Not ready for this yet...

So I am for sure not going to leave the kids with Andrew all day again. Don't get me wrong - he's a WONDERFUL father, and does a great job with the kids... HOWEVER - he teaches them things that I don't want them to do! Good things, but things I'm just not ready for yet.

Prime example: Two weeks ago, I came home from work to find that Andrew had taken LeGrand's pajamas off and he had discovered traction on our wood floor. He was crawling. And now, it makes no difference what he's wearing, he's figured out how to get around without worrying about the traction.

Today - I came home to find that Andrew had taught LeGrand a NEW trick. He now goes UP the stairs. We stay behind him so that he doesn't fall, but again... something I was NOT ready for him to learn. After all - the little guy is still in his sixth month of age! The girls weren't crawling until seven months; I'm pretty certain that it was closer to ten months when they decided to learn the stairs.

Add to the adventure of the stairs and crawling, I caught LeGrand climbing onto a box yesterday. May I say again... NOT READY FOR THIS!!!!!!!!!! I thought for sure I'd have a few more months to not worry about what he's getting into. I should really stop thinking.

And that other tooth? It's broken through. I wasn't ready for teeth yet either. He's such a little smarty pants. Next week I'm expecting him to be running. Possibly teaching a class at the local university. At the rate he's going, I wouldn't be surprised if he was standing on his own. He is pulling himself up onto things and standing there very well - if only he'd slow down a little bit. I'd be perfectly O.K. with that, I must admit.

As for the other children - Margaret is still a "wheatie pie", but now she's also a little Einstein. Savannah is getting marvelous grades in school and still loves it - although she has asked me when spring break is. I'm not sure if she's trying to get out of school, or if she thinks that we'll go somewhere during spring break.

In other - and more positive news - Andrew will be working at the Portland Oregon Temple during the closure. And so will I. We're trying to figure out what we'll do with the young ones during the possible overlap (and if there's not an overlap, we're trying to figure out when we're going to see each other over the three weeks of shutdown). Me, I'm just glad that he has work. Thank you for your continued prayers for and in our behalf.

Now to answer Patience's questions: During the ice storm, we had wind and the weight of the ice break multiple branches off of our gorgeous trees that line the driveway. They littered the driveway to the point that we couldn't use the majority of the driveway. They are now sitting on the burn pile waiting for us to be able to burn them. That's first. Second, I'm wishing that life could slow down a little too.

I do want to mention quickly how pleased I am that our children are so willing to help... Andrew and I took the family to the church tonight for Family Home Entertainment. We cleaned the building (mostly the bathrooms - which were stinky... and the chapel and the dirty drinking fountains), and the girls were such good helpers! Margaret and Savannah both just tagged along with us as we cleaned. I have memories of going with my family to clean the chapel - I'm almost embarassed to admit that I probably wasn't the greatest of helpers; certainly I was NOT as enthusiastic as my children were to help this evening. I'm sorry Mom and Dad... I'll do better next time.

And that's the news from Farm Stahronthehill... Where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. And this particular Mom just wants the baby to stay the baby for a little longer.

What have we been up to???

Well... that's a loaded question! Since the last post that had any relevant information in it, we've had three holidays and a birthday. No one has gotten married or had any babies, (not in this family at least), and we all survived being without all of our power for a week.

That being said, perhaps I should start at the beginning.

After Thanksgiving, the computer (not so fondly named "The Beast) decided that it was done working, and didn't want to work any more. And it promptly turned itself off, and clicked at us when we decided that we wanted to make it work. Fearing the worst and that we had a hard-drive issue, nothing was done. After all, it does take some amount of the budget to make things like that work - and the budget wasn't allowing. So... we went of line. Strangely, I didn't miss it as much as I thought it would. It was terribly inconvenient, but I didn't miss the hours spent checking e-mail and surfing the news on the internet. I did miss not being able to update news of our family and/or checking to see what the rest of my family and friends were doing, but... I found I had a lot more time to do other things. Odd how that works, isn't it?

Then came December. While I hate to admit it, Christmas kind of snuck up on us. We did, however, have the Christmas tree BEFORE the night before Christmas. It sat on the porch for a week. Part of that week, it was literally frozen to the porch. We brought it in to thaw it out, and it was decorated on Christmas Eve. (Ian and Christen, where were you???) Now... lest the rest of you think odd thoughts such as "I know the inside of the house is cold (it really isn't), now they're cooling the outside too?" Turner had a major ice-storm. In fact, the trees that normally stand tall and proud, were hanging limp and not so proud. One of them did us the honor of bringing down our power line too. But, only partially so that we still had enough power to run the refrigerator and the freezer. Don't try turning on the toaster or any other appliance or turn on three lights though, try that and you'll lose power to the TV or whatever else you're needing power to. We are grateful that although we couldn't flush the toilet or shower or wash our hands or wash our dishes or do our laundry, we didn't lose the meat in our freezer. And we are greatful that Andrew's siblings all came for Christmas, therefore giving us a really great excuse (not that we look for excuses, mind you) to spend multiple days and nights at his parent's house. (Thanks for the room...) We are also extremely grateful and thankful for the wood stove that kept our house warm... when we were here.

Andrew's birthday was a formal affair - all of his siblings and their respective spouses and his parents came for a formal dinner - all dressed up too! A huge thank you to Dad and Doug and Matt for coming early and helping with the mess that used to be our trees...

January 1st, the children went to new primary classes - Savannah to CTR 8 (she's looking forward to having Grandpa or Grandpa or Dad baptize her (it changes every time you ask her - and we're thinking that we'll just let Dad do the honors; we do, however, have 11 months to figure that all out.), Margaret is still in Nursery, but she's the oldest in her class - she'll be three in two weeks. Margaret has decided, for those who HAVEN'T heard, that her name is no longer going to be Margaret. She is "Wheatie Pie" to anyone to will listen. (Rough translation: Sweetie Pie) We're not sure where she picked that up, but since she is indeed adorable (all of the kids are...), we're going with the flow. We still call her Margaret, but reverting to Sweetie Pie works well when she's studiously ignoring us. I think it's a defense mechanism. Pick a new name and only respond to it and no other name. A great thought if you don't tell other people what your new name is...

LeGrand is just moving way too fast for my own desires. He started doing the "Army Crawl" sometime in mid December, getting very frustrated because he couldn't really go anywhere... and then, discovered exactly why. Mom kept leaving those nasty socks and long pajamas on! Cover the toes and the knees on a wood floor, and it's nigh impossible to get traction. Leave it to Dad to help figure that part out while Mom is at work. And now, he's decided that he doesn't need to have naked knees to move forward. He's bound and determined to go places. AND - to make things a little more interesting around here, He's in the process of cutting his SECOND tooth. I wasn't ready for either event. That being said, at least he's a huge fan of solid food. His favorites being fruits and smashed potatoes. Not always separate.

Oh yeah... and did I mention SLEDDING?? Margaret is a huge fan. Savannah too - but since we were sledding in the near dark, those pictures didn't turn out. Thanks to the "ARCTIC BLAST 2008", we had a marvelous WHITE Christmas and snow enough for sledding at least twice. What a marvelous time.

And now... I think that just about catches us up.

We're BAAAACK!!!

Thanks to Best Buy, a gross overpayment of some truly terrible auto insurance (and I'm not kidding about the terrible part... by which I do NOT mean that the insurance was good, as sometimes the words nowadays mean the opposite of what they actually mean...), and sheer desperation.



And that brings me back to the original point of this post. We're back on line. And had a wonderful Christmas holiday and marvelous December; and, while January has been a little stressful, it has indeed been good. We are truly blessed in all that we have and do.

Pictures and commentary to follow. For now, I'm going back to cleaning the kitchen and trying to figure out why our "sick" children are staying home from church when they're bouncing around the house so well. I think I'm the sick one - after all, I AM the one without energy... Oh well. I actually feel GRAND - despite the lack of energy. Wait... is it energy, or motivation? I'll let you figure that out...