August, sweet August

Here we are, at the tail end of the summer. I am looking forward to visits with my sisters in the next week as well as doing a little bit of school shopping for the kids. I have been putting it off, but I think I have to do something before they actually go!

I've been thinking a lot about "Come what may, and love it!" Life is all about "come what may," it is the "and love it" part that always gets me.

Also, we had two amazing visits with my sweet cousin, Nichole, and her family. I haven't seen her in AGES, and we were able to get 4 of our sibs together at a BBQ with Nichole & company. It is nice to know that no matter how many years go by, the love never fades. Here's to making many more happy memories together!

Last, but not least, I went to my high school reunion over the weekend. It was amazing to see so many people who really made a difference in my life, and it was equally amazing to see how silly they got as the night went on. There are a couple of pics on facebook about it--I loved seeing Hi-D, Corz, Ruben, Amy H., Erik, Aaron, Jenny O, Gen, Jaime, Jeremy, and on and on. I really missed Shawn. So many memories!

See, I am still alive! Without pictures, but still alive. Pictures will have to be another day! :)

Happy Summer!

Have you missed me?

Here's what has gone on this summer so far:

• a trip to Canada where we enjoyed the temple, family, Slurpees, mosquito bites (NOT!), building a fence, and staying for Canada Day!
• we built some retaining walls and a basketball court in the backyard
• we put up the AWESOME trampoline that I have missed terribly
• we've seen TWO missionaries to the MTC
• we've seen another Wood grandchild born (yay, Summer!)
• we've read lots of books from the bookmobile
• we've taken lots of walks to the park
• we've done a lot of piano practicing
• we've done a lot of barbeque-ing
• we've eaten a lot of fruit :)
• we've watched a LOT of TV (boo, hoo)
• we've played a lot with the neighbors
• we've seen a lot of fireworks
• we've stayed up late A LOT!! (boo, hoo again)

And there is still a month of summer left!

Three head?

So Sarah and I were lounging in the living room, and she comments,

"My head is hot."

I murmur something validating (I think).

She persists.

"My three head is burning."

That got my attention.

I puzzled--three head? Then I noticed the placement of her hand.

Oh.

I get it.

It is a numbers thing.

Her three head is burning. Just add one and you're set.

Gotta love that girl!

Going private

Some of the comments on my last post kinda freaked me out, so I guess I am finally going to succumb to the wiles of the private blog world.

Leave a comment with your email (or email me), and i'll give you an invite...

hope to hear from all two of you :)

Taxes

I've been in Quick Books purgatory today, getting ready for business and personal taxes.

Grrrrr.

Flowers?

Aaaaah.

Tulips. And roses.

I got a little bit of both today.

It almost makes up for the taxes.

Yep, I think I've forgotten about them already.

I am grateful

Today I want to make a non-exhaustive list of things for which I am grateful.

The reason for non-exhaustiveness is because counting ALL my blessings would indeed be exhaustive and I still have a full house of kids and chores to do!

1. A husband who loves me.

2. A small gaggle of cute offspring to make me smile.

3. An extended family that loves and supports me and gives me opportunities for belly laughs and mint truffle bars every once in a while.

4. Lovely mountains to gaze at while I am vaccuming.

5. Blogs to help me (a horrible keep-in-touch-er) keep up on friends and family.

6. Three temples that I can see from Redwood Road (and a fourth I can see from my front porch).

7. Yummy food to eat.

8. An amazing home that WILL BE holy ground (once I get my act together :).

9. Music that I can hear, play, sing, and hum any time I want.

10. Lessons from God in many shapes and forms.

11. Knowledge that I am indeed divine, with Heavenly parents and a loving older Brother.

12. A Sacrifice that makes everything possible, forgiveable, do-able, and worth it.

13. Good in the world. Lots of it.

14. Mostly welcome opportunities to learn to sacrifice.


I thought I'd stop there--considering the number 14 has special meaning this month.

I AM blessed. So blessed. I just needed to remind myself today.

Subtle message

So, if one's mother were to say,

"You have a nervous energy. You would rather work on this family history on the computer than, say, clean the bathroom."

How am I supposed to take that?

She has always been very honest with me. I remember when I came home from my first semester at BYU, and she immediately said,

"Wow, you sure are eating well at school."

Ouch.

Maybe not so subtle.

Obviously I need to change something...

(no pun intended)

So during my Sunday afternoon rest, I hear this:

"Mom, Sarah pooped in her panties."

Ugh, I think to myself.

Then I walk into the hallway, and there is my 3 year-old washing her own panties out in the toilet.

Ouch. I think I have been too hard on her. She didn't want to incur my wrath, so she'd thought she would take care of it herself.

(I won't mention the fact that I stepped in the poop on the bathroom floor and unknowingly tracked it all over the carpet upstairs...)

I think I'll ground myself. For a year. That actually sounds relaxing.

Pathetic! :)

On a good note, there weren't any accidents outside of the house today! Thank goodness for tender mercies!

It could be worse...

I won't tell you what I have cleaned up in the last few days.

Let's just say that I am grateful for hand soap and sanitizer.

But at least today there weren't any training pants to wash out in the toilet...

(sorry, i know too much information)

A sister's keeper

I was blessed today with "mother's genius." If only for a moment.

Yesterday, Lauren died every time I gave Sarah a dum-dum for peeing in the toilet. Every time she would ask for a treat. Quite frankly, I was getting sick of saying no, but even more annoyed that she wanted to be rewarded for something her sister had accomplished. I was undeterred. No amount of whining would break my resolve.

Today, however, was a different story. I didn't want to punish her for already being toilet-trained. I certainly didn't want any regression. So I caved.

And in the cave-in moment, the inspiration came to me!

She would become my potty supervisor.

If she could remind her sister to go potty, she would also get a treat. She had a vested interest in her sister making it to the potty. It became a shared venture.

Brilliant, I tell you. (but it doesn't happen very often) :)

Potty Training, day one

Well, it isn't actually day one because we've started this process about as many times as I have read 1 Nephi 1:1.

But it is 11:30 am, and there haven't been any accidents.

I'm not even going to say yet.

I'm positive that today's the first day of the rest of our diaper-free (during the day) life.

Go, Sarah!

Brahms

I love Brahms. I love my piano. I even love to play. Again.

Here's to classical music!!!

Ho-hum

Sometimes I feel like I must be a manic depressive (I know, its not called that anymore, but I just don't identify with bipolar--call me picky). Some days I am up--really up, and then it seems like a day later I am NOT up.

Yesterday was great--piano, getting tax stuff done, etc, etc.

Today--not so much. Maybe I am just getting ready for my monthly visitor (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). That always makes me grumpy, lifeless, ho-hum.

Yay. I have so much to look forward to in the next few days.

I think I'll go take some Advil.

P.S. I hope that my new congregation at church doesn't think I'm a lame-o for only showing up every other week. I think Hadland is coming down with something, and Sarah never sleeps for more than 8 hours at night, so she is always sporting a hacking cough. She has already stayed home from church twice this month. Her Sunbeam teachers won't even know who she is! At least Larry and I take turns staying home. That way I can go at least a couple times a month, guaranteed!

Welcome Home!

This post is for you, Liz L.

We just got our piano back today. Our amazing, beautiful, Yamaha C7.


I just can't believe it is here.

If anyone wants to bring any sheet music over, I'll play until your bum falls asleep!

Chocolate Babies

It is time for another thought from Sarah.

As we lay down tonight to read some stories, we were looking through an Anne Geddes picture book. We opened up to the picture above, and Sarah's first words were:

"Chocolate babies! Chocolate babies!" as she pointed to the non-caucasian baby faces.

Can we say diversity lessons are in order?!

STAT!!

News flash (kinda)

Well, here is a news flash.

We moved.

Again.

I know, very predictable.

It has been 5 times in the last three+ years.

You'd think I would have weeded every superfluous bit of stuff out of my life.

But no.

It just keeps growing.

I've always been a sucker for castoffs. Especially free castoffs.

So I cast off some things in order to make room for new, cooler castoffs.

A problem, maybe?

Hmmmm.

Anyway, I think I may just post in my silent 8am house.

You see, school here STARTS at 8 am. So I get up at 7, get the two school-going kidlets off, and then I wait (usually as I do last night's dishes--shhh! don't tell flylady my sink isn't shiny!) until the rest of the family wakes up. (oops--i spoke too soon. the other two kidlets just came down, bleary-eyed and cheerios-hungry)

I've tried to go back to sleep, but I eventually only waste time and listen to my racing thoughts.

I have done many productive things--
* I've started familysearch indexing. (actually quite fun!)

* I've helped mud and then paint and then wire and finish a downstairs office.

* I've moved what seems like a mountain of stuff to the aforesaid office.

* I've rearranged my bedroom (used to also be the home office) to be an actual bedroom.

* I've made space in the garage twice to fit our van.

* I've fallen on a patch of ice on the driveway, cutting a giant hole in both my only good pair of jeans and one of only two good knees. (i think i cried more for the loss of the jeans than the skin on my knee)

* I've made a few meals.

* I've made COUNTLESS trips to the grocery store for milk. (did you know that my little family can down 6 gallons of milk in 4 days? And I don't even drink it--I used the powdered stuff on my morning cereal because I can't really tell the difference--I know all you dairy lovers are throwing up a little in your mouths, but, on the good side, it is quite budget-friendly!

*I've opened piles of mail which then threaten to drown me in a paper version of quicksand. (does anyone have any ideas for getting rid of paper? would you like to come over and recycle all of mine--just ignore my protests that there is actually something important scrawled on it somewhere)

This is not an exhaustive list, but I am exhausted typing it.

Now, I don't want you to fall on the floor (after you just picked yourself up after seeing 2 posts from me in 2 days), but I am going to post pictures of our new house!

Here you go:

the front of the house
the amazing kitchen (with a pantry and TONS of cupboards!)
the huge backyard with endless possibilities (and a huge layer of snow right now)
A beautiful family room with a great fireplace/mantel and a view of the mountains!
The room that will house the fantastic grand piano! I'll post pictures once it gets back!
Well, there you go. Four bedrooms upstairs, kitchen, family, and piano room on the first floor, and then an office, cold storage, and a possible 2 bedrooms and 1 bath in the unfinished (except for the amazing office) basement.

Lest you should think it still looks this way--why do you think I posted the empty pictures? Because they looked a lot nicer than the ones with boxes all over!

Talk to you soon!

Music to my ears?

9:51 p.m.

I hear singing upstairs.

I know it isn't Lauren or William (they are sleeping, thank goodness!).

The voice is too high to be Hadland.

Then I hear the lyrics...

"Poopy again, poopy again, I'm poopy again." (do-do-do-sol, do-do-do-sol, sol-mi, re-re do--for those of you who solfeg)

Gratefully, I am not mad. Just kind of amused.

It isn't that this is the second poopy diaper tonight.
Or that my 3-year-old is the last one awake on most nights (even without a nap, sniff-sniff).

I think that when you can sing and beautifully enunciate your bowel happenings, your mom REALLY needs to take potty-training seriously.

Seriously.

I think I may need to finish moving in before I tackle that.

I already feel tired by the laundry.

It is good to kind-of be back.

I may post again. Maybe soon. Maybe not.

Resolutions

Hi there!

Remember me?

I think I remember blogging.

I may need some reminders of how to do this...

But I'll be back with pics, explanations, all sorts of stuff!

See ya soon!