There Are No R's in Rory's Vocabulary

I love the way Rory says her R's, or more accurately, how she doesn't say them. She works words around the R's, rather than pronouncing it correctly, and the results almost make her sound as though she has an accent. Here are some of my favorites.

Girl = Geyoo
Crackers = Quackeh's
Fork = Foik
Bear = Beya
Roller coaster = Woda coasteh
Cereal = Cee-oh
Squirrel = squiddel

It's gotta be somewhat awkward for a kid with R's being two out of the four letters of her name :).

The Summer of Soul-Sucking Projects

Sooo... as if our basement remodel wasn't enough of a headache to deal with, we decided it was time to redo our roof as well. It's been time for several years now, but some big windstorms in the Spring made it more necessary. It was supposed to be a project that took a week to ten days, cost a reasonable amount of money (as Teag was prepared to do the work himself), and BAM, new roof!

Instead, it took nearly three weeks, and cost nearly twice as much courtesy of some completely unable-to-foresee circumstances, like cedar shake shingles on the bottom layer, and the need to re-sheath our ENTIRE roof. CHA-Ching.

Needless to say, I don't think we'll be doing much in the way of projects for quite some time. This one may have just done us in for awhile.

Here is a picture of our house, before we started.

Notice how nice and pretty my flower beds are. They're completely destroyed now. At least it's the Fall.

The headache-causing cedar shingles

Teag was ridiculously filthy every time he came in the house

One thing that we were sincerely grateful for was all the help we received from friends and family. We had random people show up on evenings or Saturdays, sometimes planned and sometimes not, just because they saw Teag out there working by himself. Without their help, it would have taken at least another week, so we are immensely thankful for their willingness to spare their time on our behalf. I didn't get pictures of everybody, but here are some.

Yes, we even made our kids help, though don't let their smiles fool you. We thought Maisie was going to enact some kid Geneva Convention for the torture of children the way she carried on. She was also the only one to get injured by a nail (twice), but then proceeded to walk amongst them barefoot. Go figure.

Good thing everyone has current tetanus shots!

We completely filled our dumpster to the max, and we still have a bunch of stuff we'll have to haul to the dump ourselves. Goodbye nasty old roof.

And lastly, here is Teag, praising the heavens that the job is finally done.

The new roof looks fantastic, and we both like the black architectural shingles we chose. Just the beginning of several exterior updates we'd like to pursue. But probably not for awhile. Our sanity and our bank account can't handle anymore.

First Day of Preschool!

Well, we haven't actually gotten Rory fully potty-trained, but the saints at the preschool said we could bring her anyway, and they'd continue to work with her. And so, today was Rory's first day of preschool!

In the past, our kids have always jumped right into the swing of things, but Rory had a bit more trepidation about the whole thing, and tried to follow Teag out the door when he went to leave. I felt anxious for nearly the full 2 1/2 hours, hoping that things would go well. When we picked her up a few hours later she seemed very quiet about the whole thing, not really saying much, but she seemed happy enough. When I asked her what she did she said, "We ate snacks." Why am I not surprised that that would be the most memorable thing to her?

Throughout the rest of the day, we got a few more bits and pieces of what she did, including reenacting The Three Little Pigs. And shortly after we got home she said "I like school", so hopefully she'll continue to warm up to it.

Preschool is Rory Approved!

And just for fun, here's a little video that Rory asked me to record of her.

I really think preschool will be good for both Rory and her parents, so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best!

Labor Day Propiddy Trip

Due to the remodel and Finn our family wasn't able to do a whole lot of fun things this summer, so we made it a priority to get up to the propiddy for a final (and only) camping trip of 2012. And we were determined to make it fun, no matter what happened. Now saying something like, "No Matter What Happens", must be a call to the universe to dump a whole heap o' crap on your doorstep to try and impede your efforts at "fun".

Teag and I had planned to leave right after the two oldest girls got out of school on Friday, hopefully beat most of the holiday traffic, and be up to the property no later than 5:30. Then a faucet in the shower/tub combo broke in our trailer, so Teag said we had to stop at a trailer supply place on our way to buy a replacement part, or we couldn't use any water. Then it started to pour cats and dogs while Teag was furiously trying to crank down the top of the trailer, which suddenly didn't want to budge. The clock ticked, and we were lucky to be on the road by 4:45. A stop at the trailer store only delayed us further, and we were smack dab in the midst of horrible traffic. A trip that should have taken 2 hours took four, and we had to pull over somewhere in Orem so I could feed Finn. We arrived at 8:30, had to set up our trailer in the dark and wet (it had been raining there too), and try and get our kids settled into bed after eating a very late dinner.

But here's the thing: we laughed, we smiled, we joked about how ridiculous our situation was. And then after the kids were in bed, the adults all got together and had a mini hoe-down where my brother Kevin passed out a bunch of instruments and we improvised some songs from memory. It was great fun.

The next day, the men rigged up a zip line, and you would have thought the kids had died and gone to heaven.

Ready to Rock

The swing worked better than the harness for the little ones

Maisie on the downhill

Owen after his run

Even the tiny kids loved it, and kept begging for turns. We sent eight month old Millie down in the baby swing, but she seemed thoroughly unimpressed. Keep in mind that this zip line was probably a good 18 feet from the ground. Here's a video of Maisie on on of her turns.

Rory did surprisingly well throughout the weekend; no major potty accidents, and she was quite the ham. She made friends with just about everyone there.

Our kids never seemed to be at a loss for things to do. Especially with all their cousins nearby to keep them entertained.

Kid Hoe-Down

Coloring in the meadow

Even Finn seemed to have a good time, and was amazingly content for most of the weekend, as long as we kept him nice and bundled against the cold.

Even I got in on the zip line fun, though I felt bad that Teag had to tow me up to the top.

The point of this whole weekend was driven home pretty clearly; any situation like this will be what you make of it. We decided to have fun, so we did -- despite all the headaches and hassles that ensued. I need to remember this lesson more often. One thing I am disappointed about though; that we can't go again until next summer!

3 Month Finn!

These past three months have flown by so quickly, and yet I feel like Finn has really settled into our family. He has turned into one seriously chubby little guy, and has just started sleeping through the night about a week ago. In fact, Teag and I have nicknamed him "The Great Findini", because of this rather interesting trick he manages every night.

This kid loves to be swaddled, and yet by morning he manages to work himself completely out of his blankets, while leaving the "swaddle" intact.

Not really sure how he does it. One other new talent he's developed is one I'm fairly ambivalent about.

Rory was (and still is, somewhat) a thumb sucker. She has a huge callous on her thumb from it, and it makes me worried for her teeth. Luckily she seems to be growing out of it, but I guess only time will tell. I just worry about the thumb thing, but dang it if he doesn't look cute while doing it :).

Finn is extraordinarily playful and happy, and his temperament seems to be pretty mellow and content. He'll sit and talk and talk and talk to anyone who will talk back to him. I recorded a video of this, but for whatever reason, blogger won't let me post it. He's also a really great cuddler, which is good for me.

Watching Sunday Night Football with Dad

 At his recent checkup we learned that he's still kind of small in comparison to our other kids, but hopefully Teag's height genes will kick in at some point. As for now, his smallness works in our favor...

...as he can fit just about anywhere.

We're so glad we have Finn in our family. I have a feeling his personality will work as a nice counterpoint to the crazy hormones and drama our girls are sure to bring in a few years. And honestly I'm sincerely grateful to get the chance to parent at least one of each, to see just how different they really are.

Or even how similar.