Questions for a Child!

This week has been one of the longest of my life, but I will write more about it later, hopefully. I wanted to post a little questionaire I asked Carter yesterday evening while trying to keep him occupied. I got it from on of my friends blogs and thought it would be really fun to have him answer and he didn't dissappoint in his answers! Here they are!!!!!

1. What is something that mommy always says to you?

It is probably your upper lip.
2. What makes mommy happy?

Me smiling
3. What makes mommy sad?

When daddy leaves
4. How does mommy make you laugh?

When mommy talks to daddy
5. What was your mommy like as a child?

Good
6. How old is mommy?

31
7. How tall is mommy?

I don't know- like 45 feet from the ground.
8. What is mom's favorite thing to do?

Play with us
9. What does mommy do when your not around?

Rest!!!
10. If mommy becomes famous what will it be for?

A rock star
11. What is mommy really good at?

Driving cars
12. What is mommy not very good at?

Making clocks??
13. What does mommy do for her job?

Clean dishes, help others, tidy up the place and dust
14. What is mommy's favorite food?

Quesadillas and strawberry argula salad(which is what we had for dinner that night)
15. What makes you proud of mommy?

When she gives me birthday presents
16. If mommy was a cartoon character, who would I be?

Imagination movers
17. What do you and mommy do together?

Go to the store and pick raspberries at nana and baba's
18. How are you and mommy the same?

We both have Blonde Hair
19. How are you and mommy different?

Mom is a girl and I am a boy
20. How do you know mommy loves you?

Cause she has a heart
21. What does mommy like most about Daddy?

Cause he gets paid and give all the money to mommy
22. Where is mommy's favorite place to go?

shopping. Where? to walmart, no the bread store!!!

I thought some of these were really too funny. The bread store? And was he spot on about what I like about daddy or what? And I am sad when daddy leaves!! Despite all the insanity this week, he is a wonderful little boy who I love tons! Couldn't imagine life without him!

Alone! In the Inferno!

WE have been enjoying my parents house in Montrose, IA(pop.900) for the last week now! And this is the last only time I have been completely by myself since we got here! It has awesome! Although I hear a car door slamming as I write this, so maybe not a very long post! But still soo nice to be alone.

Little later.....
Not alone anymore, but still quiet! Lincoln is sleeping and the kids are downstairs with Matt watching something on tv. Would love for them to be outside, but it is like 95 degrees and soo humid it feels like a sauna! I do love the humidity but I just checked weather.com and they say it the temperature is 91, but feels like 108! Enough said! Whew! Were going to go to Nauvoo this afternoon, but it got nixed because of the heat and the fact that Lincoln was up till like 12:30 last night courtesy of my mother and was soooo tired, I couldn't imagine taking him anywhere, especially in the heat! Courtesy of my mother because he woke up at about 10 and while I would have let him cry after my initial visit to see him, she couldn't handle it and after going in to see him 5 times brought him in the living room to hang out on her lap. She kept saying she felt bad for him..... He finally went down just in time for the gigantic thunderstorm to blow in and keep him awake! It was awesome! He also woke up when the second thunderstorm came in some time in the middle of the night. I love thunderstorms, but not when you are not in your own house. Anyways......

So the trip is coming to a close. Two nights left. It has been a good trip over all. Too much time spent in the car, but I suppose what do you expect when you live close to nothing! Kids have been good about being in the car. Pretty much just pump them full of ice cream or skittles/candy during the trip and let them go crazy wherever we end up. I can only imagine what people think of us with my 5, 3, and 2 year-old and my big pregnancy belly. In Utah no one looks twice, here poeple must think I don't know how to keep my legs closed. At least they all look alike and are relatively well dressed, like we can take care of them.

Let's see since being here we went to the John Deere Museum and expensive gift store in Moline, IL and the children's museum there in the quad cities. We went to the Mennonite Walmart, which we always enjoy. Mom and Dad's branch. The Double Dip ice cream/laundry mat a few times. We went to see the BYU ballroom dancers put on their traveling show. We went to the famous Family Discount Shoe Store, where we left with 4 pairs of shoes! Everyone got a pair except for Matt. Matt and I did our once a trip outing to the Nauvoo temple and IVY restaurant! Food was awesome and session was really good too!!! Not always the case, but definitely this time. Oh, Matt and I also got to go on a date and saw the movie up in 3D. It was good- glad we didn't bring Carter- not a little kids movie! Tonight we are going to Nauvoo for their nightly riversides show- can't remember what it is called. Tomorrow we plan on going golfing- Matt, Carter, my dad and I! And then tomorrow night the guys are all going to the car races in the next town over.

Besides all our outings Matt and Carter have mowed the whole lawn, which isn't very exciting, but Carter gets to help steer the riding lawn mower, which he loves. The kids swam in the little pool mom has until Penny, the world's worst puppy, attacked it and put teeth marks in the sides of it! We have picked a bunch of raspberries. Carter has built lots of jumps with the help of boards and bricks he found. Lots of time spent on the hammock. Kids pulled out our old super soakers. Matt and Carter took a really long bike ride this morning. Daily walks to the mail box. Carter and Ella climbed the tree at the bottom of the driveway. I spent lots of time playing the piano, which I thoroughly enjoy since I never get to. Kids did the zip line! And really spent lots of time outsides doing who knows what.

We have seen 1 super cute fawn, a million bunnies, 400 dear, several dead mice/moles in the yard, one gigantic dead mole- in the yard-, several frogs, 1badger, 1 garden snake, a donkey, burro, bunches of horses and tons of cows and more bugs than I ever want to see again for the rest of my life. I am soo sick of the bugs..... except for the fireflies- those bugs are cute....

Besides all those bugs and the fact that we have been sleeping on an air mattress all week, this is a good grandma/grandpa house and my parents are good to us. Always fun to visit!

Cheap Summer Fun!!!

So I did one of my better, cheaper summer fun ideas today. It will probably by lame to anyone who reads this, but think I am lame, whatever. But before I tell you what exactly I did there is a little back story on how I discovered my cheap summer fun idea!

When we moved from Louisville to Boise we were only permitted to bring 1000 pounds of our stuff. Which may sound like a lot, however, that is everything- clothes, toys, books, basically anything thought we would need for the 9 months we were going to be there. They told us our corporate apartment would be furnished and I suppose it was, but anything and everything in the kitchen was needed and of course no toys! And while I did bring the kids some of their toys, it became apparent pretty quickly that we needed more. However, I didn't want to spend a lot of money when we had tons of toys in boxes in storage somewhere in a warehouse in SLC. So I went to the DI and found some of the biggest trucks we could find for Carter. Bigger is always better right? Ella was so little she didn't care much still about toys or just played with Carters. So we came home and gave them all a good scrubbing and he played with them tons until we got all our stuff out of storage 5 months after we moved to Boise. And those DI toys became Carter's outside toys. He loved having big trucks he could play with in the unused garden plot of the house we were then renting. And I loved that he didn't ask to take his "nice" toys outside to play. He knew he had fun stuff outside already.

But that was 2 summers ago! That is funny to write 2 summers cause it doesn't seem like that long ago in my head. hmm.. And we have moved and while we have a big tub to put toys in during the winter, he still played with them in the snow and the lid wasn't always put on just as it should have been, so those poor, cheap, very played with trucks didn't make it through. I think all have pretty much been put in the trash. Carter hasn't noticed soo much that his trucks are gone, cause they left slowly, but I noticed how much fun he had zooming down the slide or off the landing of the playset. Or crashing them into each other in sorta crash derby off the deck. And the best part was that I didn't blink an eye!

So after my doctors appt. today we were very close to the DI, which we actually don't live very close to at all, hence me taking so long to finally get over there. The kids were like where are we going? DI. Why? To buy some toys? For who?- they know better to think they were the ones getting the toys cause that never happens. For you. Why? They are going to be your outside toys. So whatever we get is going to be for you play outside with. They were very excited about this idea. In my head I only wanted to spend $15 dollars. I thought that sounded like a good number, no other reason than that.

Once inside DI we head straight for the toys. I had only been to this DI once before and so we did have to look a minute for it, stupid as that sounds. We found it quick enough though. And that was like the hub of the store. Those two isles were slammed packed full of people. I felt like I had to be really savvy and make sure they didn't take all the good stuff. Carter knew exactly how it worked and went to the biggest cars, trucks, jeeps and ATV's he could find. There were plenty there because people donate their old remote controlled ones, which are perfect for what we were wanting them for. Lincoln was excited too and was crawling around on that filthy floor playing with cars he found. We put those in the cart too. Now Ella wasn't quite sure what to do with herself. She wanted the Barbie cash register, which totally didn't work. I put it in the cart to satisfy her, but was removed before we left the toy isle. I then directed her to plastic dolls and my little ponys. On her own she found a pink ice cream truck she wanted too. She was thrilled and didn't want to put them in the cart with the boys toys, she wanted to hold all of them- she had like 10 + the truck. So we head to the register and while the kids all are all walking backwards up the isle, I am wondering how much exactly am I buying? While of course everything is cheap, the point of all this is that it is cheap, I didn't want to pay $25 for all this crap.

However, when the cashier said $15, I thought this is the best $15 I have ever spent. The kids were soo excited and wanted all their stuff in the car. Ella's was easy enough for her to play with, but the boys trucks/cars/jeeps/atvs were huge compared to their little laps. Yet Lincoln didn't seem to mind. When we finally got home, after a "quick" stop into Walmart, the kids flew outside, despite the serious wind and not so warm temperature to play with their new toys. Ella asked if she could play inside and seemed content when I told her no those were outside toys. They seriously spent the whole evening outside playing with them. And I am sure there will be many more hours of play those toys will get.

Best $15 ever spent!