Marketing strategies at their best

Have you seen the animated movie Despicable Me? It's a cute movie it really is. We took the kids to see it and they loved it. I have to admit I teared up at the end. My kids thought the Minions were hilarious, I don't blame them, they were pretty silly.

The movie is coming out on DVD and there are commercials for it all over the "prime" tv advertising spots to reach children. Now I'm not promoting this movie or paid to tell you to go buy it, nope, that is not the purpose of this post. I got to thinking......These Marketing people have it down! They know exactly what to say/do to get "you" the consumer to buy their stuff. This little mini Minion movie that advertisers are showing to get you to buy the Despicable Me movie has worked like a charm for my Children. "Mommy can you buy that movie for us so we can have the Banana movie with it?" It just shocked me as I watched their marketing strategies work on my children. It's almost laughable how they have this down to a science.

Anyway....here is the cute mini movie they are luring my children in with

T - 2....tonsils

I'm now a "pro" Mamma at dealing with post tonsillectomy children, 2 down.... hopefully no more to go.

Doctors tell you if you're gonna get your tonsils out do it while you are young, like 3 or 4 years young. Kids are SO resilient and they bounce back from this surgery way faster than an older child or adult will.

When we noticed E's tonsils were very large (almost touching) and she snored so bad she would wake her self up at night, we knew those tonsils of hers had to come. The doctors agreed and it seemed to be an easy call to make. The problem with keeping your tonsils is they cause more problems than they fix and you don't really need them any way.

E had her tonsils out at the age of 4. She did GREAT! A few days after she had her tonsils and adenoids taken out (or scorched off rather) you would have never guessed it. She was eating anything and nothing seemed to bother her. Some times the nights were hard but overall it was a great experience (for me, anyway).

They say recovery time for kids is two weeks, this is when they should feel mostly better and by 4-6 they should be back to 100%. Well with E girl it was 5 days she was feeling fine, then at about 10 days she hurt again as the scabs were falling off then she was completely better by 2 weeks. NICE.

J boy had his taken out as well, as you might have guessed. His operation was two weeks ago, from today.

Well, I thought that J boy's experience would be some what similar to E's. I was wrong! Boy was I wrong! He has not been a happy camper AT ALL for two weeks. BUT today......today is better. Today he's been laughing and playing and seems to be SO much better. But man was it rough the first 12-13 days.

He did great going into the center, he was scared at first and kept saying "I don't want to go to sleep, I want to keep my tonsils." but when time came he was happy and playing with all the cool "prizes" they gave him while he waited to "go to sleep".

playing with his cool snake

Watching some cartoons.

"Don't smile J boy" if I say this it gets him to smile every time.

They don't let parents or family be back there when they administer the anesthesia because a lot of times the kids fight it and it can be sad to watch. They wait until they are all the way asleep before they put in the IV which is nice of them! They also don't let you see them right after they wake up, I hear you don't want to any way ;) But once they calm down they'll come get the parents.

E woke up MAD! "I WANT MY MOMMY!" They said she screamed that until they came and got me. J boy was fine, crying a little but okay. When I came back he had stopped crying but started crying when he saw me. It ripped my heart out because it was like his face said "Why did you let them take me and do this to me?!" poor kid.

We stayed at the out patient center for a couple of hours for monitoring and then we were off with 4 different medications and a barf bucket. J boy threw up three times there and once at home and then he felt a lot better. Anesthesia did not settle well on his tummy.

Poor kid did not want to fall asleep at the Hospital because he was afraid they'd take him back there again if he fell asleep. So on the way home he looked like this, he was SO tired.

Awww poor baby boy! His mouth was blue from his two Popsicle he ate right after he woke up, he threw them up of course.
He looks dead in this picture, he was so out of it.

Here's hoping this was my last kid to have this done, knowing my kids I probably won't be that lucky. Here's hoping, though.

Thanksgiving tradition

We now have a fun family tradition for our Thanksgiving Holiday weekend, sadly it is one we will not be able to keep doing once we move away from the area.

Every year for at least the last three years, maybe even four including this year, we have gone to The Children's Museum during our Thanksgiving break (or shortly after our break). The kids love this tradition because every year during this Holiday weekend They set up their "Yuletide Slide" and have a special "winter wonderland" play area for the kids and they have these exhibits up all through December and into the beginning of January.

The Yuletide Slide is SO fun for kids and adults. It's a slide that goes from the second story to the first floor of the Museum, it's two slides next to each other (that way you can race down) set up on top of a large flight of stairs. Last year was J boys first time being able to go down by himself (you have to be a certain height) so this year of course he and E girl raced down the slide while I went down after them with Lou lou on my lap for her first time down the Yuletide Slide.

Racing down the slide. J boy "won"

Lou lou, not so impressed. But she was not scared either so that is a good thing.

The kids also enjoy the Winter Wonderland area. It's filled with fun things to do like....

"ice skating" in socks"snow ball fights" with soft fake snow balls. J boy LOVED doing this, he was so into it.

"ice fishing" and an ice play castle

Santa (but the kids never end up seeing him because they'd rather play than stand in line :)There was also a baby play area this year for Lou lou to play in, eerrr sit in, rather.

This year we also took the kids to "The Poles" exhibit which had all kinds of fun educational things about the North and South Poles. The kids favorite part was the penguin area where they dressed up as penguins and slid down a slide on their bellies like penguins do, too fun!

HA! I could not get a picture of them both smiling, even though at one point they both were. I think E was pouting because I would not let her go play, before I got a picture of my two penguins.

I think E was a penguin in her former life, she has perfect penguin form.

I love that we have been able to do this every year, the kids really look forward to it and have a blast, so much so that they don't want to leave. I will be so sad to have to leave this amazing museum behind when we move.

FYI: it's the largest Children's Museum in the world, really, look it up! It is five stories tall (and a basement) filled with tons of educational and FUN exhibits for Children of ALL ages! It's Dinosaur exhibit has THREE stories of amazing Dinosaur things to do/learn about including a dome area which stretches all three stories high with some real (and fake) Dinosaur fossils, you can even see Palaeontologists at work making replicas of the real fossils AND they will even let you touch a dinosaur fossil, they are so kid friendly here........ ((sigh)) we will miss it!

Lots to be Thankful for

I figured I'd better do some real updates instead of just posting silly holiday videos.

Catching up:


Thanksgiving was not too long ago so I guess I'm not that far behind. Good.


We have done the same thing every year we've been here (I think) for Thanksgiving. We get a bunch of other student families or other ward members who don't have anywhere to go for the Holiday( who have family who are far away) and we all get together and Pitch in and eat at the church. The kids love doing this, for some reason, I'm guessing because we let them run wild in the gym, watch a movie or two, we don't force them to eat their veggies or any food for that matter because we are too busy stuffing our own faces to really care. I guess I can see why they like it so much. I love doing this for many reasons: I get to be with good people, there is always LOTS of food, I don't have to cook a whole entire meal, my house doesn't have to be spotless to host the meal, and I just love that we are in this phase of our lives where we share so much in common with others and we can support one another and be there for them when family cannot.

I'm really grateful we have this opportunity to be with such good people on this Holiday every year. Second best to family is having good friends, and we love being able to spend this Holiday with our friends when family is so far away.
Good food, good friends, good times!

My kids love these things.....enjoy

mymykids

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at Ji

Merry Christmas

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards

Catching up...6 Months old

Man, I've been slacking in the blog updates. I'd like to say I was really busy doing important things, and I guess being a Mom is important but it just sounds boring to me because I do that every day, regardless.

ANY WAY....

Scary thing happened to me not too long ago. I was going through old pictures we have on the computer and I discovered that it had lost pictures for almost two years of J boy's life, from the end of 2006 (the year he was born) to 2008. I was in tears. First of all, I have the least amount of pictures of that boy than either of my girls and it's not like I don't have lots of him because I do, but I just have TONS of the girls. Second, TWO YEARS of pictures gone! What, how does that even happen?!

I went to C in a panic and I think he could tell I was upset so he got right on it and went through the computer and was able to "dig" them out by searching for them day by day. ((Sigh)) I was so relieved. I didn't realize how much losing pictures would upset me, but it did. I'm glad I have them back. We are now looking into getting an external hard drive to put all our pictures on, and I think I'd like to also put them ALL on CD as well, just in case.

going on......
My whole point in this post was to update on our Lou lou so.....

She's six months old! It's hard to believe half a year has gone by already. We've been blessed with this sweet girly in our lives for half a year! Wow. Time does fly.

She is getting so big. At six months old she's out-growing much of that size in clothing and is moving on to Nine month clothes, big girl! I love that she is so round, and rolly and chubby. I like to call her "my little butter ball", fitting for the season too. For my kids chubby is not easily found, granted, there are babies more chubby than Lou lou but still, I'm loving it.

At her appointment she weighed in at 16 and 1/2 lbs. which put her just under the 70% for weight and she's at 26 1/2 inches long so that put her in the 75% for height, like I said big girl. Her head also in the 75% which I expect from my large headed children :)

She's now sitting up really well by herself. She's also slowly, slowly scooting on her tummy. She only scoots when she really really wants something on the floor, other than that she just lays there and kicks her feet while on her tummy.

Her favorite thing to do is to just sit and entertain herself with toys, this is why I love this stage, they can self entertain, yay!

She's chowing down the food, obviously. She loves cereal, peas, squash, pears....lets face it, all the foods we've given her she loves!

She starting to get to that point of being "afraid" of strangers. She's not really afraid but more like weary or cautious. If she's tired and someone she doesn't know really well is holding her she'll cry and look for me. I'm not one of the Mothers that loves to have a clingy kid, in fact I'm quite the opposite I never want a "clingy" child, ever. So I'm hoping she's does not get worse in this "I want my mommy only!" stage. We'll see.

Now I will finish my post with lots of pictures of our baby girl:

Courtesy of E: Diva #2

Look at those cheeks!

I loved this out fit on E and was happy that Lou lou got to wear it, even if it was only for a little while.

I love this picture below. She fell asleep in her high chair while I left her to entertain her self so I could clean. Sooo tired.

L.O.V.E.

I wanted to put this picture on here because you can kind of see her "chub" and also how long she is, she really is long. Lucky girl, I'm jealous if she gets the "tall Harker" gene.

Who's who?!

I was going through some old pictures of E girl and I could not believe how much I kept saying things like "that is such a Lou lou face too." or "Wow, this looks so much like Lou lou." or "my girls look so much a like at this age." etc.

I mean there are slight differences of my girls that I can look for and know which one is which, but some pictures I had a hard time believing I was looking at old pictures of E girl. I kept having to look at the back ground to be able to tell who it was.

So, I found one picture of each of my girls at the same age (about 5 1/2-6 months old) and cropped them so that there is little "background" to tell how "old" the picture is. Now I'm putting them up here to see if you can tell who's who. If you guess right, I'll give you something. Not sure what, but I will find some thing to give to any one who can get it right!

So who's who?

Baby girl pic #1

Baby girl picture #2

GOOD LUCK!

Friday Night-Movie Night

I was feeling guilty at first that we were only doing one festivity for Halloween this year so on Friday night I thought it would be fun to have a Family Movie Night. I went to Red Box with the kids and let them pick out a movie to watch that night. They picked How to Train A Dragon.


After dinner the kids got in their P.J.'s, we blew up the air mattress, got down some pillows and blankets, popped popcorn, got out candy and put the movie in.

The kids loved it! They got to stay up late and eat junk food, watch a movie on the mattress in the living room, what could be better?

Holloween, costumes and such

This year was complicated with Halloween being on Sunday or so I thought it would be. We felt the need to set our rules about trick-or-treating on Sundays with the kids, as they are getting older and understand things more.

Sundays for us, have always been: Church, then Sabbath Day appropriate activities like: Family activities, visiting Friends, going for walks, serving others etc. We do not got to stores (if at all possible) we don't got to parties or do sporting events (like if the kids were in soccer and had a game on Sunday) or we don't trick or treat etc.

E got invited to a couple of parties on Sunday and we had to tell her "No, we don't do those type of things on Sunday." Which eventually she was fine with not going, she hardly put up a fight, which was a relief for me. Well, we very well could not say "no" to a party and then allow them to trick-or-treat on Sunday, that seemed silly to me. So we set the rule that we would not go trick-or-treating on Sunday but do our Ward/Church party and that was it.

So this year that is just what we just did our church's Trunk-or-treat on Saturday and called it good. And, to tell you the truth, it was nice only having to dress them up once! AND it means less candy to hide and fight over and throw out :) The best part was the kids did not even care that they only did one festivity. I think I'm going to go with this every year, it makes my life easier.

At the trunk-or-treat
E was the Tooth Fairy and J boy was the Transformer OPTIMUS PRIME! (said in a very transformer-y way)

So Lou lou's costume was supposed to be a tooth, because E was the tooth fairy, cuuute! It was a very simple idea....I just wanted to make a tooth shaped pillow and strap it on top of her, easy as pie.

Well I made it two hours before the trunk-or-treat because I like to save thing to the last minute. I did not turn out exactly as I envisioned it to be. Mostly it was too big for her. When I made it she was asleep so I didn't measure it on her. Well, as we were hurrying out the door we forgot to bring her tooth pillow and so she was nothing at the trunk-or-treat. But the good thing was that she slept in the car most of the time so no one really saw her any way.

Here's our little tooth, poking her head out barely.

The other two had to join in and lay next to the tooth.

Silly/hyper/sugar filled kids after the trunk-or-treat.

It fits J boy better :)

This one was taken a week ago. She's so cute in her shirt that says "Little pumpkin"

Playing dress up on Halloween, two Cowgirls.

Yay for Halloween being over, only because that means Christmas is FAST approaching!

pumpkin patch

Pumpkins feel like fall to me :)

Although I'm not a huge Halloween fan, I don't get "into" it as much as some people do, one thing I do love about this season/holiday is the pumpkin patches. Pumpkin patches feel so Fall to me and I think it's a fun way to go out and get your pumpkins for Halloween.

This year we opted for the "cheaper" pumpkin patch. And it worked out splendidly! They had a bounce house thing(that the kids love), pumpkins in a patch (kind of), a wagon to pull your pumpkins in(and kids), a pony to ride on and piles of hay to play in and that's all the kids could ask for.

This girl thinks she's a cowgirl. She loves riding on a horse/ponies.

Rolling in the hay (not in the way it used to mean ;)

Kids posing on a large pumpkin

heading back with the goods in the wagon.

showing off their pumpkins

All four pumpkins on the scale

Even Lou lou got to ride in the wagon.

Fall is fun. I love the colors and the fun activities you can do outdoors.

Nieghborhood fun

Since the kids learned to ride their bikes they have been loving riding around with neighborhood friends.

One lovely evening we had some friends ride down to our part of the neighborhood and they joined in for a bike race. These two little boys are so cute and fun and their Dad is just like a kid himself and my kids LOVE playing with him and his boys. He started the bike race with just the four of them and before you new it the whole neighborhood had joined in.

They must have done race after race for a good half hour or more! It was fun to watch all the kids enjoying racing each other in a fun way (It helped that an adult was supervising/helping every one feel like a "winner")

Lining up at the starting line...

At the finish line getting their "placements".

J boy was happy enough being last every time as long as he was pointed to and his "number" was called out, funny kid!

E got pretty into it and wanted to win and would try hard every time. AND she DID! Twice actually. The first time she won a race the look on her face was priceless! She was ecstatic to say the least.

Another fun neighborhood past time (especially on Sunday's) we play by the "trees". There are two trees across the street from our house in a "common" area and all the neighborhood kids like to gather there, mostly in the evenings.

What do they do by the "trees", you ask?

*climb them
*dig in the dirt by them
*collect "berries", twigs, leaves etc. from the tree
*play games (hide and seek etc.)
*make pies (mud pies)

And they build miniature huts/tepees, for bugs I guess. This one is complete with a fenced in camping area, a fire pit and a flag.

We love our neighborhood! My kids walk out the door and 90% of the time they instantly have a friend out to play with. I think we will miss this the most when we leave! But I think we are more excited to have a house some day, with a garage and a basement and a play room and......soon, very soon :)

Fall Break

C and E's Fall Break did not really match up on dates but on Monday E had school off because of parent/teacher conferences, since Monday/Tuesday was C's break we took the rest of Monday as a Family and headed out to a State park to hike around and look at the pretty leaves.

It was so pretty there with all the leaves on the ground and some still on the trees with all their colors! I love fall!
The kids had fun just piling up the leaves and jumping in them and throwing them in the air.

Happy Baby!
She was happy to be outside.

Eating the leaves, because everything must go straight in the mouth!

Where we went had hikes all around this creek. It was low because of how little rain we got all summer/fall. We took a hike that went along and through the creek bed, the kids loved it. The best part was there were all these rocks with Fossils in them. Most of them were just plant fossils or a few shell fossils. The kids thought it was SO fun to look for fossils in the rocks and they found quite a few.

Here she is pointing to one of the fossils in a big rock, it's hard to see in this picture.

Ha! I love that in this picture it looks like J boy really wants to whack E in the head with his stick. She is completely oblivious to it too!

I liked the shape of that tree. And the look of all the leaves on the creek bed.

A So tired Baby! I don't know why she was tired, she got carried the whole way :)

It was a fun one day Fall break together as a family. I'm glad we got out to this park while the weather was still nice.