Sunday Afternoon with Hess Kids... Gotta Love Creativity!!

Sunday afternoons at the Hess house are either really, really good -- or really, really bad. Some days there seems to be lots of fighting and crankiness, and other days they seem to genuinely love each other and have a great time. Here are a couple of those pleasant afternoons.

Lauren and Kenzi can make something cool out of anything. And poor Cam... always getting dragged into their dress up games. They had a great afternoon with a TV box, wigs and hats, and stick ponies on the wild frontier!

Sunday Picnic -- 36 degrees, lots of sun and snow surrounding us. I guess the kids have a little bit of spring fever, because I came home and Lauren had a picnic basket set up with pizza, chips, carrots (I've taught her well Dave) and Rootbeer. We sat out on the lawn and ate, played games and got a little chilly.

St. George Fun!

After a yummy family dinner!

The Hess', Adams' and Jones'

Great new park Katie took us too... coolest toys ever!

Lauren has loved plyaing in this old truck ever since she was a little girl.

Virgin River -- Dave is quite the Rock skipper.

Great new hike we found behind Grandmas condo.

Aunt Cathy and the kids.

Katie's cool pink scooter ... too bad she looks too young and can't ride it!

We had a great President's Day/Valentine's Day weekend in St. George. Lauren's soccer team had a tournament and it happened to be a sunny 50+ degree weekend. It was the perfect combination of soccer, fun and family too.

And I must admit, the new car DVD was great. Between Dave and I listening to Harry Potter 7 on CD, Lauren playing with her ipod and the other two watching movies -- the drive was calm, short and actually relaxing.

My niece Katie goes to Dixie so we got to hang out with her and she had Kenzi over for a sleepover at her apartment.

Cathy and Ray came in from L.A. to work with Dave and try to get some health/financial issues resolved with their mom so we got to hang out with them too. Of course Viarata Ray brough ceviche, carna asada, shrimp and everything else and we had a divine Sunday/Valentine's Dinner.

We stayed at a hotel with several other kids on the soccer team so the kids loved that. Cam and Kenzi swam whenever they could (Lauren's coach doesn't like swimming before games so they only got to go on Saturday night) but we did have a pizza night, game night at someone's condo and lots of hanging out in eachother's rooms playing games.

Couldn't have asked for a better weekend! (Except for maybe winning a couple of more games -- didn't do too bad -- won 3 and lost 2).

That was awesome mom!!

I wait for the "perfect ski day" to take my kids for the 1st time, and yesterday was that day for Cam. Fresh snow, sunny skies, him asking to go/not be dragging him and just the two of us.

Did he like it -- "I LOVE IT!! It is better than karate, baseball, soccer and basketball." First thing he said this morning, "Can we go skiing again today?"

Except for the little hitch of somehow Kenzi not walking out the front door for her carpool (I left her about 5-10 minutes before her ride got there to get Cam's skis and somehow she didn't hear/see them even though they honked in front for 5 minutes... but she was reading and listening to her MP3 player and I guess she was in a Kenzi zone until she called me at 8:55 am saying her ride never came -- thanks Lisa for bailing me out!!!!)

We got up there about 9:30 am and skiied until 11:45 am. He changed in the car and we went straight to school so we could get a few extra runs in.

Cam did great a job, was very brave and did extremely well. (Thank you inventor of edgie/wedgie.) His only problem was he got a little confident and the last few runs he chose not to slow down at the bottom and about decapitated himself with the rope, hit a pole and fell right in front of the chair lift.

I had to laugh because on one of the runs he said "Mom, let's not talk this time down. Let's just play the quiet game all the way down the hill." He is so his father's son.

He has already planned our next ski day for next week... on a sunny/warm day of course!

12 Weeks of No Missing Assignments = Kenzi Ears Pierced. Way to go Kenzi!

A couple of weeks into the new school year last fall, Kenzi brought home her "Friday note" that shows if you have missing assignments. Her first one showed 11!!! Eleven!

We went back to school and found most of them in her desk, in the garbage or in a pile with no name. It isn't that she didn't do her assignments, she just didn't bother to turn them in. Her desk at school has always been atrocious even though every teacher has always tried to help her. We kept encouraging her and tried to remind her, but things didn't improve much. She has

After meeting with her teachers and Ms. Kotter helping her set up an organization plan, Kenzi set two goals. After 4 weeks of no missing assignments she could earn "Little Man" computer game. And after 12 weeks of no missing assignments she could get her ears pierced.

I must admit... I kind of doubted she'd ever make the 12 weeks and if she did, I thought it would take the entire year!

Well... needless to say she did it and she got to get her ears pierced yesterday.

I've seen the organization spill over to her bedroom as well -- still filled with Kenzi "little things" hanging from everyplace, but it is pretty organized and clean.

Good job Kenzi!! And... thanks Ms. Kotter for helping Kenzi learn a really important skill.

Makenzie Rose...what color of pink is the sky in your world?

Kenzi... my sweet little Kenzi just makes me laugh. Ever since she was a baby there was just something unique and sweet about her. By the time she was about 2 or 3 Dave and I began to notice that she just thinks in totally different way than we do.

I could write pages of funny Kenzi stories... but won't do that tonight, but since this is my journal I decided to document a few funny Kenzi things.

I am completely convinced that in Kenzi's world, the sky is pink. She thinks differently than I do and looks at things in ways that I would never think. She thinks creatively and can come up with a solution for just about anything.

She is incredibly independent and is perhaps the most intrinsically motivated person I know. Kenzi is motivated by Kenzi and isn't easily persuaded into anything she doesn't want to do.

When she was 4 she asked to change her name to Rose (her middle is not Rose) and started to call herself Rose. She wrote Rose on all of her papers and asked people to call her Rose. That lasted until about 1/2 way through 2nd grade. We called her Rose and she said "I don't want to be Rose anymore, please call me Kenzi."

She has a very acute sense of smell and does not do well with smells she doesn't like. We've had several dinners with Kenzi sitting there with tape across her nose and face to "block" the smell.

Last night I was reminded again about another funny Kenzi trait. She woke up in the night sick to her stomach. She went in the bathroom, threw up, made herself a bed on a floor (hard tile floor) and went back to "bed". A few minutes later she came in and calmly told Dave and I she was sick, throwing up and would be in the bathroom. I went in the bathroom and she laid down back in her "bed" and spent the night on the floor.

Someday I'll share her 1st grade food fight story, chocolate milk escapades with a little boy, the "little" beds and homes she creates for everything and other favorite Kenzi stories. Until then Makenzie Rose (I know you don't like to be called that anymore, but I will always think of you of Rose) I'd love to join your world sometime.

Either I'm a really, really, really good mom or a really, really, really bad mom... just not sure which!

Ok, so on the way home from SEPs today Cameron and Kenzi are in the backseat talking about who knows what and we then have the following conversation:

Cameron: Mom, in my next life I want to be adopted.

Me: What did you say?

Cameron: Well you know, don't we get two lives -- another life after this one? Well I want to be adopted.

Me: Sorry buddy, in the next life we are all sealed together so you will still have the same mom and dad.

Kenzi: It's ok Cameron. All of us are kind of adopted. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother really are our real parents so it doesn't really matter.

Cameron: Oh.

Me: Yeah I guess you're right. So Kenzi I guess that makes you and me sisters.

Kenzi: I know. I was thinking about that earlier. That means Jackson and I (a kid she fights with a lot at school) are really brother and sister. Eww!

Me in my head 1st thought: Wow, I'm a really great mom that has helped my girls feel so loved and secure about adoptions and sealings, etc. that Cameron even wants to be adopted. (Side note -- at our house Cameron has been told not so nicely "you don't have a birth mom." "Oh yes he does" I reply. "Oh you don't count. Your not a birth mom your just mom." He once asked me what his birth mother's name was because being just "born" wasn't very exciting.)

Me in my head 2nd thought: Or more likely... Cameron is still ticked off that I am his mean mom and that he inherited the Bevan cry face and my lack of ability to control tears (see blog post from earlier today) and is thinking that his only chance for a really good mom is in the next life.

HELP!!!!! What to do with a son that cares way too much about his clothes!!!!

Ok... so my sweet, handsome and charming 5-year old has been walking around the house for 45 minutes crying about what he is going to wear to school today. He only has 2 pants he will willingly wear and they are in the washer... meltdown. He also refuses to wear any of his 3 new shirts I bought him for Christmas so they are now in a bag waiting to be given to his friend. (Let me clarify -- the clothes he won't wear are the "cool/trendy" looking clothes. Anything that is plain, colorless and very boy is all he wants to wear.)

Unfortunately he also inherited the "Bevan cry face" so he also looks like he has been punched in the face after being out in the hot sun for 10 hours. (The exact look that caused me to hold my breath and pass out in 5th grade when I couldn't get my new Farrah Faucet hair cut to look right... but that is another story.)

So to my girls who always had 15 outfits a day on and didn't really care what they were wearing... thank you! And Cameron, buddy, I'm afraid you have a long life ahead of you!!!

Addendum: when our carpool buddy got in the car today he looked and Cameron's face, got the strangest look on his face like "what the heck happened to you?" Not a word about the pants that "everyone would laugh at" just shock at the Bevan cry face.