Star wars

Zeke has 5 books that he carries with him everywhere he goes. All 5 are star war,s some are character encyclopedia's, and he reads them over and over again. He goes through each page and tells us about the different characters and/or asks us questions about them. He was waiting for one to come in the mail last week, he knew it would be here on Wednesday. He woke up so crabby Tuesday morning and when Amari asked him what was wrong he said "It's Tuesday, that's what's wrong!" Even amazon prime isn't quick enough for Zeke. When I offered to let him look at some of the character encyclopedias on amazon he got so excited and asked "Can I look at the expanded views?" If you look up books on amazons sometimes they give you a little preview, he loves it.

We let him stay up late and watch episode IV of Star Wars for the first time on Monday night. He was so pumped and named each character as they came on the screen. After the movie ended he told Pantera that he wanted to marry princess Leia. When I asked him about it he said "I do want to marry her, and you mom." Good answer buddy.

Naked in Walmart

 I really love having Pantera home for the summer. So much that it makes me dread school coming again. She is so excited for 4th grade and has been preparing like crazy. She makes me write her multiplication worksheets to practice several times a week and has more than fulfilled her schools summer reading requirements. I was really impressed when she went to take her summer reading test at the school and the other kids all had their books with them, she left hers at home and got 100% on both tests!

The Cook's gave us an old piano. Pantera has been practicing this quite a bit now. I think I might have even found a teacher for her. She learned some notes and a lot about music from playing her recorder at school. I heard her tooting on the recorder in her room the other day and she said to herself "A little rusty, but I still got it!"

She is a wonderful older sister who loves to share information with her younger siblings. One piece of information came in the form of warning to Amari about the dangers of pornography. I guess they had a heart to heart on Sunday about what pornography is and why it is bad. She then proudly brought Amari downstairs to tell me what she taught her. "Amari tell Mom what I warned you about." Amari says "Pownagphy" Pantera says "Right and what is it?" Amari replies "It is when you take off all your clothes and walk around Walmart." Maybe Pantera and I need to talk again.

Pops!

I am so grateful I get to stay at home with my funny kiddos. I know how very lucky and blessed I am. I love listening to them play together, this week it was mostly a game called Farm. The girls would all pretend to work downstairs husking corn, milking cows, "tidying up," preparing meals, and getting all ready for when "Pops" aka Zeke comes home. Pantera would really clean the entire downstairs for this game, so it may be my very favorite.

 

Pantera is still watching all the science videos and quizzed me today about how much I know about SARS and drug resistant infections. This is what she studies before bed at night, sweet dreams child. She is a smart little girl and always so quick with words. I can't write down anything she says though, or she gets mad.

 

Although Pantera and I love the tell eachother "Bunk a Head" and imagine different dangerous objects like hatchets, chainsaws, or perhaps a cement pillow to use. This is due to funny Katurah. I was throwing a very light bouncy ball in the air for the kids to catch and it ended up hitting Amari in the head. She cracked up and Katurah wanted a turn, so she brought me a full sized football and said "Bunk a Head?" No I will not throw that at your head crazy, Pantera and I laughed and laughed.

 

Katurah is taking an interest in potty training. When she was trying to go yesterday Amari interrupted her and said she needed to go. So Amari gets on the toilet and goes, and Katurah was so excited "High Bive Amari! I so prou a you!"

 Zeke asked me if Little Critter is a Wookie. I think he might be. He currently carries his two lego star wars books with him everywhere he goes. He loves to talk about Star Wars with anyone who will listen and if he has a question we can't answer (Why did no one tell me to learn all about this before giving birth?!?!) he just proudly says "The Bells will know, they are smart about Star Wars." They are our neighbors who collect star wars stuff, I'm waiting for Zeke to ask if he can move in with them. He gave me a card in church today that said "Dear Mom" on the outside and "Zeke" on the inside. He said he gave it to me because "You take care of me and you are beautiful."

Amari on the other hand informed me that "Me and Dad are gonna have a weddin and when we have our weddin you are gonna stay home with the kids and watch them. Got it?" She got herself dressed to the nines in bright pink pants a purple shirt and sweet boots and said it was her "weddin outfit." My younger sister is getting married next month and Amari has wedding fever bad! She and Zeke painted canvases for "weddin presents" for her new "Uncle Spencer oh and Aunt Sami too." Her picture was "a rainbow but it's mostly black cuz that's my favorite color."

Seneca girl is a dancing machine these days. She does a fabulous spin on her little booty and loves to clap and wiggle with any kind of music. She is trying to climb the stairs now and gets up the first two. It is amazing anyone survives the first years of life, just falling and hurting yourself constantly, learning to use your body is quite the challenge. I love this age personality wise but really hate all the bumps and bruises that go along with it.

The darkside

Jess has been asking how Seneca got so big all of the sudden and claims it has gone by so fast. I on the other hand, know it is from my milk and it has taken forever for her to become semi independent. I joke, I joke, she is trying to do so much and it all seems to happen at the same time. She loves to sing, if she can get ahold of our karaoke machine she will sit and listen to herself for quite awhile. She is the smiliest little girl you will ever meet, as long as I am holding her still. I never realized how important a good umbilical cord cut is at birth, maybe the scissors weren't sharp enough...hmmm.

 Zeke informed me this morning "My nickname is Luke Skywalker! But my real name is Zeke." He is in full Jedi mode these days and it's a good thing because the Sith in our area are out of control. He wanted to show me something and he said "Mom, observe this!" He got the missionary bear at church, (it is a teddy bear I dressed up in a tie and name tag and the kids take turns taking him home to remind them to share the gospel during the week they are to report back to us the following Sunday) he was so excited and when I asked him what he was planning on doing, he pretty much recited exactly what the little girl the week before him did. This included helping her neighbor plant a garden so he has been asking me over and over when we can go to the neighbors and plant a garden. I'm sure they won't mind us digging up their yard right?

 Katurah just copies EVERYTHING her older siblings do these days. We were at the library and they all picked a book, but she was distracted the whole time so we went to check out and she ran over to the shelf, grabbed the first book she saw and happily ran back to me. She is a big kid now. Unfortunately with the amount of potty humor in our home she has picked up some interesting words "Mom, is poop in my buttcrat!" or she points to her cute little booty and says "wook at da MOON!"

Amari has been a bit of a pill lately. She just doesn't seem to want to listen much and when she gets in trouble she tells me "I'm listening to Satan, being good is too hard." Then she changes her mind and says she will listen to Jesus after all. Her friend Vivian was over a couple of times over the past week. They always bring Amari some hand me downs, which Amari treasures. She is so creepy about it "I smell like Bivian! I look like Bivian!" So we pretend that we can't tell them apart and she is so happy!

Maybe this is why she has been misbehaving, has she turned to the darkside?

Pantera has refused to let me take her pictures as usual, someday you will  regret it my child. She had a big stake achievement days activity all day Saturday. She was the only girl from our ward there, makes me miss being out west. She is singing a solo in the Primary program this year and I am encouraging her to sing in sacrament meeting in the next couple of months. She has an amazing voice and I am excited she will have the opportunity to share her talent. We were at the park yesterday and there was a daycare group there. A little 13 month old girl just LOVED Pantera. Everything Pantera would do, just cracked this little one up and as we were leaving she reached up to go with her. The daycare worker said "She has been with us for over a week and wants nothing to do with me! She sees your daughter for 5 minutes and wants to go home with her!" It made Pantera feel pretty darn good.

This was my project for last week. It is all from the cherry wood Jess brought me. I made it as a surprise for a friend who needed a table. We went over to her house Monday night and made her go into her room while we brought it inside and Pantera staged it with flowers and such. Her reaction was priceless!!! "Are you kidding me?!? I don't even know what to say! Savannah!!!" Then she turns to her daughter and son in law who were in on it and said "Did you know about this?!?" It was so fun to build, experimenting with the legs and designing benches, but even better to give it to someone who was so happy for it. Only bad part is now MY table looks not so cute in comparison.

No Dynanite

Oh how we have enjoyed the sun lately! It is amazing how much I took it for granted growing up in Arizona. The kids spend pretty much all day outside if it is not raining and make up some awesome games to play like here I think they are getting some "Chi."

 

Katurah thinks she is too cool for school these days. She can be such a little terd. Like during speech therapy the past two weeks she has just sat and scowled at Mrs.Kristy. As soon as Mrs. Kristy leaves, Katurah is talking and happy again. She is at the age that she is kind of fun to tease because she just repeats everything you say with a no in front of it "No dynamite!" She was so scared of fireworks on the 4th again this year, so much that she wouldn't go out in the backyard again until I cleaned up all the packages. She copied Zeke and asked for a sandwich tonight and when I handed it to her she looked at it and said "What the heck?!?"

 

Katurah and Amari love to play Frozen. Here Amari is Elsa and Katurah is Anna. If you call Katurah the wrong princess name she will flip her lid and run away crying...you have been warned.

Amari is in charge of feeding the cat now. Unfortunately she has been slacking some days. I saw Bluestar was out of food the other day so I asked Amari if she had fed her yet. Amari replied "She doesn't have any food, but it's ok, she's not dead yet." Makes sense, she is going to be a wonderful mother;)  She is so drama about everything and loves to jump to outrageous conclusions just like her big sister. For example if you tell her to go to bed she may just reply "So you never want to see me again and you think I am the worst kid ever?" DRAMA!

 

Seneca is starting to pull herself to stand! She was in her crib fussing and  looked over to see her standing and crying at me all creepy like, it was awesome. She loves when anyone sings "When we're helping we're happy" so much. She will quickly get to a seated position and start waving her arms, then she usually joins in on the tralalala part.

Zeke is obsessed with how cute Seneca is. He told me "The last baby is like the cutest one to ever come out of your tummy!" About 100 times a day he tells her how "adorable" or "precious" she is and makes sure we all acknowledge it as well.

At dinner last night Amari told Jess "Dad, you're a little bit smart, but Mom is all the way smart." Jess told her that's not very nice and she tried to back peddle a bit but Zeke came to Jess' rescue by informing her "Amari, old geezers can be smart." Then looking over at Jess like you're welcome (I may or may not have told him Jess was an old geezer a few weeks ago).

Pantera was sick last night, probably the worst I have seen her in a long time. She seems to be on the mend tonight luckily. She has been watching a ton of science videos that the school gave her access to for the summer. After watching several of these she told me "Mom, I think I know why I have been so short tempered with the younger kids lately." I hadn't noticed but I asked "Why's that?" She replied "Puberty." Ahhh, that explains it. She has already unlocked the secret to womanhood: blame hormones for EVERYTHING.

Here's my latest project...

Jess got a bunch of FREE rough cut cherry wood from a guy at work who knows I'm currently in love with woodworking. This is a queen sized bed with 12 storage drawers, for the cost of screws and wood glue!

We have been enjoying our summer so far. I love having kids out of school, and Jess took last week off just to hang out...life is good.

 

Jess took Pantera to the amusement park she has been talking about since she went with my brother and sister last summer. Seriously she talked about it so much, about all the rides she went on and how she loved big coasters. She even went on the bungee jump with my brother. I guess on the very first coaster Jess took her on, she turned white and buried her face in his side. They spent the rest of the day on the kiddie rides. I still can't believe it after all that talk! She loves how busy we have been so far this summer, friends, birthday parties, roller blading, splash pad, she would have me going all the time if it were up to her. My little social butterfly.

 

Zeke has been playing with his sisters a lot more lately. I love to hear what he comes up with. Most of his play is movie dialogue, but sometimes he says things like "Amari, pretend I'm sleep driving."  Or the other day they were playing Toy Story 3 and he was being Andy and Amari was being Andy's mom and he just kept going through is toys asking if he could keep them, to which Amari would reply "Nope!" I guess Andy's mom was the real villain of the film, I never knew. He currently loves Legos, thanks to the Lego movie and Ninjago. Tonight we had "Taco Tuesday" and he was absolutely thrilled.

 

Amari was playing with my thermometer the other day (grrr) and came to me with it really upset. "Mom it told me to have a bad night!" What?
"It said I will have a bad night" "No Amari it said Fahrenheit." Another great quote "Syrup makes me feel like a cat!" When we went to Olive Garden last week she was so excited for our "fancy" dinner. She talked in her fancy voice the first 20 minutes we were there. Then on the way out a little boy was holding the door for us and she stopped in her tracks with a dreamy look on her face and asked "How old are you?" He said "4" she said "me too!" I told her to quit flirting, but her little "I just saw the man of my dreams face was hysterical! I'm going to have to watch this one!!! She was trying to talk Jess into getting another dog the other day and he was resisting so she walked up to him and put her finger on his nose then said "Oh smoochie boy, calm down smoochie boy. Now lets go to the pet store!"

 

Katurah wants a cane in the worst kind of way. When we were playing at the church the other night she made one out of mega blocks and was trying to walk with it. The other kids all decided they wanted one too. I told my mom, who walks with a cane, that she is the biggest trend setter amongst the 2-4 year old crowd. We went to the library yesterday and they had a science display where you could build your own junk robot. The kids all loved this but Katurah especially loved her "robop" and I loved to here her say it!

 

Seneca is going to stand any day now. She is all over the place trying to pull herself up onto everything. She can go from crawling to sitting up and vice versa seamlessly now as well. She is also trying to talk repeating my vocal inflections when I call for Katurah or Pantera. She says the dogs name "lettie" and "zee" for zeke, "lala" for pacifier, and of course Dada. No Mama, but Jess has to have something with this kid;)

 

Life is busy but so good!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Summer!!!

Summer break has officially began at the Hammond house! I am so happy to sleep in almost everyday. The kids have been pretty busy with friends over, shopping, puppy sitting, and Friday night campfires. Not a bad start to summer at all.


Seneca is into EVERYTHING now that she is mobile. She loves to get into the lazy susan that Katurah always leaves open. Seneca will pull herself up to kneeling on it which makes me super nervous because,well it spins. I had a gallon of paint behind the chair in the front room for over 2 months, I am terrible about putting all my stuff in the garage in between projects. I thought nothing of this gallon as Seneca was scooting around the other day. She managed to open it and dump it out then, slide in it before I caught her. I had just walked into the kitchen and my Dad and I were both right there...sneaky kid.

Katurah loves the "if you chance to meet a frown song" she is so cute when she sings it with a little sad face and a low sad voice until it says "quickly turn it upside down" then she grins so big and sing so fast and happy. She is still pretty hard to understand. The speech therapist thinks she is just trying to talk too fast like everyone around her because when we slow her down and ask her to repeat us, her sounds are pretty good. As a matter of fact last night she had a Captain America doll and was making him wiggle while saying "Shake your BOOOTY!" Clear as day, at least she has the important phrases down.

Amari is the constant mother hen in our home. She has taken it upon herself to start wiping Katurah's face, even though her face is covered in goo as well, kind of a mote and beam situation. But she is also more responsible then a lot of kids her age. She even got the priviledge of puppy sitting for a friend yesterday and was so serious about her task. She let everyone know how to properly handle this pup including "If he gets too wild, just scratch his belly and he will calm right down." She asked me to make her hair like Elsa for church last week and I did, of course you can imagine it made it through the first 10 minutes of sacrament meeting until it just looked like I didn't brush it. But the point is she felt like Elsa and she went around pretending to freeze everything and told Jess "Cutting the cheese is not for princesses!" She wanted to call her friend and asked me "Do you have Audrey's password?" instead of phone number.

Zeke is as always obsessed with his electronic devices. He is only allowed to play them at naptime and after dinner, so he always pretends to be tired hoping to get his kindle faster. Oh, but his Kindle died, I bought one of the new ones back in October and it has been a piece of junk since we got it but he will tell you "My kindle died because I didn't play with it enough" UH HUH. The other day I gave him frosted flakes for the first time. He looked at his bowl a little disgusted and asked what they were. I told him "They are frosted flakes and they are GRRREAT!" So he tried them and with another look of disgust says "I guess they are a little grrreat." I quickly told him it is ok if he doesn't like them and he said "Ok, I do not like them."

 Pantera has been enjoying her life with no school with counting down until it starts again and studying. She is determined to be ready for fourth grade. I love that she is so excited for next year already, but that is almost all she talks about...still. The other subject she enjoys is boys. She has a list of boys she has a crush on in about 5 diaries and likes to show them to everybody. One of the boys is in our ward and he told her today that he likes her too. After she told Jess and I all about it she said "I'm going to have a lot to write about in my diary tonight!" Boy crazy like her mom...yikes!