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!)

Thanks Sandra! I was able to fix my margins!

Anyone else wanting to change their blog margins, check it out:

http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2008/05/customizing-your-blog-part-5-adjusting.html

I have not been good lately in keeping up with my blog. I can't give any really good reasons, but I am sure having 4 kids at home during the day would be one of them.

I convinced my parents to stay one more day after General Conference. That Monday was gorgeous out! We had a little outing to the park.





That night my parents and I watched the newest BBC version of Sense & Sensibility. It's my favorite version so far. My parents took off the next day. It is sad when family leaves. We were glad they could come and visit a little bit!

Lee had last Friday and Monday off because of Columbus Day. Thanks Columbus! Friday we met up with our friends at the temple and swapped babysitting. We and our friends arrived late because of crazy traffic, so we missed the session. We were able to do sealings though and that was really nice. On the way home we made our monthly trip to Aldi and sadly skipped our monthly Little Caesars dinner. It was worth it though. The grocery budget is pretty tight this month, and taking $8 out of it for pizza, for one meal--well, that wasn't even an option. Next month we'll be getting Little Caesars though!

Shanna and Cal can unbuckle the top part of their car seats. About a half hour away from home, Shanna was unbuckled and I started pulling over because she wasn't re-buckling. She did start to re-buckle, but I went ahead and pulled over anyway. Unfortunately, that was a bad idea. I ran over something and this was the result:





We were blessed though as the air slowly leaked out of the tire. We didn't realize we had a flat till we were turning into the parking lot of Auto Zone. And yes, we were going to Auto Zone anyway to check out prices for oil and an oil filter. Mr. Handy Lee bought a tire repair kit while he was there, and some oil and an oil filter. I had budgeted $30 for an oil change for this month, but not a flat tire. Once again we were blessed. Lee got some instructions on changing the oil and then did it himself and repaired the tire himself and all of those items cost $29. I was thinking we would have to dip into our emergency fund again. But thanks to Lee we didn't have to and even saved $1!

Just the regular things have been happening: school, work, exercising, Shanna licking the top of the salad dressing bottle. I went to a marriage class last week with my friend Kari. It was a Relief Society activity. I really enjoyed it. You did a great job Whitney!

On Monday we went on a little date and I got the kids some things at the Dollar Store for Halloween. We also had fun going to a flooring store to look at carpet remnants and then to a furniture store to look at mattresses. It was fun browsing in both stores and "dreaming" of our future house.

Elden went to the hospital on Wednesday to get a synergis shot. I know I am spelling synergis wrong. It is an RSV vaccine. He will get it once a month, March being the last month. I think if a baby is born under 34 weeks, she/he would get the shot. We haven't gotten our flu shots yet, but need to do so. Elden weighed 13 pounds 1 ounce! He is sleeping even longer at night now and I am SO spoiled with that! I put him down between 8-9pm and he doesn't wake up till about 7:30am. None of my other kids were like that. I put away Elden's 0-3 month clothes, but I might have to pull them back out again. They seemed to be getting snug on him, but the 3-6 month clothes are too big.

Have a great weekend! We enjoy seeing our own little pumpkins on our front porch. Thanks to my dad for planting them! If I don't plant anything else, I think I will plant pumpkins every year till I die. There is something fun about having your own pumpkins during the fall.

15 days and 25 minutes left!

As I mentioned before, I am glad we'll be out of debt soon. Seems like some of our things are falling apart or not working properly. The most frustrating item being our computer. The screen keeps going black on us. Also my "tennis shoe" socks are getting holes in them, but I guess that is somewhat expected as they are two years old and I wear them 5 days a week while exercising.

We are having fun with my parents being here for Conference weekend. We enjoyed listening to the sessions at home and glad my mom had her laptop so we could do so. Lee plugged the speakers of his stereo into her computer so we could all hear the messages--even with the kids around. Mentioning the kids, they actually did really well. They loved listening for words from a list (when they were in the room) to get a piece of candy. For example if they heard "Book of Mormon", and told us right away that they heard that word, they got a piece of candy.

Last night my mom and I watched Emma with the boys, so it wasn't a true girls' night. It was kind of funny because the boys really watched the movie. I think they mainly liked the popcorn. We were going to watch Harry Potter when Lee and my dad got home, but I fell asleep on Clark's bed. Lee got me to wake up a little before 11 and we watched it then.

Last Sunday the boys had their primary program. I loved how the program was set up. There was a family having FHE with a non-member friend and each principle they talked about the kids said something about it and sang songs. I was disappointed with Clark's part. I had him memorize it (Cal too) but when he got up to the microphone the person holding the microphone didn't give Clark a chance to say his part. The person just started whispering it into his ear. Oh well. I knew he knew it, and he knew he knew it. Guess that is all I can do, right? I am definitely going to say something come next year's primary program--let the kids try and give their part!

Here are 4/5ths of the kids the morning of the primary program


Clark and Cal went to a birthday party a couple of weeks ago and they got seeds in their goodie bag. The Sunday after they got their seeds they wanted to plant them. So they did.


Our big event was going to Texas the end of September. Lee "applied" to get PRK done on his eyes through the military. He was "accepted" and had the surgery done September 24th. We took Clark out of school and we all went down. Two great parts about the trip were that we were able to see Paul and Cindy, and Darrell and Stacie. While at Paul and Cindy's Clark was in heaven playing with all their Lego's. It was great seeing family, having them feed us, and providing a place to sleep!

Our second night Paul and Cindy treated us to dinner at Rudy's. Ahhhh...sooooo good! Lee and his big and oldest brother (literally) Paul.


A picture earlier that day at Chacho's--a fun Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. Lee went there a couple of times last summer during OBLC. Here he is about an hour after his eye surgery. We got ice cream that they made from scratch there, plus some YUMMY chips. I've decided that I don't like jalepenos. I don't mind the heat, it's just the weird taste they have. Yuck.


Oh, and Cindy, the green ice cream that Shanna is eating below and got on her shirt, it came right out with the Clorox color bleach.




While we were waiting for Lee. I buckled the kids in so I could fix my hair and do makeup. Clark apparently had the camera.


Uncle Paul and Cal



Two of my cute boys


The kids liked seeing Cindy's cat


Another picture at Rudy's


Elden enjoying Chacho's


On our way out and on our way home we stopped at Darrell and Stacie's. It was fun to see them. The kids loved playing together and with cool, different toys.


I couldn't resist the green eyes on the cat...can't remember the name....


Since it is money crunch time, Lee listed some optometry books on Amazon.com and they all sold! He made enough money to pay for about 87% of the trip! But to keep within the "trip budget" we followed Deb's lead and had dinner a couple of times at a rest stop. As you can tell it was a great rest area! We have a portable gas stove with a single burner. I grabbed a pan and some bowls and spoons and put them in the van. One night the kids had ramen and Lee and I had soup. Then another night we had soup again and the kids had spaghettios. Each night dinner cost under $2. For six people traveling that is not bad! (I won't count Elden.)



A picture on the way home via Oklahoma. Eric is a cutie!


The rest stop again with our famous van in the background


At Rudy's



We drove by the San Antonio temple


It was very windy and cold when we stopped at the rest area the first time. I didn't bring jackets either. You can tell by Clark's shirt how windy it is. But our little stove worked just fine!


Again at Cindy's



Clark at Darrell's


A random kid picture, probably thanks to Clark


Jessica and Shanna


Joseph


Sorry for the random placement of the pictures, but you get the idea I think! We are glad to be home and Lee's eyes are feeling pretty good. His vision isn't where he would like it, but with PRK it takes a few months, so we're not worried. Plus if the PRK surgery doesn't give Lee the 20/15 vision that he likes, he doesn't mind wearing glasses. It should be successful, but if not, Lee doesn't mind.

Lee has been enjoying watching BYU football games with friends. I have been doing the regular things at home. I need to pull all of the fall/winter clothes out. I guess since it is October I need to stop thinking that it's still "summer". The kids are doing well. Clark is enjoying school and loves having friends to play with in our neighborhood--Cal too. Some of them are moving next year and I am already sad about it. Elden is sleeping great through the night--for the most part. The other day he slept from 7pm to 6:30am! Sometimes he wakes up early, but overall he is fantastic. He sure spoils me! There is a surge in fridge raids, but nothing too notable to blog about. Lee picked our pumpkins yesterday and we have five! One of them is eaten up in spots, but that is okay. And it was fun hanging up my fall wreath that Deb made for me. I need her to make another for me...

Just 26 more days!!!