Trying to Make Some Sense of the Chaos

I have been struggling for a while with what to do with my large, spacious kitchen counters -- specifically, the huge island and the higher "bar" counter that separates the kitchen from the family room. These two counters are like magnets -- they attract so much stuff! Papers, little toys, books, more papers, miscellaneous screws, magazines, etc. I realize a large part of that comes from having little kids and having kids in school (who knew there could be so many school papers?), but the mess has been driving me crazy lately.

A while ago I bought a three-ring binder and some pocket dividers to try to keep track of all the various papers, flyers, notes, etc. That seemed to help a little, but the counter was still a huge pile of stuff. So today I bought some larger bookends to make it easier to keep track of the binders, recipe books, scout books, etc. Then I put a basket to keep all the other little stuff. Here is what it looked like this evening:

Not too bad, but I know the big trick is going to be keeping it that way! It certainly freed up a lot of my island counter!

Now if only I knew what to do with this other counter (I can't believe I took a picture of it...)

I must get to bed -- I have to get up super early to catch my flight to Denver! I'm so excited to see my sisters (-in-law) and my mom and go to Time Out for Women! I hope Brian and the kids survive here at home. Brian is taking the day off to be stay-at-home-dad.

The Bunk Bed Club

I went to check on the kids this afternoon (after McKay asked me if he could get a blanket out of my room) and this was the site that greeted me in the girl's room:

They were all inside the "club" with pillows, drinks, books and who knows what else. Bunk beds are great for making forts and clubs and such! I only wish they were so great when it came to changing the sheets. Man, I do not look forward to changing the sheets on these beds. It is a pain because it is so tight around the railing to get everything tucked in.

I have noticed that both girls constantly push the top sheet down to the bottom of their bed, so they are really only sleeping under the comforter. So at the beginning of the week when I changed Hannah's sheets, I decided to just not put the top sheet on. Made it much easier in terms of making her top bunk. I was quite surprised when she got into bed that night and got a little panicked when she couldn't find the sheet. I told her I hadn't put it back on and she burst into tears. She cried and cried about how it kept her warm and she needed it, etc. I told her I would put it back on the next day (that means changing the sheets again...ugh) and the only way to console her that night was to put her blanket on top to make up for the missing warmth the sheet provided. :-) She can be such a funny girl sometimes.

I've got lots to do to get ready for my trip to Colorado this weekend. I'm way excited but it's a big job to get everything ready for me to leave here.

The Eyes Have It

I took McKay in to the eye doctor this afternoon to get his eyes checked out. I had to pull him out of school about a half hour early (the two little girls were at a friend's house and Hannah had instructions to go to a neighbor's when she got off the bus).

McKay was a little nervous about what to expect, but everything went fine (as the assistant pointed out, you don't have to worry about shots at this doctor's office). He has very mild myopia (near-sightedness) and the doctor predicts it will continue to worsen as he gets older. He said glasses would be recommended for school to read the board and such, but not needed around the house at this point. His left eye is a little worse than his right eye (which is something McKay had already noticed). The doctor said right now he is probably 20/30 in his right eye and 20/40 in his left, so it's not bad, but is bad enough that glasses will make an improvement for him.

We didn't actually order any frames or lenses today -- we are still trying to figure out the best way to manage all this since we didn't enroll in vision insurance coverage this year (didn't anticipate any vision needs!).

McKay will hopefully be good about wearing his glasses once he gets them (and not losing them). He made a couple of comments to me about not wanting to wear them, but I heard him telling Hannah in an excited voice that he gets to go pick out frames, etc.

Star of the Week

It's Hannah's turn to be "Star of the Week" in her 1st grade class. She was so excited on Friday to bring home the paper about it. We did her poster over the weekend. She glued on all the pictures and also told me what to write for the captions.

Here is what her "All About Me" paper said (she did this by herself, with the exception of the last item):

My name is: Hannah Humpherys

My favorite food is: homemade macaroni and cheese

I can't stand to eat: broccoli

The best movie I've ever seen is: Barbie

My favorite TV show is: Scooby Doo

My favorite book is: The Box Car Children

The best vacation I have been on was to: Las Vegas

My favorite color is: purple

My favorite animal is: pegasus pony

My favorite part of school is: lunch

When I grow up, I want to be a(n): teacher

My family includes: Mom and Dad, 2 sisters and 1 brother

My parents think I'm: cute

Speaking of cute, here are a couple more pictures of Hayley at Oil Ranch (from my friend's camera):

And Hayley saw this "black sparkly" dress in the back of her closet and wanted to wear it to church on Sunday. It is almost too small for her, but she loved dressing up in it! (I've got to be careful, because it's dry clean only!)

Photo Update

I wanted to share a few photos from yesterday and today before I head to bed tonight. (We have early 8:30am church tomorrow - yikes!)

Friday, I took Courtney & Hayley to a park by Lake Woodlands that has a big playground and also lots and lots of ducks!

The girls were quite taken with the ducks and tried to get as close as they could.

These ducks were extremely tame and wouldn't run away as so many people feed them bread crumbs (despite the "Please don't feed the ducks" signs). While we were there, a mom and her little boy brought some bread for the ducks. The ducks immediately all swarmed around them for a bite.

A couple of pics of the girls on the playground:

I loved this next one of Hayley!

I took this picture of Courtney after we got back in the van and she was doing "Eeney-Meeney-Miney-Moe" with her "treasures" to see which one she would let Hayley hold. Her treasures included a duck feather she had just picked up at the park, a multi-color ball point pen she had just purchased with her money at her preschool's book fair, and a little "Ice Age" keychain she had gotten from the library (they have a little basket in the children's section with stickers and such).

And here's I picture I told McKay I was taking to show what silly things my kids do when they should be going to bed:

(Those are little plastic bathroom cups, in case you were wondering.)

This activity was such a hit last night, that I came home from a stake YW meeting this morning to find this in the kitchen:

(McKay did most of this and then left and the girls were seeing how they could add to it.)

Finally, McKay had another baseball game today.

Here's a nice picture of Hannah at the game:

In the last couple of innings, McKay played in the pitcher's spot (next to the pitching machine).

He had a couple of good defensive plays. In the last inning, he fielded a ground ball and made a good throw right to 1st base to get the runner out. (Usually the throws to 1st are way off.) The very next play a similar ball was hit which he fielded, but hurried too much in his throw and overthrew the ball. Still, everyone was very excited (especially McKay). He got a couple of hits today too and said it was the "best game ever."

Latch Hook Kids

My kids have suddenly become big fans of latch hook crafts. I used to do latch hook rugs when I was younger (probably 11-12) and so the other day when I was sewing patches on McKay's Cub Scout shirt and Hannah said she wanted to sew, I mentioned latch hook to her as something she might enjoy. She got very excited and so the next time we were at Wal-Mart, she picked out a small kit (unicorn picture) and bought it with her own money.

She couldn't wait to get started and has picked it up quite quickly! The last couple of days, she runs to get it out the minute she gets home from school to work on it for a little bit.

McKay got Hannah to show him how to use the tool and told me he wanted to do one too. So today I picked up the only other kit they had -- a butterfly. When he got home from school, I showed it to him and said we didn't have to keep it (he was going to have to use his own money for it). At first, he said to take it back and he would maybe do one over the summer, but the next thing I knew he had it out and the yarn sorted and got to work:

He said a couple of times how it was so fun and then wondered if it was weird that he liked doing a "girl thing." He said he thought the kids at school would make fun of him if they knew about it. He has always had an interest in sewing and wants to learn more about it. I asked him if that would bother him if other kids made fun of him and he said he didn't think so (but I'm not so sure). I told him maybe we could look for a more "boy" pattern sometime if he finished this one and wanted to do more.

Happy Friday tomorrow!

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! WE LOVE YOU!

Oil Ranch

There are probably a dozen other things I should be working on at this late hour, but I had to share a few pictures from Hayley's preschool field trip to the Oil Ranch today. The Oil Ranch is a "working ranch" that is about 45 minutes from here (out past Magnolia). They get a lot of school groups and company parties. They have pony rides, baby animals, wagon rides to feed the cows, a little train and lots of other stuff. We have been as a family a couple of times before.

My camera battery wasn't cooperating very well, so I didn't take a ton of pictures. (My friend took some with her camera that she will hopefully send me soon.) But here are some pics of the day!

On the hayride wagon to go feed the cows...

Feeding the cows...

Swinging on the horse tire swing...

Mom and Hayley on the train...

Picking out her pumpkin in the pumpkin patch...

The group of preschool kids (one girl couldn't come and there are a couple of siblings there)...

It was a fun day -- and especially nice to share it just with Hayley!

Columbus Day

The kids had the day off today for Columbus Day. Since when is Columbus Day a no-school holiday? I don't think they even had it off last year. We didn't do anything super exciting. We still had regular Monday laundry, cleaning and piano lessons. It seems like I spent a good part of the day bugging the kids to get them to help clean up. McKay was not surprisingly the most resistant to picking up toys. ("But it's my day off!" "But it's too hard!" "But I don't like it!", etc.) Struggled a little with him today in that regard.

We did find a few minutes to stop at a little park before we headed to Wal-Mart for a few groceries (and a small pumpkin Courtney has to take to preschool tomorrow).

Here's McKay and Hannah trying out this teeter-totter contraption:

Hayley pausing for a brief picture...

Courtney climbing (and losing her shorts!)...

McKay trying one of these spinning stool things. I don't know what they're officially called. They had 3 of them -- little stools that were angled so that when you sat on them and got a little momentum, you'd start spinning around -- and it is really hard to stop! I kept thinking that could be kind of dangerous for a kid if there wasn't anyone nearby to help him get off. Even McKay needed help stopping.

And finally, Hannah talking to Courtney through one of the "telephones" ...

...and listening for the response

(again, not sure what these are called -- they have two at different places in the park and you can talk to someone at the other end)

Tomorrow Hayley's preschool group is taking a little field trip out to a place called the Oil Ranch with pony rides, hay rides, cow milking, etc. It should be fun!

Snip, Snip

I know some will think I'm nuts, but I cut Hayley's hair today -- probably 2-3 inches off. It was getting quite long and a huge battle every morning to comb it and pull it out of her face. It seems that my girls do better with shorter hair because it doesn't tangle so easily. (Plus, I am fairly inept when it comes to fixing hair, so I never knew what to do with longer hair anyway in terms of styling.)

First of all, this morning she agreed to try pigtails:

They looked pretty cute, but had pretty much fallen out by lunchtime. After lunch we got ready for the haircut.

She was mostly cooperative, but 3-year-olds can only sit so still and keep their head so straight. And I am definitely not the most talented when it comes to cutting hair (hair and I just don't seem to "mesh" at so many levels...).

Here is the finished result:

It is definitely not perfect. If you look closely at the back, you will see many different lengths of hair! I need a better hair-cutting lesson for little girl's hair. But it will grow.

This was one of the piles on the floor. A little sad to see the beautiful blonde locks fall to the ground, but I think we will all be happier with the shorter version!

Are You Ready for Some Football?

McKay's new favorite sport these days seems to be football. He still seems to enjoy baseball and is playing on his YMCA team, but they are doing football skills in PE at school right now and he has been playing touch football every day at recess with a group of kids.

He's been begging to buy his own football, so after his baseball game yesterday, Brian took him to the store to buy a junior-sized one. He and Hannah went out into the driveway to play catch. Neither of them can throw a very good spiral (although McKay does better than Hannah), but they seemed to be having fun.

(Hannah is wearing a pattern headband she made in school on Friday. I'm not sure what made her decide to put it on when she went outside...)

Park Play

Yesterday morning I took Courtney and Hayley to a nearby park for a little bit. We haven't been out to a park in quite a while since it's been so hot! The Relief Society is starting a weekly park playgroup for anyone who wants to come meet at a park (the park changes each week). It's good for me to have a reason to actually schedule a park visit on the calendar. Otherwise, it seems like we never actually make it out the door.

The downside of going to the park in the morning is that Hannah is terribly upset when she comes home from school and finds out where we went. So I told her that we'd try to go to a park on Monday since the kids are out of school for Columbus Day.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the park!

Playing in the train:


Hayley in one of the big swings (handicap-accessible swings):



Courtney had fun trying this rotating wheel:


And this was Hayley's favorite way to "slide" down these rollers (kind of a unique slide). The only problem was she'd pinch her fingers a little at the bottom when she'd try to get off. But that wasn't enough to deter her from doing it again!


And a cute picture of the sisters in the parking lot before we headed home:


Today these two girls were playing "style" with their stuffed animals and asking me to take pictures to print. I took this one at the end of both of them and thought it was cute as well!


And finally, a couple more to share. (I'm realizing I need to take a few more pictures of Hannah & McKay!)

Courtney in her preschool T-shirt (they wear once a month on "pizza day"):


Hayley in a familiar scene -- the kitchen table covered with crayons, papers and lots of coloring! The girls go through phases of drawing their own pictures or having me print out pages from the Internet for them to color in.


Oh-- I almost forgot the other "news" to share. I have made an appointment to take McKay to the eye doctor in a couple of weeks. On our drive home from Dallas last weekend, we discovered that McKay doesn't see very well in the distance (we were having him read signs coming up and he couldn't read them until we had almost passed them). When we asked him more, we discovered he has a hard time seeing the board in math class where he sits in the back (his teacher has since moved him). He also just did the vision screening at school and said it was "very hard." So off we will go to the eye doctor on the 16th to see if he needs to wear glasses. (It wouldn't surprise me since both Brian and I have bad vision -- or at least Brian used to!)

McKay also got his part assignment for the 3rd Grade play, which will be on Nov. 15th. The play is along the lines of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and he got the part of "Narrator 1." He has several lines to learn and he is the very first one to speak in the whole play! He is excited, but a little nervous I think.