Our Little Artist

I just wanted to show off some of E's drawing skills since she has been going crazy drawing on the chalk wall recently. We have been taking lots of pictures of her chalk art because eventually we have to erase them to make room for more. I'm impressed with her drawings and maybe they are average for a child her age but I'm so proud of her any way. Since preschool she has been really into crafts, activities, and drawing. I think she has found that she is good at "school" and so she has fun practicing it at home.

I was writing the ABC's on the wall for her to look at and she wanted to copy what I wrote so she would write each letter next to the ones I wrote. She did pretty good and I only had to help her with a few of the the letters.

E drew this family of birds all by herself. She thought they were pretty funny because of their silly googily eyes.

C and I couldn't believe she drew this with out any help (pay no attention to the half erased smiley face underneath her picture). I know it's mostly circles but do you recognize who it is? She said to C "look daddy it's Arthur!" She was watching the cartoon on PBS called Arthur and they were showing and explaining how the artists draw Arthur and she went up the the chalk wall and just drew him! I think she has her daddy's artistic abilities. She was so proud of her Arthur picture and so are we.

A Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday with a couple of Families in our ward to share it with. Kelly's(and their baby girl) invited us to have dinner with them, and they also invited The Yi family to have dinner with us. The Yi's have three kids and E had fun with them especially the two older ones. We had the dinner at our place because it had the most space in the kitchen for the extra table which was filled with delicious food and the kids sat at the end of the food table. Every thing was SO GOOD! The Kelly's made the turkey and ham and they were delicious and it was her first time doing a turkey, I was impressed! Us and the Yi's made the side dishes and they all turned out really good. I made three pies, an Apple which was wonderful, a Cherry which turned out great and the blueberry well I over filled it and it was dripping in the oven every where and our house was filled with smoke so we had to take it out and I couldn't save it. So we ended up with just two pies it's okay though because we didn't need the third one any way we still have lots of the two left over. I'm just embarrassed I messed up a blueberry pie, how does that happen?! By over filling it I guess, Oh well. Every thing was so yummy and it was nice to have good company for the Holiday. We hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!

E made this turkey hat at preschool and I thought it was so cute! I told her she was going to be the turkey at dinner and that we would eat her, she didn't like that so much. She was A turkey at dinner but not the one we ate.

He walks...kind of

J is getting closer and closer to walking on his own. He is a really late walker which is okay with me but what bothers me is that he CAN do it he just chooses not to. He finds it easier to crawl and to get around that way so he doesn't bother trying to walk. Well I've been pushing him a little bit more each day and he has fun when he gets up and walks but then he's right back to crawling. Oh well what else can I do?! We got this video of him one night when he was actually enjoying walking around the living room. I know he's pushing a stroller but he's basically doing it himself because if he did lean on the stroller it just tips over and you can see him pick up the stroller to move it where he wants to go. I think he feels more confident when he's holding some thing. Any way, he's a funny kid! I just thought I post this cute video of my baby boy learning to walk.

Ode to Mr. Harker....

A while back my good friend had tagged me on one of those “6 facts about you” things and I had just done one not too long ago so I thought I would give six facts that not many people know about my Husband. There are probably a lot of things people don’t know about him so I hope he doesn’t mind me putting a few of my favorites up here :) I Love you Hunny!

First I want to say he is a wonderful Daddy to his two kids. I love to watch him read a book to E at night and tuck her in, or rock J in the rocking chair, or the other night both the kids were climbing all over him and “rough-housing” with him and having such a good time together. Every time I see him do those loving things for his Children I fall in love with him all over again.

1. C served his mission in Cali Columbia in South America. Being the shy teenager he was it was a hard decision for C to decide to go on a mission but he has told me it was the best decision he has made in his life (next to marrying me) and an amazing experience that he would have regretted not doing. I'm always proud of him when he tells me about it and I'm glad he trusted the Lord enough to go. He speaks Spanish very well and has had many opportunities to use it and will have many more in the future with his career I'm sure. I know how nice it will be when he has his own Practice and will be able to offer his services to those who speak Spanish who might have that language barrier with other offices. And now he will be able to help my Brother keep up with his Spanish when he gets home from his mission as he is in the Jacksonville Florida Spanish Speaking Mission. I'm so proud of my Brother as well(I just had to throw that in there).

2. One of my favorite things about C is his love for school and he uses it in his every day life. Let me explain: he loves Anatomy and really enjoyed those classes he took. He is not bothered by cadavers at all and actually finds them interesting (it would gross me out, I don’t think I could handle it) he actually wanted to take me to the cadaver lab at school when he was a TA for the lab, funny right?! He remembers every part of the body, all the bones, tendons, ligaments, muscles, everything (okay so some times he forgets some of them but he remembers much of what he learned in those classes). So when I tell him that my leg hurts he’ll continue to give me a whole Anatomy lesson on what muscle that it is that hurts, he’ll say “that’s your gastrocnemeous bla bla bla…” I love it though! "The foot bone's connected to the leg bone, the leg bone's connected to the knee bone..."that's my anatomy vocabulary! It makes me laugh when he goes off on one of his anatomy lessons but at the same time I’m proud of him and all that he does with his schooling.

3. Some of you may not know this but C is EXTREMELY ticklish. I can get him laughing pretty good but it’s kind of hard to do because he gets very protective of himself when I try to tickle and him he will fight me off (in a very loving way) and then begin to tickle me because I’m pretty ticklish myself, so me tickling him doesn’t last long because he’s stronger than me.

4. C is a handy-man and I love it. He can do all kinds of things around the house and has even done some electrical stuff to fix our place up. He can do basic car repairs and maintenance which is nice because we have two cars to keep up on now. I remember when I was a silly college girl and I made a list of qualities I wanted my husband to have one of them was that he needed to be a handy-man and look at me now I found my handy-man! I’m not the only girl that made that list admit it ladies you did it too! Any way, it really is nice to have a hubby that is good at that stuff and he doesn’t mind doing it either. I think he actually likes it because he gets to use his skills he learned when he was working with an electrician and doing construction.

5. Many of you know C as the outdoorsy kind of guy, and he is, but some of you may not know how artistic he is. He has always been artistic and took some art classes at Ricks/BYUI and did very well in them. Here is one of his drawings he did of a picture of E, pretty good right?! He mostly draws and sketches, I have yet to see a painting of his but if I remember correctly he did do some in one of his classes. Any way he has an appreciation for all the arts. He receives these emails with an attached painting of the week in them. He really enjoys looking at art. I guess we should actually go to a museum while out here in a big city. He always says one day when he can afford to have hobbies he would love to have a wood shop and just make furniture, sculptures, etc. out of wood. He really enjoys working with his hands and is really good at it so it’s a good thing he went in the direction he did with school. He is very talented in the art area of school as well and I’m so proud of him in all he does to further his education and work towards his career.

6. Last but not least, C can’t yell. I know it sounds weird but his voice just doesn’t do that. He can raise his voice but not yell. I remember the first time I heard him try to, it was pretty funny he was trying to yell across a field at some one (I can’t remember who it was) but it was funny because he just couldn’t project his voice loud enough to get their attention I had to do it for him. Going along with the whole voice thing (I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing this) many people have told him this before it’s not just me, but he has a very(dare I say) sexy phone voice ha ha ha I know what you’re thinking but I guess it’s because he has such a soft tone to his voice it is very soothing. I could listen to him talk for hours because he has such a nice tone to his voice. Any way, he’s gonna kill me! I love you babe! I share all of these secrets about you because I love you :)

I hope that was as fun for you to read as it was for me to write. I love my husband dearly and I just had to share these fun facts about the man I have come to know so well. Here are some of my favorite pictures with C and the kids. Enjoy!

With newborn E(look how tired he was, what a good husband to stay up late nights with me and the baby)

In the NICU holding baby J.

His soothing voice put J to sleep.

Playing in the leaves with his kids.

E's first taste of Soda

These are some of our favorite pictures of E because it's all done in sequence so you can see her full reaction to her first taste of Sprite. It is hilarious, her facial expressions are priceless. You can tell exactly what she was thinking just by looking at her face! E's thoughts at the time: "Why would you give this stuff to me mom!" She was probably about 14 or 15 months old in these pictures, can you believe how much she has changed?! C has been wanting to post these pictures on here for a while now, he stays pretty busy with school so I thought I'd do it for him. Don't you love the beautiful green shag carpet in that place. I do not look back on that nasty apartment of ours and miss it one bit, ugh I hated it! I was glad to move out of that place, I guess that's what you get when you settle for really cheap rent in Idaho! Enjoy the funny pictures.

Fall Fun

Since it was a beautiful Saturday this weekend we decided to get out and enjoy Fall together as a Family and get some Family pictures while we were at it. We went to a park near by called Garfield Park, it had a couple of playgrounds, lots of big beautiful trees with many of the leaves on the ground, and they had a greenhouse observatory type thing which was fun to go in and look around at all the different plant life in them. The kids loved the piles and piles of leaves and had a ton of fun throwing them around and on one another. We brought our camera and tripod in hopes of finding a nice place to get a family picture, we lucked out and got a great picture of our cute family thanks to C and his wonderful photography skills.

This one turned out the best I think. I love E's expression in this one. I think this will be the one we put in our Christmas Cards which many of you will bet getting :)

E always does this pose with her hands under her head when she is cloud gazing it's so cute.

As you can see the kids had a blast and we got a ton of pictures of them (those were just a few) and we even got a few pictures of just Me and C. It's always nice to have those pictures of just us to look back on. It was so cute to watch E and J enjoy the outdoors together, and they didn't even really fight with each other which was nice. The Fall's here are gorgeous and I'm glad we got out to enjoy this years Fall together as a family.

Jack-O-Lantern

On Monday we carved our Jack-O-Lantern, I guess I should say C did he's the artist. E only took one handful of the guts out from the inside and thought it was kind of gross but she liked playing with the pumpkin seeds and called them magic beans. The whole time Daddy was carving she was stirring the bowl of pumpkin guts singing "I'm stirring, I'm stirring my BREW, HE HE HE HE(laughing like a witch)" it was pretty funny.

What a sweet Daddy he is! and look how handsome he looks in his scrubs. Back off ladies Dr. Harker is taken!

Showing me her magic bean.

We were being Jack-O-Lantern heads

Me teaching E how to play with fire, she loves lighters. She's my little pyro
C took this cute picture of E admiring her scary Jack-O-Lantern.
Poor J missed out on the whole pumpkin carving experience he was so tired after FHE we had to put him to bed before our fun activity, there is always next year.

The Pumpkin Patch kids

On Saturday we went to the pumpkin patch as a family to pick out our pumpkin we (daddy) are going to carve this year. I had never been to Waterman's Pumpkin Patch so I didn't know that it was a whole Festival you had to pay to get into but we still had lots of fun. There was lots to do there but most of it you had to pay more money for so we just looked around for a bit then took the hayride which was free with our admission to the pumpkin patch. I told E before we went out there that we were going to take a hayride to the pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin and she was more excited about the hayride than any thing else. She didn't even know what a hayride was but I guess it sounded really fun to her. The whole time we were at the festival E would say "can we go on the hayride now" "okay let's go on the hayride now." So that is part of the reason for us not spending too much time wondering around, E wanted to experience a hayride. J and E had lots of fun on the hayride and then riding the pumpkins in the patch or as E calls it the Pumpkin Catch.

I love this picture of E, that's what she did most of the time in the patch.

The exciting hayride

J was trying to pick up this pumpkin and he was grunting and screaming like a girl it was so funny.

We had lots of fun at the Fall Festival, I was glad we got out this Saturday because this coming up weekend is not going to have good weather like we did this weekend.

"That's the Internet!"

E says to me yesterday "Mom I need to go to my friends house today okay?"
I say "No sweetie today is school, you need to go to school today."
E then says "Okay first I will go to my friends house and then I will go to school, that's the Internet mom!"
me: "What?!" and then E repeats herself saying "that's the internet mom!"
Okay so I'm not quite sure what she meant by that but I couldn't help but laugh. She doesn't even know what "the internet" really is but I found it rather funny that she has that word in her vocabulary, she's in preschool! This story tells us two things: one, that C and I probably spend too much time on the Internet and two, kids these days are so surrounded by technology most of all computers and the internet that it's something hard to avoid exposing them to. When I was growing up we didn't even have a computer in our home until I was in High school. Now it isn't uncommon for homes to have computers in every kids room. I can see why the Prophet is warning us about the dangers of computers/internet and where we put the them in our homes. I have already decided we will not put the computer up in a room out of the way but rather keep it in an open area. It's not that I think some thing bad will happen but why risk it? When we some day have a house of our own I think I would like an office like my in-laws they have it right off the living room with a glass door you can see through I think that is a good idea.
Any way I wanted to share that silly story of E, she says the funniest things some times.

Ha ha ha ha I love this picture of her it makes me laugh every time I look at it.
That's my Internet Geek!

One of those days...

Today is just one of those days where I feel like I don't know how to be a mom any more, I do stupid things and forget things and my kids suffer for it and I feel really guilty.

So here is the drama of today....To start off I wanted to get the kids out of the house before the rain came in this afternoon, it's not like I haven't done this before, I should know how to get myself and two kids ready to get out and do some thing out side but for some reason I couldn't quite get it done. So by the time they are ready J is screaming for me to put him to bed feeling torn between getting out side because we might not get another chance or putting him to bed and doing some thing inside, I finally decide to put him to bed and do a craft with E. All is well! Not so much. After our craft (which was fun and turned out cute) I try and take a shower and get E all cleaned up, I succeed at this but only to wake J up way too early from his nap. It's okay I can deal with it. I just got my hair CHOPPED off saturday so I leave the kids in E's room to play while I mess with my hair for a while. It's really cute by the way but I wanted to see what I could do with it. I hear them crying and fighting and just ignore it, nothing unusual around here. Well I can only ignore it for so long before they are both screaming for me. I race in the room angry that they won't give me five minutes of peace while I play with my hair, and as I'm flinging the door open I realize I'm stupid to do that but it's too late. My first fear is that I smash J to the ground because he's usually right behind the door I want to open. I was wrong it wasn't J it was E she was laying on the ground with her fingers stuck under the door who knows why and she was pushing J out of the way so he wouldn't be able to do it and he was mad that he couldn't join in the action that is why they were screaming. So I swing open the door and immediately know I did some thing dumb I look down and poor E, her hand is totally smashed under that small space under the door all the way up to her wrist and she is SCREAMING in pain. I quickly push her hand down into the carpet and get it free from the door but she is hurt. Her hand all the way up the wrist had the top few layers of skin pealed off and there was some bleeding and already bruising. I maker her look away because it's not pretty and I didn't want her to freak out more. I ask her to move it up down side to side and it's not broken, thank heaven! Well stupid me forgot that as I raced in the room I dropped my hot curling iron on the ground (what was I thinking?!!!!) so as I'm running water over E's hand and comforting her I hear J scream in pain of course he found the hot curling iron and touched it! I just break down and start crying and my two kids are screaming, what is my problem today? Do I not remember how to be a mom?! Normally I wouldn't do such things because I know my kids but for some reason I was a space case today. It was quite the scene all of us crying and me holding both of my kids bawling because I hurt them (on accident) trying to run water on both of their hands. I give them both a cold wash cloth to hold on their owchies and I pump them full of tylenol to help with the pain. Lucky for them I didn't forget how to treat owchies. After about a half hour we are all calmed down. J is finally back to sleep and E is being spoiled because of how guilty I feel. I'm letting her watch as many movies or cartoons as she wants today and even eat candy and suckers! I bet she wishes I hurt her every day after her day of being spoiled and waited on by mommy. I just feel guilty for not thinking things through first. Do you every have those days where you feel like you forgot how to be a mom? Well today is that day for me! Ahhh what a day. There is always tomorrow though right? I have to keep telling myself that. And at the end of the day I still have a loving husband and two kids who will still love me unconditionally, well hopefully :)

My Bi-Lingual Children

E says to me the other day "Mom I know Spanish" and I said "You do? What do you know how to say in spanish?" and she told me she knew how to say stop, go, and go a head. A little back round on why she chose those words: in the car when we drive she likes to look at the stop lights and tell me when it turns green yellow or red. Well in preschool they taught them how to stop what they were doing by making it a game with red light green light. So now she'll say "red means stop mommy" or "green means go" and then she asked me what yellow meant and since I have a tendency to race through yellow lights I told her it meant go a head :)

So going back to my story she says she knows how to say these three phrases in Spanish so I ask "how do you say stop?" and to my surprise she makes up a "spanish" word she says "Guta!" and trying not to laugh I say "how do you say go in Spanish" and she made up another wonderful word "Mala" she says. I say "how do you say go a head?" and she makes up yet another word which I don't remember it sounded like her "mala" word but slightly different. I asked her where she learned these and she told me she just knew Spanish, what a smart girl right? She just knows :)When C got home I told E to tell her Daddy that she knows Spanish and she shared her knew found words with him (keep in mind C knows Spanish) he thought it was pretty funny, and lucky for her they don't mean any thing at all in spanish. I was afraid they'd end up being some nasty words in Spanish luckily not! What a silly girl.

My cute little J is learning a new language too. I have been trying to teach him baby sign language. He gets frustrated at times when I don't know what he wants and I decided I'd give it a try. I didn't do it with E at all because she was so eager to talk and so she learned words and communicating that way at a young age. So this was all knew to me. He does well with it when I'm consistant, that's my problem though I forget to keep at it. But he is so cute when he does do it. He knows quite a few words in baby sign but he does his own interpretations of them but I'm still so proud of him though, I honestly didn't think he'd catch on as quick but he has. So far he knows "more", "all done", "drink", "eat", "eggs" (he loves eggs!) , he did "apple" and "banana" once but hasn't done them since, then obviously "bye bye" (most babies know that one), he's learning right now "please" and "thankyou" and "hot" and he blows kisses which is really cute I love it! I'm sure there are more but I can't remember all of them. E now loves to learn signlanguage and help mommy teach J how to do it. There is a show on Saturday mornings that is called "Signing time with Alex and Liah" some of you may have seen it before, it's a cute show. E loves that show and learns to do sign language from there, she's a smart girl. I know I'm just bragging about kids but I get so proud when I see them accomplish things, every mother has the right to brag about their kids right?
So that is my story of my two Bi-Lingual Children.

E showing J how to sign "more" he already knew that one but we were trying to get him to do it for the camera. Look at that face of concentration, and E's lips are saying moooore, it cracks me up.
Here is his way of signing "drink" and he usually does this while spitting into this hand, it's pretty funny. I used to sign "drink" to him while making the slurping sound so now he does his spit thing every time he wants a drink.
This is his "all done". It's not really how you sign it but this is his version. What a cute boy!
I couldn't get him to do all the ones he knows for the camera, we were lucky to get these ones.

LICE!!

That is all I have to say, LICE, and that will make any mom cringe. Well lucky for E and ME we have both contracted lice!! E got it weeks ago and we thought we had taken care of it, unfortunately not and she passed it on to me! I am so mad, frustrated, and grossed out I could hurt some one. I have been up since 5am fretting about these stupid creatures, I know I shouldn't get so upset but these buggers are hard to get rid of.
C has today and tomorrow off of school we planned a family camping trip and now lice has ruined our weekend. We are still going because the site is reserved with no refund and we have been dying to go camping this whole season I can't let the stupid lice ruin it for us.
I'm sitting here looking completely ridiculous with my hair drenched in conditioner with a plastic bag on my head while looking up facts about lice and how to get rid of them on the internet. I know you wish I would take a picture and put it on here so you can see but that is not going to happen.

At first I was slightly embarrassed that I have lice until I found out that lice like clean and smooth hair to live on that is where they will thrive the best. So just so you know you all should be jealous (not because I have lice you do not want this) but because I have beautiful shiny smooth clean hair. Okay so I'm just trying to make myself feel better give me a break I HAVE LICE!!!

E's Testimony

So yesterday I went to the store with both kids. I do not like to do this many of you with more than one child know exactly what I am talking about but I had to because C has a test tomorrow and needed to study with no distractions. Any way so I decided I would survive a quick trip to the store for some milk and other basics. I put them in one of those carts with the car attached to the front with the steering wheels thinking this will keep them entertained for our quick trip around the store. Well of course about 4 minutes into my shopping they begin to fight over the steering wheels even though there was one for each of them. I just put up with the screaming and hitting until we got to the cereal/toy isle. At this point E grabs one of those plastic fake microphones that make your voice sound all echoey. Any way so since she had slobbered all over it I couldn't very well put it back and since J was trying to yank it out of her hands I had to get one for him to slobber all over and of course buy both of them. Spending $3 on those stupid things was worth my sanity for the remainder of our little outing. So I get them in the car and as I'm putting away the groceries and listening to "ahh ahh la la la la ah ah" from both my kids in their seats I didn't hear any words until E decides to bear her testimony. It was hilarious! I hear her say "I have a testimony, I love my mommy and daddy and brother and baby sister (even though she does not have a baby sister not even one on the way, she wishes) I go to church, at my nursery, I like to talk in the microphone...." she continued for a while I didn't understand the rest but it was priceless. The only time she listens in sacrament meeting is when those kids get up to bear the testimonies and since she had a microphone she decided it was a good time to bear her testimony, I'm not sure that she even understands what a testimony is but we'll have to work on that for when she is old enough to bear her testimony in church.

here she is with her new microphone

Cold Dog

Quick story. E loves hot dogs and being the good mother I am I let her eat them way too often. The weird thing about her is she loves them cold and I think I did too as a kid but it still grosses me out. She seriously asks for a cold hot dog almost every day and I have to tell her no because my stomach can't take watching her eat a cold hot dog every day. Well today I asked her what she wanted for Lunch and she said "I want a hot dog mom" then she usually follows that response with "a cold one though" and as I was debating whether or not to give her one I see her brain working and she then says kind of quiet and under her breath "so a cold one..." out loud to me "Mommy I want a cold dog not a hot dog just a cold dog" What a smart girl she is, why should she call it a cold hot dog when she can just call it a cold dog. That's my smart little girl!

Sand Box Fun

A while back I bought a Step 2 sand box, one of those that stands up off the ground so the kids can't sit in it and get sand all over them.(E can and still does climb in and sits in it though) Well I found it at a store here for only TEN BUCKS! Can you believe it?! It has a nice canopy over head to block the sun and it also serves as a cover for the sand box which is way nice to have. I looked up the price they go for usually on the Internet and they retail for $100. So I was pretty excited about my awesome find. The play sand I found at Lowe's for only $3 a bag and we only had to buy two. I got it because I thought the kids would love it and I would like having an outside toy that keeps them entertained. The kids do love it, but I hate it! For many reasons: It's messy which doesn't bother me too bad but they always want to play in it right before dinner and I don't want to have to bathe them before we sit down to eat because that's messy too, E likes to show J how to throw sand outside of the sand box every where, J eats handfuls of it every time he plays in it, J gets it in his eyes every time and cries, E climbs in it and gets sand in every crevice, they track sand in my kitchen every time they play in it so I end up sweeping a million times a day, and the list goes on. I thought it was a good idea to get one of these but I'm starting to second guess my judgment. Oh well isn't that how it usually is if the kids love it you hate it?!Well we got some cute pictures of the kids and their new sand box.Look how cute they are when they play nice together

Fighting over the sand toys......And mom had to separate themJ throwing sand in his hair, lovely! What a cute boy thoughI think he just got done eating a handful of sand in this picture, if you look closely you can see sand all over his chin.E really loves the sand box, she has been getting better at building sand castles all by herself.

Playing in the Rain

I know that any other posts we put on here wont top "The word on the Street" one as it was pretty entertaining, but we have taken some fun pictures of the kids recently so I thought I put some up.
A while Back we got quite a bit of rain here it only lasted a couple of days but we enjoyed a change in weather as it helped cool down the hot summer heat here. It was still fairly warm out even though it was gloomy and rainy so we decided it was okay if E played in the rain. Well she was pretty excited about that and so we took some pictures of her first time playing in the rain and puddles out in front of our place. I'm pretty sure we have not let her do this sort of thing in the past so she was thrilled to give it a try.

The rain was coming down pretty hard and fast so the side walk was like one big puddle for her to play in. She's waring J's rain coat he got for his birthday from Grandma Harker. It's a little big on him still but fits E okay.

As you can see she enjoyed jumping up and down in the puddles.

Poor J couldn't join in the fun! I'm a little more protective of my baby boy, I'm not sure why but I wasn't about to let him out there I just knew if I did he'd catch some thing and I'd feel guilty. So there he is watching and enjoying the rain from inside.

I love this picture. I don't think she though she'd be so cold after, but she was soaked from head to toe. This just goes to show that some times we think things are fun for the moment but we recognize that it really wasn't worth it in the end. She was a little grumpy after word but once she was warmed up she was wanting to go back out again. It didn't happen!

"The word on the street"

This story I'm about to tell is good for a laugh and I could not resist sharing it with you it's too cute.

So E apparently got this phrase "the word on the street" from a cartoon I think it was actually Sesame Street but I could be wrong. So any way yesterday she kept saying "it's the word on the street mom" and it was cute. Well later that day I had pretzels out and the kids were eating them at the table while I was fixing dinner. I know I'm a great mom I let them eat snacks before dinner, they were driving me nuts okay! A week or so ago when E was eating pretzels I decided to show her how to spell her initials "EH" out of pretzels. I told her what they meant that the E was for her first name and the H for Harker her last name, and she thought it was pretty cool. So yesterday as I was fixing dinner I hear E say "mom look it's the word on the street" so I say "yes that's cool" without turning around to look then she said it again "no mom look it's the word on the street" so I turn around to see she had spelled a word out of pretzels, I about died of laughter and called C down to come see what his daughter had spelled. Take a look at E's word on the street.

Look closely did you see what she spelled all by herself?! Yep H-E double pretzel sticks! HA HA HA HA. We got a good laugh out of it and E still doesn't know why it is so funny. I think she thought it was her initials like mommy showed her before. She was so proud of her spelling "The word on the street" Silly girl!

Back to School!

It's been a while since we posted news so I thought I'd take a moment today and update every one on our lives. I may have told many of you by now but E is in Preschool and LOVING it! It is so good for her to interact with other children and to have a different adult to obey besides mommy and daddy. She's been in school for a couple of weeks now. She only goes two days a week. It is so nice to have just one kid at home for those few hours a week. She has quite a few friends in there all from our ward which makes it comforting for me knowing she has some friends and hopefully is making more. Her "best" friend ( I put best in quotations because some days they love each other and others not so much!) MJ is in her class and we actually car pool with her so I only drive once a week, NICE! I think they like being in the class together but I'm pretty sure the teacher isn't so happy about it, I've witnessed her teacher separating them, crazy girls! Her teachers name is Mrs. V who actually used to be in our ward until boundaries were changed, so it's fun that we already knew her teacher. I took a couple of pictures on her first day, and no I did not cry I think I celebrated as I walked to the car! It was cute because the teacher had a basket of "parent survivor kits" to give out on the way out the door after we dropped them off it was a little bag with tissue and the chocolate candy hugs and kisses it was pretty funny. Lucky for me I didn't need the survivor kit.

E was really excited for her first day at preschool I swear she was even though she looks kind of mad in this picture. I think she was just annoyed with me and wanted to get to her new classroom so she refused to smile, oh well.

This wasn't on the first day of school but this is her friend MJ who she gets to go on the "mom bus" with every school day (We both have minivans) E and MJ were pretty disappointed when they found out they weren't going to ride on the yellow school bus to school so I tell them they get to ride on the mom bus, they don't buy it, I tried!

The Cicada Bug

You may have heard of the cicada bug or some times mistakenly called the 17 year locust, even though it's not related to the locust. Well when we moved out here I had no idea what they were, all I knew is that they were every where here and they made a loud annoying sound. Last year I remembering hearing them in the trees but by our old two bedroom we weren't near any trees so we didn't see these bugs but could hear them when we went on walks in the neighborhood. Now that we have moved to where there are trees right in our back yard we can hear these bugs extra loud and now have seen several of them and their shells that they come out of. E has decided that these bugs are pretty cool and plays with their shells that they leave everywhere in our back yard. Since she has become so fascinated with them I decided to learn more about them and I thought I'd share a little of what I learned about these weird bugs with you.

The reason people call them the 17 year locust is because they emerge every 17 years, though they are not locusts and aren't even related to them. At first I was wondering why if they are underground for 17 years do you hear them in the trees every year? Well I looked it up on the internet and there are over 3,000 species of the Cicada and some are called annuals and appear every year but most have several years (up to 17) of living in the ground as nymphs until they are ready to emerge. It is believed that they didn't used to have these long life cycles but have adapted them as a defense mechanism, for example: to have a different life cycle than their main predator would increase their population size (I thought that was interesting) so they kind of have "classes" if that makes sense, like the class of 2007 and then they lay their eggs and those nymphs become the class of 2024 and so on. So the 17 year cicada is just one of the thousands of cicada bugs out there all the others have shorter life cycles.
The cycle of the cicada is: They live as nymphs under ground for years living off the roots of trees and shrubs. They emerge out of the ground (creating holes every where in our back yard). They then climb whatever they can usually tree branches or our fence or poles or what ever they can find. They'll cling on to what ever it is they have climbed and they then slowly come out of their nymph shell leaving it behind (it takes several hours to do this) and then are adult cicadas with wings. They then fly up to the trees and make the loud annoying sound, well actually only the males can make that sound. After they mate the females lay their hundreds eggs in tree branches, the eggs will hatch and fall to the ground where the nymphs will burrow in and live underground for years until their cycle is ready to start.
You're probably thinking this is weird that I put all this on our blog but I found it kind of interesting and wanted to show you the funny pictures of E playing with their shells. So any way now you know more about the cicada bug all because you read the Harkers blog! Now log that useless information away and look at our cool pictures of them here they are...

Our first findings of the Cicada shells in our back yard
They were on every thing, like our shed, C's bike our BBQ
E thought it was funny. Daddy lined them up for her.

A close up of one of the shells. I think they are creepy looking but E isn't scared of them any more. At first she was until we explained they aren't alive and these are just shells they used to live in, now she thinks they are cool.

We found this one on our fence in our back yard it is fresh out of it's nymph shell and that is why it is green. After they cicada's new shell hardens it turns black and their eyes are red. I think it looks less scary when it's green like this one.
This was not taken in our back yard, I found it on the internet but this is what they look like when their new shell hardens.
Here's a cool shot that C took of the shell on the fence with the cicada in the back round.
Tons and tons of shells that E and daddy gathered (I don't like to touch them)
E playing with her Cicada shells. She makes them talk to each other and has families of a mommy, daddy, E and baby one it's pretty funny to watch her play with them like they were dolls or some thing.

Well I hope you enjoyed my fun facts of the cicada bug, random I know.