The Potty Project: Day 3,4, and 5

These last few days, potty training has gone about like I predicted it would. Not nearly as good as day 2 and not nearly as bad as day 1. I'd say Lincoln goes in the potty about 50% of the time give or take a little depending on the day. Sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse. He hasn't pooped in the potty yet, only in his pants. :( But we're working on that. I still haven't dared to take him out in public with only his underwear on. When we go out I put a pull-up on him, but we still take our "potty breaks" when we're supposed to. He does pretty well out in public.

Our biggest challenge these last few days has been trying to keep Lincoln interested in being on the potty. I think he's getting bored with it. I've moved the time between potty attempts from 20 minutes to 30 or 35 minutes, depending on if he went previously or not. That seems to help some. We've also had to come up with new activities to do while on the potty. We've invented "the potty ball" which actually wasn't meant to be for Lincoln at all, it's an elastic band ball for a craft I'm doing, but when I brought it home he wanted to play with it, and I told him he could if he'd sit on the potty. It soon became the "potty ball" and he only gets to play with it while sitting on the potty. I also found some bubble up in the cupboard that had been long forgotten about. We now only blow bubbles while Linc is on the potty. And, the very best, most persuasive tactic of all...if nothing else I can think of will work, I offer to let him call Grandma and talk to her on the phone while sitting on the potty. Not really sure how she feels about it, but she goes along really well and always acts excited when Linc calls to tell her he's sitting on the potty. :)

I do think we're making progress. For one thing, I think he's learning how to hold it. He goes a lot less frequently than he did the first day, and I'm giving him the same amount to drink. And when he does go on the potty (and on the floor for that matter) there is a lot more in there when he's done, instead of just the few drops like there was the first few days. I think he's also starting to recognize a little bit when he has to go. Not enough to run to the potty himself, but enough that he starts shouting, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" or sometimes it's "I need help! Help me!" and other times, "I'm freezing! I'm freezing!" (No, I don't know why he associates being freezing with having to go to the bathroom, maybe it's that tingly feeling, I have not idea, but that's what he means by it.)

Lincoln does a lot better in the morning than in the afternoons. That's probably a direct reflection on me. I tend to be a lot more patient and fun in the mornings, and a lot more cranky in the afternoons, especially if naps did not go very well. And frankly, being the sole source of potty entertainment gets really old, really quickly. So that is something I could work on. But we are moving forward. No, we did not have the miraculous-2-day-potty-training-and-then-zero-accidents experience I was secretly hoping for, but I doubt very many people do.

The Potty Project: Day 2

Today has been so much better than I ever imagined it would be. Let's just start by saying that when I woke up this morning, I was dreading having to work on potty training. But I'm so glad we kept at it! We've made lots of progress, I think.

First of all, I had a realization last night, I'd been setting Lincoln's timer for 20 minutes, like planned, but then if he didn't go I was worried and would try again in 5 or however long, but it was like I was constantly trying to guess when he was going to go, and I never guessed right. Anyways, it occured to me last night after we'd gone to bed, that the point of setting the timer every 20 minutes isn't to catch them when they have to go, but to teach them to hold it for 20 minutes and then go on the potty after that. If you can't teach them to hold it, you might as well still have them in a diaper, because trying to guess when they're going to go is impossible. But, today we also figured out that you can look for clues for when they do need to go. If they are grabbing themselves, or crossing their legs, then you can say, "Lincoln you're crossing your legs, that's a sign that you need to go potty, let's go sit on the potty for a minute." And that way it helps them to recognize, "Oh, when I feel like crossing my legs, that means I need to go potty." And they are learning too. We had 9 success in the potty today, and zero accidents on the carpet! Granted, there were a few time (about half) that he started going, grabbed himself and yelled, "Mom! I'm peeing!" And we would rush him to the potty and he'd finish up on there. But I'd say that's a major step in the right direction at least.

Also, we decided that we needed a new potty chair. The one we had was really hard for Lincoln to sit on because the base of it was so wide, and the hole wasn't very big, and it was poorly designed, meaning, even when he was peeing in the potty, it didn't keep the pee in very well, and there was always a puddle on the floor when we were done. Anyways, a friend recommended the "magic" $4.00 IKEA potty. We did some research, and everyone seems to think it is wonderful. We decided to make the long trip to IKEA. We had Lincoln pee in the potty before we went. Then we put a pull-up on him. As soon as we got to IKEA we took him to the potty. His pull-up was dry, and he peed in the big potty! He was actually really excited about flushing it down. You know those industrial toilets are pretty cool. Then we did our shopping, checked out, and took Lincoln to the potty again. He was still dry, but this time he didn't pee in the potty. We loaded up and went home. As soon as we got home we let him try out his new potty. He was still dry! Good for him. The new potty was so much nicer. Smaller for one thing, not as wide, and had a much bigger hole, and better blockers (don't know what else to call them) on the front and back to keep stuff in. We actually got a red one and a green one (one for my mom's house). Lincoln keeps switching back and forth for which one he wants at Grandma's and which one he wants here.

I know that every day will probably not be as good as today. In fact, I'm kind of considering today to be some kind of beginners luck. But I did think we made progress, and I'm really glad we kept trying. We'll see what's in store for us tomorrow.

Book Review: Beyond Ava and Aiden

Well, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm a baby naming freak. No really, it's ok, I am and I know it. I love baby names. I love day dreaming about names for my babies, even when I'm not pregnant. but when I am, I kick it into hyper-drive. I ordered this book about a week ago, and read it in a night and an afternoon. I loved it. And no, it's not just a long boring list of baby names and their origins and meanings. These guys do a much better job.

When I was pregnant with Ivan, I checked out a book from the library (written by the same authors) called Beyond Jennifer and Jason, Madison and Montana, What to Name Your Baby in the Twenty-First Century. I loved it too. It was all about trends in baby names. Not just what baby names were popular, but WHY they were popular. What names were fading out and why, what names were not cool yet, but on the verge of it. Different places where people get their ideas for baby names. And a whole lot more. And no, I didn't get Ivan's name from that book...but I feel like after reading it, I was more confident in choosing Ivan's name for him.

After reading that book, and liking it so much, I found out that there was a slightly newer book out by the same authors called "Cool Names for Babies" so I bought and read it also. I didn't like it as much as the other, because I didn't think it went into the whys and hows quite as deeply, but I still liked it alot. For those curious, here's a synopsis I found of "Cool Names":

The brand-new edition of Cool Names offers updated choices for parents in search of a cool name for their baby. The only name book ever published that includes neither John nor Mary, Cool Names helps parents navigate the range of coolness, from safe (Sophia and Sam) to as wild as you want to go (Andromeda, Alza, or Answer, anyone?), picks out the coolest recent celebrity baby names (Eden, Orson, Sullivan) and identifies the hottest new trends.

Now out in new editions in both the US and the UK, Cool Names includes fresh information on:

Trends--Accent on the vowel (Addison, Ethan); Naughty girls (Salome, Scarlett); Thunderbolt boys (Colt, Cade); Little Caesars (Magnus, Atticus) and many more
Newest Nature And Place Names (Slate, Sicily, Snow)

Names from Around the World --List after list of international names, including an Exoticizer to transform the familiar to the exotic.

Cool Middle And Nicknames

Updated Celebrity, Character And Starbaby Names

Anyways, when I found out I was pregnant again, naturally the first thing I started doing was making a list of baby names. :) I wanted to go back and read Beyond Jennifer and Jason...again but I couldn't remember who wrote it (my sister-in-law is borrowing my copy of "Cool Names" so I didn't have it to look off of). While doing a Google search (what would we do without Google, really?) to find the authors, I discovered that shortly after Ivan was born they had published a new and updated book, Beyond Ava and Aiden. Of course, I had to have it. And here are a few exerpts, interesting things, and of course baby names that I like. (And YES, in case you are wondering, I underlined things I liked (not just names) in the BABY NAMES BOOK so I could go back and find them later. I told you, just call me Super Freak!)

"Each list is supported by the kind of information today's smart baby namer craves: where trends come from and where they're going. What psychologists say about the effect of unusual names and how much a name influences a child's chance of success. Whether unisex names work as well for boys as for girls, and what you should know about nicknames, middle names, and sibling names." In the margine I wrote, "Probably why I like this book"

"...what they're looking for is a name that's not neccessarily unique, but not bizarre either, recognizable but not too popular or trendy, a name that will individualize their child but not create problems or embarrassment for him or her down the road."

"A study of a thousand pairs of twin sisters, for example, showed that girls with more androgynous names, e.g., Alex, are twice as likely to study math and science when they get older as their sisters with more conventionally feminine names like Isabella, while another study showed that girls with frillier names were more likely to go into more traditionally feminine fields, such as nursing or teaching." I'm not 100% sold on that, but it's an interesting idea to keep in mind.

"For many the quest for novelty and creativity is coupled with a search for personal meaning, embracing family history and ethnic identity. And lots of the most exciting and appealing new names can be found by digging into your own past or cultural background." Sounds about right to me. :)

"Conceiving your child may have made you feel, more than any other step you've taken together, as if you had finally and truly become one. Choosing its name can remind you that, nope, you're still actually two." Ha Ha! So true.

I also thought it would be fun to include all the catergories that the names of our little family fall under.

Aaron: A+ Names, No-Nickname Names, Biblical Boys, and Mixed-Marriage Names

Krystal: Low-class Names (yup that's the only one)

Lincoln: Vintage Chic, Vintage Starbabies, Lifetime Warranty, Presidential Power, Last Names First, All-Boy Classics, and Metrodude Names

Ivan: Metrodude Names (he's only in here once too)

And now on to the part you've all been dying to read...names that I like. I would like to preface this by saying that I realize that some of these names are out of the question due to they way it does not fit with our last name, the way it does not fit with the names of our other children, or they way Aaron would never pick it. But I still like them all the same. And some of them will work really well, and Aaron does like, so I'll let you all try to decide which are which. :) It's more fun that way.

Girl Names (I had a REALLY hard time picking girls names that I liked, do you think that's a sign?)

Lexi
Macey
Avi
Nike (yes like the shoe, but she was a Greek goddess first)
Abra
Oakley
Adelia
Hadley
Nora

Boys Names (These are never hard)

Arthur
Magnus
Sullivan
Asher
Ezra
Isaac
Jonah
Atticus
Talmage
Noah
Abel
Ajax
Atlas
Angus (hmmm, do you think I like A names?)
Levi
Phineas
Liam
Cyrus
Emerson

And these are just first names. I have a whole different list of middles, depending on which first we pick. :)

**Although, as an afterthought I thought I should probably add, the Aaron and I are already about 95.5% decided on a name for a girl and for a boy. We're getting better at this :)**

The Potty Project: Day 1

Today was probably the most frusterating day of my life. We decided, kind of spur of the moment, to potty-train Lincoln. When I say spur of the moment, I mean he ran out of diapers, and we were like hmmm, let's give this a try, so we bought underwear and a box of pull-ups for night time, instead of new diapers.

Here's the game plan. He stays in his underwear all day except during naps and bedtime. We decided that having him wear pants would make too much laundry, so it's a shirt, underwear, and socks for him. We set a timer to go off every 20 minutes. So every 20 minutes he sits on the potty for 5 minutes. If he goes we have a big party! We cheer, we give high fives, he gets a treat, he gets to put a sticker on his potty chart. If he goes on the carpet/in his pants, we do our very best not to get upset. And we try to explain to him the difference between wet and dry underwear. Sounds like a simple enough strategy. We mostly copied it from Aaron's sister Lisa.

Well, Lincoln likes his potty. He's been curious about it for awhile now, and is really interested whenever Daddy or Mommy uses the big potty. He talks about the potty all the time. The other day he even put his toy allegator into the cup holder on his car seat and told me that it was going potty. He really likes his underwear. He picked out Cars, no surprise there. He likes it to the point that today when I tried to put on his "nap time underwear" aka pull-up, he threw an absolute fit, because he wanted to wear his "McQueen" underwear to bed. He even does all right sitting on the potty (mostly, not always) when the timer goes off. For the five minutes while he's on the potty, we tried a bunch of things to entertain him. I read to him, I let him watch movies, I gave him a bowl of potty snacks (fish crackers) that he could only eat while sitting on the potty, we played firetrucks, and sword fight (I never let him sword fight, so he was really excited about this one), I even showed him a cool trick I can do, using a spatula I would flip a fish cracker high in the air and catch it in my mouth. He liked that a lot, but I got tired of eating gold fish after about 3 rounds. So we've made sitting on the potty as fun as I can think of.

The only problem is that he won't go in the potty. It doesn't matter how long he sits on it, or how short I make the intravels between sitting times, he waits until about two minutes or so after he gets off and then goes and pees somewhere on the carpet. I did not have a single, in the potty, success with him today. Aaron took over potty training when he got home from work, because I was so frusterated. He got Lincoln to go three times in the potty. So that was a plus. But that's 3 successes and about 20 clean the pee off the floor experiences total for yesterday.

Needless to say, I was happy when it was time to put him to bed, because then we could just put the pull-up, excuse me, "night time underwear" on him and not have to deal with it again until tomorrow. I'm pretty frustrated right now, if you can't feel that coming through. Half of me says I'm not cut out for this and to just put him back in diapers. The other half of me says to keep trying and be more patient because he's just learning too, and needs some time to catch on to the whole process. And really, I would love to put him back in diapers except for one minor setback. Notice in the sentence above I said, I'm not ready, not Lincoln's not ready. I guess I still just feel like Lincoln can do it, and that he's showed a lot of interest in doing it. But I don't know if I can handle another day like today...

But I'm going to do my best to keep a daily log of our Potty Project experience, because it's looking like I'll have to do this at least two more times in the future, and maybe looking back and reading about the process will be helpful when we start potty training Ivan, like when he's 12. :)

How We Spent Our Weekend of Love

On the Friday before V-day, the boys and I went to campus and decorated Aaron's desk at work. We've been in the process of making these hearts with pictures of our family on them for about a months now. They have magnets on the back so they stick. Cool.

Also on Aaron's desk was this candy bar poster, painted by Lincoln. It says, " Dear Daddy, Mommy says you're a Nerd sometimes, but really she thinks you're a Big Hunk!! She's Nuts about your M&Ms (mind and muscles), and how you always make her Laffy. Yup, Mom's got the Hots for you! She says, "Happy Valentines Day SweetTart." We Love You!! Love, Lincoln, Ivan, and Mommy"

Lincoln thought he was way cool sitting in Aaron's chair.

Saturday night, Kelly offered to watch our kids so we could go out! Woo-hoo. We went to Goodwood, and OH MY GOSH!!! It was so good. Aaron had the pulled pork and I had a chicken sandwich. We will definitely go back there again. After that we went and saw The Fantastic Mr Fox at the dollar theatre. There is a reason why I'd never heard of this movie. LAME! I sat through the entire thing with glazed eyes and my mouth hanging open, trying to puzzle out why in the world there were people laughing. It was such a bizarre movie and had several weird styles that on their own might have been ok, but mixed together with the other weird styles, not so much. Anyway, I don't even think it would be worth a dollar at red box...just save your money. But it was nice to be out, alone, with Aaron, even if we sat through a dumb movie together. After that we went to 7-11 and got Slurpees. Yum! I've been wanting one for days. I wasn't disappinted.

On the actual day of Valentines, Aaron was sick :( We had pork chops and rice for dinner with cranberrry juice to drink. As you can see we have some festive tableware, just for this once a year occasion.

I also made heart-shaped no-bake cookies, which are Aaron's favorite. (Not the heart part, just the no-bake cookie part.) After we put the kids to bed, Kelly and Esther came over to play games with us.

 

And here is my lovely Valentine. Flowers in the colors of our wedding. :) Love you Aaron.

Krystal's Birthday Desires (reasonable and not so reasonable)

-dinner at Tepanyaki
-full body massage
-breakfast in bed (I can plan a menu, let me know!)
-birthday sign
-no poopy diapers
-trip to the SLC Aquarium
-camera that is reasonably small, takes clear pictures, and decentish video
-zip up hoodies
-maternity swimming suit for water aerobics (preferably one where my chest, tummy, and bum are not hanging out)
-maternity pants
-my favorite cake and homemade vanilla ice cream
-books! (See list called "planning on reading" on my blog)
-a good night's sleep (that means no middle of the night interuptions from either of my children, and no 5:30 wake up calls from upstairs)
-my mom to come hang out with me for the day

Standing, Secret Hand Shake, and O Face

Look whose standing up by himself! Ivan Boy! He's getting pretty good. As long as he doesn't reach for anything or try to take any steps, he can stay up for about 20 seconds. As soon as he tries to step though, he falls over. But I'm thinkin' that it won't be too long before we have a walker on our hands. And I'm ok with that. The kid is heavy, weighing in at 21 pounds. Just for the record, Lincoln weighs 32 and I weigh (at my last appointment, so probably more now) 130!

My happy baby

This is Ivan's secret handshake. He puts his hand up to his mouth and wiggles his fingers back and worth. If you do it back to him he laughs and laughs.

Jabberin' away. This kid's got some personality.

And...back by popular demand...the "O Face" Lincoln used to make this face when he was Ivan's age, and we thought it as so weird/funny and now Ivan does it too and we love it.

My Cute Boys

I'm sorry, but I have the two cutest boys ever, three if you count Aaron, which of course, I do! :) I love them all so much. This picture was taken a couple weeks ago. It was freezing outside, but Aaron and I were desperate to get out of the house, so be bundled all of us up and went for a walk. They love going for walks in their wagon. And it was Aaron and I who wimped out first and decided to come in. Those two crazy boys would have stayed out all afternoon in the freezing cold. I can't believe how big they are getting either. It wasn't too long ago that we were balancing Ivan's little bucket car seat on the sides of the wagon so he could ride too, and now he practically sits in there by himself.

Ivan is a few days shy of 11 months. This year has gone at warp speed. Recently Ivan's personality has been peeking out for all to see. He's a pretty goofty kid, which means he'll fit right in with this family. He loves to pretend he's just as big as Lincoln, and tries to follow Linc around and do all the things that he does. We have a regular comedy routine going between the two of them...Linc is the ham and the joker and Ivan is guy you can count on to laugh his head off at whatever Lincoln does. Ivan also does not like to be left out. Tonight Aaron took Lincoln out of the bath and was going to go set him down in his room and come right back for Ivan, but he only got half way down the hall, when he turned around and saw that Ivan had climbed out of the bath tub and was crawling after him butt naked and sopping wet. If Ivan chooses to leave the room without you, everything is fine and dandy, but if you choose to leave one without him you are in big trouble! He's still having trouble sleeping through the night, which I largely attribute to the fact that I haven't really attempted to sleep train him at all, because I don't want to hear about it from my upstairs neighbor whose room is right above Ivan's. So we're still working on that one.

Lincoln is two and a half these days. He still talks up a storm, but we're noticing more and more that the stuff he comes up with is more original and less parroted, and it's awesome! The other day I said, "Lincoln, Daddy's a dork!" and he said, "Daddy's not dork! Daddy's......a boat!" His other new favorite thing is to list off a whole string of things he likes. We were walking on BYU's campus the other day and Lincoln ran over to a patch of grass and said, "I like grass! I like mud! I like trees! I like birds! Birds go cheap cheap cheap!" It was so funny. So my new favorite game to play with him is to ask him what he likes. Then he just goes off on the most random things. Mud comes up in his lists alot. :) He's figured out that if he pushes a chair up to the kitchen sink he can get himself a drink of water or wash his hands. I have to admit I'm half excited and half dreading this new skill. We also started potty training him this afternoon. I'm not really sure I'm ready for it, but I really don't want three kids in diapers if I can help it, and now seemed as good of a time as any. So we'll be doing that adventure for the next few weeks. Wish us luck.

The Cat is Out of the Bag...

This Valentine project kept Lincoln busy for four mornings straight while Ivan took his morning nap. I found the blank posterboard heart shaped cards and glitter glue in the dollar bin at Michaels a little while ago and couldn't pass it up. The first morning Lincoln painted the hearts. I used the washable paint, and we did red and a few different shades of pink (by combining different combos of red and white paint) but after they dried they all ended up about the same light pink color, even the straight red ones. Oh well, the texture on them still looked cool. The second morning Lincoln stuck heart shaped foam stickers on the hearts. He even did an ok job of distributing them evenly. The third morning I let him have at it with the glitter glue. He did really well, and I think this was his favorite step in the process. He could open the tubes and squeeze out the glue all by himself, so basically all I did was supervise. On the fourth morning I addressed enough envelopes for all the Valentines and let Lincoln decorate the backs with different heart shaped stickers. I'm tellin' ya, projects are the way to go with kids. :)

But why all the fuss over Valentines Day? It's not even a holiday I really like. Well, I guess it's time for the cat to come out of the bag. Maybe the poem Aaron and I wrote and stuck inside will explain a little better. It went something like this:

Roses are red

Valentine's Day is for lovin'

Surprise!

We have another bun in the over.

We sent these Valentines to our parents and siblings to announce that we are having another baby. Yup. It's true. Swan #3 on it's way. It was a little bit sooner than we were planning on, in other words, a surprise. But we're excited all the same.  On Monday I will be 15 weeks along. I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for March 1st and two weeks after that we will find out if it's a girl or a boy. My due date is August 7th. Yes, that will be the second August child. Apparently November is a good month for us. ;)

The first trimester is thankfully over. I was nauseous most of the time. But I only threw up once. So that's an improvement over when I was pregnant with Ivan.

I'm excited for another baby. I love babies. I'm also kind of freaking out, wondering how I'll manage 3 children with only 2 arms. And they will all be pretty young and pretty close together, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. :) The question everyone always asks, "Do you want a girl or a boy?" is sure to come, so I'll take some time to explore it. It would be really convenient for us to have a boy. We already have everything we could possibly need wardrobe wise, toy wise, etc. for one. I have the perfect boy name already picked out. (That's pretty much what I do from day one for the next 9 months is name the baby over and over and over again.) That doesn't mean I'll say what it is though, because I'm still making sure Aaron likes it for real. On the other hand, I don't think I would mind having a girl this time. The first two pregnancies I was dead set on having boys. But this time I feel ok with either. That being said, if I do have a girl no one is allowed to drown her in pink lacy frilly foofey awful stuff. Purple is great, yellow is better, brown good. Pink is out. No pink.

Anyways, there's our big news. It feels kind of nice having it out in the open. I was a little nervous to tell everyone. But I'm starting to show some, and so it had to come out. And now that it's out, I'm glad. :)

H Day: Houses, Hands, Hearts, and Hugs

Today we went to Suzy's house for H day. She made these cute little H books for the boys to color and give to their daddy's. It had the lyrics to the song I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home, printed out with cute pictures to go with that the boys got to color. The song has lots of good H words in it that she pointed out along the way. Home, hands, hug....to name a few. And the boys were able to look at the words and pick out big and little H's.

After that, Suzy brought out a really cool set up of the song The Wise Man and the Fool Man. She had a paper house set up in a bucket of sand, and a paper house taped to a rock (which she put in the bucket after we were done with the sand part). She had filled an empty soy sauce bottle with water, and she let the boys take turns pouring "rain" onto the houses while we sang the song. Both boys thought that was a blast. Anything to do with water usually catches Lincoln's attention, especially if he gets to splash it around. :)

The last activity was an instant hit because it had to do with building and with marshmallows. :) We helped the boys construct houses out of toothpicks and marchmallows. They loved it, and were even willing to have the help. Their favorite part of course was eating the marshmallows, which we made them wait to do until after we'd taken a picture. :)

Lincoln's marshmallow house

Lincoln was being kind of a stinker the whole day (except when he got excited about what we were doing) and wouldn't smile (or even look) for the picture.

All in all it was a fun day for letters. I have really enjoyed doing this every week with Suzy. It's always fun to see what she comes up with, and I think the variety makes it that much more fun for the kids too. I have "I" next week, cross your fingers for me to come up with something...

The Friend

This year we decided that Lincoln was old enough for us to read him The Friend magazine. So we ordered it to start coming along with our Ensign. We've started reading the kids a story out of it each night at bed time. I love it! I thought it would just be a good experience for Lincoln, but I'm finding that the simple way the magazine shares the principles of the gospel have been really good for me as well. One of my favorite stories this month was Losing Apollo. It put in a different perspective for me how our Heavenly Father always answers our prayers. And how he loves us and cares about us so much, that sometimes he tells us no.

A lot lately I've been seeing our Heavenly Father as a parent figure (this should be a no brainer, but for some reason I've been having a lot of ah-ha moments about this relationship) and seeing how He treats and loves his children the same way I am trying to treat and love mine. Obviously, He is a lot better at it than me. :) But maybe as I am experiencing all the many feelings of parenthood, and how I still love my children even when they are driving me up the walls, I'm starting to understand a tiny bit better the way our Heavenly Father feels about each one of us. I've had a really strong testimony of the fact that he does love us for a long time, but I think just recently I'm starting to get a glimpse of the extent of that love.

I'm grateful for The Friend, and for the time I've gotten to spend seeing the gospel through my childrens eyes and through the eyes of the child in me that makes everything so simple.

Louie Louie Night

Molly Gittins, Me, Tindy Weston, and Ben Weston

Ok, I suppose it's time to bring up my past. For those of you who don't know...I am a band nerd. Yup. Or at least I was senior year of high school. And, I loved it! Last night was Louie Louie Night. I'll explain. My band teacher, Mr. Qualls, is in his 25th year of teaching band. To celebrate he invited all of his students from the past 25 years to come back to Fremont High School and participate in the pep band at the boys basketball game. It's called Louie Louie Night because the only pep song we played the whole night was Louie Louie! I guess you'd have to be in the band to appriciate the humor. :) And we all got to wear leighs.

Me and my cymbols. You can't hear in the picture, but I'm making the noise for the cymbols with my mouth, because it was while the game was going on and you aren't allowed to play instrments while time is running.

They were having a BBQ in the band room at 4:00pm, but Aaron had class at 3:00, so we missed it. :( But I packed up our stuff and picked Aaron up on campus right at 3:50 when he got out so we could get up there as soon as possible. One problem though, I forgot my flute! Oops. When I was in high school I played the cymbols in the marching band, but during pep band season they have a drum set, so there is really no need for cymbols. And since the pep music is simple enough (I'm not very good at the flute) I usually always played my flute during pep band. So, I didn't have my flute, but I decided to play the cymbols anyway. And that ended up working out just fine because there were so many former students there that all the percussion couldn't share the drum set, so they got out the marching equipment anyway, so there were a couple other people playing the cymbols too.

This is an action shot!

Funny story: Right after we'd gotten in the gym, and were waiting for the JV game to get over, a kid tapped me on my shoulder and asked, "What grade are you in?" I laughed and replied, "I am about five years graduated." He said, "Ok, never mind." I must have given him a questioning look, because he pointed to his friend and said, "He just wanted to know because you are playing his cymbols and if you were younger than him he was going to trade you (I was playing the medium sized set, and he had the giant set), but you definately pull rank on him, so you just keep doin' what your doin'."

Lincoln playing Tindy's trumpet

For most of the game Aaron and the boys sat in the stand right next to the band. But he brought the kids over to see me for a little bit. I was thinking that the boys would think my cymbols were the coolest things in the world. Who doesn't love something you bang together to make a loud noise? But my cymbols couldn't compare to Molly and Tindy's trumpets. First, Molly showed them hers and let them push the buttons. Even Ivan got a kick out of that. Then, I let Lincoln stay and stand by me while we played, thinking that if he saw me crash the cymbols together, he'd think I was cool. Nope, he watched the trumpet section (which I was standing in the middle of, because that's where all my friends were. I never stood in the right section when I was in high school, no reason to start now!) the whole time. After we played Tindy let him hold her trumpet, and it was all over from there. He figured out where to blow, and how to push the buttons. It was pretty cute. I suppose I could be ok if my son turned into a trumpet player. Some of my best friends are trumpets...

Here's your "Where's Krystal" for the day. Can you find me?

G Day: Goats Gruff, Grain, and Glitter Glue

Today was G Day. I already mentioned I was planning on doing a goat theme. I think it turned out ok. I introduced the boys to goats by playing the song Bill Grogan's Goat off of the Silly Songs CD (I couldn't help it). Then I read them the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff. In an effort to save time, I made them each a set of stick puppets beforehand. I found the pattern online here. Since I didn't have craft sticks, straws worked nicely. So everytime I talked about one of the characters in the story, I had them hold up the character I was talking about. They seemed to like this, although they had a little bit of a hard time keeping their goats straight. Lincoln's favorite part seemed to be the end. When he retold the story to Uncle Kyle later, he skipped straight to the part where the troll on the bridge gets pushed into the water and makes a big splash. Forget the goats, it was all about the troll and the bridge for him. :)

After our story we all went into the kitchen for some creative art. I had printed out a picture of a goat for each of them. I found those just doing a google search for goat coloring pages. Then I got out three different kinds of grain: oatmeal, rice, and corn kernels. Each boy for a glue stick, and the objective was to glue the grain onto the goat to decorate it. Well, the glue sticks didn't work as well as I'd hoped, and my regular Elmer's Glue was in the room where Ivan was taking a nap. So, we improvised. Lincoln and I have been making Valentines, so the glitter glue was still out in the kitchen. We decided to use that. The goat glueing grain project didn't turn out quite how I had envisioned it. Lincoln's kind of ended up a big sticky mess. But that's ok. It was still fun.

Life is so Random

When I was a kid, I had this awesome cd (actually I believe it was on tape, weird, remember those?) called Disney's Silly Songs. I think my Grandma Lemmon gave it to me (correct me if I'm wrong Mom) and I'm sure she regretted it when I listened to it the entire 5 hours I drove with her and my grandpa to St George to visit them. Good times. Awhile ago (probably over 6 months ago) I looked everywhere I could think of for it so that my kids could listen. No luck. I couldn't find it anywhere. So I pretty much gave up looking, figuring that maybe it wasn't a very big thing, and had probably gone out long ago. I put it out of my mind.

So this week is my turn for letter day and the letter is G. I have a few things planned, but I always like to try and find a fun way to introduce the letter to the boys. Usually it's with a story that has to do with the letter somehow. The theme I've sort of chosen to go with for G is goats. So I was searching the library catelog for goat stories. Since I didn't have anything specific in mind yet, I just did a very basic search in the children's section for the word goat, to see what it would come up with. And low and behold, what pops up on my screen but Disney's Silly Songs cd! (There's a song entitled Bill Grogan's Goat on there.) It was so funny! Of course I reserved it, and now have the cd in my possession. It's just as good as I remember too! :)