"I think I need a bath!"

I may look sweet and innocent, but I'm am completely filthy!
This picture doesn't even do justice for showing how dirty Carter truly is. Our back yard is finally getting landscaped, but right now it is complete dirt. When we had a backyard of weeds, the kids stayed a lot cleaner as they ran through it to the park. Now the weeds are gone, and it is a child's dream come true. It is also a mother's nightmare. I don't even bother keeping up on the kitchen floor. It constantly has dirt footprints everywhere.
Olivia asked me why I was taking a picture of Carter's feet. I told her it was because his feet were so dirty. I then saw her run outside and tell Eric that she had to get her feet really dirty so I would take a picture of her. When I didn't, she quickly put on her goggles and told me to take a picture of her "stylings."
This picture was my attempt to take a picture of how dirty Carter's hands were. He did not like it very much as you can see. Carter and Olivia turned the bath water completely brown, so I had to rinse and drain the water before I washed them. After soaking my entire bathroom with his splashing, Carter made his escape and ran around the house and jumped up on my bed.
Carter is finally starting to really talk. His vocabulary has expanded by 1000% in the last 3 weeks. His favorite words to yell around the house are Hanen (Hayden), wiby (Livy), Ovia (Olivia), Iwandat (I want that), Elmo and NO! He leaves the last sound off of lots of words like baa (bath), baa (ball), and boo (book). He is so cute all the time that he just melts my heart. I don't want him to grow up. Don't get me wrong. He is a stinker and a crazy monkey, but for some reason I find it more endearing with my last kid. We went to Silverwood yesterday, and he had the best time. He loved the bumper boats and the wave pool the most. Everytime I picked him up to leave the water, he would squirm and jump back in. He has no fear yet, and somehow thinks he can swim.

Olivia is being her typical self. She has finally figured out how to buckle herself in her carseat and will not let me do it. Sometimes she will not do it and she will tell me she is not buckled. I tell her to hurry up and get buckled. She matter of factly tells me she doesn't want to. I tell her that if I get in an accident she will die and we will miss her so much. She didn't seem to care until today she said, "oh, all my boyfriends would really miss me!" Then she decided to buckle herself. She is completely boy crazy. I don't know what to do with her. She likes to add the word up to most anything. She loves to use her watering can to water the flowers on the back porch. She says, "I really need to water up the flowers." Or she will say, "I'm really starving. I need to eat up." "I'm tired, I need to sleep up." "I don't want to get burned. I better sunblock up." The list goes on. She also told me today that I would be so happy, because she was going to be really reverent in Target. I told her she didn't need to be reverent in target, just obedient. She was annoyed with me and told me that she wanted to be reverent in Target. Why can she not have that same enthusiasm in church? When she was putting on her swimming suit today she said, "look, I have hippers like you. They are my hippy hippers." I figured out she was talking about her chest. She is so random. She makes up words all the time. At first I told her that wasn't what they were called. She asked me what they were called. I couldn't think of a good word that I wanted her to use so I said, "sure, you can call them that." Later she was calling them that again. Maybe we will just keep it that way for a few years.

She made her dancing debut at her recital last Saturday night. Unfortunately she loves her fans much more than dancing. She could see us on the front row and just kept on waving the whole time. Occasionally she would do a little bit of the dance and then get distracted again. At one point she was at the back of the stage when the rest of the class was in a line at the front. The teacher had to run back and grab her. Then she started smiling and waving again. At the end when her teacher was talking to the audience and thanking everyone, Olivia made her way to the front and was dancing around and waving at everyone again. When someone told her after that she stole the show, she asked them, "how did I steal the show?"

Anyway, I do have other children. Jackson and Hayden have had an action packed summer so far. They have done soccer camp, Shock football camp, and track camp. Jackson had scout day camp, and they slaughtered a buffalo in front of the boys. I was so disturbed. I thought Jackson would have nightmares, but he thought it was so cool. He has his summer sun bleached hair. I don't love how long it is, but I think he is so cute when he gets all tan with bleached out hair. Hayden is almost as tall as Jackson. It will be a very sad day when Hayden passes up Jackson. I'm trying to get them to not be so competetive, but it is not working. When I picked them up from soccer today, Jackson came to the car proudly waving a dollar that he had won in a header game. Hayden came looking grumpy. I asked him how he was doing, and he told me, "not that good." It turns out he was just mad, because Jackson got a dollar and he didn't. If I ask one of them to do something for me they say something like, "but where is Hayden?" Heaven forbid they do the slightest amount more work than the other. Hayden's front tooth is still dangling. It has been 3 weeks, and he still won't let me touch it. I might have to go yank it out when he is asleep.

Back to Real Life

While I was gone on my girl's trip, a lot of housework piled up! I decided to enlist child labor to help me out. I had more loads of laundry to do than ever, so Carter did it for me. He was so cute and wanted to be helpful. The only problem was that he would get a little excited and shut the door to the washer before we got everything in our out.

I thought Olivia should wear a cute maid's outfit to clean the house. Actually this a picture I took of her before her dress rehearsal for her dance recital. When I got home from the airport and went to my moms to pick up Olivia and Carter, Olivia didn't have her glasses on. I asked her where they were. She replied, "I have contacts. I don't need my glasses any more." My mom said that she had told a lot of people that during the week. Some people even believed her. That would be a great idea to get a 4 year old contacts. On Sunday I was trying to get to church on time. I was doing Olivia's hair and she kept on running over and playing with the lid to the garbage can. I asked nicely a few times for her to come back. Finally I got really annoyed and told her that I didn't have time for her to do that. She just looked at me really seriously and said, "Well I have time for it." I was still annoyed, but I had to laugh.

Eric's brothers flew from Utah to help Eric win his golf tournament. The past 2 years Eric's team has come in 2nd place in the BYU Management Society golf tournament . Being the competitor he is, he was not going to let that happen again. Thanks to Parker and Corey, their team won by 1 stroke. Now Eric is the proud owner (at least until next year) of the first place trophy. Saturday morning the boys had to have their own Enloe Cup. A couple of years ago Parker had a traveling trophy made up for the Enloe boys. It says on it, "The Enloe Cup...to he who sucked the least" or something like that. There has only been a couple of times that Parker didn't win a round of golf with his brothers. Eric won the cup one time when we were in Vernal last summer. The next day they had to play again and Parker won it back. They all agree it will be a sad day when the next generation of Enloe boys is good enough to take over the trophy. We planned to go to the Tri-Cities after we dropped the boys off at the airport. The Shock had another game there last Saturday night. We were pretty tired from our week of travels and fun, so we decided to stay home and watch it on TV. Carter enjoyed hanging with dad, while we watched the game. Hayden has another dangling tooth, but he will not let us pull it out. He looks like quite the hillbilly with all the different sizes of teeth. His tooth keeps on bleeding when he bites into something. I got a call from the trainer running the Shock kids football camp this week. He was worried that Hayden might need to see the dentist after he was hit in the mouth and it was bleeding. I assured him that it was just a baby tooth that needed to come out, but Hayden was determined for it to come out naturally.
On Tuesday night the Pypers came over to watch to NBA finals. They have a little boy named Tucker that is the same age as Carter. He is the cutest, funniest little boy. It was so fun to watch them playing together.

The Best Girl's Trip Ever!!!

Last week I went to Arizona with my BFF Amy and my BFF Melanie. You might look at this picture and think we went to Boot Camp. At times it was kind of like that, but it was the best girl's trip I could ever imagine. It was amazing. We actually went to Miraval Spa. The Spa treatments were wonderful, but I actually liked the challenge course even more. I spent 3 days conquering my fears and doing things I never even thought about doing. I felt so cool. My friend Melanie did the most amazing job documenting our whole journey. Go to http://mamao4.blogspot.com/2008/06/mel-shar-amys-excellent-adventure.html to learn about our exciting adventure getting to the spa and then to http://mamao4.blogspot.com/2008/06/i-in-miraval-is-you.html to learn about our whole Miraval experience.

Amy and Melanie had an easy direct plane ride back to Texas. I, on the other hand, gave them hugs as I got onto the plane. I started reading my book. I was so relaxed without any kids. I was reading for almost an hour when I realized that we never took off. Finally they announced that the computer had a problem that they could not fix. They told Spokane passengers to exit the plane and see the attendant to be rebooked. They told me to come back the next day and they could get me to Spokane by 5:30 the next night. I told them that would not work out for me. To make a long story short, I told them to get me closer to Spokane that night. I spent the night in Vegas and was home around 10 the next morning. I was just so thankful that I was not with my kids. Plane malfunctions and stayovers without luggage are never fun when you are traveling with your kids!

Our Boise Saturday Schedule

Last weekend we drove to Boise and met Eric's family for a Shock game. We got there on Friday night and met Corey and Brenda for dinner. The kid's were so excited to see their cousins Malik, Rhys, Jorie and Camden that we pretty much disturbed the entire restaurant. We tried to ignore their loudness and wrestling and enjoyed talking with Corey and Brenda. The next morning Jackson wrote out our schedule of what he wanted to do that day. It was complete with boxes to check off when we were finished with our task. If only he knew how to spell schedule.

1.The first thing to do was go swimming at the hotel. I went with Brenda, Lindsey, and Eric's mom and Grandma to get pedicures. Eric, Corey and his Dad took the kids swimming. I thought that was a pretty stealth manuever on my part.

2. Now it is time to go see Kung Fu Panda.

The kids were dressed from swimming and ready to go. They watched cartoons while they waited.
We didn't want to buy lunch at the movie theater, so we decided to take the whole clan to Red Robin for lunch first. Eric would probably say that was a bad idea. He was driving our family in his car and decided to park right between 2 cars. It was a compact car parking space, and evidently Eric didn't know that. He was watching his side of the car and ran into the car on my side. It took him a second to realize what he had done, and when he did he didn't even swear! We went inside and had to find the people who owned the car. While we waited for our table, Olivia begged me to take a picture of her with the statue of liberty.
After lunch we were off to Kung Fu Panda. It was enjoyed by all. This picture is of Olivia with her other 4 year old cousins, Rhys and Camden. She adores them. She tells everyone that Camden is her boyfriend. She also says they are going to get married. She doesn't believe us when we tell her that is "just wrong" and illegal.
After the movie we had a little down time. We girls pulled another stealth manuever and left the little kids to naps with dads and older kids to watch tv in Grandpa's room. Now that looks like fun Ron! We went shopping.

3. Now it is time in our schedule to go to the Spokane Shock vs Boise Burn game.
Carter is posing like he is pretty cool on the way to the game. You can see the nice wound on his cheek from his fall in the hotel bathroom. He hit the edge of the door.

The Shock won, and we had a great time. Undefeated 10-0!

This is painful to put such a terrible picture of me on my blog. I hardly ever put pictures of myself, and I have to look good if I do put one on. I only put this picture in because of the overwhelming amount of people who wanted to see a picture of my injury. Most of my injuries were not very visible. My goose egg and fat lip have gone down, and I was the only one who really noticed them. The only thing visible left is that lovely bruise on my arm. My neck is almost 100% again. I look very psycho in this picture, and it is not a nice view of my very yucky arms.

Above me is a picture of Olivia posing with her favorite neighborhood pal, Paige. She got more gardening stuff to add to her shovel that the easter bunny brought her. She is obsessed and wears the gardening gloves around everywhere. She has been helping Aunt Betty plant a garden. Unfortunately when she is at home, she just shovels a lot of dirt in our yard that is still weeds.

I also took a picture of Hayden practicing the piano. He is going to be in the talent show at school on Monday. He is playing the star wars theme and is very excited. He hasn't had very much blog time lately, so I better get some more pictures of him soon .

The Titanic & Anne of Green Apples

At the end of the school year, the 3rd graders at Jackson's school do a unit on the Titanic. After they study and do projects for a few weeks they have a celebration. The kids come to school dressed in a fancy outfit and pretend to be 1st class passengers on the Titanic. Jackson took it very seriously. Aunt Carol provided his costume and all the table decor for his table. She even came to the party to see how cute all the kids were.
This was the table that I set up using all of Carol's stuff.
This is Jackson with his teacher Mrs. Davaz. He had her for Kindergarten, too, so he is very attached.

There is always a lack of drama as you can see. He is actually really growing up. I was so proud of him the other day. Long story short, some girls in his class wrote a terrible letter to a boy in the class and signed another girl's name to it. Someone in the class started a petition to get the poor girl (who was completely innocent) suspended. Most of the kids signed the petition. I thought Jackson had signed it, and I asked him if there was something he needed to talk to me about. He told me he didn't sign it. He said, "mormons don't do that. I just thought about how I would feel if someone did that to me." I got a little choked up. I was just so happy that I have such a nice boy.

I was tired Friday night and left Olivia in Eric's care. I went to bed and thought Eric would put her to bed also. Saturday morning I walked out of my bedroom and found Olivia like this on the couch. I asked Eric what happened, and he said he didn't want to wake her up. Nice excuse. I took her up to bed at 6 am.

Olivia was tired out after we went out on a girl's night. She went to dinner with Aunt Betty and Aunt Carol and her cousins Kim and Jenny. Then I met them at the high school production of Anne of Green Gables. Earlier in the day I told Olivia she was going to have a girl's night. Jackson overheard and said, "So, are you guys going to go see Anne of Green Apples?" Leave it to boys to get those things confused. On the way home from the play I was being silly with Olivia and singing the theme song in a fake opera voice. Olivia asked me why I was singing it. I said, "because I sound so lovely." She replied, "It might be lovely to you mom, but not to me." I got a good laugh. Lately she has been singing, "I'm bringing home my bumble baby bee, won't my mama be so proud of me." I think she is so cute!

Saturday night I had my first football injury, and I wasn't even playing football. I was sitting on the front row of the Spokane Shock game. A ball came into the crowd and I looked up to see if our friend was going to catch it. I didn't even see the player come over the boards and land right on my head. It hurt so bad. I could hardly turn my head for a few days. My brother-in-law Myron worked on me Sunday, and that helped a lot. Monday I noticed my arm had the hugest black bruise on it. I was so worried about my neck, goose egg, fat lip and scraped head to notice that I guess he hit my arm, too. The front row is so much fun, but I think I might sit up in the box for a while!