Brotherly Love

This big guy and this little guy love each other a lot.

On All Fours

This little man decided rolling and pulling weren't effective forms of travel, so on Saturday he got up on his knees several times. I know six-months-old is a perfectly normal age to crawl, it's just really young for our kids!

Many Hands

On Saturday we pulled out the Christmas decorations!

I'm thankful that these kids love to decorate for the holiday as much as I do. Thanks to their help we were done with the tree must faster than I expected. 

They celebrated by holding an impromptu vocal concert, because they're my children. The performers included Cooper, Phoebe, and Sophie, but I failed to pull my camera out in time for all of them.

I'm thankful for the excitement we all feel about Christmas!

Final Thanksgiving Thoughts

Remember last Thanksgiving when Bryan sliced off the pad of his thumb? I was nervous we would have a repeat this year. Thankfully the only injury for 2018 was a burn on my right index finger. I tried to take a pizza out of the oven the night before Thanksgiving and bumped the rack above the pizza. It blistered and is healing now.

On Thanksgiving day Phoebe wanted to help with the dinner. I asked her to make name cards for everyone. Here's one of them. She drew everyone as a pilgrim and left a place for us each to write what we're thankful for. Instead of writing, we used the prompt to give our thanks aloud.

We had an extra long break this year. The kids went back to school today. I'm so thankful that we had the extra day off, especially since we spent those days fighting a cold. It was hard to send them back today.

Almost all the leftovers are gone! I'm surprised at how quickly they were gobbled. I guess that's a good indication of how delicious everything was.

All month I've been focusing on gratitude here on the blog. Nearly every post so far has talked about what I'm thankful for. I wanted to bring those blessings to the forefront of my brain, so I looked for things I was thankful for in each event or idea that I wrote about. It was a good exercise. I think I'll do it again next year.

All the Blessings

Sophie spoke in Primary yesterday. She dictated the list of things she's thankful for and was content to have that be the entire talk. I decided to add a little more information. She did a good job delivering it, though was surprisingly quiet without the help of the mysteriously missing Primary room microphone. Every few lines I would whisper, "Louder!" We both made it through.

We Should Thank Heavenly Father for All Our Blessings

In the New Testament, Paul taught that we should thank Heavenly Father for our blessings. Ephesians 5:20 says

Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;

All the blessings we have come from Heavenly Father. Here are some things that I’m thankful for: family, earth, that Jesus will always stand beside me like the song If the Savior Stood Beside Me, healing the sick, the holidays, Thanksgiving because we can say what we’re thankful for and join together with family, friends, love, joy, kindness, playing, helping, learning, food, water, sand, rocks, music, ancestors, Jesus, and Heavenly Father.

The writer Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

Thanks to our Father we will bring,

For he gives us ev'rything.

Eyes and ears and hands and feet,

Clothes to wear, and food to eat;

Father, mother, baby small,

Heav'nly Father gives us all.

Thanks to our Father we will bring,

For he gives us ev'rything.

I love Heavenly Father and I thank him for all my blessings. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Let's Do Nothing!*

Today we did nothing.

Well, not quite nothing. We ate and made some progress on a Christmas gift and Bryan fixed a broken bookcase. But most of the day was full of sleeping and watching movies and playing games. Because Topher and I (and now Bryan) are still sick, we didn't even get out the Christmas tree. We laid low and tried hard to recuperate.

It was glorious.

Black Friday (spent at home and not in stores) might be my favorite day of the year.

*Does anyone else know this picture book?

All the Trimmings

For only the second time in seventeen years, we had Thanksgiving just our little family. The last time this happened was in 2013, before Sophie and Topher were born. While we missed our extended family, I was happy to spend the day with our seven.

Bryan and I split the meal prep. I cooked the sweet potatoes and regular potatoes, diced strawberries for the Jello salad, made the stuffing, rolls, cranberry sauce, and all eight pies. (That's not as impressive as it sounds, two were frozen and two were instant pudding pies. The other four were the same batch of pumpkin pie that had enough batter to make that many.) Bryan built and baked the sweet potatoes, seasoned and mixed the mashed potatoes, put together the Jello salad, cooked the green beans and corn, and prepared and cooked the turkey. Everything was delicious. 

Here's one of the many pumpkin pies. It looks unsure. When the kids saw that it appeared to have a face, they all announced they would eat the other pies, but not this one.

For the most part, Topher had a great first Thanksgiving. There were a few rough patches though. He and I both woke up with colds and spent the day sniffling and sneezing. And then, during the big dinner, as he was eating sweet potatoes for the first time, I noticed he had just cut his third tooth. In spite of not feeling well, he was, on the whole, a happy boy.

The kids played calmly throughout the day, which is a major thing for our loud bunch. During the meal they practiced their best manners. I was thankful that I'd chosen to teach about manners for my week of preschool this month. Sophie remembered a lot of what we talked about. I'm mentioning this because we've been struggling with good manners during meals. In fact, the kids had gotten into such a bad habit of yelling over each other and interrupting us while we tried to talk during meals in our echo-y kitchen, a few weeks ago we took a cue from the book Farmer Boy and instituted silent dinners for the kids. I felt terrible about it, especially because the kids had trouble remembering and would inevitably get excused from the table when they talked. They would eventually come back to finish eating, but it wasn't fun for anyone. However, it seems to have worked because when we rescinded the rule for Thanksgiving dinner, everyone did well. We were able to have a great conversation and my ears weren't ringing afterward. Maybe we just needed a reset?

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Change of Face

It's November and that means Bryan has grown a beard. Topher is fascinated by all that dark hair on his dad's face.



I'm thankful for the chance to watch Topher learn. And I'm thankful that Bryan is so patient while Topher investigates.

Brains

Parent/teacher conferences are taking place this week in our district. I met with Peter's and Cooper's teachers yesterday afternoon, I'll visit with Phoebe's next week. 

Good news: both of Cooper's teachers love him. They think he's intelligent and funny and a good kid. They also think he's a wildly unorganized ball of papers who never has his shoes tied, but they said that he was really good at managing his chaos. I agreed with their assessment. Cooper was happy that he received such a glowing review.

Good news: three of Peter's teachers think he's wonderful and funny and creative and pointed out that he asks deep and thoughtful questions that move the entire class toward better discussions. The other two teachers were not as effusive in their praise, but also weren't negative. All five of them agreed that he was very smart, so smart in fact that his grades (which currently range from 88 to 95 out of 100) should be higher. They also all agreed that he's chatty, and most of them agreed that the chattiness didn't distract from the class. One teacher kept his thoughts on that matter to himself. Even so, progress!

When I told Peter what his teachers had said about the questions he asks, he chuckled and said, "You know why I do that? I started it a few years ago when the subject was really boring. I would sit and think of a question I could ask that would pull us away from the boring stuff into something more interesting."

I laughed. "You mean those amazing questions were the result of you trying to derail the lesson?!"

"No," he answered, "I didn't want to change the subject, just move it to a more interesting area."

I am thankful for these bright boys.

Girls

We have a Thanksgiving tree on our wall that we've been using to record what we're thankful for. One day last week we were talking about what we should add to our list when the following conversation took place.

Cooper: You know what I'm thankful for? Girls! All the girls. Girls make this world what it is. (seeing the grin on my face) You're going to put that on the blog, aren't you?

Me: Yup!

I'm thankful for the funnies, intentional or otherwise.

After the Snow

Shortly after dropping Sophie off at preschool on Thursday morning I got a message from the school district notifying us that school would be released early. I quickly did my grocery shopping and headed home so I could meet the buses. Bryan and I talked on the phone and he decided to come home at lunch, just in case the snow was bad.

According to weather reports from this morning, we got eight inches of snow. Bryan arrived home just as it started to fall. I am so thankful he did. I heard lots of stories of commutes stretching on for many hours. One friend's usually forty-five minute drive home took eight and a half hours. The roads were awful and visibility was terrible. I'm so glad we were all tucked in at home.

We woke up to a canceled school day. The kids excitedly bundled up and went out to play. Sophie was so happy to share the snow with Topher that she carried an armful into the house to show him. I turned her around quickly, but she did drop some on her way out.

I really wanted to stay inside. I don't have the same love for the snow that the kids have. But the thought that this was Topher's first snow and that he should get to be in it drove me out of doors. He was not overly impressed with the icy conditions, but I think he enjoyed watching the kids play.

Peter loved watching Topher experience the snow.

The kids rolled and built and ended up soaking wet from the snow.

Sophie took a break to enjoy some (hopefully) clean snow. 

I bundled us both up even though we didn't venture beyond the sidewalk by the front door.

Phoebe built this fancy snowman and asked if she could borrow my phone to take a picture.

Sophie's smaller snowman is next to Phoebe's. It has the branch coming out of it.

Cooper spent his entire time outside building a snow chair. I'm not sure how comfortable it was, but he did try it out before he came inside.

I'm thankful we could enjoy the snow. And I'm thankful that we could retreat into our warm house and spend the rest of the day cozy and dry.

Before the Snow

The forecast for today says we're going to get our first snow of the season. Knowing that cold weather is here makes me thankful that we took advantage of a warm day last week to go to the park. By warm I mean that it was 54 degrees when we arrived and dropped to 50 degrees in the thirty minutes we were there.

The girls stuck to the playground.

The big boys played soccer almost the entire time.

And this sweet boy sat in a real swing for the first time. He enjoyed it.

Eventide

My evening routine currently looks something like this:

• Make some kind of food available to my family for the last meal of the day. This might be something awesome like roasted chicken and butternut squash (eating the leftovers as I type, delicious), something less awesome but still acceptable like taquitos and tator tots, or something acceptable to my kids but not to me like cereal. Probably cereal.
• Spend that meal sitting on the floor of the great room/living room with Topher while I call good-manner reminders into the kitchen where the kids are eating.
• Gather everyone for scriptures and family prayers.
• Read scriptures, intermittently remind children to put down books/crayons/toys/baby brother and pay attention to the scriptures.
• Pray.
• Give hugs and remind them all to please brush their teeth. This will be repeated throughout the night. It will most likely be ignored.
• Get Topher into pajamas.
• Give more hugs. Give kisses. Sing bedtime songs if time and Topher allow. Turn bedtime over to Bryan.
• Sit down in my Ikea chair in my dark bedroom and feed Topher. During this time I:
• Read my scriptures/General Conference talks/Sunday School lesson prep if I haven't already that day.
• Listen to an audiobook while I play solitaire on my phone until my eyes won't stay open.
• Switch over to YouTube videos until I'm awake.
• Go back to book. Repeat process for about two to three hours.
• After he's finished eating I hold Topher for a bit, then put him in his bed. This starts the countdown. I have between ten and forty minutes until he wakes up and wants to eat again. Yes, seriously. I usually only have time to eat something (nursing requires many calories), sometimes I prep a quick blog post, occasionally I get to spend time with Bryan.
• Topher wakes up and we repeat the whole Ikea chair bit, but this time it usually only lasts for an hour.
• After I put him in his bed, I fall into my own. Sometimes I remember to brush my teeth. I guess my kids should have reminded me.

I am living in a state of constant exhaustion. Because of this, I often remind myself of the concept of seasons. This is a season of my life, one that won't last forever. My season of babies began almost thirteen years ago when Peter was born. Since I believe Topher is our last, this particular season is coming to a close. I think that's why I'm okay spending so many hours in a chair, taking care of him, ignoring many other duties. This time with him is precious. He is precious.

I'm thankful for this season.

First Food

After yesterday's post Bryan reminded me that he recorded a movie of Topher eating rice cereal for the first time, so now you can see his full reaction. Bonus, you get to hear Peter's low voice. He's sailed past the voice change landmark of sounding like his mom, onto sounding more like his dad.



I'm thankful for technology that makes it possible to share this moment and to watch it again and again.

Not a Fan

Topher is now a seasoned six months old. That means he was recently introduced to solid food.

He did not enjoy it. After a few servings, he still does not enjoy it, but he's willing.

I'm thankful that the big kids were all so excited for Topher to eat solid food and that they delight in everything he does.

Reflections

Phoebe is participating in her school's Reflections contest. Last year she entered a piece of art. This year she has written a short story. The theme is Heroes Among Us. She went through several drafts. Each time I read it I would ask her questions about what she remembered from that day and how she felt. Each version had more detail. She finished the story yesterday and I asked her if I could post it here.

My Hero

by Phoebe

It was a hot hot Memorial Day in New York. Me, my brothers Peter and Cooper, my sister Sophie, my dad, mom, and my uncle Dallin, were in New York City to see the Brooklyn Bridge.

After we were in New York for a few hours we stopped at McDonalds to cool off. We decided to order something. We ordered an orange soda with ice. Then we left. Me, Sophie, Cooper and Peter were taking turns drinking the orange soda. Soon it was gone. Then we started to suck on the ice.

At first it felt good cooling off but I soon felt a lump in my throat. I tried to swallow it but it wouldn't go down. I turned around to tell my mom about the lump in my throat but I found that I could not talk! Suddenly I realized that I was choking! My eyes grew wide, they started watering. My heart was beating very fast and I couldn't breath  I was very scared.

My mom asked me “Are you choking”? I slowly nodded my head. Then she came up from behind me and it felt like she was giving me a bear hug. But she was actually doing the Heimlich Maneuver. The ice flew out of  my mouth. The ice went on to the street. I started to cry my mom gave me a real bear hug. I had mixed emotions. I was happy and scared.

My dad said, “Let's stop sucking on ice.” We all agreed. The nearest trash can we found we threw the cup of ice away.

When my mom did the Heimlich Maneuver she saved my life. If my mom didn’t do the Heimlich Maneuver I might not be here today. My mom is my hero.

Professionally Trained

This weekend Phoebe was struggling with a story she was writing for school. She wanted my help. Can you see what I wrote on my otherwise empty (it's a new month, I haven't filled it up yet) calendar which happens to hang next to the computer where she was working?

Here, I'll give you a closer look.

A quick explanation of dramatic structure wasn't exactly the kind of help she wanted, but I enjoyed it. And don't worry, I explained exposition, I just wrote down "background" for clarity.

I'm thankful that I find ways to use my college degree in my career as a mom.

Make the Time

Bryan and I made time yesterday to vote. I wasn't sure it was going to happen since Tuesdays are our busiest day, and yesterday was worse because it was my turn to teach preschool. But things fell into place so that I was able to leave the four older kids at home with Peter as babysitter while Topher and I went to vote.

Apparently I arrived at the perfect time: I only waited for a few minutes. By the time I got there at 4pm, the slips of paper for our names and the "I Voted" stickers had all been used. When I signed my name I think the woman said I was number six hundred and four. An hour and a half later, Bryan was in the eight hundreds.

I'm thankful to live in a place where we can vote. I'm thankful that I made time to vote. And I'm thankful that so many others made time as well.

Gross Fun

These three tried Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans on Saturday.

Some were good.

Some were not.

I'm thankful for fun activities that will (hopefully) become fun memories.

Take Shelter

Today I am thankful for our basement. I'm also thankful that Bryan put together an exercise space in one corner of said unfinished basement and that he included a foam floor. These things made our tornado warning on Friday at nearly midnight much more manageable. Bryan and I were able to wake the kids up, grab pillows and sleeping bags, and head downstairs without much fuss or time wasted. Then, though no one actually slept, everyone could have if they'd wanted to.

I'm also pretty thankful that the tornado warning didn't turn into an actual tornado.

Good Morning Grin

I am so incredibly thankful that Heavenly Father sent us this sweet little boy.

The One Where They Got All the Candy

Our Halloween celebrations started last week with Cooper's parade. Then they continued on Friday with Phoebe's parade, which was immediately followed by Bryan's work party, then a direct drive to our Ward's Trunk or Treat. We all crashed hard that night and slept in late on Saturday.

Here's Phoebe in her school parade as Annabeth Chase from the Percy Jackson books. She was so sad that only one person at her school knew who she was. I thought it was a great costume, but she's decided that next year she needs to be something more obvious, in part so people stop asking if she forgot her costume.

We didn't take many pictures at the work party. Thankfully we took advantage of the backdrop to snap a few. Here we are as a ninja, Drift from Fortnite, Annabeth Chase, Angelina Ballerina, Mama Dino, Baby Dino, and Bruce Banner.

I'm so glad we got this picture of Sophie with her ears and whiskers because the ears disappeared that night after the Trunk or Treat and I completely forgot to draw on the whiskers on Halloween night.

The ward Trunk or Treat was so fun that we completely failed to take any pictures. One highlight was Peter and the Deacons acting as human targets in their Nerf version of Duck Hunt. The Youth were in charge of the activities for the kids and this was what the twelve and thirteen-year-olds decided on. It was a hit, pun intended.

And here we are on Halloween night, about to go Trick or Treating. I was going to stay home with Topher to hand out candy. Then I realized that if we were home Topher would want to eat, which would make handing out candy frustrating for him and awkward for me. And since he's usually happy people watching in the Bjorn, I decided at the last minute to take the kids around the neighborhood. We were out for about an hour and a half and Sophie wore out before Topher did.

We have sorted and traded and weighed the candy. After eating some of what she got from Friday's activities, and some from last night, Phoebe has ten pounds of candy left. She thought that sounded like too much, so she pulled out about half a pound to take to school and share with her class. I think it's a good beginning.

Wednesday had lots of strong feelings and some of our small people almost had to stay home. I'm thankful that we pulled it together and that the kids all got to go Trick or Treating. And I'm thankful that, for the most part, the kids remembered to say "Trick or Treat" and "thank you" without prompting.