Midnight

One would ask themselves what they are doing up at 12 midnight on the computer. I ask the same question. Ridiculous I know. I feel wide awake. The problem is at 6am in the morning I won't feel wide awake and might be a bit cranky. I will remind myself that I can choose my attitude then.

I'm up late working on something for Enrichment. One of those "last minute Leah's" I call it. I've got a friend that no matter what she is planning she will come up with some amazing extra ideas at the last minute that would actually take a miracle to accomplish, which she usually pulls off and her name is Leah. Thus anytime something like this happens I have to name it after her. I've told her before, she laughs because she knows it's true.

Tonight while Dustin was taking a bath and playing in the tub we could hear him singing. Some broken version of Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer and a few added Santa's in there as well. It was to cute to pass up. So we hid behind the door and recorded the singing. When he was finished dressing and came out and saw us at first he was laughing, then his laugh turned into madness and he fell into a full blown tantrum. His reasoning in his own words to his dad "It was horrible, I only know 3 of the reindeer's names!!!!" It was all we could do to not bust out laughing so we did our best to be sympathetic. Besides neither of us know all the reindeer names either. That fact didn't make him feel any better.

A few Saturday's ago Daria went on her first date..... with her dad of course. The Faith in God girls (that's the church program for the girls ages 8-11) held a daddy daughter dance, complete with fantastic decorations, dinner, and dance lessons from two professionals. Ken even bought her a corsage. They had a blast! Ken said it was almost like prom they had it decorated so well. When they arrived home Daria looked like she was floating on air. They showed us some of the dance moves that they learned. It was so cute! It's a very cool thing to see these moments between a dad and his daughter.

A few days ago as I passed by Dustin's room I saw this on the floor. I just had to take a picture. No explanation needed.

For anyone who wonders what it's like to have a boy in the house, well the picture below says it all. I have no idea what type of experiment this might have been. It looks so organized. I found this several days after I found a small circle rock fire pit structure made from the rocks in our yard. It looked like it was made to build a fire. I did dismantle it and talked to the boys about the "fire" rules. Dustin is not a Scout but he does know that Scout's can light fires with rocks, and I've seen him try. It reminds me of a book I once read about raising boys. The first sentence said "your goal as a parent is to make sure he survives to his 18th birthday." Enough said!

The most DISGUSTING smell on earth….

The sentence makes one’s mind jump to any occasion one has had with a horrid smell. Maybe it’s rotten food, rotten baby diapers, the sewer, pig farms, or dead animals. Gross I know. But even with all of that I can guarantee that none of those smells alone or even combined can compete with the most disgusting smell in the world.

DURIAN

What is Durian you say? I said the same thing, now I wish I had some re-wind button to the days before even hearing the word Durian. Just the word makes me get a bit sick to my stomach, ok a lot sick to my stomach.

Durian is a thorny oval shaped fruit that can be found in the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Singapore. Somehow mixing the word fruit with this food seems so contradictory. Believe it or not this fruit is a delicacy to some. Personally I think their definition of delicacy and mine are very different, I would think of Durian more like self inflicted torture.

So let me explain, Friday night we piled in vehicles with 13 of our wonderful friends and headed down to China town to enjoy some authentic Chinese food.. It was a blast. This is tradition for us. Also tradition is heading over to the Chinese desert shop afterward. The shop smells fine, and includes some very interesting Asian deserts with huge Tapioca balls. Most of us ordered pretty familiar stuff, strawberry, papaya, watermelon, but Ino ordered a Durian shake. “Ino what’s Durian?” He said it tasted great but smells. Smell is an understatement. In fact the shop itself has to keep the fruit tightly sealed. I’m sure if they didn’t people wouldn’t even come in. Due to peer pressure I take Ino’s cup to smell it. It was all down hill from there. There is no word in this world to describe what the smell is like. In fact it was so bad it almost seemed unreal or impossible for something so putrid to exist. We passed the cup to everyone. Each person had the same violent reaction to its contents. By this time the whole shop smelled. When Michelle walked in she said “so what’s the general smell in here?” I think that was her polite way of saying “what in the world is that horrible smell”. Ino convinced us that the fruit tastes completely different than the smell. I’m still trying to figure out how that is possible. I’m also still trying to figure out why someone way back in the history of the world would have even attempted to eat such a smelly fruit. It makes reason stare!

So foolish me and Ken. We try a sip because Ino said it tastes great. Here’s the problem. In order to take a sip out of the straw you have to inhale to get the shake up, right? Well when you do that the smell comes into your mouth. He was right the taste was vastly different but I just couldn’t get past the smell that was now STUCK in my mouth. It was gross and made my stomach churn.

I just couldn’t believe it. So I searched the internet and found some funny comments on the fruit.

1. This delicacy has been described by its admirers as “smelling like hell and tasting like heaven.”

2. Each experience felt as though I had lost a bet. However, as emotionally scarring every bite was, durian is a cultural must-have and the locals will appreciate your efforts.

3. Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says: “its odor is best described as pig poop, turpentine, and onions, garnished with a gym sock. . Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.

The funniest thought of the whole evening was thinking of how fun it would be to surprise friends with a fruit like that, but I just can’t bring myself to even go near it! So friends, count yourself lucky!

Lame excuse

Well I had these grand plans of posting a neat little video to commemorate our 15th wedding anniversary which was last week. Unfortunately I had technical difficulties making the video. Along with that each day seems to be pretty busy and thus not allowing ample time at the computer to do what I'd like to do. I hate it when that happens.

To celebrate we spent the whole morning at the temple, this has become somewhat of a tradition for us and a perfect one at that. Very simple and a great way to renew the covenants we made with each other. We topped it off with a super awesome meal and a day together. I have to say that I feel so lucky to have been married to Ken for so many years and I look forward to many many more!!!! You rock Ken!

We live on a pretty fun street surrounded by great neighbors and kids. Friday night the "boyz" decided to have a camp out in one of the front yards. It was quite an activity. 3 tents, 7 boys, 3 dogs, and pizza. We women folk, all seven of us, joined in for the pizza, singing around no campfire, and games, then left the boys to their rugged camping ground to pamper ourselves with new fingernail polish and the movie Ever After. I love that movie.

I wonder what the HOA would say about this! Ha!

We stayed up entirely too late, but most everyone was up by 6:00am while Ken and Ino cooked eggs and sausage for breakfast. Who says we need a campground to camp!

Last night Ken and I attended a inter-faith Thanksgiving service that is hosted by a local community ministry that helps 100's of families in the greater city area. This is the first year the LDS church was asked to host it at their building, which is pretty monumental because for years and years the LDS church has helped this ministry out but we've not been invited to the big functions until 3 years ago. It's a pretty big event, consisting of some of the largest congregations here in the area, Catholic, Methodist, Episcopal, and Muslim, and I think maybe Jewish last year?? It was cool to watch all these people of different faiths come together for a cause (helping the poor, homeless, jobless, sick, etc). How the evening turned out was religious leaders from each group would get up, recite a song, poem, or reading from one of their sacred text, and then the congregation would sing a song. One of the other ministers used a song that was in our hymn book stating "because we share the same hymn". Our Stake President represented the LDS church and he read out of the Book of Mormon. Pretty awesome. Then we sang another song out of our hymn book. There was also an interfaith choir hosted by our ward choir, which sang several songs, one of which is my favorite "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing", wonderful song. The only song that was not sung by the congregation was one of the Muslim songs which was performed by their children's youth choir because it was in a different language. They did a great job! These kids traveled over an hour to get here. They were so cute. I was glad the Muslim's were there. Their religion is so misrepresented by the media because of a group of fanatics. But you never hear about the good people in that religion. I suppose it bothers me because the same thing happens in our religion at times, where we are judged based off of some break off group or person from the church that completely mis-represents what we believe. After the service EVERYONE mingled in the cultural hall. It was so cool to see all sorts of different people, some in their religious clothing, or cultural clothing mingling, laughing, talking, shaking hands, in our own cultural hall.

The evening was very enjoyable and we will definitely attend next year.

Done

Is it just me or is there anyone else out there who is just dragging their feet on this time change??? I am SOOOOOOO tired.

I'm happy to report that this year I actually finished the costumes the day before Halloween instead of an hour before trick-r-treat time on Halloween day.

I was pleased with the outcome of each outfit but have to admit that I'm most pleased with Dustin's. Out of our family he is the one who loves to dress up the most. Once he is in an outfit he "believes" he is what he is wearing. I was so excited for him. Dustin and Logan were knights. Dustin was a black knight and Logan was a white knight. Real knights. Jenni researched actual armor and she was the mastermind behind the original design. Each piece were actual pieces a knight would have worn, such as pauldrons for the arms, cuisses for the leg, helm for the head, and a cuirass for the body. When I was making Dustin's I ended up staying up until midnight because all of the sudden I got these creative ideas and just didn't want to stop adjusting and manipulating the design. The more I worked on his costume the more excited I was for him to wear it. I thought the boys looked great!


Dustin the "Black Knight"

Logan the "White Knight"


The boys trying out their powers.

The biggest challenge was dressing Dustin. It was a process which would have been much easier for an adult than a 5 year old boy. Having him stand still was almost impossible and he whined the whole time. I reminded him that a "real" knight would have taken much longer to get in his armor so he should count himself lucky. I did however warn him to go to the bathroom before we put it on and if he needed to go later on he would need to give me a lot of notice because there was no way we would get this outfit off quickly.

Kat, Daria, and I went as Renaissance ladies. I have to toot Kat's horn because she sewed her own costume...again. I remember when she was 10 and she sewed her own pioneer dress. Amazing. I don't think there are a lot of 12 year olds who can sew this well. Her dress turned out fabulous! Jenni went as a commoner or peasant lady. Now someone who knows how to sew is Jenni. Ken went as an average man of that era.


Daria as a maiden

Kat and Daria as maidens

All of the girls

My dress turned out well, although it felt HUGE. I was gently reminded that the style back then was intended to have a lot of material and be HUGE. I suppose walking around with 5 yards or more of fabric on your body would make anyone look like a pillow. The model on the front of the pattern did NOT look like she was wearing a comforter or a pillow (darn marketing techniques). The sleeves were a challenge in themselves but I really liked how they turned out.

First we attended the trunk-r-treat up at church. All 7 of us (Ken, Dustin, Daria, Jenni, Kat, Logan, and I) one 1st prize for costumes. That was pretty cool. I admit I felt a little uncomfortable as an adult because I wasn't dressing for the contest. I was dressing up to have fun. I didn't want to steal attention away from the kids since that is who the trunk-r-treat is for. After the trunk-r-treat we came back home, ate tons of pizza with a bunch of friends, then went around the block for more trick-r-treating. All in all it was a very fun evening.


Daddy and Daria ???????

We worked hard on these costumes for two reasons. To dress up for Halloween but more importantly we want to attend the Renaissance Faire, and going in "Renaissance Garb" will be so fun.

Karie and Jenni, I liked our smiles in this picture better

This picture shows the detail on the dresses better

Sounds of Silence

Or maybe it should be the sight of silence. Is it just me or are we entering that time of year where we get so darn busy that we can’t see straight? My lack of blogging has been attributed to the kids, making costumes, and helping put together a huge Super Saturday up at church for the ladies. My calling is Enrichment Leader, one which I’ve never had before but I’m always up for something new. I’ve always enjoyed the “homemaking or enrichment nights” at church and have tried to attend as often as possible. Now after working on a Super Saturday I realize now how much effort and how many people it takes to pull one off.

I’m pleased to say that it went very well. I’m so glad, for two reasons. One because I’ve spent so much time working on it (as well as the other ladies) and two, because women are so busy I felt like if they were going to spend one whole day at church it better be well worth their time. Slight pressure don’t you think??

Amazingly everything went well, not one single problem. We had a fantastic turnout and the ladies seemed to really enjoy themselves. I was glad it happened and I was glad when it was over.

My blog is looking a bit like my journal. Instead of daily small tidbits, it turns out to be one long summary of say, the past month? Well, at least it’s on record.

While driving through a floody street the other night the kids asked me what I would do if the water was deeper. Daria said she would run to the museum, steel the space shuttle and fly to space. Dustin reminded her that she wouldn’t even know which button to push to make it go since there are “100’s of buttons” to push.

I’ve never thought of myself as a “competitive” person. Maybe because I usually equate competitiveness to sports/games and I don’t really play sports. I recognize this is not the only area people can be competitive in. I never like to venture to far out with competitive situations, it’s not my style. Now, maybe competitive can over lap with opinionated, I do think I can be down right opinionated at times and I’m still working on how to come across with my opinion without being abrasive. I’ll let you know when I figure that one out.

I digress… back to being competitive. This month Daria graduated into using the piano books that I am now finishing up. The irony in this is that we both started piano the same year, just about 2 years ago. She started in the beginner kid books I started in the beginner adult books. Can you see the picture I’m painting here? Now we have to share the same books. All of the sudden I felt slightly competitive in that I want to be in a set of books ahead of her, NOT THE SAME BOOKS! Well, like I said, I’m not really competitive as that thought lingered only for a short time and then I just realized that I think it’s pretty darn cool how Daria excels at piano. She’s very good at it, in fact if she cared at all about her timing she would be super amazing, right now she’s just amazing :o)

I made my sometimes monthly pilgrimage to the salon today to pay homage to the beauty industry for helping me not look older than I am. My favorite part about going to the salon is getting my hair washed. They always take a long time and give a fabulous head massage. Just think how happy people would be if we could all start out with one great head massage.

Now back to finishing costumes…….(it’s fun, really I am enjoying it)

I'm Back

The truck is back home. Life is back to normal again (whatever normal means). Ken’s truck looks almost… brand new, well the front end that is. I can’t complain, I’m very grateful to have insurance. Ken is just grateful to have his old faithful back.

Daria started choir this week. I’m excited for Daria but inside I’m kicking and screaming all the way as I know this is the beginning of the never ending schedule nightmare. I’m such a sucker for wanting my schedule to be so “controllable”. I will miss our morning walks with the other ladies since we need to be at school by 8am instead of 8:40am. We walked by ourselves the three days that Daria had choir. Then I just sat and waited for the other ladies to arrive and then we walked back home together.

As I was vacuuming under the couch today I had this funny little thought of how I really enjoy cleaning under the couch. It’s fun to find lost treasures. So far in my house those treasures are not food or trash, but usually some lost Lego piece or some part of a toy that we’ve searched high and low for. Today I found some letters that go to the Leap Frog letter factory. This is a good thing because I just can’t stand having only portions of a toy or game.

Since Lori and I never arrived to our visiting teaching appointment last week due to some unfortunate events, on Friday Ken and I (along with a few other friends) were able to help Cinamon move out of her apartment. She lived in a quant 1930’s building downtown. I love those old buildings. They have so much character. We moved all day, from 9a until 2pm, then we went back again on Saturday 8a – 1pm. The trash we left on the corner for pickup. Unfortunately the large trash pick up only happens once a month, and that once a month wasn’t this week, so the landlord said get it off or be fined. So 8pm on Sunday Ken, Jaron, Chris, and Tim drove back down to load the trash back up and bring it up here. I love our trash people. It was trash pickup today and they picked up every single bit of it. Cinamon is a pretty cool lady and I’m totally enjoying getting to know her.

25 days and counting. I’m not sure how this happens, but Jenni and I chose our Halloween costumes in August with grand plans of having them sewn WAY before October. For some strange reason neither of us has made any progress. I have cut out the material and patterns, remember, that was the day I set Ken’s laptop on the sub woofer. But not one stitch of material has been sewn together. This procrastination happens every year. Now that we are down to the wire again, we have had to look at our calendars and actually schedule in sewing time. Wish us luck.

We had some friends in town this week. David and Michele, and their 3 kids. We met years ago when Ken and I were first married, but they moved off shortly after. Michelle and I actually used to be visiting teachers together. We’ve kept in contact all these years and it was good to find that it was as if no time had passed as we got together. Even our kids had a blast playing with each other for the first time. Daria and Kimberly hit it off right away and have promised to write each other letters (a lost art!!!)

David is a Nikon instructor which turned out to be beneficial for me since I love my Nikon. I got some hands on training and tips and even a chance to try out his $1800.00 lens. If only I could justify that!

Ok, here are some funny questions from Dustin:

“Mom, how do we know there really is a God” (realizing that as cute of a comment as this is I found it a perfect teaching opportunity to encourage Dustin to pray about it. We talked about other people who have seen God – people in the scriptures, Joseph Smith, etc, but Dustin will have to find out for himself).

“Mom, how do we find the person we’re supposed to marry?” (Ok, can someone just slap me? Dustin is only 5, can’t he ask me five year old questions like why are their so many colors of crayons?? LOL! Actually his deep questions don’t bother me, they just surprise me as I’m sure all of your kids do to when they ask various things.)

“Mom!!! Why did you make my lunch?!! I wanted to make it!!!” (Dustin starting school has created such a phenomenon in our house. It irritates him when he doesn’t get to make the lunches. So I gladly let him the next night. He successfully made a lunch of himself and Daria).

Thoughts from Daria”

“Mom!!! You interrupted me again!!” (While I was trying to help her with her timing during piano practice)

“Mom, will you sign this” (while I’m talking on the phone of course signing something can never wait until AFTER I’m off the phone)

Actually I had parent teacher conferences with both Daria and Dustin’s teachers. Daria is doing great, her teachers are very nice and they said Daria is a very polite, helpful, student. Daria does love school and I like that about her. She loves to learn (she just doesn’t love to practice). She LOVES choir. I can’t wait to hear the choir sing for the first time. It’s so exciting to watch her dabble in her own interests.

Dustin is doing great. The teacher’s exact words were “He’s bored”. I figured that would happen, especially since he’s learning stuff I taught him two years ago. Fortunately his teacher is smart enough to provide him with other learning and challenge opportunities, and Dustin loves school so it doesn’t seem to faze him that he’s already learned this stuff.

Tomorrow is the second day of General Conference. We’ve got some people coming over to watch it with us and Ken is trying a Turkey on the “Green Egg”. I’ll be thinking of all of you as I sink my teeth in to some mouth watering flavorful turkey!

One of those days

Do you ever have one of those days which is a lot like living the movie "Tale of Unfortunate Events?" I'm sure all of you have, and true to the pattern of life we all must experience the unfortunate events.

The only problem is sometimes those events are just so lame that we are left wondering and wishing we could just turn back time... just a little, like say 24 hours!

It started yesterday when I set out to cut out material. Ken's lap top was sitting on the floor near his chair where it always sits. Not wanting to step on it I moved it. Looking around for the most logical place to set it I choose the sub woofer that sits behind the chair. To me it's just another piece of furniture. Note to self: NEVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER place a laptop on a sub woofer or speaker. Why??? Well, if you are a woman, most likely you would not know why. If you are a man you will, because most men come into this world somehow already knowing about things such as engines, electricity, and speakers. There is this phenomenon about placing a laptop on a speaker. Underneath all that pretty fake wood over the speaker lurks a magnet the size of your dinner plate. Magnets and laptops do not mix. In fact magnets like to mix up a laptop. After sitting on a speaker for about 8 hours, Ken's laptop entered the realm of laptop heaven, gone, zippo, dead, unusable, has ta la vista baby. In layman's terms: magnets will erase anything and everything usable on a laptop, the memory, motherboard, operating system, the whole shebang. It will not even turn on.

I felt sick to my stomach when I realized what happened. The only redeeming thing of this whole story is how Ken handled it. VERY VERY patiently, lovingly and with forgiveness. I know the horrors of loosing data. The only thing Ken said calmly and quietly was "haven't you ever taken a part a speaker?" Uh, no I thought, I don't think that was offered in Home Ec. class (Of course NOW I want to take our speaker apart just to see the evil magnet). The picture above is of a sub woofer that is see through, OURS is not see through. Ours looks like a box of nice wood. Maybe if I could see in the speaker I would have noticed the huge magnet. Seriously though, Ken was so kind about it even though I knew he must have been wanting to pull out whatever is left of his hair.

It gets worse. I think we were both more worried about what was lost from the laptop, that we didn't even think about the fact that Ken is on call this week. We were reminded of this at 1am in the morning when he got a call from work. Normally this would require dialing in on the special software on the laptop to fix the problem. UNFORTUNATELY this time, with Mr. Dead laptop, Ken had to drive in to work a nice 26 miles one way in the middle of the morning, just to find out it wasn't his problem but another groups problem. I was already feeling small, real real small. By morning I was feeling almost invisible. It was like that airplane commerical "wanna get away?" Ken did not complain. He is amazing.

So this morning my visiting teaching companion and I headed out first thing to help a lady we teach pack up her belongings. The unfortunate events continued on. We never did get to help her pack because somewhere between here and there I got in a auto accident with none other than Ken's truck. FORTUNATELY no one was hurt. The other driver was able to drive away. Ken's truck was not able to drive away. FORTUNATELY we were near Ken's work. UNFORTUNATE that I was already feeling lousy about destroying his laptop, now I had to call him and tell him I crunched his truck. Because he takes the bus to work he had no vehicle so borrowed a co-workers and came to our location. UNFORTUNATELY we had a officer in training, so 2 1/2 hours later we finally got to leave. FORTUNATELY a friend drove 26 miles to come pick us up, Ken included, as he now had to take the rest of the day off to get a rental car and deal with the details. The truck was towed to a repair shop. If we are fortunate it will be repairable. If not, well, I am always telling the kids to not worry about the "what ifs" so I'm going to try and "not worry". We are fortunate to have insurance and I am now unfortunate to not have a clean driving record.

So to say the least, my day was less than desirable, although I continue to remind myself of the blessings, like no one was hurt, it was near Ken's work, he was able to help, our friend was able to pick us up, we were able to get a rental car, the tow truck guy was very nice and gave us some helpful tips. By the time I got home I felt like crawling under a rock. Again, amazingly Ken was very calm, loving and helpful. I don't know how he does it, I'm sure I would be on the war path if the shoe was on the other foot. I'm so glad he balances things out and is willing to "forgive".

I can't wait for tomorrow....another day...I hope it's better. :o)

How fast can you make macaroni and cheese?

Well, I’ll tell you how fast at the end of my post.

This school year is just as good as any and seems to continually provide learning opportunities for me as a parent and for my kids.

I learned a very interesting and valuable lesson last week. Let me explain. I always believed that a lot of my “struggles” and “baggage” stemmed from my parents divorce. I believed that I wouldn’t have had to deal with emotional struggles had they not been divorced. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s not a child in this world who will come out of a divorced situation without extra baggage and the cycle of its effects. Even in the most solid of families we will come out with strengths and weaknesses.

Let me continue…

Here’s the first story. Daria is doing fine academically in school and even emotionally she seems to be evening out. As I mentioned previously, the first few weeks of school Daria was one big ball of emotions. She worried that the bus would take her to the wrong place, or drop her off at the wrong place. What if I didn’t pick her up? What if I didn’t meet her for lunch? What if she forgets what the teacher says? The list goes on. Here is the lesson I learned. I thought that in order to have those behaviors one would have had to have experienced situations that reinforced that worry. The bus has never taken Daria to the wrong place. The bus has always dropped her off at the right place. I’ve never missed picking her up, nor have I ever not come to lunch when I said I would. So why was she worrying about this?

Here’s the second story. As a child I worried about everything. I worried that others knew something I didn’t know. I worried about what others were feeling, thinking and doing. I worried about being left behind, forgotten, abandoned (rightfully so as all three of those are effects of children in divorce). I grew up with those feelings along with a lot of “unpredictability”. Add to that negative experiences thus reinforcing my fears. Unpredictability, equaled “pain, fear, loneliness”. There was a lot to worry about in a family that was rocked by divorce. What you knew no longer existed, unknowns, lack of a stable foundation. I could not control my situation so I clamped down hard on the things I could control. I would not try new things because doing so would require one to face the “unpredictable outcome”. One would rather choose the pain of predictable because you knew what to expect while making any changes would be “unpredictable” which was a much worse.

With that said, I found myself perplexed and analyzing this behavior in Daria. She has a very stable predictable family, school, and church environment. So far in her short life Ken and I have never left her behind, abandoned her, or forgotten about her. We validate her feelings and have good communication. Her day to day routines are pretty predictable. So why all the worry from Daria??

Then for the first time ever I realized something HUGE. Our personalities come pre-packaged. Those personalities have strengths and weaknesses. Both of which can be exaggerated and blown out of proportion under certain negative or positive circumstances. Here I was feeling so guilty trying to figure out what I had done to Daria to make her a worrier. But it wasn’t me, it’s just who she is. I believe she has natural tendencies to worry, and I also think this is a normal stage for most children her age. Put that together and you get a huge explosion of extra worry.

I had never before thought that I came pre-packaged with a worrisome personality, fear of failure, and need to control my surroundings. I recognize now that I came with an “A” type personality and unfortunately the circumstances of divorce affected my personality traits in a negative way. This would explain why my siblings and I all came out of it with different repercussions. Our personalities, strengths and weaknesses were different and effected differently. The downside to this knowledge is the realization that one cannot blame their parents forever because part of who we are is who we are and the other part is the outcome of our parents actions. Not to justify any divorce or negative parenting of course, but this realization almost made me laugh out loud. All these years the things I didn’t like about myself I thought were the outcome of my parent’s decisions. Now I know that their decisions just affected my personality the way it did. Now I realize that well, unfortunately we are all born with some personality traits that we’re not to fond of. Mix in any challenges from an imperfect human family and wow! Look what you get!

Now the positive side of what I learned is that fortunately for Daria she does have a stable childhood. So with these personality traits that she has I know that I can work with her and teach her coping skills, thinking patterns, and tools for overcoming. For me this is a more desirable situation than trying to re-train a child who has been traumatized by things out of their control.

So with all of that said, let me get back to my macaroni story. On Friday I had committed to go to lunch with both kids. Dustin has lunch at 10:30am. I usually just sit with him since I’m so not ready for lunch at 10:30 in the morning. Daria’s lunch is at 12:15pm. Today she wanted me to bring macaroni and cheese. At home I was quickly working on some projects, steadily keeping my eye on the time. Then my sister called and we talked and talked and talked. I didn’t think a thing of it. I kept looking at the time. About 12:03 I began to think I should wrap the conversation up so I could head to school. Then in about a mili-second later as I’m still on the phone walking down stairs I spot the box of macaroni on the counter. I had strategically placed it on the counter to remind me to make it for her. Panic struck! I’m supposed to be at the school at 12:15! Do I make the mac & cheese and arrive late? Or do I just go and say I forgot to make the mac & cheese and buy her lunch there? Oh the anxiety!!!! Why? Because it almost seemed like Daria’s worry actually coming to reality. WHAT IF I’M LATE???? Then she will confirm in her head that it’s ok to worry about mom missing her lunch!!!!! AAAAHHHHHH.

Well, I will tell you that the box of mac& cheese says you can cook it for 5-9 minutes. That is of course if your water is already boiling. I decided that I needed to show up on time with the mac&cheese because I didn’t want to slide on either commitment. I said a quick prayer and I think that water boiled faster than any water I’ve ever seen boil. I tried not to stare at it because everyone knows that if you stare at water it won’t boil fast (LOL). About 12:13 I threw the mac&cheese, grapes and some dogs in a bag and flew out the door. Unlucky for me the parking lot was full. I parked on the street and ran. Funny that as I was running through the parking lot I pass my good friend Jenni who was also going to lunch with her son. She wasn’t in a hurry. I was on a mission to prove my daughters fears wrong! Fortunately my badge from my earlier lunch with Dustin was already printed out and waiting for me, so I grabbed it and headed to the cafeteria. Daria’s class had already arrived and she was sitting staring at the door with anxious eyes. I do believe she had faith that I would come. I did not say a word about my dilemma, but I did warn her that she needed to be careful, the mac&cheese was VERY hot. She opened up the bowl and all this steam came billowing out. I think it was still cooking. She told me later that she wondered just a little bit if I was coming. I told her she should always give me about 5 minutes, depending on finding a parking space, how many other people are in line waiting to get their badges. These are all possibilities. I left content that everything worked out fine. If we hadn’t gone through this huge worry stage lately I may not have reacted so dramatic about it, but I was NOT going to let her fears be re-enforced.

Anyway, even though times like this can be stressful, they are some of my favorite times because I end up learning so much about myself that I never knew before.

Oh the saga of motherhood! You’ve got to love it!

Nothin' to blog

I really don't have anything to blog about. No funny stories from the kids, no exciting adventures, no strange encounters. Life is.. well, quite normal. A good friend of mine mentioned that sometimes reading blogs makes it look like we have these exciting lives. I think we all do in a way, but the blog is just a accumulation of experiences and events. But the majority of the time, life is just as mundane as the next family. Up early, breakfast, backpacks, piano practice, walk to school, cleaning, errands, projects, cooking, helping kids with homework, showers and baths, bed time scripture reading, playing, complaints. I think we can all relate. Still, I love to blog and I'm VERY dutiful about checking all of my friends blogs everyday, and sometimes twice a day just to see if they posted. It's quite an addiction. I always look forward to reading about each of your lives and the day to day musings of being a parent, mother, friend, sister, daughter. It gives me the boost I need sometimes.

I read a book one time about how women are relationship beings. In our day and age we can find ourselves so busy that we tend to have more acquaintances than close friends because we don't have the time to nurture them (rightfully so, our time in life right now has many priorities). I realized that for me, my friends blogs have become a great way to get back in touch with my closest friends (who if I lived near them, would be going to lunch!), when there is no time for a phone call or e-mail.

So with that said, thank you for your blogs where you share your life, family, and thoughts.

Here is a cute video that I think each of us could totally appreciate. It just sums it all up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uISuvTiTYJA

Busy Weekend

There are some weekends that are busy and exhausting. This weekend was busy but not really exhausting. Everything just fell into place. Friday night, even with a booming headache we were able to play a game of Settlers with our good friend Ashley who is visiting. The fun part was staying up until 12:00am talking. That same night Ken surprised me with an early birthday present. A nice sleek new lap top. It’s a very long story regarding the laptop. Especially since I have never liked lap tops…until a few weeks ago when Ino did some kind of salesman circus trick showing me what I could actually do with a laptop side by side with a bigger screen monitor. I was sold. (I’m such a visual person. If you want to sell me something you have to “show” me its benefits). Ken, who is the master of finding good deals found some guy on Craig’s list who won this computer bundle and didn’t need it so sold it for a crazy low price. Ken couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I love how good he is at that.

Saturday morning was our turn to clean the church building. We are the team captains. We are also very lucky as our group always shows up. So it only takes us about 30-40 minutes tops. We went from clean up to Ken refereeing the young women’s volleyball games. I cleaned out the deep freezer. It needs a deep cleaning periodically as ice builds up on the insides. The kids squandered the ice and played with their Playmobil figures on the ice and snow. Very creative. I cataloged what was in the freezer which makes meal planning so much easier. Amazingly even with the cool air hitting my face I was hotter than a frying pan. The joys of living here. My main purpose for cleaning the freezer was not to produce snow for the kids, but because we were getting another order of amazing fruit from Bithel Farms. This is a berry company out of Oregon. I believe they will drop fruit anywhere as long as they get enough orders. So ladies, if you know a bunch of other ladies who want fruit it’s a great deal. I usually always get the red raspberries, individually frozen. Twenty Nine dollars for 14 pounds (it came out to about 12 quarts bagged). Not a bad deal. This time I also ordered dark pitted cherries. For the next 6 months we will have fresh fruit for our breakfast, snacks, and deserts. Yum!

Saturday night I attended an interfaith concert at our church commemorating service men and women of the military, law enforcement and firefighters etc. This is the 3rd year in a row our church has hosted it. After last night I wished I had gone to the previous 2. It was phenomenal and very well put together. I don’t know how to explain it but I become so teary eyed and weepy when participating in events that honor those who serve our country and cities. It’s the same feeling I get when we sing our national anthem or America the Beautiful and Battle Hymn of the Republic. Maybe I’m just a sap. One of the last songs commemorated each of these arms of service and the people were asked to stand when their portion was being sung. Tears were in the crowd as first you would see the police and firemen stand up, then the Navy, then Army, then Marines and Air Force. Very moving! Many in attendance were decorated soldiers, old and young. What a treat!

Sunday the Young Women put on a beautiful Sacrament program. Kat sang a beautiful solo portion of one of the songs. What a powerful voice she has, it was very moving (Kat I know you are reading this so WAY TO GO! You really shined up there and it brought tears to my eyes!) The spirit was so strong. So I would say it was a good day.

We spent a small portion of time this evening at the children’s hospital visiting a friend of ours from church whose daughter was bit by a snake Friday night. She’s only 4. It amazes me that we can transplant hearts, make tissue grow, and do a myriad of procedures but for a snake bite it’s a painful, scary wait. Unfortunately in this situation they did not know what type of snake it was. So no anti-venom could be used. What happens now is the poison just sits, travels, and swells in the body. Her leg is extremely swollen but still has a pulse which is a good thing. As a mother, I recognize the fear and anxiety that would come from worrying and watching over your young child hoping that your child will be ok. Fortunately, I think the visitors made her day and from what we are told that boosted her spirits. We are hoping for a good outcome.

Hey! Good news, we finally have BYU tv. And we didn’t have to go through Dish or Direct TV to get it. We are pretty stoked about that. (Celeste, add that to your 50 reasons why you should move back here)

Here we go with another week of school. Daria seems to have evened out now and is pretty happy about class. She has learned all that crazy information about “addends and subtrahends” because my friend Jenni, who as her husband says “could teach a rock to talk” sat down with Daria and Logan and did some really cool teaching techniques. She really does have a gift of being able to teach anyone something in a way that they will understand.

Dustin seems to live and breathe for school right now. He’s only 5. Here’s how excited he is for school. He picks his clothes out the night before and lays them on his bed. When I wake him up in the morning, he gets dressed and makes his bed (without me asking) and gets everything ready for the day. He complains that I make his lunch for him, he wants to do it himself. It really cracks me up (the making of the bed that is). Could it be that my son has inherited some of my “a type” personality?? Who knows how long it will last but I will enjoy it while it’s here.

Another day

Daria: "Mom you’re the best mom in the whole university." Apparently I’m still in the schooling phase of motherhood. I’m glad I’m the top in my class.

Dustin finally rode the bus today. I think he was more excited to ride the bus than going to school. It was painful for him to wait. He’s asked every day. We have a long tradition of walking to school, which the kids love. Sometimes they walk, sometimes they run. Sometimes they pick berries, other times they play games. Most parents like to get their kids on the bus the first day of school to get them used to it, I wasn’t falling into that trick. The first week of school is always a crazy bus schedule. This year proved no different. I had friends whose kids weren’t getting home until 5pm! That’s par for the first week of school. Dustin felt the wait to ride the bus was unbearable. I reminded him that he will be in school for about fourteen years. He’ll have plenty of opportunities to ride the bus. This idea didn’t help. I did however remind him that most of the day he is sitting and that riding the bus is just more sitting. Walking gets the wiggles out. Our plan is to actually ride our bikes but I have yet to go buy another bike lock. It’s on my list.
When he arrived home today (at 4:20p, as opposed to 3:43 when I can pick him up) he jumped off the bus and did some sort of jiggly dancing yelling hooting and hollering jive, to show me how fun it was to ride the bus. Good for him!

Dariator…..I’m borrowing that nick name from a friend (you know who you are). Daria is such a loving sweet caring, fuzzy wuzzy little girl….usually. Since starting third grade she is Dariator. In fact starting third grade has been an experience sort of like visiting a different planet. She’s been a big blubbering ball of tears, worries, “what-if”, “school is hard”, “what if the bus doesn’t drop me off” you name it. It’s caught me off guard to say the least but I’m sure this stage will pass. Luckily she came home today in a great mood (as opposed to the tears this morning)

I don’t blame her. Kindergarten through 2nd grade is a breeze here. Third grade is intense compared to three years of learning your letters and colors (ha, ha). Thanks to the No Child Left Behind, Daria’s already taken one pre-test for TAAS (I think that’s just for the teacher to see where she is at) and 5 days into school and she’s already received another “practice” test for next week. So teaching to the test has already started! Tell me why a third grader needs to know what a “minuend” and “subtrahend” is already? Hello people IT’S THIRD GRADE!

Dustin is well, slightly over prepared for Kindergarten. That’s ok, it will all even out. Last night at orientation we were given the Kindergarten site words to work on with our children. There are 30 of them. Dustin already knows 28 and the other 12 he can already sound out. I did not teach him the site words, I had no idea which ones they were. I did however teach him how to read which makes all the difference. Ooops! Well, as soon as he turns those in he will be working on the 1st grade site words. It doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact he has no idea he’s ahead of the game and I’m sure not going to tell him. He’s so stoked for class that no matter what he’s asked to do he loves it.

There are a lot of fun things about growing up, most of which I’ve experienced as a parent. There are a lot of things I missed out on as a kid, mainly due to my lack of self confidence or motivation. In this case my huge aversion to balls, or any sport that includes balls. I dislike them and the balls dislike me. When it comes to sports I think of things like mountain biking or figure skating. No balls! I can’t remember a time where I’ve played a ball sport and not been clobbered by the ball. Fast forward 20+ years. The ladies in the Relief Society at church have a volley ball group. Once a week starting at 8:30pm and they play until they decide they don’t want to play anymore. My friend Mary encouraged me to go. This made me laugh. Of all the ball sports volleyball is the one that I really try to avoid. But being an adult now I have a slight sense of control and figured I would try it out. She promised me it was just for fun, no competition. True to her words it was fun. There are a few ladies who played volleyball in college, very good players but they are there for the fun of it. The rest of us are not very good at it but it was worth it. We played until about 11pm. I think we laughed ourselves silly, and all of us got a great workout. For the first time of my life I didn’t run or duck from the ball (well, except when Tia was serving) and I actually scored about 8 points total. The best part about it was the other ladies are so encouraging. They gave me pointers and would always tell me when I did well. Being an adult is much more enjoyable than being a teenager. I like that I can re-live some of those spots from my childhood and live it without all that peer pressure to perform.

Blog Blues

Ok, not really. I’ve intended to blog almost everyday this week but just wasn’t motivated enough to get to it. Each time I got close I hesitated because I felt a bit aloof with wanting to share my feelings about this week.

So exciting news! Dustin started Kindergarten. As usual I go through changes and stages with bags of mixed emotions. I’m almost afraid to admit it for fear of other mothers feeling guilty for “Oh My, feeling different!” (as we mother’s are so good at comparing ourselves and beating ourselves up for having different opinions or feelings), so just know that I admire all of you for who you are and how you live your lives, and especially how you parent. I mean come on, if I didn’t admire you, we probably wouldn’t be friends. With that said this week has been one of extreme excitement and a sad longing for a stage now done. I admit I’m one of those insane mom’s who dreads it when the school year starts. I enjoy having the kids at home, and somehow when I see them walk into school, my lack of memory skills makes me forget all the fighting, whining, complaining, and wild behavior that comes along with having kids at home, and then I become overly sentimental.

I don’t remember going through these emotions when Daria started school. Undoubtedly because she was my “first” and everything is so exciting. In fact I only remember getting sad for Dustin who painfully realized that his constant playmate was now gone all day. He would sit on the stairs with his chin in his hands, elbows on knees and say “I miss my Daria”. I still had Dustin at home to keep me occupied and my mind off of the fact that Daria was at school.

I am excited for Dustin. There was a sense of thrill as I watched him proudly enter his new classroom. It’s always fun to watch your kids face the new stages of life. Right before school started I started to worry, you know the long Guilt List of Motherhood: “Did I do enough with him?” “Did I teach him enough?” “What if he doesn’t do well because he didn’t attend pre-school?” The list goes on. Daria never had any problems starting school. I had her in a little pre-school co-op with some other mothers and home schooled her successfully teaching her to read. She was prepared and confident. I hoped for the same with Dustin. I chose to home school him for preschool which also turned out to be a lot of fun. It’s something I like to do and I recognize it’s not everyone’s bag of tea. I love teaching my kids, for those of you who know me you know I’ve always waffled on the decision to home school or public school. Both I think are great options. Because Dustin was a bit older before going to Kindergarten I had to step up my game and lesson plans, and include experiments and field trips. For us it worked out.

I was pleasantly surprised at how confident he seemed going to school the first day. All my fears kind of washed away. He’s so completely excited he can hardly stand it. On Tuesday he said “Mom, yesterday I liked school, but now I love it”. It is so fun to see him so excited and interested in learning.

With all that excitement I am also left with the residue of gracefully (or trying to at least) moving on to a different stage of motherhood (yeah right). Sure there are a lot of exciting options but I’m still accepting and dealing with my feeling of “missing the kids at home stage of life”. In time it will change but I’m all about validating feelings. I’m not the only one. I think Ken was just as sad as I was. His comment after walking Daria to her class was “they are growing up so fast”.

Monday after walking the kids to school I went to brunch with the girls at Panera, complete with the 50 pack of German chocolates that Betsty brought to celebrate. I abstained of course but enjoyed the aroma. That was a lot of fun. Coming home was odd. I’m so used to getting this routine going with Dustin. So I spent the day digging through closets and preparing things for a garage sale.

Now that my kids are in school I’m finding out a lot of things.

1.I’m still as busy as I was before. I just don’t have the extra dimension of integrating a kid into my lists of “to-do’s”
2.Of course I enjoy being able to do some things without kids, or having a babysitter, but the quietness in the house is deafening.
3.I miss the rustling of kid noises.
4.I like being able to do some things without finding someone to swap kids with.
5.I’m not a very funny person. In fact Daria and I are so much alike. We are very serious people. This can be a negative quality at times. Dustin on the other hand is a lot like Ken, trying to be funny all the time. Dustin is our “glad” boy, no matter what happens he is almost instantly glad or happy afterwards. This is a good quality. So I find that I miss the “positive” vibes that he would spread through the house. I think it was his daily goal to make me laugh. At times it would irritate me (some things he thinks are funny are just not funny to me).
6.I can actually look at my lists of projects or “have to do’s” and create some sort of schedule and feel like I’m accomplishing something.
7.I totally miss putting together school lessons. I’m a sucker for shopping at the teacher’s supply stores.
8.In the past the hours after school were the most harried. My hope was to get things prepared enough to spend some time with the kids when they got home. I’m finding that I don’t function well without a schedule. So far this week (are you ready for this….this comes from me and the kids who can literally go a week without watching TV), when the kids got home we went through backpacks, talked about their school days and then watched Little House on the Prairie….every day. I felt so off balance thinking there must be something I’m supposed to be doing. But I was doing something, enjoying time with the kids.
9.I am totally excited to be able to volunteer at the school more this year. I love that!
10.I’m finding that once you have your kids in school you start getting all sorts of advice or comments like “So what are you going to do now?”, “you are going to be so bored”, “you better get involved in this or that or you’ll go crazy” “now you can live your life!!” (As if I wasn’t living it before?)
11. I’m finding that you get a lot of questions that make you feel like you’re from another planet like “what in the world do you do all day?” “Why aren’t you going to get a job?” “you must love having all that time to yourself” (as if I’m spending all day pampering myself! Yeah right)

At any rate, it takes all of us mother’s to make the world go around, so I’m just going to keep going forward!

The summer ends

Helping the dad

Not something you usually see in your front yard

Meet the teacher day. Can you tell the difference between the 3rd graders and the Kindergartner? Hard to believe

Everybody loves a sharp dressed "man" (zz top)

Well, tomorrow is the big day. Dustin starts Kindergarten. It seems quite unreal actually, not just because it seems like yesterday I was changing his diaper, but quite the opposite. It seems like Dustin should be going into 1st grade instead of Kindergarten. Not only is he tall for his age, but he is smart as a whip and quite comparable to his counterparts who are a year older. If the rules were different, I'd bet my bottom dollar that if he had started last year he would have done great. Of course I didn't push the issue. Everyone knows that having a more mature boy starting school is a blessing.


He is excited and nervous to say the least. With the looks of his camouflage backpack, lunch pack, pants, and socks, he looks more like he's ready to join the military (I'd be nervous too), but alas, only kindergarten. On Friday we "met the teachers". Dustin feels good about his. Her brother's name is Dustin. (immediate connection there) :o)


We will walk to school in the morning. Our yearly tradition. Dustin is excited to try out the bus because Daria told him it's a lot of fun because you don't have to wear a seat belt. What is it about kids that makes "living on the edge" so captivating?


Daria is ready for school. She will have two teachers this year. There is the morning teacher that teaches certain subjects, then in the afternoon they go to a different classroom and the other teacher teaches them. It will be interesting to see what Daria can do this year as she is in a tough class (academically that is). I think she can do it. She on the other hand is more interested in joining choir.


As a send off here are a few recent quotes from Dustin.


1. "I guess I'll just be plain ole' Dustin" (this is after I refused to let him dress up as a firefighter to go across the street. Normally I don't mind him dressing up, but wearing two layers of pants, two layers of socks up to your knee, a sweat shirt, a ski jacket, a face mask and bandanna when it's hot enough to fry an egg outside is just not a good idea. I think he would pass out from heat exhaustion before he made it across the road. So instead of "being" a firefighter he resorts to the reality of just being himself.)


2. After asking if he could go back over to a friends house and me saying "not now" he exclaims with the drama of a Broadway actor "NOW I'M REALLY BORED" (lucky for me to have the great line from my step-mom "bored is a choice")

Persistence Pays Off..

Have you ever had a friend that you've lost contact with and wish you could re-connect? Well, I have. I'm sure some of my other long time friends are tired of me always asking "Hey, have you heard from so and so?" Maybe it's the genealogist in me, maybe I'm just sentimental, either way I think good friendships are hard to find, and thus worth the effort to "find" them again. I had a super great friend in elementary school. There were actually about 4-5 of us who were pretty close, we all lived in the same neighborhood. Elkie was the first one to jump ship, not by her own doing but by her family moving to another state. I remember we kept in contact via letters periodically, and a few times when we got older. The last time we spoke was in 1992 fifteen years ago. After that I lost contact. I've periodically tried various ways to research where she might be but always came up empty handed, until the other night. I came across some old items and just thought "hey, I'm going to do some more research" which I admit I'm pretty darn good at. Unbelievably I was able to find her parents location and the next morning left a message hoping I got the right family. Amazingly it was the right family and as soon as her mother gave her the message she phoned me that same night. We had a totally great conversation catching up on everything in each other's lives.

Now, not only is finding an old time friend fun, but finding that they are still a pretty neat person with a lot of similar interests and qualities is even more of a cool thing. Add to that the fact that even though we have not spoken for 15 years it seemed like time hadn't passed at all. What a great blessing!

Just for memories sake I had to post one of our 5th grade pictures. Ok, I have no idea what was going on with my hair that day!!! except we were at a skating rink, so I'm sure I was thinking I was lookin' cool! Enjoy!

Being better stewards of the world

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=7

My dad (who lives in what I would consider the recycling mecca of the world) sent this link to me. It is fascinating but more than that it is sobering the effect we humans have on the world around us. Check it out.

This is completely worth the time to look at each of the depictions of art and read the captions. Makes ya think! The most amazing pictures was the cell phones about the 16ht picture on the page.

I believe that we are so blessed to have such technology to make our lives so much better than those who came before us. Yet at the same time we've become a very gluttonous, disposable world, unable to buy something and make it last or use it for a long time like our grandparents did. Instead we almost so effortlessly go through things without thinking what happens to them when I'm done???

Thanks to my family who have been a great example of doing their best to not make a negative effect on the earth's resources. Thanks to Heather who is a continued inspiration.

Where we live recycling is difficult because there are not a lot of facilities. But we recycle everything we can. The kids and I make our monthly trips to drop off glass, paper, plastic bags. We keep lights off and try not to run water while brushing our teeth, stuff like that. It seems trivial but I do believe that it is teaching Daria and Dustin to be more respectful and more grateful. Recently at the grocery store I asked for paper. It was hilarious! the clerk looked at me as if she had no idea what paper was. They were however polite. I found something very interesting was when I use plastic I come home with about 25 bags. When I use paper I come home with about 10. They are a little more work to carry but I think it's just another great way to be more active. You laugh, but seriously I was ok with it. I may have to invest in those shopping bags that Heather mentioned.

By the way, I noticed at the store the other day these disposable plates that looked like Styrofoam but they are completely biodegradable, made out of corn. Check it out!!

I really believe that one day we will be accountable for how we managed the earth's resources and while I'm not pointing any fingers, well maybe pointing fingers at myself really, I hope we might all slow down and find different ways to appreciate what we have by being more conscious. In the long run it just might save us some money!

Gingerbread Cookies, Ambulances, Halloween

Thankful thought of the day: I'm grateful for a hot running shower. Seriously, almost everyday I think I'm so lucky to be able to just step in a clean shower, turn on a knob and take a shower. Have you ever thought of how fortunate we are to do that? I can't imagine living in a time or place where we didn't have that luxary.

By the title of my post most of you are probably wondering what planet I live on. It's only August, school hasn't started yet, and here I am mentioning gingerbread and Halloween!!!

Chalk it up to the end of the summer scramble to fill up our time. Quite frankly we've been playing so much that I think we are just coming up with funny things to do.

A few weeks ago our family home evening lesson was on "Gracious George the Gingerbread Man". It is a story about a Gingerbread man who goes from house to house doing good. The idea was to get the kids to help each other out more. We have a little felt gingerbread man and when you do something for someone you leave him there and the person who finds him then gets to do something for someone else. Our neighbors joined in (they made a felt man as well). Both George's did a lot of traveling around their respective houses during the week. But, during that particular family night we ended to late to make any gingerbread cookies. Fast forward to this week. 4 kids and 3 adults with nothing else to do (yeah right). After family home evening (our neighbors daughter Kat gave the lesson) we decided to make the ginger cookies. I pulled out my maternal grandmother's gingersnap cookie recipe. I've never used it but thought it was worth a try. These gingerbread cookies turned out so moist and yummy that we made a second batch last night. Only this time we made ginger snowmen and snails. We named them things like "Truthful Trina" and "Service Sally the Snow woman". I think there was just as much sugar, flour, and dough on the floor as there was on the cookie sheets. Either way they tasted good.

As most of you know Ken is now a volunteer EMT. Tuesday was "National Night Out". Ken had to drive the ambulance to a few community events. But first he stopped by the house and gave all the kids a ride around the block. I told them that they can say that they've rode in an ambulance, and didn't even have to pay any co-pay!

This week should have been dubbed "safety week" in our home. Not only did the kids get to tour an ambulance and a fire truck Tuesday night. Thursday was the fire safety day at the library. The kids listened to a fireman speak about fire safety and then get dressed in his full uniform. This really helps the kids not be fearful of a fireman. Once they are fully dressed, they can look like some alien to a small child. No one wants their kid afraid of a fireman when they are in a fire. I never thought of it like this but the first time Daria saw a firemen dressed like this she was a bit alarmed. Of course the Darth Vader sounding voice that comes out of the breathing apparatus doesn't help either. Thus the reason we took the opportunity to attend this event.

Before you know it Halloween will be upon us. Why do I care you ask? As you know my friend and I have been having a blast sewing costumes for our family each year. We really wanted to do Civil War this year but decided to do that for next year as it will take us about that long to make the dresses. It may seem sort of silly but it's a great way to learn to sew and a lot of fun. Add to it my love of history and it's right up my alley to make some sort of historical outfit. The kids love it and the husbands don't seem to mind. So this year we are going to do renaissance.

Jenni, Kat, Logan, Daria, Dustin, and I loaded up for a trip to Joanne's fabric. This is actually a treat for all the kids because they love looking at the costume patterns and fabric. Seriously, my kids are easily entertained. Four $1.99 patterns (on sale from $16.00) and some really awesome Brocade fabric later (also on sale) we left completely satisfied with our upcoming sewing adventure. At first I thought I would post the pattern picture for the dresses I'm making for Daria and myself, but I'll just let you be surprised. I will be going as a noble lady, Jenni I think will be more of a peasant, Kat and Daria will be noble, Ino will be a Jester, Ken and Dustin will be more of a knight. So, let the sewing begin.

Hmmmmm, we still have time to enjoy August.

Back to the Country

Thankful thought for the day: I'm thankful for the summer because I love being with my kids. I love how we can make our own schedule and do what we want when we want. I love the evenings that are not rushed like they are during the school year.

Here are some pictures that were taken in October. I didn't take any during this last trip but I wanted to share a few anyway.


Last week/weekend we traveled back to visit the farm. I can't remember when we visited last. There is something about returning. It's almost as though the clock ticks a bit slower, the days seem longer, and life is a bit quieter. Traveling back we pass by corn fields, this time the corn is all dark and black. The consequence of too much rain. We are not sure how many crops will actually yield anything of worth. This specific part of the state is immersed with generations of Germans and Czechoslovakians. Most people who live here have lived here for generations. Ken's family arrived here around 1905. The genealogist in me scans the scenery for the old cemeteries near the old Catholic and Brethren churches, homesteads that surely go back to the early 1900's maybe earlier. Life seems peaceful. I like the wisdom and information that the families have about sustaining life. Something that gets totally lost in the city or more developed areas.


We were lucky to spend some time with Ken's parents. No field work this time since they are waiting for the fields to dry out. Daria and I worked on a puzzle with Grandma, the kids learned how to play dominoes and we of course brought our Settlers of Catan game. Ken's mom played 4 rounds with us. Home cooked meals. I cook meals at home but there is nothing like a home cooked meal by Ken's mom. She's probably cooked 3 times a day for 60 years. She likes to cook. They don't eat cereal for breakfast, they cook for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It tastes good. I believe it is because most the staple items she cooks with are from her farm. Meat from their cows, eggs from their chickens, fruits and veggies from their gardens. I can finally taste the difference between frozen and fresh store veggies, and the fresh food on the farm. The eggs actually have flavor! Dustin loves eating grandma's cooking.


One of my favorite things to do is to sit outside. The sounds are different from where we live. No hum of the air conditioner (not even their air conditioner as it broke right when we arrived. So needless to say we spent a sweltering hot weekend, but it was worth it), no car noises. You can hear the insects making their chirping noises in the tree (I have no idea how to spell the Czech name for that insect) and the breeze through the leaves. The pecan trees are loaded this year. They are still green, not ready for thrashing but come November we may have to head back up and work for a day thrashing and picking. As farmers do, Ken and his dad had to rescue a piece of farm equipment that was stuck in a field because it broke. I think farmers spend just as much time farming as they do fixing. Once home Ken's dad, brother in-law spent their time welding and fixing the piece. The highlight is always a ride on the 4-wheeler. This time Ken (while riding with each kid) let them steer, very slowly. Time was spent with the cousins and visiting Ken's siblings. One trip to the meat market. We also watched a calf nurse from a surrogate mother cow.


In the end I thought to myself, "It is always good to visit and always good to return home.", but there is still a part of me that misses living in the country. We are however very fortunate that our kids can enjoy both worlds!

Vacation Update Part 2

My fingers went into shock from my last post since it was so long so I had to let them recover before posting the rest of our trip. Ok, not really. Actually the fact is that I've been on a month long vacation playing and now that the festivities are over I have to face the cold hard reality...... Uhh, that I must now cook dinner, do bills, organize schedules, get the kids to sleep on time, exercise, and check the 100+ e-mails that sat quietly in my e-box just waiting to be opened (among other things).

Our trip to Disney did not end there. Being the brave friends we are we decided to test how deep our friendship was and pile all 8 of us (4 adults, 4 kids) into our super cool van and drive the 17 or so hours back home. Fortunately there was plenty of room for all of us. Ken added this nifty hitch to the van and we stuck one of those metal baskets on the back which held a lot of the luggage/baby stuff quite nicely. The biggest challenge for me was being sleepy, unfortunately the 3 kids in the back seat were not. In fact they were so excited and full of energy that I turned into one of those parents "It's time to be quiet... If you don't be quiet... Do I have to stop this van?" As all parents know, once kids get the giggles even threats seem to be funny to them. It was a losing battle so I resorted to talking (since there is ALWAYS something to talk about.) The trip went well, even amid the three disgusting bathroom stops which made you feel like putting hand sanitizer over our whole bodies, clothes, and shoes just to get rid of the yuck. One stop at a less than par restaurant, a long long stop on a bridge somewhere between here and there (traffic was backed up because of construction), One stop to eat PBJ sandwiches to stretch our legs but in order to not be attacked by the gnats we ended up eating the sandwiches in the van. Good choice. A few funny moments watching Greg in front of me try to get comfortable and just when he did his head would fall to the left or right of the head rest. I had to decide how long i would watch this happen before I stole the blanket from Dustin to give to Greg to use for a pillow. On our last leg of the trip about 3am in the morning my nice, newly fixed $1800.00 bumper was dented and ripped right where it was fixed... due to a very fast driver in front of us who ran over some old tire shreds. These promptly and ever so precisely came flying towards us hitting my bumper. As frustrating as it was I was glad it didn't go through the windshield.

What else can you do to see how good a friendship is? Not only drive 17 hours in a vehicle together, but spend 30 days together, and not just 30 days, but 30 days of sleep deprived fun. Yep, that's right. The night before Celeste left I realized that we had all been hanging out for 30 days exactly. It didn't really seem that long and even with all of the talking there still seemed to be so much more to talk about and so little time.

Greg stayed a week with us after the Disney trip, but like all good husbands :o) had to return to work to earn money so we could spend it on our vacation. Celeste and the kids stayed the remainder of the time.

I would say we truly enjoyed ourselves. So what do a bunch of friends do for 30 days? Well, something like this: (note: you'll notice that everything we did, besides one activity, was inside. That would be due to the excess of rain here, like rain every day excess, all except for 1 day)

Play settlers, cook on the green egg, cook on the green egg again, and again, talk, eat white pretzels, go bowling, play settlers until 2am, talk, scrapbook, play settlers until 1am, eat white pretzels, talk, go swimming, play settlers until 1am, talk, family home evening (with some more settlers), make pot stickers for dinner, play settlers, fight over settlers, cry over settlers, and forgive over settlers, get caught in a huge rain storm at Sams Club and scare the heck out of each other while trying to get back in the van (where is candid camera when you need them), play more settlers, add a few more pretzels, talk more, shop some, shop some more, play settlers....... you get my drift.

Gabe showing his teeth

Bowling sharks

Celeste still in Disney mode, makes mouse pancakes.

The kids and the family home evening they worked on all day by themselves.

You may be asking yourself the question "What in the world is Settlers?" Well if you haven't ever played Settlers of Catan, then you should either not start now (because you won't want to stop) or start now and admit that you love it. We heard so much about this game from several of our friends. Greg and Celeste brought it with them. We played every day, even after Greg left we played. Even after Celeste left we've been playing as a family. Now we have our other friends across the street playing it. It would be pretty accurate to say we've played it every day for over 30 days. We even bought our own set, and our other friends bought theirs. Even the kids are playing. It's like a plague but a very enjoyable plague.

To all my family and friends who say I talk so much, well, you are right. Before Greg left he said "What in the world are you two going to talk about for 3 weeks?" (because we'd been talking so much already) We looked at him with a "duh, as if women every run out of things to say" look. We of course were right, we never ran out of things to talk about.

It has been a great summer and I'm glad for it. We've enjoyed swimming, the kids have enjoyed playing with their friends and we've enjoyed visiting friends in Tallahassee and Disney, and having friends here to visit with (we even got to spend a short amount of time with our dear friends form Oklahoma). As I look back on it I'm feeling pretty blessed to be surrounded by such awesome friends!!!!