Honest Cadie

We had a great time in Lethbridge this weekend - even though this is what I woke up to:

As Cadie was crawling into bed with us she shoved me aside and casually mentioned that she likes Daddy better than me. I gave her my saddest look and she conceded: "Oh don't worry Mommy, I'm sure Libby will like you."

broken or destroyed

So I want to make a list of everything Liberty has broken in the last month or so:

3 bottles of shampoo (on David's head or down the drain)

the curtain rod (playing superman)

her new school shoes (crayons)

laptop keys (?)

ipod dock ( extremely energetic freeze dance)

2 separate dents in new floor (both times bringing in large rocks from outside)

and the list goes on (selective memory loss) but her lack of remorse is very concerning. I talked with Corey about ways to get her to understand what she is doing as new things are destroyed daily around here. I like to use behaviour related consequences as time outs don't

usually work with her. I thought and thought and finally came up with a plan: I would give David and Cadie some money to buy a toy at the dollar store right

in front of her and tell them they earned this privilege for having good behaviour and taking good care of their things. She of course wouldn't get a new toy. And would have to watch them get one. Corey thought this was cruel and his exact words were: "she's going to resent you for the rest of your life." Nevertheless, I pushed forward with my plan, hoping to get through to her. Here's what happened: I gave the other two their loonies and talked to her in the dollar store, fully anticipating tears and a tantrum. Instead, she got a surprised look on her face and exclaimed: "Oh! I can't wait to see what David and Cadie buy! This is so exciting!" And you'd think by now I'd know not to leave her alone like ever, but I was actually so surprised to come downstairs after a diaper change to find this:

(what else are blue markers for anyway?)

So I decided to forgo all plans of housework I had for the rest of the day and we just played. And it was sooo wonderful. We turned a duvet cover into a dinosaur cave - all of us crawled in through the zipper and realized it was the perfect place to eat and

sleep and hide from the bigger dinosaurs. That somehow morphed into "beauty parlour" and I almost walked out the door for the evening session of stake conference looking like this!

And my bathroom that was going to get cleaned today ended up looking like this:

But my wise mother in law once told me that when she looks back, she wished she had spent less time cleaning and more time enjoying her kids when they were little, so I'm trying my best to learn from her wisdom!

Vehicles

So we need to teach our children about vehicles. Apparently they are pretty clueless. There was a Lambourgini (which I don't even know how to spell) parked in our church parking lot. It stood out. Corey made a few comments about the nice Lambourgini. On our way back to our van after church Libby realized the fancy car was missing and thus commented: "Oh, the Zucchini's gone..." A few minutes later Cadie and I were heading to a baby blessing and she saw a motorbike. She commented from the back seat that it was an old lady driving the motorbike. (didn't look like it to me but oh well) she continues to elaborate on the fact that this poor old lady was by herself - where was her family? She must be so lonely, etc. A few minutes later on a different road we pass by another motorcycle - this one had 2 riders on it. She heaves a huge sigh of relief - "Oh there's the rest of her family" (obviously) "BUT THEY"RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!!! Turn around Mommy, we have to help her!"

Bacon

Mmm, well those of you who know me well, might have heard about my bacon - it's a sort of wiggle/dance/tantrum thing that I do when I am frustrated. I can't remember how it started but it really does help to relieve the tension by doing a bacon instead of getting mad. I never realized until today that the majority of my bacon's have been on my husband - my kids witnessed their first bacon today and when Corey remarked "oh, Mommy's bringing out the bacon" Cadie's eyes got big and she did her own little dance - only her's was a dance of excitement as she thought we were going to eat bacon. Libby and Cadie were both in tears when they had to go to bed without any bacon. Besides the lack of bacon, we have had a wonderful few months since my last post! We went swimming to the wave pool today - Libby and Cadie are little fish - swimming in and over and under all the waves! But when asked what the highlight of the day was, it was the candy apples - my first attempt - they were delicious but difficult to eat. Another highlight - we just finished reading the online kid's version of the book of mormon - the kids and I read from it every night and we have set a goal to read it on all 4 reading difficulty levels (we only completed level 1). Cadie started taking piano lessons this september. I was hesitant to start her at only 3 yrs. old but she was so enthusiastic after watching countless lessons and her sister practice, I couldn't refuse. So glad we started! She's amazing me everyday as she begs to play the next song in the book - in only a few weeks she's played every song in the first book and my level B book was lent out and she wanted to play more so I let her play out of Libby's book and she just loved it! Libby is enjoying Kindergarten again this year - and we are all happy with our decision to have her repeat kindergarten - even though she is so advanced academically it is so nice to see how well she is behaving and all the new friends she is playing with. David is also well - we rarely call him David anymore - mostly just "Buh" as that is pretty much all he says. He still spazzes regularly but when he's happy he is so much fun to be with! Our last highlight - Corey finally finishes his degree in a few more days! We can't wait!

party time with the varty party

David's birthday cake with Libby and my new niece, Frankie!

The pincher creek candy parade - Cadie managed to get that whole bag filled to the brim without leaving her chair once - she batted her eyelashes and parade people would walk over to put the candy in her bag - and her darling sister Libby ran out to get the rest of the candy and split it between her bag and Cadie's - the best older sister in the world!!

My other sweet niece, Ayla! Isn't she gorgeous?

David forgot he was grumpy for almost an hour at the hotel pool!

Daredevil Stratton jumping into the pool (so many times!)

So we went on a trip with the Varty's. So much fun! We got cheap ride tickets and cheap hotel- and Aaron took it a step further and got us cheap lunch from the free continental breakfast! Loved it! So here's my incident of the trip - there's always one when I'm around... only this time, I didn't even do or say anything wrong! So we got hotel rooms across from each other at the hotel so once we put the kids to bed we could sit out in the hallway and play cards. I guess I may have gotten a little carried away. I was pretty excited about the chance to sit in the hall and play cards in my pajamas. So I brought out the gear - chairs, table, food etc. from the hotel room so we could be comfortable. It was dang cold in that hallway so I also had to bring the comforter off the bed. Corey and I were thus decked out in the hallway waiting for Skye and Aaron's kids to fall asleep when the next door neighbours came home from the pool. First it was the 2 little boys- maybe 6 and 8? The 8 yr old proceeded to pull down his swim trunks and gave us a frontal nudity dance. And the 6 yr old told corey "I like your wife." exact quote. And that's not even all - they open their door and out runs a rat-dog. Seriously! It was hideous. Who has a rat-dog in their hotel room? But the rest of the trip was pure fun - the pool was awesome - oh wait, I forgot Libby almost drown, but the good part of that was that she also almost learned how to swim. I was worried she wouldn't go in the water ever again so I made her jump in with me and she was able to swim back to the edge and jump again and again and again with water wings on. Cadie was my little dare devil - as usual - she went on this crazy tube waterslide with me even though she was so tiny she kept falling through the hole in the middle of the tube! I had to hold her up with one arm and one leg - which meant I was holding onto my tube with my bum! Last time we took her watersliding Aaron forgot to catch her at the bottom (as she kept enthusiastically throwing herself down on her tummy) and she was under for a few seconds before he fished her out with his pinky. She came up sputtering and coughed out the words "again! again!"

So my previous post should have been David's birthday. I'm such a good mom. My 3rd little lump just gets squashed into the fun and doesn't often get the recognition he deserves! He's 2! And he can't talk! Thats not true. He can say "mom" "more" "mine" and "mo." (no) He likes M words. and he can say Dat. (dad) But he's usually mad at Dat- as it takes him a good while to wake up - like all the way up - he's grumpy for the first hour or so every morning and after naps. And that's usually when Corey is around so Dat is often said in a not so nice scream. Then he shuts his eyes in an attempt to not have to look at Dat offending him with his presence. But we love our little David and can't wait for him to grow out of his grumpy phase - because when he's not grumpy he's the sweetest thing in the whole world!!

camping

So we tried camping again. And it was great! Seriously, lots of fun, except for a few little things... Like while I had to hold on to David so that he wouldn't run off the edge of a cliff into a waterfall, Libby fell down and scraped her knee at the exact same time that Cadie got bit by a dog. Corey decided last minute that he wouldn't be joining us as he had to work, so I was a little apprehensive about setting up the tent all by myself - I shouldn't have been - Libby was such a good helper - she stood on her tiptoes and held up the poles so I could put them into the holes. She also babysat david whenever I took Cadie to the washroom (David still has a fascination with putting things -including his hands- in toilets) But I have to say the best part about camping was my PJ's. My warm comfy-cozy one-piece jammies that look exactly like an infant's sleeper - with feet. I thought they would keep me warm, and I love them - so I wore them. The kids were asleep one night when our rain fly blew off our tent in a crazy gust of wind - I ran out to save it from blowing away as I could tell a big storm was on it's way -well, I better preface this with earlier that day, 20 shirtless, built, rugged young guys pitched their tents next to mine. Turned out to be an entire army unit from England. So my rain fly blows off and I ran out to retrieve it in my sleeper and a whole army of good-looking (but mildly rude) men watched me flail around and wrestle it to the ground and then clumsily try to re-attach it to my tent in gale force wind. Guess you had to be there. But they sure thought it was funny. I was so proud of the girls though - Libby and Cadie both did the bear's hump hike (and I did it with a 28 pound David wrapped on my back) we did red rock canyon

and cameron lake, too. We had fun on the paddle boats and trying to catch gophers. (They did actually catch one in a butterfly net for a split second before it ran out)

David fell asleep in his camp chair he was so tired - I let the kids stay up late to see the stars - they'd never even seen stars before this!! But they of course still woke up at 6:00 the next morning...

David's highlight of the trip was throwing rocks into everything - the river, the lake, the waterfall, over cliffs, over steps, onto gophers and chipmunks- who surprisingly kept coming back for more... What a fun summer - I can't believe it's almost half way over!

So I'm blogging this simply because the house is still in showing mode and I don't want to drag out the scrapbooks from boxes in the basement but I want to remember this. We've been having crazy tons of fun lately - I had a great time at YW's camp - and my family did survive without me! We just got back from Lethbridge - and this feels like the bazillionth trip this summer without a DVD player - the kids are getting so good at amusing themselves in the van. However, today was an exception. We had gone swimming at the new swimming pool in Raymond and they all fell asleep on the 20 min drive back to lethbridge. This is bad because a short nap like that just makes them more grumpy and complicates bed times later one. So at 8:30 on the way back to calgary they are still awake and whining like crazy "I'm hungry" being the loudest. So I did what any good mom would do - I made up a game called "eating food." We had to guess two different kinds of food and then smoosh them together and pretend to eat them. We had so much fun until Corey decided to turn off his whine-drowner (Ipod) and join in. His first mix was steak with cottage cheese. When Libby was trying to guess "what comes from a cow" she guessed milk and corey said "no, a kind of meat" Libby laughed her head off and almost crying she was laughing so hard "who ever heard of a cow making meat!"