Mrs. Clause

This morning McKinley informed of something that has apparently been on her mind.

She said, "Mom, I am going to ask Santa if he has a Mrs. Clause. If he doesn't, then I will ask him if I can be his Mrs. Clause. If he does, then I won't."

So we may have a McKinley Clause in the family some day. Pretty Funny!

Death by Cracker

The modern day Snow White.

We were out of apples so we had to substitute with crackers.

Halloween 2009

Last year we went to Witches Night Out in SLC, and ever since then McKinley wanted to be a witch. Grant wanted to be a ghost, and we couldn't get Jackie to be an elephant or a care bear, so she went as a kitty.

The Sabbath - a day of Rest!!!?????

Sunday was a particularly busy day for at least one of our family members. Jackie wanted to give mom and dad a run for their money. She started out by getting into the Crayola Color Bath Dropz and dumped the whole thing in the tub. She apparently wanted to know what would happen if you mixed ALL the colors together - FYI - it makes black. Then when we were getting everyone dressed and ready for church, she found my mascara and proceeded to "paint" her arms, legs, belly, and anything else she could find with it.




We went to Stake Conference where she chased two moms out of the mothers lounge because she was talking to loud (she was talking and singing into the vented door that echos into the baptismal font) and not letting the other babies go to sleep. Then when we went out to sit in our chairs she and mom played a good game of Church Wrestling. I still can't decide who won. :)


When we got home, I thought we could relax and spend time together as a family. HA, HA, HA, HA. Jackie and McKinley went into our bedroom and found a box that I had neglected to throw away that still had the styrofoam packaging in it. When I found them it looked like it had snowed in Luke's bed. They also had the little balls of styrofoam stuck to their hair, legs, eyelashes, diaper etc. (Oh, by this time Jackie had also stripped down to nothing but her diaper - if I get her to wear clothes for a 4-5 hour period I am doing great!) This little excursion took me about 20 minutes to vaccum all the tiny little balls out of Luke's bed, the bookshelf, Luke's swing, my bed, the floor, the wall etc.


Immediately after being chased out of the styrofoam bedroom, Jackie went to the kitchen and tried breaking all my mason jars that I was boxing up to make room in the pantry. Luckily Bart stopped her at just one. What a busy day you might think? Well it wasn't quite over. McKinley and Jackie wanted to move Grant out of his closet so they took all his clothes off the closet rod and placed them neatly around his room. The only sanity we got for the day was when Jackie fell asleep at the dinner table around 6:00.


Now you may think - where on earth were her parents during all of this???? Well, isn't it obvious? We were cleaning up all the previous messes.



Even though Jackie pokes her finger in 3 eggs in the carton, dumps 1/2 a bottle of bacon bits on the floor, or squirts toothpaste on my newly washed rug; or when McKinley fills up the bathroom sink to play swimming pool with the toothbrushes for the umpteenth time, they usually make up for it in the end. The simple "Me too" response I get from telling McKinley "I love you", or the cuddles I get from Jackie while I am feeding Luke with all three of us squished into the recliner, or the "your silly mom" that Grant tells me as I rush him out the door for the bus, makes my crazy days seem worth it.

Right now I feel like I spend 88% of my time chasing one or the other around cleaning up from their latest excursion - but I find that I love them more and more every day. I have been re-reading a book that I read this summer and in it the author talks about serendipity. The definition of serendipity is ". . . . . finding something good while looking for something else." The past few months I have only been focusing on the "something else". I have just been trying to get the laundry all caught up or the living room vaccumed. Instead of taking time to enjoy the moment with my kiddos and treasure the precious time I have with them. I know I need to focus on the "finding something good" everyday. Before I know it they will be going off on their own and I will be wishing that I could clean up the cookie sprinkles that have been half eaten - half sprinkled all over the pantry floor. :)

Baby "Yuke"

Well, it has only taken me a month to add a new post. I must have jinxed myself after the last post because I ended up having the baby two days later. So much for my world record. :(

Luke David Rasmussen was born on September 21st at 6:04 AM. He is (or was) our biggest baby yet and weighed 9 pounds and 1 ounce and was 21 inches long. I say was our biggest baby because he is the first one that was not past his birth weight when we left the hospital. At our two week check up he weighed only 8 lbs. and 13 oz, and he is just a skinny little guy now. I would like to say he gets that from me, but I guess we know he gets it from Bart. Maybe I need to eat more chocolate to fatten him up. (Yummmmmmm!!!!!!!)

Grant is so happy to have a little brother, McKinley thinks he is funny most days, and Jackie, weeeell - mostly we just hear, "he's cute" from her as she is rubbing his head and kissing him. Jackie couldn't say Luke to begin with so he was "baby Yuke" however, she can now pronounce the "L", so we don't hear "baby Yuke" anymore. :( Jackie has actually done a lot better with Luke than we thought she would have. In fact it has only been the last two or three days that she has tried to squish him.


It has been fun to have a new baby in our home. It is nice to slow down and just watch the kids play with one another and also to see how they react to Luke. I was just talking to LaJean this afternoon and we decided that breast feeding makes you sit and relax while you are feeding the baby. I started to think about this and I would have missed a lot of things if I wasn't just sitting there. For example, the other day Jackie and I discovered she has a "magic cookie purse". She was playing with a little coin purse and would reach in a pull out a cookie, banana, apple, grape, some gum, a piece of cake, etc, and she would share it with me. We probably played this game for 25 minutes. Sometimes she would reach in her "magic cookie purse" and tell me that it was all gone, but then it would magically refill itself a couple seconds later and we would share more imaginary treats. I love to see the imagination of each of my kids and I love being able to pretend with them.

"That's cold - don't touch me!!!"

Our new little brother - Luke.

McKinley - checking out Luke's wrinkly toes.

I am sooooo tired!"

Check out those cheeks - Mom already misses them. :(

Luke & Jackie

Luke & McKinley

The hospital lets the siblings have a little birthday party and gives them cake and ice cream, so we really had a party. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for helping with the party and for the presents.

Happy Birthday Luke!

World Records

Okay, so it is official - this baby is past due!! My due date was yesterday and I am thinking that I need to contact the Guiness Book of World Records and be the first woman to be pregnant FOREVER!!! :) J/K! All three of our other kids were early so this is just plain torture for me. Grant was 9 days early, McKinley was 14 and Jackie was 6. So naturally when I hit the 14 day mark, I start thinking, "Any day now". Plus with this one I have been having the mean contractions for about 2 weeks now and I am more than ready. So needless to say, when my doctor comes back from his vacation next Friday - IIIFFF I am still pregnant, and he doesn't start me - I will be the first woman to give herself a c-section. So I guess either way I will need the Guiness peoples number. Actually, this week I have been trying to be patient because I know the baby will come when it is ready. Soooooo - here is hoping it comes tomorrow. :)

Got Milk?

This past Tuesday, McKinley's preschool class went on a fieldtrip to a dairy farm. It had rained - okay poured the night before and so it was a little cool and humid. Plus, there was a lot of mud. I normally hate driving past a dairy because I can smell it and I didn't think about it until we got there and then I remembered my dislike for the smell. The rain from the night before made it even more unbearable, but we survived. Actually it was a lot of fun. We got to see the milking barn (STINKY).

Rebecca, Jaxon, McKinley & Grant

Chloe thought the barn stunk worse than I did and wouldn't even come in at first.

The kids got to look in the huge tanks and see where they put the milk after it came from the cows and before it got hauled away in a milk truck.

We got to see a bottle that some of the calves eat from.

Then we got to go see all the calves - the kids loved to run around and see them. We loved that we were in a barn and not in the mud (YUCK).

It's kind of hard to see everyone, but just for an FYI - Grant, Chloe, Brighton, Jackie, Megan, Jaxon, Quentin (The little boy from the dairy), & McKinley

McKinley's Class + 1
Jaxon, Quentin, Megan, McKinley & Chloe

How Cute!!!

After playing around with the calves, we went to see some of the bigger cows. We got to see what they eat. (Hay with corn and other stuff - I wasn't listening as well as the kids were.)

After we were done, we went back and had a snack of . . . . . . . milk and crackers (YUM).

Got Milk?