YIP - Week 10

Sunday, March 18th

I wrote before about Fin's fascination with the new chicks, which we named today, by the way.  They are Ginger and MaryAnn.  He is a complete bird dog and loves to chase all the little birds out of our yard.  He chases their shadows across the yard and barks them out of the lilac bush.  I don't know what he would do if he caught one.  Well, today Bump decided to torture the dog by putting Ginger down in front of him and making him stay still.  I got this great picture in the process.  I can think of any number of great captions for this.

 Monday, March 19th

Tonight's dinner did not just consist of peas.  It's all that was left on all 3 kids plates at the end of the meal.  They couldn't have dessert until the peas were all gone though.  It worked and all plates were clean in the end.  Don't let that smile fool you.  He didn't look like that until I got the camera out.

 Tuesday, March 20th

A friend of mine from high school that is an amazing pianist and teaches piano had this great idea on her blog one day.  She is teaching her 5 year old to play and gives her a jelly bean each time she plays through a song.  I have been struggling to motivate Gabby lately and her practices haven't been good.  I bought some jelly beans and gave it a try.  Wow!  Not only did she practice each song wonderfully, the next day she asked if she could start her piano practice.  I didn't have to beg and plead with her, she was excited and has practiced every day since.  It worked!  And it didn't work with just her, Quincy asked if she could do it and so did Corban (who hasn't wanted anything to do with piano).  

Wednesday, March 21st

Speaking of piano, today we got ours tuned!  We have owned it for 2 years and finally it sounds better! Not only did we get it tuned, but she fixed the G key that lost it's ivory.  Gabby has learned to rely on that brown G key and now she can't!  Yay!  The lady we used was great, but a string broke while she was tuning our 100 year old piano.  So, she is coming back on Tuesday to fix it.  She would die if she knew I took this picture.  If anyone needs a good tuner in Tooele County let me know and I will send her your way.

 Thursday, March 22nd

Today I ended up with a bit of extra time and had a friend willing to take the kids for me so I could run into the wood connection in Salt Lake.  Remember my shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day?  Well I needed something new for my front table.  This is what I ended up making.  Pretty cute huh?

 A scary thing happened while I was out.  I was at the store and had to make a left turn into the parking lot of the store.  There were about 8 cars in a line coming the other direction, so I put on my blinker and stopped to wait for the cars to pass.  A black truck pulled up behind me and waited for me to turn.  While we were waiting I heard a loud squeal of tires and a loud crunch.  A car had totally slammed into the back of the truck right behind me.  If that truck hadn't been stopped behind me the car would have slammed into the back of me.  I snapped a picture as I was leaving.  Everybody looked alright, a policeman was just filling out paperwork.  The car was pretty munched in the front.  I couldn't see a mark on the black truck!  Our honda pilot would not have fared as well.  I am grateful for the protection that I was given on this outing!

Friday, March 23rd

Gabby had a surprise tooth fall out today.  I was at the school volunteering in her class and she came to me with tears in her eyes.  She was eating a cookie and bit just wrong and suddenly her tooth was very loose.  According to her it wasn't loose at all before that.  She wanted me to pull it out right then.  I told her we would take care of it after school.  Just after she got home from school I pulled it out and that is her 6th tooth gone.

 I am so grateful for the lesson that my mother taught me.  We don't do teeth under the pillow at our house.  They can easily get lost.  Our kids are very light sleepers.  And if it isn't out in the open where the tooth fairy can see it and remember that she is supposed to leave money, it might not happen.  So, I am grateful that my kids are happy to put their tooth in a glass of water and leave it over the sink in the kitchen where it can be easily seen!  The tooth fairy never forgets at our house.  Thanks for the tradition Mom!

 Saturday, March 24th

Today was a fun and busy day.  We took advantage of very nice weather and cleaned out the chicken coop, raked the back yard and did a bit of trimming on our crazy, out-of-control vines.  We still aren't done with that.  Bump overdid it a bit and wasn't feeling well by late afternoon.

 So. . . he stayed home with the kids and I got to go to Maddox in Brigham City to help my sister-in-law, Sue, celebrate her big five-oh birthday.  We had a surprise dinner and it was fun to catch up with everyone there.

Sunday, March 25th

Tonight Gabby had her baptism preview.  She was asked to give a talk on baptism and did a fantastic job!  We have a great ward and a super primary presidency.  They made it really neat for the kids and gave them each a white towel with CTR and their name embroidered on it.  As you can tell by her super big smile she is very excited to turn 8 in April.