Cards

There are baseball cards. . .

basketball cards. . . .

football cards (which Chandler collects)

and Ward Cards. . .

designed to fit in the fast offering envelope! What do you think? Think we've got a booming business on our hands? Just always remember you saw the very first edition of Ward Cards here on my blog. (And try not to be jealous that the Premiering Card wasn't of you.) Send your name, photo, ward name and credit card number to Chandler and he'll make you part of the beginning legacy!

I love him!

Today is Tom’s 38th Birthday Eve. This morning I was teasing him that he needed to enjoy his last day of being young. Without missing a beat, Chandler piped up “You could be Young all of the time if you changed your name to Steve or Vince”. Ha Ha. But I'd better watch myself since I'm not too much farther behind! And now without any further adieu, here are

1. He always holds family contests.
2. He buys me clothes. (Takes me shopping, picks things out, makes me come out of the dressing room to show him, then gives his opinion on each item. LOVE THAT!)
3. He does dishes every meal that he is here (except on the boys’ turns).
4. He doesn’t ever complain.
5. He encourages the boys.
6. He folds laundry.
7. He gave up so many personal hobbies when he married me so he could provide for us.
8. He gives all of his time to his family.
9. He gives good advice.
10. He gives me a kiss before he leaves for work, when he gets home from work and after each prayer.
11. He hears the alarm clock.
12. He is a good friend to the boys in the teacher’s quorum (his calling).
13. He is a happy person to have around.
14. He is an amazing dad.
15. He is an excellent listener.
16. He is conservative.
17. He is good on the computer (hence can help me when I have problems).
18. He is honest.
19. He is patient.
20. He is so forgiving.
21. He is so in love with me.
22. He is the best example of charity I know.
23. He laughs at my dry jokes.
24. He leads our family in evening meal conversation, fhe, prayers and scriptures.
25. He leads us in couple prayer and companion study.
26. He likes my cooking.
27. He makes me feel good about myself.
28. He makes me laugh.
29. He makes our family fun.
30. He provides for our family and supports me as a stay at home mom.
31. He reads his scriptures.
32. He reads the newspaper and keeps me updated on important things.
33. He regards our marriage as his #1 priority.
34. He takes me on a date every Friday night.
35. He talks to me late into the night.
36. He tells me I’m beautiful.
37. He took me to the Homecoming dance in high school.
38. He was willing to marry me :).

He needs to be older so I can list *all* the things that I love about him. . . I didn’t get to list that he is smart, he comes from a great family, he has excellent work ethics, he gives nicknames, he warms up my cold feet, he helps me with my projects, he is so consistent, he makes fun family traditions, he whistles, he goes grocery shopping with me, he has the same goals as me, he takes care of the yard, he loves to be with me. ... . . .but since he is 38, I’m going to limit myself to only that many :). I just love him so much!!

The following pictures are just a small small sampling of ways Tom is involved in the kids' lives. . . in all of the pictures he is off to the side. . . this is not to demonstrate my stinky photography, but to show how he is interested in the kids and takes time for each of them. He truly is the man behind the scenes cheering, helping and encouraging. I so so love him for this.


Happy birthday Honey!!! (hope you read my blog sometime soon :)!

8oz. . . .

is the difference between Tessie’s weight at the doctor’s office today and her weight 11 days ago at the post office. 8oz. less, mind you. Gulp. Her grand total weight is 16lbs. 8 oz. But she got a clean bill of health. She was running around the doctor’s office, teasing him, dancing and putting on quite the (unsolicited) show. He said with all of that he couldn’t worry a bit about her weight. He couldn’t see putting her through all of those expensive tests when obviously she’s doing well. So that is a relief. We still are on the feed-her-as-much-as-you-can diet, but I’m good with that! (anything to avoid that 'failure to thrive' route)

She also has a little bump on her ring finger on her left hand. . . and that too wasn't anything to worry about. It is one of three kinds of benign cysts that will eventually go away(you just can't determine which kind by looking at it).

Edited to add: The weight discrepancy was not because Tess lost weight. . .had something to do with the post office scale not being able to accurately read a wiggly parcel, possibly some extra ounces of clothes and the unfortunate option of the post office scale weighing slightly heavier. Who knows.

Life as a Mom. . .

We spent the entire weekend deep cleaning all of the carpet upstairs and downstairs in our house. We borrowed the big machine from Tom’s work to do it. It is almost an understatement to say it was a huge job, especially by the time you move all of the furniture, vacuum, including the edges and then use the cleaner. But we got them done and I was just so happy since I’ve wanted to do it for a long time. Fast forward to today. Caleb and I went to Wal-Mart. That boy has got high amounts of energy and shopping with him consists of many near misses of taking out fellow shoppers and knocking over displays. Patience is hard to come by in those situations, but I managed a fair amount today. (Just an example of what that boy does . . .we got all of the groceries loaded in the van and I asked him to return the cart. We were just kiddy corner from the cart holder thingy, but a direct path was not possible because of a snow pile. Against my wishes, he tried to trek over anyway, barely catching the sliding cart from hitting another car. You can all picture this very vividly, I’m sure!) Unfortunately we didn’t leave the energy at Wal-Mart. We got home and Cache had a clay project all over the counter so the boys unloaded the groceries on the floor. As I was clearing things up so I could start putting the groceries away, Caleb comes bounding in and lands on one of the bags. The bag just so happened to have yogurt in it. You can see where I’m going with this. Yes, it did rupture, squirting yogurt all over my nice clean carpet. And unfortunately, I must have left my patience at Wal-Mart. 6 jobs were promised and a mini-lecture ensued. When I sat down for a bite to eat, my scriptures were opened on the table to 3 Nephi 12. And what jumped out at me? You guessed again: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Well. I had to apologize and reduce the punishment to a “Tell me what you learned from this” and one job (besides the clean up). After all, 20 years from now another yogurt stain will not matter, but that I apologized will. They don’t call those things called patience and mercy virtues for nothing!!!!

Valentine's Day

I don’t know why. . . but I like to do homemade Valentines for the kids. I know it is kind of stupid because they are just thrown away, but I like to be able to make something that the kids will be excited to give and that fits their personalities. And it is tradition! It is getting a little better that we're down to only one class set a year, since at our school only 3rd grade and younger take them. But there have been years where we've made 3 class sets! (I used to make them for my class when I taught school too.) So here are Chandler’s for this year. He thought they were awesome and that was all I cared about!

The day before Valentine’s Day Chandler told his teacher that he always got sick on Valentine’s Day so he hoped to be there for the party. She kind of laughed at him and told him he looked healthy. Well . . .at 1:00am Valentine’s Day morning, Chandler’s little face was in my face saying “Mom, I have an earache.” The first thing I did was chuckle and ask, “Chandler, what do you have against Valentine day parties?” (The ironic thing is that we had not even discussed it this year and he had not told me about his conversation with his teacher!) So I got up and got him some Tylenol and sent him back to bed. A half hour later or so he was back saying that it was hurting even more. I had him climb in bed with me. He just tossed and turned and tossed and turned. Soon he left and I figured that the medicine must have kicked in. It wasn’t long until I heard him in his bedroom sobbing. To make a long story short. . . I was up rocking, singing, back-scratching, cuddling, getting heating packs, drinks etc. with him until he *finally* fell asleep at 5:30. We decided that he should stay home from school. I got him a doctor appointment and off we went. The doctor took one look at it and said, ‘this is the kind of ear you need to see a picture of’. It took him a while to find the book and he finally came in and sat back down (obviously not your everyday ear infection!) He said it had a special name (can’t remember it) and that they come on suddenly and with a vengeance so it was it wasn’t surprising that we were up *all night*. So we got him drugged up on enough pain killer, got him an antibiotic and by noon he wanted to go to school. His teacher and I had a good little laugh about his prediction and for once in his little life, he was able to get to a Valentine’s Day party!

In other Valentine Day news, Tom got me some beautiful roses. . . I’ve always told him that I’d prefer not to have flowers. . . I like them and all, but if you’re spending that kind of money, I’d rather have clothes. But he also got me 3 Shade t-shirts. . .been really wanting some of those so I was excited about getting both :). And he took the day off today too! So spoiled am I!

88 Seconds

I find it funny. . . I have asked Cache for a couple of years now if he would like a Rubik’s cube . . . the answer was always no. But he got Caleb one for Christmas and he has been the one not able to put it down. (Caleb likes it too). He learned to solve it over Christmas and it used to take him quite a while, I want to say around 15 minutes when he first started. But now he’s got it down to 88 seconds. It is pretty amazing watching him. . . hardly thinking about his next move and where each one goes, he just moves it and twists it and in a matter of seconds, it is solved. I think he is trying to get it as low as Bryan Kehl’s 70 seconds. He is also working on his one-handed time . . . right now it is 5ish minutes (down from 10). I guess next up is a 4x4 or a 5x5. . . .

Hand-Me-Downs

Reading family histories got me thinking about hand-me-downs. . . .but I’m not talking about clothes or furniture or those things in our cedar chests. I’m talking about those personality traits, habits and qualities that our parents, grandparents and others who came before us handed down to us. I personally don’t think about these often enough to be grateful from whence they came. One of the wonderful things I acquired from my parents (but it may have come from earlier generations too) is avoiding the tendency to gossip. The other day we heard something about someone in our ward. It may be true, but it is also something that could be twisted and misinterpreted and cause damage if spread. Tom and I had a little discussion about it and that is as far as it went. I’m not saying this to build myself up, but because of the example I had, I more easily resist the temptation to pass newsy info on (and believe me, I was curious and wanted to ask someone about it). How thankful I am for a great example in this area!

Another thing that has been handed down to me that has paid dividends over and over again is the blessings of being conservative. Because of this trait I don’t care so much about having nice furniture (or whatever) as much as I care about have the books in black and a little tucked away. In a conversation the other day with a teenager (who will remain unnamed) Tom and I were accused of being the biggest tight wads on the face on the planet. Said teenager associates with kids who have way more pairs of shoes than we have in our entire house and who have enough clothes to wear something different every day for 3 months (okay this is exaggerated slightly, but only for effect :). And on top of that, we never do anything fun. Like. Really. Fun. Nor do we have very cool stuff like the latest ipods and computer stuff, sports gear etc. Tom and I sat there and took it like big people And then we were both thankful for both of our parents who taught us to be conservative. Someday said teenager will appreciate it too. (just a side note to protect the innocent. . . the tone of the referred-to conversation was not negative, just oh so teenage-esque.)

Creativity is another gem I received. Now I don’t claim to be anywhere near the end-all of creative because I know boatloads of more creative people than me, but there is a little bit in me and I get to thank my dad and my Grandma Porter and according to her, my great Grandpa Jensen for this gift. The cool thing about it is that I get to always have fun dreaming up projects. I don’t always get around to half of them, but the dreaming is fun and the accomplishing when I get to do that too is always rewarding. Creativity makes my life fun. So I’m so thankful for this!

One thing I received from the Bingham side is my desire for education. My Grandma Bingham graduated from college and I wanted to too. But not only that, I just always felt that I needed to do well in school to please my Grandma. I remember getting a note in the mail from her once when my name had been in the paper for being on the honor roll. And what a wonderful blessing my education has been in my life! I am so thankful for the opportunities it brought to me and the things I (hopefully) have passed down to my children.

So what are your hand-me-downs? What qualities are you thankful for that are gifts from the past? I’d love to hear about them, but if you don’t write them here, please write them down somewhere for yourself—what a cool thing for your posterity to know.

Osky-wow-wow

It was a weekend of reading at our house. Cache always has his nose in a book, but compared to him, the rest of us are hit and miss. Caleb was reading Dragon Rider, Chandler was reading ahead in Harry Potter #3 (after what we read aloud). Tom and I were reading family histories from my Grandma Bingham’s book. We got some good laughs from my Great Grandma Emma Bingham’s stories (pictured). One of my favorite paragraphs:

“There were always nine to twelve youngsters to take when we went to Honeyville and other places. We’d fill up the front seat, put as many as we could in the back and prop the trunk open for the rest to ride in. When we went over a bump, it was the duty of the ones riding in the rear seat to check on the trunk lid to see if it had fallen down and shut the kids in or smacked them on their heads.”

Oiy! What about checking if any had fallen out???? So different than life now! And how about this one:

“One game we played on the way—we’d count cows. The first one to count 100 cows would yell ‘osky-wow-wow’. The most osky-wow-wows would win the game. If you passed a cemetery, the person on that side had to start all over again, having lost his cows.”

I challenge you to play that on your next road trip. Ha! Maybe a more modern version would be counting cars and when you passed a McDonalds the person on that side loses all their cars. But still, I don’t think it would hold up as an attention-grabbing game for long in my van! One thing I learned this weekend? To appreciate everything in your life, read a few family histories!

17lbs.

We took Tess to the post office on Saturday night and weighed her. She doesn’t hold very still so it is hard for the scale to get a reading. The two numbers that popped up were 16lbs. 15oz. and 17lbs. Here is her weight charted @ 17lbs (click on the image to see it larger). She’s not looking too hefty! We visit the doctor next week and hopefully he’ll be happy with that since the last time we were in (after she had been sick) she was 15lbs. 5oz. I’m not worried about her. . . she’s a little too energetic to be sick!

Happy Chinese New Year!

One of our favorite weeks of the year is here! Every year around Chinese New Year we get out the Chinese China and chopsticks and eat Chinese food for a week. Here’s what is up for the menu this year:

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Lettuce Wraps

Beef Benihana

Kung Pao Chicken

Fried Rice

Chow Mein/Tiny Spicy Chicken

Won Ton Soup

New to the menu this year is the Kung Pao Chicken and Chow Mein. I found a recipe online for Chow Mien like Panda Express’s. I’ll have to let you know if we like it. And hopefully we also like the Kung Pao Chicken. The rest are old favorites so we know that we’ll be eating happy for at least most of the week!

Prayer Solicitation

My wonderful in-laws are in China this year teaching English at a university in Guangzhou. During their month-long winter break, they have been on a tour around China, down to Vietnam and Cambodia. While they have been gone, China has had their most severe weather in a century. Guangzhou has had power outages (as have other cities) so it has been good for them to be on tour. But they are returning in a few days and I would like them to have power so I’m soliciting your prayers in their behalf. I think if we unite our faith, a way will be made for them to have the necessities they need. (If you feel so inclined, send this to others who would be interested in praying, or just ask them to do so.) Much appreciated!!!!!!!

As you can see from this picture, the Chinese people are loving them. One cute story that I love they have told is about them going to "English Corner" where students go to practice speaking English. One time they were acting out the play "Jack and the Beanstalk" and Jerry (who is about 5'6") was asked to be the beanstalk because he was the tallest person there. LOL!

Layouts

I’ve had so many people ask me lately if I am still scrapbooking. It is such a hard question to answer because my heart so so so wants to be. . . I would love to be getting my memories in books and I’d love to get back into publishing and designing. . . BUT I’ve had many strong impressions that have led me to feel it is very critical that I am to avoid distractions on my role as a mother right now. And since scrapbooking can be so distracting for me, it is one thing that gets laid aside. I know this isn’t the answer for everyone because people balance things differently, but for me, it is what I must do right now. And really, I’m okay with it because I am loving what I’m doing.

Still. . . . every now and again I start itching for a creative fix and I’ll pull out the paper and glue and do something simple and document something that needs a home on a scrapbook page. So that’s what these are. . . . nothing really special design-wise (in fact they are a lift from 2 peas) but I’m so glad to have these things recorded.

Guess I’d better hit the books now. . . I signed up for an independent study class so I can work on renewing my teaching certificate but I decided that I needed to have a little fun before I started on that. Now the fun is over and it's time to dig into the studies. . .

New Favorite Recipe

A month or so ago I was at Wal-Mart a little before supper and hadn’t planned anything yet for the upcoming meal (a bad combination. . . .not recommending it!). So I picked up a couple of loaves of French bread as I checked out. You would have thought I had come home with KING-SIZED CANDY BARS for everyone (all deserving of capital letters)—those loaves were not only swooned over but devoured (hopefully my boys are reserving those behaviors for food and not girls!). A few weeks later I got another loaf and the same thing happened. I decided that I either needed to stay away from the Wal-Mart bread or I needed my own little recipe. I haven’t ever liked any recipes from my bread machine book so I took the matter up at allrecipes.com. That place is my friend. I know there are other sites, but for some reason this one resonates with me and it is about the only one I use anymore. Well, I found one and it is my new favorite (with a few tweaks). Here it is:

· 1 cup water

· 2 tablespoon white sugar

· 1 teaspoon salt

· 2 1/2 cups bread flour

· 2 teaspoons yeast

Place in bread machine and select dough cycle. When finished, roll out into a large rectangle to get out all of the air bubbles. Cut in half (the short way) and roll into two loaves. Place on a greased cookie sheet. Brush egg white wash on it then cut slits in top. Let rise for 20-30 minutes. Put another baking sheet in the oven with about ½ inch of water in it. Bake bread and water @375 for 18-25 minutes. (The water isn’t required, but it gives your bread a superb crusty crust while keeping the inside soft. Yum!)

And the lovely thing about it is. . . it’s like making KING-SIZED CANY BARS, there is no oil, it is everything you have on hand, it’s better than Wal-Mart’s and did I mention no oil! The only downside is there are never left overs (but then again . . .when is there with boys?).

Don't Eat ___________!

Ever played Don’t Eat Pete? It has absolutely no point, but kids like it so I used to use it at school for holiday parties every now and again. But a few months ago I ran into a different way to play it for a FHE game: Don’t Eat the Prophet. It goes like this. Take the centerfold of a conference Ensign and put a Skittle (or other small candy or cereal or marshmallows or quarters if you’re feeling rich!) on each of the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency’ pictures. The person going first silently picks a ‘secret prophet’, let’s say President Monson is picked. The next person guesses one of the men, say Joseph B. Wirthlin. Since that is not right, the person who knows the ‘secret prophet’ gets to take the Skittle off of Joseph B. Wirthlin and put it in his pile. Let’s say the next person guesses David Bednar. That is not right so the Skittle goes to the one who knows the ‘secret prophet’. But the next person to guess gets lucky and says “Is it President Monson?” The guesser then gets the rest of the Skittles. Game continues with a different person picking the ‘secret prophet’. You can also use the “Latter Day Prophet” picture from the Gospel Art Kit.

Since I’m not in the teacher-thinking-mode I didn’t connect very quickly the applications for these new rules. But it hit me the other day as one that I can use to help my kids learn academic things in a fun way. When Tessie needs to learn her alphabet (or colors or numbers or sight words), I can pick a dozen or so letters to begin with and make a grid and play “Don’t eat my letter!” I can make one for Chandler to learn his times tables (right now I’m thinking to use it for introduction and not mastery because I’d put answer on the grid and the dialogue would be “Is it 9x3=27?” but you could do it another way too.) Anyway, I just think this simple game can be applied to so many situations. If you try it, I’d love to hear what topics you do and any variations you come up with.

So I can remember. . .

Had stake conference last night and one member of the presidency quoted a lot from this talk by Elder Holland. I loved this talk so much that we gave it on a CD with these little birds (turtle doves) for neighbor gifts this year. But listening to the talk last night reminded me that I was going to make one more CD to put in my Christmas box so I could listen to it every year and I still haven't done it. . . .but by putting the link on my blog hopefully I'll remember to listen to it again next year.

Take Strength in Those That Need You

I was feeling a little overwhelmed few days ago. . . just seemed that my to-do list was insurmountable and then I started worrying about how I would ever get it done with a demanding toddler; that turned into a mini pity party and in a matter of minutes I was a bit dysfunctional. Ever do that to yourself? (Unfortunately I get to raise my hand on that one for multiple occasions.) Then, amidst my worry, I remembered some of the very low and devastating times in my life when I often felt consumed by all the terrible, uncontrollable things happening to me. During that time, a friend mentioned that a she liked the soundtrack CD from Tarzan (thank you Kristine Anderson—if you ever stumble across my blog :). I don't normally buy that kind of music, but for some reason I bought it. . . and a song on there literally saved my life. One song has the line: "Take strength in those that need you." We listened to that CD a lot in those days and those words stuck. I couldn't do anything to stop the terrible things happening, but I could take care of my children and take strength in their need of me. Years later it sounds so simple and common sense, but in those emotionally consuming times, simple care for my family was more than I could do. . . .a few dirty dishes, having to cook a meal, a pile of laundry or fighting kids was literally a huge mountain for me. It was through those words that I discovered that giving of myself strengthened me--and without those words I might not have seen it that way. It was my theme song for many years. That memory was a little gift to me that day. . . I was able to put my overwhelming tasks into perspective. All that really mattered was taking care of my family and the rest would somehow be okay. And of course it was! So what about you? What do you do to cope when you are feeling overwhelmed?