Flag Retirement

Who knew that I was married to Walt Hancock Jr.? For FHE on Monday, we went to our first Flag Retirement Ceremony, and it was actually pretty cool. A troop of boy scouts organized everything, there was a little patriotic band, some local Marines spoke...it was a great time. The kids learned to respect the flag more (did you know that there is a purpose for every fold when you fold a flag?? I didn't.) and it really did make you proud to live in America.

I said something to Than like, "This is pretty cool...if you're into this sort of thing." And he said, "Well, shouldn't everyone be into this sort of thing?" We should be more proud of our country. It is the best place to live with all the freedoms we have.



Claira had a monumental occasion afterwards...her first brain freeze. She wouldn't stop eating the ice cream, and we ran into Dan and LaNell in Macey's and Dan said, "In a few more bites, we're gonna see her face do this..." And sure enough, a few bites later she was crying in pain. But like any girl of mine would, she went back for more as soon as the pain subsided. Atta girl, Claira.

Emily's Pedigree Commercial Meltdown

This is an email that my sister, Erin, sent me the other day and I about peed my pants....until I saw the commercial and it really is sad! Enjoy laughing at my poor sister's expense. We love your tender hearted soul!

#2,

So, we’re hangin out with mom in her hospital room and a dog commercial comes on that reminds Emily of a sadder one that gets her every time to the point where Marc has to turn off the TV whenever it comes on. I can’t remember how the commercial goes and all I want is for Emily to explain it to me, but every time she gets to the last line she starts crying uncontrollably, and then takes a minute to recuperate, tries again…cries again…tries again…cries again…..and I find this hilarious and bring out the camera…

So, these photos are a sequence of her trying to get out this commercial and the pattern is pretty much Emily trying to state the commercial….then she cries….I take a picture….she laughs, breathes and recovers…she tries again….she cries….another flash of the camera….laughter….breathing….tries again….sobs……flash….hahaha….inhale/exhale…….til finally we realize this could go on for hours so she has to write the lines of the commercial down….which, as you can see from the photos, still upsets her!!!! Freakin hilarious/ridiculous sister we have!!!!

Oh, and here’s the commercial by the way. I’d make more fun of Emily, but darn it…I just teared up after watching it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAxOtp4vDJQ

#1

The Real Marathon Weekend

Emily ran the Utah Valley Marathon on Saturday.

Holy cow. The whole 26.2 miles.

I was so proud of her! I actually was kind of emotional watching all of the people that were crossing the finish line. I don't know why. Just thinking of how hard they worked, how hard is was, setting and accomplishing goals...it was pretty fun to watch. Moms and dads running the last .2 with their kids, the lady with one leg, the 78 year old man. It's a pretty neat thing.

Emily had a baby 9 months ago. Wow!

The great part about watching Emily do this is that I've known her for a long time, and she has not always been a runner. A few years ago, her interest was sparked and so she just started running, doing a little research on how to do it, how to become better, etc, and here she is 3 marathons later. Pretty amazing girl.

We love you, em!

Kelly Clarkson...My life really would suck without you.

Oh yeah baby.

Thanks to yet another business trip for Than, he missed out on Kelly (he also missed out on Tim McGraw last year--boo!), but since Emily is running a marathon Saturday, she got to take his place. What good timing!
We had to get there early thanks to general admission seating, but we got to chat and hang out like it was our BYU time all over again. And a big THANKS goes out Colleen who spotted a secret entrance that had no one standing in line there so we got to be like the 4th people in and we ran to get the closest seats possible. Yep, I said ran. We beat out some 7th graders. What now.

All those people in the white chairs didn't have to wait 3 hours and they had real seats...and they had dinner for them...but let's be honest...we were jumping around and dancing the whole time anyway. Who needed those hundred dollar seats anyway?!?!? I only wished I had enough guts to jump over our little fence and go up close, but I'm chicken. I really did want Kelly to wave at us. She's one of those "I really think that we could be friends" celebrities. I'm sure she'd want to hang out with a mormon with 3 kids. :)

Isn't that pretty??? It sprinkled on us, but then let up.

I'm a kelly junkie. She's my favorite. I've been to only 5 concerts in my life and two of them are hers. I was seriously sad when it was raining all day thinking that it could be canceled. It was such a fun time to get away and act stupid without kids. The hard part is coming home all tired and having to get three kiddos in bed at 10:30pm. But luckily my kids are angels and let their mom see Kelly with her good friend. Pacen and Camry actually know Kelly quite well. We were listening to her in the car and Pacen said, "I like the part where she screams." Camry says, "Me, too."

Me three.

The Teeth

This is one reason why I've had a cranky baby the past week. Look at those monsters coming in her mouth! She is my first baby to ever be cranky because of teething. Who can blame her.

But now she's back to her normal, happy self.

Normal...9 months and 4 gigantic teeth in her mouth.

Oh, man I love her.

Now if she could only grow some hair.

A Losing Combination

Yesterday was our second game of tee-ball. It went a little better than the first. By the end of the game he actually went out in the field BY HIMSELF and had a lot of fun. I thought he was actually going to bat, but I was sorely disappointed. I think he really wanted to, but just couldn't pull the trigger. I did let him have HALF of the treat at the end of the game. We're all about little successes here. Camry was very happy to have the rest.
Cut to this morning. It's seven AM and I wake up to the sound of Pacen vomiting all over me and my bed. (Remember we have slumber parties when Than is gone...i'm beginning to re-think that one!) It was nasty. What a way to wake up in the morning!
I'm trying to find the connection with this throwing up business. He throws up once, and is good. Running around like a normal kid. My neighbor thought that it could be connected to tee ball. Could it??? I don't know. Is he really that stressed out??? Problem being that he puked before his game on Thursday, and then puked the morning after his game last night.
I don't care what it is....the puking has got to come to an end. Twice in one week is far too much for me.


By the way...have you seen this? http://www.wordle.net/ You put in whatever words you want and it creates little "word clouds" and you can change the color and font. If you put in the same word a few times it makes it bigger. I feel a little craft coming on with this.


***Update: The verdict is in. He's just sick. The 2nd throwing up extravaganza we just had proves it. The great part about kids is how fast they bounce back. I fixed tomato soup and grilled cheese tonight for the kids, and Pacen had one bite to see if it would make his stomach feel better. No joke, with puke still all over his arm and clothes, he walked into the kitchen and said, "Mom, I thought that soup was going to make me feel better. I'm gonna eat it now." Not quite, buddy. Let's clean you up first.

Marathon Weekend

Our marathon weekend started out Friday night with our first SLC Bees game!

My kids talk about Bumble all the time and how they are going to give him a high five, but then in reality, they chicken out. It's just too much celebrity for them. He is great entertainment for them though. All throughout the game it's like they're on Bumble watch. They can spot him anywhere.

The crew.

Claira was a champion at her first baseball game!

Kathy and the kids. They love her!


All around great night. Enormous hot dogs...whoever was the captain of the idea to put nacho cheese and roasted peppers and onions on a hot dog is genius....good friends...great game (could have done without the extra innings but it made the end exciting)...fireworks....fabulous time.

Then we got home at midnight, woke up to pick up Brooke at EFY at 6:30am, worked our tails off in the yard, had two birthday parties, one ward BBQ, and then a show at Desert Star to top it off. No wonder we all took 3 hour naps on Sunday!

Crib O'Fun

Yeah! Than is back! My blow dryer is back! (yes, he took my blow dryer! He's out of control.) Glad to have a few days with him before he's off again. I hope anyone reading this knows that my life doesn't fall to shambles when Than is gone. Than was reading the blog and said something about how everything I post is negative when he's gone. Most of the time it goes pretty smoothly. I usually describe having him gone as having 'tough moments' but the rest of the time is easy. I know i have it much easier that many people out there in the world--oh like the video that I saw on the today show this morning of a little 4th grader being surprised by her dad that came home from Iraq that she hadn't seen in a year. Matt Lauer said I'd cry and I totally did. She was so happy. And Pacen was very confused to see his mom shedding a tear at 7:30 in the morning.

This is what I found about 10 minutes after I put the kids to bed for their naps.

Who was at fault? Claira of course. Apparently she wanted to chat with them and they had to get out of bed.

Lately her crib has been the crib-o-fun. The other day I found them all in there playing and having a great time. Who knew cribs were so fun?

When will Than be home?????

Pacen just puked all over my carpet! Seriously, all over. He kept saying his throat hurt on the way home, so I was carrying him in setting him down on the couch to watch a show when it all came up. All as in all the blue coconut slush from sonic that he just drank. Nice. Then I tried to move him to the bathroom and he continued to puke a beautiful blue trail on the carpet all the way there. AHHHH!!!! Thankfully, I have a wonderful neighbor who took a crying Claira for me while I cleaned. And bless his little heart, he asks, "Can I help clean up??" And when I gave him a little rag and a spot to clean up he says all excited, "Thanks!" At least this means we don't have to go to tee-ball today. :)

Tee-Ball 2.0

We are among that land of the living again. All sicknesses are gone. I have energy again. Last night I went to bed the same time as my kids. We always have slumber parties in my bed when Than is out of town, and instead of leaving them to fall asleep while I go downstairs to eat my icecream and rot my brain with TV and computer time, I just slept with them. It was wonderful.

I'll tell you what wasn't wonderful. Pacen's tee-ball game. The pictures show you how it went, but not really because it seems a lot worse than that.

Pacen had already had some issues at his practice on Saturday because he didn't want to play with his team, he only wanted to play catch with me in the backyard. If I would have known that, I wouldn't have dropped $22 for him to play! So, Saturday was bad because he wouldn't practice with his team, then Claira had a poopy diaper going up her back and I didn't bring my diaper bag to a 1/2 hour practice so we went home.

So over the weekend I got Pacen all pumped up to play and I thought he was all ready, and then the game comes and he won't do anything. No...he will only do things with me right by his side. Problem being that I have to feed Claira because I had to wake her up from a nap to go to this game. So, he's just crying by my side until I'm done and I tell him that he won't get the treat after the game unless he plays because those are only for boys and girls who play in the game. Then I go out with him in the field and he has a blast and is so excited by how hard he threw the ball to first base and I'm thinking, Yeah! He'll go bat now that he's excited. No. I was wrong. I told him that he had to hit and be in the field to get his donut, but he just wouldn't. I tried to physically bring him up to the plate, but he just went limp body on me so I was just like whatever dude and left him lying on the ground. He came back to me and it was time to go on the field again and we went and he had a great time. Game over. Treat time.

I had to be the mean mom who doesn't let their kid get the treat because I told him he had to play. Seriously in Pacen's top 3 fits EVER. Kicking and screaming on the ground because he wants his donut. I'm trying to gather camry and claira, our chair and my bag while dealing with this screaming child and other mom's are coming over saying, "oh, i can give you one and you can give it to him later." Heck no! Not after this fit. He cried the whole way to the car and in the meantime, Camry is in tears because I told her that we could go to the little park after Pacen's game, but I wasn't about to go there with a screaming Pacen. Finally we make it to the car with 2 screaming kids. Hallelujah. By the time we're buckled, Pacen has calmed down to the point where he was just crying because he was sorry and he told me that he just wanted to throw and get a donut, not hit. So sad. Camry has calmed down because I told her that I wasn't going to give her dinner if she didn't stop. I know the way to that girl's heart because she's just like me!

So, yeah...tomorrow is game two. I hope Pacen plays. He was fine last year, but Than was at every game and our neighbor was the coach. I wish Than were home. He's gonna miss next week too. Boo. It's not like I'm making Pacen play baseball. He was all excited and is all excited before practice and games, but he gets all scared. Maybe I need to set him smaller goals or something for him to get his little treat. I have just never seen him so mad and I don't want to go through this for all of his games...it's just not worth it if no one is having fun. But I think he can have fun if he can just relax about it. Who knows. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Fevers, anyone????

Claira had one over the weekend. My mom got a fever on Sunday which put her in the hospital. Her body is in bad shape from the radiation and they want to make sure whatever was infected is taken care of for good. Then last night I got a fever! I had the chills but was super hot and had a sore throat. I'm so done with fevers!

My sick baby....

Claira has been sick with a fever all weekend. The fever broke yesterday but she still has been a grumpy baby today. I'm giving her until tomorrow to take her in. Last night she had a little pep in her step and seemed back to normal. Maybe she just needed a little more mommy time.

Yesterday she just slept off and on all day. I had just set her on my bed to do my makeup or something and it was just too sweet not to have a little photo session.


I'll be happy when she's all healthy again, but it is fun to have a 24 hour snugly baby.