Farewell Gaynelle!

Gaynelle is just about the easiest person in the world to talk to and laugh with. Plus she has four boys (so she knows about how boys DO bring drama with them) and we worked in the Primary Presidency for, what, seven whole months together? Man, I can't tell you how many times I had to remind myself to be reverent and stop talking to her during singing time. Here are the four of us.
Me, Gaynelle, Alison, and Bonnie.Please excuse our shimmer. It was hot and we had just finished working hard at a Primary Activity.

Well, Gaynelle and her lovely family moved on Monday. Bonniehosted a little going away dinner at her house for the presidency and our families. Alison brought a ice cream cake and cracked up laughing when she showed us the "professional job" that baker did when she asked them to write "Good Luck" on the cake.

Gaynelle had never heard of Cake Wrecks, so here you are dear friend...
Your own personal link to hours of laughs.
Enjoy.

Done!

Gabriel Robert finished his last reading lesson. Hurray! He complained and said, "But I still don't know how to read!"

I handed him a children's book and asked him to read it. He did, stopping to ask for help only a few times. I said, "Gabe you can read."

"Not ALL words!" he replied.

I told him that even I was still working on that and gave him a congratulatory hug. Now he gets to have some sort of celebration party, but he hasn't made up his mind yet. Today he suggested a "WipeOut" party. Hmmm, we will have to see about that.

Charotte Knights Family Fun Fest

Colin enjoying everything. Ollie and Gabe sitting it out because of fear of the dragon mascot, Homer, roaming among the booths.

Ahh, my brown-eyed boys.

Dollar hot-dogs and cotton candy bought with pooled allowance money. This was the reason Gabe came. Honestly. Quite different from 2008.


Is that Homer on the field again? Dad will keep me safe.

Is that rain?

Yes, it is.

It sure is.

Motherhood:-An-Eternal-Partnership

I love this video, especially the tantrums in the beginning. I think anytime a mom is having a bad day, she should watch it.

This borderline-creepy collage

....brought to you by my new obsession with Picasa Face Recognition.
(click on the picture, I dare you)

I gotta tell you, it is so addicting.

Though it does struggle a little to tell my boys apart. I can't blame them. Sometimes I have to look at a picture twice to tell which one it is.

Anyone else tried it and loved it?

Did you hear about the baby....

....who transformed into a little boy in just one short year?

And this was the one who promised he would stay my baby forever!

(he does still drool though)

Answering

Gabe thinks. He sits in his bed at night and stews over things.

My parents' dog Chica died while we were in Spokane. This triggered a flood of worries in Gabriel. What if everyone in Charlotte dies while we are gone? Will I see Chica in heaven? What if I go to heaven before you and I am there without you? Will Jesus know my name?

I sat on the couch and asked question after question while I tried to be honest and comforting at the same time. His brow was furrowed, his mouth was turned down in a perfect frown and his eyes were wet. His fears were coming from deep within and this definitely wasn't the first time he had thought about it.

Gabe is constantly seeking reassurance from us.

He tells us that he doesn't want to get baptized when he turns 8. I think it is a fear of the unknown mixed with a fear of "receiving the Holy Ghost." Very scary sounding. A lot of his cousins are getting baptized soon, including his cousin Santi, who lives very close to us, and Gabe recently asked me if we will still see Santi after he gets baptized. Not sure what he had going on in his head about that.

Happily not all his deep thought are so brooding.

If you ask Gabe what he wants to be when he grows up, he simply says, "A dad." If you press and ask him what job he wants, he says he just wants to be a dad.

He says he wants me to have a girl next because "they are so cute when they are tiny."

Gabe kept asking me last week, "When will I be bigger than Colin?" I kept explaining that he will never be older than Colin but he might grow taller than him someday, like Uncle Bryce is taller than Uncle Bobby. He got his crinkly-eyed smile at the thought of that.

Tonight I sat with him and Colin in the living room for an hour after Ollie went to sleep, just talking. Colin sprawled out all over me like he does with everyone he loves, and Gabe sat close to me like he only does with me, and we just chatted and chatted.

When I was shuffling them to bed, Gabe asked me if Colin had been good today. I said he had, and Gabe patted Colin on the head and said, "Good Colin." Then I gave them a little lecture about how lucky they are to have each other and how I hoped they would always protect each other and stick up for each other. I told them to say, "I love you" to each other. They hugged, bumping roughly into each other and Colin said in a goofy voice, "I WUV EWE" and Gabe let out a string of giggles and said it just as goofy back.

Several times today Gabe has just stopped, looked me sweetly in the eyes, and hugged me. This evening was a culmination of that.

My reassurance.

It was lovely enough to fill up my "I love being a mom" jar enough to last me through many days of Wii tantrums and summer tattle-telling.

(Did you know that tattle-telling increases by 120% during the summer? So does "accidental" hitting).

Bored while waiting to Skype with Chad

Evidence of Naughtiness

I forgot to put the bar stools up again and later found these pictures.

And yes, his shirt is always that dirty by the end of the day.

Only 1 1/2 more months 'til the "terrible twos" start. HA.

Pajama Day

Ollie and I were the only ones who got dressed today. Gabe was throwing up in the morning, preventing us from leaving the house, and then happy, playful and eating after a little nap, so I knew I needed to do something big to keep the boys from bickering with boredom the rest of the day. We turned their room into The Best Tent Ever.

The boys first declared it to be a movie theater, showing Princess and The Frog

and later decided it was a gun shop.

*Updated* I was going to take detailed pictures showing everyone how I made it, but Chad didn't know and took it down today before I could. Basically the center was the ceiling fan blades. I tied the corners of king and queen size sheets to the connecting parts of the blades (towards the middle) and then secured them on there with yarn, if that makes any sense. I fanned the rest out in circular fashion and secured the ends however I could - shut in the bottom of the window, shut in drawers, tied to bedknobs, etc. If the sides overlapped I put safety pins on to secure them together. Then I strung some Christmas lights through it.

Flying Woes

Here are Gabe, Ollie and Chad early in the morning on the 4th of July, waiting for our plane in Spokane (headed to Phoenix and then onto Charlotte) . When I took the picture I had no idea that we would still be waiting and waiting and waiting...way past when it was supposed to depart. There was a broken part in the cockpit and they had to fly a part to fix it, so the plane was delayed by about 6 hours, which of course made it impossible to catch any connections from Phoenix to Charlotte. So we had to re-book for the same flight the next day.

After three hours at the airport, with hotel and food vouchers, we went back to Chad's parent's house for a few hours and then went to the hotel for the night. We figured that way no one from Chad's family would have to transport us to the airport (yet again) at 6 in the morning.

It was a long long day and we didn't even get anywhere. It was so frustrating knowing that it would be followed by a long long day traveling with kids. We let the kids run around at the hotel and tried to have fun with our food vouchers but even room service took over an hour to get because the hotel was overwhelmed. That building behind the kids?

There were five different pools and a waterslide in there! Of course we had to be stranded there on a Sunday. I was very tempted to let the kids break the Sabbath just this once in the name of sanity.

This is the second time we have had to be put up in a hotel because of airline delays. The first time we got stuck during our connection in Salt Lake City and since Aaron and Jamie were living in Provo they came up and paid us a visit in our hotel. Chad was supposed to start a his new job with Bank of America the day after we got back and had to call and tell them he wasn't going to be there until the next day. That was 2007

And then of course there was the time when we were in Blythe and the airline we had tickets with went out of business two days before we were supposed to go home. I know that three major incidents doesn't sound like much, but we fly as a family ONCE a year and all three incidents have taken place over a three year span. BLAH.

Here is the positive though - as miserable as experiences like this are, they are well worth it for our Spokane trip. My kids get to know their grandparents in a way that living across the country doesn't easily allow. Truly priceless. Also, thank heavens flying is so safe that every single instrument in the cockpit gets checked (and fixed, if needed) before take-off. How lucky are we that we can span thousands of miles, quite safely, in a matter of hours?

Recipe for a good night 's sleep

Go to Knapp's Farm

Bring the kiddos, of course

Pick 10 lbs of strawberries, even if they say they are "picked out." Look hard and you will be rewarded.

Stop by the store on the way home for ingredients.

Make five of these pies!

Load the kids back up

Deliver the pies to various relatives


Come home exhausted but satisfied

Cut a slice for yourself. Enjoy.

World Traveler

Here's the story:

When I was a sophomore at Brigham Young University, I decided that I was going to volunteer to teach English in China for a semester. I applied and got my assignment. I bought some cassettes to teach myself a little Chinese, got my passport, and prepared to leave in early January.

Chad was coming home from a mission for our church (in Santiago, Chile) in late December. Despite two years of dating prior to his mission and being totally crazy about each other, our relationship was very much up in the air as I prepared to go. I had been dating other guys (maybe dating isn't even the right word - "hanging out with" is more like it) and neither of us could really say what things would be like between us after two years of not seeing each other.

I would be leaving days after Chad came home. My decision to go was a little bit of a pulling away from the relationship. I knew it and he knew it, and after all he had put up with from me already, I knew that my chance with him might be past when I came back.

In November, I was thinking it over and started to have some strange feelings.

Feelings that, although I hadn't seen him for two years and felt a little anti-men at the time, I really really needed to stick around instead of going to China.

Basically, I felt strongly that I was going to marry Chad.

I prayed and I canceled China.

Chad came home December 28th. We got engaged February 2nd, and married April 26th. It was fast, and a little scary at times, and I have to admit that if I had only made the decision with my head, I don't know what I would have done.

It was the best decision I have ever made.

My passport expires this year and it has never been used.

I love my life and the road that I have chosen,

But sometimes I feel a little like a country bumpkin

A 29 year old who already has three kids but no stamps on her passport.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I have never in my life left the country, even though I grew up near the Mexican border in a time when it was very easy to cross.

So when I heard that the house we were renting was a mile away from the Canadian border, I said,
"I'm crossing! I am GOING to Canada! I don't care if I go alone, I am going!"

And then amidst all the list making and packing for everyone and myself, I left approximately three minutes for finding my passport, and of course it wasn't in our files where it should be (and really, where should an unused passport be anyway?). So I left without it.

I was undeterred.

"I will hike into the woods and across the border if I have to!" I told everyone. My brother-in-law Bill, who served a mission in Canada, felt the same about getting across, even if it was illegally.

When we got to Idaho, our turnoff for Fliegerhaven was right before the sign that said, "One mile to Canada" but there was a river and mountains between us and the border. Gulp.

After a couple of days of looking at maps and seeing Border Patrol driving around, I pouted to Chad that it just wasn't going to happen.

I had given up, and then on our last evening Bill called to Chad and I and asked if we wanted to go check out the border. We hopped in the car, leaving the kids with the grandparents, and took off. The plan was to see if there was some sort of turn-off close to the border where we could at least get a picture with a "Welcome to Canada" sign.

There were several duty-free stores, a US Customs office, and a post office before the Canadian border inspection, so we parked the car and started walking in the direction of the border, very slowly, waiting to see how far we could get without getting yelled at.

With no one really even eye-balling us, we started strolling along the empty street when we noticed, right in front of us, the US/Canada boundary marker.

Right there, free from any border patrol officers, and yards away from inspection. Was that really the country line?

Sure enough, we glanced to our right, up the mountains, and the boundary was marked all the way up.

I ran over the Canadian side laughing, raising the roof, and had Chad snap my picture like the country bumpkin that I really am, hair undone and not a stitch of make-up on. Then my sweetie crossed over to Canada with me.

I fully realize that Canada isn't exotic or exciting, but Canada plus Chad for all eternity? Wooeeeeeee, baby!