September 2013

Here's what life was like for the Penrods in September of 2013:

On Labor Day, Clara and I went for our first mother/daughter pedicure. It was fun and I wouldn't mind making it a regular date. But, we haven't gone since, so maybe when she's a little older. In true Clara fashion, she wanted to bring all the stuff home to share it with Hazel. And when we got home, she gave Hazel a pedicure. Clara is always thinking of others and sharing. She's a good older sister... and reminds me of Emily.

We got a new table for the patio so we ate a few meals outside. It was a little warm, but still fun to eat outside. I love eating outside. 

:::clara is so messy when she eats ice cream :::my dad found some red glasses to be like clara :::i babysat some friend's kids and hazel stole the little boy's boots and wore them all over :::utah peaches :::i videoed my dad for fhe telling a brief history of him :::made oreo treats - like rice krispy treats. good, but too rich and next time, i mixed oreos with rice krispies and it was amazing. :::nap time in the nude :::i spy a little explorer :::i make lists for everything, so hazel started making lists and writing on my calendar :::two suckers from the bank for a girl that dressed herself :::piano practice in the nude (see the trend?) :::i love little random things like this that i find around my house, evidence of little creative minds. :::

I have been wanting to put the girls in the same room, but wanted to wait until we actually had beds for them. Clara has been sleeping on my old bed, which belonged to Rachel or Emily before that, since she was two. The bed was old and was just a bed. No headboard/footboard. So I decided it was time to break down and buy them real beds. I found the mattresses on sale a while before at Costco, found mismatched box springs for cheap at Spencer's and got their beds at Restoration Hardware. I looked and looked for beds that a.) I liked, b.) weren't super expensive and c.) were sturdy. When the beds showed up, they were nothing like I had in mind (I should probably not buy furniture online). The color, texture and size were way off. But, once I got over that, I decided I love them. The girls loved watching the delivery guys assemble them. I didn't have all their bedding the day the beds came, but they were so excited to sleep in their new beds so I let them sleep on blankets. Hazel rolled off a few times, more so the first few weeks, but survived her falls. Sometimes she'd come in our room, sometimes Clara would get up and help her. And more often than that, they would end up in the same bed. That has gotten a little less, but it makes me smile every time I walk in and see them sleeping together.  

:::empty room, getting ready for the beds :::we found this tiny little desert sonoran toad at our rental. i got it for clara to have as a pet, but eventually she let it go because i don't think we knew how to take care of it. :::i bought a ton of tomatoes to juice and freeze :::beads at goodwill :::out with the old, in with the new :::catching food for the pet toad :::another race :::we spent a LOT of time at our rental in september. we had to kick our our tenant and then get the place clean. it was so disgusting, it made me sick to my stomach. on this day, we at pizza on the sidewalk in the front :::neat cloud :::pretty sky :::more bug hunting :::i love morning snuggles in my bed :::we got the exterior of our rental painted - lots of money but it looks great :::clara's friend from school over for a playdate :::i got these desks from my dad. clara took over and didn't waste any time making a mess around them. she loves office supplies just like her mother. :::ugh, we had a leak in our shower. i thought for sure we were going to have to rip out our entire shower, but no, just needed the pipe replaced and a little drywall repair.

Dinner at Smashburger. We go out to eat way too much, but man it's fun. I love how Clara and Hazel rarely smile together. One is smiling, the other is being silly. Then the opposite. 

:::reading in the nude (i wasn't joking about the trend) :::cute little shoes :::hazel pulled up a chair to watch cartoons :::my itty bitty strawberry from zupa's. i almost complained :::donuts for breakfast, why not? :::hazel colored this and said, 'look, an apple' so i added the stem. :::that pose :::adoring maren, my friend melissa's baby :::hazel loves her too :::playdate with olivia :::we went to dinner for beka's birthday and the husbands were watching a game on their phones at the table. seriously. :::then we went and got frozen yogurt. i love this girl and what a great friend she is to me. she overlooked my bratty self in the beginning and is always cognizant of when i might need a phone call. :::drawing party at angela's :::watch out, world :::another sleepover in clara's bed :::hazel just couldn't resist the urge to try out clara's glasses

:::miss pigtails - ack, that face and those cheeks :::climbing out of her bed :::i bought a mattress pad for clara from costco and by the time i realized i should have bought two, they stopped carrying them. but i found the exact same one, new, on e-bay. i was pretty excited about that. :::i finally got two of everything: box spring cover, mattress pad, sheets and bed spreads. everything is white and i'm supposed to be adding some color into the mix, but that hasn't happened yet. :::when i get my oil changed, i like to run across the road for some quick shopping. when i went to cross the road, i saw this giant dust/wind storm headed straight toward me. luckily, i got back to my car before it came. :::oh, clara. :::hazel in the corner. she takes putting her nose in the corner very literal. :::mini peach pies. they were pretty tasty, but a lot of work. :::park :::chalk :::family portraits by clara :::clara LOVES our friends little car. this night, she was running alongside some friends and got run over by it. :/ she hit her head on the asphalt pretty hard, but was mostly okay. i think it really scared the boys, who obviously didn't do it on purpose. :::clara had two parties in one day and wrapped the gifts herself. :) :::i was SUPER busy with work deadlines, so while she was at the first, i found a starbucks and sat and worked ::: party #2 was a tea party and the girls got make up, dress up and fake hair. i didn't even recognize her with her hair like that :::i think some of my favorite ways to discipline is by making my girls touch noses on the piano bench when they can't get along. i'm a big fan of kids learning how to solve problems on their own and this makes the process funnier for everyone. it takes the love bench to a whole new level.

:::tiny little red apples from the fruit market :::celebrated my dad's birthday :::dinner outside again :::teaching fhe in the nude :::and all about clara in 1st grade

Here's the picture Clara colored for my dad for his birthday. It's her and him at the temple. That girl is so awesome. 

Sometimes I get crazy ideas. One of my crazy September ideas was that we really need to buy some land for a cabin. I found some we could maybe afford in Young and we took a day trip before church (one benefit of 1:30 church) to go check it out. It was nothing really that we were expecting/hoping for (not super accessible, too much scrub brush) but we still had fun hanging out. top left: a tree at the site; top right: driving from Young to Roosevelt, we stopped for the view; bottom left: it was so bizarre to see pine trees and cactus all together; bottom right: we woke the kids up early to be able to make it back for church and hazel definitely needed a nap to make up for it. I hope someday we will have a cabin. Jason and I would rather have a cabin than a bigger/nicer house. Oh the memories we could make! :)

Goodman Reunion 2013

As usual, we headed up to Jason's family reunion for Labor Day weekend. On the way up it was really rainy and traffic was going really slow. However, the RV in front of us seemed to be going faster than everyone else and then locked their brakes when they tried to slow down. We heard and saw them skidding off the road. I thought for sure they were going to flip over. Lucky for them, and unbeknownst to me, there was a dirt embankment that caught their front right wheel as they were about to tip. It was a little wild.

Anyway. We made it safe. I love the mountains. It is so clean and so beautiful. I love the sky, especially when there is the contrast of white clouds.  

We spent the weekend exploring, visiting and just hanging out.

Every year there is a serious game of water balloon volleyball. It's a lot of fun to watch. When this years game was over, someone tried to dump the bucket of water from the balloons on the other team. Clara was in the wrong place and got most of the water on her. I think it was so cold and took her off guard that it scared her and she started crying. I was trying to get pictures of the water, because I knew it was coming, but got Clara's sad face instead. 

 

The kids got their faces painted. And then they painted some of the adult's faces. Clara did a cat for me, if you can't tell.

On Sunday night, there is always a program/talent show around the big giant bonfire that all the pyros in the family build. There are a lot of recurring skits and they make me laugh every year. Jason's cousins Rodney and Brandon to "Beans" that Connie narrates (top left). This year they were especially hilarious. Uncle Randall always does Poncho Villa (top right) that makes me laugh so hard. And there is always the "If I were a Goodman..." song (bottom right). They had the kids come up and help.

August 2013

Clara had to wear her hat to the eye doctor || eye doctor fun (benefits of personally knowing the doctor) || One morning I woke up feeling like I hadn't slept well at all. See that tiny space in between Clara and Hazel? No wonder I felt like I hadn't slept well || splash pad with Heather W. and her girls || fun with Grandma Penrod || One night we got together with some friends from high school and went to dinner at Tanzy. While I loved the company, I'd never go back to the restaurant. The food was not very good and on top of that, it was super overpriced || Clara with her lasso on a horse || Baby Avery || Uncle Lamar and Hazel after Avery's baby blessing || Me in a borrowed vintage dress that Jason actually liked... what you can't see in the picture is the gum that fell out of Hazel's mouth in the car on the way to the baby blessing. We looked every where for it, I even searched the car while Jason took the girls into church. I found it at the end of Sacrament when I went to lift Hazel off my lap. Apparently it was in between the layers of her dress and then squished out onto my dress. It came off my dress fine but I threw Hazel's away since the outer layer was like a chiffon and gum was mashed into every little hole. Not worth cleaning!

After the blessing, we brought Jordyn home to sleep over. We spent most of the day swimming at my mom's where I continued to admire my new swimsuit and Lilly scaled the fence, ran across the roof and jumped into the pool. We also painted toenails and decorated cupcakes. We sure have missed Jordyn since she moved up to Utah.

My dad mowing the lawn || My dad with my girls || I knew a lot of people having babies in a very short amount a time and I dealt with some of the emotions from miscarrying by shopping and shopping and shopping for baby clothes. I found some cute stuff || My kids, my dad and my mom for my mom's birthday || Clara loves doing the lesson for FHE. This time, Hazel was her prop and she was telling her to be happy and helping her smile || Annual splash contest at the ward pool party (Jason didn't win this year) || Playing with her food || Flying airplanes || Nursery friends (where Megandee was nursing a doll, Hazel was guarding the drum and Liv remained an innocent by-stander) || IKEA || kale lentil soup || I watched Jessie's little girl, Kimberly one day. Hazel loved having a little playmate || sugar cookies with Brighton || Ever since reading the Boxcar Children, Clara has wanted to run away. Not necessarily to get away from us, but to see what it's like to live on her own. Jason made a deal with her that as soon as she can run faster than him, she can run away because then she can outrun bad guys. So, they race around the cul-de-sac on Saturday mornings || Shopping with Clara || a picture Clara drew on the backside of Angela's foam board

Holding baby Avery. Seeing my girls interact with babies makes me want one so bad. They adore babies and need a little sibling. This is also the night I tried to take Keirsten dinner, only to arrive and realize I didn't have the chicken salad for the chicken salad croissants! Rather than drive 20 minutes home and 20 minutes back, I went and picked up pizza from Little Caesar's. Don't worry, I took dinner another night to make up for it || This picture is gross, but funny. Angela had to cook some steak for work and she let us eat it. Hazel chewed on her piece like it was a piece of gum for about 20 minutes. Ha ha || being silly || being messy || Hazel and I went and met my dad for lunch || cruising (no clothes and sun glasses) || coconut curry lentils that I made and were SO good || getting creative || hmmmm, where does she learn to dress like that? || I bought a nightstand and dresser from IKEA and it took me forever to get the nightstand put together (Jason did the dresser while we were in Utah almost two months later...) || just eating a giant carrot || Clara set up a desk in the living room to do home work and set one up for Hazel right next to her's. She is such a good big sister || Look how loose that tooth is! It was hanging by a thread and then two seconds later, it fell out

I can't stop taking pictures of our sunsets. They are incredible. I love the AZ skies. || I threw a baby shower for my friend Sarah and all the food turned out so good. We had Caesar salad, a pesto pasta salad, fruit, spinach artichoke dip with, a salad with cheese, apple pears, spicy candied pecans and gorgonzola, Oreo truffles and rice krispy treats. Just sayin'...

When Clara is in school, Hazel and I spend a lot more one-on-one time together. It brings back a lot of memories from when Clara was this age. She makes a lot of really big messes but also makes me smile so much.

Glasses

Towards the end of Kindergarten, Clara told me she had to move to the front of the classroom to see. Just as summer was coming to an end, I finally took Clara into the eye doctor and wasn't surprised to hear she needed glasses. Our eye doctor, and my good friend Matt, called me afterwards to make sure I was doing okay because he knows it can be hard when a child needs glasses. Is your eye doctor that nice? :) Anyway, I explained to him that I think kids with glasses are mostly darling and I was always jealous of the kids that got to wear glasses in high school. We started hunting and realized it is very difficult to find glasses for a small face. After going to multiple Costcos, Target and Wal-Mart, we finally found some at the store of the company where our doctor works. I was hoping to avoid that, thinking it'd be more expensive, but it was actually a really great deal. We ordered them and waited. It was the first time I've ever had to buy glasses for anyone so I learned a lot. The first thing Clara said to me when she got her glasses was, "Mom, I can see your zit." As we were leaving the place and I told her she needed to be wearing them most of the time, she acted annoyed and completely surprised that she had to actually wear them. She quickly learned how useful they are and quickly put them on without me asking or reminding. The day she got them, she told Hazel, "They will only replace them one time without us having to pay for it so I have to take care of them." Then she wouldn't let Hazel play with them. I was glad she understood the importance of taking care of them from day one and understood what our warranty covered. She looks absolutely darling in them, but I know how cruel kids are so I asked her what she would do if someone made fun of her. She replied, without hesitation, "I'd blow bubbles with my spit and walk away." Man, I love her.

Back to School 2013

August means it's time to go back to school. We had our 3rd annual fancy dinner the night before school started. On the menu: steamed broccoli, garlic mashed potatoes, mushroom zucchini shish kabobs and brown sugar glazed salmon. Our theme was "shine on" and I printed a ton of pictures of the girls and hung them up. I'm sure the pictures will stay up for an entire year, just like last year. I took down last year's pictures to hang these up. :) Other than that, I was pretty unorganized and the kitchen was a wreck by the time I got dinner done. I hope that I have my life more together next year. We also had dessert, but we all totally forgot about it. I think it was lost in my messy kitchen. 

I love school. However, I hate that Clara is gone so long every day. It was especially bad this year because it's the first year of all day school. But, I have pondered and prayed and thought and laid awake in bed worrying about it and realized this is the best thing for her for now. Plus, I remember how excited I was every year to go back to school. I loved school, meeting new friends, learning, reading, writing, new clothes, the playground, lunch time, etc., etc. School is so much more than what is simply learned and Clara was so excited to start first grade so I couldn't help but be excited with her. Her lunch on the first day: I love you beary much. It's not Rachel quality, but every bit got eaten and it made both Clara and I smile. 

 

Clara is such a beautiful little girl. I think this was the only time we curled her hair for school until picture day. 

I don't worry about her making friends, being nice, doing well or sticking up for what she believes.

I think she has a tendency to reach out more to the different kids, which is the same way that I was at her age. 

 

Sometimes I look at her and know that beyond that pretty little face is a spirit that's the same age as mine. Happy 1st grade my sweet little girl!

July 2013

July was busy with vacations, but we still managed to squeeze some other things in.

I've mentioned this before, but I love watching my kids explore with their imaginations. I also love watching them play together and interact. Here Clara found a toothpaste box which quickly became a telescope and after they added some boots, they became quite the pair of pirates. Hazel looks like a little Schmee.

Here's what Clara learned in Kindergarten.

Top left to right: fort at my mom's, GNO with high school friends/friend's spouses (so glad my friends married people I like), jamming with Margo, homemade pizza with friends, first trip to Firehouse, Clara balancing on the broom, shopping with Hazel, pretty sky, awesome bedhead, letting Clara wear her cat attire to KS, Hazel's awesome glasses, Clara goes to Kathryn's to celebrate Pioneer Day (with a bacon egg and cheese biscuit in hand), playdate with the Smithsons to make and play with blubber.

The day before Jason and I went to California for SaLeah's wedding, I had a bunch of errands to run with the girls. We went to get new tires on my car and got my oil changed. In between, we stopped at Joyride for lunch but there was a big wait (for lunch on a Thursday?) so we went to SoCal Fish Taco Company which ended up being really good. While waiting for our oil change, I paid a dollar for one of those massage chairs and the girls got the biggest kick out of it. It was a busy day, but fun to hang out with my little sidekicks.

Oh, just bought 40+ cups of blueberries to freeze.

 

I wanted to do something fun before Clara went back to school so we went to the Phoenix Children's Museum. It was Hazel's first time since she was a baby and not surprising, she loved it. I can't believe how young my girls look here, even though it was only 5 months ago!

And just one of my favorite pictures of these two. 

 

SaLeah's Wedding

A week after we got back from Ventura, Jason and I went back to California for SaLeah's wedding. It was the third time in 6 weeks that we went to California. The biggest difference this time was that we left the kids behind. We had some last minute babysitting issues and ended up having a girl in our ward watch them Saturday during the day and then my mom went and picked the girls up Saturday night when she got back from Girl's Camp. She took them to her house for the night and all day Sunday. We've only left our kids one other night. We stayed in Tempe and were gone less than 24 hours. :) So this was kind of a big deal for us. Out of state for two days and a night. Woah.

We drove straight to the mall so I could try and find a dress. I brought a few for backups, but I really wanted a new dress. We walked into Nordstrom first and, lo and behold, SaLeah, Nikki and Julie (SaLeah's bridesmaids) were sitting at the MAC counter having their makeup done. So ironic. Anyway, I shopped and shopped and on my way out found the perfect one. We went from there to Geoff's. I haven't seen him for so long and his darling wife Monica was about 7 months pregnant. We didn't get to stay long, but we had fun visiting and seeing their new house.

We went and checked into our hotel, got ready and headed to the wedding. The wedding was in SaLeah's parent's backyard and was beautiful. I am so happy for her and I loved visiting with her and Nikki so much. I love those two girls. They are my "longest" friends and no matter how long we go without talking, we pick right back up.  

Sunday morning we drove to the temple to walk around. The San Diego Temple really is incredible. Every time we go there, Jason makes me feel bad for not agreeing to get married there. Sometimes I wish he would've forced me.

We went to church with Nikki and Braun, which was in the building I was baptized in nearly 24 years ago. (Writing that out makes me look old).

On our way home, we stopped by the houses we lived in to take pictures. Here's the house we moved to from Mesa.

It had an alarm system and that terrified me. For whatever reason, I assumed an alarm system meant it was a dangerous place to live. I remember waking up and walking into my parent's room and sleeping on the floor. (Sorry, Angela, guess I left you alone in our room to fend for yourself). From there we moved to here.

This house had the best backyard ever! A pool, a spa, a half basketball court, a little orchard, grass, an awesome fort and a sand volleyball court. Not to mention it backed to the horse trail. 

We headed home and had a nice smooth ride. The kids had a great time and it was fun to have so much time with just Jason. I realized I don't need a vacation from my kids, but I need a vacation with Jason.