Happenings

Here are some things that happened Last week in brief. Maybe I'll get to post more on "Wordful Wednesday". I caught the one tender moment my children had with each other on camera! How cute are they? They are such darling kids and I love them so much. I could just squish them silly!

I made strawberry jam. Five batches which translates to 81/2 gallons of jam. When you think about it that way, that ends up being a lot of jam. I also figured out that we used about 25 cups of sugar, wow! I haven't figured out how much that is in pounds but I don't think I want to know.

Mack got a hair cut! At first I hated it but now I'm used to it and he looks better, just skinnier without all of that fluff. And yes, we ended up naming him "Mack" It started as Benny, then went to Sylvester (Sly for short) then Rascal, then Maverick which got shortened to "Mack" because that was what Clare called him and Mack it has stayed.....at least for the last two months.

Clare's Room

We finally got Clare's room done. We pulled out the carpet, refinished the original oak floor, filled numerous holes, painted a wheat yellow with white trim. Clare also graduated to a big girl twin size bed with a Dora the Explorer comforter. It was supposed to be a birthday present but I didn't get it done on time. The cute bed frame I got from David's Sister, Carla. We painted it a milky white and then scuffed and distressed it. Turned out way cute. Before the Big renovation. Green walls, green carpet. Not bad, just outdated.

Clare loves her new bed. She also thinks that when you smile you have to have your eyes closed.

The finished product. Finally.

Happy Esther -oops, I mean, Easter

We had a very good Easter. We spent the day house hunting and easter egg hunting at Becky's house. Becky is always a terrific hostess and we had tons of fun. The kids loved playing with cousins, coloring eggs, and hunting them down. Sunday we just hung out, went on a walk with the kids, and then for dinner we had a little fire in our fire pit in the back yard and had hot dogs and dutch oven potatoes. Yum! I found some! I found some!

Hyrum had a blast..As always. He thoroughly enjoys everything he does. He is a fun little boy.

Yeah for Clare!

Clare and Natalie are very best friends and did their Easter Egg hunt together.

Wordful Wednesday

This was a hard one. I had a hard time narrowing it down, especially since it had to be a person without obvious religious affilliations. I kind of cheated a little when I chose C.S. LEWIS. His Chronicles of Narnia books are my most favorites reads in the world. He simplified the plan of salvation (even though he didn't know that was what it was) into stories that weremagical for children, yet had depth enough for an adult to read over and over again and still find significance. His life was an amazing yet lowly journey. He was a professor at Cambridge University in Great Britain and lived as a bachelor with his brother until he was quite advanced in age. He married an American woman with a young son after she requested it of him, she needed to remain in Britain and her union with Lewis would provide her with British citizenship. They fell deeply in love and were happy for a short time until she developed cancer and died a short time later. Lewis was paralyzed with grief yet was finally able to overcome it as he realized that his wife's young son needed him to overcome the loss of his dear mother. The movies "Shadowlands" is a wonderful depiction of Lewis' story. I definitely recommend it.

I can't go though without mentioning the other inspirational people that surround me. Luckily, there are many that I can mention. I am blessed to have so many wonderful examples. Okay, where do I start???....
Mom: She lived for years on NOTHING, yet none of us kids would ever tell you that we were poor growing up. She helped us feel there was always enough, and there was.
Carla: She has four kids, three stepkids, one on the way, a close to full time job, and she is still cheerful and happy and finds time to clean her house, make dinner, and do fun activities with her family. Amazing.
Denise: She does it all, great cook, super creative, super organized, tough cookie and can look great doing it. And she has a totally adorable youngster.
Erin Miller: One of my missionary companions. The most spiritual and faithful person I know. She is a true spiritual giant and can see the good in every situation.
Montse Wadsworth: How do you do it? Anyone who does wordful wednesday will know what I'm talking about.
Marci Case: Right now she is living in a two bedroom house that is being remodled with three kids and a niece that is staying with her. Marci, your a real trooper. I'd be in the nuthouse.....like 6 months ago.
.......I could go on and on. Pretty much everyone I know is amazing. I am really lucky to have such wonderful people around me. Hopefully I will someday live up to their incredible examples.

The Terrible Twos are Over....Right?

Clare had a birthday on Monday. She is now three years old and officially over the terrible twos....right? Sigh.... More later on her adventures into the realm of true creative naughtiness. Clare had a good birthday complete with muffins for breakfast which she helped make.. and sample. We played at McDonalds and had icecream. She is a beautiful little girl and a lot of fun...Very busy fun. Clare sampling the corn muffins

Clare enjoying her cupcake with chocolate frosting.

When I was on the phone with my sister this morning I got neglectful in my motherly duties and was not paying attention to what my darling pair of kidos were doing. Clare had found my Jergens "Intensive Rescue" lotion and a paint brush. Interesting combination. Hyrum ended up getting a complete paint job in hypoallergenic and unfragranced lotion. Our bedroom wall was also treated to some extra moisturizing lotion. After a short bath Hyrum is lotion free...(although his skin and hair [as well as the wall] do have a soft and healthy glow)

Clare colored in her new princess book...and on the countertop...this was before the lotion incident. Ooops! gotta go, Hyrum just broke a glass and cut his hand a little. I wonder how he got that glass.......CLARE!!!!!!!!!!

Wordful Wednesday

Since I don't know how to do this I'm just kind of wingin' it. One of my favorite comedians is Jack Handey. He has gotten more raunchy through his more recent stuff but I love his bazaar sense of humor. Here are a couple of he "Deep Thoughts"
"When I think back on all the arguments Martha and I have had, I realize how silly most of them were. And it makes me wonder why she wanted to argue over such stupid things...I think I'll go ask her."

"Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny."

I think that I like that one so much becuase whenever I see someone fall (or get hurt in any manner) my first instinct is to laugh. It happens when I hurt myself too..it's usually just a hysterical reaction to a bad situation in every case. sigh.....

Spring????

It has been forever since I made a post. We have been so busy that it just hasn't happened. First my Mom came down to visit us for a couple of days and we had lots of fun with her. It was super fun to have her here. We shopped and cooked and watched "Reba" and hung out and talked. Thanks Mom for coming to see us. While Mom was here we invited my Aunt and Uncle a some of their married children that live around here to come and have lunch with us and chat. It was so fun to have them here. I have not had the opportunity to get to know any of my cousins very much because we lived so far away from them as I was growing up. It was good to have them here and hang out for a while. We managed to maim only one of them too. Poor little Janie got a good wack on the head after she fell back in the bar stool she was sitting in. I felt so terrible. Hopefully there were no residual effects.
After Mom left we got busy working on the basement painting, ripping up carpet, pad and old tack strip and installing all of the new pad and tack strip. We had a friend who does carpet professionally come and install the carpet for us. It looks so great. I have also been working on refinishing a twin bed for Clare. I will include pix of that when I get done.

More improvements

We just replaced the carpet in our basement. I hated spending time down there before. Look at how dark and depressing it was. If you can't see the colors of this flooring gem, they are red, orange, black, and olive green. Whoever invented it should be inducting into the ugly carpet hall of fame and then banned from ever inventing ANYTHING again because man......they have bad ideas.

Before: When we took the carpet to the dump the people next to us were nudging each other and pointing. Finally they called over to us: "Wow! That is some ugly carpet!" Yep, I think we won the ugly carpet contest. The finished product. Except without any furniture or decorations. I still don't know what I'm going to do with that. I have lots of stuff to put on the walls, I just am not sure where or what to use.