Wordless Wednesday-Lucky's first Twinkie

This is another idea, like my Flashback Fridays, that I am stealing from a friend of a friend!

Wordless Wednesdays--because a picture (or several) is worth a thousand words!

from the mouths of babes, Part 2

After Ned's interview I wanted to ask Dusty some questions, too. I started this little interview over two months ago and Dusty was sick of me asking questions so I stopped for a while. Today is his 4th birthday so I decided it would be a good day to finish, and post it.

• How old are you? um,7


• How old is Mommy? Um, 6 (actually, you can add an "Um, Uh" to every single answer he gave me from here on... seriously.)


• What is your favorite food? Oranges. What is your favorite dinner? misasketti (spaghetti)


• What sports can you play? bounce balls


• How old is Daddy? 6


• How tall are you? This tall (patting the top of his head)


• What is your favorite TV show? Wow Wow Wubbzy


• What is your favorite movie? car car race (Hot Wheels World race)
  
• What do you like best about your dad? snacks. What else does daddy do that you like? food


• What makes you laugh? tickling


• How strong is daddy? this strong (lifting hand above his head) What is he doing when he does that? scrapbooking
  
• What is your favorite color? green, I mean, no, red, I mean, no, purple, I mean, orange


• What is your favorite drink? it is uuuhhhh, what daddy drinks, that one with spicy


• What is your favorite song? wow wow wubbzy wow wow wow wow wow


• Where do you like to go eat? songic (sonic)


• What is your favorite snack? I don't know a snack


• What is your favorite toy? Optimus Prime (transformer)


• Who are your friends? not Kyler, he told me to get out of there.


• What do you like to do at Alphabet Club? singing ABCD's


• How heavy are you? I'm this heavy (holding his hand out to the side of his body) How heavy is that? 7,8,9 dollars
  
• What time do you get up? 6 now olders (I have no idea what that meant)


• What do you eat for breakfast? sandwiches


• Are you a nice big brother? yes, I am a hard brother


• What is your favorite place to go with our family? exidonald's (I don't know why he calls it that, his older brother calls it Old McDonalds)


• What is the grossest thing you can think of? dust, I mean, poopy


• What are mom's made of? Stinky. They are stinky when they burp. (He has been telling me that I stink lately, I am beginning to believe him.)
  
• What is your favorite animal? Curious george, curious george is a monkey and he goes oo,oo,ah,ah!


• Who is the boss at our house? Daddy


• What does mommy like to do? do scrapbooking
  
• What do you want to be when you grow up? A firefighter, like weeeeeooooooo, like sound like that. I mean, a nice monster.
  
• What do you do best? play with cars


• How tall is mommy? Taller


• How tall is daddy? Tall, tall, tall. He's taller.


• What time does mommy wake up? 6 a half


• What do you love about mommy? giving me food


• What do you love about Daddy? being silly
  

I'm not JUST a mom!

I thought it might be fun to answer a question that David McMahon, (someone I blogstalk on occasion) posed on his blog.
His question is: What's the most crucial thing you've ever learnt?

It is so hard to say what is most crucial... so I will talk about one of the most crucial things that I have learned about being a mother.

Elder M. Russell Ballard gave a great talk about mothers yesterday during general conference.
"I surely know that there is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood. There is no one perfect way to be a mother.
"...What matters is that a mother loves her children deeply and in keeping with the devotion she has with God and her husband, prioritizes them above all else."

I have always known how important it is to be a mother, making my children a priority in my life is something that came naturally. That was not hard for me, but one of the most crucial things I have had to learn since becoming a mother is that I am not just a mom. Being a mom is the most important thing that I do, but it does not define who I am as a woman.

I have tried hard the last few years to find balance in my life.
Elder Ballard said, "Find some time for yourself to cultivate your gifts and interests... Water cannot be drawn from an empty well, and if you're not setting aside a little time for what replenishes you, you will have less and less to give to others, even to your children."

When I had my first baby I was bewitched. I loved being a mom and I wanted to be good at it. I was always happy, and loved my new life as a mom. I think that I didn't even realize that I had lost part of myself until I started to find things that I enjoyed doing on my own again. It felt so good to have fun doing things that did not involve my babies.

I think it all started to change when I moved to a new state and met some new friends. We started scrapbooking together every week. I found something I was good at and I was able to talk with other moms about the frustrations and joys of being stay-at-home moms. The group grew larger each week, as did my quantity of scrapbooking supplies. I stopped dragging all of my supplies and "scrapbooking night" turned in to "girls night" where we just chatted and giggled until way past our bedtimes! :)

That all started about three years ago. Girls night has kind of fizzled, but I am grateful that I had that time to learn the importance of taking time for myself.

A few of the things that I do to 'fill my well' are:

• I try to buy flattering clothes. Just because I only have $6 to spend on a shirt it does not mean that I have to buy a big frumpy t-shirt. I just have to watch out for great clearance sales.


• I get my hair done. I have lots of talented women that I go to church with that make me feel beautiful for a very reasonable price!


• I try to do things with my children that we all enjoy.


• I scrapbook... sometimes with my children sitting next to me working on their own scrapbooks (cutting papers and gluing them into a book).


• I talk to my sisters on the phone, even if it is just for a moment, to have a conversation with another adult.


• I blog. :)


• I go to a scrapbook convention every year. (I have been twice, but I plan on doing it every year!)


• I go to the gym. Some times I am better about this than others.
  
  
  I would not change anything I did those first few years that I was a mom, but I sure am enjoying myself a little more these days.
  
  So, all you moms out there, take care of yourself for a change... go get your hair done, buy a cute new shirt, or at least go pluck your eyebrows!

hey, you, google readers out there...

Ignore that last unfinished post you read on your Google reader.
I will finish it and post it soon. I accidentally hit "publish post" when I meant to hit "save now" so that I could go to bed, and apparently it does not take it off of Google Reader when you go back to save it as a draft... annoying! Sorry about that!
If you are reading this post and wondering what in the world I am talking about, and you read a lot of blogs then you need to sign up for Google Reader. It is awesome!
I obviously need to go to bed since I can't even figure out what to click on. Good night!

Another visit from Grandpa

My dad came to visit again last weekend. He was here for a total of about 30 hours. There was no one else that my husband would rather have ordain him a High Priest before he was set apart in his calling as the second counselor of the bishopric in our ward. Thanks, Dad, for making the quick trip out here to support our family. We really appreciate the sacrifices you made to be here.

I realized that last time he was here we did not take any pictures except the ones of him putting in the new floor.

After I took this picture Lucky came to sit on my lap for me to take pictures of me and him. It is a new thing he has been doing lately. If I have the camera out he wants me to take pictures of the two of us. As soon as I turned the camera on myself and Lucky the other boys wanted to join in. These are some of the silly shots we got.

Then grandpa took the camera and got one that turned out a little bit better. :)

Well, I better run and listen to General Conference.

Stranger Danger

Me: Dusty, Mommy is going to get in the shower. What do you do if someone comes to the door and Mommy is in the shower?

Dusty: Let he in.

Me: No, you NEVER answer the door or the phone when Mommy is in the bathroom. You need to make sure that Mommy or Daddy are with you if you want to get the door. Do you know what a stranger is?

Dusty: No

Me: (almost in tears.... have I really not yet had this conversation with my son that is almost 4 years old!) A stranger is someone you don't know. There are some strangers that are not nice, they could take you and you would NEVER see your family again.

Dusty: Oh!

Me: Ok, now, what do you do if someone comes to the door while Mommy is in the shower?

Dusty: Open the door.

Me: (trying not to laugh) Just come get Mommy if someone comes to the door, okay?

Dusty: Okay.

blog books

Have you heard of blurb.com? It is a site where you can turn your blog into a book. (you can make a book for anything, really. cookbooks (hint, hint, Michal), photo books, children's storybooks...the possibilities are endless) We are kidding ourselves if we think our online journals on blogger, etc. are going to be around forever. So, I decided that I wanted a hard copy of my blog. I had heard of Blurb and thought I would check it out. The prices were amazing compared to other sites like shutterfly.com and they have so many templates.

I chose to do my book with a black background. I think I liked seeing my pictures on the black background because I am used to seeing my pictures on my dark blog background. I was worried that when I got the book the black pages would smudge like some books with black paper do. It did not. I was amazed at how beautiful and professional the book looked. If you get hard back it is canvas and comes with a sleeve (that smudges a little, but wipes off easily). If you get a paperback there is not a sleeve, the cover you create is printed right on the book.

I decided to do a book each year. Since I started at the end of September I only had 23 posts to put in the book. It was really time consuming, so I am glad I started out small.

I took some pictures of the book for you to see. The picture of the cover has been edited, I had to fuzz out our name (I had our real last name printed in the book, but never use our real names on my blog). I will also add the link for you to see where the posts came from. You should be able to click on the pictures to see them bigger to see the detail if you want.

All about Dusty, All about Lucky. (for these pages I only added the memories that happened in 2007 or earlier, next year I will add all the 2008 and anything else I think of that I did not have on the list already.)

Doubleheader (the first couple of pages)

The end of I love these boys. And the beginning of Halloween memories.

The first part of D is for Doughnut. The slide show was a different post.

And the winner is... (I actually used a different picture in the book for this post because it had a better resolution). And the beginning of Baby it's cold outside.

I took this picture for you to see the binding.

The things I don't love about it.

• It was so time consuming. Don't let that stop you from making one--it was worth it!
• I had to go back and find the pictures that were on slide shows again. I suggest that if you decide you are going to do one of these, you make a special folder on your computer where you save all the pictures that you use for your blog in the highest resolution possible so they print clearly.
• I had to add the comments to the end of each post manually. I know that some people would not want them there, but it is fun to read them now, so why not 25 years from now?

Things I LOVE about it.

• The price.
• The many layout options. I didn't even play with all of them. There are so many.
• The quality. It really looks so good in person. Mrs. Morty saw it, she could tell you how good it looks.
• The service. Somehow an extra blank page was added to my book throwing off the layouts in the rest of the book. Blurb sent me a return label to send the old one back and a credit for a new book and shipping costs. They also emailed me back within a few hours each time I had a question for them. I love this company.
• I will have it forever and I do not have to depend on an internet company to be around forever to preserve my memories.