I'm going to the temple!

Lily has really been into looking at our wedding album recently.  She particularly likes a picture of Russ and I standing on the pedestal in front of the temple.  Today she was off coloring and brought me a picture and asked me to write on it.  She asked me to write, "I'm going to the Temple"  I stopped and looked at the picture and realized what I saw....a man, a lady, and a temple.

Me: What is your picture of sweetie?

Lily: Me and daddy getting married at the temple.

Me:  You can't marry daddy he is married to me.

Lily{In a dreamy voice}:  Oh, well then it is me and Christopher at the temple.  He's so handsome!

Should I be concerned that she is five and drawing pictures of her wedding?  Nah, at least she has her priorities straight and is going to get married in the temple!  Now maybe I should let Christopher and his mom in on this....

Braid

Lily has friend at school {her name escapes me right now} that braids her hair almost everyday.  Apparently Lily has been eyeing this new hairdo.  She asked me this morning if I would braid her hair like so-and-so’s hair.  I agreed to give it a try, not quite sure if her hair was long enough to braid it.  The end result…I think it looked pretty good even if I did have to hairspray down a few of her shorter hairs!

Lily’s Kindergarten School Pictures

Man alive I feel like this post should have been written months ago instead of here at the end of November!  Getting Lily’s pictures taken was quite a trial.  It first started out with me getting sticker shock from the price of a typical picture packet.  To make sure I wasn’t being a penny pincher I called and asked my sister how much she paid for her son to get his pictures taken.  She paid HALF of what we were being asked to pay plus she got a CD with the images on it. HMPH!  I hem and hawed for two weeks about whether I would get them done at the school and finally caved.

Picture day came and Lily was so excited.  She’s a little show off if you didn’t know that already.  When I picked her up from school I questioned her how pictures went.  She said fine except the man said not to smile.  Huh?!  Before I could finish the conversation I got districted and it slipped my mind.

Fast forward a few weeks….Lily comes bouncing out of school happy as usual.  I had seen a few other kids pull out their pictures to show their parents so I was excited to see hers.  At home Lily pulled them out hesitantly and showed me this….

It took me a bit to figure out why the picture looked odd, then I realized that Lily wasn’t really smiling.  Our conversation earlier in the month came back to me.  I asked Lily why she wasn’t smiling like normal.  She replied in a sad and dejected voice, “The man said not to smile.  He said to close my mouth because no one wanted to see my silver teeth”

I think my response to that was few swear words under my breath.  I assured Lily that nothing was wrong with her silver teeth and her smile was beautiful with them.  For two weeks I worked on a “polite” letter that I sent to the photo company with Lily’s pictures on picture retake day.  I didn’t want to be extremely rude but I made it clear that under no circumstances they tell my daughter to not smile normally because she has silver teeth.  Lily assured me that day after school that she was allowed to smile for her pictures.

Weeks later we finally got back her pictures.  I’m pleased that they finally turned out okay, but next year Lily will be going to Sears. {PS Can you even see her silver teeth in the picture?  I barely can and that is because I know where to look!}

End of Season Soccer Party

It is hard to believe but Lily’s soccer season game to end today.  She was quite disappointed when we let her down with the news, but quickly cheered when we told her that they were having team party tonight.  The party was at Fuddruckers.  We enjoyed the night out at the restaurant since we rarely go out to eat. 

Before the food arrived the Allie, Lily, her teammates, and their siblings were all enjoying playing in the little game room.  I was a mean mommy and let them only play one game, and go on one ice cream truck ride.  It ended up being a dollar well spent.  Lily did ask for more money but in general was happy with her short gaming experience.  It is nice that our kids tend to be okay without spending a lot of money.  They were content in pretending to play the games.

Dinner was enjoyable but WAY too much food.  I started feeling sick about halfway through.  After most people had finished the kids were given a piece of cake that one of the mom’s had made.  It had the coolest soccer ball on it and their team name.

Afterwards the kids were given their trophies.  We had chipped in to help buy these, but the coach had also covered part of the cost.  With the amount we paid I wasn’t expecting something so cool.  Not only was Lily’s name engraved on it, but that ball spins and can be taken off and played with!  Oh and the base was red the same color as their jersey!

Lily said some quick goodbyes to her soccer friends before we grabbed some free balloons and headed home.  We were unsure how soccer would go for Lily, but she seems to have enjoyed it immensely.  On the way home we asked her if she would like to sign up next season to play again and she responded with a hearty, “YES!”  Come Spring it looks like we will be doing the soccer mom/dad thing again!

Buddy

When Alan was 17 he used some of his hard earned money to buy a hunting dog.  Buddy quickly become not just Alan’s dog but the family dog as well.  We all got pretty attached to him.  After 15.5 years with our family Buddy died in his sleep last night.  He hadn’t been doing well for quite some time so it was probably the  best thing for him.

This morning I asked Lily if she remembered who Buddy was.  She said, “Yeah grandma’s dog.”  I corrected her simply by explaining that he was Alan’s dog but lived with grandma and grandpa because Alan didn’t have room for him at his apartment.  I then told her he had died and we wouldn’t see him anymore when we went and visited grandma.  I could see that she was shocked, but what came out of her mouth made me smile.  With a quivery voice she asked, “But how is going to eat bones anymore?”  When we visited mom and dad’s house it was always her job to feed Bud bones, so I’m not surprised she latched on to this particular thought.

I’ve been kind of melancholy all day thinking about Bud, but I looking at these pictures made me smile.  It will be weird not seeing Bud when we go visit mom and dad, but I guess that is just the way things go sometimes.

Tom Turkey

Remember how as a child you would always sing about Tom Turkey hiding from the farmer?  I must have been a morbid child because I loved singing the part about the ax coming down.  I was reminded of this song when Lily brought her homework folder home last Thursday.  We were excited to see that not only did she have her normal penmanship homework, but she had been given a turkey to cut out and decorate.  I worked with Lily on cutting him out, which for a kindergartner is quite a task.  No one should ask a kindergartner to make so many teeny tiny rounded cuts.  She did excellent though!

We decided to wait to decorate him because Lily wanted sparkles {aka glitter} and the only glitter I had was orange.  That night we explained the assignment to Russ and he jumped right on board.  He was so excited to help Lily!  Friday with daddy’s help we found some glitter that would work.  When Lily got home from school her and daddy got right to work on her turkey.

They started off painting good ol’ Tom’s body brown.

Then daddy showed Lily how to split up Tom’s feathers evenly, so that Lily could alternate the colors around his body.

Lily got to work on painting with the glitter glue.

Lily decided at the last second that she wanted to put beans on Tom’s body too.  We broke out the beans that I’ve been meaning to use for beanbags and she  glued them on.  Tom had to dry the rest of Friday and all day Saturday, and part of Sunday before we could take a picture of him.  Lily was quite pleased with her creation!  {I think daddy was too! LOL!}

 Today Tom went to class with Lily.  She reported back to us that the teacher though it was “fantastic” and hung it up on the board with the other kids.  I’m really glad that Russ got to help Lily with this project.  With his ultra long work days it seems like he sometimes misses out on these fun projects, but not this time!

Blessings

Last month we were blessed not once but TWICE! 

The first blessing began as my belly began to become more prominent.  Russ and I latched on to the fact that all too soon our little four person table just wasn’t going to be big enough for our family.  We had decided that we would start looking around for a table we liked, and wait until we had some extra money in January to buy it.  

A few days after making this decision Russ sent me a text telling me to check out this table he had seen on the employee market.  I saw it, loved, and loved the price even more!  We quickly arranged to see the table.  I drove down to Bay City with Allie, picked Russ up on his lunch, and headed to see it in person.  The table was in fairly good shape, AND it came with six chairs!  Without hesitation we snapped that baby up!  Russ and the lady who owned it loaded it into our car and I drove it back home with it.

We’ve had the chairs and table for a month now, and we love it!  It does have some wear on it, but nothing we can’t eventually fix.  Russ has promised me that at some time in the future he will sand the table down and restain it.  For now I’ve started using table clothes and you can’t even tell that it has wear on it! My favorite part about this table is that it has a butterfly leaf with it!  That is so important because

a) we can seat visitors at our table

b) it will expand as our family grows

c) we don’t have to find anywhere to store the leaf since it is inside the table!

It was hard to take a picture of the table since we have a huge window right behind it, but I’m sure you get the gist of what it looks like.

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Our second blessing came when some friends in our ward stopped me in the hallway.  They told me sad news that they were moving back to Utah.  They asked if we would like to have their piano.   They explained that they wouldn’t have room in their new housing in Utah and the piano probably wouldn’t make the transition either.  They offered to give it to us for free since they had received it for free.  I eagerly agreed.  A few days later our friends brought it over to us.  I spent over two hours that day playing to my hearts content.  I couldn’t move afterwards but I didn’t care.  I was soooo happy to have the piano. 

Russ  has started to teach himself how to play again.  The girls love hearing his rendition of pop goes the weasel.  I get two requests from them as well…Mickey’s Clubhouse and the Temple song {aka I love to see the temple}.  In a year or two I plan on teaching Lily piano lessons.  She just isn’t quite ready yet, but her interest is peaked which is good

The piano is older and has seen better days, but it was always kept tuned so it plays beautifully.

Russ and I are amazed at how blessed we are to have gotten these two things.  I’m sure Heavenly Father had a hand in us getting these wonderful additions to our home.

A New Record

I missed Lily’s soccer game today because I was at a Super Saturday for the four wards in our area.  Wouldn’t you know that today was the day Lily would make a new record for scoring goals?!  Upon arriving home Lily excitedly attacked me with the news that she had scored FOUR goals.  I was quite impressed but became even more so when Russ put in his two cents about the goals.  He explained that these goals didn’t consist of Lily being passed the ball and kicking it in.  No these consisted of her dribbling the ball the whole length of the field and then scoring.  Quite a feat for our soccer player who runs quite slowly.  Well….not slowly just daintily.  I was sad that I had missed this event, but THRILLED for Lily and her new record.

Produce Co-Op

I had heard about people in Utah and Idaho raving about how wonderful Bountiful Baskets is.  I had checked out their website to only be disappointed that they only service Houston.  Too far away for us

Two weeks ago at play group some of the ladies were talking about picking up their produce from a lady in the stake.  I quickly found out that our wonderful Stake Relief Society president set up a produce co-op for our area!  Every two weeks we can buy “a share” of produce, drop off the money and our basket to her, then pick it up later on in the week.  She actually does all the difficult work of getting the produce from the store and divvying it out to people.  I instantly jumped at the chance of being part of this co-op.  Today I received my first basket of food and was THRILLED!!!  Produce here is more expensive than what we were able to get in Idaho and most the time it isn’t fresh.  What I got from the co-op was worth more than I paid and it was super fresh!

For $10 bucks we received…

1 white onion

1 bag red grapes

2 cucumbers

2 zucchinis

1 large tomato

4 or 5 potatoes

1 head romaine lettuce

1 bunch cilantro

big bunch of green beans

8 or so bananas

4 oranges

4 apples

3 limes

2 pears

I’ve already seen the benefits of this co-op in my grocery bill.  Today I spent significantly less on produce, and I know next week should bee the same!  This has left me so excited that I cannot wait for my next order!