My Valentine

This is a picture taken over 10 years ago when Aaron and I had just gotten engaged. Now six kids later I love and appreciate him a whole lot more. Aaron was out of town the three days before Valentines day which meant that by valentines day I was tired and a bit grumpy but very grateful to have such a wonderful husband. Love you Aaron

Happy Birthday Maddie

I wanted to write about my kids on their birthdays this year and I am a little late for Madeleine but I am a little late for everything these days so it seems fitting enough. Maddie turned 7 on January 21st. She is our third child (I am a third child too) and has been a sweet loving child from the time she was a baby. Maddie is our "shy" one and has a very hard time talking to people outside our family, even people she knows well. A month after she became a "sunbeam" her teachers asked me if she was able to talk and not much has changed since.
This year she is in first grade and 2 months into the school year her teacher told me that she had asked Maddie a question and Maddie answered her and one of the kids in the class said "Maddie can talk!". Then all the other kids started cheering her for learning how to talk. The mother of one of the other kids in the class later told me that her son came home that day and when she asked what happened at school he said that they found out that Maddie could talk.


The Funny thing is that Maddie can be quite the chatterbox when she feels comfortable. We have a harder time getting her to stop talking at home and she expresses her opinions quite loudly when she is upset. We still worry that she doesn't say anything when someone does something to upset her unless she feels comfortable with the adults around (which she usually doesn't) but she is working on it and doing great.
Maddie is a girly girl and loves pretty things. She spends a lot of her time dressed up and in the middle of some sort of imaginary game, usually involving princesses or cheerleaders or rockstars. She loves to read, to put on plays and talent shows, to play soccer and do help take care of the people around her. She is a great little girl and we hope she doesn't grow up too fast. Love you Maddie

Four Eyes

I had the fun and joy of taking my four oldest kids to the eyedoctor yesterday and the day before. The oldest three are already in glasses and Liam desperately wants them. Anyway, the girls were pretty normal for their exams. Gwen chatted and laughed at the Doctor's jokes and told him he was funny like her dad. Maddie wouldn't answer the questions about what letter she saw unless it was me asking her and then she said them very quietly which was a bit frustrating. Brock and Liam were kind of a riot. Brock went first and kept peppering the doctor with questions or his own facts about the science of eyes and seeing. I didn't understand half of what he was saying (stuff about rods and cones and reflection etc.) but the eye doctor thought it was great and kept complimenting him on his knowledge (great for his already huge ego). The funny thing that happened was during Brock's least favorite part, the light in the eye part (he has really light sensitive eyes) During the exam Brock said, "Are you just hurting me or are you doing something else?" He wasn't being sarcastic, he was completely serious and both me and the eye doctor found it pretty funny.

Liam never stopped talking from the time they called his name. He asked all sorts of questions, kept messing with the machines and was very 4. When he was doing the eye test if the letter was an L I A or M Liam had to comment on the fact that it was in his name and where it fit in his name. There are a lot of L's A's and M's and every time Liam would pull his face out of those big glasses things to talk about the fact that it was in his name. But the funniest thing with Liam was when the doctor asked if he had allergies. Liam told him that he was allergic to cat poop. when asked further about it (mainly to ask if he had ever eaten it) Liam siad that when he smells cat poop he sneezes. I don't know where he gets this stuff but I think he is fun to have around. Never a dull moment.

Superheroes

My family (the Cardons) do a family newsletter each month and we have a topic to write about. This month's topic was "if you could be any superhero, who would you be and why? I did this topic with Aaron and the kids and I was pretty amused by the answers. I thought that they would choose an existing superhero but the kids took the question to mean that you got to make up and name your own. here is our newsletter submission:

Liam: Tiger boy, the ability to act like a tiger and bite off bad guys heads, and throw them up in the air and pull off their arms and legs when I see a bad guy.

Maddie: Jungle girl with the ability to turn into any jungle animal. This way I can turn into a lot of animals and get rid of bad guys.

Gwen: Poison girl with the ability to throw poison at people and if I do they will die. I am not the hero, I am a villain and will throw poison at Brock.

Brock: Time traveling animorph with the ability to travel through time and morph into different animals. I want to be able to kick Gwen/poison girl into the first century.

Mia: Invisigirl with the ability to be invisible so that people don’t see that I am always naked.

Evie: Optimist Prim ( not to be confused with Optimus Prime) with the ability to spread optimism and cheerfulness throughout the universe.

Mom: Mary Poppins, with the ability to clean rooms with a snap of the finger, have grand adventures and be home by dinnertime, to make children obey without complaint and to look great while doing it.

Dad: Mr. Fantastic, with the ability to stretch my body as far as I want so that I can pick stuff up and do other things without ever having to get up off the couch.

I will admit that I chose the heroes for Mia and Evie. By the way, thank you so much for the topic. The children ran around the house for hours after they chose their powers pretending to be the heroes/villains they had picked. This led to lots of chaos, some injuries and a few time outs.

Stake Conference

Our Stake Conference was a week ago but it has taken me a week to recover from it and I now feel that I can write about it. I am not going to write about the pain and drama that happened while trying to get my family there, I don't know if I will ever recover from that enough to write about it but Conference itself went pretty well. We were on the second row from the podium because Brock was singing and we wanted to see him. We were on the inside which is hard for taking children out and I ended up nursing Evie where we sat because it was too much trouble to get out but everything went pretty smoothly and Liam kept on cracking me up. We let him draw the second hour and he kept on commenting on his drawings so all through the second hour I heard comments like these made in an incredibly loud whisper that I am sure everyone could hear:

"I am going to draw jedi's that fight each other."

"This Jedi has his bones showing, see his bones?"

"I want to draw Jedis but they keep looking like ballerinas." (by the way all his drawings are a big circle with sticks for legs and arms, why he saw ballerinas I don't know but this was the funniest comment)

"This one is too small to be a Jedi, what do I do?" (I pointed out that it could be Annikan as a child)

"Mom look, this Jedi is bad with a red light saber and he tried to kill the good jedi with the green light saber but the good Jedi did this and then he pushed his light saber into the bad jedi's stomach so he is dead" (The crowning comment made at the end of conference complete with actions.)

I never know If I should laugh or cry at conferences like these and this was a relatively good one.

Compliments

So yesterday I was out running errands and I went to the extension office to find some information on 4H. Anyway, the man I talked to was very helpful and after I had finished talking to him he gave me a booklet that Liam insisted on holding. The man said Liam could read it in the car and Liam (after giving his "you're not as intelligent as I had hoped you would be" look) informed him that he was only 4 and did not know how to read but he did know his letters and his mom was teaching him. Liam then looked around the room for something to practice on and saw the labels on the filing cabinets. Coincidentally the ones closest had the words "cat" and "dog" on them so he sounded out d-o-g and put it together and read the word. The man was impressed and asked Liam what his name was, Liam answered verbally and then for good measure spelled his name in sign language. The guy was surprised and said "wow, what a little genius". That is the first time that anyone has ever referred to Liam as a genius without the word "diabolical" attached. Maybe there is hope that he really will grow out of his Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes" personality and someday be an upstanding member of the community.

chickens

Sometimes I wonder if I thrive on stress. I can't think of any other reason for a mom with six kids who has a to do list longer enough to wrap around the outside of the house twice, who can't seem to figure out how to juggle husbands, kids, church, and all the hundreds of things that go with it, and who is always complaining about having no time for herself to suddenly decide to get chickens. We had thought about getting some chickens in the spring when it gets warmer but my obsessive self suddenly kicked in and voila, 24 hours later we have a coop and 3 chickens (Ellinor, Chloe and hawk). So far the kids love going out to look at the chickens and gather their eggs and I have enjoyed the half dozen eggs they have laid so far but sometimes I wonder what is going on in my own head.