North Carolina Biological Reserve

On Labor Day we went to the North Carolina Biological Reserve. It was a very pretty ~2 mile loop. The kids enjoyed trying out the binoculars and they made it the whole way (not that they had much choice), although Heidi was complaining that she was very tired at the end.

Ryan balanced the camera on a post and used the timer feature so we could get a family picture!

some photos

Kevin seems to be enjoying first grade.

Heidi and Ann Marie sometimes have a lovely time playing together.

Heidi really wanted to have painted nails. Unfortunately she only had watercolors and markers, and she has used both (the Crayola Ultra-washable markers really do wash off easily, by the way). I finally got some cheap nail polish for her, and she was thrilled and did a good job of waiting for it to dry the first time I painted her nails.

Kevin and Heidi had a thing for sleeping on the floor for a couple of days.

Next week our kids are participating in the Primary program at church, and they came home with invitations to give to friends. Kevin was very excited about it and wanted to go straight to a friend's house to invite him. The friend wasn't home, so Kevin wanted to invite a different friend instead. When he knocked on the friend's house he handed the invitation to the friend and started trying to explain, but the friend and his parents made it very clear that they didn't want to come to our church because they are Christians, and they said that other people from our church had gotten in their face and they didn't want to hear anything about it. It was probably the most awkward missionary experience I ever had and I came home feeling upset and wishing we hadn't even tried, especially because these people are our neighbors and we see them all the time.

But then I came home and read an entry in my journal in which I recorded some revelation I received in the temple about a year ago. At the time I was told by the Spirit that the most important thing with Kevin is to help him develop his testimony and prepare him for his mission. And now even though it was really awkward I think I am glad that this happened this afternoon because it is important for Kevin to gain experience trying to share the gospel and to know that sometimes people aren't interested. What a blessing it was that I recorded my temple experience a year ago so that I could look back on that memory now and see things in the right perspective.

Summer break is over.

Well, I didn't know how I was going to make it through this summer, but I did. I was even pretty nice to the kids a lot of the time.

I had grand plans to get the kids doing chores and picking up the toys every day, which worked for a while, but at some point I got tired of the battle and the way it made me yell so much. I seriously don't understand why picking up toys is so hard for my kids. Kevin still whines and complains about it, although he's gotten better, but the instant I suggest it's time to clean up Heidi turns into a puddle of goo and starts whining that she's tired. I think it's partly a scheme to get out of helping and partly some kind of anxiety, but whatever it is, getting her to help clean up is almost always a nightmare, and it almost always results in her screaming for around 20 minutes. So we're still working on it, but sometimes it just seems easier to do it myself rather than deal with it all, you know? I think we're going to try having a Saturday chore chart because even though the kids hate picking up toys they still love doing chores.

I think we got in four or five hikes. In August it got hot and I preferred sitting on the bench at the playground to wearing the baby on my back and getting hot, so the hike a week plan died out. But I've decided not to feel bad about it because if I hadn't made the goal we wouldn't have done any hikes. Sometimes it's better to be ambitious and fall short than to not bother aiming.

We did not end up going camping like I was hoping. I think it's more realistic to go in the fall when the temperatures go down so that we can go on a long hike in the morning without burning up.

Kevin had swimming lessons twice a week all summer. The first six weeks were a waste of time. They made him go to the preschool classes because he wasn't six years old yet, so he was in a class with a bunch of four-year-olds doing activities to get comfortable in the water instead of learning strokes. During the last three weeks he was in the older age group and it was a lot better. They did all the things I wanted him to be learning all summer. It was a big pain to have to chase the girls around while Kevin was swimming, and then afterwards Kevin always ignored me when I told him to get out, but he did improve. I just wish the whole summer could have been like the last three weeks when he was finally learning something. It always made me laugh when he told me how exhausted he was because they made him swim all the way across the pool.

Other than that, we went to lots of park days, watched a lot of movies, and read a lot of books and got summer reading prizes. Kevin's reading improved a lot over the summer. I discovered the Elephant and Piggy books and he devoured them. We also tried a few I Can Read It Myself books, which are really good, but the hard thing is that they're very long for Kevin.

Kevin is back in school now and is doing pretty well. He still has a hard time focusing on his independent work, but his teacher seems really nice and has been open to my suggestions for things to help Kevin deal with his SPD. Heidi and I will be doing a preschool coop again this year with a focus on getting ready for kindergarten, so we'll see how that goes.

With Kevin in school I am trying to start practicing the piano consistently again. I invested a lot of money this year to get the piano tuned and fixed (it had three broken keys and three sticky keys), so I realized I need to practice so I can get my money's worth and so I don't keep backsliding. Right now I'm doing scales, Hanon, a Sonatina album, a hymn, and a piece from my senior recital. I'm trying to find a technique book and a new piano piece to work on long-term. Plus ward choir is starting again soon, so I will have choir music to practice too. If I do it after Kevin goes to school but while Ryan is still home I can usually get some good practice in.

Ann Marie in August

We got home from a library trip and Ann Marie immediately joined the kids in browsing the big stack of books. She's become a lot more interested in reading books in the past couple of months. She likes to have one book to hold and play with while we read another book aloud to her. A favorite is Moo, Baa, La La La. The Sandra Boynton books really have a special charm for the 1-2 year old crowd.

Ann Marie loves carrying bags around these days, but it's very important that the bags have stuff inside, so of course my purse is her favorite because all the receipts are so much fun.

She's started saying words and meaning them over the summer. The words she says are: Mama, Dada, hot!!, milk, book, ball, dog, woof, moo, baa, neigh, fish, peek-a-boo, uh-oh, and probably some others. She'll often copy you if you tell her to say something.

She's developed a blood-curdling scream and uses it liberally whenever she's even mildly upset or when she's excited about anything. She's transformed from a very mellow baby to a little spit-fire.

Everyone seems amazed at what she can do. She started walking at 13.5 months (mid-July) and a week after her first steps she was fully converted from crawling to walking. She can go both up and down stairs confidently and she can also climb onto the table, which is a huge pain. Nothing better than turning to find your toddler sitting on the table with watermelon or someone's soggy unfinished cereal spilled down the front of the clothes you just put on her. She's also starting to figure out how to pull chairs away from the table, so a lot of the time I'm starting to have to keep the chairs on their sides. She can climb onto playground equipment pretty easily, which of course is fun for her but a little scary for the ones that are tall. She gets into everything and she's really busy, but how can I be mad when she looks at me with these sparkly eyes?

July pictures

Ann Marie finally started walking in the middle of July. After a week walking was her preferred mode of getting around, and it didn't take long for her to get very good at it. It's always fun to see babies when they are just learning to walk. They're always so proud of themselves for figuring it out.

Here is a very forlorn-looking Heidi hoping that we won't send her back to bed.

another Pinterest rant

Every once in a while I see posts about people who cried themselves to sleep because they saw a friend's Pinterest boards and knew they could never do all the things the person had pinned on Pinterest. I know I've said this before, but I think this is really odd because Pinterest is not there to show off all the things you have done. Pinterest is intended to be a visual way to find and keep track of ideas. If someone has a craft board, the pins there are most likely things that the person wants to remember so she can try them later. Today I decided to look through my pins and figure out how many of my pins are things I actually tried or used. Here are my results:

Recipes 36/82 (44%)

Recipes I Tried and Loved: 32/32 (100%)

Desserts: 11/94 (12%)

Breakfasts 15/39 (38%)

Snacks: 12/30 (40%)

Soup: 13/21 (62%)

Pasta: 16/41 (39%)

Bread: 7/16 (44%)

Things I want to Make 37/93 (40%)

Joy school: 13/37 (Although I've deleted some activities that I already used and didn't plan to use again) (35%)

To do with the kids: ~36/159 (23%)

To make for Me: 6/25 (24%)

Hair: 23/29 (79%) (Most of these pins were haircut ideas--I haven't tried most of the hair-do ideas.)

Three Month Supply: 11/25 (hard to quantify this one because I made this Pinterest Board to share for a RS class, so I didn't actually intend to do several of the pins) (44%)

Nifty Ideas: 10/43 (23%)

Family Home Evening: 1/4 (25%)

Clothes: 1/1 (This board had more pins, mostly shoes I was thinking of buying--and two pairs of those were ones I actually did buy--but I deleted the rest.) (100%)

Quiet book: 9/21 (Speaking of the quiet book, it's scattered all over the house and I'm questioning whether I want to keep it anymore, especially considering that the kids have spent less time playing with it than I spent making it.) (43%)

Parks to Check out: 3/6 (50%)

To think about: 9/10 (These are mainly blog posts I wanted to save and come back to later.) (90%)

Handwriting: 3/7 (43%)

Music Videos: 7/7 (100%)

Organization: 1/1 (100%)

SPD: 1/5 (20%)

Genealogy: 1/9 (11%)

Salads and Vegetables: 5/14 (36%)

School lunch: Honestly? 0/10 (0%)

Based on conversations with my friends, I think I actually use my pins more than most people do. Many of my friends have told me they hardly try any of their pins. As you can see, for most categories I haven't even tried half of the activities/recipes. But when I want to try something new I know I can always go to Pinterest and find things that I know I am interested in trying. I don't have to search through recipe blogs or cookbooks. If I am planning a preschool class I can keep track of all my ideas on a Pinterest board and figure out which ones I will actually use. And it's also easy for me to find things that I want to try again because I know what the picture looks like and what board it is on. I'm also very selective about which boards I follow because I don't want to waste time scrolling through things that don't interest me (like interior design).

Bottom line: If you want to use Pinterest, use it in a way that will be helpful to you. And realize that nobody does all the things they pin on Pinterest.

A few years ago I found a pattern for an adorable dress on Pinterest. I printed it off and started sewing it, but before I finished I realized that even though it was supposed to be size 18 months, it wasn't going to fit Heidi for a few years. I also got discouraged with some mistakes I had made and some issues with the pattern, so at some point I stopped working on it and it sat in a drawer until this summer.

Then one day I pulled it out and tried it on Heidi and realized it fit her, so I decided to finish it up. I think the final result is very pretty, and Heidi loves it. This is one of my favorite pieces of fabric that I got from my grandma, and I think I still have enough to make another small dress.

The dress has a square neck and the front has a panel with three buttons on each side. It wasn't the best designed pattern I've ever made (it would probably work a lot better if it had a zipper in back), but I actually really like the way it turned out. It kind of reminds me of a Jane Austen movie.