Sickness in the family

One downside to having a lot of young kids is that usually when one person gets sick, it doesn't take too long for the sickness to make its way through the whole family. Last week, M&M had a sore throat & stuffy nose for a couple of days and then she passed it on to Blondie who still has a little bit of a runny nose. Then on Friday & Saturday, Baby K and I started coming down with a runny nose and eyes that wouldn't stop watering. Baby K didn't sleep too well on Friday night but wasn't too bad on Saturday.

On Saturday night Baby K slept through the night and then woke up Sunday morning with the most horrible sounding cough. I think a big part of it was from sleeping in her crib flat on her back all night long, but she sounded terrible. You could tell that her throat was hurting her because every time she coughed she would start crying because it hurt. DH stayed home from church with her while I went to primary and then I came home and DH went to Sacrament Meeting with the rest of the kids.

I spent most of the night on the couch with Baby K last night and she still doesn't sound great today. I keep feeling like if she could just get a few good coughs out then she could clear out some of her throat and then she wouldn't sound so bad. I'm not sure if she just doesn't know that she should cough or if it just hurts too much and she doesn't want to. The amazing thing is that she is still pretty cheerful through her sickness and keeps smiling at everyone. I have just been keeping her in her exersaucer today to keep her upright and have been laying her down to sleep in her car seat so she's not flat on her back. Hopefully she is over the worst of it and will get back to normal in the next couple of days. And hopefully the rest of the family will stay healthy. (DH had a sore throat this morning when he left for work.)

Chunky monkey!

Here are some pictures of Baby K, affectionately known as "Chunky Monkey" or "Drool Queen" around our house. I can't believe that she is almost 6 months old already!
She has about the biggest thighs that I have ever seen on a baby. Everyone who sees her can't help but make some comment about how big & chubby she is - healthy looking! :)
She is definitely a fun baby and loves to flash a big grin at anyone who smiles at her!
She still hasn't figured out how to roll from her tummy to her back but she is getting ready for crawling. She will lay on her stomach and lift her whole torso off of the ground with her arms!
She is a very happy and content baby and only gets sad when she is left by herself for too long.

Give said the little stream...

A couple of weeks ago our primary chorister started teaching the kids the words to the song "Give said the little stream". According to her (and the info she was able to find) we have all learned the song incorrectly. If you look in the current Children's Songbook and even the old ones that my mom has, these are the words:

“Give,” said the little stream,
“Give, oh! give, give, oh! give.”
“Give,” said the little stream,
As it hurried down the hill;
“I’m small, I know, but wherever I go
The fields grow greener still.”

I still am having a hard time believing that we have all learned it incorrectly and that it was never published with the words, "the grass grows greener still". My husband and parents are having a hard time believing it as well, but I have yet to find a printed version that has those words that we all learned growing up in the church. So I would like to know if any of you have learned the song with the word "fields" in it or if you have a copy with the word "grass" in it.

More on crocheting...

At dinner tonight, DH and I were joking again about my post about crocheting with my family and I came up with these zingers:

I guess you could say that we were a
close-"knit" family growing up.

and

A family that crochets together,
stays together.

Luke's prayer

Luke said the family prayer tonight and had his dad wiping tears from his eyes by the end because he was laughing so hard. Luke said, "Bless Blondie that she will learn to read a few words by the time she leaves kindergarten. And bless all of us that we can all learn some things sometime in the future."

Exciting times in kindergarten

Blondie is usually really excited when she comes home from kindergarten. It is really fun to see her coming out of her shell and getting involved and excited about things. On Wednesday her class gets to have P.E. time and it is hilarious listening to her try and describe the things they do in that class. Last week they played a game where they were in teams and trying to throw a stuffed frog in a bucket. Each team had a different color frog and then there were cones set up all around the bucket. Some of the cones were close to the bucket and others were farther away. The way the game is played is that one at a time someone from each team takes the frog and stands next to one of the cones and tries to throw the frog in the bucket. If they make the basket they take the cone and put it in a stack next to their team and then the next person gets the frog and tries from a different cone. If they miss the basket then they just pick up the frog and hand it to the next person. Then once a basket has been scored from each of the cones the teams count up their cones and the one with the most wins.

I asked Blondie about P.E. at dinnertime and it took her probably about 20 minutes to explain this game to us. By the end DH and I were cracking up laughing because it was so funny hearing her excitement and her desire for us to understand every aspect of the game. She is not the most eloquent of speakers at this point in her life and it was just fun listening to her.

Typo...

I am still laughing over my last post about playing crochet in the yard. While my family are sticklers for the rules while playing games, I am a huge stickler for noticing typos. I seriously think I should have been an editor for a profession. I am always noticing typos wherever I look. One of my favorites recently was a wedding invitation that my parents received. There were 3 typos on it! My favorite one was at the bottom where it said they were registered at Maceys which is a grocery store. I think that they meant to put Macy's, which is how you spell the department store.

My husband loves to tell the story of how when he was working on his thesis for his master's degree he would ask me to read through it to see if it made sense to me. My problem was that if there were any misspelled words or punctuation in the wrong spot, I had to have it corrected before I could read through the paper and concentrate on the content...

Sports agreement

For those of you who don't know my husband, he is not a huge sports guy. When we got married he told me that I would be in charge of teaching sports to our kids and I agreed to it. I've been trying to carry out this agreement by teaching the kids soccer and over the summer playing on a baseball team. I'm not too sure if we will get into football other than watching BYU. I'm not a huge fan of the sport for kids and the leagues around here are incredibly time consuming and very competitive. Basketball will also have to wait a little and we'll see if the kids play other than on a church team when they're in YM/YW.

The more I reflect on my family growing up and having my parents living near us now, the more I realize how competitive of a family we can be. We are definitely sticklers for the rules and we loved playing games as a family - whether it was cards, a board game, or badminton, soccer or crochet in our yard. (I was just reading through this and noticed my typo - that should read "croquet", not "crochet" - while I do know how to crochet a little, it was not a family game that we played in the yard...)

The most popular team sport for our family growing up was soccer. I played soccer starting in 4th grade and played up through 10th grade. The only reason I quit after 10th grade was because I didn't care for the coaches for my high school team and how they ran things. It quit being fun for me and I decided that I wanted to try out the track & field team instead. Most of my siblings also played soccer to varying degrees.

This year we have Luke and M&M playing again and I signed up to be the assistant coach for M&M's team. I would love to be the head coach for her team but I am somewhat limited on how much I can do because of my younger kids. Usually I end up having to take them all to M&M's practices so I can only help out so much.

One of the downsides to playing soccer here in Utah is that the sport is a generation behind. Where I grew up in Virginia, everyone played soccer. It was the popular sport. Out here in Utah though, there are very few people my age who grew up playing soccer. Because of this, not many parents know the rules for soccer and how to play. My biggest complaint with the league that M&M and Luke play in is that they do not have paid refs for the games. Each team is supposed to supply a ref for one half of the game - whether it is a coach, parent, or sibling of someone on the team. The problem with this is that not many people really know the rules and so the kids don't learn how to play correctly.

Since I grew up playing the game and for the most part know the rules, I usually volunteer myself to ref M&M's games. I have really been enjoying doing this and whenever a question comes up about something I look it up in the FIFA Soccer Laws on the computer when I get home. This year has been even more challenging because M&M is playing on a full-size field and they are playing the offsides rule for the first time. It is incredibly hard for one person to ref the whole field for her games. Luckily for the first 2 games there was a parent on the other team who took one side of the field and I took the other side. Last week I reffed the whole field for the whole game which kept me on my toes!

After M&M's game 2 weeks ago the mom of one of the girls on our team came up to me and told me that she really enjoyed watching me ref the games. She said that she liked the fact that I even call the little things (such as an incorrect throw-in) and I take the time to explain the rules to the girls when I make a call. She said that it is frustrating watching her older daughter who plays in an older division play because the people reffing don't know what they're doing.

It has also been a nice time for my mom because when she is able to come to the games she gets Baby K duty - which she just loves! After the last game she was reluctant to give her back because she was being so good and just kept grinning at everyone!

Clean room

Here are the top 5 reasons in our house to keep a clean bedroom:

5. Mom and/or Dad will not feel the urge to yell at you when they walk past the room.
4. You will have clean clothes to wear because your dirty clothes will be in the hamper so that Mom can wash them.
3. You can walk into the room without breaking something or killing yourself.
2. You can actually find things.

and the #1 reason to keep a clean bedroom:

If you happen to get sick in the middle of the night and accidentally throw-up over the side of your bed, you are less likely to get it all over your clothes, books and/or toys that are all over the room!


Now for the story behind the list:
On Monday I went down to M&M and Blondie's bedroom and as usual it was a complete mess. M&M and Blondie are probably my worst two when it comes to keeping a clean room - so having them share a room just compounds the problem. For some inexplicable reason that day I felt like I should clean it up for them. I enlisted the help of Blondie and Kitty (M&M was still at school) and proceeded to clean up all of the books, clothes, toys, papers, etc from off of the floor, table, dressers, etc. I helped Blondie make her bed and we threw away a lot of trash in the form of wrappers & papers. I think a part of me wanted to help out M&M a little because she had been having some difficulties in school the past week and so I thought that maybe she would be able to handle things a little bit better if she didn't have a messy room on top of everything else. After M&M's band and soccer practices I had her go down and put away all of the clothes that I had put on her bed (since I didn't know which ones were clean and which ones were dirty) and to make her bed.

Then at about 3 in the morning I open my eyes to see M&M in my room trying to wake me up to tell me that she threw up! I asked her where and she said, "I don't know. On the floor I think." DH is fighting consciousness beside me and I heard him mumble something. After asking him to repeat himself a couple of times I finally heard him say to M&M, "Go down and help clean it up then."

I thought that that was a weird thing to say to one of your kids who is feeling sick and has thrown up. He claimed the next day that he doesn't remember saying that, or anything for that matter... Hmmmmm :)

Anyways, I went downstairs and got M&M a bowl because she said her stomach was still hurting her and was able to convince her to take some children's Pepto-Bismol - which is a huge thing because M&M hates any kind of medicine. Then I went down to the bedroom to survey the damage. There was some mess on the floor and particularly on one of Blondie's pillows that was on the floor and then a little bit on both kids' comforters and M&M's sheets. There was also one stuffed animal that ended up being in harm's way but the material it was made out of cleaned up really easily. All in all I just had to do one load of wash and then some spot cleaning here and there.

It wasn't until the next day that I realized how blessed we were that I had felt the need to clean up the bedroom the day before. The state that the room had been in for a week or two surely would have resulted in a good number of clothes that would have needed washing as well as books and toys that would have been ruined (including some library books).

And to top it all off M&M felt fine the next morning and went to school.
And so far no one else has gotten sick. :)
Keeping our fingers crossed!!

No problems hearing...

Baby K definitely has no problems with her hearing. Even when she was a newborn we noticed that the slightest noise would startle her. Earlier today I was working on the computer inputing some recent transactions into our banking program. Every time a transaction is entered and you hit the enter key, the computer makes a "ka-ching" sound like an old cash register. I was holding Baby K on my lap while I was doing this and every time the computer made that sound she would jump a mile. After it happened a few times I just busted out laughing because of the startled look on her face!

Silver Lake pictures

We drove up to Silver Lake with DH's parents when they were in town. Here are some pretty pictures that I took there:
Do you see the Mickey Mouse ears on the side of the mountain? I pointed it out to Luke and he asked me if that is where Disney World is. :)

Last 2 weeks

We have had a lot going on during the last 2 weeks and I haven't had a lot of time to blog. My afternoons/evenings and weekends are pretty busy now that school is in full swing. M&M is singing in the school choir again this year - they practice twice a week right after school. Soccer season has started - M&M has practice twice a week and Luke has it once a week. Then we have 2 games every Saturday. M&M is also doing tumbling which practices once a week. Luckily we have people to carpool with for choir and tumbling so it makes it a little nicer for me. The school will also be starting up a school band here in the next couple of weeks and we are debating whether or not to put M&M in it.

Blondie is doing great at getting up in the morning for school. I thought for sure that she would start taking naps in the afternoon once school started but she is still wide awake and excited when she gets home.

Baby K turned 5 months old a couple of weeks ago and she continues to be a happy & fun baby. The kids can't get enough of her - especially when I am trying to get her to sleep!! She is getting much better at being on her tummy and is doing great at holding her upper body up with her arms. She's also still sleeping through the night most nights and usually goes down for the night between 9 and 10. It's fun watching her get better at reaching for things and picking up toys to play with. She is a super chubby baby and has a hard time even fitting in some 6-9 month clothes!

So on top of all of this we had DH's parents here for a few days while they attended a wedding of a friend and then the next weekend DH's brother and 17 month old daughter came to visit for a cousin's wedding. I feel like it is the season of weddings lately. DH & I went to the wedding reception of someone in the ward while his parents were here and there is another one next week, as well as another cousin getting married in October!

Here are some pictures from the last 2 weeks:

A deer!

On Monday morning, my husband opened up the front door so Blondie could get the newspaper from the driveway. It was a pretty chilly morning so Blondie was standing there deciding if she wanted to go out when she pointed and said, "A deer!"

We all ran to the front door and sure enough there was a deer across the street at the edge of the neighbor's yard. Then Blondie said, "Oh, there's another!" And there was a baby deer that darted across the road from our yard. And then while we were still watching, a second baby deer darted out of our yard over to the other deer. Then they ran off to the other side of our neighbor's house. It was pretty neat to watch. If you look closely in the picture you can make out the mother deer, most of one of the babies and then just the head of the second baby on the other side of the mother.

The neighborhood where we live used to be a large ranch and there used to be a lot of wildlife here. Some of our neighbors who have lived here since the neighborhood was built say that they used to regularly see elk here as well.

goodreads

One of my sisters just invited me to join the website goodreads. It is a site where you can keep track of all the books you have read and you can rate them and write reviews for them. You can also list books that you are reading as well as books that you would like to read. Then other people can see your booklists and you can see theirs. It's kind of been fun trying to rack my brain and remember books that I have read. You can also start discussion groups on the site and join in on other discussions. So I am going to give this site a try for a while and see how I like it. If anyone would like to join (or already belong) and want to be one of my "friends" at goodreads, let me know.

One of those days...

Do you ever have one of those days where there is so much to do and the house is such a complete mess that you don't know where to start? Well, today is one of those days.

I have laundry to do (which seems to be neverending lately). There is only a tiny square inch or two that is clear on my kitchen counters. There isn't a single clean room in the house. I seriously need to do some grocery shopping (and menu planning). Blondie and Kitty are being very quiet in the basement - which means they are in to something they shouldn't be. I have no energy to make anything for dinner. In fact, I would just like lay down and read The Host by Stephenie Meyer which I just started the other day. The only peaceful thing at this moment is Baby K who fell asleep on the floor next to me while I'm typing this!Unfortunately this is not a good time to be having one of these days. We just found out on Sunday that my husband's parents are coming tomorrow to stay with us for a few days. Now, we knew that they were coming to town to attend a wedding, but my husband was told they were coming next Tuesday - or at least that's what he put down on his calendar. So I have very little time to get the house back in order and somehow make space for them in the sewing room - which is now the sewing/toy room since moving M&M and Blondie downstairs. Somedays I feel like our house is ready to explode with people and things and there is never enough storage space! HELP!!

... and a carpenter to boot!

This is the HUGE, AWESOME project that my husband has been working on the last few weekends, Labor Day and he even took off work yesterday so he could finally get it finished: storage shelves for our food storage cans. They are designed at an angle so you can put a can on the top of a set of two shelves and it will roll from the top shelf to the bottom shelf so you can remove the oldest cans first (FIFO design).

One of the dilemmas that we have had lately in our house is how to best store our food storage. I try and go somewhat regularly to the dry pack cannery that the church owns so that we can make an attempt at having a rotating food storage system, but we don't really have a good way to store them once I get them home. We have been storing them in boxes but then it's hard to get to the older boxes once you pack newer boxes on top and we can't really move all the boxes out each time so the new ones can go on the bottom. So my husband decided to design his own shelf system so that we can easily put the cans on a shelf and have the older ones easily accessible.

In addition to my husband's talents with the computer and car repair, he has always loved working with wood. Unfortunately this is one hobby that requires a lot of time and money (read: expensive tools). Over his last two birthdays I have given him some woodworking tools so that he could hopefully, one day, do more with his hobby. (So finally, after almost a year and a half, he now had a need for the compound miter saw that I bought him - plus I bought him a stand for it this year so he could use it.)

After drawing up some plans and buying a few more tools, DH built a small scale prototype with some scrap wood. He then made some modifications to the plan and figured out how much wood and screws he would need to buy. After a lot of HARD work, trips to the store, more changes to the plans, lots of cuts and splinters, and several late nights working in the garage and storage room, we have not just one, but TWO wonderful, working storage shelves! Now we can move the cans out of the girls' room downstairs and back into the storage room!

I need to get a picture of M&M with the shelves because she helped her dad out a lot on Monday when he was putting the first shelf system together. The picture with the other kids is the one time that they tried to help out by handing their dad screws - while M&M was at tumbling. And Baby K was AWESOME again on Monday so I could get a lot of work done as well, such as moving all of the cans and boxes out of the storage room to begin with.

And with that, I will now open up the bidding for a sneak peak at these top-secret plans:
starting bid at $100 :)