Try, try, try again

I keep trying with this blog. Some day I might be consistent.

I am just going to start typing and hopefully the most important things come out. This is mostly a snap shoot of where everyone is right now since I haven't done that in a long time and they keep growing up.

Let's start with Beth. She is 15 months old now. She climbs anything she can and thinks it's fun. As I am typing this she is climbing the old kitchen booth from Aunt Patty's house that we use as a couch. She thinks it is great to stand on the corner backrest. She has kind of been trained on that because her siblings will come "rescue" her from there and swing her around. She is a great eater. She is not a great sleeper. We have been working on it though and have seen some good progress. She slept through the night Thursday night and it was blissful! 

She just had her 15 month check up and is 20.8 lbs and 30.3 inches tall. She likes books and putting things in her mouth. She has a few words and some noises that sound close to words but I am not sure their really them. She likes to push buttons both literally and figuratively. Did I mention she climbs and she is strong. We have some hand weights down stairs and she picked up a five pound one and carried it like 10 steps. She likes her tongue and sticks it out and moves it in funny ways. She is fun but keeps us on our toes.

This happened while I was typing this too. 

This is what I was talking about with her. Glen took this picture and then got her down. She can climb down herself too.

Ruth. Ruth somewhat regularly tells me that being three is hard. We are really close she is almost four. She continues to be either very sweet or not very sweet. She is needy. She regularly wants me to hold her. She has started twirling her hair a lot and when she sits on someones lap that has longer hair she likes to hold on to it and kind of stroke it. She loves Rapunzel and Moana especially the music from the latter. She really likes preschool but is going to go to the preschool at the high school next year like Daryl did. She really wants to be as big as him. She also wants to go to dad's school. 

Ruth is a picky eater. She loves sugar in whatever form she can get it and I have to consistently stop her from just having syrup or honey. It is a regular battle to get her to eat dinner unless it is something she is familiar with and really likes. 

She has a great imagination. She likes to pretend to be Kion from The Lion Guard or a tiger or Bolt the dog from the movie Bolt. She stays in character really well and sometimes we have to remind her that she needs to be a little girl and not a dog or lion or whatever. She really loves stuffed animals. she is still sleeping in the crib while we work on getting rooms switched around and the crib is about half full of her animals and baby dolls. It is a little bit ridiculous. She knows all of her letters and colors and numbers. She came with me to help in Daryl's class the other day. The teacher had me test the kids letter recognition  and she begged me to have a turn. Once I was done with his class I gave it to her and she did just as well as half of his class.  She has definite opinions about things and is quite a spicy fun girl.

enjoying the ride in to the ice castle with Beth

having fun at the ice castle

Daryl is a fun change from all of our girls. He is just so different than them. He likes school and is doing well with it. He would prefer  not to have homework all ready. He is becoming a better reader all the time. He has started speech which is good. He has trouble with S sounds and some other ones making it hard for others and sometimes us to understand him. He loves anything with an engine still. Dump trucks, tractors, and other heavy equipment are the things he likes the most. Orange is his favorite color. He likes to create things. If the older girls leave the hot glue gun out he rummages through the junk drawer finding odds and ends and makes something interesting and amazing.

He has gotten in to playing with legos  more and built a whole bunch of different droids one day. His favorite show is DinoTrux. He likes to make up songs on the piano and I have debated starting him in lessons. Right now we will wait because I think he will do better if he is a little older. He is kind and considerate and thinker. He likes to know stuff and still asks lots and lots of questions.

We are a little behind on getting snow clothes for him. We have a pair of pink snow pants from the girls in his size but he has his standards and he won't wear them. He chooses to wear a pair that is blueish purple and Ruth's size rather than pink.He is doing Irish Dance with his friend, Kaleb. We are working on getting the steps down right, but at least it is really entertaining to watch them try it! He 's a fun kid to have around.

We got to babysit my sister's new baby Eleanor and Daryl was so concerned and attentive to her. It was adorable

These are the droids he made

Lucy is 10 and I seem to forget that. When we were looking for clothes around Christmas I kept seeing things in the 6, 7, or 8 sizes and thinking that would be great for her only to have a quick realization that she is so much more grown up than that. She is doing great in 4th grade. 

She has a fun sense of humor and is always bantering with Glen. She loves to draw and color. She is a book worm and usually complains that we don't go to the library enough and she doesn't have anything to read. She is making a quilt for her new bed, once we get the rooms changed. That has been fun and challenging for her. She has learned to applique with my mom's sewing machine. She regularly asks if she can go sew because we don't have a machine that does the right stitch.

She really likes dogs, all different breeds. That is what her quilt has on it.  

She is between sports right now. She played volleyball in the fall and liked it. She didn't want to play basketball so she has just been waiting. She did come up with an animal work out to fulfill her active part of her four things. She assigned an exercise to each letter of the alphabet( i.e.- a=15 jumping jacks, b=10 sit ups...) She has a jar with a whole bunch of different types of animals written on papers and draws two or three of those and has to do all the exercises for each letter of animals name.
The other day she was at a friends and started making cookies and had to come home in the middle of the process. That got her and her friends thinking. They conspired to have a cookie baking contest with taste testing and everything. It was pretty fun. They each made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and then blindfolded a parent and each of the parents had to try each cookie and vote. She ended up second but it was a fun thing to do on a whim.

with Ruth on a throne at the ice castles

the cookie bake off taste testing. These girls are fun.

Lilly is really close to being a full fledged teenager. 7th grade is going pretty well for her. She made it in the stage crew class and has liked that. She had theater first semester and really liked that a lot. In fact she is trying to figure out how she can have as much theater as possible next year. She has been going through what seems to be the normal changing of friends and thankfully has still chosen good friends to be around. She likes to babysit if there is money involved which Glen and I are still trying to figure out what should be part of the family and what is extra.  She really likes the music from Hamilton the musical right now and is good about coughing or making some noise to drown out the bad words.
She loves Gunner and we often tease that he is her boy friend. She is doing well in school even in the classes she doesn't love as much like math. She is taking Irish dance and really likes it. Often you will see her bouncing up and down practicing her steps. It has been good for her to do something that Lucy isn't doing. She compares herself to her and Lucy has a little more natural ability with anything active. Like I tell Lilly though, it isn't a competition and she has strengths in other places. She likes young women's and we are slowly working on personal progress. She is a good kid to have to introduce us to the teenage years.

Ice castle fun

What it looks like when we visit Glen's office

Gunner-Lilly's boyfriend- he is intently staring at light on the wall that is being reflected by something.
 He chases light like a cat.

Glen is really enjoying the life of a high school administrator. He has a good team and supporting staff he works with and is at a good school. He still gets up at 4:45 so he can go work out from 5-6 and then get ready for work and do a couple more of his four things before heading to work.
He decided that instead of hiring someone to tile the shower in the back room that he could do it. He's beginning that process, with a little guidance from my brother.
He got to go to St.George a couple of weekends ago to help chaperone a trip the theater department at the high school did. He let me tag along too. It was lots of fun. He decided he would just be a good supporter of the arts and not take up acting. Little did he know that he would get to try his hand at acting a week or so later.
We have season tickets to Desert Star Playhouse and they consistently have audience members come on stage to help. It has been one of his greatest worries when going there, hoping to not get chosen. Stars aligned this time and he had his first acting experience on stage. It will probably be his last but I did get it on camera! Other than that he just continues to be a good dad and patient husband!

waiting at the ice castles for everyone going down the big slide

How Beth's saturday nap happened

As for me. I am trying to keep my head above water. I am trying to take some things off of my plate to better focus on my kids. If I can't take the things off completely I am trying to do as little as possible in them and still get by until they end.
Evelyn and Roberta have had a rough couple of month so work there bad been a bit more intensive. They seem on the rebound or at least to be getting over the colds and other bugs they were fighting.
I also started going to counseling to see if I could get some help dealing with some things that have been reoccurring issues for a long time. The change and progress is slow but I think it is helping.
I am trying be more present and to do the things I really need to do and not just hiding in social media avoiding them. I am trying to do fun things with the kids while still getting them to help a do things around the house that need to be done. Most of all I am trying to focus on getting my four things done and helping Daryl and Ruth get theirs done too. I am probably the worst at them and the other two really still need lots of help and encouragement to do them.  Slowly we will get where we want to be.

getting to hold cute baby Eleanor

Beth wasn't as pleased with me holding the baby, though she is very interested in Eleanor

how our Saturday ended, but really having these two little redhead in my arms
 is what half my day is made of for better or worse.