Not a creature was stirring. . .wait... There's a mouse!

We had a little excitement in the house today. Maya was in the kitchen eating lunch while I was here in the office doing very important things like facebooking. Maya shouts that she thinks she just saw a mouse. So the adventure begins. We have it trapped in the family room, hiding under our sectional sofa. I have Maya get the broom - her job is to keep the mouse in the family room. This is a very big house - the last thing I want to be doing is searching to find a mouse the size of a golf ball. Once I get a visual on the mouse, I send Luke to get a bucket so we can try and catch this thing. I lift each part of the sectional and the mouse keeps evading us. Luckily the couch is pretty much the only thing in the room the mouse can get behind. I decide we need more hands. So I call my friend up the road and have her send her 2 boys down to help me catch the mouse. This should be the highlight of their day. Anyway, they get here, we give them each a bowl/bucket. I lift the biggest piece of the sectional where the mouse is hiding and on the first shot, Dustin catches the mouse under his bucket! Woo hoo! All in all it's been maybe 5 minutes. Not too shabby. Everyone checks out the mouse, but we have to be careful cuz it's a jumping mouse and keeps trying to get out of the bucket. We dump the mouse over the tall brick wall in our backyard.

I think now Luke will hopefully listen to Matt and I. We've been pleading with him to stop leaving his apple cores behind and between the sections of the sofa. Now that he's seen the mouse in our house and I can say "Hey, the mouse probably liked finding your apple. This is why Dad and I have been telling you to eat in the kitchen." Maybe he'll finally put it together and listen... Maybe. Here's some pics of our adventure.

My army of mouse catchers: Andrew, Maya, Dustin, and Luke

I had to post a pic of the room all cleaned up after the mess. I can't just post a picture of my house trashed. Cleans up pretty nice. We vaccuumed under the couches very thoroughly. Don't want to leave sny snacks behind for any more creatures.

The perfect storm

I'm not talking about weather. The image you are about to see is what happens when Dad/Matt puts away the clothes and the 5-year-old dresses himself.

The high water pants are in fact meant for our almost 2-year-old. They are a 2T. But this is something that Matt has always had trouble with. Don't get me wrong. I'm more than willing to deal with a few items of clothing put in the wrong drawer or closet if it means all the rest of the tons of clothes have been folded and put away as well. It's a small price to pay. Those sweats were Luke's when he was 2. Now they are Seth's, but were put in the wrong drawer. Luke is still learning how to match clothes. In his eyes, this looks just fine. If the sweats had actually been his size, it would've been a battle to get him to change into something that matches. Some school mornings can be difficult.

But this on a Saturday morning just made me laugh out loud.

Hurry! Quick! Would everyone just look happy for one picture?!?

It's been a very busy Christmas season (is there any other kind?). A little over a week until Christmas and I haven't even started our cards yet. No homemade cards happening this year. I'm gonna have to plan further ahead next year. . .Ha! Like that's gonna happen.

Anywho, we had ONE single night in our busy schedules to get a picture taken. A small window of time. Matt had taken the kids out to shop for gifts for me - can't argue with that. They got back a little after 5. The problem? Maya and I have to be dressed as angels and ready to leave by 5:30. That gives us less than 30 minutes to get everyone in somewhat coordinated outfits and set up the camera and timer and try to get a few decent shots (With little kids this is difficult and usually time consuming) then get Maya and I changed again and out the door. Mission Impossible?? Oh no, I was gonna make it happen one way or another. We got lucky and got some decent family shots right off the bat. The did have to try and keep Luke from doing silly shots. It seems to be the only kind he know how to do.

So for your pure entertainment (and my embarrassment) and our family journal, here's the silly shot we took in an effort to get it out of Luke's system and get a nice smile out of him. Please ignore the armpit stains on my shirt (luckily I had sewn the whole that was there earlier that day) and my undergarments hanging out as my arms are raised. I do realize I'm pointing these things out to you, but please ignore them. At least Seth is enjoying it.

Once we were satisfied with the family picture, I wanted to get one of the kids. So we tried. . .and tried. . .and tried. And when I realized I was starting to get frustrated and angry with the kids for not sitting still (since when does a 20-month-old sit still) I gave up. And with our Christmas cards I decided to go with realistic shots. This is how my kids are. If I had time to post all the shots it would make you laugh cuz it catches each of their personalities. So, no perfectly posed children, but they're still pretty darn cute. Even Luke and his super-hero punch pose.

After Maya and I left, the boys had a little more fun with the camera.

Merry Christmas!!!

Ward Christmas Party 2010

Our ward had a Christmas party the first weekend of December. The primary acted our a nativity while singing Away in a Manger. Maya was very happy to be an angel. (The tallest one.) Jen got to participate by singing Christmas Chopsticks (Twas the night before Christmas rhyme sung to the melody of chopsticks). 6 women singing this very fun song in harmony with a little bit of silly choreography was very fun (and difficult to keep a straight face). It was nice for Jen to get out from behind the piano and have an opportunity to sing. All in all a very fun night.

What a view

The front of our house faces west, so there are many nights we get to enjoy the beautiful sunsets* over the rolling hills of California. This is the view from our toyroom.

*Unfortunately, that means the back of our house which has the master bedroom and boys' bedroom windows is facing east and the sunrise each morning. We moved here in the summer time and the sun comes up very early, and the boys were starting to rise with the sun. Thanks goodness for nice thick curtains which were put up very quickly once we moved in.

Show me that pretty smile

The tooth fairy has been working overtime in the Wilde household. Maya lost 3 teeth in 3 weeks!! If it was october, we might mistake her for a Jack-o-latern. She's still the cutest!
She still can't bite an apple, but since the teeth aren't dangling in there, she doesn't have to be so careful. She likes the fact that food can fit into the holes (like pretzel sticks hanging out of her mouth). One of her favorite songs this Christmas was "All I want for Christmas is my Two front teeth."

No one's food is safe!

For those of you who have young children (now or in the past) you know that you cannot sit down and eat something without your little coming and helping him or herself to the food on your plate. Well, you can't leave your food unattended on the table and expect to come back to it later either.

I've learned how to make my favorite Jamba smoothie at home. (Saves a lot of money.) Everyone loves when I make up a batch. Unfortunately for Maya and Luke, they haven't quite learned that they can't leave their goodies on the table. Seth is our little smoothie addict. Here's a few occasions of him finishing off Maya's and Luke's smoothies while Maya and Luke were playing in the next room. He loves the stuff! (In the top left picture - fruit bits from the smoothie are all over his face including his eyebrow. We need to work on aim.)

Seth has also become coordinated and strong enough to move our chairs around the kitchen to get to whatever he wants. This Christmas season there has been a pretty much constant supply of treats on our counter and Seth pulls up a chair and helps himself. Chex mix and cookies have become the main source of nutrition for him over the past 2 weeks. We pop him a clementine or banana whenever we can.

Going Fishin'

This fall, Matt took Maya and Luke fishing for the first time. The kids loved it! It became a regular Wednesday outing for a few weeks since Wednesdays are early release days and Seth would be napping. It left me with a nice quiet house for a couple of hours, so I'm all for it.

Luke usually comes home sopping wet with lake water. He now has a pair of sneakers that are just for fishing trips so I don't care how wet and dirty they get.

On their second or third trip Maya caught a fish. She baited her own line, cast it out by herself and caught her very first fish! A small-mouthed bass we think. (There was a nature photographer there who said he thought that's what is was. We looked it up and it matches the pictures in the books, but who knows? I'm no fish expert) She named it lucky and she'll explain why in the video.

Crazy Hair Day

Alright, I'll try to get these done in order. Time to think back.

September and October were filled with school during the week and soccer and church on the weekends. My kids love soccer as you've seen in previous posts.

School is keeping the kids nice and busy (but not too busy). Maya's quite a book worm and reads through several chapter books a week. At school she's really gotten into Tether ball. I haven't played that game since I was in elementary school. It sounds like it's making a comeback. Luke is doing a fantastic job learning to write all his letters and numbers. He's starting to sound out words. Pretty soon he'll be reading too.

The school had a spirit week and one of the days was crazy hair day. The kids had fun with it. Here's a few pics.

Of course with crazy hair comes crazy faces.

Slacker!

I am such a slacker. I didn't get around to writing a single post in the month of November. Now, once again I have a lot of catching up to do. The days are so busy with the kids and once I get them into bed my brain doesn't want to have to think anymore, especially if it has to use energy to come up with something interesting to say for each post. We'll try to do better.

I'll start with something funny that Luke said yesterday.
It's a Saturday morning and we're just waking up. Luke asks Matt to get him some breakfast, so Matt gets up. Before he goes he sits back on the bed to give me some hugs and kisses when Luke jumps onto Matt's back and says: "I'm in the love ball too."

That boy cracks me up!