Dear Leanna: Wish you were here...

The following post will be incredibly obnoxious and I'm ok with that...

Dear baby Sister,

We missed you soooo much at Beck and Kiki's birthday party tonight at Mom's house. Probably as much as we'll miss you tomorrow when we all hang out here and then Saturday at the Big Event and the Big Event's After Party. We probably won't have any fun and we may just sit around and talk about how much we miss you. Or maybe we'll have TONS OF FUN LIKE WE DID IN ALL THESE PICTURES! You really missed out. We frolicked at Hare Field like children looking for money under the bleachers on a Saturday morning. We did cheers and the wave and cartwheels and played in the sand and ate all of the licorice and popcorn that we could find. It was a glorious display of athletic ability, muffin tops, and sisterly love and bonding.

Too bad you couldn't be here. Hope you're enjoying your vacation with the in-laws.

By the way, looking at these pictures has made us realize that we TOTALLY should have been cheer leaders. We rock.

Happy Birthday Big Sissy

Here's an old pic of your 4th birthday. Look at that adorable baby next to you!




Reasons I love my big sister Becky!




-For reaching 40 before me




-For not having bigger boobs than me, especially since you didn't get the big butt, so that would have really sucked




-For being a superb example to me throughout our lives without even having to try and for making me envious of your life enough to want to clean up my own

-For taking me to the stake dances

-For using makeup and hair accouterments and showing me how

-For being the one I could turn to in my time of need and for being geographically close enough to help and to have witnessed my situation. You're the only one who really knows what I went through.

-For loving Chris almost as much as I do and for reminding me of why we love him when I would temporarily forget during fights. Fights usually revolving around our attempts at doing projects together and not agreeing on who's the Project Supervisor.

-For driving yourself and your husband and all of those kids 20hours every time I have a baby or a baptism. No more of that! But I'm so grateful that you and Dewey have been so willing and supportive.

-For marrying a wonderful bro in law. He's one of my (our) favorite people and has been the best big brother I could ever have all of the many times that I have needed him.

-For raising great kids who are wonderful cousins and friends to my kids and for raising them in a way that I never have to worry about what they might teach my sweet innocent little angels. We don't need another cousin Jeff and Becky making out in the closet, now do we?

-For planning great sister trips

-For taking 4 of my kids to the beach over night tonight so that I can get my house ready for Friday. Even though I've only worked on this blog post and scanning all of these pictures since you left. You better be happy with my post and not mad at me for getting nothing else done in the next 24 hours!

HUGGIES!

Here you are feeding me/ruffy the dog

You must have loved me for having that body. I always make you look so good.
In our matchey-matcheys with Grandma. Were you pushing me or just glaring at the back of my head? Time to put your angry eyes away.Our dressy outfits before the little kids were born...Our "dressy" outfits after they were born...
Did we OWN a hairbrush or did we just REALLY embrace the natural look?

Highlights...of my week, not of my hair. Unfortunately.

-Kiki coming home from her trip. She took over 700 pictures, which we watched as a slide show on the TV and we talked for hours about all of the things she did and saw. We are all glad to have her home and glad that she got to go. She also brought us great gifts

-Superturd styling his hair with nail polish. Then dumping the rest of the bottle on the wood floor. Thanks for all of your suggestions and support. I didn't try nail polish remover. Mostly because I couldn't find any, but also because his hair is so short and I wouldn't want that stuff on his scalp. I showered him, which was anti-helpful. Then I buzzed his hair. The hair clippers didn't like that very much. They kept getting caught in the hardened pink mess. I gave up and cut it all with scissors.

-Kaila discovering that when she's really sweaty she can open the sliding door with her stomach. It warms my heart to know that if she ever loses the use of her arms she'll still be able to open that door.

-During dinner my son standing straight up on his chair and suddenly pulling down the front of his pants, and thrusting his hips forward to make his penis stick out as far as he could, then laughing his butt off. I think his father taught him that trick. All of the females lost their appetite. Chris gave him a high five and told me that he often thinks of doing the same thing. He did add that he does not think about doing that while having dinner with the kids. Just when we're out to dinner together. Because that would be more exceptable.

-Morgan finding a old lady wig at a garage sale and buying it for a quarter. The funny part is her putting it on in the car and telling us not to tell Daddy that it's Morgan. Just to tell him that she's a neighbor girl that came over to play and her name is Sarah. We were forced to carry on the charade for about an hour. At one point she announced that she hadn't met Morgan yet, but she'd heard that she was very nice. Finally, she dramatically removed the wig and showed Daddy that it was just Morgan, not Sarah. She's very tricky.

-My NOT highlight of my week was breaking down and getting my hair cut at Supercuts after realizing that something had to happen. It's not good, but it's better than my black roots and yellow ends. Gross.

Help Me

If a child were to pour an entire bottle of nail polish into their hair, thinking it was some sort of styling product, and then rubbed it in and combed it and rubbed in in some more and then let it dry, how exactly would you go about fixing that problem?

I'm going to go find the scissors now. Please share your suggestions.

Gifts from Afar

Video of The First Tooth MoJo lost

Back On American Soil

We FINALLY heard from the world traveler tonight. Their plane landed in Vancouver BC at 12:30 this afternoon and they didn't get across the border until 5pm. They searched their buses and bags, so it took forever to get into the US of A. Now they are on their long drive home. She's been awake for 28hours straight. We're happy, we want her to sleep tonight and get right back into the Pacific Time Zone schedule before school starts. She said that she has a list of all the foods she can't wait to eat and another list of foods she hopes to never eat again. That list starts with rice. No Big Chiney Hiney for her welcome home dinner. Possibly a marathon of drive thru windows, hitting all of her favorites and wrapping it up with the, always delicious, Taco Bell. I'll be posting more after she gets in.

video

Here's a video I forgot to post. Kiki caught this baby rabbit while Dusty's family was here. She says that I inspired her to be able to catch it by saying COME ON, if you can catch snakes you can catch a BABY RABBIT! I'm so encouraging.

Hey, Beck

One week until you come to my house. Here's what we're gonna make every day that you're here... Then we'll eat it all by ourselves and then we'll make more. Just for us. Because we'll be the little, red, cackling, hens that did all the work themselves and the whiney little punks don't get any. Neither do the children. We'll gladly share with any sisters who come play with us. I guess that would just be JennyPenny, because the other one isn't sticking around to show you her baby. It's probably better that way, though, because I do still want you to love your own children and seeing baby EmmyLouise might make you rethink that. She's that cute. And she doesn't squeal like a stuck pig or a terradactyl whenever you touch her or look at her or breath the same air in the same car or in the same house or on the same 5 acres as her. Baby Plankton misses you. We look forward to leaving you in charge of all 10 children and running far away for a nice relaxing break. I hope you're up for that after all of the blackberry binging and no purging.

Found on Gina Lee's Recipes (My Hips Don't Lie)

Pioneer Woman's Blackberry Cobbler
Melt 1/2 cup butter and set aside.
In a mixing bowl combine:
1 cup sugar
1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup milk

Mix all ingredients together with a whisk. Add melted butter and whisk together and set aside.
Butter a baking dish. Take two generous cups of blackberries. (Frozen works fine)
Give ‘em a good rinse and lightly pat them dry. Pour the batter into the buttered baking dish. Sprinkling the 2 cups of blackberries over the top of the batter. Try to distribute them evenly…Until they’re all in there. Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar evenly over the top. Pop the dish into the oven and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour, or until golden and bubbly.
Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Day 10 - traveling from Beijing to Shanghai

It's day 10 and I haven't heard from my kid since that last email I posted. Yikes, I'm getting a little antsy. I know she's fine and I'm so glad that someone is taking these pictures and posting them so we can all see how she's doing.

These are the train cars that they slept in on their way from Beijing to Shanghai. Four people plus their luggage per room. At least it was one night. That's not HER room. I'm pretty sure they made them share with people of the same gender.

Breaking Dawn

So perfect.

School Clothes Marathon

KaiKai and I spent 5 hours shopping for school clothes for her this morning. Here's all of the stuff we got. Two of those shirts are for MoJo, two are for Kiki, one is for me, the rest for Miss MiddleSchooler. Everything we got her was hollister, aero, or american eagle. We spent $40. Total. For all of that. Last night she was up late searching Craigslist for those brand names at garage sales. We headed out before 7:30 this morning with our map and had the most successful school shopping trip we've ever had. I think we'll spend as much on all of them this year as we usually spend on one of them. Yeah!

I gave myself too much credit

Since Saturday morning I've been so proud of me for not exiting society and entering Twilight world. In my closet. With the door locked. I've been able to just read a little at night and I can still sleep without sneaking off after Chris falls asleep to read. This morning at 7:30 I started reading (somewhere in the page 550 range) and it got to that part of the plot line that owns me and my soul and my family will not hear from me until I'm done. Luckily, that's only 200 more pages. How does Stephanie Meyer do that?!

WAY better website for China trip pictures

Click here to go to OUR band's website of pictures. And to save you the time of searching for my child, here are the ones I found of her...

Here's practice, she's wearing a green and white striped shirt:

Here they are on the Great Wall:

More from the China Doll

Hello Family,
How is it in sunny Washington? I am half way across the world from you! That's too far!! Today we went to the Great Wall. It was AMAZING!!!! I took a lot of pictures but it was really foggy and smoggy. My camera can't capture the beauty of it anyway. Yesterday we performed at Tianemmen Square. it was 104 degrees, several people passed out. channel 8 got lots of coverage of Brandee, and i stood next to her the entire time! Maybe I was on tv! it should be airing sometime after the 8th of august. at the square there were tanks and guys with machine guns and a reallllllly small crowd. i was afraid we were going to get massacred by them, but the heat nearly did us in instead. this is for kai: i have seen this reallllllly reallllly realllllly hot guy a couple of times, he's australian ,and he looks like a hotttttter version of kevin jonas, with better hair. Brandee and i stalk him(even though she has a boyfriend), it's way fun, you should try stalking australian guys sometime. good times, good times. hey, so ummmm, our phone got shut off so i can't call you guys at all. and it costs either one dollar for as long as you want or 15yuan for 30 minutes to go on the computer. so i may be able to email you more often. i got a gift for Morgan and part of a gift for Stadd. Don't let Morgan grow! I hope she still fits it when i get back. If you go to www.hockinsonbeijingolympics.blogspot.com you can see the blog of pictures for specifically Hockinson. sweet. check it out, there's at least one of me on there.

Love you all!
Miss you all!
MackenzieXOXOXOXO

The Tweaker Stole My Baby

Did you know that there is no record on IMDB.com of that one line from Quigley Down Under about the dingo stole her baby? None. I'm not clear on whether it was "got my baby" or "stole my baby" and whether it was a dingo or multiple dingos. I just looked it up to get my title accurate for this post and I got nothin. I might have to rent it now. This is quite a predicament, as Superturd's little friend, Liam, would say. Yeah, he's three, it's ridiculously adorable. And disturbing because Superturd just started pronouncing Yes clearly last week.

The point I was trying to make was that tweakers broke into our shop and stole some stuff. By breaking in I mean driving up to our wide open shop and loading machinery into their car and driving away. How do we know it was tweakers, you ask? Because Chris caught them. Thanks to our trusty guard chickens. By guard chickens I mean that Chris just happened to be making sure they were locked in when we got home from our hot date (mom watched the kids and they were perfect and that wasn't how I was hoping it would go, not to torcher my mother, just that they were awful all day and then good when I left. Why would they do that to me? It's mean.)


So, Mom and I were watching Little People Big World and Chris went out with the spotlight to check the chickens. That sounds alot like choke the chicken, which reminds me of a hysterical story, but I'm already getting carpel tunnel, so I'll share that one later. Right, so Chris hears a sound and swings the spotlight around to the shop and there's a tweaker lady and a tweaker dude and the lady hastily explains that they were "just neckin" and the dude blurts out "we didn't take anything, I swear, you can come check if you want to" and Chris told them to take off before he shot them both. Next morning he found a few hundred dollars of missing lawn implements and in their place was a box of Sudafed and a can of spray paint. Totally tweakers! I'm not up on my Meth knowledge enough to know if a box of Sudafed is going to get you much meth, but I'll bet you right now that they had bad teeth. That's what Chris' step sister taught us about her job in the drug fighting industry, she always looks for bad teeth. That's how they know they've got a meth head on their hands. She told me that she could tell i don't do meth. That was nice. Of course, that was before that one tooth on the side crumbled. But, hey, Leanna's missing the same tooth, so I guess we'll go to rehab together. Maybe we'll see Ms Drinkey Drink there. Oops, no we won't. She got out last Thursday and starting drinking on Friday.


On the bright side, Chris did not except their invitation to come to their vehicle and check it out. Yikes. And we were motivated to go to Home Depot, not for that perfect shade of boring, but for fencing. And possibly a dog.

Me Too

We grabbed dinner at Shari's tonight. While we were enduring our almost endless wait for food, Dan Fogelberg came on the background music. He is one of my favorites after John Denver and Neil Diamond. I don't think Chris would get lucky in the parking lot after a Dan Fogelberg concert, though. OK, yes he would.

After he had been singing about listing to the rhythm of the falling rain for a few minutes MoJo turned to me and said Mom, I really like the fancy music they play in restaurants. My heart swelled with love for her. Then we arm wrestled to see who's boyfriend Dan Fogelberg is. I totally won.

Tiananmen Square and The Home Depot

Here's the news from Kiki. I still don't know whether the performance will be broadcast here, but now you know as much as I do.

Hey mom,sorry, i don't think i can call you today, as much as i would like to. we perform at tianemmen square on sunday morning at 8-9 so for you it's 5-6 on saturday. if this info doens't help then you can go to like nbc's website or something for more info.
love you, miss you,
mackenzie
i hope you see soome pictures of me on the website!!!!XOXOXO

In unrelated news, I have found out that trying to describe the color of paint sample that you want to your husband on his cell phone while he's in front of the paint counter at Home Depot doesn't turn out well for anybody. Explaining that it's a taupe/beige/light brown color that's not too yellow and not too grey, but definitely not a greenish shade, doesn't seem to help too much. I'm trying to match my new garage sale living room chairs to a paint color. Paint is never my strong point. That would explain all the gallons of full paint in my garage.

More China pictures

New pictures from China today. KiKi is on the far left of the clarinets. She's standing back in the line and you can barely see her. She's the fifth one from the left. The one that you can just see because she's tucked in the line. She has on long green/khaki shorts. Exciting? It is for me. The other picture is of the Chinese performers that they got to see yesterday.

A Handy List of Snacks That Are Both Crunchy AND Juicy

Pickles
Apples
Grapes
Popsicles
Crunchy ice from Sonic

The combination of crunchy and juicy in a snack is very rare and very exciting for Superturd.

Email from KiKi!

Whoops, I forgot to post the link to the photos (thanks for the heads up, Matty). It is beijing2008olympicorchestra.com, just go to the tour photos link on the right top corner. The place looks so incredible. Sounds like it is from her email. Here is a copy for your reading pleasure.


dear family,
sorry it took me so long to communicate! apparently, my calling card doesn't have the option to call the usa or to call from china anyway, so this sucks, but someone might have found out how to use it. the weather in china sucks, humid hot and i can't stop sweating. we had a practice this morning outside and only two people passed out! and it's overcast, and it just rained. still ninety degrees out. the food is really weird but at meals they always have one western dish. our hotel is way magical, i feel like a princess. the pictures don't even describe the ginormity of everything. there is lots of security guards all around the country that we've seen so far(our drive from the airport was 1 1/2 hours) and there's lots of trees and stuff. remarkably it looks alot like our home, except it's really reallly overcast, i hope its sunny at home. the 12 hour flight was the worst thing ive ever had to suffer through, i had to go through 24 hours with no sleep at all. i was way grouchy (so was Sue!!!) the airport is huge, we had to take the monorail to get from one end to the other end. i miss you guys so bad! i got really homesick last night and brandee couldn't believe i was homesick already
i love you all!!
i miss you all!!!
kisses and hugges!
i love you!
mackenzie

I got a little choked up hearing from her. We've been going crazy wondering how it's going. Sounds pretty incredible, I hope she enjoys every minute of it and really soaks it all in.

Yet Another Reason I Make Out With My Son

As if he weren't cute enough already, he's started a request that renders me helpless with adoration and passion. In a loving mommy way, not a molester way. Really.

When Superturd wants a snack, every one of the 100s of times that he wants a snack, he now requests one of two things. He would like something Juicy or something Crunchy. I'm not sure how he decides which one he wants at any given time, but he's always certain which way he wants to go. He says, Mom can I have a snack. How about something Crunchy? That sounds like a great idea?! Right, mom? Then he smiles. Then I grab him and kiss his face off on the way to the kitchen.


After he receives his Juicy/Crunchy snack he eats it while remarking frequently on just how Juicy/Crunchy it is. This morning his grapes were VERY Juicy Juicy Juice Juice.

Don't you love when they make up for waking up repeatedly in the middle of the night for no apparent reason screaming at the top of their lungs, yet being completely incoherent, by being so fricken funny?

China pictures

The tour's webpage has some pictures from the kids' arrival. I didn't see Kiki anywhere, but they are updating daily and it's fun to see all of the things they can do there. There's bowling and laser tag and a water park and a golf course, all on their hotel grounds. This makes my chicken raising excitement seem really lame. No, it did not seem lame before now. Just now.
This is at the airport.




That's their hotel.



Hotel grounds



Not Kiki, but more hotel grounds.

Chicken Round Up

Our Latest Addition

Look what I did!!! I got some 2x4s and with Kaila's amazing apprenticing skills we built a chicken pen. We spent yesterday hammering and framing and cutting chicken wire. We have now turned our shed into a chicken coop and purchased 10 lovely Rhode Island Reds from our friend. In a few short months they should provide us with lots of glorious eggs.

After finishing the project and standing back to appreciate our impressive handiwork I asked Chris if he as impressed with me as I was.

Does this do anything for you? Are you excited at all when I build something?

No.

What? I love when you do build things, it totally turns me on. Aren't you at least glad that I have some talent in this area and can do this?

Oh, yeah, I am glad that you can build things, but I'm not the least bit turned on by it. At no point do I watch you doing something manly and think that it's hot and get all worked up wanting you to lay my quivering body down by the fire and take me...

I'll stop there, as you can see he's not impressed with my talents.

And She's Off

We survived packing for China. Not only survived, but kept the scream fighting to a minimum. My family knows what a miracle this is for the type B mom and the Type A child. Anything involving any sort of anticipation or worry or preparation or stress turns my sweet perfect oldest child into a screaming, crying, devil child. Not this time, though, she says it was the packing two days ahead of time that helped her hold it all together. I'm so proud of KiKi, she's learning, she really is.

For your enjoyment, here are two scream fights we had leading up to her departure:

Thursday night she had a few last minute things to get before she flew out the next day. Instead of taking her and going to Walmart, I took Chris so we could get her a few birthday things for the next morning. Taking Chris required waiting for ALL the little ones to be ALL the way asleep or else they'd wander out and find us missing and wreak havoc on KiKi, who really didn't need that right then. Waiting, as it turned out, was the right thing to do, since Superturd kept getting out of bed until 10pm. Leaving that late meant that we didn't get done and home until after midnight. I was so glad that KiKi had just gone to bed and not waited up. Usually we hear from her when we're gone so long...

Oh, I thought you were in bed....are you CRYING?

I CALLED YOU EIGHT TIMES AND YOU NEVER ANSWERED EITHER CELL PHONE AND I JUST KNEW THAT YOU WERE DEAD IN A HORRIBLE ACCIDENT SOMEWHERE AND I'VE BEEN CRYING FOR LIKE TWO HOURS!!!

Oh, honey, maybe our cell phones don't get reception in Walmart. I'm sorry. See, we're fine and we got all of your stuff for you...

I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD AND ALL I COULD THINK OF WAS "OH GREAT THERE GOES MY CHINA TRIP, ALL THAT MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN. AND I'M GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THESE KIDS NOW, WHAAAAWHHAAAA".

So, we were dead and you were angry at us because you wouldn't get to go to China and you'd have "these kids" to worry about? That's sweet, here's your new underwear.

Ok, so that one wasn't even a fight. She was just very tired and we missed her calls. Still, I found it amusing, as I'm sure she won't when she reads this.

Then, the morning of the much anticipated departure, we needed to be at the neighboring High School at noon. The buses were leaving at 1pm. We needed to stop at the Post Office to grab our mail (it's on our way, and we don't get in line or anything, just grab the mail) and Costco for me to run in and get her an International Calling Card (our Costco is small, no big lines). I tell her that leaving at 11:30 should be fine, because both stops are on our way.

How about 11:15, I'd feel much more comfortable with 11:15.

Fine, honey, 11:15.

Well, 10:15 comes and she is a bundle of Type A nerves and starts to really lose it and demands that we leave NOW. I did it. I actually left my house two hours before we needed to be somewhere 20 minutes away. That's how clear it was that she was right on that very crumbly edge of sanity and might slip over any minute, then who knows how long before she pulls it together, I certainly didn't want to have to smack her in the face like right before she went on stage in ANNIE and she couldn't get the back stage door open to get her change of costume and she was in, for real, hysterics and I had to do that thing they do in cartoons where they scream PULL IT TOGETHER, MACKENZIE, and shake the person really hard. Clearly, getting her to the school was all that was going to relax her. Much like my oldest sister, BECKY, she's always sure that THESE DARN LITTLE KIDS or her SLACKER MOM are going to make her late, and how embarrassing is that?! and she'll probably miss out on something amazing, because they all suck so bad, and life will be SO MUCH BETTER when she's old enough to get herself where she needs to be, and even better than that when she's at college and not here.

About 6 blocks from the school we hit a slow light and had to wait through three light changes. She went into some sort of shaking, rocking, murmuring thing. Poor kid. I screamed at her that theschool was RIGHT THERE, YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE IT. We got there so early that by the time the buses pulled up those darn little kids and I where hot and miserable and crying and I couldn't even stick around for the next hour and a half to put her on the bus. I really was sad about that, even though half of our Ward was there with her, I still wanted to wave goodbye.

I'm proud of us. We both realized some things and I normally wouldn't have taken her that early, because that would just be crazy, and normally she would have lost it many more times, but it was way more pleasant than even finals week, or packing for Girl's Camp.

She's really pulling it together. Good girl Kiki!