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.