Ok, first of all, I have not felt any inspiration to blog lately so hopefully this post will end my 4 week hiatus and I will start blogging more often.
Isaac is a very creative boy. Often when we talk about events or other such things, he suggests we make a sign. On memorial day when I told him about my Grandma, he wanted to make a special sign for the yard to tell everyone that we were remembering Grandma O’Bryant. Today, he really wanted to make a sign to announce that Grandma Bunny was going home and he wouldn’t be diverted from his idea. He got the paper out, he found scraps of wood, attached the paper to the wood with tape, and asked me to write the words. He had taped the paper so that there were two flaps and on one he had me write “Grandma Bunny is leaving†and on the other one he asked for “Grandma Bunny is coming.†Next he found a scrap of wood with a pointed end and asked me to attach it to his sign. Once attached we had to find a spot in the yard and hammer it in. He is very proud of his sign, unfortunately the sun was in his eyes so I couldn’t get a great picture of him looking up—but you get the idea.
I had the kids make cards for their dad for father’s day. Basically, we make a little book and I ask the kids what it should say and then they draw and I label. Their books always make me laugh. To see the cards, click on the link below
Today is Isaac’s 5th birthday and I’ve been thinking how grateful I am that he is my oldest.
He is a very kind and considerate big brother. On a recent morning, I found Isaac reading (from memory) a book to Charlotte. Later that day, he didn’t want to leave the house until he had showed Charlotte how to spell her name. He showed her where each letter was on the keyboard and patiently waited for her to push the right key. He regularly encourages her to do things. I’ve even caught him bribing her with some candy (that he earned doing chores) to do things like finish her breakfast.
Last August my dear grandmother passed away, so on Memorial day I wanted to visit her grave. When she actually died, I was too emotional to talk about it with my kids so today was the first real experience I had to tell them about my grandmother and her death. Charlotte didn’t say much, but Isaac was full of questions. I told him stories about her one-eyed dog, Mitsey and about drinking root beer floats and watching movies. He asked me questions about her and about death and resurrection in general. I wish I could have recorded every word because we had some very special touching moments and I felt good to be able to share my love of my grandmother with him. He wants to make a flag to put in front of our house today that says “Grandma O’Bryant†because then everyone who sees it will know that we are remembering her today.
Isaac is at the perfect age for adventures. He gets so excited about everything. Even driving down the freeway is exciting for him. He loves looking out his window and talking about what he sees or asking questions. One of his favorite games lately is finding letters in the alphabet. When he sees the letter he’s looking for he’ll say “got it†then figure out the next one.
He wanted to be involved in everything. He enjoyed helping his dad set up the tent doing everything from bringing stakes to his dad to holding the poles of the tent. He thrilled to see the fire and when Zach gave him a rule to stay 5 steps away, he committed to stay 8 steps away. He got to cook his own hot dog and his own marshmallow.
The first site we went to see was The court of the Patriarchs. He was very excited because one of the peaks was named Isaac. As we rode the shuttle to the site, he heard them say his name when they were describing the next stop—his eyes got wide and he exclaimed “they said Isaac!!†He was very proud to have a mountain named after him (or someone with his same name).
He hiked himself to exhaustion on each trail. He loved to be the leader and would run up ahead if he got behind. On one walk he helped me name some rocks that we thought may have been overlooked when they were naming everything. He wore himself out so thoroughly that at the end of one hike he said “give me some food and put me to bed!â€
As we were preparing a meal at our campsite we suddenly heard Isaac shouting “Mom, Mom!!†and running toward us. When he got to us he pointed to the road and said “What is that thing?!†It was a little white golf-cart type vehicle. What I thought was interest turned out to be fear. He was actually scared of it! He can be a bit of a chicken.
You really couldn’t ask for a better camper. He went to bed on time and slept well. He loved every adventure and didn’t turn down an opportunity for a walk or a hike or to help make food. At the end of our trip as we were packing up camp, Grandma’s tent started to blow away and Isaac grabbed hold of the tent. He was very proud of himself for saving it from “blowing over the mountainâ€
I took some days off this week, so I thought I’d spend a day with each of the older children. When I asked them what they wanted to do, Isaac wanted to go to a mountain far away, and Charlotte wanted to look at fish.
So Thursday morning, Isaac and I set out for Arches National Park. It’s not the best for mountains, but it’s accessible in this cold spring. When we set out, we had a solid foot of new snow; I had to put Grandpa’s truck in four wheel drive to get out of our driveway. Things were sloppy on US 6 through Spanish Fork Canyon and on into Price as well.
That little Toyota is probably the finest piece of 20th-century automotive technology. While it’s a little underpowered and noisy at any kind of speed, it’s pretty near indestructible. With 275,000+ miles on it, it’s still sporting the original clutch, transmission, and motor. On top of that, any trail I’ve thrown it at (and I confess I haven’t gone too nuts) has been no problem. There are some quirks; as we hit Soldier Summit, the right side wiper popped off. A helpful clerk at Checker Auto in Price got us the right part (these pick-ups don’t have j-hooks for the wipers, so you need an adapter) and got us on the road again.
When we got to Arches, Isaac and I headed up to Delicate Arch. Isaac is a chatty kid when he wants to be, and he had questions and thoughts about everything. I use a pair of trekking poles when I hike, and when they’re not extended, they’re just the right size for him to use. He calls them “hikersâ€, and talks about how the help us not to fall over. Any time we’d go up a hill or along a ledge, he’d talk about how we were helping each other not fall. We would look for the cairns of stones
Isaac is a good hiker. Delicate Arch is 1.5 miles each way, and he did just fine.
After we hiked to Delicate Arch, we went down and roamed around in the Double Arch area. He was a pretty fearless climber there, and scrambled all over the rocks.
The GPS recommended the Willow Springs road to get out of the park, and I figured since we had the truck, we could give it a try. It was very bouncy, and by this time, the boy was very tired. Even going slow there were a few obstacles that tilted the truck a lot or bounced it. Once we hit pavement again, though, he got a nap in. Then it was off for home.
Charlotte wanted to see some fish, so we went to the aquarium in Sandy. It was very crowded, and while they had a few nice displays, it was just a little underwhelming. Charlotte still liked it, though. She especially liked one of the Amazon displays, where they had little caiman, turtles, and fish swimming together. I showed her an octopus; it made her very nervous, though. When we were done with the aquarium, I took her to Cabella’s so she could look at a lot of fish without a crowd. She fell asleep on the way up and on the way back, so I didn’t push it; we’ll have lots of times together if I have my way. Unfortunately, it was really dark in the aquarium, so my pictures didn’t work out well. Here’s one of Charlotte helping me admire a spider.
Does anyone else think it’s weird that we celebrate Christ’s triumph over death by saying a bunny hops around hiding candy and colored eggs? Were still at that stage where we are developing our traditions and I just didn’t have it in me to hype the Easter Bunny—I need more justification for his “existence†I suppose. We tried to be simple this year, we hid a bag of jelly beans and a bag of Reces Peanut Butter cups and gave each kid one gift. We decorated hard-boiled eggs, but then I just fed them to the kids instead of hiding them.
I tried to put more emphasis on Christ by talking about the Crucifixion and showing them a few movies about Christ and his Crucifixion. Charlotte and I watched “To This End Was I Born,†and talked about the events at the end of Christ’s life. I’m grateful for the special moments we had together as we watched that film. After Church, we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for dinner followed by a short Easter devotional. Krista helped me fill 12 plastic eggs with scriptures and items surrounding Christ’s Atonement, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. I hid the eggs around the living room and the kids found the eggs and delivered them to family members who read the scriptures contained therein. We followed that activity by watching our Church’s Easter message (given my one of my very favorite Apostles).
When Easter comes around, I’m glad that my kids actually like to eat hard boiled eggs, because I don’t like them in any form. I boiled the eggs today and one of the eggs cracked, so I gave the cracked one to the kids while it was still hot. They enjoyed it so much that they asked for more. I gave them one egg at a time which they took turns taking bites of. Before the eggs had even cooled down, the kids had shared 5 eggs, they might have eaten more, but I feared we’d have none left to color.
**I wrote this on April Fool’s day, but couldn’t post it until now, I’ve got some great pictures to post with it once I get this issue fixed**
Anyone who knows my brother Bryan, knows that April Fools Day may be the most important day of the year—at least to him. He loves not only to play jokes, but to have them played on him. He eagerly awaited my bedtime last night so that he could get started. Even now as I write, he’s feverishly trying for just one more prank.
Last night’s preparations yielded missing wheels on my computer chair, a missing remote which once found was missing it’s batteries, my shoe laces tied together and hidden DVDs. I tried a few quick pranks by switching out the bags on some of the cereals and covering the shower nozzle in saran wrap before we left the house for his orthodontist appointment. He got braces today which presented me with a prime opportunity to prank. I made up a list of food that he wouldn’t be allowed to eat with his new braces, the list included as many of his favorite foods as I could think of. I gave it to the lady at the front desk who read it to him before we left. The best part was probably the look on the faces of the other patients, mostly children as they overheard this list of forbidden foods. He played his own jokes on them by smearing peanut butter on his teeth before the appointment and putting pink hair gel in his hair.
Yesterday Isaac was in one of his creative moods. This means he gets an idea and wants to talk about it. . .continuously. He’s gone on for hours at a time, following me around the house as I do chores. Here are the lines that I wrote down from today’s brainstorming session. "What if all the air was drained out of the world? Would we ask Heavenly Father to put more air in the world?. . . I know, the fan in the bathroom!! The fan in the bathroom could blow air into the world. Then we would fix the problem? That air was all stinky–that’s why we had to blow it all out. . . would Heavenly Father make a fan that didn’t need electricity and leave it at that Temple that we go-ed to so that we could get it?"
Today we got the kids their first fish. They went with dad to pick the fish out. Isaac named his fish ‘Polar Express’ and Charlotte named her fish ‘Cheese.’
Isaac: The fish swims around the fish tank and the ‘Cheese’ fish stays down. ‘Polar Express’ is the fish that swims and ‘Cheese’ isn’t. That’s the whole story about them. They can play with the stuff in the tank. They can hide behind the rock and whenever they need fish food, I could give them fish sticks or dad could.
Here are pictures of us making these magical cookies. As you can see, we made quite a mess. The kids picked out all the shapes so we ended up with an interesting collection which included circles, hearts, dogs, cats, a sock (Christmas stocking), the letters H, P, and D, bunnies, gingerbread men, the number 1, flags, fish, a bear, flowers, stars, a duck, a dinosaur, and possibly more that I can’t think of at the moment. As Isaac ate his first cookie, he asked “is my hair growing?â€
Isaac has been due for another haircut for a little while, but I’ve been reluctant to take him because I didn’t want to pay for another haircut (my mom cut all of our hair until we went to college, and to be honest during college too, so it seems a waste to pay).
Anyway, I had the idea that I could see what he’d look like if I shaved his head and this would probably be my last chance to try it before he started kindergarten. It may not have been the best choice. I gave him some candy and had him stand on the stool in front of our bathroom mirror. When I shaved the hair off of the top of his head he started to panic and cry. Charlotte must have heard him because before I knew it she was at the doorway with a look of horror on her face. She ran down the hall where I could hear her crying too. At that moment I felt horrible. What could I do? It was too late to do anything except shave the whole thing and both of my kids were traumatized. Isaac started yelling “Glue it back on, I don’t want all my hair off.†All I could do was finish the haircut and then convince the sobbing boy to get in the bath and wash all the little hairs off of himself. He cried and cried and said he wouldn’t come out of the bath until his hair grew back.
After at least a half an hour of sobbing, I was able to convince him to come out of the bath and get dressed. He only stopped crying when we discussed what we could do to help his hair start to grow back. He suggested that I buy something at the store that helps hair grow. We finally decided to make some cookies that would help hair grow. His initial suggestion for the cookies was to make them with chicken, sausage, and beef. Luckily he was fine with more traditional sugar cookies. It wasn’t until he started making the cookies that he finally calmed down and started to accept his new bald head. Now I think he actually likes it, at dinner he commented on how he couldn’t mess it up.
Isaac has a fear of tigers that has become a regular topic of conversation. He’s afraid to go out at night for fear that tigers will get him. Around Christmas time, my mother made all three kids a pair of tiger pajama pants to wear. Isaac refused to wear the pants because he was afraid of them. One day I convinced him to try them on. He put them on ran around the house growling like a tiger and then took them off saying that they were too scary. I regularly try to convince him to try them on again and each time he refuses. Last night Charlotte and Nicole were wearing their tiger pajamas and I convinced Isaac that if he put his on, then the tigers would say “he’s not a boy, he’s a tiger—we don’t want to eat him.†As soon as he had the pants on, he immediately covered them up with a blanket so that he wouldn’t be scared by them. When he woke up this morning he changed out of them before coming to breakfast and yelled from the hallway that he was too afraid to come into the kitchen because he was scared of Charlotte in her tiger pants. The picture is from last night when he was covering up his pants.
2.22.09 "The new Grandma sings!" Charlotte upon hearing her grandma Bunny sing to Nicole
2.28.09 If Nicole spits up ever again, you should hold her over the toilet so the spit up will go into the toilet. Then Nicole would ask "where is my spit up?" Isaac
After reading Richard Scary’s Busy, Busy Town, Charlotte wants to be a cat with clothes on that talks and she wants to build a house for walking babies, like Paul, and Isaac wants to grow his own wheat so that he can harvest it, grind it into flour and then make bread with it.
3.1.09 Isaac was helping me build a dresser when I discovered a few pieces were missing. I said I was going to sweep the floor to see if I could find the missing pieces. He said in essence, you don’t need to look I’ll just go pray for Heavenly Father to help us find it. He ran into the living room, knelt said "Thank thee that we can find the missing pieces." then ran back in and said "They’re on their way!"
I wrote this post and then the computer wouldn’t let me post it because Live Writer was not on speaking terms with our web hosting something or other, but it appears that they’ve settled their differences, so here it is.
The kids decided that they wanted to make doughnuts instead of going on an outing after they filled up their outing chart. We took pictures of most of the steps, so read and view our adventure by clicking on the ‘Read More’ link below:
I am grateful that I got to see my mom last weekend, even if it was a very short visit. She is seriously one of my very favorite people and no matter how much time I get with her, I always want more.
She flew in on Saturday and spent Monday night at Krista’s before flying home on Tuesday morning. We had just enough time to swim at my Uncle Toby’s house in Lindon, make cookies, play two hands of cards, stay up late talking twice, drink a cup of hot cocoa, read stories to the children, play games with Isaac and Charlotte, hold Nicole, and make some soup.
After my grandmother’s death last year, we realized how few pictures we had of us as children with our grandmother so although we prefer to look at adorable pictures of the children by themselves, we have decided that it’s important to take pictures of the kids with their grandma and made sure to take more pictures this time.
***Grandma Cochran beware, I intend to take more pictures of you with my kids as well****
“I would like my own pet ant and I could open up it’s cage and put it in the bath and it would swim.” Isaac
“Mom, is Orem attached to Provo with screws?” Isaac
Coming soon: Bryan’s first week in review, but first I wanted to share a few little notes that Isaac wrote to his grandparents about his uncle.
First he had Zach write the following:
Grandma Bunny,
Don’t be sad. Uncle Bryan is here to help us.
Love, Isaac
Then I had him tell me what to write in a note to Grandpa Bird and here is what he said:
Grandpa Bird-
Uncle Bryan is being helping us, like helping us very well. Not, not helping us because he is good. Because he doesn’t do bad things and doesn’t forget. And he doesn’t forget about everything because everything is what he has to do for us and he has to be helping us more or our house will be bad.
While doing chores this evening, Isaac asked “Mom, am I saving the planet by doing my chores?” Later he asked “Is the planet saved yet?” meaning ‘have I completed this chore to your satisfaction.’
A little later he asked “Mommy, what time will you be big enough to have two babies in you?” I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but I thought it was funny anyway.
Often when we talk about events or other such things, he suggests we make a sign. On memorial day when I told him about my Grandma, he wanted to make a special sign for the yard to tell everyone that we were remembering Grandma O’Bryant. Today, he really wanted to make a sign to announce that Grandma Bunny was going home and he wouldn’t be diverted from his idea. He got the paper out, he found scraps of wood, attached the paper to the wood with tape, and asked me to write the words. He had taped the paper so that there were two flaps and on one he had me write “Grandma Bunny is leaving†and on the other one he asked for “Grandma Bunny is coming.†Next he found a scrap of wood with a pointed end and asked me to attach it to his sign. Once attached we had to find a spot in the yard and hammer it in. He is very proud of his sign, unfortunately the sun was in his eyes so I couldn’t get a great picture of him looking up—but you get the idea.
