Updates

Clark is mobile again. He ditched his crutches and now just limps around. I'm happy because I was beginning to think he had severed a tendon or paralyzed a muscle by stepping on the nail. He had a friend over to play and next thing I knew he was getting around just fine. Did his friend call him a wussie pants and encourage him to TRY to walk? I hadn't called him a wussie pants, but I had been encouraging him to TRY to walk! I guess I wasn't very convincing.
I am happy to have him back in action. As it turns out, I do ask him to help out quite a bit and I missed his help! Hmm, maybe that is why he didn't try to walk sooner.

We went to our book club tonight where I seemed to be the only one who didn't enjoy the book, Contact. What is wrong with me? Do I lack imagination? (maybe) Do I not care about the mysteries of the universe? (probably) Do I hate all sci-fi? I don't think so; I did read Ender's Game and I really liked it. A lot. I couldn't relate to the Ellie character in Contact at all. I asked Abe on the way home if I just have "Mother Tunnel Vision"? Meaning, I am so involved in mothering, that I have a hard time understanding other motivations.

Speaking of Mothering, I needed to go buy some new maternity pants today. True confessions: I'm not getting smaller as I have these babies and although I do have lots of maternity pants, they don't all fit. Okay, okay, not very many fit. So there it is.
You know when you go to a movie or a concert or something and they completely gouge you on the price of a soda BECAUSE THEY CAN! They know you are thirsty and they know you have no other options. That is how I view maternity stores. They know pregnant women are DESPERATE for pants that are comfortable, so they charge outrageous prices BECAUSE THEY CAN! Curse the law of supply and demand.
But I am enjoying my comfy new pants.

Whew!

I hosted a book club tonight for a women's neighborhood/ward book club. I hosted because I chose the book for the month. I chose "Little Men" by Louisa May Alcott. There were a few women who came (and they were delightful), but I don't think I chose a very popular choice. That's okay. I really liked it and it is done so I don't have to worry about it anymore.
However, my house is very clean. That is, my house is as clean as it ever gets. My little people all stayed sequestered upstairs watching Planet 51.

But let's talk about book club choices. For our "family book club" that we've been apart of for about five years, we are taking turns choosing the books. Abe chose the book for this month--Contact. It's a sci-fi book. Last Saturday I started reading it. I think I was pretty grouchy before I started reading it. But see, sci-fi is by far my least favorite genre of books. So after a couple of hours of reading, I was irrate! I was convinced that Abe had chosen this book on purpose just to torture me. Please keep in mind that I am pregnant and have more than a few moments of irrationality. This was definitely one of them. Abe implored me to stop reading. He said we'd just watch the movie together. Which is what we are doing right now, even as I write. For the record, I do plan on reading the rest before book club on Saturday. I am feeling much more rational at the moment.

I need to go now because I've got to figure out who the little actress in the Contact movie is. What else have I seen her in ??? ARGGGGH! I love the internet.

He Nailed It!

Clark went to play at a friend's house yesterday. Shortly after his arrival he called me and told me he had stepped on a nail in the backyard.
He was wearing really thick boots and yet the nail still went pretty far into his foot.
Okay, no more details as I sense some of you may be wincing.
His friend's mom is a nurse so I felt he was in better hands than he would have been at home. He stayed and played. By the time he finally got home he was in a great deal of pain.

He moaned and groaned throughout the evening. He couldn't put any weight on the foot.
Now to be perfectly honest, his tolerance for pain may not be that high and he does tend a bit toward the dramatic (I can't imagine where he would get THAT trait from) , but I do believe he was very uncomfortable.











This morning, after he hopped/hobbled/crawled into piano lessons (I know, I'm the meanest mom in the world) I went to DI to get him a pair of crutches so he could get around a little easier. They are too big for him, but that's all they had and I figure he won't need them very long.

















But it wasn't all bad. The final Fablehaven book did come out yesterday.














Abe spent some time with the girls tonight looking through the scrapbook my mom made for us that chronicled our dating and engagement.
The girls LOVE hearing these stories over and over. Who am I kidding? Abe loves telling these stories over and over.









Faith finally finished her birthday celebrations on Monday. Perhaps the highlight was Faith's lengthy examination of the FOUR dollars(!!!) Grandma Fox sent her. There were other gifts as well, but she was really captivated by the moolah!











He wanted his picture taken.
Cloth diaper update: they work! Who knew? Well, all our mothers and grandmothers knew, but they work. I use really thin disposable liners that you just flush away-- that gets rid of the the yucky/poopy part. Okay, I'll stop now as I sense that some of you are wincing.

Happy Birthday Faith and It's a Boy!

Chuck E., oh Chuck E.! Do I love you or do I hate you? I'm never quite sure how I feel about the giant mouse and his rocking band mates. Today we celebrated Faith's 4th birthday along with her cousin Jadan who turned six today. Lori and I decided a trip to the local Chuck E. Cheese would be fun. The kids were ECSTATIC!! Okay, Clark wasn't ecstatic, but he was anxious to see how many tickets he could collect. From what I could tell all the kids had a fun time. They would have liked more tokens, but it was pretty much tear free.


Except for this moment on the monster truck. Don't worry I rescued him shortly after the picture was snapped.













I find it hard to believe Faith is already 4. She seems to stay younger than she really is. Ever since she was an infant she has seemed to age very slowly. When she was six months it seemed like she was three months. When she was 2 I thought maybe she was 18 months. Now that she is almost four I think it is time for her to be three. What a blessing she is to our family.







It was fun time for cousins to play together. Although we live pretty close, we don't see each other as much as we'd like to.













Cannon and Ellori stayed pretty close to mom and dad, but the search parties did have to be dispatched a couple of times to locate them.

Now, if you've been patient enough to look through pictures of other people's children at Chuck E. Cheese, you get the BIG news of the day. I had my twenty week ultrasound this morning and found out we are expecting a boy baby! Hooray!
You know I would never complain about a girl (I LOVE GIRLS!) but logistically it really does work out better to have a baby boy! Cannon will have a little playmate and it will be much better for the room sharing situation. And although Cannon has been a very active, busy little boy, he has been so much fun that it makes me excited for another boy.
So I guess Faith gets to stay the baby girl for a while longer. I'm okay with that. Somehow I think Faith will stay the baby of the family regardless of how many babies come after her.

March Kids' Book Club

We had our Kids' Book Club today. We read one of our favorite books so far; Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. It is a fantastic book, especially for boys and I highly recommend it. It's a true story about Nathaniel Bowditch, an American Navigator and mathematician. He is out at sea for much of the story so for our snack the kids tried hardtack, also known as sea biscuits. The kids had a fun time trying to bite it without breaking any teeth. That's what they are all doing in this picture. Then we had soft biscuits for a real snack.


We played a game very similar to the game Coda. We divided into three teams-- France, America and England. Each team had a random code of five numbers between one and twenty. Each country is trying to break the other codes based on what they know of their own code and the other countries. It got very competitive and in the end the French (shown here) had their code broken first.






England was the next to fall.

















The Americans were victorious!
The young people were put in teams by yours truly. This is a club of kids ages 8-11 and if you remember, at that age, boys and girls are poisonous to each other. There is much tormenting of the opposite gender. For our book discussion the boys sit on one couch and the girls sit as far away as possible on the other. For snack time the girls are at one end of the table and boys at the other. I should enjoy this now, because I figure in about 5 years I'll be wishing I could keep them apart!

This picture is for Abe's mom, Grandma Fox. She gave us this great Duplo Pirate Ship a couple of years back. In our book the author refers to the different parts of the ship- most of which I didn't know. So we labeled all the parts of our very realistic looking ships! Now I know where the poopdeck is! (It's the high deck at the rear of the ship).
Sorry these aren't very good pictures. They were taken with my cell phone because the camera needed recharging.

Final things to note:
Today was Bethany's official birthday and she and Abe and Clark and Elinor went to a Jon Schmidt concert in a friend's home. He took requests and Abe requested a birthday song for Bethany. Pretty cool to be serenaded by Jon Schmidt for your birthday!
One last picture of Clark's Lego team. Utah had a small (compared to Idaho's) First Lego League competition this weekend. They won the grand prize. Hooray! And now it is all over for the year. We'll see about next year.

WELL! I am feeling rather worn out after the last few days. All wonderful, great activities, but I think we need to enjoy the virtues of boredom for a little while.

Happy Birthday, Bethany

She is almost nine.
A very wise aunt told me that the first five years of motherhood drag by at a snail's pace. And then VROOM! Time starts flying. That is exactly how I feel.
Last night we had Bethany's tea party birthday party.
















The preparations were intense. We had outfits picked and laid out 48 hours early.














Beds were made and rooms were cleaned.















The food was prepared and the table was laid.
Bethany decided she wanted to do a tea party and use her Great-Grandma, Beth Clark's, fancy tea cups. (Beth Clark was my maternal grandmother) She passed away in 1985 and somehow I ended up with her china and her collection of tea cups. I don't know much about how the cups were collected. Did she collect them over many years during travels? Or did she acquire them all at once? I wish I knew.
There are 17 of them, all beautiful and all different. We don't get them out very often so it is very special when we do. We got a recipe for delicious tea cakes from Aunt Amy (Abe's sister-in-law). The invitations were sent out and the very well dressed guests arrived.
They were all delightfully behaved little ladies who were brave enough to try herbal tea before having hot chocolate.













Bethany and Elinor loved having Abe serve as "Jeeves" for the evening.















This was the most impressive part of the evening. Clark and his friend London were the hardest working, most polite gentlemen you could imagine. They answered the door, took coats, offered all the food and quickly came when any of the ladies called them.
Now I should mention, that all the ladies were given ample monopoly money that they could tip the servers with when they did a good job. At the end of the evening both boys could trade their monopoly money for real money. ($5 each) Well worth it!
Mostly I was just impressed that these boys would be such good sports and play the part so well. What a fun memory for everyone.
After the tea party portion of the evening the girls all made shrinky-dink necklaces.
Everyone seemed to have a fun time, which is the goal.













But here was a sad little girl when it was all said and done. It's Faith, just in case you can't tell because of the face distortions.
It is a hard thing to be the youngest of three sisters, who all have birthday's within a month of each other, and yours is last. Faith has one week till her birthday and it is a sad thing to have to wait for your presents while your sisters open theirs. So sad-too bad. Hopefully it'll get easier as the years go on.

Just in case you ever need to buy a gift for a nine year old girl. Nail polish was the most popular gift and the girls couldn't be more pleased.
I've said it before, but I'm thankful for good friends for my children. We are very blessed.

Trying New Things

I am a bathroom reader. I always have been. I'll read anything in the bathroom; books and magazines are my first choice, but I have been known to read the ingredients in shampoo bottles and face wash. Right now we have "The Great American Bathroom Book" (summaries of classic books) and there is a section of quotes. I love a good quote book.
Do I have a point here? Sort of, but it's taking me a while to get to it. I think there is some sort of quote somewhere out there, maybe in my quote book, that says as long as you are learning and trying new things, you never grow old. Or maybe I just made it up. I'm not even sure I agree, but I tried two new things today and so I guess I'm young!

We are planning a tea party for Bethany's ninth birthday party and we're having herbal tea. I've never made herbal tea before. I'm not sure I've even tasted it. But tonight it was peppermint tea. The girls were very anxious to try it out, but I didn't think they'd like the taste too much. I had to prepare them by telling them that is was just a taste they weren't used to and it was a little different, but not to be afraid of it. They were all very brave and tasted it and didn't distort their faces in disgust. Faith came back for more. Mostly they just loved dropping sugar cubes.

I know this little boy is too skinny. We're working on it, but you know, if you want to gain weight you have to eat more and move less! Cannon doesn't like to eat and he loves to move, so he's too skinny. But that isn't the point of posting this pic. Look at his diaper-- it's a CLOTH diaper!!!! That's the next new thing I tried today.
What am I thinking? Well, I LOATHE buying diapers. I've been buying diapers for 10 years with one three month hiatus in between Elinor and Faith. A couple of months back I asked a neighbor about the feasibility of cloth diapers. She used them with a couple of her kids and she made them and sold them online. She convinced me to give them a try. Today she brought over a few samples she made for me to try out. Cannon seemed quite pleased with this one. These are not the diapers I remember my mom using with my brother. These are so CUTE and snuggly. I still plan on using disposables at night and on days when we're out and about a lot, but I think we'll give cloth a go for a while. I'd love to only buy disposable half as often! If you think this is crazy, remember that I homeschool my children, so I am obviously okay with crazy.
Elinor got a kite for her birthday and she and Bethany had grand success flying it at the park. I love kids flying kites. I love to see their thrill that they have conquered gravity and made something fly!











I know the Olympics are over and it is for the best, but wanted to show Clark's Lego Olympic ski jump. If you could see into the judges stand below you'd see people in there. Also, their is a lego Bob Costas in a suit in the stands. Clark also made a skating short track, but Cannon destroyed it before the picture.

Ready for Bed

It has been a most productive day and I'm ready to rest.
We pulled off one of our Primary quarterly activities today. I think it went well, but I'm never quite sure. It is no easy task to put together an activity for 40-50 children aged 3-12. The goal is for all of the children to have a good time, hopefully have some spiritual gain, keep tears at a minimum, avoid injury and not lose any children. Easier said than done. I usually end up feeling a big frazzled by the end, even after the best of the activities. My counselors are FANTASTIC and they carry more than their share of the load. But still, I feel the responsibility of so many little ones. That being said, I love our primary kids-- I think they are the best group of kids I've ever worked with. I'm so sad when any of them turn 12 and leave Primary. I know they're ready and rearing to go, but I miss them anyway.

I probably should have stayed home this evening and recovered, but I had told the kids earlier in the day we might go do something fun tonight. I should never make such suggestions early in the day when I have energy. You see, I really needed the kiddos to get on their jobs and school work early this morning so we could do our afternoon activities. And like I said, I had energy and assumed that energy would last. So, I told them maybe we'd go see The Princess and the Frog. The girls and I ended up going out for a girls' night. We did have a fun time and we all enjoyed the movie. The girls chatted away the whole way home about their favorite parts. I don't think I was the only tired one though. The girls conked out the moments after getting in bed. As will I momentarily. Good night.

We Are Down By Two

We are down by two children as of last night and this morning. Clark and Bethany are off on a legislative adventure with their Grandpa Cannon. My dad volunteers up at the the Capitol everyday all day long while the legislative session is in. I'm sorry I don't have the proper name for what he's doing but it involves "The Patrick Henry Caucus"-- a very conservative group.
He kindly offered to give all of us a tour around the Capitol during session. We have taken a field trip to the Capitol in the last year or so and I couldn't think of anything LESS pleasant than trying to keep tabs on Cannon in a formal public setting. So, Dad and I worked out a plan for have Clark and Bethany spend the night at their house and then head in with Grandpa in the morning and I'll pick up my people in the afternoon.

Last night Dad and Bev joined us for Clark's final pinewood derby. I must confess to having very high hopes for a first place finish. Alas, we were greviously disappointed. FIFTH! What is that? We had plans to slash the tires of the winners (if it wasn't us), but we withstood that temptation. Oh well. There's still hope for Cannon. We have six years to prepare.

Poor Elinor. She was very distraught about Clark and Bethany leaving. Mostly about Bethany leaving. I figured she was sad that she didn't get to go. But in all my motherly wisdom I knew it was best that she not go. It is going to be a long day for them and Elinor's not ready for that level and length of boredom. As it turns out, Elinor was sad that she wouldn't get to sleep with Bethany. How cute. We let Elinor have the comfort of watching a movie before bed. She chose "Pippi on the Run".
Maybe you're not familiar with the "Pippi" movies. I watched them as a kid. They were made in Swedish, then voiced over in English. They are no where near quality productions, the material is sometimes questionable and the characters are quite naughty. And I LOVE THEM and Elinor loves them. But, I can't really recommend them.