Is it too early to tell on your sister to Santa?

Apparently not. This story involves two main characters and one piece of evidence.

The culprit:

(Does she look like she could ever do anything wrong?)

The tattleteller:

(Scott, not Daniel.  Does he look like he would rat his sister out?)

The report:

This is a scan of the envelope and letter we found in our mailbox.  Greg asks me, " Hey, what's this in the mail?"  So we figured it must've been put in ther by Scott (he's the only one that can write somewhat coherent sentences, we are such the detectives). This is what we figured it said: envelope - From Scott to Santa (Sada), letter - Dear (D) Santa (Sada) Stacey was (wuz) no good (go).  Greg and I were cracking up!  When we asked Scott about it later he told us that he told Stacey if she didn't listen to him/do what he wants, he would write a letter to Santa!  And he obviously was serious! 

The moral of the story:  Watch what you do around Scott, he'll tell Santa on you, and he really follows through!

What we did this (last) week with 4 kids and no Dad and a grandma half a week . .

I started this post last week and thought I should finish it, even though it is about last week.  Here is a picture of my mom and a shout out to her for all the hard labor and emotional trauma I put her through when she was here!  I love her so much and me and the kids had so much fun with her and were sad to see her go.  Because of the lateness of my baby arrival she actually got to see Chase born!  The day of his birth we spent the whole day together, walked ALOT and went to a yummy sandwich shop.  I really enjoyed spending the day with her, up until the time I was in hard labor (which in no way had anything to do with her :)).  Also because of the lateness of my baby, Greg had to go out of town and my mom had to leave, so I was by myself for three days with four kids!  Like I always say, there's no better way to get used to the fire than to throw yourself in the inferno, right? So here's what we did . . .

We held and kissed Chase alot.  Daniel and Chase's kiss looks a little too close? 

The kids and I spent alot of time in the office (getting alot of the business end of the year tax stuff done).  Scott does homework and colors and Stacey colors and does puzzles.  It's fun to have them in there with me until they start fighting over whose is better at coloring while I am on the phone, and then they get kicked out.  I also put a picture of them in the bath, because I think they are so cute in the bath and I love the positioning of the cup in the picture!  Maybe my standards have just gone way down, but I actually was super excited that everyone in the house was bathed and showered (me included).  Whenever I do something now, I think ,"Oh good, I have 4 kids now, and they are all clean." or "wow, I have four kids now, and I still can get the laundry done, have a clean kitchen once a day, etc."  I feel great just when I get "everyday" things done (or just wash my hair)  Actually the couple of days that Greg was gone, people from my church took my kids for at least 3 hours everyday, and on Saturday, someone took my kids in the morning and in the afternoon so they were gone from 8 am to 6 pm. So I had one of the YW in my ward, Wyatte come over and we took newborn pics of Chase.  It was so fun and I think she did a great job!

Here are some of my favorites . . . 

 

We all love Chase and are glad he is here and we're glad our Dad is home too!  It's great to all be together even though some of us aren't getting quite enough sleep some nights!

Baby Chase James Romney is here! FINALLY!!

This is going to be a quick post, because I do want to do a REAL post about his birth and everything.  But right now I just wanted to put some pictures up.  He was born last Firday January 15, at 5:53 pm.  He weighed 8 lbs. 13 oz. (not 13lb 5 oz. that my mom acidentally texted my whole family!).  We love him and are glad he is here.  I am just realizing I have alot of young kids and that the next couple months (year) of my life is going to be a little crazy.  Crazy is good, right?

Jordan

Ok, so alot of you have been asking about my trip and I know I've been home almost 3 weeks so I should'vr blogged by now, but I'm kindof having a blogging block (it happens often). My problem with blogging about this trip is I feel like it's hard to explain how cool it really was, it was a life changing experience for me and I have a hard time putting it into words. I'm starting with Jordan because that's the easiest for me to describe. Jordan is very different than Egypt and Israel for different reasons. You'll understand the difference when I get to the Egypt and Israel post. I'll just post some pics and hopefully it will sound half as interesting as it was.
This was one of the first stops we made in Jordan to eat lunch in the desert in a Bedouin tent. The Bedouin people are people who have lived in the desert off the land for thousands of years. There are alot of Bedouins in Egypt and Israel who still live in tents or basically shacks they built out of scraps of metal, wood, etc. (some of them have satelites on the outside!), but Jordan government has been trying to get the bedouins in Jordan to build houses and stay in one place so they can get an education. The bedouins in Jordan also have these tourist camps, like the ones we visited where people can come and camp out with them (you can see the tents are more modern) or come for lunch and a jeep ride (like us). They cooked the food underground that's why they are digging in the sand. The food was good, we just ate alot of the same foods most of the trip, pita bread, hummus, meat and rice.

Here's our jeep ride through the desert (basically we sitting in the back of pickup truck). Everyone was so nervous about me going on the jeep ride, but then when it was time to get in the trucks I was at the very end. The lower picture is Greg at the bathroom. We were all taking pictures of the guys because it just seemed so funny to us that we could see them while they were taking care of business. I guess some of us will just never grow out of thinking stuff like that is funny!

The jeep ride was beautiful, it actually reminded me of Moab and St. George, but it was all through sand. Lawrence of Arabia spent alot of time with the Bedouins and so they kept telling us the highlight of the ride was the face of Lawrence carved into the rock. I guess I had my expectations sortof high, because when we got out, I was thinking, "that little face! That's what we came to see?" Good thing Petra was the next day. At least the scenery was beautiful.

These next pictures are of Petra, which is one of the seven wonders of the world. It was seriously amazing! You hike through this cool canyon and there is this beautiful stone city that has been there for thousands of years. One of the temples is where they shot some of the Indiana Jones movies. For those of you who don't know Greg he loves talking to anybody! He made friends with a guy that was trying to sell us a ride on a donkey up to the Monastary (3 mile hike roundtrip), but ended up hanging out with Greg for awhile, notice another picture below of donkey guy. He also talking alot to some Bedouins who lived on the very top of the mountain and just sold stuff to tourists to make a living. It was so interesting to think of what there life was like just living outdoors all the time. Plus, to see the kids just playing on the edge of cliffs was just weird, but that's just how they live.

Here is a picture of a little boy and a pigeon. This kids was so cute and he just kept swinging this pigeon around and turing him upside down and stuff. It was pretty funny! It was probably one of those things you had to be there.

I don't know why you wouldn't want a picture of a camel drinking from a water bottle?

The top picture was a view of Israel from Jordan. And the bottom is of a girl making a mosiac, which are very popular in Jordan. We ordered a mosaic of Jesus' baptism in the river Jordan, but we still haven't gotten it. Hopefully it will turn out. The last picture is of Greg riding on the bus,obviously, we rode on the bus ALOT.

Stay tuned for Israel and Egypt.

1st Day of school and what the rest of us do at home

Scott asked me one day, "Mom, what do you guys do while I'm at school?"

Well, we do lots of fun stuff, like walk around with laundry baskets on our heads and play with playdough (in our diaper of course). What else would we do?


By the way, the playdough we are using is edible peanut butter playdough and it was soooo good. Greg thought it was disgusting (big surprise), but I loved it. It almost tasted like peanut butter cookie dough and it wasn't super sticky so the kids had a lot of fun playing with it and it didn't make a huge mess. Cleaner than real playdough! Here's the recipe, if you want it : http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/07/kids-week-peanut-butter-playdough.html

I know it's late, but here are Scott's first day of school pictures. So far, he has liked school. He had a couple of days the second week where he would cry and hold onto me right when the bus was coming and say he didn't want to go to school, but he always got on the bus! He says he has fun at school, but he can never remember what he does there! Some of my friends have told me that's typical with some kindergarteners and he's teacher says he's doing great at school! We miss him but it's so cool to see all the things he's learning! I still can't believe I have kids old enough to be in school!

Poor Stacey

Here is a conversation I had with Stacey yesterday in the car.

Stacey: Mom, I won't like the new baby.

Me: Why not?

Stacey: Because he is a boy baby and I will only like a girl baby.

Me:I bet you will like him, you like Daniel and he is a boy.

Stacey: I KNOW MOM, but I will not like this baby because he's a boy, I will only like him if he's a girl. (pouty face)

Sorry Stace, this one REALLY is your Dad's fault!

Growing up too fast!

All the time I think my kids are growing up too fast! But especially my baby! They really just don't stay babies for very long.

And how is it that one haircut makes you realize that they're really not a baby anymore :(