Strawberries!!

The kids and I made jam this morning from our very own strawberry patch. It was so fun to have real help this year. I love it!
We picked enough strawberries for 17 8oz jars of freezer jam with enough left over to top our angel food cake for desert tonight. YUM!

What has Colin been up too?? Oh, my!


He has been camera crazy lately. He loves to take pictures. He loves to upload pictures to the computer. He loves to burn the pictures to picture CDs. He loves to watch his pictures on the TV.

His latest is this adventure in Adobe Photoshop. He took this picture of himself.

Then used photoshop to change the picture on his shirt to be an image he found on the web.

Very impressive. I asked Randy when he taught Colin to use Photoshop and Randy said that he hasn't taught Colin Photoshop.

Colin said, as I was posting this, that Randy taught him to use the eraser in Photoshop when they were programming their game with Phrogram (Kids Programming Language V 2.2). They used a picture of one of our fish and used the eraser to erase the tank from around it. He said he just figured out how to use layers himself.

Being the mother of highly intelligent, wonderful children whom one loves dearly, is not an easy task. It challenges me daily to be a better person than I otherwise would.

A few weeks ago (I know it has been forever since I last posted - my boys just can't leave the operating system alone!!), we were reading the about The Passover in the Old Testament Stories book for family scripture study. As most of you know, the last plague was that the oldest child in every Egyptian family would die. The Israelites were to put lamb's blood on their doors to keep the destroying angel from visiting their homes. As the oldest child, Colin was very interested in that. We talked about it for a minute and, of course, I assured him that we would certainly have followed the Prophet and painted our door so the sickness would pass over us because we loved him so much.

After the kids went to bed, I pondered that for a time - was I really "painting the door" of our home to keep the destroying angel away??

A few days later, I was studying my scriptures and happened to reread the Word of Wisdom from section 89 of the Doctrine and Covenants. I have read it many times, however, this time I read it, I was struck by the very last verse which reads "And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them , as the children of Israel, and not slay them. Amen." Wow, how powerful is that! I have spent a lot of time pondering that for the past few weeks and I realize that I do have a testimony of that truth!

Randy and I discussed it shortly after I read it. We have different views of the Word of Wisdom. He focuses on the don'ts and I focus on the do's. It was an interesting discussion. I have never had a problem with the don'ts, so I don't think about them too much. Randy has not ever had a problem with them either, but has been more exposed to those that do. The week I was reading this, he attended the funeral of a cousin who had shot and killed a bail bondsman and then was shot and killed himself by police. Randy pointed out that if Tony had been obeying the Word of Wisdom and avoiding the alcohol and drugs, two men would still be alive. That is pretty dramatic. We read the newspaper that week and noticed that most crimes are a result of not following the Word of Wisdom. Interesting.
We talked about how most frequently the destroying angel comes as heart attacks or illness and is not always a sudden as being killed quickly. Many news stories are about diet related illnesses that could be prevented by following the Word of Wisdom.
I had Chronic Fatigue from 1996 until 2001. Colin's birth in 2000 was what forced me to face the fact that traditional medicine did not have the answers and if I wanted to be the mother that this child needed, I would have to figure it out myself. Turns out that following the Word of Wisdom was key to turning away that "destroying angel." As long as I stick to it, I feel great.
Colin has been my motivation to do better and be more obedient from the beginning of my quest to follow this law. He has had food sensitivities since he was six months old and has challenged my abilities ever since. At six months old, he developed a rash on his toes. I took him to the doctor and he gave me steriod cream to put on them. I didn't like that option very much. I had an appointment with an ND for my chronic fatigue about that time and I took Colin with me. He told me that we both had dairy allergies and I had Candida. I quit drinking milk and went on a "Candida Diet." It was amazing the difference. The toes cleared right up and I felt sooo much better.
As Colin got older and was eating more and more foods, we discovered more and more sensitivities - wheat, corn, dairy, food dye, peanuts..... I had to completely change my menu planning. The really great news is that I have since learned a lot more about food and cooking and he can now eat the foods he is sensitive too in moderation without breaking out in a rash. I certainly have a long way to go, but it is good to look back and see where I came from.
I have been slacking quite a bit lately, but I am now re motivated to keep trying.

Just yesterday I read an article about autism. Autism is a very complex disease that no one really knows the cause of, but many people have raised very good questions. This last article I read talked about how autism is a genetic defeat that needs an enviromental trigger to manifest itself. No one is exactly sure what that trigger is, but it is very possible that it is related to food sensitivities in certain individuals. It made me wonder if all my early efforts helped prevent my son from developing autism. What would have happened if I had just applied the steriod cream and kept doing what I was doing?? I guess I will never know.

I think it would be easier to paint the door with lamb's blood and see the immediate results of your efforts the next day. It is not easy to endure to the end. :)

My current goals toward "painting my door" are:

Work on the do's of the Word of Wisdom through more prudent research and proper menu planning.

Follow the council to have three months of financial reserves by staying in my budget.

Keep working at daily scripture study focusing on:
Personal Study: Reading and studying my lesson guides for Sunday School and Relief Society, and using the topical guide to research personal questions that I want answers to. This to be done in the afternoon before I start my other studies.

Couple Study: Read Understanding Isaiah in the mornings before Randy leaves for work or school, so we can get through 2 Nephi with some insight.

Family Study: Currently Old Testament Stories to be read as a family before bed.


Okay, there it is in writing. Now I have to do it right?

Puzzle Masters!





I knew Grace was good at puzzles, but I wondered if some of it was that she had all our puzzles, and all the nursery puzzles, memorized. It's not, she's just good.
On Monday, I bought her a brand new 24 piece Dora puzzle at Walmart and she had the whole thing put together within minutes of opening it without so much as a hint from anyone. Wow!



Some of the credit must go to her puzzle mentor - Robyn! I got Robyn a new 100 piece puzzle at the same time. She worked on her puzzle through the afternoon and the next morning between other jobs and projects and finally finished the whole thing all by herself!

Here are the pictures of the Mei Tai. Grace likes this one better than the first one. She says this one doesn't hurt her legs and it's not hot.

One of the features of a Mei Tai is you can still use it while pregnant. I don't think I want to use it too often though - that's too many kids to carry for too long. :)
I am 29 weeks pregnant in this picture.

Notice the lovely patio my husband has created this past month. I love it! We still need to put the sand in the cracks, but it is a HUGE improvement over the dirt that the patio has been for the past two years.

DISCLAIMER

Jeremy doesn't like to read my blog due to lack of proof reading. I realize that this is a problem and I will work on it. In the meantime, if I waited to make everything perfect (or even close), nothing would ever get posted! Between interruptions and computer glitches, I am happy to get what I get to post. Someday I will be an awesome writer, be patient with me. :) If my sentences don't make sense or my spelling is off, know that I am enjoying motherhood and my kids are more important than blogging. I will always be able to blog, but those darn kids keep growing up on me and someday they will have their own homes and interruptions.

What have the kids been working on this week while I have been studying myself?

Colin has been studying Scooby Doo. A few weeks ago, the librarian gave him a Scooby Doo book to try. He loved it because Scooby talks funny. When he finished it, he put everything Scooby Doo on hold with his library card. He has been reading Scooby books, watching Scooby movies, and playing Scooby computer games this week. They are not exactly classics, but he is learning. Tonight when the kids were playing babies, they were going on a trip in boats. Colin asked Robyn what kind of boat she had. She didn't know so he suggested she be in a gondola like Scooby and Shaggy. So she and Grace were in gondolas and Colin was in a canoe.
He has also been playing with numbers a lot (thanks to Robyn's current obsession with math). Now that he "gets" place value, he can add huge numbers together. Randy gave him the problem of 123456 + 654321 and Colin thought is was great that the answer was a bunch of 7s. He spent a lot of Sunday figuring out how to write problems that would add up to a lot of the same number like 1234 + 4321 equals 5555. He even noticed that the number of numbers is one less than the number (ie 1234 +4321 = four 5s). He is very good at saying the numbers he creates too like 617528 is six hundred seventeen thousand five hundred twenty eight. Fun Stuff. He has also been playing a bit with multiplication. He likes the 11 times tables and likes to times by 10.
Legos have also been big this week. He has been building cars and pyramids. Very cool.

Robyn has been crazy about math lately. I bought her a Primer level Math U See book in December and she is almost through the whole book! She said the other day, "I just love math, Mom." I love to hear it. My visiting teachers came over and she was working on her Math U See book. One of them asked if she was doing school. Robyn just gave her a really funny look and said, "No, I'm doing math." It was pretty funny.
Robyn has also become a voracious reader. On Monday, she read to Grace for over an hour. It was awesome to watch two little girls just sit and read for that long. They like to sit with me while I read my books and they read their books.
And of course she has been playing babies. Playing babies everyday is a given.

Both girls would live outside if they could. They love to swing and do tricks on the bar of the swing set. It's been pretty windy this week, so they haven't been out as much as they would like to have been.

Grace has been doing her "math book" too. It is really an old preschool workbook that I bought at Walmart a million years ago. She wants to be a big kid so she does what the big kids do. it has been fun to watch. She learned to write several letters doing her "math."
She LOVES books. She spends hours being read to by whomever she can get to read to her and hours just looking at the books. Her favorites are her Winnie the Pooh books by AA Milne and the Magic Tree House series. (She likes to get out the whole Magic Tree House series, not just one book at a time.) They are not exactly two year old kind of books, but that is what she likes. She likes to look at the words and find letters. Today she was "reading" the Rainbow Fish and she asked me, "What does B U T spell?" I love it!
She has been spending a lot of time playing babies. She is frequently lost and she is in her room or in the hideout playing babies by herself. She likes to read to her babies and play games, like Memory, with her babies. And, of course, plays babies with Robyn a lot. Grace has more time for babies because she just little and doesn't have quite as many jobs as Robyn does.

It is so fun to watch them inspire each other.

We are loving Spring! Here are some pictures of the spring gardens. Weeding is on the list for tomorrow! We are currently harvesting radishes, lettuce, parsley, cilantro, chives, and a few other herbs. We have garlic, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, potatoes, cilantro, parsley, sage, thyme, catnip, lemon balm, chives, and radishes growing in the gardens now. And probably a few things I can't remember right off the top of my head. The fruit trees and the berries are looking pretty good. Robyn told me yesterday that she found blossoms on the strawberries. I can't wait for fresh berries!! It is very nice to be harvesting food again. I love that, even if it is pretty limited right now.

This is part of the veggie garden. The white stuff is frost cloth - it is awesome!! I only have two pieces so only the peas garden and the center garden have been covered - there is a big difference in the plants in those two over the plants that haven't been covered.
A lot of the "weeds" in the path are lettuce and cilantro - Grace helped a lot with the planting. We will have a yummy salad for lunch tomorrow after we get the weeding done.



This is the herb garden. We tried to make it look like a wagon wheel because the pioneer women used to put an old wagon wheel down to plant their herbs in so the men folk would know that those plants were the herbs and wouldn't walk in them or let the horses eat them. Not that any of that is relevant to our back yard, but it was fun anyway.

Happiness is:

Watching Robyn push Gracie on the swings and teaching her to pump.

Life is Good!







Everyone has become a bit more self sufficient this week. I am very excited.

Colin learned to vacuum and use the can opener!! Wahoo!!

Robyn learned to ride her bike WITHOUT training wheels and go across the monkey bars at the park! Hooray!

Grace told me last Sunday that she doesn't like to play toys at nursery class - no wonder she always cries at the very end and gets brought to me during Relief Society. We talked about it and decided she could ask her teacher if she could read books instead. She tried it and after class she told me, "I didn't need you today." Her teacher read three books to her during toy time.

It is very, very nice to not be needed quite so much. I got a lot done this week! I was able to study for two or three hours each day and the house has stayed clean! That has never happened before. I even had time to sew a mei tai for the new baby. A Mei Tai is an Asian baby carrier. We went to The Baby Place for our monthly midwife visit and one of the girls there was wearing her 11 week old in one on her back while she checked me. Her Mei Tai is a Kozy Carrier (http://www.kozycarrier.homestead.com). I decided that for $85, I could build one myself. I made a mock up in Robyn's size first to practice - it's straps aren't quite in the right angle, but it works pretty good for her dollies. Then I made one out of a piece of fabric left over from when we recovered the couch. I put Grace in it and she said it was too hot! It was also too wide. So I found some lighter fabric and shrunk the body by three inches. I haven't actually tried it with any children yet, but it works great with Robyn's "sleeping baby" that is about the size of a real three month old. I was thinking I would have Randy try it with Grace tonight - he's not pregnant.


The final Mei Tai



Robyn modeling her Mei Tai.

So why haven't I blogged in a while???
Reason #1 The computer monitor blew up on me and I had to wait for a new one.

Reason #2 My boys can't make up their minds about what operating system they want and I cannot keep up!

Reason #3 It is SPRINGTIME!!!!

Reason #4 I have been catching up on my reading.

March was a lovely month - oh so very much better than February. (I am hoping that the next three months go as quickly as March did. Tomorrow I enter the third trimester of this pregnancy and I am looking forward to THE END!)

The kids and I have been very busy taking long walks/bike rides around the neighborhood and generally being outside at every available moment.
We have onions, potatoes, carrots, peas, beets, radishes, lettuce, swiss chard, chives and cilantro growing in our garden. We have even begun to enjoy the harvest of the lettuce and the chives this week and look forward to radishes by next week. Happy days! I love to eat out of my very own garden.
The crocuses and the daffodils have come and gone and now the tulips are blooming. All of the fruit trees have beautiful pink and white flowers on them and the berries are leafing out.
Randy has been working very hard getting our patio extended on the weekends and it is looking fabulous!
Did I mention that I LOVE springtime?!!

Last week, the kids went to an assisted living center with their fiddle group to play for the residents there. It was so fun! When they were finished several residents asked if we would come back. When Monique said we would, one lady said, "WHEN." It was cute. Monique said we would try to come back next month. I hope we do.

I have made a goal to keep up on my church lessons - reading the lesson before I attend the class. It really helps me get more out of the class. Good Stuff.
I have also been trying to get through the Church News each week and keep my Ensign read. It is amazing how much a girl can learn from such publications and how relevant they seem to be to what I have been thinking about or working on.

I finished Fascinating Womanhood - fabulous book, Highly recommended.
I also read Alas, Babylon for my 5 Pillar Group tonight - great book! It is a book written in the 50s about Russia bombing all the major cities at the same time, effectively ending civilization as we know it in a matter of minutes and what took place in the days after. It gave me a lot to think about. I think I will go buy some extra needles next time I get to Walmart. Oh, and I still want a farm.
I am also working on The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer and The Great Conversation.
I won't be running out of reading material anytime soon with all the Great Books of the Western World, the classics on the first pillar reading list from George Wythe College, the Lord's Library (all the books written by the Prophets of this dispensation), and the huge stack of books I just want to read - all just waiting for me.
Right now they are all waiting for me in huge stacks in my family room as my book cases that I ordered two months ago still haven't arrived! Maybe this week they will come. I hope so.

We have to run now - time to set up for Pack Meeting.

P.S. As soon as Colin teaches me about Windows Vista Business, I will upload some photos.