My Crew

I'm feeling extremely grateful that these people belong to me and I to them. After church I placed them all against this white brick wall and asked them to smile and it's a Mother's Day miracle because they actually listened! Our shirts are untucked, we're missing shoes, the outfits don't match and the diaper is bulging but look. at. those. smiles! I love these babies and feel eternally grateful to be their Mama. 

They were sooooo done with pictures at this point but I wanted at least one snap of me with them on my special day...so here it is!

Friday Ice Cream Day

We're still going strong with our Friday Ice Cream Day tradition and it's easily my favorite day of the week. Usually my freezer is packed with sweets and we come home with friends to party, but last week Melissa treated all the kids to ice cream from the ice cream truck and they thought they were in heaven. All 8 of our babies played in the backyard until evening and at some point both Melissa and I looked at each other and said, "You're never allowed to move!" Neither of us are planning a trek anytime soon, but you just never know when you live in West LA and I can't even spend a second thinking about the possibility without crying. I love all of these little besties.  

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"Instead of sitting in our own chairs, how 'bout we just be chair buddies!" The cutest duo with BY FAR the most energy!

Sweet Tay turning my backyard into a work of art!

Motherhood Lessons Learned While Camping

I spent all Friday morning keeping Cora from eating the soil surrounding Rupert the house plant, reminding Quinn that kicking her sister, tossing magna tiles like footballs and throwing temper tantrums in the kitchen are not allowed and packing for a campout that the kids and I had been looking forward to all week. The tents and sleeping bags were borrowed, the {junk}food was purchased, new batteries were in all of the flashlights and the van was full of gas but alas, at 2 pm I received a call from James with the sad news that he was staffed on a new deal and couldn't make the trip. I was super bummed but knew the kids would feel it even deeper and was not looking forward to that after-school conversation. I'm so deeply, truly grateful for James' amazing job but geez, work sure gets in the way sometimes.

I sat for a few minutes under a dark cloud trying to invent a suitable Plan B to no avail, but then I remembered that I am strong, capable and independent and why waste energy being bummed when you can instead use that energy to take your four babies camping with all their church friends?! And so that's what I did. 

The camping adventure was held at Castaic Lake, a short hour north of Los Angeles and totally hidden from the freeway. The I-5 is our route back to Sac, and even after so many trips I didn't know Castaic Lake even existed! The tent went up easily thanks to a few friends who took pity on the crazy camping Mama and the evening was spent eating delicious food, roasting marshmallows and hiking up hills for pretty views of sage brush, wildflowers and the sparkling lake. The kids couldn't have smiled bigger as they surrounded their buddies by the campfire and they came home to tell their Daddy handfuls of reasons why this was the "greatest weekend of their lives!" 

The realist in me wants to also let you know that in total I slept an hour on a broken air mattress with no blankets and there were approximately 100 times during the night that I cursed my confidence in camping without James. The wind was whipping around Castaic Lake and even with stakes and ropes supporting our tent it sounded like a hurricane and beat against our faces for frigid hours. We were not alone in this problem, the wind completely broke a few of my friends' tents and drove others to escape the elements and sleep in their vehicles. Quinn spent much of the night screaming in confusion, Everett kept having nightmares that he was falling off a cliff, Talmage was worried about being blown away and cranky when anyone moved in the tent in the middle of the night and poor Coco needed bottles and diaper changes and cuddles all night long to keep her satisfied. It was eventful and I checked my phone a trillion times (only to be repeatedly disappointed that time was passing like a snail) and at 5:45 we were all up and at 'em taking down the tent and eating smuggled cherry PopTarts. It may take us a week to recover and we may never camp again, but overall it was a fun story to tell and I feel empowered by doing something really hard and rocking it. And hey, we survived and like I said the kids were on cloud 9 so I'd file that under "we rocked it!"

Mother's Day weekend was probably the greatest time for this campout to happen. You see, there are so many qualities I lack and ways I fail as a mother. I really hate making dinner. I'm the worst at doing arts and crafts. I need to read more with Quinn, check Evie's homework and listen deeper to T's stories from school. I'm pretty strict about messy rooms and manners and let's just say my frown line is deeper than my smile lines these days. I want to do and be better in 100 different ways. 

But there are some things that I am really good at, and this weekend reminded me again what they are. I'm awesome at taking my kids on adventures and making fun memories. I don't let my fear get in the way and I go and do and experience even if it's not easy and even if it's slightly crazy. I hope this weekend taught my kids that even when things don't go as expected (the work and the wind, respectively) we can take control of our realities and still create something lovely--and I think I'm pretty good at doing that as a Mom. Oh yes, and we can't forget that I rock at buying camp-food; people knew who to come for for Cheetos and red vines and all manners of sweets!

I'm grateful in life for little moments that feel like a sweet pat on the back from on High. Moments where you realize that you're not perfect, but you're pretty darn great despite all you lack--and this campout was one of them.

 Here we are in front of our awesome home for the night!

Don't ask me how many marshmallows this chick consumed because I plead the 5th!

If you look at the tip-top of that hill you'll see a line of kids hiking like army ants, and if you look at the bottom of that hill you'll see the little Quinny ant that sadly got left behind. 

Standing and Smiling

Cora as an 11-month-old is everything you'd dream a baby to be. I love every little thing about her, but the cheeseburger smiles she so easily offers as of late is on the tippy top of that list. Standing and smiling, standing and smiling--that's this little gal's jam.

Field Tripping

That whole one-field-trip-a-year policy bit me in the buns this go-around and I ended up on back-to-back Friday outings with my boys. The first Friday Ever and I went to reDiscover Center which is basically a place where kids can make junk out of junk and learn the reduce, reuse, recycle jingle as they go. The next week T and I went to Tree People where we hiked in a gorgeous canyon and learned all about saving water, planting trees and being a good member of the human family. That was supposed to be the finale of my field tripping but the next week Ever's teacher needed help on a trip to the Natural History Museum's Butterfly Pavilion and rule, or no rule, I couldn't (nor did I want to) tell her no. If these field trips sound a little crunchy granola then welcome to LA and welcome to Westwood Charter! Kidding aside, I think it's great that my boys are learning to love Mother Earth and I hope they always treat her with the respect she deserves. It was so fun to field trip by their side.

reDiscover Center:

These cute boys made a cave with rocks and sticks inside and big fruit trees surrounding it and water running alongside it. Their prompt: create something you'd find in nature. Nailed it!

Seconds before this shot the two on either side of Evie were linked, arm in arm. It was darling!

Kinder-kids are the best when you pull out a camera!

Tree People:

It was bright and windy and cold and then warm--the weather (and this little munchkin) just couldn't sit still through the whole field trip!

Their tour guide instructed them to be "California Cool" if they saw any wild animals, and this was these awesome 2nd graders interpretation of that phrase. They look pretty darn cool to me!

Planting a tree that supposedly will grow big enough to plant in our yard someday. We're just hoping to keep it alive through the week.

Butterfly Pavilion:

These two never left each other's side! And I quote, "I'm gwad you're coming Mom, but I'm actuawy sitting with Chase on the bus. So maybe you can sit with another Mom, how about Melissa?!" Thanks buddy, and hooray for Melissa and I on another field trip together!

I couldn't help but take pic after pic of these beautiful butterflies. What a wonderful world we've been given!

 This nice docent was trying to calm these boys' anxieties about a butterfly that was stuck in a spiders web. It worked, thank goodness!

And that concludes another successful year of field tripping. Thanks boys for being the best, I love to adventure with both of you!

Songs for My Little Ones

I find myself melancholy this morning for so many reasons. This last weekend was such an intense mixture of emotions that I'm going to have to peel them back like an onion, examining and feeling one layer after another, until I find myself at peace once more. For now I'm keeping kleenex in business and allowing myself the space and time to mourn.

Over the course of 30 hours on Saturday and Sunday we drove to Sacramento, witnessed the passing of our dear Great Papa, thanked my Dad for his service in the Stake Presidency with his release and then encouraged James' Dad for his service in the Stake Presidency with his new call, met President Nelson and heard him speak and then drove back to Los Angeles. All on two hours of sleep (in a 40 hour period). Oh yeah, and it was my birthday.

The only word I can use to describe this weekend adequately is INTENSE. At some point I will probably revisit the details and my feelings on here, but today through my sting I've reminded myself that the tender feelings I have for those closest to me are such a gift and having them recorded for posterity will keep them timeless. With that in mind, I'm sitting here replacing worries with words and finishing this blog post I started long ago.

In our family, we have a lovey song for each child. This was not intentional when we started having children, but when Ever was little and we started replacing his name in the song we sang for Talmage I felt defensive of T and didn't want them to share a special song (postpartum hormones, maybe?!) Not long after, we started singing a song with Evie's name and all of a sudden, he too had a song! Now we have four little chickens and they all have their own little tune. They've all come randomly and organically and they're all to tunes of other songs we know (unfortunately we're not composers here!) but they are special to us and special to them and I don't want to ever forget the silly little songs that were their childhood.

Tal-mage Scott, oh Tal-mage Scott. We love you a lot a lot. Talmage boy, oh Talmage boy. You are Mom and Daddy's joy.

Evie, Evie, listen while we sing to you. Evie, Evie, you're a part of our life too. Anyone can cry a lot, anyone can scream, but it takes an Evie to make our life supreme. Oh Evie, Evie Knight, listen while we sing to you.

Quinny Chestnut knows I love you, Quinny knows, Quinny knows. Quinny Chestnut knows I love you that's what Quinny knows.

Hello Coco! Hello Coco! Hello Coco, we're glad you're in our family!

Pretending: To Play Princesses; To Parent

I 100% bribed Quinny to put on that princess dress and take a picture with her girlfriends. I can't remember what it took, but I'm pretty sure I remember chocolate chip cheeks soon after this snap so my guess is that the Costco-sized bag of cocoa in the freezer had something to do with that darling grin. Despite a rack full of dresses and a drawer full of Little People, Quinny only pretends to like princesses. Mostly she's in to cheetahs, scary cheetahs, and wants to run around the house all day saying, "See! I fast wike a cheetah! Watch me run faster, faster!" She is fast like a cheetah, that's for sure. And are cheetahs super stubborn? Because if so, her likeness to cheetahs just went up a few notches!
 
Her lack of girly-girlness surely doesn't come as a surprise to me, I was a ball over Barbie gal myself, but from where I'm sitting as an almost 32-year-old it's incredibly fascinating to watch her navigate her world as an uber confident two-year-old. She knows what she likes and what she doesn't. She has definite ideas, opinions and plans. Her passion knows no bounds, nor does her ability to express her thoughts and feelings (loud...and long...and strong). At moments all I can do is take cleansing breaths and say silent prayers that I can make it through the day because she is SO MUCH for being SO LITTLE and I worry that I'm so caught up in surviving that I don't spend enough time savoring.

But a relatively easy bedtime routine tonight (even after a heck of a day) has allowed me the mental energy to revisit all the good moments in my day, and I'm sitting here marveling over that fiery little cheetah dressed in princess garb and how proud I was when she spent the afternoon throwing and catching a football in the backyard, how brave she was when she took a hard fall and hopped up with a smile and an "I OK!" and then tonight, how sweetly she sang "I love to see the temple" before a prayer and a kiss goodnight. Gosh, I love my Quisabel, and it's so easy when she's acting so cute.

When it comes down to it we're playing the same game, Quinny and I. We're trying our hardest to do things that don't always come naturally, but we want to do well. She's pretending to play princesses, I'm pretending to know how to be her Mama, and with enough chocolate chips I'm hoping we'll both be successful!