Happy Leap Year Day!

It's quite an unusual, famous, ordinary day, isn't it?!

We did our usual shopping trip to Walmart today. I got off a lot later than planned, but Shanna was sleeping and Haley was being her normal great self, so I took advantage of that and folded and put away some laundry.

Today for the cookie club at Walmart we got a 3-leaf clover sugar cookie with green sprinkles, dipped in chocolate on the bottom. I saw a lady and her son in the bakery area so I told her about the cookie club. She seemed pleased that I informed her of this secret. Thanks Deb for telling me about it!

The lady who was manning the cash register met the dad or the grandpa of the first baby born today on Leap Day! It may just be for this hospital in the area, or for the whole US. I have no idea. But apparently the guy was in a rush to get back to the hospital because the newspaper was going to do an interview or something of the sort.

For this fine Leap Year Day I have a wonderful quote I want to share with you. I see it a lot, but have never written about it in my blog. It's on a Hotel's sign thing.

It reads:

Give a bit of your Heart

Rather than a piece of your Mind

A Snow Day...sort of

I just love when your own kids can communicate with you. It's quite enjoyable, and makes being at home lots more fun.

Recently when Lee or I have left to go some where Clark will tell us: "Don't get lost!" Tonight, like I mentioned earlier, I was at the library. Clark walked me to the exit. He told me "Don't get lost!" Then he closed the door. I was watching him because I wanted to make sure he got back into the apartment okay. One second later he opened the door and said: "I love you!" Makes you want 20 kids!

This morning Clark and I were once again talking about going to Paul's house this summer. He is very excited about it and has been talking about it for a few weeks now. (I think I mentioned that one too early.) Since he knows it's a long time away before we go to Paul's house, he now tells us that "someday" we are going to Paul's house. Well today I thought I throw in a new twist to this same conversation, and told him we are going to Jon's house this summer too!

He was telling me how Paul & Jon have COOL! toys. But Becca doesn't have COOL! toys. She doesn't? Clark informed me: "Becca has beautiful toys." :)

I just put up some pictures in my other blog.
They are just of clothes,
as I mentioned earlier in my blog.

The girls were being cute, like always playing by my feet while I was talking on the phone and updating my photos.

Sweet girls!

They're so sweet!

One more before we sign off. And yes, Shanna does have a boy bib on. But with four kids, you can imagine that we go through them fast! And if you can't, well, we go through bibs fast!


We had the Smith Family over for FHE last night. The lesson was centered on the story of David & Goliath. I painted this Goliath on the craft paper I had leftover from Lee's Valentine Day sign. Not too shabby, but he is stout looking for being over 9 feet tall. I made him almost exactly 9 feet tall though.

They threw socks at his head and then tore him off the wall. It was pretty funny.....maybe a little too violent, but they'll learn the story better, right?

Lots of pictures for you!

Feb 22 at the Ward Lip Sync--Here are Clark's buddies:
Zach Butler is in the black and green stripped shirt
Zach Benson is in the blue shirt
Bronson Smith is in the green shirt
Clark is in the blue shirt with an orange ringer
They were doing the hokey pokey and for a little bit Clark was the only
one dancing. It was pretty cute seeing him move!


Feb 22 Zach Benson, Bronson Smith & Clark


Camden Smith, Zach Butler, Bronson Smith, Clark & Zach Benson


Feb 24--last night, Shanna


Feb 24--we have bandages that have Curious George on them so now when the boys get an "owie" they want a "monkey". "Monkey, mommy! Monkey!"


Clark showing off a hot rod....I have no clue where we got it. If it's yours, please let me know!


Feb 24 C lark, Haly & Shanna


Haley Rae


Beautiful palm trees at the Beautiful Columbia, South Carolina Temple Feb 23


Shanna & Haley while we are waiting for Dad Feb 24


Shanna & Haley again


Shanna


The boys and Shanna


Haley & Shanna waiting for Mom Feb 23


The girls enjoying the great weather! Low 70's on Saturday



Well, you get the picture......





This is the playground behind the temple














The girl standing up with the pink boa is Savannah Hubbard. She holds one of the girls every Sunday in Sacrament meeting, and it's a BIG help!!!



Back to the temple.....

Happy Sunday Everyone!

We had a good Sunday today. I spoke in church about the Grace of God. Before Sacrament Meeting started, we got the girls out to other people, so I could sit on the stand. Lee of course had the boys, so I sat on the stand the whole meeting. It was nice!

We have some news items to pass on! First off, we received an exciting email tonight. We received seven possible options for where we will be for the Army this fall. We need to rank them one to seven, one being our top choice. Here are the states: Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Also in the email it was mentioned that Lee’s officer training won’t start till the beginning of August, and that would be great! Hopefully his training will be only 7 weeks. It could possibly go up to 11 weeks.

The other big news, Cal is basically toilet trained! The first few days were awful. Let’s just say I wanted to hire a nanny and leave for a few days! Wednesday afternoon things started to click with him. He has a bit of progress to make, but it is going pretty well after just one week, and I feel like we can get back to our normal outings during the week. I had one of my friend’s pick up Clark for playgroup, and we skipped storytime. And this week I went grocery shopping by myself.

Tuesday night we had the missionaries over for dinner and Lee went with them afterwards. We did go on some outings at the end of the week, and Lee was with me. Friday night there was a lipsync at the church along with a potluck dinner. It was really fun. There was a HUGE crowd there. They had to bring out more tables.

Saturday we went to Columbia, South Carolina to the temple. The weather was gorgeous! Low 70's. I should have dressed the boys in shorts instead of pants! I did the 10:00 session and Lee took the kids to an LDS bookstore right across the street. Lee then went to the 12:00 session and I took the kids to a park that is right by the temple too. Last time we went we didn’t know about the bookstore and the park, and we are so glad we know about them now. There is alos a community center right next to the park that is open every Saturday, and there are restrooms you can use right inside, so it's the perfect place to wait while Lee or I are in the temple. There were some other people from our stake going to the temple that day, so it was fun to meet them. I met Marilyn. Her husband is the bishop of a ward in our stake. They have 6 kids and they recently bought a 12 passenger van. She was really nice.

We made a couple of stops on the way home from the temple. One stop we made was at Target. They had really cute fake Croc’s for baby girls there, and for a decent price too. But there was one size 1, one size 2, and one size 3! Since my girls are little and don’t tell me how to dress them, I do like to dress them alike, so it’s frustrating when I fight something for a good deal, and that I like and there is only one of that item.

Lee has stayed at work a few times during lunch. Boards are coming up in April for which he has to do an exam on a patient, among other things. I really want him to pass the first time around, and it’s nice when he doesn’t have to study at home, so this is working out pretty well; though I do love it when he comes home for his hour lunch break! It’s been a treat.

I will be posting some pictures soon. I need to get some from some friends too. I hope everyone is doing well!!!

Visiting A Valentines’ Past

Though Valentine’s Day has come and gone, there is a particular memory that will never fade for me or Kelly Memmott. I am sure this memory finds its way to my thought pattern a few times a year, but the memory is most prevalent around the day of sharing love, cards, candy and of course, hearts.

Sister Clark (now Kelly Memmott) and I were serving as missionaries in the Westdale 2nd Ward, Los Angeles, California during February of 2002. Valentine’s Day approached as usual and we thought of some people on whom we should bestow our “sister missionary love.”

After the labors of the day, we made one last stop to the home of Sister Nancy (I remember her last name, but don’t know how to spell it and I might as well not embarrass all parties involved.) So, being kind sister missionaries, we thought she would love to open her door the next morning and find cute paper hearts all over it. (Some people call it a heart attack.)

I can’t remember the arrival time to Sister Nancy’s. It is safe to say that if the night hadn’t completely settled in, dusk was waning. After getting out of the missionary car (we sisters in the mission were spoiled to have our own car all the time and I loved being the driver!!!) we proceeded up to the front of the house.

We pulled out our cute cut-out hearts, and if my memory serves me well they were of various colors: pink, purple, red. After about two minutes of taping these hearts onto her glass storm door, we heard some sounds. We feared we might have taken too long in our good deed, and aroused Sister Nancy.

Sister Nancy had been aroused.

She opened her house door, the storm door still closed, separating us. For a split second, and I literally mean split second—okay, maybe .0000010th of a second, we realized our sweet, loving deed had been exposed and we would engage in a quick, “Happy Valentine’s Day Sister Nancy!” “How are you?” “We thought we would stop by.” “We hope all is going well.” “Can we do anything for you?” “Let us know if we can help you out with anything.” “Have a wonderful evening!”

Our illusion shattered quickly. Sister Nancy started screaming and yelling and pounding on the door. Can I interject that I was scared for the first time on my mission? So, I was scared for the first time on my mission. After a few seconds she realized who we were and that didn’t change a thing. Questions and comments followed filled with annoyance and to us, some anger: “Why are you here?” “This is a bad area of town!”

Sister Clark and I awkwardly apologized and tried to quickly take down the hearts that had ignited such an attack. We were mortified as we slipped back into the missionary car and headed back to the LA temple apartments via the 401 freeway. (Is it the 401?)

Still in shock, I can’t remember the discussion, if any, we had on the way home. I think we did converse about our complete and utter shock. It seems as we were on the freeway, or at the intersection to turn right onto Santa Monica Boulevard, we burst out laughing. We had a good hearty laugh, tears included. Ahhh, how silly the whole thing was.

But of course, since we had that “sister missionary love”, we did feel really bad about the good-intentioned heart attack. We wrote her a note and apologized for our….um…..misguided surprise? I don’t remember what we wrote, but it was a tricky apology note to pen.

As for the moral of the story? I’ll let Sister Clark handle that.

The boys are having fun playing with their cars. Four of them I got on clearance for a great deal, and then got each of the boys the Lightening McQueen race car.


A view of the dance last night


Lee & I at the Big Band Dance


The Band. They were great!


We went to a big band dance last night at the Stake Center. It was really fun. Andrea, another student at Lee's VA extern came and babysat for us. THANKS! We haven't been on an official date since my birthday, (end of December) so it's been awhile. The food was YUMMY! We loved dancing to a live band. We wish we could have remembered those fun dance moves we learned in college. We missed having you there Megan Shakespear! It was also fun to get in the van and not have to buckle in four kids. :) Just ourselves. Thanks Lee!

Lee a surprise is awaiting you! Search here.

The Cookie Club

So, today we did our weekly outing of looking at toys and going grocery shopping. This time I asked for 3 cookies instead of 2 for my boys. I am sure glad I asked! The lady gave us three chewy, chocolate chunk cookies! YUM! Thanks Wal*Mart!

We hope you all had a fun Valentine's Day! We ended ours by watching two episodes from Season One of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The nightly movie once again worked its magic on Cal. He was sound asleep at 7:57 pm.

Lee got me some beautiful flowers for V-Day

We are having a roast for dinner. (This picture is for Brittany.) We rarely have roast for dinner, and they were on sale a week or so ago. We buy them maybe once or so a year and the rest of the time Ruth W shares hers with us! :)

I made a sign for Lee for Valentine's Day. I took Clark and Cal with me this morning to hang it up. It was really cold outside, below freezing. Poor kids, they didn't even have jackets on! (I wanted to get it done fast.)