My Special Mother by: Kiersten

For Mother's day each person in her class wrote about their mother. This is what she had to say about me:

In case you can't read it, between the pencil and her spelling it is kind of hard to read, it says," My mom is the most wonderful mom in the whole world! She's as pretty as a princess. She weighs 60 and is 32 feet tall. Her favorite food is pork chops. In the days when Mom was little, she used to go to church. I think Mom looks funny when she runs around the house and puts on her make-up. I know she is mad when she hears me say a bad word. I wish mom would put me to bed everyday with me everyday. I wouldn't trade my mom for anything! I think my mom is cute! I love her very much!"

And, just to clarify a few things . . . I do like pork chops, especially when Nate grills them with a dill marinade, but of all the yummy things in the world, pork chops certainly aren't my favorite. We must have had them the night before she filled out this page! Just in case you are wondering, I didn't stop going to church now that I've grown up - I still go. I'm not sure what to say about the "runs around the house and puts on her makeup comment." I think I'll just leave that one to your imagination! And, I'm pretty sure that the bad words she's referring to are words like, "stupid" and "ugly" because she comes home talking about people on the bus who say bad words and we always talk about how it isn't good to say bad words. I think I traumatized the poor girl when I called something stupid the other day!

Tanner's Favorite Book

Tanner loves stories, and loves being read to, and he also likes routines, especially when it comes to books. He gets on a kick and wants the same 2 books read every day at nap time and at bed time (he'd love more, but I've had to limit him or I fall asleep before I finish reading!) Currently, and it has been this way for at least the last 3 weeks, his 2 favorites are "Frank was a Monster who Wanted to Dance" and "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." Like I said, we read these books at least twice a day, but sometimes more (I think the most I've read it is 5 times in the same day, and 3 of those were right in a row)!

Knowing Tanner, this should come as no surprise that this is his favorite page:



And every time we read it - even when we're on the third time of a triple-header - he points out that Frank's eye has a plug on it. And he's delighted by that fact every time. I worry that Tanner now thinks his eyeballs are connected with plugs and cords! Oh well, in his world that is a good thing!

A Little Overboard?!?!?

I love shopping for cute clothes for Kiersten, so I've been a little bummed with Kiersten starting school and them having to wear uniforms. Well, not really uniforms, but "uniform colors" it's called. It's nothing like what my parents tell us about in Hong Kong, but there isn't much I can do within the guidelines. So now, for the first time in her life, Kiersten has an entire wardrobe centered around blues and khakis. So my shopping turned to ribbons and flowers for lots of hair bows. I know some of you think I've gone overboard with hair bows in the past, but this time I think I really may have gone overboard . . .

We're 4 weeks into school and she hasn't repeated a hair bow, she hasn't worn them all yet, and I still have ribbon that I haven't even used yet, so there are still more hair bows just waiting to be made!

Not only do I have an abundance of hair bows, but I also have lots of left over ribbon (because of course I can't make more than one bow (or set of bows) out of each kind of ribbon!), and I'm pretty sure if I'd clean my mess up I'd be well past my "limit" of 4 boxes of ribbon! It's a good thing Nate's a sweetheart and I think he always knew that I wouldn't be able to stick to only 4 boxes of ribbon

More than He Bargained For!

The other day Nate agreed to grill hamburgers for dinner. What he didn't know was that a monsoon would hit right as he headed out to get the grill started. Poor guy, by the time the burgers were done, he was soaked and the storm was pretty much done. Good thing he was in his swimsuit - he'd tried to take Kiersten and Tanner swimming that afternoon, but the pool closed right as they got there because of the coming storm. We have so many false alarms that even that wasn't enough to warn us that it might not be the best night for grilling outside! (Too bad rain doesn't photograph well; this doesn't do justice to the high winds and sheets of rain.)

Why do I bother boying toys?

This is Tanner's favorite way to spend the day . . .
He can go all day without playing with a single toy, as long as he can have the vacuum! He takes the plug and "plugs" it into the end of the attachment and he's ready to go.
Unfortunately I can't use this to my advantage. He won't play with it when the vacuum is really on, so I still have to go back and vacuum. But, thankfully if I need him to be occupied while I get something done, I can say, "Tanner, go vacuum the family room," and I can count on him being occupied for at least 10-15 minutes!

She's so excited, she just can't wait!

With the new year, one of the things I've been looking forward to is changing the time we go to church. Last year we went from 2-5 and I absolutely dreaded it. But this year we've got the 8 spot. It's a little early to be out the door in the mornings, but being home by 11:30 is WONDERFUL!

So, we've been talking a lot with Kiersten, letting her know that she's going to have to get up early (for the past few weeks she and Tanner have been sleeping until at least 7:30, if not later - it's been wonderful) and get ready quickly for church. Kiersten has been very excited to wear this dress to church that Aunt Angie sent her. So was so excited, in fact, that she came out Saturday night wearing the dress, and then pulled her pajamas on over it. That way, when she wakes up in the morning all she'll have to do is take off her pajamas and she'll be ready to go to church. Nate and I laughed so hard - she looks like she had a pretty large growth around her middle! (And Angie, you were worried about the wrinkles from shipping it. That was nothing compared to being bunched up in her pajamas!) We finally managed to convince her that there would be plenty of time to get dressed in the morning and that she didn't need to sleep in her dress.

Then the next morning when the alarm went off at 6 I noticed that Kiersten's light was on. I figured it was left on from one of her many gettings up in the night and didn't think much about it. As I was doing Kiersten's hair she told me that she woke up really early (it would have still been dark out), and thought it was time to get dressed, so she got up, turned on her light and put her dress on. Then she decided she was still tired, so she climbed back into bed and fell back asleep.

Maybe next time we should just let her wear her dress to bed!

Santa borrows our wrapping paper

WARNING: Don't read this with children who still believe in Santa!

I had hid a role of wrapping paper in our closet a few months ago, planning to wrap all of the presents from Santa with it. I had done really well keeping it hidden from the kids up until Christmas Eve day. That afternoon Nate had taken the kids out to do something and while they were gone I pulled out a present for Kiersten from my parents that I'd hidden in the back of my closet. In the process of getting the present out, I had to move the "Santa" wrapping paper. I fully intended to put it back in it's hiding place before they got home. However, I got busy and forgot.

After Nate and the kids got home, I assigned Kiersten the job of wiping down all the door handles with a Clorox wipe (we really didn't want to spread Kiersten's pink eye!). The first door she heads off to do is my closet door, and right away she spots the "Santa" wrapping paper. Not knowing why I would have wrapping paper in my closet, she says, "Mom you have pretty snowflake wrapping paper in your room." I try not to make a big deal out of it and agree with her. As soon as she leaves my room I go in and hide the paper, but the damage is already done.

Nate and I try to decide what to do. It's too late to go buy another role of paper and re-wrap all the presents from Santa (I'm too cheap and lazy!), so we figure we'll just hope for the best.

Christmas day arrives, and she doesn't say a thing. But, the day after Christmas she and I are headed to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of things, and out of the blue she asks me, "Mom, do you think Santa borrowed our wrapping paper?" "Yes I do" is my answer - that was a better solution than I had come up with. To that she says, "Wow! He must have been really quiet when he was wrapping presents, because he didn't wake me up at all!" I told her he didn't wake me up either, so he must have been really quiet!

Relief Society Christmas Dinner

Since I made reference to my "decorating monster" and blamed it on my Relief Society calling, I thought I would share a few pictures from our Christmas dinner. Our president is amazing when it comes to decorating, and Kiersten has learned quite a lot from her! :) The cultural hall was beautiful that night.(Yes, that is a Christmas Tree hanging upside down from the center of the ceiling.)

(The serving table.)

(One of many tables the sisters ate at. This was the first time we didn't have enough seats and had to hastily set up another table after the dinner started.)

You Can't Go Wrong . . .

So the other night Nate and Iwent out to dinner and ended up at a fairly new Greek restaurant near our house. I decided to try one of their sandwiches, and asked the waitress for recommendations. Her reply was, "Well, obviously in a Greek restaurant you can't go wrong ordering the Greek Gryo (pronounced jahy-roh, like in gyroscope)." Nate and I had the same thought, although we didn't say it out loud (at least not until she left the table!) "And you can't go wrong with a waitress who can't even correctly pronounce items on the menu!"

Despite our waitress I did try the gyro, and it was pretty good!

Some thngs I've learned recently . . .

The past couple of weeks have been full of "learning experiences" for me, so I thought I'd share some of the more interesting ones!

• Part of President Obama's stimulus package includes money to remove all of the kilometer signs along the highway by us. Yes, we do live along the only Interstate in the country that has kilometer markers - it was part of some experiment a while ago to see if it would work better than using miles like the rest of the country. For some reason it didn't take off - go figure! Not too long ago they went through and added mile marker signs that were turned at a funny angle, so that they would be there but not too distracting and interfere with the kilometer signs. So now Arizona has received federal money to take out the kilometer signs and rotate the mile marker signs. I'm so pleased to see our tax dollars being put to good use! (The other sad part of the story is that this article made the front page of our local paper 2 weeks ago! It must have been a slow news day!)
  
  
• I must be a bad mom because I think I've been starving my poor child! Tanner had his 9 month check up two weeks ago, and in the 3 months since his last check-up he's only grown 1 inch and he lost a pound. Nate and I are so worried about over feeding him (he'd eat himself sick at every meal if we'd let him), which tends to aggravate his spitting, that we cut him off before he acts full. Apparently we've been underfeeding him. So now I've got 3 weeks (we're down to one week!) to put weight on him or the doctor is going to start him on acid-reflux medication. But now I'm worried I'm over feeding him - in just 2 days he's starting to put on quite a belly! I just don't think I'm ever going to win this one!
  
  
• On a somewhat related note, I've discovered that blueberry yogurt comes back up a kind of a turquoise color, as my carpet, tile and clothes can attest to. Everything else seems to come back up the same color it went down.
  
  
• A whole bottle of mouthwash will not stain your carpet, even if you let it soak in for 5 hours while you take your kids to the zoo. Nate knew the day was off to a good start for us when I I called him at work at 8:30 am to ask him what he thought about me not cleaning the carpet right away since we were already late leaving to meet some friends at the zoo. He just laughed. All I know is, thank heavens for steam cleaners! Oh, and by the way, in case you are wondering - that was Tanner, not Kiersten, who got in the mouthwash and spilled a brand new bottle!
  
  
• I think my least favorite word in the English language (as other Mom's of 3-year-olds have said!) is the word, "why." "Why mom?" "Why is that a dog?" "Why is her name Michelle?" "Why do I have to have to have quiet time every day?" I especially want to scream when I'm on my 10th "why" question in a row, and we're going no where but in circles!
  

I think there was more, but I can't remember what else I was going to share. It must be real important, right? :)