and parks and stuff too.

it's the january thaw ya'll.

where most utahans don't wear coats.

and your kids get to see the light of day again.

and parks and stuff too. 

ok some people wear their coats.

but not if they're going from their car to the store.

not worth carrying your coat around inside.

melted snow=motes around the sand diggers. 

chase had to get new clothes on when we got home. totally worth it.

then we all collapsed and sat under blankets for the rest of the night.

until i made homemade clam chowder.

which all 3 of my kids hated.

sean and i ate ours.

and tried every bribe under the book to get them to eat theirs.

and then when brennan started dry heaving

we knew we were sunk.

so sean started passing out buttered toast and jam.

no dessert served.

pity.

chase liked the bacon.

he kept getting up on his stool and stealing handfuls of it.

can't blame him.

who doesn't love bacon?

no one.

{if you have ever seen my kindergarten picture,

the one with the different colored hand prints as the background,

you  would know that chase is my TWIN. right down to this very face.

i will dig it out for you sometime and you will be like "oh my GOOOOSH, they are twins."

i swear. i was laughing so hard about it that most of my pictures were blurry.

we are kin. and i love it.}

...

so feeding my kids i did not like tonight,

except i really loved making what my kids did not like tonight. 

especially because my kids played toys at the table together the entire time.

with no fighting.

no whining.

and no crying.

just chatting,

pretending,

and everything in between.

and we all know how miraculous this feat is when dinner time 

always falls at the same bewitching hours of every day.

so i sat there frying bacon

and chopping my idaho potatoes,

and it was heaven.

that is

until they all started crying after they took their first bite of my homemade chowda.

that was not so nice.

devastating really.

in a nondramatic way.

except sean and i mostly laughed about it.

b/c you could tell they truly despised it.

hated it.

want to barf it.

and it was just funny.

so we ate our chowda and stifled laughs,

looking at each other doing the shoulder shrugging laughs

between bribes of course.

and like i said,

none of which worked.

but let's just remember this:

bet you can't guess who's at the top of that tower;)