"Mom, can we play K'NEX?"

K'Nex is the popular toy in this house right now. Hunter got a starter kit for Christmas because he is the boy who will make something out of ANYTHING. He regularly pulls trash out of the bins and comes to me with a mangled scotch taped creation saying, "Mom, look what I made!" He has earned the nickname "Dumpster Diver" in our family. So, I thought K'NEX would be a constructive outlet for him, but all the boys love them and I am currently shopping for second hand bins of them to add to the collection. Luckily, they're not totally independent to build some of the bigger things yet, so it's good time for mommy to sit and "help" with certain projects. Sauce wanted to build the windmill this week, so we did it together - it actually has a motor that spins the top part. Pretty cool. Meanwhile, Hunter was making his own racecar and Rufus made a little fighter jet.

I do have to add that once Squirt starts crawling, this toy is going to be a nightmare!!!

Oh to be three again...

I'm sure that someone out there who is gifted in math and statistics could explain to me WHY - if there is a 50/50 chance for certain things to happen when there are two equally possible choices - Rufus puts his pants, shirts and underwear on backwards and his shoes on the wrong feet 95% of the time!!! Oh, how we love this boy!!!

Davy and the boys!

Well, if arranged marriages were politically correct today, I think we would have found a match! My dear friend from college Karen, her husband Jeremy and their sweet 9 month old daughter Davis Milan (a.k.a. Davy, Davy Crockett, or Baby Crockett) came to visit from NYC for a quick weekend of Park City skiing and playing with the Sweeneys.

At first we thought that we'd arrange for Squirt and Davis to sign an agreement, but they didn't show a lot of interest in each other. Sauce fell in love with little Davy though, and was such a helper and a sweet friend to her. The legal paperwork is still to come, but serious talks are in progress!!! We had such a fun weekend. Kenyon and Jeremy skiied Park City Mountain Resort and Snowbird and were blessed with a weekend FULL of snowstorms. Then Karen and I got to get out together for part of the day on Sunday at Park City. I'm sorry to say that Karen is a snowboarder. Even though she went over to the dark side, I still loaned her some snow gear to go board her bootie off on the mountain. I have to say though, not only is she really good, she helps to improve the reputation of all those ill-mannered snowboarders out there!

Here are Sauce and Davy studying the map of Park City.

The Gaskill family in the snow cave in our front yard. Jeremy spent hours outside with Hunter shoveling these deep tunnels in the MOUNTAIN of snow in our front yard.

On Saturday when the men were at Snowbird, and the older boys were at ski school all day, Karen and I took Davis, Squirt and Rufus to the community indoor pool. This pool has a two story waterslide, a lazy river and a zero edge, soft-floored play area with a playground for the little ones. We had so much fun and it was the babies' first time in a pool like this. They loved it and Rufus was unstoppable!

Davy and Squirt in the locker room, ready to swim!

Karen and Davy

What fun!

Finishing out the night with a story as usual. We're reading one of our favorites, "Pirates don't sit on babies!" Davis is watching from above!

Guilty as charged

Since we're homeschoolers, I regularly attend a homeschooling support group and we try to have monthly field trips for the children to enjoy. I was responsible for planning and arranging January's field trip, so I arranged to have a tour of the brand new police station in Park City. One of the officers happens to attend our church, so I asked him if our group could come for a tour. He graciously arranged it and unfortunately when the day arrived, a fairly large snow storm had hit the night before. Out of 34 people who RSVP'd to be there... we had four. Yup, the boys and I got a private tour of the police station and had a blast.

Officer Mark Chytraus is explaining technical police protocol to my boys. Rufus felt the need to get down on Mark's level.

The vehicles were one of the highlights for us. They got to sit on the police 4-wheeler.

The Park City police drive Harley Davidson motorcycles in the summer (nothing but the best for 84060!)

These are the benches that arrestees get handcuffed to as they are processed. There is no real jail at our police station, so this was the closest thing to it. I couldn't convince Officer Chytraus to handcuff these suspects to the benches though!

Hunca and Pop Pop's visit

I have quite a bit of catching up to do here on the blog. Life moves fast in the Sweeney house! Soon after my mom left, Kenyon's parents came to visit for nine days. The boys loved having their grandparents here. Hunca Munca and Pop Pop came prepared to do lots of activities with the boys like skiing, cooking, reading and playing charades and "Uno Attack." They also got to come see Hunter and Sauce at swimming lessons and go snowshoeing too. In the middle of the visit, they took a short trip down to south central Utah to visit a town called Cedar City. They returned refreshed and ready to finish soaking up their time with their four grandsons.

Hunca Munca broke out the aprons again to make a meal of pork loin, salad and a chocolate pie (made with tofu) for dessert.

Here they are enjoying the views of southern Utah

A tuckered out Rufus finds a comfortable lap!

Enjoying a story before bed

Lunchtime already?

My kids eat a peanut butter sandwich for lunch nearly every day. It's a favorite here around our house - peanut butter with jelly, or honey or banana - it varies sometimes, but we go through a lot of peanut butter! I did some math while I was making three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch yesterday. I took an average of 5 days per week I give the kids peanut butter sandwiches (sometimes more, sometimes less). Well, if each child started eating these sandwiches at around two years old (again, average), and consider each of their ages (7, 5, 3)... I've made approximately 2,470 peanut butter sandwiches in my almost seven years of being a mom. Wow, I'm tired! It will be 2,473 by tomorrow!

Park City moms' morning out!!!

My husband is great to me during the week to arrange a periodic workday at home, when he can get things done and manage the troops while I get out for a morning of skiing. This week my friend Christa and I planned on skiing from 9 to 12 on Wednesday, but little did we know it would be the best powder day we've had for a long time! We did lots of blue and black runs, some of the terrain was untouched and we got to ski shin deep through the powder. I would say that "Newport" (see black diamond run to the left) was our favorite run of the day because we chose to do it twice. The powder (and burning thighs!) definitely took us to our butts a couple of times, but it was fun and we laughed a lot. In the end, Christa lost a ski once and I lost a pole once, but we had a great time and I'm thankful for a good friend to "powder around" with!

Me on Newport

Christa taking on the black diamond!

At the top of our last run - still smiling!

Snow anyone???

We had quite a storm this past week with about 36 inches of snow over the course of two days. Our roof gets quite a bit of build up and Kenyon periodically shovels it off. The boys went out to play this week and had lots of fun climbing on and around the mountains of snow that were shoveled off the roof. It got a little scary when Hunter suddenly got on top of the roof and said, "Hey Mom, look at me!" We had to set some ground rules for where they were allowed to be from now on! They had a blast though and it got them nice and tired - which is always a good thing.

Rufus on top of one of the tallest piles of snow. I kept the porch in the picture just for perspective!

My cool little dude!

Naughty boys and creative discipline

Sauce and Rufus play well together, but occasionally they fight (as all siblings do). Well, instead of yelling at them, I took the advice of my friend who suggested a time-out that took some effort. So whenever I hear them arguing, I call them into the kitchen calmly and hand them each a penny. They need to hold the penny between their nose and the wall for the duration of their time-out (anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes) and if I hear the penny drop, their time starts over. Unfortunately, it backfired on me a little bit and Hunter came into the room and asked if he could try too. I handed him a penny and he joined his giggly brothers in the new contest. My job now is to find an amount of time that actually feels like a consequence to them. At the very least, they are distracted from whatever they were fighting about!!!

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I think we're seeing a trend here!

Tonight at the dinner table, Rufus went from "60 to 0" in 2.5 seconds. We were reminding him to finish his salad when we looked over and he was sound asleep in his chair despite all the other noises and shananagans going on at the table. So cute!

Here's the video of us waking him up. He was embarassed that he fell asleep!

Little fish

The three older boys are in swimming lessons right now and they love it. It is two nights a week of chaos for me, as Kenyon is in school on both lesson nights and the lessons are at 5 and 5:30 p.m., so it is rush hour, "witching hour" with the boys (you moms know what I mean), but it still feels good to get out and give them some exercise on our long winter days!

This is what I'm doing when Cameron is in his lesson - feeding Squirt and Rufus hanging on me!


Sauce swimming


Hunter swimming

7 months old!!!

My baby is seven months old today!!! Squirt is such a joy to our family. He loves to laugh and be loud with squeals that hurt our ears. Often when I pick him up he grabs my cheeks with both of his hands and puts his open mouth up against my mouth to give me a big wet kiss. He still loves his nursing time, but eats about six jars of baby food per day in addition to some baby cereal. He probably weighs in at around 18-19 pounds and his big Sweeney melon-head is probably half of that weight! He has always been a good sleeper and patient when awake in his bed, just playing and talking when he's waiting for us to come and get him. Lately he has been waking up at 5 a.m., not hungry but ready to start his day - just like Sauce used to. Hopefully he'll get the message soon that when he's just laying there alone and it's still dark out, that no one else is ready to wake up! We love our "wittle wuke" as Rufus calls him and look forward to each day with him.

Dancin' Drew

Lastnight was "store night" at AWANAS, and this being my first year, I didn't know we were in for part two of Christmas! The boys came home with many purchases with their AWANA bucks, which they earn for memorizing Bible verses (sounds like bribery to me!). Rufus came home with a new toy cell phone that even has a blue tooth headset like daddy's and this is him this morning dancing to the music it plays! I think he has his mom's rhythm!

The Jones Family!

My dear friend Jenny Jones had her first baby yesterday! We had her baby shower at my house a couple of weeks ago and the majority of us were convinced that she was having a girl. My guess was mostly due to the fact that all the couples in our Park City small group have boys. Not one girl in 9 kids!!! Someone had to have a girl! Well, I think that the water in our town is killing off all the girl sperm because Jenny gave birth to a beautiful baby boy! Parker Eugene Jones entered the world weighing 7 lb. 2 oz. and 21 inches long. Jenny endured about 14 hours of natural labor - that's right, no drugs - and that included TWO HOURS of pushing. She is a champ! I got to go to the hospital yesterday and congratulate the newest member of my exclusive "Moms of Boys Club". Jenny has her own blog, "Keeping up with the Jonses" and the link is on the right hand side of my blog (if you want to watch Parker grow).

Jenny and me with sweet Parker Jones!!!

Our boys belt it out at K2

Our church (called K2 The Church) had a one-time childrens' choir last Sunday. The boys loved participating, but it was a big commitment - one evening practice and on Sunday, we had to be at church at 6:45 a.m. and stayed for all THREE services, getting us home at 2:15 in the afternoon. They followed through on their promise though and sang their little hearts out all day! Here's a couple samples.

"On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand"

This next video was taken during their early morning practice, and to me, the boys look very sleepy!

"As I Wait"