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Thursday,
February 22nd, 2007
February
has flown by for us, but always does with a birthday at the beginning,
a birthday at the end, and Valentine's Day in the middle. Despite the
extremely cold temperatures, we managed to stay warm and cozy and have
a nice month. Alisa's birthday was a fun day. The kids
always pick their favorite meal, and she picked make-your-own pizzas
and punch, with a Strawberry Shortcake cake. Mark and I got her some
Strawberry Shortcake things for her birthday, such as a notebook,
folder, bubble bath, Band-Aids, panties, and something else, but I
can't remember what right now. (Typical!) She also got money from
her grandpa, aunt and uncle, and her great-grandma, so she went and
purchased a Strawberry Shortcake doll and is looking into getting some
Pixar 'Cars (the movie)' model cars that Dylan has and she wants too.
Ethan is also choosing to have pizza and punch, though he wants to
decorate his own cake, and wants to have dirt salad with his
meal. He is getting a video game from us for his birthday. We
officially signed him up for Cub Scouts on Sunday, and he passed off
the entire Bobcat badge today. He'd been going to the meetings for long
enough that he already had the law, motto, sign, etc. memorized, to my
surprise.
Speaking of video games, I fried the kids Nintendo by accidentally
changing the voltage on the adapter for car trips, and so I told them
I'd either replace it, or put however much money they cost towards a
new system. Ethan and Gabby decided to take all their allowance money
for the year, subtract 25% savings and 10% tithing, pool it with the
money I put in, and buy a Nintendo DS. Zach is trying to do the
same for one of his own, and should be able to have it by his
birthday, if he babysits enough.
My new calling in the Relief Society is going well (that is working
with the ladies over the age of 18 instead of the kids). I taught
my first lesson, and it is so different. The kids are like Hermione
Granger, always ready to raise their hands and give an answer, and the
women kind of just look around waiting for someone else too. I observed
this for 2 weeks before I taught, so I came up with some things to get
everyone involved. This calling is so much less work than Primary
that it amazes me. (At least so far!)
Dylan has been doing an excellent job potty training. He will use
the potty any time that he sits on it, and is recogizing when he has
peed in his diaper too, by announcing 'Pee!' very loudly, wherever he
may be.
Mark's crown work went well, and Zach is getting used to his braces. He
had much less pain than I remember having though. I couldn't eat for a
week, and he was just fine. We also had our 'big' ultrasound
today, and I will update the '8 is Enough' page for that as well. (Top)
Saturday,
January 20th, 2007
We are
back from our family cruise! Everything went well, and I added my
cruise journal HERE. As far as
other updates, Zach is having his braces put on on Monday. Dylan can
home from the cruise with a horribly sore throat and nasty cold, which
thus far hasn't spread to the rest of us. The kids' school break ends
on Monday as well, and we are excited to get back into more structured
learning (as if they didn't learn tons on the cruise!) Our community
education is only doing private swimming lessons for their winter
quarter, and sadly none of their other offerings look exciting to the
kids. Zach will have his next Boy Scout Court of Honor on Wednesday the
31st, where he will receive his badges for 1st Class Scout and the
Family Life, Citizenship in the Community, and Disability Awareness
merit badges. That will make 13 for him. Gabby will be spending
some time in the next few weeks doing service projects for the Girls
Scouts working with the elderly, working at an animal shelter, and
writing letters to soldiers in Iraq. Ethan will soon be turning 8, but
wants to hold off his baptism until our church building renovation is
finished. Alisa is turning 4 in 2 weeks and wants a Strawberry
Shortcake birthday cake. I told her she could have whatever she wanted
for supper, and she requested 'pineapple'. Should be quite a
meal! Dylan is as precocious as ever. He is so cute and funny, and we
often wonder where he gets it from. Mark's dentist appointment for his
crown is coming up, and I don't think he is looking forward to it. I am
doing well, slightly tired and glad to be home! Oh, and our 8 is Enough
page can be found HERE. (Top)
1:00 PM pdt
Friday, December 15th, 2006
(Above picture is
of Zach's band concert) 10 days until Christmas. It's going to be a
pretty subdued event this year. I'm even not doing the family letter
until after our cruise. We'll call it a New Year's update. :-) Most
gifts are homemade, the kids are getting one simple thing (a DVD, for
the drive down to Texas) and so it's been easy to concentrate on just
having fun together instead. We've made some Christmas cookies;
Snickerdoodles, candycane cookies, gingerbread cookies, peanut
blossoms, chocolate mint cookies. Today we are going to make meringues,
we'll be making Spritz and sugar cookies, and begging Mark to make his
delicious truffles. I'm not a fudge or rocky-road type person so it
doesn't get made. I do like English toffee, but I never make it right.
I think I don't let it get to a hot enough stage or something. With
Christmas Day with the Anderson's and the Foede's celebration being on
the 26th, we even have Christmas Eve. to go look at lights, sing
carols, plan a menu, watch "A Christmas Story" or whatever we want.
Mark recently had a dentist appointment and found out that he has to
get a crown on a back tooth in January. Oh boy, the same time
Zach gets his braces. Each item will cost around $500 out of pocket
right away. (Not to mention the extra $2800 for the braces later as
payments. We'll just use tax returns and/or Mark's bonus.) Yuck! Mark
also had some fun news. He called in to a radio station (KS95)
and played 'Smarter than Stacy' and won a $50 gift card to the
Burnsville Mall, 4 tickets to a play about bingo, 4 tickets to bingo at
the Casino in Hinckley (yah, right!) a shirt, and a picture of the
producer while he was on the phone. He had to answer 5 questions and
the DJ answered the same questions and whoever got more right wins. So
hurray!
Other than that, not much else has happened. We're boring and we like
it that way. That last update we had on Gary (Mark's Dad) was
that he had another surgery (4th?) and hopefully found ALL the problems
that were causing his bleeding. With Kirk's (my brother) father-in-law
and Cade (my nephew) also looking at some medical challenges/testing,
it's been a harder month than some to find gratitude. But our friend
Becky's daughter Makayla is celebrating her 1st birthday tomorrow,
something doctors weren't sure would happen, hopefully Gary's problems
are behind him, hopefully Kirk's FIL will find a miracle, and Cade's
cyst will be nothing, and we can all celebrate health and strength in
the New Year! (Top)
3:00 PM pdt
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006
I was waiting to update the blog until Mark's hunting pictures were
developed, and he was able to write his own story, but I got impatient
and simply don't want to wait that long. *smirking* So you'll
have to deal with MY version of his hunting trip. Which in a nutshell,
I told Zach to watch out for the mice in the shack and Mark smugly said
"There aren't any mice in the shack". One night and a phone call
later. "Hi Honey, guess what we've caught in the shack?" HA! Mark
almost got a deer that day, but his gun has to be air pumped somehow
(???) and he forgot to shut a little door-thingy so the thing that
hammers against something to fire the gun didn't work properly and all
he heard was a 'click' and saw was the back of the deer running
(injured, due to a wild shot, I might add, which made me cry but I was
strong enough to wait until we had hung up.) Apparently said deer was
of monstrous proportions with a huge rack (typical thing to brag about
*snort*) but eventually Mark was able to catch a deer a couple days
later. He and Zach nimbly hiked to a log and sat there, and then said
to Zach "Shush, there is a deer, don't move" and then shot the smaller
deer. This was the day after they sat on a hill that ended up being a
nesting area for baby ticks, or some other questionable insect. EWWW!
Zach had his 7th grade band concert last night. He did excellent,
as always. It's fun to see him interact with the other 7th
graders. He towers over many kids his own age, but fit's in nice
with the 12-13 year olds. I wish I could warn the 13 year old
girls what bright lights and camera flashes do to their black clothing
though. One wants to concentrate on one's child and the music, but some
of the clothes can be really distracting, especially the see-through
variety and the immodest variety. I wanted to through shawls over a
good majority of them and say "Honey, we can all see your thong!"
We put up our Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving. This year we put
in the leaves in the kitchen table and are eating in there, and turned
the dining room into a family room with the tree, the dining room table
moved to the side and housing are train and village. We just love
it, and get a sense of how badly we want a living room and family room
in our next home. Neither have to be big, but the two different
living area's are so nice. The picture of Dylan is when we set up
the tree. He loved helping us. He now says "Pretty tree on?" "Do
pretty on?" and LOVES to drive by lighting displays around town. He'll
yell at the top of his lungs "WOW! Pretty" and then after you pass it
he says 'Where it go?" and holds out his hands in a shrug.
I get so emotional at Christmas, and this year is no exception. I cry
all the time. O Holy Night by Michael Crawford plays...cry.
Commercial...cry. My 'baby's' band concert...cry. Read from
the bible, go shopping, watch White Christmas or Miracle on 34th
street...I think you get the idea! I just love Christmas, and the
Reason we celebrate it! (Top)
12:00 PM pdt
Saturday,
November 4th,
2006
The children all
had a fun time trick-or-treating. Mark had an appointment to look
at the tube in his ear, so he was able to get home from work early and
help out with the costumes and pictures before hand. Zach was
originally a little old witch with a baby on it's back (pictured below)
but we decided that it was too much fuss to get in and out of the car
with the full costume, so he just used the mask. Everyone at the
carnival liked it though. We first went to Great-grandma Eleanor's
house for supper, and she also had Great-Grandma Toots and Grandma
Bonnie there as well (and also Steph and Nick, Mark's cousins, and
Steph's son Caden.) Before we ate, we sent the kids next door to
Nancy's house (Bonnie's sister-in-law) to say hello. The kids
absolutely love it there, and sure enough like all years, they came
home with half their basket filled. This time there was
toothbrushes too! Eleanor served her famous sloppy joes that the
kids love so much (and their parents!) Eleanor, Toots, and Bonnie all
load up the kids baskets even more, and we also got some souvenirs from
Italy, including T-shirts, an cross, a beautiful doily, and a pendant
blessed by (and I will probably have to be corrected) but
either the Pope, or cardinals, or someone from the Vatican. There was
so much to remember about Bonnie's trip that I just can't think of that
particular detail.
We found that Dylan just adores VeggieTales. He started off only
liking the theme song. So I could actually get a bath or a shower
in if the kids quickly played the video, and started it back to the
theme song over and over. Then he started liking the whole movie.
He still prefers the theme song, jumps up and down yelling "Bob" or
"Veggie" (in his baby way of saying it). And at the end, and
those who have seen them will know what I mean he says perfectly to
"It's time for Veggie" and he joins in for
"Tale-ale-ale-ale-ale-ale-ale-ale-ales!"
Ethan recently took a bath using my little spa attachment, and Dylan
decided to strip down and join him. Ethan then added too much
bubble bath, and everything was coated. Pictured below is Dylan
after coming out of the tub.
Gabby recently heard about another man being attacked by a sting ray
and said "They are plotting against us!" and won't even thing about
going on a sting ray excursion in Grand Cayman. I don't blame
her. Think that's about it for now!
 
5:30 PM pdt
(Top)
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