Good Mail

The other day I recieved my first ever Good Mail. It was very exciting. I haven't gotten into the good mail thing, because I don't know any of the ladies that do it. They seem to all be friends or friends of friends. I on the other hand am a complete stranger and don't really like giving my mailing address out to just anyone. But the other day I put my name in a hat for a contest and actually won. I never win, so this was a complete suprise. We ate all the candy immediatelyand then had the popcorn with my boys the next day while we watched 27 dresses and I ironed 345 pieces of clothing. OK, maybe not that many, but close. I have to stop avoiding the ironing bucket for months on end! Thank you to the Three Diva's and their mommy!

SPT- Something Blue

Our final installment of the wedding theme for the month of May, is Something Blue. And here they are- three of them any way. When my husband married me, he told me it was on condition that I had a blue recessive somewhere in my genes, because brown eyed people were taking over the world and he had to make sure that the blue-eyed ones continued. I think I must definitely have a blue recessive, because 3 out of 4 isn't bad. The fourth has mommy's hazel eyes. I have done my part in helping the blue-eyed people continue upon the earth! (pat, pat- me patting myself on the back.)

SPT- Something Borrowed

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue. We are on to Something Borrowed this week. At first, I was thinking I needed to borrow a little strength to get me through tough times, but then I realized I already had it. Strength, creativity, intelligence, confidence, the ease of life I live- it's all borrowed as I stand on the shoulder of giants. We used to live by a jail that housed many of the women who were arrested while trying to gain equal rights. The treatment they recieved in that jail brought to the forefront of the United States their message and helped women gain equal rights here. Women like Elizabeth Kady Staton, and Susan B. Anthony. Now we have a woman running for President. She may not be someone I would vote for, but it's still a sign of the times we live in. Then there is Florence Nightingale who brought nursing out of the gutter and made it a place where respectable women could work. Then how about the inventor of the flat iron, because some days no matter what you do naturally curly hair just doesn't look good. Then there is my mother who stood up for things that she believed in. She was against the whole long white dress thing- "we aren't catholic and we aren't doing a baby baptism, we are doing a blessing!" So I was blessed in a short hot pink number! She also nursed all her babies when it wasn't popular to do so and kept food storage even when every three years she had to get rid of it, because once again we were moving overseas. There is my mother-in-law who has had a pretty rough life, but tries to be positive and loving in all she does. She has taken care of at least 2 people who were only slightly related to her like they were her own mother. Then there is all of you. I am amazed the things you can learn from blogging and all the great ideas. Thank you Natalie for helping me find this resource. And finally, there may be still times that I hate my ward and go to bed crying because my friends have hurt my feelings and my husband just tells me to stop being such a girl. There may be times I am scared because the alarm has gone off in the house and my husband is away again. There may be times I am having health problems and am worried and my husband is away again, (Ok, can you tell we are in the middle of lots of TDY time?) but I can always count on a little borrowed strength from the Lord. I borrow strength from all these peoples and have become much stronger because of it.

Oh yeah, and thanks to my neighbor who has let me borrow about a dozen eggs, lately!

Weekends are not easy when my DH is not in town. Today was the first time in all these years that I was glad that no one invited us to dinner. Being invited to dinner when Rob is gone has only happened once, but I keep hoping people will realize how much stress it would take off of me, if the kids had people to play with and I could relax and talk to adults on Sunday's. Today was different, though. I needed my pj's, ibuprofen and a long nap. I don't even care that the kids have watched two movies in this time. Ok, I am feeling a little guilty- we may have to go for a walk!

Growing up is hard to do!

According to Emma, "it's just a little red bump!"

SPT-something New

I think I need a new swim suit before our beach trip this summer! I don't know how this happened, but we were at a huge indoor waterpark this last week and I was with my husband about to go up to take my turn at the surfing on a man-made wave. My husband told me to come back and then informed me I had a hole in my suit. I thought it was a little one, until I reached back and found the whole back side ripped down the middle. Luckily, I had a good liner. I wonder how long it had been like that? I did have a second suit, so I was able to enjoy myself. I guess using an old suit to go down tubes is a good idea, because of the wear on them, but you have to worry about how old and how much wear!

Pass the Heinz, please

I saw on the Everything pink website that she had a bottle of ketchup that says, "A little blog Ketchup for Kristi" on it. Could you please pass that Ketchup my way. I need to do some serious blog catch-up. Read on down and you will see what we have been up to the last little while!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's day to all the mother's out there! My mother was the best. She read to me and made me yummy bread and came to my competitions. The most important thing she did for me, though, was talk to me. I don't know if it was the way she interacted with her or just my own personality, but I couldn't stop feeling hyper until I told my mother everything. There were a few make out sessions, I never told her about, but I think she probably knew. Everything else, I told her. I don't know how she made it through 7 teenagers and some ungrateful ones at that, but she did a pretty good job.
I am a selfish person and so sometimes mothering is hard for me. I have to admit, even with the selfishness, these kids are so darn cute and so funny, that it makes it a lot easier to be their mom.
For Mother's day, they made me breakfast- never in bed. We don't like crumbs in our bed. Rob made pancakes and syrup (yes, he actually made the syrup, after I told him how and found the ingredients for him!) and eggs and peppermint tea (from Emma's class- it had a cute poem attached to it. Emma said she chose peppermint, because it was the only one she saw that she knew I could drink. Good girl to be wary of tea!) Rob also made Roast and potatoes and gravy for dinner. We had some friends over and really enjoyed our afternoon. Some more friends came over and helped Rob build a new shelving unit I had bought at Ikea and screw in the hooks for the chore boards. They were two honey-do's he hadn't done for a while.
Sharing time went really well. I did a modification of the Newly Wed game. We played the Mom and Child Game. I asked several mom's to come in and had them write down answers to questions about their child and then had the children answer and see if they matched. I also switched and had the children tell answers about their Mom's. The kids loved it. I found the idea on Sugardoodles.
I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's day as well!

Go Vipers!

Sam's team finally won a game! I think they finally got tired of loosing!
Emma also did really well. Last week she only got 16 minutes of playing time- Rob counted! But, she still scored. This week she played really well again and got more playing time. She scored 2 goals. Go Emma! Go Sam!

A little Family Vacation

We took some time off in the middle of the week and went down to Williamsburg, to the Great Wolf Lodge. It is one of the biggest indoor waterparks. We couldn't convince anyone to go down with us, but we had a blast. There was a big tree house, with the big bucket that dumps every so oftenand two water slides on that. There were also 3 baby water slides and a baby play area. An area with basketballs and floating toys. There were 2 big people slides, and a family raft ride and a lazy river and a wave pool. Our two favorites were the surfing- on a man-made wave and the Tornado- which was a 48' and over waterslide. Sam finally meets the 48' requirement! Yeah! The tornado had a cloverleaf tube that four people can get on. It swoops you down and then there is a big drop that ends in a funnel where you swoop up each side as you go down. It was very fun! Wednesday and most of the Thursday were perfect. We did the rides, back to back and got to surf quite a bit. By Thursday night, the weekend crowd had arrived and we had to wait in line to go down the fun rides, so ended up just leaving then. Who wants to wait in line after they have not had to for a whole day!

The surfing got x-rated at times. They should put a sign up that says one piece swimming suits only. Emma and I were smart enough to cover our top halves with a shirt, but my bottoms did get pulled half way off once. It just so happened right after we had been laughing about a lady that had both her bottoms and her top ripped off of her. So I guess what goes around, comes around! Carma was out to get me.

Photo Shoot

We have a lady in our neighborhood that is going to start up a photography business. She sent out a note saying that she would love it if people wanted to volunteer themselves and families to be photographed to help build her portfolio and that she would give them a CD with the pictures on it for free. Uh, that's a No-brainer! I signed us right up. And Rob actually went without any kicking and screaming! I was very impressed. He said it was for Mother's Day. I had to buy him a whole new outfit, though. My DH does not like spending money on clothing! I also bought a new shirt for me, because I had nothing that I liked in blue and of course we all had to match. I ended up with a really cute shirt, but it was empire waist lined and since my body had decided to pack on 5 pounds of water weight that week (thankfully it is all gone, now!) I look pregnant in some of the shots. I am not! Just if anyone is wondering.In fact this is one of her favorite shots. I don't like it at all, because of the afore mentioned water log issue. I absolutely love this one, but it's not something you can hang on the wall for a family photo.I am thinking of finding a quote to go with it and blowing it up to poster size. Won't it look so cute on the wall? Here are a few of my other favorites.

You would think everything, except the weight gain was perfect, well you would be wrong. The baby had to be dragged from a nap that went over time and he was cranky. He didn't smile in most of the pictures. We didn't have time to eat before we left and weren't done until 8:15 pm and this little guyripped into my hair cutting box in the morning and got a hold of the scissors and proceeded to chop is hair off. I was beside myself, but decide that the rest of the hair hid it and so it was better to just leave it that way. How do kids always know when it is the worst time ever for them to do something like that?

Uh, Oh- I think we've got a player on our hands!

Joseph is 5 and already he has girls slap fighting over him. He told them one time when they were fighting and yelling about him marrying them, that he loved them all. I have seen him light up when he sees one of them around and walk down the halls at church holding one of their hands. I have seen him give them toys to borrow. The other day one of them came to church with her hair all curled and in a barrett. He told Rob, "Dad, I want to go sit by her, she's beautiful!" I am a little worried about this one!

SPT- something old

Here it is- Something old for this weeks SPT. It is the tires on our Truck. They had to be changed today. Of course, I had to go in and do 2 hours of volunteering for the school. I have to have 20 each year to keep my kids at the school they are at. It isn't easy finding the time to do it with 2 rugrats still at home. I also have a big class on Friday and Saturday that I have yet to read the book for or do the mandatory training on CD yet. We will be gone Wednesday and Thursday, so it has to be done today. I also had to return some items, do a boat load of laundry and other things to get ready for the trip and pick up a gift card for teacher appreciation week that has to be turned in by tomorrow. So why am I blogging instead? I guess only a blogger knows! ;)

Bright Ideas

I got tired of reminding the kids over and over about their different chores, so now we have a jar with marbles in it. Each marble is worth a certain amount of money. For each thing they don't do a marble is taken out- or more, depending on the infraction. They get whatever is left over at the end of the week. We believe in repentance marbles, so if they do something extra on their own then they get one back. This has caused all kinds of help to come out of the woodwork. I have had people sweeping the floors and running down the stairs to set the table as fast as they can. To help them remember exactly what their chores are, we are making these chore boards. I saw the idea from Liz H. at the Pink Christmas website. Of course ours aren't quite as cute. I couldn't find nice big boards like she had. Besides that, boys don't do cute! The boards will have hooks in them and then I will modpog some coordinating paper onto those wood swatches you can get at Home Depot and then put on them what their chores are and hang them on the hooks.

Emma found this idea to make fish out of water bottles in an American Girl magazine. The boys and her had a lot of fun making them.

I have found this is a good way to store some of my ribbon. I string them on the rod in my craft closet. It is sort of a curtian of ribbon. I am also going to hang up two curtain rods in my guest room that I will put spools of ribbon on. It will be a wall decoration also!

Here are my last two sets of cards for card club. The one card says, "Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, but... she did it backwards and in high heels." The other one is a mother's day card and someone asked me how I made the ruffled cardstock at the bottom and I gave a general answer that really didn't say anything. Basically, you get a piece of cardstock that is twice as long as the card you are putting it on, then you score it at alternating intervals. The one I saw, said at 1 inch and 1/2 inch, but that was too big of a ruffle for these cards so I did mine at 1/2 and 1/4. Then you fold. Looking at the first set of scores, you fold the farthest one from the end so that the right sides are together, then you fold it out again on the one closer to the end. On the next set of scores, you do it exactly opposite. Continue on down the line. If you need pictures with this quick tutorial, let me know and I will take some.

These are for Teacher Appreciation. I got some of the ideas from Executive Homemaker. Some of them, I came up with on my own. Each item is tied with a tag that says something like: You are Extra, Extra, Extra special on three packs of gum. Thank you for quenching our children's thirst for knowledge on the pack of Crytal light. You are out of this world on a Milky Way. You are Souper on a can of soup.Thank you for your illuminating smile on a smelly candle. We give you top marks on a book mark. You are the apple of our eye on the apple. I got the baskets at Ikea and figured they could use them to put all kinds of things in at school. I took all afternoon to make them last week, because I thought I had missed the entire week of Teacher Appreciation week. I had worked the night before and hadn't gotten a nap, so I was working on 5 hours of sleep. I didn't get a rest and had to work that night also. I made it, without too many problems, thank goodness, but Emma informed me that Teacher Appreciation is this coming week, not last week. Bummer!

For Sharing Time today, I talked about the need for family units and how God created it like his, because it was the best way to get back to him. I had them try and pick up a book with just their fingers and not their thumbs and see how well they did. Then we talked about our hand being like the members of a family : We need a father, Mother, Children, Extended family and the Godhead to make a successful family. I did comment that this was the ideal and that there are lots of families out the there that are not this ideal and that they still worked, just like picking up the book. Many of them were able to do it, but it wasn't as easy. Then we talked about what each member of the family did. What do mother's do? What do father's do? In Senior Primary we almost had a health lesson going when someone mentioned that Mother's have babies and then Sam said, "yes, but they can't have babies without the Dad's. Dad's help make the babies. Then another person piped up to introduce the whole sperm thing. I had to quelch that health lesson right then and there. Afterwards, I had a few people come up and we talked about traditions in their families and then I asked them why we had traditions- to remember! Remember our families and the love they have for us. Father in Heaven sent us here with the tradition of Families like he has, with prayer and scriptures and the sacrament all to remember his love for us. Finally we made these houses out of paper and had the Junior primary draw pictures of their family inside the doors and the senior primary write some traditions inside. It went really well! Hope you all had a bright idea week as well!