New members of the family

For about the past 3 years my kids have been asking me if they can have a pet. Well finally that day has come. A friend of ours who recently moved away left us the fish tank along with 2 gold fish. The boys were soooo excited for their new pets. They are doing a great job of taking care of them. I was hoping that getting the fish would dispel their hopes of having other pets but I'm afraid it has only intensified them. They want a dog named Bolt, a cat named Mittens and a hamster named Rhino. (If you've seen Bolt you know what I am talking about.) That's not all. Ben also wants a pet bumble bee of all things! And the other day he said that he wants a baby whale and a baby elephant! He's just going to have to be happy with a visit to the zoo and the aquarium every once in a while for that. As far as the dog, cat and hamster go there is only so much we can do in an apartment. They know that the dog and the cat for sure have to wait until we get a house. Whew! That buys a little time. And I am just not ready to own a rodent yet. I really have to get over my fear first. I could maybe do a hamster in a year or two. We'll see. For now, we will just enjoy the fish!

Here are the boys trying hard to make their best fish faces. . .

The creativity of kids

The other day I dropped a whole bunch of q-tips on the floor and my initial reaction was to just pick them up and throw them away but before I could even reach for them Ben grabbed them and took them to the table. He proceeded to arrange the q-tips into different shapes. I just sat and watched him in amazement as he played and created.

Here is the proud architect and the finished product! I love the creativity of kids!

Trip to Arizona

Last week I decided to go visit my sister and her family in Arizona. Jim was in the middle of finals and I just needed a break from this place. My mom flew to LA and drove with me. Thank you so much mom! You're the best! I don't think I would have made the 6 hour drive with 3 kids alone. We had such a fun time. My boys absolutely adore my sisters three girls! Oh and don't let me forget their dog Missy. They would not leave the poor dog alone. You know how some people say that they are baby hungry, well, my boys are "dog" hungry! They are always telling me that they want a dog. Luckily I can use the apartment excuse for a few more years. They'll just have to wait. The day after we got home Luke went to our front door and said, "Go see Missy!" He just doesn't quite get the concept of having to drive 6 hours to see Missy. Luckily I distracted him with something else and he soon forgot about it - until he saw the pics of Missy on the computer! We had a great time while we were there. We went swimming a lot. . .

We played with the dog. . .

And had a blast playing with our cousins!

Thanks Pam and family for a great time :)

Lessons Learned

In the last 24 hours I have learned a few lessons - some are hard lessons learned and some are fairly easy lessons learned.

Lesson #1 - Close your garage door when you go out. If you don't you might get stuff stolen from the homeless people who decided to take up residency in the abandoned parking garage nearby. Yes, this happened to me yesterday between the hours of 3-6pm. In the middle of the day! I went out and didn't shut my garage door and when I returned all of our camping gear and supplies had been stolen along with 12 gallons or so of our emergency water storage. I called the police, of course, and apparently this is a common occurrence around here. Big surprise huh! (I guess I need to add theft to my list of crazy things that have happened to us in L. A. from the previous post.) I am not totally sure that it was the homeless people but who else would steal camping gear and gallons of water!?

Lesson #2 - Don't say things that you don't want your kids to say. I don't even remember saying this but I guess I called one of my kids a "freakin monkey" probably when they were climbing all over me like I was a tree. Or maybe it was Jim who said it, who knows. But anyway, Ben has been saying it all morning. It is especially embarrassing when he says it to other people. I can't really say anything to him about it like "we don't say that word" because if I do that will only make him want to say it more and how can I say that to him when he heard it from me. At least he's not dropping the F-bomb or anything like that. I know for a fact that he has never heard that in our house. Now once we walk outside our door it is a different story, but if "freakin" is the worst thing he is saying I think we are doing pretty good. Like the time when Jimmy was playing a little game he made up by putting B's in front of every word he said including the word "kitchen." I told him not to say it so, of course, he said it again. Luckily, he was pretty mature about it when I told him that it was a bad word and he stopped saying it. I'm not sure if Ben would understand as well as Jimmy did though. They are really like little sponges soaking up EVERYTHING they hear so I better watch what I say!

Lesson #3 - Don't believe everything that you hear. Last Sunday we had a 5.0 earthquake which shook me up a lot. (Yet another thing to add to my Crazy L. A. list!) Back in the fall I barely felt a minor earthquake that we had. But since last Sunday we have had a couple more earthquakes, which I haven't felt, but other people have. So every time it comes up in a conversation people keep telling me that they have predicted the L. A. is expected to have a huge 9.0 or 10.0 any day now. (Yea, and L. A. is going to fall into the ocean! Whatever!) At first, it freaked me out a little bit but then I realized that most people don't really know and they really have no way of predicting earthquakes so I better not lose sleep over some crazy stuff that people say.

Lesson #4 - It is okay to put my kids in front of the TV for a little while so I can catch up on stuff. I usually limit the TV watching my kids do to like an hour a day and I try to save it up for when I am making dinner. But with all of the earthquakes and robberies going on around here, I have been a little stressed and when I get stressed I have a really hard time keeping my house clean. And because it is a mess I get more stressed and it is just a vicious cycle. So finally this morning, I decided to turn on the TV for the kids so I could just clean my house. I got so much done. After about an hour the kids lost interest in TV so I just gave Ben a spray bottle and a rag and he was a great little helper "wiping" up all of the spots on the kitchen and bathroom floor. A spray bottle is a great toy for a 3 year old! Remember that the next time you have to clean and you need something to entertain your kids with!

Crazy L.A.

We have lived in L. A. for almost 9 months now and it seems like every day brings a new adventure. There is always something (or someone) interesting to see here. I'm not complaining. I'm actually starting to like it here. I think it is because in the last 9 months the only time we have had to get our winter coats out was for our trip to Utah in December. Other than that, it has been jacket weather all winter. I really love that! Not only that but all of the other crazy stuff that we see here makes for great conversations and good laughs. Here are just a few of the things we've seen and experienced here in L. A.

• A serenade of sirens going by our apartment building multiple times a day. I don't even want to know where they are going!
• Police and news choppers hovering over our heads a few times a week. Again, I don't want to know!
• A protest blocking traffic on the way to dinner on a Friday night. This is a common occurrence here.
• Don't even get me started about the traffic! It's a nightmare!!
  
• A crazy homeless lady banging her cane into the side walk over and over again. She was really mad about something!
• R-rated billboards (okay, pg-13 by the world's standards but R-rated by mine.)
  
• The most rude drivers I've ever seen in my life!
• A water bottle filled with urine on the sidewalk (I'm pretty sure it was urine. I kept my distance.)
• People selling medical marijuana at the beach.
  
• Also, at the same beach, a closed bathroom because someone found a dirty syringe.
• Rats! I know that rats are in the city but I really didn't expect to see them climbing on my apartment building at night. I don't go out much at night for this reason! They better not get in my apartment or I think I will go ballistic!
• More "plastic" people than I have ever seen in my whole life.
  
• Famous people at church. Yes, apparently Rick Schroeder is a member of the church and he was at our sacrament meeting last week.
• Today I saw some idiot standing on the side of the road right in front of a car trying to turn right. I was behind the car trying to turn. He was just standing there with his arms up in the air like he was calling the guy on or something. Finally after like a minute of just standing there he moved. I didn't stick around to see what happened after that. I really wonder what planet some people live on! Oh yea, I forgot, it's called Los Angeles!
  

My little tornado!

People often ask me how I stay thin after having 3 babies. Well, I can sum up the answer in four words - LUKE, BEN, AND JIMMY! Especially Luke! I am amazed at how much a 19 month old toddler can keep me running around like a crazy woman! He always manages to be about 10 steps ahead of me. Here is an example. Today at lunch, I fixed Luke and Ben their lunch and sat them down to eat. Then I started fixing my own lunch. When it was ready I set my plate down on the table. Then I got up because I realized that I forgot my drink. While I was up Luke started throwing his plate and food - this means that he is done. So I got him out of his seat. I had only taken about 3 bites of my food at this point. Upon getting him out of his seat I realized that he had a poopy diaper, so I took him to his room to change it. Then I made my way to the kitchen with the diaper to put it in a plastic bag so I could drop it in the garbage. While I was getting the bag from under the sink, I noticed that Luke was climbing on the table about to dump my food on the ground. With bag in hand I got Luke off the table. When I turned around again, he was getting into the cleaners and plastic bags that were under the sink (I forgot to shut the cupboard door when I went to get Luke off the table). So I went to shut the cupboard door. Then I finally threw the diaper away and sat down to eat my lunch, which, after changing a poopy diaper was not very appetizing at all. I took 2 more bites and then noticed that Luke was getting in the garbage to retrieve the very same poopy diaper. Well, I had to put a stop to that, of course, so once again my lunch was put on hold. I got him away from the garbage then sat down again. This time, I was interrupted by Ben. He had opened both drawers of my filing cabinet and it was starting to tip over. I went to his rescue and turned around to discover that Luke was on the table AGAIN!! So by this time I just threw my hands up in the air and laughed a little (because if I didn't laugh I would cry). Then I took him to his room and shut the door and tried to choke down the cold, left over chicken from last night. I ate every bite because I knew that I would need the energy to get through the rest of the day.

Here are some pics of the little rascal getting in to trouble. Seriously, I don't know what to do with this kid sometimes. He is not the least bit interested in real toys. Why??? I don't get it. He only wants to play with whatever he knows he is not supposed to have. Does anyone out there have any suggestions of how I can keep this kid under control without destroying everything I own!? I will welcome any advice or ideas! Please help me!

The minute he goes into Jimmy and Ben's room he goes straight to the ladder and climbes to the top bunk. I just know that it is only a matter of time before he breaks a bone.

L. A. Zoo

Last week was Jim's spring break. However, it wasn't much of a break because he was on campus writing a paper 4 out of the 5 days. We decided that we definitely needed a family day to do something fun together at least one of those days so we went to the zoo. It was so much fun and the kids loved it. I really like the L. A. Zoo because they had so many cool and different animals that I had never heard of. When we were observing the monkeys I couldn't believe how much they resembled my kids - not in appearance, of course, only in behavior. Who needs to go to the zoo when you have your own at home, right!


The giraffes were pretty fun to watch. We got to see them really close up and there was one giraffe who was trying so hard to get the leaves from the tree. He needed to be just a few inches taller, but he managed to get a couple leaves by stretching his tongue really far. I didn't realize how long their tongues were! It was entertaining to watch him for a while, but I felt really bad for him when he couldn't reach.