Interview with a 6 year old

Porter 2 weeks. He grew up way to fast!

Last month on Porters 6th birthday I did a little interview so later we could remember all the things he liked at this age. Kids change so quickly that i wanted to capture a little of his personality at this age.

What Pet would you want? a dog and a cat
What do you want to be when you grow up? Archaeologist and a Baseball Player
If you had a million dollars what would you buy? All the Mario games. I would buy all the stuff that looks cool at the store.
If you could live anywhere in the world where would you live? Utah
How many kids do you want when you grow up? three

Favorites
Color- Every color
Food- Fajitas
Restaurant- Wendy's ( bacon cheeseburger)
Fruit- Pear
Candy- Yogo Bites
Game- Mario brothers Games
Movie- Star Wars
Friend- Jayden, Hanna is favorite at school.
Thing to do- Play video games and swim
Thing to do at school- PE
Sport- Baseball
Song- Jenny ( a song from his dads CD)
Church Song- Follow the Prophet and I love to see the Temple
Thing to do with Papi- play catch with the baseball
Thing to do with Mommy- crafts

Crazy Sunday

Im thinking this is going to be a frequent installment till my boys get older.

Today started typically. Everyone was dressed and ready to go, then of course last minute Arthur rubbed peanut butter all over his white shirt. I could only find a blue polo and white shorts to change him into.. it was the closest to church clothes as i could get. So now we are a little late, walk in and there is not one place left to sit except for the row right in front of the sacrament table. We got a new bishopric today. We also sang my favorite hymn "How Great Thou Art". I was really excited to hear the new bishop talk, but when it got to be his turn i didn't hear a thing... it was right at that moment i realized i didn't know where Arthur was. I sent Cory out in the hall to see if he ran out there. Thirty seconds later i swore i could hear him making his cute little boy sounds... but where was he?? Theo figured it out first.. ran up to the sacrament table and crawled underneath to the coolest secret fort ever! For a second i considered just leaving them there.. they were being quiet after all! But not knowing how many in the congregation saw my little hooligans go up there i thought it best i act like a responsible parent. So i walk up there and drag both boys out, they start protesting loudly so off to the hall we go. We spent the rest of the meeting there since it was time for Cory to leave for work. I totally forgot about Porter. After the meeting i found him crying in our pew because we left him all alone.

Two hours of primary program practice later... ( I'm in the presidency so I sat on the stage and tried to help the children be reverent and sing) I am sitting in choir rather enjoying the most spiritual part of my Sabbath day when Arthur comes hobbling in screaming. ( my boys were supposed to be playing in another room, but someone took them outside to play) I could tell from a far something was up with his legs... as i scoop him up i can see the tiny welts from ant bites covering his little legs and feet. There are at least 50 ( yes i counted!) I calm him down and he sits in my lap as i continue to sing. A few minutes later he starts writhing and screaming. I frantically strip off his clothes and diaper trying to find the ant.. which i did. Of course its at that moment i realize my child is naked. That's right, two out of three of my kids have been nude in the chapel in one month. Oh well, what can ya do? so i just redressed him and kept singing.

So for all you out there that don't go sing at your ward choir... I promise if I can do it, YOU can do it!!

Super Mario Brothers Birthday Party!

Way back in August Porter decided he wanted a Mario Birthday party for his sixth birthday. So we went to work! There is not much pre-made Mario stuff out there, and what you can find was too pricey in my opinion. Porter and I worked together for two solid months and i think he enjoyed his party all the more because of it! Now because of all the fun party planning Theo starting saying he was going to have a big Mario party too. The only problem with that is he doesn't have many friends.. and his birthday is December 20th... and there was no way i was going to want to throw another Mario party in three months. So we made it Theo's party too. They are brothers after all.. and it was a Mario brothers party right? The invites.. made with simple kid construction paper that i already had laying around. In fact i have had this in my kid box of crafts supplies since my nanny days 10 years ago!! So yay, they were free to make just took a little time!

Porter loves bingo, and we don't even own the game, so I decided to make our own version! I was on bedrest after my surgery when i made these. I hand drew and colored every single one since they had to be different. After my first one, it took me about 20-25 minutes for each one after that. I got them laminated because after making 12 of them that was way too much effort to get thrown away! ( all you computer literate people out there that also have color printers I'm sure could have made this much easier than i did!) I bought some of those colored decoration rocks to use as the markers, in red and blue of course!

Now, for the decorations! Like i said, I'm cheap.. er poor... um i mean frugal? well we made everything we could, and then i bought streamers and balloons. I even skipped the helium balloons this time round and just hung up regular ones.. i dont think anyone missed em!

The most time consuming would be the mushroom bad guy thingies. I made all of this out of construction paper and markers. I laminated the things that took me forever to make, because porter wanted to use them as decorations for his bedroom after the party. And I wasn't going to risk having them ruined after i spent hours making them! There is a store here that you can self laminate at for 25 cents a foot.. and thats like two feet across. His room looks like a board from Mario now, he loves it! He is a bit Mario Obsessed. He has downloaded all the old school games on the wii so we have the orriginal ones from the nintendo, and the super nintendo. They cost five dollars a piece, i have never seen him so motivated to earn money!

For the past two months every time my kids wanted to color we colored Mario pictures. We found them online and printed dozens out, and then a few dozen more for the guests to color! I love the Internet. Full of fun free things!

Porter Picked out these napkins cause he said they looked like toad.

Some of these pictures are out of order sorry! Im not reloading them.

Arthur with his cake.

Some of our fun guests!

The younger kids chowing down on pizza. They all made their own pizza, cracked me up to see what some of them came up with!

had to throw this one of Parker in there. I love his grumpy face here! Not sure what he was mad about. His mom was taking the photos, which i am utterly grateful for since i was so busy i think i would have only one otherwise!

Theo and his pizza.

Porter talking with his friends.

Yummy cake!

The pinata, if you have ever played Mario games you will recognize the character chain chomp

Porter and i spent almost two weeks on this project. We started with a big balloon.. did four layers of paper mache with a day in between each one to dry. Then i did a layer of black tissue paper, followed by cut tissue paper, and then all the final details. It was a fun craft to do together! All 15 kids had two turns hitting it muliple times each... and it finally broke! Next time i think i will only do three layers of paper mache!

party bags to carry home their loot in!

Porter getting a good whack in!

I decorated the bat myself... made it more fun and it was easy and fast and i used crepe paper i had left over from decorating at the party!

Arthur hits harder than some of the three and four year olds! Future baseball star im sure!

Theo taking a swing

We had a Yoshi Egg race. I find kids doing this hilarious! some of the older boys smashed their eggs at the end on purpose. yuck!

Porter didn't want a lot of formal games so other than this we played duck duck Mario, and i taught them red rover. Red rover was my favorite outside game as a child. They all loved it and we played it for so long that we ended up not having time for the Mario bingo. Later Porter was really sad about this ( and well i was a bit sad we didn't use them after all that work!) but i assured him when ever people come to our house we can pull it out! So come visit, play with us!

Aren't those napkins the cutest thing you ever saw? A friend gave them to me when they had extra left over from their party. I had oogled them online so i was excited to have them! Oh and i made the cake. More on that in a second...

Our family Sporting our Mario brothers shirts. I love Theo's expression. He is so cute! I might be biased. Porter.. well we couldn't get him to smile except the pinata ones when he has a blind fold on and doesn't know we are trying to capture his fun on camera! That is Arthur in the right corner... umm he doesn't have a Mario shirt, he will have to wait till next year for the hand me down! Cory's shirt says " Get a Life". hahaha.. Mario humor.

This cake too me forever to make. I bought the mario, luigi, and turtle. Everything else is made from edible marshmallow fondant. Which really is like yummy playdoh! It was my first attempt at fondant so I spent many hours making it and trying to get the colors right and the characters to look right. The hardest thing to make was the little teeth for the piranha flower and the koomba ( goomba? how is that said I had a lot of fun making the little decorations for the cake, although i was a bit sad to cut into my creation when the time came! It was super yummy though and the boys all thought it was awesome!

another crazy sunday

Today was porters birthday, he is 6! ( more on this later) I tried to make it a special day, i decorated the house last night and everything. I even made a banner. It wasn't till i colored the whole thing and hung it up that Cory pointed out i left out the H in birthday. Porter never seemed to notice it said "happy birtday porter" but Cory laughed at me for a while... and i laughed with him!

I let porter pick breakfast. Anything he wanted ( including pancakes bacon french toast.. etc) He wanted Oatmeal!

I had to leave for church early because its ward conference and i am the primary secretary so i had meetings before church.

Cory was late with the kids, since he had to get them ready himself. Porter came in with no socks, tie, or belt on.

I didn't hear one thing today in church from the talks.

Cute moment though, porter asked me if i could read him some stories from his scriptures later ( I love that kid!)

Theo and Arthur smeared RED gusher fruit snacks all over themselves and me ( note to self don't buy that kind again!!)

I stayed after church for an extra hour for choir practice. ONLY because the new leader has been sending out emails for anyone and everyone to come and sing. I get guilt trips easily. and i DO like to sing ( even if im not the best at it)

FYI if you forgot from last Sunday post Cory is at work at this time so i have all three boys at choir practice with me

All three boys got balloons in primary that they had blown up and were making all sorts of noise with. I kept leaving my choir seat to go settle them down, stop the fights, beg and bribe them to show an ounce of manners.

they keep running in church, climbing on chairs, talking really loudly, they were acting how any boys would act after three hours of church! I took them to the gym and threatened them to stay there or ELSE!

at least 10 minutes of singing uninterrupted
THEN... duh duh duh

Theo comes bounding in to the chapel full speed and at the top of his lungs screams " mommy i went potty all by myself!" He runs up the isle and up the stairs at the front where we are rehearsing.. STARK NAKED from the waist down! I was mortified. He just laughed and ran from me.

All of his clothes were strewn about in the women's bathroom including his shoes. On the plus side he didn't pee his pants, right?

and surprisingly the choir director said she would see me next week!

Homesick for Autumn

As we embark upon fall I find i am increasingly homesick for Utah. Autumn is my favorite season. I love the smell in the morning on a crisp fall day where the air has blown down the mountains. The beautiful colors of the leaves and how they fall all around. Sunday drives up the canyons to enjoy all the smells and colors, stopping to collect all the beautiful fallen leaves in such vibrant colors. I used to love going on long walks in the fall, walking briskly along breathing in as deeply as i can with a silly grin plastered on my face. Watching the leaves float to the ground and feel the crunch in my step as I walked over those already there. The sudden urge to skip along, or break into song like on the sound of music. The cool evenings where its cold enough to bake but warm enough to leave the windows open. I love being outside when its not too hot, or cold. Where you can wear jeans comfortably but no coat. When I was a child I used to climb up into the tree's in the fall and sing to myself ( or as i imagined the animals as i seemed to have some deep fascination with becoming snow white). I would lay back on the branch, and just watch the leaves. I have a long standing romance with tree's, anyone that knows me well likes to tease me about it. If i could live in the middle of the woods in a tree house ( like Swiss family Robinson) I would be in eternal bliss. Fall weather is the best for laying on the grass and reading the afternoon away, and while your out there eating a juicy crisp apple and taking a little nap. Its also the best time to swing, pumping as high as you can then leaning back with eyes closed and breathing in the smell of the falling leaves, feeling the warm sunlight on your face and you float back and forth. Oh fall, how i miss thee!!

Cory and I seven years ago when we were engaged. see how how happy I am with my tree and my leaves and my perfect temperatures?

Sadly there is no fall for me here. Its still feeling like July, hot and sticky and not one Autumn smell.

Dear Utah,

Please don't rush into winter this year, I will be there for thanksgiving and really need some fall. Kindly ignore my children's prayers for snow when we come.. or at least wait till November 25th ( right before we leave)! Your beautiful mountains and tree's will be showered with adoration.

All my love,

Camilla

Back to school bash

Porters school had a little party, they asked parents to bring cookies. I'm not kidding there was about 110 DOZEN cookies. Every kid ate till they were sick and still the table was full! ( okay i will admit i had plenty too!)

Arthur playing with his favorite friend Addison.

Porter playing with his favorite friend Hannah. She is in his class as school and apparently they love each other. He followed her around for about 2 hours!

Chatting up a group of girls... ( there were boys playing soccer on the field but Porter only wanted to play with the girls!)

hanging out with his pals

Porter and Arthur both love going down the big slides.

You may wonder where Theo is... well he is standing in the corner of the playground talking to a little red sign. I kid you not! It was just his height,stapled to a stick and in a bucket. ( look in picture above in the top left corner to see what i mean) I don't know what he was saying but he kept talking to it and touching it, I had a good laugh. I meant to go get a photo of it but i got distracted by my dare devil 2 year old! Theo has no interest in things such as slides or playing with kids. We had to leave soon anyways because he peed his pants. I tried my hardest to not laugh because he was so upset and almost to tears telling me how he "tuddent find da poddy mommy.. i jiss tuddent and i don no where da potty is?"