Mommy's Little Helper

Today Nathan helped me by putting every.single.thing into the shopping cart at the grocery store.

He helped me by grabbing the groceries and bagging them. I was allowed to bag some of the groceries. If I got to them first.

He helped carry the yarn to the check out at Micheal's.

He helped carry the bag from Micheal's to the car.

He tried to help unload the groceries.

He helped with every spoonful in the dinner preparation.

He is my little helper.

Transpose

(Blatant parental bragging to follow.)

Abbie loves to play the piano. She will sit down and just mess around for awhile. She will make up songs and she will goof off with the songs she is learning, alternating ddynamics speed or mood. She just gets so caught up in the music. She also has an amazing little gift that she got from her father called, "Playing by Ear." She is much better at hearing something and picking it out than sight-reading it blind. When she hears a song, and is reading the notes she does her best.

She has been learning the song Pat-A-Pan for her Christmas recital. It wasn't difficult but she didn't have a lot of time to learn it. One Sunday I heard her playing the song, over and over while I was fixing dinner in the kitchen. Then Russ came up stairs.

"Did you know she can transpose that song into the key of A, and the key of G?"

Nope. Didn't know that. I've never transposed anything ever. And my daughter was doing it in her free time.

When I talked to her teacher about it I learned it is very common for kids who learn by ear to do this, because they are identifying patterns rather than notes.

Lucky kid. Didn't get that from me.

Thankful, Not Thankful

Savannah was responsible for the Family Home Evening lesson this week. I suggested she do the lesson on gratitude. She told the story of Jesus healing the ten lepers, drew a maze of thankfulness, and invented this game.

There were three jars. One was full of strips of paper with words on them, the second jar said, "Thankful, " and the third said, "Not Thankful." We were each to pull a strip, read what was on it, then put it in the appropriate jar.  This is how things stood at the end of the game. (Spelling has been modified.)

Thankful Jar

Clothes
Church
Home
Family
People
School (This was a debated point.)

Not Thankful Jar

Coffee
Robbers
Sickness
Smoking
Bad Guys

No, no I am NOT thankful for bad guys.

Novemeber Updates

Things have been more than a little crazy this month. Starting with the day after Halloween. Abbie had a cold the week of Halloween but by the time she dragged herself around the block and forced herself through a soccor game the next day, she was done. She developed a really high fever and crashed it hard. Within 24 hours we had three sick kids. 

Thankfully, with the help of lots of rest, plenty of fluids, and Netflicks Abbie and Nathan recovered quickly. Savannah unfortunately had a fever that just wouldn't go away, so after four days we took her into the doctor to discover....pneumonia.  Thanks to antibiotics she bounced back rather quickly and we just needed to recover from the TV binge that had been happening in our house.

Abbie recovered in time to go to temple square with me and they both managed to be well enough to climb on grandma and grandpa's trees.

 ...and Savannah made it to her class's drama performance of the Lost Little Witch, wherein she played a mouse and did a fantastic job.

This week, for five full days everyone was healthy enough to play and wrestle to their hearts content.

Until yesterday when Savannah woke up with a fever that by the afternoon had climbed to 105. I have never had a kid with a fever that high but it scared me. Thankfully, after a trip the instacare, we learned it was strep throat and another round of antibiotics later, we are on the mend. Again.

** PS - Savannah's pneumonia was diagnosed on my birthday, which was, as you can imagine, fun, thankfully Russ and I went out on the weekend and had a wonderful time at the symphony.

Halloween Prep

I had no idea what to do for Nathan's costume this year. Thankfully, my neighbor has three boys and a fetish for costumes and thrift shops, so she loaned us Nathan's costume.

 The girls will both be witches for this year's Halloween festivities. Savannah is a nice witch and Abbie is Hermione Granger. Both are pretty darn excited this year.

Monday night was pumpkin carving Family Home Evening. We grew our pumpkins this year to increase our fun. Unfortunately, home grown pumpkins haven't been genetically modified to be good for carving. The biggest, Abbie's, broke our bread knife. The new ("Now with stronger blades!") pumpkin carving knifes we bought were bent within seconds. Needless to say the project took a little longer and more patience than expected. 

Last week Russ and I were invited to a Halloween party at our friends' house. While I do have sandy blonde hair, the race issue made me avoid LaFawnduh and instead I went as Deb. Russ was the life of the party as Kip. (Your mom goes to college!)

Fall Break

This fall break we made our semi-annual pilgrimage down south. We had a great time with friends, played in sand and water and relaxed. We had hoped to go to Vegas to visit Russ's sister but the prospect of driving there and then all the way home in one day was a little daunting. ( Sorry Jen, we really wanted to go, we just need to make it during a longer trip.)

The neighborhood is building after many recession years of stagnation. This means backhoes all around, much to Nathan's delight.

We went to the "Red Rock Park" climbed and ran and played hide and go seek. The kids had a blast showing their favorite places to their friends.

Then we went to the White Sand Dune Amphitheater and climbed and hiked and played in sand some more. The truth is, we pretty much do the same thing every time we go south, but we love it all the same. 

Random Thoughts Sunday

Russ has accepted a job! It has been a roller coaster, highs, lows, and thankfully very, very fast. He will be working for a designer in California but in an office downtown. The people (all two of them) seem very nice and we are optimistic this will be a good fit. 

After seeing the canyon over Labor Day I made a goal to go up  once a week until after the height of leaf changing. So far, I've been able to meet my goal and it has reminded me why autumn and living by the mountains feed my soul. Friday the kids didn't have school so we went up with a bunch of friends and walked around a lake. It made all of the stress of my life just melt away.

Nathan has a new favorite game. Hide and Seek. He counts (1,2,3,8,9,10,12,13) and then explodes with excitement as he starts to find you. His joy in finding is almost matched in his joy in hiding. However he doesn't quite understand the concept of not wanting to be found. For him the goal is to be found as soon as possible. He whispers, giggles and laughs as people get nearer and nearer, and is thrilled when, in fact, they find him.

This week I learned that new furnaces cost between $4,000-$5,000 on the lowish end. Guess how I learned that....just guess. It was why I needed that stress-melting hike around the lake.

This weekend I got to spend some one on one time with both Abbie and Savannah. I can't tell you how much fun I had with each of them. Savannah made up a game called, "Do you Remember..." in which you state a memory and the other person says whether or not they remembered it. We had a great time talking about our favorite memories with each other and then  "trick" each other with difficult memories. She claims to remember her birth but then I claimed to remember a random night last summer.

Abbie and I went to the LDS Women's Conference with my mom and sister. Abbie was thrilled to be with the grown ups on this one, and she didn't let that intimidate her one little bit. At dinner she jumped right in the conversation. She alternated cuddling with me and grandma during the conference, (which was edifying) and loved the ice cream afterward. The only challenge of the night is the chocolate covered strawberries  weren't peanut-free, which we learned a little too late. Thankfully, there must not have been a lot of "peanut dust" in the chocolate as all that happened was a lot of throat clearing and a dose of Benadryl was all it took and she was fine.

Enjoy Your Day Here....

This week we decided to set it all aside. We needed a break from job searching, life planning, decision making, life switching stress.

So we set it on the shelf and ignored it all.

On the weekends.

Okay so maybe we didn't/couldn't/wouldn't take the full break that we really could have used, but it was a start.

 Labor Day we went hiking. It was still freezing in the mountains, but thankfully that also meant that the crowds hadn't arrived yet. (Relatively speaking.) I think this was the first hike we have done as a family where no one complained about anything at all, where they were excited to hike from beginning to end. Nathan even hiked the entire way back.

There is something therapeutic about being in the mountains for me. Unfortunately, over the years that therapy has been marred by constant or even less constant commentary on the weather (too cold), distance of the hike (too long), quality of the snacks (insufficient), wildlife (bugs), or any other thing about which my children can complain.  Labor Day was a return to the good life.

Thankfully the escapism didn't end. It was however interrupted with this.

Which I am very proud of, thank you very much.


Yesterday was my dad's company party at Lagoon. Abbie and Savannah were in kid-hyped heaven. They are at ages where they can really get into what their interests are so they just went gang busters on all their favorite rides. It couldn't have gone better for them.

We were really looking forward to taking Nathan as he is obsessed with all things that have an engine. When he saw the children's airplane ride he was thrilled. But as soon as we put him on, his frown came out, and when I went to take him out of the ride the tears came. (It breaks my heat that he held it together for the duration of the ride and then just lost it in the end.)

It took him several hours to recover, poor kid.

Thankfully, with the help of his sisters next to him and rides that didn't take him literally feet off the ground he was thrilled. He kept saying, "Again!" at the end of each ride and would just attempt to switch cars rather than return to the line. But unfortunately parents' job is to teach our children to be decent people. And decent people want to do the things that line jumpers do, but we don't. That is what makes us decent (Thank you Mike Birbiglia). So he had to return dejectedly  to wait in what were very long lines for a two-year-old. And the mother of a  two-year-old.

Random August Tidbits

Clearly, I've done a poor job at updating our weekly activities. If I'm totally honest it is because the last few weeks of real summer felt like running around trying to get everything done.Then the last few weeks of August have put us in a haze as we are reexamining job, life, goals, and directions and all of those minor, lighthearted issues. So this post is just a hodge podge of the last few major (or minor) events that happened to make it on camera....or bear repeating.

Shopping at Costco getting the girls fall jackets. (This is pre-job disaster.) However I will mention that both of those jackets are at least one size smaller than the girls' age. Abbie's is a 7-8, and Savannah's is a 5. Notice how the sleeves are rolled up. While smaller jackets would fit better there is some mom impulse in me that says, "They'll grow, they will grow into it...." 

 This was a sewing project afternoon. The girls each sewed the skirt they are wearing. (With a little help.) They both claimed to love them but they haven't been worn much since the event. (I can't say I was any better with any homemade clothes I made as a kid.)

 The girls and I took a special trip up to the Ogden Temple Re-dedication. It was amazingly uplifting. Nathan had a fever that day, which meant I got to totally focus on their experience and as we walked through each room I could pause and talk to them about it. Their favorite and mine, is "the room that makes you feel like you're in heaven." I was so glad that they were able to feel that and know what a wonderful place the temple is.

 The first day of school! First grade for Savannah and 3rd for Abbie.
 It bears mentioning that Savannah got a major haircut for 1st grade. I almost cried as my friend chopped off the long curls but she looks so cute in her little bob (this picture really doesn't do the haircut justice). Now she can brush her own hair without tears which is one less daily battle and everyone really is a lot happier.

 I don't have any major pictures of Nathan right now...probably because he wont hold still for any. But a new "Nathanism" poped up this week. Much to his sisters' delight, he calls his favorite snack, Pirate Booty, Pirate Poopy.

And yes....one more trip to the zoo. With a zoo pass, it is our go-to get out of the house activity.