Girl's Afternoon In

Makelle and I haven't had a girl's night out for awhile now so yesterday she asked if we could have girl time while Corbin was at school and Seth and Jefferson were napping.  Initially she said, "could we just go somewhere really quick while the little bubbas are sleeping?"  

She wanted to go for donuts, so after explaining that I couldn't just leave them home alone, even if they were sleeping, we decided to compromise with making donuts together while they slept.  

We didn't have all the necessary ingredients, (meaning I didn't have colorful sprinkles, which she informed me are absolutely necessary for donuts) so we had to wait a day until I could run to the store.  Then this afternoon girl time ensued.  

Makelle helped me measure and stir ingredients, and then mixed up some concoction of her own that is still sitting in my freezer for some reason.  Then I fried them up while she finished eating her lunch.  Her favorite part by far was putting on the chocolate frosting and those crucial sprinkles.

We each ate a couple of donuts, and now we are left with a kitchen full of excess treats that the boys are all allergic to.  Would anyone like some extra donuts?  (Makelle may or may not have licked her fingers a few dozen times while frosting them.)

1st Grade

Corbin started school today at Kaysville Elementary.  We never sent him to any kind of preschool or kindergarten, so it was literally his first day being out of the house on his own all day.  He did great and absolutely loved it.

He is in a hand picked class for the gifted and talented program in our school district and as such ended up with rather skewed proportions; 18 boys to 4 girls, which he thinks is pretty great! (We'll see if he still likes those odds in 10 years ;)  For now he has lots of friends to choose from and is excited to spend his day with so many boys... they were apparently all reading and discussing Captain Underpants books today during their free time.

Last night Caleb was able to give him a blessing that he would make friends, be a good example listening to his teacher and following the rules and be successful and learn in school.  Corbin then mentioned how excited he was for today, because there were going to be two good things in one day... going to school and having family home evening.  Once he was out of earshot, Caleb told me I had raised a little dork, but I'm okay with that :)

This morning he was up and dressed in about .2 seconds.  I let him help me pack his lunch and get his stuff together, I drew out brushing teeth and doing his hair and basically tried to fill as much time as I could with him, but we were completely ready to go and out of things to do with 45 minutes to kill still.  So the two of us went to eat bagels for breakfast at one of his favorite places on our way to the school.

The original plan was to drop him off, but he was so loaded down with all his new school supplies, home-packed lunch, medications to take to the school nurse, a box of vegan snacks for when others kids bring in treats and some classroom donations, that I ended up walking him in to help carry everything.

When I arrived to pick him up, I was so excited to hear all about his day and he tells me, "we didn't do any work, we just did fun stuff all day."  I asked him what fun stuff he did, and all I could get out of him was that they did a scavenger hunt around the school, ate lunch and went to recess.  I assume they had to have done more than that during the time he was gone, but he is a boy and not real chatty, so that was pretty much it.

I did find a worksheet in his backpack were they had to find people in their class that met certain criteria and have them sign in the corresponding box.  90% of the boxes on Corbin's worksheet were signed by some kid named Easton.  I asked Corbin about him and he informed me that that was the kid he sits next to... good job branching out buddy, glad to see you really embraced the purpose behind that assignment :)

I also found a paper he had filled out about himself:

Throughout the remainder of the day he slowly opened up and told us a little bit more about the things he did.  He said they said the pledge of allegiance and he was excited he already knew it.  He also told me that they each are assigned a job to help out in the classroom each week and this week he is in charge of straightening up all the books, and he said he was lucky to get that one this week, because they aren't really doing any work out of the books, so he doesn't have to do anything.

After school I made a couple of batches of vegan cookies with all the kids.

Normally I am too strict to feed my kids cookies for a snack, but it somehow seemed necessary and so nostalgic to make cookies on the first day of school.  Then we got ready for our 'double fun' activity of the day and enjoyed a fun family home evening together.

Overall he seemed to have loved it, and can't wait to go back.  He is such an easy going kid, he told me he wasn't nervous and really didn't act anxious at all, despite having never been in a school environment before. In other words, he adapted well and you would have never guessed he was the nerdy home schooled kid :)

Eggs!

Our chickens have finally started laying eggs!  We happened to find our first egg the very day I had made bread, so we had a yummy dinner of toast and eggs.  (That first egg was small enough that Caleb, Seth, Makelle and I each ate a single bite, and then we had to cook up some eggs from the grocery store, but not for much longer! :)

(Makelle managed to drop the egg on the short walk from the coop to the kitchen, but luckily it only cracked and didn't break all the way, so we still got to eat it.)

These chickens sounded so fun when we started with them back in April, but they have really been more of a disaster.  Two of our chickens died when the neighbor's dog found a hole in the fence and came to attack our flock... apparently you should not live next door to trained bird hunting dogs if you want to raise free range chickens that wander your yard.  The poor dogs go crazy trying to find their way into our yard and the other day they finally managed to succeed.  :(  In addition to losing a couple of the chickens, two of the three pullets we bought turned out to really be roosters.  As much as we liked them and had gotten attached having watched them grow up, they had to go.  We are pretty sure we are zoned agricultural, but the neighbors are not, and they seemed annoyed.  Maybe in the future we will try to breed our own new chicks every spring, but for now we are going to stick with hens, so we found our little roosters a new home.  And luckily found a lady in Centerville that was selling some chickens that were born about the same time as ours so we got a couple replacements.

One guy who came to take our Easter Egger rooster, picked him up, tucked him under his arm, wrapped his free hand around the bird's neck and started to twist it backwards.  Then he pauses to ask us if we want him to put him to sleep.

"No!  Not in front of my kids!"

He looks confused and says, "are you sure, my grandkids like to watch."

"What?! No, nope they don't want to see that, you can do what you want with him when you get home, but not here."

Still looking confused he pauses, tilts his head and then, "Oh!  No!  We are going to keep him to breed with our hens, I really am going to put him to sleep, watch."

He then proceeds to tuck the head under the wing, hold the bird on both sides and rock him back and forth for about 10 seconds.  Then he lays the bird on the ground it flops down, not moving at all.  A couple seconds later he pokes it with his foot and our Easter Egger hopped right up.  Fascinating... who knew you could put a chicken into a comatose state for transporting them?  Apparently we still have a lot to learn about our little pets.  But really don't tell me you wouldn't have jumped to the same conclusion I did, I think my assumption was perfectly warranted.  I was quite relieved I was wrong though.

Anyway, despite all our chicken drama, they have been fun to have around.  We love hanging out in the backyard and watching them wander around pecking at the ground.  They are funny little creatures and now that we have them figured out and have reinforced the fence, they really do require little to no maintenance. We don't have to feed them at all, they are eating what appears to be random crap from around our yard and they found a broken sprinkler head that pools on top, it must have a really slow leak or something, that they drink from.

At first we would spend a good 15 minutes looking like idiots chasing the chickens around the yard at night trying to catch them to put them back in the coop before we went in to put the kids to bed.  Then one night we were out late and didn't get them put away before we left and we came home to find them all settled in their coop, waiting for us to lock the door.  Oh the annoyance and embarrassment we could have saved ourselves had we known they would do that automatically every night.  Like I said, we are learning though and its been a fun experiment.

Our Green, Green Garden

It took us a little while after getting moved in to the new house to get our garden area all cleared out and set up to plant, so our plants were a little late getting started.  Despite the late start and poor soil area we have been getting some delicious fruits and veggies lately, there is something so satisfying about sending the kids out for fresh herbs and veggies when it's time to make dinner, or watching them go and pick an afternoon snack fresh off of the tree.  Our property is definitely what made us fall in love with this house!

(So Caleb's mom found these old shorts from when Caleb was a baby in her basement a few years ago and gave them to us for Seth to wear.  Is it weird that I think 80's shorts on a toddler are so cute for some reason? :)

We ended up planting homemade salsa and bruschetta (tomatoes, peppers, jalapenos, onions, cilantro and basil), as well as brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, green beans, edamames, beets, peanuts, potatoes, squash, zuchini, cucumbers, honeydew, watermelon, and corn.  We also started some annual plants that should take off next year and give us asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, rosemary, thyme, chives and sage.  Plus, we already had peach, pear and apple trees.  Not everything we planted has produced very well, but we are learning as we go and it's been especially fun to watch the kids get so excited to eat things they helped to grow.

Davis County Fair

I took the kids to the fair a few times in the past, but we missed last year for some reason and Corbin, with his killer memory, pointed this out to me and asked if we could go again this year.  So I packed up the kids and we headed off to the fair today.

First we stopped and saw all the farm animals.  Seth has a love/fear relationship with animals and gets so excited to see them.  He runs up to them and then stops dead in his tracks about 2 feet away and cowers.  He did eventually end up petting a few of them, but it took a lot of coaxing and me standing right beside him.  He did spend a lot of time jabbering excitedly, pointing and making animals noises though.

Makelle was kind enough to take a picture of us with the horse, but I neglected to realize that there was no horse from her vantage point, so here we have a nice picture of me and the little boys with a metal roof.  Great memories :)

For some reason my kids have to stop and get their picture taken whenever they see these cut-out boards.  Classic.

We ended the day with free pony rides, and elephant show and strolling through the booths.  This guy was trying to recruit people to sign up for karate classes and let Corbin break a board by punching it.  He was pretty proud of himself and even asked to keep his board.  We also stopped and saw the bunnies and chickens.  Now that the kids have pet chickens of their own, it was fun to see them walk through the hen house, commenting on the breeds of chickens, the types of eggs they produced and whether they were male or female (we unfortunately now know a lot about that, since 2 of our 3 pullets ended up being cockerels... after listening to roosters crow in our backyard for a few weeks Caleb determined that the agricultural store must have accidentally mixed up the bins :)  They said that next year they want to enter their chickens in the fair, which I think would be fun for them, so we'll have to remember that for the future.  It was a long, hot day that we absolutely loved!

Prima Ballerina

Ever since she could talk Makelle has been begging to take dance lessons.  In our family you have to be 4 before you can sign up for activities outside the home.  So she patiently (or not so patiently) awaited her 4th birthday and then assumed she would immediately start dance class.  We didn't realize that most dance studios don't start new classes until the fall.  So then she had to wait another 6 months for a new class to start up.

This week all of her waiting finally culminated with her first ever dance class.  She said she was a little shy at first and I didn't get to stay and watch her, but when I picked her up she came running out of the room with a grin as big as I have ever seen plastered onto her little face and was bursting to tell us all about her experience.

(I think she was just as excited about getting all dressed up in dance clothes as she was about going to dance.  She even insisted on me giving her 'dancer hair.'  Let's just say it took A LOT of gel to make that little walnut-sized bun with her sparse head of hair!)

My favorite was when she told me the teacher didn't teach them any dance moves, they just played games and did fun stuff. She then proceeded to show me her 'fun stuff' and assumed a perfect little dance position as she 'reached for a jar of peanut butter while hoping on one foot, so as not to get jelly from the first piece of bread onto the floor.'  When I pointed this out to her she started giggling and said, "oh, I am dancing!"  What a sweet, little blonde we have!

Sweetest Little Pill

Sometimes this little guy keeps me up at night:

But that is okay because sometimes we get to curl up in bed and take naps during the day with him nestled into me, and then all is forgiven.

It Must Be Love

We sure do have some cute kids that really love each other:

Makelle is constantly trying to hold baby Jefferson.  The first day we came home from the hospital I laid him down on a blanket and came back 5 minutes later to discover him missing.  Makelle had picked him up and carried him into her bedroom and was reading him a book.  Cute scene, but had to be followed up with a "don't steal my baby without asking first" lesson.  She is such a great big sister and not only helps with Jefferson, but is almost always willing to help Seth and play with him whenever I am busy with the baby.

Seth has been fairly indifferent towards having a new baby around.  Whenever he walks past Jefferson he politely pats his head and says, "baby" and then moves on.  So it was pretty cute to see him come in and lay down and cuddle up next to his little brother.

Seth still finds great comfort in sucking his thumb and sticking strings in his ear.  So we took it as the ultimate sign of love when we saw him look down at Jefferson and then take the string from his own ear and generously stick it in Jefferson's ear.  What a sweet and weird little gesture :)

I seem to take a lot of pictures of the kids when they are sleeping, but sometimes I just can't get over the awkward positions they sometimes end up in:

What 2-year-old would be tolerant enough to let his 6-year-old brother use him as a pillow?  These kids sure do get along better than I would have ever expected!

Squirming

Jefferson hates tummy time.  It has been highly motivational for teaching him to army crawl.  Here he is at almost 2 weeks old:

He usually ends up moving a couple of feet forward during the 5-10 minutes I typically force him to tough it out on his belly.

Miller Reunion

On Friday evening Caleb's family all came into town and we got together to take some family pictures.  Pretty much every girl loves getting her picture taken a few days after giving birth, right?  :)  But despite my personal dislike of how I look in the pictures, they actually turned out pretty cute, especially when considering the number of children we were trying to all get to cooperate.  We knew we were done when Seth was throwing a fit and pouting because I didn't have any water and then Jefferson started crying as well.  50% of the children screaming doesn't exactly make for a good family picture.  But an ornery Seth does make for a rather amusing picture:

After family pictures we all went to dinner and then headed to Sam and Benson's to make tanks for the annual Miller Family Tank Wars.  Thanks to an awesome deal Benson found we ended up with about 3x as many fireworks as usual, as well as, some bigger fireworks than we've had in the past.  This resulted in Lane achieving actual liftoff with his tank and being deemed the 'winner' of the battle.  One year I have no doubt that we will suddenly have pictures of a large scale fire that we accidentally start with our tanks on here.

Seth loved the fireworks and got really into throwing the little pop-its with Uncle Bryan.

The next morning we went to go see Despicable Me 2, followed by lunch, naps, a trip to the splash pad and a BBQ.  That evening the boys all went on what Corbin referred to as a 'big boy adventure' and attended Glenn Beck's Man in the Moon show down in Salt Lake.  The girls stayed behind and got to reenact female revolutionary war heroes with Grandma Miller.  Since it involved cousin Brynn and getting dressed up, two of her favorite things, Makelle thought it was pretty great.

On Sunday morning we woke up early and were able to attend cousin Edy's baby blessing.  We went to Tyler and Tori's new house afterwards and got to visit with all the Lloyds, including Grandma Nash who came up to see the babies and Eric before he left on his mission.  Then we hurried home and got ready for our own church where we were able to bless Jefferson.

After our church we came home and had dinner with all the Millers, and got some nice family pictures:

However, Jefferson managed to mess his diaper and get it all over his cute little white outfit before I got any pictures of just him on his special day.  So like any crazy mother, I dressed him back up and took some posed pictures of him the next week while Caleb mocked my staged memories :)

Since he was only a week old when we blessed him, waiting to take his picture, he really did look different all ready, but at least we have some fake memories of what a little stud he was all dressed up.

After we got Jefferson cleaned up and put down for a nap we were all able to celebrate with Seth, since it was his birthday that day, and I had missed his party the week before.  His Grandma Lloyd saved the old farm tractors and trucks that my brothers and I had played with outside as kids and gave them to our kids when we moved into the new house.  So we made Seth a cute little truck cake since he is so into playing with his trucks and tractors in the new sandbox.  He also got a new tractor from Grandma Miller for his birthday that is about as big as he is, so he thinks he is suppose to ride on it.  He sits on top and puts his feet on either side and scoots around the house.  He is definitely in a 'vehicle' faze these days, so I think he was pretty excited to see his cake and even more excited to get to eat it.

Aunt Ashley and Uncle Jake somehow discovered 'kid proof' books that can't be ripped or torn and are water resistant.  I hope the inventor of those books becomes a millionaire, because they are an ingenious idea.  Plus, Seth loves his.

We had a crazy busy weekend with the new baby and family in town from both sides and so many things going on all at once, but it was so much fun to celebrate our children and be with family!