Telephone Etiquette

Today we took Adam's mom with us to the big town to do a little shopping. She had lost her cell phone while chasing some bulls in the corrals so it probably is resting peacefully in the manure. The joys of rural life right?? Well, Miss Sarah was super upset that her grandma got a shiny new phone and she didn't..... She screamed and screamed "Where's my phone??" Adam took pity on her and bought her a pink plastic Disney princess slider phone at Walmart. (Our children are so spoiled!) When we got back in the car to head to our next stop, she was pretending to talk to somebody and us three adults were talking to each other. She moved her pretty pink cell phone away from her mouth and yelled "BE QUIET! I TALKING!!!" Do you think maybe she's heard that before????



This is Miss Sarah as she fell asleep last night. It's hard to be a girl :)

Report Card Time

This is a picture of the teacher comments from Paige's latest report card. And I quote, "Paige is doing a great job. The time issue has gotten better but because she is so thorough and does a really good job some things take longer. Keep up the good work!"

And that, my friends, is Paige in a nut shell.

Write your senators and representatives!

Seriously.... Can I just tell you how much I HATE daylight savings time?? This week has been miserable and and it's all DST's fault. I am tired, the kids are tired, and when we are tired we are cranky, super cranky. HATE IT. Why can't Montana go be like Arizona and decide to ignore it? The end.

In other news, Porter is hilarious. Anyone who knows him knows that. Yesterday was our bi-weekly grocery shopping trip so we went and had lunch with Adam like we usually do. We were sitting around the table eating pizza when Porter started talking about our family. He showed us his index finger and said "This is Sarah...", the middle finger "This is me....", the ring finger "This is Paigey...", the pinkie finger "This is you, mom... You're little." and finally the thumb, "This is you, dad. You're fat!" Adam and I laughed. Hard. I had a serious case of the giggle. He looked up at us innocently and said "Sorry! We ran out of big ones!!" It was so funny.

Porter has also taken to snuggling up to me and singing "You are my sunshine" while he wraps his arms around my neck and looks lovingly at me. Adorable. No question that that boy is a lover. He's going to make some girl very happy someday. (And if I was a betting type of gal, I would put money on the fact that his daddy was just like that as a little boy.)

Physically, I am doing fine, incase anyone is wondering. I can do anything I want to really and have no remaining pain or issues other than being tired. Hormones are another question. YIKES. They are super out of whack right now and it is messing me up big time. I am hoping that they will start to settle down by next week and then things can get back to normal.

So does anybody else read Nie?? (nieniedialogues.blogspot.com) I just discovered her and I love what she has to say. I can't say my trials compare to hers at all but everything she says about trials relates to me. She is giving me a lot of inspiration right now.

The snow geese are about. They are everywhere by the thousands. They are super loud to boot. They have flown around/over the house twice this morning. It is so hard to describe the noise. They are all flying and honking but it sounds nothing like what you usually hear when the Canada geese honk overhead. Unbelievable. My mom in law says it's a sign that spring really is here. Crossing my fingers!!!

Also, WE GOT OUR CONSTRUCTION LOAN!!!! Woo hooo!!! By this time next week, there should be a very large hole in our awesome little hilltop. I am so excited!!!

Lessons from Little House on the Prairie

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately. See, one of my favorite blogs was nominated for an award and I was curious to check out the competition. They are all "Mormon Mommy" blogs so I figured they would have something interesting to say. And they do. For me, they just don't compare to my favorite but still good. While I was reading, one of the moms was talking about her homeschooling practices. She had some suggestions for books at different reading levels. One of those suggested was the "Little House on the Prairie" series. It actually got me thinking because a lady at church had asked me a while ago if I had ever read them to my kids because she thought Paige would love them. Yesterday when I made my weekly stop at the local library I grabbed the first book on a whim. Paige and Porter were soooo mad at me because "they only like picture books!!" I told them it had some pictures and I that I thought they would like it. We got all ready for bed and curled up on the couch for story time and started "Little House in the Big Woods" despite the groans and protests. As we read, the kids crowded in closer and closer and closer until they were sitting on top of each other to sit right next to me. They made lots of comments as we read too, like "we have to keep our stove going all the time in the winter too" and "our daddy hunts". When we finished the first chapter, I told them it was time to read scriptures and they whined "Oh Mom!! Pleeeeeasseee... just one more chapter!!" We read a few more pages and then had to quit so we could read scriptures and get to bed on time but they made me promise that we would read it again the next night. I was really surprised but very happy that they loved it so much. I had hesitated to read big books to them because they're so young but they certainly proved me wrong. It also occurred to me as we read how differently we live than probably 90% of people in this country. We heat our house with a wood stove and cut & gather our own firewood, we believe in planting a garden and storing for the winter, we spend lots of time outside, our daddy hunts and uses lots of outdoor skills, my kids understand that the meat we eat comes from animals and that they usually have known the cow that we are eating for dinner. It makes me glad to know that we are not so removed from our past, in fact, I think it's a really great blessing!

Can we get some Spring, please??

We just got home from California. It is a bit of reality check to go from wearing capris and flip-flops in the 70 degree sunshine to bundling up next to the wood stove again. This has been the longest. Winter. Ever. Seriously. Disneyland was awesome. LA traffic, not so much. We hated LA itself. Dirty, littered, polluted & yucky. Once you cross the line into Orange county there is an immediate change. I wish I'd have taken a picture. LA county - dirty... cross invisible line to Orange County - clean. So crazy. My kids had a blast. Paige told me it was 'the funnest vacation ever!!' Sarah hated all rides basically. She liked the carousel at Knott's cause her horse didn't go up and down, It's a Small World because of all the singing 'babies', and the Tiki Room because of the music. And she loved meeting Tinkerbell. I'll have to post the video. It's great. Porter's favorite was the beach. I guess having a giant sandbox would be most little boy's dream. He was sliding down the hill, picking seashells, running through it, etc. He just kept screaming 'This place is AWESOME!!' Paige says her favorite ride was 'the Pony Express' at Knott's Berry Farm. It was a rollercoaster but it had horses that you straddled instead of seats. I thought she was insane when she wanted to ride cause she is not daring at all. I think she was lured in by the horses. But she did it and says she loved it. She rode the Thunder Mountain Railroad coaster at Disney with me too. That one I know she loved cause she kept screaming 'I love rollercoasters!' during the whole ride. Pretty cute. We saw tons of characters. TONS. More than I have ever seen on a Disney trip. We could have met Rapunzel and Flynn Rider but the line was over 45 minutes (at one point 1.5 hours!!) and when I told Paige that she said "Nevermind." My favorites were meeting Belle & the Aladdin musical at California Adventure. Belle was miraculous for me because we got to Disneyland, walked down Main St, did our pictures in front of the castle, walked through the gate, and turned left to go to Frontierland and there she was. We saw other princesses but it was at the Princess Faire where you're guaranteed to meet at least two so not quite as amazing. The Aladdin musical was fantastic. Really, really, really good. The funniest thing was that my mom, Adam, & I went with all 9 of the kids, including the two babies. The babies were sleeping so it was fine and then the other adults could go ride the huge coaster. About half way through, Jordyn (3) came over and said she had to go potty so my mom took her. Then baby Kinley woke up and started to scream. She is a very picky kid and mostly only likes her mama so I ran to the back of the theater, turned her around so she faced the stage and not me, and bounced. As long as I didn't talk, she didn't realize I wasn't her mom. (Thank goodness for those sister similarities!) A minute or two later, Sarah crawled out of the row and came back to me. I told her to stay there and be quiet. Next thing I knew, she was walking down the steps to the stage. I ran down to get her and ran past baby Cruz's carseat, who was also now screaming. I whispered to Adam to take Sarah, grabbed Cruz, carried him to the back, put his carseat on my foot and did my best to bounce Kinley and rock Cruz with my foot. Luckily Mom & Jordyn came back a couple of minutes later and saved the day. It was hilarious and I'm sure, since I was wearing my BYU sweatshirt that day, the annoyed audience members thought I was some dumb Mormon woman with too many kids. I still loved the musical and think it was a super funny moment. And now I know that I couldn't do twins...lol.

I can do hard things

It's been a rough month around here. I've been having some health problems that we now know started about Christmas. I didn't have a clue what was wrong. I've just felt "off". There's been some other small issues along with the "off-ness" but nothing life threatening. I was just tired of not feeling well. When I talked to the doctor, they didn't seem overly concerned so I didn't get overly concerned. Insert last week. Certain things took place and suddenly people were concerned. They needed some blood tests. Then they needed an ultrasound. Suddenly we were being moved from room to room and doctor to doctor. Finally we were instructed to get ourselves to the hospital right away because I needed emergency surgery. (Not exactly how I had foreseen my Thursday evening.) We cried. A lot. We made arrangements, stopped at Target for some supplies and went to the hospital. Everything went fine. I should recover just fine. This experience has changed me though. In a way that I will never be able to explain to anyone else. I am okay, don't misunderstand me, just changed. Sometimes we just don't know what the Lord has intended for us and now I understand that sometimes we don't get a lot of time to struggle through the trial itself. Sometimes what is happening happens so fast that we find ourselves inexplicably altered and find the struggle in the aftermath. Maybe I'm crazy but I love when I fall on my knees and have to be reminded to rely on more than my own strength. There's something so exquisite and so profound in that kind of pain. I think those moments are when we really discover who God is because the rest of the time we aren't vulnerable enough to pay attention like we should. I have been constantly reminded that His pain is my pain too and I am not alone, ever. For me, that is truly something beautiful.

It's a Brand New Year

I don't know that I'm all about New Year's Resolutions really. I like trying to re-start and be better or set new goals but I do that all the time so the New Year doesn't automatically mean a total reboot on my life. I am just in general trying to be better. Good enough, right?

I was trying to think of things that we learned in the last year so here they are, in no particular order:

1 - Selling a house is fun and super stressful. BUT we were super blessed through the whole process. My wonderful mother-in-law gave us a place to be when we had nowhere else to go and within a week we found a rental in Fairfield. We've moved on from that rental now but it was what we needed at the time.

2 - My children are generally good and kind. They are listening and taking in way more than I think they are. Paige especially. She went to a birthday party last month and she told them no when they offered her tea. (Although she told them it was because it has alcohol in it =o) During Christmas at my parents house, Paige told my Grandma that Christmas is the most special day of the year because it is Jesus' birthday.

3 - Subdividing land is way more complicated and time consuming than we thought. When we first talked to the surveyor at the end of July/ beginning of August, we truly thought we could get everything done and submitted by the end of August then we could break ground in November. It took until the beginning of October to submit. Then we got a response in mid-November but we had deficiences that had to be corrected. So once I got through my life and re-submitted it was December and we heard back right before Christmas. We just went to the lawyer and got all the documents signed and filed everything at the courthouse this week. The land is finally ours so now we can work on the financing and getting ready to break ground which will hopefully happen in March. They are always going to be hoops to jump through with this I guess but with luck, we'll be living in our house by next Christmas.

4 - Adam is a master at the wood stove and I only qualify as the bumbling apprentice. Our current house has an awesome wood stove. Adam has it down to a science. He can get a blazing fire in no time flat and bake us out of the house. I can get it warm in here eventually but it might take a while and we all might end up smelling like smoke in the end =o) I think we may have to look into a pellet stove for the new house rather than a wood stove.

5 - We have amazing friends and family. I cannot tell you how many times someone has saved the day for us. They have babysat, driven cars home, helped us move TWICE, changed flat tires in the snow, written sweet notes, called when we're having a bad day, been just as disgusted at certain people's crappy decisions, brought cookies, loaned books, folded laundry, cleaned when we were moving, and much more. The goodness of people never ceases to amaze me. I very much appreciate the people who love us unconditionally. Especially the ones who we don't see often and even if it's been forever, we seem to pick up right where we left off. THANK YOU to all of you. You know who you are.

2011 is gonna be great!!