a bit of our week

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I guess we decided to squeeze a bunch of stuff into this week… hurry – before it snows! Aaak.

Here’s a little of what we did – phew.


Tru is still talking about going to the mall with Grandma to ride the green train. I think it’s his best life event thus far.


p.s. for the record… great deals at Nike Outlet on Shoes. Abe’s were size 4 for $21. Hannah’s were size 3.5 for $25. Just a little bit more than target, but hopefully better built shoes. Their Nike’s last year made it through an entire year. Yesssss!

Strength of the Priesthood

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Tonight was the night for pre-school-jitters father’s blessings. The kids always look forward to this special event. Even Truman and Max realized the importance of it. Tru sat still through his blessing and part of Max’s. He is a wiggle. By the last one, Hannah’s… the littles were restless. This is our life… but it is still good.I consider it a miracle that everyone was looking and smiling at the same time. We only had to take one photo!

Peach Heaven … whatever shall we do?!

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We have been swimming in peaches the past few weeks.
I placed a few group orders for our neighborhood from Burgess Orchards.
They even delivered them to my home.
They are Red Haven Peaches and are so juicy and tasty.
I think I ended up with 4 (20 lb) boxes by the end of it all.
$20 for 20 lbs for freshly picked peaches. Okay!
I wanted to freeze some… I can’t even remember how many quart bags I finished with.
I was so very tired. I don’t know how people can all autumn long.
My feet and legs get weary.

I made a peach crisp… which was so-so… not so crisp –
but makes for a tasty breakfast the next day!

I made jam.
Plain Peach jam failed. Completely failed.
It is peach syrup only I put too much sugar in. Bleh.
Raspberry peach set up much better.
I froze it for the next year of happy eating for Miss Hannah (my only jam eater)

Zuzu loves peaches.
Tru loves peaches.
Max and Abe – not so much.
Hannah loves peaches … like loves them.
She’s also a good helper at peeling the blanched peaches.
I love happy helpers.

I love me a tasty peach. They make my tummy happy.

Happy Hearts – Happy Family

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When we were on our trip to Maryland, heading to the SLC airport, I decided we needed a family chant to help us when we were run down and tired. The quickest and cheesiest thing I could come up with was, “Happy Hearts – Happy Family”. Of course the kids loved it at first … when they were happy. But in those hot grumpy moments, they didn’t love it so much…and ended up moaning ‘happy family.’ But it reminded us to keep trying to have a good attitude.

Even now, we still say our little chant. Max loves it the most. When he is sad and says, “My heart is sad,” we talk about what he can do to have a happy heart. Usually it involves choosing the right by apologizing, obeying, being a happy helper, giving a love, receiving a love. Hopefully the kiddos will know that when they have the Holy Ghost with them, they can have a happy, happy heart.

p.s. isn’t that heart rock great? our friend patti spoke at our R.S. fireside last night. She talked about how when we come to know the character of God, we feel of His love, and come to know who we are as Children of God … magnificent! It was a great message. She shared some heart rocks with us.

a Hearty Laugh

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Eliza seriously has the best laugh. Really. It’s a good solid hearty one. I can hardly believe she turns 1 next week. Here’s a glimpse of Liza playing with her daddy.

(Pardon all my laundry lined up… at least it’s clean!)

Meet Pearl

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I’m so happy to introduce the newest member of our family, Pearl. She really is a delight. She brings JOY to all. She’s a lovely little thing too. I love how simple her design is. ‘Liza loves her. Tru loves her. Even Max loves her (oh wait – I think that’s Stevie Wonder sportin’ the glasses). Hannah has already been teaching Abe. I think we’ve heard Fur Elise and Ode to Joy 100 times from Miss Hannah.

Pearl was able to attend her first family home evening, and though Tru was in tears because he couldn’t play the opening song, all worked out in the end.This is how it all came down. Jimmy mentioned that it might work out to get a piano this summer. Happy dance from Heather. So I searched KSL… missed a few good ones. We searched a few piano stores. All the perfectly beautiful ones seemed out of our price range. But we came across Pearl, from China. Pearl was built by Pearl River… the Chinese company trained by the Yamaha folks… so one tuner said all the parts were similar to the Yamaha. It will work splendidly for our young family. Thanks to some angel helpers and a little negotiating, we were able to get the piano. Anyhoo… blessings all around.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get a turn to play alone. I either have Tru by my side playing along or ‘Liza in my lap pouding on the keys. It is JOY.

as the summer days fade a.w.a.y…

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i imagine one day i’ll think back to certain seasons of our life and wonder what we did all the day long.
this summer was a little tricky.
i imagine the kids might only remember our BIG TRIP (which was cool – eh).
we’ve had mostly mellow (wait – no day is mellow. scratch that.) CRAZY days trying to keep everyone alive and not fighting.
nice.
things do seem a whirlwind when everyone needs mom at the same time.
i’m struggling with balance with home/work/play/fun.

this past week we had some great moments.
we got a piano. my heart is happy.
we harvested food from the garden. tru’s heart was happy.
we watched olympics. hannah’s heart was happy. go gymnastics!
abe got his cast off. his heart was happy.
max got to eat a treat. his heart was happy.
zu-zu won the battle and ate popcorn. her heart was overjoyed.
jimmy is about to launch his website at work… his heart is full of joy (he really said that) that he is finally able to send out a church site that is optimized.
anyhoo… here’s the rest of the week in photos from the phone.
i do love the convenience of the phone camera … just not the quality.

p.s. thanks to opening my etsy shop for 48 hours and all the great customers, this is coming in the mail on Tuesday (thank you Amazon Prime). It’s a Panasonic Tough camera. It’s supposed to be unbreakable (ok – mostly), waterproof, dust proof (in case I’m in a sand storm in Egypt), etc. It will be super with kids. I hope it takes decent pictures.
(wow… that is quite the life-size image of the camera. I love that it’s orange. It’s the color of the year for me.)

a pioneer day

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We didn’t exactly do the most pioneerish of activities. We all went to a piano store to look around. That was an adventure. We ate Little Caesars for lunch. The kids ran through the sprinklers after quiet time. We ate grilled kabobs and pineapple and then played baseball and kickball. We ended the day with apple dumplings. It was a good family day together… just not a day full of sacrifice and hard work. We are grateful for all the pioneers went through so that we can enjoy such a nice place here in Utah.

TEMPLES: this makes my HEART happy

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Summer Idea: pictures of famous places around the world on our laminated maps. Learning in a fun way!

This is a photo from long ago. Now, we have oodles of little red stickers indicating LDS Temples. It takes a long time to find all 150+ temples. Someday it will look something like this.

Anyhoo… back to the famous places. These are the ones I found with Creative Commons license (free for personal use). Yeah – I know they are small on this collage. In real life, they will print as 2×3.

It was fun to discover new cool places. It will be fun to see where they are located on the world map.

But… my soul knew something even better was missing. I knew we needed something MORE. I found some temples for free download on the church’s site. I only got 149 of them, but figured it would be a good representation. These images have 6-9 images per 4×6 card so they will be smaller – but oh so great.

Now – this – is – cool!! 149 temples all over the world. What LIGHT! What POWER!

When I was at Ricks College – oh, in 1995 or so, I decided a grand goal would be to visit all the temples. I believe there were fewer than 50 at the time. I don’t think this goal is very feasible now … so pictures will have to do.

I’ll take a picture of our maps, when we get the new little pictures put up. MY HEART LOVES TEMPLE POWER!

Cannon Ball!

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The kids had so much fun!!! And then… after swimming … Tru and Max ended up with gooby eyes and coughs… I assume germs from our trip … but I don’t imagine the cold water helped. Ay-Ay-Ay! Chilling today and watching Duck Tales. The end.