Pros and Cons

Just some random thoughts today. There are definte plusses to having your baby become more independent. She can run get her own shoes, she can throw her own fruit snack wrapper away, and she can play with her toys alone for a good ten minutes, allowing you to actually finish a job. However, she can also open the pantry and get her own box of KIX and dump it all over the floor in the family room. Hmmm....

Yesterday we did one of my favorite Christmas-time activities. We made paper snowflakes for our front window. It's the perfect activity: the kids can participate, the results are fascinating and occasionally elegant, and it costs nothing more than a few sheets of copy paper. Alex was especially proficient and prolific. Our front window is practically a blizzard.

A sports writer today wrote that he could think of only one mega-star, professional athlete who was successful at resisting sexual temptation: Jackie Robinson. That makes him even more incredible! It also makes me grateful for an average, faithful, middle-income man. I'd take the domestic tranquility over the professional dough any day.

Three Years

Adrift! A little boat adrift!
And night is coming down!
Will no one guide a little boat
Unto the nearest town?

So sailors say, on yesterday,
just as the dusk was brown,
One little boat gave up its strife,
And gurgled down and down.

But angels say, on yesterday,
Just as the dawn was red,
One little boat o'erspent with gales
Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
Exultant, onward sped!

--Emily Dickinson

God Speed, Little Son!

Red Letter Day

This is a day I have feared since finding out we were finally having a daughter. But, today I feel like Mommy Triumphant--I have managed to make a "do" in my daughter's hair. Her hair has been getting a lot longer and occasionally falling down her forehead into her eyes. So today I bit the bullet and went to WalMart and got some girly supplies. After much worrying and ado--here it is, the very first attempt at actually fixing Jillian's hair, and by some miracle it turned out cute!
We have just taken a great vacation with the Felt Parents. I will get the photos ready and posted as soon as I can. I've decided that if a zillion people didn't already live in California, I'd move there next week. We spend a wonderful, cool, temperate week in San Diego and a couple days in Anahiem and then came home to 100 degree weather. What a bummer!

Jillian's pictures

I'm trying to get blogger to let me load up Jillian's latest pictures and having some trouble. I'll upload a just a couple. Heidi has, as usual done an incredible job. There are so many great pictures. Thank you, yet again, dear friend!

First Birthday!

Well, it is official, Jillian has turned one. Yesterday the Arizona cousins came over and we had our traditional first-birthday cake destruction. I must say, it was very fun to make a cake that had pink icing and nothing to do with Star Wars! Jill ate so much cake I was sure she'd be up sick, but as Auntie Alison says, "She must be related to me if she can hold her sugar!" This is Alison's niece, all right. Josh had to help her figure out why she was sitting there all by herself in front of a cake, but once he got her going she pounded about half the cake with only a few jelly beans for the brothers and one bite of cake to spare for her dad. Here's the photographic evidence:

Uncle Ken was put in charge of the birthday gift from the Stakers. He scored! Jillian loves the ball popper and gets some time to play with it now and then if her older brothers ever leave it alone. I may have to abscond with the batteries in order to get some peace and quiet around here.

We spent last weekend at a Hilton resort in North Phoenix on a "staycation" with a few of our friends. We had a great time: swimming all day, good friends, good food, and no cell phone service! I did, however, forget my camera. We'll have to rely on the good graces of friends for photos from our get-away.

I am also trying not to think about the fact that Sunny and Joshua are loading up and leaving for Philadelphia tomorrow. I wish I could be there to tell them goodbye in the flesh. If the kids make it there alive after 4 days in the car, then I guess we'll get ready to come and visit. Pennsylvania and Arizona look very far apart on our USA puzzle. Best wishes to Toad and Josh as they head off on their adventure. Don't stay too far too long!

Homeward Bound

We've just spent a wonderful 10 days at home in Salt Lake, in Idaho, and in Jackson at Uncle Doug and Aunt Carrie's house. Needless to say, we had a grand time and came home all pooped out! Consequently, we've all been sick for the last two weeks. And so I am just now getting around to posting some pictures from our trip. It rained and rained, but as you can see, the skies dried up just long enough for us to hike in God's backyard, for Jillian to discover the joys of spray cheese (thanks to Uncle Greg), to have a cookout in Millcreek canyon, and for the boys and Grandma Debbie to see a really cool frog exhibit at the Natural History museum. (Alex is the frog in the frog stew.)

It was hard coming home. However, we have great friends here in Queen Creek that make it worth the drive. Otherwise I think we would have moved into Doug and Carrie's shed! Jackson was absolutely heavenly.

We're getting ready to spend the 4th of July without our Dad. He's headed up to girls camp in the morning. (Luckily, we're not the only ones, so we'll be having a single parents' 4th of July party.) We went bowling and out for burgers today so that the boys won't feel cheated tomorrow. Happy Independence Day all.

Private Schmivate!

Ok, well, privacy is a nice idea, but it's a pain. I'm just going to take the permissions part off. My Mom has trouble getting on my blog and so do lots of our friends and cousins. I'm getting tired of trying to keep up with the invites and all that jazz. Any more creepy comments and I may have to go back, but for now, I'm going back to normal. Happy blogging.

Another Project

Well, gee I see that it's only been two months since I posted on my blog! Things have been a zoo around here lately. Anyone with kids can attest to the fact that the last two months of school can drive you bonkers. We've had a lot of changes around here lately and a lot of stress. Since this blog is private and I know everyone who's going to be reading this, I think I'm safe to post a few details. Josh was called to be the bishop of our ward about 6 weeks ago. We were (and still are) scared, worried, bewildered, flummoxed, and any number of other adjectives that can describe the overwhelming feelings of inadequacy that attend the issue of such a calling to such a young man and his young family. Then to top it all off, they postponed the meeting in which our ward was to be realligned for three weeks. So we sat there stressing for a whole month before he was sustained in church. It is not then surprising that I've had a whole litany of health problems--most likely stress-induced. But now the rat-race has begun in earnest and we're off and running. The old saying is true: the fear of cannibals is most definitely worse than cannibals. So far we're still alive. I'm sure Josh will grow into the large shoes that he's supposed to be filling and I'll get used to pulling a little more of the weight at home.

In other news, Jillian is teething, and she thinks she can walk. Which translates into GRUMPY TROUBLE. She is at this very moment standing next to the computer squealing at me for having the audacity to put her down for a few minutes. It's a good thing she's cute and her hair seems to be coming in curly because I think I'll keep her.

I finally finished the sweater I've been working on for months and months, hence the photos. Luckily it seems to be a little big still. I was worried that by the time I'd finished it would be too small for her. It looks like it should work out nicely as a winter coat here in the "Arizona wilderness." It is truly amazing to finish a project and have it look like is is supposed to. It never ceases to amaze me!

Perhaps I can be a more faithful blogger now that I will have more time on my own. I actually don't mind the solitary time. In the words of my Grandma Ann, "I enjoy my own company."

Happy Easter

It is truly a beautiful Easter Day here in Arizona. Today on the way home from church I asked Ryan what he learned about Easter. His Sunbeam class talked about new life using examples like eggs and flowers and butterflies. "Mom, Jesus was like a butterfly, he went into his racoon and came alive again." We went home and watched the church DVD, "Finding Faith in Jesus Christ." It was perfect for the boys. However, I think my brother Greg's Easter idea was by far the best. His kids woke up and searched the house only to find the empty boxes from their chocolate bunnies bearing a note saying, "He is not here, HE IS RISEN!" After a good lesson about Easter, they handed out the chocolate.

This week has been a stressful one. I have spent much time pondering the mysteries of life and death this week. Three of my dear friends have been spending a great deal of time in the hospital with a parent. Cindy, Jeremy and Kelly--our prayers are with you.

I think Easter is one of the most best holidays of the year: good chocolate and the promise of new life. Who could ask for anything more?

All for the love of Jill

Well, we knew that the crawling would not satisfy Jill for long. She has been trying to stand since she was tiny and has now disovered that she can pull herself up on just about anything. She's having trouble sleeping because she would rather be standing up in her crib playing with her fishy mobile than taking a nap. So, here are some new pictures especially for the Salt Lake grandparents. We're issuing fair warning--Jillian is likely to be walking when we get up there in June. Make sure you stash your valuables!

Josh and I were both just commenting how much having a daughter adds to the dynamic of our family. In a family full of boys we truly thank heaven for little girls!

Why Kids Grow Up

Today at 6 AM my oldest son came into my room bearing a tray with a bowl of Cheerios, a glass of water and a note reading:

"Dear Mom,
I'm sorry adout the car. We can get new paint. Happy Brekfist.
Love Alex"

(I have left his spelling intact)

Yesterday I backed our new car out of the garage and came too close to Josh's car. I heard the bumper hit Josh's car and panicked. Instead of braking, I hit the gas. So...I really crunched the back bumper of our beautiful car. (Luckily Josh's Ford POS can't look any worse than it already does.) I ran in the house bawling and must have really upset Alex. He decided that breakfast in bed the next morning was the way to fix it. Despite awakening with a stomach ache, I downed a few bites of Cheerios and basked in the love of my thoughtful son.

Now we have to find a good body shop in Arizona, any suggestions?

Loser Blogger

Oh, believe me, I know! Somehow finding time to update the blog has been much more difficult lately. We've had visits from my parents, from Aunt Paula and Uncle Jeff, Ryan's fourth birthday, spring break, the ever intensifying Primary work, and just daily life in the way. Jillian can crawl now. Even on the third time around it is still amazing to watch the developmental leaps babies take. She learned to crawl one week ago. Saturday morning she couldn't do it, Saturday afternoon she tried and still couldn't do it, and then all of a sudden Saturday night she could suddenly crawl. Truly miraculous and really cute, even if it means life is getting more complicated!

The boys have had a great trip together to meet the Felt family in Moab. I do enjoy a good camping trip but I must confess that 9 hours in the car to go camping with a crawling, diapered baby sounded less than appealing. So it turned into a Dad and boys trip. From what I can tell, they had a glorious time. You can see the ruins in the background, they were right above the camping spot that the Felts like to use in Canyonlands. The boys were tired and totally dirty. We just had to throw away a whole load of orange socks, that sand never washes out! Many thanks to Gary and Debbie, Abby and Rich, and Uncle Bear. The boys had a wonderful time.

While the boys were gone, my Mom and Sunny and her girls came down for the first annual all-girls extravaganza. We had a ball. Sunny has all the pictures, seeing as how my boys took our camera. But we did all sorts of fun girl things: we exercised hard every day (you should see my Mom and Sunny salsa dancing!), we shopped, we created, we painted toenails and we watched a chick movie EVERY NIGHT. We also made some bruschetta that was so good that we ate it for dinner several nights in a row. Jillian and Jane are only six weeks apart and it was fun to watch the two of them together. Right now they spend most of their time taking toys from each other and patting each other's faces.

Jillian Update

I haven't posted for a while, so here I am on my third post of the day! We enjoyed a visit from Josh parents, Aunt Meggan and cousin Jackson, and Uncle Bear. We basically ate good food, let the kids play outside as much as possible, and went for a hike in the San Tan "Mountains" near our house. Meggan and I also ran a 5K last Saturday. I wish there were one this morning so I could get my sluggish self moving. I don't have many pictures, so we'll hope that Meggan and Gary will be forthcoming with those!

Jillian is growing like a weed and is now sitting up like a pro and learning to feed herself. She desperately wants to crawl, but is still spending a lot of time falling over on her face. It won't be long! The pictures are of her first go-round with a biter biscuit and of her thinking she's all that because she can sit in the chair all by herself!

We Are As......

This is the costume that Josh wore earlier this month for some of our church activities. He is dressed as Helaman, leader of the 2000 Ammonite warriors in the Book of Mormon. Our Stake sponsored an activity for all the 11-year-old boys to teach them about the Aaronic priesthood, scouting, and the Duty to God award before they enter our Young Men's program. He wrote a wonderful script to inspire them as they strive to meet their goals. (He also made an appearance during Sharing Time in Primary, since we happened to have the costume on hand!) Here's his script (just imagine it being read in Josh's deep, sonorous voice):

"I am Helaman, military commander and prophet who lived in the Americas shortly before the time of Christ. I welcome you parents and leaders and most especially you young men who I soon hope to call sons.

We are in a war between good and evil, a war where you cannot sit on the sidelines. The events of this day will prepare you for battle. You are hereby called to serve in the army of your Heavenly Father!

I once had the privilege of leading another group of young men who became my sons through the many battles we fought together. They were, “men of truth and soberness…exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength …true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted…for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him.”

You are young men of such quality. This morning you will be taught in a series of three classes how you can fulfill your destiny and walk uprightly before him. Upon completion of the training I will meet you again and ask that you declare with your signature upon this contract your willingness and commitment to fulfill the mission set before you.

My 2,000 sons once told me before we went to battle with the Lamanities, “Father, behold, our God is with us, and he will not suffer that we should fall.” (Alma 56:46) I testify to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that it shall be so for you as well, my young sons. God is with you and as you fulfill your oaths He will not suffer that you should fall. Go now and receive your training and we will meet again soon, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

As a mother of sons, I was definitely inspired in fact, moved to tears. It really helped to get our 11-year-old boys inspired as well. Thanks Josh for being so willing to do anything that is asked of you!

My Budding Writer

Alex's class is doing a weekly writing assignment called a "Life Journal." Each week they write in a composition book using their vocabulary words, spelling words, ideas they are discussing in class, or just the thoughts in their 2nd grade heads. I am loving watching Alex learn to love this assignment. His personality is revealed in the stories he comes up with. Two weeks ago he was supposed to write a letter. When he was finished, he'd written a Valentine love-letter to his Legos that was absolutely hilarious. So, I copied down his story this week so that I could share it on the blog. He was supposed to write a story using his vocabulary words: objects, confused, clasp, typical, removes, cornered and caused. As you can see, the boy has a wonderfully developed sense of humor, for a seven-year-old! Here's the Life Journal entry for this week:

2/19/09

Bubba was confused. "How did the pigs get out?" he said. He saw some muddy objects lying on the grass. He said, "The clasp broke! I wonder what caused that? Nothing but a screwdriver removes a clasp like that." Bubba looked up. He was surrounded by 15 pigs with a screwdriver! "How typical! I knew I shouldn't have given those pigs tools."

Quarantine

I'm sorry about being such a loser blogger lately. Ryan and Jillian have both got RSV. Ryan was sick but just fine. Jillian on the other hand is really sick and wheezing sandpaper every time she breathes. I'll get back to blogging after I get some sleep!

The Jedi Council

This is just a quick post to report Saturday night's dinner conversation. Alex looked up at Josh and said, "Daddy, you're on the Jedi Council, right?" When Josh looked perplexed Alex continued, "You know, when you go to the church to have meetings." Josh chuckled and told Alex that the High Council is kind of like the Jedi Council. Alex then tried to figure out which Jedi master his dad was. When I suggested that Daddy was like master Yoda, Alex replied, "No Mom, Grandpa Larry is master Yoda because he has those ugly yellow Yoda toenails." When I called my dad to tell him, his response was " You tell Alex that when 900 years old he is, look this good his toenails will not!"

Whose Baby is This?

My mom sent me some pictures this morning and when I pulled them up, Ryan said, "Look Mom, there's Jilly with Grandma Ann." Impossible? I don't know, these babies look pretty much the same to me.

We found Jillian's first two teeth today. My, my how time flies!

RED LETTER WEEK

Well, after a long drought, it has been truly a red letter week! So many happenings. First of all despite my kids' best efforts at earning lumps of coal, Santa made it to our house. There was a grand time had by all with new Legos, lightsabers and a little pink doll.

I wish I could say it had been a relaxing holiday this year, but there was so much going that many of the things that I wanted to do were left undone. Those of you who are out-of-town family will notice that I've been running behind when your Christmas cards arrive sometime next week. I hope that there is truth in the old saying: "better late than never." Josh seems to have been much more productive than I. He had the week off and was able to finish his built-in project in the playroom.

The boys have really loved the window seat, as you can see. It is so nice to hear silence, wonder "What on earth are those boys up to?" and walk into the playroom to find them reading! The new cabinets have plenty of space for everything that has been cluttering the floor in the playroom plus space for my extensive collection of unfinished craft projects. Perhaps some of them will get finished if I don't have to dig through the plastic bins buried in the closet to find them.

This week is also notable because, thanks to the intervention of Dr. Bapa, my upper-respiratory- sinusitis-bronchitis-never-ending-terrible-horrible-no good-very bad cold is finally on the run. I actually made it out running this week for the first time in a month. I feel like a bear emerging from hibernation after a winter's worth of bad dreams; like I've been living in a constant state of out-of-body experiences. I am battling off some residual headaches, but in general this is a vast improvement.

I think the headaches are probably due to the Primary. Today was the first Sunday in January and anyone who's been in the Primary will agree that the last few weeks have been exceptionally stressful. However, today we managed to get all the children in the right place and every class had teachers. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to our primary teachers and to everyone who worked so hard to get our sputtering Primary started again. Now I hope we're on a roll!

Friday night was also excellent. I'll admit that I wasn't too sure that the Utes had it in them, but boy did they ever! They ran roughshod over the Crimson tide of Alabama. The best part was watching the TV announcers falling all over themselves trying to act like it was just what they expected. It was nice to have the game on regular TV so that we could watch. The Rosens watched the game with us, and Matt found it in his heart to cheer for the Utes. (He was probably ready for a good football game after having had to watch the Cougars embarass themselves losing to Arizona.)

In other news, Jillian has learned to sit up. We still have an occasional slumping over, but she's getting pretty good. Now if we could just tackle the waking up at night problem. And I also finally finished reading Anna Karenina. I've never actually finished a Russian novel before. I have learned the value of a really good translation! I enjoyed Tolstoy very much and I think I'll try to get started on War and Peace as soon as I can.

If the last few weeks haven't killed me off, I think I'll still be around to blog in the future. We missed our families this Christmas. Especially upon hearing of the massive mini-marshmallow fight at the Staker home and seeing photos of the penny auction at Grandma Rogers. Perhaps next year the Primary transition will be smooth enough that we can spend some time at home. Here's hoping for a happy 2009!