A toothless old man

Well I guess Jacob isn't an old man but definitely toothless. He pulled his latest one out because it was a little loose. He wanted me to do it but I refused and told him to wait for his dad. He was impatient and got a towel and did it himself. That kid is crazy tough. Here he is with his bath beard - I am sure one day he will be embarrassed to see that he enjoyed bubble baths even at the ripe old age of six. Tonight in his prayer he said "we thank thee for letting us be here on earth, and we are happy that we didn't chose to follow Satan".

Here is Spencer in a pair of his favorite pajamas - I think it is time for the size 24 month pajamas to be passed on. In the bearded picture Pence looks a little drugged, but I promise he isn't.



Here are a couple of pictures of a hottie named Khuong. We went away for the weekend without the kids - it was WONDERFUL!!! We did normal boring things like hang out. Of course we kept score

Event/Score K-Khuong, L-Lauren

*Ping Pong - K-6, L-1
Biking - K-super slow, L-kicked trash
Racquetball - K-5, L-0
**Kickball - K-4, L-0
Naps - K-0, L-2 (kicked trash again)

Oh so on paper I didn't do so good, but I was rockin at biking. I kept having to wait for K and when I asked him why he was going so slow. His answer was "because he fell once". PLEASE - of course I had to start cracking up!! Then I informed him that I fell once too. We traded stories and decided that my experience was more perilous, but his was obviously more life changing. I had some crappy girls bike (I don't think I've ever had a girls bike) - in the end Khuong traded me for his bike.

*Ping Pong - I did lose A LOT!! It is probably more pathetic that I made him play all the games left handed. In my defense he spent the 4 years of medical school perfecting his game. In the tournament in medical school he won first place and on a cruise won second place. He practically a professional

**Kickball was AWESOME!!! This game of kickball was like none you have ever played. We created this game in the racquetball court. You play it just like racquetball but with your feet. You have to serve it and kick it back on the wall after the first bounce. It probably sounds lame but it rocked.

The Smalley Clan

This last week I had the Smalley kids while their parents went house hunting in Utah. We of course had lots of fun, and then there were those moments of intense drama. This is a picture of day one - I should have known that it was a foreshadow of how dirty everyday was going to be. I truely was in awe at how dirty David could get - needless to say baths were mandatory every night. Spencer was mighty dirty before this picture, but he HAD to take a bath because the dirt was bugging him. I should have gotten a picture of the bath water.


This is some of the water fun that we had. I am sure the playset was not intended for this use, but what the heck!! David's white swim truncks will never be the same - sorry Julie. On Saturday the kids were outside for about 8 hours - the weather was really perfect this week. On Sunday it poured - perfect timing.



SLEEPOVER!! I think the defenition of a sleepover is that you all sleep in the same bed. What can I say, most of the nights the four oldest slept in the same bed. They really, really wanted to. We did seperate them one night because they were getting up too early. When the kids are down in the basement playing at 5 am something has to be done. I gave them a rule that they couldn't get out of bed if it wasn't light outside. They managed to stay in bed until 6 am every other morning. Jacob thought it was so cool to tell me "we got up in the middle of the night to play". Poor Becka - she was falling asleep by 9am on the way to the gym.

We ate smoothies I think 4 of the days. We got to create our own - marshmellows, bananas, apples, blackberries, blueberries, rasberries, strawberries (these 4 were frozen), chocolate syrup, oranges (I know - yuck!) milk, and ice cream. The kids were really creative. By the end of the week we ran out of supplies and it was just berries, ice cream and milk. In this picture they are all showing off their berry mustaches.

David did a LOT of eating. Here he is downing a papaya. When it was all gone K said "that kid ate more than half of it." For those of you who went to Ecuador you know what papaya does to you. I had to change a blow out the next day. No more papaya for you David!! My neighbor is in love with this cute boy.

Spencer and Becca being soo cute.


The week is over and Jacob and Spencer cried when they all left. Jacob loved having Sarah to play with. Everyday he would ask "how long until 4pm" - he would aske this several times until Sarah got off the bus. Spencer loved all of the company. I can honestly say that I would have 5 kids in a heartbeat. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun.

NAP

I will admit it - I like to take naps. I had an excuse for taking one this week - I was tired. I sat on my window seat so I could see all the kids outside - there were 8 of them out there. Then I dozed off. I could hear them playing and talking and every once in a while I would hear the word "cookies". When I finally really started to pay attention and look out I saw that they had filled up our empty sand turtle with mud and were making "cookies". They had also make mud sculptures. Then mine started to put their hand prints on the wall and smear mud on the door so on and so forth. I of course put a stop to it and then I went to do something. When I returned to glance out the window the two oldest girls were holding Pence up to my neighbors pool (it is an above ground one) so he could wash his hands in the pool. I of course watched it all happen just to make sure Pence's big head did not pull him over the edge. Then I had to go outside and discuss appropriate behavior with the kids. I seem to have to do this on a regular basis. Last year Pence decided to pee from the top of our play structure - he thought it was hilarious. These are pictures of some of the hand prints on the wall and the door. Khuong told me to take the pics, but I had already started to wash them off so the pictures are really faint. The door was especially caked in mud.


This is the door - can you see the smiley face one of the kids drew?

This is just to show that everyone loves my new chair!!

Book Tag

Melissa tagged me a while back. The rules are

1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog
5. Tag 5 people

Right now I have the 2nd Fablehaven book - the fifth sentence reads

"The platform was high enough to see over the nearest treetops down the slope from the cabin, which extended their view quite a distance."

definitely does not give away the ending.

Interestingly enough I picked up Jacobs BOM (the missionary ones) and the fifth sentence is

"O my brethren, hearken unto my words; arouse the faculties of your souls; shake yourselves that ye may awake from the slumber of death; and loose yourselves from the pains of hell that ye may not become angels to the devil, to be cast into that lake of fire and brimstone which is the second death."

I thought that was a pretty good fifth sentence - one that I better heed.

FAMILY

It was so much fun to have our family down for a week. The hit of the week was Daphne - we had never met her. She is of course so cute and the boys are in love with her. They wanted to sleep with her and hold her. Baby Spencer was fascinated with her bodily functions of course. He introduced her to all the neighborhood kids as "the baby who sometimes farts!" That is my boy - all into the stinky part of life. He actually says that his talent is being stinky. He also succeeded in irritating Uncle Spencer by calling him Uncle Daniel - to which Big Spencer would say - "stop calling me Daniel - my name is Spencer like yours", the kid is dense and kept on doing it. Above is a picture of the Daphinator in her little Easter hoodie. She is a whole 4 months and such a HAPPY and CUTE baby!!




We ventured to Philadelphia and DC. My heart is always so full when walking in DC. We walked to pretty much every monument and memorial. We were sooo tired by the end of the day. We stayed at the McFad's house and kept Joseph up really, really, really, late (sorry Michelle - it was totally Khuong). The big boys stayed up till like 4 playing Settlers of Catan. The next day we went to DC again and were much less productive. We got into the Natural History Museum, stopped by the money printing place, and the Holocaust Museum. That was a wonderful experience for us and the kids.

Settlers of Catan was the game of the week - I think only one night went by where we or K and S didn't play. Every night was a party - I would have to go to bed at like 2 or 3 - but the crazy big boys were up really late every night.


Here the boys are doing some Spiderman thing on the White House fence - that is how we enjoy history!! (This picture also tells me that K needs some new pants that maybe don't tapper so much - what can I say all his clothes are hand me downs)

This picture is seriously AWESOME!! I would like to introduce you to Spencer - this is kind of what he looks like having a tantrum. Sadly this is not really a tantrum - this is the picture of him after eating it by the reflecting pool. It was kind of funny. It took him a while after lying on the ground face down to decide that he was going to react with such feeling. Jacob was a little jealous that he didn't get to fall down and get dirty. He immediately tried to lie down and roll in the dirt, but Khuong caught him at his knees. Poor Jacob - if only he had executed his plan faster.



Big Pence, Daphne, and Sarah

Grandma, Sarah, and the kids (that little carrier for Daphne was awesome - she loved it)

I loved this picture of Jacob and Spencer - it was at the WWII memorial. If you look closely you can see Spencer is hooked up to Grandma's iPod - it was awesome because he was so quite while he was plugged in.

These are Jacob's little fingers.

It was a week filled with sleeping and playing. Grandma got sick and spent the four days after DC in bed. She finally felt better when she was leaving - lame!! We did get to hit the two dollar theatre the night before she left - 27 dresses was pretty good. I have come to understand that I kind of go into a depressed funk when they all leave, not to mention Khuong and I were crazy tired for like 3 days after they left.

DC

Jackie Joe was down in DC for a convention for work and we went to visit. Did I mention that Jackie is my favorite friend in the whole world!! Her hotel was really close to the Pentagon and had a really good view of the whole Mall/Strip (whatever it is called). Jacob kept getting excited when we would see the Washington Memorial - which was quite a lot. We stayed with her in her hotel and went SWIMMING!! The kids were CRAZY for it!!

Here are the kids and Jackie in the Native American Museum. It was kind of awesome! They opened the museum only for J and her convention - there were like 300 of us. When we walked in they had four men chanting along with beating a drum - it sounded like a pow wow - it was really cool. Then we listened to a speaker had some refreshments and had the run of the place. We got to tag along with J, so we felt like celebrities.



One afternoon the boys and I went to the Natural History Museum - we were there for over 2 hours. Jacob really wanted to go to the Lincoln Memorial but we just didn't have the time. We rode the metro which is an adventure in itself. Of course the dinosaurs were a bit hit. Spencer was really loving the sharks and he kept calling me over to see something really fascinating - like squirrel bones!:) Jacob liked everything but really wanted to see some snakes. There were some snake bones and some live tarantulas that kept him happy. We did not go into the butterfly thing - it was too expensive - I plan on going when it is free. We did get to peek through the window and saw a 5 inch wide butterfly - it looked pretty awesome in there.




We were able to visit the temple - next time J and I will get to do a session. This time we just hung out in the visitors center.



Jacobo and Spencer with Helaman's 2000 sons


Friday night we crashed at the McFad's house and K came down. J left early sat morning. I slept in while the men went to play soccer - they took the boys (Joseph does it every Sat morning - what a treat for Michelle). Michelle had arranged for a babysitter so we all went and did a session. We then ate at Cheesecake Factory which was some serious grub. I of course was a huge pig and helped everyone finish theirs - I had to try it all. We left with cheesecake to go - mine was banana and it was really good, k even liked it. That night Michelle and I left the men to naps and movies while we went to visit Cyndi and Calvin (Brandon) Stanford (some things from the mission will never be forgotten). It was a lot of fun, but we kept her up till 11pm (needless to say we did not make the trip home sat night). All in all an excellent week.

K is 32!!

What an old fart!! He even has started complaining about his white hair and how he needs to start coloring it. Please - men look sexy with the salt - women on the other hand. You should all be proud that I remembered K's b-day. I am known to forget them all (including my own) - I put his in my cell phone to remind me. Now the question is will I remember his next b-day on April 6th. For those who don't know - k's b-day was April 6th his whole life. Then at 19 his mom found this document from Vietnam saying it was Mar 11th (some of his legal docs had mar 11th and some April 6th). He then changed his b-day legally, and had all his documents changed. So I am not so bad - I always remembered it as April 6th and he has two we get to celebrate. LUCKY MAN!! WE LOVE YOU KHUONG!!