Quilt class

In January 2007, my mom and sister Amber had a brilliant idea. They invited me to join a quilt class offered through Deseret Book. They were working on these bright colored quilts they thought my girls would really like. They were right about the girls loving the quilts, but I quickly found out it was not really my thing. They love to quilt, I would rather scrapbook. They piece fabric, I piece paper. Anyway, I went to as many classes as I could with my work schedule to pick up the quilt block for that month, but I can honestly say the only thing I did on these quilts was help cut out the pieces for 1 of the squares. My mom put together both of these quilts for Chelsea and Brianna and my Grandma Alldredge put her stitches in as she bound them both. They finally arrived in the mail this week. The girls were anxiously waiting and very excited to get them. Chelsea opened hers up and said "it smells like grandma!". She sat on the couch for then next half hour hugging her quilt and smelling it. Brianna picked out her rug when we first moved here in anticipation for her quilt. She has been very interested in the whole process and would lay out out all the squares on my bed as a new one got finished. We are very grateful for this reminder that there are people who love us back home!!!

Chelsea's favorite square on her quilt.

Brianna's favorite square on her quilt.

Night Shift

So I've officially begun working the night shift. I was so proud of myself when I was still awake at 7 AM the next morning. We work 7 pm - 7am which I like a lot more than 6-6. While working days, the extra hour of sleep was very nice. Now in the evenings, I get more time to help the kids get their homework done, make dinner, and even sit down and eat with them. It also gives Mike a little extra study time. When I get home in the morning the kids are up and going and Mike is making the lunches. All I have to do is drop them off to school, take Cord to daycare, and come home and sleep for 5 hours. I don't have to sit around in the morning and try to stay busy so I don't fall asleep because it's too early to wake the kids up for school. I like the calmer atmosphere of the night shift and the people seem more laid back as well (common for night shift). I was surprised to find out that the cafeteria isn't open at night so I have to bring my dinner. Well, the staff do commonly order out but that can get expensive, especially when I have to buy new pants due to eating all that high fat food. I found a vending machine, but sadly it didn't have mountain dew. I'll either have to keep exploring for another machine, or (gasp) try to wean myself off the dew. But I don't drink coffee like everyone else so I don't know what else to do to stay awake. I do stay pretty busy with my 2 open heart patients on balloon pumps so that helps me stay awake, but I'm completely exhausted when I get home. This morning I was so tired I missed my freeway exit and had to travel an extra 30 min to get home by the time I got turned around. Luckily Mike is on spring break this week so he has been picking the kids up from school on his way home from the library so I get an extra 1 1/2 hr of sleep (every little bit helps). There is not a lot of insulation in this house so when the crew gets home, it doesn't matter how quite they try to be, I hear everything from their basic conversations, Cord's crying, the creaky stairs, or doors closing. I guess it's a good thing I won't be trying to sleep here in the summer. I think that would be impossible.

After my first night shift we had to show the house at 9:30 so I couldn't even come home and sleep. I had to clean a few odds and ends in the house (where is that cleaning lady????). Then when they got here I got in my car, drove over 1 street, and tried to stay awake until they left the house. There are currently 4 houses for sale on this street and another one will be for sale soon. We really don't know what to do. We need to get out of this show house environment for our sanity, but we just aren't finding very nice options for rent. We won't be able to find something this big and nice for what we are paying now. There isn't a lot we can do until after finals though. For now we are just keeping our eyes open.

Happy St. Patricks Day

We just wanted to send you some green smiles today. Have you got your green on?

First Haircut

I finally caved into peer pressure (from everyone in the family) and cut my baby's hair for the first time. It was mostly long and curly in the back. He looked really cute in a headband. He didn't sit still very long, but I managed to trim off the curls. But I didn't go too short, like a normal boy's haircut, because his hair is still pretty thin. I do think it makes him look too grown up though.

BEFORE

AFTER

Especially for Grandmas (you can watch too)

I'm trying really hard, but I can't keep Cord from growing. He really gives me a reason to smile though and I thought I'd share with you. He is learning to give kisses. They are really wet, juicy, and sweet. I'm also glad that at least he is getting some use out of the cross trainer because I'm certainaly not motivated enough to use it yet.

One of his favorite games is peek-a-boo. We can play this for hours on end. It always makes him laugh, which makes us laugh.

Mason & Brianna keep Cord entertained role-playing with these animals. Today I found him in his room playing with them by himself.

What does this mean?

As you can see we have a new feature in our front yard. This past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of emotion for us. We knew the ultimate goal of our landlords was to sell this house. The lease we have is until the end of June, then it goes month to month. We had hoped that because the market was so bad, they would decide it was better to have a nice responsible family, who paid their rent on time each month, and took care of the house here than trying to sell it again. We were wrong. They just really want to get it sold. They did offer it to us first to buy, but we really don't want to buy a home here that we will have to worry about selling when it's time to come home. The market right now is really scary. Plus the fact that we are living on my income and student loans. The only thing we could qualify for would be a small 2 bedroom house somewhere safe, or a larger home in downtown Springfield where we could borrow a cup of crack from our neighbors.



So what does this mean for us? I get to live in a show house again. You all know how much I enjoyed doing that last year so you could say that I have not been in the best mood lately. I had finally got to the point where I felt at home here, even put out a few pictures, but now I get to take all the personal stuff down and "de clutter" the house in preparation for showings. So I'm basically starting to pack up again and we have to move some furniture out. We get to make sure the house is clean at all times for possible showings. The listing has requested 24 hours notice, but they can't promise it will happen. The silver lining in this is the owner is going to send her cleaning lady once a week to scrub the bathrooms, clean the floors, dust, clean fingerprints off the windows, etc so that when we need to prep for a showing it's not so hard. We also get to disappear when the house needs to be shown and when they have an open house every other sunday afternoon for 2 hours. Who knows where we will go at this time, it's not like we can hang out at mom's house. Plus we will have the issue of my trying to sleep during the day after working a night shift.



Needless to say, we are now looking for other homes that we can rent in the near future. We are checking out other towns in the area to see if we can find one that is good for our family. We really need to find a home that is officially in our ward boundries so they won't start making us go to the other ward. This is the ward that Mike attended when he lived in Springfield, and we have just kept coming. There are a lot of neat families there. But that means that the kids get to start a new school next year since there are not a lot of homes to rent here. We need to find somewhere with a 2 year lease so we don't have to move again before the end of school.



There's not much we can do with this until Mike is done with finals the first week of May. (can you believe that in 7 weeks he will be done with his first year of law school?) I've been driving myself crazy worrying about the future which I really have no control over. My goal for the week is just to relax and enjoy the time I have with my kids. I start working nights next week. I had to take 2 hard tests for work, a critical care test and an arrythmia test. I passed both so now I don't have to take the critical care coarse. It's nice to have them over with.



It's starting to warm up here, but we haven't put the coats away just yet. I hear that New England can be very tricky in the spring. It's nice to have a little more light in the evenings though. Keep us in your prayers.

It's a mystery

I don't think I've told you about my church calling. It didn't take long, but I was called to be the first councilor in the Relief Society (in charge of homemaking). So on top of learning a new job and taking care of a family with no support system, I get to tackle a pretty big calling. As soon as I got the calling, I was also informed that I was in charge of the Relief Society Birthday party 1 month away. (big sigh inserted here) Needless so say, I'm breathing a little easier because the party was last night and it seemed to be pretty successful. I just got a call that said the Bishop was really impressed with the whole night, I'm not sure that's a good thing in my behalf.

What we ended up doing was having a murder mystery night. Remember those "how to host a murder" parties that were really popular when we were in High School? Well, a sister in our ward had a sister in Utah who made up a similar night using a story right out of the Book of Mormon. There is 1 murder victim, 6 accused characters, and 3 rounds of clues. As you sit at your table, eating your dinner, you have conversations with your group as you try to prove your innocence by proving that someone else is guilty. It really was fun and engaging. We invited the young women to join us, so Chelsea got to be with me, and Brianna (plus a couple other 11 yr old girls) was in charge of the nursery. We also served Hawaiian Haystacks which was really easy to do, plus it wasn't something people here were familiar with. During dessert we had each table discuss who they thought did it and why. At the end is a readers theater that ties the murder mystery to the story in the scriptures and thus reveals who did it and why. We tied it up with a challenge to get reaquainted with the scriptures. For the table centerpiece we had several mystery novels, a name plate for each character, and some fun birthday pencils with a card attached to it as party favors.

It was fun! I'm very glad it's over!!! Now on to the next challenge, a service project of some kind. If anyone is interested in the script, e-mail me and I can send it to you.

You're gonna miss this

I preface this story with this statement: When my kids were little and life was crazy with a 2, 4, & 6 year old and even now when they are older with the 1 yr old, my mom always tells me that one day I would miss having these little kids running around. I usually just roll my eyes because sometimes I can't even find time to shower and I fall asleep exhausted each night.

We have been looking around for some nice Easter dresses for the girls which has proved to be difficult because everything is either too short, too low cut, or with little or no straps. The other day I decided to be brave and take all 4 kids to the mall to look a couple more places. Shopping with the boys is not my first choice, but Mike was at the library and my time has been limited so I did what I had to do. It was pouring rain so I opted not to get the stroller out justifying that we would not be that long. We knew what we were looking for so we would be in and out (right?). Once again we had a hard time finding decent options so we had to go to several places. I was ready to sell Brianna and Mason because they would not stop fighting with each other. Brianna said shopping was not fun unless we were looking for clothes for her, and Mason was just plain board with the whole thing. Let's just say that they were ...... horrible. Add to the fact that Cord is a growing boy and became very heavy to carry through the mall. Then I became aware that I was feeling very warm and moist right under my hip where I was carrying him. He had been battling a severe case of diarrhea for the last couple weeks and it manifested itself at that time. I had thought a little ahead and had a spare outfit packed in the diaper bag. So now I'm in Macy's with a stinky, wet baby and 3 fighting kids looking for the nearest bathroom. I plopped them outside the bathroom and began to clean up Cord and myself, all the while hearing them argue outside the door.

Needless to say, we did find a cute skirt in 1 department and a nice top in another that both Chelsea and I liked so I bought it and hurried my wrecking crew to the car. I did hear the cashier comment as we walked away, "I sure feel sorry for her" which topped off my experience. I guess that's why everyone here only has 2-3 kids huh?

Anyway, back to the story. After we got in the car and I, shall we say, expressed my feelings loudly to the children, I turned on the car and a new song was playing by Trace Adkins called "You're going to miss this". It talks about how life is crazy raising children, but when you look back after it's done you realize how good it was and you miss it. I know that's true, but at this minute all I could think was "yeah right!!!". Here's the ending of the song that I like, but it's only the last verse.

"Five years later there's a plumber

Workin' on the water heater

Dog's barkin', phone's ringin'

One kid's cryin' one kid's screamin'

And she keeps apologizin'

He says they don't bother me

I've got two babies of my own

One's thirty- six, one's twenty- three

Huh, it's hard to believe

But you're gonna' miss this

You're gonna' want this back

You're gonna' wish these days

Hadn't gone by so fast

These are some good times

So take a good look around

You may not know it now

But you're gonna' miss this"

You can hear the song if you click on this site and then maybe you'll share my sentiment.
http://music.aol.com/video/youre-gonna-miss-this-aol-sessions/trace-adkins/2063880

Another song that I have really liked lately is by Rodney Atkins called "Cleaning this Gun". Mike is always teasing Chelsea that when she turns 16, he is going to build a big, glass, gun case for the front room. He'll then sit in front of it to interrogate, I mean, interview the boys that come to pick her up for a date. I think that is funny because I remember an 18 yr old boy that was once afraid to meet a girl's dad who happened to be a Sargent in the Army. I didn't think my daddy was that scary, but he sure thought so. I guess what goes around comes around. Listen to the song, it's really good.
http://www.cmt.com/videos/unplugged/rodney-atkins/162035/cleaning-this-gun-come-on-in-boy.jhtml

Need a good laugh? This is wild

http://www.maniacworld.com/frozen-in-grand-central-station.html

How's the price of gas there???