Our Gingerbread House activity

I found an egg-free gingerbread house kit and we put it together. It was loads of fun and the girls can't wait to eat it.

Christmas Morning

I love to dress my girls up in matching outfits!

The Cutest Shepherd

the future Bella and Edward

Does this Edward live up to your expectations. I think if he shaved and had more wavy hair I'd be more impressed. Still, I do think he's hot. (No worries Alan, that is just in my fantasy world where I don't live except when I'm exercising on the nordi-track.)

Dancing to the Nutcracker Suite

Christmas Letter 2007

Christmas 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas! Yet another year has gone by and we haven’t seen nearly as many of you as we would have liked, yet are grateful for the chance we’ve had to spend time with some family and friends. Our family has been blessed and we feel to rejoice in our Savior at this Christmas season. Of course we’ve had a share of trials, but they have been tempered with the knowledge the Gospel brings and the tender mercies of the Lord. We had a great time going on vacation to Yellowstone with Alan’s sister Coralee’s family. There were also camping trips and reunions with both sides of our families, which was great fun.

Alan was released from the young men’s presidency in our ward and has been called as the scoutmaster. He loves it; I think he’s crazy. Who wants to go camping in winter!? At BYU Alan’s job changed slightly to a more administrative role that he is happy with. Alan still does consulting work on the side just to keep his programming skills sharp.

I keep busy with the three girls and my responsibilities as a counselor in the primary in our ward. I have developed an addiction to the Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyers and getting in shape. It’s not a bad thing, really. It has been nice to focus on other things since we lost our baby at 18 weeks. I am fine and feel like it was just the wrong time for that baby to come. We hope he comes to our home later.

Sarah turned 6 and is amazing of course. We love her delightful bouncy personality. She’s in first grade this year and enjoys reading (on a 5^th grade level now) and art. I try to challenge her at home since she doesn’t really learn much at school as it relates to her academics. She was diagnosed with asthma this summer and we are relieved that she has responded so quickly and well to the daily maintenance plan her doctor has her on. Since she started she hasn’t gotten sick with anything worse than a mild cold and has not missed nearly as much school as last year. Yay! She also got her tonsils out in March.

Emily is the peacemaker of the family and we love her too. She plays so well with Alyssa but enjoys the quiet time when Alyssa naps as well. We do preschool together each morning and she is learning to read simple words and count to 100. She turned 4 this November and simply wanted a Belle dress. She is a princess and loves everything princess and girlie and also frogs. We’re not sure how the frogs fit in to her princess world, but it doesn’t matter.

Alyssa is adorable at 21 months. She is so busy compared to the other two girls. She climbs and gets into everything. Alyssa loves to look at her books and to be read to. She tends toward the girlie with Emmie and plays dress-up and dolls. We can’t leave the house for long periods without her blankie and heaven help us when we decide to try and get her to stop sucking that thumb! Despite being so busy she loves to be held and is quite cuddly. We love our Alyssa!

That sums up our year. We hope you all are happy and enjoying the holidays. We love you all!

Love,

Alan, Shannon, Sarah, Emmie, Alyssa

Things that are wrong-to me

Stealing candy from a baby
Tormenting animals
Fat free ranch dressing
Hitting (unless the one being hit is a bad guy)
Staying up past midnight for no good reason
Calling names
Replacing someone's parachute with a Walmart bag
Not stopping for someone in a cross-walk
Eating dog
Skipping desert (unless it has nuts)

Thanksgiving

Things I am grateful for(not including the obvious family, faith, and food) in no particular order.

rice cooker
crock pot
dishwasher
washing machine and dryer
Twilight Series
that I fit my clothes finally
electric pencil sharpener
blogs
date nights
my toothbrush, it really does a dirty job
sharp knives

Stick in the Mud

You know, I am sometimes a "stick -in- the -mud" as my mother would say. I want to be one now but I won't. I want to skip Thanksgiving, not because I don't like food or family, but because it will mean lots of people (people that I love but many of them) and noise and preparing and cleaning up after and worry. Also I can't skip Alan's favorite holiday because face it, I'm crazy about him. I hesitate to even admit it-wanting to skip Thanksgiving, not about being crazy for Alan. Maybe I won't even post this...but I will because sometimes it's nice to admit a weakness/personality flaw/trait whatever. It makes me feel relieved to know that everyone will know that although I am crazy, I'm not nuts.

Update

I know it's been awhile since I've blogged. My plan is to play catch up today so you don't forget who the Spanish Fork Wessman's are.

Naturally with our family we have been dealing with sick kids. Emmie and Alan started it. (That should be said in a whiney child voice.) They got colds about a month ago. Just as they started to feel better after about 2 weeks Sarah got it. That is actually impressive. She lasted 2 weeks and didn't get it first. She was sick the shortest amount of time too, only 1 week. Then when she was feeling better Emmie got sick again, this time with more of a cough. A few days later Alyssa joined Emmie. After 2 1/2 weeks of Emmie not sleeping because of all the coughing fits (this is with her taking Hystinex, a perscription cough syrup) I took her to the doctor. That was Friday. Sure enough she had a sinus infection and since she started the antibiotic has been doing tons better. The doctor gave me an anitbiotic for Alyssa too if she needed it in a few days time. Today I started that because her coughing is getting worse. I also got another asthma treatment for Sarah as she only had 2 doses left and takes one each morning. Yes, if you were wondering, we spend way too much money on medical bills. Thank goodness Sarah is down to once a day because her stuff is $40 each time. The inhaler thingy has 60 doses in it so it does last awhile. And it seems to be making a huge difference.

So due to the above paragraph trick-or-treating was a lot shorter this year. We went out for about 20 minutes and they got much less candy than usual. I don't even mind. Sarah was wearing her unicorn horse costume, Emmie decided to wear her butterfly costume (both of these were bought for them last year) and Alyssa went as a bee. Alyssa was so cute! She caught right on to the dress up for candy idea and was very happy to be a bee.

Alyssa has been sleeping so much better since we put her back in the crib. She was just not ready for the independence associated with the bed. Hopefully when the time comes she will be better at sleeping in the bed but who knows when that will be.

Sarah is now into the Little House on the Prairie series. I'm so glad she found something else. I thought I was going to have to hide the Boxcar Children just to get her to read something else. She is also discovering the Animal Ark books but they aren't her favorite. She loves to imagine herself a pioneer and says things like, "I'm not going to talk unless you talk to me first" at the dinner table. We reinforce that that isn't a rule we have at this house but she likes to pretend.

Emmie is suddenly showing a lot more interest in letters and reading. She likes to write all her letters (capitals) and can sound out short words or spell them if you ask her. She is still very much a girly girl and loves princesses and playing house. In our house I am the Queen and Alan is the prince so that Emmie, the princess, has someone to marry. Alan would rather be the king but usually Emmie is adamant that he is not the king he is the prince. At least she recognizes that I am the QUEEN. Don't mess with the Queen.

I am doing okay. I have started exercising in earnest again in the hopes to look like Dawn. It will never happen and I am learning to accept that. I'd settle to look like me 10 years ago. That will never happen either but I don't accept that.

I've also been scrapbooking and enjoy that periodically. I'm glad to know that we aren't moving, at least not for 6+ months so I might put the pictures back up on my walls that are now painted so nicely. I might even consider painting the family room or the girls' room still.

Alan and I read through the merit badge list and realized that Dad Wessman could be a counselor on at least 20 of them. Yikes Dad! You know too much. Alan wanted me to be a counselor but they don't have a scrapbooking merit badge. Alan of course has signed up to be a counselor for the following: Computers, Astronomy, Weather, Orienteering, Journalism, Hiking, and Environmental Science.

Time to fix lunch. See you all later probably.

Wikipedia Addictions

This is crazy.

Alyssa

Apparently I was wrong about Alyssa not being able to climb into the bathtub. Alyssa had already had her bath and was ready for bed when it was Sarah's turn for a bath.

Subbing in Primary

One of our teachers left us without a sub today and what was ironic was that I ran into her in Boston. That is not part of the story. I decided to play a baseball trivia game with the class and was alarmed at the number of what I considered to be the amount of easy questions they were unable to answer. That is not part of the story either. So I finally decided they could work as a team rather than answer as individuals. That is also not part of the story. I asked what the name of the priesthood was that worthy young men could get when they turned 12. Aaronic was the answer and they got that. That's the beginning of the story. Next I asked what the other priesthood was called after Aaronic. One young girl, named Kennedy (her name isn't crucial to the story) responded enthusiastically "Moronic! The Moronic Preisthood!" That is the story.

Vampires

So while I was in Boston I gave in and began reading the Vampire books by Stephanie Meyers. I admit I didn't want to. I basically decided to read them to appease certain sister-in-laws and neighbors who I am sure wouldn't give me any peace until I read them. To his credit Alan helped get me intrigued. I had brought book 1 onto the plane just in case I should decide to read it. I started with Sudoku and Alan tried to get his laptop to play a movie which it wouldn't do so I gave him the book to read. He reads twice as fast as I do and so occasionally when I was stuck on a puzzle I glanced over and read some before he turned to the next page. I admit I became intrigued. The start of the next day found me reading on a bench outside the conference center while he went to class. I couldn't put the book down! Two days later I went to the Barnes and Noble and bought the 3rd book. (I'd only borrowed books 1 and 2.) By the time I got home yesterday I had almost finished reading book 3 through the 2nd time having already finished books 1 and 2 again. You could say that I'm hooked. Alan found Stephanie Meyer's web site and I loved reading about Edwards first day. (Can't remember what she called it, but it's a chapter long version of Bella's first day at school from Edward's perspective.) I'm quite worried about having to wait until next fall to find out what happens next. These are my new favorite books!!

postponing

I just read through all the blogs again. Coralee set up my google home-page to let me know if anyone posts a new blog but I sometimes I just go through them and check anyway hoping it might have missed someone. Some of you haven't posted in soooo long and I miss the blogs. (Alan are you paying attention? Rob? Dawn? Julie and Scott?) I thought if I was going to miss other's posting I aught to post something myself so as not to have a beam in mine own eye. We leave for Boston on Monday and so I am not doing chores the last few days. I figure I will do them all on Saturday so Mom Wessman won't have to come tend children in a dirty house, at least not as dirty as it would be if I didn't do any chores. So this morning I made a carrot cake. I had to, there was not a choice involved. You see, I pulled three carrots from the garden last week that were huge! The largest was about 3" across at the top. Yesterday I made spaghetti and so I shredded the carrots and zucchinis to put in the sauce. After I added some carrot to the sauce, I still had about 3+ C of carrot left. What does someone do with that much shredded carrot. Well I could have made a 5 pounds of jello salad but I thought carrot cake would be better. Anyone who wants carrot cake with cream cheese frosting is invited over for desert tonight. (Now I will know if anyone reads this.) I also have about 2 C of shredded zucchini and later today I will make zucchini bread or something. The end.

F-e-e-lings, nothing more than feelings...

Yesterday was the 2nd day I was cranky, short-tempered, and alternately depressed. Poor girls. I've been a bad mother. I hate to admit it knowing that people might actually read this but I will own up to it. Yesterday evening, being a Friday (date-night) Alan hung out with me and we watched the beginning of Big. I like the beginning and end but not so much the middle. Anyway I realized that life has suddenly become quite unsettled and everything has happened in the last month. Add on top of that the body trying to adjust the hormones and no wonder I'm crazy. Last month we were normal. No possible job change, expecting in January, no primary program, no painting the house, no child with asthma (although to be honest we did have a child with asthma even if it wasn't diagnosed), no upcoming trip to Boston with planning and organizing involved, and no crazy mood swings. I can't wait for October.

complimentary companion airline voucher

Up for grabs to whoever wants it is a complimentary companion airline voucher. We "earned" this by using our visa card one month and this is how it works. You buy a ticket and then get one free. The free one has to be to the same place, at the same time, and on the same airline as the first. The voucher has set prices for the tickets based on where you want to end up. For example: To fly from SLC (zone 4) to Seattle (zone 4) is the cheapest and costs $345. The cost goes up, obviously, when flying to other zones but it is still cheaper than purchasing 2 tickets so if anyone feels like a vacation we could watch your kids and you can get away for the week/weekend. The kicker is that you have to mail this back by 9/15/07 although you can fly after that. Also it won't work during holidays. For more info call me. You could email me, but you'd be more likely to get a response if you call.

Long time no post

I admit the fault is mine. I haven't posted for a long time. No one is responsible but me. So here is the catch-up. We went to Yellowstone and had a great time. Coralee and her family went with us. It was very nice to have a planner and organizer in the midst, cousins for the girls to play with, and friends to visit with after the children were down for the night.

Primary has been keeping me busy. Our president decided that a third counselor was needed and so I no longer have activity girls under my belt but have kept the nursery and the primary program. Last week I wrote the program and emailed it to our president and she sent it to the bishop for approval. As it is almost all word for word from the Church Primary Program Guide, I don't expect any problems. This week I have to assign all the parts and make sure each child has something to do or say. Because of such a large primary some classes sing a song together and not everyone has a speaking part so I have to make sure that those who didn't get a speaking part last year have one this year. It's a bit time-consuming but I don't mind it, especially since I don't feel so tired and gross anymore.

Nursery needs another 2 teachers so we can add a 4th class and one of my newer teachers hasn't come the last 2 weeks. She's somewhat active and I think I need to go over and make friends. I've been thinking I need to do a thank you something for all my nursery teachers anyway. Walmart had big candy bars for a $1, maybe I'll get some of those and make little cards. Ideas??

This week while Alan was at scout camp the girls and I have kept busy and happy. We went up to Wessman's and helped make applesauce. We went to the zoo and we've been to the park and of course Walmart. In earlier years I hated having Alan gone, but lately I don't mind it at all. I enjoyed having the whole bed to myself. (Is that bad?) Alan seems to have had a good time at camp.

I started to read the Potter books over again. I've read 1-3 so far. This week I'll try and read #4. I also want to finish scrapbooking the month of May this week, although the time I would scrapbook is the same time I have to read so I can't do both.

A neighbor brought over her maternity clothes for me. She claims to be done. (I wish I knew for sure how many we are supposed to have.) I was pleased and grateful as many of my maternity clothes are getting worn and stained. She also brought some clothes for Sarah. Earlier this week another neighbor brought over a few things for Emmie, although they are too big right now, so it has been a week of generous neighbors and I am grateful.

Alyssa and Sarah have slight colds. Runny noses mostly.

Emmie has been having issues going to primary the last 4 weeks. She cries and is clingy during singing and sharing time. She sees me in there and wants to be with me. Today she wanted her green blankie. What is going on with her? I hope this doesn't continue. She is always happy and chipper when I pick her up from class and her teachers are awesome, two of the best we have right now. She is confusing me.

I think that about catches you up. Bye.

gross

I'll tell you what is making me grumpy. I feel gross. Very gross. I should not feel this way anymore. I don't mind feeling gross up to 13 weeks. After that it isn't allowed. At least that is what I've been telling Myself and Myself usually obeys me. I have certain expectations for Myself and I find that I am very disappointed with Me. I, Myself, and Me usually get along well but we are at odds the last two days. Here I am trying to get ready for vacation and Me and Myself are feeling lazy and nasty. They just want to sit somewhere quietly, not moving, and not doing any work. I've been telling Myself to just keep eating soda crackers and get going. Sometimes it works but sometimes I have to just give in to Myself and sit awhile. I had better get Myself and Me into shape before tomorrow or the long car ride might just be more than I can handle.

sick again

The girls all have mild colds...again. I really think I'm cursed. It seems like they're sick at least as often as they are well and it's making me paranoid. What am I doing wrong??? I feed them vegetables, but maybe not enough. They wash their little hands after we get home from the store, after they come in from playing outside, after they go to the bathroom, and after we get home from church. Don't tell me it's too clean in here. It's not. I haven't done deep cleaning in over a year. Maybe that's the problem. I need to wipe the baseboards, clean the windows, wipe out the kitchen cupboards, and wash walls. I don't know but I wish I did. I am so sick of sick kids.

help

Help. For the Paulsen family reunion I am in charge of getting a bunch of pictures from when we were all little and making them into a slide show. I know how to do that once the pictures are on a cd, but how do I get them onto a cd? Alan suggested going to Kinkos and scanning them but that turns out to be pretty darn expensive. Does anyone have a way to scan pictures on their computer? And would that someone mind helping me scan some pictures to burn onto a cd?

Another Blankie Baby

Alyssa has become quite attached to her blankie. She likes the one Julie made for her. It is soft and has darling chicks on it. I'm fine with this, but today is Monday (laundry day) and Alyssa is not happy about taking her morning nap without her blankie which she can't have because it's getting washed.

sleeping like a moving target

It's not uncommon to find the girls in odd sleeping positions when I check on them before going to bed but last night totally cracked me up. I went in and Sarah's feet were on her pillow. Perhaps she's trying to be like Pippi Longstockings? Anyway, I tried to rouse her and get her to turn over so she didn't crash into the wall or off of the bed. Finally I woke her enough to get her to respond. "Sarah," I said "I need you to turn around and sleep the right way so you don't fall out of bed." She responded, "Okay." and then went right to sleep without moving a single muscle. While this was going on Emmie was trying to get comfortable and was scooting backwards on her tummy in her bed. She scooted backwards until her feet and legs up to her knees were sticking out at the bottom of the bed. So I pulled her back up to her pillow and tucked her in and started over with Sarah. "Wake up Sarah. I need you to turn around." Finally it worked and she flipped over and I went to bed.

hummm

So I get a weekly safety tip email from my brother Jacob's company. Here it is if you are curious. This week's tip was about life hammers, which are tools for cutting one's seatbelt and breaking the class of the car window so you can escape in case of an emergency. I thought, "Wow, I better get on this!" and clicked on the amazon link to get one. Of course I checked out their prices and then went to ebay and bought 2 new for 1/2 the cost of one on amazon. Anyway, then as I was feeling secure about keeping us all safe I thought, "When are you ever going to need this? We live in a desert for heaven's sake! Like I'm going to accidentally drive off the road into a large body of water." So here are my justifications to Alan: This is in case the car stalls and there is a snake inside that is threatening us and we can't open the door because we somehow became pinned between two semi-trucks, or the seatbelt mechanism fails and we are at Krispy Kreme donuts and must exit the car quickly to get in the front of the line. Alan's reply was, "Or we just aren't spending money quickly enough so we have to smash open the window of a bank so we can grab some cash to buy more stuff on ebay." See, it really will come in handy. And one more I just thought of, what if the car is on fire and we have to get out through the back hatch!

more...

portraits

Molars?!

So as I was changing a diaper on Tuesday I discovered Alyssa had two top molars coming in. Upon further examination I found a bottom one right beneath the skin ready to pop through. And I thought all the fuss was over the fourth bottom tooth coming in. That brings her teeth up to 10 with one on the way: four top teeth, four bottom teeth, two top molars and one bottom molar getting ready. No wonder she's so cranky.

Lately...

Lately I've been thinking about blogging. I just can't figure out what exactly to blog about. Everything has been going along normally. Which means of course that the girls have been sick. Emmie went to the doctor yesterday with an ear infection. She complained the previous night about her ear hurting and then in the morning said her ear was wet. The doctor said her ear drum had ruptured! Her ear drops were $45, the antibiotic was another $27 and of course the co-pay for the visit was $15. This is over budget for the whole month and it's only the 4th day of April! Then I came home and did finances and paid the hospital $130 for Sarah's surgery. Now we are way over budget for April. Nobody else can get sick the rest of the month. Mind you, I am grateful for insurance or else that would have all been a lot more.
Lately I've been obsessing about exercise. I have to obsess over it or I won't do it. I hate exercising, but finally the desire to be skinnier outweighed the laziness and I've been working at it. It's harder for me to eat right and less, than it is to actually exercise. And I hate that one evening of indulging myself and eating a single donut will cost me 4 days of strict diet and exercising like a mad woman to get back to where I was before the donut. It's so not fair. (And it wasn't even a Krispy Kreme.) I do like my new Bean exercise toy and do two of the routines it came with every day. One is only 7 minutes and the other is 30 minutes. I still do the nordi-track every morning during Alyssa's nap time for 20 minutes.
The weather is perfect and I love to be outside in it. I actually weeded and cleaned out all the flower beds the other week. Our tulips are just starting to bloom and the lilacs are getting ready too. I love spring. I wish I knew how to build a birdhouse for the garden in the back. I'm thinking about that again but there are so many other projects that I'll probably ignore it again. I want to paint my room. Actually I want to paint the whole house but I'm not as brave as Coralee.
Alan and I reserved a room at a bed and breakfast in Salt Lake for a couple of nights in May. I am so excited about that. We are going to get away for 2 days and celebrate our anniversary and Alan's birthday. Mom Wessman has generously agreed to watch the girls. It is something to look forward to.
I can hear Alyssa getting into the dog food again. Does anyone want a dog?

Alyssa

Alyssa has just started to clasp her hands together when we say prayers. It's so cute.

Alyssa Firsts

Yesterday had a lot of Firsts for Alyssa.
She had her first year-old appointment. This is the first one that was actually on the child's birthday for me. She is 17 lbs 1 oz, which is in the 4%, and 26 1/2 " making her in the 3% for height. Her head is in the 75% so she is a typical Wessman baby. The only somewhat worrisome thing for Alyssa is she was only drinking between 4 - 6 oz of 2% milk a day. Her doctor said she should have between 18 - 24 oz a day of whole milk so we have been trying to step it up. She doesn't like milk much though and so he suggested flavoring it. I came home and gave her 4 oz of warm chocolate milk (first chocolate milk) and lo and behold she drank the whole bottle. This can't be all that good of a habit though. Once she is drinking enough milk I will slowly diminish the amount of choc. syrup until hopefully she'll drink it straight. She also likes it much better warm, imagine that.

She also had her first day and night of no nursing. I always have mixed emotions when it comes to weaning the babies off of nursing. On the one hand I'm so free! and yet on the other hand I'm sad my baby is growing up.

Alyssa took her first steps yesterday!! She's been standing by herself for about 3 weeks but has been super hesitant about taking any steps. So we were both sad and excited to see her walk yesterday. Today she has been bolder and taken more wobbly steps.

To celebrate her birthday we got donuts, no egg issues here, and she had her first glazed donut. She loved it of course.

Last of all, she celebrated her new-found independence and age by staying up from 2:30 a.m. to 5 a.m. I don't know if it was the shots, chocolate, donut, or what but it wasn't cool.

On the plus side she learned how to "give 5" which is super cute and yesterday she also learned how to turn around and go down the stairs herself. She has become an expert at this new found way to freedom and nothing is safe anymore.

activities

Here are a couple of activities I did with the girls this week that were fun and I thought others might like to try. I got them off this cool website. We did the Sponge Painted Earth and the Moon Prints. I know you think I'm too scheduled, but I have to schedule stuff or it just doesn't happen. I have firmed up my activity time with the girls so that I will actually do something with them every day. So here is my schedule. Monday - Craft/Art Project, Tuesday - Music, Wednesday - Science Activity, Thursday - Cooking/Baking, Friday - Games, Saturday - Field Trip or Movie, Sunday - Journals. If you have any ideas for any of those areas or any other areas I'd be very happy to hear about them.

my bedroom so far

So here is the beginning of a beautiful bedroom. Alan helped figure out how to paint it. The wall with the love seat will be dark blue and the rest of the room with be an off-white or cream color. The curtains will be changed to sheers, dusty rose. There will also be a dusty rose valence with the blue one. What do you think?

Alyssa meets Cookie

Yum

I made this for lunch today with hash browns and ham.

Some thoughts

I sit here thinking while Alyssa systematically takes each piece of paper out of the box Alan's cell phone came in and tastes it. Some must be better than others because she chews some to shreds and others just get tasted and discarded. Apparently the instruction booklet is yucky whereas the receipts are tasty. She just looked up and grinned her sweet baby smile. I love babies!! Especially my own. She's cutting a new tooth on the bottom and she's learned to cover her eyes with her hands to play peek-a-boo. She bobs her head to singing from anyone, usually Sarah and Emmie and loves to play. She thinks wearing shoes is cool and will stick out each foot for a sock and shoe. Her favorite thing to chew on is Potter's bone and paper. Naturally this is because I take them away whenever I catch her with them. She is adjusting to Lactaid milk although her diapers are still pretty runny. She's laying her head on my lap so it must be time for a nap, although she is a very cuddly baby even when she's not tired. I'll be back later...

Concern for poor Alan

I sold the headboard and some concern for poor Alan concerning the bed is pouring in. Not wanting to impose too girly a bed I am posting this link for the style I would like in my room and you can vote on whether it's too much for a manly man like Alan. Of course even if you vote against it I will prob. do it anyway. Here is the style I am going for. And here is the canopy I've ordered with which I will try it.

Whoa Baby!

Alyssa didn't sleep well last night. We thought she had a tummy ache. Today after Stake Conference while we were getting lunch ready Alan smelled something suspicious. Alyssa! She had made such a blow-out diaper. She had been sitting in the entryway playing with Potter's leashes which we keep in that closet and then moved to the stairs. There was a pile of mess in one spot, and I do mean pile, on the wood floor and then several patches between there and the stairs. Good thing Alan scooped her up when he did. We took her up to the bathroom where we stripped her disgusting clothes off her and then showered the mess off before filling the bath to bathe her. Holy Mouskins! What a mess! I think she's competing with her cousin Matthew. Fortunately for us we could strip her and clean her up unlike poor Matt.

the bedroom

Am I the only one that dreams of a beautiful bedroom? I want a bedroom like you see in bed and breakfast places. A place where it's peaceful, beautiful, serene, romantic and intimate. Where I can read my scriptures and say my prayers and absorb calmness. An escape. A romantic get-away when needed that's free and doesn't require a babysitter. I can picture it in my mind but creating it is sooo hard. Partly it's cost but mostly it's getting rid of this big practical not-beautiful headboard. Alan loves the headboard. What I want is much more girly and much less practical. He says, "I don't want to be smothered by sheer materials, only books. Can't we have a headboard made of books?" No, it's not intimate. He says, "I don't want to sleep in a cage." I say a canopy isn't a cage and sheer curtains aren't bars. He says, "I want you to be happy and if it means that much go for it, but just don't spend more money than you can get by selling the headboard." I say I love you.

update

The word to describe our family the last month is sick. We did have one week where everyone was well, but then I got a sinus infection and Sarah got strep throat and then a week later Emmie got strep throat. We are all feeling better overall and are hoping to stay well for at least a month. Sarah needs to have her tonsil out and so I am trying to find an excellent doctor for her at Primary Children's. Alyssa hasn't been sleeping well and I have no idea why most of the time. Sometimes I know it's due to a stomach ache. She is like Sarah in that way, slow to adjust to new foods. Pity.

Alyssa is standing for up to 30 seconds now and enjoys trying to walk between Alan and I but she gets so excited that she leans way forward and so hasn't actually managed to walk on her own yet. I love how she giggles and growls when the girls play "monster". She is so cute.

Sarah had her walking report card a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit absurd (can you find the 'f' Sarah) as she had mastered all the skills way before she entered kindergarten but she had fun and we did get to hear her read a book on her level. We love her teacher and are happy with what she does in school. We liked the book she wrote. Title: Alyssa Page One: Alyssa makes funny faces. Page Two: Alyssa has six teeth. Page Three: Alyssa likes to eat paper.

Emmie loves preschool and dress-up. She just started primary as a sunbeam and is by far the smallest one. She is also the one with the least amount of hair which gives her the appearance of being a nursery child in the wrong spot. Oh well. She knows all her letters and is starting to learn letter sounds. She likes to color and is getting pretty good at coloring in the lines, thanks to Sarah's coaching. Emmie is a sweetheart and is quick to help out and share with her sisters.

About a month ago the tattling and selfishness of mostly Sarah were starting to drive me crazy and so we had several family home evenings about showing love and being kind and unselfish. The girls have been remarkable at implementing the lessons and I haven't heard any tattles or complaints for about 2 weeks. I wish I learned that quickly. They share everything they get with each other and take turns and Sarah has even begun to put Emmie's wants before her own. It makes me so happy to see them getting along so well and our home has such a nice Spirit to it now. I wonder how long it will last. Any ideas for how to keep it going? Should I reward them, remind them periodically, or just assume they've got the message?

I miss the holidays. There isn't anything to look forward to and I miss the chance to see and interact with family. Perhaps I'll organize a Valentine's Day Party or something. If we can all stay healthy and it's not too cold we are going to the zoo on the 31st which is supposed to be free. Who wants to come with us?

Well the girls are all asleep now and I need to read my scriptures and I hope, don't be mad Coralee, to take a nap too so I'll end this now.

breakfast on Sunday

Alan and I are excited to see you all on Sunday and eat some breakfast dinner. I remembered right as I was going to bed that I have a teacher-training on Sunday at 4:30 but don't worry. You all are still welcome to come here anytime after 2 to play games and visit but we will postpone eating until 5:00 if that's alright. Alan will hold the fort down while I do my bit at the training and I will be back around 4:50 I hope.
Alan and I will have juice and a German/oven pancake. I'll also do a peach cobbler/with no eggs for Sarah. What does everyone else want to bring?