Homework Blues

I dont remember having half as much homework a night as Noah does. He always has like 4 different papers and subjects a night. It is hard for him to focus on anything when his brothers and sisters are playing and having fun and he is stuck doing boring homework. I think tonight he hit his breaking point. He was crying and saying what a bad day it was because he had soooo much homework and it was going to take forever. On top of his homework, he has an essay that is due tomorow for a contest to win free snowboard lessons. He really wants to get these lessons but he didnt want to do the essay. I had to break out the big speech on this one about how nothing worth having is easy and if we really want something we have to work at it and blah blah.. you get the picture. He finally calmed down and went to work. About 10 minutes later he came down for a final inspection and this is what he had written-grammer and all

(NO LIE)

Im Noah Lomu and I really want to snowboard. I came from Mesa, AZ were it never ever snows and its my first winter in UT. I cant pay becaus PC (park city) has poeple loaded compared to AZ poeple. So pleas please let me snow board.

I was laughing so hard and it made him cry. I think I hurt his feelings, but I could not hold it in. He is so honest and literal about everything-he doesnt sugar coat it. I just had to journal this story. It was just what I needed to finish out the rest of the nights homework with him. We did the essay (Bill actually helped him finish) , put finishing touches on his book report, did a practice spelling test, did his 2 sided math sheet, and finished it off with a comprehension sheet that has to be done with a parent (2 sided) and now its past 10 and he has to read for 20 minutes. Its crazy. Poor Lani-I forget that she also has homework (reading) and that is starting to not get done. I dont know what Im gonna do when she starts having more homework and then Tyson starts school. AHHHH. I was so busy with Noah and Bill wasnt here, when it was bed time for the boys, I told them to get in bed and I will come tuck them in after I finished what I was helping Noah with at that time. Of course, I forgot and I noticed about an hour later that it was completly quiet upstairs. I went to check on them and both boys were in their beds and fast asleep with their blankets over their heads. They have been into "scaring" me when I walk into their room. I think they were waiting to scare me and they both crashed. I should of taken a picture. Its things like this that remind me how lucky I am to be blessed with such sweet kids. The whole day of craziness and yelling and nagging and crying and fighting are erased and I am filled with such joy and love for my kids. Its funny how that happens right when you need reminding the most.

UPDATE!!!

Today was Averys Dr appointment for her head and everything is A-OK . I dont know the exact medical term that was used, but in simple terms, the soft spot on the top of her head closed too soon and its causing a ridge to grow upward. If you feel the top of her head in this one spot, there is a large bump. I never noticed it before, but because of it, her forhead protrudes slightly. Luckily, her case is mild and doesnt require surgery. She will go back when she turns one to make sure all is growing properly. I am so happy that she will not need the helmet. YEA!!!! I have not liked one pediatrician that I have ever had-im being dead serious, not one. I cant say enough good things about the one I have here. She is attentive and thourough and is really interested in the kids well being. The Dr. I saw this morning said the thing that Avery has is rarly caught this early. What a blessing to know that if Averys case was more severe, she would have caught it early enough. If I have to say one good thing about Utah, I guess it would be that I FINALLY have a great Pediatrician!!!! Yea Dr....BOO Snow!!

Thanksgiving

We have been home for 2 days now and I finally have some time to blog. The laundry is all washed(but not put away) and all the junk from the car is put away. When you go on a trip for that long, its like packing your entire house and then moving back in when you come home. Hard work, but soooo worth it to see family. (I spoke too soon, the baby just woke up. Be back later)

What a week. We left after the kids got out of school on Friday and rolled in about 2 am. Thank goodness for TV screens and new movie releases.

On Sat. we met the Lomu family at the park for a picnic. They had a Neds sub and tons of good food. YUM!! The kids played and had so much fun being able to play outside again. I broke out the shorts and flip flops for this trip. It was so good to see all the family again.

Ana and Sophie.

Drew and Avery werent quite sure about each other, but by the end of the picnic, they were buds!!!

Grandma got a new puppy (Harry Potter Lomu) and Lani would not leave the poor thing alone. Her and Leila followed him everywhere. I bet he was glad when we left.

This girl is the cutest thing. She never will smile at me and she is just now starting to even acknowledge my existence. I was so camera happy at the park and I got some really cute shots of Sophie in action. She is just too cute not to take pictures of.

Sophie Moody

I attempted a photo shoot with Caleb and Tyson. I was trying some new things out with my camera with different lighting and settings. This one of Caleb is my favorite.
These two were wrestling and I snapped this one. So cute.

Now, this kid I could take pictures of all day. He is the most photogenic kid I have ever seen. Those big eyes and huge dimples are too hard to resist. I think I took about 50 pictures of him. This one is my all time favorite.
Drew Taylor

On Sunday, 8:00 church and loungin the rest of the day. I actually cooked dinner and made cinnamon rolls for the whole family. Im not much of a cook, but it turned out pretty good. I used my sister-in-laws homemade lasagna recipie-so good!!! In our house, Sunday = PJ's. After church the kids race to get into their jammies-its the best.

Lani and Mady.

Monday night we went to Bills counsin, Tusi's, daughters 1st birthday party. In the Tongan culture, the 1st birthday is a HUGE event. Tusi had Moki's cater the party. This is one of my favorite places EVER to eat. If you have never been there-you MUST go. Its on the corner of Val Vista and Southern-in the Safeway shopping center. We couldnt stop eating, it was so good.

Bill and the birthday girl, Melenani Lutui.

(she was real happy about her birthday!!)

Bills cousins wife, Crystal is a chef at the Ritz Carlton. You know there will always be good food when Crystal is involved. Her and her sister made this amazing cake. I just had to take a picture of it.
The customary pig. Yuck. This is one custom I will never get used to (or eat)
Bills cousin Tusi. This guy is HUGE and Avery wasnt quite sure what to think of him. It was such a fun night. We always have a good time with this side of the family. Thanks Tusi and Pua!!


On Tuesday night, My parents took us all to Chuck E Cheese. Places like this are the best. You give you kids some tokens and you dont see them the rest of the night. This place was particularly nice because they stamp your hand and your kids cant get out unless they are with the stamped parent. Its nice knowing that if I lose track of one of my kids they arent going to be kidnapped or lost of anything. We also ran into some fellow bloggers. That was a nice surprise.

Tom and my Dad got in some Bball

Noah was the ticket KING. After he got his prizes he said "that was a rip off, I could of gotten this at the dollar store."
We couldnt find Caleb and Britney happend to glance down to find this.

I guess when your tired, your tired. This kid can fall asleep ANYWHERE.


On Wed. night be went bowling with Bills family. I havent been bowling in years. It was so fun and the kids had a blast. I only have pictures of our kids because Bills family are all camera phobes. I tried, but once the camera went up, they all scatter. They told me if I put any pictures of them on my blog they would kill me.

Tyson thought he was so good because he knocked the pins down everytime. I should have played with bumpers too!!!!

This was Ana;s first time bowling. She did pretty good and had really good form.

Lani wanted to be like the grown ups and not use bumpers or the ball roller thingy. She tired it once and didnt like it so much.



Thanksgiving day was full of food, family, and at my house, white trash video games. I have never even heard of this Guitar Hero game before, but apparantly its huge. After about 1 song I wanted to jump through the window. I like all types of music, but the 80's hard rock does not fall in that category.
Curtis thought he was pretty good.


My mom watched Finn while Trent and Jackie went to the ASU game. He couldnt stand the music either.


My parents surprised the kids with a bounce house and some new bikes and scooters. They didnt leave the outside the entire day and night. This is all the kids minus the 2 babys and Madison who wasnt there that night.

We were lucky enough to get to go to both familys Thanksgiving dinners. I think I ate a weeks worth of food in one day. Then the guys all dogged their familys for the game. (my ticket fell through or I would have dogged too!!!!)

On Friday,I am usually up at 4 ready to battle it out for whatever great deal comes my way, but this year I was really dissapointed at the sales. Not too interesting. SO, I slept in until 7 and went with my sister, Stacy to a couple places. There were no crowds at all-I was surprised.

Later that afternoon, my family got together to have a "Family Prepardness" meeting. These are always good to remind us to stay on top of our year supply and 72 hour kits.

Then it was time for round 3 or 4 (I lost count)

Trent and Jackie (she is going to love me for posting this)

The kids played and played and crashed so early, which was a good thing because my parents bought the Wii for Christmas and broke it out early for the adults to play. That game system is seriously the coolest thing. I played ping pong with Stacy and I was totally sore the next morning. This might be on my christmas list!!! ha ha

All the grandkids. It was pure craziness trying to take a decent picture. I guess I shouldnt have waited until the end of the night when they were all dirty and hair a mess.

Such a fun time with both familys. I cant wait to come back at christmas time. The kids really miss their cousins and Grandparents. Thanks for a fun week Malones and Lomus!!!!


Sadly on Saturday it was time for the long journey home.

NOTE TO SELF: Dont wait until the day you are leaving to take family pictures and when you are leaving in 2 hours and havent even packed yet. Because if you do, you might wake up to...

A cranky husband who just learned his schedule was being thrown off because I wanted to take pictures

And...

A sick baby who wont smile or look at the camera. I seriously only got 2 pictures of her looking at the camera and one of her smiling.

She looks so bad in this picture with those huge dark bags. She doesnt do well sleeping in the port a crib.

We had to bribe the kids to smile and be good for the camera. The thing was, we only had one sucker and it caused a lot of fights.

The kids were kinda all in their own worlds most the time. (except Lani who was posing it up for the camera the whole time)

Lani loves animals more than anything. She found this cat wandering the Temple grounds and picked it right up. Sorry Lani, but sadly we will NEVER have a cat.

This was the ONLY picture of Avery smiling and it happend to be in a picture that no one else was looking at the camera. I just thought this was the cutest picture of her and I had to blow it up.

Whew, that was the longest post ever.

Luckily, I was ahead of the game this year and I decorated before we left on our trip. It was nice to come home to a Christmas house. Last night we did Santa letters for family night and today it is snowing so Tyson thinks its Christmas. Im excited for this Christmas season to try and start some new traditions and teach my kids the true meaning of Christmas. We are on the fence about where to have Christmas. Its hard to lug all our stuff to AZ for Christmas and then lug it all back. Do we go for Christmas or leave the day after and stay for New Years? That is the million dollar question.

We already have a scrooge story for this season. Sunday morning when Tyson woke up, he didnt see Bill in bed so he went to the garage and opened the garage door to see if Bills car was here. He didnt shut the garage door when he was done. Someone broke into our garage and took Bills power drill, the boys big remote control hummer, Bills paint gun (but not the tank) and worst of all, they took Bills shot gun. I have no idea how they even saw that. Bill had it hidden on top of the garage shelves out of the kids sight and reach. Weird random things. Its scary knowing someone has his gun. Is this something we need to report?? Im not sure. So, we are all bummed out about that. Not a nice thing to happen during the season.

Anyway-thats all folks!!!!

Merry Christmas.

HELP

Ok, so I changed my page and put a picture in the header..Why in the world is it so dang big??? How do I make it my normal size header and still have a picture in it?? Any help would be great. Thanks!!!

Too Good to be True...

It was a nice thought, but as always its too good to be true. I guess there is always the Fiesta Bowl. Bye Bye Roses!!! Maybe next year.

GO DEVILS

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

I am in Az right now hanging with the Fam and loving every minute of it. I really missed the good ol Az heat in November. I wont be posting any pictures until I get home, so this post will have to do until after Thanksgiving. For journaling purposes, I wanted to say all the things that I am grateful for. First is FAMILY. I cant even beging to say how much I love my family. I have the best kids ever. They are all healthy, happy and FULL of energy. Each and every one of my kids has their own individual personalitys. They are all so different and I love it. Noah is smart and literal and helpful and kind and so tender hearted. Lani is friendly, a good helper with her little sister, sweet and so kind, loves animals and makes a friend anywhere and everywhere she goes. Tyson is the funniest kid alive, he has the best smile and the best laugh, he is a good helper and wants to be just like his Dad. Caleb is sweet and playful and happy and is always on the go, he loves his big brother Tyson and follows him everywhere. Avery is mild and happy and easy going, she loves her siblings and smiles any time she sees them, she is funny and already has a great, playful personality. I am thankful that I have a husband who is willing and able to work and provide for our family. I have the opportunity to live in the most beautiful place and be surrounded by Gods beauty. My parents are wonderful and helpful and they love my kids to peices. I am blessed to have a great mother in law whom we all love and the kids adore. I am really focused on family right now because I have missed them all so much and I am so happy to be here.

Im so pathetic, but I already put up all my Christmas stuff before I left so we could come home and jump into the Christmas holiday. It was weird decorating a week before Thanksgiving, but I know it will be nice when we get home. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving full of family, food and fat pants. I know for sure that I will be ready for the first of the year to come so I can start my "no more babies diet" This means that since I am having no more babies to ruin my body, its time to get back into pre-baby shape. So let me tell you that I am livin it up this holiday season becasue this will be the last time for a long time that I will be able to touch anything that contains sugar, fat or anything that remotly tastes good. Have a great week and...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

A Day in the Life of a 9 Month Old

Avery is 9 months old.

Its crazy how fast a month goes.

Here is what our Monkey has been up to.

(Besides being cute)

Avery has learned that if she wants to play with something, all she has to do is grab it. Caleb doesnt think its funny. This girl loves to explore and gets into EVERYTHING!!!!

Avery has some new chompers. Her 2 top teeth came in at the same time on Nov.1 (she has yet to bite-what a good girl)They are the cutest teeth, they are spaced way far apart. We joke that she is gonna be a looker...helmet head, gap teeth and a butt chin. What a sweetie.

She has learned to throw quite the fit. She is so bi-polar. One minute she will be screaming and the next second, she is smiling. All you have to do is pay attention to her and she is all yours. You walk away and she lets you know play time is not over.


We love her big, bright eyes.
We just love this little monkey so much. She makes us laugh and we are so glad she is a part of this family.
She is the most playful baby I have ever had. She loves to play pat-a-cake and eensie-weensie spider. Just today she learned to do pat-a-cake herself. She has learned to wave hi, bye and night night, and does it all the time. She loves to stand, her favorite is to stand looking out the window. She loves her brothers and her sister and loves to watch their every move. She loves to snuggle and suck her thumb. She loves real food and wants nothing to do with baby food anymore. She does not like to be left with someone that is not her mom or dad. She loves me the most (this wont last long so im eating up the attention) She is my smallest baby by far-only 18 pounds. She makes the perfect last addition to this family. We love you Aves.

Photo opp..

This is kinda late, but 2 weeks ago, my kids had Mon. and Tues. off of school, so we decided to do something fun..and free!!! My kids have never been to the Salt Lake Temple, so we took them to see all the neat stuff Temple Square has to offer. We went to the Museum and the kids loved it. It was neat to see them so interested and loving church history. Noah was particularly obsessed with the pioneer trail and how far they walked.

While we were there, I decided to see if I could get some cute pictures. I sware its almost impossible to get all 5 looking at the camera at the same time. So, I guess this was just a trial run and we will try again soon.

Here are some of the pictures that "turned out".

Dr. Visit

So Avery woke up in the middle of the night burning up. I gave her some Tylanol and put her back to sleep. She slept for about an hour and then was awake until 4. She finally went back to sleep only to wake up with another super high fever. I have been so blessed with her-she has not been sick her whole life. This is her first "real" sickness. I think ive only given her Tylanol one other time for her teething. She literally laid on me and didnt move for over 2 hours-not even a smile. I gave her more medicine and put her down for a nap. I went to check on her after and hour and she was just laying in her crib staring at nothing-and still burning up. I took her in to the Dr. and they think its just a virus of some sort because she doesnt have any other symptoms. They first thought it was a bladder infection because right now she has the worst diaper rash ive ever seen. (we are trying new food and its causing diareaha-yikes!!) They had to put in a baby cathater to get some pee out-poor baby, it was so sad. But luckily it came back negative. So hopefully this will run its course and she will feel better soon. So while we were in the office, the Doctor had some concerns about the shape of her head. When I took her in for her 6month check up, she had said the same thing so they did some x-rays and they all looked OK. The Dr. said that sometimes the soft spots in babies heads will close to early and the head will continue to grow, but not have anywhere to go so it grows oblong like. I thought since things looked ok and the sutures were still open, that she would grow out of it. Apparently not. The Dr. is still seeing some weirdness in her head. I dont see it so much, but Bill can. So, she is sending her to see a specialist and on the referal form it says "Helmet Therapy". My sweet little monkey might have to wear a helmet to correct it. Poor sweet thing. I know that its something she has to do and its for the best, but I just have a hard time with that idea.That just doesnt seem all too comfortable-and she would have to sleep in it and only be able to take it off for about 1 hour a day. Im still praying that its not as bad as the doctor thinks it is, but I guess we will see. Our appointment is on the 28th-so I will keep you posted.

On a completly seperate note, I have decided not to go private. I have thought a lot about this and have gone back and forth, but I think I will stay public. One of the things that I love most about this blog is that I can write down my feelings and my experiences and all the crazy things that we go through so that we can remember them. I love that everybody does that too. I love being able to see what my friends are up to and how their familys are growing and what things they are experiencing. I am also an admitted blog stalker. I love jumping from blog to blog checking out how different and similar other peoples lives are. I can honestly say that from doing this, I have learned a lot. I have found links to some really useful websits. If these were private, I would not have been able to do that. Im not saying that my blog is full of wisdom and useful information, but I would feel like a hypocrite if i blocked mine while looking at everyone else's. I know that scary things can happen, but as long as im careful about the info I put on here, then I think it will be OK. So on that note, I want to share some cool websites that I have found. I hope that these people dont mind me spreading the word, but they are too good not to share. My fav. cooking websites are: ourcookingsite.blogspot.com, pickypalate.blogspot.com, and pimpmydinner.blogspot.com. These have some really useful recipies and some supper yummy ones. I have already tried a bunch out and they rock. So, check them out. I also encourage everyone to do the same thing-share the cool things you find or learn from these blogs. This is really such a cool concept and if we use it for good, then it can only get better.

Thrifty

What do you get when you only have $80 to spend on snow clothes for your entire family....?

Well, if you shop at the coolest thrift store in all of Park City/Heber you get... 5 pairs of bibs, 1 pair of snowboard boots, 3 heavy duty, awesome, snow jackets, 3 pairs of snow gloves, and dont forget the ugliest, early 90's flower, star snowsuit for Avery (at only 3 bucks i dont really care much what its lookin like. You really gotta click on the picture for the full effect.)

And I owe it all to my super cool hubby who went to stand in line early to get it all. It was hard to let him go and pick it all out with out me seeing it first, but I was so impressed with what he came home with. Thanks Vili. So now my kids have all the winter stuff they need to have a fun winter in the blasted snow. Now we will just see how often it gets used because mommy never wants to go out in the snow because she is too warm sitting by the fire place drinking hot chocolate. Good times. Only 7 more months until summer. YEA!!!

Scary sight

What is this scary sight you ask???

Is it our mousy friends?

No way, we caught him last night, thanks to a good ol mouse trap.

(shh..dont tell Caleb and Tyson)

This is what happens when you wait too long to cut your familys hair. The dark hair is Bills alone. I should have taken a before picture because his hair was soooo long and shaggy. He was threatening me to go to Bikini Cuts if I didnt cut his hair soon. Now my family is all cute and clean cut. At least for the next month anyway!!!!

Mourning

It is not a happy time in the Lomu house right now. We are all still pouting about ASU's loss on Sat. night. I know its only one loss, but it was their game and they threw it away. And what makes me even madder is.. that I even care. Its football for cryin out loud. But I do care and that will never change. They could be 1-8 and I would still be cheering on my Devils. We still love you ASU. We will be cheering for you next week all decked out in our ASU gear and hoping for another win.

GO DEVILS!!!