Adventures in Nursery

I've spent every Sunday at church the last few months in the nursery with Corin. He has a total meltdown if I'm not there, but I'm hoping to leave him there soon. The windows are open in there to let some heat into the overly air-conditioned room. 

I watched Corin throw some balls around the room out of the corner of my eye. He loves to do this. Then he stopped, and I noticed an expression on his face that said, "I don't know what to do now." I realized he had thrown a small ball out the window. 

So the leaders decided to take all the nursery kids for a walk outside, partly to occupy then and party to retrieve the ball. Once the ball was picked up, a praying mantis was discovered. They were all excited and said “Hello, praying mantis!” and tore up grass to shower it and "feed" it. When we all went back inside, they all said, “Good-bye, praying mantis!”

You can see how spiritual my Sundays have been lately.

My Binder Paper Quest

With school in full swing, and Deven in junior high, I now need a lot of binder paper. Deven's teachers want college ruled. I assumed they also want 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper, which is what my teachers all required. Anything less meant expulsion. 

I first went to Target, where they had crates and boxes of 8 by 10 1/2 paper. Hmm. Maybe they forgot to order the full size. Next I tried ShopKo. They had a sale for 58 cents a pack, but they were sold out. As usual. I'm not sure what size they actually had. Next I tried Smith's and Wal-Green's. They also had only 8 by 10 1/2. Later at Sears, where I was hitting up a shoe sale, I found their paper. Also only the smaller size.

My last resort was Staples, a real office supply store. Surely it would be here. I found some paper pads of 8 1/2 by 11, but it was not hole punched and also very expensive. A couple stores had spiral notebooks of the normal size. Nobody had loose "filler paper" in 8 1/2 by 11. So I gave in to the smaller size.

It took me a while to find it at Staples since it was in a big pile in the aisle instead of on the shelf. I began gathering up packs of paper when I realized I was holding wide ruled. The college ruled was the other half of the stack, but there weren't any open boxes. So I took out my keys and used one to cut through the tape on a college ruled box and took out ten.

Deven's teachers better accept this smaller sized binder paper. Hopefully they won't notice. Surely no other parents had any better luck.

Chair Art

This is why I'm not buying any nice furniture until there are no kids left in the house. This is a kitchen chair. Some months ago, someone put stickers on it. These did not peel off well and have left these white circles behind. Recently, a squawko used those circles to make a face, drawing in eyes and eyelashes and a mouth. How creative. (This looks like Jaelyn's artwork.)

Birthday Party

Jaelyn had a birthday party last Saturday. Not everyone was able to come, but we had a nice time with those who did. We made little animal puppets and played Octopus tag and Duck, Duck, Goose and Pin the Tail on the Donkey. I just had popcorn and soda and then cake and ice cream available to snack on.

The last time I did a kid's birthday party, I was really stressed. This time was rather easy. It's actually pretty similar to planning a Cub Scout den meeting. 

The cake was really an experiment with tiers, and I sort of made it up as I went along. But I think it ended up pretty cute. It had trees and vines and toy animals from around the house.

back view

Jaelyn's 9th Birthday

Jaelyn turned 9 on August 16. That is hard to believe. She brought some treats to school for her class. At home we had cake and presents. She designed the cake herself; I followed her orders. Then Saturday she had a party with friends.

Umbrellas with rain drops

Unsupervised Children

Warning--this is a bit of a rant.

I thought I wasn't doing enough to keep my children in line, and then I see all kinds of worse examples. We went to lunch at the park all summer, where they gave out free lunches. Some kids there just throw food everywhere. If the lunch workers see them, they can ban them, but the park is big enough to be unobserved often enough. Recently some kids threw oranges at the chain link fence that borders the tennis courts. If they threw hard enough, the fence would slice through the oranges. They thought it so hilarious while making a huge mess.

At the stake ice cream social (a CHURCH event), some of the kids began playing in the sand that goes with the horseshoe games. Corin was there, too. One kid kept pouring sand on another kid, shoving it down the other kid's clothes while hitting and pushing this kid around. No parent around. I had been in a cranky mood all day and came so close to smacking that kid really hard. Then another kid began throwing sand in Corin's face, so I seized his hands and said, "Don't!" several times. He was lucky I didn't smack him hard, too.

Cat Spotlight: Albus

We have six cats from two litters. They all have the same mama cat, and I suspect they have the same daddy, too. There are two from the first litter we consider our real pets. The other four are very skittish and are called the TUCs (Totally Useless Cats).

Albus is from the first litter. He looks just like his mama. He has long fur that doubles in volume in the winter. Everyone loves him. He is wary of strangers but doesn't always run away from them. He loves to be outdoors but comes inside to get his fix for attention and loves. The TUCs all adore him. He mostly ignores their affections. Albus and Kryten like to chase each other through the house. If they catch each other, they will wash each other's faces. Albus will also put the TUCs in a headlock to wash their faces.

When he's ready for attention, he will flop down on the floor and show off his belly as if to say, "Here's my belly. I will let you pet it now." It's a pretty loud flop as he kind of hurls himself onto the floor. If he is on the bed at night time (not often), he will start purring loudly as he kneads my head and neck. He buries his head into my neck if he can't get at it. It's sweet but kind of hurts with those sharp claws. Albus is the cat who will come meowing for food in the morning; he's the leader of the group He has a sweet and mellow disposition.

Corin hugging Albus

Albus's favorite chair

You can see where I cut out some big chunks of matted fur.

Sad News

This just shows how everybody in the news means something to somebody.

This woman was in our ward in the condos. She was funny and friendly and smart, so it was really shocking and heart-breaking to see her like this.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=16550067#.TjL0swUZ6ws.blogger

The grandmother in this story is the sister of a couple in our current ward. Too sad.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=960&sid=16765444&autostart=y

Our Lives -- July 2011

July 1 was our last day of school. Deven graduated from elementary school. July 26 was the first day of school for Jaelyn and Sara. Jaelyn started 4th grade, and Sara started 1st grade. Jaelyn has been doing her homework as soon as she gets home. It's nice to have Sara away from Caelan all day. They both like their teachers and classes.

Aerial fireworks were allowed in Utah for the first time, so from our back yard we had a view of half a dozen sites of fireworks going off in the air. They continued all month. We never bought any ourselves. I really wished they would've stop going off before midnight.

Glenn, Caelan and Deven went camping with the 12-year-olds on the 13th. Thursday Glenn and Caelan got home at 11:30 p.m. They had gotten stuck up the canyon when the road closed for an accident involving a drunken driver. Deven stayed at camp until Saturday.

Corin went to his first-ever birthday party for a 2-year-old around the corner. I made the cupcakes like baseballs, basketballs, and soccer balls. I promised 30, which was 10 of each, and I ended up with 31 and an extra basketball. While I took a break from decorating to do a little laundry, Corin climbed up on the stool and helped himself to a basketball sitting on the stove top. I had to shout, “CORIN!” Then I put him in his high chair and let him finish it off. He was lucky he’d taken the spare cupcake. He seemed to enjoy it more when he was being sneaky.

Before my parents left after being around for Pioneer Day weekend, my mom paid for a haircut for me. I had it cut pretty short, so I don't have to come back for a while.

Then everything kept breaking down. The car kept wanting to overheat, having some kind of coolant leak, the swamp cooler stopped working (Glenn fixed it), and I couldn’t run the self-clean on the oven because the door lock doesn’t work.

Poor Baby

Last Sunday we were walking to church, pushing Corin in the stroller. About halfway there he began to fuss and cry. I didn't see anything wrong with him, so we kept going. He kept crying and screeching. I kept telling him he was fine. 

As I went to get him out of the stroller, I noticed his thumb had gotten pinched in the joint where the stroller collapses. It was really swollen, and the outer skin layers were broken through. Oops. He was not in a happy mood until much later.

Sneaky Corin

Every morning, Corin nurses and then gets up and plays with the stuff on my nightstand, including my alarm clock. The other day I saw him pushing buttons and knew I would have to check the time later. But I forgot.

I was incredibly tired when my alarm went off and unable to become conscious. After pressing snooze for an hour, I managed to look at the time. It was just about 9:00. I began to panic because we were late for school. But then I began to wonder why no one else, especially Corin, was up yet. I put on my glasses to look at Glenn's clock. It said 6:45. 

Corin had reset the time on my clock. The alarm was still set for 7:45.

Big Weekend

Deven turned 12 and was ordained a deacon on July 24. I already had Mikayla, Ellysa, and Benjamin Hveem staying at my house for a few days. My kids have spent weekends at their house a few times. Dave Hveem got a job in Texas, so they'll be moving soon. On Sunday, Liz and Brandon Hveem joined us. We were also joined by my parents, Glenn's parents, grandparents, brother David Hammer, Glenn's Aunt Suzanne, and cousins Robert, Sarah and David Fearnley and Jonia.

We squeezed into the bishop's office after church for the ordination and went home for lunch and later dinner. We've turned into the boring adults who sit around talking all day. But this is how families cement their unique cultures.

My parents were over Saturday to watch me make cupcakes. I tried to think of something to represent priesthood and settled on boy faces with ties. Dad said I should have given them all different expressions.

Latest "Four Glenns" picture: Glenn Austin,

 Glenn Calan, Glenn Deven, Glenn Barlow

Cousins David, Sarah, Young Robert

Deven's 12th Birthday

For not being a very formal event, we had lots of people over for Deven's birthday. In the morning I drove to Orem to meet my sister-in-law from Ephraim. I came back with her three youngest kids. They stayed until Sunday, and they all had a great time. 

After dinner, my parents, brother with his family, and some other friends came over for cake and presents. Deven got a pretty good haul this year. He chose a Candy Land cake again, which he just likes for all the candy. I had eight little vultures hovering around while I put the candy on the cake. It's an extra big cake pan, and we ate a lot of it.