The girl who cried wolf

This morning Yaya was playing on the computer and chewing some gum.

Yaya-"Mom, could I have another piece of gum?"

Me- "What happened to your other piece?"

Y-"It fell out of my mouth."

Me-"Out of your mouth into your stomach?"

Y-"No, onto the floor."

Me- "O.K." I responded, immediately knowing she was lying again, "Get down from the chair and find it."

Y-"I can't."

Thankfully Lars was in the kitchen as well. We exchanged a silent look, ensuring we were on the same page, but I still couldn't pull it off with a straight face.

Lars-"Yaya, turn off the computer and find your gum."

Immediately Yaya's lip started to tremble and her eyes filled up with tears. For some reason it's not as easy to lie to Daddy.

Y-"I can't (sniffle) find it (sniffle)."

L-"If you just admit that you swallowed it, you can turn the computer back on."

Yaya's whole face lit up with excitement for this unexpected easy out.

Y-"Ok. I swallowed it."

At that moment I had to turn around and hide my face so she couldn't see me laughing. Lars then sternly reprimanded her for lying, and then took the time to tell her the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Maybe it sunk in this time???

Pumpkin Carving

Leah, Naomi, Heidi and Yaya on their pumpkins

falling off their pumpkins!

Heidi baby

Leah and Yaya

Naomi's slimy pumpkin hand

Leah digging and Heidi...helping

Heidi

Heidi

the finished pumpkins

Leah, Naomi and Yaya by their respective pumpkins

(Heidi was one tired little pumpkin)

Last night for Family Home Evening we carved pumpkins. Leah tackled hers all on her own this year. She cleaned it all out and cut out the design on her own. I was rather impressed with the finished product. Naomi drew a picture of the face she wanted and Lars carved it. We asked Yaya to draw a picture of the face she wanted on hers, so she drew a circle, two dots for the eyes, one dot for the nose and a big thin line for the mouth. After we explained that was virtually impossible to carry out on a pumpkin, she revamped her design and came up with Bucky here. I took the artistic liberty from Heidi's scribbles to come up with her pumpkin design :)

WARNING

SOME PERV. JUST TRIED TO JOIN MY BLOG, SO I'M GOING PRIVATE. DISTURBING.

However, If I am mistaken and the dirty pervert would like to identify himself and you end up being someone I know, I'm still going private because I don't like to look at your "friends" and see naked people. Nothing personal.

Forced to be "green"

Our waste disposal company has instituted a new garbage system. They dropped off three new garbage cans. One for yard waste, one GIGANTIC can for recycling and one microscopic can for trash. And, by the way, they are now only collecting trash every other week.

Don't get me wrong, I think recycling is great and we already do it, so it's not a huge change for us except for one minor detail...I could fill that tiny garbage can with diapers in three days. If anyone dare suggest I start using cloth diapers, I will immediately delete you as my friend. I love the earth and I will do what I can to reduce reuse and recycle, as long as that doesn't include scrubbing out and laundering cloth diapers. I'm pretty sure I would enjoy this beautiful earth more sane, than I would from the barred window of a padded room.

That's not exactly what I meant

I was sweeping the kitchen floor and as always there was a giant pile of cereal, and half eaten this or that. As I was getting ready to scoop it up and throw it in the trash, I called the girls into the kitchen for their snack. They all came running in and sat at the table...except for Heidi who sat right in the middle of my pile and started picking out the cereal and shoving it in her mouth. Not the snack I was talking about, but whatever work I guess!

Family Pictures

We took family pictures last Thursday. For the most part, it went well. It was the perfect day, cloudy and overcast and at the end it started to sprinkle. Heidi baby didn't think it was a very good idea to take pictures, but she was a trooper and my friend got some good shots of her. Here are the first few she has showed me, I'll get more in a couple weeks.

Every coin has two sides

I was listening to a CD in the car the other day. One of the songs says, "...you can do what you want." Then I heard Yaya's little voice from the back seat, "I can't do what I want. Only if you and Dad died. Then I could do what I want."

On the flip side

Yaya recently has really been looking out for Lars. She will come into him while he is studying and ask him if he is hungry and then make him a delicious peanut butter sandwich or bring him a bowl of cereal. She very tenderly hugs him and tells him she loves him and misses him all the time. It really is quite sweet.

Liar Liar Pants On Fire

Just a couple more examples of Yaya's bold face lies :)

I needed to return a chocolate fountain to my friend that I had borrowed for a party. I loaded the stuff and Yaya and Heidi into the car and strapped the girls into their five point harness car seats. I ran inside to get something and when I got back to the car, Heidi was holding a piece of the chocolate fountain. I asked how Heidi got it and Yaya explained, "She unbuckled her car seat, jumped down and took it." Really? And then did she buckle herself back in? "Yup." Huh.


Today I was in the bathroom and Heidi was in there with me. Apparently Yaya needed to use the facilities, but instead of telling me, she went into the laundry room and peed on the floor. I went into the laundry room a few minutes later and noticed her changing her undies. So I asked her if she had an accident. "No," she corrected me, "Heidi came in here and took off her diaper and peed on the floor." So I once again explained what lying was, using her most recent one as an example and then put her in a time out. When I got her out of her time out I asked her if she knew why I had put her in there. She sweetly answered, "Because I forgot it was against the rules to tell a lie."

Another new obsession...will it ever stop?!

My friend just taught me how to make these super cute hair bows. Considering I have four girls who always beg me to buy them bows and then promptly loose them, this newly acquired skill may come in quite handy!

Eensy Weensy Spider

This morning I was sitting in the living room, when I overheard some ruckus in Leah's bedroom. "All for one, and one for all and one for the wall!" WHACK! "EWWWW! There are guts and legs all over my wall!" Poor spider. Never had a chance.

should i be worried?

Yaya, my little one horned devil, is a LIAR. She straight face lies to me hourly. I'll give you two examples from this morning alone!

1. There is a strict food stays in the kitchen rule in my house. Yaya came running into the kitchen from her bedroom yelling, "Heidi made a mess with yogurt!" So I went back to her bedroom and there was yogurt all over the bed and carpet. Sure enough Heidi had a cup of yogurt and spoon in her hands, so I figured she must have grabbed it off the table and taken it back there. As I was cleaning it up I noticed it was not only on the bottom bunk bed, but also on the ladder going up to the top bunk and on that sheet as well. I also found a hot dog on the top bunk with pencil holes poked in it. The more likely story was that Yaya brought the yogurt up to the top bunk and dropped it before Heidi got the yogurt cup and ran off with it.

2. Yaya was standing on the chair eating a broken off chunk of chapstick. I asked her to hand it to me. She innocently handed it over with the explanation, "Heidi did it." I then asked her for the tube of chapstick, which she also had in her possession. She handed it to me with the explanation, "Heidi had it." Really? Like I couldn't see you standing two inches from me chewing on the broken off chapstick ?

I don't want to give her a lot of attention about lying and somehow adversely encourage her to lie even more. I have explained to her countless times what lying is and why it's important to tell the truth but like everything else in life, she just doesn't believe the the rules apply to HER! Help!!

I don't even know

Last night I was in the kitchen cleaning up dinner when I heard the always endearing, "Moooooooooom. Yaya just wet her pants." Ok whatever. I was in no hurry to take care of the mess, so I casually finished what I was doing and then set out to find the crime scene. I walked into the bathroom to find Yaya standing in the sink with a gigantic wad of wipes frantically scrubbing the bathroom counter. It took me a minute to take in the entire scene and put all the pieces together. Naomi was on the potty, so apparently Yaya just couldn't wait until she was done. I'm not sure WHY she climbed on the counter, but she did and wet herself. Well, Heidi's new favorite past time is to pull all of the toothbrushes out of their bin and throw them all over the floor. Unfortunately she had done this shortly before Yaya wet all over the counter which then spilled onto the floor and subsequently the toothbrushes. The greatest part of the whole scene was that Yaya was dressed up in her witch costume when it happened. It would only have been more appropriate if she was sporting devil's horns instead.

A New Obsession

Recently my children have discovered Ramen Noodles. I've never given it to them before, but my friend dishes it out all the time. My girls LOVE them. Yaya asks me every morning if I will make her Ramen noodles for breakfast. I have to limit it to once a day. At least they're cheap right?

Amazing

As I watch all of the disgusting things my kids do and gnaw on and put in their mouths I become more and more amazed that any of us actually live to be semi-normal adults. Today at the grocery store we were walking down the meat isle. I was pushing the cart with Heidi and Naomi. I looked over to Yaya and to my horror saw her walking along side of me, dragging her tongue along the metal lining of the meat cooler. I don't even want to know what disgusting germs and bacteria she ingested. I suddenly am very confident Yaya will get the swine flu.

my most favoritest time of year

Naomi on some pumpkins

Naomi and Heidi

Yaya

Heidi

Leah

Heidi, Leah, Yaya and Naomi

Heidi Baby

There was no school Friday so I was able to take the girls to an apple orchard and pumpkin patch with some of our friends. It was so fun! The girls got to pick out a pumpkin and drink some fresh apple cider (after we fought off the bees for it!) Then of course we took a million pictures and played and had gobs of fun. Sigh....I just love autumn.

wishful thinking

Wednesdays are my piano days. I teach all my lessons on Wednesday evenings and leave Lars with all the girls :) Today I dropped the three older girls at a friend's house and brought Heidi home before I went off the teach. Apparently during my lessons, my brain let go of details it didn't consider important. As I was driving home I was hoping that Lars would have the girls all ready and in bed by the time I got there. I opened the front door and no one ran out to greet me, so I was really excited that they were already asleep and everything! I walked down the hallway to give them each a kiss and as I opened their door and saw their empty beds, I remembered...there's a reason it's so quiet. They aren't even here. So I put my shoes back on, got back in the car, and went to pick them up. So much for avoiding bed time.

Shamelessly living vicariously through my children

As school picture day approaches I am finding myself having a very strange and strong impulse to pay a ridiculously large amount of money for sub-par school photos. As I've been thinking on this I remember longing to be the kid at school that got the really thick packet of photos. You know, the ones with enough pictures in it to actually hand out to ALL of your friends, and not just the first eight people who asked you for one and you felt too guilty to tell them no, even though you didn't really care about them at all. Yeah. Thankfully there is a voice of reason in this house. His name is Lars. He tends to remind me at times like these, that it is actually quite impractical to spend sixty dollars on school photos. Especially in light that we are getting family photos done this same month by my very talented and creative friend who's pictures are guaranteed to be 800% better than any school picture.



But this strange impulse just got me thinking about some things I wanted as a kid that if my girls were ever to ask, I would definitely say yes to...until Lars talked me out of it. Here are a few...and none of you had better give this list to my kids.



1. Hairstyling doll...especially the kind that you could cut their hair and it "grew back".

2. A science kit with real chemicals that you could mix. (I went through a phase of being obsessed with Thomas Edison. Could be worse.)

3. A giant barbie house...the one with the elevator.

4. The toy powered car that you can actually ride in.

5. A pocket knife. Don't ask me why. I just always wanted one.

Papa Murphys

Yaya got a little smurf book from a garage sale this summer. Recently she has been toting it around reading it to everyone. Somehow she got her characters confused and calls Papa Smurf, "Papa Murphy" and every other smurf is "Honey Murphy." It's pretty dang cute!