Fall Break at Bryce Canyon (again)

 Will enjoys the last couple of days of his bottle.

 Napping so he can keep me up until 2:30 am in the hotel room.

 

Poked by the pine needles.

 

 My little cheese ball "smiling" for the camera

This didn't go as well as last year. Will is one year older and one year harder. Between him bouncing off the walls in the hotel room, running away at full speed at the swimming pool over the wet cement, keeping Rebecca & I up most the night and just overall encouraging my anxiety level to hit max levels it was, kind of, not fun. 

Needless to say if I had it to do over again-- I wouldn't. I'd have stayed home with Will and sent Rebecca & John off with Peter. Hopefully the kids will have good memories. 

Lesson learned: toddlers + hotel rooms = unique form of torture.

Will's nursery mug shot

Our nursery leader is very creative and makes all kinds of cute things for the kids including this little book here. 

Unfortunately Will doesn't always feel cooperative with going and certainly not having his picture taken.

Sarah & her friend made a couple of captions for it including:

"When you see your crush flirting with someone else"

"When you run a jillion miles only to find out your thighs have only gotten bigger"

Safe landings and supersuits

  

Finally heard something about Nathaniel's safe arrival in Peru. I was starting to feel a little unglued about it. I mean, it wasn't as if I was terribly worried. I knew we'd have heard something if there had been a problem. But you know, you like to get some type of news when your child flies from country to country.

So here he is with his mission president and wife.

In less important news, I couldn't find a single dang pair of scissors yesterday and because I frequently can't remember to ask when I actually have a kid in front of me (and even then I forget which kid I've already asked) I sometimes just write on the white board where everyone will see it eventually. Yesterday I had written, "Where are my scissors??"

I came home later and saw this that my question had been modified:

 I laughed out loud.
It was done by Rebecca of course, who drives me crazy at the peak (hopefully, maybe??) of her teenage Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde teenage girl phase but you an see occasionally her true self peaks through and her extremely witty and creative self makes an appearance.

Other good news is my scissors made a quick comeback. Note how I write on them "kitchen" and "mom" to send subtle messages that these particular ones are not to be moved. Doesn't really seem to help but at least when I find them in guilty party's room I can prove they really are out of their assigned spot.

Nathaniel leaves for Peru today

Fishin' for some sanity

Peter got the bright idea for us all to get out of the house a few Saturday's ago and do some impromptu fishing. One thing about our family and fishing is they don't tend to go together well.

(Look at us pretending to be having a good time!)

Sometimes things are hard because of this cute guy . . .

  . . . but lately this other cute guy has been causing his fair share of trouble. As in tantrum throwing, fake crying, make mom put everything on lock down, throw away all the permanent markers and buy-Mr-Clean-Magic-Erasers-in-bulk-at-Costco-trouble. Amazon boxes with new child proofing devices show up almost every day lately. You would not believe some of the gadgets out there but just the fact that they were invented makes me feel like I'm not the only one with troublesome toddlers.

He played with the worms and tangled the poles and screamed and rolled around in the dirt in a tantrum fit until Peter started to lose it and the rest of us all packed up and left Peter to fish by himself while we got something to eat.

 Speaking of which, guess who we don't take to restaurants unless we can't find a better way to slowly torture ourselves?

 Went to the bowling alley for FHE on Monday and Will wanted to hold the ball and throw the ball all by himself (not happening) while throwing random tantrums in between when he didn't get his way.

I'm working on the not-giving-in thing really hard. Course I try and pick my battles. In our Love & Logic class they said to pick your battles but when you pick one you better make sure and win it. 

When the speech pathologist came over recently to visit him and he threw a fit (he was extra cranky that day) I first ignored him and then deposited him in his bedroom for a little chill-time. She said I was doing all the right things so that made me feel better.

 Candy. Save it for when it's necessary.

He started up with another runny nose yesterday (argh!) but I had already promised John we'd go to Cornbelly's opening night and thought it would be good to get out anyway. Will did alright but it was obvious he wasn't feeling the best. 
I captured the fake cry he pulls on us all the time on this video for all to enjoy. (Especially if you don't have a toddler right now.)