Showing posts with label Chocolate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chocolate. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
What cures all?
Long day. Another 100-minute round trip to Primary Children's Medical Center for Jesi. Lexi's IEP. I took Parker on a daddy date to the BYU-New Mexico basketball game. Christi home with the other 7 by herself. I started the day at 5:45 am going up to the church with Taylor and Parker to play basketball. I get home from the game tonight at 11:20 pm. I'm exhausted. Christi conked out on the bed waiting for us to return. Our arrival wakes her up. "Are you in bed for the night?" I ask. She looks at me with both stress and sleep in her eyes. "I could get up and watch a Mary Tyler Moore," she replies. "I have good news!" I say. I hold up two Mint Chocolate Utah Truffles. I can see the stress just ooze out of her. A peaceful, serene joy now surrounds her like an aura. Life will go on...
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Advice for New Mothers...
Two beautiful new babies. Brynlee and Benjamin, were just born into our extended family. I wasn’t able to attend the baby showers for the two “B’s,” but just getting the invitations had me reminiscing about my own baby showers. The thing I liked best (well, besides the gifts, of course) was reading the little note cards where people had written their advice on motherhood. I don’t know if they did that at these two showers, but just in case, I thought I’d share my thoughts here! (:
(These are totally random thoughts)
1. You don’t always have to wash the binky. I know germophobics are now squirming in their chairs, but trust me—the child will live! We refer to this phenomenon as “remember the bloody toenail!” When Taylor was just over a year old, he ended up in the doctor’s office for his first stitches. After the stitches were put in place, he was walking up and down the lab while we talked to the doctor. At some point I noticed that Taylor had put something in his mouth. I coaxed it out of him and found it to be none other than… (drum roll) a big, (as in “adult,”) nasty, yellowed, bloodied, WHOLE toenail! (As I’m writing this, I’m wondering for the 100th time why we didn’t sue and get rich from the ordeal!) The doctor promptly grabbed the toenail with a napkin, threw it in the garbage, and rambled something quickly about how because Taylor didn’t have any open sores in his mouth, we didn’t need to get it tested and he should be fine. Uh-huh. HE was fine, but WE were GAGGING! What did we learn from the experience?? He survived the bloody toenail, so surely kids can survive those M & M’s they pick up off the floor of Target or the cookie crumbs eaten off the carpet, or even a binky that has fallen on the floor. We just call out "bloody toenail!" and everything's ok. Oh, and by the way, I was just kidding about suing. I hate when people sue for silly things.
2. If you like to wash the binky, go ahead and disregard #1. Because an even more important thing for a mother to learn is to disregard any advice you don’t like.
3. Speaking of the binky, (or “paci,” as they call it in the south), if you choose to use a binky, try to ignore comments from the anti-binky-police. Using a binky does not make you a bad mother. In fact, it may be the key to getting through a church service without having to leave, dinner at a nice restaurant, or most importantly, a good night’s sleep. And if your child happens to be one of the children that gets super attached to the binky—do not despair. You know your child best and will know when to throw a bye-bye binky party. And you will probably cry right along with your child as you watch their alligator tears when they find the binky is permanently gone. But you will both get through it. And when someone tries to tell you that a binky stunts language development, send them to meet my darling niece Mariah! She was very attached to her binky until she was three and is quite possibly the best conversationalist I know. I could listen to her talk for HOURS! Her little voice is seriously the cutest on the planet.
4. The desitin goes in the wet-wipe container. When my sister Becky taught me this, I thought she was BRILLIANT! I could never find the desitin when I needed it until I learned this trick. Now all you have to do is keep track of the wet wipes!
5. Moving on to when children get older… (cause I’m just typing whatever comes to mind). Color code the towels, and get them a washcloth to match. For instance, Graci gets pink, Taylor-blue, Parker-orange, etc. Tell them you will wash the towels ONCE a week. Tell them if they can’t find THEIR towel, they can use their wash cloth to dry off! Trust me, this will save you loads and loads of towels that were clean enough to be used again, but somehow found their way into the hamper instead.
6. Don’t really follow through on the wash cloth threat. Your children will not find it funny. Give lots of second chances. Which reminds me of…
7. The whole “Love and Logic” has some great principles. (Our school uses it, so I actually read the book.) But sometimes you just have to rely on your parental instinct. For example, Love and Logic would tell you that when your child calls home and tells you in a quivering voice that they forgot their sack lunch, and lunch starts in two minutes you should respond by saying, “so what do you plan to do about that?” Really??? The child is probably already stressed and embarrassed about the forgotten lunch and you are just making it worse. Instead, add an extra treat to the lunch with a little love note on a napkin, and high-tail it up to the school. Your child just might give you a big hug in front of his friends and thank-you again when you pick him up from school. And again when you tuck him in that night. Maybe you aren’t teaching responsibility in the way Love and Logic says, but you are letting him know that when he makes a mistake, he can come to you!
8. Never yell or demean.
9. They will pick up your eating habits, so teach them good things. For example, I hate mayo, so I’ve never put much on my kids’ sandwiches. Now they don’t like it either, which is fine because it’s unhealthy. I’ve never buttered their bread, and now they prefer it plain—which is great! And Taylor thinks he’s going to die if he drinks anything but skim milk.
10. Chocolate in any form is an exception to rule 9. Make sure they love it. I mean, who wants to go through life without chocolate. (Besides my father-in-law, that is).
11. Make up a nickname and use it to tuck them in at night. This one came from Jer’s parents and we love it!!! Every night when we tuck Taylor in, we sing, “Are you my little sunshine?” He sings back, “I’m your little sunshine.” Then, “I love you,” “I love you,” “Goodnight!” “Goodnight.” Parker is punkin’, Jessica/princess, Elli/ladybug, Graci/tiger-blackbird (long story), and Xander/Dang Xu Chu (we kept his Chinese name as his nickname at night). I’m hoping they’ll still do this with us when they’re 18!
12. Read scriptures with your children every single day.
13. When your four-year-old son decides he wants to be a pink Care Bear for Halloween, and you know he will be parading in his costume throughout the high school as part of his preschool party, it is ok to wait until Walmart is all out of pink so you can settle for blue. He will thank you when he’s older.
14. Keep dating your husband.
15. Pray as a family, morning and night.
16. Never buy them soda when you go out to eat. Ok, that was totally random, but hear me out!! If you want to give your kids soda, buy it by the 2-litre and have it at home. Just teach them that when you go out to eat (even at McDonalds) that you just get water. If you start young, they won’t think it’s weird. (I don’t think my kids would even consider asking for anything other than water—unless they’re with Grandpa, of course!) You will be grateful when someday you find yourself with six children and you realize you can save a truckload of money! You will be even more grateful when their almost-full cup spills all over the floor of your car/minivan/12 passenger beast.
17. Let kids who are close in age share their socks and underwear. You may think this is gross, but I promise you, it’s a great system! Just have a sock bin and an underwear bin and you won’t have to remember whose are whose. Incidentally, even Xander shares his socks with the older boys because of his cute, funky little (or not so little) feet! (:
18. You will sleep again.
19. You will not, however, ever look like you did before you pregnant. Oh wait, maybe that's just me and has something to do with #10.
20. Let your children see your face light up when they come into the room. Even if you are not feeling lit up about it inside. (:
I could go on and on, but my bed and cute sleeping husband is calling out to me! I’ll end with the very cliché but very true, “Love every second. They really do grow up too fast!”
Christianne
(These are totally random thoughts)
1. You don’t always have to wash the binky. I know germophobics are now squirming in their chairs, but trust me—the child will live! We refer to this phenomenon as “remember the bloody toenail!” When Taylor was just over a year old, he ended up in the doctor’s office for his first stitches. After the stitches were put in place, he was walking up and down the lab while we talked to the doctor. At some point I noticed that Taylor had put something in his mouth. I coaxed it out of him and found it to be none other than… (drum roll) a big, (as in “adult,”) nasty, yellowed, bloodied, WHOLE toenail! (As I’m writing this, I’m wondering for the 100th time why we didn’t sue and get rich from the ordeal!) The doctor promptly grabbed the toenail with a napkin, threw it in the garbage, and rambled something quickly about how because Taylor didn’t have any open sores in his mouth, we didn’t need to get it tested and he should be fine. Uh-huh. HE was fine, but WE were GAGGING! What did we learn from the experience?? He survived the bloody toenail, so surely kids can survive those M & M’s they pick up off the floor of Target or the cookie crumbs eaten off the carpet, or even a binky that has fallen on the floor. We just call out "bloody toenail!" and everything's ok. Oh, and by the way, I was just kidding about suing. I hate when people sue for silly things.
2. If you like to wash the binky, go ahead and disregard #1. Because an even more important thing for a mother to learn is to disregard any advice you don’t like.
3. Speaking of the binky, (or “paci,” as they call it in the south), if you choose to use a binky, try to ignore comments from the anti-binky-police. Using a binky does not make you a bad mother. In fact, it may be the key to getting through a church service without having to leave, dinner at a nice restaurant, or most importantly, a good night’s sleep. And if your child happens to be one of the children that gets super attached to the binky—do not despair. You know your child best and will know when to throw a bye-bye binky party. And you will probably cry right along with your child as you watch their alligator tears when they find the binky is permanently gone. But you will both get through it. And when someone tries to tell you that a binky stunts language development, send them to meet my darling niece Mariah! She was very attached to her binky until she was three and is quite possibly the best conversationalist I know. I could listen to her talk for HOURS! Her little voice is seriously the cutest on the planet.
4. The desitin goes in the wet-wipe container. When my sister Becky taught me this, I thought she was BRILLIANT! I could never find the desitin when I needed it until I learned this trick. Now all you have to do is keep track of the wet wipes!
5. Moving on to when children get older… (cause I’m just typing whatever comes to mind). Color code the towels, and get them a washcloth to match. For instance, Graci gets pink, Taylor-blue, Parker-orange, etc. Tell them you will wash the towels ONCE a week. Tell them if they can’t find THEIR towel, they can use their wash cloth to dry off! Trust me, this will save you loads and loads of towels that were clean enough to be used again, but somehow found their way into the hamper instead.
6. Don’t really follow through on the wash cloth threat. Your children will not find it funny. Give lots of second chances. Which reminds me of…
7. The whole “Love and Logic” has some great principles. (Our school uses it, so I actually read the book.) But sometimes you just have to rely on your parental instinct. For example, Love and Logic would tell you that when your child calls home and tells you in a quivering voice that they forgot their sack lunch, and lunch starts in two minutes you should respond by saying, “so what do you plan to do about that?” Really??? The child is probably already stressed and embarrassed about the forgotten lunch and you are just making it worse. Instead, add an extra treat to the lunch with a little love note on a napkin, and high-tail it up to the school. Your child just might give you a big hug in front of his friends and thank-you again when you pick him up from school. And again when you tuck him in that night. Maybe you aren’t teaching responsibility in the way Love and Logic says, but you are letting him know that when he makes a mistake, he can come to you!
8. Never yell or demean.
9. They will pick up your eating habits, so teach them good things. For example, I hate mayo, so I’ve never put much on my kids’ sandwiches. Now they don’t like it either, which is fine because it’s unhealthy. I’ve never buttered their bread, and now they prefer it plain—which is great! And Taylor thinks he’s going to die if he drinks anything but skim milk.
10. Chocolate in any form is an exception to rule 9. Make sure they love it. I mean, who wants to go through life without chocolate. (Besides my father-in-law, that is).
11. Make up a nickname and use it to tuck them in at night. This one came from Jer’s parents and we love it!!! Every night when we tuck Taylor in, we sing, “Are you my little sunshine?” He sings back, “I’m your little sunshine.” Then, “I love you,” “I love you,” “Goodnight!” “Goodnight.” Parker is punkin’, Jessica/princess, Elli/ladybug, Graci/tiger-blackbird (long story), and Xander/Dang Xu Chu (we kept his Chinese name as his nickname at night). I’m hoping they’ll still do this with us when they’re 18!
12. Read scriptures with your children every single day.
13. When your four-year-old son decides he wants to be a pink Care Bear for Halloween, and you know he will be parading in his costume throughout the high school as part of his preschool party, it is ok to wait until Walmart is all out of pink so you can settle for blue. He will thank you when he’s older.
14. Keep dating your husband.
15. Pray as a family, morning and night.
16. Never buy them soda when you go out to eat. Ok, that was totally random, but hear me out!! If you want to give your kids soda, buy it by the 2-litre and have it at home. Just teach them that when you go out to eat (even at McDonalds) that you just get water. If you start young, they won’t think it’s weird. (I don’t think my kids would even consider asking for anything other than water—unless they’re with Grandpa, of course!) You will be grateful when someday you find yourself with six children and you realize you can save a truckload of money! You will be even more grateful when their almost-full cup spills all over the floor of your car/minivan/12 passenger beast.
17. Let kids who are close in age share their socks and underwear. You may think this is gross, but I promise you, it’s a great system! Just have a sock bin and an underwear bin and you won’t have to remember whose are whose. Incidentally, even Xander shares his socks with the older boys because of his cute, funky little (or not so little) feet! (:
18. You will sleep again.
19. You will not, however, ever look like you did before you pregnant. Oh wait, maybe that's just me and has something to do with #10.
20. Let your children see your face light up when they come into the room. Even if you are not feeling lit up about it inside. (:
I could go on and on, but my bed and cute sleeping husband is calling out to me! I’ll end with the very cliché but very true, “Love every second. They really do grow up too fast!”
Christianne
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Happy Anniversary
August 11, 2009 11:00 PM China time
About 6:00 tonight, Christi looked over at me and said, “Hey. It’s our anniversary!” So this was our most memorable, but least remembered, celebration of the greatest day of our lives. (Or at least my life. Sometimes I think Christi got gypped. But I do know she loves me tons:) Just prior to that realization, we had returned home from a full day. Notarization and registration of documents took several hours. Then we went with the kids to a Lotus Shopping Center (bigger than WalMart!) We made the mistake of going through the toy section. Anyway, while at the shopping center, I snuck a Dove chocolate bar into our cart without anyone knowing. When we got home, I pulled Christi into the bathroom and locked the door. We both took a deep breath and treated ourselves to a few minutes of peace and a few bites of chocolate. Christi was seated on the edge of the tub. I was on the toilet. You know you’re getting old when that’s as romantic as it gets on your anniversary:)
So now the kids are in bed and Christi and I are just about to settle down and watch an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series on the computer. (Christi had never seen a full episode of any Star Trek prior to three months ago! I introduced her, and now she’s a little Trekkie:) We’ll post more tomorrow, but know that we are still so in love with X-man (as I like to call him). Oh, we got him a pair of sandals today that seem to be MUCH better for him. Shoes are going to be interesting…
Jeremy
About 6:00 tonight, Christi looked over at me and said, “Hey. It’s our anniversary!” So this was our most memorable, but least remembered, celebration of the greatest day of our lives. (Or at least my life. Sometimes I think Christi got gypped. But I do know she loves me tons:) Just prior to that realization, we had returned home from a full day. Notarization and registration of documents took several hours. Then we went with the kids to a Lotus Shopping Center (bigger than WalMart!) We made the mistake of going through the toy section. Anyway, while at the shopping center, I snuck a Dove chocolate bar into our cart without anyone knowing. When we got home, I pulled Christi into the bathroom and locked the door. We both took a deep breath and treated ourselves to a few minutes of peace and a few bites of chocolate. Christi was seated on the edge of the tub. I was on the toilet. You know you’re getting old when that’s as romantic as it gets on your anniversary:)
So now the kids are in bed and Christi and I are just about to settle down and watch an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series on the computer. (Christi had never seen a full episode of any Star Trek prior to three months ago! I introduced her, and now she’s a little Trekkie:) We’ll post more tomorrow, but know that we are still so in love with X-man (as I like to call him). Oh, we got him a pair of sandals today that seem to be MUCH better for him. Shoes are going to be interesting…
Jeremy
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Too Many Titles!
P.S. (As in pre-script, not post-script. Usually I try to put on a song that has something to do with my post. This song is just cool:)
Have I ever told you about my little sister, Jen? She's a talented, sweet, beautiful girl. She is a great writer, sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek. Well, today I got an email from her entitled "Ode To An Empty Blog." It was a funny call to repentance for me. Here's a portion of her poem:
Onto the internet I log,
Cross my fingers and hope the blog
Of my brother and his wife
Will have an update (I have no life).
I check their blog about all six
Of their children – it’s quite a mix.
I also check the blog for Elli.
Did she learn a new word yet? (Like “jelly?”)
But alas, there is nothing there
Day after day, (feels like year after year).
Are they happy? Are they having fun?
What cute things have their kiddos done?
...
So write today, and make me happy.
Write anything…just make it snappy!
LOVE YOU GUYS!
Jennifer
So Jen, here's an entry, and it could be a long one. There are a few things I want to share, so I couldn't decide on a title. Instead, I'll favor you with subtitles as I go along:)
HI-YAH!!!
The other day I was in my office downstairs. I heard Jesi and Graci playing in the other room. By the other room I mean our family room/play room/guest bedroom. We don't have an extra bedroom, but we do have an extra king size bed. (An EXTRA king size bed ?!?!?!? you may ask. Well, it's too long of a story for this post, but you could chalk it up to "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.") Anyway, this extra king size bed is in the family room/play room/guest bedroom. The kids love to play super-wrestling-attack-jump-on-each-other and similar games on it.
This particular day, Jessica was Batman Girl. (See picture below)
(Not to be confused with Spiderman Girl!)
When Jesi is Batman Girl, she wears Parker's Batman gloves. These are really cool gloves that make batman-type punching sounds when the wearer moves their hands. So a little kid (or a dad re-living his childhood:) can punch the air with a bunch of cool sound effects. Anyway, from my office, I hear Graci scream, "AHHH! A spider, a spider!" I grab some tissue to deal with the invader and go into the room. There are Graci and Jesi, kneeling on the bed. Graci is looking somewhat scared by the arachnid. Jesi (who has no fear of bugs, worms, etc.) has made a fist with her batman-gloved hand and is trying with all of her might to smash the life out of the spider. Try to picture it. Jesi in her batman gloves, pounding away (and making sound effects) at this poor spider that is very dead by the time Dad arrives on the scene. I was cracking up!
GOING, GOING, GONE!
Have you ever watched something bad happen and felt like you were powerless to stop it because you could only move in slow motion...?
Last weekend we went on the 2nd annual Green Family Hike Up Lone Peak. This year, Christi's brother Matthew came with us. It's a great hike. Next year I'm going to take a GPS to see how far we go and how high we climb, but I'd bet it's about a 2 mile hike with about a 2000-3000 foot climb. It's a pretty good hike, especially when you carry a backpack that weighs 28 pounds and a gut that weighs 40. (Next year-no gut!!! But I digress.) Here are a couple of pics from last year's hike, since we haven't developed the ones from this year yet:
One of the things we like to do up there is sit on the big granite outcropping and look down into the valley below. It is a breathtaking view, made all the more wonderful by the fact that the only way to access this view is by a challenging hike. In other words, you feel like you earned it. We hiked up late Friday afternoon, looked out over the valley for a little while, then came down off the outcropping to set up our camp. After dinner, we went back up to the rock to see the sunset and watch as the stars came out. Even mid-July it can get a bit chilly up there at night, so we all brought our sleeping bags up to the rock to be cozy as we watched the heavens. Our sleeping bags were in stuff bags that were roughly cylindrical in shape. Shortly after we had come to the top of the rock, Parker put his sleeping bag down-still in the stuff bag-on the slightly sloped surface of the granite. It started to roll away. "Parker!" I yelled. But it was too late. I wanted to lunge after it, but I would have had to run downhill toward about a 30 foot drop-off. I helplessly watched his sleeping bag as it rolled down, down, and over the edge!
We looked for it on the sloped hillside beneath where it had fallen from the rock. It was just too dark to find a black stuff bag. So here we were, in the middle of nowhere, one sleeping bag short. Fortunately, this trip was in July (as opposed to last year's September trip!) The night was cool, but not dangerous. Parker slept the first part of the night in his clothes. He wore Christi's sweats on top of his own, and three sweatshirts. (He also wore a pair of my socks, which, for some 8-year-old reason, he decided were sufficient footwear to wander off in the woods in the middle of the night for a bathroom break! But that's a different story:) Early in the morning hours he got too cold, and Christi let him crawl into her mummy bag with her. What a great mom!
You know, I sometimes wonder why we love hiking and camping so much. My legs have barely recovered, and its over four days since we got home. I slept terribly (due primarily to the large root I failed to identify prior to laying out our sleeping tarp and the large slope of the ground I also failed to identify-oops!) It took forever to get the water to boil over our fire to cook our freeze-dried food. There was much clean-up after the trip was over. And yet, there are few things I enjoy more than camping with my family. There's something about getting out in nature. I think we feel a connection to our Father in Heaven that is hard to feel in the hustle, bustle and noise of our everyday lives.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE...AND WAY TOO MUCH TO EAT!
Tonight I went downstairs to put Elli to bed. I heard the sound of gushing water from the bathroom. The toilet had overflowed and continued to pour out water for somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour. Not good. There was about an inch of water in the bathroom and it had poured out into the hallway carpet and our two unfinished storage rooms. Remarkably, I kept my cool. I quickly put Elli down in her room and tried to figure out what to do. First I tried soaking up the water with towels, but I quickly realized that this would be almost impossible to do without WAY more towels than we own. Fortunately I was able to borrow a wet-vac from a neighbor and was able to make the headway into the mess. Christi had been at a church meeting, but I was able to get in touch with her and she rushed home to help.
Water, when in the wrong place, is a terrible thing. Nothing can really stop it. It seeped under the walls into the adjacent storage rooms. Fortunately, these are just cement floors, but several boxes that were on the floor got soaked. Right where it came into one room a queen size mattress set was propped up on it's side. (Yes, if you're keeping track, that technically means we have an extra king size mattress set AND an extra queen size mattress set. But you can't really count the queen. It's over 20 years old, has been passed down through a few generations, and is more like a model of the grand canyon than a mattress.) Bottom line-this added a lot of work, not just tonight, but through the next several days as we make sure everything gets dried out and try to rearrange the stuff we moved and took out of boxes to dry. But, you know, that's ok. Cuz' we really don't have much going on in our lives. We're not preparing for an invasion of 50+ kids tomorrow night for a combined Taylor-Jesi-Graci birthday party. We're not trying to get ready to leave on a two-week trip to China to adopt a 4-year-old with special health concerns. We didn't just find out today some news that is complicating this trip and the time-off needed to take it. We're not supposed to leave this weekend to be in Christi's home town for a family reunion. We're not in the process of trying to refinance this home and possibly put an offer on a new home for which I would be the general contractor for the final 1/3 of the work that still needs to be done on the house. Oh wait, yes we are! HOWEVER...it could have been much worse. It could have been an upstairs bathroom. It could have leaked for a longer period of time, or even at a time when we were gone.
While I was not very happy with the situation, I was calm and collected throughout. How, you may ask, did I demonstrate such self-control? Well, I have this friend. It's called chocolate. Have you ever heard of Flipz? (If you are trying to diet, stop reading now!) Flipz are divine and terrible at the same time. They are pretzels covered in your choice of Chocolate, White Chocolate, or Chocolate and Peanut Butter. At Smith's they were on sale for $1.00/bag. Quite a deal! One bag contains four servings of 5 pretzels each-20 fabulous pretzels with a total calorie count of 560 calories. Christi thought it would be a great idea to stock up on Flipz while they were on sale-the kids love them. OK, I said. But (and I'm not kidding) I told her as soon as I got home with them she had to hide them REALLY well. This she neglected to do. We are both trying to lose a little weight prior to our trip to China. She wants to lose about 5 pounds in the next 2 weeks. I want to lose about 35. Anyway, I had to make repeated trips up and down the stairs in the process of cleaning up the water mess in the basement. Those doggone Flipz were just sitting there at the top of the stairs. Over the course of the evening I ate two bags of them all by myself. That's the equivalent of 4 and a half Kit Kats! What a pig. Well, there's always tomorrow. Maybe I'll shoot to lose 34 pounds in the next two weeks instead:)
Jeremy
Have I ever told you about my little sister, Jen? She's a talented, sweet, beautiful girl. She is a great writer, sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek. Well, today I got an email from her entitled "Ode To An Empty Blog." It was a funny call to repentance for me. Here's a portion of her poem:
Onto the internet I log,
Cross my fingers and hope the blog
Of my brother and his wife
Will have an update (I have no life).
I check their blog about all six
Of their children – it’s quite a mix.
I also check the blog for Elli.
Did she learn a new word yet? (Like “jelly?”)
But alas, there is nothing there
Day after day, (feels like year after year).
Are they happy? Are they having fun?
What cute things have their kiddos done?
...
So write today, and make me happy.
Write anything…just make it snappy!
LOVE YOU GUYS!
Jennifer
So Jen, here's an entry, and it could be a long one. There are a few things I want to share, so I couldn't decide on a title. Instead, I'll favor you with subtitles as I go along:)
HI-YAH!!!
The other day I was in my office downstairs. I heard Jesi and Graci playing in the other room. By the other room I mean our family room/play room/guest bedroom. We don't have an extra bedroom, but we do have an extra king size bed. (An EXTRA king size bed ?!?!?!? you may ask. Well, it's too long of a story for this post, but you could chalk it up to "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.") Anyway, this extra king size bed is in the family room/play room/guest bedroom. The kids love to play super-wrestling-attack-jump-on-each-other and similar games on it.
This particular day, Jessica was Batman Girl. (See picture below)
(Not to be confused with Spiderman Girl!)
When Jesi is Batman Girl, she wears Parker's Batman gloves. These are really cool gloves that make batman-type punching sounds when the wearer moves their hands. So a little kid (or a dad re-living his childhood:) can punch the air with a bunch of cool sound effects. Anyway, from my office, I hear Graci scream, "AHHH! A spider, a spider!" I grab some tissue to deal with the invader and go into the room. There are Graci and Jesi, kneeling on the bed. Graci is looking somewhat scared by the arachnid. Jesi (who has no fear of bugs, worms, etc.) has made a fist with her batman-gloved hand and is trying with all of her might to smash the life out of the spider. Try to picture it. Jesi in her batman gloves, pounding away (and making sound effects) at this poor spider that is very dead by the time Dad arrives on the scene. I was cracking up!
GOING, GOING, GONE!
Have you ever watched something bad happen and felt like you were powerless to stop it because you could only move in slow motion...?
Last weekend we went on the 2nd annual Green Family Hike Up Lone Peak. This year, Christi's brother Matthew came with us. It's a great hike. Next year I'm going to take a GPS to see how far we go and how high we climb, but I'd bet it's about a 2 mile hike with about a 2000-3000 foot climb. It's a pretty good hike, especially when you carry a backpack that weighs 28 pounds and a gut that weighs 40. (Next year-no gut!!! But I digress.) Here are a couple of pics from last year's hike, since we haven't developed the ones from this year yet:
One of the things we like to do up there is sit on the big granite outcropping and look down into the valley below. It is a breathtaking view, made all the more wonderful by the fact that the only way to access this view is by a challenging hike. In other words, you feel like you earned it. We hiked up late Friday afternoon, looked out over the valley for a little while, then came down off the outcropping to set up our camp. After dinner, we went back up to the rock to see the sunset and watch as the stars came out. Even mid-July it can get a bit chilly up there at night, so we all brought our sleeping bags up to the rock to be cozy as we watched the heavens. Our sleeping bags were in stuff bags that were roughly cylindrical in shape. Shortly after we had come to the top of the rock, Parker put his sleeping bag down-still in the stuff bag-on the slightly sloped surface of the granite. It started to roll away. "Parker!" I yelled. But it was too late. I wanted to lunge after it, but I would have had to run downhill toward about a 30 foot drop-off. I helplessly watched his sleeping bag as it rolled down, down, and over the edge!
We looked for it on the sloped hillside beneath where it had fallen from the rock. It was just too dark to find a black stuff bag. So here we were, in the middle of nowhere, one sleeping bag short. Fortunately, this trip was in July (as opposed to last year's September trip!) The night was cool, but not dangerous. Parker slept the first part of the night in his clothes. He wore Christi's sweats on top of his own, and three sweatshirts. (He also wore a pair of my socks, which, for some 8-year-old reason, he decided were sufficient footwear to wander off in the woods in the middle of the night for a bathroom break! But that's a different story:) Early in the morning hours he got too cold, and Christi let him crawl into her mummy bag with her. What a great mom!
You know, I sometimes wonder why we love hiking and camping so much. My legs have barely recovered, and its over four days since we got home. I slept terribly (due primarily to the large root I failed to identify prior to laying out our sleeping tarp and the large slope of the ground I also failed to identify-oops!) It took forever to get the water to boil over our fire to cook our freeze-dried food. There was much clean-up after the trip was over. And yet, there are few things I enjoy more than camping with my family. There's something about getting out in nature. I think we feel a connection to our Father in Heaven that is hard to feel in the hustle, bustle and noise of our everyday lives.
WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE...AND WAY TOO MUCH TO EAT!
Tonight I went downstairs to put Elli to bed. I heard the sound of gushing water from the bathroom. The toilet had overflowed and continued to pour out water for somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour. Not good. There was about an inch of water in the bathroom and it had poured out into the hallway carpet and our two unfinished storage rooms. Remarkably, I kept my cool. I quickly put Elli down in her room and tried to figure out what to do. First I tried soaking up the water with towels, but I quickly realized that this would be almost impossible to do without WAY more towels than we own. Fortunately I was able to borrow a wet-vac from a neighbor and was able to make the headway into the mess. Christi had been at a church meeting, but I was able to get in touch with her and she rushed home to help.
Water, when in the wrong place, is a terrible thing. Nothing can really stop it. It seeped under the walls into the adjacent storage rooms. Fortunately, these are just cement floors, but several boxes that were on the floor got soaked. Right where it came into one room a queen size mattress set was propped up on it's side. (Yes, if you're keeping track, that technically means we have an extra king size mattress set AND an extra queen size mattress set. But you can't really count the queen. It's over 20 years old, has been passed down through a few generations, and is more like a model of the grand canyon than a mattress.) Bottom line-this added a lot of work, not just tonight, but through the next several days as we make sure everything gets dried out and try to rearrange the stuff we moved and took out of boxes to dry. But, you know, that's ok. Cuz' we really don't have much going on in our lives. We're not preparing for an invasion of 50+ kids tomorrow night for a combined Taylor-Jesi-Graci birthday party. We're not trying to get ready to leave on a two-week trip to China to adopt a 4-year-old with special health concerns. We didn't just find out today some news that is complicating this trip and the time-off needed to take it. We're not supposed to leave this weekend to be in Christi's home town for a family reunion. We're not in the process of trying to refinance this home and possibly put an offer on a new home for which I would be the general contractor for the final 1/3 of the work that still needs to be done on the house. Oh wait, yes we are! HOWEVER...it could have been much worse. It could have been an upstairs bathroom. It could have leaked for a longer period of time, or even at a time when we were gone.
While I was not very happy with the situation, I was calm and collected throughout. How, you may ask, did I demonstrate such self-control? Well, I have this friend. It's called chocolate. Have you ever heard of Flipz? (If you are trying to diet, stop reading now!) Flipz are divine and terrible at the same time. They are pretzels covered in your choice of Chocolate, White Chocolate, or Chocolate and Peanut Butter. At Smith's they were on sale for $1.00/bag. Quite a deal! One bag contains four servings of 5 pretzels each-20 fabulous pretzels with a total calorie count of 560 calories. Christi thought it would be a great idea to stock up on Flipz while they were on sale-the kids love them. OK, I said. But (and I'm not kidding) I told her as soon as I got home with them she had to hide them REALLY well. This she neglected to do. We are both trying to lose a little weight prior to our trip to China. She wants to lose about 5 pounds in the next 2 weeks. I want to lose about 35. Anyway, I had to make repeated trips up and down the stairs in the process of cleaning up the water mess in the basement. Those doggone Flipz were just sitting there at the top of the stairs. Over the course of the evening I ate two bags of them all by myself. That's the equivalent of 4 and a half Kit Kats! What a pig. Well, there's always tomorrow. Maybe I'll shoot to lose 34 pounds in the next two weeks instead:)
Jeremy
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Chocolate Girl
We were told a cute story tonight. A lady that we go to church with has two daughters. The oldest, Matty, is about 12, and the youngest, Hayden, just turned 3. Earlier this week, the girls were watching a children's program called "Brown Bear." This episode involved a visit to China. Matty asked Hayden: "Do you know anyone from China?" Hayden replied: "Graci." Matty asked: "What about Graci's little sister, Elli?" They talked a little about how Hayden had two friends named Elli and how one of them was blind. Hayden said something along the lines of: "The pink and white Elli isn't blind. The blind Elli is chocolate, like chocolate chips!"
So I guess we have two chocolate daughters. Christi and I quickly saw how apropos the comparison is for Elli. She's just like chocolate. Usually milk, occasionally semi-sweet, and once in awhile-bitter!:)
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