They're laying!!

I finally found my first green egg from these layers!! That means that my Easter Eggers are starting to lay AND that at least one of them will lay green eggs. Yay!!

Instruments

And the collection continues . . .

I told Nathan tonight that we need a music room. It's almost gone from a "that would be nice to have someday when we're rich" to a "necessity." For now, here is our music "corner of the living room."

Christmas fun? and Congrats to Craig and Sarah

Last night, Zoey started throwing up, so my plans were shot. I was very excited to do a post about Craig and Sarah being sealed today and have pictures to go along with it, but I'm not there, so no pictures. I am very happy for them and I'm sorry I wasn't able to be there. Congratulations, Craig and Sarah!!

I decided to make the most of my time with my kids and play a game with them. We talked about it and I told them I thought Candyland would be fun to play because it was Christmastime and we get candy at Christmas.

Owen told me that we should play Operation (the kids favorite game lately) because it was more Christmas-y. I was confused for a minute until he explained that Jesus came to earth to help people and in Operation, you are helping people.

Then they decided that they wanted to watch a movie. Owen came up with his new Dinosaur movie (a documentary for kids that has actually taught him more than I ever knew about dinosaurs). He explained that it was also a Christmas movie because the dinosaurs lived a long time ago just like Jesus.

I can't wait to see what else they come up with in the next 5 days that also has to do with Christmas. I must admit, he helps me think of the season in a whole new way.

Karate!

When Owen turned one, I took him in for his well baby visit and the doctor watched him scoot around the office for what seemed like a very long time. He finally told me that he wanted me to see a neurologist to make sure everything was okay. The problem was, Owen would sit up fine, but he would scoot while sitting up. He wouldn't put any weight on his arms. And if you tried to get him to stand up, he wouldn't put any weight on his legs.


I took him to the neurologist and while I was there, his nurse asked if I had tried to get him help through the District Health Office. She got me the paperwork and I filled it out. A few months, and many tests, later; we found out that his speech was great, his small muscles were great, but his large muscles were very much delayed. We began having a physical therapist come out to our house twice a week. She would play with Owen and show me things that I could do with him to strengthen his muscles. He began progressing immediately. Within a few months, she went down to once a week, and finally down to once every other week.

Just before Owen turned three they tested him again and decided that he didn't qualify for help anymore. It was hard to say goodbye to Lisa. She had been a part of our family for a long time, but we were glad that he had progressed so much. He still had a delay, though and things that were easy for other three year olds were still very hard for him. I wanted to help him continue to progress, so I was on the lookout for something to stimulate his large muscle groups.



I kept hearing about a karate class in a town about 10 miles away from us. It was taught by a guy who used to live out here. Finally, the thought wouldn't go away and I called. I actually got to talk to Shon. I told him about Owen and asked if karate would be something to help him. He told me that Owen was a little young for even the youngest kids that he taught, but I was welcome to come and see how he did. He also told me that he had been working with some kids with muscular dystrophy and they had gotten to the point where they could do the karate stances without crutches. The next week we were there and Owen has been taking it ever since. He's doing GREAT!! I've seen a huge improvement in his muscles. He used to walk up and down the stairs with two feet on each step and now he'll walk down normally. He can get into the car or truck without much trouble.


At karate, they have many drills that they do (crab walk, bear crawl, duck walk, etc.) and at first Owen couldn't even make if across the gym when all the other kids would make it there and back. Now he is the last one back, but he usually makes it. All of the instructors have commented on how much he has improved.


The other day I overheard some parents talking about Owen and how slow he was. The mama bear came out in me and I told them about him and how much he has improved. I told them that I was very proud of him and how hard he works. It was hard for me to see others not understanding him and judging him. I haven't heard any more comments.

Karate has been a HUGE blessing to us. Owen loves it and it is helping him so much. I'm glad that I finally talked to Shon and got him in it. My hope is that when he starts kindergarten that he will be able to keep up with his peers, not the most athletic in his class, but just keep up with them. I've seen that that hope might just come true. He's been able to play tag and soccer lately and somewhat keep up. I'm so proud of him!!

Nerf Wars

When we just had Josie, we got adopted by a border collie named Gus. Nathan thought a nerf gun might be a fun way to train him. So, I got him a nerf gun for Christmas. It didn't faze Gus, but Nathan had fun with it. Next, we got a gun that shoots darts, then another ball gun and more dart guns. Finally, last year for Owen's birthday, we got him his own dart shootin' nerf gun. He was ecstatic!! Finally he didn't have to use a cheapy, cast off from Nathan. So, every once in a while, I'll find myself caught in the middle of a nerf gun fight. I'm actually pretty impressed at how well my kids do against Nathan. At first, they would just get upset when they got shot. Then they realized that it doesn't really hurt THAT bad and they could shoot him, too. Now they are to the point where they realize that if he doesn't have any ammunition, he can't shoot them, so they'll spend the time to pick up all the ammunition that he shoots at them until there isn't any left for him. Then, they'll stop the game until Nathan gets his ammunition back and it will resume. I think that's pretty smart for a couple of kids.

Owen's stance.

Nathan stalking the prey.

Jo having fun.

Owen cocking the gun.

Nathan lying in wait.

Everyone getting in on it.

Nathan starts them out young.

Jo hiding. If I can't see you, you can't see me.

Oh, wait, you're taking pictures?

This is my favorite one. Jo is calmly walking up the stairs not knowing what is lurking around the corner.

Personally I think it's great!! The kids love having interaction with Nathan and I think it's a great way for everyone to burn stress and energy. Especially when it's so cold outside.

Sick!!

About a month ago, we all came down with weird sicknesses. The kids all got sore throats and Zoey had horrible diarrhea for about a week. Just as she was getting over it, she broke out in this horrible rash (see the pictures above). It started on her face and moved to her hands and feet, then finally all over her body. It would show up and then within 45 minutes it would be gone and move on to somewhere else. I finally took her into the doctor and they gave her Zurtec and it kept it under control. They figure that she had a reaction to the virus she had. A week later we were back at the doctor where we found out I had strep throat and they ended up treating me and the kids with antibiotics. We were well just in time to go to Utah for Thanksgiving.

Friends

Once a week, I go volunteer at Jo's school while a friend watches Owen and Zoey. Then, later that day, I watch her two youngest while she volunteers in her son's class. She has all boys. It's quite interesting for me to be involved with that many boys. This is her youngest with my Zoey. He loves being in a house that has girls. He always finds the most girly things to play with. Here he has pink Dora sunglasses and he's holding a doll pacifier. He always heads straight for the dolls and the highchair. It's hilarious!! His dad probably wouldn't appreciate knowing that his son is all girl at my house.

Notice the pacifier?

Piano keys

I actually took these pictures a long time ago, but just found them and remembered I wanted to post about this. A few weeks after we got our piano, Nathan was selling a motor on craigslist. Someone wanted to come out and look at it and brought a friend. They were in our living room talking when all of a sudden the friend went to our piano and started playing it. It was like he was drawn to it and couldn't resist. He started asking questions about when we got it and how we got it. It turns out that he restores pianos in Idaho Falls. He is completely overwhelmed with pianos to restore, so he wasn't looking for business. He told us things to do to take care of it and told us if we have any questions when we're going through the restoration process to give him a call. He also agreed with us that we should paint it instead of try to stain it. The belt sander the lady used took off too much of the veneer to make it salvageable.

One peice of advice that he did give us was to clean the keys with Windex. I did it a few days later and here's the results.

Before

After

My cello

We have been collecting musical instruments lately, but finally I got one just for me. Our collecting started when Nathan found a bugle for cheap. We love music and decided that we wanted an instrument and bought it. It's pretty cheap, but Nathan has taught the kids to play on it. They love it. Then Nathan was invited to play in the Teton Chamber Orchestra and had to borrow a french horn. He began looking at horns on e-bay and finally found one to buy. Then, he found a trombone at a garage sale, and finally we bought our piano earlier this year. There is a guy that plays with Nathan that also teaches at Owen's karate. He plays the cello. A few weeks ago, I was talking to him and mentioned that I played the cello, but haven't for a LONG time because I don't have one of my own. He told me that he had a student cello that he would be willing to sell for just what he paid for it. Nathan and I talked it over and decided to buy it. So, last night Nathan brought home my cello. Yay!!

And the collecting continues . . .

Owen's in preschool

There are lots of things I've been meaning to post about lately, but stuff has happened. Luckily I did take pictures of some of it. Owen has gone to a developmental preschool for the last two years. We found out about it through a therapist, but he didn't qualify to go for developmental delay. Because he learned to talk so early, he was talking well by the time he was three, so they decided that they wanted him to be a peer tutor. He started the Monday after his third birthday. This last year, they had so many kids sign up, they had to turn some away. Owen was one of those. I figure it's because he already had the opportunity to go for two years and they needed to give the opportunity to someone else. Owen had a hard time with it, but we tried to fill his time with other things. At the end of October, they called and asked if Owen still wanted to go to preschool. They had an opening one day a week. He was so excited!! A few weeks later, they moved him to two days a week, so he is now officially back in preschool. And LOVING it!! Here are a few pictures that I took on his first day of school.

On the front steps. He can't keep his eyes open for anything when I'm taking a picture.

In front of the car. Notice the frost on the car. That's a great first day of school picture!!

Tag #2

I realized that I was tagged again, so here's another one for everyone to enjoy.

Husband Tag (by Kylie)

1. Where did you meet? In my apartment when I went back to school after my mission. He was in our FHE group. I went back to school halfway through the year, so he already knew most of my apartment. He was there visiting when I walked in. I just remember him being really scruffy (he had grown out his beard over Christmas). I was ornery and not in the mood to try to be nice. He said something about meeting the new roommate and I told him I was NOT his roommate and stalked off down the hall. He was still nice enough to help me carry in all of my stuff. The funny thing was, we had a whole bunch of other connections as well. My cousin was in his ward, my first zone leader was one of his really good friends growing up, my ex was roommates with his brother while I was on my mission. It was just a matter of time before we met.
2. How long did you date before you got married? Date? What does that mean? We met at the end of December and were married on August 12. We got engaged in April, but both went out with someone else the week before. We always joke that we got married and then started dating.
3. How long have you been married? Ten years last August.
4. What does he do that surprises you? He understands me. Whenever we have a discussion, he often understands me better than I do myself.
5. What is your favorite feature of his? I love his arms. I love how they feel around me. But I love his butt when he's wearing cowboy boots, too. That just sounds too shallow to put as my FAVORITE feature.
6. What is your favorite quality of his? I love that he thinks of others. There are many times that he reminds me to come out of my little world consisting of just my family and do something for someone else. It's second nature for him to stop and help someone else. He is a natural at being an EMT. It gives him a chance to find out how to help others in a way only he can.
7. Does he have a nickname for you? He calls me Babe. It's pretty funny because it just slipped out one time when we were first married. I've never been one who liked to be called cutesy nicknames, but maybe it was because the right person never used them.
8. What is his favorite color? Based on his closet when we got married, I'm guessing blue.
9. What is his favorite food? I'm thinking Thai, as long as it's authentic. It might be that it's hard to find, so whenever we find it, we have it.
10. What is his favorite sport? I can't think of one that he would know enough about to call it a favorite anything.
11. When and where was your first kiss? February 14, 1998. He was just dropping me off after a dance we had gone to. It was in the lobby of my apartment.
12. What is your favorite thing to do as a couple? I like to play games, but it's also fun to just go shopping and spend time without the kids.
13. Do you have any children? Yep. Three. Jo is seven, Owen is 5, and Zoey is 2.
14. Does he have a hidden talent? I've found out he's a pretty good artist because Zoey makes him draw pictures every Sunday all through church. Mine aren't good enough for her. But I also know he's great at figuring stuff out. Stuff that totally blows my mind, like how to do two angles at once on the table saw and how to put stuff together to make it work.
15. How old is he? 32.
16. Who said "I love you" first? I'm thinking him, but just because I was still scared of boys for quite a while.
17. What is his favorite type of music? I'm going to say classical.
18. What do you admire most about him? I admire that he is so strong in the gospel. He has had experiences that could have swayed him, but they just made him stronger. I love that his testimony is his own and he's developed it himself.
19. Do you think he will read this? Yep. And comment on it, too. Either in his blog or on my comments.

For this, I tag Red, Mimi and Mare

Tag #1

I know, I've been horrible about blogging lately. I have some not so good reasons, but I also came down with strep throat almost three weeks ago. My other kids had had sore throats and I hadn't given them any sympathy and they eventually got over it. I kept telling myself that if I admitted that I needed to go to the doctor, I should have taken my kids to the doctor and didn't; so I was a bad mom. I suffered through it for five days before I went in and by the time I did go to the doctor, I could hardly swallow without crying. He told me I had strep and put us all on antibiotics just in case my kids also had had strep. It took me forever to get over it, but luckily I was feeling pretty good when we went down to Utah for Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving, I was trying to get my house clean and decorated for Christmas, and I was just out of the habit of blogging. I keep telling myself that I need to get back into it, but I don't. A few people have tagged me in the last few weeks. I'm sorry about not responding, so here it goes.

Quirky Tag (by Mimi and Rachel - Apparently I'm pretty quirky - although I had a hard time coming up with them. What can I say, I think I'm pretty normal.)

1. I'm obsessive about some things. I like to do things in a certain order. I think it helps me to be able to think about other things while I do things that have to be done all the time. I have to shower in a certain order even down to washing my left arm first and my right leg last. If I get out of order, I have to start all over again to make sure that it all gets done. I also try to figure out the most efficient way of doing things and always do them in that order. For example, if I'm cleaning the bathroom, I like to use one rag and clean from the cleanest to the dirtiest. If I have more that one bathroom, I'll clean all of the mirrors, then all of the sinks, etc. If I'm making something in the kitchen, I'll measure out the dry ingredients first, then go back to measure the liquid so I don't dirty more measuring cups/spoons.

2. I like to do math problems in my head. There are the easy, necessary ones like how many more minutes until Josie needs to leave for school; but I also do very unecessary ones like what is the midpoint between my exit and my parents' exit on the freeway. I'm constantly figuring out stuff like that.

3. My dad and sister will laugh at this one: Apparently most people put on a sock and a sock, then a shoe and a shoe. I put on a sock and a shoe, then a sock and a shoe. My dad has tried to convince me to change, but I won't.

4. I love to change my surroundings every once in a while. When I was growing up, I shared a room with a sister. We both loved to change things around. We could take our beds apart and move around the room in about 1/2 hour. Now, it is a little more difficult, but I just recently moved about 75% of my furniture around, so I'm happy for a while.

5. I love getting new little things. It totally makes my week when I get a new toothbrush, new loofah, new body wash, or even new dental floss. There's just something about opening a new package and using something new.

6. When I go shopping, I usually pick up some treat at the beginning of the trip, so whenever I'm tempted to buy something not on my list, I remind myself that I already have a treat and it keeps me from totally blowing my list. Usually.

So, there's quirky me. I now tag: Tara, Laurene, and Abby.

Look what I found!!

I went out to feed and water the chickens this afternoon and guess what I found in the coop! Our first egg!! I've been waiting for five months for this day. I HATE storebought eggs. I didn't really see a difference until we had to go back to them in July. They are watery!!

Anyway, I had to run in the house to show everyone. I finally fed and watered the chickens, fed and watered Gus, and watered Hannibal. Then I remembered that we had new bedding to give the chickens (I had cleaned out the coop on Saturday and we ended up having to buy more bedding). I went to put that in and found another, very warm, egg by the feeder. It was like the chickens were thanking me for the new feed. Probably what really happened was that the chicken was ready to lay an egg, but wasn't about to miss out on the new feed. Now if I can just train them to lay in the nesting boxes, we'll be set.

The eggs really are both brown. The more white-ish one was the first one and it seems to have some sort of white coating over the brown. I'm SO excited to have brown eggs again!!

I just have to share a story about brown eggs here. We went down to my mom and dad's house and my mom got out a carton of nice white eggs. My kids all stared at them in wonder. One of them asked Grandma where she got the white eggs. They didn't remember ever seeing them before.

Girls' Weekend

I started this post right after we went down to Utah, but I never finished it.

We went down to Utah to the "Bronson Tricks of the Trade." The drive down was fun, the party was fun, the hotel was fun, the drive home was fun. Pretty much a bunch of fun. Kidless fun at that.

We came up with fun ideas for Cheap Family Fun, talked and laughed, and heard lots of Bronson stories. Then we went back to the hotel and talked and laughed some more. Just as we were settling down, we had a small emergency and had to get up and take care of it, which started us having to settle down again.

In the morning (or should I say, later in the morning?) we got up and had fun in the hot tub and pool, where we encountered another small emergency trying to put down the broken shades (Let's just say you should never go anywhere with Tara without being well stocked in bandaids). Jolee was the good one of the bunch. She just checked out the exercise room. I tried to talk myself into joining her, but I didn't talk hard enough. Then we got ready, compared our overnight bags (I vote Tara's is the coolest, and the most stocked - of course I could just be jealous of her mini straighening iron) and started for home. We stopped in Layton for lunch and Pocatello for ice cream and finally made it home later Saturday evening. I'm sure our kids were missed, but not enough for us to never do it again.

Here are more pictures from the night.

The party!

The ride home.

Thanks Jolee for making sure we were all invited. And thanks everyone for letting me crash your party even though I'm not related through blood.

The election from the mouths of kids

Jo came home from school today and told me that I should vote for McCain because "Obama wants to take all of our guns away. He thinks he needs them for something." Apparently they learned more about the candidates today. She said that they had an election at school and McCain won.

This election has really made Jo think. While they were having their afternoon snack, they made up some laws that they thought were important. Here's what they came up with.

Laws:

1. No drinking or drugs
2. No bullies
3. No pirates
4. No robbers
5. Stay healthy
6. Only nice boys and girls in the town
7. There should be a fire truck by every house
8. When there's heroes like Daddy and police, you gotta get out of their way really fast so they can do their work
9. No stealing guns
10. Hunt so animals won't be hungry and die
11. Love your neighbors
12. Sometimes moms have to clean the house, and kids

Jo asked if there could be two presidents like a brother and sister, like her and Owen. I told her no, but there's a president and a vice president. She decided that Owen could be the vice president, since she made up most of the laws.

Psycho kids

A few weeks ago, I opened the door to go downstairs and this is what I saw. I'm not sure what she was doing, but she wasn't doing it for a show. She wasn't expecting anyone to open the door and see her. I laughed SO hard!!

Then, when Owen learned that Jo was being psycho, he wanted to do something funny, too. Here's his attempt.

Jo saw me taking pictures of Owen and saw what he was doing and wanted to try. Here she is doing it for show.Zoey was excited to try, but she was afraid to hang her head over the side of the bench, so here's her attempt.But, don't worry, she more than made up for it last night. She woke up early from her nap yesterday, so by last night when we were trying to get everyone ready for bed, she was loopy!! I guess I should be glad that, most of the time, when my kids are super tired, they get psycho instead of super cranky.

She's definitely NOT ready to give up naps!!