Happy Birthday to me!

In the morning I was motivated to wanting a clean house so I made it happen. I tidied, did the dishes, swept, and mopped. I took a quick shower and then went to lunch with a couple of friends, Shari and Terry. We went to Barista's. All the food look really good. They make everything from scratch there. I had the hamburger and my friends had the BLT and the apple pecan salad. Jileigh took care of the kids while I was gone. It was a nice enjoyable afternoon. Matt wanted to bring home some salmon to cook, but I wanted wild caught rather than farm raised so we didn't get any. So I made whole grain blueberry pancakes instead. They were yummy as always. I was glad to have 16 people on facebook and some people here on this post wish me a happy birthday. That was really nice.

Spring Cleaning - Day 1 and 2

I have decided that I need to get my house and my life organized and cleaned up. So now I am in a spring cleaning mood.

Day 1 - Tuesday March 23 - Cleaned up all the garbage in my bedroom floor and vacuumed. My kids are little tornados even in my room. I filled a white 13 gallon garbage sack.

Day 2 - Wed. Mar. 24 - Cleaned out my closet and organized it. Took out any left over maternity clothes and boxed them up and filled a black garbage sack full of clothes to donate to the young womens garage sale. Then I clean up my desk and filled another 13 gallon garbage sack. I then gave it to Matt and Talon to burn all the papers in the fire place. Then I dusted off my desk. I am tired and ready to go to bed.

Day 3 - Friday Mar 26 - Cleaned out file cabinet. I pulled out literally a stack of papers about 1/2 ft tall then burned the papers.
Day 4 - Wednesday March 31 - Cleaned off the bump in my room. This structure was originally designed for a TV; but since we don't have one there, it is a catch-all and it was cluttered. Then I cleaned of my dresser. Matt even cleaned off his dresser. Then I filed the things I wanted to keep that I cleaned off. Now my bedroom looks presentable. Then I cleaned out the kitchen pantry and threw away white garbage bag full of stuff.

Jaren's birthday party at the park

Today was a crazy day. I had to do two loads of dishes, go grocery shopping, make chicken broccoli egg noodle casserole from scratch, and a lemon meringue pie from scratch and then be at the park for the party with the casserole and the pie at 5 pm. Well, we almost made it. I took the kids and the casserole, and Matt came about 15 minutes later with the pie. We had a nice potluck dinner, and then Jaren got to open his presents. The kids really enjoy getting to spend time with their cousins.

Matt's dessert creation

Matt likes dessert and he likes to make desserts. So to compromise he reduces the sugar in them and uses raw sugar. He also replaces at least half of the white flour with whole grain flour. He made this oatmeal cookie apple bars that was fantastic. With the small amount of sugar and white flour in them, they can make a good dessert or even breakfast with a glass of raw milk!

Pandora

My cousin recently told me about www.Pandora.com free music to listen to on the computer. Love it!

Elody ar 9 months with her bear and duck

Elody is now 9 months old and a week. I know, I am a little late, but I have been consistantly, so I guess that makes it ok. She doesn't like to hold still for pictures, so these were the best I could get. She is always so happy and has the biggest smiles, well, except for when she's tired. She still likes to be held most of the time. Her hair is growing a little longer, so soon I should be able to put some little pig tails in it. Two of her four top teeth finally cut through.

Happy 7th Birthday Jaren!

Yesterday, Sunday March 14th was Jaren's 7th Birthday. We are going to celebrate it today with Matt's family. We gave him his Grandma J and Grammy D's cards to open and we put a candle for him to blow out in our dinner of deviled eggs. We had a late large lunch, but we still needed to feed the kids something before they went to bed.

Friday and Saturday fun

Friday we got the house cleaned up and went off to a new park called Cottonwood Cove Park. It was really cool. I forgot my camera unfortunately, so we will have to go back and take some pics. There weren't the average toys there. They were different designs with a lot of spinning ones. Anyway, it is hard to describe.

Then we went to Robert's store and bought stuff to make flower clips. Saturday morning after breakfast, we disassembled the flower and put together these designs. It was a lot of fun. Even the boys wanted to get in on making the clips. I had to approve of every clip design and had to change a few. I am too controlling that way, but they had to at least be pleasing to the eye. So for 20 bucks, we ended up with 16 flower combinations on 12 clips. I want to get some smaller snapping clips for the littler ones.

Stuck!

On the way home we had to take a detour at Cedar City. The freeway was closed due to a serious multicar accident on the freeway. Matt knew of another road home going over to Enterprise and then home. Well, it would have been fine, but there was a dirt road that Matt wanted to take that would be a "short cut." That muddy road turned into a icy/snowy road and we quickly got stuck. Since we were on a slight slant, we really had a hard time getting unstuck and staying unstuck. It took us two hours of going back and forth, getting stuck and unstuck to finally being able to back up out of then snow and back tracking back to the main road, all the while it was still snowing on us. We needed to be home before 7pm to get to my Relief Society meeting. We made it there at 7:30pm. Since we were having a dinner, it was ok that we were late. They actually had 2 extra lasagnas and then some, so I asked if I could take one home to feed my kids since we were all next to starving. I stayed and Matt took them home, had Jileigh take care of them and then he came back. We ate and then sang our song for the program. We sang a beautiful arrangement of Each life that touches ours for good with my friend Shelly and her husband with her daughter playing her violin. It turned out beautiful. We were exhausted by the time we got home. We made a fire in the fireplace and went to bed.

Monty Bean Museum

I wanted to take my kids to do something before we left Orem, so we went to the Monty Bean museum on BYU campus. It was pretty neat. There were all sorts of life sized animals and creatures to look at that live on land and in the sea.

Staying with my cousins Kathy and Rod C.

When we went up to Orem for my niece's wedding, we stayed with my cousin Kathy and her husband. They were very good to us providing us with 3 queen sized beds and yummy meals. We all really enjoyed our visiting with them. They recently returned home from a mission in the Dominican Republic in the same mission when Matt served. The day we left, they had 3 of their grandsons there to tend and they joined us in the picture.

Lindsey's wedding

We went up to Orem to be at me niece's wedding. Lindsey and Justin were married on March 9th 2010 in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. We had a really nice time visiting with family.

Planting to start off our spring break!

It finally stopped raining long enough for me to plant a little more in my garden. We planted a row of beet seeds, some spinach, lettuce, and a row of bare root walla walla onions. We also put in an early elberta lemon peach tree. We dug the hole deep, put in my placenta from Elody, covered it with some more dirt and then put in the tree. We put a fence around the tree right away to try to protect it from the dog and the kids. The hardest part was trying to keep Elody from eating the dirt.

Jileigh got her top braces off!

Jileigh got her top set of braces off this week. Next month she will get the bottom set off.

Beau just loves his baby sister. His carseat is next to hers. Everytime we are going somewhere

in the car, he reaches over and holds her hand. Today I just happened to have the camera in my car. I saw them, saw my camera, pulled over, and snaped a picture of them. I wanted to remember how precious they are.

It's about time!

I went to Walmart yesterday and bought myself a prepaid Tracphone cell phone. They are less that $15 for the phone. I bought a card of 120 minutes plus 20 extra minutes and 150 days for $30. I probably won't use it that much, but it is nice to have one in an emergency or a grocery shopping emergency! LOL :-)

Cowboy Toast

One day Matt put together this breakfast for him. We have all decided that it is now our new favorite way to eat eggs. Angelique named it Cowboy Cheese on toast and I shortened it to Cowboy toast.

1. Melt a little butter in a small cast iron skillet with a little squirt of olive oil. (Olive oil helps keep the eggs from sticking and keeps the butter from burning.)

2. Scramble 1 egg in a small mixing bowl and add a dash of salt and pepper.

3. Butter a slice of homemade wheat bread.

4. With the fire on medium low pour the eggs in the skillet and put the bread on top butter side up. cover with a lid. Let it cook for about a minute.

5. With a spatula, flip the whole thing over. Cover the eggs with shredded colby/jack cheese. Turn the heat up to medium and cover with a lid. Let it cook and toast the bread for about 2 minutes.

6 Slide it out onto a plate and slice it into 8 portions with a pizza roller cutter. Voila!

☺☻♥♦♣♠•◘○♀♂♪►♫♣‼↕◄♂▬!,7)3=§♥☺( Jileigh added the symbols for fun.)

Elody at 8 months

With all the events happening in Feb. I never took the time to take Elody's 8 months old picture with her bear and duck.

So I found some pictures of her the day before her 8 month mark that one of the other kids took of her.

This last picture was taken of her at the viewing a week after she turned 8 months old. I just like the close up of her.

The one and only word she says is, "Dat." Not sure what she thinks she is saying. She can also make the gesture of opening and closing her fist. I taught her to sign "milk" but she just makes the sign randomly.

Hard times for Elody and Beau

This week has been hard on Elody and Beau.

Elody is teething her 4 front top teeth. Monday night she woke up a little before midnight crying. She wouldn't nurse so I had to get up with her. I gave her some catnip and fennel, but that didn't help her. So then I gave her some Tylenol. It took 40 minutes of her screaming before it finally kicked in and she quickly went back to sleep. Matt was ready to take her to the emergency room because it was so unlike her to be that upset. She hasn't been able to sleep well through the night at all this week.


Beau went in for a circumcision on Wednesday the 24th. Matt drove him to the hospital in the morning and I came a couple of hours later with Elody. We waited for an hour for the Dr to come out. He said that the procedure went well and they would let us know when he was awake. A half an hour later he woke up. I was nursing Elody, so just Matt went back at first. About 15 minutes later, I asked if I could go see him even with the baby and they let me. When I got to the room, Beau had just thrown up and they were cleaning him up. Then he threw up again, but in a bucket this time. He was so miserable looking. We stayed for about another half hour and then they released him. He rode home with Matt and as soon as Matt put him down in his bed, he threw up again on his bedding. About an hour later he felt better. We gave him some Tylenol in the evening, but by 2 am, he was in pain again. I gave him some more Tylenol, but it took him 2 hours to finally settle down and go back to sleep. We have just kept him in a diaper during this time like a big band aid. Hopefully, he won't regress too much. He was at the point of wearing underwear all day and a diaper at night, but only wetting in it maybe once every two weeks. He is such a sweet boy that it is so sad to see him in pain and uncomfortable.

The reason he had to be circumcised was because the foreskin closed up some for some unknown reason. It made the foreskin balloon out when he urinated and it was uncomfortable and sometimes painful for him.

Emotions

I have felt a range of emotions this week. My s-i-l and best friend called me this week and helped talk me through some of my feelings. I think that I mostly feel a longing for the family closeness that I experienced last weekend. We spent 6 days at my mom's house. I spent quite a bit of time helping my mom and just visiting with brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and with my mom. I loved that. I felt loved. Now I am home and they all went their separate ways. I feel a longing for family again. I have been calling my mom quite frequently, about every other day. I want to make sure she's doing OK, and I want to let her know that she is loved and thought about. I am glad she has Nathan to be with her.

This week was especially hard with trying to get caught up. The four older kids had tons of homework to catch up on. I had to sit down with Talon and with Jaren and get them to work on their homework. We also had a ton of laundry to wash, separate, fold, and put away. By Saturday afternoon we were pretty much caught up. Matt was sick on Thursday with a bad head cold. He had some allergies going on at my mom's house and it really took a toll on him by the time we got home. Friday he was feeling better. Saturday night we took time for a date. We went shopping for a shower door and found one on clearance at Lowe's and got something to eat. Sometimes, I just really need to get out of the house to separate myself from my responsibilities there for a few hours. We did take Elody with us.

Today at church, I walk in the chapel about a minute before sacrament meeting was to start. I opened my program and saw that the opening song was, "I am a child of God." I thought to myself, 'How on earth am I suppose to make it through this song?' The last time I heard this song was at my dad's funeral, sung by his grandchildren. That was very emotional for me. Sure enough, about half way through the first verse, the emotions kicked in. All I could do is stand there and lead the song and not sing. I tried to at least mouth the words, but I couldn't without being emotional. (I don't tear, so I don't use the word cry.) I was fine for the rest of the sacrament meeting. Then the hugs from my friends, the sisters in the ward, started coming. Then the emotions started up again. I loved the hugs. I needed the hugs. The first came from a sister who lost her husband about 7 years ago. When she says, I know how you feel, she means it and I know it. I am grateful for the caring women in my ward who cared enough to let me know that they cared. In this case I needed to hear it and feel it rather than just assume it.

I feel like we all get busy and self absorbed in our own lives. I found that I would go 2-3 weeks without talking to my parents and many months without talking to any other family. Now that we spent so much time together, I want to find ways to keep in contact with them. I like to read my nephew's wives blogs and read family members posts on facebook and even chat with them when I can. I like feeling connected to them. I love my family. :)

I have reflected back thinking about my childhood memories of my dad. I remember him only spanking me once. I hated unloading the clean dishes out of the dishwasher. I remember sassing my mom about it and running to hide in my parents' bathroom. My dad found me and spanked me once and told me to never sass my mom. I also remember how much he supported me throughout Archery. He could see that I was doing well, and bought for me my own bow and set of arrows. He came to my practices and my home meets. He also came to my state tournaments. One time he brought the camcorder and started filming me. It made me nervous and I couldn't do my best. I turned around and glared at him, s0 he turned it off and smiled at me.

Another time I was grateful for him was when I was about to be a senior in high school. I was in a bad relationship with a boy who was controlling and manipulative. One night when he was being this and having a moody night, he wouldn't take me home. We were on the temple grounds, me listening to him whine, at 2 am. Then my dad showed up. I was so glad. He brought me home. The boy had the gall to follow us and my dad walked up to his car and told him he was never to see me again. That was fine with me.

Then there was the time my parents took me to the MTC. I was totally excited and surprised to see my parents tearing. I think that was the first time I had seen my dad get emotional like that. It was sweet and endearing. The other time I saw him get emotional was when I was pregnant with my first child and my parents were getting ready to leave on their first mission. My dad gave me a very special blessing.

I also remember my parents taking Nathan and me back east to the church history sites the summer before my senior year in high school. I was very impressed with the Hill Cumora pageant. I felt like I finally understood the complete story of the Book of Mormon. We had read it over and over as a family, but I just didn't get it most of the time. I then studied it in Seminary my senior year. Having seen the pageant really helped my to understand it and gain a testimony of it.

When I was in my second year of college and in a young adult ward, I was given the calling of being a gospel doctrine teacher. I would call my dad Saturday or even Sunday morning and go over the lesson I was suppose to teach. That calling terrified me and the only way I survived it was with the help of my dad.

I didn't grow up having a grandpa. I am glad that at least some of my kids will remember my dad. His legend will live on. He was a great example to his children and grandchildren. He read the scriptures diligently. The pages were covered in red and yellow markings and post it notes. He taught us to remember our Savior Jesus Christ in our prayers, in bearing testimony, and in our Family Home Evenings.

I loved my dad and will remember him always.