April 8 Happy birthday Jileigh

Jileigh is 11 years old - Happy Birthday!!! I gave the capris first thing this morning for her birthday so that she could wear them to school!

A quiet afternoon

While I was nursing Beauchene to sleep, Jaren and Safia decided to hide in the toy closet under a blanket. I had such a nice quiet afternoon!


Beauchene is really taking off. He feels more sturdy on the carpet than on the tile. He is walking about half the time and crawling the other half.

General Conference

I love General Conference. This year, for the first time, I actually took notes. I loved M Russell Ballard's talk about Mothers. I want to frame that talk and have it for a FHE lesson every Monday!!! I also enjoys the talks Saturday morning on parenting and families. I feel like General Conference gives me a renewed sense of starting over to try to do all that we should to be better people, parents, and try to have a better family.

Matt's talent

My husband is such a MacGyver! Tonight when I was in the kitchen, I heard a funny sizzling sound by the refrigerator. Then I smelled a funny electrical burning smell. Safia kept saying, "Mommy that smells bad." I called for Matt to come in and check it out. He pulled out the frig and took off the bottom part of the back of the frig and fished around in there. Apparently, the capacitor burned out which didn't allow the compressor motor to run which over heated the thermal protection repeatedly which eventually caused the adaptor plug to burn up. (Those were Matt's words). So, he went out to the garage and got an old ceiling fan, pulled out it's twin capacitors, and wired them up in parallel (so that they added up to a sufficient number of microfareds) to the compressor motor in the frig to replace the bad capacitor. He plugged the frig back in and it worked! This will do for now until we can order a new capacitor and adaptor plug. He is so smart!

Beauchene loves his daddy!

Beauchene loves his daddy. As soon as Matt gets home from work, Beauchene only wants to be with him. On the weekends as long has he isn't hungry or tired he is with his daddy. Matt even takes him with him to his Sunday meetings as long as he is not teaching. If Matt has to work on something and can't hold him in his arms, he puts him in the baby backpack. Beauchene doesn't care, just as long as he is with his daddy. I finally captured this in a picture. This was Saturday morning. Matt was building a temporary panel for someone. When he was done, I went with him to do a wire pull and install the panel. We took Talon and Beauchene with us. Talon was finally able to concentrate on his homework. Afterwards, we went to Colorado City (polygamist town) to get some raw milk. They had flats of strawberries on sale there. We picked up 4 flats. As tired as we were, we spent the evening making strawberry freezer jam. Then we got the house cleaned up and ready for Marni and her girls to stay the night. They had spent the week in Mesa and were heading home to Boise Idaho. We spent Sunday morning together and made four 8 x 13 dishes of German oven pancakes, some with blueberries. After church and lunch Matt and I crashed for a couple of hours. I love Sunday afternoons!

Safia - beyond words to describe this child

Friday night Matt and I went on a date for my birthday. We went to eat at BAJIO's and did some shopping in St. George. Matt's mom babysat for us. It was really nice to just get away and spend some time alone with my honey. After we got home, I realized Safia had disappeared. I found her in the bathroom. She had emptied out the contents of my toothpaste on the lid of the baby toilet and was playing in it. That child is constantly getting into things. I just now found her pulling out a bunch of floss from its container.

A day with a twist

This morning I went to the store to get the stuff to make a salad for my birthday luncheon at my friend Pam's house. I got everything all ready and went to a wonderful luncheon. All my friends in my ward were there. THEN Beachene pooped bloody mucus in his diaper and he was being extremely fussy and grumpy, so unlike my little Beau. So I changed his diaper and then he went some more, a lot more. I panicked. I called Cousin Dr. Dave and he told me to bring him in immediately. So I left my wonderful luncheon, Yes I did get to eat a plateful before I left, and took Beauchene to the doctor. He filled two more diapers before he actually saw the doctor. Then Beauchene was totally happy and had stopped pooping. Fortunately, I brought the diapers with me so he could believe me. Dave gave me a scenario of several possibilities, but he told me to take him in for some lab work. So we went to the hospital lab and they pricked his finger to get the blood and then gave me 4 bottles to collect stool samples. FUN EH?! I got home about the same time that Matt did and he had gone to the store to get stuff to make hamburgers. How thoughtful of him. (In picture: Shelly Beutler holding baby Corbin, Andrea LeBaron, Amanda Borden holding baby Sky, Amy Yardley, Terry Allen, Me holding Beauchene, Pam Hamm -our hostess, Shari Smith, Inger Gerkin, Leann LePour)

Beauchene wants to walk!

Beauchene at 10 months and 3 weeks has decided that he wants to walk. He can hold on to our fingers or a rolling toy and walk. He can stand up in the middle of the floor on his own and take a couple of steps then does the Mogli crawl to his destination. He was even holding on the wall and walking. It is going to only be a matter of days before he is offically walking. (yay)

Happy Easter

Friday night we got the house all cleaned up and ready for Marni (my sister) to come with all of her 7 girls. They showed up a little after midnight. We spent Saturday morning with them and made a big breakfast of waffles with custard sauce, sausage, and scrambled eggs. The kids played their hearts out. After they left at 11am we got things cleaned up and drove out to Rockville (about 30 minutes away) and went on a little hike. We also built a little fire and roasted hot dogs. I was kicking myself for not taking my camera. We all came home tired and reeking of smoke. After we got the kids ready for bed, we left Jileigh in charge and we went to the grocery store to get stuff for their Easter baskets. We got them: apples, bananas, 100% juice boxes, string cheese, cheese cracker sandwiches, fruit snacks and pudding cups. They were quite content with the contents Sunday morning. We didn't even have to feed them breakfast.

After church and lunch, Matt and I crashed for a long nap and the kids built a fort outside in the backyard with sheets and blankets. They really do have a ball together

I need to write down what Safia did on Friday afternoon while I was cleaning the kitchen. I keep a cheap lipstick in my bathroom drawer. Well Safia got into it. She had it all over the lower half of her face and she put it all over her hands like lotion. Then she put hand prints down the hall on her way to come show herself to me. I stuck her in the tub and bathed her and again was kicking myself for not taking a picture of her. (We call her "turkey" because she is constantly pulling stuff like this.)

One of those days

Saturday, March 15th. Today I wanted to finish cleaning my house. I got alllll the rooms swept up and was ready to mop. I asked Talon to use the shop vac to vacuum around the fire place. The area was quite covered in wood chips and ash. He got it all set up and turned it on. Unfortunately, the hose was connected to the blower side and blew all the junk all over the living room that I just cleaned up and swept. The only thing I could mentally handle was to just send him outside while I cleaned everything up and then I mopped.

Later, after all the floors were mopped, I started my bread. Every week I make 4 loaves of wheat bread. I also have several other grains that I grind together to make pancakes etc. Then I store the multi-grain flour in my freezer. While my bread was mixing, I combined all the grains together and was scooping them in my little grain mill attachment to my Kitchen aid mixer. Well, as it was grinding, I guess I didn't attach it tight enough because it came loose and fell off spilling grains everywhere. I yelled for Matt and told him my sob story and asked him to rescue me from my mess. Since my counter and floor were just cleaned, we just scooped all the grains back into the bowl and back into the mill. This may sound gross, but it really wasn't. I think the lesson learned here is to not to try to do too many things at once!

I managed to get everything done that I wanted to do to get completely caught up and even went grocery shopping at 10pm and in bed by 11:30pm.

Jaren's 5th birthday

Spring break Day 3: Talon and Jaren got their turns to go to the dentist. Last year, Jaren refused to even open his mouth. This year he was such a big boy and opened his mouth wide the whole time. Talon was the only one who had a cavity and he only has one.

Day 4: We decided to go to 3 Falls park on bikes. I jogged next to Jaren to give him more practice on his bike. He is still quite timid on it. I was so exhausted by the time we got back, that I was pretty much good for nothin'. That night I got a bad headache.

Day 5: March 14th, I pretty much gave up on trying to structure the kids day and just let them watch TV and movies and play outside while I switched laundry loads. When Matt got home, he got the kids to separate, fold, and put away all the laundry and clean up the floors. I worked cleaning the kitchen and making dinner. For Jaren's birthday, we met with the cousins and Grandma H at the new park in Hurricane for a pot luck dinner. Jaren got 2 shirts, shorts, a throwing disc, baseball stuff, and other fun, active toys. We all had a good time.

Spring Break Day 2

This morning started off with Dental cleanings for Jileigh and Angelique. Then at noon, we went to the park for our weekly Tuesday picnic-at-the-park. I made a bean burrito casserole. It was another gorgeous 65 degrees outside. Jileigh and Angelique went to a friends house after the park the the other kids played outside in the backyard in the wet sand again. As soon as the girls returned home, I went in for my teeth cleaning. Then I went to the store to get some things at the case lot sale. After returning home, I made some buns and we had BBQ beef for dinner while watching The Biggest Looser and the Jazz - Bulls game. I only managed to get dishes done today. Cleaning house is like swimming upstream. If I am not constantly working on cleaning up the house, I get swept down river and my house turns into a disaster zone. I will try better tomorrow to keep up.

Spring Break!

Today is the first day of Spring Break! It was a gorgeous 70 degrees today. We spent half the day reorganizing the toy/food storage closet for the 1000th time and then the other half outside. The kids were listening to Harry Potter 4 on audio cassette and playing in the sand and on the swing set.

Beauchene is feeling better

Beauchene is feeling much better. He didn't throw up at all last night or this morning and he finally had a normal dirty diaper. He is also happy crawling on the ground playing with toys and being with the other kids. What a relief!

Beauchene is sick, the poor baby

The last week of February, Beauchene had a bad cold and cough. At the beginning of March, he started getting better. Then on Wednesday the 5th, he started in on the stomach flu. He threw up every hour Tuesday night to Wednesday morning. By Friday, he started keeping some of my milk down but the "runs" started it. Even until now, Sunday, I have been changing his diaper every hour. It is so sad to see him sick.

Friday, I came down with a cold and cough. It hit hard and fast. I was down the whole day. My visiting teaching partner happen to call me that morning about something else and found out I was sick. She brought dinner into us that night. Saturday I felt much better.

This afternoon, I had Talon hold him and take him outside so I could get some dishes done. Talon held him on the swing and Beauchene just cuddled him. It was another one of those moments that I just had to take a picture of. Just a minute ago, while I was changing his diaper again, he finally said "Ma Ma" very clearly. He has been saying Da Da for a while, but now he finally said Ma Ma. Yay!

This evening, Matt's dad came over to spend some time with us. He held Beauchene for us while we made dinner. Then after dinner he read stories to the kids while Matt and I did dishes. Then we played a game, Apples to Apples Junior, together until bedtime. We really had an enjoyable Sunday evening.

Crazy hair day!

Friday, at school, was crazy hair day. So Jileigh took it upon herself to do their hair that morning. They had a lot of fun. It is the only time we let Talon have spiky hair.

Jaren's funny

Last Tuesday after we went to picnic-at-the-park, I needed to do some things, so I set Beachene down for Jaren to hold and put on a movie for them. Not 5 minutes later Beauchene fell asleep on Jaren's lap. It was too cute to not take a picture of.

Also last week, one night we were getting ready for family prayers. We were all tired and it was after bedtime. We were all kneeling except for Jaren who was sitting on the toilet with the door open. We just called out, "Jaren, fold your arms. We are going to have prayers". He took it as if it were his turn. So he started yelling out, while sitting on the toilet, "Heavenly Father. We thank thee for this day." Then he paused and then said, "Somebody help me now!" We all started giggling. I ended up getting him from the bathroom to join us in the front room to kneel down with us.

Family night dinner

Tonight for dinner we had homemade pizza. I gave each kid a half pound round of dough. Then I had an assortment of toppings available so that they could decorate their own pizza. I made two large ones for Matt and me. It was a lot of work but it was fun for them. For family home evening, Matt read some journal entries from his grandma's published journal and then the kids wrote in their journals.

Cute things kids say

Today Matt took the kids to the sand dunes to play in the sand and I stayed home with my sleeping Beauchene. Matt came home and told me about their adventure and said that it is funny how Jaren's mind works. He told me that while they were playing in the sand, Jaren stuck his finger in his nose and pulled it out and said, "Darn it. There is sand in my boogers. Now I can't eat them." Then on the way home there were a lot of what Matt calls whoop-de-doos, where they go up and down on the sandy road. Jaren said, "I am glad Jesus put these bumps here for us to ride on." I think 4 years old is my favorite age for a child.

Absolutely Adorable!

For a couple of months now I have been trying teach Beauchene some signs, mostly the sign for milk. The sign is just simply opening and closing the hand like you would milk a cow. Anyway, he has been sick this week with a cough. Last night was especially bad. I didn't get much sleep. So this morning when he woke up at 8am, I had Matt get up with him so I could get some more sleep. At 10 am, Beauchene started being fussy and making the sign for milk for the very first time. Matt realized what he was doing and brought him in to me and he immediately latched on and was content. It was so cute! I am so glad Matt realized what Beauchene was trying to communicate to him and then we were able to reward him.