Halloween...You Betcha!

McKenzie and Hailey have discovered the true meaning of Halloween...eat until you're sick. As soon as you're feeling slightly better, eat a bunch more. They were so hyper this weekend I thought I was going to go crazy. Honestly, Greg didn't eat a regular meal for 3 days. Poor Greg was so freaked out about Halloween. He thought it would be a bunch of scary people jumping out at him the whole time. When we went to the ward Halloween party on Tuesday, we assured him all the way there it would not be scary. Our youth put on a carnival for Halloween, and we happened to park right by the window where they were doing a haunted house. So much for trusting us. We hop out of the car to the sound of kids screaming and poor Greg froze in his tracks. We made sure to steer him clear of that and stick to freaked out child appropriate activies. My parents went trick or treating with us on Halloween since Dave had to work. We found a fun neighborhood to trick or treat in and yay! it wasn't freezing. It was the best Halloween in years since I didn't want to just hide in my car with the heat blazing. Greg was still scared and walked around solemly all night sucking on his lips (its his scared thing.) My parents took us to Krispy Kreme afterwards because the kids just hadn't had enough sugar coarsing through their veins yet.

Here's Kenz with her beloved donut on a string. Sadly she isn't posing for this shot. That kissing face is her actual normal face before she eats a donut. She loves them a little too much.

The girls and their loot. Greggers is my timid little dinosaur in the background.

At the ward Halloween party. Greggers is a dinosaur, Connor has Greg's old cowboy costume, Kenzie is a princess and Hailey is Hannah Montana complete with fiber optic glowing wig. A necessity for every little girl.

I don't remember dressing up for Halloween since the 6th grade when I went as the Phantom of the Opera and no one knew who I was supposed to be (hard to believe I didn't have any friends, I know.) So with that great track record, I decided to see how many more people I could make not want to be my friend and dressed up as Sarah Palin. My nametag said "McCain - Palin, Gettin Mavericky" I'll let you be the judge if this was meant to be supportive or ironic. Let's just say when I went trick or treating it didn't go over as planned, but the kids bagged extra candy from my "fans." Bonus : I got to say "you bethcha" a lot.

Chronic Lateness

So you all know how I'm always late to everything and therefore my entire family is always late to everything including church. So this past Sunday we were on time for once. As in we heard the announcements on time. Something we haven't done in months. Usually we stroll in seconds before the Sacrament Prayer and hang out in the foyer until after Sacrament is passed. This means Greg only has to wait a few minutes to break into his snack bar he's brought along and we miss all the opening stuff. So as we're raising our arm for releasings and sustainings Greggers keeps asking me what I'm doing. And he keeps asking louder and louder "mom why you waving like that" "who you waving at?" I'm trying to tell him what's going on but he just keeps asking louder and louder. I'm thinking its quite apparant to those immediately around us that we aren't here for sustainings too often. Then he's freaking out that he can't have his snacks. See we have this rule that he can't have his snack until after Sacrament is passed. Being on time probably made the time until snacks seem like an eternity to a 2 year old. Now he's yelling "is it done yet?" Because usually he doesn't witness anything other than Sacrament being brought into the foyer. I was hoping that even though it seemed really loud no one else actually heard my son's announcement that the Huisman family is chronically late. No such luck. When I went into the foyer with Connor later a woman that had been sitting near us joked about Greg's commentary earlier. So there you have it. My lateness has gotten so bad that my son thinks church is some snacks followed by nursery.

Mississippi

I finally got around to unloading my camera so I finally have pictures of our trip to Mississippi. I realize I'm a little behind since this was a few weeks ago but whatever when am I ever on time for anything? We had a great time. Hailey was so excited to see Maddie, it was probably the happiest day of her life. A few days ago she was feeling sad about friends at school. She said yeah these girls, Joanna and MacKenzie were her friends but Maddie was special. It was so sweet. Greggers and Sa got to work on their wedding plans. While Hailey worked to re-corrupt the Campbell kids. It was so great to see where they lived. Gregger's is really enjoying his custard. They have this great icecream place called Bop's there. We went twice in three days. When I asked Maddie what her favorite thing about Mississippi was she yelled "Bops!"

These are some pictures of the kids at the Jackson zoo. Hailey and Sa look just like sisters.

Theres this cool little plexiglass dome the kids can stick there head up through and watch the beavers. Unfortunately the pump was broken so the water was bright green and there were no beavers. But hey apparantly its still fun to stick your head up there.
This is Hailey's monkey. He followed her wherever she went around cage and would climb up to where we were. He probably sensed her innate ability to find a treat anywhere and thought he could get a hookup.
Hailey and Maddie on the carosel.

We went to the Mississippi natural history museum. It was a lot better than I thought it would be. It was actually pretty cool. The kids are all piled on a giant frog statue.

Greggers running around Nik and Da's new backyard. Its hard to tell but the grass is as tall as him. Everything there seems like it grows really fast. Da's dream life. A lawn of fast growing grass. How long tell he's got Nik out there 9 months pregnant mowing the grass? I see the concrete lawn coming.

Connor and Jack playing while we check out the house. My favorite part of their house is the master bath. Its so awesome. I took several pictures of it. I think the fact that I was so excited about a bathroom may indicate I've lived in an apartment too long.

Here's the tragic death of the Previa. I think it looked worse in person. It sure felt worse. I really enjoyed the way the back hatch would rattle every tiny bump afterwards like it was about to fall off.

It was a great trip. It was so good to see them again. Mississippi was actually way more normal than I'd expected. I expected a bunch of weird backwards hicks and women that looked like Designing Women. Its so pretty there, everything is so green. I know why Miss is the fattest state in the nation, AWESOME FOOD! Nik took me to this great restaurant called Juleps. I'm still craving those cheese fritters. Yay to Da for watching all 6 kids so Nik and I could have a girls night out. I think it was good for me and Hailey to see where they lived. I thought the fact that it took an entire day to fly there would be a good indicator of how far they lived. But Greg still thinks we can just hop in the car and cruise on over. It was so great of Dave to set this trip up for us. It was so thoughtful of him. He loves to torment me about Nik, but he really came through on this. Who'd of thought he'd think this up and research it out for me. He secretly wants of to be neighbors again, I know it.

Boys are so special

Sadly this is a true story. I was changing Gregger's stinky diaper when he starts wiggling his bum all around and straining. Thinking there was something going on I didn't want to experience I tried to quickly put a new diaper on him. He starts yelling "no, no I trying to fart." Well that's just great but I'd really like to have that region covered just in case if you know what I mean. "NO mom I want to fart on you. Take my diaper off!" I'm hurrying faster now, not taking any chances here. "Mom I want to fart you head! Its coming, take it off", pulling his diaper off. I quickly re-diapered, wrenched his pants on and hurried him on his merry way. He chased me out of the room yelling "Mom wait, I want to fart your head!" Ah motherhood. Seriously what is turning my sweet little toddler into this disgusting little boy? Is this what I have to look forward to?

How to Potty Train Your Son in a Day

Greg has been showing a lot of interest in using the potty lately which made me think he's ready to give it a go. We decided to hold off until we got back from Mississippi and then see if he was still interested. Well he came back as excited as ever so I thought Great! lets go for it! Here's my simple plan to potty train your child in a day

Day 1

1. Take him to the store and pick out really cool underwear. Very exciting!

2. Take them home and try them all on. Make sure you pick him up in front of a mirror in each pair so he can see how great his bum looks with Thomas the Train or Lightening McQueen on it. Assume that his shrieking like an excited girl at a Jonas Brothers concert means he just can't wait to use the potty.

3. Take him potty, cheer wildly for tiny trickle. Repeat over and over for an hour.

4. Fold up a towel on his seat in the stroller and tell him its just in case his pee comes out while we're on a walk. Remind him, your pee goes in the potty. When I got home Greg jumped out excitedly and yelled "mama I peed on the washclof!", beaming. Umm I think he doesn't get it.

5. Change his clothes, take him potty, cheer, rewards.

6. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

7. Suggest after outfit after outfit that maybe he should take a nap with his diaper. Greg refuses and I cave. To my surprise he wakes up dry. Ten minutes later he comes out with noticabely wet underwear which he swears are dry. When I question him he finally says "Yeah I peed the floor in my woom" then runs off leaving his underwear behind.

8. By this point I figured what the heck I'll let him run naked for a while, he's just peeing all over anyways.

9. Now we really had to go somewhere so I tackled him down to dress him. Imagine my joy to find some tell tale smears on his naked bum. Our conversation went something like this

"Um Greggers did you poop?"

"Yeah" very non-chalantly

"Where"

"Over dere"

"Where over there"

"On the floor"

"Where on the floor"

"Umm under the table I tink"

Twenty minutes of hands and knees searching revealed nothing. Hopefully that means he was just saying stuff and those smears meant he stopped in his tracks, but I'm a little afraid of a surprise later.

10. At this point in the day, when he ran from me holding his underwear yelling he wanted a diaper, I gladly gave him one. Which he wore the rest of the day.



Day 2

1. Get child up put on clean diaper.



In the end Dave and I came to the conclusion that maybe the underwear are just some new item of character clothing to wear and peeing in the potty is something fun to do sometimes. I'm pretty sure in his head those underwear were just like a diaper waiting to be used then replaced.

Little Cherubs

The other day Greg and Hailey asked if I would get down this huge box of train tracks for them to play with. I said sure, as soon as the boys room is picked up so you can set the train up in there. They were back in record time with the room reportedly clean as can be. As I walked down the hall, they ran ahead of me and lined up next to each other in front of Greg's bed beaming like the Von Trapp children with their shiny, little, blond heads. Thinking to myself "how sweet. They're so proud of their cleaning job," I start to get down the train set all the while telling them what a great job they did. Then out of the corner of my eye I see the real reason for their cherubic smiles and strategic line up. They've piled every single toy from the floor (and there was a lot) on Greg's bed and tried to block the giant pile with their bodies. No wonder it got done so quickly. Gotta give them points for trying I guess. I helped them clean it up right, and got them the trains. Meanwhile I learned that if your children come to you smiling like the Chesire cat, there's probably a reason and it's not always good.

The Dorky Kid on the Playground

Tonight while she was getting ready for bed, McKenzie started telling me her sad tale about life on the playground. She's never been one to have a ton of friends. She usually has one or two that she just really loves. But she had a few little friends last year and one on again, off againer that seemed to really matter to her. Apparantly there's all sorts of sadness and difficulty happening as a result of some sort of jumproping club and mean girls. Most of you have witnessed my embarrassing lack of coordination, which sadly Kenzie has inherited. This does not make one popular in the jumproping club apparantly. Basically its a long, tragic tale and at the heart of it is this poor little girl who doesn't really have a lot of friends and is terribly shy and self aware and I think maybe getting picked on a little. In short she's me. McKenzie's story is the story of my entire childhood. I was the sad, dork at school with one friend only. And if that friend was gone one day or played with someone else, well my day was wrecked. I didn't really move much past this one friend scenario until 10th grade. I tried to reassure her that mommy only had one friend total until 5th grade. Surprisingly this did not help. I thought maybe she'd snort and make a face like "Geez mom even I have more friends than that," but all she said was "who Nikki?" I tried to give her advice, but I feel wildly underqualified. Making new friends has never been my best skill. I went the "well you have to deal with mean people your whole life and this is a great learning experience" route"but that fell short too. Hailey, who I was so worried about sitting all alone on the bus, apparantly jumps on and has a slew of friends to sit with. She doesn't want to sit by her sister, I thought it would be the other way around. My heart aches for McKenzie. I know her pain but I don't know what to do. I want to go down to that school and say: "Hey you bratty little girls. She'll get better at jumprope if you just let her try. McKenzie is sweet and smart and loyal and way cuter than all of you so you just better be her friend or you're missing out." (Pretty sure that wouldn't go over too well.) I know she has to fight her own battles but man it sucks being the dorky kid at school.