I am not smarter than a 4th grader

4th graders all over the state of Utah participate in a program after they have successfully learned all about Utah and its 29 counties. I didn't even know that Utah HAD 29 counties. Of course I am not a native Utahn (or however you spell that...). I am an Idahoan. And we do not do this GINORMOUS project as measly 4th graders. I learned about Idaho history and the counties when I was in 7th grade. I remember it distinctly because it was Mr. Losser's class and he did not like me.

Anyway, so Meghan has been learning all these great things all year long. Back in the fall a note came home saying that Meghan had chosen Millard County as the county that she would do her report on. We wished that she had chosen Juab County since that is where grandma and grandpa live, but you can't tell a 4th grader what to do. Or so we have learned anyway...

The crappy thing about this whole undertaking is how much time it involves! (1) There is a written report that the students do at school. (2) There is a brochure that the student needs to make at home. (3) There is a float -once again at home. (4) A county product...at home... (5) And last but not least, a county fair entry type item- Meghan learned how to make Chocolate Zuchini Bread since she didn't finish the cross stitch project that she was also learning. (TOO much learning!!!!)

That's 5 things!! Meghan could have done this for a Personal Progress project since I know it was well over 10 flippin' hours that we spent with her fighting her, cajoling her, threatening her, making her cry, and doing it for her to basically get the stinking thing done! What the heck!!

In the end though, she claims she learned a lot. Great. Mission accomplished. This seriously makes me dread 5th grade though. That's the year they do the State reports!!

*Here are some pictures of her projects and from the cute LONG program that the 4th graders put on for the parents. Meghan had the part of a pioneer. She was too cute. She sang in a little group for one of the songs and was part of the rythymic instruments (or something like that) for another song. We are so proud of her!!


Meghan's float which showcased a popsicle stick Territorial Statehouse.
Meghan's brochure on Millard County and her county product which was supposed to be fossil beds and a trilobite being dug.

Meghan sitting at her desk after the program ready to answer anyone's questions about Millard County. Supposedly she is now an "expert". :]

Happy 10th to Meghan!

Happy 10th Birthday Meghan!!

I can't believe she is 10! Wow! Her childhood is going by so fast. I wonder if she feels the same way? The highlight of her birthday was the ice cream cake from Cold Stone (no picture- sorry! It was all blurry), and getting the Taylor Swift CD.

She is such a young lady, I almost feel silly being a mom to someone who likes the same stuff that I like. (Does that make me weird?)

Here are the top 10 things that are great about Meghan:

1. She likes the color purple and so do I.

2. She is very crafty. Her latest obsession is weaving. She has made 6 scarves for the homeless and is almost done with another.

3. She likes all the same music that I do.

4. She is smart like her dad.

5. She has beautiful handwriting (when she takes her time...)

6. She makes yummy Mac n Cheese.

7. She is a great helper around the house and usually does her chores without grumbling.

8. She is a girlie girl through and through!

9. She likes CHoColAte!!

10. She is very pretty and fixes her own hair EVERYDAY!

LOVE YOU MEGGY!!

I'll be darned

The other night at dinner Meghan was talking about the election and how they had talked about it in her class at school. She said that all the kids had said they voted for McCain. They she said, "We were all darned that he lost."

Me: "Wait...you were what?"
her: "we were darned, you know like 'Darn it'!"

Me (laughing): "You mean you were disappointed"

her: "oh yeah. I guess that's what I meant."

I'm sorry if you don't get how funny that is to me, but I thought it was pretty great. She describes everything so literally, and this was just one of those times.

wordFUL Wednesday and the kids that don't stop growing

I am shamelessly copying Cecily's "wordFUL Wednesday" (I usually do wordless wednesday, but it's too hard) and posting a picture and writing about it because I can't NOT talk about it! Am I weird or what?

This is my gorgeous girls taken in 2004. Long time ago, huh? I was reminded this week of how little they used to be. I was reminded in a weird way. You see...when they were adopted, they were ages 4, 3, and 20 months. They WERE little. Now they are ages almost 10, 8 1/2, and 7. Everyone always says that they think Meghan and Rachel look like twins because they are both blondies. Lately though I think it is Jenny and Rachel that are more like twins. Jenny, who used to be teensy tiny, is growing like a freaking weed and just won't stop. She is as tall as Rachel and they wear the same size clothes.

The problem is that I like to use the "pass down" method in clothes usage around here and her being the same size as Rachel completely SCREWS that up! Just this morning I had to go to the store and buy her a coat because she has outgrown her other one, but yet Rachel still fits just fine in the one she has and can't pass it down. So I had to go and buy one the exact same size as Rachel's for Jenny! ARGH! Stop growing already!

I just want her to be little again. Matter of fact, I want all of them to just be little again.

Wordless Wednesday...and a crappy day

Okay, so I have had a rough day. First of all, I have had back spasms all day. Add that to my chest pain that started a week ago, and you will know how "fabulous" I feel. Thank heavens my hubby came home from work early so that I could get a nap in. Then I check my email, and I get one that I was none too thrilled to receive. Let's just say that the bag of Caramel Nut Clusters I bought that I was saving for a rainy day....um yeah, they will be gone before 7:00.

I just realized also that it is Wednesday. You all know what THAT means.....

Happy Wordless Wednesday!!

Grapes...and more

This weekend Mike picked some of our grapes and got the older girls involved in taking them off the stems in preparation for making juice. If Mike and I do that part, it always takes so much longer because we have to chase kids during, so we decided to offer more allowance as an incentive (okay, it was a bribe) to do that part for us. Meghan was pretty good about helping, but she would rather have been pretending she was married to Zac Efron than help and so she kept stopping and wandering away. Rachel, on the other hand, was gung ho and all about getting it done. She is kind of OCD though and this was the perfect job for her.
Anyway, we got 4 batches of grape juice done for our food storage (24 quarts) and will be sharing the rest of our grapes with a neighbor so that she can make juice for her family to use. What was funny was that during the time we did grapes, I was trying to catch up on the laundry and had washed Jenny's bedspread and hung it out on the swingset to finish drying. (I don't have a clothesline-wish I did!)

Well, Jonathan thought of a fun thing to do and him and Sidney took turns running under the quilt! It was pretty funny to watch.


* Did you notice that all the kids are wearing their BYU shirts? 'Cuz HECK YA- it's BYU time!!

blue ribbon worthy

This is for Meghan. Remember her Giant cabbage that she has been growing since April? Well, Mike had to go out of town and I had him dig it and trim it down for me before he left so that I wouldn't have to do it. It was HUGE and I was sure it would be heavy. I knew that I would have a hard enough time just getting it down to the Fairgrounds and into the exhibit building as well as tote a baby and a preschooler. Anyway, Mike put it down in our food storage room and I thought it would be fine. Really it was only down there for 3 days.
And Tuesday afternoon this is what I found. It was all yellow and starting to mold and just smelled NASTY. So, we couldn't take it to the fair.

Which is a bummer because I bet that she would've won a blue ribbon. Just in case you were wondering, it weighed 22.5 pounds. It was 13 inches in diameter, and 8 inches tall. It was very BIG!

Congrats Meghan!

Random, random, random

So first off, some randoms need said....

1. Dark Knight ROCKED! Mike and I went on a date (a DATE!) on Wednesday night (thanks Shan and John for watching the kiddos) and we went and saw it. Mike was dying because apparently he "wanted" to fight the crowds and go on opening night, but we were in Idaho for the temple open house. So, instead we were 5 days later in seeing it and it did not disappoint! Love, love, love Christian Bale! And Heath Ledger was a VERY believeable Joker. I'm not jumping on the give-him-an-Oscar bandwagon, but he was super creepy and super good in character.

2. We try to take the kids to the dollar store once a month. Well, we have missed a few months as the kids keep reminding us, so today when it was too hot to work out in the yard, we loaded up in the car, got the kids their $2 each out of their money jars, and headed for Dollar Tree. Oh yeah! Fun times! I bought for myself a new heel scraper and some silicone brushes for cooking with. Oh yeah, and toothbrushes for the Stake activity thing we are having next month. (our ward got assigned to bring 200 toothbrushes) ...ANyWAy...
We always let the kids buy whatever they want. WHATEVER. Sometimes that backfires on us. Like the time that Jenny bought maracas. She now doesn't not get to buy anything musical...and for good reason too. Jonathan usually buys toy cars or guns, Rachel gets dolls, but Meghan....well, lets just say that she goes into the dollar store with a mission and does anything she can to accomplish it. Today was "mission accomplished"! She seriously is a fashionista. She just is. I couldn't help but take her picture when we got home of her and her $2 spent. YOU GO GIRL! 3. Sidney is apparently an "apprentice" fashionista because every day (no, seriously...everyday!) she pulls open the bottom drawer of my hope chest where random things have been placed and pulls out Meghan sling from when she broke her arm 2 years ago and then she drapes it around her neck. It's so cute! Sometimes Jonathan puts his batman cape on her too and then she looks really silly! And she will just toddle around the house dressed like that for hours and hours. :] It's all about accessorizing!!

Meghan and the Giant cabbage

Meghan was in 3rd grade last year and apparently as part of the curriculum, a cabbage is sent home with each kid for them to take care of and grow. Not just any cabbage either. A GIANT cabbage. Because why? That's frankly what I want to know.

Regardless of the why, we of course got sucked into this little experiment. Meghan babied her little cabbage plant in our house until we could transplant it to our garden. I was secretly hoping it would die from the shock of being transplanted. Unfortunately, it is super hardy too! Anyway, by the end of the school year, just Meghan's cabbage and one other child's were still alive and well. And then when Meghan came home on the last day of school she reported that she was the only one left in her class that still had a cabbage. Oh well then, hooray for us. *sigh*

I am trying to be a good sport about this and give my child this "wonderful" opportunity to do something amazing. But at the same time, my brain is yelling at me..."What the HE** are you going to do with a a50 pound head of cabbage?"

Anyway, enjoy the picture of Meghan and her cabbage. It just keeps growing and growing and .... someday, she will wake up and in the night the cabbage thieves will have come and absconded her cabbage. (Or at least I HOPE they will) Bummer.

The "incident"

On Friday, day 2 of our campout, Meghan went out in to adjacent field with Grampa Cole, Uncle Lorin and the older boy cousins who were playing baseball. Grampa and Lorin were hitting them to the boys who were catching the balls and throwing them back. It was a game called 500 or something like that.

My kids are not the most sportsy-coordinated kids around. They are great at dance and gymnastics (must be their Ukrainian blood...), but they kinda stink at actual sports stuff. I was not really surprised when Rachel went out by Meghan and tried to catch and got hit in the knee with the baseball. It left a nice big mark that I forgot to get a pic of. Meghan stayed out there after Rachel's accident for a long time. I seriously kept expecting her to get bored. And then it happened. She got clocked right in the face by the ball that she was trying to catch. I took this picture about 1/2 hour after she got hit because as Mike and I were walking back to our campsite with her, I noticed that one of the lenses had fallen out of her glasses and we all had to look for it in the grass. Thank heavens that Gramma and her sharp eyes (ok, actually her bifocals) saw it in the grass.

Today Meghan sports a smaller bruised area above her eye. It is not swollen anymore, but the inside of her eye next to her nose is black and blue. I don't think she is going to try to play baseball anytime soon.

Flashback Friday...of sorts....

My boy crazy 9 year old daughter LOVES the Jonas Brothers. I think I am constantly hearing allllllll about them and their songs and the contest to win tickets to go see them and mom-didya-know-this and mom-didya-know that all Jonas Brothers. And I so don't even care. I mean look at their hair. Weird. Get a real hairstyle I say. She even wants a poster of them for her room. Ha HA Ha. Not even. Sigh.

And then I remembered myself when I was near to her age and the boy group that I thought was the shiznizzle. New Kids On the Block! I mean really. Have you ever in your life seen such Hawties? NOt since the late 80's early 90's at least. And their hair is so not much better.

Sigh.

But I am still not getting her a poster.

It's not just for laundry anymore...

I thought this was fun. I heard Sidney giggling and came out of my room to see Meghan and Rachel pulling her around in the laundry basket. You would have thought that they were the only kids in the world to think it up when they said, "Look Mom! Look what we are doing with Sidney"!
So, of course, then I HAD to show them that pulling a baby around in a laundry basket has been done by older siblings since probably the dawn of time! Here is my older sisters Amy and Marni pulling me around. And I was even the same age as Sidney is. Funny!

Singing in the shower

My four year old just told me that Zac Efron sings in the shower.

WHAT am I supposed to say to that? I mean, first of all, WHO CARES? I'll tell you who cares...my nine year old daughter that thinks she is 15 and is "in love" with Zac Efron. Gag.Me.With.A.Spoon.

But, alas, I was a good sport and I said to the four year old, "Oh yeah, how do you know (she loves you...oops sorry, wrong topic there) that he sings in the shower?"

"Because Meghan told me so." And that begins the never-ending cycle that occurs at our house of the nine year old giving information and the others believing "because she said so".

Make it stop. Please.

It's a spectacle!

At our house, dealing with "spectacles" is definately a "spectacle".



I have completely lost count as to the number of glasses that my "sweet darlings" Meghan and Rachel have had and/or broken. Frankly it's too many to count. But since they need them to see and therefore function in society...We just keep getting them pair after pair after pair after pair.....
Anyway, Meghan's broke (she helped them along) right before her birthday, which is coincidentally, RIGHT before CHRISTMAS. So, for Christmas Eve, we went to Walmart and picked up her new ones. She likes them. They are Hannah Montana frames! That sentence had an exclamation mark simply because you need to imagine that a 9 year old is telling you that bit of information. I hear it a couple hundred times a day. (Oh yeah, Meghan is the blond on the left)
And Rachel's broke a week after Meghan's broke. These two have a tendency to do this sort of copycat thing. ANYWAY, we couldn't afford to buy TWO new pairs right at the holidays, so we taped Rachel's up (she broke them on the earpieces), and told her to hang tight for a month or so. Well, last week she and I went to Walmart and had her eyes examined. Her prescription has changed quite a lot. (That's probably why she couldn't see the board at school) And she also got her new glasses. They are Hannah Montana frames TOO! LIke, Oh my heck!
(Rachel is the blond on the right)
They are both thrilled and we are poor and we'll see how long these glasses last.

Sucks Stinks to be YOU!

Today sucked stunk just a little bit for Meghan. Look to the right and you can see why. This morning at breakfast I noticed that above her lip was a little red, but since she has a cold and has been wiping her nose like crazy, I just chalked it up to chapped skin.

Well, after school she hopped in the car and I said, "Holy crap!". I grabbed her face and took a closer look and sure enough....she's got a killer cold sore. This is the biggest one she had ever had. It is the whole left side above her lip. Poor thing. I asked her, "Didn't anyone say anything to you about this today"?

Apparently, no one had enough guts to ask her "what the heck is that?"

So, we are slathering Zovirax on it like crazy, but I am betting she will have it for a good 2 weeks or so.

On another note....she and I had the puberty talk tonight. Yah, double whammy, huh? Anyway, it went better than I thought it would. She took it all in stride and didn't get freaked out by any of it. I guess now I need to prepare for the "sex talk". That one might just freak ME out!

Thursday Thirteen...celebrating MEGHAN!!!

Wow! Thursday 13 again! Didn't I just do it? Maybe I should rethink this.
Anyway, this weeks edition is devoted to my sweet Meghan. She turns 9 years old today!

So without further ado...here we go.

#1 This is the first picture that we ever took of Meghan. I will always remember her this way, even as she grows older and gets a bigger attitude. She was 4 years old when we met her and she always smiled and her eyes truly seemed to sparkle.

#2 This is Meghan and I on the third day that we visited her at the orphanage. We got to take her for an outing and so we got her all bundled up and away we went.

#3 Meghan on her first day of Kindergarten! She was so excited. Don't ya love the pose?

#4 Meghan (on the left) and Rachel in their costumes for their dance recital.

#5 Meghan with Princess Atta in Bug's Land at California Adventure. This was from our first jaunt to Disneyland in 2003. Meghan had only seen this movie (A Bug's Life) one time, but she still wanted to take a picture with Atta.

#5 This is her and her birthday treat for her 6th birthday. We always let the kids pick if they want a cake or not and for this year she chose ice cream sundaes.

#6 She is always willing to let me snap funny pictures of her. This one also includes her sister Jenny (left) and Rachel (right).

#7 Meghan and her broken arm. Oh yeah! Monkey bars are death traps! She was "trying to fly" and fell off them the beginning of the school year of 2nd grade.

#8 Seriously, could she be any cuter?

#9 Meghan dressed as a DIVA for Halloween. Sometimes she acts like it is Halloween again, just with no costume.

#10 Meghan and her friends for her 8th birthday party. I gave manicures and that is what they are all showing off in the picture.
#11 She claims this is her first snowman. Lest you think that my kids have no opportunities for fun...this is not her first, but rather her 5th or 6th. I just didn't think I needed to document every single one of them just to prove it isn't the first. Sheesh!

#12 Meghan and her dad on her baptism day last January. She describes this day as "one of the best EVER".

#13 Trapped by Jafar when we went to Disneyland in October. She seriously giggled the whole time!

As you can see, we feel really blessed to have this special and sweet spirit in our home. Happy Birthday Meghan dear!!!!

UPDATE: Yes,I did just barely realize that I can't count and I have two number 5's. It's a crazy week, what can I say?!

Birthday week

This is Meghan's birthday week! She turns 9 years old on Thursday and her teacher does some really fun stuff to help them shine during the week around their birthday.

First of all, last Friday, she was the "Scientist of the Week" and she and her dad did a science experiment at home and then had to go and show it to the class. They chose gravity. It pretty much went over my head, which is why I did not help her do the experiment! She had fun and did really well explaining things and speaking in front of her peers.

Then yesterday being Monday, it was the start of her birthday week and she had to "walk the plank". Her teacher's class is Pirate themed this year which is kind of fun. Anyway, at home we worked on a poster. We had to put pictures on it and she had to answer lots of questions, such as...favorite television show, favorite food, who her friends were, and something fun that she has done recently. It was a great activity that she and I did together. Then at school she had to stand up in front of her class again and tell them all the things on her poster and answer any questions that they had for her. Once again, she was a trooper and did a fabulous job public speaking! I am so proud of her. When I was her age, I would get so nervous that I would practically hyperventilate and then cry.

Walmart makes me poor

So before school this morning, Meghan comes to me and asks, "Mom, are we poor?"

"um, no. We are not poor. Why do you ask?"

"Because, yesterday at school, Prissy (name has been changed) told me she liked my shirt and asked me where we bought it and I told her that you bought it at Target. And she said that her mom said only poor people shop at Target or Walmart."

(Well then, sign me up for food stamps, 'cuz that's where I shop)

"Meghan", I said, "we are not poor and we are also not stuck up."

I hope that just this one time she repeats every word I said. It would serve Prissy and her mom right!!