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.

Here is a picture of Grace (left) with her fiddle from www.ruwemusic.com.

I love books!

One of the books that I am currently reading is called Fascinating Womanhood by Helen B. Andelin originally published in 1965. It is very interesting. I like it. It is along the lines of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. I still have about 100 pages to go, but so far would highly recommend the book to all women who want marriages like so many of the Prophets and their wives have enjoyed. It says basically the same things as The Surrendered Wife and Created to be His Helpmeet but uses classic books, the bible, and testimonials to illustrate the points made.
The Surrendered Wife is very "fluffy" and supported only by testimonials, but is a very easy read and easy to apply. It was the first book of this kind that I read and I made a big difference in my marriage.
Created to be His Helpmeet is supported entirely by verses from the bible and testimonials. It is superior to Surrendered Wife and a joy to read. I did feel that many of her interpretations of the bible were a stretch but the fruits of following the principles in this book are enough to convince me of its worth. It made a huge difference in my marriage.
Fascinating Womanhood is supported as I said by classics, the Bible, and testimonials. So far, I agree with her interpretations and all points made in the book. It is a slightly more difficult read and offers a lot to think about. I like it best because it is most aligned with the principles of a leadership education that we try to follow in our home. I checked the copy I am currently reading out from the library, but I will be buying a copy of my own.

A significant portion of Fascinating Womanhood is dedicated to "Understanding Men." (Boys are so weird!) In Chapter 7, the point made is that a man wants to be number one priority to his wife. Not that she can't have other interests, but he doesn't want to be less important than the children, her career, the house, her hobbies........ Makes sense. Why then is it so hard for women to meet this need?
Mrs. Andelin says, "There is a tendency for women to fail in this respect, to place other things ahead of their husband. This tendency began in early childhood and was clearly evident in our world of dreams." She then describes little girls' play. When little girls play "house" or "babies," that is what play is all about - the house and the babies. There is no husband present. The focus is on the children and homemaking. Little girls also dream of the wedding -- beautiful dress, cake, decorations....... everything except the groom.
As the girls get older, Prince Charming comes into the picture some. I remember when JaNae and I used to play barbies, we would spend all afternoon getting everything all set up and ready to go on a date with Ken. By the time we had the barbies all dressed and their hair done and Ken finally drove his Corvette to our house to pick Barbie up for the date, my mom would call and the game would end. Occasionally we actually married Ken, but the game always ended after the big wedding.
Even the children's stories and poems we read and hear are about the pretty house and babies with no mention of the husband or else they are about Prince Charming who carries the Princess off to the castle in the clouds and they live "happily ever after. The End."
I read this chapter and thought about it some yesterday. I took some comfort in that when my girls play "Babies," they usually talk Colin into playing the Dad. He usually doesn't mind because it is the Dad's job to go to work so he gets to play the computer for his work and the girls play whatever they want while he is gone and then they occasionally play together for dinner or to go on a car trip or whatever. When Colin won't play, they use Sunshine bear as the dad and he goes to another room when it's time for him to go to work.
Then later that night, I was reading a Winnie the Pooh story to Grace and she wanted to know where Roo's dad is. He only has a mom. Kanga is a wonderful mother. She is always sweeping the house and worrying about Roo, but Grace was very right. No Dad.

Anyway, I am interested to know what anyone else thinks about this subject. How does this figure into the problems of today?

My personal view is that if all women fulfilled their role as outlined by our Father in Heaven and well described in this book, we wouldn't have the problems that we do. God really is very smart. He is pouring out his blessings upon us and it is up to each one of us to use our agency to follow him and receive those blessings. Satan is also very smart. He is using every source he can to distort God's plan and he is carefully leading everyone he can down to hell.

Oh, Happy Day!!!
The kids and I just got back from the Doctor's office. Our baby is Rh NEGATIVE!!!!! It is back to a normal, hopefully boring, pregnancy. We are going back to the Baby Place next week - back to our wonderful midwives. No more specialist's office for us (knock on wood). Happy, happy news!!!

Computer Education

Two weeks ago, Randy switched our operating system from Windows Vista to Freespire which is a linux based system. Colin has spent every spare second learning his way around the new system.
The first week was spent learning the necessities: Music, pictures, and account management. It took him about a day to find L Songs - the program to download his CDs. Then he worked on his account to create 10 different desktops which each needed a different background. It took him a while to figure out how to upload pictures. Monday morning at about 6:30 he burst upstairs to announce that he had figured it out. He could now upload photos from the camera. He and Robyn spent all day Monday taking pictures of random things and uploading them to his account. Then they created different backgrounds in different styles for each desktop.
On Tuesday, the thing that I have been dreading happened - he discovered the games on the new operating system. Up to this point in his life he has spent his computer time doing "educational" things. The games on Windows Vista were great. My personal favorite was one called Purble Place where you could play logic games similar to Master Mind. I liked those games. However, Freespire has real video games. They are very similar to the Nintendo Games from my childhood - Tetris, Super Mario Bros.... His favorite is a game called Super Tux - it is very similar to Mario only instead of Mario, the guy is a penguin. He has been very preoccupied with Super Tux - always thinking about it no matter what he is doing whether at the computer or not. He has spent the last four days figuring it out. The good news is that I was able to impress all of my children with my video games skills thanks to the limited time I spent on Jensen's Nintendo working my way through level 1 of Mario Brothers. I actually taught Colin a few things after he showed me how to get started - like that if you kill the square guy (like it's a turtle in Mario) and you jump on him again just right, he will slide and kill all the guys in your way. And that to jump over really tall things you have to run fast and jump at the same time. I even passed three levels without dying before I had to leave to get the bread in the oven. Yeah Mom!
I started to get a little concerned about this video game obsession yesterday, but decided to not do anything yet to see what would happen. I know Colin well enough that I know he doesn't like to play by the rules - he likes to figure things out and modify them. Sure enough, this morning he was programing his own levels of Super Tux. It came with a feature that you can create your own game and he made two different levels today. What a relief! I was afraid for his brain for a bit there.
He showed me how to program a bit. It's a lot of fun to play your own game.

Other news

Seems like when you just start to get into a groove and feel like everything is going well and in control, change happens.
We were going along just fine, decided to shake things up a bit and add a new member to our family. Everything still okay so we decide Randy should go back to school for another degree.
As soon as he started his class, we find out that this pregnancy is high risk.
This Sunday brought another new change. Randy is now the 1st councilor in the Elder's Quorum. And for now, still 11 year old scout leader.
Then I come home from my Doctor's appointment today and I find out that a big company in Japan is having fax issues and Randy is renewing his passport to be ready to head to Japan! He has never had to travel with work before. We still don't know if he will be going or not. He said only 25% chance that he will go.

Goodness! Lots of adventures. My advice would be whatever you do, don't try to understand Isaiah - you may get more blessings than you are ready for! :)