April 2009 – Page 2 – Andelin Adventures

Dinah is as stubborn as the rest

The kids have a hard time getting motivated to clean up their toys. We usually let Dinah get away with not cleaning, since she’s so young, but she’s been starting to show more of an interest in cleaning. She is very good at understanding, although she speaks very little still. Tonight, when the other kids were sent to their rooms for failure to listen, Dinah was still in the living room. I told her, “Dinah, pick up the toys!”

She looked at me and then looked away, and said, “uh uh!”

“Dinah, go to your room,” I said in mock firmness.

“Ahhhhhh!” she cried in protest, and ran from the room.

Boys and Bugs

Yesterday morning we woke up and came out to the living room, and I opened the blinds for the back door and there were baby grasshoppers EVERYWHERE (on the INSIDE). Of course I was wondering were in the world they came from and HOW did they get in the house???

Ethan’s kindergarten class has been talking about bugs lately, so I thought that I might as well catch some and send them to school with him. He was so excited to show them off to all his friends and his teacher, but she sent them home with him because she didn’t know how to feed them. So when Kyle took the kids to PetSmart last night he picked up a couple critter keepers (I have no idea what they are actually called), to keep the baby grasshoppers in. And since he got two Ethan claimed one for his grasshoppers that he took to school, and Jeremy claimed the other one and asked me to catch some more grasshoppers for his critter keeper. So here are my boys with their bugs:

You can’t really see the bugs in the keepers since they are baby grasshoppers and are quite small (if you look on the top of Jeremy’s keeper there are a couple of black specks, those are some of the bugs). But the kids are thoroughly enjoying watching them and giving them fresh grass and leaves. Ethan keeps trying to catch more and gets so excited when he actually does catch one. I keep trying to catch more, when I see them on the back window or on the floor by the back window. After all I don’t need them loose in the house. 😉

New Dress / The Comic Stylings of Ethan and Tyra

Some of the ward’s ladies came over today to make jam, and one of them (Sister Wozab) was working on making dresses. She explained she was creating dresses for some local girls who were putting on a play about Dr Suess, and she described some of the dresses she’s made. Currently, she was working on a “Cindy-Lou Who” dress, red with some colourful frills. She offered to let Tyra try the dress on, and Tyra was really thrilled to put it on. After she showed it off, Sister Wozab told Tyra that she could have it! Tyra wore it for the rest of the evening.

I took the kids to PetSmart to purchase some new fish and other supplies, and in the car, Tyra and Ethan were having a discussion about the dress. Tyra had a hard time remembering the whole name of the dress, at first.

Tyra: It’s my ‘Cindy-Loua’ dress.
Ethan (correcting her): Who.
Tyra: Me.
Ethan: No, it’s ‘Who.’
Tyra: It’s mine. It’s my ‘Cindy-Loua’ dress.
Ethan: No, Tyra, it’s ‘Cindy-Lou Who.’
Tyra: That’s what I said!

I couldn’t help but feel that Tyra’s dress was perfect for playing First Base.

FHE #15

Telephone Training

Opening song: Hymn 226 “Improve the Shining Moments”

Opening prayer: Tyra

Scripture: Doctrine & Covenants 45:61 “…that ye may be prepared for the things to come.”

Lesson: Tonight we talked with the kids about how to use a phone, and proper phone ettiquite.

Activity: Each child took turns practicing dialing and calling Kyle’s cell phone from the house phone. Then we had them practice using Kyles phone to call my phone and they got to practice answering the phone. And for a special treat Tyra got to practice dialing Granny’s number and Granny answered so Tyra got to talk to her for a bit. Granny answered with “Hello?” and Tyra said “What Granny?” (I just laughed and reminded her that she was supposed to say “Hi, this is Tyra”). Then Jeremy got to practice by dialing Grandpa’s number (which is a different area code :O ) and Grandpa answered so Jeremy got to practice talking on the phone too. He kept nodding his head to Grandpa’s questions and we had to keep reminding him that Grandpa can’t see him and he has to answer by talking into the phone.

Closing song: Hymn 303 “Keep the Commandments”

Closing prayer: Jeremy

FHE Treat: Easter candy

Fish

Our fish tank hasn’t been a happy place for awhile. And so a few weeks ago we totally drained it and put in an undergravel filter and got it all set back up. Then we just let it run for awhile before getting some fish. Last Friday we went and got some fish to put in our tank. We got a catfish, 3 red platies and 2 frogs (at Ethan’s request), and a female beta. The guy at the pet store knew a lot about the different fish, and Kyle and I were quite impressed to actually get someone who knew something about fish. Most of the time when we go and ask questions about our fish or tank, the person in the fish department knows nothing about fish tanks or the fish in them and so to get someone who knew what he was talking about was quite exciting. Well he knew enough about the fish that when fishing out the red platies that Kyle had selected, he got us two female and one male. And he showed Kyle how to tell the difference. Of course hearing that we had both male and female fish I was wondering if we were going to need a nursery for any babies that may come of it, and Kyle said that we didn’t because we have live plants in the tank for the baby fish to hide in.

Saturday our catfish died, I guess he got stressed out in the tank transfer or maybe our tank is still too clean and there was nothing on the bottom for him to eat, or something. The kids were quite sad, but we assured them that that is normal with fish, they don’t all make it, and it’s easy to stress them out. So yesterday we went back to the fish store to return our dead catfish, we got our money back and decided to use it to get a few other fishies. So we got 3 yellow mickey mouse platies (they have a mickey head on their tail fins, so cute) again, two females and one male. And we got 4 of the cheap 12 cent goldfish. Kyle made fun of me because I pointed to the specific fish that I wanted and made the girl fish those specific fish out. She did a good job, though I must say 😉 .

Today Ethan was looking in the tank, very excited to be watching our new fish, and he likes to come over and look for his frogs (frogs like to hide under plants and rocks at the bottom of the tank). Then he spotted a baby fish! He excitedly called to me to come look at the baby fish, and I said “what?” and I went over and sure enough there was a baby fish. But then as Ethan and I were watching it, one of the gold fish saw it and ate it! Oh well I guess it’s going to happen. There are plants for the babies to hide in, and the ones smart enough to hide will live to be big enough to not get swallowed, and I guess that will help with our fish tank population. It was tough explaining to the kids that sometimes fish see baby fish and it just looks like the fish flakes that we feed them, so they think it’s food….. Ethan and I did see some more baby fish in the tank. I watched one dissapear into the rocks at the bottom of the tank, and I’m sure there will be more baby fish in the future.