Yes that is the title of my blog, Children. I have come to learn that going on vacation can completely change a 2 year old's sleep habits and fears. Andrew now thinks there are sharks living in his room and is completely terrified to go to sleep alone. I asked Peter last night why this happened. He replied "Maybe it is because we have had it WAY TOO EASY." I guess I am beginning to come to terms with it and we do a shark hunt in the room nightly...he even had to sleep with his shark shirt last night which I think helped.

Beck is soooo close to really walking. He will take a couple steps here and there, stand up in the middle of the floor unassisted, and drink and eat just standing there. He is so close that I would see it happening before he turns one on the 30th.

We are happy to be home and getting somewhat back into our daily routine. We got a snow storm the last two days so there hasn't been much leaving of the house. Andrew is only allowed to play 45 minutes of Mario Kart daily. I will say he doesn't quite understand just yet but the fits are getting better everyday.

Peter has begun studying for his PE exam that he takes at the end of April. It is a big deal and I am trying to be a supportive wife and allow him to get all the studying he needs. 2 guys from his work just took it and didn't pass so I am trying to allow him get all he wants done. He starts up a review course down at BSU at the end of the month which will be every Tuesday night until the test date. Please pray for him as he studies that he will know everything or know where everything is in the books he gets to take in with him so that he may pass. If he passes, it is huge for him and he would then be a Licensed Engineer which could get him a lot more opportunities job wise.

Volleyball should have started up again last night but practices were cancelled due to the snow and ice. We have a meeting about this Grassroots League that we are putting on(I am co-administrator) tonight. Lets hope it goes well being that it is the 1st year we are doing this.

Anyways, I should get dinner on the table and get ready for this meeting. We can't wait to see Mom and Dad later this month. Hopefully we will be able to see some of you before the Lake trip next summer. We love you all and miss you terribly. (Andrew is so bored with just Beck around, it is quite comical at times)

So I seriously have started a blog on my phone about 10 times over the past few days but have been interrupted and had to stop before I was finished with my post. So now I am going to take a few minutes at the beginning of my work day to blog since about half the office is out sick and I am working full-time so I have more time to get my projects done. Ha! See how people are more efficient when they work fewer hours?

I don't feel like writing about my New Years trip (it'd take too long and I wouldn't give it justice right now) so I'll just share a couple of stories from the past few days...

1 - On Saturday after I got home from SF at 4am, slept forever, finally woke up, noticed the time of Brooke Bessey's wedding, rushed up to PQ with 20 minutes of reception to spare, said hi for 2 seconds and rushed back down to la Valle de Mission - I was ready to run my errands. I was on the search for a couple DVDs and CDs that I really wanted but hadn't gotten for Christmas so I headed to the homeland aka Target. After finding that Target looked like it had been attacked by wolves and there was nothing left on the shelves, I headed to my second chance, Best Buy. I happily found all I had been looking for at Best Buy and a few other things that I was this close to buying (ehem...LCD TV...) and went ahead and checked out. I got the usual "Would you like a bag?" and like the green gal I am I said "No, I do not wish to kill the earth when I have plenty of room in my purse." So I slipped my hoard into my purse and headed to the doors. As I walked through I heard the lovely BEEP BEEP BEEP of the alarm go off. Great...now I have to deal with this odd looking muscle head who guards the grand entrance of Best Buy. I took my bag to him, told him the story of how I bought them but they were in my purse and he took them and scanned them. No beep... so I walked back through...BEEP BEEP BEEP. Ugh... back to Arnold and he took my purse itself and scanned it over the pad - no beep... another walk through, another BEEP BEEP BEEP and I realized what it was. I was wearing my new jeans and they had one of those security tags sewn into them and I hadn't cut it out before wearing as it had so wisely advised me to do. So I told him this and he asked "Well, where is it?" while holding up the de-magnifying pad. And this is where the embarrassed laughter started. "Um, it is here," I said pointing to my crotch-le area. He laughed and then shoved the pad at my stomach and said "There! It won't beep again!" I tried to laugh it off while secretly hanging my head in embarrassment and walked out the door to go home and sing it off to Mamma Mia!

2 - On to more errands on my Tour de San Diego. After Target & Best Buy (above), a stop at Costco for gas, round about up the 805 to UTC to exchange my jeans, which had so conveniently ripped where you don't want them to rip in San Francisco after I had all my bags packed, at Nordstrom, I headed downtown to Urban Outfitters to return my jeans which failed because of my skinny ankles (I was going for the whole boots over jeans thing...didn't work out). After UO I headed to the Borders that is right behind it to pick up a wall calendar for my room. I found one I liked and set to head back to the car and on to my next stop. After I paid for the calendar and started to walk out I had to get around a ton of people standing at the registers between me and the door. One group was about three big ghetto guys that were getting some movies off hold. I had to squeeze around them so I said "Excuse me" in my sweetest, nicest voice so they moved a little and looked back at me. That is when I got the "How you doin'?" (to be said in your best Joey voice). Pause - how do you respond to that?? Probably not how I did. Ok, play - "Good?" said in a sheepish get-me-outta-here voice and I rushed out the door. I immediately felt stupid and called the expert (my friend Michelle who gets comments like that a lot) to find out what to do in such a situation. Still waiting on that answer...

3 - Yesterday I took my Blanca (iBook laptop) into the Apple store since I feared that I had seen the screen of death. There was a nice little Genius lady that helped me out and when I asked her what she knew about what they were going to announce today at MacWorld about new products, she warmed up immediately...and didn't know anything. Dang. So after about an hour of diagnostics, re-installing the operating system, complaining about other customers and my friend Joel walking in and out of the store like a bored child - I found out that Blanca is about dead. My hard drive is kaput. My wireless AirPort card is no longer working. I think she has seen her last day. So I'll likely be getting a new laptop in the next couple of weeks seeing as I need one for school. I'm hoping they will be releasing a new fancy (tri-screen?) one today but I'm not holding my breath since they did just release the new MacBook and MacBook Pro. We'll see.

Ok so now I really need to get to work! More stories to come as they happen to me...

Hello Family,

I am going to try and keep the post face book (dark ages) of the blog alive. I fell like we need paddles like an ER to bring it back. Everything is going well here in Minnihaha. Noah is becoming more alert everyday, He bounces like crazy on his jumperroo and loves all of his many toys. Including the MP3 player that we bought like the one Mike has foe Ellyn. He is beginning to sleep pretty much through the night. He has his 4 month appointment on Monday so we will see what his official size is. All I know is he is a tank!!

Work is going well. The holiday (as expected) were not even as profitable as it normally is. Hopefully Obama can shock the system back so people want to spend money. My store still looks good, we just need customers.

Lastly I want to say what a wonderful mother that we have. She is ALWAYS willing to help us with Noah and our Babysitting issues. We have found a great situation for Noah on Fridays, our RS president will be watching him. She has a 15 month old and is really excited to watch Noah. But Mom totally is great to be able to help once a week. Thanks Mom.

Anyway that is all I have. Love you all and WAKE UP THE BLOG.

Link here if you are interested. EDIT: you might want to get these or some FEMO clay to make the game more thematic. The new printing only has cubes and round discs :-(

These were taken 4 January 2009 just about 7:30 pm. Its back to slick up the drive to work tomorrow. Kenn

Well, as Mike reminded me when I cautioned all to not slack on posting as we all entered the world of Facebook, I have not been stellar with my contributions even without facebook. Hm-m-m-m-, what are my excuses...redoing most of our house due to the leak, 24 people in the house most of the days for the last two weeks, Marnie's blowup bed in the middle of our study....but mainly lack of imagination and creativity!

Having everyone here was delightful, the chaos is nothing compared to the joy of having almost all here. I loved the games that Mike brought...and all of you noticed that Dad actually enjoyed playing them! The snow made it really feel like Christmas and minimized the running around on last minute Christmas tasks. I'm really thankful that I did most of my shopping early this year...not my usual routine!

Some of the pictures in my mind as I remember this time:

Ellyn enjoying the hot tub for over an hour!!

The kids doing the hot tub and then doing snow angels on the backyard...then back in the hot tub to warm up again, (I think there was a picture of Dad doing that the next day)

Andrew and Melia running out of the bathroom at full tilt when I heard the toilet flush and called their names. Andrew closing the door carefully behind him. They did have a proclivity to get into things but definitely knew what they should and shouldn't be into.

The night Brian and Paige came over...seeing the older group of kids sitting around the table playing games and talking among themselves. Visions of years to come!

The wonderful Christmas dinner at the table with the twelve adults there...that roast from Costco was outstanding....I can say that with no boasting since they did all the work...I just had to follow their instructions!

The mounds of garbage in the garage due to no garbage pickup for two weeks. They finally picked it up last Tuesday. From the reports of our neighbors, the looks on the garbagemen's faces were quite amusing as they surveyed our 3 cans and 25+ bags of garbage.

Late nights...1 am+ every night. Poor Brent being the only one that then had to get himself out of bed in the morning...sometimes at 5 am to brave the snowy roads to get to work.

Sawyer picking on Beck...Beck picking on McKenzie and Noah....McKenzie and Noah too little to pick on anyone.

Jane (with major help from her Mom and Dad) taking the dogs out into the snow early morning and late night with many trips in between. They all did make having the dogs in the house a minimum inconvenience.

Seeing Morgan and Sadie enjoy eachother as usual....I'm looking forward to the next trip to D'land with those two!!

All of the grandchildren's acceptance of our new rules at the money drop...It really shows their real character developing!


I probably will think of more later but I can't express the joy of a mother in seeing her children enjoy each other as adults and the next generation forming the close bonds as cousins. The only thing that could have made it better would have been to have Tom and Tracey and kids here with us. (although you would have had to leave the stomach flu back in Japan!)


We are back to our normal routine now...all the Christmas stuff has been cleaned up. Our normal decor is back...and our January looks crazy. Today we are having the missionaries over for dinner, next weekend we are going up to Mt Hood for the 2nd annual Lake Collins skiing adventure with David and Brent's families, the next Thursday, Kenn has to go over to Boise for work so I'm going too to see Anne and Peter for the day...when we get back on Friday we will be leaving right away for Salem for two days for Kenn's acls training course and test, the next weekend we will be going over to Lincoln City with the Krouts, then the next Wednesday we will be going to Elko for our annual Cowboy poetry! Not sure how that all got scheduled in one month but it will all be fun...if a little daunting. (Although I'm not sure Dad really thinks the ACLS test is fun!!!)

Well, time to go to church. We love you all and I'd love to hear your memories of this Christmas too...fill in what I missed!!!

Love,
Mom