Rainbows and friends

When Jonah was three we went to a little playgroup with some moms from church. This is one of my favorite new mom memories. In Minnesota it was pretty rare for any of my friends to put their kids in preschool before the age of 4. So we decided to do our own version. We got together weekly. The person who hosted had a simple lesson and then we all had lunch together. Oh and everyone stayed the whole time, which was great because we all got to talk and get to know eachother. I learned so much from these great moms. Sometimes I think that preschool is a bum rap because it replaces this kind of get together.

Anyway I have found something similar here in TX for Lucy and it has been so fun. One great thing about this playgroup is that there is no expectation of a fantastic lesson (really we just do a small craft) and everyone helps prep the lunch and clean up. I hosted last week and after it was over I realized that I wasn't stressed out and my house wasn't a mess. So nice! Which left me with a little energy to make these happy rainbow pudding pops.

They took about 10 minutes of prep and then needed a couple of hours in the freezer to harden. I used one large pack on instant vanilla pudding, divided it into 6 bowls, added some food coloring and spooned it into small cups with sticks. Easy and pretty!

Spring

Ahhh spring. So in Texas we are in full on spring mode. This Redbud tree is my favorite! They bloom purple in the spring and have really beautiful full leaves until winter.

Curtis and I have been working so much in the yard the last couple of weeks. Trying to get everything done before it gets too hot. We really need a hedge or some trees to give us privacy from the neighbors that built their house RIGHT next to ours. The problem is that the ground in that area is sorta wet (again, thanks to said neighbors who also had their lawn built up 4 inches higher than ours so ALL their drainage comes into our yard. arghh!)

Anyway, we've spent a lot of time looking online and visiting tree nurseries and just talking about it. I love plants and planting and someday I would love to work at a nursery and learn about every plant there. I just realized this past weekend that I totally take it for granted that Curtis talks about this stuff with me and enjoys it too. Between all the yardwork and watching the last season of "24" we've had a lot of fun minidates. Love that guy.

So the bad news is that the kids are slammed with allergies. I'm taking Isaac to the allergist tomorrow and will probably start giving him shots. I'm not excited to start down that long road but the poor guy is seriously miserable. Hoping he can find some relief. Jonah and Lucy have been suffering too. Actually the only person in our home who appears to be impervious to illness of any kind is Daniel. No cavities, gets a cold once a year and knock on wood- has no allergies.

I'm looking forward to General Conference this weekend. Usually I start prepping for GC at about 10 am on Saturday morning. I find myself trying to cook some special foods, print out bingo cards for the kids and set up the TV room so it is comfortable for the family. It usually doesn't go very well and I end up missing part of the first session. This time I'm trying to prepare a little earlier. Tomorrow we're having a net put over our pool so I will be home all day and can hopefully get all that stuff prepared early.

The last couple of years we have invited a family or two over to watch the last Sunday afternoon session and then we all eat dinner together. It has been a lot of fun and helps us all to listen a little better (or worse I guess when you consider that fact that there are a dozen or so kiddos squriming around). So I think we'll do that again. I'll try to print off a little packet for each kid and have colored pencils sharpened.

Here's a pic from back in the day (actually it was 2005). We were "watching" conference on our computer in the basement of our MN home. The boys were bored and Daddy looked weak.

Any other ideas?

Okay I just made up my dinner list for the week and need to head off to HEB. Hope everyone is having a great day. :)

Spring Break

This week was spring break. The good news is that the weather was amazing- mid 70's all week long. The bad news is that the pollen is killing us all! I felt bad for the families sitting by us at church today. WAY too much wheezing and hacking!

Curtis couldn't take much time off this week so we planned accordingly. On monday I took the kids to Six Flags with a couple of girlfriends and their kids. We had a great time. I'm still amazed that all of my kids are able to enjoy that place. There are so many rides for Lucy and of course plenty for the boys. Daniel doesn't enjoy wild roller coasters. This is difficult for me to accept since I was raised on "Cedar Point" but luckily there are a lot of rides that aren't totally stomach dropping. I didn't get to go on many rides that I wanted to and am thinking I need a moms day at Six Flags. :)

On Tuesday we recuperated. Napped. Ate. I wanted the boys to do a little service over the holiday so I invited one of my favorite moms with a new baby to bring her twins over on Wednesday so she could get a break. I talked to my boys a bit beforehand but didn't do the best job of explaining exactly what I wanted them to do (ie: threatening them with consequences lol). With my kids that is so critical and if I forget to do it before the event.. the moment is sort of lost. Anyway, we did take the girls to our park and the boys did a pretty decent job of entertaining them, at least until their friends showed up. Dang! I'll keep trying. Whenever I am prayerful about helping my children I ALWAYS get the impression that I need to teach them service. And it can be simple. But even simple service seems to be a challenge. We'll keep trying...

Later that evening we went roller skating with some friends. The Katy Roller rink is like 20 years old and totally takes me back. It's definitely not the typical Katy crowd. Lots of tats and roller derby type outfits, but they played "Brick House" early on so I knew it was a classy establishment. I was so proud of Daniel. This is his third time at that rink and the first time he literally could not stand up on skates. But he was very determined and was away from the wall cruising on his own the whole night! Actually he had a bit of a swagger and from the back he sort of reminded me of my brother Riche (I told him this and made sure he he knew it was a major compliment- Riche rocks on skates). Oh and the boys made me participate in a race... and I came in third place. Had to knock down a couple of 6 year olds to do it but it was worth it. Of course at one point Isaac and I were holding hands and pulling eachother around the rink really fast. Our skates hit and we both fell. Ouch- huge bruise on my knee. Overall a good night though.

It's a bit of a blur but at some point during the week, Curtis brought home several yards of soil in his truck and we all worked to wheelbarrow it to the backyard. There will be more of that next week too. yea! We're hoping to plant a hedge and a tree or two. Wish us luck. Landscaping in Texas doesn't appear to be our gift.



On Thursday we packed for hours (literally) and headed up to Lake Livingston. We camped for 2 days and really enjoyed being outside in such beautiful weather. Another ward in our stake had planned the event and there were around 20 families there. We had a great time. Highlights:


1) watching the boys play capture the flag
2) singing around the campfire, everything from Dan Fogleberg to Alanis Morrisette. :)
3) eating some great (and some not so great) camp food
4) doing science experiements with the kids

5) watching my normally very shy husband play the guitar... while other people listened!!

6) talking about constellations with Isaac and Curtis

7) eating Brandi's amazing peanut butter cookies- I need that recipe! (they're flourless too)

I also started a list of things to do and not do before our next trip. At the top of the list? Bring easy food for at least 1/2 the meals. My kids love cooking over a fire so I planned a lot of our food that way. We tried corn on the cob and hot dogs for lunch one day. It tasted fine but PBJ's would have been so much easier. I also brought power balls and puppy chow for people. Next time I'll just grab granola bars and chips. Actually the dinners were pretty good. We did foil dinners for the first night and a stew in a dutch oven for the second night.

Tips for foil dinners: use heavy dute foil, just one layer. Then use 2 layers of cabbage leaves. The inner layer tastes so good and the outer layer will keep your food from burning. The rest of the ingredients are: ground beef, potatoes, carrots, onions and cream of mushroom soup. These are great with salt and pepper and a little ketchup.

We came home on Saturday completely saturated with smoke and dirt. I washed my hair 4 times and it still smelled like a camp fire. I did about 6 loads of laundry and then Curtis and I both took much needed naps. We finished out the day by watching 2 episodes of "24" season 8. It's not the best season I've ever watched but really, "24" just has a special place in my heart.

Okay, this post is getting too long. More later.

Dan-o-mite!

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Seven years ago today I woke up with pretty strong contractions. As with all of my pregnancies I was quite overdue. But since this was baby number 3 I wasn't too concerned. In fact, the first due date my doc gave me was March 8 and so I told myself we would be getting a St. Patrick's Day baby! Expectations are everything! (I'm devoting a whole post to that soon).

Anyway, my excellent friend, Sarah came over aroun 10am because I was in my bedroom in serious labor. Since my first two babies were posterior I expecting a lot of back pain and thought I would be depending heavily on Curtis to help me deal with it. But this labor was different. I found that sitting on a birthing ball, leaning over my bed in a dark room helped me to get through every contraction. Amazing.. especially since with my first two labors I had to stay on my hands and knees for almost the entire time!

Everything was going along swimmingly, my contractions were pretty irregular, sometimes 5 minutes apart but often 9 or 10. Suddenly I had this crazy massive contraction. I knew we had to leave immediately and have a vivid memory of Curtis helping my down the stairs. I was sobbing (a sure sign that I was in serious labor) and poor Sarah had to watch. A little too close to home for her

since she was pregnant too.

The 20 minute ride to the hospital was torture. Curtis was racing as quickly as he could, which meant lots of slamming on the brakes at intersections- arghh! It took a few minutes for the hospital staff to realize that they needed to seriously expedite the check in process. I remember a nurse yelling- she's at a 10! Daniel was born 15 minutes later.

We spent an hour this morning watching home movies and it was fun to remember how sweet and mellow Daniel was as a baby. He spent lots of time smashing play-doh and playing in the dirt behind our home in Minnesota. This past year has been a big one for Daniel. He learned to ride a bike, shoot a basketball into a high hoop, got his big boy front teeth and started reading. I love finding him engrossed in a book. His loves "Bad Kitty" and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." He was reading excerps from "Bad Kitty Gets a Bath" to me the other night and I was crying. So funny!

Daniel is definitely my most imaginative child. Give him a few toothpicks and a bit of dirt and he will be happy for hours. It dawned on me today that I don't ever recall him coming to me complaining of being bored. He has a terrific sense of humor, which unfortunately gets him into trouble at church. We're still working on that one. So far the school has him sufficiently terrified of "getting a mark" so his behavior there has been very good. :) Daniel has agreed to be on swim team again this summer. He is a great swimmer and has some good buddies on the team- hopefully this year will be a good one. He continues to be a great playmate to his brothers and a very kind and entertaining older brother to Lucy.

We love Daniel and are so happy he's part of our family!

Lesser known hymns

Our church schedule is 1-4pm this year. If I wasn't the nursery leader I would actually love that time. It's nice to have a slow morning. I try to make something in the crock pot for dinner (today we're having beef stew- suggestions for future meals WELCOME). I have finallly realized that the kids are much better behaved if we have an early breakfast and then are sure to have a decent lunch before we leave.

For the first few Sundays of 2011 we had a big breakfast around 10 or 10:30 but nothing else and everyone was miserable about halfway thru sacrament meeting. Sometimes we even just eat PBJ's and oranges in the car on the way to church. We've also been leaving a few minutes early so we can drive around for a bit and let Lucy fall asleep. Then she will sleep for the first hour of church and not have some crazy 4:30pm nap, throwing off our entire schedule!!

Nursery is pretty tough as most of the kids are sleepy but I really do love working with little ones so it's all good.

Anyway, this morning I've been playing the piano. I haven't been practicing lately- mostly because Lucy starts to attack almost immediately when I'm playing. :) Jonah and Isaac are both taking lessons from a wonderful lady at church and so they compete for piano time as well. Not complaining about that! I really hope each of my kids will at least be able to read music and play a few hymns. Which brings me to the title of this post. I have come across a few beautiful hymns in the last couple of years. I never hear them in church but they are awesome. Thought I would share.

The first one is "Thy Holy Word." You can listen to it on the link. I LOVE the 3rd measure of the second line, especially the bass clef. Simply but so beautiful.

Another great song is "Sabbath Day." There are some great disonant chords in it. I've heard the motab sing it a few times and it is gorgeous!

In the Children's Song book is one called "The Commandments." The online version pretty much butchers it but I think you can get a feel for the harmony.

Lucy found me-gotta run. Happy Sunday

Too fair?

So I was at the kid's school parties recently. Each party was an hour long and featured a craft, game and snack. All very cute and well executed. One of the games was a donut eating contest. Two sticky glazed donuts were hanging from strings and the kids competed two at at time to see who could eat theirs first. In my second graders' class, all the kids started chanting one of the kids' name. As they got louder I found myself feeling anxious for the other child competing. Obviously the teacher did too because after that she assigned each contestant a side of the room to be their cheering section. I breathed a sigh of relief.


But later I was thinking about it and wondered if the micromanaging of kid's interactions has gone a bit overboard. It feels like adults are intervening all the time so that everything is perfectly even and fair and everybody wins. I mean, it totally bugs me that my kids get a trophy everytime we play a sport. Seriously why do I need all these huge, dust collecting weapons of death (they all have pointed tops) sitting on top of our dressers? And really, isn't the trophy for when you actually win? Your reward for playing is that you got to play!


But I do see where the parents and coaches are coming from. I remember keenly that feeling of being the loser when I was a kid. And I didn't like it. My natural instinct is to protect my kids from those experiences. But maybe I turned out to be the awesome adult that I am because of those experiences! :O And maybe we're sending kids the wrong message when we say things like "If you had fun, then you won!" This is all on my mind because I read an excerpt from the book "Nurture Shock" recently and it stuck with me. One of the points that the author makes is that praise can actually encourage children to underperform. Seems counter intuitive at first but I think I actually agree. It's disingenuous to tell everyone that they won. Tell them they worked hard and you're impressed with their effort, tenacity and staying power and they will feel empowered to keep on trying.

Hmmm, not exactly sure where I am on this issue because I don't know if I can stop myself from intervening when I hear the words "It's not fair!" Sometimes I wonder if the whole helicopter parent model is going to blow up in our faces...