Love is Spoken Here

White

2012-02-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

So my last week of maternity leave has come to an end and the week went far too quickly. I'll be back at work tomorrow morning. I'm working from 5:00 AM -2:00 PM so that we can minimize the amount of time that the kids will be without a parent. Jeff is still on course to graduate next May, so I keep telling myself its only another eighteen months and then I'll be home again. You can probably tell, since I mention it almost every post, that I desperately miss being at home with my kids. We were always blessed with enough for our comfort when Jeff worked and I stayed home, I have a testimony that my family was blessed by having a stay at home mom and will again soon. Sometimes though, you have to pull yourself up by the boot straps (so to speak) and do what you have to do to make things work.

I spent the week doing things I really enjoy including spoiling my adorable baby. I made a cake for his baby blessing lunch and finished sewing the outfit I was making for him. He looked so handsome.

Arlo had his baby blessing on Sunday. This is an ordinance where a father publicly gives the baby a name and pronounces a blessing on the baby as directed by the Spirit. Arlo was perfect and slept peacefully through his blessing. Jeff is pretty soft spoken in situations like that so he was difficult to hear, but it was a sweet occasion.

Chartreuse

2012-01-29T11:48:00.000-08:00

The weather was just beautiful this week and we really enjoyed being outside. Things were relatively mundane for the most part. At 6 weeks, Arlo has started to smile, which just brings so much joy to my soul, to see him emotionally connect with us. It certainly makes getting up in the middle of the night more tolerable.

I made a cake for a friend this week that was a lot of fun to work on, and boy what a mess it made! I'm looking forward to making another cake for Arlo's baby blessing next weekend.

So the endless updates about my garden are going to start early this year. On Saturday we worked out in the back yard and had a really enjoyable time prepping the east bed for planting, clearing out the dead leaves and such from the other flower beds, hanging pots, and porch plants. We also re-seeded the lawn which is something we do every year. It's really early, but it has been in the 70s here for weeks now and I don't anticipate that changing so we decided to get started ahead of schedule and give the more delicate veggies a head start on the heat. We've set aside a budget again this year to finish raised beds on the north and west ends of yard. I hope to have the planting plan ready to get seeds in the ground this week. We were pleased that the beds on either side of the porch are still filled with lovely plants from last spring and won't need to be re-planted. I may put in some colorful annuals, but for the most part all of the plants survived the winter. I came across a wonderful surprise in the garden as well, that I am very excited about. Last year after I had told Jeff we would be having another baby, he brought me a beautiful pot of daffodils. They died when it got too hot, but I saved the bulbs and put them in a shady part of the garden. Yesterday, when I was out working in the garden, I noticed a dozen or more shoots coming up from the bulbs; I'll have new daffodils in a few short weeks and year after year when they bloom I will remember that wonderful day. Give potted flowers instead of cut flowers! There are so many things in my yard that I am emotionally attached to. That may sound strange, but it's true. I have a flowering cactus that was my Nana's that sits by my front door that I love and I think of her every time I see it, a rose bush in the back that was a Valentine's gift, amaryllis flowers that remind me of my dad because I dug them out of my parent's back yard before they sold their house. OK, I'm a little sentimental and I'll admit that when you're emotionally attached it's harder when a plant dies! We spent so much time in the yard last year and I'm looking forward to the garden again this year...with some improvements planned.

It was a pretty normal, non exciting week, and I'm going to really try to enjoy my last week home!

Sunshine Yellow

2012-01-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

I had such a great week...I think the rest of the family did too. I've gotten used to my new sleep "schedule" and all the doctor's appointments and other distractions have died down. This week I felt like my old stay-at-home mom self. Everyday the house was clean and a healthy, delicious (in my opinion) meal was ready when Jeff got home from school. I did homework with Felicity and made sure she practiced piano. I even had time to play with the girls, we spent about an hour in their room on the floor playing with Polly Pockets.

Arlo graciously continues to group his sleeping in six-eight hour blocks making life a little more easy. Even when he does wake up at night he eats and goes right back to sleep so I really couldn't ask for much more than that. He has trouble being put down when he's awake, but as he is becoming more aware of his surroundings he's enjoying tummy time and looking at his toys a little more. He loves bath time and is very good when it's time to ride in the car.

I started going to Weight Watchers last week to help me and lost a little over five pounds (from here on out it'll be a more healthy 1-2 pounds a week). With eating much more healthy I'm also enjoying the added activity. I met my lovely friend Megan this week at Sahuarita lake and we walked around the lake, I'm not even sure how many times. I really enjoyed chatting although after I got in the truck to head home I felt bad because I realized I did all the talking; and probably said a lot more than she wanted to hear!

Friday I met my mom and grandma for breakfast and shopping. We had a great time as usual, I'm so lucky to have them. Jeff worked on a group project for school on Saturday and wasn't home so I didn't accomplish a whole lot this weekend, we're planning on getting our garden in early this year since it has been so warm, it seems a waste not to enjoy a longer growing season. We need to decide how much of a budget we're going to have for it this year, that will determine how much improvement we make. Ideally I would like to extend our back wall to enclose our side yard, continue the flower beds around the entire perimeter of the yard, reseed the lawn, and replace our two trees out front that died last winter. If we do finish the flower beds around the rest of the yard, I'll probably plant several new rose bushes along the east wall.

I have two weeks until I have to go back to work, so I'm going to try to make the best of them. I need to finish sewing the outfit that I'm making for Arlo for his baby blessing, I am making a cake this week as well. It's going to be a great week!

Baby Blue

2012-01-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

I can't believe how quickly time has gone by, but here we are half way through January! Baby Arlo had his one month check up this week and is doing well. He's gotten back up to his birth weight and the goo left behind when his umbilical chord stump fell off has dried up and he has a proper belly button now. He's also grown two inches in length and is out of the newborn size and is wearing 0-3 month PJs and onesies. He's started grouping his sleeping a little more and is awake and alert a lot more during the day and is sleeping in six hour blocks at night. The only bad part about that is he falls asleep at about seven, so I'm still getting up with him for about an hour at around 1 or 2 in the morning. He's such a good baby and we love him so much.

Jeff went back to school this week. His classes are in the afternoon this semester so it's been nice to have his help getting the kids ready for school in the morning. I had some one on one time with the baby while everyone else was at school which was nice. I am loving being at home so much, it'll be hard to go back to work in about three weeks. Tuesday, Jeff watched Arlo and Helen and I went out with my mom. We went shopping and had lunch then as a belated birthday gift we had a manicure and pedicure. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed ourselves. We had friends over for dinner on Friday night which was nice and then we had a great game night...there were seven kids upstairs having all kinds of fun. Felicity also lost her second tooth this week. It had been loose for some time and it fell out at dinner, she was so proud.

In an effort to be a healthier happier Davidson family this year, Jeff and I got bikes and a bike trailer so that we could ride as a family. The girls went out in the bike trailer with Jeff on Saturday. They were only out for 15 minutes or so before Jeff got tired. We have some great places to ride around our neighborhood, but its pretty uneven terrain so it can be quite a workout especially since it's been a long time since either one of us has ridden a bike. In the afternoon the kids were antsy and we wanted to head out on an adventure, so without knowing where we were going to go we got in the truck and started driving. We went south on I-19 and got off on Arivaca road and took a trip to Arivaca. It was a nice drive, one I haven't taken in several years. We drove through town and then headed toward Arivaca lake (I didn't know there was a lake there). We ended up on this very narrow dirt road winding back into the mountains (I was afraid maybe we wouldn't be able to get out) but ended up coming upon a pretty good sized lake. The kids got out and threw rocks in the water and enjoyed some exploring. We drove back up and through town past the old cemetery and past my great aunt's property. Felicity asked why the people were living in weird "house cars" (there are a lot of trailers in that area), but it made Jeff and I giggle the way she described them. Then we headed toward home just as it started to sprinkle. It was a very nice drive and we had a good time. We stopped for kids eat free at Denny's when we got back to Sahuarita which the kids love. We watched a movie together as a family when we got home before the kids got off to bed.

So eight o'clock church has not been easy so far. With Arlo getting up in the middle of the night, I've been enjoying sleeping in, this morning was no exception. I woke up at 7:35 and rushed everyone else to get ready in record time. The baby went straight from the crib to the car seat and had to go to church in his PJs. The girls had their breakfast on the way to church, but we made it in time! We'll have to try harder next week to get up on time. Once at church, Jeff had an experience that I think most people have nightmares about. As it turned out the speakers for Sacrament meeting fell through and there was no one to speak. The bishop, from the pulpit, called on Jeff and another brother to speak. Jeff's not exactly crazy about public speaking when prepared, so I was proud he didn't bolt for the door! It took him literally a minute or two to get going, but once he did he had some heartfelt, sincere things to say.

We had dinner with my parents in the evening and Felicity stayed the night since it was her turn and she doesn't have school on Monday. She was so funny, on Friday she told me that she didn't have school Monday and I asked her if she knew why. She said, "well the brown kids had a broken drinking fountain and this one guy had a dream, but I don't remember what the dream was about. Someone killed that man and that's why I don't have school on Monday". Kids say the darnedest things!

Desert Green

2012-01-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

This week... this week... what happened this past week? Monday was the last day of the kid's holiday break, so we took them to lunch with Nana and Papa and then to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. I love the museum and its right up my alley in expertise...in fact working at the museum doing public education would be pretty amazing (except all their docents are unpaid volunteers). I bore my children to death with facts, questions, and "did you know..."; in fact one time, much to the chagrin of my husband, I had a group of tourists follow us thinking they lucked out with a free guided tour. We had a great time and the girls were really well behaved as was Arlo. We really enjoyed the beautiful weather and the exercise.

Felicity went back to school on Tuesday morning and was very excited to start again. Helen went back on Wednesday and Jeff and I spent the day putting Christmas away and cleaning the house. It feels wonderful to have the house in order and be back on a schedule again. Little Arlo is pretty inconsistent with his sleeping patterns so far, sleeping in four hour blocks some nights and not wanting to sleep at all other nights. We've been able to be pretty flexible since Jeff is still on break from school, I imagine that will change next week when he goes back.

Felicity brought home her second quarter report card this week and we were very please to see that she did very well. She received the highest mark, Meets Expectations, in all the academic areas which she was tested; she also received the highest mark, Consistently, in the personal development areas. We are very proud of her and her eagerness to learn. I have a suspicion that she will excel in mathematics as she is already adding and subtracting in the after school work we give her and more than that really seems to grasp the principles and reasoning behind math. We are working on being a peacemaker at home; many of the arguments she and Helen get into would be quickly dissolved if one of them would just walk away!

Thursday Helen, Arlo, and I went into Tucson with my mom to do some shopping and give Jeff a break. We had a nice time and the kids were great. Helen even got a new pair of shoes. Jeff and I took an opportunity to get out and about on Friday morning with only one child. We did our shopping, grocery shopping, and went out for lunch. We've been out with all three a few times now and they are a handful! I guess that's really all we've been up to this week.

I'm grateful to be back on a schedule and am really enjoying my time away from work. I would be a liar if I said I hadn't fantasized about not going back, but alas. I have four more weeks and intend on enjoying them. I can't believe the baby is already four weeks old, time flies! Hopefully Jeff will be graduating next spring as planned and will be able to find a job quickly so I can come back home. I hope everyone else had a great week and is happy, healthy, and safe in the week to come.

Hey Jude

2011-12-19T13:30:00.000-08:00

It has been a wonderful couple of weeks in the Davidson home. Little Arlo has already brought so much more love and happiness into our lives. My recovery is coming along, it was slow at first, but I am feeling almost back to normal now. The baby lost a considerable amount of his birth weight, so I've been feeding him like crazy. It took him awhile to get the hang of nursing, but we seem to have overcome that challenge, he just needed a couple more weeks of maturing. He also had a bout with jaundice; I put him in the window a couple of mornings and that cleared up on its own. I had some depression the first few days home, but Jeff had me save a few ounces of milk for him, and he took over getting up with the baby so I could get a good nights sleep and that really helped chase away the blues. The girls are adjusting pretty well I think. Its hard to tell since they are out of school, we off our schedule, and they've been eating holiday candy and treats. We were very lucky to receive so many meals from some of the best people out there. It was greatly appreciated and was a lot of help.

The Monday before Christmas we had our 4th annual Gingerbread house Family Home Evening. We had family and friends over for a Family Home Evening lesson on the symbols of Christmas, the kids decorated gingerbread houses, and then we sang Christmas carols. The kids seemed to have a good time and its something I look forward to each year. It's a tradition that helps us point Christmas towards the Savior and I hope to continue it for years to come.

Jeff finished the built in shelves he and I designed for the baby's room. I love them! He even encorporated some dowel rods for shoe box-sized toy bins. We have something similar in the girls room that retails for around $70. The dowel rods cost less than $5 and the bins were $1 each. We built the toy bin just under $20 and its built into the rest of the shelving.

Christmas eve was spent with my family and we had our traditional Mexican food feast which was wonderful. The girls had so much fun opening their gifts from Nana and Papa and Grandma Lo and Grandpa Gene. Baby Arlo slept through most of the festivities; Grandma held him for a good portion of the evening. We got home around 9:30 and the kids were all asleep. Jeff and I put the girls gifts under the tree including a pair of bikes that Jeff put together the night before.

The girls got us up about 7:00 on Christmas morning. Daddy read the Luke account of the Christmas story and then we let them go downstairs to open their gifts. They were very excited and loved their gifts. We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and then got ready to head to church. We had a very nice Sacrament meeting with some lovely music. Jeff was asked to play and sing Silent Night on his guitar and he did a great job. We enjoyed the rest of our Sabbath together and the girls happily played with all their new things. We spent the evening over at the Bryson's eating, visiting, and putting together a puzzle. The girls had a great time and the kids really played nicely together. It was a great way to end Christmas day...we didn't get home until a quarter to 12!

We've had to drive into Tucson everyday last week it seems. The baby had two appointments with the pediatrition to check on his weight. He is slowly gaining and they are happy with the progress he's made. He's consistently opening his eyes now that almost all of the bruising and swelling has gone down around his eyes, although he has a blocked tear duct which is causing some discharge from his left eye. I also had a doctor's appointment to check my inscision and everything is looking great. We took advantage of our trips into Tucson and took the kids to mall to play one day and to the movies another. We are really enjoying our Christmas break and it already seems as though Arlo has always been with us. Although, we are quickly realizing that we are out numbered; I have a suspicion that the change from two to three children will be more tricky than from one to two was.

Baby It's You, Reprise

2011-12-13T06:15:00.001-08:00

Friday morning, after taking Felicity to the bus stop, Jeff and I loaded up our stuff and set off for Tucson Medical Center. I had a non-stress test to make sure the baby was doing well and would tolerate the amniocentesis without any problems(we were doing an amniocentesis to verify the baby's lungs were mature enough to deliver early since he was so big). He was a little sluggish as I had to be fasting from the night before. The nurse came by about an hour later to prep me for the amnio. There were a few good pockets of fluid, but the baby was so wiggly by this point, he was making it difficult. The midwife joined us for support and the doctor decided where she was going to put the rather long needle to take out some fluid. Just as she was about to, the baby moved into the pocket of fluid she was going to use so they re-planned; she said the baby could sense my apprehension and was responding by moving a lot. I closed my eyes and tried to really relax, Jeff said I didn't even flinch when she put the needle in, which felt no worse than getting a shot. The baby continued to wiggle even though there was a sharp needle up by his bum! The doctor was able to get a few vials of fluid and everything went well, I didn't even need a band aide! Jeff left for his geography final and I went back to observation and another non-stress test to again assure baby was doing well.

About an hour and a half later the nurse came in to let me know that the baby's lungs were mature. The doctor came in and gave me a choice; she said she wasn't really happy they scheduled me for Friday, seeing as I was only 37 weeks, she said we could go ahead with a c-section today, or I could go home and eat, take the weekend to prepare and come back on Tuesday. I decided that since we had already made the necessary arrangements and we were already there, we would just go ahead and deliver at 37 weeks. Jeff arrived back from his final just as they were moving me to a labor and delivery room to prep for the c-section. We visited with the OR nurses that were going to be attending as well as the two doctors who would be performing the surgery, an intern who would be watching, the anesthesiologist, the midwife, and a few other people. I think the IV was the worse part of the whole thing, but once I was ready and they came to get me I started to get really scared. I'm not sure why, with Helen I was cool and calm. I chatted with the OR staff during her c-section, but not this time. When it came time for the spinal block tears just started streaming down my face as I desperately tried to hold still. They were prepped and ready to go and I just felt so panicked I couldn't catch my breath or stop crying. Jeff was allowed in and he came and put his hand on my face while the midwife held my hand.

The doctor gave me the play by play as we had discussed earlier. I wanted to know how the scarring and adhesion looked and get her opinion on whether we could have another baby. At first everything went well, I heard all positive things. "Scar tissue looks minimal, there's some slight adhesion, everything looks good so far Heather" then a small gasp and an "oh, my gosh". The room got pretty quite and she said "there's a hole, an opening, I can't believe this". Moments later the anesthesiologist leaned over to Jeff and said here comes the baby if you want to see it being born (to which he shook his head and made sure his line of sight was well under the screen). There was a lot of pressure and pulling and then that beautiful sound of new baby cries. Not loud or particularly strong, but there just the same. Exclaims of "wow, look how big he is", "look at those thighs", "he has the cutest cheeks" came streaming to my ears from the other side of the screen. The doctor briefly brought him behind the screen for me to see and then whisked him to the Neonatal nurses. They eventually wrapped him up and gave him to Jeff to bring over to me, where I could see his adorable face and kiss his soft forehead, perfectly round. Jeff went with the baby to be weighed, measured, and evaluated. I closed my eyes and let the exhaustion and fear wash over me.

After they were finished with post surgery, the doctor came around to my side and said we were really lucky and we obviously were living our lives the right way because someone was looking out for us. When she got down to the uterus, there was a hole and partial tear at the old incision line. The weight and pressure of the baby had caused it to begin to rupture. Had we waited until the next week, had the baby gained another couple of ounces, it would have ruptured and we would have lost the baby and put my life in serious jeopardy, especially since we don't live close to a hospital. She said we couldn't have anymore children; they didn't have a written consent for a tubal ligation, so they sewed everything back up, but we would have to talk about permanent sterilization soon. I was glad the baby was OK, and I was eternally grateful for whatever person mistakenly scheduled us for Friday instead of the following Tuesday, but my heart was broken at the idea that we couldn't have anymore children, that I'd never get to be pregnant again. Tears well up in my eyes as I think about it now. Jeff has wisely reminded me that just because we can't have anymore of our own, it doesn't mean that our house will never experience another baby. I love him.

We made it back to the recovery room and Jeff and baby Arlo were waiting. He let me know that he was 10 pounds, 4 ounces and 20 1/2 inches long. He was perfect. He has lots of soft brown hair and a weird patch of completely white hair in the back. The nurse said it was a birth mark, no pigmentation at that place on his scalp, it's kind of cute and luckily not large enough to be a stripe or overly obvious. His eyes were pretty bruised, and only after about three days have we been able to see them as he is now just opening them. They are blue, as expected and very curious.

My recovery has been relatively fast and I didn't need any narcotics while in the hospital. I was up walking by ten o'clock that night (once I regained real feeling in my feet and legs), and had all my tubes and IVs taken out the following afternoon. I was eating regular food by morning and feeling pretty well. My doctor said since I was doing so well, they would release me and the baby a day early as long as I promised to come back in to have my staples removed on Monday.

The girls came by on Saturday morning after their Big Sister class that I had signed them up for. They were very excited to see their new baby brother and took turns holding him. My grandparents came by later in the afternoon to visit. I wasn't feeling up to any more visitors, so we spent the rest of our time in the hospital by ourselves until we were released Sunday afternoon.

I am so in love with my little guy, and Jeff is smitten too. I'm so grateful to everyone who has been supportive and helpful. Especially those who gave us clothes and other necessities including a crib. I have the best friends in the world. I'm sure that there will be lots of pictures and stories to tell of little Arlo's adventures, we're looking forward to taking Christmas pictures together as a family and enjoying the holidays!

Baby It's You

2011-12-11T08:44:00.000-08:00

What a surprising, wonderful week this was! I worked on Monday of this week and after work met Jeff and the girls at the school auditorium for Helen's preschool holiday program. It was cute and she did a great job singing and dancing, but I, being a rather practical parent, think it was rather pointless. They only sang one or two holiday songs and mostly it was kids too young to be counted on to behave in an expected way picking their noses and staring blankly. After we took the girls to McDonald's for an ice cream treat and then to the grocery store to pick up some necessities. It was a long day and I didn't get home until around 8.

Tuesday was my last day of work until February. I headed straight to my visiting teaching appointments after work, which I always enjoy. I love visiting with the great sisters I have assigned to me, and was happy to take over some cookie/candy baskets. I had Jeff take some pictures of my beautiful belly, sorry they are not terribly modest, but I couldn't help but want to document it; I love pregnancy I think it's an amazing beautiful thing and I feel so incredibly blessed to be able to experience it.

Wednesday I slept in and had great plans to get everything ready for the baby. I did a little cleaning and sewed some Christmas gifts I had been meaning to get to. We were expecting to go in for an amniocentesis next week, but I got a call Wednesday morning that I had been scheduled to go in Friday morning at 8 AM. So an actual due date of December 27th, got moved to December 20th, then December 13th, now December 9th. We finished getting the house picked up and made arrangements with everyone we needed to.

Thursday, Jeff and I planned to take a trip to the Mesa temple, as it will probably be awhile until we can go again. Felicity left for school and we took Helen to Jan's and we headed up to the Phoenix area. As we pulled up there were not very many cars and scaffolding up the side of the building. We parked and got out (I had checked the schedule online to make sure they were open) and were met by a groundskeeper who asked if we were there to volunteer. Upon realizing we weren't exactly dressed for work, he let us know that the temple was closed until the 13th. We were so disappointed, supposedly they were suppose to announce in ward meetings that the temple was closed, but I guess I missed that memo. So we turned around and drove home. We spent the rest of the day getting our bags packed and the house ready. The baby's room isn't quite done, we still need to put up/paint the bees that are going on the wall, and Jeff hasn't finished the shelves yet...it will just have to wait.

I decided to give our special birthday its own post so as to not go on and on, so for the rest of the events for this week, check it out!

All I've Got to Do

2011-12-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Ok, this week seemed like a bit of a blur. I left work early on Tuesday to make it to my NST at TMC. That went well and I was home by 6. We had Family Home Evening after dinner and we talked about "stranger danger", which term never came up as it's an extremely poor way of teaching your children about safety. We talked about how our bodies are like the temple and how important it is to treat them right and how nobody else has the right to touch our bodies. I had the girls put bathing suits on over their clothes and we talked about the "bathing suit rule" (nobody should touch you where a bathing suit covers). They loved this physical demonstration and it was hard to get them out of their suits when home evening was over. It's important to teach our children about the Savior and other gospel essentials during home evening, but we also feel its a good time for other teaching moments as well. We talked about how the girls never have to be ashamed to tell us something and they never have to keep secrets from us. Most importantly, we taught them that even people they know have the potential to hurt them, that a bad person is not some villain they don't know. It was well received and I hope that it's information they'll never have to use.

I had a big day on Wednesday. I had an ultrasound to continue to monitor the baby's size. At 36 weeks and 1 day gestation, the baby weighs approximately 9 pounds, 2 ounces. For perspective an average baby at this gestational age weighs about 5.75 pounds. He is in the 100 percentile for weight and head circumference, he's of average length. After my ultra sound I had a consult with the obstetrical surgeon again and we discussed our options. She's concerned that if we wait to do the cesarean section at 39 weeks the baby could be over 11 pounds at which time I would be at an elevated risk for uterine tearing and damage at the time of delivery that could result in me having to have a hysterectomy. We decided the best course of action is to do an amniocentesis at 38 weeks (around December 13th) and if the baby's lungs are mature to do the c-section that day or within a couple days. I wish I could say I was excited to meet our little guy two weeks early, but it complicates things a little. Firstly, an amino test is a little frightening, although she reassured me that worse case scenario is that I would go into labor, which would be OK. Secondly, Jeff has finals that week at school and both the girls will still be in school. It also messes with when I was going to take my maternity leave. If we delivered at 39 weeks I was going to be able to PTO that week, then would come my two weeks of holiday pay and I wouldn't start my maternity leave until January 3rd with it ending eight weeks later. Now I have to take my PTO next week and start my maternity leave on December 12th. I will get eight weeks from the 12th which means I'll have to go back to work three weeks sooner than I had anticipated. On the plus side, while I love being pregnant, I have been very uncomfortable this pregnancy and it will be a bit of a relief to deliver, although recovering from a c-section isn't necessarily easy either.

Since our plans have been adjusted by a week I've been trying to get everything ready. Friday I had an NST in the morning, which lasted for almost two hours because the baby was not cooperating. Then I met my mom and grandma at the thrift. My mom and I then went shopping and I got a couple more gifts for Jeff and I got the girls some candy and small things for their stockings. I met Jeff and the girls back at my parent's house and we had dinner together and then my mom and I made six pounds of fudge, which was the last thing I wanted to make for my candy baskets. I was beat by the end of the day!

Saturday, it was cold and rainy, but Jeff hung our Christmas lights. He also worked on the shelves he's making for the baby's room. He didn't get them done because of the rain, but hopefully he'll find time this week. I decorated the gingerbread men and cut out cookies that I made a few weeks ago, and really enjoyed doing it. It was a task, but it was fun and I think they turned out pretty cute. Felicity and I cleaned the entry way while Jeff and Helen went to get a gift for Felicity from Helen. I really wanted to deep clean one room in the house per day until the baby comes. We took everything out of the closet and reorganized it, donated some shoes, and packed up some shoes that don't fit the girls anymore. We mopped inside the closet and cleaned the doors and baseboards. It looks great, even if the rest of the house is still a mess! Jeff and Helen came home shortly after we finished and Helen announced what she had gotten for Felicity, "guess what Felicity, I got you an Ariel doll". Oh, well!

We had stake conference this week and we showed up early so we could find a parking spot. I ended up not having to interpret as the young woman I interpret for wasn't there. It actually made for a pretty long meeting on an uncomfortable pew. I'm hoping to finish sewing the baby's blessing outfit this evening. I'm grateful I'll have some added time to get ready this week since I'm only working Monday and Tuesday. Time is just flying by, but I'm very excited for the Christmas season. We'll be getting our tree tomorrow and will decorate it for FHE, one of my favorite traditions.

Your Mother Should Know

2011-11-27T18:58:00.000-08:00

What a fabulous week we had. It was a short work/school week and we really enjoyed one anothers company. The girls' both had Thanksgiving festivities at school. Jeff took Helen to the preschool on Tuesday for their "Thanksgiving Tasting", Helen had a blast and was so excited about eating turkey.

I started my NSTs (non-stress tests) this week on Tuesday morning. It basically consists of checking in at Labor and Deliver at TMC and having a quick ultrasound to measure the amount of fluid around the baby and then being hooked up to a heart rate monitor which records the baby's heart rate and movements and makes sure that the resting heart rate is within the normal range (a sign that baby is healthy and tolerating his environment) and that the heart rate accelerates during a movement. It didn't take too long and both times I went in this week the fluid was normal and the baby is very active and healthy. I worked from home on Wednesday which was nice and peaceful.

I received the remainder of the Christmas gifts I ordered online this week including the changing table for the baby. Jeff and Felicity put it together for me Wednesday evening, after which Helen and Felicity used the extra Styrofoam to have some sort of sword battle.

Thursday morning we picked up the house and I made cranberry relish (my favorite), a sweet potato pie, and a pecan pie. In the evening I made some garlic mashed potatoes and Jeff fried our turkey. We had my parents and my brother and his wife over at 5. Normally I enjoy making the whole meal, but this year Jeff was very insistent that I give up a little control. I admit I was grateful to not have to do it all myself, I was pretty tired and soar that evening from the little bit that I did do.

We enjoyed a restful Friday and did venture out briefly in the afternoon. I had a NST at TMC and we stopped at Target so that Felicity could pick out a gift for Helen as she was spending the day with Nana and Papa. Saturday was very productive and I'm starting to feel more ready for the baby; only three weeks and two days left! I made some stocking-stuffers for the girls from something I saw on Pinterest.com, a pair of ear warmers/headbands. Jeff took the girls to dinner at his brother's house. I had to stay home because we were babysitting Saturday evening, but they had a great time.

It seemed a little harder this year to be joyous as some events that brushed our lives made some of our gratitude a little more somber. There is a family in our stake, no one I know, nor did I even recognize the name, but there was some sort of household accident that left their 17 month old baby in a coma. We learned that he later was removed from life support and passed away. My heart just ached for this family and the tears came easily even though I don't know them. Thursday we learned of a tragic airplane accident that took the life of young man (along with five others, three of which were small children) who was close friends with Jeff's younger brother, a young man we had had in our home a few times. Again tears welled in my eyes and my heart felt heavy for what it must be like to loose someone dear, especially during the holidays. My gratitude this Thanksgiving was to my Heavenly Father for the knowledge that my family can be together forever, that if for some reason He were to call one of my children or my husband home, that I would be with them again. I am grateful for the great blessing and trust that has been given to me as I've experience the joys of motherhood. I have a great love for my family, for our extended family, and for our amazing friends. I am thankful this year for those things most of all.

I made the girls pilgrim hats for dress up this week. They were quite a hit!

One after 909

2011-11-20T20:06:00.000-08:00

So tired! We had a nice week, busy as usual, but nice. Monday we took a walk in the Rancho Sahuarita park and the kids enjoyed throwing rocks in the water, antagonizing the ducks, and climbing on just about everything. It was cool, but very enjoyable. I didn't get very far before I was too tired and need to turn back.

I was feeling pretty exhausted on Wednesday so I took the day off. I ended up making gingerbread cookies and cleaning up a little bit while Jeff and the kids were at school. I have a to-do list of all the things that I want to accomplish before the baby comes and I'm making pretty good progress. Jeff volunteered in Felicity's classroom as he usually does on Thursday afternoon. I'm grateful he has the time since I can't. He is all registered for his Spring classes and it works out pretty well for us. I'm going to have to go into work really early, around 5 AM, but it limits the amount of time the baby will have to be with someone else. It looks like he'll need a sitter on Monday and Wednesday for about 5 hours. I need to get over my emotional block and find someone willing to watch him (we're not really comfortable with him going to a public daycare).

It was my off Friday, and busy as usual. I had a midwife appointment in the morning which went well. They did another blood draw since the consulting physician wants to do a hemoglobin screen to look at glucose levels over the last three months, they are still convinced that diabetes is the cause of the baby's extreme size. I have another ultrasound (our 5th I think) on the 30th to continue to monitor the baby's growth and they want me to start non-stress tests (NSTs) twice a week until I deliver. One at TMC, the other at the birth center. I'm hoping I can continue to juggle all this and work until December. After my appointment I met Jeff and my mom at the primary school for the kindergarten assembly. Felicity was receiving the Owl of the Month award (basically student of the month) and her teacher invited us to be there. She was very excited, we are very proud of her. Jeff and I had lunch with my mom after and then headed home to get some chores done.

While Jeff and I were cleaning up, Helen took her pre-school napper into the kitchen to play with it and ended up sound asleep on the floor. My children will sleep anywhere! We brought out all the infant toys and cleaned them up. We also got out the baby bath, swing, and some other things and cleaned the "garage storage" dirt and dust off of them. You would have thought it was Christmas seeing how excited Helen got about each "new" toy to be pulled from the container.

I made a birthday cake for my dear friend Jan's daughter this weekend and it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, but the kids really liked it. She had a Dinosaur Train themed birthday party and the girls had a blast. They really enjoyed getting their faces painted and jumping on the trampoline.

After the party we stayed and helped clean up and then had pizza with the Bryson's. The kids played and we adults watched a movie while I finished up the blessing blanket I have been crocheting for the baby. He now has a blanket and booties to be blessed in, I have his outfit cut out, I just need to sew it. It's on my very long list! I did get to mark some other things off the list though. We bought some of the last necessities we needed this week including a changing table and diapers and wipes. It's the first time I've bought diapers for a new baby, with both girls we got so many at my baby shower that we didn't buy diapers for the first 6 months!

We had a lovely sabbath and enjoyed time together as a family. We even made some more Christmas cookies. I'm almost done with my Christmas baking, I think the fudge is the last thing I need to do, aside from decorating the cut out cookies and the gingerbread men.

We decided that we would host Thanksgiving here after all. I promised Jeff that I wouldn't try to do it all and only picked a few of the menu items to make and asked my family to bring the rest. We're looking forward to that, as well as a short work week! We hope everyone has a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving this week, I'm certainly grateful for my family, for all our great friends, and our extended family whom we love dearly.

I Will

2011-11-14T18:51:00.000-08:00

So this week did not go the way it was suppose to! It's a big week for us, my birthday on Wednesday, our anniversary on Saturday, and Labor Day in between. Orignially we had planned to enjoy a weekend get away, just the two of us. A few years ago for our anniversary we stayed at a bed and breakfast in Snowflake, AZ and went to the Snowflake temple as part of our quest to do service in each of the temples in the United States. We had a wonderful time and wanted to repeat the experience, only this time planning to do a cabin in the Salt Lake valley. Alas, being so close to my due date and it being dangerous to go into labor, we were advised not to make such a long trip away from home. Ok, plan B. My parents were to take the girls Thursday night and all day Friday and we were going to go out to dinner and movie and then take a day trip to Mesa. Well, we ended up watching Gabrielle Thursday night so no dinner out, no movie. Friday morning I popped into work early in the morning to tie up a few loose ends. I was in charge of a catered lunch later in the afternoon and I was handing it off to a collegue who had agreed to take over for me. Yeah, so much for that, he called in sick and I had to stay and take care of the meeting. I got home around 2:30 which was too late in the afternoon to make it to Mesa. Jeff and I instead went to a matinee and then picked up the girls from my parents house. Oh, well! I hope to make it out to dinner and to the temple before the baby arrives.

Speaking of baby, as of Monday I have 20 work days left and only 5 weeks until the baby's big day. We are so excited, and not quite ready. The girls are excited as well. We had a very productive weekend and were able to accomplish a lot. I got the girls winter clothes out and packed up the summer things and clothes they have out grown. We finished the chair rail in the baby's room and cleaned up the house. I've made a lot of progress with Christmas preparations and baked pumpkin bread and cut out cookies. I also wrapped all the gifts I've bought so far.

On Monday we had a Family Home Evening lesson about the importance of families and after, we put the baby's crib together as a family. The girls had so much fun and were actually pretty helpful. We made the crib up too, although we'll have to take the bumpers and blankets out and wash them since the cat was under the impression that the crib was for him and everything is now covered in black cat hair!

Saturday I met one of my best friends in the world for lunch in Tucson. We hadn't spent time together in quite awhile and it was so nice to chat and catch up. Life just isn't complete without friends. Since friends came up, I have to mention that Saturday was the anniversary of the day I married my best friend. We have had probably the happiest year of marriage so far this year and I feel blessed to have him as my eternal companion.

I Me Mine

2011-11-06T18:15:00.000-08:00

We had a peaceful week. Halloween was a lot of fun. Jeff took the girls out with Victor and his girls to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood on Monday night. I stayed home to hand out candy as my waddle has become very pronounced and I would have held up the group. We had a lot of kids come by this year! It seems the year before last when we took the girls out door to door, there was hardly anyone participating, this year they both came home with a bucket full of candy. There were a few teenagers not in costumes, and a lot of parents with infants holding open bags for candy.

Work was relatively quiet this week. On Tuesday I had my photo taken with the VP of Engineering in recognition of an award. The group picture they took of all the awarded was a head on picture, so it looks like I'm incredibly fat, not pregnant. You can imagine how thrilled I am to have that go up on the company home page this coming week!

Felicity lost her first tooth this week and was very excited. It was her lower left incisor and it had been loose for some time. As it turns out, she bit into a tootsie roll from her Halloween stash and the candy pulled the tooth out. I was sceptical it was ready to come out, it seemed a little early to me, but low and behold there was it's replacement poking through the surface. The more I thought about it, I remembered that Felicity had got her first tooth, that particular tooth, when she was only four months old, so I shouldn't be so surprised she ahead of the game in that area. Helen had a crazy hair day at school and enjoyed me putting her hair into little pony tails all over her head, and Jeff finally had grown tired of pushing his hair out of his face and got his bi-anual hair cut!

Friday morning I had an ultrasound to gage the baby's growth so far. The technician was just amazed, she measured everything three times, and the baby weighs six pounds six ounces. To give that some perspective, I officially have 8 weeks left to term and a baby at this gestational age, on average, should weight about 3.75 pounds. He's very healthy and happy, she got a great image of his adorable little face (he looks like Felicity did in my opinion), and of him waving his hands. They were going to send the results to the consulting OB and the midwives and get back to me. I then met Mom and Grandma for breakfast and did a little shopping at the thrift. Then I headed to the midwife's office for my regular 2 week check up. My glucose results were back, and as usual, were completely normal; no gestational diabetes which is always their first thought when considering the size of my babies. They did talk over my ultrasound results and want me to visit with a nutrition specialist and start a diabetic diet even though my blood sugar levels are normal. It shouldn't include finger sticks, but will mostly be a low carbohydrate, low sugar diet. I have to admit that I'm not really that happy about it. I, like many women, feel like I've been on a diet my entire adult life. Pregnancy is the one time when I eat conscientiously, but not necessarily on a restrictive diet. Alas, I'm willing to do what is best for the baby, although I have fears that I will suffer through the last few weeks on this diet to no avail and still have a big baby! We are so in love with him already.

After my appointment I met up with Mom and we went out to run errands. The midwife prescribed me an orthopedic brace to help with the discomfort I've been having. I have had a lot of pain and pressure in my lower abdomen along with sciatic pain because of the weight of this pregnancy (on top of the baby being large, I have too much fluid as well). So our first stop was to a prosthetic/orthopedic medical supply office where I was fitted for the support. It is a little complicated, but it has really made a difference, especially at night, giving me some extra support. I made some more progress with Christmas preparations. I have almost all my gifts bought I just need to start wrapping them and boxing the ones that are going to be shipped. I am almost finished buying for the girls, I think I have a few things I want to make and then I have to come up with something for Jeff. The girls helped me make a batch of cut out cookies and pumpkin bread from our Halloween jack-o-lanterns.

Saturday, we worked on the baby's room. I made a valence for the window and Jeff hung the chair rail. We spent the rest of the day getting chores done and other mundane tasks. I wish we had been outside more, it was a beautiful day with lovely temperatures. Here's a picture of Helen playing in the baby's bouncy seat that a friend gave us.

I have a lot of preparations still to make and the time just seems to be flying by. We feel so blessed and excited to be parents again.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

2011-10-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

What a week! Work was pretty well this week. I had two days of leadership training, which was acutally pretty enjoyable seeing as it was on a topic I enjoy, it was called Fierce Conversations and was mostly about commnication in the workplace; although, I think the thing that stuck out the most, I'll use at home. "Let the silence do the heavy lifting", Jeff makes his decisions internally so usually after I've asked him a question he thinks about it a long time before answering. Usually the silence makes me antsy and I start talking again. Evidently, most engineers function this way, internally processing, I was the only external processor in the room. It gave me some good insight on better communication with my spouse and they fed us really well so it was worth two days in an uncomforable conference room chair.

I am amazed at how time consuming Jeff's homework has been this semester. He has Tuesday and Thursday free, and spends the day working on assignments. He also does homework in the evenings on the other days of the week. I guess they're just more challenging classes this semester and he's doing what he can to stay ahead; I'm proud of him. He's considering taking a class over the winter break, which as long as it's in the morning should be OK. The winter session starts on December 19th, if his class is in the morning we could schedule my cesarean in the afternoon and it would mean that he would be away for a couple hours each morning, but it would also mean that he could knock out one more class in four weeks.

Last week when I went in for my checkup, they said they didn't have my lab results back yet. Come to find out, there was some lab error and they couldn't process them so I had to go back in on Thursday morning and retake my glucose test. I worked from home once I was done. Friday was a pretty standard day at work, although I found out my collegues and I received another team achievement award. This one really wasn't just for doing my job, we really bent over backwards for this particular customer and it was a well earned award. I don't know yet how much the bonus will be, but I'm hoping that I can use it to finish up my Christmas shopping.

Friday evening the girls had their first "slumber party". We usually have Gabrielle on Friday nights, but this week we agreed to take the Bryson's girls for the night as well so they could celebrate their anniversary. Jeff and I decided that the girls would be much better off if we organized the night with activities; left to their own devices the girls would be fighting in just an hour or so. We had a pizza dinner and then went out back with an LED flashlight and played hide and go seek in the dark. The "it" person had the flashlight. The girls had so much fun! Towards the end, Felcity ran into Helen and ended up with a black eye, at which point we switched gears and made smors. They mostly enjoyed roasing the marshmallows over the grill. After cleaning up the sticky sweet treat we went upstairs and played BINGO. We have a fun disney version with a DVD caller. They played three rounds before growing restless at which point we put on PJs and popped pop corn. The girls watch The Corpse Bride. At about 9:30 the girls left awake went to bed pretty peacefully. We were woken up at about 3:30 by Helen and Felicity fighting over a toy, they were all up and playing.

I finished sewing the girls' Halloween costumes Saturday morning while Jeff worked in the baby's room. He cut all the pieces for the chair rail and touched up the paint (we forgot to take the tape off the ceiling right away last weekend). He also hung some blinds and a new ceiling fan. We had the ward Trunk or Treat in the evening. Felicity, Helen, and Gabrielle had a great time. It was two wards from our stake and there were a ton of people. I handed out 300 pieces of candy, one per child, and ran out just at the end. It was fun and we didn't get home until 8. I let them each have one piece of candy before brushing their teeth and heading to bed. As I kissed Felicity good night I noticed her lips were sticky so I asked if she brushed her teeth. "Yes, Mom", smiling widely such that I could see the jawbreaker candy at the back of her mouth. "I thought you said you brushed your teeth?", thankful I noticed the tooth roting sugar ball. "I did Mom, I took my candy out, brushed my teeth and then put it back in mouth". I love being a mother!

Here's to hoping the weather goes back to being more fall-like and that everyone enjoys the fun Halloween holiday.

In My Life

2011-10-23T19:47:00.001-07:00

Another week come and gone...where does the time go? Halloween is almost upon us and then its down hill for the rest of the year.

Felicity had two half days this week as it was parent/teacher conference. We are very proud of her and the great success she's having at school. She's above grade level in all the areas they look at and got the highest marks in all the behavior/socialization areas. They evaluate much of their progress with an exam they are given at each quarter and there was only one thing she didn't score above the grade level. They are expected to write their name, fist and last with correct capitalization and Felicity used a capital T in her first name. Sorry for the brag-fest, we are just very proud of her and the care and excitement she puts into school. All the teachers at the Early Childhood Center seem to really love Helen as well and rave about her. To have two for two I feel incredibly blessed, I know only a small part of the girls' success has anything to do with us as parents and has more to do with the fact that Heavenly Father sent us a couple of amazing little people.

I also had another midwife appointment this week which was a quick check in that went well. We'll be having another ultra sound soon to monitor the baby's size since I am consistently measuring big. They didn't have my test results from the myriad of blood tests they did at my last check up, they weren't sure why they were being held back. I should hear sometime this week, but I don't really anticipate any problems; I'm feeling well. I met Mom and Grandma for breakfast on Friday morning and while I couldn't stay and hang out too long, I enjoyed the time I had with them. I didn't even find anything at the thrift which was odd!

Saturday we spent the day with chores around the house and also working on the baby's room. Helen's fantastic nursery teacher gave us a very nice crib this week and we went and bought paint and a ceiling fan for his room. I was actually feeling pretty energetic this weekend and helped Jeff with the taping and painting along the base board. We painted the top half of the room light blue, the bottom half light green and we got a white chair rail to run along the middle of the room. My plan is to, with Jan's help, cut out the outline of little bees in vinyl and create a little bee trail around the middle of the room swooping under and above the chair rail. I also found a great quote from a Winnie the Pooh book that I want to put on the wall. Jeff is going to make some built-in shelves like he did for the girls room. I think after that all I need is a changing table, a diaper genie, blinds, material to make curtains, and diapers...I'm almost ready! I can't believe how quickly this has gone. I must admit that I'm very worried about leaving the baby after my maternity leave is up. Honestly, I've not been allowing myself to even think about it. I miss being away from home so much, I know we're making the right choice, it just doesn't make it any easier.

I also finally started really making progress on the girls' Halloween costumes! I pulled out the sewing machine and just put my mind to it. Not a moment too soon either, the Ward Trunk-or-Treat is on Saturday and then Halloween on Monday, again where did the month go? I am also proud that I made some more progress with Christmas preparations. I got some more gifts taken care of and made a batch of chocolate bread to go in the baskets I give as gifts. Looking back, it was a pretty successful and productive week...here's to hoping next is just as good!

If I Fell

2011-10-16T19:21:00.001-07:00

This week has marked a substantial slowing down for me in terms of what I'm able to comfortably accomplish. Point in fact, when I first sat down on the couch with the lap top to write this post, I didn't come up with anything right away (which for me would indicate a significant mental slowing down) and I fell asleep for a couple hours before having someone climb on me to cuddle. I feel as though I accomplished very little this week and its quite frustrating.

Felicity had fall break and I'm so grateful we were able to juggle the schedule and I'm grateful to Jan and my mom for taking Felicity a couple days this week. I wish we could have taken time off to do something fun, but it will have to wait until Jeff is out of school seeing as he isn't granted a fall break. Work continues to go well and I was pleased to hear this week that I had earned two team achievement awards. One was for dedication to engineering excellence (or something like that) and came with a monetary bonus which we will be happily using to get the baby's room ready with paint, new shelving, furniture, etc. The other was for Excellence in Engineering Security (again, something along those lines) and while it doesn't have a monetary bonus involved (bummer) it will include lunch and a photo with the VP of Engineering. I do enjoy recognition for just going into work every day and doing the best work I can. We have been so blessed by my job and while I carry a lot of guilt around lately over not being at home with my kids, which is where I really want to be, I'm grateful for the opportunity that we have. We were always blessed in the past with enough for our comfort when I stayed home and Jeff worked, and I know that that season in life will come again; for now I'm going to do the best with what we have. I'm so happy Jeff has the opportunity to go to school and better himself and better prepare himself to lead and take care of his family, a responsibility he is really looking forward to as well. I'm so proud of all the progress he has made.

As I mentioned earlier, my mom and dad watched Felicity on Friday. They had quite the adventure and they took her shopping at Target, out to lunch, then to see Cars 2, and then to the Marana pumpkin patch. They rode the tractor, picked out pumpkins, played in a huge sand box, jumped on a jumping pillow, went through the hay maze, and so much other fun stuff. She was pretty worn out by the time they brought her home, but she had a great time.

I've been very discouraged with my lack of energy and time to get things done lately as I said earlier. On Saturday I finished cutting out the fabric for the girls' Halloween costumes, but fizzled out before I even got the sewing machine set up. I also sat down and got my Christmas cards written and addressed. Since the baby will be born the week of Christmas I want to have all my ducks in a row so that I don't feel like I missed something. So the cards are ready and I did some Christmas shopping online for the nieces and nephews. My plan is to make one batch of Christmas treats a week and store them in the freezer, so that they are ready to assemble in baskets before I head to the hospital. Jeff finished priming the baby's room, so hopefully we can paint next weekend. I have so much I want to get done, but with work and my calling and everything I need to do around the house, I'm just exhausted! I think too, that reality is setting in and I am realizing that I don't have as much time as I want...the baby will be here in eight short weeks! We can't wait to meet him and the girls are excited too. I signed them up this week for a Big Sister class at the hospital where they will go on a Saturday morning and learn about holding, diapering, and taking good care of their new baby brother and the class also includes how to deal with the feelings involved when a new baby comes home and a tour of the maternity floor where baby brother will be born. They are both excited to go, I think the class is Saturday, December 10th.

I'm going to try to keep my chin up and let the non-important things go and not stress myself out (we'll see, I'm not very good at that). I have Friday off this coming week, but we have parent teacher conference and I have a midwife appointment in the afternoon (I'm going every other week now). I'm hoping to catch breakfast and shopping with Mom and Grandma on Friday morning, but we'll see. We hope everyone has a great week and enjoys the ones the love most.

I'm Looking Through You

2011-10-09T13:29:00.000-07:00

The weather in the latter part of this week really made if feel like fall. It's been so beautiful! We haven't had the air conditioner on since Wednesday and have had the windows and doors wide open; I love all the fresh air blowing through the house.

Jeff is continuing to enjoy school as the semester wears on, he's had a slew of tests and lots of homework that keep him pretty busy. I spent a day and half of this week working from home as the rest of my team was at a conference.

I had my "big" midwife appointment this week as well. I had my one hour glucose test which includes a blood draw and my RhoGAM injection which they give you in the hip (my whole leg has since been sore). I figured for good measure I should get my flu shot out of the way too and get all the pokes behind me. It all went well and I had a standard visit on top of the prodding. I had a huge jump in my weight, but she didn't give me a hard time about it seeing as we're getting down toward the end and all my babies have really started to put on extra weight starting around this point. I am almost finished with my 29th week and am measuring at about what is normal for 31 weeks. Baby is still head down and doing great.

We enjoyed our weekend and got some chores out of the way on Saturday and then Jeff sat down for the rest of the afternoon to finish up the homework he had due for Monday. I worked on sewing the girls' Halloween costumes. I've only managed to get them cut out, I haven't actually started any of the sewing. Jeff also had two church lessons to prepare for, one in primary which he normally does and one for Elder's Quorum. You would have thought we were taking him to the gallows on the way to church this morning he was so nerve wreaked. He made it through without any sort of mental episode and is happy to have it behind him, hopefully it will be easier the next time.

We're going to continue to enjoy the weather and being together. Felicity is out of school this coming week, but we won't be able to do anything exciting since I'm saving my PTO for the end of my pregnancy and Jeff has to be in school. We are, however, planning to take a long weekend vacation in November for our wedding anniversary, possibly to the Salt Lake valley, so there is that to look forward to.

Flying

2011-10-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

Another week gone, where does the time go? So last weekend I over did it with chores I guess because when I woke up on Monday, I was in a lot of pain and did not feel well. I stayed home on PTO, but it was too difficult to take it easy with an empty house and things a mess. It probably wasn't a good idea to clean house because on Tuesday morning I really felt awful and worked from home. I need to remember to take it easy and that I can't do everything I think I can do. I can hardly believe I only have about 10 weeks left.

Helen spent the night with Nana and Papa on Wednesday night. We took the opportunity to take Felicity out for a special evening. We had dinner at home and then drove into town to see a movie. We got popcorn and watched The Zookeeper. I had read some reviews online that people felt it was child appropriate, yeah, they and I have differing opinions on what is appropriate, but it wasn't too bad. I don't really think Felicity understood the premise of the movie, but she was a good sport and enjoyed being out by herself with Mom and Dad.

Work is going well, I'm plenty busy which makes the time go by quickly. I need to start getting my maternity leave all lined up, I'm not looking forward to the paperwork and phone calls to get all of that approved and in motion. Jeff continues to enjoy school and is doing well. He does seem to have a lot of homework, but I think he's making it his priority on Tuesdays and Thursdays when he's at home. Helen is such a good girl, and believe it or not, is very content to entertain herself on those days when it's just her and he. I thought, seeing as she's always had Felicity as a playmate, she would be lost without her and need Jeff to entertain her, but not so, she really enjoys playing by herself and from what he says, she puts herself down for a nap in the afternoon when she gets tired.

Felicity is loving school and has made a lot of good friends who she talks about. I continue to be impressed with the work she brings home, she's very careful and meticulous with her work; much more so than I ever was at that age. She also loves to do homework after school. This past week her teacher sent home some supplementary math sheets as "extra practice". Felicity sat and did page after page until she completed the entire packet. I hope her enthusiasm lasts throughout school. I think that she will really excel in math, she already, without knowing she's doing math, adds and subtracts things in her head. We were in a restaurant a few weeks back and the hostess asked us how many in our party. Felicity answered "four, unless Nana and Gabrielle were with us in which case we would need six". She's a bright girl; although we've noticed since she started school that shes become a little more sassy with us and very strangely that she's started hitting Helen as a means of getting out her frustration. Let's just say that she's spent some good time in timeout and we've had some serious talks about acceptable ways of communicating our needs and more importantly acceptable ways of responding to Helen.

We enjoyed our semi-annual general conference of the church this weekend and appreciated being together as a family for the sessions. The girls had a packet to work on and really liked the coloring activities, and since it was a special occasion I let them use their markers which made it even more fun; more colorful, but more fun. I was going to take notes, but the lure of crocheting instead won out and I finished a baby blanket. We have tried to come up with some good traditions to make conference something the girls look forward to, this year we went to McDonald's in between sessions on Saturday...it was a madhouse! I guess everyone had early morning soccer because the place was jammed. The girls did, however, enjoy playing and having chicken nuggets.

Saturday afternoon we started painting in the baby's room. We started priming over the old paint in there and Felicity helped us. It's not done yet, but I imagine Jeff can finish it up sometime this coming week, not that I'm in a big hurry as I haven't decided on colors just yet. We're going to use the Winnie the Pooh bedding we've had for both girls, so I'm thinking some light blues, yellows, and greens with maybe a bee motif on the walls. I'll be sure to post pictures when we are done with it.

I'm feeling pretty well, although the fatigue from the first trimester has crept back in and I find myself having to get up for a brisk walk at work in the afternoon to avoid nodding off at my desk. I've settled into a good sleeping pattern, and I am just loving all the baby movements, even the strong ones that are borderline painful. It's fun to watch the surface of my tummy dance around, it's slightly surreal and I love it. I have my big checkup this week with blood tests, a glucose test, and my least favorite, a RhoGAM injection. Then I'll be on the every two weeks schedule, I can't believe time has gone by so quickly. Before I know it it'll be Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and then the big event. Bring on the Holidays!

Oh, and here is a link to that AMAZING talk from the general Relief Society meeting I mentioned last week, Forget Me Not .

Maxwell's Silver Hammer

2011-09-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I really feel like I'm living for the weekends. Work went well this week, I was very busy, so the time went by quickly.

Felicity had Monday off from school for a teacher in-service. She spent the night with Nana and Papa on Sunday night and stayed over there Monday. Helen cut her hair last week so Jeff took her on Tuesday to get her hair fixed properly. She has a new pixie cut that is very cute. I was surprised at how brown her hair really is. I guess only the ends were blond, because what was left after the haircut was pretty brown. Jeff says she reminds him of Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music, so he's been singing songs from the movie to her all week. I'll be surprised if she doesn't start singing about how she has confidence in me.

It was my Friday off, and for the first time in a long time it wasn't all booked up. I went into Felicity's class in the morning to volunteer for their "Teddy Bear Picnic". The kids brought in their teddy bears and then had a picnic snack of berries and nuts and gummy worms. We are really blessed to have Felicity in the class that shes in. After meeting the parents of the little girl who Felicity has befriended in class it was apparent that they are in one of the other wards in our stake. It was a little funny they managed to find each other, not that it was probably too difficult, Felicity has five kids in her class who are also members.

After I got home from the picnic, I went to Wal-Mart and got some crafting supplies, including a pattern for the girls' Halloween costumes. I thought about buying them costumes this year, but just got sad over the idea they wouldn't have a mom-made costume. It took me a few minutes when I got home to decide what I was going to do. I really enjoyed some productive time at home.

Saturday morning the girls and I pulled up most of our spring/summer garden and planted beets, carrots, lettuce, green beans, and pumpkins for the fall. I tried to things I want to serve at Thanksgiving since I'm hoping to harvest around then. I was pretty tired when we got back inside, but I did manage to get the downstairs clean before taking a break. Jeff and Victor took the truck and a trailer to St. David and loaded Jeff's VW bug that has been sitting down there since before we moved into our house. They had quite the challenge getting it loaded as it was is waist high weeds and sand and the tires were all flat. Eventually the hooked up to a tow rope and used the truck to pull it out, roll it down the hill and load it up on the trailer. Jeff is ecstatic to have it back home, although a few years of sitting out in the sun has done some damage. I think he wants to work on it a little at a time and get it restored. I really enjoyed the General Relief Society meeting on Saturday evening and like so many others really appreciated President Uchtdorf's uplifting and inspiring talk. I'll have to post a link to his address when it's available, it was very touching.

We had our primary program at church today and Felicity and Gabrielle both did well. Felicity needed some prodding to get her started on her speaking part, but once she got going she was fine. I plan to work on the photo project we've been working on for some time this afternoon. I'm hoping to get more progress done in the baby's room this week; we've been making progress on getting our guest room cleaned out and painted. We have almost everything we need for the baby, I think the only things we still need are a crib, change table, and a fan for his room. We've narrowed down our name choices to Arlo, Jonas, and Jude for the baby, his name will be comprised of two of the three.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful week full of opportunities to serve others and show and express your love for those that mean the most to you.

I'll Cry Instead

2011-09-18T14:22:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to do a little bit of venting. I love being pregnant, I'm not much of a complainer in that regard. I've so far been blessed to have easy, enjoyable pregnancies and I just really love the whole experience. That doesn't exactly sound like venting, I'll get to it. The short, short, version of the story goes that my first OB waited to induce me until 42 weeks and needless to say after 14 hours of unmedicated labor and an hour of pushing, I had to have an emergency c-section, Felicity was occipital posterior and 10 pounds 2 ounces. I was determined to have a VBAC with Helen, I went to a midwife instead of an OB considering my previous experience and loved it! At 36 weeks I had to have a consult with the supporting OB group to gain approval for a trial of labor. After an ultrasound they told me that Helen was already about 9 pounds and that it wasn't safe to try a VBAC; so at 39 weeks Helen was born via planned cesarean section at 10 pounds. With our newest little one, I knew it was a slim chance, but I met with the supporting OB group to talk about a trial of labor. I had an ultra sound and was excited that baby is still healthy and adorable, and still a boy! We also found out that he is in the 77 percentile for size (average for this gestational stage is 1.75 pounds, our "little" bundle of joy is coming in at 2.5 pounds). The OB was incredibly sweet and she commiserated with me over the problems I've had in past. She let me know that while the current recommendations are starting to lean more to allowing women a trial of labor after multiple c-sections there isn't enough good data to make definitive decisions about the safety. She basically said she would be hesitant if I had had two 7 pound babies before, but its almost certain that baby boy Davidson will be equally large. Here's where the real venting comes in...it sucks! I don't take medication while I'm pregnant and try to follow good dietary and exercise practices. I'm all about natural births and embracing the whole process; I feel like I've been robbed of those opportunities. Surgery is rough, when Felicity was born, I only saw her for a brief moment before they took her away to be evaluated. I spent the next hour in post surgery observation, when I got back to my room, all the family that had shown up had held her before me. It means a 4-5 day hospital stay, stitches, heavy drugs, oh and you can't lift anything over ten pounds (i.e. my infants). There's no holding my baby right after they're born, no helping give them their first bath. I didn't cry when she told me we'd be doing another c-section, after all, this isn't about me, it's about what is absolutely best for the baby. That's not to say that there hasn't been some mourning on my part over the loss of some of my motherhood hopes and dreams. We had a great talk and she reassured me that they would give me a good birth experience. That is the end of the venting, it was great to chat with someone that understood my disappointment and frustration. Here are the positive aspects of having another c-section, because it should be every one's goal to always look on the bright side of every situation. I get to pick the day (within reason) that the baby is born, this is great especially since the baby is due so close to Christmas. I can plan it so that I should be out of the hospital before Christmas. I get to deliver at 39 weeks, I don't have to go through the initial pain of labor (although recovery isn't necessarily easy). I can get a good night sleep before and it's over for the most part within a few hours of showing up at the hospital. It's going to be great, I'm so grateful that my babies have been healthy and happy. I'm grateful that we've not had any problems with fertility or problems during pregnancy.

Sorry for all of you who didn't really want to know that much about me! We had a pretty good week otherwise, we had a remarkable amount of rain this week. I got trapped at work on Thursday due to flooding and road closures, but it worked out OK, I just put in some overtime which meant I got to come early on Friday. Felicity got an outstanding owl award at school, she was proud to show it to us when she got home. Helen is also really enjoying school. Jeff had his first tests this week and did really well too. I'm grateful he's doing well and enjoying school. We had a "play Saturday" this weekend since the last two weekends we did work together. We went shopping and out to lunch. Jeff and I started to clean out the spare room so that we can prime and paint it and have a place to put the baby's things.

Helen cut her own hair this week, unfortunately it was in several places. She cut the front (where she has the least amount anyway) and the back and underneath...it's pretty bad. So she'll be getting a "Tinker Bell" haircut this coming week. Nana got her some new boots this week as well, and she hasn't taken them off since she got them...here she is taking a nap in them. We hope everyone is doing well and enjoying life, we are.

I Forgot to Remember to Forget

2011-09-11T19:27:00.000-07:00

It was an exciting, but seemingly short week. I was so grateful to have Monday off for the Labor Day holiday and we really enjoyed some time together as a family. The Saturday before we spent time getting our front yard, back yard, and garage tidied up. So Monday morning we finished getting the house back in shape.

In the afternoon we got together with the Bryson's and made green corn tamales. We had so much fun and they really turned out great this year! We even used the green chilies from our garden as well as bell pepper from our garden. I'm glad to have such great friends and neighbors in our lives.
The rest of our week was pretty normal. It was actually my Friday off this week which meant for an extra short week; although, I really try to cram all the must-dos in that one day. In the morning I went to volunteer in Felicity's classroom. It was great to feel like I was contributing if but for only an hour. Then I headed into Tucson for an appointment with the midwife. It was a good appointment and actually managed to get a "way to go" on keeping my weight down this visit. The baby is starting to measure a little big, which unfortunately is pretty normal for me. He has found his way to the head down position so that is good (even a C-section goes much more smoothly if the baby isn't breech). I set up an appointment to consult with the obstetrical surgeon. I am not hopeful that after two previous c-sections and two babies over 10 pounds they will approve me for a trial of labor, but I figure it's worth asking. If I can't be cleared for a trial of labor, they'll schedule my surgery for December 20th. I'm not due until the 27th, but if they won't let me do a normal delivery, they don't want to take the chance of me going into labor naturally, so 39 weeks is safe enough to deliver (Helen was born at 39 weeks and was a very healthy 10 pounds!). Then before heading home I stopped by the thrift where I found my mom and grandma...not that it was a surprise, I would have been surprised if they weren't there on a Friday morning. Jan and I got together and made some hair bows in the afternoon and enjoyed some grown up girl time.
Saturday morning the girls and Jeff went out to do some service for our next door neighbors. They are an older couple and we figured we could help out with some yard work. Victor and his girls met Jeff out there in not too long and after a couple of hours managed to get all their weeds cleared, the yard raked of debris, and their bushes trimmed. I had a great picture of the girls helping, but alas, the computer lost it. Helen did manage to have a close encounter with the neighbors cacti. She stood up and turned only to walk right into a prickly pear. She got several spines in her chest and a few in her hand. After we managed to get her shirt off, we pulled all the cactus out that we could. I gave her a bath and could still feel some little spines that had broken off, so I pulled so more out and finally explained to Helen that anything left behind, her body would eventually push out. This whole weekend whenever we've asked her how her chest feels, she says "fine, when the pokies are ready, they'll push themselves out".

I made some cupcakes for a good friend's son's baptism in the afternoon. I made a ganache and covered mini cakes...they were so good. We drove to Tucson for the baptism and then had dinner with their family afterward. It was a great time and was only marred by the torrential downpour that started at around four and didn't let up until after we left.

We had a lovely Sunday today. I enjoy so much hearing what the girls are learning and doing in primary. Right now Felicity is practicing for the Primary program...Jeff is happy about that as he didn't have to prepare a lesson. He will however be teaching in Elders Quorum in the next few weeks as he was also called to teach on lesson a month in EQ.

We are happy and healthy and enjoying life. Can't imagine that there's much more we could want for. Hope this day finds everyone else happy and well, as they remember what is most important in life.

Blue Jay Way

2011-09-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

August 29-September 4

We had a wonderful week this week. We're adjusting to our new schedule with Jeff and the girls in school. Felicity is loving kindergarten and we couldn't be more proud. She's taking great care with her school work and is especially enjoying learning sight words. So far she has learned "my", "I", "is", and "a" and she is sure to point them out whenever we're reading together. Jeff gets her off the bus every afternoon and she does a few pages of homework from a kindergarten workbook we have and then she practices piano. She is enjoying piano and I hope she continues to.

Helen too in enjoying school. Her teachers are very impressed with her maturity and ability to get along with the other children. He vocabulary is also increasing; she is quite the chatter box. Our only problem is keeping clothes on her. We are grateful that she keeps them on while at school, but as soon as she gets home she stripes down to her underpants. She stays that way for the rest of the evening and she humors us for a little while at bed time with PJs, but she always takes them off before actually falling asleep. We love her little independent spirit. She crashes pretty hard at nap time, here she is sleeping at Jan's who picks her up for Jeff on Wednesdays.

Jeff is happy to be back at school for the semester as well. His classes are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday back to back from 9:00 AM -1:00 PM so the time goes by quickly for him, but it doesn't leave him a lot of time for studying and doing homework while he's at school so it has to get done when he's home on Tuesday and Thursday. He's not working at the estate sale company anymore since we don't really need the money and we wanted to enjoy each others company on the weekends when we're both off. He did take Helen to Felicity's school on Tuesday and helped out in the classroom. He did some sort of letter matching game with the kids and actually like the time he was there. I'm grateful he was able to do that since I really can't.

We've been having problems with the little car we bought in March to replace our van. We paid cash for it and were hopeful it would be dependable for us until December when the baby comes. Our intention was to keep both little cars for commuting to work and school and buy an additional family vehicle in December after we had time to save a nice down payment. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, one of the little cars has been giving us trouble. On Wednesday on my way to work, it suddenly lost power and I was almost in an accident because of it. Wednesday night Jeff and I left the girls with my parents and went a hunting for a new to us family vehicle. We spent the evening looking and found one we really liked so we decided to sleep on it. Thursday morning we went back down to the dealership and traded in the little Kia and put what we had already saved down on a Chevy Suburban. It's a 2004 and in excellent condition. It seats 8 with lots of storage space and towing capability. I love being back in a truck. I had bought a brand new Chevy Silverado in college that was my pride and joy and we had to sell it when we had Helen since it only seated three. So this new one makes me feel at home again. We looked at mini-vans, but found that they were just as expensive as the SUVs and tended to have more miles on them. Before we bought it, we made sure that the payments, the gas, and the insurance were all in our budget and since we had a good amount to put down, and they gave us $2,000 for the car it worked out well. I couldn't be happier and am glad to have a dependable vehicle again. I'm going to continue to drive the other little car on days when Jeff is home and then he'll drive the car on school days to save on some gas.

We were also able to check off some things on our baby list this week. I went with Mom and Grandma last Friday to breakfast and the thrift store and was able to get a large bag full of baby clothes for a very reasonable price. I had to very sweet friends give me clothes leftover from their little boys and honestly I am set for clothes, hats, socks, bibs, and blankets for at least the first year! We went to look at cribs that were on sale at Babies are Us, but weren't impressed with what they had, but we did get an infant car seat that was on sale while we were there; I had a coupon which made it even better. I also got a new pack and play (our old one had holes cut in it from one of the kids and was no longer safe) from a "pinching your pennies" add on Facebook. I'm going to use the old Winnie the Pooh crib bedding and decorations and we still have a swing and other little necessities. I think all we still need is a ceiling fan for his room which for whatever reason seems to be the hottest room in the house and a crib and change table (you may recall that our old ones were destroyed in some sort of toddler Olympic high jump event a couple of years ago). I've definitely been feeling a little "nesting" and have crochet him some booties to go with the blessing outfit I'm going to make, and I've started on a blanket. I can't believe how quickly the time has gone. I'm having some more blood work to check my iron levels, etc. this coming Friday and then will have my RhoGAM injection and glucose test at the following appointment, it's pretty much all down hill from there! I've been feeling great and the only down side is I've already gained all the weight I was suppose to and then some so I need to be more careful about getting my exercise in and snacking less. I love all the baby kicks and movements we're feeling at this point. Everyone has enjoyed that, Helen especially. I wish I had a picture of her face the first time she felt the baby kick her!

We are having a great holiday weekend so far. Saturday we got up early and spent time as a family working. First we got out in the front yard and pulled weeds, trimmed the bushes, readjusted the rocks, and swept up the sidewalk. We had an ice cream break and the girls ran in the sprinklers and then we picked up the back yard and Jeff mowed and edged and we cleaned up the garden a bit, pulled up any of the plants that are done for the season. We cleaned out the little car and cleaned in the garage and actually made enough room for the truck to fit and all of Jeff's musical equipment (it's going back out in the garage since the baby will be getting the extra bedroom). We were pretty hot and tired, but we did get some cleaning in the house done...I guess we'll be cleaning upstairs on Monday! Our Sunday has been great and very relaxing. Jeff made some great fajitas with peppers, onions, and chilies from the garden. We're hoping to finish up the cleaning tomorrow and make tamales in the afternoon.

We hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend. Love to all!

I'll Follow the Sun

2011-08-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

August 12
On Friday the 12th Helen had her third birthday. We went to Peter Pipper Pizza with Nana and Papa and Grandma Lo and Grandpa Gene. Helen had a great time playing and having pizza and cake. I made a pretty cheesy Strawberry Shortcake cake for her, but she really liked it. She got a new doll house from Jeff and I and lots of other nice things. We can't believe she's gotten so old, she's such a joy in our lives and we love her so much!

Yellow Submarine

2011-08-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

August 15-21
School continues to go well for the girls this week, they still look forward to going every morning, so I'm a happy mama. Felicity brought home her first week of school work this week and I was very impressed. She's really taking her time and doing an excellent job, again, I must sing my praises for the Early Childhood Center, together we did a great job of preparing Felicity for Kindergarten.

So the obvious highlight of the week was our long awaited family vacation. Late last week my mom called and asked if she could go with us. We had mentioned to my parents several months ago that we were planning to go and they were welcome to join us. My mom decided since my dad had a trip planned later in the year with my brother she would take me up on my offer and go with us. We had a great time and the weather was beautiful.

I worked and the girls went to school on Wednesday, during the day Jeff packed all our things and got us ready to leave Wednesday night. Around 10 PM we packed up my mom's car and headed to Anaheim. I drove the first six hours, and around 4 AM Jeff and I switched and he finished up the trip. We arrived at the IHOP just outside of the Disneyland gates around 7:00 AM. The girls did great and slept the whole drive. We had breakfast and then parked and waited for the shuttle to take us to the park.

The first day at Disney was hot, and seeing as we were tired we were ready to head to the hotel to check in and take a nap in the afternoon. Jeff fell asleep on the It's a Small World ride and I knew it was time for a break! The girls had so much fun on the rides and had a great time! We came back in the evening to enjoy the shows and fireworks. The girls' loved the Fantasmic show and really wanted to stay to see it again, but by then they could hardly keep their eyes open and Jeff looked like the walking dead.

On day two at the Magic Kingdom we really got lucky. We headed toward Adventure land as we had spent most of day one in Fantasy land. We enjoyed the Jungle cruise without any waiting, waited for Pirates of the Caribbean for only five minutes. Next we were able to get right into the Haunted Mansion and both girls were really brave, and by the end were raving about how much fun it had been. We got them some cotton candy which Helen didn't really care for, but Felicity was crazy about it. We rode on the Winnie the Pooh ride and then Felicity surprised us by asking to go on Splash Mountain. Helen and I couldn't go on the ride and Nana wasn't interested in going so Felicity and Daddy waited about 30 minutes to go on it. Helen and Mom and I went and took a break in the Tiki room and met up with Jeff and Felicity later. They had a great time and Felicity loved the ride! Again in the afternoon we went back to the hotel for some rest. We had lunch and swam in the pool and then Jeff and I had a nap, the girls were suppose to nap, but they didn't. We then went to California Adventure and enjoyed the Bugs Life show which was really cute. Jeff, Mom, and Felicity rode the Soarin' over California while a sleeping Helen and I tried to get Jeff a Fast Pass for the roller coaster. He missed it since they close it for their evening show. We watched the World of Colors show and the girls fell asleep. Mom and I did the last of our souvenir shopping at Disneyland while Jeff went to ride Space Mountain. We had a great time!

Saturday Morning we drove to Sea World and unfortunately found out the Helen gets car sick. Mom brought a portable DVD player and about half way through Horton Hears a Who Helen lost her breakfast all over herself and down in the car seat. We had a quick stop at a gas station for a "bath" and then Target for a new outfit. Sea World was SO crowded. I was disappointed that they have taken the focus off of animal exhibits and have a lot more rides and carnival type things. The kids enjoyed themselves for the most part and the highlight of the evening for Helen was getting in a photo booth with Nana...she had everyone around the booth laughing with her antics inside the booth. Felicity had waited all day to ride the big roller coaster. She loved it and Helen was extremely upset that she wasn't big enough to ride. We put Helen's rain coat on her and gave her the umbrella to wait at the bottom of the ride to get splashed.

Probably the most enjoyable part of the trip for the girls was the day at the beach. Neither had been to the beach before and they LOVED it. They went in the water with Daddy, played in the sand and had the best time. We had lunch on the beach and then headed home. We were pretty tired when we got home Sunday night, but it was a great trip. I can't believe I walked so much...my back and feet were pretty sore by the last day.

I learned the following and plan to use my learning's to better plan for next years trip:
1. Felicity loves roller coasters
2. Helen can't watch a movie and drive in the car at the same time
3. While I can keep going and going and going, others can't
4. Felicity loves cotton candy
5. Driving over night means saving a day and avoiding traffic
6. Little kids can only handle so much fun...they need some down time
7. Schedule potty breaks when you can, there's nothing worse than leaving a line you've been in for 30 minutes to go to the bathroom
8. Pack an extra pair of clothes for everyone to take to the park
9. When you take your kids its a trip, when you leave them at home...that's a vacation!

**I posted all the trip photos on Facebook if you're interested!**

You Really Got a Hold on Me

2011-08-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

August 8-14
Wow! This week really sneaked up on me. Felicity had her first day of kindergarten on Monday, where did the time go. She was up and dressed well before we got up and was very excited. We all walked to the bus together. She wanted to ride the bus, but we promised we would meet her at the school to help her find her classroom. It was very busy at the primary school and Jan had already taken Felicity to her classroom; so we went in to say goodbye. She was perfectly happy to see us go...I knew she'd do great. Helen had her first day of "preschool" and was equally excited to go. They both had a great time and Felicity had so much fun she fell asleep on the bus on the way home. When she didn't get off the bus right away, Jeff had to get on the bus to get her off.

I'm enjoying the schedule and structure that the school year has brought to our house again. Jeff doesn't start school for another couple of weeks, so he has some time to work on some projects.

Felicity started piano lessons on Wednesday after school. She enjoyed her lesson and was eager to practice after homework each day this week. I'm proud of her enthusiasm for school. She and I and Helen as well talk about what they did, who they played with, and what the best part of their day was. They're growing up fast and I'm hopeful that Arlo and I have done a good enough job of laying the foundations for them to really excel while they are in school.

We're doing well and loving life.

Baby It's You

2011-08-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

August 1-7
We had a wonderful week, the last week of summer before the start of the new

school year. I think that Jeff is glad to see summer come to a close I believe
he was beginning to get a little cabin fever. It seemed like this week at work
was a long one. I came down with a bit of a summer cold on Thursday so I stayed
at home and worked remotely; for whatever reason, I seem to be able to get more
done at home. I worked a half day on Friday as we had a lot going on in the
afternoon.

As many now know, Arlo and I are expecting! I’m sorry that we didn’t announce
it earlier, but I didn’t want it to jeopardize the probability that I would be
hired full time. I thought the hiring process would move along more quickly,
but as I know now, it didn’t and we had to keep things on the down low longer
than we would have liked to. It’s one of the only times in my life I’ve been
grateful to be chubby! Jeff told me back in November that he felt strongly that
we would be blessed by having another baby. I must say I was not crazy about
the idea seeing as he’s still in school and my job was still only a temporary
assignment at the time. We decided to pray about it and he again said he felt
that it was time. I felt that it was time to trust his judgment. Things could
not have worked out better. The baby is due on December 27th while both Jeff
and the girls will be off for the Christmas holiday.

I have been feeling well throughout and the only downside so far has been that I
think I donated my maternity clothes reasoning that I would lose weight between
Helen and the next baby, so I haven’t had anything to wear. Lots of skirts with
elastic waistbands and the old rubber band through the button hole trick. I
plan to get some things this weekend when I have some down time.
I thought that because of my birthing history I would have to go to an
obstetrician. I was not happy about this as I had such a poor experience with
the OB I had with Felicity and the wonderful pre-natal experience I had with a
midwife with Helen. I thought it would be worth the chance and called the birth
center to see if they would be willing to accept me as a patient. I was
delighted to hear that they would be happy to take me. It seems, however, that
my desire to have a VBAC after two sections will probably not come to fruition.
The midwife said I can confer with the consulting physician, but that they were
not likely to allow a trial of labor and that quite frankly, the chances were
exceedingly good that this baby would be too large just like the others. She
did reassure me that it had nothing to do with my weight and there was nothing I
could do to mitigate having a large baby, it’s just a genetic complication that
can’t really be helped. I find it quite discouraging, especially since I’m the
type to try to avoid medical intervention if I can. I did, after all, go
through 14 hours of induced labor with a 10 lb 2 oz baby who was upside down
with no pain medication. A natural delivery just doesn’t seem to be in the
cards for me but what I really want is a happy healthy baby.

We had our 20 week ultrasound on Friday. It was as exciting as it ever is. The
baby is very healthy looking and very wiggly. I just love to see their little
feet and hands. The sonagrapher asked us if we would like to know the gender of
the baby and we were of course interested. It took her about five seconds to
get an underside view of our baby and point out his rather obvious boy parts.
We are just tickled. I had decided the baby was another girl, so we were quite
elated to find that the baby is a healthy little boy. Although I quickly
realized through my elation that we don’t have anything boyish in our house,
only totes and totes of pink and purple and flowers and butterflies! I’m sure
we’ll collect the things we’ll need over the next few months.
Felicity had her meet and greet at school on Friday as well, so Nana took her.
She was excited to meet her new teacher and visit the school. I felt much
better about sending her off to school afterward, I know that there are at least
two members in her class and her teacher is a member of another ward as well.
For whatever reason, that just makes me feel better. We took Helen to the
preschool meet and greet Friday evening and she too is excited to start
“school”. I have no illusions that it is really preschool as Helen is only just
turning three, but I’m glad that she’ll be somewhere that she’ll have structure
and learning activities.

Arlo worked at the estate sale on Saturday and I had a bit of energy and decided
to get the house really clean for the coming week. Jeff’s been doing a great at
home, but the house has really been missing my personal touch. I cleaned the
house from top to bottom and felt great, tired, but great when it was done.
Jeff received a calling to serve as a nine-year old primary teacher with another
brother in the ward on Sunday; he is excited to serve and gave me a full report
on everyone in his class when we got home. Sunday night he gave the girls all
school blessings and they were very excited to get a father’s blessing.
Gabrielle was over for the night and she wanted a blessing too so he gave her
one as well. There has been a lot of love and happiness in our house lately and
I am so grateful for all the wonderful changes happening.

I Want to Hold Your Hand

2011-07-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

Week of July 25-31
We had a great week this week. My team was at a conference so it was quiet at work. I worked as normal on Monday and then Tuesday and Wednesday I worked from home which was nice. I was probably more productive than I normally would have been. We were able to purchase a computer through Raytheon's surplus asset program this week as well. It's much better than the old one we've been using for the last five years and it only cost us $50. They do a drawing to get rid of assets once they are out of warranty. I put my name in on Monday and they notified me on Wednesday that I could pick it up. It's a good thing too, our old home desktop really needed to be replaced, but we were only planning on replacing Jeff's lap top this year.

We had a nice Family Home Evening this week about the importance of education and then as our activity we took the girls school shopping for the last few things they needed. I think they are ready. We discussed with Felicity what she would like to do on the first day and she decided that she wants to ride the bus to school, but Mom and Dad to meet her there to walk her to her classroom. She has her meet and greet this coming Friday where she'll meet her teacher and see her classroom. Jeff and I have an appointment at the exact same time, so Nana is going to take her. Helen also has her meet and greet on Friday, its later in the evening, so we'll all go.

My parents watched the girls on Thursday night and Jeff and I went on a date. We had dinner out curtousy of a wonderful friend who gave us a gift card to celebrate with and then we went to the movies. Jeff wanted to see Harry Potter again, so we did. It was just as good the second time. It was my Friday off this week so Jeff and I took a trip to the temple. It was a wonderful experience, it had been two and half years since Jeff had been. The Mesa temple was closed for cleaning so we went to the Gila Valley temple in Thatcher. It was almost exactly the same distance, but had the added benefit of allowing us to check off a new temple from our list. When Jeff and I were first married we decided that we would make it our life time goal to do service in each temple in the United States. So far we've attended seven of the 77 currently open or announced...we have a ways to go and they continue to announce new ones each year! We've now served in Mesa, Snowflake, Gila Valley, St. George, Salt Lake, Logan, and Las Vegas.

Jeff worked on Saturday because they really needed the help. He's looking to stop doing the estate sales on Saturdays once school starts. We don't need the money the way we used to and we want to be able to spend time together as a family. I, again this week, didn't really want to spend the weekend cleaning, so instead I worked on some family history and a photo project I've been putting off for awhile.

We are still looking forward to our vacation. We are leaving Wednesday, August 17th and will be coming home Sunday, August 21st. We are going to Disneyland for two days, the beach, and Sea World. It's going to be a rather short trip, but it's what worked with our schedule. Lamentably, Felicity will be missing Thursday and Friday from school, but with work and school and everything else, this was the best we could do. We haven't ever taken the kids on a real vacation and are really looking forward to it. Jeff has been looking into to camping stuff so we can take more long weekend trips, and hope to be able to use that to visit family more often.

We're planning on enjoying our last week of summer, I'm not sure what we're going to do, but I'm sure we'll find something. I put some more pictures of the garden up, I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing about it! I have a pumpkin that has grown out of the plot and is creeping over the yard. I have a few pumpkins growing on it too. We're getting lots of cucumbers and I've been meaning to make pickles.

Two of us

2011-07-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

Week of July 18-24
We are truly in a season of great blessing right now in our life and for that I am truly grateful. In the May 2010 general conference Elder Uchtdorf gave a wonderful talk where he stated the following: "Often the deep valleys of our present will be understood only by looking back on them from the mountains of our future experience. Often we can't see the Lord's hand in our lives until long after trials have passed. Often the most difficult times of our lives are essential building blocks that form the foundation of our character and pave the way to future opportunity, understanding, and happiness". Today I feel a greater appreciation for the challenges that have been a part of my life that have helped not only me, but my family and those I love the most learn and grow.

I survived the first two weeks of my new permanent employment. Things have gone very well and I was able to enroll in all the benefit programs we needed to thanks to some help from Jan. She helped us do a side by side comparison which made it easier to make our decisions. I feel a little useless at home right now, however. I come home and Jeff has done all the usual chores: laundry, grocery shopping, etc. and usually has dinner made. We eat and I'm ready for some rest and relaxation. I have found that even though my house really needs my personal touch, the last thing I want to do on my weekend is house work so I've had to let go of that a little (that's a big thing for me). That being the case, if you come for a surprise visit and I don't warmly welcome you in, it's because I'm embarrassed of the mess.

Speaking of messes, my kitchen is a disaster after making an anniversary cake for a friend's in-laws this week. I always worry after I accept a cake order that it won't be good enough or professional enough. I haven't had any complaints yet, but that doesn't make the nervousness any less!

It's been a couple weeks since I last wrote and I'm trying to think of all that has happened. Jeff and I went on a date last weekend. We had decided when part one of the last Harry Potter movie came out that we were not going to see it because we didn't want to wait six months for the final installment. So we bought part one on DVD last week, watched it for the first time on Thursday night and then went to see part two in the theater on Friday night. It was perfect! I love delayed gratification! We've enjoyed our garden even more since we've had some monsoon rain. The back yard is green and lush and we're pulling different veggies out of the garden daily. We harvested the first of our sunflower seeds this week and so many of the other flowers are in bloom. Jeff even had to mow the lawn!

We are getting ready to head off to California on vacation in a couple of weeks. We are very excited and hope that the girls have a lot of fun. School starts for the girls on August 8th and both are excited to start Kindergarten and preschool. Jeff will be back in school for the fall semester on August 21st. I'll be happy to get back to a more structured schedule. I'm very apprehensive about Felicity starting school, but we are going to be as involved as we can to make that transition for us more easy.

Jeff had his final hearing this morning and had his membership fully restored, he also received a new temple recommend and has already been approached about a couple of possible new callings. I'm very proud of him and we are hoping to make a trip to the temple this week.

Revolution

2011-07-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

What an amazing week we had! I can't even begin to express my gratitude for the things that are now on the horizon. Last week I was under then impression that my contract was up on the 27th of June, but upon looking into it further, my end date really isn't until July 21st. So that gave me a few more weeks. I had an interview on Tuesday of this past week and I must say that I was pretty nervous...I have never been nervous to interview before. I admit the technical interview was difficult at moments. I knew that they were interviewing other internal and external candidates for the position, and while I had the experience and had proven over the last eighteen months I could do the job, software engineering is not what my degree and background are in. Donuts on Wednesday morning to congratulate me on a great interview were certainly a buoy to my spirits, and at that point I met with one of our team members who let me know that I was the most qualified of all the applicants and that they had unanimously put in the request to HR that I be the one hired for the position. HR certainly could have pushed back and insist they hire someone with a software or engineering background.

On Thursday afternoon I got a call from talent requisition offering me the permanent position and asking for a verbal acceptance of the position and the proposed salary. The funny thing was the HR department used a piece of software that my team developed and I personally did the quality testing on to come up with the salary offer. This has been a blessing that has been several years in the making and I am so grateful to wonderful family and neighbors who helped watch the girls while I finished up the last semester of my college education; a dutiful home teacher who knew we were in need and helped get me the contract job at Raytheon just weeks after I graduated from the University. For all those who continued to support us emotionally while I left home and my girls to take care of my family financially while Jeff started on the path to finishing his education. I am grateful for the people I work with who really stood behind me and pushed this process through so that I could stay on permanently and make a good living with full benefits. Hopefully if all the paperwork and drug screen get in by Tuesday, July 5th I should be able to start new hire orientation on Monday July 11th. This will mean that there will be no unpaid time between when I start and when my contract is up.

One of our family goals for 2011 was to pay off three debts, unfortunately, because we had just made the last payment on the second debt we've paid off this year we didn't have any money left over to go out and celebrate...so that will have to wait! What was really unfortunate was that Friday morning I woke up with a terrible pain in my side and couldn't go back to sleep. Jeff had to work, so at 8:30 I took the girls with me to urgent care here in Sahuarita. After some blood work and poking around it was determined that I had a problem with my gallbladder. The doctor said to take some Tylenol and to not have any food with fat in it for the next 24 hours hoping it would clear itself. In the event it progresses it will have to come out. So lamentably I spent my Friday off at home on the couch not being able to move around or get comfortable with only fruit to eat! By Saturday morning it was less soar and I was feeling better; on Sunday the pain was gone, although I haven't had any fat in the last 72 hours. I'm going to add it back in a little at a time and hope for the best.

Jeff had a meeting with the Bishop this morning and has a date set for his upcoming meeting and was able to have a recommend interview. After his council, depending on the outcome he can interview with the Stake President and get the other needed signature. I'm so proud of him. It was a divine week. I hope everyone has a happy and safe Independence day!

Penny Lane

2011-06-27T15:35:00.001-07:00

It seemed like a really long week this past week. I went into the week with the assumption that by Friday my contract at Raytheon would be up and I’d have some time off while HR worked toward getting me a permanent position. This being the case, I worked a full forty hours, although it was unevenly broken up. I worked five hours on Monday and Tuesday, and then ten hour shifts the rest of the week. I was beat by the end of the day and was grateful to come home to my wonderful family.

We got Helen registered this week at the Sahuarita School District Early Childhood Center where Felicity went to pre-school for the fall. We were so impressed with the progress Felicity made in just nine hours a week that we decided this would be the best place for Helen to go while I’m at work and Jeff is at school during the fall. I won’t call it pre-school, because, after all, Helen will be only three. We felt it would be worth the extra money to have her somewhere where I know she’ll have a schedule, learning activities, constant interaction with both teachers and other kids, and no TV time. My first preference would be that she could be home with me, but since for our family right now that isn’t an option we think this is the next best thing. I don’t have a lot of worries about Helen, she will love “going to school” and I’m sure she will learn lots of new things. She'll go Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon when Jeff will get home from school. He won’t have classes on Tuesday and Thursday so on the days he has school, he’ll pick Helen up on his way home and then they’ll meet Felicity at the bus stop. I take comfort in the idea that Jeff should be able to graduate in May of 2013 and I can go back to being at home with the girls.

We had some good news about my job situation this past week as well. I have an interview on Tuesday, which is definitely a step in the right direction. This will probably be the first job interview that I will prepare for in advance as I am still in real competition to retain my position. I don’t know what kind of salary I’m looking at, and I must admit that it was a little bit embarrassing filling out aspects of the pre-interview application in relation to what my salary at previous jobs has been. I have, in reality, only worked rather menial jobs while I was in college and spent much of the last six years at home, so I didn’t have any impressive salary figures to brag about! We’ll be happy with the stability, and I have an idea of what worst case scenario for salary looks like, and it’s not that bad!

It has been incredibly hot this summer (as it always is) and we’ve found some relief in the backyard pool. The girls have both been blessed with mine and Jeff’s easily tanned skin, Jeff routinely refers to them as his Tahitian princesses. Rest assured we still insist on slathering them with sunscreen! We do really need the monsoon rains this year and are hoping and praying they come early. It almost seemed like we might get a shower on Sunday afternoon, but the clouds dissipated and left us with nothing but the dry heat. Our garden is doing wonderfully and I’m so proud of it. Our corn is reaching over the wall as well as a few of the sunflowers. We’ve got tomatoes ready to be harvested and the cucumbers, which were late to sprout, are taking over parts of the garden. I planted a few varieties and looks like I’ll have lots of the pickling kind to process by the end of the summer. I’m waiting to see if the extensive vines of our two watermelon plants will actual produce a melon or two. It’s so fulfilling to look out in the yard and see the progress, especially since almost all of it was grown from seed. We get new and exciting flowers in our flower beds every day and I’m so grateful that the Green Valley water company is not nearly as expensive as Tucson water because it takes a lot of water to keep everything green and happy. We pay as much now for our water as we did when we lived in an apartment with no lawn, no washing machine, and no dishwasher! I adore living in Sahuarita!

Jeff worked on Saturday at the estate sale and I worked on a birthday cake I was commissioned to make. I love doing cakes and it’s a lot of fun to make money at it, but I really hate turning on my oven in the summer! We had a nice Sabbath and enjoyed some rest, relaxation, and one another’s company. I hope everyone else is doing well and enjoying their loved ones. We’re looking forward to the upcoming Independence Day holiday and hope that everyone else has a happy save 4th of July!

Let it Be

2011-06-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

We had a nice, rather uneventful week. I was able to finally put in my resume and application for my job, I'm just waiting now for an interview. We hope that HR moves quickly with getting things processed and all goes well. Next week is my last week and I'll have to wait unpaid while the process continues after next week. We're praying it all works out.

It's been hot and we've enjoyed some afternoons in the pool as a family. I thoughtlessly got in the pool early in the week without sunscreen and came out quite red, luckily it's already tanned, but I learned my lesson. I had an early day on Friday and was able to come home before noon. I spent some time with my sewing machine and made a few gifts to send to Jeff's sister. In the evening I went to interpret for a young women's fireside with Elder Webb of the seventy as the keynote speaker. The girls camp on Mt. Lemon was cancelled due to fire danger so the girls had one day of camp, Friday, at the church building, and then are headed to New Mexico for an alternative camp arrangement on Monday. I won't be able to go and interpret since I have to work, but I'm sure they'll have fun.

On Saturday Jeff worked and the girls and I enjoyed a pajama day. Essentially we hung out at the house in our PJs and the girls played happily and I was able to finish quite a few projects I had previously started and not yet finished. It was quite productive from one stand point, although the house didn't get picked up! On Sunday we had stake conference and I must admit that in the past we left the girls with my parents since a two hour meeting is difficult for little ones. This year we took them with us and they sat pretty well. I interpreted and Jeff was singing in the choir so they sat by themselves a short distance from me. Helen fell asleep on Victor and proceeded to snore quite loudly and Felicity entertained herself. Felicity is pretty good at that, although she has this little habit of singing to herself which can be distracting to others. After our conference we met Mom and Dad for lunch to celebrate Father's day. It was a great afternoon, marred only by the long, hot drive home!

My thoughts turn to my own father this father's day weekend. I was really lucky in a lot of ways. My father is extremely level headed and slow to anger. He taught me by example many lessons that have made me the person that I am. As I've gotten older its hard to ignore some of the similarities in personality we have come to share. I'm grateful for long hot Saturday mornings of pulling weeds or digging holes; him always working beside us, never barking orders from inside the house. I'm grateful for plant sales, and scrap metal, and selling china, and a hundred other things that meant being out and getting things done. I'm grateful for nights spent on bleachers listening to terrible marching bands and a few losing tennis matches. The best memories I have are hearing the words "that a girl" as I brought an extra load of tree branches in my arms to the alley. I was always bewildered by our relationship as I don't ever remember getting hugs or hearing I love you (the four minutes we danced at my wedding was the longest of my life), but I've come to realize as an adult that people express those things in different ways and isn't it true that actions speak louder than words. I've come to understand and recognize the actions that mean I love you. My father used to say of my Nana and the way she interacted with me, that she was not his mother, only an old person trying to get into heaven. How the tables have turned now that he's a grandfather! I'm grateful to have a wonderful father.

I've Got a Feeling

2011-06-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

We had a great week. I had an appointment on Monday morning and so I took the rest of the day off and enjoyed an afternoon with Jeff and the kids. We went to the mall to play and then out to lunch. The kids had fun, it was a nice day. I worked the rest of the week.

We had a fun FHE as usual this week, the girls really love playing games. I picked up these great card holders at an estate sale several months ago and it makes it so much easier for the kids to enjoy playing card games.

The garden is just blooming, it makes me so happy. I've lots of pretty flowers including four o'clocks in every shade, these absolutely beautiful thistles in indigo and one of my sunflowers has bloomed. I was just beaming the other day because while watering the neighbor poked his head over the wall and complimented me on my lovely yard and asked some tips for putting grass in. We harvested two different kids of lettuce this week and some peas which we incorporated in a delicious fresh salad.

Jeff is doing a great job as a stay at home dad for the time being. I'm glad I can count on him to get things done around the house and get dinner ready. There was some red tape we ran into with my job, I'm hoping its all resolved now and I can apply this week; I put in my resume last week. Since my contract is up on the 27th of this month I have a feeling I will be getting some unpaid "vacation" at the end of the month while HR gets everything sorted out. It will set our vacation plans back a few weeks, but otherwise I think it will turn out alright.

We had a bit of a stomach bug this week with both Jeff and Helen sick in the latter part of the week, luckily I managed to dodge it. They are both thankfully better now. My parents took the girls for the night on Thursday because Jeff was going to work on Friday. We took advantage of an evening without kids and went out to the movies. It's completely strange that we've been to the movie theater so often in the past few weeks, my only explanation is I've been craving movie theater popcorn like crazy! We saw the new pirates movie and had an enjoyable evening. I worked with Jeff at the estate sale on Saturday while the Bryson's graciously watched the girls for us. It was a long hot day and we were so tired by the end!

We hope everyone else is having a fun summer so far. It's been very hot here as expected, but we are in desperate need of rain; as most have heard we are struggling greatly with wild fires in our beautiful state. If you're the praying sort, pray for rain (or do a dance if that's your thing:) for Arizona, we'll be fasting in our stake this week for rain. Love to all.

Here There and Everywhere

2011-06-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

What happened this past week, I can barely remember. I had Memorial day off which was very nice. We spent some time together at home in the morning and then were invited to a friend's house for a bar-b-q. The kids had a great time swimming and playing; Jeff and I had a great time too. Jeff gave a great Family Home Evening lesson on forgiveness this week and we played some games which is the girls' favorite FHE activity. Here's a picture of Helen setting up Lucky Duck, the game she picked.

I worked the rest of the week with Friday off. Jeff worked on Friday so the girls and I stayed in and cleaned house, as it badly needed mommy's touch. Jeff does a great job during the week while I'm at work, but its just not the same. The girls were responsible for cleaning their own room, which took them most of the day. There was much wailing and nashing of teeth, but right before their friends came over for game night they announced it was done. I went in and gave Felicity a hug and reiterated why it was important to take care of her things and her room. I told her I was proud of her and then moved on to hug Helen who proudly exclaimed "we put it all behind the bed"! So we pulled their bunk beds out and they had to put all of it away. We had game night, which only ended up being us and the Bryson's, but we had fun none the less.

Jeff worked at a sale on Saturday, and after the girls and I put the finishing touches on the now clean house we drove to Tucson to visit him. It was hot out, and not really worth the trip as there was absolutely nothing at the sale worth while. When he got home he took us to dinner, our usual, kids eat free at the local Denny's. Then we drove into town to see Kung Fu Panda 2. Felicity was very good and attentive as she usually is, Helen was a little more disruptive, but they enjoyed themselves, as did Jeff and I. We don't often see new movies at the theaters with the kids since it is so expensive, but it's nice to treat them every now and again.

I had a cake order on Sunday for an Eagle Scout court of honor which I procrastinated a little too long, but got it done. It turned out well and I was happy with it. We went to my parents for Sunday dinner and really enjoyed ourselves as usual. I'm glad they're so close and we can spend so much time together. I'm looking forward to the fall when I'll have every other Friday off and the girls and Jeff will be in school so that I can spend Friday's with my mom and grandma. Hope everyone else had a fun and relaxing week. Love to all!

Glass Onion

2011-05-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

Wow! What a week. It was a long one for me and the only thing that seemed to get me through it was knowing there was a three day weekend at the end of it. I worked a full 40 hours this week while Jeff was at home all week. He did a great job of keeping the kids busy. They're really excited to start the summer reading program again this year...they picked out some interesting books to start the summer off.

We continue to spend a lot of time in the backyard and I'm starting to see the fruits of my labor, my garden is really blossoming. The girls are loving the swings, the pool, the grass, and the sand box. Here's a picture of our tortoise, Cecil. We had watered the garden and water collected in a trench between the grass and the garden wall. The silly tortoise crawled into the trench with the water over his head, Jeff pulled him out three times and each time he went right back in. Here's a picture of him dunking his head under...he's a strange fellow. We finally gave up trying to "save" him and decided that's where he wanted to be and he knew how not to drown.

I feel I can officially say that at 2 years and 9 months Helen is potty trained! She did great and it was relatively painless for all involved. She went accident free last week and she hasn't had any problems with night time either. We are very proud of her. She can, however, be a handful at times, the most bothersome is her ability to use brute force to knock down the baby gate and help herself to whatever she wants downstairs. Early in the week she decided to make her own toast and with the help of a chair from the dining room pulled out the toaster, plugged it in, jammed three pieces of bread in two slots, turned it to the carbon morsel setting, and managed to perfectly toast all three pieces. In the middle of the week she stacked a stool on top of a chair and pulled down a bag of Hersey kisses, and took them behind the couch and ate them. This morning it was a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I love her independence, I need a cage though.

Jeff is getting ready to start summer school. As part of his road map, he's taking two summer courses this summer. The first will be the second semester of calculus, the second, later in the summer, will be a second semester of ASL to complete his language requirement. I'm hoping that when he is able, he will can use what he's learned and sign the sacrament prayers for me. We really need a priesthood holder to interpret the prayers, and do it exactly. I make do for now, but as you can imagine, it's a little awkward. Speaking of sign language I've been doing a lot of interpreting. All three meetings on Sunday, Mutual on Wednesday night, and I may be taking a couple of days off of work to go to girls camp. I enjoy my calling and hope that my skills are improving. This experience has taught me that I would never make a good professional interpreter, I'm constantly adding my two cents...as most of you know, I have an inability to keep my mouth shut!

We had a fun game night on Saturday night. We had the Bryson's over for dinner and the kids played outside until the sun went down. After, the girls went upstairs to play and the adults played a great game of old school Trivial Pursuit. Here's a picture of all five kids on the swing!

Jeff is practicing with the stake choir for our upcoming stake conference. I'm so happy to see him participating in something he enjoys so much. I am so in love with the man he's become. Today he was not feeling well (we think it was the oyster sauce in the Chinese we ate last night, he's deathly allergic to shell fish), so the girls and I headed off to church by ourselves. After Sunday school he popped his head in the room where I was interpreting to say that he was there. Shortly after we left he began to feel better, so he showed and dressed. He couldn't find the keys for the other car so he walked to church.

HR at Raytheon is incredibly slow and I only got word on Friday that the job was posted, that I could apply June 3rd. So we'll just have to postpone that celebratory news! I'm looking forward to a short week at work at a restful Memorial Day. I'm so grateful for all those who selflessly sacrificed all so that I have the privilege to live in this wonderful country. Love to all and wishes for a safe and happy holiday!

Glad All Over

2011-05-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

It was a long week for me, it was a different week for everyone else. Jeff was home all week since he's finished with the spring semester and the first summer session doesn't start until May 31^st. I took advantage of him being home and decided that I better try out working full time since that's what we're hoping will happen in the next couple of weeks when I'm hired permanently at Raytheon. I worked close to 40 hours in four days and then had Friday off, as will be my schedule normally, every other Friday off.

Monday Felicity had her preschool promotion. They had a small ceremony where they received a certificate of achievement and then had a little reception with snacks after. Jeff went for both of us and took a total three pictures! Felicity is going to miss school for the next few weeks, but I think she'll enjoy some time off too. Here's a picture of Felicity and her teacher.

Jeff and the girls did a good job keeping the house picked up and also making dinner in the evening this week while I worked. I'm grateful to have them! We had some cooler days this week, which has been pretty strange, but it didn't keep the girls from the pool or the backyard. They are getting a lot of use out of their swing set. The garden is doing really well too. I'm starting to get blossoms in my flower and vegetable garden, I have a pumpkin that is just doing fantastic. When I remember to faithfully water the grass it stays nice and green.

On Friday, since I was off, we ran some errands in the morning and then drove to Tucson. We took the kids to the mall to walk and play then out to lunch. We had Chinese and they were good sports about trying new things. Then we caught a movie at the theater. We saw Hop; lets just say that Helen was completely uninterested and I fell asleep...yeah, not exactly quality entertainment in my opinion. Jeff was invited over to a brother in the ward's house to play computer games with about 15 other guys. Jan and I had “game night” here although it was just she and I and we didn't actually play any games just spent the evening chatting, which in a lot of ways is just as good. When she went home the girls and I climbed into my bed and we put “Ella Enchanted” on and fell asleep. Jeff wandered in at about 1:30 AM smelling like peppermint. I add that last part because it was odd, Jeff hates peppermint, so I was sure to ask about it. He said they had some salt water taffy that had peppermint flavor to it; so basically they had death, destruction, and taffy, a real manly party I guess.

Saturday we relaxed and cleaned the house, played and worked in the backyard and enjoyed a quiet day at home. Jeff didn't have to work so it was nice. I'll be working another full week this upcoming week which will also be good for our paycheck as we continue to save up for our vacation at the end of the summer. I should be applying for my job this week and hope to announce some good news about that and some other good news we've been sitting on next week. We hope everyone else is doing equally as well and enjoying time with loved ones.

Ask Me Why

2011-05-15T16:19:00.001-07:00

This week was rather mundane for me. Jeff had two finals, one on Monday and one on Tuesday, and otherwise was home. I worked extra hours since I was out sick part of last week. I'm very happy to say that Jeff did a great job entertaining the girls and picking up around the house and making dinner. It made it easier for me to be at work longer.

So they have the job requirements for my job posted internally and in five days I can officially apply and submit my resume. I think from there I will need to interview, but I'm pretty sure it will all work out OK. I'll be appreciative to have that security. I am especially grateful that even though it's not what I prefer to do, that I have the ability to take care of my family financially because I'm educated. You never know what will happen in life. The loss of a spouse, the loss of a spouses' employment, whatever happens, it's important as women to have the ability to step in and fill that role if necessary, even if but for a time. My education also brings me great personal satisfaction as well. I'm excited that Jeff has the opportunity to go to school and is doing so well...I can't wait to get back home and do what I'm really best at when he's done!

Helen's potty training is coming along well. We haven't been putting a diaper on her at night for a few weeks now and she does great at night. She does have accidents every now and again, but overall is really doing well. We're very proud of her. Felicity has her preschool promotion tomorrow and her last day is Friday. I could not be more pleased with her progress this year and will happily refer friends to the Sahuarita School District Early Childhood Center. She's eager to continue with reading this summer and enjoys that quite a bit. I must admit, though, she seems much more skilled with numbers. She astonishes us at times with her applied math skills. We're hoping to start her in piano lessons soon, which I also think she will enjoy. Our plan for the fall is for Helen to start at the Early Childhood Center in August. She will go Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 8am-2pm. Jeff has class from 9am-1pm on those days, which will work out nicely as he will be home in time to pick up Helen from preschool and meet Felicity at the bus stop. He'll have Tuesday and Thursday off for studying and homework. I'll be happy to have him home in the evenings again, this last semester was rough!

Jeff met with the Stake President this last week to discuss his upcoming council. It was suppose to take place in June, but due to Stake conference and the president's vacation plans, it will have to wait until July. He is very excited and ready. I'm so proud of him!

We're working on our summer vacation plans. We have an opening toward the end of July that will work well for us to take time off of work and summer school and head to California. We plan to take the girls to Disneyland for a couple of days, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and the beach. We could really use a vacation, although how long we go will depend on how much paid time off I get as we will be trying to save quite a bit of it for later in the year.

I think we're off to a wonderful summer and hope everyone else is too!

Her Majesty

2011-05-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

Last week was nothing all that special. I worked, Jeff went to school, life was pretty normal. Jeff had brought home a virus of some sort and when Saturday rolled around was not feeling up to working, so I filled in for him. The day went pretty quickly, I enjoy working at the estate sales every now and again. I did, however, end up catching whatever Jeff had and have been sick all week. I worked on Monday and Tuesday and only went in for a couple hours on Wednesday since I was rather feverish. I stayed home on Thursday and even though I was feeling really crumby, we didn't want to waste a day where we were both home. Jeff finished up classes for the semester on Wednesday and only has two finals left to be taken on Monday and Tuesday. We intended to go to Mesa so I could attend the temple and we could take the girls to the Phoenix Zoo.

We decided to do the zoo first and had a lovely day. We renewed our membership which is really a great deal. The membership costs about as much as membership at the Reid Park zoo in Tucson, but with a Phoenix Zoo membership we get in free at both zoos. Included in our renewal was 10 tickets for the carousel, paddle boats, camel rides, and sting ray bay. We decided that the girls would be less interested in the boats and were too small for the camels, so we got all the tickets for the carousel and sting ray exhibit. Helen and Jeff and I enjoyed Sting Ray Bay where you get to put your arms in the pool and pet the rays as they swim by; Felicity refused to even put her hand in the water, she enjoyed the rays from a safe distance. We only saw part of the zoo since it was a hot day, it's a big zoo and takes several hours to see it all. That's one of the other nice benefits of the membership, I don't feel like we have to see and do it all in one trip; I know we can come back. The girls enjoyed the farm and petting zoo, along with several of the exhibits. Helen got a real kick out of the elephants, lamentably Felicity just kept asking when we were going to ride the carousel My favorite by far is the orangutans and since the last time we visited the zoo have finished their new enclosure. It was amazing! Michael, the male was sitting right up next to the glass interacting with the kids, it was great. We let the girls cool off in the splash/water play area, reasoning their clothes would be dry by the time we got back to the middle of the zoo for their long awaited carousel ride. They got to ride the merry go round; Helen on an elephant, Felicity a zebra. We then finished the zoo trip with the girls' first snow cone. We cooled off by enjoying our snow cones in front of the African savannah. We weren't able to make it to the temple as I had forgotten that we needed to be home by 6:30 because we were babysitting Gabrielle. It was a fun day, especially since we haven't been on a day trip since our adventure to Old Tucson back in December.

I worked on Friday morning and in the afternoon we relaxed in the pool and did some housework. We celebrated Mother's Day for me on Saturday with a trip to the mall. Jeff bought me two new albums and we had dinner as a family with a gift card my mother got me. The girls fell asleep on the way home and Jeff and I finished off the evening with a movie at home. Its so good to feel so loved and appreciated. I have been blessed with such a wonderful family. On Sunday was went to church as usual. Felicity was giving a talk in primary, but Jeff said she froze and wouldn't say anything. He ended up giving the talk for her. It's really not like Felicity to be afraid, the only thing I can think is that we didn't practice and prepare enough...oh well, better luck next time. We drove into Tucson after church and brought Grandma Lo a cake and some flowers for Mother's Day. We stayed and visited for quite some time. It was a great day. I'm so blessed to have so many mother's in my life. My own wonderful mother who has been the best example to me in so many ways, my dear grandmothers who I love more than anything, and all those mothers I admire around me who teach me new things all the time. Sisters-in-law who teach me by their example the power of patience and diligence, the importance of loyalty. I feel honored that my Heavenly Father has entrusted me with such a beautiful stewardship, I pray daily that I can live up to that responsibility. Happy Mother's Day to all.

Free as a Bird

2011-04-24T18:44:00.001-07:00

Happy Easter everyone!! We had a marvelous week at Casa de Davidson filled with lots of good news. On Tuesday we went to kindergarten meet and greet and got some general information and a tour of the primary school. Felicity is very excited to start, she's also ecstatic about riding the bus. On Wednesday I went to register her and that was a relatively smooth process. She'll have quite a few kids from church starting school at the same time, although I don't know if she'll have anyone in her class seeing as there are 11 kindergarten classes at the primary school and that's not even taking into consideration that some of the kids her age at church will be going to Great Expectations or Anza Trail.

Helen's potty training is going wonderfully. My guess is we will be calling her potty trained within the next few weeks. She's doing better to alerting us when she needs to go, but still has trouble if she is actively engaged in something, i.e. hunting Easter eggs, or if it's not mom or dad she's with i.e. the nursery leaders. We are very proud of the progress she's making and I'm so glad that both of the girls were eager to be big girls when it came time to going on the potty. Now that I think of it, they both learned at about the same age.

We spent some great time in the yard this week. The girls were swimming quite a bit, although quite honestly its been a rather mild April and they are usually pretty cold when they get out. The garden is coming along nicely, everything we have planted has come up and I'm eagerly awaiting some growth spurts in my flower beds! The rose that Jeff got me for Valentine's Day is in bloom and is lovely and smells wonderful. He also surprised me with some Daffodils on Monday which were also very pretty. I love that he brings me potted, live flowers instead of cut ones...luckily I have somewhat of a green thumb so they survive. The other nice thing about that is, I can remember the occasion or the thing we were celebrating every time the flower blooms again. The grass is quite green and it's just a great time of year for eating on the porch and grilling outside.

It's been a little nerve wrecking knowing that the end of my work contract is looming, but some good progress was made in that arena this week. A long story could be told of all the politics there, but it not necessarily very appropriate for a public blog! Needless to say, they will be submitting a job opening for my job for two weeks in which I can apply and hopefully will be able to retain my job. We are so happy about this, I don't know I can express how grateful we are as a family for the blessing that have come to us through the people I work with and for. This permanent job would be a blessing beyond what I can comprehend right now, although I am prepared in the event that it doesn't work out. Right now we are praying for Heavenly Father to bless us with whatever will be best for our family. I have faith that whatever that will be, we will be taken care of.

Jeff worked on Satday and the girls and I had a nice day. Felicity got up with me and we did yoga together. The girls and I then went out for breakfast and to the estate sale to visit Daddy and Nana. We got home and cleaned the house and by the afternoon I wasn't feeling well, so we missed the birthday party we had planned on attending. We were all happy to see Jeff when he got home. In the evening we went over to the Bryson's house for some games, which was fun.

Easter was a lovely relaxing holiday this year. We enjoyed our church meetings, especially recounting the story of our Savior's resurrection and the blessing that come to us through that amazing event. We would have liked to do our egg hunt, etc. on Saturday, but since Jeff and my mom had to work, Sunday was really the only day we could all be together. It was far to windy in Vail to hunt eggs outside so Nana and Papa hid them inside instead; upstairs for Helen, downstairs for Felicity. My grandparents joined us for lunch and we had a great visit. I'm so grateful for my family, which in reality is what Easter, the atonement, and the resurrection is all about, family. Our Savior made it possible for us, through his selfless acts,to also be able to one day conquer the grave and be with our families forever; for that, I'm eternally grateful.

Every Little Thing

2011-04-17T16:55:00.001-07:00

So obviously its been awhile since I've written, and I must admit that I missed it to some degree. We've been very busy, but not with anything really very fun. Jeff's spring class schedule has been more demanding on the family as a whole in the last couple of months and there have been other things, including the blog, that have suffered the consequences.
In March Jeff spent his spring break working on our backyard project. We had established a budget for putting a three foot retaining wall around the perimeter of the back yard for a garden. Included in the plans was some new plants for the front yard and a trellis on the west side of the back porch to help cut down on the wind and the sun. We received our tax refund a little late, so the work didn't begin in earnest until mid March. The budget allowed for us to the lay the footing and build and fill three flower beds. One on each side of the back porch measuring 6' x 3' for flowers (because after all, I'm into flower gardens, I plant and grow veggies out of guilt). He also completed a bed 44' x 2' x 3' all along the east side of the yard. We put in some bougainvillea around the front entry way, planted a new tree in the back yard and put up a trellis on the west end of the porch where we planted blackberry bushes to climb the trellis and built a BBQ area for Arlo. So the back wall and the west wall of the yard will have to wait until next year's garden budget to see completion. We've learned a lot in the past couple of years about planning, budgeting, saving, and then sticking to the budget. The grass has come back and once again, I find myself spending more and more time in the garden. We planted flowers in the two beds on the sides of the porch. Hollyhocks, amaryllis bulbs, black eyed susan, four o'clocks, African daises, and a couple of packets of mystery seeds! We have lots of spouts in those two beds, although I've been battling mushrooms in one bed and I think we split the amaryllis bulbs too late in the season, because some of them didn't come back. We're enjoying a hanging basket of strawberries, which is great for getting one or two a day. My pride and joy has been the two blueberry bushes I have. They're up on the back porch where they are only exposed to a couple hours of early morning Arizona sun. I hope to get blueberries next year. I've adapted the square foot garden technique for a veggie garden which is located in 2/3 of the east bed. The first 15' is shaded pretty well so I put some of the more fragile veggies there, followed by 14' of flower garden, followed by 15' of veggies that do well in full Arizona sun. We planted peas, beans, beets, carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, tomatoes, bell peppers, green chilies, onions, corn, okra, watermelon, and pumpkin. We planted more of the sun-loving flowers in the flower area; sunflowers, hollyhocks, four o'clocks, marigolds, brown eyed susans, and African daises We've also got several containers of herbs, the chives and cilantro are doing the best right now, and lots of other things in pots around the yard. We were lucky enough to snag some cannas from the sister I visit teach and planted them all along the back wall, about 30'. I've got a garden journal going again this year and am documenting all my spouts. The kids helped all through the process and take great pride in the things they planted. We're out there as a family at least an hour a day.

The school year is starting to wind down for both Jeff and Felicity. Jeff is doing well in all his classes, by far his computer science class interests him the most. He's always eager to show off the newest program he wrote for his lab class. I'm glad he's enjoying it so much as he switched his major from electrical and computer engineering to computer science. He is just much more interested in software engineering than hardware. He has mapped out his educational course path and because he came into the university with so many credits from high school and a few from community college it looks as though he will graduate in May of 2013. He's made great personal strides as well and I'm very proud of him. He's not been working as much in the last month so that he has time to get adequate study time for projects and finals, but has been giving guitar lessons once a week to one of the kids in the ward. He is enjoying it and is really feeling the sense of satisfaction when she improves.

Felicity is nearing the end of preschool and is getting ready for the big jump to kindergarten in the fall, although for Felicity I don't think it will be a big jump as much as a pleasurable transition. The preschool has taken her on two field trips to the Sahuarita primary school. One to participate in a kindergarten classroom, and one to have lunch in the cafeteria and play on the playground. They sent home kindergarten readiness papers and she and I sat and went through them. She's well above the entry level requirements and we've started working on reading. I can't say I'm excited for her to go to kindergarten yet, it'll be hard to give her over to the world and the influences of others, but I also feel like we've prepared her well...I know she'll do well, choose the right, and make us proud.

Helen has dove headlong into the fun world of potty training. She initiated it of her own desire to be a big girl and is doing very well. It's certainly a different experience than it was with Felicity. She, however, doesn't alert anyone to when she has to go. We were sitting in the family room playing a game the other evening and hadn't heard her slip away, but had to wonder, “who just flushed the toilet” when it happened. This also means if we are somewhere that she is unfamiliar with and can't find the potty on her own, i.e. Wal-Mart, she just has an accident instead of telling us she needs to go. On the positive side, Helen has decided, non-surprisingly, that she would learn to go #2 on the potty first and then work on #1. I know with most kids they get peeing on the potty down quickly and then the other is a more laborious task. I, unfortunately, am really uptight when it comes to messes and that is something that makes potty training frustrating for me. The worse situation is when she's obviously peed and she can't seem to remember where it happened at, so in my minds eye all I can think about is urine soaking into the carpet somewhere. Sigh, we're so proud of her and it's hard to talk her into putting on a diaper for bed time.

I've been working as usual. I've taken on quite few more tasks at work which keeps me more busy than the amount of time I have, but I reassure myself that at least I know I'll have plenty to do if I'm hired permanently. That however, is a cause for much stress for us right now. My contract was renewed in January and will expire again in June. I'm still waiting to hear if I'll be hired permanently or if I will have to find a new job. I'm hoping the former is true and I can stay at Raytheon. I do have faith that whatever is best for our family will happen. I really can't wait until Jeff finishes up school and I can go back to being at home full time which is what I'm really good at. Being a stay-at-home mom has always brought me the greatest satisfaction and fulfillment and has always been well worth the sacrifices we've made so that I didn't have to work. I'll be happy to go back to that!

As I mentioned earlier, we received our tax return in mid March and along with setting aside money for our garden project we also budgeted it to pay down some debt, build a savings reserve, and replace the van. We finally, after much praying and agonizing over the decision, decided to buy a small used car outright to last us for the next few months until we have a more certain idea of what my job situation will look like. I was too frazzled by the whole thing after we looked at the perfect car. It was within our budget and only had 16k miles on it. We drove to Eloy to discover that it didn't have air conditioning...yeah, you're not going to be able to sell that in Arizona buddy! Anyway, I sent Jeff out on a Saturday morning and by noon he had bought a car. It's a 2003 Kia Rio with 60,000 miles on it. It's a nice little car and we're happy with it for now. The added bonus was selling the van. We had anticipated just giving it away to charity because it had so many problems, but I had a feeling it wouldn't hurt to put it on Craigslist.com. I put is up and basically said, it will be up for one week, if someone offers us $800 they can take it, otherwise we'll write down offers and the best offer at the end of the week gets the van. Within 20 minutes of posting Jeff had three calls and four text messages and someone promised to buy it sight-unseen for the $800. By Monday it was no longer the eye-soar of our driveway. So now we have the little Saturn and the little Kia. We hope to be able to buy a newer van/SUV in the coming year if my work situation works out, in which case we'll get rid of the Saturn as it is getting on in years and miles.

Jeff had his birthday on the 25^th of last month. We celebrated by going to dinner and a movie, and then having cupcakes at our usual Friday game night. Felicity had her fifth birthday on the 14^th of April. We've decided to do a party for the girls every other year so as to not feel pressured to make a big thing of it each and every year, especially as our family grows. She spent the night with Nana on the Wednesday before and they went shopping together on her birthday. We let her pick the dinner menu and she chose tacos, so daddy made her tacos. On Friday night we met my parents and grandparents at Peter Piper Pizza in Tucson to celebrate with pizza, cake and games. My dad gets a kick out of giving the kids $5 in tokens and letting them piss it away on stupid carnival-type games...but they love it, so what can I say. Felicity hit two jackpots on one of the games and earned 1,400 tickets in the evening and brought home some fun new prizes. The kids had a blast. I tried to make a cake with Pascal the chameleon from “Tangled” at Felicity's request, but it didn't turn out too well. I guess an epic cake failure keeps me humble every now and again. She got birthday money from several people and so she and I went to Wal-Mart together and did some school shopping. She picked out a lunch box and thermos and we got some great deals on uniforms; because Felicity is still so small she's in 4T and 5T clothing, so we got some good deals on khaki pants and dress shirts for school.

I will try to be more faithful in writing so that the next time I don't have to write three pages, if anyone ventured this far! We are happy and healthy and doing really well. We're still hoping on being able to go on vacation toward the end of the summer, but we'll have to see how things work out with me and my job. Lots of love to all.

And Your Bird Can Sing

2011-03-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

This week went mercifully quickly. We were expecting our tax return on Tuesday, it didn’t come. Unfortunately, we were counting on it as part of our budget (we filed on January 27th), so it’s put a kink in some of our spring plans. Jeff contacted the IRS in the middle of the week and they explained that because we took deductions in two areas affected by recent tax law changes our return needed a more thorough review and they wouldn’t be getting our refund to us until mid March. It’s frustrating, but we’ll survive. We did get started on our garden preparations, the best we could. We planted two blueberry bushes and I started seedlings to later be transplanted. We bought the seeds for the rest of the area we’re going to plant this year. Jeff made forms and laid a few feet of footing for the new flower beds. I’m excited to get things going as it is already getting warm. The weather has been beautiful and we’re already enjoying the backyard more. We re-seeded the lawn a few weekends ago and the new grass is coming up nicely. The battle with the ants has already started…it just wouldn’t be spring without a confrontation with our unwelcome anthropoid nemeses’.
I did some canning this week. Strawberry jam in the beginning of the week, chicken breast in the middle, and Jeff helped me on Friday can blueberry jam. I also had a cake order for Saturday that I worked on Friday after work. I took the day off on Wednesday as a sanity day. Things have been slow this week at work as we’re in a development phase, so I could afford a day to take some time off to start some spring cleaning. I took some shelves from our bedroom closet that we don’t use and found them a new home in our entry “coat closet”. I also hung some pegs for church bags and backpacks. Felicity came and helped me too. She washed base boards it was a great experience to work together. We had a great family home evening this week as well. We are starting a month long series on preparedness. We had an emergency drill. We talked about fire safety and what to do in the event that the fire alarms went off in the middle of the night. We turned off the lights and all pretended to be sleeping. Jeff set the alarms off and we all crawled out of the house and met up at the Bryson’s mailbox. Everyone thought it was fun and Helen has mention a few times this week that she’ll meet us at the Bryson’s mailbox if the house is on fire. We also reassured them that this was a precautionary learning exercise and that their house was safe and would probably never catch fire (fingers crossed!).
Along with working on the yard this weekend, we also went to stake baptisms and Jeff went to the cannery. We had quite a busy Saturday; Jeff has really enjoyed having Saturdays off again. Today has been rather relaxing. We met with the bishop after church (my recommend had expired at the end of last month) and he chatted with Jeff about his upcoming anniversary. I must admit that I’ve still felt a lot of stress as we wait to see if I’ll be hired in the near future or not. We’re praying for whatever will be best for us; it is stressful though. Jeff is doing really well in school and is enjoying his classes; he chats me up when he gets home about the things he’s learning. I wish we had plans for his upcoming spring break week after next, but I’ll have to work. Hoping everyone is doing well and has a great upcoming week.

Don't Pass Me By

2011-02-27T15:50:00.000-08:00

I’ve been feeling rather overwhelmed lately and haven’t been as faithful in writing my weekly musings. We are doing well and are enjoying some comfortability in life. Jeff is really loving his computer science class and has decided to change his major from electrical and computer engineering to computer science and met with the advisor this week to make the change; this way his focus will be more on software engineering than hardware engineering. I’m glad he’s happy and enjoying it along the way, the girls and I are so proud of him. We have made plans for our backyard garden this year; unfortunately the weather has been rather unpredictable. It gets warm and then we have cold snaps with frost. We’re planning on finally putting in raised beds around the perimeter of the backyard this spring. We have a budget for the project and after some pricing last weekend it looks like we will only be able to do half of the project this year and will have to finish it next spring. We will be planting another vegetable garden in the beds we do put in. From what we learned from last year’s experience and some new techniques I hope we will be even more successful this year. We got the materials this weekend to lay the footing, but because it was rainy Jeff wasn’t able to get as much done as he had hoped.

I had four cakes to make this week. I made two cakes for my dad’s retirement party at work. Jan helped me considerably with the templates for the cutouts. It was nice to be able to attend the party as well since I’m on the plant site now too. I got quite a few compliments on them and was asked for about four business cards with my information on them. Then on Saturday I had two birthday cakes. One was more difficult for me only in that it had a couple of new techniques and it didn’t have any fondant elements which are really in my comfort zone. Jeff is very patient with the mess I create in the kitchen each time I do cake orders. At this point I have almost any tool that I need for fulfilling cake orders, so I’m going to save my earnings to buy a new kitchen aide stand mixer or an upgraded cutting machine (mine is not very reliable in cutting fondant/gum paste).

Work is going well, I’m still waiting patiently for word that I will be hired full time. I have until June 27th to secure permanent employment at which time my contract will expire. We have faith that whatever is best for our family is what will work out. We are expecting our tax return at the beginning of next week, although, we have not decided what we are going to do about our vehicle situation. Jeff and I sat down and came up with six options for the money after we put a percentage in savings. (Option 1) Buy a brand new car and make payments, have no money left over for debt reduction (Option 2) Buy a used 7 passenger vehicle out right, no payments, have some money left over for debt reduction (Option 3) Buy a used, smaller vehicle out right, no payments, cramped room, more money left over for debt reduction (Option 4) Fix the van and hope that it lasts another year, much more money left over for debt reduction (Option 5) Do nothing, spend all the money on debt reduction, hope for the best (Option 6) Quit my job, live off the money for as long as possible. Ok so the last two were really not serious options…just something to humor us as we discuss all of our options. We ruled out option one as we do not know what our income situation will be after June and are a little gun shy of debt. After some debate we are between options 2, 3, and 4. We had the van looked at, and it was determined that there was a crack in the radiator and there was a problem with the relay to the fan. We have one estimate that the repair will be $1,200. We’ve been out to look at used cars over the past couple of weeks. The nice thing about buying from a used dealer is they would likely take our van, which would mean we would escape the hassle of trying to sell it ourselves, that, and we could get a warrantee. But we can probably get a better price and avoid paying tax on a private sale. A larger vehicle meets our needs and gives us plenty of room; a smaller vehicle would be more economical, although not as comfortable. This option is in hopes that I am hired this summer and we could afford a new large vehicle. We’re still out on what it is that we are going to do. At this poing we've figured it would be best to decide when we have cash in hand and see what is available. Wish us luck!

We had a cold rainy night in Sahuarita last night, but Nana and Papa’s house got snow, so we took the girls over this morning to play in the snow, it was a lot of fun for them. It is so neat when it happens here, I am grateful it’s not a several months out of the year thing.

Time just keeps slipping by us, sometimes I wish we could pause so that we didn't feel we were being passed by. We feel so blessed and are very happy.

A Shot of Rhythm and Blues

2011-02-13T13:19:00.000-08:00

I'm gratful to have gotten my groove back. I went through a few blue weeks after returning to work after the holidays and finally feel like we are back in our normal rhythm of life. This week went very well. Since I last wrote, Jeff has really been enjoying classes, especially his computer science class which is relief seeing as it’s the career path he has set out on. He has also found with 16 units this semester and no days off during the week that classes have been more of a challenge; he temporarily cut back the number of weeks he is willing to work on Saturdays. He told them he would work when they were in need of extra people, but otherwise wanted to have Saturdays off. It’s been nice having him at home on the weekend, and it makes it so that he can more easily stick to his goal of not doing homework or studying on Sundays.

The weather a week ago was unusually cold. The temperatures we in the teens here and luckily we didn’t have any pipes break, although we woke up the next morning without electricity or water. While I’m aware that most of the rest of the country routinely experience cold weather like that, in Arizona we are just not suited for it. The infrastructure is not the same here, our pipes are not insulated in the same way, and heck, I don’t even own a coat! We bundled up and got through those couple of cold days. On Wednesday night of that week my mom kept the girls so Jeff and I could go on a date. We had dinner at Manuel’s in Green Valley which was delicious and then went into Tucson to make a couple of stops and then saw a movie. We had a very nice night.

I’ve recently taken on some extra responsibilities at work since one of my colleagues moved on to another team. I’m hoping and we’re praying that it will soon result in me being hired full time with benefits. It’s not been overly stressful and I’m grateful to learn new things and expand my skills. We were able to file our tax return and are eagerly awaiting our refund. I must say the car shopping has not been as enjoyable and I had hoped. I must admit that I’ve become a little gun-shy so to speak of taking a loan. Jeff and I are leaning more toward buying something older outright so that we won’t incur anymore debt, especially since we don’t know what will be happening with my job in the next six months (my contract is up in July and if I haven’t been hired as an employee then I will be out of a job). We’ve also considered putting some money into fixing the van we have now and then if I am hired in the next six months we can more comfortably buy a nice, much newer vehicle. Jeff and I have done a little bit of shopping and a couple of test drives. I really hate not knowing exactly what we want to do; I always know what I want!

The girls have been doing very well and bring joy and happiness into our home daily. We are so blessed to be parents. On Friday of this week I had the day off and spent it with my mom and grandmother. Helen and I joined them for breakfast and then did some shopping. We picked up Felicity from Jeff on his way to class and did a little more shopping. I love spending time with them. It’s so wonderful to have multigenerational relationships; I believe they greatly enrich the girls’ lives.

We did some yard work in the front, clearing out the leaves and trimming back the dead branches on the bushes and such. We are also having to hand water the plants since we discovered that some time in the past our water line to the drip system broke and one of our helpful neighbors turned off the water to the system, but they forgot to tell us. Our plants out front haven’t been watered in awhile. We’re really looking forward to slightly warmer weather so that we can start work on this year’s garden. We’ve put some money aside to put in raised bed plots around the perimeter of the yard and under the windows adjacent to the porch. I hope to use what we learned last year to have a wonderfully productive garden this year and I am also looking forward to putting some roses in as well.

(Helen got some pink cowboy boots handed down to her and she refuses to wear any other shoes, here she is ready for church last Sunday)

12 Bar Original

2011-01-23T19:19:00.000-08:00

It really seems as if nothing of any consequence has happened in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been sick and have developed my famous “death cough” as Jeff likes to call it. It’s been a nuisance for everyone. I’ve had several people, some who don’t sit anywhere near me, come and offer drops and candy at work. I’ll get over it in a few weeks I bet. Jeff is enjoying his new classes. He has a computer science class this semester so he’s getting a taste for what he ultimately wants to do; he even coded a couple of applications this week.

(Helen loves Beau)

Felicity is continuing to do very well in pre-school. She can count to 30 and the other day in the car I gave her a word for each of the letters of the alphabet and she was able to tell me what letter they started with. She had trouble with U and Y, and N took her awhile, but otherwise she was quick to answer. We are very proud of her.

(Daddy and the girls making pudding)

Helen’s potty training is going slowly, but that’s what we expect at this early stage. She is very articulate and is such a talker. We’ve been much more restrictive with TV watching and the girls have really enjoyed playing together more often. Felicity and Helen play so nicely together. The girls have also been spending a lot more time playing outside on their swing set.

(I knew there was a reason we got a double sink!)

We are patiently waiting for our tax return documents so that we can file for our return and go buy a new van. We’ve narrowed it down to another Dodge Grand Caravan or a Honda Odyssey. I really wanted a suburban, but after research it was just not a wise choice for us. It would have been more initial cost, more in gas, insurance, etc. We can get a faily new, well equipt van in our budget and in the long run will be happier.

As it would happen, with our luck, Jeff got pulled over this week because we forgot to register the van. So even though we’re getting rid of it in a couple weeks we need to register it to avoid the $400 fine for the ticket. Unfortunately it did not pass emissions because the check engine light is on so we’re required to fix it. I didn’t want to spend another penny on the van, so this is an annoyance. I think we can get around it since we live in Sahuarita. If we don’t use it to commute to Tucson every day we don’t have to have it pass emissions to register it. So that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

(The girls helping Nana at work)

Jeff worked Saturday and the girls and I spent time together at home. We went out for dinner when Jeff got home. The Denny’s in town has kids eat free on Saturday and Tuesday nights so for around $15 we can all eat out. It’s nice to not have to cook once in a while. It should be another mundane week coming up. Hope everyone has a great week.

(Helen and daddy enjoying a burger at Red Robin, Helen discovers Ranch)

(Helen's first french braid)

Sorry all my pictures are so graining, I really need to stop being so lazy and use my camera and not my phone to take pictures.

Act Naturally

2011-01-09T18:13:00.000-08:00

There was little excitement this week. I got up early on Monday morning to get to work. I arrived at about 6am and got a really good parking place, the building was still pretty dark and it took me several minutes, after checking my email and getting settled in, to realize that Monday was still part of the holiday break! I felt pretty silly, but I enjoyed one more day home with the family.

The week went along pretty normally. Wednesday night Felicity spent over at Nana and Papa’s, so Helen and Jeff and I went out on the town. We had dinner out and then did some shopping, it was very nice. We took a trip into Tucson on Friday afternoon and enjoyed some walking at the Tucson mall.

Jeff worked on Saturday and had a pretty easy day. I spent most of the day glued to the computer trying to make sense of the shooting tragedy. Helen went to spend the night over at Nana and Papa’s on Saturday night. They love to be over there so much. We’re so blessed to have them close.

We’re enjoying our new church time, ten o’clock is a pretty convenient time. After church we spent several hours over at Mom and Dad’s.

A Beginning

2011-01-02T15:25:00.000-08:00

The last week of 2010 and of the holiday vacation slipped by us this week; it was a spectacular year for the Davidson family. I’m looking forward to having a hardbound copy of our blog made from last year; of all the entries and pictures as a keepsake/family history heirloom. For those with less than stellar knowledge of the Beatles catalog, I will point out that each entry this year was titled with a Beatles song; some well known, some less so. That little challenge has been a lot of fun this year and I intend on titling the book I’m publishing with our blog entries, simply “Anthology”…I’m am quite pleased with my own cleverness.

Monday this week we decided to use some Christmas money that the girls received and take them on an outing. The received quite a lot of things for Christmas and weren’t in need of anything in particular so we thought this would be a fun way to use the gift. We decided on Old Tucson Studios. *Steps on Soapbox* What an incredible waste of money, time, and gas that was! Let’s see, the adventure began at the gate where we had to haggle with the customer service (term used with extreme liberality) over the coupons we brought with us. After reading them verbatim to her a couple times she conceded to allow us to use them and then proceeded to ask us how old Felicity was. I politely answered that she was four. This is a good time to point out that Felicity is in actuality four years old and even more significantly that four is the threshold age when you have to start paying for them…a good lie would have been to say she was three, hence getting her in for free. The somewhat slow and obviously rude lady then leaned forward, looking sharply down her nose and replied “really?” with the most snide and accusatory tone imaginable, at which point I asked if she would like a birth certificate, social security number, or blood sample to prove her age. Greater annoyance crossed her face and after paying our $33+ dollars were permitted into old west where a woman in jogging shoes and jeans took our tickets. We saw the movie memorabilia, which consisted of four or five costumes and movie posters. Then onto the mission set where we saw the most boring, lame, laborious comedy/stunt show ever. For those who enjoy writing/performing that kind of entertainment, firstly one cell phone/texting/computer reference in an old western scene is adequate for laughs, continuing the gag just leads the audience to believe that perhaps you really don’t know that they didn’t have mobile phones in the 1800s. Secondly, let’s keep the thinly veiled sexual jokes out, there are little kids present, this is a family park right? Thirdly, the audience’s attention span for something of this nature is 35 minutes tops, and that includes the 15 minutes of heckling that is done while the audience files in. The most exciting part of the show was the stampede of patrons shoving to get out before the performers regrouped and came back out for applause. We thought the girls would enjoy doing some of the kid attractions and rides next for being such good sports about the “comedy show”. Haunted mine ride first. Wait, strike that, the haunted mine walk-thorough, no more riding. The scariest part was the fear of feeling up the old lady in front us while groping around in the dark trying not to trip. Ok, so that wasn’t so much fun. Hey, let’s try the train! What used to be a train ride around the park talking about the studio’s history and films that had been shot there and funny antidotes about infamous actors, was now nothing more than a rickety train ride into the desert, in silence, to see whatever broken down, sun damaged crap they had thrown out there a decade before, oh and the air conditioners, dumpsters, generators, and duct work on the back of the buildings. Literally, five minutes later, as we are getting off with the other disenchanted passengers my four year old looks up at me and says, “That was stupid”. How about driving the cars? That’ll be fun, come on. We waited in line for the old fashioned cars, choking on the noxious fumes sputtering out of them while the attendants (definitely not in period costume) kept throwing more kitty litter over the pooling oil. I think the especially nice finishing touch was the literally, yes I counted them, 11 no smoking signs within the twenty square foot area. So, petrified we were going to go up in a blazing ball of flames, I reluctantly got on the cars. The kids were a little too light headed from the fumes to enjoy the unmaintained scenery, some of the fun, old fashioned road signs so faded and chipped as to render them completely ineligible. This is the part of the story where I feel extremely negative and feel that something positive must be said. The carousel went in a circle as expected, the horses when up and down and the kids enjoyed the minute long ride. It was the highlight of the trip. We thought for about two seconds about having lunch there and then promptly decided that the best option was to leave and head for McDonalds. Long story short, take your kids to the International Wildlife Museum, take them to the Desert Museum, take them to the Children’s Museum, don’t waste money and time at Old Tucson, where the west doesn’t come alive, it wears jeans and would be better off mugging you in the parking lot, taking your money and saving you the hassle of desperately trying something fun and educational for your kids to do inside. *Steps off Soapbox*. I tried to find a place to leave some scathing comments, but noticed on their website there were 15 comments from last year, all of which were positive, and the last being left in September, obviously I should just save my literary fireworks for my blog, where maybe at least two people will read it.

On Tuesday we took the Christmas tree and decorations down. I like to wait until the first week of December to decorate and then I like to get it all down before January. We finally got the house cleaned up and things back in order. On Wednesday we took Jeff to his follow up appointment and everything is looking great. We spent some time at the mall walking and browsing. We did a lot of picking up around the house and getting ready to go back to school and work. On New Year’s we drove the girls into Tucson and met Nana and Papa and Peter Piper Pizza. The girls had a blast eating and playing and turning in their tickets. Then we went home and had the Bryson’s over for game night. We ended up staying up until midnight and rang in the New Year.

Jeff and I came up with some great goals for the New Year and came up with a new budget. I hope there are some great things for us around the corner in 2011.

Here's Helen and Daddy singing "Yellow Submarine" while playing Beatle's Rock Band

Christmas Time (Is Here Again)

2010-12-28T20:44:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas all! It was such a busy and eventful week for us. Monday officially started the holiday break for Jeff. His sister and her family arrived in Tucson from Utah and he and the girls met them at the park for lunch and to play. Felicity was quite excited to see everybody. That evening we hosted our third annual Christmas family home evening. We had our family, the Bryson family, the Newswander family, the Richard Davidson family, Chelsea, Chris and Lillian, and Gabrielle, her mother, and her cousin. It was quite a house-full. We had burgers and dogs on the grill for dinner and then had a nice lesson on the gifts of Christmas for family home evening. Then the kids decorated gingerbread houses. After we finished gingerbread houses we went over to the Bryson’s for Christmas caroling. Fun was had by all.

On Tuesday we drove into Tucson and met up with the family for a trip to the Desert Museum. I always enjoy the museum and I’m sure my kids were grateful there were other people with us so that all my “teaching moments” weren’t directed at them. The weather was a little chilly, but it was generally pretty nice out. Jeff had an appointment with the oral surgeon on Tuesday afternoon; they put him on pain meds and antibiotics and scheduled him for an appointment for the 23rd. We lamentably skipped out on going to Winter Haven with Jeff’s family that evening to get started on putting together the swing set for the girls.

I worked for a few hours on Wednesday and then came home and worked with Jan to get all the vinyl cut out for the girl’s bedroom. Jeff and I continued to work on the swing set well into the evening. We had wanted to keep the swing set a secret from the girls; however, I looked up to see my girls, the Bryson girls, and Gabrielle all peeking over the headboard in front of Jeff and I’s bedroom window excitedly staring into the back yard. The jig was up! I started painting in the girl’s room and got a good majority of it done before heading off to bed around 3 in the morning. I dropped the girls off with Jan on Thursday morning and took Jeff to his appointment. They got him in and out fairly quickly. He had all four of his wisdom teeth extracted in about 30 minutes. There was no need for stitches and Jeff did really well. He came home and rested most of Thursday while I finished up the swing set in the back. I was amazed at his recovery. No swelling, bruising, or real irritation; I think because he’s suffered with them for so long now, they didn’t have to really be dug out which made for a more smooth recovery. Victor came over in the evening and helped me with a few finishing touches on the swing set. It really turned out nicely and the girls couldn’t wait to get out on it. I was surprised by the quality of the set for the price and it went together really easily; although, it took us about 12 hours! All the holes were pre-drilled correctly and the boards were straight. It’s nice because it’s a gift I feel like is for both girls and Gabrielle.

Friday was spent busily trying to finish up quits for the girls among other Christmas gifts. Jeff was feeling pretty well and helped me. The girls enjoyed their swing set and were getting excited to head to Nana’s for Christmas Eve. We ended up over there at about five and had a wonderful Mexican food feast with a lot of great fun. It was us, my parents, and my grandparents. The girls had a blast opening their gifts, the highlight of which was a doll house for Barbie-sized dolls, well that and stuffed Grinch toys (my kids LOVE the Grinch for whatever reason). They were both mesmerized and spent quite a bit of time in their play room playing with the doll house. They also got blankets and pillows among other things. They were both asleep in the car before we even got out of the neighborhood. Jeff was excited to get a new Wii game, Epic Mickey, and some other great stuff including a Beatles puzzle and book, and a gift card to Game Stop. I got a gift card to Michaels and quite frankly have been thinking about getting a Cricket Cake.

After we got the kids to bed in the guest room Jeff and I went to work finishing up the painting in their room. It really turned out great. We had trouble putting up the boarder Jan and I cut since the transfer tape we had was a problem. We got a lot of it finished and put their new quilts on their bed, hung the curtains I made, and put the toys back in the newly painted toy bins. It’s quite pink in there! We spent another few minutes putting their toys under the tree which included two Power Wheels motorized cars that Jeff and I got at an estate sale. I must say that Christmas is more fun as an adult trying to make it fun for the kids then it was as a kid opening gifts. We ended up getting to bed around 3am.

The girls got us up at around seven and we watched the video "Joy to the World" about the birth of Christ and the prophesies surrounding his birth. We also read the Luke account of the first Christmas. Then we let the girls go downstairs to open their gifts. They loved all the things they got and as soon as they were done went outside to play on their cars and the swing set. Then we told them we had one more gift for them and showed them their bedroom. It was a great morning for us. I spent the rest of the day trying to finish up the PJs I was making for Jeff’s nieces and nephews and cleaning up the house. We went over to the Bryson’s for Christmas dinner at about five and enjoyed a nice dinner and evening of games and fun. We watched the Tabernacle Choir and the girls played with Hailey and Sam’s new Barbie’s. We are so grateful to have them in our lives. Sunday was spent trying to finish some holiday baking for candy baskets for Jeff’s family and getting ready for dinner.

Jeff’s sister and her family joined us at our house around eleven and went to church with us. We enjoyed a nice Christmas program and the kids enjoyed singing in front of the congregation. We had Jeff’s siblings over for dinner when we got back and the kids opened gifts again (quite spoiled this year I must say). We had a lovely evening of eating, visiting, and enjoying one another’s company. It’s sad that we only get to see some of Jeff’s siblings once or twice a year. The kids really miss their cousins when they’re gone. Tracy and Vance were both missed this year as they were away. It was a very nice Christmas with lots of love and peace. We hope that everyone else out there enjoyed a happy holiday season with those they love.

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

2010-12-19T10:31:00.001-08:00

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Obviously not the weather, but the house has the hustle and bustle that comes with the joyous holiday season. Jeff had two finals at the beginning of the week and he felt he did well. On Monday we attended Felicity’s pre-school holiday program at the district auditorium. It struck me that many of the children had never been on a stage in front of people or performed before, Felicity was completely at ease seeing as she has done it many times at church. It was cute and the kids had a great time. They also kept it short which was appreciated. Helen desperatly wanted to get on stage and sing too. I've added a video at the bottome, you can hear Helen asking to get on stage.

I had a long day at work on Tuesday. We did have two office pot-luck lunches at work which was nice. Jeff held down the fort at home and I’m grateful for that. He had his last final on Wednesday and after he got home from work we took the girls to Mom’s house for the night and the two of us went out to celebrate the end of his first semester. I’m very proud of him; he hasn’t received all of his final grades yet, but so far has done extremely well. We had Chinese for dinner and then did a little Christmas shopping together for the girls. It was nice to spend time together.

I had another long day of work on Thursday. Things are winding down for the end of the year and I’m doing more learning activities to increase my skill base. Thursday night it rained and was somewhat cold. We went to the Christmas party for the company Jeff works for at Pinnacle Peak. They hired a Santa Clause and all the kids, except mine were very excited. Helen was quite weary and Felicity was not interested at all. They had fallen asleep on the way there and were sleepy and grumpy when we got there. They soon perked up and had a nice time.

Friday was a great day. I got to work early as usual and completed the things I needed to do and then met up with Mom and Grandma at the Good Egg for breakfast and then we went out shopping. We hit the thrift store and I found a lot of great stuff. Some of which I’m going to wrap up for the girls and Jeff for Christmas. We also went to Home Depot and bought sand for the girls swing set and paint for their room. Before heading back to Sahuarita, I picked Chelsea up in Tucson to come spend some of her Christmas break with us. Jeff and I went and picked up the girls’ new swing set on Friday evening, as it had arrived at our local Wal-Mart earlier in the day. I was really impressed with the quality of the set; it should be a fun challenge to put it together!

Chelsea watched the girls for us on Saturday while Jeff and I both worked at the estate sale. It was a busy, but quickly passing day. We were done by around 4:20 pm. I did a little more Christmas shopping at the estate sale. Jeff and I got a great deal on two little Power Wheels motorized car toys for the girls for Christmas. They were still left at the 50% off time, so we just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. They’ll need to be charged up and washed with some minor touchups, but I can’t wait to see the girls’ faces on Christmas morning; we’re going to put them under the tree with bows on them! I can just see Helen now cruising down the sidewalk in her little green VW Bug. We came home that evening to find that Helen had helped herself to a little more than a dozen sugar cookies Jeff had left out, she was bouncing off the walls most of the evening. We spent a couple hours at the Bryson's for games which was fun as usual.

I’ve been working diligently on my Christmas projects and have a long list of things to do this week. I think I’ll be doing some work from home in the coming week and hope to get everything done I need to. I really need to get the gifts wrapped before they're discovered which is sure to happen before too long, there are only so many places for me to hide things! We hope everyone is enjoying the excitement of the season and takes time to reflect upon the blessings that come to us because that little baby was born in Bethlehem. Merry Christmas to all!

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

2010-12-12T10:07:00.000-08:00

The Christmas holiday has really crept up on us! We had a very nice week. Monday, Jeff stayed home from school since he was not feeling well; he has a bit of a winter cold. We hung our Christmas lights and bought a tree. On Monday night we learned about the many prophesies that were given of the birth of Christ before his birth in Family Home Evening. Then we decorated for Christmas. The girls got a kick out of pulling out all of the ornaments and hanging the candy canes on the advent calendar. By the end they were tired and cranky and had to go to bed, so Jeff and I finished up the last of the trimmings ourselves.
I worked all week and am finding it difficult to keep up on all the cleaning, cooking, and gift making I want to accomplish, but am fairing well. I am looking forward to a couple weeks off toward the end of the year. I’ve gotten some of my Christmas shopping done; there are still a few gifts to get, and quite a few more to make. Work has been a little slow the past couple of weeks, but I've been staying busy by learning some new skills.

I made a very simple cake this week. I had auctioned a cake as part of our "Bee of Service" Relief Society activity a couple of weeks ago. Here is the cake the winning bid ordered. It is a great cake for a beginner,
Click Here for Instructions!

We did order the girls a swing set that should arrive in time for Jeff to put it together for the girls to “open” Christmas morning. I’m excited for them to see it! I think Jeff and I are going to put parts of it together in the garage and then on Christmas Eve we’ll put the rest together in the backyard. It should be interesting; we’re also planning on painting their room that day. I’ve finished their new curtains and I bought the material to make their new quilts, we also got the spray paint to re-paint their toy bins. I still need to order some vinyl I want to cut out as a boarder. I’m probably going to want to pull my hair out over the next couple of weeks, especially since I’m going to be working through the 23rd.

I did get almost all of the PJs cut out that I want to make for Jeff’s nieces and nephews. I started sewing on Friday. It will take me a few hours to get them all finished, but I should have them in time! I also have some books that I want to bind for them. Then there’s all the Christmas baking. It sounds like a lot, but I do really enjoy doing it so all the work is helping it feel a little more like Christmas around here—especially since the weather is not!

Here's a picture of me and our 150+ pound lap dog!

Jeff is officially done with classes for the semester and had his first final on Friday. I worked from home on Friday so when he finished with his test we enjoyed a nice day together. Felicity and I did some baking after she got home from pre-school. When I picked her up she was wearing reindeer antlers that they had made and her nose was painted red…too cute. I wasn't smart enough to take a picture, but here's one of Helen playing Daddy's old school Ninetendo.

Jeff and I both worked at the estate sale on Saturday. The Bryson’s very graciously watch the girls and Jeff and I worked from 7 am – 5 pm. Unfortunately, because we didn’t get out early we missed our progressive dinner that we were suppose to have, but we did get home in time to have dessert at the church. That was very nice. I personally hate eating dinner with the whole ward in the cultural hall. It’s too many people, you can never find a seat for your family, and the kids run amok. This was much more appropriate. Santa came which is a point of worry in our house, especially this year. As many people know, I don’t do the Santa Clause thing. We’ve never told the girls Santa is going to bring them things and when Felicity asked about it a couple of years ago, I told her frankly that Santa wasn’t real, just something parents tell their kids for fun. In my shortsightedness I didn’t realize how Felicity’s over-zealous sense of right and wrong would cause problems with her wanting to enlighten other children as to the wool that’s been pulled over their eyes. I overheard her arguing with Gabrielle whether or not there was a Santa, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, etc. We’ve had many discussions about letting people believe what they want to believe and not ruining it for others. I briefed her on it again shortly before we got out of the car for the ward activity and she did well; even sat on Santa’s lap. We had a very nice time.

Oh! Darling

2010-12-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

I should really not wait to do my blog; I’ve forgotten everything that happened last week. We’re enjoying the more mild weather. Monday it was downright cold, I let the dog out at 5:30 am and it was 19 degrees on my back porch. It only lasted through Tuesday.
I did some work on Christmas projects this week and made some progress. It was just business as usual this week. I bought the dog some toys and it cut down considerably on his wake of destruction. He is learning quickly and has fit in quite well.
I had Friday off -- Jeff, and the girls and I had breakfast with Grandma and Mom. I started work on one of three cakes I had been paid to make for a Christmas party. My kitchen was a wreck by the end. Saturday, Jeff worked and I finished up the last two of the cakes. Gabrielle’s mom came home permanently and I think she was quite excited to go home. When she picked her up, she mentioned that Gabrielle had asked if she could still go to church with us every week. I met Jeff after work and we went to a lovely Christmas party. The girls had a nice time; they especially enjoyed the sing-a-long. I have to mention some outrageous rudeness that happened this week. Our bank has two drive up ATMs they are in succession next to each other so if the car at the first one finishes the line waits for the second car to finish. There were two cars at the ATMs, we were third in line, there was a land yacht (aka snowbird in a cadillac) behind us. The person at the first ATM finished and drove off, we waited for the second car to finish so that we would pull into the first one and the q-tip would get the second. Not what happened. The gentleman, term used loosely used, pulled around us, parked in the teller lane (thus blocking anyone from gaining access to the teller), got out of his car and proceeded to use the first ATM. Then he refused to move so the second car could leave when they were finished...it was unbelievable! Jeff took a picture! And as a side note, the bank has several walk ATMs as well as the drive through ones.
On Sunday, Gabrielle met us at church and we enjoyed our meetings. Afterward, we were invited over to Gabrielle’s for dinner. Her mother prepared pork ribs, a turkey, fish, and fried chicken…now I understand Gabrielle’s obsession with meat! It was very nice. We won’t have to miss Gabrielle too much, we’ll still be babysitting a few nights a week and she’ll be coming to church with us on Sunday.

I've added a video of Felicity at the bottom. She has mastered writing her name and when I asked her if she can spell it, which believe it or not, is an entirely different skill she really wowed us. We’re looking forward to the coming week!

It Won't be Long

2010-11-28T17:08:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all! We had a marvelous week at Casa de Davidson. Things were pretty quiet at work this week and I didn’t get in quite as many hours as I hoped, but I was very grateful for the short week. Monday, Felicity taught our family home evening lesson on gratitude. We played a few games before it was bed time for the kiddos. The car battery died while Jeff was at school on Tuesday. He got it jumped so he could get home, but we were without the car for a few days.

I was very excited for the Thanksgiving holiday; I really enjoy cooking and entertaining. Wednesday night was spent in the kitchen. I prepared all my meals ahead of time so they were ready to just go in the oven at the right time. In fact, it worked out nicely. I timed all the dishes according to when the turkey went in. Everything came to the table hot and ready! We fried our turkey again this year, and I reaffirm that I don’t ever want to prepare it any other way. It was delicious, succulent, flavorful, and moist. The girls helped me pick up the house Thursday morning and my family arrived at about 12pm. We had our family, Gabrielle, my parents and my grandparents. It was a lovely time and I really enjoyed having everyone over. Later in the evening, Jeff picked up his sister Chelsea to visit with us for the weekend.

We actually braved the crowds on Friday and went out to the Tucson Mall. Chelsea had some shopping to do and we haven’t had a weekend together as a family in a long time and were itching to get out. Other than having a difficult time finding a place to park it wasn’t too bad. The girls enjoyed all the sights and people. We even let them play in the very crowded play area. We packed a lunch and stopped at a very nice park on Limberlost and the girls and daddy had a great time playing after our picnic. It was a beautiful day for it! We had a leftover dinner and then all six of us took turns playing Rock Band. The girls had a blast.

Jeff worked on Saturday and it was a long day for him. He didn’t get home until after 7. The girls and I cleaned up the house; I had four loads of dishes and several more loads of laundry. I also made a cake for our friend’s child. It was a lot of fun to do and turned out pretty cute. In the evening we went over to the Bryson’s for games and birthday cake. We had a great time and I think even Chelsea enjoyed herself.

We’ll be taking Chelsea back to St. David this morning and then have church this afternoon. I’m looking forward to having church earlier next year, we got the ten o’clock spot. I’ve felt so much gratitude this week for the many blessings my family enjoys. I’m grateful for my job, for the opportunity Jeff has to go to school. I’m grateful for a wonderful family and for our health; for so many more things.

I think it will probably be a pretty busy week coming up. The semester is almost over for Jeff; he has a full week of classes next week and then begins his finals at the end of the next week. He has been doing very well and I’m excited to see how his grades will come out. I really need to get on top of my Christmas gifts; I have quite a few left to make. It won't be long until Christmas!

You'll Be Mine

2010-11-21T09:39:00.001-08:00

It was a long week it seems, but at the same time Friday came and I thought, the weekend is here already? I was off on Monday and spent some good time with the girls. I also had time to complete one of my Christmas presents. I worked long shifts the rest of the week. Since I’m still a contract employee I don’t get holiday pay, so my plan was to work a little extra this week and next so that having next Thursday and Friday off won’t impact my paycheck too much. I’m really looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday, I have almost all my grocery shopping finished.

We got Felicity’s school pictures back on Tuesday and they really turned out cute, I can’t believe how fast my baby is growing up, alas. Gabrielle’s mom came for a visit on Wednesday. She picked Gabrielle up in the evening and has been keeping her. I think we’ll be watching her Monday and Tuesday of next week while she works in the Tucson, and then she has to be back in California to work on Thanksgiving. Gabrielle will only be with through the first week of December and then her mom will come home permanently. It has been a good experience I believe. I’ve learned a lot about my girls and their willingness to share and adapt, especially Felicity. I noticed that when Gabrielle, who is an only child, plays with other children who are the first born in their families there tends to be a power struggle and much more bickering and fighting; Felicity however, does not seem to display those first born tendencies. Maybe it’s because Gabrielle has been coming over since Felicity was two, but I think it’s just not in Felicity’s nature to be the dominant personality. She is much more like Jeff in that way and I don’t think it’s an entirely bad thing. It’s not that she allows other kids to boss her around, she’s just happy to go play by herself if Gabrielle becomes too domineering. I also love that Felicity includes Helen in almost everything she’s doing and encourages other to include Helen as well. I really hope we’ve fostered a home where they will also have a great friendship and love between them. As you’ll see below Helen is still refusing to wear clothes all day. Here she is pictured riding her bike in her favorite outfit!
Friday was a day of great frustration for me. As has been the story for the past several months our van needs to be replaced. We didn’t pay very much for it and it has been a good vehicle for the most part, I love that I can cart around a ton of people and stuff. The time has come that I would rather get something newer than to sink money into repairing the van. What we really want to get is a suburban. I’ve been looking on Craigslist, an online classified page if you will, for such a vehicle. I found two on Thursday night that were in our price range and emailed the individual’s selling for more detail. Both responded that the vehicles were in great working order; in fact neither had any scratches or dents, but were in fact perfect. Oh, and the mileage on both was good as well. Long story short they were both scams, the same scam to be exact. Both wanted to arrange the sale online, claiming to not be in Arizona. I would send them a secure payment and they would send me the vehicle. If I didn’t like it I could send it back at their cost, and receive my money back. I was so angry. Mostly I was embarrassed that I had gotten my hopes up, I really should have known it was too good to be true. At least I was smart enough not to send them any money, obviously some people fall for it, or they wouldn’t continue using the scam. So now, in the past two weeks, I’ve had a swing set I wanted sold out from under me and got my hopes up over vehicles that probably don’t even exist. Yeah, I think I’m going to swear off Craigslist; maybe we’ll start getting the paper! I think more likely than not we’ll have to go through a dealer to get a newer vehicle. But hopefully we’ll have a new suburban before February/March when it will start to get hot again here.
Helen went to spend the night at Nana and Papa’s house on Friday night. She was excited, but made sure that Nana wasn’t going to take her to the car wash! We had our Relief Society Be of Service dinner and auction. It was a good time with a yummy soup buffet. Jeff took Felicity out for a daddy daughter date while I was gone.
Jeff didn’t have to work on Saturday so we met Helen and Mom and Dad at the Sahuarita Pecan Festival. Helen rode the pony; the kids pet the animals in the petting zoo. Felicity enjoyed jumping in the jumping castle, Helen would not go in. Both girls tried to ride a little barrel train pulled by a tractor, Felicity enjoyed it, Helen cried and wanted off. We had a nice time and swapped kids. Felicity went home with Nana and Papa and Helen came home with Jeff and me.
We drove into Tucson to take Helen to the mall. We did some good walking and she played in the play area. We had a nice lunch and went to the pet store to look at fish. We took Helen back to look at the cats and dogs for adoption from FAIR, a no-kill shelter. There was an adorable dog that was literally a chow/Chihuahua mix, if you can believe that, the representative there said he probably wasn’t good with little kids but drew our attention to a very large cattle dog below which he said loved kids; in fact a two year old was his rescuer. Evidently he had been hit by a car and crawled under this family’s trailer to die. Their two-year old coaxed him out with a cupcake and he and she shared the cupcake. He healed from his wounds and since they couldn’t keep him turned him over to FAIR who placed him with a foster family, the gentleman who was at PetsMart with him. He got him out of the kennel and he just covered Helen’s face with kisses and she put her arms around his neck and they were friends. We just fell in love. Here’s the part of the blog where my mother rolls her eyes, sighs, and says, “oh, Heather”… we adopted him. The man who’s been keeping him said he’s house broken, which seems to be the case. He said he doesn’t dig and he’s good with other dogs and kids. He slept under our bed last night and got me up to take him out to potty this morning. He’s not very good on a leash, but is learning. He’s very obedient and knows how to sit and stay. He’s fixed and licensed, has all his shots and also has a microchip. The little girl who found he named him Moe, we're going to call him Beau. I’m sure he’ll make a wonderful addition to the Davidson Family menagerie. Speaking of our menagerie that cats are a little weary of him but I think they’ll adjust nicely.

We got together with the Bryson’s on Saturday night as well and played Risk, I probably became a little too competitive towards the end, but I think we had a nice time; we always enjoy getting together with them for games. I’m hoping that the coming work will go by quickly and we’ll enjoy a nice holiday. Happy Thanksgiving all!

We Can Work it Out

2010-11-14T18:34:00.001-08:00

It was a lovely and busy week. Monday the girls and I met Jeff at Richard and Beth’s house to have dinner and visit with Vance before he needed to go back to Tennessee. The kids had fun playing and it was a nice visit. Jeff and I wish we had more time to spend with Vance, but we hope other opportunities will present themselves. Gabrielle came home on Monday night as well. The week was sort of business as usual. I put in my usual hours at work and Jeff had school.

I must say that I let my house work go second to Christmas projects this week. I’ve finished a cute patch-work tummy time mat for Jeff’s niece and the quilt top for his other niece. I bought some material to make curtains for the girls’ room. I finally decided that we will be redecorating the girl’s room as their Christmas gift. We are going to paint the walls, paint their toy buckets, put up new curtains, and I’m going to make them quilts. It will be great, and it won’t cost us very much.
So Tuesday was my birthday, my 30th birthday. I worked all day and then the Jeff took the girls and me out for dinner. I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking anyone else to watch Gabrielle so we haven’t had any date time in the last three months, so we all went out. The girls made me cards and Jeff made cookies for dessert. It was a very nice day, not my most exciting birthday, but good just the same. I was overwhelmed by all the birthday wishes I received through the day. My goals for the next ten years include: getting to and maintaining my goal weight, finishing our family, getting out of debt, and being more patient. I thought that in honor of the passing of my twenties I would write a few random top five lists…perhaps on my 40th birthday I can look back and see where I am.
Ideal Jobs
1. Mom
2. Photographer for National Geographic
3. Curator of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum
4. Research Anthropologist
5. High School Science teacher
If I had any more kids I would name them:
1. Billie Jo (girl)
2. Norma Jean
3. Jonas Alan
4. Jude Arlo
5. Clara Mae
If I went back to college I would get a degree in:
1. MA Education
2. BA Classics
3. BA History
4. BS Animal Science
5. BS Agriculture
Favorite Bands
1. MxPx
2. Green Day
3. Alkaline Trio
4. Weezer
5. Whatever Band Jeff’s playing in that year
Things I want to do before I die
1. Learn to play the piano well
2. Visit Rome
3. Learn to speak Spanish well
4. Visit every temple in the US
5. Serve a mission
Well, that’s enough about me. This week, in order to get a little more exercise, Helen and I walked to the pre-school to pick up Felicity. It took us about 40 minutes one way. I left an hour early so we got to spend about 20 minutes with her class. Helen enjoyed playing on the play ground with the big kids and also singing time. She followed directions very well.

Thursday Gabrielle was home from school for the Veteran’s Day holiday and the three girls were home alone with Jeff all day while I was at work. Luckily he didn’t go mad! We had Family Home Evening on Thursday night. Friday was Jeff and I’s 5th wedding anniversary. It went uncelebrated only because it was the middle of the week, we have three kids and no money! Even though it wasn’t recognized with a romantic dinner or weekend get-away, it was an important milestone. It has truly been the best year of marriage we’ve had. There has been a lot of growth and maturation. I’m grateful for our marriage, for Jeff my eternal companion.
Jeff was doubly lucky this week. The estate sale was in Rancho Sahuarita so it was 15 minutes away, and they’ve started their winter hours which means the sale doesn’t start until 8 am…long story short, he got to sleep in. He also had a delivery so he made a little extra money…the delivery was a block away, so he dollied a piece of furniture up the street! I tackled a project that I’ve been meaning to get to for awhile. I drained the large salt water tank; cleaned all the parts, took the filter apart and cleaned it, and cleaned all the sand. I stained the cabinet it sits on to match my other furniture. We set it back up in the living room as a freshwater tank. All the saltwater fish had died and I was having a really hard time keeping it clean. As a freshwater tank I can get a couple of plecostomus fish to keep it clean and we can afford to get several new fish for it. I’m happy to have it done! It was a very nice week, I’m really looking forward to the upcoming holidays, and the weather as of late has made it easier to feel winter coming. It’s been quite chilly in the evening/early morning.

Jeff and I sat down today and have made plans to save money for two large expenditures. We are going to try and get a new vehicle at the beginning of the year and are planning a vacation to California toward the end of the summer. I’m hoping we can stick with our budget and make it happen. I’m happy, we’re happy, I’m so grateful for all that we have and enjoy.

No Reply

2010-11-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

I can hardly believe its Sunday already! We had a very nice week, although it seems we are really going at a feverish pace. Monday while I was walking Gabrielle home from the bus stop she said she would like teach the Family Home Evening lesson. After dinner Jeff helped her prepare her lesson, which was about loving one another. She did a great job and Felicity chose the activity, we played a couple of card games. It seems that Monday night was the only night we were together. Tuesday night Jeff played with his band, Wednesday night he had a meeting, Thursday night I had softball, and Friday night he played a show at The Rock with his band. It was a busy week.
I stayed busy at work this week and managed to come up with my Christmas list and Thanksgiving menu. I have finished a few of the gifts I’m going to make, but still have several to go. I worked on some quilts, and want to get those finished this coming week. I think I can get it all done by Christmas.
As I mentioned earlier Jeff played a show with his new band at a club downtown on Friday night. I didn’t go since I had all three girls with me, I did, however, get to hear them from the van parked on the street. The car broke down while Jeff was in Tucson, so he called me to come get him after the gig. He’s really enjoying playing again, even if it’s not really the type of music he normally enjoys playing. Richard and Beth came to his show, and I know he appreciate that.

Saturday, Jeff didn't work. He attended his aunt’s memorial service. We were very sad to hear that she passed away the week earlier from cancer; for us it seemed quite sudden as we hadn’t known for very long that she was ill. Jeff enjoyed seeing his family and cousins and especially visiting with Grandma Ruth. He was also surprised that his brother Vance came as well. The girls and I spent some time at the Foothills Mall. They had a blast playing at the play area! Gabrielle’s mother made a surprise trip to visit. Gabrielle will stay with her through Monday.
Sunday was a little more quiet then last week. We enjoyed a cinnamon roll breakfast and after church my parents came over for dinner. We had tacos and chips and the highlight of the meal seemed to be the homemade goat cheese that Jeff got from an estate sale patron. It was very nice having them over, we really should do it more often. After dinner my mom asked if the girls wanted to go get the car washed. The last time they drove through the car wash they seemed to really enjoy it, Helen talked about the car wash for days after; however, when asked, Helen said she didn’t want to go to the car wash. She went anyway, not wanting to be left out, but as I understand it, she and Nana stood outside of the carwash while Felicity and Papa went through. She became very frightened and wouldn’t go through. Alas! We have another busy week ahead of us. We hope everyone is enjoying the cooler weather and has a wonderful week!

Helter Skelter

2010-11-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

It was just another really hectic week this week, which is why, in part, I’m so late getting my blog updated. Monday kicked off a “Spirit Week” at the pre-school. Monday was crazy hair day and Jeff did a great job making Felicity’s hair pretty crazy. We had a very nice family home evening that night as well. Felicity volunteered to give the lesson, and she wanted to speak about gratitude. Jeff and I have been talking a lot about being grateful with the girls as of late and have related parts of President Monson’s conference talk on having an attitude of gratitude. For her object lesson we found an empty shoe box and each wrote down two things we are grateful for on some index cards. The plan is to repeat this at each family home evening until Thanksgiving and then we can share them at dinner. Gabrielle chose to play Pretty, Pretty Princess as our activity and the girls had a blast, Helen ended up winning.
Tuesday was a long day at work for me, but I’m happy to be getting good hours and getting things taken care of. Felicity had “Mismatch” day on Wednesday and she and Daddy got quite creative. She had two non-matching shirts, striped tights under her shorts, and a different sock and a different shoe on each foot. She thought it was great. She really is enjoying school a lot and I’ve been surprised at how much she is learning. The other day she recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and pretty well I might add. I’m glad that they are still teaching that, I quite honestly was surprised, and am very proud that the school district thinks it deserves a place in even a pre-school classroom, which it does; although, it’s sparked some interesting vocabulary conversations over the dinner table-- the United States of America is not “under-visible”.
Thursday Felicity had a Halloween party at school and she and Helen went in their PJs, because it was also pajama day. They both had a lot of fun. Helen really enjoys spending time in Felicity’s classroom. Often, I go several minutes early to pick Felicity up so that I can interact with her teachers and see what she’s up to; Helen is welcome to join in and most of the time does readily. We also had our ward trunk-or-treat. I got home from work at about 3pm and worked feverishly on the last bit of Gabrielle’s costume I had left to do, I did get it finished in time. There were a lot of people there that I didn’t know and ran out of candy relatively quickly. The girls enjoyed it. I really wish they would do it earlier in the evening while it’s still light out. It was pretty dark.
Friday was costume day at school and both Felicity and Gabrielle got dressed up to go to school. We didn’t do a game night, but instead were invited to a dinner/party at a friend’s home. There were several families there and some girlfriends and I stayed late talking and visiting. Jeff worked on Saturday and I spent my day off trying to catch up on all the housework I missed throughout the week. Saturday evening some of the families in our neighborhood got together for trick-or-treating and a BBQ. It was a lot of fun. I spoke in church on Sunday and we enjoyed quite a nice day. We didn’t go out for anymore trick-or-treating since it was Sunday. The kids didn’t even notice seeing as they had lots of activities throughout the week, and it felt good to be consistent in our observance of the Sabbath. It’ll be another long week in front of us. Jeff has exams coming up this week, and I’ll be working quite a bit. We can’t wait for Thanksgiving, I’m fixing at my house this year for my family. I love to cook the big holiday meals. It will be great. I love the holidays and we are really enjoying the cooler weather.

Too Much Monkey Business

2010-10-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy this week! Let’s see our FHE lesson this week was about being a light in a dark world. I hid a flashlight in the family room and asked the girls to find it, when they couldn’t I turned off the lights, which made it obvious where it was hidden. They really got a kick out of it, as they usually do with object lessons. We went to Wal-Mart as our activity to look at Barbie dolls, one of the girls’ favorite activities!
Felicity had school pictures on Tuesday. We weren’t sure if we were going to spend the money on pictures, but decided at the last minute to go ahead and do it. Felicity was very patient and let me blow dry and curl her hair. She even placated us and practiced smiling. I had to be at work, so Jeff took her and said they got a good picture. She looks so grown up…I guess they can’t be babies forever. Wednesday was extremely busy as it usually is. After work, I picked up Felicity and we went to Michael’s to get some fondant for a cake I had to make later in the week, the AT&T store to claim my employee discount, we stopped at the FedEx store to drop off some very important papers and then we went grocery shopping. The girls were pretty good and I appreciate that it’s not too stressful to take them out running errands. Gabrielle came back from her stay with her mom on Wednesday as well and that was met with much excitement by Felicity and Helen.
We received some very good news this week. The finalization of our mortgage restructure came through and we received the papers in the mail early this week. We made sure to get everything notarized and sent back right away. It has been a point of stress for us as of late with all the news of problems with the banks not following through on restructures. We’ve been very faithful in making our payments, so ours went through OK. It’s a great time to refinance if you bought at the height of the market and your credit is good. I also had an excellent conversation with my supervisor this week in regards to my contract with Raytheon. The contract will expire at the end of July, and it looks very promising that I will have a permanent salary position with benefits at that time if the money is available. I feel very fortunate to be where I am.
I did manage to finish Felicity’s Halloween costume and I’m really cutting it short with Gabrielle seeing as its not done yet. I will finish! We have a fun and exciting week ahead!

Dear Prudence

2010-10-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

It only seems appropriate that this week I have an abundance of things to talk about since last week my blog was rather underwhelming. It was a long tiring week. I was at work by six or before every day this week, but we are doing great!
Let’s see…Jeff took midterms this week in two of his classes and did pretty well. That was Monday night, which meant that Family Home Evening was moved to later in the week. On Tuesday we had a picnic in the park and the girls watched me play softball. The season is almost over and I’m glad. It has not been as much fun for me this time around I don’t think I’ll play again in the next league; my time would be better spent at home with my family.
My garden thinks that it is spring again. The weather has been so nice lately and we got a couple of little rain showers too this week. I’m pulling in three of four good-sized tomatoes every day and on Wednesday, I think it was, I made salsa from tomatoes, green onions, green chilies, and cilantro from my garden. The grass looks great too; the girls are enjoying playing outside every afternoon.
We missed Gabrielle this week as she was in California with her mom. They arrived back in Arizona yesterday morning and I’ll be picking Gabrielle up off the bus on Monday afternoon. It was rather nice, I must admit. My week was so busy with work, it would have been just more stress to be driving her to swim lessons and piano lessons this week.
Wednesday nights are always hectic for us and this week’s was no exception. Jeff has a meeting at seven and I usually interpret for young women’s. Young women’s this week was particularly interesting. I specifically remember learning how to interpret a bike accident or recipe, but Wednesday I had to interpret how to properly iron a shirt and how to tie a men’s neck tie. Yeah, I resorted to quite a bit of pointing!
Jeff had band practice on Thursday night so the girls and I enjoyed a night in with a movie and popcorn. Friday was spent getting the house cleaned up from a week of neglect on my part and I baked some cupcakes for Jan’s birthday. My mom came and picked Felicity up to spend the night at Nana and Papa’s, which was met with much jubilation. Jeff worked at a really interesting estate sale on Saturday which was an all day event; he didn’t get home until well after six. The person was quite clearly a hoarder; if he had one of something he had seven of them. Collections of all sorts, but typical of people who obsessively acquire and keep things in their home much of it was damaged and rendered useless by years of neglect and unkempt conditions. I’m grateful Jeff has the opportunity to work while he is in school which helps us out a lot.

This week was also one of some financial change on our part. As many people are aware, Jeff lost his job shortly after we bought our house and then right after that, his brother lived with us for several months. As a result of those circumstances and poor planning and decisions on our part we had acquired a considerable amount of debt in the following year. Well, we have finally come to point that we are comfortably making ends meet and are ready to begin the arduous process of digging ourselves out. We sat as a family and discussed ways we can all tighten our belts so to speak and devised a new family budget. Felicity is foregoing piano lessons for a year, Helen has agreed to practice going on the potty for the first half of each day (although I think while our diaper expenses will go down, our laundry expenses are likely to go up…but I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it soon). We canceled our cable service, and changing our phone services has helped as well; because the weather has been nice we haven’t had the air conditioner on in two weeks.
My week of resolutions went well. It has now been two weeks since I’ve had soda pop and we all ate much more conscientiously this week, I lost two more pounds.
Saturday, the girls and I went out for the day with Nana. We went to the thrift, out to lunch; we rode the train in Reid Park, played on the play ground, visited Daddy at work, and went back to Nana’s to play. It was such a nice day. Helen was pretty grouchy, but otherwise I would say fun was had by all. I’m so grateful that my parents live nearby and play such an important role in the girls’ lives. I’m also fortunate to have my grandparents who see the girls regularly. I think that having a multi-generational influence is so important in children’s lives. It gives them a better perspective on where they’re from and where they are going; helps them to appreciate and love people of all ages. I had such a good relationship with both my maternal and paternal grandparents and I know it enriched my life greatly. Jeff and I had a good discussion about family the other day and are resolved to help our children to develop loving relationships with one another, not to simply be people who happened to grow up together; to be invested in each others’ lives. I just feel so blessed, we really want for nothing.

From Me to You

2010-10-10T10:15:00.001-07:00

Is there such thing as bloggers block? Perhaps it’ll be an abbreviated entry for this week. Luckily I’ve been feeling better; however, Jeff has come down with the mystery virus and has been quite miserable the last few days.

Gabrielle was out of school for an in service on Monday, so she had to keep herself entertained while Felicity was at school, and while I picked up the house Monday afternoon. For Family Home Evening Monday the girls helped me make pumpkin cookies. Jeff gave the lesson, on keeping the commandments. The girls were very engaged even though it was a little lengthy as FHE lessons go. Felicity picked the activity and we played Shrek Operation and Slamwich, which is quickly becoming a family favorite.
The rest of the week slipped by unnoticed. I worked quite a bit this week and anticipate working a full schedule in the coming week as well. Jeff stayed home from school sick on Friday and home from work on Saturday, he’s beginning to feel better today. I did completely finish Helen’s Halloween costume this week and Felicity’s is almost done. I’m hoping to be able to find enough left over fabric to make one for Gabrielle. I don’t even know what our Halloween plans will be this year since it falls on a Sunday. I also want to start on some new Christmas gifts sometime this week. I want to make a bathrobe for Felicity and some matching PJs for Jeff’s nieces and nephews.
Saturday I took Gabrielle to the airport and put her on a plane to California to visit her mom. She has a fall break this coming week so was going to be out of school. Luckily it went very smoothly and we were there at just the right time. The plane started boarding as we got through security. She wasn’t afraid to fly by herself at all; I waited in the airport with her until the plane was in the air.
This week I put into action one of my goals for the next ten months, and I’ve decided to stop drinking caffeine, which really means soda in its entirety. It was Ok, I didn’t miss it too much and I ended up drinking a lot more water. It’ll also save us grocery money and water weight! In the coming week I’m going back on the wagon to get the last few pounds off to meet my weight goal.
I will resolve to do something more interesting in the coming week! We hope you are all well and happy and enjoy the week ahead.

Carry that Weight

2010-10-03T20:57:00.000-07:00

This week has quietly slipped past me as I lived only half in this existence; the rest of my consciousness was clouded in a fall cold fog. I worked a little on Monday and then came home. My mom needed me to bring her purse into Tucson, so Helen and I drove to my grandparent’s house and visited for quite awhile; Helen had a blast. We had family home evening and had a great lesson on the importance of families and Gabrielle was responsible for picking the activity, she settled on games, so we played mouse trap a family favorite.

I stayed home on Tuesday and lied in bed in my PJs most of the day in hopes of giving my body the opportunity to gather its reserves and win the battle over my unwelcomed microbial guests; as I sniffle and stifle a raspy cough in this very moment I’m disheartened to report that the first Heather platoon did not win!
Jeff took me to urgent care on Wednesday and they were able to determine that I have a virus that’s causing swelling in my throat and chest causing me so much misery and aptly told me to get some naproxen and wait it out…I’m still waiting. Gabrielle’s mom came to visit on Wednesday and Gabrielle was with her mom from Wednesday to Sunday afternoon. I must admit that we missed her while she was gone and it was truly as if one of my own children were away from home.
I worked a full day on Thursday and was quite tired when I got home. Friday, Jan and I canned peaches. It was not nearly as messy as the apples a few weeks ago. We canned 24 quarts of peach pie filling. We had games that evening and fun was had by all!
Saturday morning the girls and I enjoyed the first two sessions of conference. Felicity had some coloring sheets to work on and she got to pick one word to listen for. As the speaker at conference spoke her designated word she got a chocolate chip. Her first word was family and she got a fair number of chocolate chips. By evening she chose to change her word to Jesus Christ and was pleasantly surprised! Jeff worked at a huge estate sale. The girls and I stopped by around 11:30 and there was no parking and there were tons of people. The house was packed with stuff, none of which in my opinion was of any value. We stayed only for a few minutes before deciding that it wasn’t worth it to stay and push among the frenzied shoppers. We did get some rain in the evening which was nice. Jeff didn’t end up getting home until well after six in the evening, missing the priesthood session of conference. The girls and I went over to the Bryson’s and played games.
Sunday was very relaxing. We had a big breakfast of pancakes and omelets made from veggies from the garden. We enjoyed conference and the girls were relatively attentive. Gabrielle came back around three and we had dinner. Dinner really must have been good tonight, two of the three girls chose more dinner over dessert (peach crisp). We sat together on the couch and watch the first session of conference that I had recorded for Jeff. Gabrielle picked the word love and Felicity picked family and they were both happy with the delicious results. Jeff spoke to Tracy for quite awhile this evening as well which was mutually appreciated.

I feel an increased desired to do better, to be better. There were many instances where I felt good about the things we are already doing consistently. I feel encouraged and enabled in the many facets of life in which I function. I feel like the weight of the responsibilities and duties that sometimes feel burdensome has been lifted and lightened. I’m grateful for so much in my life and will try to more actively express an attitude of gratitude.

Things We Said Today

2010-09-26T10:56:00.000-07:00

Uhg! Why is it I only appreciate my health when I’m sick. I need to repent and be grateful for the days when I just feel fine. So I’ve got a bit of a cold which is making me rather miserable and in turn is making my children rather miserable, for as the saying goes, If Momma aint happy, aint nobody happy. Other than my cold we’re doing very well.
I worked thirty hours this past week and worked on Halloween costumes. Helen’s is done and Felicity’s is getting there. The little headband that goes with Helen’s costume is so cute; I may make some more in different colors for her to wear every day. I also completed a Christmas gift project for Jeff’s nieces and nephews. I got the girls’ costumes from Halloween past out to see if I could use the same size pattern for Felicity that I used last year. I ended up putting some of their old costumes in their dress up bin; when I came down to breakfast the other morning Felicity was enjoying her pancakes in a witch costume and hat!
Jeff is off this morning to his newest niece’s baby blessing; the girls and I enjoyed a cinnamon roll breakfast and stayed at home seeing as I didn’t want to share my cold germs. We had a fun family home evening scavenger hunt this week. Jeff came up with several things for the girls to find, such as a stick shaped like a “Y” and a bunny rabbit, and we went for a “hike” in the desert behind our house. We got some exercise as a family and enjoyed looking for the things on the list.

Jeff practiced with his new band on Tuesday evening. He’s enjoying playing again, although it’s not the style of music he would prefer to play. We had a picnic in the park on Thursday. I had a softball game at 6:30 and didn’t get out of work till 5:00, so I met Jeff and the girls at the park for sandwiches and then they got to play on the playground while I had my game.
Jeff worked on Saturday and I wish that I could say the girls and I did something interesting, but alas, I was in a cold medicine fog and the kids played inside while I worked on some projects. After I had sewn the same seam wrong twice I decided I wasn’t focused enough to be sewing and gave up.

I’m looking forward to the holidays, even though Christmas is a few months off, working on projects and deciding what to make gets me all geared up for it. I think again this year I will make most of my gifts. I want to get the girls one large gift to share and then make the rest. Jeff is of the opinion that they have too many toys, but I would like to get them a doll house http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=5851&e=product&pid=44946&prodcat=dollhouse-thumb; although it would be nice for them to have a swing set in the back as well. Next year, after we expand our side walls in the back, I would like to build them a playhouse in the back yard like I had as a child. My grandfather built me a beautiful playhouse when I was little and I spent many hours in it playing happily. We’ll see!

I’m hoping this coming week is good. I know I’ll be busy at work again this week. Gabrielle’s mom is coming to visit this week, and I’m really looking forward to General Conference next weekend. I’m hoping to kick this cold as well! We hope everyone has a great week!

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

2010-09-19T09:37:00.001-07:00

I can’t believe it’s only nine o’clock in the morning, it feels like I’ve been up forever already, oh, yeah, that’s because I have been. The kids were up and playing boisterously at a quarter to six on my morning to sleep in. Oh, well! This week was pretty good. We had a fun family home evening on Monday. Our lesson was on prayer and we played Pretty, Pretty Princess. Jeff had Helen on his lap to help her play, but by the end she got bored with it and Jeff ended up playing himself; he won by the way.
I had a very slow week at work, so I spent much of this week at home, which was nice. Jan and I got together and canned three cases, over 100 pounds, of apples. We canned apple pie filling, apple cinnamon jelly, apple sauce, and apple butter. It took us more than two days to get it all processed. It was a lot of work, but some fun too. I think I’ll be including the apple pie filling and jelly in my Christmas baskets this year. Jeff found a band to play with and practiced with them on Tuesday night, which meant for a long day, but I didn’t mind since I was elbow deep in apples! I made some good progress on Halloween costumes and got Helen’s dress finished; I’m working on finishing the cape and headband and hers will be done. I’ll move on to Felicity’s next, I told Gabrielle that if I finished Felicity and Helen’s early, I would make her one as well, otherwise, she has a costume from last year she can wear. I did have an unpleasant déjà vu moment from my childhood. I had finished sewing the skirt to the bodice of Helen’s dress and asked her to try it on so I could mark where to put the fasteners in the back and forgot to take the pins out before I put it over her head. My mom did that to me all the time as a kid! She got stuck before I realized it and then she was afraid to try it on when it came time to hem it and asked “Mommy, all the pokies gone?”
I was having problems with my phone this week and had to drive down to the apple store on Thursday. We went as a family while Gabrielle was in school. It was quite the adventure, but a really great time. We stopped at the Tucson mall and let the kids play and then we had lunch and headed home. Jeff had his first math test this week and felt it went really well. He also had his first paper due on Friday as well. I tried my best to stay out of it and let him do it himself. He did a great job, and I’m sure he’ll get a good grade on it.
Jeff made omelets for breakfast one morning this week and they were excellent. We used tomatoes, onions, and peppers all from our garden. I really enjoyed gardening this spring/summer and learned a lot. I have great plans for next year’s garden. Our grass is still very green out back and we’ve had to mow it a few times this summer. The heat has held out, as expected, so the kids are still enjoying the pool on occasion in the afternoon. I’m hoping the temperatures will start to break sooner rather than later as we’re still having problems with the van overheating, which means we can’t use the AC.
We started the fun task of potty training Helen this week. At first we are focusing on it just in the morning until after lunch. She likes the idea, and unlike Felicity was, is willing to sit on the potty whenever we ask. We’ve been rewarding her with stickers and she likes the extra attention. I’m sure she’ll catch on quickly. Felicity is learning to ride her bike, which has been more difficult than the potty training actually. She is very fearful in general, so it’s been an exercise in patience and diligence. We went for a family walk/ride around the block last night that took more than 30 minutes, but she did make it. She is really enjoying school and has been a good sport about sharing her room with one extra person since Gabrielle has been with us.
We had a family movie night this week as well, which was sooner than I thought we would have one. I promised Gabrielle that when she finished The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl I would get the movie and we would have a family movie night. She started last Thursday and finished on Wednesday. So we put on our PJs early, popped some popcorn and watched the Fantastic Mr. Fox which was enjoyed by all. It was just another great week at Casa de Davidson, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da life goes on...

Good Morning, Good Morning

2010-09-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

An omage to the fact my girls can, and often do, sleep anywhere...enjoy!