Conversations on Identity

In the last week or so(except one):

Me: Eliza-are you a stinker?

Eliza: NO!! I am a cutie pie!

Tom in the morning getting her out of her crib: "Hello Gorgeous"

Eliza: No, I'm Eliza

Me: Eliza-are you cute?

Eliza: No I'm poopy

My sister Katie: OH! You're talking now.

Eliza: No I am Eliza

Me: Eliza-are you cute? (Why do I ask my kids this so much?)

Eliza: No, I'm a stinker! (So we've come full circle)

Eliza in dress shoes...asleep. My girly girl (or just Eliza)

Yeast Facts

Sometimes kids just crack you up. Samantha was trying to eat some bread dough Tom was making and he told her she couldn't and why she couldn't. So Samantha decided to guard against the perils of bread dough for always by making a comprehensive list:
She's a good speller but I'll translate just in case:

Yeast List

1. We never eat bread dough

2. We will get a fungus. They take things your body needs

Yeast Facts

This public service announcement is sponsored by Samantha. If we can save just one person from getting a fungus from bread dough-it was worth it.

Happy Scrappy

I never post my scrapbooking pages-I feel too shy. I like what I do and I'm happy I do it. I just tend to like what other people do better. But I've been working hard (like I always do about 3 months before I have a baby). I am between 1 1/2 and 2 years behind. I just have to come to terms with that. I would really like to be about 6 months behind but that doesn't seem likely. Here are a few that I like:

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Stinkin stickers wouldn't stay on straight.

You will never believe how long this one took me so I'm not going to tell you. It was inordinately long (I was watching a movie at the same time). I think it was the stitching that added so much time.

This one freaked me out-white space-ahhh. But I actually like it.

At Least She's Not a Vampire

Tommy was my biter. He bit almost constantly when he was about 18 months old (I think-I've blocked it out). I remember one particularly special occasion where my sister Livvie left my house and she had 18 horrible bite mark/bruises all over her body. Tommy had used her as his teething tool for his 2 year old molars or something. Thankfully, he never bit anyone outside of the family!

But that's just barely related to this story:

Eliza is not a "biter" per say. But occasionally she brings out the fangs in self-defense. I don't know what was going on but she bit Tommy hard the other day-on his finger. He cried, I soothed, we moved on (except for when Tommy recapped the story for daddy in great detail).

The next morning he wakes me up and says "Mommy I have an ouchie where Eliza bit me" It was infected-full of pus (sorry delicate readers)! Maybe this is normal but in the 1204930948 times Tommy bit Samantha that had never happened. Maybe Eliza has venom in her spit? Maybe Tommy will wake up with super powers? Or maybe he'll just learn not to mess with Eliza.

We Believe: New Beginnings....really cupcakes

Last week I was in charge of New Beginnings for Young Womens. Of course I was stressed about it because it's always stressful whenever you're in charge of things. I was prepared though and even though that didn't mean "I did not fear" it still went well. The decorations were cute, my talk went well, the girls did a great job on their talks/song. Everything was great!

But this post is really about cupcakes. We have a low budget this year so we went with cheap(er) and simple. The refreshments were cupcakes and water. So since it was just cupcakes I wanted them to be *fabulous*. As the post states the theme was "We Believe" based on the 13th article of Faith. That's a great theme-without any decorating ideas. So I went floral for everything (because that is ALWAYS a good theme-right?)

I got online and searched for cupcakes. At this link I found dainty little flower cupcakes shown below:
Then at this link I made these rose cupcakes (okay, okay-I put Tom in charge of these and he did a great job. )
Both of these were pretty easy really. Much easier than some of the other things I searched for. One tip on the rose ones-they were cuter when you applied unequal pressure to the two bags (if you read the link you'll understand) because evenly spread colors weren't as cute as say white tinged with pink or vice versa.

Am I ready to open my own boutique!?! Um...no, but I really enjoy doing things like this.

Poor Samantha!

Tuesday Samantha came home from school with a very high (104.3) temperature. There were two little red spots on her cheeks that I just attributed to dryness.

By the next morning she was covered head to toe in a horrific rash that would start as bumps, morph into hives, and then eventually scab over. The rash was everywhere - on her lips even!! Plus she still had her insanely high fever. I was extremely stressed and took her to the Dr.'s office. After more than one doctor, strep cultures and blood work plus waiting forever we still had no answers. The Dr. gave her a prescription for an anti-viral (which I have to admit I'd never heard of) then we just hoped for the best.

She is doing better now. She got a priesthood blessing (the biggest help I think) and the anti-viral was the right call as well. We'll probably never know what exactly she had I'm just glad she's doing better! She missed 4 days of school total. She is thrilled to go back.

These are some pictures-they really don't do it justice though. It was so bad, my one friend said she definitely won the prize for the worse rash she'd ever seen!

Character Counts

Samantha's school does this "Character Counts" thing where they talk about Six pillars of Character. One of them is "Caring" and for the month of January Samantha was nominated from her classroom as the representative for that characteristic. They sent home a little note telling us there would be a reception for her (and the other recipients). We didn't tell her about it and she was very, very excited when she found out. She got a little treat and they took a picture of her with the Principal. It was nice.

This is what her teacher said about her: "I am nominating Samantha for the pillar of caring. She is always caring for others. She is always helping other students when they need it. She hugs friends when they are sad. She is always so concerned for everyone else's feelings. She is so sweet and I enjoy having her in class very much! Thank you Samantha for being a caring friend!"

We've got Spirit! (Sort of)

I had envisioned this post being like other people's spirit week posts where we had 5 full days of Samantha showing school spirit and us being totally prepared and on top of it. Instead I have this post:

Monday: Crazy Hair Day. We started off gung-ho and Samantha chose to have ponytails all over her head. I added a ribbon for each pony tail.

Tuesday: Neon Day. This was trickier. I guess I'm a pastel kind of girl because we were sadly lacking in the neon department, but we managed.

Wednesday: Super Hero/Villain day. I don't know if I could have pulled this off or not. I kept Samantha home with a sore throat (and took her to the children's museum-so I guess that shows what kind of mom I am)

Thursday: Crazy hat day. I was sick in bed waiting for death. Tom pulled out all of the hats in our house (that I spent the rest of the day cleaning up but I will try not to complain....any more). Samantha chose an "Alaska" beanie from her father. Not necessarily crazy and we didn't even get a picture.

Friday: Football Jersey Day. I protested this by sending her in curled hair and a dress. Samantha was good with that.

So maybe next year?

What happens if you don't blog in forever

My friend Amie noticed that I needed some blog help-so she tagged me. So here are some deep thoughts/answers from Emily:

Q1. If you blog anonymously, are you happy doing this? If you aren't anonymous, do you wish you started out anonymously so that you could be anonymous now?

A. I don't blog anonymously. I don't put my last name on there or mention my city name (if you've been 1 of like 3 or 4 people I've rejected comments for-I did it because it mentioned our city/identifying info). I don't think it makes a lot of difference but I suppose it's just one little step to make it harder for these nefarious people who might be wanting to do something dark and sinister. I don't know what those things would be-just that people seem to worry about it, and thus I worry about it :)

Q2. Describe an incident that shows your inner stubborn side.

My stubborn side isn't inner-it's entirely outer. But...I feel like being a mom has made me a whole lot less stubborn, I've learned that there are only a few things that are really worth the fight (gospel principles and safety issues come to mind-whether they have one cookie or two....not so much).

That didn't answer the question-I just can't think of something....yeah, I really can't think of anything. I guess I'll have to steal from Amie and say I haven't joined facebook yet. But the thing is-I can see the value in it, I just know myself and that I would find myself being distracted and time-wasting with it. Does that even count as being stubborn or just knowing my limitations?

Q3. What do you really see when you look at yourself in the mirror?

Aren't these blog tags supposed to ask what my favorite food is and what 8 TV shows I have in my DVR queue? Why the deep questions?

Someone with pregnancy-induced acne. Um, if the roots are 8 inches long do they count as roots anymore? Someone whose baby must be taking residence in her BOTTOM because that's where I keep getting bigger. OH and a daughter of God :).

Q4. What is your favorite summer cold drink?

This is more like it....I LOVE ice cold water

Too boring? Lemonade? Ohhhhh-frozen lemonade from Disneyland

Q5. When you take time for yourself, what do you do?

Read or scrapbook. Sometimes I still take teenage 30 minute showers because my kids have learned to leave me alone.

Q6. Is there something you still want to accomplish in your life?

There are SO many things I want to do.

I want to be rich (so do you-just admit it).

I want to go to graduate school...nursing, librarian, something

I want to go on a cruise

I want to run a marathon

I want to go on a mission with Tom

I want to swing on one of those rope things that swing over a lake

I REALLY want to go to all my kids weddings in the temple.

I'm sure there's more.

Q7. When you attended school, were you the class clown, the class overachiever, the shy person, or always ditching?

Oh I was so the overachiever. It makes me laugh when I think now I am SO proud of myself for going to the grocery store with all three kids. I would study for hours, I was upset with anything less than an A. I remember I would do homework until 11 or 12 every day and then wake up at 5:00 for seminary. I can't imagine any of that now :)

Q8. If you close your eyes and want to visualize a very poignant moment in your life, what would you see?

Well, there's the obvious answers of the birth of my children. One recent one was finding out my house was finally selling. I was so excited to find out that I was having a boy this time, that was poignant.

Q9. Is it easy for you to share your true self in your blog, or are you more comfortable writing posts about other people or events?

I'm more of the event writer. I don't do a lot of journaling/deep thoughts on my blog. I admit to being a little worried about things like that. I don't want things to come off wrong and I'm hyper-aware of once things are on the internet-they're their forever!

Q10. If you had the choice to sit down and read a book or talk on the phone, which would you do and why?

No question-I would read. I hate talking on the phone, it's always stressed me out.

Now you know more than you wanted to :).

*Emily* Get your gun

This past weekend we took the young women/young men to a shooting range. First they were taught about gun safety and then we let them loose (not really). I have only been shooting once before, with a pistol. This time I got to shoot a pistol and two other big guns that I'm not cool or savvy enough to know what they're called. Rifles? Sure, but I don't know what kind.

One of my young women took this picture of me. Are you afraid?

Multimedia Family Update

So what have we been up to since "Last date posted September 22, 2010?" Well, I will tell you. Obviously this post will be long but I tried to keep my "talking" to a minimum so you can just enjoy these pictures of our family. And I would like to post more often-so I can hope for that.

Tom:

He's in like 1 or two of these pictures. Where was he? Work I suppose. If he wasn't at work he was at church. We love him but he's a busy guy...moving on

Me:

I've been really sick. Because I'm pregnant. See...so there's a reason for my bad, bad, bad posting. I am 22 weeks along. And I'm having a....(more on that later)

I've been really busy with YW (this isn't me). But one of the things we did for class activities was to make scripture totes. I used cloth place mats and then we embellished them. The girls have been using them so that's good

And then we did lots of things but I was sick for all of them. So I was probably too ugly or just laying on the couch for pictures. So this is New Years Eve. My family came to visit-yay!

Ringing in the New Years with Tom

Samantha:

She has the most pictures because she's a busy girl. Like with homework:

We went to CA in early Oct. My mom took care of the kids while I laid on the couch. This is at her town's heritage day. I've always wanted to do the trampoline thing so I lived vicariously through my kids-I was impressed she could do the flips. Not everyone could.

She was Wendy Darling for Halloween (it's sad that's the only picture of her but I was too busy running the cake walk booth)

We went to New Mexico for Thanksgiving. Everyone descended on Tom's sister Maria. Samantha absolutely loved every minute with her cousins as usual.

For our city party in early Dec we did a lot of rides-like the train ride.

Seeing Santa at our ward party.

Christmas Eve in Mesa at Tom's extended e-x-t-e-n-d-e-d family. I don't think we'll ever go again or see those people.

Samantha learned to ride without training wheels. Maybe I took a long time as a kid but she learned SO fast I thought. If you want to actually see her riding a bike then this video is useless. But if you want to hear Tom's angry voice and see Tommy being a stinker then it's a funny 37 seconds. She really is good-too bad we don't have proof.

We used Christmas money from Grandparents to buy year passes to the Children's Museum in Phoenix. We've been three times already in just a month so I think we'll make it worth it.

Samantha started basketball. Don't watch this whole video, I don't even want to watch it. But if you watch for about 5 second from 1:15 then you can see the way Samantha leaps and prances across the court instead of running. I wouldn't say she's *good* at basketball by any stretch of the imagination, but she enjoys it.

Finally: she got to ride a horse -by herself!!!!- for a friend's birthday party. I wasn't there so I don't have pictures. There are two of her at this link (but not riding a horse)

Tommy:

Tommy on the trampoline in CA. He had more fun then his face would indicate. He was nervous at first but got used to it.

He was Peter Pan for Halloween

Thanksgiving: He actually got along with Matthew. But I think he drove my brother-in-law Jon crazy. He's a terror, what can I say?!?

Elephant ride!

Christmas Eve in Mesa. He took off to the backyard and stayed there-I think he was the smart one.

Tommy at the Children's Museum.

Eliza:

She used to be sweet but now she's awful. But I still love her despite the combined 2 hours worth of tantrums every day.

She didn't go on the trampoline in CA. She sat on the ground and ate (I'm not exaggerating) an entire HUGE carnival sized bag of carmel corn. That's my girl. So this was the other things we did-my Mom's children's museum-pretend city.

Eliza was Tinkerbell for Halloween (sense a theme?)

Thanksgiving in Albuquerque-This is Tom's cousin Brookie. Eliza had a lot of fun with cousins. She got to see Tangled and loved it!! (So did the other kids, but that was to be expected).

Eliza got to ride a camel at our city Christmas party

Seeing Santa-no screaming-which is great

Christmas Eve-PJ's!

Eliza at the Children's museum.

Andrew (probably):

Is a boy! (Obviously or we would come up with something other than Andrew). I don't know how to use the scanner so there are no pictures of him. But he has all his parts and he's ruining my life. I can't wait to meet him.