Some Stuff

Today was my last time teaching Preschool, at least until it's my turn again in a couple of months. It was a fun experience, but at the same time somewhat stressful. November was just a bad month anyways, because I've been super busy trying to get ready for Novemberfest. I think Myra really enjoyed having preschool at our house. And unfortunately, today was the worst day we've had so far. All of the kids were SUPER hyper and EXTREMELY disobedient. Oh well, they're 3 & 4. I shouldn't expect too much. I ended up putting a movie on during the last 20 minutes because they couldn't stop fighting with each other and wouldn't pay attention to ANYTHING I would say. Silly kids.We haven't had too much going on in our lives lately. We are pretty excited for Thanksgiving. Mmmm! Yummy Turkey and Mashed Potatoes and Gravy and Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce and .... You get the picture. We are heading down to my Parent's house in Sandy tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have the chance to visit some of our Grandparents while we are down there. Then we have to hurry and get back here Thursday night to prepare for Novemberfest. I will be SOOO HAPPY when it is over with. For the past 2 months I have spent every free second I have sewing or making stuff for my booth. I've sewed close to 100 blankets, 30 onesies, 30 bibs, 30 burp cloths, made 5 Christmas stockings and finished the Christmas Stocking tutorial I'm selling in my shop, not to mention making 100's of hair clippies to sell. I think I'm getting carpal tunnel. I am hoping that I sell ALL of my stuff. Then I'm going to take a LONG break! I'll keep trying to sell anything I haven't sold at Novemberfest, but I won't make anything new for the business. Anyway, if you're in the area, come to Novemberfest. It's the friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving at 195 South 100 West, Logan, UT. There will be lots of great gift ideas! And I'll be giving away free soap samples. So, I hope to see you there.

Blemishes upon Society

Today, I filled the car up with gas for only $1.84. How has that happened? Not that I'm complaining, but how does gas go from being almost $4 dollars just a few weeks ago down to less than $2 dollars? In all honesty, I thought - back when it was almost $4 dollars that we would NEVER see it drop below $3 dollars again. I guess I just don't get it. Did they spring a new oil well somewhere? Did the wealthy oil industry decide to help everyone else out a little bit. Perhaps if I paid closer attention to the news, I would know the answer to these questions, but I'm pretty flabbergasted. I just hope it stays this way! Now if only the price of everything else would take the same trend.

On another note, Chad has a growth. A lump, if you will. It started out a few weeks ago as a little swelling and grown to enormous proportions. Well, ok, it's about the size of a pea, but still! It's on his pinky finger. He says it doesn't hurt at all or impede in any movement. It's hard and quite Nasty looking. (To me at least.) So, for a few days we've been arguing about him going to the doctor. He doesn't have insurance, so he's hesitant to go, but I think he should before it gets any worse. Chad just wants to cut it open himself to see what's in there. So, we've decided to put it to a vote. On the right side of our blog is an Opinion poll. Please tell us what you think. Here are a couple pictures of the lump. It was hard to get a good picture of the size and malformity.

Ravioli

Myra and Lexi really like Ravioli for lunch. I admit it taste good, but I'm always reluctant to fix it. Today, Myra asked for Ravioli for lunch. I told her no, then she started singing this song.

Needless to say, we had Ravioli for lunch.

And this is why I don't like fixing Ravioli for lunch. It's SO messy!

Reasons I can support Obama

By way of preface to this entry, I am not a politically savvy person nor do I find myself passionately drawn towards many political issues. I did not vote for the President-elect Barack Obama but recent opinions and actions of others have led me to feel a need to support him. We have heard children younger than 5 speak hatefully of Obama and how our Country is going to hell, while we read today of others taking bets on when Obama would be assassinated. This is ridiculous; I hope I never teach my children such hatefulness. I do not believe that any man that seeks to be president does so because he hopes to make America a worse place, and just because some do not have the same ideas as me on how to accomplish our betterment does not mean they are unfit or even wrong (I will admit to being wrong on occasion).

Obama was chosen by the voters of this county, those of us who did not vote for him have a second choice to make; we can spend the next 4 to 8 years filling our hearts and homes with negative cynicism blaming every difficulty our country has on the president just so we can say “told you so” (our country has already being doing this for the last 8 years), or we can get over the loss, and support the new president in policy we agree with and express our opinions of dissent on policy we don’t, because that is how America works. "Cynics do not contribute; skeptics do not create; doubters do not achieve" (Bryant Hinkley).

So after looking through Obama’s website and reading what his presidential agenda is; here are 10 areas I felt optimistic about. (Note: I could have easy made a similar list of things I don’t agree with but it seemed counterproductive.)

1. Education: Our education system could be improved, while I don’t know that I agree completely with all of Obama’s plan of improving it, I am glad that he feels it is important, especially early childhood education. I also am glad to see that he wants to make math and science education a priority.

2. Energy and Environment: I think that anyone that had been elected would have felt pressure to emphasize this due to its current popularity. My current opinion inclines me to support any initiative to promote more environmental friendly lifestyles and alternative energy sources. Obama’s agenda seems like a reasonable step in this effort.

3. He’s Black: During the election I thought race was a poor reason to vote for someone (and still do). But now that he is elected, and the majority of USA decided to vote of a member of a minority group, maybe we will have a little less “equal opportunity” complaints, and people will finally realize that life is what you make out of it. We are not all equal but that does not mean we don’t have opportunities and should make the best of them as Obama has.

4. Immigration: Obama’s plan for dealing with the complexity of the immigration dilemma seems reasonable and I like that he has made a point of trying to unite part citizen family.

5. Preventing Unintended Pregnancy: I know that Obama’s support for “pro-choice” policies is a major reason many LDS and members of other Faith refused to even consider supporting him (one pastor even told his congregation they were unworthy to take communion if they had voted for Obama). While I strongly oppose abortion, having a president with a similar view for last 8 years has seemed to do little to nothing in curbing this trend. So perhaps an alternative tactic can reduce abortions. Through increased education and the teaching of correct principles, we can expand the understanding that the “choice” should take place before conception and not after.

6. He is a family man: I like that Obama seems to have genuine concern and love for his wife and girls.

7. Investing in Science: Obama seems to recognize the need to encourage research (especially at the university level), and retaining good scientists as citizens (many of our graduate students are from other countries, we pay for them to become the top of their fields but make it near impossible to gain citizenship).

8. Supports marriage being only between a man and woman: check out My cousins blog for some great facts and info on Prop 8.

9. Supports Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: A program that was started by Pres. Bush in 2001 and which Obama plans to continue and expand.

10. Because he will be the President of the United States and I support America.

5 Years

On November 15th, 2003, Chad and I were married in the Bountiful Temple. It's so hard to believe that 5 years have gone by. It seems as if it were just yesterday and at other times, it feels like forever, in a good way. It has certainly been the best 5 years of my life. Chad and I have enjoyed a wonderful marriage and we have been blessed with 2 beautiful daughters. I know we both look forward to Eternity together. Happy Anniversary!

Tumbling

Myra has been taking a Tumbling class the past couple of months with her friend Camille. We were even more excited when we realized two other kids from our ward, Jenna and Isaac, were taking the class too.

Camille, Myra, Jenna, Isaac

Myra cried every week when we left her, but once she got involved in the class, she had a fun time playing with all of the kids. Last week was the final class and they invited the parents to come and watch. Here are a couple of videos and pictures from the event.

Craft Show

This Saturday is the first Craft Boutique that I am signed up to do for the Holiday season! If you are in the area, please come! Here is the information:

Pioneer Valley Lodge
Sat. November 8th, 10-3
2351 North 400 East, Logan, UT

There is no charge to go to the show and there will be a lot of great ideas for Christmas, including, Home and Holiday decor, jewelry, candles, magnetic boards, creative signs and blocks, wood frames, bows, aprons and , of course, baby items. :-)

Here are pictures of a couple items I will be selling on Saturday. To view more, click here!
I hope to see you there!

I is for Ice Cream

November is my first month to teach preschool to Myra, Camille and Dallin. I admit it's been nice having a couple hours every week without both kids, but I'm excited for my turn to teach. We are learning about the letter I this week. Today was all about Ice Cream - a subject the kids seemed to enjoy immensely, especially since we made homemade ice cream. The 2 hours went by really quickly and it was easy to fill the time up with things for the kids to do. I transformed the kitchen area into our "classroom", which Myra continues to enjoy. She keeps pointing to the letters and asking me what they are. We'll have to quiz her on them during dinner time - maybe then she'll learn them quicker. These aren't the best pictures, but the kids were having fun. Everyone wanted to hug Myra.

Halloween 2008

We had a fun Halloween day this year. Myra was Snow White and Lexi was one of her Dwarves, although which one varied throughout the day. It fluctuated from Happy to Grumpy although I think she looked mostly like Dopey. The kids got dressed up in the morning and we went with several friends from our ward and walked around the businesses on Main Street. I was surprised how many people were there. It was so fun to see all of the cute costumes kids were wearing and Myra and Lexi had a great time. At first, Lexi was pretty confused at what was going on, but she picked it up really quick! She would carry around her candy bucket, but as soon as she saw someone handing out candy, she would drop it and run to the person to get her treat. Then she would come back, put it in her bucket, pick it up and take off again. It was so funny.
That evening we met up with our friends, the Days, so the kids could all go trick-or-treating together. They were pretty impatient for the picture-taking part, but of course they loved going from house to house.
(This picture was from last year. I wanted to post it so you can see the difference a year makes.) Myra and Camille were really good at yelling, "Trick-or-Treat." Lexi just trudged along with her bucket. At one house, you could tell there was no one there, so we started to pass it, but Lexi ran up, went up the stairs and started knocking on the door. It was so funny! I wish I'd taken a video. Myra took a little detour to jump in a pile of leaves. Oh, to be a kid again!
After trick-or-treating, we had dinner with the Day's and the Jensen's. Janelle cooked stew in a pumpkin. It was really yummy. The kids had a blast playing with each other and we enjoyed nice conversation. It was a fun Halloween. When we came home, the kids didn't want to go to bed, but once they did, they fell asleep immediately.

Pumpkin Carving

Last night we decided to finally carve our pumpkins - actually, it was pretty early for us. The past couple of years we haven't done it until Halloween day. Well, Chad decided to take pumpkin carving to a whole new level. As we got ready to get started - we brought the pumpkins in, cleaned them off and pulled out the knives - and just as Chad started to cut in, he exclaimed, "What, I've always wanted to try this." And guess what he came back with, one of his little power saws. So, that's how he carved our pumpkins this year and I think they turned out pretty good! Lexi wasn't so sure about it though.

Myra really got into cleaning them out. At first, she almost started gagging, but then she seemed to enjoy it. Lexi helped me to collect the pumpkin seeds to cook (which I burned). She kept sticking stuff in her mouth throughout the process. We let Myra draw the face on her pumpkin, which resulted in scribbling over the entire pumpkin, but she loved it. When we were finished, Chad placed some of the pumpkins "entrails" so they were coming out of the mouth and Myra still keeps talking about it today. "My pumpkin was sick. It threw up." We then set the pumpkins outside and lit candles in them and Myra proceeded to sing Happy Birthday to them. She's such a cutie.