Swensen Sentral

1. We got here 2. Ate some good Thai food at Pearls Cafe.  3. Started the house hunt.  4. Had fun. Got excited. Fought a little. Disagreed a little bit lot.  5. Reconciled.  6. And made an offer on 2 great homes!   Now it's waiting time. Hoping for a great Christmas present!

Some boy is going to fall hard for these big brown eyes someday And I'm dying to have her curly hair Hard to believe she was throwing up all night. But after a bath and a little bit of food this morning she is happy as a clam. Wish I cleaned up this well. 

Hey mom, why do I have big squishy things on the bottom of my penis? Life is full of discovery. 

As much as I hate potty training, someday I'm going to miss the cuteness of a little tiny person sitting on a huge toilet looking at a book to pass the time. I probably won't miss wiping bums in the middle of dinner though. 

I have felt a little guilty that I've never volunteered in the kids classes at school. It has always seemed too hard to schedule babysitters for the little ones so I could go in and do that. This year I decided I would go on one Fieldtrip with each of them. Two babysitters during the year didn't seem too much.  Last Friday was Amelie's day. We went to the zoo together. It was fun for me to see her among her peers and get to know the little girls she's always talking about. The thing I noticed most was that several of the other girls' moms were with us as well and they were holding hands half the time and the other half running around with their friends. Amelie on the other hand clung to me most of the time. Holding hands was not close enough for her. She wanted her arm around me and my arm around her. And she didn't seem to care too much about her friends, she was perfectly content to have just me. We had a good time together and I was so glad I took the time to...

One of the cutest things I've heard Soleil say... She's been dressing and undressing like crazy lately. She's taking full advantage of her newfound ability to dress herself and I can't keep clothes on her. One of her favorite things to do is to put on dresses of all kinds: her dresses, Amelie's dresses, princess dresses, whatever is nearby. There's something about a dress that just feels wonderful to her. She loves how they flow around her and most of all she loves to spin around and watch her dress fly out. The other day she asked me (she actually asked) if she could put her princess dress on. I said "no" because was tired of her changing so much. She looked at me, cocked her head to the side, and with a desperate look on her face cried, "But Mom! I NEEEEED to spin! I NEEEED to spin!"  My heart melted. How could I say no to a little girl who just neeeeeds to spin? So she got to spin, and spin, and spin, and spin. And I got a warm feeling in ...

Had so much fun dressing the kids up this year. Chase wanted to be something scary so here is... the Grim Reaper.  Amelie wanted to be pretty for the ward trunk-or-treat and scary for Halloween night so we had... Glinda the Good Witch And a wicked witch  Sawyer couldn't make up his mind. He wanted to be lots of things so we narrowed it down to something scary like Chase and a pirate like dad. So here is our... Captain Hook by Day And Vampire by night Miss Solei-lei found this blonde wig at Walmart and cried when the mean store employee took it off her head and put it back. So of course I had to buy it for her and come up with a costume. Introducing... Miss Marilyn Monroe (complete with personality) I wasn't sure if she would take to the Marilyn idea or insist on being a princess, but as soon as I finished her dress and let her try it on she was hooked and in love with it. Phew! She went around telling EVERYONE who she was "I'm Marelyn Monrose". It was hilarious an...

This inspired an idea...now I have a costume brewing for this one, but I'm gonna have to make it. Stay tuned! And here is Clark Kent, at your service. Sawyer broke his glasses again, for the third time in 2 months, so here's the new frames.  We'll see how long they last! 

So much fun with Heather today and the Nitro Circus crew. We had a blast watching these guys do amazing tricks off this crazy high ramp. 

A true lover of shoes. Should I warn her future husband? Or just let him be surprised.😊  This look is completed with two pink princess band aids (which upon application she immediately stopped crying and said "now it's better!" The BandAid company must have harnessed some kind of magic to throw in those things because they seem to magically heal any wound on a child 5 and under.)

I love the way kids describe things. Almost every day my kids say something funny or something that makes me think differently. Just a few I remember today... After Sawyer got off the toilet he said "the back of my leg hurts. It's like my muscle went away and it's sparkling."  Sawyer very matter of fact, "Sometimes I like the things I don't like and sometimes I don't like the things I do like (sigh)" And he looks at me with these eyes like "you get it right mom? That makes perfect sense to you right?" Sawyer was trying to tell Rick something that happened a few weeks ago but he didn't have the vocabulary so he said "the other day and  the other day and the other day and the other day and the other day and the other day and the other day and the other day and the other day and the other day and the other day and..." seriously said it forever.  Oh there were several more, one from Amelie but I forgot them now. I should write the...

It was a perfect weather day, warm with a breeze. What better way to enjoy it than lazily swinging on the futon? Oh the carefree life of a child. 

I just love Conference! Can't expect them to be reverent the WHOLE time What Sawyer and Soleil were doing during conference I made these conference bingo trays this year. I was tired of the candies falling off the flat sheets every time the kids moved them, so I bought these trays at Dollar Tree and printed the bingo sheets from  http://www.compguy.com/conferencebingo/  and bought 3/4" magnet dots with adhesive on one side from Amazon and a 3/4" hole punch from Michaels and used paper I already had on hand, and put these together. They are working great! The kids get a small candy for a bingo and a big candy for a blackout. They are loving it.  I also printed these conference packets from sugar doodle and had them bound at Kinkos for $6 and added a bunch if blank paper at the end so they can use them for drawing books at church and remember what they did at conference. Thanks to Karl and Virginia for the book idea :)