Sittin' with Santa

At the church Christmas dinner this year, they brought out Santa for the kids to talk to. Kevin was so fast to get on Santa's lap that he was done and gone before the photographer was set up. So we got pictures of Tanner and Amy on Santa. Tanner had a great time of it and made sure to tell Santa that he wanted a remote controlled Wall-E, which, unfortunately, I'm almost certain Santa won't actually bring this year.


Amy---poor, sweet Amy---was forced to sit on Santa's lap mainly because her sadistic mother wanted a picture of Amy screaming on Santa's lap.


We heard all about it afterward, too. She kept saying that "Hanta" was "wood." (Santa was rude.) But at least he gave her some "handy." (Candy.) Toddlers are so much fun!

Welcome, Hannah!!

Rob and Kathryn Chase are thrilled to present
Hannah Lynn Chase
Born November 30, 2009 at 10:39 am
8 lbs 6 oz
20" long

After a long nine months and then a whirlwind labor that went so fast I almost had to skip the epidural (shudder...), Hannah has finally joined our family!!

We are so pleased to have another jolly little soul in our ever-growing family. Each one brings so much joy and happiness to our home that we scratch our heads in wonder and say many prayers of thanks.

Tanner, Kevin, and Amy are enjoying Baby Hannah very much. When we brought Hannah home from the hospital, my parents hid the older siblings behind a blanket and when they removed the blanket, there was Mommy and Baby Hannah! Their jaws dropped, and Amy's binkie even fell out.

Amy was a little disappointed to discover that Hannah is not specifically hers, but she loves Hannah very much and gives her many kisses and head pats.

Tanner loves Hannah too and always remembers to wash his hands after school before he says hello to his newest sister.

And sweet Kevin is taking it all in stride and loves to hold Hannah whenever he can.
Hannah is proving to be a real cutie with a beautiful face full of newborn wonder.
We are having way too much fun with her and she has become a very important part of our family.

We love you, Hannah! Thanks for coming!

For more pictures, visit http://picasaweb.google.com/robandkathryn/BabyHannah

Stay at Home, Mom!

I was talking to a young mother who has one 3-year-old girl. This mother told me that she's had it with watching this girl all day every day, and she absolutely has to get a job and put her daughter in daycare or she'll go insane. I told her what she needed was to give the little girl a sibling to play with. (This could be construed as a tactless comment---I am famous for making them---but the condition of my belly at present allows me to make certain types of comment without too much reproach).

The conversation didn't really go anywhere, and I certainly made no impact on her resolution to quit being a stay-at-home mom. But it made my heart hurt for her and for her cute little girl.

I would never voluntarily leave my children to go to work. The thought of having somebody else raise my little ones is appalling! That is MY job. These are MY little ones. Nobody else in the entire world can do for them what I can do for them. Nobody else can love them as I love them.

There are days when I go bonkers and realize that being a stay-at-home mom is hard hard hard hard hard. There are times when I let my children make me so mad that I am surprised at myself. My house is often a mess, my shoulders are often covered in peanut butter or worse, and I am often greeted with angry faces as I turn a corner.

But then, as I put the kids to sleep, I hear a little voice say "I like you and I love you and I think you're beautiful and pretty." These children I have are my most precious blessings from heaven. They are so cute and so sweet.

And that's enough soapboxing for now. I just wanted to say I treasure not just my children, but also my role as their mother.

Happy Birthday, Kevin!!

Around four years ago I had my second baby, sweet little Kevin Allen. When Kevin got his blessing at church, Rob included that Kevin would be a joy to his mother. Boy, has that ever held true. That boy just makes my heart weep with happiness.

Kevin is our jolly child. He almost always has a smile on his face and he's always ready to play what anybody else wants to play. He is fun-loving, happy, and just too cute for words.

OK, so he has his moments of intense anger, but he is, after all, a very small person, and they all have their moments.
(Here he is after I picked out the boys' clothes and Rob put the wrong clothes on the wrong boys anyway.)
But he never stays mad long, nor is it possible to stay mad at him for long, even if he's eating cookies in bed:

He's been growing too fast and I'm definitely looking forward to many more years of enjoying my friend Kevin. And did I mention that he is just so cute? Those blue eyes have been enchanting from the time he was just a few weeks old.

So for his birthday this year we had a friends party at home with 17 kids and 9 mommies, we went to the Exploration Place, we went to the grand opening of the new library, and we went to McDonalds, where we learned that Kevin wanted not food but to play on the play place. (Oh well. Not sure the stuff at McDonald's really qualifies as "food" anyway.)

Kevin got great presents and had a happy day.

But then, most of his days are happy days. : )


Happy Birthday, Kevin! I love you!

What's up with my body?

For the past few months I've been putting on a shocking amount of weight, despite my usual rigorous exercise regimen of chasing three insane children around. Strangely, the weight seems to congregate mostly in my middle, though it has also spread itself rather obsequiously over my entire body. And the concentration of weight in my middle has this alarming tendency to wiggle and attack me from within! I've also had heartburn, difficulty breathing, fatigue, and extreme moodiness.

Fortunately the doctor assures me that this condition, while life-changing, will last no longer than three more weeks. I'll have to go to the hospital to have the majority of the swelling removed in what will most likely be an extremely painful experience, but then my body will begin to gradually shrink back to its previous state of normalness.

But here's the weirdest thing: The doctor told me that I'm going to have to keep the cause of the swelling! And it's going to cry and poop! For years!!

Though, now that I think about it a little more, it seems this has happened to me three times before. And each time was one of the highlights of my life, so I guess this is all really a good thing after all. I think I'll call the little lump "Hannah."

And I will smile and possibly cry just a little too. : )

Happy Halloween!

A few months ago I went to a consignment sale and was clever enough to snarf up a $5 Darth Vader costume. Then I was foolish enough to give it to the boys to play with----so by the time Halloween rolled around, neither boy had the slightest inclination to be Darth Vader.

Drat.

They decided they wanted to be bats. See, Rob sometimes tells them bedtime stories about Tanner and Kevin having various adventures on a hot air balloon. One night the adventure led them to a haunted house surrounded by bats with red eyes. The bats were really a minor detail, but the boys focused on the red-eyed bats and wanted nothing other than to be bats for Halloween.

So this year, I am pleased to say that I did not purchase pre-made costumes. I sewed bat wings on the backs of some black shirts and stitched some ears and red eyes on black hats, and there you have it. I even used some left over fabric to tie on a cape for Amy, who, by Rob's request, was a little witch. She wouldn't wear the hat, preferring instead to showcase another of my hairbows. : )

Anyway, the kids had fun trick-or-treating, except Amy got a wee bit spooked by the whole thing. Not spooked enough to refuse the candy, but spooked enough to be quite somber for the majority of the evening.

Of course we carved pumpkins too. Messy business, that. I took no part in it, except to take pictures.



We had a happy Halloween and now are screaming internally in anticipation of Thanksgiving. Will the baby come before or after? Oh boy oh boy!

It's Late October Already??!!

Confession: Only because I needed to post pictures to Craigslist did I finally bring the camera down to the computer and upload all of our most recent shots. But, that being done, I am now free to post a small number representative of the last two months.

First and foremost, and this was a one-time occurrence, we put Amy's hair in pigtails!!

I don't know how other mothers manage to put perfectly straight pigtails in their daughters' hair. That girl would not hold her head still for two seconds straight. The result was absolutely adorable but only lasted for an hour and then we found alien Amy with one pigtail on her head and a small hairband sticking jauntily out of her grinning mouth.

The absolute low point of the last two months was the death of our friends' one-month-old baby girl. SIDS. It was devastating. I was honored to be asked to make a bracelet for her tiny arm.
The amazing thing was that as I was making the bracelet, I had the strongest feeling that the sweet baby will be wearing it when she rises in the Resurrection. There's no doubt in my mind that families are forever and that this baby will still get to be raised by her parents. Small consolation, perhaps, but I don't see how anybody can bear such loss without such testimony.

It being October, we of course had to go to a pumpkin patch. Tanner was at school and missed out, but he gets pizza every Friday, so I try not to feel too bad about him missing some stuff. Kevin and Amy each picked a baby pumpkin. By now both have been thrown away (pumpkins, not kids) because the children wouldn't stop throwing them around and they got squishy and moldy. Eww.

And here's a shot somebody took of me on a tractor ride at the pumpkin patch. My face is chubby with pregnancy, but I look so happy to be out with my sweet kids. This is one picture of me that I actually like. : ) I may occasionally struggle with the day-to-day tedium of nurturing my kids, but I love being a mom so much and I love my wee ones so very much!
And along those same lines, I am now five weeks away from getting yet another wee one! Two weeks ago some friends held a baby shower for me and loaded me up with diapers, wipes, and of course more girlie clothes. Someone even made a diaper wreath:

So cute! I am so excited to have another tiny baby in our family! For now her name is Hannah Lynn, but of course nothing is really decided until we see her tiny scrunched-up rutabaga face and agree that she really is "Hannah."

And you can't really get through September and October without colds and flus, so we're battling that right now, but in light of everything else, the sicknesses don't really matter. We are so blessed right now and things are looking better all the time.

Oh yeah, and on Saturday Rob and I saw Wicked!!!!! Woot!!! It was soooo cool!

Solicitors

When I am at home with my family, it goes without saying that I want people to ring my doorbell and tell me to buy things from them. Because it would certainly never occur to me to go out to a store if there was something I needed or wanted. No, I need salespeople to come to me and use their tried-and-true tactics to tell me what I need and why I have to buy it right now (before I have time to research a cheaper way to obtain it or before I realize I don’t actually need it at all).

Two salesmen are immortalized in my memory. Actually, these are the only two salesmen that have gotten into my house. The first of the two was the first salesman to come by after Rob and I moved here, and he taught us quite well that we never wanted a salesman in our house again.

He used all sorts of tactics to get us to buy a $5000 water softener. He told us that demand for his water softeners was so high that he just couldn’t get out to people’s houses fast enough---so if we bought the water softener that very evening, he’d give us a discount and a sign to put on the lawn that would qualify us for another discount.

Having learned about supply and demand, I commented that perhaps he needed to raise his prices. He chose not to respond to that comment.

He went on to tell us that we were already paying for the water softener because of the wear-and-tear of hard water, so we might as well sign here and get our free vacation voucher and year’s supply of soap. How could we refuse such an offer?

Refusal was made ever so much easier when he used his portable softener to actually soften some of our water. He had us taste the newly-softened water, confident that its flavor would send us salivating to the contract to enter years of debt for soft-water deliciousness.

It tasted terrible. As we both grimaced, he smiled at us and said, “Isn’t it great?” We tried to say yes but it came out more like “Guccch.”

Then he tried showing us how revolting our own water is by doing an experiment with our water and his wonderful softened water. He dumped some soap in both samples and stirred it up, making frothy bubble water. The bubbles quickly went away in “our” water, and the bubbles in “his” water stayed frothy throughout the remainder of his presentation. “Look at that! It’s still bubbly!” We were supposed to be impressed, but we really didn’t see the point of his experiment.

Turns out we didn’t buy the water softener. Not even a $600 at a home improvement center. And life goes on, hard water and all.

The other salesman who got into our house was the Carnivorous Man. He came on Labor Day with big talk of juicy hamburgers and lean steaks, and I politely asked if he had a menu or a brochure.

That was my mistake. He took it as an invitation and ran back to his truck to grab a huge box with several layers of frozen meat, which he set up on the table and proceeded to show us piece by piece, praising each for its leanness and superior quality to every other piece of meat in existence.

I never actually figured out how much meat he was trying to sell us, or for how much money, but he fully expected us to give him at least $297* for all of the meat he could shove in our freezer. He even pulled out a calculator and showed us how, by buying his meat, we would only spend about $2.50 per day on meat, whereas right now we were obviously paying at least $50-60 per week at the grocery store on beef alone, right? (“Uhhh…” I said to that one).

This carnivorous man, carried away in his own excitement, was so completely taken aback by our “We’re not interested” that he packed up his meat without another word, leaving an eerie atmosphere of anger and resentment in his wake. It was so uncomfortable that I pretended to hear the baby making noises across the house so I could go skulk in the hall until he left. I heard Rob ask for the man’s card, just to make him feel better I guess, and the man grumbled, “You should buy it right now. It will never be this cheap again!”

I find it very hard to believe the salesman was trying to do us any favors by selling his meat at the cheapest price ever. I rather believe he was trying to ensnare us with steaks and fillets and patties on one of the biggest BBQ days of the year. He even offered a long-term payment plan. Can you imagine going into debt for steak?

Mmmm… steak….

But I’ll not plunk down several hundred dollars for a freezer full of meat from the Carnivorous Man! Even if his meat is several grades above what you’ll find in the stores! (“Did you ever have a steak from Wal-Mart? Terrible, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Uhhh…” we said.)

So now when a solicitor comes to the door, I will remember these two men, and kindly shriek “GO AWAY YOU DEMON AND NEVER RETURN!!!!”

I will delight in watching them run.

But by all means, if you’re a solicitor, please come to my door and tell me to buy your product.

(If you read this, please leave a comment so I know I'm not the only one who ever visits this site...)

Happy Birthday, Rob!

Today was Robert's 31st birthday!

Huzzah!

Due to technological stupidity (meaning technology was stupid, not me), we were unable to take any pictures of Rob on this special day.

But he had a great day:
-Eggs and bacon and toast and orange juice for breakfast, made by a groggy and slightly disheveled wife
-Warm ham and cheese sandwich, chips, and enormous cookie for lunch, purchased at work
-An hour to himself while children napped or finished the school day so his wife could go to the doctor and get 3 stabs with needles
-Golden Corral with fresh rolls and honey butter for dinner
-NO chocolate cupcakes because his tummy was too full from previous line
-Presents!!! (tools, candy, woodworking book, clothes, and a gift card to Hobby Lobby, which he spent on jewelry-making supplies for me)

He even cleaned up after Amy pooped in the bathtub while bathing with her brothers. I suppose that is what makes it a great day for me.......

So Happy Birthday to Rob! What a great guy! : )

Chase-ing Life

Oh, Summer, where is your sting? 'Twould seem Mother Nature has finally gotten out the can of summer spray and is ending your tyrannical reign. I delight in watching you writhe in agony, desperately trying to cling to your pathetic muggy existence, but you are dying and I am happy.

The demise of summer marks the cleansing from the streets of myriad children, leaving adults free to go out without fear of being run over by some kid running wild with the delirium of the season. One of theses such children happens to be my own son Tanner, who is now facing nearly a decade and a half of SCHOOL. On August 17 wee little Tanner donned his backpack (actually my backpack and then Rob's backpack from college), toted his lunch, and smiled for the camera before being hauled off to his first day of state-sponsored torture. I think, however, that the torture part doesn't really apply to kindergarteners. He seems to enjoy school, even if he is extra weepy thus far. He needs to get used to the rigorous schedule.


Tanner being gone during the day leaves me with only two small children, and what a luxury that has been! Did I once consider two children to be a handful? Pah! Kevin and Amy get along well, if only Kevin would leave Amy's hair alone. She has beautiful golden curls that have inspired me to actually start a hobby: Hair bows! I make clippies for her hair with ribbons and flowers and any sparkly things that suit my fancy. Pictured below is one such creation. From this angle it looks a little like a creepy tarantula on her head, but trust me, it's a lovely flower with a jeweled pink center.

Shortly after school started we packed up for an overnighter in Oklahoma City so Rob and I could take turns going to the temple. Interestingly enough, it was during Rob's turn inside that Tanner decided to throw up in the temple waiting room. Rob overheard the temple workers talking about some kid that threw up downstairs, but Rob, being carried away with his spiritual experience, never once considered that that poor kid was his own and that that poor kid's mom was his own pregnant wife.

Here's a shot of the kids outside the temple. Notice Tanner's pale face (this is pre-barfing) and Kevin's hand pulling Amy's hair. We feared Tanner may have caught something at school, but it proved to be a one-time, just-for-mommy kind of thing. : )

Another end-of-summer adventure was the continuance of the hair cycle: I had been wearing my hair in a messy bun for weeks and decided it was time to chop it again. I was pleased with the result. Also, I used a gift from my mother-in-law to get new sleeves on a not-quite-modest-enough dress, and wore that with my new haircut to receive more compliments than I've ever received on a single Sunday. Huzzah!

August was also the most expensive month we've had since moving here (and therefore, the most expensive month we've had ever). We decided to have some work done in the basement (see previous post) and shortly after making the Big Payment to our contractor, Rob got released from the Bishopric. I had always suspected that our blessings for Rob's service were blessings of omission: bad things weren't happening because he was in the Bishopric. Within three weeks of his release we had spent over $900 on car repairs. Amazingly, two Sundays after his release we were all ready to go to church only to find a flat tire on the van and a dead battery in the other car. Rob changed his clothes to stick on the spare and we arrived just after the sacrament.

(This is precisely why I never asked for Rob's release---I knew this would happen.) (He was instantly made Young Men's president, and we're not seeing much difference except he can sit with us in Sacrament meeting now.)

Anyway, the work on the basement is done for now (translate: we have spent enough on the basement for now) and we are enjoying our two new rooms. One for food storage and tornado preparedness:

And one for Rob's laptop and calling-related materials and my crafting table:

It's all still rather a mess, and the carpet is a big old remnant from Lowes that doesn't actually cover the whole floor, but we have sprayed for bugs and painted the walls and the rooms are ever so much more delightful than they were when they were unfinished and full of Rob's tools, which have no been banished to the garage (One step closer to the garbage can, as he says with fear in his voice).

So now we look forward to September and lower house payments from our refinance and hopefully replenishing some of what we lost in August.

The kids are healthy, the wee girl in my tummy wiggles with reassuring regularity, and life continues. And, mercifully, this blog post doesn't.

Like mother, like daughter

This is Amy, but could easily be me, minus 26 years. Look at what she's reading! Lectures on Faith! Pretty advanced stuff for a toddler.

Time vs. Talent vs. Money

What do we have more of?

Time? Hardly.

Money? Give me a break.

Talent? OK, we've got some of that...everybody has a talent. They tell us that from the time we're bitty kids. But our talents do not really extend into the area of rewiring ceiling lights and fixing up somebody's bad framing job.

As far as time goes, I have plenty of it, but how safe would it be for me to do drywalling with three kids screaming at my knees? Plus I don't know how to drywall. Rob has no time to speak of, unless he's willing to get by on four hours of sleep per night or never see his children again.

Which brings us back to money, which I guess we have the most of, because we are now facing the prospect of paying somebody to do the work for us.

We're finally going to put up drywall (or sheetrock, if you prefer) in our basement storage room (aka the "tornado room," because it's where we go during tornado warnings). We're having somebody do some electrical work, frame a new wall, fix some bad framing around the perimeter of the room, and put up walls and even a texturized ceiling. Whew.

I am so stinking excited!!

Another good name for the room could be the Spider Room, the Stay-Out Room, the Don't-Go-In-There-Barefoot Room, and so on. Once the work is done, it will be the Office and the Big Storage Room. Much less frightening terminology, don't you think? I just love walls. So many fewer hiding spots for spiders than all those boards and loose insulation. On further reflection, I think my fear of spiders far outweighs our lack or time, talent, or money. The walls must come up!

So here's the "before" picture. You missed seeing the room with all the stuff in it---we removed that on Saturday.


Stay tuned for exciting coverage on this developing ... uh ... development!

Or go ahead and block me right now! Who really wants to follow someone else's home improvement projects anyway?

A Day of Firsts

Today was the first Sunday in a year and a half that I was able to sit through Sunday School and Relief Society at church without a squirmy kid to wrestle with! I actually didn't know quite what to do with myself.

Yes, Amy is now 18 months old and can go to Nursery!!! Hard to believe. She's still a baby to me.


We've learned from experience that it works best for Rob to drop off the wee nursery ones, so Rob took her to Nursery and she didn't even notice that he left. Her teacher said she was happy and cooperative---she even helped with cleanup and sat down when she was supposed to. Yippy!

And for another First, Tanner got to give a talk in Primary! He helped write it (he even insisted on typing some of the words) and he gave a spectacular job. None of that sissy shy business. Good ol' Tanner. : ) He did great!


For those interested, here's his talk:

When Nephi and his family were on the boat going to the Promised Land, Nephi's brothers, Laman and Lemuel, started being naughty. When Nephi told his brothers to be good, they tied him up and it hurt his arms. The Liahona stopped working and the boat started to sink. So Laman and Lemuel let Nephi go. Nephi wasn't mad at his brothers---he didn't yell at them or hit them. Instead, he prayed and the boat stopped sinking and the Liahona started working.
Even though his brothers were mean to him, Nephi was nice to them. When Laman and Lemuel were mean, the whole family was sad, even Nephi. Even Laman and Lemuel didn't feel so happy. Nephi was a good example and he was kind to his family, and that made his family happy.
When I'm mean to my brother, it makes me start to feel bad. I start being nice and say "I'm sorry."
When wer'e nice, the Holy Ghost comes to our house and it stays there as long as we're nice. The Holy Ghost helps us feel happy.
I hope we can all be like Nephi and be nice to our families so that we can all be happy and have the Holy Ghost with us.

So I was a proud Mommy today. And Rob I think got his share of jollies out of it too. : )

Ultrasound Results Are In!

It's a baby!
The Ultrasound Nazis dictate how much you have to drink before you go in, and they tell you exactly when you are forbidden to use the bathroom anymore. In one hour, you are supposed to drink 60 ounces of water. Well, I drank 70. Talk about waterlogged.

So we were admitted to the ultrasound room and we got to see the blobby, frightening pictures that the ultrasound technician called a "heart" and "kidneys." We also got to see some great baby wiggles, which was extra interesting for me, because I could feel it and then see it slightly delayed on the big screen. They had a huge room set up with extra chairs and a large plasma screen. A nice change from my previous ultrasounds when I had to crane my neck to see the technician's tiny monitor. Even without the neck craning, I was in agony: she was poking my bladder over and over getting those bizarre pictures!

After she measured the head and the waist and the thigh bones and whatever else, she told me I could go to the bathroom. Apparently, I had consumed so much water that my bladder was too big---the baby was just sitting fat and sassy on top and the technician couldn't get a good view for gender-determining purposes! I was more than happy to cooperate with her on that front.

When I got back (much relieved), we finally got that coveted gender shot: The complete absence of certain external organs clearly indicated that this one is a girl!

: )

So, two boys and two girls. Sweet. We're stinking excited. Rob was giddy for the next hour. Though he would have been giddy with any declaration. We're just happy to have a gender-specific pronoun to use in reference to the baby: She! Huzzah!

Kevin's Brownie

In my continuing efforts to pack on the weight I didn't gain because of first-trimester nausea, I made a pan of brownies (not that it takes conscious effort to gain weight now....I'm a roly-poly pregnant lady). It was nearly bedtime, and we were hoping to pack away the children before indulging in the chocolatey goodness.

At this point in my blog post, I realize this story would be much better if it involved Kevin climbing up onto the counter and eating the brownies straight out of the pan or something like that. On the contrary. My children are far too disciplined for such tomfoolery. What followed was merely a cute conversation, so you may stop reading now if you were hoping for stories of naughty boys and ruined brownies.

Rob told Kevin to say to me, in a squeaky-cute voice, "Mom, can I go to bed now?"

Kevin turned to me and , in a perfect imitation of Rob's squeaky-cute voice, flawlessly matching intonation and timing, changing only three words, said, "Mom, can I have a brownie now?"

Huh. We sure thought it was funny at the time.

He did, of course, get his brownie.

June Weddings

Well, poo.

Sometimes I write in my journal. I used to be very diligent about it. But whenever I fall behind, I feel like I can't just pick up where I left off because so much has happened since I last wrote. Yeah. I'm having that problem with my blog. I traveled thousands of miles and attended two family weddings in the last month, and I cannot begin to blog properly about it. And the computer won't let me upload pictures. So, I've uploaded what I can to my picasa site, and you can see some pictures there.

http://picasaweb.google.com/robandkathryn/June2009

The best pictures are on the CDs that I can't really upload right now, but here's one of me and Amy taken on what may have been the best hair day of my life. : )


I can give some highlights of the vacations.

-The brides, Evie (who married our new uncle Ryan) and Monica (who married our other new uncle Ryan), were beautiful and it was too fun watching them enjoy the happiest day of their lives.

-We went to Enchanted Forest in Oregon with Rob's sister and her family and had an absolute blast (see pictures on our picasa page).

-I sobbed hysterically in the temple with my little sister Monica when we hugged after she got married.

-We got Creamery chocolate milk at BYU!

-We were the only guests staying at Rob's parents house and had three rooms to ourselves!

-We were 5 of 24 people staying at my parent's house, but still had one large bedroom for our family. My parent's house is huge, but that was bordering on insane and I'll bet we won't do that again!

-We sat in bad traffic outside of Denver: 40 miles in 120 minutes! Aaaaaaaaaaah!

-Tanner was an awesome helper for Amy in our four days of car travel. Kudos to him.

I must finish this post now because autosave keeps failing and I'm getting nervous.

Here's the link again, in case you don't want to scroll back up to get it there:
http://picasaweb.google.com/robandkathryn/June2009

Guilt Trip

Yes, I realize I recently had a trip to Washington and I have not said a single word about it. Truth be told, I haven't gotten around to writing about it for one reason: Pictures. I don't like to blog without pictures, and the camera and CD full of other pictures are upstairs. Simple as that. Once I get them downstairs and download the pictures I want, then I will be able to write witty things about my trip and show charming pictures to illustrate. Until then, this will have to do the trick. And it might indeed do the trick---writing this has assuaged my guilt enough that I may not post again until after my NEXT wedding trip, which begins this very week.
So there.

The Little Shard That Could

...or "What Won't I Do to Keep Rob Home from Mutual?"

Once upon a time, a small girl named Amy discovered the joys of rooting around in the kitchen cupboards. Her parents saw no real harm in this, so tolerated the behavior, even though it meant frequently tripping over bowls and pot lids.


After one particularly boisterous round of Amy's bowl bashing, Amy's mom smiled at the the little girl and lifted her up to put her in her chair for lunch. During the course of lunch, the young mother patiently put away all of the bowls and pot lids again.

After lunch, Amy was put so sweetly in her crib for a nap, and the mother turned her attention back to Amy's two older brothers and the chore of cleaning up the kitchen. The kitchen was famous for its perpetually messy floors. This was not due to any shortcomings on the part of the mother; it was the natural consequence of having three children aged 5 and under. The mother was very much accustomed to stepping on various cruddies, (no matter how often she swept) and would wipe them off on the top of the other foot without a second thought.

On this particular day, however, Amy had been particularly boisterous in her cupboard play. Unbeknownst to the poor young mother, a 2-inch long glass shard had been blissfully bashed from the rim of one of the bowls by a well-placed whack. When the mother stepped on the shard with her bare left foot, she thought "That's a pretty sharp cruddy," right before she tried wiping it off on the top of her bare right foot.

Ergh.

The left foot actually drove the shard over an inch deep into the top of the right foot in what can only be described as "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!"

Again, without thinking, the mother pulled the shard from her foot and was amazed at the length and that she had managed to drive it in that deep before realizing the problem. The amount of blood that came from the wounds of both feet was ... copious.

The two brothers were quite helpful, locating the hydrogen peroxide after only two failed attempts (they first brought lotion and then aftershave, neither of which would have helped much). They enjoyed very much the blood all over the kitchen floor. They even brought two band-aids to their pale mother and helped her limp over to the couch, where she tried to elevate her feet to stop the bleeding.

There ends the interesting parts of the story. No infection was forthcoming, the doctor's visit was inevitable, the tetanus shot was avoided because of the mother's pregnancy, and the husband stayed home from his church meetings that evening so he could help his gimpy wife. Now the mother walks with a limp and a wary eye on the ground before her.

She even took a picture of the shard, lest some think the story exaggerated. Pardon the redness on the shard----it wasn't red to begin with.

Kansas Critters

We found something in the backyard last week while Rob was planting our new trees. Rob and I had dismissed it as a lump of dirt---it was just sitting there, crouched down as low as it could go, possibly cowering in fear and trying to disappear. Kevin saw it for what it really was---a baby bunny! We weren't impressed nor deterred by its clandestine efforts, and so Rob picked it up with a little rake and stuck it in a big Rubbermaid tote. The kids had a blast. Sorry I can't really say the same for li'l Bun.

Ever since living in Germany, I have a slight fear of bunnies. (I seem to harbor a slight fear of anything that is small and moves.) Where we lived there, a healthy population of bunnies abounded, and we learned to watch where we were running to avoid the piles of bunny pellets. Every few years some people would come around and spread disease for the bunnies, to keep the population down. So we would be outside playing and would often discover, to our delight, baby bunnies! Then, to our indignant horror, we would notice the puffy white eyes and shuddering little bodies and realize that to touch the bunnies might mean instant death.

So I forbade the children to touch this bunny, claiming that if they did, their mother would disown it. I think that only applies to birds, but you can't be too careful. Amy, however, didn't heed my warning, but she seems no worse off for her truancy. We've seen no trace of that bunny since, but hope that it is alive and well somewhere, not disowned by its mother.


Also, frog season has started, along with all the frog piddle you can handle. Ewww.


And, in conclusion, let me add a picture Rob took of our most recent thunderstorm, the storm that cancelled the Priesthood commemoration campout and nearly broke my sons' hearts until we compromised on camping in the basement.

On second thought, that picture is rather boring to look at. So instead I'll attach a picture of Kevin with paint in his eyebrow. It is ever so much more amusing than clouds.

Faster, Daddy, Faster!

Not even one month after we got Tanner a real bike, he insisted we take off his training wheels. So, with the help of our neighbor, we obligingly removed the offending wheels.

Now, I'm sure you've all heard stories about children who have training wheels removed from their bikes and just take off like little rockets. That is precisely what Tanner thought he was going to do.
After a few laps around the cul-de-sac, however, Tanner quickly realized that it was not as easy as our neighbor made it look. Rob let go of Tanner for a third of a second, and that was all the freedom Tanner experienced. No sense of balance in that boy whatsoever. Which, really, was to be expected, but I suffer from delusions that my child ought to excel in his every endeavor, since he generally excels in so many. Apparently he was under the same delusion. Trying to balance and pedal at the same was hard work!

He hasn't touched his bike since. That was three days ago.

Amy did just fine on Slimey with no help, though.

And Kevin put plenty of hats and scarves on his bike....for some reason known only to Kevin.

I'm certain Tanner will get the hang of it. So certain, in fact, that the previous sentence is rather silly, since every child who ever tries to learn to ride a bike usually succeeds in learning to ride a bike. Until then, I think some knee and elbow pads might be a worthwhile investment.