Spirit Week: Day I

It is Spirit Week at school! This means that each day there is a theme that the kids get to dress along with to show their budding school pride. It also means that they get a piece of candy as they enter the school if they participate.

Day I: Mismatch Day. Kids get to wear things that don't match. It is a pity this was not around during preschool. This would have been many a day for Rachael, as she dressed herself. I kid you not, there was a two week span where she wore the same striped pants, under a plaid skirt, and rounded out the whole ensemble with her fuzzy pink boots. (For the record, she changed her shirt and underwear. Other than that, I washed the pants and skirt. A lot...) Anywho, kids also get to have crazy hair, or wear a funny hat. Cool.

Morgan is sporting one tennis shoe and one boot. She also has her shirt inside out and pretty funky hair.

The hair. Pretty fun, eh?

*Rachael opted out of mismatch day. She now cares if she matches. Sometimes. (Actually, she is going through a phase where she really worries what other kids think about her. How sad is that? She was worried that she would be the only one in her class looking mismatched. That and she did flat out did not want to participate in this one.)

General Conference Crafts

Last weekend was General Conference. Ahhhh, Conference Weekend. For you non Mormons out there, this is something that happens twice a year, and it is a big deal. The prophet of our church, along with our other major leaders speak to us, counsel us, and give us direction and words to live by until the next Conference weekend. These conferences occur on the first weekend of October and April respectively.

Anyway, technology being what it is today, allows us to stream talks via internet. This means that we get to stay at home and listen to conference. Such a treat. Since there are several general sessions to listen to, we have started a tradition of doing crafts while we listen. We color, do puzzles, play with play dough, do special conference packets, and during at least one session, we work on our stitching. This is by far the girls' favorite activity during conference. 'We get to SEW!' We are starting out small here, but it is fun to watch the girls come up with little sewing/crafty projects. Here is what they came up with this year:

Morgan made a pillow and a cape for her American Girl Doll, Elizabeth.

Rachael made a sleeping bag for her Zhu-Zhu Pet, Patches, and an ornament for Daddy. Chris and I helped Rachael out a bit with the stitching, but she came up with the design all on her own.

*I made some curtains to hang up in our office. Technically speaking, I made these after conference was over, so I did not include a picture in this post. Furthermore, are just your basic curtains and are simply not as cool as what Morgan and Rachael came up with. =)

And That's What You Call 'Ironic'

Because she has been teething and sick and teething some more, Kate has not been sleeping through the night for a couple of weeks. For the past two nights however, she has slept great. Hooray!! The only thing is, Morgan has been sick. So Kate's first nights sleeping through the night in a while, I have been up 3-5 times each night with poor Morgan. Boo and Hiss for illness and Morgan's utter discomfort. (She had to miss 3 days of school this week.)

*In true surgeon fashion, Chris said that he wondered if Morgan might need her tonsils out. This was only the 5th week of school and already Morgan has missed 5 days and come home early twice. Hmmmm. I wonder if he is on to something there...

T.P.

So, Kate is not my first baby to discover the toilet paper roll. She is, however, my first baby to rip to shreds all of the paper that she has pulled off of the roll. She has done this twice now. Fortunately, both times the roll was about gone so there was not much material to rip...

The first offense. While there was not much on the roll, she literally ripped everything that she pulled off the roll. It is noteworthy to mention that she did this in less than 2 minutes, and that I was right in the next room putting away laundry. Go Kate.

The second offense. You will notice that there is more paper off of the roll this time, though not as many tiny pieces for Mommy to sweep up. Thanks Kate.

*In looking trough our picture archives, I found this one of Rachael and her discovery of the toilet paper roll. Notice that she is more of an unroller, and less of a ripper.

PB & J

Is there anything as yummy as a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich? Oh, I don't know, maybe peanut butter and honey or peanut butter and apple butter. How about good old peanut butter and grape jelly? All of these options have been consumed by yours truly lately, and I say they are all simply delicious.

What's so great about a PB&J you say? Well, as a kid I thought it was fine. In high school, I started to notice a sensitivity to peanut butter that got so bad I found I had to avoid it completely. They say once you get your major *food allergies/sensitivities in check you can eat things that you couldn't eat before. Turns out they were right. Isn't that fun? Of course, since I can eat peanut butter, that also means that I can eat various and sundry candies containing peanut butter if they also happen to be gluten free. For the record, Reese's Peanut Butter cups and Snickers bars fit into this category. How I survived 15 years without eating these delectable morsels is beyond me.

*For those of you that don't know, I had to go gluten free three years ago. We discovered my girls did too. Poor Chris is the lone gluten consuming person in the house. He is hoping Kate will be normal like him. Of course, normal in our house is gluten free, so I guess he is hoping she will be abnormal like him.* :)

Canning

I love canning. This week I had the opportunity to can some 54 jars of scrum-didilly-umptious peaches. Home canned fruit is far and away better than the store bought variety. A good friend taught me how to can when she and her husband were living here for medical school. That was seven years ago, and with the exception of one off-year due to moving and pregnancy, I have canned every year since. (Ironically, the friend that taught me how to can had just moved across the country and she was just as pregnant as I was in the off-year previously mentioned. However, I am just not as turbo as she is. Plus, at the time she was like 22 and I was 30 in the off year. BIG difference.) On behalf of my family and my pocketbook, I thank you Kim for teaching me such a useful skill. I think of you and Grandma Blackham every time I can peaches. Or pears. Or anything else I am canning. Except for when I am canning apple butter. Then I think of my mom.

Visit with Dad

On one of his recent call nights things were kind of slow, affording Chris time for a visit from his 4 favorite girls. We took him some dinner and got to eat and visit for a little while. This was really nice and helped break up the time apart. It also got the girls a soda as a special treat from Daddy. Rachael thought it might be fun to snap some shots in Chris's white coat. *Kate was too busy crawling all over the lobby to stop for a picture. =)