Busy week...

This has been a busy week...but then what week isn't busy! I've been busy making cards, mini-scrapbook albums and other stuff for a craft fair up at my parents'. Tonight is my scrapbook night (now known as Girls' Night) at church. Luckily, the tables are still set up from Wednesday night when I taught a scrapbook class to the Young Women. Joshua will help me arrange the chairs how we want them when we get there at 5:30 and help me set out stuff and we'll be ready to go when it starts at 6. I'm hoping we'll have several people there. I know that there will be at least 4 people (besides Carrie and I) so that will be fun. The craft/mini project I'm "teaching" this month is a Scrapbook in a Box. A friend gave me the directions over a year ago. Joshua and I made one for Brian for Father's Day last year and then one for each set of great-grandparents at Christmas. They're pretty easy and pretty fast to make. Well, not for teenage girls :) Between chattering and trying to figure out how to find 1/4" on a ruler (I just shook my head) it took them close to two hours to make theirs. I'm hoping that grown-ups will be a little faster. I'm also taking some stuff for Joshua to make some Halloween decorations. Another friend gave directions for making Ghost windsocks out of crepe paper and construction paper at Enrichment last week. I think we're going to do pumpkins and ghosts. A few other little kids might be there for a little while until their dad can pick them up, so we'll have enough for them all. And when they finish that - there's always coloring and stamping...I'd better remember the washable ink pads.
Nathaniel is STILL napping from when he fell asleep on the way to take Joshua to school - 3 hours ago!!! I'm going to have to wake him up in a few minutes so we can go pick him up. I need to change my clothes too. I'm wearing old sweats. I got away with them to drop him off since I don't get out of the car, but I have to sign him out when I pick him up, so I'd better get some jeans on...and brush my teeth, haven't gotten to that yet today. Well, sleepy head just woke up and shut himself in their room. He does that EVERY day...instead of opening the door all the way (I leave it cracked so I can hear him), he closes it and then stands there and knocks on it and calls to me. I'll have to add some pictures later. If I'm going to get a parking spot within half a block of the school I need to leave in about 4 minutes!

8 Years Ago Today...

...Brian proposed to me. It's amazing how quickly time flies! Our date that night had been going to the Corn Maze in Woodland and then we had dinner at Lyons and then after that we talked and ended up driving over to the Stake Center and he proposed there. It wasn't what he'd planned to do that night, but he knew that was what he needed to do. I laugh about it sometimes...I had my first and only boyfriend for less than a week before he became my fiance. We don't have a picture of us from that night, but we do have a picture from the first time we met. His parents took this picture of us in the parking lot at their apartment complex in Davis. I'd met him at his homecoming from his mission in Brazil a few hours before and we were heading over to his brother's in Woodland for a family dinner. And for anyone who doesn't know the story...we'd been writing for several months before we actually met, so it wasn't like we were total strangers. So this picture was taken Sept. 19, 1999...the day we met - two days after he got home from his mission.

What a Day!

Man, Sunday was quite a day! It started out with me finally having caught the cold or whatever that everyone else had. Sore throat (Friday & Saturday) and sinus pain (Saturday and Sunday and still today). I was still planning on going to church since I haven't been to our ward once this month (visiting in Etna, sick kids and stake conference...and next week we'll be in Woodland at Brian's great-nephew's blessing) and needed to go. Well, Joshua woke up with a lovely "bark" (hate that kind of cough) so that decided it, we were staying home. I asked him how he felt and he said, "Listen to my cough...how do you think I feel?" Of course, by 9:30 he felt better and not another cough was heard the rest of the day. But for him, it was the perfect excuse to stay in his new pajamas. He told me they were so comfy that he could just wear them all day - which he did until it was time to go to Uncle Terry's for Michelle's birthday. He's feeling fine today, so no missed school. And no having to cancel dentist appointments this afternoon.

Nathaniel has made some new discoveries this week. For one, he discovered that all the cupboards in the kitchen can be opened and there are all kinds of new treasures in them to play with. Sometimes Mommy gets a little upset with him playing with these new treasures, but that doesn't stop him. So, to continue with this new trend of opening things, he discovered (when Joshua went to get a movie out yesterday morning that they could watch so I could lay on the couch and wait for my sinuses to explode) that the drawers on the table thingie the TV sits on pull open. And the treasures in them are some of his favorite things in the world - DVDs! Nathaniel in about thirty seconds flat can remove every DVD on the shelf at his level in the book case where we keep most of the DVDs. Up until now, he hasn't ever discovered the drawers were the rest are kept. Well, as you can see from these pictures he had fun emptying one of the drawers. He was just getting started on the second one. Even smashing his fingers TWICE in a drawer did not deter him from his mission of flinging movies right and left. Luckily, both Joshua and I were well out of distance sitting/reclining on the couch. I probably should have stopped him from doing it, but at the moment I had about as much energy as the pillow I was using, so I just watched. Once I got them all picked up, he didn't try it again, so maybe he decided it wasn't as much fun as just pulling them off the shelf was. This second picture isn't really him looking down because he'd been chastized or because he was sad about what he'd done. No, he was laughing at me and looked down just as I took the picture. Goofy kid! A few hours later he wasn't laughing quite so much. After Brian got home from church and home teaching, we were talking about what I'd missed and the boys were playing in their bedroom. Well, Nathaniel comes running out of their room at top almost 13 month old speed...with almost 13 month old control and balance...and tripped over his feet and hit his forehead right above his left eye on the door jamb/molding by our storage closet in the hall. He had so much momentum behind him that he hit pretty hard. Of course within seconds a HUGE goose egg appeared on his forehead. We got a cold washcloth on it right away. He screamed and screamed. Joshua was pretty upset because he'd been roaring at him (a game they play) and "scared" him (Nathaniel actually runs away laughing) and that's when the accident happened. My first thought after it happened was. Great...and the bishop (Brian's doctor and he has done a house call or two for us in the past) is out of town this weekend. I'd been getting ready to take a shower when this all happened, so while Brian tried to keep something cold on the bump, I hopped in the shower. I knew Nathaniel was feeling okay when I got out, because I could hear him chattering and playing with something in the living room.

He had no focusing problems or anything with his eyes and we kept a close eye on him and he was fine. The swelling had gone down quite a bit from the time we got to Terry and Theresa's around 4:15 to when we left around 7:45 and looks even better this morning. We keep saying he's going to be the kid that gets us to the emergency room with all his daredevil actions at this age already. Almost did it yesterday.

So hopefully today will be a calmer day. My sinuses are still bugging me, though only on one side and not so badly. Some sudafed will hopefully help with that. It's change the sheets day - yuck. And I've got bananas that are begging to be made into bread, so I'd better get going on that. But before I do that I wanted to post my scripture of the day...missed doing that over the weekend. Today's is John 6:47 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." A lovely thought...one that gives hope.

What's that falling from the sky? No, it can't be...

...it is...RAIN!!! We haven't seen that in awhile. Yesterday afternoon and evening we had a thunderstorm and rain. This morning we woke up to rain again. And two stuffy boys. Joshua seems to have gotten "unstuffed" since he's been up, but Nathaniel is back to the leaky faucet nose. His nose had finally "dried up" late last week...and now it's started again. He seemed tired this morning, no fever though, but he fell asleep in my arms about half an hour ago. So, hopefully an hour and a half nap will be enough for this morning, because we have to take Joshua to school at 1130. I'll let him sleep as long as I possibly can...that's what I did yesterday. Joshua is excited to wear his new rain coat today. I'll have to try and get a picture of him in it. He wants to take his umbrella but, luckily, I don't know where it is right now. That's the last thing he needs to take to school! He'd want to use it as a light saber or sword at recess!
I've just about got my stuff together for the class on leading music I'm teaching tonight at Enrichment...though it finally dawned on me yesterday that I'm only going to have about 15 minutes to teach this and that is so not enough time. Oh well, hopefully I can cover enough basics that we can get some more of the sisters to be able to fill in when regular choristers are out of town. I think I'm going to scrapbook with Joshua for a little bit before it's lunchtime and school time.
Today's scripture is: Psalms 34:13 "Keep thy tongue from evil, and they lips from speaking guile." This is an interesting scripture...but very important...how different the world would be if this was kept...no speaking evil of others or saying deceitful and untrue things about others. The politicians wouldn't know what to do! Or all those newsprograms! A good reminder to not gossip, too.

Mid-week...

Nothing overly exciting going on in our lives. Joshua's at school (today is a morning kinder day), Nathaniel is napping and Brian is at work. I'm trying to get my stuff together for the class I'm teaching on conducting music at Enrichment tomorrow night. I need to blow up some things on the copier, but need to wait until Nathaniel is awake because it's kind of loud. I taught myself how to lead music out of the back of the hymn book, so this will be interesting. The church has a conducting course book...I was able to download it from lds.org and it has a lot of helpful information in it, but I'm only going to have about 15 minutes to teach this, so we'll see how much I can cram in! I'm trying to figure out some other things for Enrichment, to get prepared for the coming months and how to get things working. And try to get stuff ready for the craft fair in Etna in a couple of weeks. At least Nathaniel slept all night last night - for the most part. It was after 11, I think, when he finally fell asleep. But he didn't wake up until 7. We put the rail thingie that we used on the side of Joshua's bed when he went into a twin bed...we used that on his crib mattress on the floor so he couldn't roll all over the room in his sleep. So I don't know if that helped or what, we'll see tonight.
I'm trying to do better at reading my scriptures every day...I think about it every day, does that count? Anyway, we have a little perpetual calendar that we got at Deseret Book several years ago and it has a scripture for each day. So I thought, well, I'll at least make sure to read that every day, that'll be a start. So today's scripture was short, yet powerful...John 14:15 "If ye love me, keep my commandments." So simple, yet so hard sometimes - in different ways for everyone.
No pictures today...unless I take some of the boys later, I haven't taken many pictures in the past week or so...hate being that busy that I don't even take pictures of them...and they're so dang cute :)

Technical Difficulties, I guess

Sorry to anyone who looked at this over the weekend and found a bunch of photobucket logos and stuff. I guess the person I downloaded the template from exceeded their bandwidth (however you do that) and for some reason that messed up the templates. So, as cute as that was and so were her other ones that I wanted to use eventually, I guess I'll just stick with blogger's premade ones. So now, back to our regularly scheduled blog. Have a nice Monday!

Blogger video

Well, I noticed the other day that Blogger now has a way for you to upload videos. And Carol has done so successfully in her new blog, so I'm going to see how it works and if it makes things load any better for people than dropshots did.

This first video is from last September when Brian sang at the Sacramento Temple Dedication. This is from the rehearsal the day before. The boys and I went to that (Nathaniel was 6 days old) because I wanted to hear it and being as Nathaniel was so little, I wasn't attending the dedication.

This next video is from Grandma Darlene's 80th birthday a couple of weeks ago. Nathaniel had a blast taking things from her little cupboard, putting them on the rug by the sink and then taking them back again. It was too funny to watch him.

School Picture day, sorta'

Well, today was school picture day. Joshua was pretty excited about it. Yesterday he got his haircut. Today he got already in a cool T-shirt and shirt combo from Grandma Lorrayne. We combed his hair all nice and took some practice pictures here at home before heading to school. (Because I knew his hair would be lucky to last through my photo shoot much less playing until his class took theirs and it almost made it through my pictures).

After I dropped him off - which took forever because of people dropping off kids in the drop off/pick up zone who park their cars and leave them there...and park them so you can't drive by them....and then like the less than intelligent people in front of me...park in the street waiting for one parent to go drop off the kid while they sit there. I thought they were waiting to go through the drop off zone like I was. When I realized they were parked there I got really annoyed. And then I got even more irritated when I pulled closer to the drop off zone and saw that a truck parked there was slightly diagonal and the rear was three feet from the curb so there was no way that any car could get past it. Which meant that the two mini vans behind it, whenever their drivers decided to get back to them, couldn't go anywhere anyway! Finally the truck and front mini van moved, I was able to pull in and let Joshua out and apologized for him for him not having time to play because we were waiting for so long. Then as he got out, I watched the driver of the last parked van, herd a bunch of kids - none of them kindergarten age - to the van. Some day care person had been dropping off or picking up a kinder kid and let all the other kids run around and play on the playground! Umm, either park somewhere else and do that or take the kids to the park after you pick up/drop off said kinder student! Before I picked up Joshua, I went into the office to chat with Juanita, one of the secretaries that knows me from when I used to teach there. I told her my problem and she said well, kinder parents can park there to pick up kids because we have to sign out our kinder kids. I said, yes, but that makes it difficult when the morning parents are doing that 11:35 (when morning kinder gets out) and the afternoon parents are dropping off the kids before the 11:45 start time (when pm class starts). That had been a concern of some people (like the secretaries and teachers) but the powers that be hadn't gotten the idea. So she wrote it down and is going to bring it up to someone. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, I went visiting teaching after dropping Joshua off. Had two good visits, discussed our upcoming Enrichment Meeting with the Enrichment Counselor, since this is my first as Enrichment Leader (except I haven't been set apart yet, oh well), sat in the drive of our house for fifteen minutes with Nathaniel snoring in his carseat while I talked to Brian and read some stuff I'm altering for an activity and then went to the school to do the office chat mentioned above and pick up Joshua. As soon as Joshua's teacher see me she says, "Oh, did you get my message?" No, what message. Apparently, Joshua freaked out when it came time for his school picture to be taken and cried and didn't want it done. If I'd gotten the message and gotten over to the school before 2:30 we could've gotten them taken if he'd have gone with me and been okay with it. The just called using the number that I'd written on the photo payment envelope. Not thinking it was something that was going to be used today, I'd written the home phone number, not my cell number. Guess I just need to start putting that on stuff so I can be reached as needed. Which reminds me I'd better go charge that think before I need it and it's dead as a doornail.

Anyway, Joshua finally was able to explain to me that he'd been scared because the people taking pictures were strangers and he didn't know them. I explained to him that his teacher would never take him to people that were strange or scary and she'd keep him safe. From my teaching days, I remember that sometimes the photo people were really loud and animated trying to get kids to smile and I guess that could freak a kid out. So, we'll have to try again at retakes. But his picture won't be on the class picture, most likely. And that's what I really wanted. I took some good pictures of him today that I like. We decided to get a package with an 8x10 and all for his first school pictures, but now I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.

Here are the pictures I took:

Oh, and a welcome to the blogging world to my sisters Carol and Carrie. They've both created blogs in the past couple of days. Welcome to the fun :)

Grandma Darlene's 80th birthday

Last Sunday was Grandma Darlene's 80th birthday...we had her party the afternoon before. I have a hard time believing my grandmother is 80 (well, that either of my grandmothers are 80 because my paternal grandma turned 80 last year)...especially as I watched her step over the kid gate set up in my parents kitchen doorway last Sunday with more ease than either my mom or I had used...and she was wearing cut-off jeans shorts...not quite what you picture an 80 year old wearing! My sisters and I made her a scrapbook - celebrating her life, her children, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren - it was a lot of work and we barely finished it in time, but she seemed to really like it. Here is the title page:

We'd also done one for my dad's 60th birthday that we gave to him the same day. Here's his title page:

Dad's album is all uploaded in my gallery:

http://forum.storytellersclub.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=1076

I'm still in the process of uploading Grandma's, put her's will be here:

http://forum.storytellersclub.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=1077

Well, blogger won't let me load any more pictures, so i guess I'm done for right now. I downloaded a template from another person's blog and somehow deleted my Books I've Read in 2007 list and my Scrapbook Pages Completed list. Thank goodness I'm keeping track of my book list somewhere else or I might cry! And the scrapbook list wasn't as long. So unless I can figure out what happened there, I'll have to try and get the time to retype all of that...ugh!!

Grandma & Grandpa's Garden

When we were up visiting my parents over Memorial Day weekend, Joshua (and Nathaniel, kind of) helped them plant their garden. He helped plant yellow crookneck squash and green beans. Over the past few months, Mom and Dad have sent him pictures of how the garden has progressed. They also had planted tomatoes and chard. Well, while we were up there last weekend, Joshua got to help Grandpa pick the "fruits" of the garden. He discovered that he liked cherry tomatoes (which he changed his mind about after we got home with two sandwich bags full of them...and Brian doesn't like them and Nathaniel won't eat them, so I've got a bunch to eat), doesn't like squash and still likes beans from Grandma's garden. He watched Grandma can some for us to bring home and saw how they changed color once they were canned (he thought that was interesting).

Here's Nathaniel looking out the bedroom window at Daddy, Grandpa and Joshua. He could hear Joshua and Grandpa, but could only see Daddy from the window I had him in. Silly boy!

We missed out on the raspberries that they have planted alongside the driveway, but we were able to go pick some blackberries at the top of the hill Sunday evening. There's nothing better than fresh blackberries that you pick yourself - those store-bought ones are in no way comparable. Brian and I took the boys on a little walk up the road - that hill seemed much taller when I was a kid...especially the one time I went sledding on it when the city used to block it off when we had plenty of snow. They can't do that anymore since someone built a house on the side of it with the driveway going out to the road...darn progress. Brian was worried about snakes in the blackberry bushes...I told him he didn't need to worry...but watch out for mountain lions. One summer when I was home for a weekend from college, a mountain lion did walk down the street. My sisters and visiting cousins were walking up the street from our grandparents that lived one house down from us. They saw that lion and ran up the driveway of our mutual neighbor's house, climbed the fence into our driveway and hurried in the back door. I was watching this from the kitchen window. I'm not sure if Brian believed me or not...have to have one of my sisters back up that story for me.

Nathaniel was disappointed that I wouldn't take him out of the stroller and let him run around. No shoes, too many stickery weeds - it wasn't going to happen. He showed his annoyance in his diaper - but we finished our walk around a few blocks anyway.

Nathaniel's First Birthday

It's hard to believe that Nathaniel has already turned one! How fast that first year has gone! And how quickly he has grown! He now weighs about 22 pounds, 30 (or so) inches tall and is non-stop motion! If I could bottle his energy and sell it we'd be rich! He's working on his fifth tooth (about through the gum) and a few more. He climbs on EVERYTHING...piano, couch, windowsill, toys, toybox, you name it. He also puts EVERYTHING in his mouth...pieces of cracker that haven't gotten swept up from under the high chair, bits of grass tracked in on someone's shoes, toys, paper, plugs (after he pulls them out of the wall), etc. Very different than Joshua in that respect.

He's so much fun though.

Here is more about his birthday last week...copied from an email that I sent out to just about everyone :)

Hard to believe how fast that first year went!! We celebrated with some of Nathaniel's aunts and uncles yesterday (Sunday the 26th) as his "pre-birthday" bash. Uncle Terry and Aunt Theresa Lee invited us to come over to their house where there's more space (plus a pool - which neither Joshua or Nathaniel can get enough of) which was so nice of them. We took taco salad and cakes - Nathaniel's own "special" cake and then one for everyone else. Nathaniel was nice enough to share his cake with his daddy and his cousin Elisha since neither of them are eating much chocolate now for different reasons - but we made sure to get their pieces BEFORE Nathaniel dove in. Aunt Theresa had made a fruit salad and jello. Nathaniel enjoyed the food, but really had fun with the cake! After more swimming it was time to open presents...he got some cute clothes from Aunt Carrie, cute stuffed animals from Aunt Sarah and Uncle Dave and fun toys from cousins Elisha & Tim and baby Zachary, Uncle Terry, Aunt Theresa and cousin Michelle and Aunt Theresa's mom and dad - Grandma & Grandpa McFarland. He's been having fun with his toys all day long...and so has Joshua - before and after school. To top off the evening there was even a piñata!! At first Nathaniel wasn't sure about hitting it, but once he figured out that you swing the piñata stick just like a light saber during battle (well, at least how he and Joshua battle) he had fun. He did not have fun giving anyone else a turn and Aunt Carrie had to console him while Joshua and others took some swings at "Lighting McQueen". Tonight (Monday the 27th) he gets one of his favorite foods - spaghetti (let's hope he still likes it, it's been a couple of weeks since he had it last) for dinner and then ice cream. We had enough cake last night. And he'll get to open his presents from Mommy, Daddy and Joshua.

Nathaniel's birthday breakfast was a banana. We had some waffles in the freezer from the last time we made them, but he didn't want those. He just wanted a banana. Once we got him convinced to not eat the peel, he did pretty well.

Joshua had a waffle...with chocolate chips on it instead of syrup. We told him that with his "black" teeth he looked like Jack Sparrow...quite the little pirate we've got.

Birthday dinner was "spaghetti" (well, I was out of actual spaghetti, so we used shells...he didn't care) for the boys and I. Brian had something different since he can't really do spaghetti now (don't know if it's the pasta or the tomato sauce), but I can't remember what I fed him. Anyway, Nathaniel thoroughly enjoyed his dinner.

Then it was time to open presents. He liked ripping the paper, and sometimes got more interested in the paper than he was in finishing opening the gift!

Back with more soon, but...

...don't we have the cutest boys in the world!! I took these pictures after Joshua got home from school today. The new T-shirt that Nathaniel got for his birthday (thank you Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Lorrayne) has orange in it and Joshua was wearing an orange shirt and I thought, hey, that'd make a cute picture. We had a big weekend up in Etna and Fort Jones celebrating Great-Grandma Darlene's 80th birthday. Tomorrow I'll hopefully have time to post about that and Nathaniel's birthday last week (I think I emailed pictures and stuff to everyone that reads this blog, but just in case I'll put some up here too!)

Just had to share these pictures!