New Sleeves

So I finally got to use my Christmas present!  (ordered the wrong size and had to wait forever to get it exchanged)  LOVED them!  Twas great!!  Did exactly what they were supposed to do.

I was loving that whole thumb hole thing.

When I started my run it was pretty chilly, and I was thinking to myself "I might as well have just worn a jacket, it's so cold, I won't get to try these out for real."
But 2 miles into it, I was plenty warmed up and rolling down my sleeves sounded fabulous.  They worked just like they were supposed to.
It was such a wonderful run!  I loved it.  It felt so good.  It was so nice to be outside!
Earlier this week I had a really cranky day and decided to "run it off."  19.4 miles later I got what felt like a charlie horse and jumped right off my treadmill.  But I've been worried that maybe it was more than a cramp and maybe I injured myself.  So I've been taking it easy and this was my first run since then.  My plan was to take it nice and slow and just do a short one. Just see how my leg would react.  I told my love I was going to do less than 4 miles and I'd be back in less than an hour.  7.5 miles and 80 min later . . . . .
It just felt so good!  And to be outside, oh my goodness.  There was this great Northwest mist going on too.  I'm thinking I really need to not do that anymore though.  Me and my treadmill usually get a long pretty good, if I do too much of this outside stuff, it's going to affect my relationship with my treadmill.  :P

Tacoma Children's Museum

I've had a REALLY hard time keeping a grasp on my tear ducts lately.  Felt like a long week.  So when I found out I didn't have to go in for jury duty on Friday, and my love found out he couldn't work his overtime day anymore, we decided take a day as a family and just take a break.  Get out of the house and have some fun.
We decided to try out the Tacoma Children's Museum.  It was such a nice little outing.  Especially when compared to the King Tut family field-trip we took in December.  (I feel stressed just remembering that morning.)
It only took an hour to get there.  Once we got to Tacoma, we parked in the Tacoma Dome Station Parking Garage.  Which was FREE!  (Parking to see King Tut cost us $25!!!)  Then we jumped on the Tacoma Link Light Rail, which was right outside the parking garage and also FREE.  Got off at Convention Center Station.  It was so EASY, so SIMPLE, so PLEASANT, so CHEAP.  (Can you tell that King Tut experience really traumatized me?)  And of course the girls were thrilled to ride the "train."
And as if couldn't possibly get any better, this museum is "Pay As You Will."  So we made a donation we could afford.  
Normally, I try to rein myself in when it comes to taking pictures, but I just let myself go and snapped away.  I enjoyed watching my kids have such a great time. 

  

My favorite thing about the water area was those aprons.  They were wonderful!  Shortcake would have been drenched without it.  Such a brilliant idea.

 Those 2 little penguins were her favorite toy.

My pictures don't do the next area justice.  

It was this big boat/flying machine/birdduck thing. 

This is a view from the back.

This is a side shot.  When she pedaled, the "wings" on this huge apparatus flapped.  There were other pedals and wheels that made the engines light up and turned fans on.

These tubes had air constantly blowing through them.  The kids could divert the air different ways and then send a toy through the tubes and watch to see where it would come out.  

I know she looks like she's gonna biff it in this shot, but really she caught herself just fine.

All in all, it was a wonderful much needed little outing. 
We're excited to go back again some day and maybe next time take some friends with us!

Shortcake's Birthday

2 years ago life was so simple, calm, boring even.  This little shortcake has livened things right up.  She has always had such a STRONG spirit trapped inside her tiny little body.  The older she gets, the more she can do, and the more thrilled about life she becomes.  And her joy is contagious.  Love her, love her, love her. 

When I was a little girl, my mom made AMAZING birthday cakes.  I do my best to make shnazzy cakes too.
This time around I reused a Winnie the Pooh cake pan I bought for the twins 5 years ago.  It was either that or try to make an Elmo head out of a simple round cake.  If it were up to me entirely I was leaning toward the Elmo, but the twins really seamed to think that Pooh would be better.  After it took me forever to get red icing for Pooh's shirt, i was glad the twins had talked me out of Elmo.

So here's my set up.  At this point, it was about 10:50 . . . P.M.  While putting on the countless dots of frosting can get just a little tedious, it's not the worst part.  Don't mind it too much.  The worst for me is the making the frosting.  Then guessing how much of each color you're going to need, and praying you don't guess wrong.  And then drop by drop trying to get the color to look just right.  So by the time I took this picture I was already an hour into it.
About 2 hours later . . .

Ta da!  I'm way happy with how it turned out.  The year I made one for the twins, I really struggled with the color and ended up with an orange bear. 

We invited some friends of ours over to share in the cake and ice cream!  Between our kids, their kids, and 2 more friends who we were taking care of for the evening, we had quite the party!  8 kids in all.  It made it so fun and exciting though.  They were all excited and had a good time.

I couldn't decide which picture I liked better.

The aftermath:

(Poor Pooh.)

So I think she really liked her presents. 

After the comotion settled down and friends went home, I found her back at the scene of the crime, getting a second taste of her birthday cake.

She brings a smile to my face.  She loves life and reminds you to love it too.  

Love her to pieces.  

Happy Birthday Shortcake!

Answers in Scriptures

I will wholeheartedly admit that there are things I don't feel like I have a very strong testimony of.  But, there are things that I do have a very strong testimony of.  One of which is the ability to find answers in the scriptures.  The very first time the Lord spoke to me via the scriptures was when I was technically still a teenager.  I had graduated high school and was back east being a nanny.  My mom was very sick and I was very very troubled by it.  At the time I remembered hearing once (though unfortunately I can't remember exactly where) the phrase:

If you want to talk to God, PRAY.
If you want God to talk to you, READ YOUR SCRIPTURES.

That night I decided to put it to the test.  I opened up my scriptures and found:

D&C 98:1-3
1  Verily I say unto you my friends, fear not, let your hearts be comforted; yea, rejoice evermore, and in everything give thanks;
2  Waiting patiently on the Lord, for your prayers have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and are recorded with this seal and testament - the Lord hath sworn and decreed that they shall be granted.  
3  Therefore, he giveth this promise unto you, with an immutable covenant that they shall be fulfilled; and all things where with you have been afflicted shall work together for your good, and to my name's glory, saith the Lord.

Since that night I have conversed with the Lord in that fashion many times.  He has spoken to me so clearly time after time.  
The Lord answered my prayers again tonight, through the words in the scriptures and I wanted to record it and record my testimony.
Tonight my heart was troubled and aching for the heartache and troubles of those that I love.  I opened to

D&C 132:56
. . . . . I, the Lord thy God, will bless her, and multiply her, and make her heart to rejoice.

This brought such great comfort, but I wanted more.  I wanted guidance on what was causing all the heartache in the first place.  Then I turned to

D&C 78 17-18
17  Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you;
18  And you cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. . .

At this point, though my mind still had questions, I thought, "I have been so blessed with these priceless words of comfort, I better not press my luck and continue to beg for further information at this time."  Clearly based on the last scripture find, the Lord thinks I can survive just fine with out all the answers to all problems. 
My eyes did wander to another verse on this page though, and I'm putting the scripture reference up at the top of my blog.  It goes perfect!

D&C 78: 13
Behold, this is the  preparation wherewith I prepare you, and the foundation, and the ensample which I give unto you, whereby you may accomplish the commandments which are given you;

I close this post with my testimony that the Lord does answer prayers.  And some of those answers can be found in the scriptures.  Don't give up.  If you open to "So-an-so begat so-and-so, begat so-and-so . . .", or 10,000 dead Nephites, you're probably not on the right page.  Just keep flipping.  Show the Lord that you sincerely want it to work, and you're willing to keep at it, even if it takes a few tries.  His words will come.

Primary Fun Song Spinner

Got a new calling at church.  Best calling there is if you ask me.  :) Check out the fun song spinner I made.

Just cut out the squares and tape them on the board.
My original thought was to include a pdf in case anybody ever wanted to make their own.  But it sounded extremely complicated, involving downloading my pdf to another host site and things like that.  Unfortunately, and embarrassingly,  really intimidating.  Sooo, if anybody would like free printable pdfs please leave a comment with your e-mail and I'd be happy to e-mail them to you.

So as you can see, I just covered up a Twister spinner board.  Growing up, I remember when my mom was Primary chorister, she too had a spinner board.  She made her's from scratch using a piece of a cardboard box for the back, and another piece of cardboard box with a brad of some sort for the spinner itself.  Worked great, but using this pre-made spinner sounded like a much lazier way to go. 
The 4 smaller circles are song alternates for Senior Primary.  Some songs are great for the Juniors but the Seniors are gonna be insulted if you make them sing them.  For my Senior alternates I picked the songs that sing the books in the Old Testament, New Testament, and Book Of Mormon.  The 4th song is Latter Day Prophets. 
Now any of you that really know your primary songs may notice some discrepancy in a couple of my song titles.
 
pg 198 real title: A Happy Family  my title: A Happy Primary
When I sing it with the primary, I bring one of the primary classes up to the front and instead of singing "Father, Mother, Sister, & Brother," we use the names of the kids I brought to the front. 

pg 236 real title: "Give" Said the little Stream  my title: "Give" Said the Little Rain
We don't sing the 1st verse, we sing the 2nd.  The kids act like droopy flowers until the rain raises their weary heads.  TIP: tell the flowers they have to stay in their flowerpots, or in other words, stay in their seats.  We started out with some wilted flowers spread all over the floor.  Doesn't exactly fit the definition of reverent in my book.

pg 241 Rain is Falling All Around
Didn't change the name of this one, but I do change the way we sing it according to the weather.  For example, we sang "Wind is blowing all around."  Could easily switch it to "snow is falling," or "sun is shining." 

Had a great time today.  The kids sang GREAT and I felt like they learned the song.  I so enjoy it.  Just makes me smile.  Feel very blessed.  All callings require an amount of work and or sacrifice.  While preparing to teach a song can be time consuming sometimes, I don't feel like it's a sacrifice at all.  I totally enjoy it and I get excited to prepare the next song.  Even though it won't get to last forever, and I know some day He'll put me somewhere else, I thank my Heavenly Father for this gift of time in the primary. 

Yesterday Shortcake woke up WAY earlier than usual.  After about an hour, she decided things were pretty boring without her sisters around, and fell back asleep.  And kept on sleeping.  Didn't wake up 'till noon! 
After that, she was a walking snot bomb.  Every time she sneezed a blanket of snot went everywhere.  Despite that, she was still ever so pleasant and happy.  Went to bed just like normal.
About an hour and a half later, she woke up and could hardly breath.  She sounded terrible!  Last winter she got RSV so I kinda assumed that's what were were dealing with again.  We pulled out our breathing machine thing and gave her a treatment.  Didn't make a huge difference.  Stood with her in a hot shower with some essential oils.  That seemed to make a difference, but she still just didn't sound good.  As a mother I just couldn't put her back to bed and possibly get any rest myself.  Laying her down just seemed to make her breathing worse.  So we gathered up every spare pillow in the house and made our short, hard, wooden couch as comfortable as possible, and I did my best to hold her upright most of the night.  By 1:30 she had a fever of 102.  (We won't dwell on how much sleep either of us got.)
Sounded as horrible as ever the next morning and were at the doctors by 9:20. 
Not RSV though.  Croup.  According to the doc, the breathing treatments wouldn't do much good and we had 2 more nights just like the first to look forward to.  Nice.  She did prescribe a steroid to help the inflammation that is making her breathing so hard. 
Little did I realize what a pain it would be to get that prescription filled.  Our normal pharmacy was out and so was the other one in town.  Ended up finally finding one that had it.  Right across from the doctors office.  Ya, could have saved myself about 1/2 an hour of driving if I had just gone to them in the first place.  Bother.  And due to apparent telephone complications between the two pharmacies, and then further telephone complications between the pharmacy and myself, poor little thing didn't get any meds in her 'till 2:00.  Got her to the doc at 9:20 and it took till 2:00 to get a pill in her mouth.  Twas NOT impressed. 
By the time my love got home from work, she still sounded just miserable!  Walking around a little and even smiling now and then, but you just wanted to take a deep breath FOR her.  My love wrapped her up in 2 big soft blankets and took her out on the back porch.  The cold winter air helped bring down some of her inflamation and the sweet little thing fell right asleep.  So glad she got some much needed rest.
While she was out, we had our home teacher come over and help give her a blessing.  So grateful.  As they started the blessing and I heard them say the words "Melchizedek Priesthood" I just felt so grateful, and I could feel the spirit whispering to me that my husband does indeed hold the Lord's priesthood.  So grateful.
She has since woken up and sounds so GOOD!  I can't hardly believe it.  Some things I found online totally coincided with what our doc said, and with what she prescribed.  The only difference is the website said nights 2 and 3 would be worse!  Great.  But she's doing so good right now.  Practically breathing normal.  So we'll see what the night has in store.   

New Years Day

It was well after 3:00am by the time our heads hit the pillow.  So everyone slept in and we were all up in time for "little smokies" for lunch.  (I personally couldn't sleep past 10:30, but everyone else slept in 'till lunch.)
It was a BEAUTIFUL New Years Day.  Especially for these parts.  So we had to jump on the sun shine while we had it, and get my love up on that roof.  If we didn't do it that day, who knows when the next time the stars would align and we'd have no rain on one of his days off.
So outside we went.

Isn't he just amazing?  I think he is.  Christmas lights are NOT his thing.  If our lighting decor were left solely up to him, we would possibly maybe have a plain strand or icicles going across the top.  But despite what HE would do, he humors me year after year because he loves me so much.  We put all sorts of lights up and he doesn't complain a bit.  But even more valiant than that, he climbs up on the roof for me.  AND, when it comes time to take them down and put them away, he does way more than his fair share of getting them all put away again.  (Especially the year shortcake was born.  By the time New Years came around there wasn't a spec of Christmas to be found.)

The twins got roller skates for Christmas.  Growing up, we had a sidewalk that went clear around the block and was great for having a place to skate or bike.  But our neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks.  We do have a paved driveway, but it's got like a 10% grade.  Ain't no skating gonna be happening there.  So lucky for the girls, my love does an amazing job of keeping the garage clean.  (We wouldn't even be able to park in there if it were left solely up to me.)  So we pulled the car out and turned the garage into a makeshift skating rink.  Even plugged in the radio for some tunes.  It worked great.  The girls got to use their skates while my love and I worked on de-decorating.  (Yes I know that's not a word but I like it.)

The only trouble is, shortcake didn't get skates.  She has a little trike with a big adult-push-stick-thing on the back.  So she sat on that a little.  And we brought out her little sit-on-push-with-your-feet lion thing.  But she really didn't spend much time with that.  Knowing her I'm sure she felt it was below her abilities and interests.  (Ya I'm talking about my 2 year old.)  Despite not having much to play with herself, she was surprisingly content.  She went back and forth from watching her sisters in the garage, to watching mom fight to keep the lights untangled.  My only complaint would be that she kept taking off her coat.  It was freezing!  But rather than fight her on it, I figured she would realize on her own that it was more beneficial to wear a coat.  No, not her.  She was coatless for a significant portion of the afternoon, but whatever.
All in all, I couldn't ask for a better way to spend the first day of 2013.

When I was 8 years old I received my first journal.  Through my teenage years I kept a journal faithfully.  I'm am assuming, that perhaps one day, these might be an interesting read for my children. 
But somehow, somewhere, amongst going to college, getting married, and having children . . . . . my once faithful routine gave way to . . . . . I'm not even really sure what happened.  Why something I used to be able to stick to no longer happened - ever. 
I have very few regrets in life.  This however is one of them.  I think back on the last 10 years, and all the amazing, wonderful, significant things that have happened.  I got married!  I had children!  All the thoughts, feelings, and lessons that have accompanied those things didn't get written down.  If my children, or any other posterity who cares, ever sets out to take a gander at my life, there is going to be a great big huge hole in the middle.  :(

That being said, nothing I can do about the days behind me.  But I have full control of the days in front of me.  As my two oldest children approach their 8th birthday I have decided to do my best to resurrect my old ways.  Before I give them their first journals, I want to be back in the habit myself. 
However, I am very excited to document my happenings in a way very different from the way I used to do it.  No more ink smudges on the side of my hand.  I'm excited for color photos and the speed at which I can type!

So here goes nothing!