Journaling

A long time ago, my mom would write a weekly letter and send it out to all our family. I love hearing from my family and friends, and I eventually started on this practice as well. I realized I could kill 2 birds with one stone here and that became my journal. Every week I would sit down and write a letter and email it out to my family and friends. I then printed a hard copy as well, since over the years we have moved from floppy disks to hard disks to CDs to thumb drives to store stuff, and I never could access the letters after I saved them!

A few years ago, I discovered Blurb.com. I may have mentioned before how much I absolutely LOVE them? Well, I do! And they have a nifty B&W text only option for peanuts. I decided to try it out, and I put all of my letters from 2007 into this little paperback book. Fabulous! I loved it! And now I had a lovely bound book journal. I felt so virtuous and obedient for keeping a journal. And I have done the same for the last years. Love it!

My sister Deborah, who is wonderful, let me know that she had saved all my previous emails. We won't go into how odd that may be, because I was delighted. I had all those letters in a binder somewhere (which I currently cannot locate), but to have them in a convenient hand sized book..... ahhhh, the thought made me giddy! Deborah was beyond marvelous and she individually opened and copied and pasted 52 letters into one long document for me for my 2002 letters. Then she decided that was a lot of work. (Which it was!) This past week, she thoughtfully got me all of 2003. Such fun! Sort-of. That was a tough year. I'm not sure I like reading about it. I feel like I was such a pansie.

I am still in the process of reading and fitting it into a book, since the cut and paste sometimes does odd things, and the last 3 letters come up missing on a few pages. It is so exciting though and I am so grateful for a loving and thoughtful sister who is willing to do so much work for me! Thanks Deborah!

And for your entertainment, I will post a portion of the letter written February 9, 2003 (When Joshua was 18 months old and I was ginormously pregnant with Marian.)

"Wednesday the bad stuff started. The day began innocently enough. We went to the Museum and Joshua had a wonderful time running around giggling like a loon while I followed faithfully. At story time I got him to sit through the songs and finger-plays, and I was excited when he was still sitting quietly on my lap when the story part began. Halfway through the story, what does he do? He opened his mouth and vomited. Once, twice, and then a final third time. I just sat in shock. There were at least 10 moms and a lot of kids, and I was mortified. They were all very nice though. One lady helped me get Joshua to the bathroom and stripped down. It was so awful! Poor Joshy. We slunk home after that. I know it happens to everyone, but I was sure that everyone thought I was an awful mom for bringing my sick kid out. But he had seemed fine! And he didn’t have a fever. However, he proceeded to throw up absolutely everything he ate that day. That was truly horrible. Fortunately, he magically was in the kitchen at the time of most of his barfs, but he did get the carpet too. Sigh. I guess psychologists call it “desensitizing”. I wouldn’t say I’m desensitized, but I managed to survive cleaning up much puke! Joshua was his usual perky, happy self between throwing up, so I wasn’t too worried till he started with diarrhea, too."

Marian in Motion

How to be a celebrity.

I have been working on a project involving Callie's class. I absolutely HAD to finish it by this weekend. I needed to get pictures of Callie and her class for this project. I finally got my act together and got rid of the extra kids so I could go to the school and hang out with her class.

Callie was delighted to see me, and I caused some major pandemonium. None of the kids wanted to walk in their line. They wanted to come say hello and talk to me. I was hugged, touched and petted by quite a few different children. If you ever feel worthless, just go to your kid's kindergarten class. You will be an instant celebrity! Everyone will want to be your friend!

I had no problems getting pictures of the kids. The problem was stopping taking pictures. There were a lot of hams in that class. I went to recess with them and it was a lot of fun. As soon as I pulled the camera out, they were all posing for me and shouting to take their picture. They were very cute and I had a good time.

Callie did not have as good a time. Someone hurt her feelings and she was sad the whole time I was there. So no good shots of her, but lots of pix of the rest of her class! I still went home thinking I was pretty special!

I did complete my project, and 2 minutes after I was all done and it was a done deal, one of the moms emailed me a couple pictures I totally could have used. Sigh.

Good times!

We went to Roy Rogers. I really really did not want to take the kids to a place you have to sit down to eat. But Dan likes to take them to Roy Rogers because there is a gumball machine and if you get a certain color, you get a free ice cream cone. So the girls LOVE to go there. Up till this day, I had never been inside, and to be honest, I'd be happy if I didn't do that again. I was already grumpy and tired when we got there. Then watching my children run amok and act like they had never heard of parental supervision was just not much fun. I pretended I didn't know them. But this moment was so cute. Callie got her ice cream and Rylee wanted a lick. Callie was so sweet to share and I laughed to see her licking along with Rylee. I love my thoughtful kid!

On Saturday, Joshua and Dan and Marian went to help out at a volunteer farm. I think they had a good time. I know service usually ends up being a lot more fun than it sounds, and this was a 4 hour block to remove rocks from the fields and do a little planting. Dan said it was good, but the kids were ready for snacks after an hour and a half. Since I didn't hear any complaints, it must have been fun for them. I know Callie and Delaney were outraged that they didn't get to go too! I drove down to meet them when they were done.

And then we went to Luray Caverns! WAY COOL! The kids loved the audio tour, and enjoyed checking out all the amazing things to see. And it was amazing!

This little puddle reflected the roof back and it was breathtaking. It is amazing what nature can create. Check out Callie and her headphones. She listened and loved the whole audio tour.

I thought this rock formation looked like a dinosaur, so I had to take a picture of Marian next to it. She thought her friend Adrian would like it.

Here's Joshua in front of some cool stuff. The whole cave was just jaw-dropping.

Rylee is being coy for me. Her hair is now barely long enough to put 2 pigtails in and she is so adorable! But not happy to get a picture taken. This is her trying to run away.

Delaney did her own hair today! Then she had Nutella on toast that she made herself. She wanted a picture taken, and this was her pose. She's a terrific girl!

Delaney's preschool had their end of the year program. Delaney was funny. She saw me and was waving and she looked attentive, but only sang half the words. The program was great; it was short and sweet!

After the preschool program, they had a picnic on the playground. I couldn't believe Delaney ate everything I bought for her AND Rylee. And when she got home, she had a slice of leftover pizza. I guess she was a hungry girl.

They passed out popsicles to all the kids and Rylee was not going to stop eating hers to play. She had a tight fist on hers as she wandered around the playground.

We did not stay long. It was reaching 90 degrees and the humidity was awful. Just standing in the shade made me sweat. I guess the kids were affected by it as well, since they up and left when I said it was time to go.

Day of rest for who?!

This morning I got to sleep in. I had a turkey I needed to cook and today was the day! So I got it all ready for the oven and then moved on to getting 4 little girls ready for church. (Joshy is self sufficient and combs his own hair.) As for the girls, I supervised 4 dresses on, shoes located, and all 4 heads of hair looking nice. Since I have been feeling inadequate lately, I needed to do extra fancy hair to up my self esteem. So that took a little longer than I intended. Partly because Delaney wouldn’t sit still and partly because Rylee was very unhappy about getting 2 cute ponytails out in.

Once the kids were all ready, I realized I had 15 minutes to put on make up and get out the door. Then I remembered I still had to put the turkey IN the oven and I hadn’t eaten anything yet. 11am church stinks. I opened the oven and grouched because I had forgotten to pull the top rack out of the oven. I pulled it out of the hot-hot-hot oven and put it on top of the sink to cool down. Then I popped some toast in the toaster and hustled upstairs to put on makeup.

Darnit, I had forgotten to make a sandwich for Rylee for nursery! I asked Joshua if he would do it and he headed off to help. Just as I was pulling out my mascara, Joshua walked in and informed me that I should have told him the rack in the sink was hot.

Yikes! He dissolved into tears when I asked to see his hand. Yep, burned and starting to blister. I felt horrible. I poured lavender on it and sent him to get an ice pack while I finished up. Then I couldn’t find my shoes. I had to hug and soothe Joshua a bit more and put more lavender on his blistering hand. Then I remembered I still hadn’t had anything to eat and it was now 10:45 and we had to be at church in 15 minutes! Why was it ME who was making us late to church today?!!

I got my cold toast out and slathered peanut butter on it. Dan had made Rylee’s sandwich, thank goodness. Toast in hand, I piled the kids in the car and with much screaming and complaining, we were off. We were even on time, and things looked brighter. Then, halfway through Sacrament meeting, Rylee peed through her diaper onto my lap.