Friday, October 19, 2012

Funny Things We Said this Summer:

 

A few funny conversations I made note of this summer…

1. She needs a mental Advil  

Faith:  “My mind hurts!”

Jane:   “Ooh!  Why?”

Faith:  “Seth kicked it.  He kicked me in my mind.”

 

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2.  The Mote in Your Brother’s Eye

While fighting with Seth, Faith started to sing “I’m trying to be like Jesus” (a song I sing to remind people how to act).  When I heard her start singing (assuming the best, of course), I said “Faith, are you trying to help yourself act like Jesus?”  Faith burst into tears, saying “NO!! I’m trying to help Seth act like that!”

 

3.  It’s all a matter of expectations

Ryan, while trying to diet this summer, had this observation:  “When you are on a diet, you go from Hungry to Not Hungry.  When you’re not on a diet, you go from Full to Not Full.”

 

4. (not necessarily funny, just sweet and worth recording)

We saw Miss Patty (one of the school supervisors at Seth’s school) at a non-school event.  Seth, of course, went out of his way to hug her.  She commented:  “He’s just full of love tonight!”

I said “oh, he’s always full of love!”

Miss Patty replied, “That’s what we say at work.”

I asked “What do you say?”

Miss Patty shared, “Oh we say… if you’re sad, go find Seth.”

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5.  So, we should or shouldn’t jump off the table holding sharp scissors…?

Ryan:  “You know what’s the most exhausting part of being a parent?  Having to constantly be the voice of reason.”

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5.   The Wrong type of nasty

Faith was being particularly snippy and rude to everyone, and so I said “There has been a nasty mouth here and I’m tired of it.”

Faith, in complete oblivion, though it should have been VERY obvious, says, “Who has a nasty mouth?  Jane?  Seth"?”

I say, “Uh, no.  You!”

Faith, again, in all seriousness, “But I pwomise I bwushed my teeth this morning.”

Monday, October 15, 2012

The casts we wore

Yeah, so Faith broke her arm. If you're counting (please don't), this is the 6th broken arm in the Romney family. Faith has the dubious honor of being the only child to break her arm TWICE, though, so that's something. Don't read the breaking-of-the-arm description, please, if you are our insurance agent, kay? Because it involves the trampoline: The most dangerous/most played with toy we own. It was Sunday afternoon, Seth and Faith were playing on the trampoline, Faith went to get off, Seth bounced while she was standing on the edge, she fell and hit the ground. I did my usual denying of any illness/injury and Ryan did his usual "of course something's broken/ill, you ridiculous eternal optimist". We called our doctor friend and were loading Faith up to check with him to avoid ER fees, but as we were loading even I could see it was really really hurt and we headed to the ER instead.
She was a trooper as we waited, and they basically told us it were super broken which means Surgery and Pins. She was in the hospital for 24 hours and everything went normally and the only thing of note was when Ryan forced the surgeon to commit to a hard cast because, really?! A 3 year old in the summer, with a splint and some ace bandage for a month?! Really?!
It sucked majorly not being able to swim, because as previously posted, we swam every day last summer. Faith decided to remedy that by falling into the pool at swimming lessons, fully dressed, and was whisked back to the o,rthopedist's office (for a new cast) where one of our friends, who is a doctor there commented that we should have a standing weekly appointment. Har de har har.
We got it taken off exactly one month later (so she could swim at Boulder Bay at Silverwood, of course). The doctor warned that 3 is young to remove pins without anesthesia, but we wanted to just try the easier (cheaper) route first. I was seriously praying like crazy the few days before. I had Ryan take off work and he held her (with Netflix streaming on his phone) while we distracted her and the doctor whisked those babies out like it was nothing. I was so thankful!
And that's the story of the cast. So, Vegas odds on whether there'll be Broken Arm #7??

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Vacations (okay, there was only one) we went on

(almost done with summer, for reals…like, 2 more posts, I think)

June is lame here.  The best summer break plan (that the majority of my friends follow) is to take your summer vacation as soon as the kids are out of school (which is mid-late June) and then come back the beginning of July which is when summer weather actually starts here.  That’s what we did.

We headed to California to visit Ryan’s parents and my dad and Genie.  We showed up about a few weeks before Ryan’s parents were moving, but they graciously wanted us to stay with them, anyway.  WE LOVE GRANDMA NUT’S house and pool and everyone was in a little bit of mourning knowing it would be our last time to hang out there. 

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Ryan did help organize and prepare for the garage sale they were having the day after we arrived. 

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We swam a ton, ate yummy home-cooked and not home-cooked food (In-n-Out, yum!) and had some good conversations.

We then moved over to Grandpa Mike and Grandma Genie’s.  We love hanging out with them and make sure we do lots of miniature golf and spend time in their pretty backyard, eating and picking fruit!

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I wanted to go to a museum and a beach while I was in California and, on the advice of Paige, we headed to Natural Bridges Beach in Santa Cruz.  I really think that that day is my favorite day of the entire year so far.  It was just our little family and the sun was shining and it wasn’t crowded and we just swam and relaxed for a while.  This beach has incredible tide pools and I think we spent an hour or more exploring while the waves crashed.  It was the kind of day you picture when you picture having a family (and doesn’t actually happen all that often).  Everyone was happy to be there and learning and getting along and it was just bliss. 

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The next day we headed into the city (San Francisco) went to the children’s museum there.  I was so happy that we had grandparents accompanying because keeping track of kids in that kind of place is impossible.  Everyone really enjoyed themselves and we only had one tantrum (Faith) and one lost child (oh! also Faith), so pretty good day.  Bonus:  Paige and her kids met us and we tried to have meaningful conversations while kids were dragging us to the bubble station and the smoke maker thingy.

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While we were there, my awesome friend Tammy was due with her first baby so we were all waiting/hoping we’d get to meet the little guy while we there.  Unfortunately, he waited till we were on our drive home to make his entrance into the world, but we still got to eat dinner with Tammy and Elive and Abby (all high school friends).

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I made sure we were in Tracy for 4th of July because I have lots of happy memories of that holiday there.  We did the early morning balloons, the church 4th of July breakfast, the parade and the carnival in the park.  After a yummy BBQ, with this awesome plum cobbler (isn’t it so pretty?), we headed to the best small town fireworks show ever.  Highlight was Grandpa Mike joining in the Cupid Shuffle.  Awesome.

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We were heading out the next day but everyone had to swim one more time in Grandma’s pool and so we drove 15 minutes in the opposite direction for one last dip (and our favorite Mexican takeout).

Man, writing this sure makes me want to go back.  Next June…we’re there!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Tantrums we (and by we, I mean FAITH) threw

We interrupt this sugar coated version of summer to tell this story.  (It was so bad when it happened I almost broke my non-blogging streak to tell you all, but was too traumatized at the time.)

So if you’ve been reading a while, you all know that Faith is one of those girls that “when she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid”.  The girl knows how to throw a tantrum.  She is getting better and better as she ages but she definitely will have phases where it gets worse.  Mid-June to mid-July was one of those worse times.  It was pretty much every day for 30-45 minutes for a few weeks there.  Awful.

But this one takes the cake.  I can think of only one or two tantrums that even compare (and the girl has thrown, literally, hundreds of them).  So this is what happened:

We are in downtown Spokane with sisters in law and cousins.  We’ve parked about 2 miles away from Riverfront park so the kids can scooter/walk on the trail.  We make it to the park, played for a while and decided to go eat in the food court on the 3rd floor of the mall.

I make the STUPID STUPID mistake of buying 2 (refillable) sodas for 4 kids and, duh!, fights ensue.  Faith began to scream really obnoxiously…people are looking.  I head over to grab her and she begins to run away from me around a large pole. 

Major anger trigger #1:  When my kids make me chase them.

Major anger trigger #2:   In public.

Major anger trigger #3:  When I think people are judging my parenting.  Which somebody does…loudly and rudely…while I’m chasing Faith and man walks by and says “Are you just going to let her yell like that?!”

I am now beyond embarrassed and mad.  I finally get to Faith and begin to carry her SCREAMING out of the mall.  It is an open center and all 3 floors of the mall can see and hear us as we ride down the escalator.  (I tell Heather to bring my kids to the car whenever they got done as I am scooping her up.) 

At this point in the summer, Faith has her broken arm but no hard cast, just a huge splint wrapped in brown bandage.  In order to carry her anywhere, I have to manuever around this huge thing on her arm…all while she’s screaming, “You’re hurting me!  You’re choking me!”  Plus I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do, since the car is a 30 minute walk from the mall.  It’s awful. 

We get outside to the wagon we’d brought and I say “Do you want to ride or do you want me to keeping carrying you like this?”  She chooses to ride.  I know she’s going to change her mind and try to get out, so I begin walking as fast as I possibly can to deter this.  The route back to our car takes us by, easily, 5 outdoor restaurants and it’s dinnertime.  She is yelling “I want to get out!” at the top of her lungs and I’m doing my best to ignore and book it to the car. 

And then I here a huge bump-thump-bump.  I know she’s jumped out.  With her broken arm.  I front of the whole Olive Garden patio crowd.  What I don’t know is that she looks like this:

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Yeah.  She’d somehow stripped herself completely naked.  She is (listen closely) laying   on   the   ground  stark  naked  screaming   bloody   murder  with  an arm in a soft  splinted  cast  wrapped   in  ace  bandage.  Do you understand how horribly embarrassing this is???

I try to put her clothes back on but between the fighting and the cement and the broken arm, it’s impossible.  I toss her back inside and tell myself “I don’t care, I’ll never see these people” again.  After about 2 blocks, I decide “YES I DO CARE!!” and wrestle her to the ground and am able to get her into one layer of clothes. 

As we walk the 30 minutes back to the car, her screaming turns to yelling a repeated phrase that goes like this “I’ve ruined my life!  I’ve ruined my precious life!”  Over and over.  For 2 miles.  Past probably 150 people.  So awesome.

We made it to the car.  Everyone else got treats and went on rides while she waited in the car with me (I blasted super soothing classical music so I could calm down).  She had to choose a toy to “sell” because I’d had to miss my dinner and waste our money dealing with her, so she had some consequences. 

The tantrums continued (not that bad) for about another week, but I started super cracking down and doing immediate, consistent consequences and she moved out of the phase (like she always does).

My sister in law who was visiting was amazed at how calm I seemed as I handled her.  She told me that night that she was impressed.  When she said it, I began to cry and I said “Brooke, it’s because I’ve done that (taken her out, screaming, from a public place with tons of people watching) at least 100 times.  I do it ALL. THE. TIME.  I hate it that I’m good at it.  I hate that I’ve done it that many times, because it’s always embarrassing and always stressful and it always sucks.”

Anyway.  It was a bad day.  It’s not fun to have this issue with Faith.  It’s getting better and I’m learning a lot and I love her tons no matter what.  I just felt it needed to be part of family lore:

Faith, screaming “I’ve ruined my life! I’ve ruined my precious life!”, naked, on the ground, with a broken arm in front of a bunch of people out for a nice quiet dinner.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Instagrams I posted in June

(The First, chronologically, of 3 posts dedicated to the pictures I’ve put up on Instagram.  It’s my new favorite way to share pictures and happenings.  If you aren’t on it, you are missing out!)

 

Location: Rocky Hill Park

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“Dad put together this surprise “end of school” breakfast this morning.  #bestdadever”

Location:  Our niece’s graduation

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“Please bless she’s never old enough to graduate!”

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“Favorite Family Home evening:  scripture stories using blocks and Little People.  (Gabe’s telling the story of the Tower of Babel)”

 

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“Traditional Last Day of school pinata on our street!”

 

Location: Tri-fusion triathlon

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“Kids triathlon starts in 5 minutes”

 

Location: Summer has arrived

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“Finally!”

 

Location: Carvers Farm

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“Strawberry picking.  Stop by my house later for strawberry syrup, strawberry jam, strawberry pizza, strawberry ice cream!”

 

Location: Chez Romney

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“Strawberry Ice Cream.  Crazy Good.”

 

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“Jane/mom date:  first pedicure”

 

Location:  Costco

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“When you have relatives coming and you’ve cleaned the house and the kids were VERY helpful AND, mostly, you don’t want to clean up lunch…you go to Costco”

 

Location:  Avista Stadium

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“Seth was making friends with all the mascots at the Spokane Indians Game”

 

 

Location: Seeley vacation fun

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Rainy Summer Day Recovery Plan:  games+famous hamburger stand+movie+humungous desserts”

 

Location:  Looff Carrousel

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“Finally tall enough to reach the Carrousel Ring arm—it’s a big milestone!”

 

Location:  Riverfront park

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“Visitors Photo-Op"

 

Location:  City of Anderson, CA

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“How we are staying awake on our long drive to California—sonic hot fudge/banana shake!”

 

Location:  visiting the California Grandparents

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“Run, Swim, Nap…aaah, vacation!”

 

Location: visiting the California Grandparents

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“Everyone was going for the most unique picture”

 

Location: visiting the california grandparents

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“Two More!”

 

Location: the state that actually has In-N-Outs

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“The lunch we’ve all been waiting for!”

 

Location:  visiting the california grandparents

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“Harvesting Plums with Grandpa!”

 

Location: on our way to Santa Cruz

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“Gabe’s excited to go to the beach!”

 

Location:  Natural Bridges State Beach

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“More fun than words”

 

 

Location:  Natural bridges State Beach

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“Tide Pooling”

Instagram I posted in July

 

ocation:  visiting the California Grandparents

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“And the fun doesn’t stop at Grandpa’s!  What do you think we’re going to do with this?”

 

Location: visiting the California grandparents

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“The blueberry”

 

 

Location: visiting the california grandparents

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“Learning/playing in San Francisco”

 

Location:  Lincoln Park

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“Fourth of July tradition:  watching the balloons go up”

 

Location: Tracy, CA

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“I still have to take these tired kids to fireworks? #fourthofjulyisalooongday”

 

Location:I don’t think they like you to do this

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“I got to the bank at 5:02 and when the lady saw me at the ATM, she waved me over to the drive through.  #washingtontrustbankhasgreatcustomerservice”

 

Location:  Pavillion Park

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“Movies in the park.  #ilovethistown”

Location:  Guiltville

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“Does this look like the grocery purchases of a girl who is really going off sugar very soon? #stilleatinglikeimonvacation”

 

Location:  lazyville

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“Anyone else find cleaning (or anything else productive) sooo annoying during the summer.  Note the book and the bowl of cereal 28 minutes before dinner should be done.”

 

Location:  Good Momville

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“First Zoku Popsicles of the season (Strawberry Lime)”

Location: my room…while the kids yell at me through the door

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“Favorite scripture study tool…I write questions/concerns before I start and then note anything of interest.  Helps me be more focused.”

Location:  Doug and Marcy’s pool

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“#thisisprettymuchallwedo #summerismyfavorite

 

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“Because sometimes you want to get dressed up for your boyfriend!”

 

Location:  Hiawatha trail/ MT-ID border

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“Best pre-birthday idea ever:  biking the Hiawatha trail with the family”

 

Location: Hiawatha trail/montana-idaho border

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“Outtakes”

Location: Chez Romney

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“World’s ugliest self-made birthday cake.  #butiknowit’sgoingtotastgood

 

Location:  Southside Aquatic Center

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“It was more fun before it made one of them barf”

 

Location: the kids’ bed tonight

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“Family scripture study on the trampoline”

 

Location:  Spokane’s South Hill

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“We live about 20 minutes from Ryan’s Grandma’s old house.  Today we had dinner near it and decided to walk over and check it out.  Fun memories for him…cool walk through funky old neighborhoods for me.”

 

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“In honor of pioneer day, our primary presidency asked everyone to walk to church.”

 

Location:  Valley Hospital and Medical Center

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“This would be a picture of my child who is in the hospital waiting to have our family’s 6th broken arm fixed.  Awesome.”

 

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“Ready for surgery after a long.  #castson3yearsoldsduringthesummersuck

 

Location: Hayden Lake

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“How many people can you fit on a boat? (7 on the boat, 5 in one tube, 2 in the other=14)”

 

Location: Hayden Lake

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“Best lake day ever.”

 

Location: Iller’s Creek trail

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“The hike was awesome.  THe fact that it was one hour longer we thought it was NOT awesome.  #mykidsaretough”

 

Location: Chez Romney

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“Grilled pizza (BBQ pineapple pork and pepperoni)”

 

Location:  Looff Carrousel

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“When you visit Spokane…you ride the carrousel”

 

Location:Riverfront park

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“If you visit Spokane, you have to feed the trash goat”