Lots of Random Stuff

I finally got my new camera after losing the old one. Hence the pictures on my blog. And we got a new surplus laptop from work so the Rocket Scientist and I have been busy updating software and such so we can actually use the new camera. We went outside and took some pictures of the kids just for fun.

Early Saturday Morning Love'ns

While Grandma was here, Handsome Face wasn't feeling too well. He fell asleep one day on the couch and we noticed that some clothing wasn't quite right. He looks for the tag to put in the back when getting dressed and this pair just happened to have a tag in the back and the front.

Cute Girl got watermelon seeds in Primary last spring. Here she displays the fruit of her labors (or her parents').

We made fun Autumn trees a few weeks ago. The colored leaves on my fridge are the only ones in the neighborhood since it's still 86 degrees outside. The trees don't lose their leaves here until Christmas.

I haven't posted for a long time. For a couple of weeks, life was just crazy and horrid and who wants to hear about that? And part of that horridness was losing the camera and so we haven't had any pictures, which is what everyone really likes anyway, and so I didn't post because of that.
We still don't have pictures but a new camera is on its way so hopefully there will be more soon.
Today was the first day of fall break. We went to lunch at a friends' ranch. The kids had fun playing outside and I had fun talking about raw milk and local honey.
We're about to go to the Rocket Scientists' softball game for our FHE activity. During the opening song of our Family Home Evening Handsome Face did all of the actions to "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" while holding a trick-or-treat pumpkin over his face. Very, very funny.
So now I've posted.

Miscellanii

(Because every time I sit down to blog I always seem to have something better to do, i.e. my kitchen's been clean this month.)

Apparently Christmas came early this year because my kids watched Rudolph, Charlie Brown, and Mr. Krueger this week. Cute Girl's even got her Christmas list.
School starts on Tuesday for us with seminary starting the following week. I'm not ready for summer to be over but that's the way it goes.
It's been raining a lot the past few days. Our backyard has been converted to a lake several times and the kids have decided that lightning and thunder are kind of fun.
We found out we're having a girl a couple of weeks ago. Cute Girl is very excited and has found many things in her room that we could give to the baby for Christmas.
Yesterday we went to Kitt Peak National Observatory. It was a lot of fun. The Rocket Scientist really enjoyed the solar telescope and the kids liked the ladybugs, rocks, and driving up the mountain in a cloud. One lady on our tour complimented how well-behaved my children were. They really were good.
We've gone to the pool all week long and almost none of our friends ever showed up. Really sad. But Cute Girl has become quite a fish and has figured out how to dive for things (when she can actually get her scrawny little bum over her head so she'll sink). And on Friday Dad came too and that was a blast. The kids have much more fun when he's around.
I taught in Young Women today on the creation and the fall. I'm not a very good teacher and so I was very pleased when the lesson went well. I even got participation and it wasn't ALL from the other leaders.

Frustrated

I think one of the most frustrating things about being a mother is when you're having a horrible day and it is mostly (if not all) your fault. A close second to this is when you're having a hellish day and you're doing everything right. Because seriously, what on earth are you supposed to change to make the day better?!
We were greeted this morning with some sunshiny faces. My children were dressed and Cute Girl had done her chores and I actually made breakfast.Then Handsome Face played with some play dough while I cleaned up the kitchen.


Cute Girl helped with the dishes.
After playing kitchen in the pretend kitchen upstairs (so boring by the way), I left my children to their activities in order to start on my to-do list. Things quickly spiraled downhill. After two hours of tantrums and fights and time-outs we finally had lunch and everyone calmed down. Oh I hated those few hours.
And now we're here. Cute Girl practiced some sewing,
while I finished this banner. It was supposed to be a project that Cute Girl and I could make together for the Fourth but then my children took to their sickbeds for a week. She did help man the sewing machine and trimmed some edges.

Hiking

Yesterday we went to our canyon for a neighborhood picnic. We did a little hiking as well. I learned that I should not take two small children hiking by myself. And I need a child pack. But the kids had a blast - especially with their cool backpacks.

All ready to go!

Playing in the dirt post-lunchOn our hike

Pause, now blog

I'm taking just a moment to breath in this crazy week of mine. We've had locked-in keys, a car that won't start, shopping trips like crazy, birthday packages that won't fit in the car, emergency truck-borrowing, kid-pawning off...
But the highlight of yesterday was sitting around with my Beehive girlies making little toys (for some children whose father has leukemia) and giggling like crazy. They're sweet girls.
And when I got home the Rocket Scientist informed me that the reason Handsome Face keeps getting up and heading for his sister's room at night is that he just wants to sleep with her. He found him there last night sucking on his blanket while his sister snoozed on.

More goings-on in our house

Is it really Thursday already? I swear I was going to post yesterday. Oh well.
Here's a question for you. Why do delivery men (and yes, they're all men in our neighborhood) always come in the middle of naptime? And why do they either ring the bell twice or get it stuck so that it's constantly buzzing?
I am now the proud owner of one 5 qt crockpot, two 5.5 qt crockpots, and three 5.5 qt crockpot stonewares. All this due to breakage, replacement, breakage, and more replacement. What am I supposed to do with all these extra crocks?
Cute Girl is now the proud owner of a Combi Dakota booster seat (hence the doorbell at naptime). Yay for no more cumbersome carseat. Boo to her no longer being able to buckle herself in because of the shoulder strap adjustment.
Handsome Face is still sick. We hate fevers. But this didn't stop us from going to ride bikes with the same kids we traded germs with on Monday.
Our car is sometimes not starting. This is a big sometimes, as in the car won't start when I have to go to my church meetings in the evenings. It always works for the Rocket Scientist and it works when I run errands Saturday morning. Just Wednesday and Thursday nights it decides it doesn't want to go to church. I completely missed my meeting last night. And I really wanted to go!

Pictures, Thoughts, and Random Goings-On

My children have been struggling with high fevers for the past four days so life has been a bit tiring. I've been meaning to post for awhile but haven't had the time. The kids are currently hiding under the blanket covered coffee table so I'm going to see what tidbits I can throw up here really quick.

Last week we discovered that Cute Girl no longer had any shorts that fit. This is a problem as we wear shorts ten months out of the year. So we did two things: cleaned out her closet and shopped for clothes.
I am not a pack rat and I HATE useless clutter and LOVE tossing things out. But I also subscribe to the "waste not, want not" mentality so this means I keep all my kids clothes for the future babies. When your first child is the first grandchild on both sides and a girl, this adds up to a lot of baby clothes. It also means that I'm running out of storage room. So I spent the better part of a day trying to condense all of my tubs of girl clothes. After an hour, I had taken this tub which contains only 0-3 months clothesand combined it with the 3-6 months clothes to produce this: I was very proud of myself, even if it did take all day and the lid won't close. But then we had to go shopping which I mistakenly thought would be easy. It's the end of summer and all the shorts would be on clearance, right? Wrong. There aren't any shorts on clearance. In fact, there aren't any shorts anywhere in the stores! I went to Maceys, Children's Place, Gap, Old Navy, Ross, and Marshall's without finding any shorts on clearance. Finally, we hit Target and found regular priced shorts on the regular sales racks. I grabbed them all because apparently they are the last ones in town. Oh, and did I mention that I hate shopping?

Last Saturday Cute Girl went to her first ever Primary Activity. It was a service project putting together school kits for children in Colombia. We collected supplies for a month (she took pencils and erasers) and then the kids each got to assemble one kit. They also colored pictures for the children, watched a service video, and ate popsicles.Here Cute Girl is with Kate and Anna. Can you believe that even though they are all the same age and all Sunbeams, none of them are in the same Primary class? Our ward is that big.

Since the kids are sick we've been staying home - no preschool or playgroups. But on Monday my friend Jacie called to see if her son could come play with Cute Girl. She wasn't bothered by the fevers and I didn't mind a quiet little boy entertaining my sickies so we got together. Then today we went to her house to let the kids ride bikes on her large driveway. This whole time I've been worried about my kids giving hers fevers and she's worried about her kids giving colds to mine. Since we weren't bothered by the other person's worries we threw them together anyway. The Rocket Scientist was laughing at our "cross-pollination of germs."

And finally, whoever came up with M&M's "melts in your mouth, not in your hands" didn't live in the desert.

And here we are today

We're off to a good start today. I actually got up and went running in the dark - not my favorite - and showered and read scriptures before the kids were allowed out of bed. We had a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, and berries since Cute Girl goes to preschool today and she'll need lots of energy. I even have the breakfast dishes washed already. Not bad, eh? My kiddos got some new things from the store this week. They were VERY excited.

Swimming with Daddy
He didn't want his picture taken.

The sun was too bright to face the right direction. This is what home looks like - scrubby desert, dirt, and mountains in the background. Great combination for dust storms.

So, so, so much

I have been meaning to post all week, but life is just so full right now that I feel like I'm barely staying a float.
Yesterday was not such a nice day. I was not a good mommy or wife or housekeeper or anything. But we'll only mention the fact that I ate lots of M&Ms and had three pb/chocolate cookie bar things at RS last night. So very discouraging when the day before I hit the lowest weight I've had in months.
But this morning we are already doing better. I was awake by 5:30 to lay in bed and think about my day, read my scriptures and say goodbye to my husband. Handsome Face didn't wake up until 7am (?!?!) and I had already stripped my bed and started the wash, fed Cute Girl and myself, read her five stories, taken my allergy meds, and finished my internet updates. Oh, and Cute Girl had gone to the bathroom, made her bed, got herself dressed, and cleared her breakfast dishes. Not too bad.
We have now completed two weeks of seminary classes. It hasn't been as bad as I originally thought it would be. That is indeed a blessing. But it isn't a walk in the park either. Cute Girl is always disappointed when she isn't awake to say goodbye to her dad at 5:45 but I'm disappointed when she is. So the Rocket Scientist can no longer park in the garage because it wakes up all my children. He doesn't like it but he's pretty good natured about it.
I don't think either of us realized just how tired he would be. He only gets up 15 minutes earlier than before but with teaching a bunch of teenagers and then nine hours of work plus hour and a half of driving everyday, he's pretty worn out. Then he still has to come home, help with dinner and bedtime, do any home teaching that may be scheduled, and then prepare for the next day's lesson. We have some really exciting evenings in our house, let me tell you!
Last Sunday I was released as a Sunbeam teacher and called into the Young Women's presidency. I must admit that I am pretty happy not to be in Primary anymore. I loved my sweet, little Sunbeams but it was hard teaching them and I was always exhausted. I have never been in the Young Women and I'm excited to work with the Beehives. But all of a sudden there are activities that are coming and the details aren't worked out and I have no idea what I'm doing. It's kind of overwhelming. We have a shooting activity this Saturday that I'm not thrilled about but I feel like I have to go so I will. Hopefully the inactive girls it is supposed to be targeting will actually come.
One of the sisters I visit teach is also my neighbor and we're both in the neighborhood mommies group. She's less active and I try to do everything I can to help her, although I'm sure I don't do enough. She has a very spirited little girl who is eight months younger than Cute Girl. Last year her daughter was enrolled in preschool at the elementary but it's too expensive to enroll her again so she started a preschool group like Joy school. We meet twice a week for two hours and trade weeks so we each only teach once a month. Now, I am not a big believer in preschool. I've never felt like Cute Girl needed to go to preschool and she learns just fine at home. But I wanted to help my friend out so we joined the group. I'm constantly back and forth on it. I taught the first week and after the first day I was ready to quit. The kids are on all different levels and I couldn't keep them focused. Cute Girl got left to herself during table work because I was too busy helping everyone else. She filled an entire line with perfect A's and a's before moving on to B's because she was so bored. But then the second day was infinitely better and Cute Girl seems to like it. But I miss my freedom on Tuesday and Thursdays. We used to meet up in the park to play with neigborhood kids but that's getting harder to do. And then I realized that to walk Cute Girl to class and home again was going to take up to an hour and 20 minutes a day. For a two hour class! (We still don't have a car.) Once again I was ready to drop out but my friend Nicole is graciously driving her. But now I feel so indebted to her and I still haven't figured out how to get Cute Girl to Nicole's house when she's teaching and it's kept me up at night.
Oh, there is so much more going on in life but my kids are clamoring to get to the swimming pool. Life really is very full right now.

Today's Fun Moments

While I was running there was a 50-foot stretch of road that was riddled with gumdrops. I felt like I was in Hansel and Gretel.

When I came home, Handsome Face heard the front door open and he came running down the stairs yelling, "Mommy! Mommy!" When he found me in the kitchen, he stopped short and said, "Cock-ker bye-bye" (cockroach bye-bye). Such an important announcement for first thing in the morning.

Handsome Face and I were searching the pantry for what he wanted to eat next when Cute Girl yells from the table, "Goodness! we have a lot of cereal!" (There are close to 15 boxes. We just stocked up.)

Well, I can already tell what life is going to be like married to a seminary teacher. Early morning training means home from work late means I took care of the kids myself, the kids went to bed without seeing Dad once today, and his dinner is cold. And it was a good dinner too! Indiana-style fried pork chops, golden baked potatos, buttered brocoli, and salad. Although, to be completely honest, I never actually finished the salad because I was doing everything myself and taking care of crying kids. There's just a bowl of lettuce sitting on the counter.

Life is Crazy

I feel like all we do is go, go, go. And we don't even have anything to do! And in the process of doing all of this nothing, we don't get anything done! Crazy how that happens, isn't it?
Today is supposed to be a good, quiet, productive day. And so far it has been lovely. But it's now three o'clock and the house is still a mess and none of our to-do list has been checked off.
First the kids and I slept in until 6:20 and then had breakfast. The Rocket Scientist was long gone to Seminary training. (Yes, he's been called as a Seminary teacher. No, I'm not very happy about it but I am trying to be humble.) Then we got ready and we were at the pool by 8:00. We met a lovely new family in the neighborhood and played with all our old friends. It was nice to be out in the sunshine (and later the shade) with our feet in the water, talking to good people, and seeing my children happy.
When we came home at eleven o'clock, my children got to do this: Then they played with water toys until the scrubbing came due. They really don't like the scrubbing part.
After lunch and a very wicked little boy tantrum we played computer games, read books, and then went down for naps. Well, Handsome Face is still napping, I napped shortly, and Cute Girl eventually abandoned my bed and went to her toy room. It may be that my laying down with her trick is finally wearing off and she's really going to give up the afternoon nap. Oh, that will be a sad day.
Now we need to finish all the laundry, pack for our trip to Utah, clean the bedrooms, and wash the dishes for there are no clean bowls or spoons. Oh, and I guess some of us may want to eat tonight so I'd better make dinner too. How much of that can I do in two hours?

There is a season for everything

We had a great weekend filled with installing sprinklers, cleaning house, baseball games, cancelled church (actually really sad because we were all ready to go and on time), lasagna shared with friends, improptu barbeques and motorcyle riding. Fitting that such a lovely weekend was followed by throwing up and strained muscles.

And Happy Zero Birthday to Baby Lucas! (or Be-be Lulsssss as Handsome Face says)

Life as it is Now

There are periods of life when I am really, really busy without actually having anything to do. That period was the last two weeks. And maybe the next few weeks too.
Maybe I'll throw out tidbits of what went on the last few weeks over the next day or two. Or maybe I won't. But here's what's going on now.
Handsome Face is sick again. It breaks my heart. His little body is burning hot and he just keeps telling me it hurts. His whole frame shook after church because he was so cold. This is where we found him yesterday. He slept for almost an hour the first nap, almost five hours the second one.
Cute Girl played computer games after church. Not something she usually gets to do on the Sabbath but somehow she caught me off guard. When she was finished she told me she was ready for her nap. Now there's a new one.
The Rocket Scientist is making dinner. Quesedillas and black beans. I adore black beans and his are divine. They're so good that I'll repeat the words 'so good' with every bite. I love it when he makes me good food on Fast Sunday.