A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family
Dinah turned 6 today!
She is growing up fast. She loves being a Girl Scout Daisy, and she loves to play, but she hates to clean up or do any form of chores because “That’s BORING!” (said while she is stopping or kicking a wall…..).
Dinah asked for strawberry cake, so that is what I made. A strawberry cake, with fresh strawberry frosting.
Dinah loves Hello Kitty, and has a small collection of Hello Kitty Mega Bloks. For her birthday we got her a Mega Bloks Hello Kitty with a car. 🙂
This is Dinah’s first Girl Scout day camp! The big girls (6th-12th graders), led all the younger girls to a circle in the middle of the field where they sang camp songs while they waited for all the other girls to arrive.
I was volunteering all four days, and so Tyra, Dinah and I all got to go. Day camp this year was planned completely by Girl Scouts in sixth through twelfth grade, and so the adult volunteers just had to show up and help at each of the booths. But before they could go to the booths, the girls had to be put in the groups that they would be with for the rest of camp. Dinah got to be in the Pink Ponies group.
Tyra got to be in one of the blue groups. I don’t remember what they called themselves.
On day one, I got to be at the boondoggling booth. I haven’t done this since I was in middle school, and at that time I didn’t know there was a name for it! So it was fun to get to re-learn something I already knew before. A lot of the girls had trouble understanding how to do it, so by the time the end of the day rolled around and we had the Daisy groups last, we decided that we would just have the Daisies braid instead.
When I got home, I finished a boondoggle that I started during the day, and I had to figure out how to tie it off. So I googled it, and found a whole website of different boondoggle stitches! It was amazing! Ethan recently went to Webelos Woods, and one of the projects he started there was a boondoggle to work toward his Craftsman badge, but he hadn’t finished it. He was amazed at all the other boondoggle stitches that there are to do too, and exclaimed that he really wants to do the Cobra stitch. I told him that there is no way I’m going to let him start another one when he won’t finish the one he’s got!
Day two, I got to be at the yarn doll station. This was not very well prepared. I remembered seeing an email before day camp started with instructions for the yarn doll, but they were very small, and I had no idea that that is where I was going to be, so I didn’t think much of it. The email didn’t actually say anything; it just had an attachment. So getting to day camp and finding out that everyone’s attachments in their emails were different based on where they were going to be helping, was kind of frustrating. So at the yarn doll station, there was yarn, and ribbon, and a couple pair of scissors. No instructions, and no other supplies. When we finally found someone that had instructions we found that we were missing other things. Like pieces of cardboard. Step one for these dolls, was to wrap the yarn around a piece of cardboard 26 times, and we had just a few minutes to come up with a whole bunch of pieces of cardboard! It was crazy but we made it work. It was also super windy, so our cardboard, yarn and rolls of ribbon kept trying to blow away.
When we got home from day camp, Ethan proudly announced that he had finished his boondoggle, and asked if we could please go get some supplies so he could try some of the other stitches. Totally amazing to me, he had ZERO interest in finishing that project until he saw that he could do something else with it, and that I wouldn’t let him until he had finished the first one. Then suddenly he is done and begging me to go to a craft store.
Day three of day camp, I got to help at the cow door hanger station. This craft was so involved with passing out plates, and papers and scissors and glue and markers, and bells, that I had NO time to take pictures of anything. The first couple of days, I tried to get pictures of all of my girls in my troop while they were at my booth, but yesterday that just was not happening!
Today, day four of day camp, the girls got to perform skits that they had been putting together the other days of camp.
I was too far away to hear anything of what the skits were about, but my awesome zoom on my camera could get pictures from that distance. After the skits were over, the girls got to rotate to the different stations and today they were just carnival type games. I got to manage the boot toss game. There were eight boots and the girls got to try to toss ping pong balls into them. Again, no pictures because I was too busy chasing ping pong balls before they got to the street. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and my girls can’t wait to find out what day camp will bring for next year. 🙂
And check out the patch! The big girls, that planned everything, also designed the shirt and the patch!
This is a conversation that I had with Dinah today.
Dinah: Mommy? How come your belly isn’t flat enough to have two babies in there?
Me: Heavenly Father decides how many babies go in my belly.
Dinah: What?
Me: Heavenly Father decides how many babies go in my belly.
Dinah: Heavenly Father decides how many babies go in our bellies? {Pause} I know that’s true.
That made me smile. 🙂
Last week Kyle’s upper manager, Dave, invited our family over to his house for dinner on Thursday. Thursday afternoon, I started getting nervous about our dinner engagement, and I kept asking Kyle questions just to double check the answers. I verified the time with him, and asked him if Dave knows that we are bringing our children, then I asked if he is aware that we have SEVEN of them. I asked how many kids Dave has and found out that he is a grandpa, so there wouldn’t be other kids there for our kids to meet and play with. Kyle assured me that yes Dave knew we were bringing the kids, and that he knows we have seven of them and that he had invited our whole family, so I tried not to stress out too much.
Kyle came home from work and I had been getting the kids ready, so we could leave as soon after he got home as possible. On the way, Kyle mentioned to the kids that we were going to his upper manager’s house for dinner. One of the kids interpreted that to mean “Daddy’s boss”, and we had to explain that Dave is actually “Daddy’s boss’s boss”, and from there they decided to just call him “Daddy’s boss boss”.
We arrived at Dave’s house and his wife answered the door, and Dave and another coworker came over to greet us. Dave looked right at me and said “I didn’t know you would be bringing the kids.” My first thought was “WHO could I have left them with?” as I said “Well….” and then I thought “But I double checked with Kyle, and Kyle said….” I had way too many things going on in my mind at that one moment. Then Dave told me he was just kidding and that Kyle told him to say that.
Dave offered to take us out back and let the kids give their horses some apples, and the kids were really excited about that, especially Dinah. Lydia LOVED seeing the “horseys” but she would not touch them. On the way back through the garage to go back into the house, Dave showed us a door to the pantry from the garage (so that you can unload groceries directly from your car to the pantry). Then we got a tour of the rest of the house. There was a tv in nearly every room, the living room, the family room, the bedroom, over the bath tub…Downstairs there was also a game room with air hockey, ping pong, pool, and some other things. Then we got to see the workout room. It was filled with various workout machines and things, a big workout ball and there was, of course, a tv in here as well. Dave let some of the kids get on the treadmill and walk a bit, while we stood right there talking, and as we left he bent over to switch off the power to it so the kids couldn’t just go in there and play with it while we weren’t looking. Before going back upstairs for dinner we got to see his theater room, which was really awesome. There were no windows, and there was a huge screen and nice reclining chairs with cup holders. There were also some bean bags for sitting down in front of the chairs. There were dim movie theater lights so that you could see the steps and not trip on them in the dark too. As the guys were drooling over this room, Dave’s wife was standing next to me and told me that when Dave was putting this room together it didn’t bother her how much he spent doing it because she had told him that she was going to match it when doing her barn.
We went back upstairs to have dinner, which consisted of macaroni and cheese, some spicy penne pasta dish, canned green beans, and applesauce. I was glad that nothing was overly scary, although I was cautious of the penne pasta dish. I think the kids were also glad that they were being given food that they were more than willing to eat. The kids finished their dinners quickly, and went off to play downstairs.
We got to watch Dave’s friend park a Ford Model A in his garage (Dave was going to store it for him for awhile). After a while Tyra came upstairs to tell Kyle that Dinah needed him. He didn’t go down right away, and I fed Adam, and then as Dave was showing Kyle the view from the door in the dining room, they found that Lydia was in the backyard.
Their backyard isn’t fenced in and so we quickly went out and brought her back in. She actually tried to escape a few times. I ended up going downstairs before Kyle ever did, and I found Dinah crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said that she got hurt on the treadmill. I asked her where she got hurt, and she showed me. I did not look good, but it could have been worse. I went into the workout room to check to make sure the treadmill was off, and it was. Then I yelled at the kids for messing with it. Dinah wasn’t the only one that had messed with the treadmill. Tyra had been the first one on the treadmill, which doesn’t surprise me. I should have expected something like this. I noticed when Dave bent over to turn off the power to the treadmill before dinner, that Tyra was watching him. So SHE was the one that knew how to turn it on. Also she was the one that turned the treadmill on to 8mph while Dinah was on it, and so the treadmill took Dinah backwards, she fell and hit the wall and the belt rubbed the side of her abdomen. I went and told Kyle about what happened and he got Dinah all bandaged up. Then us big people went downstairs with the kids and we finished up the evening by some people playing Guitar Hero on the Wii, Dinah found a coloring book and worked on that, the little ones played with toys, and some of us played air hockey and ping pong. For the record, Jeremy CAN hit the ping pong, but he CAN’T aim, and he hits it hard, so most every time he hit it, it hit me and it hurt. 😛
A few days later the kids start talking about a “hole in the wall”. Upon further questioning we find out that when Dinah flew off the treadmill at Dave’s house, she put a hole in the wall. Today Kyle asked Dave about the hole in the wall and Dave said “Don’t worry about it, she didn’t go through both walls”, which makes me wonder just how big this hole really is. And even though Dave told Kyle not to worry about it, I am worrying about it, and I am bothered that my kids would do something like that, and damage property, and not say anything about it. But also I am telling myself that it really can’t have been that bad, because I did go in there to check to make sure the treadmill was off and I didn’t notice the wall at all. If there was a huge hole in the wall, I probably would have noticed it.
Patsy and Tiffany along with Tiffany’s boyfriend, Christian, came up for a visit this weekend. They have tickets for a Sunday session of general conference and are staying with us. Kyle and I needed to make a quick run to the store for a few items this morning, and we tried to leave early enough to be able to get back before the Saturday morning session of conference started. We got home a bit later than we had hoped and what we found when we came into the house was not at all what we expected.
Conference was on the tv, and most everybody was in the living room. The kids were playing around, and Tiffany and Christian were trying to watch conference. But Patsy and Dinah were nowhere to be seen. Going down the hall, we found them in the girls bedroom. Patsy was carrying Dinah and Dinah was just crying. We asked what happened, and Patsy explained that Dinah ruined all of her make up, and all Patsy asked was for Dinah to apologize. Dinah is a very stubborn little girl, and decided that she would rather scream and cry and throw a fit than apologize. By this time Patsy was also in tears because she was so upset. I told her to put Dinah on her bed, and Kyle and I proceeded to survey the damage. There was foundation all over the carpet and all over the wall and on Chloe’s sheet and pillow case. Other make up items were scattered on the floor. We had to clean up everything that was on the floor and then we moved the bunk bed so we could bring in the carpet cleaner and see how much of the foundation we would be able to get out. Dinah sat on the bed this whole time. In cleaning up the things on the floor so we could vacuum, I also noticed lots of gum wrappers and an empty gum package and a bottle of lotion that turned out to be Tiffany’s.
I don’t wear make up, so my kids don’t see those kinds of things in our house very often. I also very rarely ever dare to have gum in the house. So when my sisters bring these things into our house, my little girls are naturally very curious about them. However, instead of just watching my sisters use these things, Dinah really likes to get into them herself. This isn’t the first time she has destroyed make up that belonged to one of my sisters. A couple of months after Lydia was born, Tiffany came up for a visit and Dinah decided to try out her mascara or eye liner (we aren’t sure which it was).
After we cleaned up most of the mess and the first session of conference was over, I took Dinah and Patsy to Wal-Mart. I also took with us all of Dinah’s earnings from doing chores over the summer, and Dinah got to buy Patsy some new makeup and some new gum for Tiffany. We used all of Dinah’s money and then Patsy covered the rest. I figure that can be part of Patsy’s punishment for bringing makeup into my house and leaving it where little people can get it. When we got back to the house I lectured both Patsy and Tiffany for bringing makeup and gum into the house and told them that it will be safer if they just leave it out in their car. It’s October, so it’s not too hot to do that. And just maybe, they will someday learn not to give my girls access to their stuff. Maybe.