Halloween decor

Something about living in my own house awakened something new in me - the desire to craft and decorate! For Halloween, I was very low key, with just some Halloween bunting, one draped across the mantle and one across the window in our breakfast nook. I made them one night by cutting out triangles from Halloween paper and stapling them to a long black ribbon. The gals at eighteen25 were my inspiration.





Ethan carved a pumpkin, and Scott drew on his.




Next year will be wild! BWA HAA HA!

Halloween

We went to a ward Trunk or Treat on Saturday night. Incidentally, wouldn't it make more sense for them to be called Trick or Trunk? The boys collected oodles of candy, ate their 10 favorite pieces, and left the rest for the Great Pumpkin, who came in the night and left them gift certificates for new bikes in exchange for their candy!

Terrifying Treats (bwahaha!)

Check out our ghosts and other ghastly creatures! I forgot just how much I LOVE to eat Rice Krispy treats. Ethan made a pig, Scott made a mountain, and I made ghosties.

Big news

Back in May, Scott had his pre-K culmination. Part of the program was dancing. Scott refused to participate, choosing instead to stand next to a bench, while his class and teachers did the Hokey-Pokey and a few other such dances.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago. At family home evening with Grandma Gail and Grandpa Dennis, Scott stood up on the window seat, cleared his throat, and announced , "I'm going to say something that you may find surprising. I am going to do the Chicken Dance."

Evidently, in his PE class, there is much dancing. Scott was thrilled to invite Mr. M and me to come to the family dance last weekend where each grade performed a dance routine, interspersed by spectator/performer dances, including the Chicken Dance, the Mexican Hat Dance, and the Hokey Pokey.

As proof for those who will never believe it, and especially for Teacher Renee and Teacher Kim, here is a brief clip of Scott doing the Hokey Pokey with Mr. M and Elizabeth (and clearly having a great time).

Porcine pursuits

Scott is in kindergarten this year. One of his recent homework assignments was to fill in the blank and draw a picture to match: " I see the _____." Typically, he focuses on pigs, but having recently learned a new word from his dad, he turned in something vastly different:


In case you can't read it, it says, "I see the swine."

The most recent assignment had an optional portion, and I truly wonder if his teacher put it in just to make Scott smile:

Finish this silly rhyming sentence. Draw a picture to match.
Can you imagine pigs wearing _______? (wigs, figs, twigs)

Remembering Catherine

There was a recent bout of stomach flu at my house. In a period of 4 hours, my three children vomited 11 times. I was grateful to be living in a house with a washer and dryer, since we moved fairly recently out of an apartment with only public, coin-operated laundry facilities. I considered what it might have been like living in an earlier time and trying to cope with such an illness: chopping wood to make a fire to boil water to do laundry or perhaps going down to the rocks by the river to scrub, waiting for the sun to dry out the sheets and the towels and the clothes. There would have been no 24-hour nurse hotline to consult, no pedialyte to dole out in spoonfuls, no internet to look for information on signs of dehydration.

In thinking about those earlier days, I found some forgotten information about one of my ancestors. Catherine Fewkes, was born in England a few years after Joseph Smith’s vision of the Father and the Son. They say she was a handsome woman with dark red hair and brown eyes.

In 1845, at age 19, she married Thomas Hicken, also 19, and joined the church. Catherine sewed clothes from cloth that she wove with homespun thread that she made from flax raised by her husband.

In December 1851, she and Thomas and their 3 children crossed the Atlantic ocean to New Orleans on a small crowded ship. For the 10 week trip, they were in quarters with no heating, no ventilation, and no refrigeration for their food. The washing and plumbing facilities were likely inadequate for the 500 passengers on board. When they arrived in March of 1852, they traveled up the Mississippi River to Iowa, where Thomas worked any job to earn money to buy an outfit to cross the plains.

In the spring of that same year, the Hickens joined with the Kinsman family to buy one yoke of oxen, 2 yokes of cows and a wagon. They joined the Eli B. Kelsey Company. Because the 2 families were sharing the wagon, Catherine walked most of the way from Iowa to Utah with her children, ages 6, 3, and 2. On top of it all, she was pregnant!

When they arrived, they settled in Provo. That December, her baby, Thomas (my great-grandfather) was born in what they called a wattle house, with walls made of willows stuck in the ground and plastered with mud, with dirt floors and a dirt roof. Those years in Provo were lean. Food was scarce. Her daughter recounts that one morning when they went out, the trees were covered with a white sweet substance. They gathered it and used it as sugar. They survived on suckerfish and pigweed greens for almost one whole season. After 8 years in Provo, they moved to Heber, where they stayed.

In the 9 years after arriving in Utah, Catherine bore 3 more children, one of whom died when he was 9 months old. A year after her last child was born, and Catherine was 36, her husband took a 2nd wife, a widow with 4 children. He married her to help her and her children. As far as is known, he did not live with her. 3 years later, Catherine had to share her husband with a 3rd wife, Margaret, who was 18. Thomas, was 39. They had 5 children together.

Catherine lived only 15 years more and died in May 1879 at age 54 of a paralytic stroke. She was remembered as a faithful and kind church member.

When I think about Catherine’s life, I want to do better. I want to be better. I want to REMEMBER her and channel her strength, instead of complaining about laundry to do or the difficulties of cleaning vomit out of carpet. I want to remember how blessed I am and thank God for every moment.

Is there someone in your past or present who inspires you to be better?

Update

The boys returned to school today, and I thought Elizabeth was doing better. She did not throw up from last night at 8 pm, did fine all through the night, and through the morning. Unfortunately, she threw up this afternoon again, then again before dinner, and now again in bed. This makes over 48 hours that she has been vomiting.

I've been very frustrated with the pediatrician scene here. Every office I have called is not accepting new patients. Tomorrow morning, we'll take her in to pediatric urgent care.

We have spoken with the 24 hour nurse hotline 3x and also consulted Dr. Dad. She is alert and cheerful as ever when she is awake, but she has lost at least 2 lbs (10% of her body weight), her urine output has dropped, and I can tell she is tired of the vomiting. For now, she is asleep. Please keep her in your prayers.

WELCOME to the 2010 San Antonio Crudfest (cue swoopy lights)! Our scores tonight are Scott 5, Elizabeth 4, and Ethan 2!

It has been an eventful day. I woke up in time to get the boys on the bus in clean clothes. This job usually falls to Mr. M, but he is en route home from a business jaunt to Los Angeles.

On our way to take Ethan to his first choir concert of the year, Scott complained that his stomach felt weird. After we dropped off Ethan, Scott decided he would feel better if he were lying down and tried flopping sideways in his booster seat. As we drove, I suddenly heard a gurgling sound. Poor Scottie heaved all over the backseat of the car. I pulled over, punched my emergency blinkers, dumped out a plastic bag I had in the front seat, and Scott managed to do the rest of his heaving in the bag. We drove back to the concert location, where I had Scott sit on the grass while I cleaned out the back seat with baby wipes. It wasn't too bad, and I finished with 10 minutes to spare before the start of the concert. Scott was completely clean and was feeling much better.

Elizabeth was still in her babyseat, and it was time to go in. I got out with my diaper bag and closed my door. Scott was already out. Elizabeth's door was locked, as were ALL THE OTHER DOORS. "No problem, my keys are in the diaper bag," I tell myself. They are usually in the diaper bag. They are usually attached to my diaper bag. For some reason, they are not attached to my diaper bag. I can see them, sitting in the front seat of the car. AGH. I have locked my baby in the car with my keys.

I had my cell phone, but no locksmith to call. I called Shaun, to see if he could look someone up for me. I had to leave a message. I called Jessica, who was not far away, but didn't give me anyone to call. I called Dennis, who said he was on his way, but wouldn't be there very soon. Gail and Jessica showed up together about 5 minutes later.

At this point, Elizabeth is irritated. It's an overcast 91 degrees outside, and she is starting to sweat. Gail had a newspaper in her purse that we unfolded and put across the back windshield to make shade. Jessica called AAA, and amazingly, the guy showed up in less than 10 minutes. He said he got a "hot baby" call, so I'm guessing I'm not the first person to ever do this in Texas.

We made it in to the choir concert with a minute to spare. Ethan did a terrific job. The sanctuary was beautiful, very cathedral like, with a huge organ in front and stained glass windows all around. I met Ethan's choir director, who told me what a joy it was to have him in choir. Then we made sure all the other administrators would remember the whole family - as Scott threw up all over the red carpet at the exit of the sanctuary. Poor guy. Poor carpet.

Since arriving home, we've had much more vomit. The scores in the title are number of times said person has thrown up. The crud has hit and hit hard, although Ethan suggested that he only threw up because he had 4 cookies at the post-concert reception. Scott has a fever. The boys are both sleeping with low buckets on towels next to them in their beds. Elizabeth is sleeping in her pack'n'play downstairs on the tile. I've changed 2 sets of sheets, one sleeper, poured out 5 buckets of vomit, given 2 baths, and done one big load of laundry. I'm collecting for the second load.

Anyone have good ideas on removing vomit smell from carpet? I removed the chunks, blotted with numerous paper towels, and generously sprinkled baking soda over the wet places, which I will vacuum in the morning.

Before he threw up the second time, Ethan was still begging to go to school in the morning. He doesn't want to mess up his class' chance at perfect attendance. "Please? Just for a little while?"

Beautiful food, beautiful girl...

Last Friday's pizza dinner was this caramelized onion, bacon, and spinach pizza, recipe courtesy of Cooking Light. So, so, soooo good! It can be somewhat labor intensive and because of that, I didn't make it for months and months, possibly years.

I couldn't choose only one or two photos of The Girl, so here is my first ever photo collage.



Come visit! We'll play and eat:)

Alive and well

Judging by our last post and our lack of recent updates, you might think the boys are wandering out in the desert somewhere or that we decided to turn back to Los Angeles and were kidnapped by aliens along the way. Not at all. We are home, in OUR home, and life is so good. I will now throw down some photos in an attempt to summarize what has been going on and to pacify my faithful readers who have been besieging me with requests.

While making up our minds on where to live and whether we'd really close on the house we were planning on, we stayed with the wonderfully generous Craig and Jessica. They are family AND friends. They piled up their kids to give Mr. M and me our own room. They fed us. They watched kids while we signed documents, etc. Now that we're in our own place, it's a real treat to live near them. Jessica took me fabric shopping (yes, I bought some!), and I've introduced her to IKEA.

Ethan and Scott started school. They LOVE their school, and they love riding the bus. It picks them up at the end of our driveway at 7 am and drops them off at 3:15 pm. It makes for a very long day for them at school and a very short time together at home before bed. Here's a video of them on the first morning that they rode the bus, in which we learn that Ethan controls the weather (he has since recanted that claim):



Mr. M is enjoying his new job. It takes 10 minutes to go from our front door to his office door, if I drop him off. He keeps pinching himself and thinking he'll wake up and this new life of ours will be a dream. He is still slugging away on that dissertation.

Uncle Shaun came to visit for a week. We all had a wild time:


I love our new house. I need to paint the garage floor, so that all the garage stuff currently in the front room can go to the garage. Ask me if the front room is tidy yet. Ask me if I've painted the garage yet. I need some motivation.

One reason my work is a bit slow is this delightful little person. She is very busy these days, as you can see:


And really, it's hard to get work done when there's someone like that around:)