Elmer Update

Only a week and a half left of school left, and we can't wait to have Porter home with us every day!!! I think he will be excited to get to sleep in and spend all day playing with his brother and sister.

Maya finished soccer camp and LOVED it. I never would have guessed she'd like it so much. She has also been quite the little helper around here. I don't know what I'll do next year when she is in kindergarten.

This guy has been trouble as usual. He is now climbing out of his crib which brings on a whole hoard of headachs! He's talking up a storm and loves being the center of attention. He adores his Aunt Sarah (everyone always says he should have been a Harward).

We've been keeping up with our compost pile. Mostly filling it with watermellon rines.

And our most exciting news...We've added to our family (temporarly, we can't take her to Boston with us) Fraidy cat Elmer has been a great pet for the kids. She is super patient and very friendly. All the kids are smitten with her and are hopeing Nana and Grampy will take her when we leave so we can still visit her.

I was looking all over for the cat before bed one night, and couldn't find her anywhere. I finally found her curled up snoozing with Porter. I asked him the next day if he knew she had slept with him and he said "yes but that cat was driving me crazy". She's not a good bed buddy!

Happy Mothers Day????

I guess you can say I decided to give my mom a big laugh for mothers day, so I became a BLOND! I really didn't want to post these pictures, but this ones for you mom...

The Bishop and Brother Call were busting a gut laughing up on the stand today and I just had this feeling they were laughing at me, and come to find out they were!!!

I've become one of those people who it's just hard to look away from:) I'm making myself give it a few days to get use to, but I will probably go get some more dark put back in.

Some of the comments from church

-We thought you did it so Bennett wouldn't feel left out.

-Sister Hernandez got a new dress for Mothers Day and Sister Elmer got a new head of hair

-I love it, it makes you sparkel (bless you Sister Seymore)

-Amanda, your hair!

-You must be new in the ward

-I kept trying to figure out who Casey had his arm around

Get Happy!

Porter had a musical called Get Happy a few weeks ago and it was so fun to watch. Here are a few highlights from the show. I apologize for the shaky camera, I was a ways back.

Mystery Baby

Amanda had her 22 week ultra sound on Monday and me and the kids all went to see their new sibling. We have decided that we will keep the sex of this baby a mystery until the day he/she is born. Because of that the kids have suggested that we name the baby 'Mystery' which we laughed at, but it is pretty cute in retrospect.

They have advanced quite aways in technology in just 6 years since Porter was born and we were able to not only see our baby in black and white, but with the flip of a switch, we were able to see him/her in blazing 4-D. It was really cool, even if it did look like it's head was deflated.

As for names, we are getting closer to narrowing it down, which is a miracle as far as I am concerned as Amanda and I both are pretty stubborn about what we like and dislike and quite frequently they are not the same thing. So if Baby Mystery happens to be a boy, he will either be Elliot Niels Elmer and if it happens to be a girl, which were convinced it probably is, she will be Clara Belle Elmer. We like both names alot so were hoping we'll have twins!

Ok, so I am recommitted!

A few months ago I decided we were going to really work on lessening our carbon footprint and we started to recycle (just paper, but hey it's something). Well I never took the massive amounts of paper and cardboard to the recycling plant (I'm too cheep to pay for curbside recycling so I was going to transport it myself) and last week Casey had had enough. He threw away roughly 6 months worth of collected paper products! I really couldn't blame him, but I've decided I'm going to do better. My new goal is to not only find the recycling plant, but also recycle paper/cardboard, and also cans, and plastic. My greater plans for this scheme is to offer to take recyclables to the plant for my neighbors who want to join the effort. Oh yeah, and I'm doing a compost heap. We've been working on one for a while (by working on one, I just mean we throw all our yard waste in a corner of our yard and thats it), but now I'm going to focus on putting more kitchen scraps into it, and mayb mixing it every now and then. I've always been pretty intimidated by the concept, but I'm giving it a try. Any tips would be welcomed:)

Spring Break

YIPPIE! It's our first spring break with a school kid. I'm so excited to have Porter home for a week, but I think Maya might be more excited than I am. I really wanted to plan a bunch of fun stuff for us to do this week, but it seems like this is going to be a colder week than the last. Any fun ideas for us?

I'm as surprised as anyone!

Porter brought me the mail yesterday afternoon and there was a big fat white envelope from Harvard University. As you probably would have guessed, Fat=Good News, so I opened the envelope and found out that I was accepted to Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Next to my mission call, that was the second most exciting white envelope i've ever gotten. I wasn't even expecting it for another few weeks and then I was expecting a rejection letter and I had totally convinced myself that I'd be going to Upenn out of a lack of options and I had been preparing myself for Philadelphia again, which by the way, I would totally do again. So it looks like August is going to be a busy month with the baby coming at the beginning of the month, and then packing everything up and moving at the end of August out to Cambridge, MA! I'm really excited and left poor Amanda to carry the worry burden which she does so effortlessly. Who cares how were going to pay for, were going to HARVARD!

Our baby turns 6!

We've celebrated another birthday in the Elmer house. Porter turned 6 years old and I'm blown away by what an amazing kid he is. I sure love that guy!

Thanks to Grammy and Poppy for the totally stellar suit and Spanish missionary name tag! Porter sure feels fancy going to church now (he's a little show off).

Once again we are having a star wars themed birthday party.

Here's the cake! Probably the least impressive cake ever, but it did the job. The party was so hectic we didn't even get the candles lit.

It's chow time, but the birthday boy can't stop playing long enough to eat.

Here's the party guest. I think we ended up with 14 kids there. I was really surprised how many kids showed up. We were out of town the Sunday before so we were not able to get invitations to his church friends, so all these kids are from school.

Here's Porter with his aunt Hanny who spoiled him with LEGOS.


Here is Nana who also spoiled him with LEGOS and smooches.

And the highlight of the party was Grampys magic act (all using 'jedi mind tricks' and the 'force' of course). Although in all actuality I think the parents were more impressed with the magic show. Thanks Grampy!

It's still working!

So far so good. It seems like the camera is working perfectly. I do continue to have issues with the blur factor, but I think that comes from my refusal to use the flash, and am hopeful that outdoor summer pictures will be just the cure!

It's been a pretty uneventful week!

Bubble Bearded Boy

Bubble Bearded Baby

Rough and tumble little girl

Baby Koala

Benny is such a little love bug. He is at a really fun age, where he is really starting to show his personality. We LOVE IT!

If Bennett was an animal he would totally be a Koala bear. He loves being snugged right up on me. I think it's all that time he spent in the MOBY as a baby.

As we were getting ready for church yesterday Bennett decided to do an photo session on the bathroom floor. He was really cheesing it up. Unfortunantly most of the pictures turned out blurry, but here are a few of the good ones.

I can't resist that baby mohawk!

He was feeling pretty studly.

Cheese!

Dare I hope this is SPRING?

Ok, so I know it isn't really spring (yet), but the weather has been so great the last few days. I think I could get use to this great feeling. The kids have been loving playing out side, and although I forgot how dirty floors get when kids are running in and out, I love it too!

In other exciting Elmer news, we got our camera back from the shop (yes, again!), and it seems to be working A-OK. I'll keep my fingers crossed, but now that its up and running I feel like I can finally start blogging again. For some reason I feel like a post isn't a post without a few cute snap shots, so that being said enjoy!

"I'm king of the WORLD"

"I'm king of the KITCHEN!"

"I'm the queen of EVERYTHING!"

p.s. thanks to my aunt hanny for giving me all of her way cool clickits. How do you like my flower hair ties?

Now it's just the waiting...

So for those of you interested in what i've been up to since graduating in December, here it is...

I've been working on applications to grad school and i've finally finished the two first choice schools. It wasn't easy, I had to put together 2, 20+ page portfolios of my work, get 6 letters of recommendation, write two 1,000 word essays, take the GRE, get copies of transcripts from BYUI and Purdue and get it all done by the 16th for Harvard, and the 30th for UPenn. Man, the last month has been a marathon and Amanda has been a great sport about me not having a job, but I think the grace period is over. Anyone seen the yellowpages? M....McDonalds, yup, they look like they're hiring. Gotta Go!

Los ojos rosado

So just when I though all who were going to get it had it, Casey had to go and join the ranks of the children (as usual) and get a raging case of pink eye. So far I am the only one in the family who hasn't personally dealt with the nuisance (knock on wood).

Buy three haircuts, get a tooth for free!

We're running a special in the Elmer house today. Each of our kids got haircuts and as a bonus Porter lost his first tooth!

Such an occasion necessitates a fashion show...

Here is Porter sporting three hip accessories the buzz cut, the snaggle tooth, and the red eyes (yep he's got pink eye)

And our next model Maya has an interesting story to her stylish do. It took three professionals to achieve this look. Maya herself began the process followed by mom and later finished by our favorite beautician Marty!

And just to prove we are not bias towards brunettes we thought we toss a blondie into the show. Bennett is so great at haircuts, and always ends up looking incredibly studly!

Scavenger

After picking the kids up from primary on sunday, I was talking to Maya's teacher and she said, "Maya was eating paper in class today."

"Yeah, she also likes to eat chalk too," was my reply.

"Yeah, she sits next to a chalk board in the primary room and i've seen her run her hand along the chalk tray and then lick her hands." she said.

"I know, she's a weirdo."

"Yeah, she is a weirdo."



I stumbled on this video from the summer which only reinforces my daughter's weird eating habits.

Steve-o G. Madsen

As some of you may know, my brother-in-law Steve is really into church history and especially loves the Truman G. Madsen lecture series on the presidents of the church.In fact, I think he has the 15 cd's memorized. So when he asked me to create a profile pic for his facebook account, I couldn't help but alter him a little bit.

Not a Resolution!

So this is not a new year's resolution, because I really don't like those guys, but it is a much needed update. As our camera has been on hiatus because of lack of AA batteries in the Elmer house, there have been very few pictures taken to catalogue our happenings, and thus, we forget what we have been doing week to week, but I did happen to find these photos of Elmer Family Poncho day, and two pics of Bennett's first birthday. so there you have it.