Since our fourth anniversary is this Thursday, we had a family home evening lesson about the temple and how our family can be together forever. I told about some of the events that happened that day, and explained that because we were married in the temple, we will be married for all eternity. I also said that means that Kevin and Heidi will be in our family forever. I showed Kevin a picture of the Provo temple where we were married and also one of our wedding pictures. It was a really nice lesson, and I think it touched Kevin.

We are truly blessed to have a temple marriage and to have the ordinances of the gospel in our lives. I am so grateful to have Ryan in my life. He is a very good man. He always forgives me when I lose my temper, he encourages me to push a little harder when I don't even want to get up off the couch, he shares thoughts that increase my understanding and testimony of the gospel, he supports me in the goals that I set for myself, and he is so nice to talk to. He was one of the first guys I had ever met who I could have a meaningful conversation with. We love sharing puns and laughing about them.

Last Thursday we found a babysitter and went to do proxy sealings at the Raleigh temple. It was really nice. There was a man there who had done some of his genealogy and had found the names of several children to be sealed to their parents. We had a feeling that those children were very happy to be sealed to their families. I love my children so much and am so grateful for the reassurance that we are linked to each other forever. Family means so much to me. The family is central to God's plan for us. It's not just a nice side benefit; it's the whole point. God intends for us to be saved with our families.

more Kevinisms

"Oh thank you."

"Thanks?"

"Good grief!"

He is starting to have imaginary friends. One is named Johnny. Today Kevin was putting him in time out for pushing, and at dinner Kevin gave him some carrots. (The real Johnny is Kevin's best friend Joseph's baby brother.) Kevin has also adopted a doll who he has named Tessa (Tessa is one of the girls in his nursery class).  He asks us to be quiet because she's sleeping and also lets us know when she is sad. A few days ago he put her in a chair at the table and gave her a corn muffin to eat. Once a week or so ago, Heidi was still napping in our room, and Kevin kept running to the door and then bending down to whisper to Tessa/Johnny, "Shhh, Heidi's sleeping."

"Kee-fee." (Excuse me.)

"A DIGGER!!! A DIGGER!!!! A DIGGER!!!" (We know where all the diggers are on campus and when it's time to plug our ears and quickly acknowledge that we see the diggers too.)

"Heidi's unplugging the thing . . . Heidi, stop unplugging the thing! Heidi, go! Go play with your toys." Wonder where he heard that one from . . .

Every day when I come in to get him from his nap, I am greeted with, "Well, ready to go to the playground? Okay, let's go to the playground."

In January, I found a lot of Thomas trains and tracks at a consignment sale. We've pulled them out a few times lately, and Kevin played with them for over an hour! What a miracle! He gets frustrated when the trains don't stay on the tracks, but he's learning how to make them stay on the tracks better, and he can also put the tracks together himself. We've had such a good time playing trains with him!

Lately when I'm reading him books that he's very familiar with, I'll replace a word with something silly. Kevin thinks it's so funny.

Kevin likes to climb into the washing machine. He does it all the time.

Kevin also really loves to play with my timers.

Heidi's recent accomplishments

Heidi has taken her first steps without holding onto anything. She will only take one or two steps before she falls down, though. If you hold her hands she will walk very fast!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ore0iYKnc7A&feature=youtu.be



She also enjoys feeding herself from a spoon. I will put a little bit of food onto it and then give her the spoon and then she puts it into her mouth, and does a pretty good job, too. This is not an activity I could have done with Kevin! He would have flung the food far and wide.

Her newest vocalization is something like this: "Hm! Hmmmm. Hm! Hmmmm. Hm! Hmmmm." (It's quite rhythmic.)

She's finally sleeping through the night again. She got into the habit of waking up at about 4:30 to eat. She was going right back to sleep again, but I was getting tired because it was hard to get back to sleep after that, and once I got back to sleep again it was time to get up for the day. I knew that she could make it all night because she was sleeping through the night when she was just a couple of months old. So I decided to let her cry. The first night she cried for what seemed like quite a while, but I didn't time it. The next couple of nights she cried less. It was really only a couple of minutes (I timed it). And now she doesn't wake up until about 6:15. Much better. I also cleared out one side of our closet and put the pack n play in, so I think we've found a sleeping solution for her for a while. We just keep the door open a little for ventilation, and she sleeps really well in there. Now the crib is back in Kevin's room, and the living room seems more roomy!

Heidi is learning to sign "more." She's very delighted about it. I'm going to have to brush up on some signs, because we haven't had to use them much with Kevin for a while.

Tomorrow Heidi will be ten months old. Now that we're in the double digits it seems like her birthday is a lot closer.

Here are some more pictures. I love Heidi's smiles.

I am very impressed that Heidi has figured out how to lift up my water bottle and has enough coordination to get a drink. 

climbing

Heidi loves climbing. One day I came home from class and Ryan showed me how she had climbed into the window sill all by herself. She can't really climb onto the couch from the floor, but if she can persuade you to put her on the couch, she can get into all sorts of adventures, like sitting on the window sill, climbing onto the freezer, and climbing from the freezer onto the piano.

covered in flour

A few weeks ago the kids were helping me make pizza dough. Of course once we had most of the ingredients in the mixer I realized that the flour canister was empty. So I pulled out the flour buckets, and they were also empty. So it wasn't just a matter of getting flour out of a bucket, which is enough of an ordeal with kids around, but I also had to pull out a new 50-lb. bag of flour, dump it into the two buckets, then put some of the flour into the flour canister so we could make pizza dough. I don't know if this is normal, but opening the five gallon buckets is always a risky business if Kevin's in a mess-making mood (which is all the time). Ryan was teaching a lab and wouldn't be home until late.

I filled up the first bucket and so far things were okay. I put the lid on and filled the second bucket and still no major mishaps. But after I put one of the buckets back into the front closet where I store them, I came back to find both of my children elbow deep in a bucket of flour, laughing hysterically and having a marvelous time. And there was flour everywhere. How did this happen in ten seconds without me realizing what was going on? I don't know.

I had swept up the flour before it occurred to me to get the camera out, which is unfortunate because I didn't really capture the magnitude of this mess. I must have said a really sincere prayer that morning, because for some reason I was amused rather than ready to pull my hair out. The kids were awfully cute covered in flour, and I got a lot of cute expressions out of them, especially Heidi.

Heidi also decided to pull milk jugs out from under the sink.

Once things were somewhat cleaned up and the dough was mixed (the Bosch does an amazing job, by the way!), Kevin helped me roll out the dough. It worked out really well because I had enough to make a pizza crust and a batch of breadsticks, so while I rolled out the pizza crust Kevin could play with the other ball of dough, and then by the time the pizza was in the oven Kevin had lost interest in his ball of dough, so I could roll it out and make breadsticks.

By the way, here's a picture of me when I was little after I had gotten into the flour bin (no, they're not the same overalls that Heidi is wearing, but that is interesting that we were both wearing overalls!).

the last time I did karaoke

Tonight we had a ward activity. It was a potluck followed by dessert and karaoke. It brought back memories of the last (and only) time I tried karaoke.

That was also a ward activity. My sister Melissa and I were teenagers, but I can't remember how old we were. We are pretty decent singers, but I wasn't really planning on singing that evening--I wasn't a big fan of being silly in public, I think, although if you got me in the right mood I could be quite silly, much to Melissa's embarrassment.

Well, somebody handed us the list of songs, and we looked through, curious to see which ones were even an option. It seemed like most of the songs people were singing were country songs, and we pretty much hated country music (I've since been converted somewhat--please don't disown me, Melissa). So we wanted to hear people sing some better songs. We were particularly partial to oldies.

Then we noticed that the song "You Are So Beautiful" was on the list. And one of us (I think it was me, but I'm not really sure) thought it would be really cool if we were to get up and sing the song and dedicate it to our mom. We figured it would make her feel good.

So we went up to the stage and waited in line and then told whoever was in charge that we wanted to sing "You Are So Beautiful." At the microphone we announced that we were dedicating our performance to our mom.

Like I said, we were pretty decent singers. We weren't expecting to sound like we were tone deaf. We were good at singing the right pitch and getting the intervals right.

But we couldn't, for the life of us, figure out what the right pitch was. The TV screen was flashing the words we were supposed to sing, but the accompaniment was different enough from the melody that I think we barely recognized it. So we didn't even sing the first couple of lines. Then I lamely leaned forward into the microphone and just said the words "You are so beautiful" in the right rhythm, but that sounded dumb. But it was karaoke, and we had to stand there and fumble through it and try to sing even though we couldn't figure out what notes we were supposed to be singing. At one point we figured it out and it sounded pretty good, but then we lost it again. That was a really long couple of minutes.

I'm not sure what our mom thought. She didn't say anything.

Later on, we got a chance to redeem ourselves. The activity was starting to end, and somebody remarked that our dad had never gotten up to sing and convinced him to choose a song. Melissa and I joined him. He chose "New York, New York." Dad has a really great singing voice. He did an awesome job. I think people asked him to do another song after that. And since Melissa and I were singing with him, we felt a little better about it all.

And that is why I do not sing karaoke. It's not just the fear of embarrassment. It's that if it's not going well, you have to keep being embarrassed until the song is over, standing all alone in front of a bunch of people. Some people don't mind that. I can't handle it.

Kids do not think rationally.

I've been thinking about something since yesterday. I realized that I can't always expect to be able to talk my kids into making the mature choice. It's something I probably already knew, but I just need to remember that a little more often.

We had gone outside for a walk. Heidi was in the double stroller and Kevin had opted to walk. We walked around Baity Hill and then Kevin wanted to walk up to the business school and go down the elevator. (We have elevators in all the buildings here, but I guess there's something special about that one, rickety as it is.) I showed him the fountains, which he thought were pretty wonderful, and then we walked under the flags (always very exciting to Kevin), and then we went down the elevator and then back up again. We had a really nice time.

On the way back, Kevin was moving a lot more slowly because he was tired. He hadn't taken a nap that day, either. He kept getting distracted and it was taking forever to get home. I knew that we were both hungry and that things would go a lot faster if I could just convince him to get into the stroller. But I didn't want to deal with the battle that is often involved in getting him in the stroller when he wants to be out exploring. So I procrastinated it and I tried to convince him to decide to get into the stroller by asking him every thirty seconds if he wanted to get in the stroller.

Then I realized something. Two-year-olds are not very rational. He was exhausted and wanted to ride in the stroller, but he was having a hard time making the mature choice because he was also so interested in everything around him. I had to be the one to just make the choice to put him in the stroller, because he wasn't going to do it himself. So I did, and lo and behold, he didn't even put up a fuss. It was what he had really wanted all along, but he was too distracted to make the reasonable choice.

So that's where I come in. And that's one of the challenges of motherhood. I've had to learn that even though he's yelling and screaming that he doesn't want to go to bed, sometimes I have to just put him in bed anyway because he's tired and he's not going to make that choice himself. I've had to learn that even though I'm dragging him kicking and flailing from the playground, I can't take it personally because he can't choose to go in to dinner when he's having fun at the playground. You can't expect a child to think like an adult. You can't always attempt to reason with them and convince them to make the right choice on their own. So a lot of the time I just have to make the call without expecting that my kids will see things logically--in fact, it's to be expected that a lot of the time they'll object. And I have to do it anyway.

That is one of the most exhausting parts of being a mother.

I've been thinking a lot this semester about the importance of having a righteous society. This is largely because I've been studying a lot of dysfunctional societies in my history class. What has struck me again and again is that the cultures that have the most trouble are usually the ones that condone immorality, greed, selfishness, laziness, and so on. A recent example that I have encountered is sex slavery in Thailand, which I learned about while reading the book Disposable People. Prostitution is extremely prevalent in Thailand. It's part of the culture. We are familiar with men going out and drinking to celebrate, but in Thailand after getting drunk the men will also go find a brothel. Few of them even feel bad about it. It's illegal, but the police help the brothel owners because the owners bribe them. Another striking problem is that parents commonly sell their daughters into sex slavery so that they can get enough money to buy a television or other luxury. Can you imagine selling your child for something as cheap as a TV? You can donate lots of money to helping stop sex slavery in Thailand, but until these flaws in the society are overcome, I doubt that sex slavery will disappear there. The fundamental problem is that a large portion of the population has no problem being immoral, dishonest, greedy, and without natural affection. If those problems are overcome, a lot of their other problems will also disappear.

So what it comes down to is that we need good missionaries to spread the light of the gospel. The gospel of Jesus Christ will do more to improve conditions in a society than any amount of money or economic reform or government regulation. And this is why it is so important that we avoid moral decay in our own society. It doesn't just affect that one person. The more a people becomes immoral, the more everyone suffers. It seems that lately a lot of people are saying that they should be free to make their own choices when it comes to morality, without being judged. But ultimately this will lead to everyone losing their liberty, because an immoral and wicked society is a scary place to live.

things that went through my head today

Evenings like today are pretty effective birth control. The thought of more little Kevins is about more than I can bear!

Not that any of our children will survive him. Do you know how many times I put him in time out today for hitting/pushing/pulling hair/pinching/whacking with toys? Me neither. I lost count.

And to top it all off, as I left him in his bed and turned off the light, he was singing I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus. Could have fooled me. But how can you not forgive a child when he's singing that song so sweetly?

I want to throw away all our stuff. All of it. I'm sick and tired of tripping over it and climbing all over it. Most of all, I'm tired of looking at it.

But now that Kevin's in bed, I'm too tired.

I made chicken, potatoes, and sweet potato fries for dinner. I was sure Kevin wouldn't eat any of it because by the time dinner was ready he had coerced me into making him four pieces of cinnamon toast and a bowl of applesauce, all of which he ate. Nope, he also ate a handful of sweet potato fries and some chicken.

I am often faced with two choices. One is to have something besides cereal for dinner and a clean house, but to have screaming monkeys flying everywhere and be miserable. The other is to spend the evenings outside and come home to a train wreck and something fast and not-so-exciting for dinner.

In other words, I opted to clean the house and have a good dinner today, and Kevin went stark raving mad.

Oh, by the way, he also thought ripping up The Real Mother Goose would be a better use of his time than taking a nap. That was what made me decide to move all his toys into the living room, which meant the crib had to go in his bedroom, which means our walk-in closet is going to be Heidi's bedroom. And all of this shuffling is most likely the reason Kevin went nuts. All those changes are way too stimulating for a tired little boy.

I think it would have been better to put him in front of a TV and have him watch for two hours than to treat him the way I did today.

I'm still fuming. But tomorrow is another day. And he does like sitting on my lap at the piano and singing primary songs, so that's something. He also gives sweet kisses to Heidi.

Heidi is eating second dinner and rubbing bread on her ears.

my ripped pants story

It was 2006. A couple of months before, I had graduated from high school. My family was in the process of moving 19 years of stuff from Idaho to Utah, and my sister Michelle and I had decided to attend Girl's Camp in Idaho with our stake. Michelle went because she was not exactly excited about the move and she wanted to treasure as much time as she could with her old friends. I went because when the stake young women's leaders had made an announcement about Girl's Camp earlier in the year, I had had an impression that I needed to go even though I had already graduated from high school and wasn't attending Young Women's anymore (I varied between going to Relief Society with my mom in the new Utah ward and going to singles wards with my friend Morgan Price in Idaho).

This was my second time being a YCL (Youth Camp Leader). The YCLs are the oldest of the Young Women and take on much of the leadership responsibilities for Girl's Camp. We went a day early to get things set up for the rest of the Young Women. In the morning of the second day, before the rest of the Young Women arrived, the tradition was for the YCLs to go rafting.

Before I went to camp, I was aware that we were going on this rafting trip, and I had been adequately informed of what clothing would be appropriate for rafting. We were encouraged to wear swim suits and shorts or at least light and breathable clothing that wouldn't make us paralyzed once we got wet, as would inevitably happen.

At this point I should explain that I am quite fair-skinned. And being a self-conscious 18-year-old, I was always nervous about exposing my very white legs. I owned a swimsuit and also a pair of swim shorts that would have been very appropriate for this activity, but if I were to wear this outfit I would be exposing my white legs to the world. The horror!

With respect to pants, my wardrobe consisted of jeans and a nice pair of black pants with pinstripes. Obviously the nice pair of pants was not suitable. Jeans would slightly restrict my movement, but they had the advantage of covering my legs. So I made the decision that it would be better to go rafting wearing an old pair of jeans than to wear a swimsuit and shorts and humiliate myself by showing my white legs. I know, it was great logic.

The morning arrived. I pulled my old pair of jeans out of my duffel bag and got dressed. Hmmm. They were a little tight. I hadn't worn this pair for over a year. Oh, well. It would work.

We went to the place where the rafts had been placed in the water, and everybody put on life jackets and got ready to climb into the rafts. I was starting to feel slightly embarrassed that I had opted for jeans because nobody else was wearing jeans. I sensed that some people felt sorry for me and were considering offering to loan me something better to wear, but there wouldn't have been anywhere to change anyway.

I was one of the last people to get into a raft. It was a bit of a stretch to climb over the side, especially in my old jeans. As I threw one leg over the side of the raft, I thought I heard a horrible sound that resembled ripping cloth. As I sat down in the raft, my suspicions were confirmed: There was a tear in my jeans that ran along the zipper and down my left leg. I stared helplessly at my lap. All the cars had already left to go down the river to where they would meet us, and all I had with me was the t-shirt and jeans I was wearing and a tube of chapstick in my pocket. I had nothing that I could use to cover the huge tear in my jeans, and my leg and underwear were exposed through the rip.

Ripped pants are one of the top ten most embarrassing things that can happen to a person. Everybody knows that. I couldn't tell anybody what had happened because that would be too embarrassing. But a leader had seen, and she found another girl who was wearing a t-shirt over her swimsuit who could loan her shirt to me. So I rode down the river wearing ripped pants covered by the t-shirt in my lap. I did enjoy myself, but the enjoyment was dampened by the fact that I was wearing soggy jeans with a huge rip in front and that I had to focus on that t-shirt in my lap to make sure the rip wasn't exposed. I thought over and over again how silly I had been to worry about people seeing my white legs. Now I was in an even more ridiculous situation.

We stopped near some high rocks at one point, and most of the girls got out to jump off the rocks into the water. I stayed put, desperately holding that t-shirt around my legs. Several people, unaware of my plight, urged me to try jumping off the rocks, but I shook my head. I have no idea why I didn't explain that my pants were ripped and ask if anyone could loan me some shorts or something!

After a couple of hours, I knew that we were nearing the end of the rafting trip, and I was faced with a new worry: getting out of the raft without exposing myself to the world. When we arrived, I struggled out of the raft, clutching the t-shirt against my legs with one arm as best I could. Then I darted to the van that held my backpack and pulled out my towel, which I wrapped around my waist. I couldn't sit down anywhere because the towel would come unwrapped, so I walked around and felt quite foolish and forlorn. Somehow I managed to eat lunch one-handed because I didn't want the towel to slip off and expose me. I could barely concentrate on responding when people said things to me because I was so embarrassed.

The irony was not lost on me. I had been so worried about being embarrassed about my white legs that I had decided it would be better to wear jeans in a situation where a swimsuit and shorts were more appropriate, and now the consequence was even more embarrassing. Yet even then I hadn't learned my lesson because I was too embarrassed to explain to somebody that it would be really helpful if I could borrow some pants or shorts from someone.

One leader was driving back to our camp a little earlier than everyone else and had space for me. I jumped at the opportunity. Somehow I struggled into the back seat of her van with the towel firmly held around my waist with one hand and my backpack in the other. The van had three seats in the middle, and I wasn't sure how I would get out again without throwing the towel off, but I focused on the prospect of the two clean pairs of jeans in my tent that I knew actually fit me.

I half fell out of the van when we got back to camp. But since I was one of the first girls back, there was still plenty of hot water left. I got a nice warm shower, and with it I washed away the embarrassment and stress of the morning. With a clean pair of pants, I put on new confidence. It was like a fresh start. The embarrassment of the morning no longer plagued me. In fact, I was very confident the rest of the week and had a wonderful, testimony-building time, especially as I bonded with my sister.

I learned an important lesson that day about the absurdity of worrying what other people will think about something as trivial as how pale my legs are. I have eventually come to the point where I appreciate my fair skin as a result of my heritage and would prefer not to be tan, although I am still self-conscious sometimes.

When I was 41.5 weeks pregnant with Heidi, I went to church without nylons--despite the fact that I had not shaved my legs (I couldn't reach them). Yes, I was slightly worried about someone noticing, but I declared to Ryan, "Anyone who's offended by my white, hairy legs can tie a beach ball around their waist and then try to shave and struggle nylons over the beach ball." It made a lot more sense to go without nylons than to endure the pain of them cutting into my belly just to cover up my legs and avoid embarrassment.

You see? I'm learning.

You can learn about the LDS church's Young Women program here (towards the end of the page) and the Girl's Camp program here. Here is the lds.org page for youth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

John Rosemond on Day Care vs. Parent Care

A working mother is generally viewed as more "liberated" than a mother who opts to provide home care for her children. As a result, a significant number of people will view my remarks as downright regressive, tantamount to suggesting that "a woman's place is in the home." I will, no doubt, be accused of being criminally unenlightened.

The fact is, I am as much for women achieving self-fulfillment as I am for men. I believe that the best parents are, in fact, self-fulfilled. True self-fulfillment, however, is a mature quality. It is not reckless, impulsive, or driven by self-centeredness. A truly self-fulfilled individual does not disregard the needs of others or do things at anyone else's expense. Self-fulfillment, in other words, is not equivalent to self-gratification. In fact, a defining feature of maturity is the ability to postpone self-gratification. If, therefore, in order to provide at-home care for a young child, a parent or parents must postpone self-gratification, then so be it. More than anything else, children need parents who are able to make mature, responsible decisions.

--John Rosemond, Making the "Terrible" Twos Terrific!, p. 162

Today we went to a park we've never visited before, and I think we've found a new favorite park. It's completely fenced in and was perfect for Kevin's age. There's even a chicken coop in someone's yard on the other side of the fence. Our friends the McBrides were there. Kevin and their daughter Lexi play really well together, so that was really great.

I just got frustrated when a ton of other kids arrived for a birthday party. Kevin tried to play with some kids who had brought some shovels and pails to play in the sand, but they were reluctant to share their shovels and Kevin ended up throwing sand in a little boy's face. As I pulled him away, telling him not to throw sand, the kids were saying, "That kid's being mean." I don't know why it hurt me so much to hear that. Kevin isn't a mean kid, he's just an active 2-year-old boy who is still learning how to play with other kids. So it hurt to see other children labeling Kevin like that. Later on we went back to try again, and the kids were getting frustrated with Kevin because he kept messing up their little projects. Their mom was telling Kevin to use his words and ask if he could play with them. I know Kevin looks like a four-year-old, but he's not. He can't say something as complicated as "Hi, my name is Kevin. Can I play with you? Can I help you make a chocolate chip cake in the sand?" I'm just getting really tired of dealing with all of these social interaction issues. I know it's just hard because Kevin is still learning, but he just doesn't get it, and it's frustrating. And I admit that part of it is that I'm afraid it reflects badly on me. I'm not sitting here at home fine-tuning Kevin's hitting and pushing techniques, you know. I'm doing my best to teach him to be nice.

lessons learned from couponing (and giving it up)

Lessons I Learned from Couponing

• Have an idea of what your maximum price is for items. I quickly realized that not all deals were good deals with a coupon. I started keeping a mental note of what I considered to be a good price for certain things, and when a good sale came up I would buy a lot of that item. That way when I wanted or needed it, I had it in my pantry and I didn't have to pay full price for it. It saved us money because even though we were mostly using the same items, we were paying less to buy those things. 
• Match sales and coupons. Most coupons by themselves weren't very good deals, but if I waited for a good sale and used the coupons then, the prices could be quite good.
• Check your receipts. Sometimes items don't ring up at the right price, and sometimes the checker punches in the wrong price per pound for produce. Sometimes customer service has given me the item for free because of the mistake. Other times it's a few dollars. But that adds up! However, I will admit that sometimes by the time I've loaded the kids and all the food into the car and realized there was a mistake, it's not worth it to me to go back in just for 50 cents.
• Grocery shopping goes much faster if you make a list. I keep a running grocery list on my fridge and add to it throughout the week as I run low on things. Then stick to the list. It really helps me to have a list because I don't feel as tempted to buy things that aren't on the list. If I just go without a list then I am very susceptible to buying things I wasn't planning to buy and that I don't really need. I do keep an open mind in case there are Manager's Specials.
• A lot of grocery stores will mark down items that were slightly damaged in shipping or that they ordered too much of. There are certain places in the store where they tend to put those items. Know the hot spots and briefly check them when you go to the store. A good time to get good deals on candy is right after Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, or Christmas when the store is trying to get rid of the extra holiday candy.
• If you want to avoid expensive splurges on treats, don't go grocery shopping hungry, and don't bring your kids if you know they'll try to get you to buy them a treat.
• Go grocery shopping once a week. Plan your weekly menu before you go so that you can make sure to buy everything you need, and base your menu on what you already have or what is on sale that week. Even if you don't use coupons, you can save money by watching the sales ads.
• Avoid making frequent trips for just one item. Every time you go to the store increases your chances of splurging on something--and you lose all that time spent driving to and from the store. (This one actually isn't that hard for me because for some reason grocery shopping always seems like such an ordeal that I avoid going for as long as I can.)

Lessons I Learned from Quitting Couponing

• My time is valuable. One of the main reasons I stopped getting the Sunday paper was because I always dreaded clipping my coupons because it took so much time--even with the help of The Grocery Game. I know there are some things that I could still save a lot of money on using coupons, especially cereal, but I also value my time, and I'd rather have that time to do things that are more important to me. There was also always the stress of making sure I remembered all my coupons, keeping a tight hold on them throughout the shopping trip, and making sure they scanned right. I may start using coupons again after I'm done with school, but if I do I'm going to have to come up with a better system that doesn't take so much time. For now I still look at the weekly ad for the grocery store and add good deals to my grocery lists. It really only takes me about five minutes to do that.
• Did I mention my time is valuable? On a similar vein, I realized that going to extremes to save money isn't always worth it to me. For a while I was washing ziploc bags and setting them out to dry so that I could reuse them. It was a mess. The piles of plastic bags were driving me nuts, and I couldn't keep track of them. I know it works for some people, but I have a hard enough time keeping up with the dishes. Adding plastic bags just didn't work for me. So, yes, maybe I could save some money by washing plastic bags, but that ten cents isn't worth the stress for me. I do have a lot of plastic glad containers that go in the dishwasher just fine, so I use those instead of plastic bags whenever I can.
• I need to come up with a more organized system for organizing our food, at least some of it. After I quit couponing I went through our pantry and realized that I had gone way overboard stocking up on salad dressing (and other items too). I had a mindset that every time salad dressing went on sale for a certain price, I would buy a couple of bottles. So when I went through the pantry I realized several of the bottles were past their expiration dates. My thought is that I need to keep a spreadsheet or list that tells how much of certain things I need to keep in stock--i.e. four bottles of salad dressing, three bottles of oil, eight boxes of Cheerios, and so on. If I already have enough of that item, then I don't need to buy five more when they're on sale.
• On a similar vein, I've come to realize that food storage can be clutter. I do try to keep a pretty good supply of food, but at the same time stepping around food storage stresses me out. In a different season of our lives, we will be able to store more food.
• It's easy to get a lot of unhealthy food with coupons. I had quite a bit of self-discipline in that area, but after I quit couponing I did feel like we had a lot of processed food to work our way through. I guess part of the problem was that it would be on sale for cheap, so I would buy it, but then we would never eat it because I don't cook that stuff very much. If I were to start couponing again I would have to figure out a way to moderate how much of that we get. I do like to keep a few boxes of hamburger helper or some cans of soup on hand for dinner emergencies (which, by the way, aren't happening as much lately since I've been using my menu!), but I don't need to keep very much--and to be honest, a lot of the time it takes just as much time to make food from scratch as it does to make the pre-packaged version. I do feel that couponing can still be helpful even if you do mostly homemade foods. I was able to get things like cereal, pasta, canned fruit and vegetables, frozen vegetables, and also non-food items like shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, and toothbrushes for good prices and save a lot of money with coupons.

playing in the closet

random thoughts

I think subconsciously I'm thinking that if I could just get organized enough then the house would clean itself.

I think the internet is making people stupider while tricking them into thinking they are more informed.

We are swimming in chairs. Six chairs that belong to our table, two more that we acquired before getting the table, one high chair, and one rocking chair.

Actually, we're just swimming in stuff. I don't understand why we have so much stuff. When we moved here we were awed at the amount of space we now had.

Last Sunday when we were talking to Ryan's parents, Ryan told them we were slowly digging our way out of the drifts. I was afraid he was talking about how messy the house was. Thank goodness he was actually talking about the pollen. "Drifts" is right. But the flowers are lovely.

Our neighbor, who is from Jordan (the country), told me, "I think you have lose weight from your body." It made my day.

There was a pair of jeans that I bought without trying them on. At home I realized they were too small. But then I never got around to taking them back, and I decided to try them on again, and now they fit. That was exciting. They're skinny jeans, too. I swore I would never wear skinny jeans, and now I am.

Sometimes I'm secretly grateful when Kevin breaks things that I was already thinking about getting rid of. It's nice to have the decision taken care of.

I'm grateful I am not Muslim. We Latter-Day Saints may mistake our culture for doctrine sometimes, but from my history class I am learning that in many Islamic cultures that is done to a much greater degree. In particular, women are repressed and people justify it by saying it's backed by the Qu'ran, which is debatable.

some more things Kevin's been saying

"Come here." (while beckoning to Heidi)

"Funny!"

"Um, Ryan?"

"Ryan, dinner ready!"

One morning while I was busy doing something else, Kevin was pushing Heidi's high chair over to the front door and standing on the chair to unbolt the door. I was just a few feet away in the kitchen, so when I heard him get off the high chair I would just go over and rebolt the door so he couldn't run off somewhere. He got progressively angrier with me each time I did it, and each time he unbolted the door he would say to me, "Okay. Don't touch it!" One time after I bolted the door again he said, "Okay, a-listen. Pie-oup!" (Okay, you didn't listen. Time out!) Then he grabbed my legs to take me to time out.

"Oh, a-got!" (Oh, I forgot!)

" 'Member?" (Remember?)

"Ah-yeah? Ah-yeah!" (Oh, yeah.)

"I want it this."

He has been singing Away in a Manger, I am a Child of God, The Wheels on the Bus, and the ABCs. We have had some lovely moments this week playing the piano and singing primary songs. I'm glad that he's starting to learn some primary songs.

"DON'T SCREAM!!"

He likes to call "Bangka" (Grandpa Tanner).

He's been talking about baptism a lot lately. Nursery lesson?

Here's a video where he was talking about Jesus being baptized (inspired by the picture on the Preach My Gospel book).



I couldn't understand everything he was saying, but here's what I could understand: "Jesus crying. Happy. Jesus crying. Oh, no. Oh, no. All wet. Is Jesus sad? He's sad. He's happy. Where's Jesus?"

He's been asking to watch movies of spiders a lot lately. I'm glad he wants to watch something somewhat educational, but it's making me a little paranoid about Brown Recluses and Black Widows. Ryan is redirecting him to BBC Life videos.

If he wants to go see something, he says he wants to say hi to it, as in "say hi lawnmower," or "say hi Lexi."

He has this funny new laugh. It has a forced sound and goes, "Uh uh uh!"

"Piece . . . of . . . bread?" "Eggs for lunch? I want to break it." He also likes to make his own toast and scrambled eggs, with help--or rather, he thinks he can do it by himself, but I help him because he isn't actually allowed to use the stove and cut slices of bread. You know, safety and all that stuff.

"Two hands?"

"BAH-na-na?" That's how he pronounces banana. He likes to peel them. The problem is that he doesn't eat them.

Heidi at 9 months

Heidi is nine months old now!

She is 27 inches and about 16 pounds, which is 25th percentile for both.

Heidi can stand by herself for several seconds--if she wants to.

Heidi hits her head all the time.

Heidi likes to climb. She likes to climb into her stroller and stand in the seat. There's a big tote full of blankets that is next to Kevin's bed and the window, and she likes to push things over to the tote and use them to climb in. Then she can look out the window or climb through the bunk bed ladder to play on Kevin's bed. I think she's pretty smart!

(People who read my blog by email, please come to this post if you want to watch the videos!)



I'm concerned Heidi won't make it to her first birthday if she doesn't figure out how to walk and slide backwards off of things after she's climbed on them. I do my best to keep her safe, but she gets herself into the craziest predicaments and has no problem diving off of things.

She's so clingy lately and gets really upset when strangers try to hold her. A lot of the time she cries even if I put her down on the floor so I can to do something. I think sometimes it's boredom.

I'm really trying to increase the amount of people food she eats. I know an underlying reason for her clinginess is often that she's hungry for something more substantial. It's just another thing I have to fit into the routine, so I have to make it into a habit. I'm working on giving her breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the same time as Kevin. Heidi loves to feed herself and knocks the spoon out of my hands if I try to feed her with one. I would say she gets about 75-80% of finger food into her mouth successfully. She's really good at picking things up with her pointer finger and thumb. I'm grateful that she'll eat bananas, because they're cheap and healthy. Kevin can't stand them.

Heidi says Mama, Dada, and Baba, and she will often copy you if you say one of those to her, or if you blow raspberries.

She recently figured out how to clap, and is so delighted with this new and valuable skill.





She likes to press keys on our computers. She also enjoys getting into the fridge, the garbage, and the bathroom. Kevin is training her well. Sigh.

Heidi is become rather wild. She no longer sits quietly in someone's lap. I keep commenting to Ryan that changing her diaper or dressing her is like dressing a cat--claws and all. She loves to move and wiggle and grab things. One of her new favorite pastimes is opening drawers and throwing all their contents onto the floor. It's kind of frustrating, but at the same time she is so fun to be around, and she is so enjoying all the new things that she can do.

Kevin and I have to read books up on his bed so that Heidi doesn't interfere. It's not that we don't want her around, it's just that she likes to crawl all over the books and rip and grab the pages, and Kevin gets frustrated because he likes to read books for a long time. I'm starting to try to read more books to Heidi, though. We read Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel the other day, and she thought it was fun.

hot glue strings

I've had a little bit of spare time to try some of the sewing/craft projects that I've pinned on Pinterest. (Click the links to see the tutorials I used.)

A month or two ago I used some scraps leftover from the changing pads to make a grocery bag holder. It's been nice to have all those grocery bags in a smaller space and more accessible. It also gives me an idea of when I need to stop collecting grocery bags. I usually use reusable bags, but I do like to have some around--they're useful as little trash bags, for putting stinky disposable diapers in before I throw them away, or for holding cloth diapers I changed away from home. I think this would be a very good project for someone who is learning to sew, because it's lots of straight lines and then elastic (in a casing) at the top and bottom.

Felt flower. (Still cute, but not my favorite. I'm going to try it again with something other than felt so it's not so bulky.) I also made another one using this tutorial. I haven't decided what to do with it. I might use it to pin to my own shirts

Baby shoes. (Way too small for Heidi--I'm going to have to try to mess with the pattern so I can make some that fit her. But they were a cute present for a friend who's having a baby soon!)

Silk flower. I was so pleased with how this one turned out!

All of these projects were very cheap because they didn't require very much fabric. I bought a huge package of assorted buttons too. Many thanks to my mom for the hot glue gun, which made most of these projects possible!