Happy Fall Everyone!




This picture of Clark is so cute! I just love his thanks-for-taking-a-picture-of-my-great-creations-because-I-think-they're-wonderful-too expression.


We have seen a few "walking sticks" around here. Cal loves them. They are his friends, as he tells me.



This is what the kids do while I work out




Amidst the rain, we've had a few great fall days here and there





Last Thursday afternoon, I believe it was, Cal and his friend took a bunch of pictures. It was pretty funny hearing them laugh while taking pictures of each other and of things like the blinds or the stair rail.


Clark didn't have school last Friday due to Parent/Teacher Conferences. I had a little extra time and fixed my girls' hair from how I saw my friend's daughter's hair fixed. Make sense?



Clark is doing good in school and his teacher is pleased with how things are going for him. I am glad that he won't be held back in anything. It is amazing to hear Clark reading or spelling words aloud to me.

I received a new calling and was sustained on Sunday.

Friday I did the last week of grocery shopping till the big day! I brought some cash with me so I could pay for part of the transaction with cash and the rest with my debit card. I forgot all about the cash. That night I went to the church to help organize items for the Ward Yard Sale. The ward here (our church congregation) asked people to donate items to the yard sale and all proceeds went to the Good Samaritan here to help with Thanksgiving dinner. I thought that was the neatest idea. They raised around $400. It would be great if it happened again next year. Anyway, back to the forgotten cash. While I helped sort, I saw a few things that I wanted to buy. And I got all of those items with the cash I had! It was great!

I thought you might like to know what my new calling was. (Well, maybe.) I am now the Relief Society Secretary. I have had this calling twice before, and I love it! All the ladies in the presidency are wonderful, so I am already looking forward to my calling.

So two little tidbits I want to throw in, one on laundry and one on kids. For awhile I was trying to do laundry all in one day, once a week. I would get fairly close to getting it all done, or on that extremely rare occasion, get it ALL done. But more often than not, it would take me longer than a day. I am one that doesn't mind if there is a pile of laundry sitting around, so the idea of doing laundry once a week was very appealing. Well thanks to an idea from my friend Britt (thanks Britt!) on how she schedules her laundry, I now do it two days a week and it works out great. On Saturday we bring all of the laundry down and get it sorted. The main goal of Saturday is laundering the linens/towels, etc. I usually do an extra load or so to jump start Monday. Then Monday morning, I do the rest of the laundry. It has worked out really, really well. Sometimes we are up late finishing, but for the most part we it done by bedtime on Mondays.

So the one on kids: my kids like to jump on my couch. Though they have been told and are constantly told and will be told not to jump, it still happens. We have a somewhat springy couch, so I am sure that doesn't help. Truthfully I don't really care if they jump on this couch. It is VERY comfortable, but is lacking in eye comfort. What I do care about is them jumping or climbing on furniture in other homes or businesses. It is challenging reinforcing this rule--especially if I am not there to reinforce it immediately. My sister Deb gave me a great idea: don't let them sit on the couch if they jump on it. I wish I would have thought of that sooner! It is working pretty well too!

For one more little tidbit, the hospital on base somehow wound up with some H1N1 flu nasal spray immunizations. Thanks to Lee and his poking around, he was able to get Clark in today to get the vaccine. We are confident Cal can get one tomorrow too. I will wait till I can get a flu shot in the arm. I am assuming that since it is a nasal spray, that it is a "live" immunization and needs to be used or they'll go bad. The only caution we have with the nasal spray is Elden. Since Clark just got H1N1 shot up his nose, we told him not to touch the baby or be close to him. Clark did a great job with that.

We hope you are all having a great week. And sorry for any typos you may encounter. It is extremely late and I don't want to re-read it at the moment.

I can't believe Halloween is on Saturday! YEAH!

(So it's the next day. Cal did the the H1N1 this morning and I got one too. I figured that the flu that is going around is H1N1 and with little Elden, we need to take all precautions. I also received the nasal spray vaccine, so time will tell if the extra mercury or whatever is in it has bad side affects. Hopefully not!)