Magic Mountain

James and Savanna had a Daddy-Daughter Date at Magic Mountain's Home School Day! It's cheaper and closed to the general public so they were able to walk onto every ride (some more than once)! I was a little jealous to stay behind, but I was able to go see my Mom, Aunt, and Uncle so that was great. Greg and Marsha had never met Emma. Of course, they fell in-love with her. Who doesn't??

Savanna chickened out and wouldn't ride X2, but she rode everything else. James rode X2 twice...and everything else!

Savanna insisted they ride the carousel. I would have loved to have seen this!

Overall, it was a fun but tiring day. They both looked beat up when I came to get them. James said he didn't think people were supposed to ride that many roller coasters in one day!

November 5, 2010

The Guest List

Just had to share this funny story real quick. Bradley decided to make a tent in the living room. During this endeavor he had a little altercation with his Dad. I look over from where I was studying, and I see this sign Bradley made and taped to the door of his tent:

Fortunately for James within about 20 minutes, Brad was over it. But then, he had it out for Ben!

November 2, 2010

Busy Bees

Tuesday was a busy day of dentist appointments, park play, and colloquium discussions.

All three kids had their check-ups. No cavities, thankfully! We also found out that Bradley may be only missing 6 permanent teeth (we were told previously that he was missing 8!). It will still be quite unfortunate and costly, but won't be as difficult as we thought. Benjamin, on the other hand, has one extra tooth! He will have to have oral surgery in the next year or so to remove his extra front tooth. Fortunately we have Savanna with her supermodel smile!!

It was a beautiful day so we played at a nearby park for a couple hours and then hit our new favorite deli, Jersey Mikes, for some killer subs.

When we arrived home, James and I prepared for our colloquium on "Walden" by the infamous Thoreau. It was a great discussion about simplifying our lives and focusing on the more important, spiritual matters. Although I wasn't able to finish it in its entirety, I gained some great insight from his 2 year sabbatical in his cabin by Walden Pond. I have found that although I may not have 2 years to spend in nature, I can be like Thoreau and make time every day to enjoy God's blessings, read, pray, meditate, and have quiet. It brings peace and sanity. It invites the Spirit. What mother of four can't use more of that?

October 26, 2010

Emma Leigh Eve Wyett

Even though Emma is our last baby, she has had many firsts. She is our first baby who has slept in our room past the first couple of weeks. She is our first baby that I have attempted to use cloth diapers with, and she is our first baby that I have sent out newborn announcements for and taken newborn pictures of. Another first is the size of her name. She is the first of our children to have two middle names. The story of her name is very sweet, so I thought I'd share it with you all.

Several years ago when Benjamin was still a baby, James and I visited the Los Angeles Temple. In our faith we attend the temple for many reasons, but a great blessing of the temple is that we can receive personal revelation from God to help us in our daily lives. During this temple visit, James and I both had a strong impression that we were going to have another baby in the future, and that her name was Emma.

Pondering a middle name, we decided soon after this visit to name her Emma Leigh (James' middle name is Lee, but I've always loved the spelling Leigh for a girl). We went back and forth over naming her Emmaleigh or Emma Leigh. We decided on the latter, but we all still call her by her first two names very often.

So, why the second middle name? Shortly before I became pregnant with Emma, my darling grandma Evaclaire (known to all her loved her as Eve) passed away. My grandma encompassed all the beauty and sweetness I would wish for my little girl, so we decided to add Eve to her repertoire of names. Eve was the matriarch of my family, and it is also sweet to think that Emma bears the name of Mother Eve, the matriarch of the entire human family!

November 1, 2010

Happy Halloween!

Halloween was short and sweet this year...this is a theme I'm starting to really like. On Thursday we carved our pumpkins. The boys really loved the pumpkin carving, and all 4 of the kids got their own pumpkins. James is the master carver, and I bake all of the seeds afterwards!

We celebrated on Friday since Halloween falls on a Sunday this year. I was very grateful to get out of trick or treating, and the kids didn't seem to care either way. As it was, they still ended up with a HUGE amount of candy...sigh.

Here are the highlights:

Bradley finally decided on a Pirate. I tried to get him to practice his "arrgggh," but he thought that was ridiculous.

Ben was our cute, toothless Fire Chief.

Savanna was a fairy. This was the easiest costume ever and aside from the wings, she can wear it over and over!

And the star of the show was our Little Pea in a Pod (even though two other babies showed up as peas, she still was a hit)!

We ended up going to our ward's Trunk or Treat activity. They had a wonderful dinner followed by a costume parade and trick or treating...I mean trunk or treating. Anyone who wanted decorated their trunk and parked in the lot at church. The kids walked around (several times) and collected candy from the trunks. This was great not only because we knew all the people (we were able to make homemade treats that were safe to be handed out!), but the kids got to go around with all of their friends and primary teachers. Savanna was the only teenager making the rounds- no embarrassment there on her part. She is a candy addict!

Our Trunk.

Our Treats!

As is customary in our house, when we got home we dumped out all the candy on the floor and the children picked out their favorite candies to keep (to be doled out at Mom's discretion). The rest is left out for the Switch Witch (aka Dad) who will trade candy for a cool prize. Bradley really likes this idea, but Ben informed me the other day very indignantly that I was the Switch Witch because he saw me put their prizes in the cart at the store last year. He also informed me that I was a big liar (wow, he's been carrying that around all year!). I told him, "Ok, Ben, here's the deal. You can trade your candy for a prize or you can trade your candy for nothing." He's warming up to the prize idea!

Overall this Halloween was fun...but I'm glad it's over. Just doing normal things is still a bit overwhelming with a newborn. It is a sweet and sacred time, but a tiring one nonetheless. I will be thinking of all of you out and about tomorrow evening while I am home with my kids watching Halloween videos and reading some "scary" books the boys picked out from the library! :)

October 28 - 29, 2010

Here We Go...Again

It seems that every other month or so I post about some change in our home we have made...whether it be physically moving furniture or implementing a new routine or strategy. Well, a few months ago the older three children decided to share a sleeping room and turn our second bedroom into a craft/play/school room. It has worked out very well and has been utilized a good deal, however, the room is just too small. Squeezing all three kids and their shelves, tables, and projects into a 100 square foot room led to many messes and squabbles. Plus, the craft room was upstairs, and James and I spend most of our time downstairs so they were unsupervised a lot. It just made sense with the type of environment we are trying to create in our home to utilize the biggest room in our house for this purpose. So...this week we moved the craft/play room to the livingroom, and turned the upstairs second bedroom into an office/den. Wow, now this is really going to work out well! The children have so much more room to spread out and play. I am always downstairs cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, etc. and can help them organize their projects and encourage their creativity. I have my rocker in the livingroom to nurse the baby and read my books but other than that, the room is theirs.

We even moved the futon and computer desk to the office, so there is officially no media devices in our living room. We banished the TV from our living room a long time ago, but I didn't realize how much time my husband and I spent on the computer during the day because it was "there." Facebook, email, youtube, you name it, and every time we were on the computer the children would gravitate towards the screen and stop their play. Now that the computer is in a separate room, we still use it (I'm obviously using it right now!), but we tend to do it in the evenings or other times of day that don't interrupt our learning times. I do have to say it is a little weird not to have a couch of some sort in our main living area...but for the few times of year that we have company, we'll have to make do!

October 27, 2010