Xootr

When we went to Chicago for Joe's law school, the first year we lived downtown, 1 block form Lake Michigan and 2 blocks from "the Magnificient Mile." We had planned to sell one of our cars and just keep one car for law school, and with that in mind we had worked hard on selling and upgrading our cars (as only Joe can do) until we had a car we were really happy with. Once Joe got into Northwestern and we found our apartment, we found that it would be $110/month to park our car in our building. At the time, our rent was more than 1/2 of my monthly take home pay, so we figured we couldn't afford to keep our car and we sold it shortly after we got there. That was doable because we lived 2 blocks from the law school and 3 blocks from my work. Joe did some research and decided that he would like a Xootr to ride to school and around to different places. I thought that $250 was a lot of money for a scooter, even if it was for the "Porsche of scooters", but he really wanted it so we got it anyway. He LOVED riding around the city on the xootr. The ride was so smooth, it really was fun. In fact, in the spring that year, we went on a date on the xooter where we rode a couple of miles north to dinner and a movie together on the xootr. It was lots of fun until a couple of blocks from home Joe tripped and knocked me off.
Anyway, we have kept the xootr, and it still is a dream of a scooter ride (really razor scooters don't hold a candle to the xootr). The kids love to ride with Joe on it. The other day, the kids were out riding bikes and Joe decided to give Nate a ride on the xootr. They had a blast, then the other kids all had to have a turn. What fun!

We love that it is cooling off so we can go outside and ride our bikes again, we missed it when it was so hot!

Rain!

I love the rain. I love it when it sprinkles, when it pours, when it lasts for days, I love all of it. Maybe that's because I grew up in Vegas where there was no rain. I've really missed it this summer with the big drought we were in. Luckily, we have been having rain for the past few days.
One of the other things I love about the rain is putting my kids in cute little raincoats:

He wouldn't pose very well for the picture, but he sure enjoyed wearing the coat all morning as we ran errands.

Lets not leave Ellie out:

Hope you have a rainy day soon too!

Legos, legos everywhere

Do your kids have a favorite toy? Ours do: Legos! Years ago, when Adam was much too small to really play with them I went on a Lego hunt for Legos for our kids. I did pretty well between ebay and craigslist and the occasional garage sale. Now we have 2 big bins of Legos as well as a bin of dragons and a big bin of Kinex. The boys are constantly building "ships." Even Ellie gets into it now. I used to let them keep one ship, but over the summer they were really busy building, and now our whole window seat is a continual Lego starfleet. (luckily its upstairs in the game room where I don't have to look at it all day or it might drive me a little nuts).

Recently, there was a big squabble in the Frost home over Lego men (minifigures as they are officially called). We didn't have enough, so I have been on the search for cheap Lego men. Come to find out, they don't exist. They either come as a set at the store, or you can buy them on ebay for about $2 a man in a set (or up to $15 individually, depending on the person). Now, they are used in our house as bribes...ooops, I mean "rewards," but I'll post about that some other time.

Nate likes the Legos too. He doesn't eat them, but he enjoys taking handfuls of Legos out of the bins and throwing them across the room. It makes for lots of fun clean up.

As you can see, I might go nuts with the constant mess, but I am trying to remember how good Legos are for the kids, they are learning so many building and designing things...and really it is a GREAT substiute for the Wii or the TV.

Work, work, work

The past two weekends have been work weekends for the Frost family. A few years back, Joe and I entered into an ongoing discussion about teaching your children to work. (I believe one of the plagues of our prosperous society is the lack of parents to teach their children the value of hard work). For some families that may be fairly easy if you have a business at home or a farm or a ton of kids. We happen to be really blessed and Joe has an office job, so unless we make them up, the opportunities for physical labor are few and far between for our kids. (Of course moving every couple of years helps, but we are not doing that anymore!) One of Joe's goals in finding a piece of property nearby was to find a place where we could work and involve our children so that they could learn the value of hard work. Unfortunately, most of the work we have done lately has only involved the adults, but the kids are around and they help when they can (and believe me, they are standing around begging to help).

Last spring, we purchased a house that was on the property adjacent to our original property. At the time, it had some people living in it. They smoked and didn't clean much. We knew that before we could use the house, we would have to do some serious cleaning and gutting. Last weekend, this became the top priority on our ongoing to-do list.
Austin came (he lost a bet with Joe and so he owed him some hours of work) and helped us rip out the carpet. The existing carpet was the indoor/outdoor type carpet, and it was very dirty.
Here Joe is scraping up the tack strip.
Upstairs there was a small wall separating the big room from where the water heater is, but it was not a permanent wall, so Austin and Joe removed and dismantled that. (You can see where it was, the paint is different).

I got the fun task of scrubbing the walls and the ceiling and the cupboards and anything that was going to be painted. It was so coated with nicotine that I frequently had to just throw away my rag and start over...

Here is the downstairs. The stairs had carpet on them, but there were a ton of industrial strength staples that were holding down the pad...those all had to be removed and several nails...that was another lengthy project.

Once we got the carpet out and looked, we got excited because we noticed that the windows and walls were all trimmed out and the walls have a bead board type material on them. We thought it would be fun to paint the walls a neutral color and then all of the trim white and we could have a cottage style "lake" house.

This week, we finished scrubbing the walls, taped and started painting. The plan was to have all of the painting done this weekend, but nothing ever goes as planned.

Here is Joe painting the ceiling, we all stayed elsewhere during it:

Actually, the camera's flash made it look worse, it was a little more like this:

Unfortunately, the sprayer was temperamental, and after he painted the ceiling, the sprayer stopped working. With the grooves in the bead board, you couldn't just roll the paint on, so we had to go and paint all of the cracks on the walls. Adam and Michael were very happy to help. (I never let them paint at home because I don't want them to ruin the nice carpet).

We didn't get much of the wall color done. Here is a picture of the corner that did get done...this is definitely a "to-be-continued" project.
Now that that is all done, I get to go home and do a weeks worth of laundry tonight!

"The daily grind of hard work gets a person polished."

No No Nate

Nate just turned 15 months this week, so it was a good excuse to get pictures of him.

Over the last few months, he has really turned into a handful. He loves to walk around the house finding things that are put away and put them out in the middle of the floor. He loves to try on shoes, especially his daddy's. Not only does he walk proficiently now, he also runs. In fact, he thinks its a fun game to walk a few steps away from me in public, wait until I start to come after him...and then take off running in the opposite direction. Fortunately, he is not faster than me yet.

His favorite new skill is to throw things. He throws anything he can get his hands on, and he's pretty good. Not fun-is when he throws his food across the room. He really likes to throw Legos and Polly Pockets and make a mess by scattering them (yes I know that he is too young to play with them, but they are used daily in our house.) Using the same motion, he also likes to hit people to get their attention.

His vocabulary has come a long way too...he can say a lot of words, and he babbles all the time. As he's babbling he will look at you and nod as if he wants you to agree with what he is saying.

He has the best smile- when he sees you, his whole face lights up, it melts my heart every time.

His favorite foods are still tomatoes, salty rather than sweet, meat rather than bread (my first child who will eat meat at this age).

We love you Nate, even if you do terrorize the house!

Dance and Gymnastics

I had been planning on starting Ellie in gymnastics once the school year started for a while. A few weeks ago, Joe decided to ask the boys what they would want to do this year...Michael and Adam both said they didn't want to do soccer or t-ball. Michael said that he would like to go gymnastics again. Adam thought maybe karate. I went and looked into gymnastics for Ellie and Michael. I found they had a tumbling class for Adam's age at the same time. It didn't take too much convincing to get them all signed up for their separate classes. The day they all lined up was Monday. Meanwhile, my friend Sylvia organized a dance class that someone in our stake would teach for Ellie and her friends on Monday morning. They learn ballet, tap and tumbling for 45 minutes. So...Monday is an exciting day for Ellie. Here she is with her friends Emi, Sidney and Teia, obviously she is not used to the leotard feel yet....

And then a few hours later, she gets to go to gymnastics...and guess what she gets to wear! She absolutely loves both classes.

Michael is in a fundamental class....look at this series of pictures that make up a somersault:

Adam is in tumbling. I thought it would be fun for him to take so that he could learn to do flips and handstands and tricks for the trampoline. The first week was rough. He thought he was significantly worse than the other kids (who probably have been taking gymnastics for years) and he was very upset about it. Yesterday, he was much happier saying that he had improved a lot and he loved it....well except for the stretching part...which hurt. I don't have any pics of him yet, I'll post some when I get them.

Nate gets to stay with me during gymnastics. There are lots of other little brothers that are waiting for their siblings to do gymnastics, and he loves to run around in the waiting area with them.