frebruary

Poor little buddy was kinda dumb and pushed away a hot pan that his dad had just said not to touch because it was hot. He burned his hand pretty good. I put some medicine and a bandage on it, but knowing that a 2 year old wasn't going to leave the bandage alone and not play with it, I covered it up with one of these sweet sleeves I had left over from my home IV treatments when I was pregnant with Jude. He liked it, and he never touched it. Win!

My giant snow pile. It was about as tall as I am.

That's my foot while I was shoveling. I guess trying to show how much it had snowed in a few hours? I'm not sure. Nice foot though, am I right?

That's Jude in there.

I'm just going to say it: I love babies in big people shoes.

Kate drew this after spending some time with her baby cousin Jocelyn.

I saw this on the internet, and it was funny. And true.

Colin lost 2 teeth on the same day. Before school he complained that his tooth hurt, so I said I would look at it. I grabbed it and lightly pulled, and it fell out into my hand. While this was happening, Colin freaked out and ran away from me yelling, "No! Don't touch it! Don't pull it out!" And it was already out. I laughed pretty hard. I did pretty much the same thing to him before bed when he said that his other tooth was bothering him. Except this time I had to pull a bit, and I had to wrestle him to the floor and kind of sit on him, but we got it done and it really wasn't that bad. He's just kind of a weenie sometimes. If he had been still, none of my other tactics would have been necessary.

Awww, snuggles.

Colin and I went to his friend Emmeline's baptism on the 13th. It was lovely, and while Colin didn't want to put his arms around those girls, he really does love them.

Kate dressed up her bears and wanted a picture of them. This is that picture. You're welcome Kate. Don't say I never did anything for you.

Sometimes you just want to bake a Boston Cream Pie, so you do.

My adorable little helpers.

I think it's time to make another jean quilt. My trunk is getting full again. That's all denim, all the way down.

I designed and printed these "rules" for the playroom a few years ago, and I finally got them hung up! I love how it looks. And I'm so glad Laura went to Ikea and purchased the wire and hooks for me!

This is what family scripture study and prayer looks like at the Silvey house.

My sister insists that the Utah public education system equates the Founding Fathers with Jesus. It's hard to disagree with her when my child brings home papers like this.

Once every couple of months, Kate's ballet teacher (who is also my neighbor) invites the parents to come to class and see what the girls have been working on.

Jude is so dang cute in these lumberjack pjs, but he doesn't like them. And he wouldn't let me take his picture.

We went to Hogle Zoo on free zoo admission day, which might have been a mistake. It was super crowded (duh). But Kate didn't have school that day, and so we went for it. My father-in-law came with us, and we had a great time. Here are the lions.

And a monkey.

And a baby elephant in a tube.

And my little ones and Sam watching the elephants.

And my little ones comparing themselves to monkeys.

And another monkey.

And a lizard. (I know, I could totally give educational tours at the zoo.)

And some weird looking rats. Just kidding, and I know they are armadillos. Jude was obsessed with them.

Happy kids!

Everyone loves the lion drinking fountain.

The giraffes were hiding by the heaters, but we found them just before we left.

Jude kept taking his diaper off at the most inopportune times, so I decided to try potty training him. He didn't go for it. But he looks super cute in his underpants.

Kate opted not to take her Official Royal Academy of Ballet exams, but she did do the unofficial one. I wasn't allowed to go in and watch, but I got her results on Tuesday (March 29) and she rocked it! a 5 is like an A, her teacher told me, and no one ever gets 10s, but she had all 7 or higher. Mostly 8s. I don't really understand it, but I am still prodigiously proud of her.

imma little behind

The kids and I went to watch Nate play in an indoor soccer game one Saturday evening.

Jude is sitting on my lap right now, and when this picture loaded he said, "Whoa. That funny."

The point of going to the game was so I wouldn't have to be at home alone with the kids. I didn't want them to just sit and watch TV, and I didn't really want to parent. So we went to the game, and here's what the kids ended up doing. Blerg. This is what happened after I had to keep running to grab them as they wandered onto the field.

He's still the cutest little cheeser.

I am a big fan of Jimmy Fallon's. I tape his show and watch it when I have time during the day. I feel like we are friends in real life. I was really excited to see his book at the library.

Nooooo! Not more pink eye! (I think it ended up being a false alarm, because it was fine that night and it didn't spread to anyone else.)

I love happy kids with green mustaches. I believe they were drinking some homemade grorange juice, which is green orange juice (spinach and oranges blended up).

Kate didn't want to eat pretzels, but she did want to make a craft with them. She was quite proud of her crown.

Real men wear aprons, right? Please tell me that's right.

I piled the snow up when I shoveled the driveway to help the boys make a fort. They loved it and spent a lot of time working on it.

Nate and I took the younger kids to the Provo City Center Temple open house on the 28th. It was difficult to get a good picture of everyone. Nate and Jude declined to get in the picture, Kate chose to do a classic Kate grimace, and Gray was silly.

But everyone liked the fountain. (Colin had to stay at school because he had already been on a tour with me, and I felt like he had missed enough school that month because of the Great Pinkeye Epidemic of 2016.)

On dentist day, Gray insisted on showing me the frogs. I don't think you can see any of them in this picture, but they were cool.

Oh, I think this is the kids mauling our nice new neighbors. They are a sweet young couple of newlyweds, and I don't think they'll be having children of their own for years and years after experiencing an evening with the Silveys.

pinkeye is the worst

As I type this, Kate has pinkeye. Again. For the third time. I'm about ready to kill myself. Anyway, here's the end of December and beginning of January.

Gray also got pinkeye around this time. His case was the mildest and over the quickest. Yay!

I wanted to do something special for our neighbor Mary, who is also my children's best friend, because she was turning 18 and it was Christmas. So I decided to make her a tshirt quilt with some Maple Mountain High School cheerleading shirts of Kate's. I asked her mom if she had any other old ones I could use too. I bought fabric at Joann's the day after Black Friday, but it was fleece and not flannel like I wanted (because there wasn't any flannel in the colors I wanted). And her mom never got back to me, so I had to rethink my project. I decided to make a couple of pillows from the shirts and a jean quilt backed with fleece in MMHS colors. I think it turned out okay, but I would do so many things differently if I ever did something like this again. I am not a seamstress.

We wanted to go over early to give it to her, so she would still be in bed. The plan was for the kids to put the blanket on her then wake her up.

The plan didn't quite work, because the kids were too loud so Mary woke up before we got to her room. Oh well. She was happy, and the kids were happy.

Playing Jenga as a family. Jude would wait until the game would get really good, then run by and destroy it. That happened four times, then we quit playing. And strangely enough, when I play Jenga with only Jude, he doesn't knock it over. He actually plays by the rules. Weird.

Nate tried to keep Jude away from the game. It didn't work.

My aunt gave me and my mom gift cards to McDonalds for Christmas. I had to run to the temple on the 29th to help my mom with something, and she suggested we go to lunch. Since those gift cards were burning a hole in my purse, we went to Mickey D's. And now the gift cards are gone and we never have to go back. The kids had a good time though.

Jude eating with his eyes closed.

I'm naively thinking that no one else will get pinkeye. So silly.

On the 30th I drove to SLC with Gray so he could be part of a TV spot for Cahoots Fitness on KUTV's Fresh Living. It was adorable and exciting. I've never been in a TV studio before (I think).

Gray watching himself on the TV. He was very excited. I'll post the link to the clip in my next post, because it isn't assimilating well here.

We had our Primary meet your teacher activity on January 2nd. It was easy and fun, just the way every activity should be.

When we got home from the activity, I noticed that Colin now had pinkeye. Great. Grand. Wonderful. Perfect.

We had some friends from DC (Paul and Bren Larsen) come to visit with their children, and I sent the girls home with extra dress up shoes and princess crowns—because they appreciated the toys and my girl does not so much these days. Also, we had like 8 of those crowns, we could spare 2. Kenny tried on one of the crowns when his nieces weren't looking.

I love a baby in an In'N'Out hat. And I love when the children play nicely together with old toys. Jude is the cutest with the food. He stands behind the counter and says, "What you want?" It's adorable. But I'm not sure it made it onto the video.

They really were having fun. Gray just got mad because I told him to stop moving the kitchen around.

I saw this on Facebook and it made me laugh. So I sent it to Nate. His response, "When did you buy coffee?"

And this is from the 9th when Jude developed pinkeye in his other eye. Yay! (He originally got pinkeye a day or two after Colin.) Also, Nate had pinkeye last week too. His is gone now. (Or should I say, for now?) I have been washing bedding and towels daily for weeks. I have been sanitizing everything I can think of several times a day. My house is cleaner than it has ever been, and yet pinkeye continues to haunt me. So far my eyes have been fine, buy my mental state is suffering. My confidence in my ability to clean and mother is super low. I feel judged. I feel like a failure. Happy New Year.