Dishes, last week of no school and other pictures I found on my husband's phone that didn't make it in yet.

Let me just start with this video here:

 

This was recorded by my daughter McKenzie as evidence of her doing the dishes?  Why?  Because an argument ensued just before this about whether or not she does dishes.  She claims to do dishes more than anyone else in the family so now she is videoing herself everyday she does the dishes as proof for her father and I (and her brothers who complain she gets out of it way more than anyone else).

Truth be told, they all get out of the dishes WAY TOO MUCH!  And getting my children to do the dishes is probably the biggest battle I face as a mom.  I know, you guys, are like Really? biggest battle?  I mean your kids could be doing so much worse and all I can say is, I know.  Those of you that know them and have them over for dinner are like, "Really, cause they always help when they come over to our house."  To which I also respond, I know.  And yet, the biggest battle in our house is the dishes.  I've tried charts with assigned jobs.  I've tried single night dishes rotating it through every child and Brad frequently tries the, "guess who's going to get in trouble next and have all the dishes" game, a game which rotates through all the children several different times each night for not helping out or for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  They all act like to be punished this way is the WORST PUNISHMENT EVER!!!!  I just don't get it.  Really, dishes just aren't that hard.  Especially if everyone chips in.  But for my children, every night it is like I am asking them to move a mountain and the biggest fights always start over the dishes.  So when I visit your house and see you nagging your children to do something and you say to me, "Am I just a bad mom/dad or what? Why do they not listen to me."  I have no advice to give you because my kids still have trouble doing the dishes after all these years.

Oh...and on that note, they still ask me to buy them candy when I go to the grocery store and am checking out too to which I respond, "Have I ever once bought you candy at the checkout?"  And for the moment, they stop asking.

Deep down, I think the kids are always looking for that chink in your armor as parents, so maybe my advice should be hold on, stay strong and die before you give in on the battle of dishes (Ha!  Ha!  Just Kidding don't really die.  Give up before that happens.)

My kids go back to school tomorrow.  They are saddened by this because they've had so much fun this break.

We still do not have much snow.  I would say we do not have any snow but we got a little moisture last night.  It's weird to be so dry this time of year (we don't even have frost on our windows) and our whole community, while certainly enjoying the warmer days, is more than a little worried about what the shortage of moisture will bring to the southwest.

Like I said last week, because of the warm weather and lack of moisture, Brad and the boys have spent a lot of time rock climbing.  I guess even their wrestling coach joined in this week and showed them a couple of sweet spots.  Anyway, here are a few rock climbing pictures from before Christmas of Ben and Riley that I didn't post last week.  They are repelling themselves down the rock.

And here, Ben is ascending a crack in the rock.  Riles did it too one climb after but I don't have a picture of him.  From this angle it looks as if Ben is comfortably sitting trying to figure out his next move, but he is actually using all his strength to hold on while he looks for the next hold up. 

The following are from this week and are of Riley and Jake.  I guess this particular climb had no hand holds that they could use (Brad and Ben were able to get past this point but they are more advanced) and so Riley and Jake had to climb (ascend) the rope until they got to a spot on the rock they could climb.

Here's Jake later at the top of the rock.

Jordan's leg is recovering quickly and he should be back to wrestling this week.  We are so glad that the break was minor.

The above picture is of him using the handicap cart at home depot.  He and I bought a sink for the bathroom upstairs that we finished.  Here's a picture of it completed.

Still got to put up the mirror and replace the lights and then we're done!  Have I said how glad I am to have tile in that bathroom now?  Just two more bathrooms to fix and then we'll be done!  Of course, this one has taken us over a year and it wasn't even that big :(

We got some pogo sticks for Christmas and have also been enjoying those.  Especially Brad.  He has to use two because he is too heavy for one.

And finally, Kenzie and I are training for a half marathon.  We haven't set a date yet.  We're working on getting her up to 3 miles of continuous running without stopping and then we'll continue from there. Here's a cute picture I took of her before we went out for a run one day.  So glad she's taking up something hard.  Sometimes it takes something like that to make you realize you can do much tougher things.