Elliot the Craft King

The other day I told Elliot that I was going to start calling him the craft king. He agreed that it was a good nickname for him. This kid spends HOURS every day covering our kitchen table with little scraps of paper, tape, and glue. Thank goodness that Preschool is able to be an outlet for some of his crafting energy. He will sometimes come home from preschool and try to make the preschool crafts again. The most recent of those was a turkey on a popsicle stick.

Elliot's current obsession is mazes. But thanks to his daddy, Elliot thinks that the best mazes should include portals, walls that you can blast through, and plenty of poisonous snakes and monsters to fight. Having him explain his mazes is the best. He will at instruct me at breakneck speed about how the spiders that have lots of legs need to be blasted 10 times but the ones with just the normal amount legs only need to be shot one time, and that I have to fight all the ninjas but only one of them has the key. An essential element to completing mazes is making the appropriate sound effects to accompany all the blasting and fighting. 

Maze by Elliot for me on the left, and one by me for him on the right

Elliot has latched onto the idea that he can bribe/punish us by making/withholding cards that he makes for us. It is common for him to scream "I won't make you cards for a zillion days!" on his way to time out. Cards are commonly earned by making his favorite dinner or by making mazes for him to do. He leaves them by our door and gives us strict instructions to not look at them until we go to bed.

One time he asked Aaron to make him a card. I thought it was pretty impressive. It had a picture of stick figure Elliot holding his orange blanket with a couple rainbows and stars in the background and it said "I love you little buddy." When Elliot saw it in the morning, he immediately launched into a critique about how it only had two rainbows when really it needed at least eight. 

This kid is obsessed with rainbows. We tried teaching him the ROY G BIV trick as we got tired of telling him the color order time after time, but the presence of indigo confused him (me too, buddy). Luckily he memorized the order himself after cranking out a few hundred little rainbows. Every preschool class the kids practice writing their names and I guess he must be fast because his name slips come home with the backs covered in little rainbows that he drew.  

A classic card, halloween colors edition

Elliot is 100% convinced that he found Aaron in BYU magazine. I think it is a pretty good doppelganger!

Rancho Sahuarita had a chalk festival by the lake this year. It was right up Elliot's ally! The town taped off a bunch of squares to make a kids drawing zone. As you curved around the lake, there was a section with 3ft x 3ft squares for the "emerging artists" competition which seemed to be geared to teenagers, and then there were big areas where local artists made some gorgeous chalk drawings. Elliot says he wants to be an artist when he grows up, so he appreciated seeing them at work. We went back the next day to see the finished (but somewhat smeared by people walking/biking over them) products the next day. 

Let me slip in my own artistic success of late- I have learned how to put Annie's hair in pigtails! It doesn't last through a nap, but it sure is dang cute.

Elliot notices flowers wherever we go. He loves picking them to make his own "gardens."
Also, don't you just love how natural kids look when posing for pictures?

Our Halloween decorations multiplied 100x this year because Elliot kept begging me to cut out mores ghosts for him to tape around the house and outside for the trick-or-treaters to see. He got a "How to Draw Monsters" book from the library and cranked out tons of little monster pictures that he cut out, even after Halloween was over. He climbs through the closet to slip his decorations into the box of Halloween stuff for next year. 

Annie Quotes

Annabelle: "Bunnies chewt!"

Dad: "Annie, are you cute?"

Annabelle: "No! Bunnies chewt!"

Annie listing her favorite things during a prayer:

Park, mimming pool, Daddy tickle, go outside....

Dad: "Annie, did you like Prince of Egypt?"

*Long pause*

Annie with a very serious face: "No."

Dad: "Annie, what day of the week is it?"

Annie: "Uh, four?" *Holds up five fingers*

Annie has the ultimate sweet tooth. She is always on the watch for an opportunity to get a treat. One angle she takes is that we told her that if she ever pees or poops in her little potty, she can get a treat. She will go get the potty out of the closet, strip herself naked, and sit on the potty for a few seconds before leaping up and saying "get tweet?" with a huge smile on her face. We check it and tell her, "Annie look, it is empty. You have to put poopies or peepies in the potty." To this she always gets the hugest scowl and yells "I DIIIIIIIIIIIIIID!"

She also overheard me bribing Elliot to put the folding chairs away after volleyball since the kids always make chair forts. Now as soon as she notices people starting to leave she comes up to me and says "Put away chairs, get tweet?"

Also, there's the "Annie Grimace." Ever since Annie was a child, she has struggled with expressing her excitement. When she was a tiny baby, she would express her excitement by kicking her legs. Most babies do this, but Annie's were much more vigorous. She would kick one leg at a time, causing her whole body to jerk back and forth. It was cute. Now that she's older, we get the Annie Grimace. It's basically this face but with much more intensity:

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT LIFE

She often whips it out when she's excited to see Daddy when he gets home. Or if she sees a baby. Or if we play hide and go seek. Or if she gets to play with water. You get the picture.

We love our little Annie!

Fall Adventures

This Fall has seemed very action packed! We went on two camping trips in September. The first was a ward camp out at Pena Blanca Lake. They have some neat cliff jumping spots that we took advantage of on Saturday morning. Aaron was brave and was the first to jump off at the highest point, about 30 feet. I brought my snorkel to the lake, but it was completely useless- I could barely see my hand in front of my face because the water was so murky. The Flyths brought a ton of inner tubes, so we all had a splendid time.

We did have a rough time on that camping trip. Annie went down first and was soundly asleep when Elliot came in an hour later. We foolishly granted his wish to take a flashlight in with him, and he was swinging it all around and woke her up. He eventually fell asleep, but she kept crying for hours. Eventually everyone else was asleep, and we felt bad about keeping everyone else up so we tried everything- singing to her and rubbing her back would get her to lie down for like 1 minute, but she would pop back up and start crying again as I stealth rolled back to the air mattress. Trying to get her to sleep with/on us didn't work- she thought that was great fun and wanted to play. This went on for well over an hour before we finally put her in her car seat in the car with the windows cracked. It was parked right outside the tent so we could still hear her but she couldn't see us, so she fell asleep right away. Stinker. We have taken to sticking her pack and play in bathrooms when we travel now because she consistently refuses to fall back asleep if she sees us in the room with her when she wakes up in the night. 

Some of our pals at the ward campout. Aaron found a tattered note on the top of this hill written by a teenage girl about her father who had some weird name that I can't remember. It was a neat little discovery.

We reserved the big group campsite, but they failed to open the gate for us. We sent people back to cell phone service areas to frantically call, but all the offices were closed for the day. Not to be deterred, some inventive members of our ward removed a fence post and pulled back the barbed wire fence to allow us to drive into the campground around the gate instead of through it.

Here are some cute ones of my favorite explorer on our other camping trip up Madera Canyon

Elliot wanted to walk on the ceiling. His Daddy made it happen.

We thought Annie had completely grown out of her egg allergy, but she broke out in crazy hives when she managed to crack a raw egg all over her lap. She seems fine eating it, but her skin is still sensitive to certain things. 

Kenny Heyen had a nerf gun war for his 30th birthday. It was SO FUN. They had an impressive arsenal of nerf guns and transformed the church gym into a battlefield complete with dimmed lighting and music. Best of all, they hired a couple of teenagers to run the nursery so that we could shoot each other in earnest without kids getting in the way!

Annie and I were in charge of picking up the chicken and bringing it to Elliot's preschool for their farm animal unit.
I don't know which one of us was more excited. I feel like I have been waiting my whole life for someone to ask me "can you pick up the chicken," and it finally happened

Elliot has gotten BOLD at the park

I hate this ladder. Annie tries to climb on it every time and still falls through at the top fairly frequently, so I have to stand beneath her to catch her while having mild panic attacks. 

Annie and Theodore in their halloween costumes

I failed to get a picture of Elliot in his clownfish costume. It is the same one he wore last year, and I hope to keep him in it for another year before he realizes that most kids get new costumes every year

Videos

This one is an instant classic- behold, the bloodlings busting some moves to "White and Nerdy" by Weird Al! Elliot's moves have been dubbed "the elbow crab" and "tornado hips."

Here's a nice chat with Annie about animal sounds

The Cat Came Back

Annie has gone through a rather long obsession with the song, "The Cat Came Back" by the Laurie Berkner Band. It is a rather morbid but catchy song about a guy who has a cat who he wants to get rid of. He sends it up in a hot air balloon, on a train, etc. Every time, there is a crash where everyone dies, and they think the cat is a goner. Then, the cat comes back the very next day. She actually knows a lot of the words and will chime in as I sing it to her as a bedtime song, which she demands most days. It is either "Cat Came Back" or "Jesus," which is the primary song "I'm trying to be like Jesus."

Anyway, the obsession with cats was further fueled by a mysterious cat that started jumping over our backyard wall. This cat is AWESOME. It legitimately plays peekaboo with Annie. It will hide behind various plants in our backyard and then pop its little head out and looks right at her. It is friendly and lets me pet it, but it doesn't come up too close to Annie, which is good because it would scare her. It comes by for about 20 minutes to entertain Annie and then hops on out of our backyard- no maintenance required! This is the level of pet ownership I have always dreamed of! My kids get to become slightly less scared of animals with no added responsibilities. Win-win. 

Rocky Point- now with a snorkel!

One trip to Rocky Point this year was inadequate, so we made a return trip! This time we went with the Knells, Allsops, and Wiscombs. Nikkole, Alexandra, and I are all pregnant, and Alyssa is nursing a baby who doesn't sleep through the night yet, so we were pretty much the ultimate party crew! I love so much that we have friends that are up for adventures even when life circumstances aren't perfectly ideal. 

We found a sweet 4 bedroom house through Airbnb that was on the second row from the beach in Las Conchas. We could see the ocean out the window and had excellent views from the roof (which my kids were terrifyingly obsessed with- the spiral staircase to the roof had gaps in it that were more than big enough for Annie to fall through. We had to barricade the door so that she wouldn't run out and constantly climb it)

These pictures don't do the awesome brick dome ceiling justice

Eating lunch, probably with some ice cream from our very well stocked freezer

One of Annie's favorite parts of the trip was the non-stop access to baby Riley

I spy a little cutie in the courtyard

Roof pics with the buster bubbs

Oh how I love those sweet cheeks

All 8 kids in age order! Please appreciate the shadows of the adults trying to get everyone to look at the camera

We dug a hole and buried Elliot's legs in it

This kid loves the sand and spent most of his beach time trying to convince me that I wanted to build ANOTHER sandcastle

When Annie wasn't busy commenting on every little thing Baby Riley was doing, she enjoyed getting wet and playing with the sand toys

Theodore and Annie being the cute little kids that they are

A nice scrabble arrangement of our four last names interwoven in sand and FRIENDSHIP

My favorite part of the trip was snorkeling. I bought a snorkel set after our last trip to Rocky Point and was so excited to try it out, and it exceeded my expectations! At low tide there is a huge area where I could swim around and be just about an arms reach from the rocky ground. It was great for looking for shells, q5rvgand it was shallow enough that I didn't feel like there could be a shark sneaking up on me. There wasn't really coral, but there were tons of bright yellow fish hiding in little nooks in the rocks and conch shells and hermit crabs aplenty. I even swam over a spotted sting ray! I was pretty jealous of Nikkole who saw an octopus. That is my goal to find next time!

At one point I was in the sand with the kids. Alyssa was out with Riley in the water when she yelped and ran for shore. She had looked behind her and seen a huge black shape moving towards her in the waist deep water. The guys investigated and a little while later it came back. It turned out to be a huge school of tiny silver fish! I grabbed the snorkel and swam into the middle of it. It was a completely surreal experience. The fish parted for me, and none of them touched me. I was completely surrounded by a wall of fish every way I turned. I swam out to deeper water, and we could see all sorts of seabirds including pelicans diving into the water to get their fill.

No pictures of me with a snorkel were taken, so here is Alyssa after I talked her into borrowing mine

The menfolk could frequently be spotted talking by the waters edge and making animated hand gestures

 We made a return trip to el Barrelito for dinner, and I had this great conversation with them:

Me: Hey, are you guys closed already?

Guy in the barrel truck: Yep.

Me: What time do you close?

Guy in the barrel truck: 6:00. 

Me: Well it is 5:30 right now...

Guy in the barrel truck: Well, we ran out of tacos, but I guess we have some ceviche left if you want that?

Restaurant dining in Mexico is so different than it is in the US! But the benefit of this was that we found another great place to eat nearby. It was called Tacos Brissa, and they combined delicious tacos with an enclosed room to eat in so our kids couldn't escape! That was a huge advantage over the food truck. 

Goofballs

Payson

Mary and Michael found an awesome rental house in Payson, AZ. We were glad to mooch off their planning and enjoy a little fall getaway with cousins! It was about a 3 hour drive for us, ending with a grocery stop that including picking out a birthday cake and ice cream for Annie!

We pulled in to find the cousins going bonkers over the awesome tree house in the yard.We managed to drag everyone inside to eat some delicious ribs that Michael had smoked at 3 am that morning- the benefits of insomnia! After that, we whipped out the cake and ice cream. 

Some happy cake eaters

Opening her new drawing pad

Mimi sent her an adorable backpack!

Elliot with Annie's new drawing pad in the cousin bunk room

Annie had a rough night. She woke up around 3am. Normally she would just cry a little and then fall back asleep, but since her crib was in our room she saw us and it was game over. We couldn't let her scream it out since we were right next to the room with all the kids, so we got to spend the next hour convincing her to try to sleep in our bed with us. Eventually I went downstairs to sleep on the couch, and Aaron got her to sleep pretty soon after that. The next night we stuffed her crib in the bathroom and it worked out much better for everyone. 

Not at all remorseful for her nighttime shenanigans and ready to take on the day!

She wasted no time getting her backpack back on

Then it was outside to play in the yard!

They have these neat swings all over the place

These two needed some persuading to try the zipline, but both quickly became masters

All the kids (and Aaron and me, naturally) loved the zipline, but Andrew was definitely the most bold. He would hold onto the top bar with just his hands while someone else sat on the seat. 

We were planning on hiking to this neat bridge, but luckily the night before Michael figured out that some big race was happening there and we wouldn't be able to get in. After a considerable amount of review reading, we decided to hike the water wheel even despite the warnings that our shoes might get wet. It was perfect for our group- completely beautiful and with some rock scrambles and stream jumps that made it feel like a real adventure. 

We got to watch some brave soul jump into the freezing water by the waterfall- the perfect entertainment to reward us for reaching the end of the trail!

Tarantula just meandering along the trail. This was our first up close encounter with one in the wild since moving to Arizona. Eck. 

Kudos to Mary for finding such a neat spot to stay!