Metro Light Rail

This past weekend was the grand opening of the Metro Light rail in the valley. It was free all day to ride, and there were lots of activities and food along the way. Austin thought it would be fun to take the kids and let them experience the light rail on day 1... I stayed home. It's a good thing I did, they left pretty early and were gone for FIVE hours! I had to be to work by 1:00, and I never would have made it. They went all the way to Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix and then took city buses to get back home, because the lines were so long. The kids had a lot to say about it when they got back though... they sure did love riding the train! Too bad it doesn't come farther into Mesa because our city was too cheap to purchase the rights. Ah well, our City is too cheap to do anything these days, including taking care of it's employees. But that's another story and another rant for another day.

Christmas 2008

Enjoy some snapshots of our family's holiday!

The stockings were hung...

This is Grace's fourth Christmas, and I finally finished her stocking! Just in time, Christmas is in four days! Here are pictures of the stockings I have made for each of my kids:

A humble Christmas greeting

I've been showcasing my kids talents this Christmas season, and I wanted to add a bit of my own. I tried to upload a video of me playing a few of my favorite Christmas Hymns on the piano, but my internet connection was not cooperating. At least I have the video on my hard drive to show my kids.

I took piano lessons for years growing up, not understanding the financial sacrifice my parents made to provide them until I was older. I'm not as good as I once was, getting rusty from disuse, and my piano is in need of a good tuning. My playing is a humble effort at filling my home with the Christmas Hymns I love. I want my children to know what I spent years learning how to do, and maybe they'll want that for themselves someday. They show occasional interest, but after one lesson they decide it's too much work and want to go back to playing outside or watching TV. That's the other sacrifice my parents made, my mom especially; she sat at my side to make sure I practiced every single day, and that couldn't have been an easy job. My talent is the product of her diligence.

Strangely, Austin and I were typing our blog posts at the same time, and about the same thing. He almost NEVER blogs, how weird is that? I really enjoyed my practicing tonight, and I'm so glad that someone enjoyed listening. I love the piano, and I love music. Thanks for being my audience tonight, Austin.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Tonight while I was folding the mountain of clean laundry that I had created throughout the day, Jill came home from work. She's been home for about 45 minutes now (10:30 PM). As I continued attempting to find the base of Mt. Raiment, Jill started playing the piano. As she played, I began thinking about how much I love it when she plays the piano.

At some point I thought to myself, "this is one my favorite things." The "this" in this sentence refers to listening to Jill playing the piano. Unfortunately, I don't get to listen to her playing very often.

Below is a short list of some my favorite things in life. None of these are "major" things; they are simple little, every day-kind of things. (Well, some of them are not so every day, but I wouldn't mind them being.)

Behold.....a few of my favorite things (in no particular order):

• Listening to Jill play the piano
  - As much as I love to do this, it is 100% out of my control. I would love to have the sound of the piano being played more regularly. But let's face it, how often does Jill have time to sit down and play the piano without at least one kid trying to "help" her play?

• Folding laundry with my wife
  - "Strange thing to have as a favorite," you say? Well, for all you moms out there (and hopefully some dads), you know how easy it is to let the clean laundry you just pulled out of the dryer end up on your bed. And then the next load and the next load and...well you get the idea. Around our house, we tend the follow the paycheck-to-paycheck way of laundry. Sometimes I think we are just cycling our clothes from the dryer to our bodies and back to the washer. I swear, no matter how hard I try, those same garments wind up right back in the laundry baskets again!! What is a parent to do? Well for me, putting the laundry away always has to wait until the evening. Tonight was no exception. Often when Jill gets home from work after 9:30 PM, I am in the bedroom folding clean clothes. I love it when she comes in to help me (especially when I don't even need to ask)...not so much when I still have to do it all myself. The beauty of folding clothes together for all you Doubting Thomases out there is that we get to spend time together. We talk, we laugh, we catch up ("Grace did what today?"). For families like ours where both parents work, sometimes it feels like we are just "ships passing in the night" and we don't get much time together. So all that having been said, yes, I do love to fold laundry with my wife.

• Sound of Jill playing and laughing with the kids
  - Yes, the "simple" things are the best. Jill has a way of getting the kids (especially Ember) to laugh that is just great. She has this [fake] laugh that she can do that makes the kids crack up. I love it!

• Family dinner
  - In this case I am not referring to the times when we just feed the kids out necessity. (You mean you are hungry again?? I just fed you yesterday!) I am referring to the times when we actually get to sit down together at the table and have a meal together. Times when we have don't have to rush out the door to this appointment or that meeting.

• The sound of the kids playing
  - I mean the times when they are happily playing together. No screaming, no crying, no bleeding....you know what I am talking about. The times when you can actually believe the words of the primary song, "...they are so good to me, I want to spend my life with them...". 'Nough said.

• Google
  - My kids have discovered the joy of Google. However, they haven't quite made the distinction between the Internet and Google. They know that in Google you can type a word and magically, virtually unlimited information about that word shows up. Really, though, who hasn't used the verb "Googled" in regular discussion. Personally, I couldn't live without it. (Was there Internet before Google? Man may never know.) I use it everyday. Thank you Google!

• The kids doing what they are supposed to do....on their own
  - There are times, fleeting moments, in every parent's life (or at least I would like to think so) when a child can be found to be doing what the parent asked them to do. Following is an example from my own family: After Ember turned eight year's old and was baptized, I began to impart upon her my wisdom. Okay, not so much. Really, I started a totalitarian rule regarding personal scripture reading. Jill and I have given her an additional hour past Ben and Grace's bedtime. As part of her "extra" 60 minutes, she has to spend 10 minutes doing personal scripture reading. As Jill and I remind her, night after night, there is push back a good deal of the time. However, from time to to time, she just does it with no complaining at all. There are even fewer times when she does it without being asked or reminded. Hallelujah!! I love those times. Maybe by the time she is a teenager, she will actually understand what she is reading.

Okay, I know that was a long post. I'm sorry. But I had to get that off my chest. Believe it or not, I actually had to shorten my list. When I realized how long this is, I had to drop some from this list. Good thing that doesn't mean I have to remove them from my list.

A few more cookies...

We frosted the rest of the cookies this morning... can you tell which ones the kids did and which ones mom did? They're so talented! :)





Grace needed ANOTHER shower after frosting cookies, but the great thing is the next picture... she SAT in the frosting! Several times, apparently, because there is a variety of colors on that cute white underwear.



It was Austin's great idea to wrap the entire table in saran wrap this morning before we started. This is the post-decorating table.


Here's the cleanup... and the best part...


The clean table! Great idea Austin, we'll definitely do that again.


We're thinking that for our next family home evening we're going to wrap the table in saran wrap, make macaroni and cheese, and dump it on the table. The kids will have to eat it with no dishes or utensils, just fingers and faces! We just need some kind of gospel lesson to tie into that... any suggestions?

Christmas Traditions

Our annual family tradition is frosting sugar cookies to take to the neighbors. Thankfully, none of the cookies that Grace 'licked' made it onto any plates but her own. That entire bowl of frosting belonged to her after that. It's a messy, sugary, sprinkly, time consuming tradition that I would never ever skip no matter how crummy I feel.


This is my pretty Santa hat! Grace is admiring it, and hoping it will end up in her tummy.


Ember was the frosting scientist, mixing colors to see what new shade she could come up with. It mostly turned out gray.

Ben looks mischievous, but he was actually the best behaved one who turned out the prettiest cookies.

Just me admiring my posterity having the time of their lives. And checking out the cleaning project to come (oh, the sprinkles on the wood floor...)

Grace looks forward to holding those sprinkle jars all year long, she doesn't even care about the cookies or frosting... just those sprinkles! Her cookies are so loaded down, it's difficult to pick them up without sprinkles ending up across the street.

And DON'T try to take them from her before she's done! That girl is possessive!

This is Grace's ballet class picture, a friend of mine e-mailed it to me. I don't have Ember's class, but I'll get one before her spring concert. My girls love taking ballet from Melendy, she has a private studio built next to her home and charges such reasonable prices. Anybody who has girls and wants more info just ask! It's the greatest thing I've done for my daughters!

Ballet Recital

Ember & Grace did fantastic at their recital today. After trying to scrub the marker off of Grace's face with a Mr. Clean magic eraser yesterday, she had a bit of a rash today. I looked it up online and found out I'm not the first mom to try this, and it's a really bad idea. It causes abrasions from the foam, but at least it's not a chemical burn. Needless to say, I felt awful. I turned her face from green to red! At least it's seasonal... anyway, Grace was the one three year old in her class that stood still during the entire performance from stage fright. There's always one, this year it was mine. She loosened up by the end, and I was really proud of her. Ember is amazing, she's really developed her talent this year and I'm so proud of her. Way to go my dancing girls!

Really? Really?!?!?!

Are you kidding me?! She has a ballet recital tomorrow! Those aren't crayola either, they're my heavy pigment archival quality scrapbooking markers!! AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

Unconventional delivery

I didn't get my newsletter done in time to mail to everyone this year, so here's a captured image of it. If you click on it then it will enlarge enough for you to read the text! You can even print it out if you like, though it will use up a lot of ink. A few who don't have internet access will still be getting one in the mail, but it may be late. Merry Christmas to everyone!

Sweet Gracie

Grace has been into all kinds of mischief lately. If I turn my back for one second, she eats a half a bag of marshmallows, gets into my nail polish and cuticle trimmers, takes all the cushions off the couch and makes a bounce room, eats all the yogurt in the fridge, colors all 10 of her toes with rainbow markers, draws all over her arms and stomach to decorate herself, gets into my makeup and paints herself and the bathroom mirrors and counter, fills up the sink in the bathroom to wash her feet after going to the bathroom, pulls every single book off the book shelf to find the ONE she wants to read, changes her clothes six times a day to figure out which outfit is her favorite (and all those 'outfits' end up in the laundry basket before I know what she's done), pulls out my cross stitching thread because she wants to see if she can do it like me, drags a barstool in to the kitchen to gain access to cupboards she shouldn't be able to reach and starts eating crackers, raisins, and an entire box of fruit snacks, after which she hides all the wrappers under the couch cushions. This is the short list of what I can remember right now.

Then she wakes up in the middle of the night from a scary dream, climbs out of bed to find me sitting on the couch with the lamp on reading a book in the middle of the night, and as she's rubbing her eyes and holding her blankie and teddy bear says, "Mommy I wanna be wif you. I hadda bad dream." She crawls onto my lap and promptly falls back asleep, her head of toussled hair resting on my neck and shoulder, her tiny fingers hugging her bear. She is an angel that I feel humbled to have.

Especially when she's asleep.

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Ember has been asking this year if there really is a Santa Claus! About a week ago she asked me if I still believed in Santa, and then she asked again a few days ago, and last night she asked Austin if HE was Santa, if all parents were Santa. Aaahhh!!!! She's growing up!!!!

Temple Lights

One of our favorite family home evening activities for December is visiting the Temple to see the Christmas lights. The Westwood Honor Choir was singing tonight, and Mr. Harris is still directing! He was my teacher from 1992-1994! The lights were beautiful, and the kids had a great time. Ember said it is one of her favorite traditions. At the end of the night we make hot chocolate with handfuls of marshmallows, then snuggle up for bed.

Jumping Rope

Grace was trying to jump rope while we were out putting up Christmas lights on Monday. Isn't this how everyone started?

Funny Family Moments

These are just some funny pictures I captured over the weekend. First is Grace showing Shelby how to eat her Thanksgiving dinner, and adding some of her "leftovers" to Shelby's plate. Those two girls stuck close to each other all day!

Ember and Ben learned how to play Dad's favorite computer game, Unreal Tournament. It's your basic shoot-em-up game, and they were having a blast. Thankfully the game has a "low gore" setting, so they just laughed when they shot each others' heads off.

Grace went bike riding and Ember helped her get all decked out in her safety gear. This all belongs to Ember, but she's outgrown it and decided Grace needed it more. Those tricycles can get pretty crazy, after all.

Ben and his cousin Chase spent Thanksgiving day reading over 30 Spiderman comic books. They were comparing their favorite scenes, villians, and pictures. They were there for a long time! It hasn't worked since that day, Ben doesn't hold still for more than 15 seconds at a time.

More of Shelby and Grace; they were playing ring around the rosie, and falling down is their favorite part.


Today Grace asked me if she could have a banana for a snack. Then she just sat at the table holding it for a long time. I finally asked her what was wrong and she said it was "too peeled." She tried to re-wrap it in the banana peel, and when that didn't work, she decided to feed it to her nativity toys. She said her friends were hungry.


I love my kids, and all the different ways they make me smile every day.