We are still kicking...

Hi!  Just can't believe I haven't posted anything in almost two years!  Life gets so crazy, but I am sad I have let this go so much!

I wanted to post my favorite picture from last year and a quick update, although there are many other things I need to do today, so it won't be too long.

Just thinking about summer is happy right now, because it is like negative a hundred outside, but we are still liking Minnesota.  Jared's job is good, and they just love him there.  He is working in the Young Men's Presidency at church, so that has been an adjustment for him, but he is liking it, and he is super good at it.  He is facing surgery on a hip problem soon, which is daunting, but it will hopefully alleviate pain he has had for many years.

I am in the Primary Presidency, so that is fun.  I have observed for years that it is hard to keep it staffed, and I was never envious of that, and that is tough.  I like being in with the kids though, and my counselors are great!  I am busy with piano (I have thirty students right now), but it is satisfying work.  For my Christmas recital, we went to a senior center and so many of the residents came in and even started singing along and it was just so great and fun!  I am doing a book group, and it was my turn to pick this month, and I picked "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand.  Read it with me!  :)

John is in fourth grade and doing great.  He did an FLL lego robotics thing last fall that was really interesting and cool.  As in, they built their robot and then had to program it to be able to do different "missions."  He is way smarter than I am!  He is still an amazing artist and has been loving a cool website that he recommends called http://artforkidshub.com/  Check it out!

Sara is in third grade and is in the same accelerated program that John is in, and she loves it.  She has been busy writing her own screenplay for a movie she is working on just for fun.  She has most of her class involved and the teacher often lets them stay in from recess to work on it.  Cute!  I am always trying to find good, wholesome books for the kids and I just recently came across this list from Jenny Phillips that I have been excited to peruse--I have 24 books on hold at the library.  While I am recommending things, check this out if you want--to buy it is only $5, but you can see an excerpt for free...  http://www.jennyphillips.com/products/jenny/jennys-great-book-lists/#.VOYnw033-iw

Michael is a big three-and-a-half, and is still a goofy, wilder Morton than the other two ever were!  He is still insisting he doesn't need to go to Sunbeams each week, but loves to come up to the mic if I am trying to conduct in Primary.  He is suddenly loving puzzles, and, just this last week has mastered most of the ones we have with less than 50 pieces.  He loves his time with Dad at night, and he often calls him "Jeerd."

Ok, I should go be productive, but it was lovely chatting!  :)

Book of Morton Stories, March 2013

Well, March was a LONG month around here, and winter held on with a tight grip.  Most of it was spent on Spring Break, so we did some field trips to the Children’s Museum, sledding, and some bike riding after the snow started to melt.  That has been happy to see the edges of the driveway again, and the yard!!  I had hoped we would be able to put the trampoline back up, but it has still been too wet and yucky.  John’s highlight was winning the Pinewood Derby on the same day he got his official acceptance letter to the new school program for next year!  He also got a lego set he had ordered from ebay, so it was hard for him to decide what was the best part of that day!  He got to move on to the District level for the Pinewood Derby, which was this morning (April 6), and he got 6^th there.  Two sizeable trophies make for one happy boy!

Sara finished off a level of piano books, so she was excited about that.  I must say that she was so happy for John with the whole PW Derby thing—I don’t think it ever occurred to her to be jealous or anything.  It was so sweet.  Oh, but her highlight would have to be finally having her bday party (only 3 months late—don’t judge me!).  She had a bunch of friends over and played games, and made bead bracelets, had ice cream cake, etc.  These good friends all knew she loves Lego Friends, so that is what she got.  We now have a serious Lego storage problem going on around here.  J

Michael’s highlight was probably discovering the magic of candy-filled Easter eggs.  He LOVED that!  I knew dying eggs would be too crazy with him, so I uninvited him by doing it during nap time, though he did wake up while we were finishing up and went nuts!  He was tossing eggs in cups faster than I could keep up, but luckily didn’t do any permanent damage...

Jared fixed his car window that wouldn’t roll down by switching its motor with the rear one—thank you You Tube!  He also did the brakes on the van, so that has been awesome!  So handy!  I had fun getting the Primary ready to sing for Easter, and have been preparing students for another recital, so things have been busy!

We are so ready for Spring to totally get here, and we started some seeds inside to move to the garden later.  It is a miracle to watch, and I can’t wait to see how well things will do this year!

Book of Morton Stories, Feb 2013:

February flew by, and ended with some un-planned deep-cleaning (see Jared’s post from earlier this week...).  Sigh.  Most of the month was pretty good, though.  We’re all feeling tired of cold, though!  I even fell on the ice last week and was a little sore, but I felt grateful it wasn’t worse.

I had 6 students participate in “Festival” where they play for a judge, and 5 of them got the highest score so I was very proud!  The same day I took 5 other students, including John and Sara, to play at the Mall of America for a cool fundraiser playathon, so those were some fun events.  John and Sara both played very well, and are getting pretty good in spite of a mom who doesn’t help them practice enough.  I keep planning to start waking up earlier and doing it before school, but, uh, have you met me?  I like my sleep!

At conferences, John’s teacher recommended looking for a gifted program for him for next year, and he tested extremely well and got in.  So, we’ll be switching schools and I’m very excited for the change.  It is a full-time GT program within a regular school (which is the type of program I was in and LOVED and thought no one around here had, but they started a few years ago...).  Anyway, we’re a little burned on our current charter school, because there has been a crazy turnover rate for teachers—John is on his 3^rd teacher this year!  Also, we’re on the 3^rd director in 3 years, and this one seems to be driving the teachers out like crazy.  We’ve liked the uniform, year-round calendar, Spanish and Art that they offer, but, especially with this cool GT program, we’re more than ready to switch.  We will be VERY sad to leave lots of very dear friends, but lots of them are planning to leave, too!  It’s been a little stressful, but I’m thinking it worked out well for us, and the kids are excited, so that makes me happy.

Oh, and I only mentioned John because the program doesn’t start until 3^rd grade, so Sara wouldn’t be in for another year.  She does seem to be a good candidate for it, too.  She says she is known as the “brainiac” in her class.  Cutie!

I gave a talk in church last week, and ended up spending a lot of time studying a lot of biographical info about the First Pres. and 12 that I think is so interesting.  I’m all fired up for conference again—learning about the leaders makes me want to do better in everything!  While I worked, Jared took the big kids tubing and they had a ball!  That was very nice of him, and I appreciated it a lot!

And finally, last night we all went to John’s first Blue and Gold Banquet.  It went very long, and I even left early (which I don’t like to do) since Jared had already been in the hall with Michael for an hour, but I was very proud of John.  They did a talent show, and he played a new song on the piano that he memorized totally on his own.  He had wanted to play the “real” version of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and was disappointed with the simplified arrangement I found for him, and didn’t quite have time to work it up anyway.  Anyway, he was worried his Ogg the Caveman song would be kind of “basic” he said, but I think he sounded like a pro, and I think he was the best one there--of course!  J  He didn’t even get flustered when they were starting to move on to the awards and I had to run up and say he wanted to play a song  (it was on the list but got skipped somehow).  That did make me forget to start filming him, though!  Oops.  He also displayed two art projects from school that are seriously impressive.  Pictures would really help here—I’ll do it, I promise!

Oh, and another exciting thing—John finished the Hobbit last night at 11:00 pm.  I was so proud that I wasn’t even too bugged that he hadn’t stopped reading at 9 like he was supposed to.  Turkey!

And that reminds me that I haven’t mentioned Michael this post—ha, ha.  He is crazy as always, and totally adorable, even when he is fussy.  He’s had a lot of teeth coming in, so he has been a little nuts, and he has figured out door knobs, so everything is more complicated again!  Got to buy those door knob things...

And there you have it.  Good times.  Wish you were here!

"I'll Never Be Hungry Again"

Warning:  The following contains graphic material.  Reader discretion is advised.  If you are eating, and especially if you are eating hot dogs or mandarin oranges, do not continue reading.  

We had a biological incident at our house last night.  John came out of bed and said he needed a puke bucket.  I was feeling magnanimous, so I told him he could have one, and then dismissed his nausea and sent him to bed.  As you know with a 6 and 8-year-old in the house, dismissing physical complaints is something like a domestic pastime (e.g., taking two days to convince Sara that she wasn’t going deaf, and that the reason her ear hurt was because she fell asleep with her earring pinned between her arm and her head).  Anyway, about 90 minutes later, I heard him come to his door, and without so much as a whimper or a guttural grunt of horrified anticipation, I heard the door open and what sounded like soup being poured from a pot onto the carpet.  Three times.  The entire episode lasted 5-10 seconds, which, all things considered, isn’t that long.  But I think that any reasonable person would agree that it is long enough to make it to the bathroom that is approximately 18” from where he stood.  I see no reason why the carpet should have three bowls of soup, while the toilet and the easily-cleaned tile floor in the bathroom should go hungry.  Alas, such are the caprices of Mother Nature when she slams the gear shift of digestion into reverse and lets off the clutch all at once.  My reaction to a puking child is, and has always been, to ignore whatever needs for empathy the child has, and to grab them by the back of the neck and force them to the nearest puke-appropriate surface.  Watching this happen is not unlike watching somebody in an old-western try to sober up a drunken cowboy.  It’s an aggressive tactic, but it works.  If a child wants empathy, blowing half-digested hot dogs and mandarin oranges all over an uncommonly lush carpet is not the way to get it.  Anyway, I was unfortunately not the first on the scene.  Katelin was, and in spite of all her training, she froze.  She stood in mute horror while at least one, maybe two, of the bowls of soup were served.   My contribution was to emit a (for me) uncommonly strong profanity, and then start shouting helpful things like:  “John!  Why did you ask for a puke bucket if you weren't going to use it?!!”, and “Kate!  We have drills for this!!  Don’t you remember the drills?!!”, and “John!  Did you see the bathroom?  It’s right there!  It is a puke bucket.”  But Kate is an independent type, and for whatever reason, she didn’t want me to continue helping, and I was sent upstairs to wash the boy.  While he was in the tub, I informed him that the next time he vomited on the carpet, he would be cleaning it up, as well as paying for the carpet cleaning.  He began to tear up, and said “I didn’t know.”  I said:  “I know, buddy.  It's all right.  You get one free one, and that was it.”  I then extracted from him a solemn vow to never throw up on a porous surface again.  All parents and alcohol users know what happened next.  Mother Nature loves an encore.  Not 20 minutes later, I was laying wide-eyed in my bed, rocking and moaning in the fetal position, while John lay on a rubber sheet on the floor next to me.  In case the rubber sheet wasn’t big enough or close enough, he had again been provided with a puke bucket, and an extra-large plastic-lined puke garbage can.  This time we did get the tight-throated, wide-eyed, grunting early warning system, and what did he do, but stand straight up and step off the sheet and away from the rubber sheet, Puke Bucket 1, and Puke Bucket 2, ready to serve soup to an entirely different carpet.  Luckily I was able to yell loud enough to get him to mash his face into Puke Bucket 1, and the floor was saved.  He proceeded to throw up 4 more times.  Throughout all this, I heard little from Kate, except when I walked past the basement door, and she looked at me and muttered:  “Should we sell him?”  

But, as Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone With the Wind : "Tomorrow is another day."  (To avoid any unnecessary metaphysical discussions, we will assume that she said this yesterday, making today the "another day" she was referring to.  Incidentally, if I recall correctly, after Rhett and Scarlett's little girl puked on the carpet, Rhett was so mad he shot her pony).  Anyway, the boy seemed to be feeling better this morning, and all seemed right with the world as long as anyone equipped with a sense of olfaction did not open the door to the basement, this in spite of Kate's solid hour spent cleaning.  The carpet cleaners are coming at noon.  With twelve hours of hindsight under our belts, we have decided not to sell the boy.  However, if he pukes on the carpet again, we may be open to the idea of a trade.

P.S.  Scarlett O’Hara actually said a number of things that apply quite well to this whole situation.  It’s uncanny, really.  Perhaps the entire book and movie were nothing more than an elaborate metaphor for dealing with puking children.  See below:

"I can't think about that right now.  If I do, I'll go crazy.  I'll think about that tomorrow."

"Well...but remember, I warned you."

"I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again."

Jared Morton

Book of Morton Stories January 2013:

 January had its ups and downs, with Jared and Sara down with the flu for much of it.  Jared was hit pretty hard, although I was never as sympathetic as I probably should have been.  I think his illness was prolonged by a day with every piano lesson he heard, or kid running through the house, or baby crying, but we couldn’t put everything on hold for him for the couple days he stayed home.  He got more peace and quiet at work, and so he was motivated to get back even before he felt 100%!  J

Anyway, we had a lot of crazy cold days, so we were inside most of the month.  John did very well in the spelling bee that was 2-4 graders all combined.  He was the last 2^nd grader standing, but didn’t make it as far as he had hoped.  The word calendar got him (he finished it off E-R), but he correctly spelled tinkerer and several others that made me VERY proud of him! 

Sara is growing like a weed, and seems much older lately.  She has finished reading Little House in the Big Woods, and had a lot of fun with that.  We are not far from Lake Pepin (only about 1 hr), which was the nearby lake and town that are talked about in that book, and we recently drove by them when we were going to an eagle center, so that has been fun to connect with Laura’s world.  I hope to visit the Minnesota sites in the summer.  In fact, I have been totally taken with the Little House books and have almost finished reading the first 7 since Christmas.  I am envious of some things, and yet I feel so grateful for what I do have (especially central heating) as I read through them again.

Michael is finally warming up to nursery, so that makes Sundays a tad easier.  He has discovered he can open the freezer and loves to find ice cream or frozen blueberries.  I am still often finding him on top of a table or getting into something potentially dangerous, or dumping out all the Lucky Charms to pick out the marshmallows, so I have to watch him every minute, but he is totally fun.  I suppose I should save it for our Feb. news, but last night we went sledding for the first time with him, and it was so funny!  He was quite a daredevil, and had a ball until a faceplant crash finally got him a little too cold.

I finished a baby book for Michael on the website Shutterfly, which was pretty cool.  I posted it on my blog if you want to check it out.  I got a coupon so I only had to pay shipping, but it seems like they run specials pretty often if anyone is interested in trying it...

Jared’s work group had a party at a fun bowling/laser tag/arcade place, and the kids loved it.  Michael got really into the bowling (we let him “help” carry the ball and then push it down one of those ramps), and even strolled down onto the lanes every time we let him loose for 2 seconds.  He also had fun helping himself to every drink he could find.  What a kid!  I didn’t beat Jared in air hockey, which, at least in my memory, I usually do, so that was a bummer.

That sums up January pretty well.  We love and miss you all!

Michael's Baby Book

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly baby photo books are the perfect way to preserve your baby's precious moments.

Dec 2012

Book of Morton Stories, Dec 2012:

Who can remember what happened in December?  It was kind of a blur!  Well, let’s see...at the beginning of December Sara had the good sense to turn 7, but I already covered that in my last newsletter.  It seems like most of the rest of the month was anticipation and preparation for Christmas!  We had a great time, all in all, and there were many highlights, including a surprise bonus from Jared’s work!  That was a very happy day, and I found out right before an already planned trip to the Mall of America, so it was a little dangerous—he, he!  Also, I had been thinking of getting a Lego Table for John and a desk to play school for Sara, and somehow I turned those over to Jared’s capable hands—I’m no dummy!  He ended up spending a ton of time on each project (seriously, a TON of time), but he learned a lot, and the end results were amazing!  We found an old school desk on Craigslist that he totally took apart and refinished and painted bright pink.  Sara LOVES it (and Michael and John, too).  He totally built John’s table and it is awesome!  Okay, I have to post pictures...

Santa brought some good Legos for both big kids, and a Harley for Michael.  Really.  Lots of other good movies and books, games, toys, etc.  Oh, and he brought an RC helicopter for John that is fun to do inside—Michael goes back and forth between loving it and being terrified!  Sara also got a chalkboard/white board easel to complete her school, so that is cute.  She always talks about being a teacher when she grows up...cute.   

The kids have 3 weeks off at Christmas, so they get to just play and play with all the new stuff.  I actually like it, and we had a lot of fun but most of it was bitter cold or weird and rainy, so we didn’t even go sledding once!  We did go swimming with friends, to the Mall of America to ride the rides, and to the dentist, so that was a party, right? 

Oh, and John got picked to be one of the four 2^nd graders in the Spelling Bee, so that will be cool.  Don’t know how he got so smart!  J

Michael is a climbing fool all of a sudden, and I am exhausted most days by noon.  He has figured out how to get out of the high chair, too, so he is never still for a moment!  He is not taking to nursery well unless Jared stays with him—and he can open the doors at church so he escapes repeatedly, but he is still totally funny!  When we went swimming he was crazy and loved it.  He climbed out and jumped in over and over and my friend and I were laughing so hard trying to keep up with him!  Then when we were done he peed on me.  Thanks.  My favorite new thing is he will fold his hands out in front of him and look down for prayers.  Seriously cute!  He is also totally catching the Cars bug that John had, so it’s a little “dejavu-y”, and luckily John has turned over the car collection, which is now strewn throughout the house most of the time!  Brings back a lot of memories!

Got to run!