It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. Part 2

Today was the day of days and I am a free woman. At least for just a few hours each day.

This chickie went to Kindergarten and, boy, did she love it. She keeps reminding me that she had fun at school. Then she reminds me that she needs to go back tomorrow and that I don't need to walk her up to the door. Sheesh.

The most wonderful time of the year is officially here!

Hallelujah!

A Day In The Life.

Monday...We celebrated Baby Rebecca. We were certainly blessed by her sweet angel-ness for 3 months. The funeral was beautiful and Aunt Jennie was a mess as she led the opening hymn! All Rebecca's cousins sang I Feel My Savior's Love and did a terrific job.

Goodbye baby Rebecca, we love you, we miss you, come back soon!

Tuesday...The boys' first day of school. Ruthie had her kindergarten assessment and did a great job impressing.

Wednesday...Pack meeting was that night and Daniel is the Cub Master. He stapled his patches on and they were falling off. See the staples? I was nice enough to sew them on for him. I'm awesome like that.
Thursday...Isaac needed to get ready for his first spelling test. I didn't believe his teacher that there would be a spelling test the first week of school. Hello! So we broke out the Scrabble tiles and had a mini spelling test. He did awesome.

Friday...We have cantelope! And honeydew. But I only got a pic of the cantelope. It's yummy, too. We are so excited to get them ripe now because last year they didn't get ripe until the frost came.

Saturday...The potatoes are in! This is 1/2 of the first half of the small row in the potato rows in the garden. We'll be eating potatoes a lot this fall!

Sunday...What I love about my garden tomatoes is a good tomato sandwich. just 2 slices of bread, mayo, salt and tomato slices. Mmmm. It's better with white bread, but I don't buy white bread. It's no good with homemade bread. So I didn't make any at all this summer. I have been preparing!

Have a terrific week!

Flashback Friday.

Here we are on the first week of school. I hated school. Seriously. But memories always flood in when I send my kiddos to school. So today we are going back to second grade. 1978. Don't I look like I'm enjoying second grade?
There was a boy named Bobby in my class. I thought he was cute. One day, all the girls started chasing him. Well, I'm a girl, so I joined in. Then things started to change. Drastically. In a way that would forever impact my life. I was named as the girl who would kiss Bobby. Kiss?! Are you cootie crazy?! So the boys joined in and they pinned him down. They all called me up to kiss the boy. I did. Yes. I did. It was an adrenaline rush. Whew!

Then we went back to class. One kid was determined to get me into trouble. You see, it was a school rule that girls don't kiss boys. Especially when they are pinned to the ground by the other punk boys. Danny was his name. And he had really thick glasses and was mean! He kept trying to get the teachers attention. Finally the teacher told Danny that she didn't care what he was trying to tell her. I remember looking at my best teacher ever. She just looked at me, smiled, then went on with the teaching. I knew that she knew what I had done. But I was forgiven. I was saved.

Sometimes I wish it were that easy to get away with stupid peer pressured things you do. Not that I have peer pressure now or anything. And I actually enjoy kissing now. And the only pressure to do it is when Ruthie says, "Mom are you going to kiss dad again?" My answer is always, "Why, yes, yes I am."

Cute Quips.

I have been hearing some doozies lately. But my brain has melted into a big puddle of goo. Yes, goo. But I just got a good one that had me in stitches...

Sam is in bed and it's late and he calls for me to come to his room.

"Mom, what are contractions?"

"Well, when a mommy has a baby in her tummy, it's in a sack called a uterus. When the baby gets big and is ready to come out, the uterus gets really tight so it can push the baby out. That's a contraction..."

"That's a math problem??"

He meant fractions. But we did talk about contractions (can not=can't). Then we talked about verbs, nouns, and fractions. We did NOT talk about child birth.

The Bag Of Yum Quotes. Again.

Okay. Only 2 people tried to guess the quotes on my Big Bag Of Yum post. And you 2 didn't catch them all. So. Here's what I'm a gonna do! I'm gonna put the quotes here in just a bit. Then I will give anyone and everyone a chance to guess where they come from. It's gonna be hard. I'm not gonna lie to ya. But I have confidence in you! Yes, You! Here we go...

"Your pits are entirely tolerable" I did only put the entirely tolerable in the post. We'll see if this helps.

"Stat! Stat means now!"

"And whoever said that orange was the new pink was seriously disturbed."

"Red, yellow and blue. Each one has a message for you and me. Each is a symbol true."

Some clues...One is a movie, 1 is a TV show, 1 is a song and 1 is a cartoon.

Now. What you need to do is this: Email me at lovelaughloud@hotmail.com and tell me what you know. You can do one or all four or just tell me something funny. Seriously! Then I will announce winners and make you cookies. My sister Katie already got 2 right. My friend Jen got 1 right. And I don't need to know you for you to get cookies. Really. Please don't put your answers in the comments! Okay? But you can still leave me a comment. Because I like comments. Ready....GO!

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. Part 1

Today my boys went back to school! Yesterday was the first day. But we spent the day with family for Rebecca's funeral. So today was the day of days.

Sam woke up and the first thing he asked Isaac was, "Are you nervous?". Isaac said yes. And they talked about the first day of school yesterday and that today is their first day and they are nervous because everyone else knows everything and got all their instructions, etc.

I agreed to walk Sam to his class and mention to his teacher that today is his first day.

Then we got dressed, attempted to eat breakfast, brushed our teeth and took a picture. Sam wanted to have a picture.

I think he will be fine at school.

This is the first year I actually dreaded going back to school. As much as I am looking forward to having some time alone, I am really not looking forward to being alone. I will miss my kids. It will be an adjustment. But I'm sure with chocolate and diet pepper I will be able to accomplish ANYTHING!

And then I'll love being alone.

And...

Then I'll have a baby!

Make A Meal Monday

I thought about doing a Make A Meal with the pasta I made last Sunday.

But this is what it turned out to look like. Frankly it just isn't appetizing. It tasted okay, but was far from looking good!
So instead I am going to do these Volcano Meat Balls.
They were awesome and my kids ate them.

You start with 1 lb ground beef, 6 Ritz crackers, finely crushed, 1/4 cup Parmesan Cheese and 1/4 cup spaghetti sauce. Mix it all together and shape into 12 meatballs about the size of a golf ball.
Place them 2 inches apart in a baking dish sprayed with Pam.
Press a cheddar cheese cube or slice of string cheese into each meat ball.
They should look like this:
Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes or until meat is thoroughly cooked (160 degrees).
Mmmm...

Ruthie says she's a vegitarian. Unless she's eating meat. Then she's a meatatarian.

Those meatballs are so much better looking than the homemade attempt at pasta!!

Enjoy!

A Day In The Life.

This has been a long week. But it's done. Tomorrow is Rebecca's funeral and my boys are extremely happy that they will be missing the first day of school. So here is our week...

Monday...For FHE Ruthie did our lesson about prayer. We painted prayer rocks. The blue and red bulls eye is Isaac's, the purple and gold is Daniel's, the golden strawberry is mine, the one under that is Sam's and the all purple is Ruthie's.

Tuesday...We got a call at 6 am from my dad saying Rebecca had died just an hour earlier. It was a long day. Tuesday night was our Primary Noisy Party. Those are the pinatas and balloons (in the black bags) and extra candy that didn't fit in the pinatas. The kids had a blast and I felt really good after the adrenaline rush.

Wednesday...I took the kids to see G Force and right after we got home these beautiful flowers arrived. My excellent friend Amie sent them to me. Aren't they beautiful?! Thanks again, Amie!

Thursday...Back to school night for the kids. There is something exciting about going back to school. I just don't know what it is! Ha ha. My kids have excellent teachers this year.

Mindy, Rebecca's mommy, asked me to get hankies for Rebecca's great grandmas, grandmas and aunts. I found these beautiful crocheted hankies at White Elegance. I then scrambled to find someone to embroider an R on each of them. My fantastic friend Jen said she would do it! She even did Rebecca's name and a flower on Mindy's hankie. Aren't they beautiful?! Thanks again, Jen!!!

Friday...I have been harassing my kids with ketchup. They love to eat chickens for breakfast...I figure they are getting protein and fat. A great way to start the day. Usually I just do a dab of ketchup. Now I do their name, initial, happy face, heart, etc. They are thoroughly disgusted with my actions! I don't care.

Saturday...Poppy's Hike. Alex, my brother and Rebecca's daddy, wanted to still do the hike. (He's the one with Josh, in the white t-shirt and what looks like a straw hat) They had tons of fun hiking up Donut Falls. Then we always go to McDonald's and my dad buys everyone lunch. We broke the McDonald's. They don't like us.

Sunday...It's only 10 am and we don't have to go to church. (Temple Dedication) So the kids and dad had a fight. Awesome. We still need to get everyone spiffed up for the funeral Monday and the first day of school Tuesday. We will do Father's Blessings this afternoon...a tradition in our home at the beginning of every school year.

Have An Awesome Week!

A Big Bag Of Yum.

Every girl knows the importance of chocolate. Because chocolate is therapeutic eatin'. It's dark, rich, yummy, smooth. This particular chocolate has a coat of colorful candy. Now, usually when chocolate is necessary, and it's always necessary, I like the kind that doesn't wear a coat. And I really do like it dark. But when a girl has no other options, the colorful coats are entirely tolerable. And I never look at anything containing chocolate with disdain!

This has been a week! I tell you! A week! With a Primary activity, my niece's passing and PMS, I really needed some chocolate. Stat! Stat means now!! So I went for one of our staples. M&Ms. These didn't have peanuts. And peanut ones deserve their own post. But I wanted to share my M&M psychotic-ness. Ready? Okay...

I start with a bowl of the yum. Easy enough. I always eat the brown ones first. They aren't pretty. Even though they are the color of chocolate. I just eat those first. So there.
Then I look at the pretty colors left in the bowl. Aren't they pretty? Green is next. I can feel that you are all just green with envy, too!

My next color is orange. And whoever said that orange was the new pink was seriously disturbed.

And here we are my dears! The last 3 colors. My favorite M&M colors. Red, yellow and blue. Each one has a message for you and me. Each is a symbol true! Yellow is Daniel's favorite color. I love it because I love him. Blue is Sam's favorite color and is the color of the sky. Red. Mmm. Red is the color of power. The color of love. And it's my favorite!

So here's what I do. I separate those three colors into small groups. Psychotic, remember?

Then I put the extras back in the bowl. I eat the yellows till they're gone.

Then the reds. And please understand that I don't just plunge in and eat them willy nilly. There is a method to the madness. I eat in 2's. Kinda like the animals on the ark. 2x2.

When I have nothing but sets of 3 colors, I put them back in the bowl and eat them in sets of 3. Red. Yellow. Blue. Weird. I know.

These were the extras in this particular bowl of yum. Daniel usually gets those ones. Or Isaac if he's lucky! They don't match. They don't go together like the pretty sets of three. So I can't eat them!!

This is all that's left.

Yes. I am disturbed.

And if you caught the (three...oops) FOUR quotes in my post, you are totally awesome! And if you want to, I'll make this a contest. Email me at lovelaughloud@hotmail.com with any or all of the four quotes and where they came from and I'll make and bring (or send) you cookies. That's right folks! Cookies!

Enjoy!

A Sweet Baby.

Isn't it just wonderful to hold a baby? To look into her sweet face and know she was just with Heavenly Father? To feel her soft skin next to yours? To breathe in her delicious baby smell? To watch her eyes open and try to focus? To feel her wrap her tiny fingers around your finger? To watch her sweet mouth try to suck? To take in the beauty that only a new baby can posess? It is. It's wonderful.

Sometimes when a baby comes, everyone who gets a chance to meet her is touched eternally. You can see heaven in her eyes. You can feel the angels surrounding her. You know she is a gift sent from God for just a small moment.
Rebecca is one of those babies. She was only here for a small moment. She didn't need to be here any longer than that. She went back to her Heavenly Father this morning and each of us who met her, who held her, know that her life's mission was complete.
You can go HERE to see some beautiful pictures of Rebecca, her brother and her mom and dad.

Make A Meal Monday.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...If you don't have zucchini in your house, what's wrong with you? This is the Cruller Zucchini.

I wanted to make zucchini bread last week, but wanted to try something different. So I searched high and low in all my many cookbooks and found a good one.

Blender Zucchini Bread

Here's whatcha gotta do:

Put 1 cup veggie oil and 3 cups chopped zucchini in a blender. Puree.

At this point, if you normally make fruit smoothies in your blender, your children will think you are going to try to poison them!

Add 3 eggs and 1 tsp. vanilla and blend it all well.
Sift together 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking soda (I always say that with a Minnasota'n accent, you should try it!), 1 tsp salt and 1 Tbsp cinnamon.
Then Add the zucchini smoothie and stir well.
Mmmmmm... Pour it into 2 medium well greased loaf pans.

Bake at 350 for about an hour, or until a knife or chopstick stuck in the center comes out clean.

I thought the bread might actually be green. I was a little disappointed.

Then I started serving it to my kids and hubby.

This is how my boys reacted...

"Mmm. Mom I want more of that bread it's so good and I want to eat the whole loaf."

Except that their mouths were full. So now go back and say it like there's something in your mouth.

Considering my boys won't touch or eat anything that comes from God's Green Earth.

This is definitely a winner at our house!

I'm Just Thinking Here.

Have you ever had a moment, whether a small moment or a long space of endless time, when you felt you just couldn't do all that was expected, required and, well, expected of you? No?? C'mon. Be honest with yourself. You're reading this without anyone looking over your shoulder or judging you because you have felt that way. So, now. Yes. Yes, you have. I have, too. In fact I seem to have been in one of those moments lately. A long, endless, dragging moment.

And sometimes those moments are too much to handle. But you do. Because you have to. Because if you don't, dinner won't get made. And then, just when you think you can't go on being unappreciated, wonderful things happen.

Today I had 3 people at church tell me things Heavenly Father knew I needed to hear. A teacher said I presented an idea in Sharing Time that was valuable to her. She represents Jesus when she teaches her class. A woman who was filling in said I was the right person for Primary. I am doing an awesome job. And a boy who is turning 12 soon, and who just spent his last Sunday with us, said he appreciated me and being in Primary. Thank you!

Then here at home, Ruthann confided her angst about starting Kindergarten. Isaac came in and laid down on my bed with us and rubbed her head and talked to her about how awesome school is. About how she will get to make more friends. About how her teacher will show her and tell her everything she needs to know. About how if you get in a lot of trouble, you'll be sent to Mrs. Principle. And you don't want to do that.

Then Sam let me kiss his cheeks all over. And he didn't wipe them off.

And Daniel ate all the homemade pasta I fixed today. Even though the noodles were clumpy and weird.

And Daniel let me go lay down and watch my Office DVDs when my unleaded diet pepper exploded and I started to cry. Oh yes, my friends. I started to cry. Over diet pepper.

And when we had family scripture study and family prayer, I felt the importance of my family. Especially when I feel a little, well, a little under appreciated. This is where I am happy. This is where Heavenly Father knew I would find my greatest joy. And how could I possibly feel that tremendous joy without those moments of doubt and under appreciated-ness.

So the next time you feel that feeling, think about where you find your greatest joy. And even though chocolate is joyful, I will bet anything that it will have to do with the people you hold the closest to you!

That's all.

A Day In The Life

Monday...This is our "adoption phone". It sits on the counter and I don't use it. It just sits there to remind me that one day we will get to talk to our birth mom.

Tuesday...This funny looking zucchini came from way deep in the zucchini kingdom. I thought the twistedness looked like a cruller. You know, like the donut. Yumm. Maybe you just needed to be here.

Wednesday...This picture was actually taken at an intersection on Thursday. But I needed to show it. You see the fluff on the wiper blades? It's pink. We were driving down the freeway on our way to see our cousin Rebecca, when out of nowhere, all this fluff was all over. It was pink. It was fluffy. I thought it was cotton candy. It was insulation. Darn. Some got stuck to us and most of it was blown off by the time I could snap a quick pic. We thought it was so cool to have pink fluff on our wiper blades. It made us happy. Kinda like when you have cotton candy.
Wednesday...We visited our cousin Rebecca. She is an angel on earth. We have certainly been blessed by her being here. She wasn't supposed to survive the pregancy, but Heavenly Father sent her to earth for a special purpose. We're so thankful she's still here!

Friday...This is the whopper hopper that visited at just about dinner time. As we sat down, Isaac let out a yell of Holy Moly!! Then the hopper started to poop and we had to close the blinds.

Saturday...We till our garden under every year. So we always get fun things that grow wild out there. This is this year's prize winner. It looked like a malformed cucumber on steroids. When we cut it open it smelled like a cuke and a pumpkin. I love the fun stuff that grows from our unwillingness to just throw old plants away. Till 'em all under, baby, and see what grows next year!!

Sunday...What more can I say? I will do a whole post on this later this week. It's a big bag of yum. And sometimes a girl just needs a big bag of yum.

This is our last week of summer. We are hoping to earn back the Wii stuff this week so we can have a Wii-off. Among other things, of course. We'll be living it up before we go back.

Have an awesome week!

Labels.

I don't like labels. You know, when a mom says her daughter is her "Complainer" or her son is "Beyond Help". There is just nothing else for the daughter to do but complain. It's become an expectation. And when the son doesn't even try to be better, well, let's just say the mom was a huge help with that.

I babysat for a family while in California who had all girls. They were beautiful girls. Then, the most excruciating thing happened. They had Son. You would have thought those girls had just dried up and disappeared when Son came. I only know the boy as Son. The dad would only call him Son. So even when I babysat, I didn't know what to call him. Ricardo? Henry? I just don't know. So this is how introducing his family would go..."This is my wife (the Great Vessel who gave me My Son) and these, um, yeah, these are my other kids. And THIS, Now THIS is MY SON!" And then the heavens would open and angels would sing.

I hear other people calling their boys "Son". So what do they call the girls? "Daughter"? I just don't get it.

As you can tell, I have a bee in my bonnet. Son aside, I just don't like it when parents label their kids. Even with positive labels. It sets them up. Kids just don't need that kind of pressure.

So here's what I did. Look over on the left side of my blog. Yes, right there. You see it? I'm going against my better judgement and I AM LABELING! I haven't gotten very far. But I was at it for quite a while last night. Soon you will be able to read my blog systematically by the labels. I really don't care, either. Maybe you'll even start hearing me call Ruthie "Daughter". I suppose I'd have to call Isaac "Son 1" and Samuel "Son 2". Hey, I can call Daniel "Husband". He does call me "Mother" every once in a while. Now I'm just babbling.

Vacuums And An Experiment.

This is all Sam would eat for dinner the other night. No meat. No veggies. But I really don't care. He was happy.

But there had to be a catch. This is his "vacuum". He started just vacuuming his noodles up off his plate. See the butter on his face. Yeah. Nice.
And Ruthie got in on the action. She vacuumed all her noodles up, too. But she did eat veggies and meat.

But Daniel and I were tired. So we told the kids we had to go to bed at 7. So the kids said they were fine with that and asked what they needed to do. We told them they needed to do the dishes, clean the house, make dad's lunch for the next day, be nice and go to bed at a decent time. Hee hee. This little thang wanted to do the dishes.

So Daniel and I were lovingly tucked in at 7:03 pm. We didn't hear much from the kiddos for a while. Then Ruthie said she needed to do the dishes. We heard the water turn on. We heard dishes being moved around. These are all that was left in the sink later.

We heard cupboard doors opening and shutting. I finally found the blender pitcher up on this shelf in the laundry room later.

We heard Ruthie shout, "Mom is going to be so pleased with me!" We laughed while we slept. It didn't take long to find this bowl up on the same high shelf in the laundry room after I found the pitcher.

We heard the kids discussing bed time. "So what time should we go to bed?" "How about 9:00." "Well, how about 8:00." "Okay." "Okay." "Okay." It did take a lot more time to find this pot. But once found, I was happy.

We got up out of bed around 7:16 pm. We were too enthused to see what Ruthie had done in the kitchen. All the dishes we found in various spots were soaped and then dried and then put on a shelf. This is how much soap was still in the pitcher when I went to rinse it.

Our little experiment was fun. I still needed to do the dishes. The kids went to bed at 8:30. And mom and dad had a nice little nap.