Andelin Adventures – Page 135 – A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family

Dinah’s 3rd Birthday!

Dinah is three years old already! It seems only yesterday she hadn’t been born yet, and Kyle and I were trying to decide when he would quit the second job. We were planning on him quitting before the baby was born, so that he would be home with me more when we had the baby, and afterward. Well here we are 3 years later and he is STILL working two jobs, and we’re not quite ready for him to quit yet (even if we are always discussing when it should happen).

Dinah was oblivious to the fact that it was almost her birthday so Kyle and I, and her brothers and sister, kept reminding her that it was almost her birthday. That got her excited. Then Tuesday was her birthday and so we were all telling her “happy birthday” and I kept asking her how old she was. She would say “Two, NO FREE!” Then she would try to hold up three fingers which was quite entertaining, because we had to keep showing her how many fingers is 3.

Another favorite game that I have with Dinah is to ask her who she is. I like to ask her to see if she knows, to see what she says, and to see if she knows her full name. So I would ask, “Who are you?” and she said “Dinah!” So I said “Dinah WHO?” and she answered “Dinah Befany”, so then I would ask “Dinah Bethany WHO?” She used to say “Dinah Befany Andelin” but this week since her birthday has been the main focus, she would say “Dinah Befany it’s my birfday!” or “Dinah Befany where’s my present!”

Saturday I was gone at the retreat and we were planning on having a little party for her Saturday evening, but the cake wasn’t ready and Debby hadn’t come like she said she would so we postponed the party for tonight. Kyle made the cake yesterday since I wasn’t home and he went ahead and made the frosting today to finish it. Dinah requested chocolate cake, but she kept saying that she didn’t want frosting. “Don’t want frosting”, she would say. We had to tell her that the frosting helps keep the candles in the cake, so I offered chocolate frosting, and Kyle offered peanut butter frosting, and the peanut butter frosting won….

I love how big her eyes get!

She was really excited to get to open her present.

Thank you Grandpa Tom and Grandma Kathy for the cute outfit!

Guess Who?

Looking through the pictures on the camera, it appears that some of my children were trying their hand at photography. However, they left evidence to show WHO had been touching the camera!

Exhibit A:

Brown eyes…

And looking at the pictures of Jeremy’s stuffed animals taken right before this one, I’m going to have to say that it’s Jeremy!

Exhibit B:

Now at first I thought Ethan was the culprit here. Just because the picture is of my paused game of Jr Pacman on my computer. However, look at the shape of the little photographer’s heads shadow on my screen…..Hm doesn’t look like Ethan….Well this picture taken RIGHT after the one of the computer screen gives it away!

Yup TYRA!

Exhibit C:

Blue eyes…

Fuzzy white hair….

Totally Dinah!!!!

Sisters Retreat

This weekend our ward had a sisters retreat. And Kyle was sweet enough to get the night off and make the necessary arrangements so that I could go. 🙂

It was a wonderful weekend. I left the house just before 1 in the afternoon, and headed down the street with my pillow, my sleeping bag, my camping chair, my jug of water and my backpack to load up my stuff on the trailer in front of my ride’s house. The drive to the Heber Valley Camp was beautiful. This was the PERFECT time of year to go, there was no snow although the weather is cooling off (so it wasn’t HOT either), and all the leaves are changing colors. The campground that we had was REALLY nice. There were three cabins (each had 16 bunks), 2 bathrooms (with flush toilets), 2 showers, and our own pavilion, which had storage closets to store our food, and there were even a couple of refrigerators. There was also a fire pit, with logs positioned all around it for sitting on. We didn’t get to have a campfire though. 🙁 The day had been considered a ‘no burn day’ issued by the State of Utah (so there were no campfires statewide). Oh well. We had a great time anyways. There weren’t any planned activities, so that everyone could just sit and do whatever. We could chat and visit, and get to know other sisters. There were a few baby quilts to tie and all but one of them got done. A few brethren from the ward came up to do the cooking, so that none of us sisters would have to cook or clean anything, which was just so nice. They made Navajo tacos (scone base, topped with chili, onions, olives, cheese, sour cream….), since there was so much scone dough left over from the Stake Harvest Festival that had been canceled (they made a whole bunch of scones for the impromptu ward activity that night but obviously they still had tons of dough left!). There was also watermelon, and also some honey butter for the scones.

After dinner there was a guest speaker, Sister Elmer who is a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir that lives right here in Eagle Mountain. She talked about her life and how being in the choir has supported her though the difficult situations in her life, and she told us all about how Heavenly Father speaks to her through good music. She talked of her travels with the Tabernacle Choir, and she told us how the audition process works. She has been in the Choir for 17 years now, which is just amazing. A comment that she made during her talk caught my attention. She said “Nothing is impossible with the Lord”. Now I KNOW I’ve heard that before, but that really caught my attention right then. Lately I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed. Kyle works two jobs five days a week, and so he’s never home to help with the kids or the house, or really anything, so everything is left to ME. I’ve been really tired lately, and I’m finding things are slipping. I’ve just been letting things go because I’m tired, or just don’t have the energy to keep up. I’ve been TRYING to get the kids involved with cleanup more, just to help myself out a bit. After all, I am mortal, and I am not perfect, and therefore I physically can NOT do everything for everyone. Some days I feel like what is required of me is simply ‘impossible’. So when she said “Nothing is impossible with the Lord” that really caught my attention. It reminded me of when I was a child, I remember my mom had this saying that she would quote every time we said something was impossible, she would say “Nothing’s impossible, except the impossible. But that’s impossible, because NOTHING’S impossible.” She drove us nuts saying that, but thinking of that reminds me of something my dad always said: “Whiners aren’t winners”. Which I totally and completely believe. If you are too busy whining, you aren’t doing what it takes to be a winner. So all of this just tells me that I need to rely more on my Heavenly Father, so that when things seem impossible I can continue on and be a winner. 🙂

After our main speaker, our ward’s high council member spoke for a few minutes, and then our bishop spoke for a few minutes, and after that our Relief Society president, opened the time up for testimonies. WOW! That was just awesome, we sat there and had a 3 1/2 hour testimony meeting. It was just so awesome to sit there and listen to everyone’s stories, and really get to know each other better. It was simply wonderful. And of course, since we were all women, there were times when we were all crying with each other, and other times when we were all laughing with each other.

We didn’t get back to our cabins until about 1 in the morning. And I don’t know about the other cabin full of women but our cabin didn’t stop talking and turn lights out until 3 something!

I woke up about 8 in the morning, and breakfast was supposed to be at 9 so I was excited that I hadn’t woken up WAY to early (when I get super hungry I start to just feel sick). Bishop and his buddies, made pancakes, eggs, and bacon for breakfast. There was also honeydew melon, oranges, hot chocolate and orange juice.

After breakfast we had a morning devotional, where a couple of sisters spoke, and we raised the flag on the flag pole that our campsite had. We said the pledge of allegiance, a few of the sisters sang a beautiful song about being a daughter of God, and our Relief Society President spoke to us a bit.

It was a great retreat, and I got home between 2 and 3 in the afternoon. Everybody missed me, but things went back to normal soon after that….. 🙂

Preschool

Jeremy was really sad that he wouldn’t get to be going to kindergarten this year, but he missed the cut-off by about 3 months. So I wanted to do SOMETHING with him. I heard about a group of moms in our ward that were planning on having a little preschool for their kids and I asked if Jeremy could join and they said yes! So it’s a group of 8 kids and they meet on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s and each mom takes a week to teach, and we just rotate through everyone. And there is another sister that just loves to teach preschool so there are nine teachers and that means I only have to teach one week out of every nine, which comes to I think a total of 4 weeks out of the whole school year. I can handle that! 🙂

Jeremy was just SO excited to hear that he gets to go to ‘preschool’ he’s been wearing his backpack every morning when we take Ethan and Tyra to school. Today was the first day, and it was only a half day but he was so excited just the same.

After I picked him up from preschool and he was telling me that he got to use ‘his’ crayons (I put supplies in his backpack for him to use at preschool), but he was sad that he didn’t get to use his scissors or his pencil. I told him, that’s ok, you’ll be going back to preschool and you’ll get to do different things each time. Later I heard him trying to since the ABC’s. I say ‘trying’ because he fumbled a bit, but that was more of the ABC’s than I’ve heard him sing before. So cute.

A Nice Break

Ever since Ethan started kindergarten, Kyle has always taken the first day of school off of work. That way he can be with the family to walk the school kids to school and say goodbye, and so that he could be home when it was time to pick up the kids from school. THIS year, Kyle decided to take the whole week off, so that he could be home for the first day of school, but also so that he could spend some time with the family, and get some things done around the house. 🙂

So Monday we just spent the day around the house hanging out, and trying to keep the house clean. Monday evening we got to go to the school to meet Tyra’s first grade teacher. That was when we found out that her teacher was NOT going to be the teacher that was posted on the window at the front of the school. The school had decided the Saturday, just two days previous that they were going to switch the teacher listed on the class list out front, with Mrs Jaque. Tyra didn’t skip a beat, she didn’t whine about what happened to the other teacher she was just totally excited to be meeting her new teacher!

After our field trip to the school we made a run to wal mart to buy a griddle. When we decided to say goodbye to Ihop we also decided that we would buy a griddle so that we can make our own pancakes, and make them faster than just with the frying pan. So it’s official, Ihop is history!

Tuesday, Kyle was SUPPOSED to go the home depot to get supplies for some shelves that we wanted built in the garage. But he ended up on the phone Tuesday morning. He had applied for a better position at Symantec, and someone was calling for a preliminary phone interview, and when she was done asking him questions she set up an appointment for the official phone interview later that afternoon. So when Kyle got off the phone he spent the rest of the morning adding LOTS of details, of his experience at all of his different employers over the years, to his resume. Then he spent a good chunk of the afternoon on his phone interview.

We also got to go renew our temple recommends with a member of our bishopric. 🙂

Wednesday was the big day! The first day of school! After getting Ethan and Tyra off to their classes, we came home and I had a meeting to go to, then Kyle went to Home Depot for shelf supplies.

Thursday, Kyle worked on the shelves most of the day and I went out to help when he needed a second set of hands. And after school we went to “Back to School Night” to meet Ethan’s teacher, and check out his classroom, then we got to go see what Tyra had been up to in her class the first two days of school.

Then we got to go have a member of the stake presidency sign our temple recommends. I’m SOOOO glad that we were able to take care of getting those renewed while Kyle was home this week, otherwise I just don’t know when we would have been able to do it.

Friday morning I went to the dentist to start work on crown #8. How stinky is that. I’m not even 28 years old yet and I already have SEVEN crowns and am in the process of having the 8th crowned! It really stinks to have crummy genetics when it comes to teeth! Kyle decided to take our three little kids and join with me at the dentist. His reason being that he couldn’t work on the shelves with me gone anyways, and the house would stay cleaner if they just came with me, than if they stayed home and waited for me to come back. After the dentist we did a bit of grocery shopping, while I was totally miserable because I couldn’t feel my face. I couldn’t even drink water without it spraying out the numb side of my mouth…. I think all the numbness wore off my 2 or 3 that afternoon. And my appointment was at 9:30 that morning and they numbed me first thing! So I was numb for about 5 hours or so! Ugh.

Friday, Kyle finished building the shelves! Then it was my turn to do some work and fill them! 😉 Actually I haven’t finished filling them yet. I did put all of our holiday stuff on them (minus the Christmas tree and Christmas dishes). I still need to sort and pack up all of the clothes that the kids have outgrown or are too big for them and then those buckets will be stacked up on the shelves too.

Garage Before:

Garage After:

So now we can ALMOST park Kyle’s car in the garage. We just need to clean up the other side of the garage enough to get the trash cans over there then Kyle will be able to park in the garage! How exciting!

Saturday we didn’t really have anything planned aside from make a big pot of chili and some form of dessert to take to the Stake Harvest Festival (which was to be an outdoor activity). But about 2 or 3 in the afternoon we got a call from someone in our ward saying that the Harvest Festival was being canceled due to the weather (it was REALLY windy and there was dirt blowing everywhere outside). BUT our ward decided to have an impromptu activity at the church building instead and that we should just bring our chili and dessert to that. So Ethan was REALLY upset that we weren’t going to the Stake Harvest Festival, because he had heard that there were to be bounce houses and other fun things there, but we packed up the kids and the food and went to the church. There was plenty of chili and rolls and chips & salsa. The dessert table was somewhat lacking and because of that the 3 dozen cupcakes that I made were gone before we even got through the line for food. The bishopric did have a couple of guys outside making scones for dessert too, since that was one of the booths that our ward was going to have at the festival. I felt bad for the guys that had to stand outside in the super windy weather and make scones for everyone else that was sitting in the church eating a yummy dinner.

There was also face painting, which was to be the booth at the festival that the young women were in charge of. Now I have to say that I highly disapprove of face painting. Why you may ask? Well I disapprove of face painting, writing on our bodies, tattoos (even those cheap washable tattoos that look like stickers) and anything of that nature. Shoot I don’t even wear make up! As close to make up as I get is chapstick and nail polish. Our bodies are temples! They are the temples that house our spirits. Now you wouldn’t walk up to the temple and paint it, or write on it in any way, so therefore you shouldn’t be doing anything like that to your body. So I have tried to teach my kids this. I don’t want them scribbling on themselves. So my sweet daughter Tyra, walked into the room where they were doing face painting and blurted out, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear “Our bodies are temples!” Then she gave into peer pressure and had her face painted. I guess the lesson on peer pressure will be coming up soon in our family home evenings. 😉

I actually wasn’t in there when this happened, but a sister that Kyle home teaches was in there and told him about it when he was visiting their family. I’m glad to know that she did learn that our bodies are temples and that that lesson didn’t just go in one ear and out the other.

It was really nice to have Kyle home all week. Actually with the weekends on both sides of the week he was home for a total of nine days! But now we’re back to the normal routine of him being gone working two jobs, 5 days a week. He has an in person interview scheduled for this Thursday. I’m really hoping he gets the job, because it most likely means a higher income (I’m not sure how much higher), but that would mean that he would be able to quit the second job sooner, than we were thinking. So here’s to hoping.