Anxiously waiting....at 8/7 central!

Finally, our trip to Oregon for Christmas!!!

If you have been anxiously awaiting our Christmas Trip to Oregon slide show, click here and you will be taken to the entry and slide show. (I know about 3 if you are on pins and needles...) If not, here are a few photo highlights...

Prophet, Seer, Revelator

We received the news last night with a phone call from my friend, Marty. I had just come from a Stake Primary Meeting and no one there had yet heard that the President of our church, our Prophet, had passed away during our meeting time. We as a family feel so grateful for our knowledge of the Plan of our Heavenly Father and imagined last night the sweet reunion of President Hinckley with his lovely wife, Marjorie. We feel it a privilege to have been taught by him as he shared his testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a spirit of tenderness, kindness, good cheer, and eternal optimism.

Dabbling...

...in digital scrapbooking. I am getting new software for my birthday so now I have been "making do" to create what I want, it is just harder and trickier because what I have been using is not as nimble or flexible so it takes a lot longer. I have done 12 layouts for calendar for some Christmas gifts with my sister, a little on my blog and for my sisters' blogs, just a little here and there. I really like this one I did today. I am going to put it in a frame to send to work with daddy...

Edited to add: I think Lindsay looks so much like my mom in this photograph - she has my mom's nose and my mom was notorious for a small, barely there smile in pictures.

Our 3 Day Holiday Weekend

We Like to call this "Child Labor Law Violation" at its finest.

Actually, they had a lot of fun helping Mommy and Daddy (for a little while anyway) dig out our front shrub bed...until they got preoccupied with earth worms. They don't dig in the dirt much so it was kind of a novelty for them. Here's the deal with the front yard. We moved in 5 1/2 years ago and had a desert landscape we hated. So, after much thought and next to no research, we decided to rip it all out and put in grass. We had these huge beautiful ficus trees and built our front lawn around the tree and decided to put in a shrub bed along the driveway. We didn't know at all what we were doing when we started the whole project but soon were skilled in sprinkler system installation and laying sod!
But the last couple years of dealing with the dang Lantana we put in the shrub bed really got to us. They grow LIKE CRAZY and require constant trimming. And, if we get a cold day or two, they FREEZE into very ugly skeletons of their former selves. They attract bees and wasps so we were always having to get rid of a wasp nest. These tiny white flies live in them and often swarm in clouds. Yuck. We had had enough. So we came up with a new plan, again, we didn't know what we were doing, but decided to rip out all the shrubs and replace it with a flagstone pathway along the driveway and leave a tiny border for a small, tight, SLOW growing annual of some sort. (My friend and her husband are Landscape architects and she has some good ideas of what to choose - she is taking me to her wholesale nursery this week!) We knew we would have to dig out down a couple inches and grade and level it and figure out a map of our dripper lines so we didn't accidentally cut one. I said to Steve, as I knew we were nearing the source of some of those lines "we better grab a small trowel - we are getting close." "Yeah, you are right...HOLY CRAP!" And he hit a PVC sprinkler line with his next shovel dig and we were treated to a geyser shower! So, that repair took 3 hours out of our day (well, we cleaned the garage while the PVC cement cured) and we had to adjourn until Monday.
So we broke out the fire pit Steve got for Christmas. He admits he was skeptical at first - he actually wanted to take it back but I kept explaining that it really was a gift for the whole family to enjoy. So we assembled it and got to work figuring out how to build a fire. You see, for some reason, Steve is never the one asked at a ward campout to get the big bond fire going! He had bought a bundle of wood so we at least had a start. The girls were anxiously waiting so we could do what you do with a backyard fire pit - roast marshmallows and make s'mores! We actually had so much fun, trying to keep the fire going - we eventually did - discussing the finer points of roasting marshmallows. Now I think our back patio is screaming for some real patio furniture but I want furniture INSIDE the house, oh, what to do, what to do...

We also had a very lovely, age appropriate discussion, led mostly by Lindsay, about Martin Luther King Jr. and what he did and why we memorialize him this month. She told us what she had learned at school about him - that he made the world a better place by bring white and black people together. So I then decided it was time for some real world application. I asked Lindsay about some of her friends (Lizzie, Zyan, Ron, Nicholas) from school and our neighborhood and if they would have been able to be her friends if we had lived in certain places during segregation. She thought about it and it made her very sad that the play dates she loves and the girls she plays at recess with may not have been her friends 50 years ago. She then remembered how she had learned that some kids didn't get nice new schools or have books in a library or desks that weren't falling apart and she was grateful for MLK Jr. and all he did to lead the fight for civil rights.

So Monday we got to work again on our little yard project. The girls got invited to go and see a movie with a friend so Steve and I were able to work on it. We ended up that day going to two stone yards to find a color of flagstone that was sold by the pound and I liked the color that wasn't sold by the 2 ton pallet. (We ended up buying about 500 lbs .) We found a stone we liked, got it home and realized...we needed something under all this stone...so I went back with two Rubbermaid tubs to buy sand. Steve stayed and got some other work done and sent me, the preggo one, to buy 400 lbs of sand! Always play the pregnancy card - then you get a cute guy at the stone yard to shovel it and load it up for you! (I think Steve had an idea this would happen....that is why he sent me, well, maybe not the cute guy part...) Caroline was funny - as we started to level out the area with the sand, she said "This stuff is just like beach dirt!" Girl needs to get to the beach more often to play in the sand! So, here is our work in progress. We got about 1/2 the stones down before it got dark. It will wait until Saturday to be finished. Crossing our fingers that it works out and looks good!

I'm Thinking About This for my new Diaper Bag...

Update - OK - now I am thinking this one! Same bag style but patchwork instead and I am in love. And I am not usually an obsessive purse girl! It is my birthday tomorrow, I think I will take care of ordering it!

Super cute, right? It is handmade by a seller in Etsy from South Jordan, Utah and all her bags are darling! They are priced well for the work I KNOW it takes to make one. I just don't have it in me to come up with a bag. But I totally dig this one. It has 5 interior pockets, multi-layers of interior facings and fleece to make a stable, sturdy, yet soft bag. And she will make a "quick trip diaper and wipe" bag to match. Check out Janie and Clutterbags on Etsy.

100th Day of School! (And some cute puppies)

Update - Lindsay brought home some of her classwork from the 100th day of school - we all got a kick out of her illustrations and answers on the "100" list. We all took turns answering - it was a fun little game. For the record, Daddy would save his $100 for a new TV. Mommy would eat 100 Whoppers Candies, and Caroline would like 100 Tinkerbell things. (I think she is already there.) We do love Lindsay's self portrait at 100, complete with a wheel chair and cane and rain and sunshine.

Lindsay's 100 List!
I can eat 100: ice cream sckoopss
I would not want: 100 Ovucotoh (avocado)
I wish I had 100: Swing setts
I could never eat 100: sweet chairies
I can make 100: cookies
If I had $100.00 I would buy: pritty, fancy cloas (clothes)
In 100 years I hope that I can: fly

Today is the 100th day of school and apparently this is an opportunity to celebrate. I don't remember this being a big deal when I was a kid but it is now. (I guess the administration has all kinds of 100 day reports as well so there is some official business.)

This year Lindsay was asked to bring 100 snacks in a bag. She chose sour gummy lifesavers. I would have taken a picture of her counting them out but I was too busy doing her "100 day hair." (Not required but still fun!) Last year, we put 100 hair ribbons in her hair and it was a big hit. She wanted something different this year so she asked for 100 ponies. That takes a little while. She was up before me - she came to me in bed and said "Mommy - get up - we have a lot to do this morning!" This hairstyle is a variation of one she and Aunt Shelly do on each other when they are together. Though I doubt even Shelly has ever done 100 ponies!
Here is her picture from last year - she was supposed to bring a collection of 100 things (in addition to the 100 snack items - she chose Cheetos) in some sort of display - she wanted to do pennies in the shape of 100 on a poster (not terribly original) but a lot of our pennies were icky and not at all shiny so we googled how to polish pennies and the most fun Kindergarten way to do it was with Ketchup. So we polished and it smelled kinda yuck - the metal of the pennies, the acidic tomato ketchup, yeah, kinda yuck. But it was fun!

My Dad and Debbie have 3 dogs - about a year old Miniature Dachshunds and they just bred Chloe, the oldest. The 6 puppies were born last week and we got to go and see them last night. (We were supposed to see them Monday night for Family Night but another case of me being the meanest mom in the world - they didn't get a couple of certain chores done in the alloted time so we canceled for the night and went Tuesday instead.) They are darling and tiny - the girls love them. It really is too bad their mama is not a dog person because there is not a chance at all we are bringing one home. Anyone interested? I think they still have 3 that are not already purchased/committed to families.