The Secret

There are quite a few widows in our ward, and there is much talk of how lonely they get. It's sad, and I wish I had more time to visit. But I was thinking about it today, and I'm pretty sure that will never be me. Because I know the secret.
I know how to get everyone I know to drop whatever they're doing and come rushing to my place.
All you have to do to get tons of visitors at your door is to have a messy house!
Now, I don't think it works if your house is messy all the time. You have to keep your house really clean for at least a week. (During which time your house will be invisible. People walking past will not even glance in your direction. No one will even think about stopping by. And you probably won't get any mail because the mailman, of course, can't see your house.)
But then all you have to do is let it fall apart. Say, if you have a daughter who's throwing up every hour for at least 24 hours and you get no sleep and all the other kids just run around making messes while you do nothing but read Dora stories and clean up puke. Something like that.
As soon as your house is good and messy, the people will come! Lots of people. Your mother-in-law, your visiting teachers, the neighbors, old friends, distant relatives, EVERYONE! And they won't just step inside the front door and chat. Oh no. They'll need to use your bathroom, walk through your laundry room, visit your kids' rooms, and maybe even want a drink, because they can probably tell that there are no clean cups left in the entire house.
And there goes your loneliness problem out the window!
Of course, it will take several days for your house to recover from that one day of neglect, during which time you will continue to receive a multitude of guests.
Until that magic moment when your house is presentable again, and the flood of people will instantly stop. By then you'll be sick of guests, but if you're ever lonely again...
you know what to do.

One Month's Worth

It's a good thing I take so many pictures, or else I'd never remember what's happened around here.

About a month ago was the Pinewood Derby. Ben decorated his car all by himself, and he placed second every time. Didn't matter which lane. Didn't matter whether the cars were backwards or forwards. Ben just got second every single time. Hooray for Ben!


My friends and I had been trying for months and months to get tickets to Wicked. But it turned out to be mostly impossible, as those of you in my area well know. But at the last minute a friend of a friend pulled some strings, and we got to go! We stayed at a nice Marriott (thank you, Jamie!), went to an AWESOME play, and just had a ton of fun. I have the best friends ever! Thanks guys!Then on to a sewing project. The Young Women were going to sew skirts, and I decided that I should have some idea of how it was done before I tried to teach others. So I made a couple of skirts for the girls. After seeing other people's blogs and the amazing Easter dresses that were sewn, these skirts may not seem so impressive. But they were a big deal at our house, and I was happy with how they turned out. (Even if it did turn out that I did them both completely wrong. Oh well. They look good. :)
Easter was a crazy day for us, since it also happened to be a double birthday! My mom and Emily share a birthday, and this year it was on Easter. So we had a fun Easter egg hunt at our house right after church, had some carrot pizza, (Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it!), and then went up to my parents' house for a double birthday party. Actually triple, since my nephew had a birthday that week, too.

Happy Birthday to Momma, Emily, and Blake!

And that should bring you about up to date on what's happening at our house.
Here's hoping it won't take me another month until our next update!

Dude, You Gotta Try This!

Happy Vernal Equinox!
Did you know that on this day (March 20th) you can balance eggs on their ends?
No, really! It's the coolest thing.
Technically the equinox is at 5:44am (If you're in my time zone),
but we took these pictures at 10:30pm the night before, so it will still work for several hours
before and after. It'll just work the best at 5:44am.
So get out those eggs and try it!

Wrestling

Wrestling season this year (all three weeks of it) ended with a big tournament. There were kids from five different schools, and it was quite the event. Ben did a great job, and he got a silver medal for his age and weight division!

Hooray for Ben!

Found It

Well, I couldn't find it on any of your blogs. But I've had fun going back through your archives. :)
So I decided to try and look for it on that big ol' world wide web - and I found it!
So here it is.
All of you mothers should read this. Especially on those days when you feel invisible.

Searching for Something

I've been looking for a specific post that I read a while ago on someone's blog. Only problem is, I can't remember whose blog it was. But I know it was one of the blogs listed on my Blog List. So if your blog is listed, could you help me out?
One of you posted a link to someone else's blog where that someone else talked about being a mother. They talked about no one seeing them, and being just a pair of hands. Then they talked about the great cathedrals being built by unknown workers who never saw the end results... Is this sounding familiar to anyone?
I'm not even sure if it was written by the person who posted it, or if it was just copied off one of those email forwards. But wherever it came from, it has been on my mind quite a bit, and I really want to go back and read it again, but I can't find it!
Can any of you help me out?

Mystery Solved - Almost

Three weeks later - I finally found them! I'm sure you've been wondering all this time just where Emily's valentines could have gone. And now I can finally tell you!
Can you see them?Where could a bag of valentines possibly hide for three weeks? On the top shelf of the closet in the hats-and-mittens basket, of course! The weather has been quite nice, so no one has disturbed this basket. But on Saturday when I had to clear four inches of snow off of Max before I could take my Young Women to see the Draper Temple, I went looking for some gloves and found a surprise. Of course she claims to be completely innocent, and has no idea how they could have gotten up there. So I guess the mystery isn't completely solved because there still must have been some sneaky valentine gremlins around here.

Happy Birthday Cannon!

Yesterday was Cannon's birthday! He turned five years old. Wow. This means that I will be sending my fourth child to Kindergarten in the fall. It's kind of freaking me out, actually.

But yesterday was a great day. Cannon got a new bike, and thankfully it was warm enough that he could spend lots of time riding it.

Last night we had a little family party, and once again our singing was not appreciated. What's up with that, anyway?

Happy Birthday Cannon!

OK, here's one more picture to prove that there were five candles on the cake. In the picture above, there are actually two candles poking up between the L and the A.

It's Coming, It's Coming!

Spring is coming! It really is. And I am SO excited. It was such a gorgeous day today that the kids and I had to go out and enjoy it. And, of course, I brought my camera with me. In case you haven't noticed any at your house, here are some sure signs that Spring is on its way!

The crocuses are blooming!!!

This one brave little Viola is blooming!

And the violets are just starting to show. The bluebells are on their way!

And even the roses are feeling the sun.

I'm not saying there won't still be some cold days,
probably even more snow,
but Spring is on its way, and I am SO excited!

Little Actresses

The Missoula Children's Theater came to town this last week. Two professional actors show up, bringing all costumes and set with them, hold auditions on Monday, practice all week, hold two performances on Saturday, then pack up and go on to the next town. (Collecting a large check from the PTA before they leave, of course.) The play they did was called The Little Mermaid, but had very little in common with the Disney cartoon, or even the fairy tale, besides that there were mermaids involved.
Robyn and Emily were both in the play, and I must say that they were amazing. During practice, the two directors said, "None of the seahorses are singing! Except that girl." And, of course, they were pointing at Emily. So that's how Emily got a solo, and she did a fabulous job.


Robyn was a Sea Scout, and had several of the Sea Scout lines, of which there were very few, but she did a great job. She's the one second from the right with the "Friday" line and the "what'll we do now?" line. (In a big deep voice.)


It was amazing to see how well it all came together in only a week.

Missing Valentines and Scarlet Fever

Last night the kids got their valentines all ready to take to school today. They were pretty excited. But about twenty minutes after she was supposed to be asleep, Emily came to me and said that she couldn't find her bag of valentines. At that point I was much more worried about getting some peace and quiet than in missing valentines, so I told her to go to bed, and "I'm sure we'll find them in the morning." Well...
In the morning we looked. And looked. And looked some more. All three kids were late for school because everyone was helping to look for the missing valentines. I finally sent them off, and told Emily I'd find them and bring them before her party at 10:30. Turns out that was much easier said than done. I searched everywhere. Not only in the usual places, like under beds and couches and in toy boxes, but also in places like the dryer, the mailbox, and the crisper. (Because you never know what might be in the crisper.) Those valentines just weren't anywhere. I even drove over to Robyn and Ben's school to double check their backpacks, but no luck. I finally gathered up all the leftover valentines, counted out enough candy for her class, and took her a bag containing a mixed variety of valentine greeings to give to her class. In the meantime, I've only come up with two theories for where that missing bag could be.
1 - The bag suddenly decided of its own accord to take a vacation to Florida. (Not that I blame it at all.)
2 - A thief came in the night. A thief who had no interest in my purse or the various electronics he might have seen, but was only interested in a handful of Dum-Dums to snack on while prowling through the night. And of course, some princess valentines with the name Emily on the back. Once again, I really couldn't blame him.

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I've decided it's just not a good thing if the doctor walks into the room, takes one look at your baby, and says, "OH, I know what she has." It makes a mother very nervous. Then when you tell him all her symptoms, and he just keeps nodding like you're saying exactly what he expected you to, it just makes a mother more nervous. And when he finally pronounces that your daughter has Scarlet Fever, it's a little hard to keep your face calm, and try not to show any of the alarm you feel because the doctor seems so calm - almost amused. Very unnerving. He even expressed regret that there was no medical student there when he needed one, because it was such a classic case.
But if that ever happens to you, you don't need to panic too much because it turns out that Scarlet Fever is just strep throat with a rash. A very weird rash that gets puffy in the worst areas and leaves the skin bumpy even after the red is gone, but it's still an easily cured disease that a few days of antibiotics will quickly take care of.
So I've spent the last couple days being very grateful for modern medicine that not only cures the disease, but can also relieve all her symptoms until it's gone. I've also been trying not to feel guilty for all the children we inadvertently exposed in the two-to-five days of being contagious before any symptoms appeared. And maybe in the two or three days before the rash appeared when I was still blaming her fever on her teeth.
Sheesh. This mothering job can sure be hard on the conscience sometimes.

Projects

Something about winter just makes a girl wanna start an indoor homey project. So here are a couple I've done lately.

First, I did this way cool calendar. Not only does each month have pictures of my super-adorable children, but there is also a picture of every person on their birthday.
Wait. I can tell you don't realize what that means. Let me explain. If you take Jef's family (including ten siblings, half, step, etc, their children, and their children's children), Jef's family that he adopted (because he didn't have enough family already), and, of course, my family... that makes 133 birthdays.
And let me tell you. My life would have been a whole lot easier if those had all been on 133 different days.
And I must have still had too much time on my hands, because next I took on a quilting project. This may be quite shocking to those of you who know of my anti-sewing sentiments, but what can I say? Cabin fever does strange things to a girl's brain. So I picked out some crazy material, and finished it eight days later (today). And I'd like to say now how much fun it was and how I can't wait to start another one, but....
It was actually a huge pain. It's cool now that it's done, but wow. I really didn't realize how much work it would be. Hopefully, though, I've learned enough to save myself several hours the next time I'm overcome with cabin fever and decide to do something completely against my nature and better judgment.

But, hey! Cool quilt, don't you think?