Finished!

So, if I can't show off on my blog, then where can I do it? Ha ha!

I just finished a blanket that took me months to complete! I honestly wish that I could crochet faster (or just have more time to crochet!) so that I could give more blankets as gifts, but by the time I have put so many hours into a project, I get selfish and want to keep it myself.


In case you can't tell, the alphabet is stitched onto the squares using a popcorn stitch. There is a star in the bottom right corner. It is such a huge, cozy blanket!

Pray this doesn't happen to you, too

Warning: TMI alert!

Today I'm taking the Buddy to the doctor. Here's what has been happening: barf, barf, barf. For the past couple of months, Jared has been barfing in the middle of the night about once a week. He doesn't get a fever, and he really seems to be fine the next day. Well, this past week he has barfed three times. Each time it happens Alan and I are awake for a couple of hours in the middle of the night giving Jared a bath, changing sheets, and rinsing out pj's and stuffed animals and blankets and everything else that got puked on.

Well, last night it happened again and the main thing that Jared barfed up was raspberries from dinner last night. Red, chunky juice all over everything: pj's, socks, hair, stuffed animals, blankets, sheets, mesh crib bumpers, mattress pad, etc. After giving Jared a bath and changing his sheets, we put him back in bed (it was about 2:30 in the morning). THEN we spent the next hour and a half cleaning up. Alan said we should prepare ourselves to have to throw several things away since they were stained so badly, but we decided to try to pour boiling water over everything to see if it would help. We had four pans of water on our stove at a time and poured the water over everything in our bathtub. It was so disgusting. Then we did a load of laundry in the middle of the night. Crazy, I know. Most of the stains seemed to come out. And yes, Jared seems fine today. However, I am going to take him to the doctor to see if he has some kind of acid reflux problem or something. Hopefully it's not something that medicine can't fix!!

Barf from little kids is so, so, so gross. Hope that this never happens to you!

Peaches!

Aah, another post about me working on my domesticity. :) Our new house has a peach tree, and last week the peaches were ripe, so we picked them all for Family Home Evening one night. Jared loved it! He was totally helpful picking them--so we got him his own set of gloves (since Alan and I were wearing them) and his own grocery sack to put them in (so we could sort out the good ones from the bad ones.)

Our peach tree is actually a pathetic-looking little thing, and you can see above that it is being held up by two metal posts.

We have been enjoying fresh peaches on our cereal, fresh peaches for lunch, and fresh peaches in our milkshakes. Yum!

My mom helped me can my peaches. It was such a pain to peel them since most of them were the size of apricots, but I did get 14 quarts for our food storage! It is kind of a satisfying feeling to have canned peaches from our own yard!

Being Replaceable

Today is the first day of school in the school district my kids will someday attend. I used to teach at the nearest high school by my house. As I have driven by this week and seen all the other teachers' cars parked outside the school, I have pondered being replaceable.

When you finish a phase in your life, do you ever wonder how life there will ever go on without you? I remember when I graduated from high school thinking that it was so weird that my teachers would continue to teach the next year without me or my friends there. Choir performances and competitions would go on without me. School dances would continue to be a busy social event, even though I wasn't there.

The same feelings come to me as I have moved a couple of times in my married life. My landlords easily found new tenants, and the bishops of our former wards found new people to fulfill our church callings. Life somehow goes on without me there.

I loved the years I spent teaching, but now I get sort of sad when I think that students come and go every year, and my former coworkers keep right on teaching year after year without sparing a thought for me. (Well, I still keep in touch with a couple of coworkers, and they claim to miss me sometimes. Ha ha.) It is sad to me that I was replaced so easily.

All of this makes me appreciate the roles in my life where I am NOT replaceable: my roles as wife, mother, sister, daughter, and friend.

A Gripe

To Facebook or not to Facebook...

A couple of nights ago I went to a wedding reception for a high school friend and ran into several other high school friends there. I had about four different people ask me why I'm not on Facebook. In fact, a different friend who is getting married soon admitted that he only sent invitations to high school friends who sent him their addresses when he asked for them via a Facebook message or post, or whatever it is called (that's an example of how much I know about Facebook).

Then the last straw hit last night when we found out that Alan's cousin (whom he is very close to) got engaged a WEEK AGO and instead of calling Alan (or anyone else) to tell the good news, he posted the announcement on Facebook. We found out from the grapevine since we do not have Facebook accounts.

Am I really that weird for not wanting to be on Facebook? I think that I already spend enough time blogging, reading other blogs, and looking at other things on the internet that I don't want to add another addicting program to my life. I would only waste even more time! But I really hate how impersonal people have gotten lately because of all this new technology. Is it really that hard to make a personal phone call or send a personal email (or even a mass email!) when something exciting happens in your life? One of Alan's brother's announced his engagement on a family blog and then texted everyone to check the blog. Even his siblings found out this way. (We have all given him a hard time about this.) I mean, come on, people. It's okay to post exciting news on Facebook or a blog to let all of your not-so-close friends find out, but please be more considerate of family members and close friends!

Am I way out in left field, or does anyone agree with me?

Our Little Rascal

Jared certainly keeps us on our toes.

Yesterday I played the organ in church, and Jared came up on the stand to see me when Sacrament Meeting was over and I was just playing postlude.

Well, at the end of church, Alan went to nursery to get Jared (I was still in Relief Society). Alan turned his back on Jared for 10 seconds to talk to someone in the hall, and Jared took off to come find me. Once Alan realized Jared was missing, he went into panic mode and looked everywhere for him: was he outside in the parking lot? Nope. Did he go back to nursery? Nope. Alan finally peeked into another ward's sacrament meeting to see if Jared was there. A couple of people figured that Alan was looking for a lost little boy, so they motioned Alan over to the foyer on the other side of the chapel. Alan shut the door to the chapel and then ran over to the other side of the church. A man was holding Jared and asking him, "Where's your mommy?" When Alan got there, the man told Alan that Jared had wandered into this other ward's sacrament meeting and walked all the way up on the stand by the bishopric before someone scooped him up and took him out to the foyer. We figure that Jared was looking for his mommy up by the organ! Smart kid. I'm so glad that we are new to this area and no one knows who we are and whose little boy that was that was wandering around.

I told this story to my mom this morning, and she said that my oldest brother did the exact same thing when he was about Jared's age. My parents found him sitting on the lap of the bishop of another ward!! Like uncle, like nephew, I guess. . .

Bear Lake

Last week we got back from a vacation to Paris, Idaho, the little town where my sister-in-law grew up. We went up some canyons, visited Minnetonka Cave, toured the Paris Tabernacle, and spent a day at Bear Lake. It was a perfect getaway for our family.

Jared and Grandma venture into the lake

Jared and his cousin

The entire clan at Minnetonka Cave (well, we are actually missing two)

Inside the cave

Jared "playing" Bingo with his cousins. He kept saying "I love Bingo!" although he really had no idea.