Fun day at Gardner Village

Today Camille, Clarissa, me, and the boys all went to Gardner Village. Gardner Village is a fun little village filled with all kinds of trendy little shabby chic shops. They have a duck pond, petting zoo, and pony rides. After walking through all the shops we walked by the ponies, and to our surprise Ben actually wanted to ride a pony. I was shocked because he's usually kind of scared of trying new things. But he got up on the pony like a rock star. He even got to the point he could do it alone without me following next to him like a paranoid mother. It was a lot of fun.




After the pony ride we went to the little bakery they had there and had lunch. Tom was really enjoying his PB&J sandwich.

Wendy Brock saved my life!!!!!!

That's right Wendy I'm talking to you (you will always have a special place in my heart). You may remember a previous blog post where I vented my woes of my troubling children. Wendy posted a comment about a book called Parenting with Love and Logic. This book has revolutionized my family and has helped me and Sam establish peace in our home. We went from yelling, crying, spanking, and losing control almost daily to loving each other and looking forward to spending quality time together. Before Love and Logic I dreaded Sam leaving me home alone with the boys each day and only looked forward to my kids napping in the afternoon. Ben (2 yrs old) was constantly hitting, biting, and taking toys from his brother Tom (1 yr old). After reading this book I've learned how to help Ben learn from the choices that he makes. The thing I love about this book is it makes sense. It's not all about punishing your kids, it's about teaching them to live with their choices and consequences. I recommend that every parent read this book. This book will help give you the tools to raise pleasant responsible children.
Ok I'm done preaching. Thanks again Wendy for the great advice.

What a day!

For most of our married life Sam has been home by 6:00pm at the latest and always home on the weekends. I believe those days are over. We are entering a new and unknown world where Sam is no longer in charge of his waking hours, his work is the charge now.
Today Sam left the house at 6:45am and did not return until 10:00pm. 14.5 of those hours away from home were spent working. What does this mean for me and the boys? It means that mama's drinking again. And when I say drinking I mean Dr. Pepper. In fact, just today I went through a drive-thru on our way back from our morning outing to purchase a small Dr. Pepper. As we drove home I was planning out how I'd put the boys down for a nap and sit down in the peace and quiet to savor my DP. I was almost giddy with excitement. When I got into the house I started by changing Tom's diaper and whilst getting him ready for a nap I called to Ben, "Ben, why don't you come into the bedroom so mommy can change your diaper?" I heard no response. I should have known that the silence that returned was trouble. I kept calling as I finished with Tom. Then I went into the kitchen and "NOOOOOOO! What have you done?!?!?!?!" Ben had poured my DP all over the kitchen floor and was playing with the ice. My eyes went misty. Didn't he know that I really needed an hour of solitude with my DP? Wasn't my bedraggled appearance a dead give away that mama was two clicks away from crazy???
Don't worry, I know that you were all worried that the day ended horribly, but things resolved themselves. Gina and Chris picked-up a DP on their way over this afternoon, the boys went to bed at 7:00pm this evening (just having them asleep for the night almost cancels out anything bad they may have done during the day), and Sam finally came home. All is well in Zion.

Workin' at the car wash. . .

When we were in California we went to Papa and Grandma Knecht's house and lo and behold a few of Ben's aunts were there too. Most of you know that in the Knecht household Saturday is a special day, it's the day we get ready for Sunday, which means we wash all the cars (Grandma Knecht does not like going to church in a dirty car.). Ben of course wanted to get in on the action. He started out washing and then turned on his aunts and started spraying. It was hilarious.






Then the tables turned and his aunts started spraying him.

Beach Bliss

While the boys and I visited California last month we were lucky enough to go to the beach with my cousin Jacquie and her two girls, Claire and Azure, my mom and my sister Clarissa. We had a great time. The weather was a little bit overcast, but still nice.


Ben loved digging in the sand.




Here's Tom and Claire. They're really close in age. Aren't they cute?


Here are all the kids playing around in the sand.





Tom was being so gross. He kept putting shovel-fulls of sand in his mouth. Disgusting! Then he'd spit it out and smile like he ws proud of his accomplishment. It was a fun morning.

Babies No Longer

Yesterday I took the plung and threw all of the baby bottles away. This was kind of a big step for me. I really had to admit to myself that I no longer have any babies in my house, I have toddlers. Once I made the realization I was actually really happy. Don't get me wrong I love babies, but the thought of me having another one in the next year or so is kind of scary. Now if I could just get rid of having to buy and use diapers!

Home, Sweet Home

I hope all of you know by now that we live in Taylorsville, Utah. It's about a 10-20 minute drive from downtown Salt Lake City. We live in a basement apartment of a 35 year old house. We like it a lot because although the appliances and bathroom are really outdated, it's really spacious. Here are a few pictures.


Here's the kitchen/laundry room/entry way. Our front door opens directly into the kitchen. The door you see on the right is to the bathroom. The doorway on the left is to the hall. You may have noticed, there in no dishwasher (I thought for sure that not having a dishwasher would really bother me, but I've been ok without it.)


This is our lovely bathroom. My sis-in-law Gina lovingly refers to it as "Hogwarts Castle" because of the ugly faux brick on the wall. I think it's more like shabby chic, emphasis on the shabby.


Next is the hall way. The door on the left is our bedroom and the door down the hall is to the boys' bedroom.



This is Sam and my bedroom. It's great because it's so large. You'll notice that our lovely red couch resides here in our bedroom because it wouldn't fit down the hall and tight turns into our living room. Oh well. It's been nice to have it in our room to rest and read on.


This is the boys room. (Don't mind the mess.) It's a good sized room. The door you see leeds to an oversized walk-in closet.


This is a view of our living room standing in the hallway. Our living room is so large that I wasn't able to get it in one shot. I love it. There's plenty of room for toys (as you can see all over the floor), TV watching and reading books. It's so nice in comparison to where we lived in Idaho. Our whole apartment in Idaho would almost completely fit into our living room here.




Here are a few more shots of the living room. Notice the wood burning stove, behind the rocker, that I keep wrapped up in cardboard so that the boys don't hurt themselves on it.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the tour of our place. Now that you know your way around you'll have to come and visit us. We'd love to see you.