Memories

So I'm finally getting around to the memory post, and I'm posting this because I wanted to leave comments on everyone's blog who has done this already. The first time I saw this was on my friend Becky's blog, and since then it has been everywhere.

1. Leave a comment on my blog, one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Benjamin & Dinner

Benjamin has a hard time eating dinner. A couple of nights ago I tried videoing him to get him to eat faster. After three videos and Benjamin eating at the same rate I gave up, but I do have the videos to share because he was being cute.

Playing in the Rain

I was sitting at my craft desk looking out the window at the rain. The sun is shining through the clouds so it is actually warm outside instead of cold. I was thinking of how soothing the sound of rain is when I notice my son holding his jacket out to his dad. He wants to put his jacket on so he can go outside and play. Michael proceeds to help Benjamin put on his jacket and lets him out the back door. Benjamin just stands on our back pad while the rain falls on and around him until Mom and Dad bring their cameras to the back door, and then he proceeds to dance around and play in the rain. Kids are so interesting sometimes!

Michael's Birthday

Yesterday was 8-08-08. Flip the numbers backwards and forwards and they say the same thing. Michael started his day with opening cards and presents and ended his day with cake and ice cream (his favorite!). His parents gave him a card with this fun sticker in it. He wore the sticker all day.

In case you can't read the picture, it says 'It's my birthday, and I'm an incredibly smart, exciting, good-looking person!' Happy Birthday, Michael! We love you!

Harvest Time

My garden has grown, been taken over by weeds at least twice, been weeded and watered on a semi-regular basis, and produced much. I have over 40 cups of zucchini in the freezer, have made eight loaves of zuccini bread, given 20 zucchinis away, and have a ton more growing. (Moral of that story: only plant two zucchini plants instead of 6 to 10.) Here is some more zucchini that needs to be grated or cooked.



On Saturday, I harvested all of the carrots I planted, and yes, that is a five gallon bucket full of carrots. I also harvested the rest of the onions (another 5 pounds) and a few more zucchini. The people in our old ward smile and shake their heads when I show up with zucchini to give away, but at least I am able to share the fruits of my labor and now that they will be well used.

We are also starting to get tomatoes and we will be able to have corn next week. The pumpkins that are taking over the garden have about two dozen pumpkins actually growing (some are as big as basketballs and still green) and about that many more blossoms. I even found a couple of watermelon growing today. There are even a few peppers growing.

Everything I planted has grown and the only thing that has yet to produce vegetables are the cucumber plants. I feel greatly blessed to have so much growing and for the opportunity to grow a gardent. This year's success gives me the encouragement to try again next summer. Thank you, Michael for watching the children so that I could take care of the garden.

Ice Cream Quiz

So, I took the ice cream quiz that I found on Amme's blog. The most interesting thing was that we had the same flavor come up. Don't let my mother-in-law know!

You're Coffee.Compared to other ice creams, coffee ice cream has a strong flavor, and it's packed with caffeinated sweetness. You're like that, too! You're always busy, and determined to stay focused as you move from one task to the next. You get frustrated when other people slow you down or hold you back, but when you're in control, you can find ways around any obstacle.

Deer

This post is for my Dad because he can look out his front door and see this every day. On Sunday we looked our our bedroom window and saw two bucks in the field behind our house. For living in the city, I would say that is not bad. But, deep down I am a country girl and I enjoy the more rural parts of our country (especially those with mountains and trees) although I greatly appreciate being within minutes of the grocery store as well. We have the same view, Dad!

Library Picnic

To end the summer reading program, the library had a picnic in the park complete with an inflatible slide and caterpillar, Presto the Magician, and popsicles. Mom even took Bekah down the huge inflatable slide. It was a great ending to the fun summer story time "Catch the Reading Bug." We have great librarians.



It's a spider [ant]!

What's this, Mom?

Eating lunch and waiting for the magic show to start.

Presto the Magician performing magic bug tricks.

Can I go up there? Will he pick me?

Blog Technilogical Updates

Yesterday, blogger updated something. Today I only get feeds when I click on the links to friends' blogs on my website. Not cool. I like to see everyone's cute backgrounds and sidebars. The Blog List was great for a while because it told me when people updated their websites. It saved me the time of clicking on everyone's blog on a daily basis because I could see how long it had been since they posted something new. This change to feeds is frustrating and saddening. I guess I'm back to checking blogs manuallly. Too bad, maybe the old feature will come back so I can enjoy everyone's creativity and keep updated on when they post. I am grateful that blogging is free, sometimes the updates are just frustrating.

Crawling

Bekah crawls very well up and down the stairs. She will not crawl across the floor, she prefers to scoot on her butt. We have starting calling her our little butt scooter, but this video shows her climbing up the stairs at the playground.

Before and After: Front or Living Room

I have been posting a lot of before and afters for those of you who only saw our house before or after. It is also fun to see th finished product after you put so much work into something. This is the last before and after until we get to improvements in the yard, which will probably be when we put up a fence next summer. You can look down into the living room from the family room because the wall does not fully divide these two rooms. One of the pictures is looking down into the living room from over the wall in family room. Our biggest change to this room was that we put curtains up which helps keep the daytime heat out of this room much better than naked windows.

Dancing Bekah

Bekah loves to dance. She even likes to hold my hand and dance around the house. She says "dan" and reaches for my hand when she wants to dance while Mommy holds her. I finally got her to do it for the camera. Our camera doesn't have sound so the video only shows Bekah moving.

The New Comfort Item

Bekah has discovered colored pencils. She has yet to discover how the write and she does not eat them like she does crayons. She even packs handfuls of colored pencils around the house, we are finding them everywhere! Today when I went to lay her down for a nap she had her usual handful of colored pencils when I went to lay her down. I took the colored pencils away, turned on her music, laid her down, and left the room. Bekah proceeded to howl and scream at the top of her lungs for the next ten minutes. When I went back to check on her she was quite upset but obviously still tired. I got her up, gave her a hug, found the two dullest colored pencils I could find, and laid her back down. She promptly snuggled under her blanket with a colored pencil in each hand. Apparently, colored pencils are the new comfort item at our house. Aren't children unique?

Before and After: Master Bedroom & Bathroom

The before picture I have for our master bedroom isn't as good as some of the other pictures I have, but here is the one I do have. These before and after pictures are mostly to show how we painted in this room. We painted brown halfway up the wall and I had questions on whether or not it went with our dark brown furniture. We tested the color out before we painted and we think the color compliments our furniture nicely.

The master bathroom is a golden yellow color and I was asked if I was planning on painting the bathroom. My response was that we would probably paint it eventually, but I wanted to see how my current bathroom colors looked first. We decided that the maroon, navy blue, and sunflower yellow looked just fine with the golden color.

Before and After: Family Room

Our family room is quite large, and because our house has only three bedrooms I decided to divide this room into three different areas to use the open space more effectively. The first picture is a visual of the layout from the last owners. This picture was taken from the stairs that go in and out of the room.

This is the front left side of the family room where we watch videos and visit with company.

In the back right corner, I set up my craft table, etc. The photo frame makes a great room divider so that you see the pictures instead of all of my craft stuff.

In the front right corner, we have the children's toys and small table. This way they can have toys in the family room without the toys being the center of attention. We are still working on the concept of toys in one spot.

Scheduling Blog Posts

I am so bright some times! I have some pictures that I wanted to post but I didn't want to post them all at the same time in 3 or 4 separate posts. Then I rememberd the under "Edit Posts" it mentioned that you have drafts, published posts, and scheduled posts. So being the bright person that I am I clicked on "Post Options" to see if that was where I could schedule posts and low and behold all I had to do was change the date and time of the post to schedule it in the future.

I wish I had figured this out sooner, but since I know it now I will probably being using it more frequently. And, no, I will not be getting up to blog first thing in the morning, I just have my posts scheduled for first thing in the morning. So for those of you who are brighter than I am you can smile and shake your head. For those of you who are on the same technilogical level you now have some new information available to you. Happy blogging!

It's Sunday!

It's Sunday afternoon, and instead of just starting church we are done with church for the day. This morning our alarm clock woke us up with "It's Sunday!' at the top of his lungs bright and early at 6:30 a.m. You would have thought that it was Christmas. Benjamin sure loves nursery and seeing people at church.

We went to our new ward today. It is the same size as our last ward but because the church we go to is so old it looks like the ward is bigger. They didn't make chapel buildings as spacious back in the 70s as the do now. Everyone was polite and friendly, but living in Utah I don't expect people to be as overtly friendly as they are in places where the church membership is much smaller. With so many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah people don't feel like part of the minority or need to identify closely with someone new in the ward. After living so long out of state it is still something I have to get used to every time we relocate in a different part of Utah.

As for being part of the minority, some people refer to it as 'living in the mission field.' I absolutely hate this phrase. Last time I checked the still had missions in Utah and people are baptized here on a regular basis. So that means that living in Utah means you are living in Utah. I don't here the general authorities get up in General Conference and say every member a missionary except those living in Utah. If I remember correctly, we are often reminded that there are just as many opportunities for missionary work here in our state as there are in other parts of the country or world. Thus, I say that I spent a lot of my growing up years where members of the church were in the minority because that is the actual fact.

When people say that the 'lived in the mission field' I picture people living in the middle of a field of wheat with nothing around them for miles whereas the people who live in Utah live in the middle of a city. I never felt isolated from the church when I lived out of state, just lonely. I was lonely for people who shared my beliefs and attended the same religious activities that I did. I rarely lacked friends who shared my same values to some extent or people that I could get along with, I just didn't have an abundance of friends who attended the same church I did and shared the same beliefs about God. I'm sure I did my fair share of missionary work by the example I gave others more than overtly trying to hand out Book of Mormons and giving referrals to the missionaries. I did my best to be open to opportunities to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those around me.

I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the good things it brings into my life. Today is also Fast Sunday. This does not mean it is a quick Sunday or that this Sunday will pass any faster than the last few Sundays. This means that throughtout the church, around the world, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have the opportunity to fast for two consecutive meals in an effort to be more spiritually in tune. During our church services we also have a testimony meeting instead of assigned speakers. This provides the opportunity for members of the congregation to share their testimonies about Gospel principles as they feel prompted to do so. We do this on the first Sunday of every month and it is a great time for spiritual growth and pondering.

Benjamin's idea of pondering and spiritual growth are a little different than my own. On the way home from church he asked if he could watch a Sunday movie when we got home. I appreciate the fact that he knows we don't watch regular movies on Sunday, but I'm not quite sure that he understands why. On Sunday we let him watch movies about Christ, His death and resurrection, the prophet Joseph Smith, and the pioneers. Sometimes we even have good Gospel discussions about the principles taught in these videos. I am grateful to the people who spend their time putting together these things for use in our homes.

Being at home in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday just feels weird. I don't know what to do with the rest of my day. I missed going to choir this morning. That usually starts my Sunday off nicely with the Spiritual music and getting to interact with other members of our ward not to mention the fact that Mom usually gets a break from her two busy children for an hour. I love to sing. I am not the greatest singer in the world and I am usually just a little off, but I love to sing. I love music and songs, especially uplifitng and inspirational music.

I am grateful for our hymns and those who share their talents of writing, leading, and playing music with all of us. If I get nothing else out of church, I usually get the hymns we sing. It is hard to be able to follow a lesson or a talk given at church when you are in and out or referring children for the majority of the time, but I do get the words and the feeling of the music out of our church meetings. It has even turned into a bit of a test for me because I sing hymns and primary songs to my children when we are at church to get them to take their naps. (This is before they are old enough to go to nursery.) I get tired of singing the same few songs to my children when I know that there are a lot of wonderful songs we sing. I have started challenging myself to remember and learn more of our beautiful and sacred music so that I can share it with my children and learn new principles each week.

Today is Sunday. It is a time for reflection on and contemplation of the word of God as taught in the holy scriptures and through our living prophet, President Thomas S. Monson. It is a time to take a break from our daily cares and concerns and focus more on our families and our spirituality. How would we learn and grow as individuals if we didn't take some time out for self reflection and growth? I am grateful for Sundays that prepare me to face the week ahead of me.

Swimming in our Backyard

Yesterday I cleaned the garage and finally got the children's pool out for them to play in. This morning Dad took the children out to play in the pool and he took his camera out with them. We have to little water dogs on our hands. Bekah and Benjamin love to take baths, run through the sprinkler, and play in the pool. They had so much fun this morning that they didn't want to go inside even when they were both freezing.

Pictures are a Blessing

Does anyone else have a relative that insists on taking pictures of everything every time you get together? One of these blessed people is Michael's Grandma H. She takes pictures all of the time and we often don't appreciate. However, I am very grateful for her insistence today.

Back in November our laptop was stolen out of our car. The laptop had all of our pictures from last summer on it that we thought we had backed up with the rest of our pictures. Unfortunately, when we checked the back up none of the pictures from the summer were there. This didn't seem to be a huge deal because I had emailed several of those pictures to friends and family and we hadn't done anything overly significant, we thought.

Then I realized that all of the pictures of Bekah's baby blessing were on that computer. Now they were all gone. I emailed everyone I could think of who was there to see if they had taken pictures of Bekah in her blessing dress and our family that day and no one had. A couple of months ago it occurred to me that Grandma H., who is insistent about taking pictures, had been there. (It was actually after our niece was blessed around Easter time that this occurred to me because Grandma was taking a lot of pictures of Victoria and McKayla.) I didn't get a chance to talk to Grandma until a couple of weeks ago at Alisabeth's bridal shower and I finally remembered to ask if she had any pictures of Bekah's blessing. She said she didn't think she had any, except at the luncheon but that she would look.

Yesterday I got a card from Grandma and Grandpa H. congratulating us on our new house with some pictures inside. Low and behold, there were two pictures of Bekah in her blessing dress. One of her with Michael and I and one with Michael's Aunt Cyndi holding her. I was so appreciative that I almost started crying on the spot. There were some other fun pictures in the letter, but the one from Bekah's blessing I was the most grateful for. I am so glad that I have some visual documentation of that special even in her life that words do not do justice to my feelings.

What I learned from this experience is that pictures are a blessing. Even though we may not find the picture taking convenient at the time, having those pictures at a later date can be especially important. So next time you don't want your picture taken, or you think you have taken enough of your own, remember that sometimes those extra picture takers are an immense blessing. Thank you, Grandma H.!

This was right after sacrament meeting and Benjamin was in nursery. I made Bekah's blessing dress the summer after I graduated so that I would have it when I had a baby girl. It is all hand crocheted.

Cyndi is holding a sleeping Bekah at the luncheon we had afterwards. She was all worn out from her big day. Bekah has gotten so big I have a hard time remembering that she was ever that small.

Farm Country

This time we took Michael's parents and Katie to the farm. This is the conference barn next to Farm Country where they hold a variety of seminars, presentations, displays, etc. It is the biggest 'barn' I have ever seen and it is surrounded by a grape vineyard. Farm Country is great for the little kids and it was fun to ride on the carriage instead of a wagon this time (pictures to follow.) Thanks for being good sports and going with us.

Grandma & Grandpa on the carriage ride

Katie feeding the animals

Bekah checking things out

This little goats name is Josie. She is wearing a harness because she has to be taken care of by a human 'mother.' Apparently, her mother did not know how to take care of her and she got rather sick after she was born. Josie is doing better now, though she thinks one of the workers is her mom rather than a goat. Katie and Benjamin got to pet her just before we left.

Michael said this goat posed for him. It definitely looks that way!

Benjamin riding a pony. He thinks this makes him a real cowboy. :)

Katie was so excited to ride a horse that she was jumping up and down all the way from the entrance to the pony ride pavilion.

Here is the carriage we got to ride in. Usually, it is a long, open wagon, but we must of timed it just right to get to ride in this instead.

The llama thought Grandpa smelled good.

Mommy and Benjamin feeding the animals. He was a little hesitant to get too close to the animals after the cow tried to eat him last time.