Happy Birthday!

Happy 5th Birthday to my brilliant and amazing daughter Tessa!

Ugh. A freaking five year old. I am a little bit in shock that she is already this old. How on earth do I have a five year old? It's too much.

Here is the Birthday Interview:
1. What is your favorite color? Pink and purple
2. What is your favorite toy? Foam bath letters
3. What is your favorite fruit? Apple
4. What is your favorite TV show? Powerpuff Girls
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Sandwich and applesauce
6. What is your favorite outfit? Anything pink - especially days when she can wear everything pink
7. What is your favorite game? Sorry
8. What is your favorite snack? Chocolate-chip Granola Bars
9. What is your favorite animal? Zebras (because they have stripes, she informed me later)
10. What is your favorite song? Happy Birthday song
11. What is your favorite book? Mickey Mouse book (further investigation revealed this to actually be the Where is Maisy? book by Lucy Cousins)
12. Who is your best friend? Kennedy and Mia
13. What is your favorite school subject? Dinosaurs
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play in the kiddie pool
15. What is your favorite drink? Apple Juice
16. What is your favorite holiday? My birthday (If you listen closely you can hear Hailey whispering "Christmas!" in the background.)
17. What do you like to take to bed at night? Elsa doll
18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Oatmeal (seriously.)
19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday? Pizza
20. What do you want to be when you grow up? Doctor or Dentist

Happy Birthday Tessa. I'm so proud of the smart and loving and creative person you are, and I'm so glad you're mine. I love you!

Memorial Day Camping Adventures

Unfortunately for me, I fell in love with a boy who loves to camp. A boy who loves to camp whose family also loves to camp. I figured I'd be sacrificing some vacations to the inevitability of camping, but to my great delight, I have managed to make it almost seven years with only two family camping trips under my belt. The first was just after we got married. The second was last month.

It actually wasn't too bad. I enjoyed myself! (Don't tell Seth though. It would ruin our roles as camp-lover and camp-hater and we like the banter too much.)

And as I told my family (who were all in shock that I willingly went on a camping trip), if you have to go, you may as well go with the Winsors. They are pro campers and they have all the fancy camping things to make it nice. (Special camping chairs! Fancy camp kitchen! Rain covers over the picnic table! Special sticks for roasting marshmellows! etc. etc.)

That includes this fancy hiking backpack that we borrowed.
Although now that I think about it, if we didn't have this backpack I would have been able to stay behind at camp with Claire instead of hiking........ dang it! A missed opportunity.

Here we are, fresh-faced and happy about a lovely hike through the woods with our family.

And here is Tessa about five minutes in, already needing a break and crying and complaining that she hates hiking. Ah, forced family fun. It's wonderful.

 Here we are enjoying our lunch by a waterfall.

Here we are trying not to think about the fact that we just hiked two miles with our three little children and we now have to hike two miles back. (Whose idea was it to take this trail? Next time - if there is a next time - a shorter one.)

Riding on Seth's back the whole way is clearly exhausting for Claire and not Seth.

Highlights of the hike included playing in this stream.

And taking selfies with children. (Not pictured: picking up every single millipede we saw along the way.)

Sunday we attempted to go to Luray Caverns, but since every single person in Virginia also had the same idea, we vetoed the idea and headed to a local park instead.

It was actually a pretty sweet park, so no complaints.

Other items of note: Tessa will attempt to read to her cousins at any opportunity.

Claire loves to be outside and hates to touch grass.

And always check if your campground has showers. (Ours didn't. So so so so gross when we got home.)

Now let's hope it's another seven years before our next family camping trip. (Just kidding, it was great! DON'T TELL SETH. I have a reputation to maintain.)

Listed: The Past Two Months

I thought that maybe I would get some of my brain function back after giving birth, but apparently not. So since I have no brain capacity or energy to think up creative blog posts about the stuff going on, here is a numbered list for you.

1. We cleaned out the garage and I finally persuaded Seth to get rid of the broken gas mower. This drops our number of lawn mowers from three to two.

2. In addition to their imaginary brothers Lit, Zeet, and Bernst (best name ever), the girls now have an imaginary sister. Her name is Mad Alice and she doesn't seem to live at our house with the rest of the real and pretend siblings. This necessitates several phone calls a day to Mad Alice to tell her what they are up to. Still not quite sure if Mad Alice is angry or insane.

3. Tessa freakishly memorized the color of each of her bath letters.

4. I got lice from my two oldest. After that went away, I got pink eye from my two youngest. I gave them life, and they give me horrible contagious diseases. Motherhood is wonderful.

5. We finally gave Claire her baby blessing at four months and it was lovely. Thank you to everyone who participated.

6. My mom came to visit us and attend the blessing and it was great. My mom is the best. We did our usual - laze around, do a little shopping, and infect each other with sickness.

7. Claire met her bathtime goal of getting Seth and I as wet as possible.

8. Easter was lame and we were all sick, so I have no pictures of us in our cute Easter clothes. We scraped together the energy to dye Easter Eggs, which we then accidentally left sitting on the counter all night and had to throw away.

9. The most Eastery thing we did was an Easter Egg Hunt with Seth's family, and that's because it was before we all got sick. The girls got their faces painted and ate plenty of candy.

10. Tessa learned how to wiggle her eyebrows.

11. We bought the girls Sidewalk Chalk, which they then proceeded to use on the house, the car, the fence, the mailbox, and basically anywhere that was not the sidewalk.

12. We told them not to use chalk on the top step because the overhang prevents rain from washing it away up there. Tessa, being the smart girl that she is, wrote "NO" in chalk to remind herself not to write in chalk right there.

13. Seth and the girls captured three caterpillars and got to watch them make cocoons and then emerge as beautiful butterflies fat ugly moths.

THE END.

Tessa's Books

Tessa recently decided to become an author and has been rather prolific in her publications. Every day she cuts up her paper and carefully writes and illustrates another story. Some of them are pretty good.

Here is a video of her reading one of my favorites, "The Friendly Little Mouse"

This one's titled "I Love You Mommy Bear" despite there being no mommy bear at all in the story. The ending is hilarious.

And of course, my favorite is "The Story of a Boot Who Had A Toot". (Title created with help from her father, of course.) It's short, so I posted it for your enjoyment:

One day there was a boot and he...

...needed to go potty. He went on the potty.

And he farted.

We're thinking of sending it in for a Caldecott award.

Five on Friday

1. Seth was gone on a business trip for the past three days and I spent the whole time in silent praise of single mothers. He went to Detroit, so he spent the whole time in silent praise of warm southern winters.

2. Made some chocolate cake the other week, and then left it on the counter unsupervised for far too long. Hailey took advantage.

3. Is there anyone who reads my blog who hasn't heard of Hamilton? I'm obsessed and I want everyone I know to be obsessed too.

4. Sitting in Sacrament meeting a week ago, Seth suddenly discovered that Tessa's head was crawling with lice. And thus began a week-long torture of spending hours picking through everyone's hair to try to get every last one of the dumb things out. I hate you lice. I hate you so much.

5. Hailey ran into my room the other night very upset because she had been hit in the face...by herself. On purpose. She didn't appreciate that I was unsympathetic and found the whole thing hilarious.
Then today Tessa came in rather sad because she had been poking herself in the eye - on purpose and more than once - and was upset.
Kids are weird.

Happy Birthday Hailey

Okay, technically her birthday was last Monday, on the 25th. She was up at her Grammy's house for a birthday trip and so I didn't get my birthday interview and once that deadline had passed I found it hard to get around to. So sorry, my middle child.

Likes:
Being naked as often as possible
Playing outside
Sugar
Having Tessa read to her
Teaching her mother patience

Dislikes:
Being told what to do
Brushing her teeth
Clean-up time
Quiet time
Bedtime

Birthday Interview! Done in two parts because of Tessa, the great distraction.

Transcript:
1. What is your favorite color? Purple
2. What is your favorite toy? Duplos
3. What is your favorite fruit? Oranges
4. What is your favorite TV show? Scooby-Doo and Room on the Broom
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Cake
6. What is your favorite outfit? A giraffe (?) (I have no idea.)
7. What is your favorite game? Checkers
8. What is your favorite snack? Graham Crackers and Fruit Snacks and Goldfish and Pretzals (I swear my children eat more than just snacks all day.)
9. What is your favorite animal? Tiger
10. What is your favorite song? Scooby-Doo Theme Song
11. What is your favorite book? Room on the Broom
12. Who is your best friend? Tessa
13. What is your favorite school subject? Hula Hoops
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Draw with chalk
15. What is your favorite drink? Apple Juice
16. What is your favorite holiday? Winter
17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? Stuffed Elephant
18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Cocoa Krispies
19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday? Pizza
20. What do you want to be when you grow up? An Apple (Seriously, no idea.)

As you will see in the video, she was ready to be done with only five questions left but I managed to get her to answer the rest.. A surprising feat, as the girl is literally the most stubborn person I know. Literally used the correct way.

Happy (late) Birthday Hailey! We love you.

Books for 2016

Both the number of books I read and the record-keeping of said books was pathetically dismal this year (ALL THE BABY-BLAMING), so instead I am writing about books I am looking forward to reading in an effort to get me out of this Netflix-watching, never getting past the first chapter, book reading slump I am in.

1. As You Wish. A behind the scenes look at the making of The Princess Bride. I want the audiobook because Cary Elwes narrates it with cameos from all the cast members.

2. Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Sci-Fi/Fantasy is usually my least favorite genre, but it happens to be Seth's favorite and he has been telling me I need to read these books for quite some time.

3. The Life Changing Magic of Tidying-up. Because my hold at the library finally came up and I want to see what all the hype was about. Plus, it's about tidying up - my favorite.

People keep recommending The Martian to me, but as getting lost/stranded/killed in space is one of my (totally illogical) worst nightmares, just hearing about the premise of the book fills me with stress. I'm not sure if I can handle reading it.

It's a problem when I have a mile long To Be Read list and nothing sounds interesting enough to pick up. Reading slump, you are the worst.