Ode to Katie

Megan B. posted the other day about my niece, Katie and how she gets into everything and how Megan spends half her cleaning time cleaning up Katie's messes... So a couple of days ago I went through our pantry and completely organized it - wiped down the shelves, vacuumed the floor, condensed and rearranged, etc. It was spotless. I went in the other room to sit at the desk and not ten minutes later I realized Mckenna had been going back and forth from the kitchen to the garage door quite a few times. So I walked over by the garage door and there was half of my pantry stock, all neatly lined up by the garage. She was "shopping at the food store." She had also spilled a bag of quinoa all over the step-stool, bottom shelf, and floor. Of all the things to spill - that was probably the worst! It's like rice only much much smaller. So I had to take everything out again, vacuum, and put it all back in. Luckily she couldn't reach the rest of it. So there you go, Megan, they really are made from the same mold. :)

Never Talk to Strangers

We've always struggled with convincing Emma not to talk to strangers. Well, it's not that we can't convince her not to, we can't get her to remember not to. So last night we went out to dinner* and while we were waiting for our table Emma made a new friend. It was a sweet little girl who was there with her mom and dad. So they played and talked and Emma told their whole family our whole family's names. Eventually they were taken to their table and we were taken to ours. As we were leaving the restaurant and on our way to our car we met up with them again. Emma was so excited to see them that she ran up and gave them all hugs - the mom and dad included(which surprised them...). So in the car on the way home we had another discussion about strangers. Near the end of the discussion we were running through different scenarios and talking about when it's OK to talk to strangers and who strangers are. We had a neighbor, Mercy who lived two houses down but recently moved. Now it's a house of 3 young bachelors. The other day she ran down to their house (without permission...), rang the doorbell, and was just chatting away with the new neighbor she had never met. I think she'd forgotten that Mercy had moved and was hoping to play with Mercy. Anyway, I asked her about those neighbors and if she thought they were strangers. So this is the paraphrased version of her answer:
"Yes, but Mom - if I was sleeping and they came to our door, you could answer the door and talk to them. And if they said, 'When that girl wakes up - you know, the beautiful one - tell her she can come and play at our house with you because we're strangers, so you can come too.'"

I just thought it was so funny that she referred to herself as "the beautiful one." It won't be so funny when she's in high school, but for now I can be happy that I've raised a confident child with high self esteem...who talks to strangers...hmmm.


*tangent: TGI Friday's has the best new menu!! They have smaller portions, smaller prices, and healthier choices! They even have small desserts so you can get a little sweet treat but not make yourself overly full. I loved it!

Picture time!!

Random pics from our week:



The lipstick found Mckenna's face again:

No, he's not crawling, he's starting to follow in his sister's steps(or I should say in his sister's slitherings) by army crawling. But the other day I put him down and he stayed like this for about 30 seconds. :)

Why we moved the coffee table to the garage... David's been getting into my magazines which are stored on the shelf under the coffee table.

This is INSANE

My friend Heidi sent me this link to a website that teaches what they call Infant Swimming Resource. It is a method of swimming designed to prevent young children from drowning. They teach from 6 months to 6 years. Watch the video on the front page before you enter the site. It shows a baby who's (in my estimation) about 1 to 1 1/2 years, but they have more videos on their site with younger babies; one of them is 8 months old. Anyway...it made me almost sick to my stomach to watch the beginning. I literally tensed up. OK enough of my talking, the video shows you more than I can say.

http://www.childdrowningprevention.com/

Motherhood

My friend, Ruth sent me this video in an email. It is so great!! Enjoy!

Auction

Yesterday my neighbor, Dawn came to my door and said, "You've got to see this!!" I walked outside thinking there must have been a huge car accident or something since there were cars and people everywhere. This is what I saw:It was actually my neighbor's house being auctioned. I'd forgotten they were doing that last night. They had 6 houses to auction, this house being the last on the list. Here's the front:

You can se the auctioneer standing in front of the house. The couple who actually bought the house plan to fix it up and sell it again. The wife is in the first pic, slightly to the left wearing jeans, a light teal sweater and flip flops with short dark hair. The husband is in the second picture, but you can't really see him. He's in front of the guy right in front(jeans and blue plaid shirt). I'm sure you're wondering by now how much it sold for. Let me give you a bit of background info...The house is 3bedroom 2.5 bath, 2411 sq. ft., built in 2002. Zillow.com estimates its value at $511,181. They opened the bidding at 50k. Are you ready to know what it sold for?? Drum roll please...

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273,000

Isn't that insane??

TWINS!!

My amazing mother and father-in-law just got their twins!! They adopted sweet Tihune and Mikyas from Ethiopia. Craig went over there last week and brought them home yesterday. They are both absolutely beautiful and I can't wait to meet them. Ian's parents have always shown such sweet charity, so this is yet another example of that. But what's interesting is to hear Craig's sweet thoughts on the adoption, the kids, their family, the orphanage, etc. What an amazing man he is! And what sweet thoughts he shared with us from Ethiopia. And to listen to Laurie's excitement and all of the energy and effort she's put into getting ready for these beautiful kids. I thought I knew before what amazing parents and people they are, but this experience has really shown that even more so. I just hope that Miki and Tihune can see how much Craig and Laurie already love them and that they will all adjust to being a new family easily.

New bows

Megan B...thanks for taking me to the ribbon store!!!

The true definition of Willie off the Pickle Boat

Annie

Alert

I HAVE PLANTAR FASCIITIS.











That is all.











OK that's not really all...I just wanted to be dramatic. The name sounds much more dramatic than what it really means. It's super common so most of you probably either know what it is, or have it yourself. Basically it means my heels hurt and I need new shoes. But they really hurt. Especially in the morning when I get out of bed. And more so now since I've been walking Emma to school and going on hour long walks after on M/W/F's.

I have flat feet so when I walk, the ligament that goes from my heel to my toes gets stretched too far and it is now tearing and becoming inflamed down by my heel. Once I get good shoes, it should get better, but I also need to add some foot excersizes and stretches to my daily routine. It won't be so bad, I need to stretch more anyway.

It's actually good and bad. Bad - because I've really been enjoying my walks and am worried that this might affect them. Also, I'm going to do the Breast Cancer 3-day where you walk 20 miles a day for 3 days (60 miles total) next year and I don't want my feet to be in bad shape for that. Good - because I was planning on buying a new pair of shoes for the walk, so this will just get my bum in gear and make me go out and buy some.

ANNOYANCE

I have this curse where I think of absolutely wonderful responses long after I should have actually said them. However it just might be a blessing in disguise because if I actually said some of the things I've thought of, I might end up worse off than if I never said anything in the first place. You following me? Example:

Today I went to pick Emma up from school. There's a system to how you are supposed to drive when you pick your kids up from "the loop." If you are to be turning left into the loop, most people get in the left turning lane about a block before you turn. Today I didn't do that because there were no other cars in the turning lane yet and I thought I'd get into it when I got closer in order to not cut off any other cars ahead of me that may be wanting to be there as well. I put a lot of thought into this... So when I did enter, there was a car behind me that had gone into the lane before me. Now this car was not right behind me, it was far enough away that I was in NO way cutting them off, probably 2-3 car lengths behind. Apparently they thought otherwise because when we were in the parking lot a bit later she said, "So do you teach your children to cut in line too?" I actually didn't hear her at first, so by the time I realized what she said she had already walked away. But even after I realized what she said, I still couldn't figure out what she was talking about. I was ahead of her anyway, regardless of when I entered the turning lane. So, had I actually realized what she'd said, figured out what she was talking about, and thought of something to say...man she would have gotten an earful, let me tell you!!

Good thing I'm cursed.

Sweetness

I don't know what came over me...

Yesterday we walked Emma to school, went on a 45 minute walk after, went grocery shopping, came home, unloaded groceries, picked up Emma, had lunch, put the younger kids to bed, did all the laundry, helped Emma with her homework, made cookies and zucchini bread, cleaned downstairs, made dinner, did the dishes & wiped down the kitchen, took a shower, went to Enrichment, crashed in bed. Oh yeah and somewhere in there I nursed David about 10 times...at least it seemed like it. What's weird about all that is that when Ian was almost home and it was almost time for me to go to Enrichment, I was praying for an extra hour at least because there was still stuff I wanted to get done. I honestly don't know what made me want to be so productive - whatever it was I sure would like some more of it!! Here's a cute pic of Emma and David:

*sigh*

All 3 of my kids are in bed before 8 o'clock. Now I know some of you may roll your eyes, others might have a slight case of disbelief, and some may even have a jaw-dropping thud. (and the rest of you will say, "Oh, that's nice." But it's true, I tell you. And it gets better. One of them was in bed and asleep by 6:45...and it wasn't my youngest child. It was my 5 year old. Shannon J. was the only one priviledged enough to read our dinner dialogue that I posted. I felt bad and deleted it. I've been complaining about Emma a lot lately (she's been hard to handle lately), but she's definately getting better and I've realized that the majority of times when she's cranky, it's mainly because of a lack of sleep. Monday she was insanely cranky so I sent her to bed for 5 minutes and when I came back in (7 minutes later...I know I'm terrible) she was conked out. We were having the missionaries over for dinner that night so I woke her up a little bit later, but sometimes I need to remember that her crankiness isn't her fault, it's mine for not putting them to bed early enough. I'm editing this almost 13 hours after I put her to bed and she's still asleep... But I've got to wake her up to begin our new day!! (We have to leave in a 1/2 hour!)

Square what??

The pictures speak for themselves, but if you want to read about them, here is the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1390088.stm (it's from 2001, I can't believe I'm just hearing about this modern marvel now!!!)

Shan's wedding pics

I just realized I totally forgot to post their wedding pics!! Go here: http://www.kingphotographystudio.com/individuals/Shannon_Jed/index.html

You're in the right spot!

Yes, it's still my page, I just jumbled things all around. I didn't want anyone to think they came to the wrong place. :)

Topsy turvy

I've never thought my children were capable of turning their super-saucer over....until now. David just rocks out in it.

More bow stuff

I just love this stuff!!! SO fun!

These are a few of my favorite things...

So this summer has really helped me gain an appreciation for this:
If you need a better picture to fully understand what I'm talking about, here you go:

As we were getting ready to walk to school last Thursday I ran back in the house to grab the camera because I was just so darn excited for CLOUDS!!!

Another favorite thing...my sleeping ballerina.

And my sweet sleeping babe...

Books

Just finished Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult. I really enjoyed this book. I got a little frustrated with the characters everynow and then, but it made me think about a lot of things. Picoult tends to write about controversial issues and usually opens your mind to new perspectives and this book did just that. There are a few times were the language was pretty harsh, but it didn't bother me.

Before that I read Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen. OK Other than some ridiculously harsh scenes that I learned to skip right over, I really enjoyed this book. Its about a man who joins the circus...sounds silly but it really was a neat book. Theres one scene early on that I read and very much wish I hadn't and theres at least one more scene that I'm sure got very graphic but I saw it coming and just skipped it completely. The book refers to it later on, but you don't have to read it to know what happened. Anyway, I would not recommend this if you are easily offended or if you like perfectly clean and happy books, but I liked it!

What are you reading right now?

My hero

We have had a mojor ant infestation this summer. They got so bad that when when we went to WA last week we had everything completely spotless and clean when we left and then 3 days later when we came home, there were still tons of ants just roaming around our kitchen sink, bathroom sink, and pantry. They weren't finding anything, they were just looking. So when we got back I went to Lowes and bought these:

And oh my goodness you would not believe how many ants attacked those things. I put one by the sink, one in the pantry, and one on the bathroom floor. There were so many ants inside that it looked black. And there was a huge trail coming and going for about 36 hours. But at the end of the 36 hours...not a single one!! I haven't seen any ants in our house for about 3 days. Thats ridiculously amazing. I also bought some outdoor ones but they haven't seemed to find them yet, because I still have ants all over my dahlias. And snails... And black widows on our porch... Those should all be tackled by next weekend, but I was just so happy to have won the ant war!

Ugh

Went to the grocery store today at 12:30....And look what my car had to tell me...



I texted this pic to my sister who later texted back a pic of her car's thermometer which said 104...and she lives right next to the beach!!! This weather is insane!!! Thank goodness for AC. Can I buy a portable AC to keep in my food storage? I think I'll die if the power goes out for more than a day. We have had the power cutting in and out all week but never for more than a minute. And we had a 4.7 earthquake yesterday. It was actually no more than 20 miles from out house, so we felt it pretty good. The girls didn't even notice it and Emma was bummed because she learned what to do in an earthquake last week at school and she didn't get the chance to do it. I think I'd rather have a minor earthquake and have her not feel it than have a huge one where she would need to kneel under a desk with her arms folded over her neck...

Today was an absolutely fabulous day. Ian and I started cleaning our house at about 1 and cleaned till 8:30 with a few breaks in between. Our house looks shiny and new! The floors are clean- mopped and vacuumed, the laundry put away, the bedrooms are spotless, kitchen shining, desk cleared(we cleaned that out last week...whew!), the lawns mowed. Ian was even able to tackle some "honey-do" projects I've been wanting him to do for a while. Taya - he finally hung your "HOME" letters downstairs and they look awesome!! I was stoked to have the time to organize our linen/medicine closet. I know it's strange but there are few things on earth that make me feel better than having an organized linen closet. Organized pantries may be a tiny bit higher on the list but not by far... Anyway, we really got a lot done. Thanks honey!!