "Ummm.... from the table." I asked her which table and she said, "The black one!" Sure enough I went in our living room and our coffee table (I hate calling it that but don't know what else to call it so everyone knows what I'm talking about!) was substantially more wobbly then before, although with the kids constantly jumping on and off it all day it is normally a bit wobbly. I crawled under it and there were about 10 bolts poking out from around the table with no washers or nuts on them! Silly girl.

Todays "highlights"...

* Nora making up a game with her stuffed zebra, 10 pairs of panties and numbers written on pieces of paper. You take turns drawing a number, then whatever number you draw you put that many panties on the zebra. Whoever's turn covers the zebra entirely with the panties - wins! :)

* Miles throwing (hard!) a metal train at my face while changing his diaper. I came so close to crying. Five minutes later he snuggled up on me and fell asleep, so that made up for it.

* Sophie being a grump the entire sacrament meeting at church because we wouldn't let her take her stuffed puppy in with her. She kept a scowl on her face the whole meeting and kept writing me notes that said, "Why? Why? Why? I can never do anything!" :)

Sophie

Today's memorable moment comes from Sophie. The girl who's been cracking us up ever since she could talk. I was snuggling with her on a chair after school when she abruptly pulled out the front of my shirt and looked down it. I quickly pushed her hand away and said, "What are you doing that for?" Her response was, "What? I'm a lady, too."

New intentions.

I sat down to write in my journal last Sunday and realized it had been 3 months since I'd last written. It made me so sad... then I realized that at least those months had been blogged about! I hate forgetting all the little things (good and bad) that happen every day that make up my life as a mom. I know these precious days will be gone all too soon and all I will have left will be what I have written down. So I am going to start trying to record the top moments of my day - be they good, bad, sad or funny. This way I can look back and remember what my life was made up of.

Memorable moments from today:

* Miles running around the house with a bucket on his head banging in to walls and doors over and over again and laughing.

* Nora's amazingly awesome fit she threw.

* Walking home with the kids after picking Sophie up from school we saw an ambulance and firetruck driving by with their lights and sirens on. We stopped and watched and as we started walking Sophie says, "Well I think that's just about enough excitement for one day!"

*On our way to get Sophie from school I was pushing Miles in the stroller and holding Nora's hand. We were waiting at a busy intersection and as the walk light turned green I started pushing the stroller and the front wheel got stuck on the curb and it ended up tipping all the way forward off the curb- with me on top! Luckily Miles was buckled in tight and there is a bar across the front that protected him from being hurt. In fact, he had a huge smile on his face when I flipped the stroller back up. We continued on our way, laughing so hard I could hardly walk. I didn't dare look at anyone in the cars who were no doubt watching us! But I hope it brightened their day.