Playtime Problems

I can just see a future time when my children are all grown and we gather for a reunion to sit and share old memories. I'm guessing that it may start out something like this: "Hey, that reminds me of that one episode of Spongebob where ..." or "Remember when Zach and Cody decided to trick their mom that one time..."

At MOPS today we watched part of a documentary about the kind of play that kids these days have compared to those in previous generations. And it got me thinking. And feeling some guilt. When I get together with my siblings and tell "remember when" stories, it is so much fun to reminisce about our childhoods and the experiences that we had growing up. One quote from the documentary had a guy saying that todays kids spend way more time "looking at screens than they do looking at streams". When I was a kid in rural Utah, we roamed around for miles all the time. We'd build playhouses and forts in the trees and go on hikes just to see what new discoveries we could make. "Going swimming" consisted of playing in the river or tubing down the canal (with no adult supervision, of course). Actually when I think of some of the things we did as kids, there is no way I'd let one of my kids do those things unsupervised! But even our indoor play was different. We'd role-play elaborate stories with our dolls and dress-up clothes or we'd play "office" with old junkmail and scratch paper, or we'd make up all sorts of silly games with ever-changing rules. There was no such word as "playdate". We played with our siblings and cousins most of the time and on occasion we would have a friend over for a sleepover or we'd go to their homes. Mostly we just went with the flow of things.

The documentary pointed out that now there are kids who could tell you everything you could ever possibly want to know about the Amazon rainforest, but they don't have a clue what's in their own backyard. Some people would say that's the problem with living in a city. But actually the documentary says the city is a lesser problem than the suburbs. Suburbanites spend hours scheduling their kids playtime and activities and then driving them to each location. Then when they aren't "playing" at those things, they are at home glued to the TV or computer or texting, texting, texting.

The guilt I am experiencing is because my kids seem to be headed in that direction at least as far as the tv is concerned. Part of it is the time in which we live. I don't feel entirely comfortable leaving the kids alone in our un-fenced yard. I wish I could, but there really are some scary people out there, and I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to them that I could have prevented had I just been with them. The same goes for letting them walk or ride their bikes all over town. Kendall walks to his friend's house one block over sometimes and it's all I can do not to follow him to make sure he's okay! The other thing is, I get really busy doing all of my mundane list items every day and it's a lot easier to turn on the TV to occupy the kids instead of having them whining and following around at my heels constantly. But then, it's easy for an hour then two and sometimes three to go by before I realize that the blasted TV is still on and my kids have slipped into a tv coma where it's impossible for them to hear anything I say to them or be aware of anything going on around them.

I do okay most of the day when I'm babysitting because I try to keep the kids occupied and playing and I plan activities and games that we can play. But even then, I feel like if I'm not in the middle of it, they suddenly don't know what to do with themselves. I don't want to be an entertainer. I love playing with the kids, but it would be nice to be able to go to the bathroom and have them continue playing and developing their own imaginations. I can remember only a few occasions where my parent's were actually involved in our playtime activities.

So, my new resolve is to turn off the TV more (or maybe even completely) and get the kids playing more and being more creative and imaginitive so that they can have fun memories like I have. What do all of you do with your kids to help facilitate that? And how do you still find time to do the things on your list that need doing if the TV is not involved? I am open to as many ideas as you can throw at me!

Come What May and Love It!!!

Our favorite message from the last General Conference was by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin entitled "Come What May and Love It." In it, he stressed the importance of laughing at ourselves when silly and embarassing things happen to us. We've been reminding the kids of that ever since and we're working on laughing at our own mistakes as well. Good thing. Prepare yourself for for a belly laugh! Here's what happened:

Yesterday was Sunday. I was giving a talk in church that day so I was a little bit stressed about that as I was running around trying to gather things together and pack the diaper bag and get the kids all ready to go. I was trying on some different shoes to see which I liked better when the phone rang. It was Kalen who was already at church for his early meetings. He was calling to ask me to bring him a couple of things that he'd left and reminding me that the roads were really slippery so to make sure we left early enough to get to church on time. Once I got off the phone I had to speed things up a bit so that we could get out the door on time. I had a funny feeling that I was forgetting something, but I double-checked to make sure that I had my talk with me and the things Kalen had needed, so I knew that the most important thing was taken care of and figured anything else was probably no big deal.

We arrived at church in plenty of time--miraculous, I know. We got all settled in. I congratulated myself on not feeling very nervous for my talk. I had prepared well and felt like I had things under control. We went through the opening hymn and prayer, announcements and the sacrament. I was the first speaker. I walked up confidently with maybe just a few butterflies and gave my talk. I felt like it went really well. I finished up and went back to my seat feeling relieved and happy that I'd made it through yet another experience that throws me outside of my comfort zone. I leaned down to put my materials back into my church bag and caught sight of one of my shoes. "That's funny," I thought. "I was sure I'd decided to go with the other pair." I looked at my other foot..."Oh...my...gosh!!!" Here is what I saw:

Mortified doesn't even begin to cover what I felt! How in the name of Payless had I managed to not notice such an obvious difference??? The only thing they had in common were that they were both black and about the same height. One was a square-toed chunky heeled shoe and the other was a pointy-toed spiky-heeled shoe. I quickly contemplated my options: Drive back to Albion during sunday school and try to get back in time for Relief Society. Most likely I wouldn't make it with the roads being so bad. Plant myself right where I was and not move until church was over and everyone had gone home. That probably wouldn't work because the men would realize that I was slightly out of place during their priesthood meeting, plus, being that I am in the Relief Society presidency, I'm expected to sit up front at the beginning of that meeting. Then my thoughts were interrupted by Spencer who had a pretty obvious diaper issue that I knew I would not be able to ignore. I had to go out. I tried to use him as a shield as I walked out. And back in again when we were through. After the meeting Kalen came to tell me what a great job I had done on the talk. I showed him my dilemma. He laughed. Really hard. I did too, in between waves of wishing the electricity would fail and we'd all be plunged into complete darkness so the rest of church would be cancelled. Then I showed Mom. She looked puzzled and asked "what's that about?" I thought about saying I'd lost a bet so I was doing this on purpose. I didn't. She laughed. I made it though Sunday school by keeping my church bag covering one of my feet. When it was time for Relief Society, I held my bag as low as possible as I walked really quickly to the room and when I sat up front, I put it on my foot again. I was SO thankful that I wasn't conducting the meeting! I thought about just fessing up and giving everyone a huge laugh but I just wasn't quite ready to do that yet. It'll be better now, after the fact to tell it and not have to endure everyone looking at my feet for the rest of the meetings. But the more I looked at them the more hilarious it got. Everytime I saw my feet, I'd start chuckling again. After church I showed the kids, who all cackled hysterically. (Except Lynnsey who looked like she could understand my mortification, and only laughed when she saw that I thought it was so funny). After I took the picture and saw it on the camera, it just seemed more funny. So, even though this now officially ranks right up there in my list of most embarassing moments, I am sharing it with you. Are you laughing? I still am.

Road-kill

The warmer weather we had a couple of days ago brought out a lot of animals from their winter hide-outs. And that means the return of more dead animals on the highways. I was driving to Marshall last night for an enrichment activity at church and I had three of the kids with me. They began noticing all the road-kill along our way, and I guess to pass the time they started keeping track: "there's another deer, there's the second skunk we've seen, oh and there's a racoon." Then Kendall said: "I wonder what we'll see next?" and Spencer piped up: "I think it's gonna be a zebra."

Heat Wave

Okay, I'm going to give this post another shot. It's the weirdest thing. I had it all done and posted but later tonight when I got online, it had totally disappeared. So strange. So we'll see if it works this time. If any of you saw the other post and commented before it vanished, you can go ahead and comment again since obviously I didn't get to read your comments.

Anyway, on with my post. It is so amazing that only a week after posting my picture of all the icicles which were hanging nearly to the ground, that we should have a day like yesterday! I had previously been getting so excited when the high temperatures would soar all the way up to 20 degrees or so. So you can imagine how completely wonderful yesterday's 62 degree high felt after such awful bone-chilling weather . It was BEEYOOOTEEFUL!

The kids headed straight for their swingset as soon as school got out. It was so muddy and soggy, but no one seemed to mind. We just enjoyed soaking up all the sunshine while we had the chance. You can see some snow in the neighbor's yard behind ours, but our yard is completely snow-free now!

Spencer was ready to play with his t-ball set, but unfortunately we couldn't find the ball, so he mostly just (happily) dragged the bat around in the mud.

The fish in the pond woke up from their long winter's nap and got a little exercise. They all survived another sub-zero winter. It's amazing that they can do that.

And here's Kendall standing in front of the very spot where I took the icicle pictures of last week. I love it!

Lest you experience a little spring jealousy however, after another warm but rainy day today, we are supposed to be dropping back into the 20's and 30's and have snow moving in for the next few days. Oh well. It was a nice break anyway!

Sledding!

My sister Susannah has been out visiting Michigan for the past few weeks and one of the things that she wanted to do was to go sledding. She has never been sledding before! So on Saturday we all bundled up and headed over to our local sledding hill so that she could give it a try.

It really is a good-sized hill and so much fun...in a painful sort of way. By the time you manage to crawl to the top, you start wondering if it's really worth it for such a short trip down. The answer to that is: probably.

The view from the top might seem a little intimidating, but that's nothing to the view from the top after you know what it feels like to get to the bottom. Some years it's better than others. This year the hill is very bumpy and we had to hang on tight to keep from being flung from the sled as we flew up in the air after each bump. Flying in the air wasn't so bad. The coming down part was a little excruciating at times. But we still went back for more! We even convinced Mom to go down--once. Sadly, I didn't have the camera with me for that run so I missed it. And Mom wasn't willing to recreate the ride for me.

At first Spencer wanted to take turns riding with someone on the larger sled, but when Timothy took the baby sled up the hill with the intention of riding it down (someone dared him to do it), but Kalen refused to let him break the sled, we put Spencer in it to see how it would work from the top of the big hill. It was fantastic! Probably the best sled we had. It went right down in a nice even line and didn't even come close to tipping over.

After that, Spencer rode it down nearly every time. He had so much fun this year! Last year after a couple of rides down the big hill, he refused to go up anymore and stuck to the small hill. This year, he wanted to keep going long after the rest of us were exhausted.

Kendall attempted to use the baby sled as a snowboard on the little hill, but it didn't quite work out for him.

Kaya got some sledding action too. I had intended to keep her in the car with Mom for most of the time but Kalen brought her to the top of the hill and decided to see what she thought. She loved it! When I met them at the bottom, she was just grinning.

Timothy took the kids several times, but went on many trips by himself that were pretty comical. He couldn't seem to stay on when he went by himself and had some funny landings. Susannah also did a backward flip once and I was also thrown off and nearly flipped over before I came crashing back down. Oh, to be practically weightless. I think the kids barely felt the bumps at all. The adults on the other hand may be in need of a few chiropractic sessions. We think Susannah had fun though. Maybe enough to last a lifetime.

And now that we've done this, we are officially ready for spring.

Winter...still.

Yesterday was Groundhog's Day. We are pretty sure that the Groundhog did not see his shadow.
That's because most likely he was trapped beneath two feet of snow and ice.

We are so looking forward to springtime. If only it weren't still MONTHS away!

(Oh, and these icicles on our house are nothing compared to some of the ones that we've seen on other homes and buildings. The other day we saw one on a house that was easily as big around at its base as a small tree--I'm not kidding! They are enormous!)

If Ever-a-wever a Wiz There Was...

A couple of weeks ago Kendall auditioned for a spot in the local youth theatre's production of "The Wizard of Oz". He was so excited when they called him the other day to let him know that they are casting him as the Wizard! They thought it would be funny for the audience after hearing a big booming voice (which will be done by an 8th grader), for Kendall to come out from behind the curtain with his tiny size and much smaller voice. He's so excited. He was figuring he'd be cast as a munchkin or just as an extra without a speaking part since this is his first time doing a play. But they said he did a great job enunciating his words, so they thought he'd be perfect for this part.

He starts practice today and the actual play is scheduled for the end of April. Pretty exciting huh?