February in a Crunch

It's that time of year again where my blog gets ignored quite frequently. I haven't figured out yet if it's because we're stuck indoors much so I'm not out taking pictures to post, or if we're just so busy with school/life that I don't have time to sit and write everything down. Maybe both. Who knows? It doesn't really matter. But for journaling purposes I need to go back and record all the things we've been doing -- you know, why I've been too busy to blog :)

For starters, on February 8th I took the girls to a Relief Society class. We've decided our "weird" thing we're doing this year is to give only handmade gifts. I had intended this to apply only to Christmas, but the girls got a little carried away with it, so I told them they can do it for whatever they want. So, I've been feeling some pressure to learn some skills so that they can make gifts. That's exactly what we did at this activity. I would post more details about it, but I know that Chloe and Sophie are planning to give theirs as gifts to people who read my blog so I'm going to keep hush.

I made an appointment for Sophie to go visit the orthodontist. I don't think I mentioned what a goofball she was at her last appointment in October. It was time for her to get her expander off, and the doctor said she was ready, but I mentioned that Sophie was a little nervous about it. Well, he decided that meant Sophie got to choose if it came off or not. She tried to look at me for guidance, but he wouldn't let her. It had to be all her decision. She chose to keep in on. He told me to come back in 6 months, but only 3 months later it was really bothering her and she wanted it off. I made her suffer a little bit, since she made the choice to keep it on, but I finally gave in and made the appointment to go get it off. The doctor said Sophie's probably going to need some more work done in the near future, but we're not sure what that means. We'll go back in a few months and see what he thinks.

We had a family outing to a high school production of Grease. I love this show, and was happy to find a somewhat censored version to share with my kids. Here's a really terrible camera photo to show we were there:

Then I took Sophie on a date this month. After going out to lunch we were talking about all our options and we decided to take a drive to Tooele to visit some family. She was pretty cute on the drive out, talking about her cousins who will be starting kindergarten this year. She sounded so mature as she said, "When did they grow up so fast?" Yes, Sophie, tell me -- when did you grow up so fast?

I read "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" to the girls this month. Again, it felt totally inspired. I couldn't have asked for a more appropriate story for the girls at this time. There's a strong focus on math and astronomy in it, and about being self-taught. I mentioned our math incentives I was giving them last time. Well, Sophie came to me and said she didn't really want a reward any more. I asked her if that was her way of saying she just wasn't motivated to do her math. No, it wasn't. She honestly felt like the reward was not appropriate, so we've moved on to other things. Wow! She truly is maturing, isn't she? Then to help matters out, she finished her level of math. I didn't let on to her that she was near the end, so it was a big surprise on the final lesson. She was so ecstatic! It was like Christmas morning when I got to go pull out the books for the next level and show her what she would get to be doing. She was so excited she went to work right away. She's been doing two lessons a day, since the beginning is always a review so it's pretty simple. Chloe's still chugging along as well. It's been fun to watch the two of them get excited and work together.

Much to my children's dismay (mostly Chloe, I'm not sure Sophie even knew what was going on), I did not take them to a Valentine's Day party. They did a lot at home to make up for it. They set up decorations, and went a little overboard with gifts for everyone. Chloe gave me a coupon for a 3 minute backrub, good once a day for the rest of my life, as well as a coupon to declutter her room once every two months! Lucky me :) I splurged on dinner and did a homemade version of fast-food. Since we no longer eat that stuff this was quite a treat. I made Boca burgers, french fries, and milkshakes with coconut milk ice cream. I believe I heard a "this is the best meal ever!"

This has been a very busy week. Tuesday we went to another Astro Camp. This one had an astronomy theme, so I couldn't pass that up. It was pretty basic, so I don't think Chloe really got anything out of it, but it was fun and always good to get out of the house and go interact with others.

Wednesday we went to Tracy Aviary with some neighbors. It was only supposed to be 45 degrees that day, which sounds very cold to me, but it was surprisingly very pleasant. It was nice to be outdoors again. Sophie was super excited to get to the Owl Forest. She saw a saw-whet owl, and was finally content. I'm not sure she bothered to look at much else. I do have pictures from this outing, but they will have to be posted later. I'm too lazy to get them off my camera just now.

We have some big projects going on at our house. Rooms are getting moved around, paint is going up on walls (and other places), accessories are being splurged on. You're just gonna have to wait for the big reveal, but I have to use it as one of my excuses as to why I'm so busy.

I think that should about cover things for now. Oh, by the way, we're now reading "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank. She's giving me a little prompting to record events better.

Ordinary Life

Our life the past couple weeks has been full of nothing extraordinary, but complete with daily living. For example:

I've been trying to do my "daily picture" project again. One particular day Sophie got a little silly with her pose, and just kept going. I kept shooting.

And then her sister wanted to join in. Even though she'd already had her photo taken, she needed a round of silly shots.

Or how for history we were studying the Arabian peninsula, so we got to make a desert oasis. I tried to do a "healthy" version, because you know if I buy treats to do a craft with more will end up in the stomach than on the craft. I was pretty proud of how my asparagus and snow peas transformed into palm trees. FYI: the sand was shredded Triscuits.

And friends came over and pulled out the science kit. They had a little too much fun with this project.

We got to go get a special treat since they met their math goals. Sophie's really struggled with feeling confident in math, so I decided to offer a reward as some incentive. It worked! She's been very diligent, and even did some work independently. Chloe's also been a really big help with her -- when Sophie will allow it. Chloe doesn't need incentive to do math, so I told her she could only get the reward if Sophie earned it so that she would be motivated to work with Soph. I think that helped as well.

Chloe got to climb up on the roof. I don't know what her fascination with it is, but she knows how scared her dad is to get on the roof. She wanted to do it so bad, so he finally said he'd help her. They all climbed out the bedroom window and sat on the roof. Chloe was a little more unrestrained than we'd hoped for. She wanted to go all over the place. He let her go out two different times, and then tried a third to get on the other side of the house, but it was covered in snow. She was pretty sad after that that we wouldn't let her do it anymore. I really hope we don't have a problem on our hands!

Then I started a big project with Sophie. When we went to Gardner Village with my parents she had found a stuffed dog in a fabric shop she liked. I thought we could try to make it, but they were out of the patterns so we had them take down our information to call us when it came in. After this long I figured we weren't going to hear from them, but one magic day Sophie just knew the call was coming - and it did! So, we make a trip back to get the pattern and picked out some fabric. To move the story along, we ended up having enough fabric to make two of them, so Chloe got one as well. After lots of work, wah-la, we have a dog.

Book Report

Papa's Daughter
A little over a year ago I read the charming "Papa's Wife" to my girls. It was such a fun story. Sophie bought me another book by the same author, Thyra Bjorn, for Christmas that year. But "Papa's Wife" is the first in a trilogy of stories about Button (based on the author's own life) and her family. I've been dying to read the second book, "Papa's Daughter," ever since. I finally got it and read it to the girls. It was much more sober than the first. There was a quote in the book that I felt described my blog and how I feel when I'm writing, so I wanted to share it.

There was a discrepancy between the words Button dreamed in her mind and the way they came out on paper. The words on the paper weren't right; somehow they were not really Button's. Oh, some of them were strange and pretty, but they were fake, as if she hadn't held the pencil that jotted them down.

No, I am not a writer. I am terrible at making things sound the way I hear them in my head. Especially talking to people, but writing words down isn't much easier. So, there you go.

Mitten Strings for God
I have had the most wonderful visiting teacher. But after 5 years they decided she needed a break from me and gave her a new assignment. But before they took her away from me, she brought me a wonderful gift. A book. She knows me very well, and found the perfect book for me. It's called "Mitten Strings for God." I think every mother should read this book. And if I still had a book club to attend I'd definitely pick this book for my next discussion. The leader of my old book club just moved, so the group kind of dissolved. Someone else tried to take over, but she lives even further away from me and really changed the format of what the group does. So, I'm not sure if I'll make it to that one or not. Anyway, back to my book. It had so many wonderful quotes in it. I think I have just about every page marked up. Rather than give a "report" I thought I'd share some of my favorites. I tried to keep the list short, but there are just too many!

Ours is a society that places high value on achievement and acquisition. The subtle rewards of contemplation, quiet, and deep connection with another human being are held in low esteem, if they are recognized at all.

I find myself thinking about gifts of time; of our family's need to be quiet together in the midst of all the seasonal events and expectations.

How easy it is to fall into thinking that living well means partaking of all that's offered.

If I pause long enough to listen to my own inner voice... I made better choices for us all.

The closets are packed with stuff--our possessions spred into every available space, cluttering our homes and crowding our imaginations as well.

We know full well that our children are not yet able to distinguish wants from needs.... But many of us are just as confused as our children.

[Our children] teach us whatever hard lessons we most need to learn.

I've learned an enormous amount from both of my children. Different lessons from two very different temperaments, all of them valuable.

I have found my children to be far more accepting of my athletic and musical and artistic shortcomings than my peers were thirty years ago.

All that is really important is invisible: love, God, air [quoting Peggy O'Mara]

Our children do not need any more possessions to be happy; they need only to feel sure that they possess our hearts, our attention, our acceptance of who they are.

Most of what I know of God, I have learned from my children.

See, isn't it just fantastic? Now go out and read the book! And then we can have an online book discussion!

Birthday at the Museum

Yesterday was another birthday in the family -- Jason turned 40. So, of course, that meant we had to have a celebration. Unlike Shane's, his party wasn't a surprise, so he got to plan it. He chose to go to the Utah Museum of Natural History. They built a new one, so this was our first time visiting the new facility. It was very impressive, especially compared to their old one. We spent the morning there. It's definitely a place you need to visit more than once, so I'm sure we'll return soon. Afterwards we all went to lunch at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Yes, I was just there less than a month ago, but I was happy to return. I even ordered the same thing! That's me -- pretty predictable. And that was about it. My parents had to get Grandma to the airport, so the party was over. We drove home in a bunch of snow/slush. It had rained all morning, and finally decided to turn to snow but it was a mess. Anyway, we had a great day and had fun celebrating with Jason. I guess I'm next. That's kind of scary! The girls had fun that morning sitting and figuring out how old they will be when each of the other siblings will turn 40. Some numbers were quite frightening. I'm not ready for them to be that grown up just yet, so it's a good thing we have a while.

Hair Cut * Planetarium * Root Beer Floats

We took the month of December off for swimming, but we made it again this month. Sometimes I feel like we spend so much time in this house, it's good to get out and go do a physical activity. So, the week after swimming was a skating day. I started to hate the skating rink (for several different reasons), but this time I felt like it might be a good idea to go. The girls have been out rollerblading quite a bit lately, and I thought doing it at the rink might be a nice change. They were pretty excited that I took them. I still don't plan to make it a regular activity, though, but it was fun for a change.

My hair's been driving me crazy lately, growing it back out from my last experiment. I just wanted one of the layers taken off to help it along, so I asked Chloe to do it. She did it the last time I needed it done, and did a great job so I had a lot of faith in her. And I like to give her experience. She started out well, but by the time she got around to the other side it was a few inches shorter than we had planned! I was a little lopsided.

So we just ran to the salon and had them fix it up for me. Now my hair is very short. Way shorter than I was hoping for. Sophie really likes it (she thinks it's cute), so that makes me feel a little better, but I really don't plan to keep it short. I was going to post the "after" pic along with the lopsided one, but I haven't got a decent one taken yet.

On Saturday we got to have our one-on-one dates. Chloe has caught the "declutter" bug and just wants to clean her room out; however, she shares a room with a hoarder. She wanted to spend our date together cleaning out her room while Sophie was gone somewhere with Brandon. I explained to her that we can't just get rid of Sophie's things behind her back, but I know how hard it is to live with all her junk! So... I came up with another idea that I hoped would take her mind off her room. I took her to the planetarium. We've been several times so it's not like it was anything spectacular, but Chloe has really been into astronomy lately. She gets her hands on every book about space she can. We've had plans to convert her room into a space room -- someday. So we went and watched an IMAX movie on the Hubble telescope. It was so amazing watching it with her. She knew so much. She'd lean over and tell me what things were before the movie mentioned it, and then give me a big smile when they proved her right. Thinking about space always makes me feel so small, so I just don't even try to fathom it. But there was just something magical about being there with this child of mine, feeling how much God truly loves each of us, and sharing it with her. It was a great date.

Then Monday Chloe wanted to go to a bounce house for her FHE activity. We try not to do big activities very often, but we thought this would be a good opportunity. Especially after we realized that Brandon had the day off so we could go in the afternoon and not break our rule about making people work on Monday evenings (sometimes we're better at that than others!). So right after lunch we left, only to find out the place was closed down! That was a bummer. It had been converted into a church and it was funny to hear Sophie in her disappointed voice go "I don't want to go to church." So, we looked at another place we could go, but Chloe didn't think it looked as fun. It was geared more for younger kids, and didn't allow parents to play. So we went and got some stuff for Sophie's treat, and then went home to discuss new ideas for an activity. Sophie wanted to make root beer floats. They may be fun in the summer time, but it was a little cold for January. Sophie had to put her coat on, and I had to take a picture of her drinking a root beer float all bundled up.

And for the activity Chloe wanted to clean her room from head to toe. So... without taking any of Sophie's stuff away she got her room cleaned up. And they got their bunk beds put back up which they've been begging for months to do.

I should also mention I finally got a new vacuum! My old vacuum had a good run (it was a wedding gift), but we've patched it, glued it, and babied that thing for quite a while. I've been contemplating this purchase for too long, and I finally made it. The best part is that the girls love my new vacuum and think it's so fun to vacuum now. I'm getting my floors clean everyday without asking!

White as Snow

I was getting pretty comfortable with our weather; several nice, warm days with no snow. Just the other day I was thinking how less stressful things had been when the thought popped into my head that I haven't had to deal with wet gloves, hats, snow pants, coats, ear muffs laying all around. We even survived a Christmas that wasn't white (I've always known it wasn't necessary, just not sure why others think it's a must). And then it happened. Yesterday we woke up surrounded by white, fluffy snow. It was a very pretty sight, especially early in the morning before it had been disturbed by anyone. We went out and cleared off the driveway, and helped some neighbors while the girls played with their friends. And then we went sledding! You can view all the fun below:

Happy New Year!

Have you ever been asked what you would do if you had one day with no restrictions? Anything you want? Well, when I saw the schedule for the Temple Square EVE celebration I knew that would be my perfect day. The only thing that wasn't perfect was that my family wasn't quite as excited as I was. The perfect day must be shared with someone who is equally as excited or it's just not as exciting. But I'm not going to trade my family in, so I guess this is as good as it gets.

We started off at the Assembly Hall for a sing-along of Broadway show tunes! That was a blast. They had some people from Hale Centre Theatre who lead it. I got the microphone on the very last song -- "Tomorrow" from Annie -- the girls were supposed to sing with me, but of course they were too bashful. I wasn't afraid to sing by myself!

Then we needed some dinner, so we went over to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and ate at the Nauvoo Cafe. Afterward, we went to the FamilySearch Center in the same building. They had all kinds of activities for the kids, and we got our family photo taken. The girls really wanted me to participate in the indexing challenge (they're up for anything where you can win a prize!), but I told them I wasn't going to index all night. I did do a few batches while Brandon helped them with a scavenger hunt. I earned a couple little prizes while working on the indexing, and the girls got some stuff for completing the scavenger hunt.

We missed a lot of really fun programs during that, but it's ok -- the girls were having a lot of fun. So, now it was time to head over to the Tabernacle for a variety show -- Marvin Goldstein, Billy Dean, Vanessa Joy (she says you have to Google her if you want to find out who she is), and Thurl Bailey. What a group, huh? Of course, Billy Dean was my favorite, and he blew me away when he sang "I Am a Child of God." It was beautiful.

We skipped the next show because we needed to get up and walk around. We went out and looked at the lights on Temple Square and the girls wanted to go back to the FamilySearch Center. The did one more activity and then we had to get back to the Tabernacle for the highlight of the evening -- The Nashville Tribute Band! Yes, I rung in the new year with my favorite group. They had Due West performing with them, David Osmond came out for a couple songs, and Dyer Highway did one song. They played right up until 11:57 and Sophie was so worried she was going to miss the fireworks. We got outside just in time to see them -- probably not the best location, but we could see them over the skyscrapers. David Osmond was right in front of us, and Tim Gates was to the right. I'm sure the other guys were probably nearby, but I didn't see them. That was the end to my perfect day. And this was the first New Year's Eve the girls stayed up all the way till midnight for.