Going Full Hippie

These are chickens.

Six Rhode Island Reds to be exact. They have taken up residence in a corner of my living room and are happily peeping away. 

I completely blame Morgan.

My kids are over the moon excited. (I'm pretty excited too...) We're looking at plans to build a chicken coop, and hopefully, within a few months, we'll be able to send the girls out first thing in the morning to collect the eggs. 

We're also planting phase one of our garden on Monday.

So, go for it. Best "hippie" joke wins. As far as I'm concerned, all I'm missing are some dreads, birkenstocks, and maybe a goat. 

A Different Kind of Stage Mom

There's a certain amount of stage-mom-ness that comes naturally to me given my two girls and their musical pursuits. But when Ashlynn asked, begged, pleaded, and basically threw herself at my feet promising she'd do whatever I asked her happily for the rest of forever if I'd just let her enter a pageant, I nearly choked.

A pageant? Really? Like dressed up, parade around stage, fancy dresses, judged on your appearances? So not my scene. I might even be morally opposed to beauty pageants on a fundamental level, and maybe a bit afraid that my inborn stage-mom tendencies would turn me into one of those crazy reality-show pageant moms. 

So I talked to a few moms in my community, and they assured me it wasn't a beauty pageant, that it was judged more on talent and poise and interviewing skills. They told me it would be a chance for her to serve our community. Then Ashlynn begged more. For months on end. And my husband pointed out how we encourage Abby to be on stage all the time and it would be good for Ashlynn to do something just for her. And then I thought about how fun it would be for her to be in parades, be on stage, make friends, represent our small-town community, etc... So we took a deep breath and jumped in with both feet.

The last few weeks have been filled with practices, talent routines, discussions about modeling and on-stage interviews, and a giddy 9-year old bouncing off the walls with excitement about the pageant. I kept wondering what in the world I'd gotten myself into.

But Ashlynn loved every minute of it. She absolutely lit up and shined on stage. The first time I saw her do her cute Harry Potter monologue that introduced her piano piece, tears sprung to my eyes as I thought, "Wow. That's my kid. And she's pretty stinking amazing!"

The pageant was on Saturday, and the days leading up to in and the day of were absolutely insane. Saturday morning at 6:40am found me hauling down the mountain in the blizzard to judge violin federation. (Stupid snow, grumble grumble....) I got back just in time to re-curl Ashlynn's hair, put makeup on her and run back over to the pageant.

After all the talent-ing, the makeup, the glitter, (I got in extra trouble for putting glitter in her hair because all the girls are supposed to look the same in the opening number, don't you know,) she was sitting in the chair next to me, bouncing off the walls, waiting for her name to be called as part of the royalty.

And call her name they did.

What I've learned in the past few days is that this isn't just your average beauty pageant. These five girls will be representing our small mountain community for the next year with tv appearances, community service projects at least monthly, performances, and a huge commitment for the community celebrations that happen around here every Labor Day and Christmas. I don't think I realized quite the crazy we signed up for until I was talking to one of the moms of the outgoing royalty, and she showed me the bag she carries everywhere complete with butt-glue (did you know there was such a thing?!), false eyelashes,  multiple costumes and at least two curling irons. 

So deep breaths. She is going to love every bit of it. I'm going to hold on for the ride, and pray for on-time carpools, good hair stylists, and moms that know more about the mysteries of butt glue than I do!

In Which I Reveal the Extent of my Craziness...

I have four children. This is a lot, did you know?

Let's be honest here. There are many times that the volume level in my house rivals a jet engine at takeoff. Often, my day consists of triage-ing the needs of my four children and deciding which screaming child, which bickering pair of kids, which gigantic mess needs my attention first. There are very few things that I avoid so strenuously as I do as a trip to the grocery store (or heaven forbid, Wal-Mart!) with my herd of children. At least once a day week I hide myself behind a locked bathroom door just to get a minute to compose my thoughts.

After finally getting pregnant with Max, I swore up and down that we were done, all the time knowing that we were supposed to have at least one more. Then Ian snuck in, completely unexpectedly, and when he was born, we finally felt whole, complete.

For a little while.

There's a long story behind the removal of my birth-control-of-choice, but all you really need to know (trust me) is that in the months since my fail-safe, don't-even-have-to-think-about-it birth control method has been gone, I've been filled with the unmistakable knowledge that our family isn't complete. I've tried to deny it. I've looked around at our chaos and wondered what I could possibly be thinking. I finally got up the courage to mention it to my husband, expecting that he would tell me that I was crazy insane.

Except then he didn't.

(This is hard for me to even write about, because I fully expect that virtually everyone who reads this will think me totally insane. I think I'm totally insane, if that makes you feel any better. One of the reasons I've been so absent from this blog for so long is because I haven't had the courage to sit down and write about it for fear of ridicule and people telling me that I've completely gone off the deep end. Trust me, it's not anything I don't know.)

We know there's a girl that needs to join our family, and we feel her absence from our family keenly. There have been many times in the past few months that I've been making dinner while Abby practices upstairs, Ashlynn practices downstairs and the two little boys are playing literally at my feet, and I look around, panicking because I don't know where the baby is. It always takes me a minute to realize that there's no baby. When we're out and about and I do the kid head count, I frequently have to remind myself that I have only four kids, not five, and don't need to go running around like a crazy lady because I've lost a kid that doesn't exist. (Further proof that I've lost it: when I typed that last sentence, I typed "only five kids." See, told ya.) My husband has had similar experiences.

But it gets better. Tom and I equally as convinced that this baby is not coming from us. This has been hard for me. While I don't love being pregnant, I love little babies, and would gladly cuddle a newborn daily for the rest of forever.  But we've known since shortly after we were married that someday we would do foster care and/or adopt a child, and we can't deny any more that this is the right time to pursue it.

There are many reasons why  we shouldn't do this, chief among them being that I already have an entire herd of children, two of which I'm homeschooling, and a whopping 22 violin students. I've been immersing myself in foster care and adoption blogs, and I've learned that above all, foster care can be incredibly unpredictable, which scares the daylights out of my control freak self.  I'm worried about how it may change the dynamics of my family, and how it may affect my girls if we have a disrupted placement. I'm worried about the chaos that may result from suddenly adding a new member to the family, and how we'll manage everything that comes with a foster placement.

But for as many reasons as there are not to do it, there are reasons why we should. While I joke about how crazy our house is, there is a lot of fun here. Good food, lots of music, many laughs, much love. I am not afraid of special medical needs, and I know that we have many blessings to share.

We're meeting with someone from Utah Foster Care Thursday night. We have a million questions. We're nervous, we're probably a little naive, we're more than a little green behind the ears. Yes, we may be a little crazy. But above all, we're excited to follow this path and see where we end up.

Any tips? Anyone have experiences doing foster care? We'd love to hear from you.

Shameless Mom Brag

The violin journey with Abby hasn't always been easy. She has a strong personality, (really, no idea where she got that from...) and we've had our moments of butting heads.


But, a few months ago she decided she wanted to start entering competitions. We started the third movement to the Kabalevsky Violin Concerto in October, and she nailed her audition this past Saturday. The competition was tough, and the winner gets to solo with a symphony in May. We don't know the results yet, and probably won't for a few a few more days, but regardless, we're very proud.

As a side note, I didn't start playing the violin until I was twelve. She's eleven, and already playing violin literature that high school students use to audition for college scholarships. I am truly amazed at what she's been able to learn and accomplish.

Catching up in pictures

Well. 

My goodness, it's been a while.

Do you remember me? (Do I remember me?)

So, it was Christmas. We like Christmas.

Now it's winter, and there is much snow and cold. A week or so ago, it was -18 degree when I woke up. Yes siree, it makes getting up to teach 6:30 am violin lessons extra inviting.

 So what do you do when there's 2 feet of snow and ice all over the place and your 4 year old is bouncing off the walls? Bring his bike inside. Then curse yourself repeatedly for thinking that a bike in the kitchen was a good idea.

Then, in the approximately 2.5 minutes when there isn't snow on the roads, you take your kids out for a walk. Greet the animals and splash in the puddles, quick, because you won't see the sidewalk again for months!

So what else have we been doing?

 Sleeping through Sunday School,

 Preparing for our new lives as famous recording artists, 

 Ruining Mom's high scores on iPhone games,

 Beating each other up with swords,

Learning to ice skate,

 Baking pies, (mmmm, pies!)

 Making gigantic messes,

 Getting by with a little help from our trusty friends, 

 Making more giant messes, this time of the artistic variety,

And looking ridiculously cute in our pjs and matching curls.

Don't forget the fact that winter and spring mean lots of practicing, performing, and Abby's first big violin competition. (Gulp!)

 So Ashlynn is practicing for the piano festival,

 I'm working on perfect bow hands with my students,

 Abby's performing everywhere,

And even Max feels the need to practice. (Will someone get that boy a cello already?)

Other important happenings: 

 The boys are developing their talent in photography. 

 They're both going through a rather experimental self-portrait phase.

Max has another impossible to cure ear infection. I didn't think you wanted to see pictures of that. (You're welcome.) We're heading into February, the dreaded month of illness, and I'm crossing my fingers that this is as bad as it gets.

I even took all the kiddos to get new pictures taken, and we all still liked each other when it was over. Check out the sidebar. Pretty impressive, right?

So there you have it. 2 months, two dozen pictures, and you're up to speed.

We're busy. We're happy, we're grateful.

Birthday Ian

Two years ago, two days before Thanksgiving, in the middle of a blinding snow storm, we welcomed tiny baby Ian into our family.

Ian has been a surprise right from the start. While we knew all along that another baby was meant to join our family, we hadn't planned on that addition coming along quite so soon. In fact, staring at a positive pregnancy test a mere two days before Max went in for skull revision #2 was quite a shock.

Other things I didn't plan on when it came to Ian? Going into labor at 30 weeks, then again at 31 weeks, 6 weeks of "restricted activity" along with the demon drugs terbutaline and nifedipine, and giving birth in a hospital with both pitocin and an epidural on board.

But in the end, when the midwife handed me my baby and we discovered that he was a boy, (another surprise, because I could have sworn right up until the time I was pushing that we were having a girl!) it was if he had always been a part of our family. From the minute we brought him home, we couldn't remember what it was like without him.

Ian has a huge personality trapped in a little tiny toddler body. If there's trouble to be had, Ian will find it. He scales bookshelves, desks, chairs, counters, and kitchen tables like Spiderman, makes messes like it's his job, and has practically no fear. "Get down, Ian!" is a frequently heard motto. This is Ian on the very top shelf of our laundry room...

 One memorable afternoon not long ago, he had a complete meltdown as I was pushing him on the swing in the backyard. Finally, after ten minutes of hysterics, I realized the reason he was so upset was because I wasn't pushing him high enough.

Ian is a complete charmer with his blonde curls and his dimples, and more than once I've been asked if he and Max are twins. When we sat down in church a week ago, one of Max's preschool friends pointed to Max and said, "Look Mom, it's Max!" He then turned to Ian, somewhat confused and said "There's another Max. there's two Maxes!" Ian idolizes Max, wanting to do everything that he's doing, but is just as likely to be found stealing Max's toys or beloved hat and running away, laughing.

Ian has two volumes: loud, and loudest. He has absolutely the loudest scream of any kid I have ever heard anywhere, and definitely knows how to use that scream to get what he wants. He is a bundle of toddler contradictions: heaven help you if you try to assist him in getting dressed in the morning, ("No! Leave me alone! Do it self!") but you're in equal amounts of trouble if you refuse to carry him everywhere he wants to go. I think I spend as much time rocking him in the rocking chair now as I did when he was 8 months old, but the "Love you, Mama" that I often get from him is plenty of reward.  His is filthy more often than not, and I secretly rejoice in the 30 seconds each day right after I brush his teeth and hair, knowing it's like that those are the only 30 seconds that day when he'll be that clean.

At two years old, Ian loves anything that has to do with "Toy Story," loves hot dogs, broccoli, macaroni & cheese, and any sweet thing he can sneak or con someone into giving him. He is very nearly weaned, although he's not super happy about that. Ian is an articulate little chatterbox, who keeps us laughing everyday with his words and his funny, funny expressions. He has to be up on the counter "helping" while I'm cooking, and will frequently try to mimic what he sees me do in the kitchen, which is less than thrilling when it involves him trying to make strawberry jello in a cup on the living room floor. Ian loves to wrestle, to run, to play with "his" phone, to dump shampoo all over the carpet, to watch "Sesame Street," to jump on anything, to drive his sisters crazy, and to snuggle as close to me as possible at nap time.

We doubled up and celebrated his birthday on Thanksgiving with a giant oreo shaped cake, Toy Story figurines, and two foam swords. A happy birthday indeed.

He's such a sweet, charming, hilarious little boy, and I'm so glad he's ours. Surprises and all.

It's the little things

Ten things I am grateful for right this minute:

1~Swimming for FHE? Yes, please. The tired kids that come with it? Even better.

2~A wonderful, successful recital this past weekend. It was the most ambitious group recital I've ever done, and I'm so grateful it's over.

3~The best part of the recital being over? One completely lesson-free week. That means 5 blessed weekdays this week without a 6:30 am lesson. Yes, life is good.

4~Warm socks, a hoodie, and very large blanket.

5~Cold sore medicine.

6~Kneader's pumpkin spice bread brought to me by a sweet violin family.

7~The anticipation of a new novel on my kindle tonight.

8~Text messages. And the friends who have day-long conversations with me via text messaging. (Seriously, what did we ever do when we had to actually pick up the stupid phone...?)

9~My sweet husband sitting next to me, both of us typing away on our respective laptops, keeping each other company.

10~A (mostly) clean house. Or at least the part I can see. Because let's face it, even if my house hosted its own Armagheddon today, I wouldn't be doing anything about it tonight.