So Hot!

One more hilarious Will story: 

A few weeks ago, I was so frustrated with the boys. The first time they had dumped powdered sugar all over the kitchen, themselves and their jammies, I thought it was funny and took pictures, but the second time I was miffed. I came down the stairs, saw the mayhem and took a deep breath. I blew out as much exasperation as I could and Will looked up at me and said, "So hot!" Blowing air like that means candles to him........darling......

Pie Fights

For the past few months, our boys have been obsessed with the idea of having a pie fight. It all stemmed from the movie they saw of a pie fight birthday party we threw for my dad a few years ago. Now everything has become a pie and is meant to be thrown at someone within your vicinity; snow, wipes, water, cookie dough, powdered sugar, and dirt have all been imagined into useable pies over and over again at our house!  It is hilarious enough watching Dane and Jonah pie fight, but when Will joins in, at a full 23 inches, get ready for some real belly laughs. He always starts out saying, "I'm papa" and then picks up the nearest "pie" and launches it, complete with splattering sound effects straight from his drool-ridden mouth. So cute.

The other day the boys were "cleaning up" the hallway.  Jonah and Will were picking up various items and bringing them to me, "Here, mama. Here towel.....Here mama, socks......" When they picked up a pile of baby wipes and came running toward me holding them with a smile as big as Texas on his face they said, "Here, mama. PIE!! "

Spiders, Bats, and Other Creepy Things

Tonight, Jonah was wearing his Batman costume, as usual, when he and Dane simultaneously got stuck in a gooey spider trap that Kev had set out. After I cleaned their sticky feet, Jonah quietly said, "Spider traps are for spiders. Not bats."

Routine?

According to so many friends whose children are now grown, what seems to be routine for so many years will actually someday fade into the distant past and become less memorable. Given that, and the fact that my brain is rapidly turning to mush anyway, I thought I would jot down one of our favorite "routine" pasttimes......

One of our favorite ways to spend an evening is to visit my parents, "Papa" and "Abba". We just came from there tonight, and although our visits vary each time, there are recurring themes to each visit. For instance, the drive-up/park/get-out-of-the-car-and-in-to-the-house portion of our visit is always brightened with mom, dad, or both coming out to the car smiling, waving, and helping unbuckle and unload the kiddos. The kids are always full of excitement and love to tell Abba and/or Papa their latest (random!) thoughts of the moment! Usually, our first stop out of the car is Papa's pirate ship where he is constantly working. Liza, Jonah and Dane love to climb up on the decks of the ship, help with minor building assignments Papa gives them, and steer the ships very-realistic wheel.  Then its off to fly the treehouse airplane, sit in the ship's suspended netting, climb on the monkey bars or play on the teeter totter and we are still only in the first 10 minutes of our visit! Somewhere within playtime, Abba always works in a snack, and someone always works in an injury (thankfully all minor so far). Once the kids are fed, inside we go where Papa puts on "Horsies Dancing" (Man of LaMancha) for them to watch while the adults snack on Abba's latest culinary greats. Tonight she had made tomato bread, chicken salad and banana bread! We are in spoiled city whenever we are in Abba's kitchen! Liza likes to go back to the American Girl room that she and Abba have created, where all of the American Girl doll treasures in Abba's house are kept! My favorite are the doll-size theatre chairs. Liza loves to look in all of the little boxes that house different doll paraphenalia and oooo and aaahhhh at each little piece. If we are lucky, it is usually around this portion of our visit that Kev makes his appearance and the kids all run to him and give him hugs!

Sometimes we swim together, sometimes we play with toys (Papa's robot is a hit), sometimes we color or do artwork, but always some sort of adventure emerges. Once, Papa climbed up on the pool roof to spray several bees nests while Abba held her breath and made a plan for his fall from the pool below! Tonight we found another bees nest in the tree house where the kids were snacking, so everyone gathered around to watch him spray that one too. 

The consistent theme, however, is abundant love where time stands still. It's not Abba's and Papa's house that engenders those qualities; it is their loving and generous hearts that are so willing to fully invest into our family. We always leave their home with far more than we came with, in every sense. 

No visit to Papas and Abbas would be complete without a dance session in the living room with Papa at the piano! The kids go wild while he plays, running, skipping, jumping, singing, twirling, and oh yes, crashing (Dane and Liza hit pretty hard tonight) until each song is over, when they immediately fall to the floor and lay on their backs until Papa starts the next song. The glee of Christmas morning is the only competition in our Top Few Precious Moments collection - the delight of the kids dancing and Papa playing is extremely sweet. Papa always has 1 or 2 kids on his lap "assisting" him with his dance numbers; maybe some future pianists will be born from this fun? After dancing, we either hit the road, or on a warm evening like tonight, go out on the front lawn for more running, playing and crashing (Dane and Liza again ran into each other on the grass tonight.....time for glasses for them?) Baseball was a popular game tonight, with the kids batting at the ball with pool floaties Abba has cut for them to swing. Papa helped Liza practice her pitching and batting, and Abba pitched a nerf football to the twins for them to hit. Will loved his "bat" and as usual, we stayed until about 2 minutes before his bedtime, milking every last second of our playtime with Papa and Abba! One of the most predictable parts of our routine is that Papa and Abba help us get the kids situated in the car, someone remembers that we have forgotten (again) to load Ruger, and then Abba goes back into the house to package up any extra food to send home with us! They always leave us with our hands and hearts full (and our kids tired!); we are so thankful that we have such devoted grandparents who so generously and willingly share their lives with us!

Liza's first day of second grade at Hannah Holbrook Elementary with Mrs. Kerr, a teacher that we loved all year long. 

All About Liza

From the time Liza was a teeny baby, we knew the heavens had sent us a rare and beautiful shining star.  Now that she is about to enter second grade (waaa), I am compelled to jot down a few notes about her blossoming personality, interests and skills.

Liza's contagious laugh has long been her happy trademark - everywhere we go, even strangers comment that her laugh lifts them! Things that make Liza laugh: funny stories, tickle wars and funny shows.  

Just within the past few months, she seems to be truly enjoying and appreciating her brothers. Dane and Jonah are big enough now to be actual playmates for her, and she delights in sharing her Littlest PetShop, Barbies, American Girls, or whatever the flavor of the day is with them. They hang on every word she says as she models how to play with the various toys. She is generally happy to share, as long as the "sharee" asks her permission first. 

This summer she has developed a new confidence....I think it may have stemmed from her Groove dance performances at Raging Waters and the Bountiful parade. She just unleashed and danced with such attitude - so great - perhaps we have uncovered one of her fortes. Along with her voice lessons, swimming lessons, art lessons and scrapbooking classes, this summer has been a full one for her. Liza is great at most everything she tries - her voice coach has already asked her to perform in church (Liza isn't sure about that one), her swimming teacher said she was a true natural, relaxed and athletic swimmer, and her scrapbooking teacher said that in her 3-day class, she completed more pages than any of the other girls there (all of whom were older than Liza)! She would just focus intensely for the entire class and burn through stacks of paper.....she created a darling Sizzlin Summer scrapbook that she is proud of.  She excels in so many areas.

This week, Kevin has been working with her on 2nd and 3rd grade math. She is whizzing through her multiplication tables and division is next. Go Liza! Of course, she is motivated by the money Kev pays her to get through her studies......she is saving up to by the American Girl Bitty Twins, but hey, whatever works, right?

American Girl could be its own topic....for now let's just say she is obsessed!

Liza has an amazing combination of strength in spirit, heart and mind. Her spirit is sensitive and sweet - she is acutely aware of every emotion in a room, just the same way she is aware of every piece of furniture in a room. (She is the first and sometimes only person in our family to notice when I move a chair from one corner of a room to another). She loves to hear stories about honesty, and has a firm grasp of right and wrong. She is getting ready to be baptized in a few months and is learning all about that decision.
Her heart is compassionate; she is free with hugs and kisses for those she loves that are hurting or in need. She looks out for kids who are playing alone at recess and is quick to include everyone around her.

Her mind astounds us daily - she already thinks and speaks with lawyer logic, using large vocabulary words and reading far beyond her grade level.

We love her through and through, inside and out!

It is so fun to have all of those internal charachteristics so solid in a little person, and to still have the girly girl on the outside who loves doing hair, makeup and nails, and shopping for cute clothes. We have so much fun together! Thank heavens for our one little girl!  

Life at Skyline Drive with four beautiful kids and a dog we all adore. Does it get any better than this?

Liza has loved Baby Will ever since her eyes first met his at the hospital when he was born almost a year ago, and he loves her too.

We had an amazing time on the boat and jet ski at Jordanelle today! Papa, Abba, and Grandpa Franklin were all there to cheer the kids on in one of, if not their first boating experience. Everyone loved the water. Liza especially loved tubing, and the twins' favorite was the zipping around the lake on the jet ski. Baby Will stayed home with a sitter since this isn't much of an activity for little tikes, so we missed him, but found the other three kids to be water bugs!

The kids loved our visit to the Davis County fair, complete with slimy, furry, cuddly creatures of all kinds.

Too Many Funnies

Being the primary author of this blog, I thought I would take time to wax theoretical or philosophical for my blog entries, but no. The quotes of the week have taken over, and it appears that most of my blog entries will consist of hilarious things the kids say! Fine with me. At least I am finally jotting them down somewhere.  Jonah holds the record today, adding the following two funnies from our visit to Wheeler Farm today: 1) about a water pump leaking into the mud below "Mama, look at that water going into all that JUNK!" 2) "Hey, look at that chicken in the cow's nest!" We got to see a cow get milked, visit all sorts of animals (Will was in heaven), and spend almost an hour "riding" on stationary tractors. Liza's favorite part was probably Kev's bullet-speed stroller ride to the car.....she was missing a Bitty Baby American Girl doll (a boy) and wanted to get to Abba's to see him one last time before bed.

House Haunting

For a few years now, we have had the bug to expand our home and yard, and really, what it boils down to for me is.....my laundry room. I can't wait to have a normal sized washer and dryer instead of the pint-size European models we are working 24/7 right now.  True, it would be great for the kids to have larger play areas, both inside and out, but I think they will be unsupervised wherever we end up, because I will be so happy in a new laundry room that I will just put a load in the washer and sit there and watch in pure awe as 20ish pairs of pants are cleaned together instead of the 4 or 5 we can load in now. I should be more thankful to even have a washer and dryer, but some days I wonder how much stress our models are saving and how much they are causing.   Anyhoo, we are debating between buying an existing home (foreclosures abound in this soft market), or building a home on the ground we just bought in North Salt Lake. Either way has its perks.  Our main objective is to not own a "coffin" that Kev would have to work night and day until he dies for - what is the use of a great family home if there is no daddy around? And our second goal is to give the kids and their friends more space to play in as they grow.  The challenge is to achieve both goals simultaneously - can we do it?

Three Cheers for Blogging

We have arrived in the wide world of bloggers! Welcome to our online journal highlighting the hilarious, the ridiculous, the tumultuous, and the delicious life of the Tolton Tribe. Add us to your favorites list and stay tuned for more......