My Little Handyman

Check it out, people. Jack just made his first project in wood shop. Yes, he's taking wood shop. Isn't that awesome that they have wood shop for 4-year-olds? I think that's awesomeness. So his first project was a bug box. And he actually got to hammer the nails and sand and paint the wood and staple the netting and all that good stuff. And he couldn't have been more proud. All afternoon he had to show everyone his bug box. Ellie even went out and found him a caterpillar for his bug box. Mom is praying that the poor caterpillar lives out the day so our cool little wood shop project doesn't have to turn into a circle-of-life teaching moment. Next week's project? Marshmallow shooter - how cool is that!

The Garden Wars

You remember "Caddyshack," where the Bill Murray character is locked in an epic battle with the pesky groundhog who keeps digging up the golf course? Well, imagine Jared as Bill Murray, his beloved flower garden as the golf course, and Little Miss Ellie as you guessed it, pesky groundhog. Poor Jared lovingly tends his flowers every day....and then Ellie tromps all over them, picks them all, and generally abuses them. Jared tends them ... Ellie destroys them ... Jared tends them .... Ellie destroys them. Rinse and repeat.

So our neighbor Christine had a great idea to give Ellie her own little garden, and even brought over some little garden fencing and fake flowers. So we fenced off a little 3x3 ft. area in front of the house and designated it as Ellie's Garden - and wouldn't you know it, she was thrilled to pieces. She put up all the fencing, dug out holes, "planted" her little flowers, and just went to town. Before long, there were pinwheels planted in there, and even a big stinkin' umbrella. And more importantly for Jared, she stayed away from his garden. Not sure how Jared's going to feel coming home to a garden full of pinwheels in his front yard, but hey, better than the alternative, right?


Ellie, hard at work planting her garden

The proud gardener

Jared's flowers, breathing a sigh of relief

Not related to this story, but Jack wanted to show you his new bike

Yeah, that's why

Yesterday the kids drove me batty. Jack whined and complained and mumbled so much that I had to keep checking to make sure he hadn't suddenly morphed into a teenager. And Ellie redefined the word "brat," pulling out Jared's flowers, dumping things on the floor, and throwing fits over EVERY SINGLE THING. By the end of the night, I was pretty much ready to sell them on eBay. And then Jack came up to me and gave me this.

If you can't tell, there's a heart on it, a drawing of me, a drawing of him, and the words "Jack" and "Mom" - he gave it to me and said, "this says 'Jack loves Mom.'" And, I kid you not people, after he handed it to me he sang a little Mother's Day song they're teaching him at preschool. So I pretty much melted into a little gooey, sappy puddle on the floor. And I remembered why I don't want to sell my kids on eBay. At least not today.

Hoochie Girls

God help me when she becomes a teenager

Smoking Caterpillers, Talking Cats, Birds, and Bees

So we had a kinda surreal day yesterday. Jared got off early from work, so the whole fam went to see "Alice in Wonderland." So tell me, just how the heck did that qualify as a Disney movie? Man, I'm sorry, but that movie (that book, really) is just bizarre. Even Jack turned to me about a half-hour into the movie and said "this is kinda freaky." Gee, really? Just what was freaky about it? You mean the creepy talking cat that kept disappearing? Or the hookah-smoking caterpillar? Or maybe that Alice crossed over a castle moat by stepping on disembodied heads? You think that was kinda freaky? Naaaaaaahhhhhhh.

So, fast forward a couple hours, and we decide it's time to have "the talk" with our kids. I won't get into details on the why we figured it was time - let's just say that Jack uttered the words "well, if it's attached to me, I'm gonna want to play with it! Geez!" So here comes "the talk." Talk about surreal. Clearly, we should have prepared a bit more, because we basically stammered and hemmed and hawed and stuttered about mommies and daddies who love each other and same and different body parts and where babies come from and okay and not-okay touches (and yes, middle-aged Lydia actually giggled when Jared said the word "erection"). And of course the kids saw this as open season for using all the bathroom words they could possibly muster and just thought it was hilarious that they could say "penis" and "vagina" repeatedly without repercussion. So basically I'm hoping we do a little better the next time around. And my apologies in advance if my kids hang out with your kids and start talking about erections. I promise they're not perverts, they just unfortunately have rookies for parents.

A Hiking They Will Go

Jared had the day off yesterday (and I did not), so he and his buddy Matt took the kiddies on a hike to Great Falls, an awesome national park near our house with hiking trails, kayaking, rock climbing, and stuff like that. They had a great time, and Jack, Ellie, Ethan, and Drew managed to find all sorts of nooks and crannies to discover.

Male Bonding

Ellie got invited to a girls-only sleepover tonight, so Jack and I got to hang out. Since he said hanging out with just me would be "boring," we invited cousin Craig to hang. And thus, my introduction to all things regarding 4-year-old male bonding. I felt much like Jane Goodall studying the chimpanzees. And witnessed pretty similar hygiene habits. Here are a few tidbits from my anthropological study:

1. Four-year-old boys take great pride in their burping, and in fact have several varieties. But their artistic beauty can only be appreciated in public places.

2. Nothing is funnier than throwing things at each other. Except maybe throwing things down the stairs. If you can throw something at the other person AND make it ricochet down the stairs? Well, that's just elegant is what that is.

3. There is apparently a song called "Aunt Lydia Wears Dad's Underwear." Believe it or not, it's got several verses.

4. Four-year-old boys think it's perfectly appropriate, and even impressive, to lick their own toes.

5. It's quite hysterical to watch the bad guys in "Home Alone" get hit in the testicles. Repeatedly.

6. If the nice Indian couple at the Dairy Queen tries to come over and tell you you're two cute little boys? Well, of course you must stare at them. Then laugh. Then tell them they talk funny.

7. It's not, NOT, I say, appropriate to use one's napkin to wipe one's mouth. That's what a shirtsleeve if for, people. And if a middle-aged mom tells you that perhaps a napkin would be advisable? Well, then of course, you must tell her that she's got an alien poopy head.

What a lovely couple

Yeah, my kid's the one in the skirt. That's right.

How'd you do?

Just took this civics quiz - I didn't pass with flying colors (82%, or 27 out of 33), but at least I passed. Phew! Now I don't need to move to Canada! How'd you do?

Here's the link:
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

And here's the article talking about how poorly incoming college freshmen do on a similar test:
http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-colleges-get-failing-grades-on-civics/19430737?icid=main|aim|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fopinion%2Farticle%2Fopinion-colleges-get-failing-grades-on-civics%2F19430737

Happy Easter!

(And a Happy General Conference to my LDS friends)

Preparing for the Easter egg hunt with the cousins

Lookin' for loot

They just love when Mom takes pictures - can you tell?

My brother John and sister-inlaw Remi hosted Easter dinner - it was lovely!

And the company was great

And spring has also sprung! Time for the flowers!

Easter Pet Peeve

OK, this is a big pet peeve of me, directed at my fellow Mormons.

What the heck do you have against Easter?

For some reason, despite the fact that our church is centered around Jesus, and His atoning sacrifice for us, many Mormons tend to totally overlook Easter - you know, the celebration of Jesus's atoning sacrifice for us. Walk into an LDS church around Easter, and I bet you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and any other Sunday. Sure, they'll talk about Jesus, but that happens every Sunday. I bet you probably won't even hear the word "Easter" more than once or twice. And if you talk to a lot of LDS families about how they'll celebrate Easter, beyond egg hunts if they have small kids, you probably won't hear much.

So what the heck do they have against Easter?

You see, I have a different perspective. Despite the fact that I was raised LDS, we spent almost every Easter down at our weekend home, which is nearby my mom's families' weekend homes. So we'd go to Easter services at my grandfather's Episcopalian church. Although it was a bit alien to us (I never did figure out when to sit, stand, or kneel), we always got a kick out of how big a deal they made out of Easter. Big, floppy hats, flowery dresses, packed church, "Easter, Easter, Easter" all the time. It was a BIG deal. Not to mention the sunrise service co-sponsored by the Episcopalian and Baptist churches, the big Easter egg hunts, the family dinners, you name it. So we grew up thinking of Easter as a very important holiday (as it should be for Christians, people!). So then I went away to BYU for undergrad, and my first Easter? They had a missionary farewell. Literally only mentioned that it was Easter once. Huh?

Check out this article from the Deseret News - http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700021832/BYU-study-Disconnect-between-Mormons-and-Easter.html?pg=1 - BYU professor did a survey of LDS families and their celebration of and understanding of Easter. The respondents to the survey "ranked their families' celebration of Easter a distant third behind Christmas and Thanksgiving, with only "slightly more planning than the Fourth of July," he said. There's no formal church-wide celebration of Easter, "fewer than half read the Easter story at home or knew when Easter was this calendar year. Only one in six discussed or reviewed the events of the Passion week. Only one in 19 discussed the Triumphal Entry. These participants sent a consistent message from their candid answers: The celebration of Easter among the Latter-day Saints receives little attention beyond a regular Sunday worship service."

Sorry, people, but something's wrong when my Muslim and Jewish neighbors mention Easter to me more often than my Mormon friends do.

OK, end of rant.

Why Sisters Are Cool

Because as long as my sisters are crafty, my kids still get cool-looking stuff like this! Check out what my sister-inlaw Lindsey made for the kids.

Aren't those the cutest things? The closest I could get to making those is to making out a check to someone who actually has some skill. Jack and Ellie have been showing their friends these all day.

Ellie is going through a stage where she thinks it's funny not to smile in pictures. Precious, huh.

My Name is Lydia....

...and I'm a chocoholic.

Now, just wait a minute there. I know that 75% of women claim to be chocoholics. But they're wrong. They just LIKE chocolate. They may even LOVE chocolate. But they're not chocoholics. They don't worship chocolate. They don't dream of chocolate. They don't wish that chocolate could come in man form so that they could marry chocolate. Unless those things are true, don't bring your fake-ass chocolate addictions to me. I'm in the big leagues here.

If you have done one of the following, you can be my sister in chocolate addiction:

(1) When I'm dieting (which is all the time), I will forgo meals so that I can save up enough calories for chocolate. Back in my single days, I would have a Slimfast (chocolate) shake for breakfast and lunch, so that I could later on have a Dairy Queen blizzard (chocolate with peanut butter cups).
(2) My vitamins are chocolate-flavored.
(3) I have to literally throw chocolate in the trash so that I won't eat it. (Just threw out 6 Reese peanut butter eggs after I had downed 5 in 5 minutes.)
(4) Worse, I have to pour nasty things over it in the trash, or else I will later retrieve aforementioned chocolate from the trash. (Just had to do that too.)
(5) I bake almost daily - under the guise of being a loving mom - just so I have chocolate items to eat.
(6) Being that loving mom, I will often hide chocolate from my children so I can eat it all.
(7) Much like Alex Keaton's alcoholic uncle on a very special "Family Ties," if I don't have chocolate readily available in the house, I'll search up and down in every nook and cranny to find something chocolate - chocolate chips, Hershey's syrup, you name it.
(8) My 10 extra pounds can be SOLELY attributed to chocolate. Even when Ellie was a baby and I used to call it "baby weight"? Nah. It was chocolate.
(9) I want chocolate right now.

So go ahead. Bring it on if you think you can play in my chocolate dojo.