Lovely music

Amari has an amazing "pop" voice. I think this is a normal phase most little girls go through thinking they sound so awesome with there vibrato belting of random lyrics. She was singing a lovely little number last week that I just must share it went a little something like this:

"You don't wanna be messin with me-e-e or my family. Cuz you wanna live you don't wanna die. You don't wanna be messin with me-e-e-e!!!"

I will leave the interpretation up to you. I will neither confirm nor deny mafia ties.

Christmas 2015

Here's a little look at our Christmas morning...

Katurah was up until 1:30 am, I think due to excitement. Then when it was time to get up for presents around 8 am, she refused to get up. When we did finally extract her from her from her bed, she was less then thrilled. We started opening presents and when it was Katurah's turn to open one she stood in front of it with closed eyes and duck lips and refused to open anything.

 

The rest of the kiddos were quite thrilled and enjoyed opening there gifts. Zeke had the best reaction to his Disney Infinity 2.0 "I wanted this for Christmas!!!"  And Seneca was so happy for her Bubble Guppy toys, she just took bubble puppy and started barking.

 

Zeke has been under the weather for some time now. I am getting grayer by the day. One day when his fever broke he woke up all sweaty and said "Mom, I think the curse has broke again." We started him on a gluten/lactose free diet to try to help some of his issues until we can finally get into the stomach specialist at Children's hospital. I asked him if he wanted some ketchup with his chicken and he checked with me first "Is it gluten free?" Then he told  Jess "I hope mustard isn't gluten free, because I don't like mustard."

 Some habits are hard to break, Katurah can't stay awake if she sits next to Jess. I am terrible at laundry. I can never find matching socks for my kids...like ever. So the one time I found a pair and put them on Katurah she was SO EXCITED "Two of them?!? TWINS!!!" She was talking about Christoff from frozen but she still has some speech issues so his name is "Pissed off."

 Seneca's future husband came to visit before Christmas. Brady is such a cute little guy!!! They almost acknowledged each other this year. I wish there family lived closer, we miss you Buck and Chanie!!!

 Pantera was discussing going into Young Womens with me for like the 20millionth time. She likes a boy who just went into deacons quorum and has tried to find every loophole to skip the next 2 years of primary. She was telling me how excited she was to go into beehives and Amari became very concerned for her "Pantera, bees are very mean so you should probably just stay away from them."

Amari was so surprised by something and she said "It just blew my mind to smiths!" Not smithereens, smiths.

Seneca is learning to climb and loves to play with the big kids. They are usually pretty good about humoring her, but she can be quite the little pill. The older girls set up very elaborate games and Seneca loves to knock them down to see how mad they get. She is the youngest and that is her job after all.

Moohaha Gonna Kick Shlink

Seneca LOVES baby dolls. She is constantly carrying one around or pushing one in the stroller. I almost feel as though she is hinting at me. Sorry kiddo, you are the last. She also loves Bubble Guppies. She does some amazing dances to the songs from the show and even carries around a huge Molly doll that I bought her for Christmas and she found. It is the coveted toy of our house and whenever anyone else has it she will walk over to them and rip it out of there arms. See Seneca, being the youngest has its  perks!

 Amari girl is the perpetual mother hen. The other day Katurah wasn't listening and Amari said "Mom, let me handle this." She proceeded to scold her sister and send her to time out. Then last night Katurah wasn't eating (what's new?) and I tried spoon feeding her unsuccessfully. She again stepped in and took over and guess what? Katurah ate. Of course Amari didn't eat her food, but beggars can't be choosers now can they?

 Zeke has been invited to so many birthday parties over the past few weeks. One was a bowling party and he discovered that he absolutely loves to bowl. Although it was a little frustrating when the other kids weren't as focused as he was, but he was pretty patient considering. He loved it so much that we decided to take all of the kids bowling again last week...so fun. When he and Amari were making cards for one of the parties he helped her spell the words for her card. It was one of the sweetest things I have ever seen the way he encouraged her "You got it Amari now a Y." He did the santa workshop at school and was so happy to give us all our presents. He got Jess a pen but informed him "That is not what I wanted to get you. I wanted to get you a Golf Character Encyclopedia. But they didn't have one." That would have been perfect seeing as Jess doesn't even have one yet. Poor dude hasn't been to school yet this week due to feeling like garbage. Oh I hope this passes soon!

 Pantera is just plugging along through fourth grade. She is quite the devoted class mayor, she refused to stay home sick for fear her classroom would be left in the hands of her vice mayor. She was chosen as one of 5 kids from her school to participate in an English festival, this is quite an honor. They will have to read 4 novels and write questions about them, then participate in events and competition in May. They get to meet one of the authors of the books they read. Way to go Pantera!!!

 Katurah is 3....

 See.....

 That face says it all huh? She loves to scowl for the camera little stinker. She constantly pretends to be someone other then herself. Mostly Marshall from Paw Patrol or Slink from Toy Story. She will correct you if you call her by her name and not the one she is pretending to be. We have a long standing tradition with the girls in my little family playing what I mournfully call "you have to say." Pantera started it and would ask me to play with her, ok great, then control the entire game until I wondered why I was even there. "You have to say 'look at the cat over there'" oh and if I go off of the mental script which I am not given a copy of I get yelled at. Sounds fun eh? Well Katurah wanted me to be a super villain and she was super Slink (but she can't say s so it is Shlink). What is the meanest thing a sheltered kid could come up with for a super villain to do to our games hero? "Have to say Mooohaha, gonna kick Shlink!"

Jess took the girls on a date last week. Amari takes her dates with dad very seriously but was ok with Katurah being the third wheel. You girls are just lucky I am willing to share. Love that guy.

Arm Wrestles

We had such a nice Thanksgiving! Jess got a nice 4 day weekend, I love it when he gets to be home with us.

Amari has said some pretty great things over the past few weeks. We were at the post office and there is a door that says "Post Master" on it. She asked what it said and after I told her she pretended to shiver and said "Post Master, nobody wants to mess with him!" When we say our prayers often the phrase "please bless that no harm or accident will befall us" is used. I guess this entire time Amari was hearing something completely different. When she said the prayer she said "Please bless no arm wrestles will fall on us." Then today Zeke told me "Mom, I arm wrestled at church one time. Can you forgive me?" He was so worried. For the record, we have nothing against arm wrestling.

And happy day Amari has found a cure for head lice! You see I have been terrified of them since I was about 12 and all of my kids know this. We have yet to face this in our home (although I am sure it will happen at some point) but never fear we will now be prepared. Amari asked me "Mom, are you scared of tarantulas? No, that's good because if you ever get those bugs in your hair just put a tarantula on your head and BAM no more bugs!" Excellent, we are going to be millionaires I tell you!

Zeke had 50's day at school a few weeks ago and they dressed up as greasers and did all things 50's like. He brought home a paper that said "If I could have 50 of anything I would want 50 __________." And it had a space for a picture. He picked 50 socks. Way to shoot for the stars Zeke.

Seneca is still obsessed with dancing. This might be my favorite thing she does, just swings her one arm and turns in a circle. Then if she sees me she lifts those chubby arms up and says "Da" for dance. She also barks whenever she sees a dog. She is so big and funny. I need to go put these crazies in bed.

3

This happy little girl just turned 3!!!

 She is at that age of professional quality pouting, she is quite amazing at it. She spends the majority of her days pretending to be a dog, sometimes it's Clifford, sometimes it's Bubble Puppy, other times it's Slinky, or perhaps a Chihuahua. On her birthday she was "Birthday Chihuahua" and if you called her Katurah she would quickly correct you. She also has different barks for each type of dog, our favorite is Clifford because she sounds like a dog who has smoked for a good portion of his puppyhood.

She requested a Bubble Puppy cake and was pleased with the results. She got a lot of Toy Story toys (yes, yes the same ones I donated to goodwill a few years ago...ugh) and was so thrilled. Her Bullseye toy is her prized possession now. She has lost said doll like 100 times since she opened him, I love to be the one to find him as her reaction is amazing and sweet every time.

She has quite the attitude these days because she can. The other day she wanted to get in bed with us and we told her there was not enough room. She got so mad and said "I SUGGLE MAMA, HMMMM!!!!" And she climbed right up and forced me to snuggle her. She is still hooked on the pacifier or lala as she lovingly calls them. She steals Seneca's but gets so mad if Seneca takes hers. Katurah is currently sleeping on the couch and Seneca walked over and took one right out of Katurah's mouth as she is sleeping. Payback sister!

We sure love this crazy 3 year old.

10

Pantera turned 10 a few weeks ago! DOUBLE DIGETS!!! We had a pretty darn low profile b-day bash with our little family for her this year. She got an Ipad and has been obnoxiously texting her extended family every day since.

 She ran for class "Mayor" something she has talked about for the past year or so. Right before the campaigns began some of her guy "friends" told her if she ran they would not be her friend anymore. I knew something was up when all of the sudden she informed me that she was going to run for secretary and help Nick with his mayor campaign. OOOO, some of these kids just tick me off so bad, but I just try to remain neutral and encourage her to try regardless of what they say. So my brave girl did. She came up with her own poster idea that I thought was so fun...

And guess what? SHE WON!!! She is now the Mayor of Barkeyburgh. Regardless of the outcome I am just glad she tried. A few days after she won she got a threatening note in her desk that said "If you don't resign, I will hate you." She said "Mom, the problem is that it was signed anonymous so I don't know if I should care or not!" I'm telling you these kids can be rotten. She has taken her post so very seriously and has vowed to end bullying within the classroom.

For school picture day I curled her hair up real cute and when she got her proof she said "I knew I looked good that day, but I didn't know I looked THAT good!"

 

I hope you always stay you Pantera, you are so awesome.

Halloween

 I keep finding new projects to do instead of blogging ever. A lot is getting done, but I really need to catch up here! Halloween was so fun, we were all Star Wars characters except for Pantera, she was Black Widow from the Avengers.

 We all got to dress up for our ward's trunk or treat, but Jess had to work for our neighborhood trick or treat. So I took all 5 kids by myself and it was kind of chaotic. We went out for maybe an hour, but Katurah was SO SLOW that I couldn't handle much more. After the first 3 houses Zeke said "I think I have enough candy." He wanted to go home and read.

 Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, R2-D2...

After trick or treating Katurah crashed on the couch, all that hard work takes it out of a girl!

Unfortunately the candy takes its toll on our house as well. She and Seneca are obsessed with the big bowl of Halloween goodies I keep up on top of the fridge. Seneca will point and babble at it until I get it down and Katurah just says "I hab it? Is really good." Pantera on the other hand I guess has started to learn she said "My stomach is telling me 'more' but my small intestine says to 'stop.'" Crazy kids!