Year: 2010

I believe that I have been inspired. 🙂 Earlier this week bedtime had been HORRIBLE, several nights in a row. It was SO bad one night that I was sitting here in my room at midnight waiting for Tyra and Jeremy to just go to sleep already! Wednesday night I just had this idea! I don’t even know where it came from or why I thought of it, but I just had an idea. I decided I wouldn’t say anything about it until it was time to put it into action and so the kids changed into their pjs, I gave them all a treat for having pjs on before 8 (that’s a rule in our house if you have your pjs on before 8pm you get to pick one candy from the basket), then I proceeded to sing the prayer time song:

Let us gather in a circle, and kneel in family prayer

To thank our Heavenly Father, for the blessings we all share.

Let us thank Him for our meal time, for clothes we daily wear,

For parents home and family, for His kind and loving care.

Oh may we always serve Him, in thought and action too,

And humbly kneel at prayer-time, as so many families do.

(Children’s Songbook pg 189)

Singing the song means that it’s time to come to the living room to pray, and that’s the way we’ve done family prayer for years. But here’s where my idea came into play. After we pray it’s time to go down the hall to brush teeth, go potty and go to bed, but Wednesday my idea was to add something to that. Wednesday after we prayed, I whispered to the kids to be quiet from that moment on and that only whispering was allowed. NO TALKING and NO NOISE at all!

The first night Ethan just kept, kind of giggling at me. I don’t know if he thought I was just playing around or what? Last night went very smoothly and after the kids had brushed, gone potty, and were in bed they were asleep in no time. Tonight even though some of them didn’t fall asleep right away, just the peacefulness of having no talking, only whispering was just WONDERFUL. I feel like I was inspired to initiate the no talking, only whispering after prayer, because it helps to keep ME calm at a point in the day where usually I start freaking out and getting really upset/mad that the kids are just NOT staying on their beds, or just aren’t being quiet, or they think that bed time is still playtime. No talking, only whispering sets the tone and is a transitioning from normal daily life to it’s now time to be quiet and go to bed. It also reminds me of the peace there is in the temple (even if the house is messy). And whispering really forces the kids to LOOK at me when I am talking to them so that they can hear what I am saying. 😉 (Of course that goes the other way too, I have to LOOK at them when they are talking to me so I can hear what they are saying to me.)

I LOVE it and I hope that we can keep this up and that as time goes on that it will continue to improve bed time.

Yay I harvested the first vegetables from my garden today!!!!!

Just a handful of radishes and a jalapeno. This is actually the first time EVER that we have gotten radishes from our own garden. I tend to plant them a lot, because I like radishes, and they happen to be expensive, so I’m REALLY exited to get some from the garden this year. And I love the color of that pretty purple one. 😉 Kyle and I had the pleasure of eating them all up at dinner tonight, which really was a pleasure.

I just don’t know what to do with a single jalapeno. I don’t see any tomatoes on the tomato plants yet, and none of the onion seeds sprouted, so I think in order to use up my jalapeno I’m going to have to go buy some tomatoes and an onion to make some salsa….which means I need to buy some chips too. Man this is turning out to be an expensive jalapeno. But I like chips and salsa. 😛

Kyle and I have decided officially that we are DONE with IHOP!

When I was a kid I remember that my parents took all of us kids to IHOP every Sunday morning for breakfast. Every week! I remember our family getting lots of looks and people asking if all of us kids were from the same parents. And their next question was always ‘And no twins???’ Anyways I remember really enjoying IHOP.

Later after Kyle and I were married, and I was pregnant with Ethan I remember Mom would on occasion take me to IHOP for lunch while all of my siblings were in school. I LOVED their blueberry pancakes. A meal at IHOP just wasn’t complete without the pancakes topped with the yummy blueberry topping.

Kyle has never thought IHOP anything special, but since having kids it was always a good place that we could take the family. They used to do a “Kids eat Free” after a certain time, type of special, now it’s a “Seniors eat Free” after a certain time. Last week we went to IHOP because we were out grocery shopping, at dinner time (ya that was really bad planning) and the kids were hungry, and Ethan asked very nicely if we could go to IHOP and get some pancakes for dinner. So Kyle decided that we would do it. We hadn’t been in awhile and Kyle asked about the kids eat free special and they told us that they don’t do that anymore. Ok that’s fine, but then we saw that each kids meal is $3.99. Ouch! And one of these $4 kids meals consisted of 2 donut holes, 1 piece of bacon and 1 egg, that comes to $1 PER PIECE!!! Then Kyle and I were kicking ourselves for leaving the IHOP coupons that we had at home on the counter. Anyways, we got three kids meals and shared the food around so that all five kids got food, and everything was alright. Actually almost alright. My sausage was squishy and my hashed browns were still ‘firm’ not crispy at all, they were still WHITE and firm as in, NOT COOKED all the way. But my blueberry pancakes were yummy so it wasn’t that big of a deal. The whole trip cost us $45! And I had decided I am DONE with IHOP food except for the pancakes.

Just to put that into perspective, on the road heading home from our California trip we stopped at Red Lobster in St George for dinner. They were still open and Kyle felt that the kids needed a chance to get out for a bit considering we still had about 4 hours left on our trip and it was already 9pm. And their food was great! The service was great! The waiter did everything in his power to get our food out fast so that we could get back on the road….totally GREAT experience. And that cost us about $55 (with the tip added).

So back to my IHOP story. This weekend we saw our IHOP coupons and saw on the side of the whole ad that kids meals are supposed to be $1.99, ok so WHY did they charge us $4/per kid meal last weekend??? And since we knew we would be taking Liesl and going to see a movie and that we would be out about dinner time we decided that we would give IHOP another chance. And we took our coupons this time. This trip wasn’t much better. Kyle talked to the manager about being charged full price for kids meals the week before when the ad that we have (and we brought it with) says that kids meals are “$1.99 All Day Every Day” and the manager did nothing but give him excuses that on weekends they don’t do that unless you ask for it. UH HELLO the ad says EVERY DAY!!!! So that was dumb. So then we just proceeded with our order, letting the waitress know that we had coupons and all that, and that meant that Kyle and I NEEDED to order drinks too, because the coupon said that you have to buy a meal and two drinks to get a meal free. OK so we did I had the watermelon lemonade, which was nothing but horribly sweet, rather disgusting actually. I couldn’t drink it and had the waitress bring me a glass of water so that I’d have SOMETHING to drink. Kyle had a mango lemonade, which was a little better, but still overly sweet. And for food I ordered the blueberry pancakes. And seriously a plate of FOUR pancakes with blueberries on top $8! No joke. Anyways seriously unimpressed. When we were all done, Kyle went to pay for our dinner, and he stood there waiting forever for someone to come to the register so that he could pay our bill. Liesl and I had taken the kids out to the car, and we waited for him out there. When someone finally DID come they wouldn’t give us the $1.99 kids meals AND let us use a coupon. So they just gave us the $1.99 kids meals. Which means that Kyle and I wasted our money on those nasty lemonades. 🙁 And the whole bill still cost us $50!

Ok so $45-$50 for IHOP food or $55 Red Lobster????? Um I think I’m going to go with RED LOBSTER!!! I’d certainly rather have the quality food and the quality service rather than pay the same price and be disappointed!

SO GOODBYE IHOP!!!!