New Camera

Have you noticed the lack of pictures on our blog lately? That’s because our camera, randomly decided to die. It really bummed me out, when I picked it up and tried to take some pictures of my girl scouts all dressed up for international day, and it just wouldn’t turn on. Ordinarily you’d just think that I forgot to charge it and it had run out of battery power. But the thing is, I had JUST charged it, and it still wouldn’t come on. It just decided it was done working for us. So Kyle and I started researching digital cameras. We didn’t want anything big and fancy. I just wanted something I could throw in my purse and be able to take with me anywhere, but we did want something that produced better quality pictures than our Casio. We looked around on Amazon, and at Best Buy and ended up buying one at Costco. It’s small and can fit into my purse, but it doesn’t actually go into my back pocket as nicely as our Casio did. It is a 16 megapixel camera, which compared to our 7.2 megapixel Casio is a huge improvement.  I’m still learning about all the different features and settings, and I’m sure that will take awhile to get used to.  So I’m excited about our new camera.

Our Heritage

Shortly after Kyle and I were married, we discussed the topic of when we should start our family. Some felt that we should wait considering how young I was and our financial situation. But Kyle based our discussion on scripture. When we were married in the Los Angeles Temple we were commanded to multiply and replenish the earth. “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” declares:

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.

From there we turned to Genesis. Genesis 1:27-28 reads:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them , and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth….”

Looking for more about Adam and Eve bearing children I found this scripture in Moses. Moses 5:11

And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed…

I felt that she was expressing her joy for the ability and opportunity to bear children. I felt that if Eve was SO happy to obey the commandment to ‘multiply and replenish the earth’, why would we want to delay that happiness, that joy in our family? After all Psalms 127:3-5 reads:

Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man’ so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them…

I just knew that if we did all that we could to obey God’s commandments we would be blessed for our efforts. Here we are several years, and several children later, and I know that we have been blessed for our faith in starting our family when we did, and allowing our family to grow since.

In October 2011 General Conference, Elder Neil L Anderson spoke on children. He said:

It is a crowning privilege of a husband and wife who are able to bear children to provide mortal bodies for these spirit children of God.

I truly enjoy being pregnant. I look at my young children, and as I watch them grow and learn I find myself thinking “I think this is the best age, they are so fun when they are at this stage”. But as they keep growing, I keep thinking the same thing. Yes, my children do things that are frustrating to me, and sometimes make me ask “WHY?!?!”, but that’s just part of watching them learn. I only hope that I am doing a good job at teaching these little spirits. My life is crazy, my house is full of little people, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can’t wait for #7 to be born later this summer!

February

Well February has come and gone, and we didn’t have too many exciting things happen, although we were very busy. Every day seems to be packed with something. I’ve got girl scout meetings once a week, I babysit three days a week, Ethan has cub scouts once a week and Kyle has been subbing for one or the other leader every single week since Ethan became a bear in January. Dinah and one of the little girls that I babysit have preschool twice a week. Jeremy is in Kindergarten every morning until noon. Ethan and Tyra are in school all day, and of course Kyle goes to work every day. And this is just all the regular stuff that keeps us busy!

Ethan’s pack meeting for this month was the Blue and Gold Banquet on the 8th. They decided to have a fiesta this year and we had taco salads for dinner. They awarded the boys that had earned awards recently. Ethan hasn’t earned anything new yet, considering he JUST moved up to bears and hasn’t worked his way very far into the book. They gave gifts of appreciation to leaders that have been released. There were some skits performed and after all the eating was done, they let the boys pick either a sombrero or maraca to take home. We finished the night off with a pinata, which the scouts got to take turns whacking at. First they let the kids in the wolf den beat at it, and then the kids in the bear den. I think it busted before they got through all the bears though. I was kind of bugged that the pack meeting is supposed to be a family thing, and yet only the scouts got to hit at the pinata, while the siblings stood back and watched, hoping that they would get some of the booty.

On the 10th, Tyra’s class invited family to come to the school during school hours to come check out all the animal reports that the kids had put together. I always go to these things and see all the other projects and wonder if all the kids really did their projects all on their own. Some of them are always way too good to be the work of the child alone, that’s for sure. Tyra chose to study and do her report on foxes. This also fell on pajama day so all the kids were wearing their pjs. I let Dinah and Chloe wear their pajamas to school as well. I didn’t get to stay very long to look at many of the other projects however, for as soon as we got there and we were looking at Tyra’s project, I discovered that Chloe had a dirty diaper. Such bad timing. Also Dinah ran off, and then Chloe kept trying to sit on Tyra’s lap. Chloe also decided that since we were no longer traveling outside that that meant she could take off her shoes. I tried to get her off of Tyra’s lap and get her shoes back on which resulted in Chloe throwing a huge fit, crying loudly. I felt bad for the mom next to me that was trying to video tape her daughter telling her about her animal project. So I told Tyra she did a good job on her project and took Dinah, Chloe and Lydia back home!

Something else that happened this month, most people will probably think I’m silly for mentioning. I had a dental checkup, my regular cleaning and exam on the 24th. The thing that was different about this one was that when the dentist was done looking at my x-rays and my teeth, he seemed really surprised, and asked if this was a first. “A first what?”, I wondered. Then he said that I have no new cavities! I’m sure that to some people that’s no big deal, but for me that was the first time in YEARS that I haven’t had new problems when I went in for a checkup. Usually I have one or two cavities that need filling. At least once a year for the last couple of years I’ve needed a new crown (I’m up to NINE crowns in my mouth!)…just something new every time I go in. Now this doesn’t mean that none of my teeth have problems this time, just that there were no NEW problems to have to deal with. My 3 wisdom teeth that are showing all have cavities, but the dentist doesn’t want to bother filling them because I need to have them pulled anyway. One of those three cavities is more like a huge cave on the back of my tooth. But I already knew about the wisdom teeth issues (I’ve totally been avoiding going in to have them pulled), but am SO excited that there were no new problems. 🙂

And the last exciting thing worth mentioning, is that as the girl scout troop leader with a large van, I got to go up to Salt Lake City to pick up our troop’s girl scout cookies! I really wish that I had been able to take a picture of our stack of cookies, but our camera hasn’t been working properly lately. Our troop had two pallets of cookies, and almost filled my van (which we had taken the seats out of, to make more room). I was really excited to get to see how they distribute cookies to each troop. We did annoy some people from another troop that were waiting for us to get out of their way so they could start loading their cookies. But I promise we weren’t trying to annoy anybody. We had loaded the first pallet of cookies into the van and then looked up to find the rest of our cookies, but they were nowhere to be seen. We stood there and waited a few minutes to see if they would show up on the dock when one of the other pallets was moved out of the way, but they didn’t. So Amy (our troop’s cookie mom) went to go ask about it. It turns out that our other pallet of cookies was just sitting in the back of the warehouse all by itself totally unnoticed by anyone. So we brought it to the attention of the guys operating the fork lifts and they brought it to the dock for us. And now we have the fun joy of delivering all those cookies!

Traveling for Business

Kyle spent the last couple of weeks traveling on business. He works for Symantec, and they sent him on 3 different trips in two weeks. So I’ve been alone to take care of the house and kids for the past couple of weeks and I’m so glad to have him back home. The first week he left on Sunday to fly to Rochester, New York. He spent Monday in the office there in Rochester, then Monday evening he had to fly to Boston, Massachusetts and then drive to Waltham, Massachusetts to spend Tuesday and Wednesday with some software developers there.  Then Wednesday night, he had to fly back to Rochester to spend Thursday and Friday back in that office. He didn’t get home until late Saturday night. Then he was home for Sunday and we had some family over for dinner. He went back to work Monday, and then Tuesday morning he flew out to Springfield, Oregon and didn’t come home until dinner time the next Saturday. So he had a totally crazy time the past couple of weeks.

As for me it was business as usual. Get the kids up early and get them ready for school. Girl scout meetings, cub scout meetings, babysitting three days a week, oh and the school just happened to decide to have SEP’s during the time that he was gone! While Kyle was out of town, Chloe would come to sleep with me every night, (which didn’t really bother me because it beat sleeping alone) and every morning she would ask “Where’s Daddy?” She seemed to think that by sleeping in his spot, that she would be able to catch him whenever he happened to come home during the night. She really didn’t understand that he didn’t come home during the night because he was far far away. Life for both of us has been insane, but I’m so glad that he’s back now. It’s so good to have the whole family back together again. Chloe has issues with him going to work in the mornings, at present. Seems like she’s afraid that he will disappear for days at a time again.