My kids crack me up!

This picture is for Aunt Melissa. Raelin is walking in your footsteps!

And this was just great! I was cleaning out my closet to make room for a dresser and Ryker came along in his undies and got a hold of my paint ball gun and put the mask on backwards. Notice the cute pink dress up shoes.

I love his stance in this one!

I had to get a picture of the mask from the back too.

One day we had someone out trying to fix some stuff on our house (we inherited the Somers' curse; even new things break down in this family!) and he left an enormous mud pit in our backyard. The kids went out to play in it and Ryker, true to form, really went for it!

He had a great time getting all muddy and sitting in the puddle.Until...

The kids got COLD!

And my kids have the most sympathetic mommy! Instead of helping my kids out of their wet clothes, I instructed them to take them off themselves while I grabbed my camera! I did run them a hot bath after I got some good pictures though.

Here's my little girly-man. Poor kid was doomed from the start--Both mine and Brice's brothers are all in touch with their feminine side in one way or another. Some of them will probably not appreciate me saying so, but it's true!

Doesn't he make a pretty girl though?

Ryker does have a manly side too. Here are the kids taking on the Daddy-Monster. Ryker's got his "shooter" which is an old holster he puts his hand into and fires away.

Haha! They got that monster!

Week of projects and school

These past two weeks have been pretty busy (Is our life ever not? Is your life ever not?). Last weekend was a wonderful opportunity to hear from our new prophet. "Prophet Hinckley" as our kids call him, passed away and President Monson is our new leader. I miss President Hinckley terribly; he's really the only prophet I've ever known and he was the sweetest, kindest, gentlest, wisest man. Love just exuded from him and it was always a privilege to hear from him. On the other hand, we now have President Monson to lead and guide us and he is an amazing story teller, has a photographic memory (as far as I know), and is clearly inspired and called of God to be His mouthpiece.

Between sessions of conference, Brice put in a garage door opener (YAY!) and I filled our front planter with dirt and flower bulbs (Yay again!). I crocheted a lot during conference and I also did some sewing (you didn't know I could sew, did you! Well, I can, but just barely) in preparation for some bookshelves I've been wanting to make forever. The conference itself was so wonderful. I'd been telling Brice on Friday night before conference about some things I was struggling with with motherhood, and several talks in conference helped to put my mind at ease and make me feel like it was all going to be okay. Ahh, so much better.

All during the week, Brice and I were busy with school--I've had lots of projects due as the semester is coming to a close. We did get to make time for some racquetball, which I love. I'd never played much until recently, which is strange considering how much my dad loves to play it, but it sure is lots of fun, and a good workout!

This weekend I was able to finish my bookshelves! Woohoo! Here they are and I LOVE them! Now I keep the book closet locked and the kids get to have "family library day" and get out a FEW books (not a hundred), so my house won't be so messy! I'm so excited!
And I'm proud to say that I did ALL of it myself (sewing, sawing, painting, and nailing--blogs are for bragging, right?), except for assembling it--too many things to hold for one person to do it alone. And I guess I got a little bit of technical help in figuring out how to find the angles to cut the cross-braces. But it's a good, sturdy, kid-friendly, and hopefully break-resistant piece of furniture.

Brice had some help from our wonderful home teacher and from William (Brice's brother) to get some work done on our fence. Is coming along nicely! I really like Brice's design (he slaved over it for days and days and days and days and days and...you get the idea). Here's what we've got so far and hopefully we'll have an entirely fenced yard really soon and the dogs will no longer be house dogs. At least Pee-Pot-Kira won't be! Haha!
Oh, and my birthday! I forgot. My birthday was on the fourth and I got to go to Barnes & Noble BY MYSELF with a gift card (thanks Mom and Dad!) while Brice made dinner. I also went to Deseret Book and Michael's Crafts (also with a gift card--thanks other Mom and Dad). SO much fun! When I got home, Brice had been SLAVING away (and I do mean "slaving," as you will soon see) in the kitchen just for me. He made me salmon that was fantastic and he'd made Spanish rice from scratch and veggies. It was a great meal, but the best was yet to come. William and Angel and Marcos and Noelle came over for cake. Brice had made an 11 layer chocolate cake that was to die for! It was the most decadent thing ever--a chocolate-lover's paradise! It had two layers of cake, two layers of brownie with chocolate chips in it, two layers of chocolate frosting, two layers of chocolate pudding, a layer of cream cheese chocolate frosting, a layer of chocolate shavings, and a layer of chocolate fudge. Whew! It was delectable! I'm sad I didn't get a picture of it, but there have been numerous requests to repeat the exquisite taste bud titillator, so next time, I'll be sure to document this singular dessert.

The next day, after conference, we went to a park and had a BBQ and played soccer and rolled down an enormous grassy hill. Most of my family was there and it was lots of fun!

Okay, last thing: Here's the picture of William in the tree last Easter that I told you about in a previous post:Can you find him? He's the little brownish dot right between the two trees WAY at the top.

Best dance video ever!

This video is from a while ago, but it's priceless and deserved a spot on the blog. The music is coming from the radio and she is watching her reflection in the TV screen, but it's off.

Isn't that awesome!

Great Stories From This Week

On Thursday I had Raelin, Ryker, Liam (my nephew who's about 16 months old) and Liliana (our friends' baby who is the same age as Liam). Angel (Liam's mom) had run to the store to get a few things for the dinner I was making for all of us. While she was gone, I was slaving away over a hot stove, and the kids decided to all gang up on me. Raelin and Ryker decided it would be a good time to do what they do best and fight! Raelin was getting pretty sassy and bossy, so I gave her a time-out to regroup. I went to talk to her about being bossy and how I like to be around my nice, kind, happy Raelin so much more than when she's bossy and rude. I lectured for a minute or two and she said, "But Mommy, I just want to learn it the hard way." Oh, boy, are we ever in trouble!!! Then I went back to the stove to rescue the dinner when Raelin said that Liam was getting into trouble. I went and looked and Liam had taken the canister out of the vacuum and dumped all the dirt and dog hair and whatever else was in there all over the floor and was playing with the filter. So I scooped up the big clumps and ran back to the stove. Then I turn around to find Liliana on the floor with a package of wipes (the pop out kind), pulling them all out! Brice's mimic later of what was going through her mind was, "Oh, look! Another one. And then another one. And another one. Wow, they just keep popping up!" She was surrounded by wipes and having a grand time! I went to pick them up but then I heard my kids in the garage and decided that was much more important to check on. Go ahead, Lily, just keep pulling! So I went out to the garage to find:

Raelin with a hand saw, sawing away!And Ryker with a 4 foot stick, hitting things! Maybe he thought he was hammering things and, lacking a hammer, the stick was the next best thing (kinda fuzzy picture, but you get the idea).

So, I got all the kids back into the house and away from the dangers of our garage and attempted to rescue dinner yet again. Minutes later, I noticed the back door open and looked out to find Ryker out there with the filter from the vacuum (I hadn't bothered putting it back together--the damage was already done), banging it on the porch to get all the dust out. He's seen Daddy do that apparently. In the meantime, however, the babies were both escaping! I herded everyone back inside again and fortunately, Angel returned before any other catastrophes came to pass. Amazingly, dinner was still fabulous--we had Caribbean Black Beans with Mango Salsa over rice. Don't you wish you were here! For once in my life, I was able to just laugh at all the mayhem going on around me even in the moment (as you can see, I even took pictures of it all!). That was a first!

Here's a funny Ryker anecdote: This morning we were getting ready for church when Ryker came to the bottom of the stairs and called, "Brice, Brice, Brice!" Brice came to the top of the stairs and said, "Ryker, you should call me Daddy." Ryker said, "OK" and started to walk away. Then he stopped and said sheepishly, but matter-of-factly, "Mommy calls you Brice," and stuck his thumb in his mouth and swirled his hair as he wandered off.

Crazy week!

Holy cow! Was this ever a crazy week! You have never had a week like this one! Okay, maybe you have, but it doesn't happen often because if people had frequent weeks like this one was, we'd all keel over and die!

The mayhem really all started last week. On Wednesday, Brice and I played racquetball with my dad. He slaughtered us, as you might expect but it was loads of fun. But the next day, I was the sorest I've ever been in my life! Well, I think I remember being more sore one other time in my life, but still... I was so sore that when I tried to drive myself home the next day, I could only use my 1st, 3rd, and 5th gears--I couldn't pull the stick shift down into the other gears! Pitiful isn't it! Good thing I didn't have to back out of my parking spot...

So, by Friday, I was still super sore and I was really starting to feel the pressure because Brice's parents were coming the next day and I really wanted to have a clean house for them to visit instead of one cluttered with kid shoes and toys and everyone's clothes and a sink full of dishes. The thing is, I really couldn't do anything! I was too sore. So I was stressed and miserable and then I loaded up the kids to go to my 3:00 class only to discover that my stinkin' car wouldn't start. Grrr. So I spent an hour trying to start it, I missed my class, and Brice got a ride home. Then he took me out to cheer me up. Thank you, William and Angel for watching the kids.

So Brice's parents came the next day to a house that wasn't quite what I would have hoped, but hey, that's life. We had a great weekend with them and then Monday came and the work began. In one week we: dug 27 holes by hand around our yard that had to be at least 2 feet deep through hard clay, poured concrete in them, and set fence posts in them (okay, we didn't really dig them by hand--we rented an auger. I had ya going there for a minute though, didn't I!); we dug and lined and shoveled rock into a 2 foot wide strip along each side of our driveway to widen it; we made a planter out front with a rock walking path along it from the driveway to the door; and finally, we put in a sink, toilet, and mirror in the storage room to make it a bathroom. All that from Monday to Friday! On top of that, Brice and I had school and homework and tests! If it wasn't for Brice's mom helping so much with the kids and the house, I don't think it would have been possible. She really went above and beyond the call of duty because she also helped outside and kept us all fed too! She's amazing!I LOVE this planter and walkway (above)! I think it turned out so well. And I can't wait to see flowers in it.

Ryker, true to form, is in the slop from cleaning out the cement mixer. He might have made a nice statue, but we got him out before the cement set...

It was really great to work hard together as a family and see so much progress. What a rewarding week. But oh, so exhausting! Ryker was a great little helper. He was so willing to do whatever he could to help, and was outside with us the whole time. Raelin was very good and kept herself entertained and out of trouble. She is a magnificent artist and created several masterpieces that week. She also got really good at writing her name. She can do it from memory now!

Today is Easter and we have another fabulous tradition: My dad hides eggs for the kids and we all follow them around and take pictures like parents and grandparents are supposed to. But then the real fun begins. My dad also hides eggs for the adults! And he hides them REALLY well! It usually takes us about two hours to find our eggs. We each have ten, and they have our initials on them, so you can't just take the first ten you find and be done. You have to find YOUR ten. Last year, we were down to the last two or three eggs and William (Brice's brother--this is an extended-family-and-friends activity) was getting pretty irritated. He'd had nine of his eggs for the longest time and just couldn't find that last one. So my dad started giving us hints. At some point Angel (William's sweet, gentle, innocent wife) found and egg, looked at it, and said, "oh, not mine!" and THREW it as high up the pine tree as she could. And it stuck. Of course, it was William's! He was mad but laughing at the same time and ended up climbing way up in the tree to get his last egg (I thought I had a picture of William way up in the tree, but I can't find it at the moment. Darn). So this year, William found the first egg (it happened to be mine) and he threw it on the roof! Oh, we were off to a good start!

So the hunt began and we were having a great time. I kept hearing William across the yard bragging about his eight eggs he'd already found, so when I came across one of his just lying on the grass out in plain sight I thought, "That's way too easy," so I picked it up and put it in a hiding place that was WAY better. I hid it in an egg-sized crack by a door and then I covered the opening with grass so you couldn't even tell there was an opening there! Heeheehee! He was the last one to find all his eggs. Again. Oh, good times! We love Easter egg hunts!This picture's kinda fuzzy, but the enthusiasm is there!

The Magic Bean Sprout

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who found some magic beans. He didn't have to trade his cow for them or anything; he just happened upon them one early-spring day. Sadly, as the boy was playing with them in his parents' bathroom, they fell down the sink. His daddy was so angry that he made the little boy throw all the rest of his precious magic beans in the trash can. The poor little boy was so sad! But the daddy's sink wasn't working right and the daddy tried to plunge it but it didn't work. So the boy lost his privilege to have any more magic beans. A few days later the sink was still not draining efficiently so the boy's mommy told the daddy that they needed to fix the sink--it was, after all, their beautiful new house. So the daddy took apart the plumbing under the sink and the drain stop (lots of beans were stuck all around it) and poured out the water into the toilet and then put the beans in the trash. But then the mommy noticed the most amazing thing! The beans had started to sprout! In a few more days, the mommy and daddy would have had magic bean sprouts growing out of their bathroom sink drain!

Maybe the boy can have some more magic beans later in the spring if he promises to plant them in the GARDEN this time...

Santa's gift and our future cheerleader!

Here are some pictures from a while ago; I just got these pictures from Angel's camera the other day. Thanks Angel!

We went to a Christmas party this last Christmas and Santa was there. For weeks before the party Raelin kept saying she wanted to give Santa a present. The day before the party, I asked her what she wanted to give him and she went and found her beloved monkey that she had dressed in a dolly dress. I explained to her that if she gave it to Santa, it wouldn't be hers anymore and she wouldn't get to play with it anymore and was she okay with that. She said yes so I said okay. She wrapped it herself and "wrote" him a note and gave it to him at the Christmas party. It warmed my heart to see how kind and generous she was. Santa probably didn't really get what she was giving him and how much it came from her heart, but it just made me proud to see what a thoughtful girl she is. She was so happy and excited to watch Santa open her gift.
You can't quite tell from this picture but Raelin has a huge smile on her face in this one and Santa is holding her monkey.

And here is our little cheerleader-man. Raelin got some pom-pom's for Christmas and Ryker started playing with them one day. Angel started snapping pictures of his "routine."

Ready, GO!

Go team, go!

Ta-Da!Isn't that the best picture!