September Festivities

I'm obviously a little bit behind on blogging since I have been trying to write a primary program and canning a bushel of pears which yielded 26 beautiful jars. And then after canning was done, I have been working on de-stickifying my kitchen. So here is what has be going on with us.

September marks a busy month for us. My birthday was on the 14th which I celebrated one day early by driving to Strawberry Reservoir with the girls for the day while Guy was out and about. My mom and Steve were camping with all of Steve's kids and my sister Tamara. The weather was perfect and Amelia had a blast playing with her cousins for the day. Amelia and Ashley also loved doing a little bit of bike riding. I had bought Amelia a new helmet just the day before and she love wearing it. And then when Amelia was done with the helmet, Ashley took a turn and just loved wearing it even though she wasn't doing anything that actually required wearing a helmet. Since my birthday fell on a Sunday, Guy waited to take me out to dinner until Monday. Personally, I didn't mind extending my birthday a little bit.

Next came Amelia's birthday on the 21st. It just so happened to be my mom's weekend for her family's cabin and so we decided to celebrate down there. We had a really yummy dinner Saturday night and then opened presents and had cake and ice cream. Since I am in no way a creative cake decorator, I let her pick out a cake from Albertson's before we went down. She had really wanted a fishy cake, but the bakery didn't offer one and so she picked a dragon cake instead. When I first saw the picture, I knew that it was going to take a ton of frosting to make that cake and I was right. As we were cutting the cake, I would put a portion on a plate that looked like it was going to be a good size piece. But then as you started to fork through it and scrape away the frosting, there really wasn't much cake left. We really got a good laugh out of it. Amelia got some great clothes and presents including an AquaDoodle, a new backpack, My Little Ponies, play food and a cash register. We continued to celebrate on Sunday (her actual birthday) by having a yummy breakfast of waffles and bacon. What a fun weekend to celebrate my baby turning 4!

The last big even for us in September is our anniversary on the 25th. This marks 6 wonderful years for us. I drove the girls up to Grandma Corinne's house on the 26th for a sleep-over and then Guy and I went out to dinner that night. He took me to Los Hermanos (super yummy) and then back home for dessert. It was so bizarre to be away from the girls for a night and not be in "mommy mode" all the time. On the other hand, it was great not to have to worry about potty breaks and diaper changes for a day. The girls were lucky enough to go to the circus that night with Grandma Corinne and Auntie Tamara. And from what I heard, the girls really wore them out that night. Ashley fell asleep at the circus since she had missed her nap that day and Amelia loved seeing the clowns. They also got to ride TRAX which is a rare treat since we don't live in the Salt Lake Valley. After I picked them up the next day and we were just a few miles from home, Amelia told me that she wanted to go back to Grandma's house and didn't want to go home. Hopefully we will be able to make it up to see Grandma again soon.

Accident Prone

Apparently I am a little bit accident prone when it comes to the Durango. Don't worry...the Durango is fine. I'm not talking about accidents involving other vehicles, just the Durango and me. So far, I have shut two different fingers in the door and hit myself in the face while closing the hatch. It's a little embarrassing to admit all of this, but hopefully I will start paying more attention and not getting hurt so often.

The Simple Joys of Motherhood

After a very stressful morning in Primary (which was mostly due to me teaching an impromptu class because a teacher didn't show up and making some preparations for the program), I was very happy to sit down and relax a little and prepare for conducting closing exercises. When Amelia and her Sunbeam class walked in I flashed her a quick smile and then got back to my task at hand making sure that I had all the announcements ready. As the children were singing "We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet", I took a quick break to glance up and join in the singing. And that was when I saw Amelia singing every word to the song! I was so proud of my little girl!! Just about an hour before that, our music director told me that in Junior Primary, Amelia is just about the only one singing besides the CTR 7 class. Wow! This is probably mostly due to the fact that the only music we listen to when we are driving is Primary music. Even Ashley has started to sing along to some of the songs. I'm sure that it won't last forever, but I am enjoying it while it does.

Our State Fair is a Great State Fair!

My wonderful friend Tamara called me up on Monday and invited me to go to the State Fair with her and Britta. They were nice enough to postpone our trip for a day since I had a ton of peaches calling to me. As I was driving up to Riverton on Wednesday to pick up Tamara (patting myself on the back for actually leaving my house on time) I realized that I forgot to put Ashley's shoes on. She was in her room reading books as I was getting everything ready to go and I completely forgot to put her shoes on her. While I was loading everything in the Durango, she came out to the garage and so I picked her up to get her loaded too. That is when I noticed that she didn't have shoes on and that she needed a diaper change. So, I changed her in the back of the Durango (a really great thing about an SUV), got her buckled and then went back in the house for one more load and to get the shoes. Oops, I forgot the shoes but I didn't realize it until I was driving through Provo. I made a quick call to Britta and she saved the day by letting me borrow a pair of Abby's shoes for the day.

When I got to Tamara's house, it started raining...and then pouring. I put Kylie's car seat between my two girls and then we were off to Britta's house. Our original plan was to go straight to the fair and find something to eat there. Due to the crazy weather though, we decided to stop at Kneader's for some sandwiches before heading out. After lunch, the clouds had started to clear and so we went to the fair.

At the fair, Amelia loved looking at all the animals and she even got the bonus of riding a pony. A wee bit expensive ($4) in my opinion but she loved it and I think that she would have done it all day if she could have. During her ride, she kept telling "Rocky" to go faster and there were many "Yee-Haa's". My favorite things were the "Home Arts" exhibits with all the amazing things that people make. I loved looking at the quilts and needle point and the amazing things that people can sew and crochet. And of course, I had to admire the prize winning jar of peaches just to see what a blue ribbon jar of peaches looks like. And I must say, my peaches look just about as good and even better than the 3rd place winner of this year's fair. We also went by the "Market" building with the giant pumpkins and other things that were grown in people's gardens. And after seeing all that produce, you realize that even with preservatives sprayed all over, there are some foods that just shouldn't be left out for too long. We also took a little break for funnel cakes that Amelia wasn't too sure about at first but then couldn't stop eating them.

All in all, it was a really great day. And, I wasn't the only one to forget things that day. Britta and Tamara both forgot to bring a camera, Britta didn't have any cash, and Tamara forgot to bring a diaper into the fair. Luckily, we were all able to cover each other and nobody suffered for long. The last thing that I forgot was to get Amelia to take a potty break before we left the fair. It was soon after we got on the freeway to take Tamara home that she said she had to go potty. I hate having to get off the freeway just to get back on so I asked her to hold it (and she did) until we made it to our exit to take Tamara home. It was such a fun day and I was shocked when Amelia and Ashley stayed wide awake for the whole ride home. Once we got home, we had a quick dinner, followed by a fun game of "I Spy" and then it was off to bed. I was exhausted, but I was so glad that we went.

p.s. There is your first look at my pregnant belly (just 15 weeks to go) and the back of our Durango.

Peaches, peaches, peaches!

Last week I went out and bought 2 bushels of peaches. My mom was kind enough to come down and help me can them on Tuesday. What a day! The girls were extremely neglected but I think that they didn't mind too much since they got to watch three movies that day. Amelia still remembers last year when I canned tomatoes and brought the little tv up to the kitchen for her to watch movies on. So, we did that again this year and Grandma brought some fun movies for them to watch too. Ashley was anti-nap that day, probably because she thought she would be missing out on something fun. We started about 10:00 in the morning and we were processing the last batch by 8:00 that night. Of course, the pregnant lady had to take a few breaks for snacks and to just get off her feet for a minute. When it was all said and done, we got 53 jars of peaches done. My kitchen is still a disaster area, the floors are sticky, and the counters are completely covered in beautifully filled jars of peaches. Guy asked me today if we could take them downstairs now, which is another huge task to organize everything so we finish up last years peaches before we start on this years. Hopefully I will get all the jars cleaned up soon so that they can make their trek to the food storage room and ultimate organization and I can have my counter back...at least until I can pears.

Time to bite the bullet

One of my responsibilities as the first counselor in the primary presidency is to write the annual Primary Program for sacrament meeting. I have been putting this off for 8 1/2 months and now it is getting down to the wire. Our program is on October 27th which means that I need to get parts handed out to the children by September 28th so that everyone has time to practice. That is just 2 1/2 weeks away so I decided that it is time to bust a move. I had great intentions of working on it for just an hour each day this week, but other things have come up and so I haven't touched it at all. I practically could have majored in procrastination in college because that is when I would do my best work. So here goes nothing...It's off to work I go.

Imagination

I love Amelia's imagination! Here are two of my favorite things that she does right now.

At least once a day, she says something about her "hand babies". What are hand babies? Well, imagine that your hand was a little baby doll and you had it wrapped up in a blanket and you carried it around with your other hand...that is a hand baby. When she washes her hands, she says, "Hand babies sure do need a lot of washing." Her hand babies even cry and need to be fed. At least I don't need to worry about hand babies getting lost at the store.

The other thing that she does is to pretend that Ashley is a doggy...and Ashley happily plays along. We were out shopping one day and Amelia told Ashley to be a doggy and so Ashley got down on the floor of the store and crawled around like a doggy saying "Woof woof." My shopping trip took a lot longer that day and Ashely was filthy by the time we got out to the car, but it was still a lot of fun.