Imagination, Family Reunion Craziness, TRAINS, Bribery, MMMM Butter!

Aaron got invited to be a part of a play for Youth Conference this year.  Every ward had to put on a little play and our ward's assignment was the Four Son's of Mosiah.  Fittingly Aaron's part to play was the part of Aaron--made it easy to remember ;).  However, I had to come up with some sort of costume for him to wear.  I tried using my imagination since googling Son's of Mosiah costumes didn't yield much online.  Here's what I ended up sewing while using my imagination:

 The lady in charge of the play really took her job seriously.  She had play rehearsals every Tuesday and Thursday nights with weekends mixed in too for about 6 weeks.  At one of the play rehearsals she came over to Aaron who was wearing flip flops and told him, "I hope you aren't planning on wearing those in the actual play!"  Aaron went and dug out his old leather sandals.  However, he hated wearing these sandals because they have a hold in the sole of them and every step he takes they make tooting noises.  Why they haven't been thrown away yet I will never know.  If you had a hard time picking him out in the play just listen for the Son of Mosiah that toots a lot while he walks.  The play turned out as a success or so I hear since we never got to see it just the people at Youth Conference did.  They did video the production so maybe we can get to see it sometime although it won't be live. 

The other day it rained.  After the rain storm we got a huge, beautiful rainbow that stretched all the way across the sky.  It was really pretty.  Here's the view from our back patio:

 The other day I was doing laundry downstairs.  Now Noah and Sarah love to follow me around the house where ever I go.  Downstairs is where our storage is as well and while I was doing laundry Noah started playing with his old exersaucer.  A little while later I started hearing screaming.  I went and found him stuck inside the exersaucer and he was pretty mad as you can see:

 He didn't appreciate me laughing at him either, but I still did anyway.  Heee-heee.

Friday we met up with some friends at the Dinosaur Park.  We had lots of fun and more importantly we wore the kids out which is always awesome!  When we got home I had to start packing for my family reunion with my Dad's side of the family with all our aunts, uncles and cousins that was Friday night/ Saturday day.  We ended up being late because that was also the night Aaron had to do his play for Youth Conference.  The family reunion started at 2 pm at Heber Valley Camp which is a church owned and run camp, but we didn't make it there until 8 pm.  To make things easier I dressed the kids in pajamas before we left so they could go right to bed when we got there--or so we thought.  When we got there we found our cabin and set up everyone's sleeping bag on the bunks.  We set up the pack and play for Noah to sleep in and he was happy and laughing when we first put him inside...

 but he quickly turned very upset when he realized we expected him to actually sleep inside it.

 To keep him quiet and everyone else happy I ended up taking one for the team and letting Noah sleep across my chest all night long.  I basically didn't get much sleep, but everyone else got more which is good.  While I was packing up all of our stuff for our stay Friday afternoon I was doing it alone since Aaron was doing his play.  Let me just say packing for 7 people while trying getting endless interruptions and trying to entertain and keep an eye on 5 of them was just crazy.  It was no wonder I forgot to bring along bed pads to go under our sleeping bags.  All of us had to sleep on top of a plywood slab bunk with just a sleeping bag for a cushion which was not much.  The next morning Aaron and I could barely move because our bodies were so sore from the lack of padding.  Anyway once we turned out the lights in our cabin the three older boys went right to sleep until Noah escaped my arms and went and turned on all the lights and woke everyone back up an hour later.  Grrrr!  It took everyone a bit to settle back down to go back to sleep again.  Here's Sarah just hanging out on her bunk in the dark:

 The next morning we were up bright and early since all the kids are early birds and Aaron and I didn't get much sleep anyway.  When we went to get ready for the day you can imagine my horror when I realized I had left the basket of clothes we were going to change into at home.  DOH!!  Since we didn't want our kids to be seen wearing their mismatched pajamas all day Aaron made an early morning run to the local Walmart to pick up clothes for them to wear.  **Sigh**  I just viewed it as back to school shopping a little early.  Luckily Aaron and I had our regular clothes on (even if we had worn them up and slept in them as well) we kept those on so Aaron just had to get clothes for the kids.  While he was gone on the Walmart run I was cleaning up the cabin.  That's when I discovered Noah had snuck off and had fallen asleep on one of the bunks.  Oh how frustrating!!  Why couldn't he have done that the night before instead of making me hold him all night long!!!???

 The next morning we had a deer come right up to our camp.  Sarah was quite intrigued with it and tried to chase it down.  (If you can't tell which one Sarah is she is the only one still wearing her pajamas waiting for Aaron to return from his Walmart run with morning clothes...)

 During the day we got to hear about some of our ancestor's life stories and they were quite interesting.  Afterward the kids got to do a bunch of crafts.  All my kids made these crazy headbands to wear, but I didn't get any pictures of them wearing the headbands.  I did get a picture of my cute niece Bree wearing hers, though.

 After the crafts and getting our cabin checked off for being clean we headed down to the lake to do some canoeing.  Josh decided to do a paddle boat with his cousin Nathan.  Daniel and Matthew rode in a canoe with G&G T.  That just left Aaron and I in a canoe with Sarah and Noah.  We thought it would be a piece of cake, but again, my kids proved me wrong.  Noah for whatever reason decided he did not like being on the canoe and screamed the whole time we were out on the lake.  He also kept trying to walk around the canoe to get to me causing the whole thing to tip and rock coming close to tipping over.  I tried to get him to hold still, but he refused to.  In combination with my lack of sleep and frustration with him I, I said, "Oh you little sh*%!!"  Now I am not one to swear much, but I was really frustrated and it must have shown because I said it really loud.  Now let me remind you there are people from the church camp in canoes all over the lake and they all turned to look to see who would dare say such a thing especially at a CHURCH camp.  It was a little embarrassing to say the least.  Too bad Aaron was stuck on the canoe with me because if he could have I think he would have pretended he wasn't with me.  Oops!  He now has something to tease me about and he HAS been teasing me about it ever since.  Thanks, honey!

On the way home we had to stop by one of the kids favorite restaurants Dairy Keen (aka the Train).  They usually have some awesome kids toys inside their kids meals so all the kids got a kids meal with an extra hamburger.  This time the toy was sunglasses.  Everyone was excited to wear them in the car.  However, by the time we got home more than half of them were broken.  Oops.

 Once we had driven a few miles outside of Heber the lack of sleep caught up with everyone.  Things got extremely quiet and when I looked back I saw everyone had fallen asleep even Matthew which is amazing since he NEVER falls asleep in the car EVER!

 When we got home I found the basket of clothes innocently sitting where I had left it full of everyone's clothes that they were supposed to wear that morning.  **SIGH** again.  Aaron started to make fun of me again and I told him I'd like to see how he'd do packing for everyone while trying to keep track of everyone and getting numerous interruptions while packing, too.  In more defense of myself I had a lot to remember to pack like allergy free food for Daniel, medications, sleeping bags, pajamas, socks, babies, blankies, pillows, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc.

On Sunday the day after the family reunion everyone was just 'chuckles'.  Holy cow we were all ornery and that did not make a good combination.  If Aaron didn't have to say the opening prayer in Sacrament meeting I don't know if we would have even made it to sacrament meeting.  During primary Sharing Time was about an Honesty Train.  Each train car stood for a different value etc.  Matthew couldn't get past the point that we were talking about trains.  He interrupted Sharing Time every five minutes by jumping out of his chair and announcing to everyone about how much he LOVES trains.  By the middle of Sharing Time the primary president would just nod and say, "Yes Matthew we know how much you love trains."  Matthew was so excited he couldn't sit still during the whole lesson.  It was just crazy to watch.  However, we were really excited to put everyone to quiet time that afternoon.  Everyone needed some catch up sleep since we didn't get much Friday night.

 Monday Aaron had volunteered us to have the missionaries over for dinner.  Monday the kids had no Kids in the Park, but I had to go to the grocery store to get food to fix for dinner.  Let me just say I HATE taking all five kids to the store by myself.  It is just mass pandemonium to say the least.  In order to try and make things easier for myself (and to not assault other shopper's ears with me yelling "You little sh%*!") I bribed the kids with Pace Bars if they behaved.  They did well enough so here they all are enjoying their bribery afterward:

 When we got home and I was busy cleaning the house and starting on dinner.  About an hour later I realized that I hadn't seen Noah for a while.  I went around the house looking for him.  I started to get more panicked when he wouldn't answer my calls or come with the promise of getting some candy.  I started getting really worried because I had checked all the rooms in the house and couldn't find him.  I then went outside to see if I could find him since he now knows how to open the door knobs.  I bought the childproof door knob covers to go on them, but they worked a little too well and none of the older kids could get the doors open without busting the door knob covers off.  I spent a while looking outside and couldn't find him.  I was getting frantic when I checked his bedroom just one more time.  That is when I walked around his bed and saw him asleep on the floor.  You had to actually walk in his room to see him because he was laying so close to his bed.  Oh I was so glad to see him there.  He must have been a tired boy because he ended up sleeping there for over 3 hours.

 My kids eat A LOT!  I have made 18 loaves of bread in the last two weeks alone and the kids have annihilated all of them.  Their favorite is eating it for toast in the mornings.  However, they don't clean up their mess and leave the butter out on the counter.  Noah prefers eating butter more than anything and he loves it when they leave the butter tub on the counter.  He crawls up on top of the counter and eats the butter by the butter knife full.  He loves his butter as you can see:

 For Pioneer Day we spent the day at the Union Station Museums (aka the train museum).  Matthew hung out at the window to watch for the Frontrunner to pass by while the rest of the kids played.

 After the museum we came home and made some taffy.  We had to pull the taffy by hand once it cooled off, but after a few minutes Josh was the only one still working with me since everyone else had given up and found something else to do.

 Again here is Noah this morning.  I didn't sleep very much the night before, but I finally crashed about 4 am.  I was out of it when the boys woke up and started fixing themselves breakfast this morning.  I was finally awakened by Matthew SCREAMING at the toaster because his piece of toast had gotten stuck inside it.  While I was dead to the world this morning Sarah had let Noah out of his room for breakfast, too.  Since I was still asleep Noah fended for himself for breakfast but as you can see he did ok.  He found a loaf of bread and ripped a huge hunk off the top and dipped it in the butter and ate it.  He was pretty pleased with himself.  What the picture doesn't show you is the major greasy face he has because he seemed to have wiped his buttery covered hands off on all over his face and hair.  It was about this time that Matthew started screaming at the toaster and that's what woke me up.  What a crazy morning.  Noah had a nice long shower after I found him.  Good thing I rarely ever sleep that soundly especially with the kitchen right next to my bedroom.  I really must have been tired!