Why we call her Maddie...

Maddie is destined to become a hoarder. She can't throw anything away. Last week we had a yard sale and she had about 5 duplicate copies of Junie B Jones books. I told her she should sell the ones that were duplicates and she cried. Then she hid them from me.

She's outgrown some p.j.'s and I've let her wear them still as capri's and belly shirts because, well, who sees her but us? Last night while I was folding laundry and decided it was time to give them to Lindsay, so I put them in Lindsay's drawer. While we were reading scriptures, Lindsay pulled them out and said, "Look what I got." teasing her sister. Maddie lost it. Crying, screaming, kicking. "Those are my most comfortable pajamas. You can't give them to Lindsay." and on and on until scriptures were given up on for the night and she was sent to her room to cry it out.

Jeramy and I came downstairs and shortly after, this sign was thrown down the stairs for us to read:

Can you read it? Well, here's the translation:

"11p.m. I get the p.j.'s or else I will punch Lindsay in the face."

We laughed and laughed. 11 came and went, and no punching took place. However, Lindsay came down with a dollar and said, "Maddie gave me a dollar for her pants!" So the battle will start again tonight...

Once again, I can hardly wait until she's a teenager.

T-ball

A very kind lady in our ward organized 4 t-ball teams with 4 games (which would be 40 crazy little kids, and 4 rescheduled games for weather).

Lindsay was so excited to play t-ball with her friends. She did a great job, even if she had no idea what she was doing. Baseball is not a sport the Wakewii family follows at all. My favorite was when she said, "I just did what my coach told me to do." Her coach is our good friend Joe. 6 out of 7 days of the weeks he's "Joe." Saturday morning for an hour, he's "Coach." Thanks "Coach Joe" for being such a good teacher, and thanks to Cindy for organizing all of this!

I've also found out that 3 little boys in this picture are in love with Lindsay. She'll happily hold hands with any of them, too.

Really cross off # 11 # 10

Saturday after our amazingly fun yard sale Jeramy and Maddie went and hiked Timpanogos. They had a blast! Somehow Maddie was informed that the chipmunks eat deer...I'd like to see that! She's usually so good with retaining all information correctly. Apparently the tour guide said that the mountain lions could eat a deer, not a chipmunk. I can only imagine her terror when she saw this:

I love these pictures of Maddie, she's pulling some pretty goofy faces.

Monday for FHE, we used our $6 canyon pass to go on a hike. A .25 mile paved hike. It was enjoyed by all. We carried our Little Caesar's Pizza with us and had a picnic without napkins or plates. Now that's a picnic in the canyon! After we were done, we started our family hike up to Timpanogos. Lindsay made it to the marker #5, which is about 5 minutes up the trail. Glad we didn't pay for the cave!

Jeramy had told Macie to smile with her teeth. And once again, Maddie's pulling a funny face.

Cross off # 3

The girls and I hit the Riverton Splash pad yesterday. We met up with some of my Payless buddies. Maddie had a blast, Lindsay and Macie sat on my lap the entire time.


Apparently the new sensitive skin sunblock I bought isn't all that waterproof (it says it is), Maddie is burned! I feel so bad for her. The other girls didn't get very wet and they are fine, but she's bright red and very upset about it. :(


We'll definitely go back, and hopefully the little girls will play this time!

FHE for this week

Jeramy bought a book with 21 easy hikes for families. For FHE this week, I thought we'd tackle 2 of them. The first was Temple Quarry trail, a paved .40 mile walk and then Lisa Falls a .20 mile walk that I used to do in high school, so I knew the girls would be fine. We read the directions, but somehow ended up on the wrong trail. Instead we did a very rocky and somewhat steep 3 mile round trip hike to this little lake...

I was planning on 2 easy hikes, so I left Macie in her flip flops and a dress. I packed us a large picnic dinner, which got heavy really fast on our hike up. Jeramy enjoyed teasing me about our "Picnic Feast" of sandwiches, chips, broccoli, carrots, capri-suns and pudding. I even packed him a coke to which he said, "Why not just water, we're hiking?" And for the millionth time I said, "Because we weren't really supposed to be hiking, we were supposed to be taking a leisurely walk."

The girls were troopers for the most part. We took turns packing Macie. Lindsay freaked out about any little bug that crossed her path on the trail and she refused to sit on the ground to eat dinner. She also let me know about 20 times that "This is not the hike you said we'd do. This doesn't count as my lesson. I get to do a lesson next week with NO hikes!"

We'll see how many more of these "easy" hikes we can get them to do!

I've created a monster!

Maddie loves school.

Maddie loves structure.

Maddie hates summer.

On the first day of summer she begged me to make her a chore chart.

I know I should be happy, but I don't like structure. I like getting out of bed when I want and not doing anything until I'm good and ready. Now the minutes she gets up, she wants to do the dishes, which means I have to help empty the dishwasher. Then she wants to pull weeds, which means I have to pull weeds. Do you get the picture? She's making me do chores.

She also wanted to do homework. Each night I am to put a worksheet in each folder. If I forget, I get the wrath of Maddie first thing in the morning. Not a pretty sight. Jeramy has even started to remind me just so that he doesn't have to experience it either. She also writes in her journal every night and asks me for writing prompts. I'll have to post some of her stories sometime.


And we now have chore jars

Each chore the girls do, they get a pom pom to put in. When their jar is full, they get to go on a date with their dad. I keep waiting for them to get tired of all this structure, but it seems they all like it. :(

For my husband...

Do you ever feel like you (as the Mom) are the only one capable of finding things around the house? The other night I was at a camp meeting. When I got home I had a very annoyed husband.
"Why didn't you take your phone?"
"Because I was in a meeting."
"Well, I couldn't find our shovel. I know you were using it the other day. I looked everywhere for it. Someone must have stolen it."
"I left it by the barbecue grill."
"It's not there."
"Sorry."
End of story. I didn't lose too much sleep over it. I highly doubted some crazy man came along and said, "Ohhh, a shovel....think of all the things I could dig with it....I could smack people on the head, then bury them...I'd better take it."

Today I went outside with the girls and noticed this:

All right, I probably wouldn't have found it, either.

But at least now we don't have to worry about some crazy person out there with our shovel.

Trekkies....

Not that kind of trekkie, although I have watched a wonderful documentary called "Trekkies". This kind of trekkie is what I'm thinking about today:

I was just cruising through old pictures and found these from August of 2002. I was 3 months pregnant with Maddie when we did this trek at Martin's Cove with my sister and her family. It was hard and I learned a lot - like that I would have been a terrible pioneer. I remember being all alone (everyone left the slow pregnant lady in the dust) looking around at the nothingness, and feeling very overwhelmed. Thinking about being a pioneer and being pregnant on the trail and not having a doctor - or an epidural - to help me. I can't imagine the faith that the pioneers had!

(The youth in our ward are on trek right now. I've thought a lot about them. I hope they have a great time!)

Happy Friday!

Cross off # 4 and half of # 11

See this well-hidden blue bag by my garage door? Doesn't look all that important, does it? It looked so um important that both Jeramy and I walked right past it twice on our "final check" before we left for the ward campout.
Bedtime rolled around and I couldn't find said bag. Said bag held ALL of our jackets, p.j.'s and toothbrushes. It was a chilly night and Macie cried that she had to sleep in her clothes. Other than that, the ward campout was a total blast! I had said that I wanted to pack light, just not that light!

I did dutch oven chicken with potatoes for dinner - which was pretty good - if I do say so myself. Then I did an apple cobbler for dessert - which was pretty good also. It was WAYYY too much work though and I won't be doing that again anytime soon. It's way more fun to do my dutch oven cooking in my garage.

The highlight of the trip for me was Bro Fralick and our new neighbor Ben playing their guitars. Made me wish my hubby still played!

I had promised Jeramy that we would go hike Timpanogos cave when we got home, so I grumbled and complained and we packed up all the girls and headed up the canyon. FREE canyon day...yipee...all tours of Timp sold out...yipee...I mean BUMMER! We drove up to Tibble Fork Resevior and took a little hike. Lindsay lasted about a tenth of a mile and I had to take her back to the car. I guess Maddie fell down about a tenth of a mile after that, so they turned back, too. Jeramy finally admitted that maybe Timp with 3 little kids that didn't sleep much the night before wasn't such a great idea. All 3 were asleep before we got out of the canyon.

So I'm going to cross off half of "hike timpanogos cave" because we tried.