April's Family Adventure Day!

In April, for our FAD, we decided to take the advice of Elder Gary E. Stevenson from the most recent General Conference, and take our children to the Temple. Elder Steven said:

The First Presidency has invited “adult members to have a current temple recommend and visit the temple more often” where time and circumstance permit and encouraged members “to replace some leisure activities with temple service.” They also encouraged “newer members and youth of the Church who are 12 years of age and older to live worthy to assist in this great work by serving as proxies for baptisms and confirmations.” Even our young children have been encouraged to visit the temple grounds and touch the temple. President Thomas S. Monson once counseled, “As we touch the temple, the temple will touch us.”

And now, what you've all been waiting for...

An update on the weaning process!

We're done. She's weaned. I'm FREEEEEE!!! She nursed for the last time last Wednesday, and it's kind of been a rough process. I'm not sure if it would have been better to just do it cold turkey. Because she went through withdrawals every time I dropped a nursing. And now that she's done I can tell she's still a little miffed at me. She hasn't forgotten about it quite yet. I remember the intense feeling of relief and freedom I felt when Caleb was weaned. I felt like a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders. And now that Grace is done...

I'm sad.

I miss it.

I know...looking back at this post, and this post, you would not think that I would be the least bit sad, but I am. I think the reason for this is that Caleb had no problem drinking formula, and then later milk. Grace still thinks that milk is "death juice." She just does not care for it at all. So the relief that I should be feeling is overshadowed with worry that she's not getting enough nutrients or calories. So, all I can do now is keep feeding her cheese and yogurt, and hope that she'll warm up to the milk once she forgets what breast milk tastes like.

I am, however, highly enjoying eating whatever the heck I want to!! Within reason, of course...


(yes, I know she's holding a toilet plunger)

And now that we've made it through weaning Grace, we now have to think about weaning Caleb....from this:



Yes, Caleb still has a binky. But, in my defense, he only has it for naps and bedtime. But still. He's almost three and a half years old. I have a feeling that when Glen is with the kids while I'm gone next weekend, the binky is going to mysteriously disappear. I'm just happy that I won't be around for that. May the Force be with you, Glen.

Camping

In the almost 6 years that Glen and I have been married, we have only been camping once. One time. And it was before the kids were born. Sometimes we wonder why we don't camp more. And then we watched this:



Oh yeah, that's why.

(No offense to those who love to camp. I'm positive we will still camp at some point in the future, and we may even enjoy it. Maybe...)

Family Adventure Day!

Glen and I had a conversation a few weeks ago about how our house has been consuming our lives since we moved in, and we never have any family fun. So we have declared one Saturday a month to be an official Family Adventure Day (or FAD, kind of a lame abbreviation, I know)!

Our first adventure was a couple of weeks ago. There is a community center in a city north of us that has an awesome indoor pool with a water slide, lazy river, and little kids play area. We realized immediately how sheltered and unadventurized (yes I made that up) our kids are, because, no joke, it took us 45 minutes to get Caleb to step a foot in the pool. 45 minutes.

This is where he sat for those 45 minutes:



Then, Glen picked him up and tried to get him to have fun on this delightful looking contraption:



The boy. went. nuts. We're talking full out Tasmanian devil thrashing, folks. He ran down the steps so fast he ended up slipping like three times, scraping his knee and getting all kinds of bruises.





Somehow, Glen was able to coax Caleb into putting his feet in the water. And then he sat down in the shallow part and actually enjoyed splashing, but he would not let Glen move from this position:




And that's where Caleb played for 8 minutes before family swim was over and it was time to go home. All things considered, we had a good time, and hopefully it won't take Caleb more than 30 minutes to get in the pool next time.

Grace was a little nervous about the water at first. Mostly, I think, because it was a bit chilly. But she warmed up to it and had a good time. Here are some pictures of her in all her cute Gracieness.

He's on a roll

Caleb provides a lot of comic relief around here. He seriously just says the darnedest things!

He's had a thing lately with calling Glen and me by names other than "Daddy" and "Mommy." Here are just a few:

We had all just come home from someplace, and as I was getting Caleb out of his car seat, he randomly said, "I want Glen to get me out."

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Also Glen and I rarely call each other by our first names, and Caleb picks this up too. The other day after Glen left for work, Caleb looks around and asks, "Where's Honey? Where did Honey go?"

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This one is my favorite - We all have our usual seats at the table, but sometimes Glen and I will change seats so he can constantly put pieces of food on Grace's tray and pick them up when she throws them off. The other morning at breakfast, Caleb was having a hard time with the fact that we weren't in our usual seats. He said to Glen, "Hey that's Sister Thomas's chair, Daddy. You're in Sister Thomas's chair!"

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A few more Calebisms for your (but mostly my) enjoyment:

Me: "Caleb, are you my little cutey guy?"
Caleb: "No, I'm a penguin."

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Glen: "Caleb, tomorrow we're going to go swimming in the swimming pool!"
Caleb: "No, I don't get my hair wet. I need to keep it clean."

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Sometimes I sing wierd little songs to Caleb and Grace. Today, I was singing a little diddy that went like this, "I love Caleb, yes I do. He's my little coochy-coochy-coo."
Caleb: "No, I'm not a little coochy-coochy-coo."
Me: "Oh, you're not? Well what are you?"
Caleb: "I'm a big coochy-coochy-coo!"



P.S. I know you're all dying to know how weaning Grace is going. It's going...I'll post about it soon...