Match made in heaven.

Match made in heaven.

Our crazy brood!

Our crazy brood!

Connor

Connor
Connor- 5 years old and has always kept us on our toes!

Parker

Parker
Parker Tyrrel 3 1/2 going on 30

Felicity

Felicity
Felicity Kate- the Princess

Followers

Monday, October 12, 2015

5, 3 and 1

Next week something is going to change. When people ask me how many kids I have and how old they are I'm not going to say "5, 3 and 1". Over the next 2 months my answer will change to "5, 4 and 18 months" and then "6, 4 and 18 months." I'm not going to lie I've really loved the ages my kids have been at and how perfect it sounds when I say their ages. I know it's weird but I found myself sort of sad about the changes and the increasing numbers that represent their ages. Felicity is starting nursery tomorrow. Connor is a kindergartner and in 2 years will get baptized. Parker has one more year at home with me before he starts TK or preschool. Things are catapulting forward and time never goes slow (unless we're waiting to hear about a job...then time crawls like molasses going uphill on a frozen winters day). I never blog enough. I record them, take their pictures but will I remember all their nuances and stages if I don't write or type it out? Probably not. It's already a blur. I feel like Parker will be the most neglected when it comes to tracking stages and ages. I did the least blogging when he was little and I regret it so much!

So here's a little update on each kid:

Felicity: So much to write, amazing growth for this little saint this past few months! She has such a big vocabulary and loves to yell her brother's names. She knows her friend Hannah's name and loves to say it. She is a mimmick and copies everything I say, sometimes in the same exact tone! She is a climber and I always find her standing on top of the kitchen table. She climbs in her high chair and stands on it so she can watch me cook or clean in the kitchen. She follows her brothers around and plays with them like she's one of them! She thinks she's such a big girl and hates being left behind. She loves her toys, her baby dolls, legos, everything the boys like. But she LOVES to get pretty with me. She loves putting on lipstick, pretending to put makeup on, getting her hair done, and puts on everyone's shoes and walks around the house with them on. She even figured out how to put her own shoes on the other day, just two different shoes haha! She screams at her brothers if they take things away from her or bug her. She doesn't back down from an argument and totally holds her own. Sometimes she bites if she gets really mad. Hilarious that it's an instinctive reaction, nobody taught her how to bite! If we tell the boys to apologize to her she opens her arms ready for a big hug and love from them. She loves to jump off the couch onto the cushions with Parker, copies the way he plays with toys making "whee" sounds and pushing things along the surfaces of the table or floor. She smiles so cute for pictures, her teeth are all coming in and she has the most adorable toothy grin. She loves doing snapchat photos and opens her mouth when you do selfies on there and we're doing filters. She loves talking to grandma Betsy and whenever she hears me login to skype she starts screeching "mama! Mama!" (grandma) She loves giving kisses on the screen during skype too. She loves jabbering with Avery and says everyone's name. She loves seeing the doggies and makes barking sounds when she sees any dogs. She backs up into my lap when I'm sitting on the floor so I'll read to her. She loves being read to as long as the books are captivating. The other morning I was woken up to her banging on my door yelling "mommy!" She loves to come snuggle me in the morning. She loves her blankie and can't sleep without one of her muslin blankets. Doesn't matter which one just has to have one to fall asleep. She asks for it and it sounds like she's saying "baby".  She's probably the best eater out of all the kids and finishes off everything on her plate at meal time. She loves her frozen cups with straws and they're about the only thing I use since they don't leak as bad as sippy cups. But she's really doing great with regular cups, just likes to dip things in them, and not always food. I'll write about her burn incident later but I'm amazed at how well she coped with it. She never once scratched at her face, or acted like it bothered her one bit! She left her bandage on all the time and was patient and happy as ever. I was constantly in awe at her sweetness and how she took it all in stride. She's a little princess and loves everything and everyone. She's so full of love and tenderness and there's just something about her I can't get enough of. Her spirit is so strong. She loves to sing a long to primary songs, and loves dancing to music. She really belts it out in the car and when I sing "I Am a Child of God or You are My Sunshine" she sings along and knows certain parts and words she can say so she really sings out on the "way" and "away" and "happy" words. I love it when she hugs me around my neck and holds the hug. She loves riding in her step 2 car and honks the little horn.  I could go on and on about this perfect little ray of sunshine!

Parker: Oh what a cute budding personality that tests my patience daily. He's a packrat hoarder and loves to shove all kinds of toys and non-toys into his "pack pack". There are times I find my keys in there, my jewelry, etc. If you can't find something the next place to look is in his backpack. He's a loon! We got lego duplos for Felicity and he totally commandeered them! The entire set stashed in his backpack, never even getting played with just being protected.  His speech has matured a lot and he uses a lot more words, sounding smarter every day. With that intelligence has also come a bit more stubbornness and independence. He doesn't love to listen the first, second or 100th time and copies some of Connor's bad habits. But he's overall still such a content kid and can get captivated by a certain toy, pushing it along like a train. His favorite thing is to play roller coaster with his toys, he'll push it around then say "get off, get in...then mumble something similar to the 'keep your arms feet and legs inside the ride and watch your children' then has them all scream and say whooooo!!! weeeee!!!!" He'll do it over and over and over and over....and over. He is obsessed with Star Wars and Darth degator. He wants a star wars cake for his birt day. That's all he's asked for! I think he'd happily eat the whole cake if I let him too! I realized the other day he doesn't have a lot of his own toys that are specifically his. The boys have always shared. But with Connor being a little older and more possessive Parker has been a bit more stripped of their toys and I know that makes him cling to the toys that are "his" more closely. He loves to snuggle, buries his head in my chest when he feels shy or nervous and will snuggle for a long time after naps.  He wakes up early with Connor to start crazy adventures and keeps us busy all day. He mostly watches movies in the mornings while Connor is at school or is my little sidekick. He plays with Felicity and they have a lot of fun together. He has a little temper on him and screams his head off when he's frustrated or "Fa-wiss-ity" takes things from him. He whines more than the other two kids combined when he can't have what he wants or is being asked to do something hard like eat his dinner. The other night he gagged on his food and ended up puking up some of it into my hands just because the thought of chewing his food was so awful. He was even shuddering as he took bites. It was good food too! A funny story about Parker took place about 2 months ago at the park. The kids were playing at park days with other kids in the ward. Connor was at school.  All the kids were on this little bench thing playing and jumping and Felicity accidentally got knocked down. Parker stood up, pointed at the kids and said "That is NOT OK! You say sorry to my stister RIGHT NOW!" All of us saw it happen and it was one of the cutest most hilarious things in the world!

Connor is Connor and while I wish I could be strictly positive and write all the wonderful things about him, so many of his stories are frustrating ones and I really need him to look back and maybe read these and know how much he challenged me throughout his life. So Connor, if you're reading this, know that mom earned her place in heaven by being as patient as possible with you, and you never made it very easy! Connor has really enjoyed kindergarten and I find him being more chatty about what happens than he was last year in TK. He gets excited about working with the computers and having Friday centers. He has a lot of friends and I've seen him in his element, he's a born leader. Kids gravitate to him and somehow he always gets them to fall in line. He decides its time to play pirate ship and all the kids are happy as clams to be his pirates and follow his orders! He has so much energy and I think the kids just love his positive and happy and crazy energy! His teacher tells me he's always very helpful and wanting to be a helper in the classroom. He was always that way last year too.

Connor was asking what to give Ben for his birthday last week and said "I know, I can make him a star wars space ship! I'm going to need a lot of cardboard..." He is so stinking smart and I know that's why he gets into trouble. I wish I could figure out how to make it rewarding to follow the rules. I'm working on it! We started a fuzzy wuzzy jar for him so when he does good or nice things he gets to earn fuzzy wuzzies and cash them in for different prizes. Play dates, toys, yes day, etc. So far he's cashed in twice for smaller things and has been working really hard to earn a play date! He's so full of love for his friends and just loves playing swords, police, and dressing up as so many different things. Every time he sees someone cool or an interesting job he decides that's what he wants to be when he grows up. Doctor, vet, fireman, policeman, disney worker, garbage truck driver, the list goes on and on. He's got some serious ambition! :) He loves to put together big forts or set ups for his siblings, just like I used to. Loves to play store, play with his legos, write and doodle. He is learning to read and spell and has me help him write things all the time. Currently he's holding a sword right in front of my eyes saying "you'll never know how to write now! I want your nose..." He loves playing power rangers, and all the boy things imaginable. When he makes up his mind that he wants something he can't rest until he gets it. Recently he was in time out and I was having a big frustrated cry. He talked through the door "Mom look at your necklace! It has two boys and a girl on it" He wanted to remind me that I have three kids who love me. It was the sweetest thing! Right now he's doing some dishes. Washing his lunch boxes from school. He loves to be helpful and busy, have I said that yet? And currently (I've written this over a few days time) Parker is pushing toys at my feet either playing train or Disneyland. Felicity is taking a much needed nap! Connor is learning to read and I can see so much of myself in him. Hard to focus, sometimes sloppy and fast and wanting to just get stuff over with. At least I can see where he's coming from!

So that's the run down on my sweet perfect adorable annoying crazy impossible kids. Every day is an adventure and I'm constantly tired and exhausted but I know I'll miss these days, and sorta forget them faster than I'd like to. So here's to blogging....I'll try to do it more!


Sunday, August 23, 2015

Week in Review: August 17

I really need to be better about blogging.  I need to be better about a lot of things actually, like typing. It took me like 5 tries to type that second sentence and even longer to do this one. You'd think I'd have the knack of this keyboard down after 2 months of having it. I want to start doing weekly posts, they seem more manageable and for the most part I think I can remember a whole week at a time...doing it daily would be excessive and monthly I'd forget a lot. So let's give this a whirl.

We decided this year to use some of Ben's many vacation days to do a "Staycation"! After all, look at where we live. Why would we ever need to go anywhere else? We didn't even go to Utah this summer, we stayed where it's easy breezy by the beach and had a lot of lazy fun days.

So Monday we decided to have an "sea life" day. We went to breakfast at Cafe Sunrise and then drove to the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. It was so cool! Not as big as I originally thought, I think they have just as much at Sea World to look at and enjoy, or the aquarium at Legoland haha. I guess people talked it up too much. But the kids had fun and of course ran around like crazies rather than stay with us so we could make it educational. Oh well. They loved being outside on the water splash area with a pirate ship to play on. They petted stingrays, even Felicity had one graze her hand and she pulled her hand out faster than you can say slimy. We even went into the bird area which was not what I was expecting. I thought it was just an aviary display like any other. NOPE. Full on crazy birds landing on you, flying right over your head, eating nectar right out of your hand! Parker hated it, Connor pretended to be brave, and Felicity was just along for the ride. Right as we walked in one landed on Ben's shoulder even though he didn't have food! haha it was great.

We spent a little longer there, in total I think about 2-3 hours. We headed out and Connor and Felicity fell asleep in the car so we drove all the way to Newport and parked. We had to really shake Connor awake which is crazy since the kid hardly EVER falls asleep on his own. We had pizza at a little pizzeria on Newport Harbor and then boarded our boat to go whale watching! It wasn't what I expected..no dolphins swimming along the boat. Nowhere really to sit. Felicity hated not being able to walk around. All Connor wanted to do was go up and down the steps to the galley below and back to the top of the ship. Parker was probably a little tired and sea sick and just wanted a nap. It took over an hour before we saw anything at all and I was ready to cry. Finally the captain said we were near 3-4 blue whales which are the largest whale in the world. We got up there in time for Connor and Parker to see the backs of the whales come out of the water and blow their holes a few times. It was really cool but I don't think very cool to them...I'm sure they were expecting to see the full whale jump out of the water. I know Connor loved just being on the boat and said so many times. We were really glad when it was over! Haha...not the best idea with littles.

We were so sick from the boat and eating greasy food that we had dinner at Nekter and got an acai bowl for the boys and juice and smoothies for us. Then we went to look at a van for sale since ours we thought was done for. Thankfully didn't buy the van, the ac wasn't working and our van ended up not being as bad as we had thought!

Kids went to bed early, as did we. We had a big day the next day and wanted to be rested!

Day two was Disney day. After a summer of not having our passes work for blackout days, we were anxious and excited to go! And it made it even more fun that Parker was tall enough to ride most of the rides he'd never been able to go on! We started at Cars, and daddy rode Little Mermaid and the bugs land caterpillar train with Felicity while they waited for us. The boys rode Soarin over California, and we all rode Monsters Inc. We headed over to Disneyland and got fast passes for splash mountain, took the boat to the Pirate Island and played there for a bit. Got Parker to ride Splash Mountain with Connor and I...ok we tricked him. I told him we were going on a tree house that had singing animals and you ride in a tree trunk. Not all the way untrue...and honestly he was giggling after the big drop and had a blast! I'll be surprised if he rides it again though...the photos were priceless!

We rode Winnie the Pooh as well while we were over there, but Parker refused to ride Pirates. His dilemma with that ride is so ridiculous! We were hungry and headed over to the all you can eat bbq in Big Thunder Ranch! It was so delish and we got super full and enjoyed the cool air in the shade. We rode Small World next and enjoyed that cool air even more. It was definitely getting super hot by that hour. Connor was having a really hard day and I think it's partly because all the attention was on Parker and the rides he was able to ride. Every single thing we went on he said "I hate that ride". Eventually Ben just took Parker on Buzz alone since Connor was being so rude and throwing such awful tantrums. I hated it, this was supposed to be our family time!

We ended up going back to California Adventure I rode Little Mermaid with the boys while Felicity slept and Ben rode Cars with them.  By then it was just so crowded, hot and almost 5:00 so we decided it was ok to go. We told the kids we could get ice cream somewhere yummy and hit up a Dairy Queen not far away.  What were we thinking? The sugar rush in the car...oh man it was bad. We got home and got them to bed as fast as possible and watched a movie. So much better than a hotel!

The next day was our chill day. We needed it! Got a few things done, took care of the van that was still in the church parking lot and had it fixed. Went to the Reserve pool where they were having Relief Society activity but nobody was there so we ended up getting a key and some lunch and having the pool to ourselves for over an hour. Ben taught Connor to float and we all had a great time! Home for naps which were heavenly..then we went and had dinner at the Irvine Spectrum at Red Robin with the gift card my mom sent Ben for fun. We shopped for school clothes for Connor and called it a night around 9. Kids were bad in the car again...frozen yogurt (I forgot to mention) had gone straight to their bloodstream. I hate how crazy they get and how mean I have to be sometimes!

All in all we wore them out as good as any regular vacation, but got to sleep in our own beds at night! It was a great time and I love my little family. I hope they made good memories and know how special they are to us. I hope they know we do this for them and want them to have a happy life. I hope they realize how lucky they are to live where we do to be surrounded by all this amazing beauty and opportunity! So blessed to have my sweet family!

So after the vacation had ended and Ben went back to work I took the kids on a walk that next morning then hit the beach for a nice beach day. We spent about 3 hours there then home for naps. The boys didn't sleep, just Felicity who apparently needed it badly after our big escapades. Later on Gabby and Rusty and Caroline came over, they had been in SoCal for a a training for Rusty and they played with the kids for a bit then we had Emily come watch the kids while we went to dinner at South of Nicks! It was so yummy and fun to have visitors. It's my favorite thing when people visit! :)

The next day we went on a walk and picked up Grandma Tyrrel at the train station. She stayed with us all weekend watching the boys while I got things done, and then when we had a bridal session Friday night and wedding to photograph all day Saturday. It was nice to know they were well cared for! Today is Sunday and I'm home with Felicity while the boys are all at church. Felicity has had a little cough and runny nose and not been herself so we are hanging out keeping it nice and relaxed while those crazy boys are at primary!

Some of the funny things this week:

Parker started saying "Wait wait wait...and talking (rambling) about just anything that came to mind. The rides he rode, his legoland tickets, etc. If you tried chiming in he'd put his hands up and shut you down..."wait wait wait, Listen to me!". Not sure where he gets his attitude...(Connor. He gets it from Connor).

Felicity's vocabulary keeps growing and she now says "dah!" when you ask if she wants to do things. I asked if she wanted to go to Target and she said "dah!" (yeah). She also says nonna for Connor, copies my counting when I'm saying one...two...three..to the boys. She knows where her eyes, nose, mouth, tummy, toes and more are and names a lot of them out loud. She says thank you, starting to say I love you, and she's smart as a whip. She throws her diapers away for me, (as well as a lot of other things which is scary)..climbs on her high chair to get to stuff, loves buckling things, is totally fearless and tries to keep up with her brothers! I try cleaning up her messes and she dumps things right back out like "hey that's how I wanted this!". She is sassy, fights with Parker over things and doesn't put up with them bullying her. She calls both Ben and I daddy and when I get home from anything she runs to me "daddy daddy daddy" which I guess is ok...two other people call me mommy WAY too much.

Connor is Connor and keeps us on our toes. This week he was sneaky with food and snuck a ring pop, baby food, cookies and who knows what else into his room. His obsession with locks and keys continues, and he was SUPER proud of his new school shoes and backpack. He took all the tags off and folded everything to put it away in his closet and drawers. He has his backpack hanging on his closet all ready to go. He hates it when grandma Tyrrel calls it "Kindee-garden" and corrects anyone who says it that way. He loves riding his bike and is always looking forward to the next big adventure. Even when he's having fun he has to know what's coming next. I'm trying to teach him to live in the moment! I'm going to be glad to have the break from all three being home but will miss him in the mornings. Excited he gets to ride the bus which gives me even more of a break!

Here's to another week!