Family

Pictures for your viewing pleasure

This is Grace in her tutu. It was supposed to be for Christmas but then we didn't have a costume for Halloween so Voila, happy halloween! Grant and TD had semi matching shirts on the other day and Grace insisted I take a picture. TD has become quite the daddy's boy lately!

And this is a fly. :) Grace killed it all by herself with the fly swatter. She amazes me sometimes

And early Merry Christmas to you all!

Husbands....are GREAT!

Lately I have been thinking about the population of the world who either isn't married or whose husbands are not that great. I am so blessed to have a husband who keeps his marriage covenants and takes care of his wife and children in any way he can. He's not perfect, but neither am I. But he is a good man. He does what he should, he chooses the right, he plays with the kids, he sympathizes with me and my womanly stuff, he puts up with me for 1 whole horrible week a month and still loves me, he is worthy of his Priesthood, he serves others, he works ever single day, he compliments me and tells the kids that I am a 'hot momma', he picks up the house and does the dishes and fixes all the broken things, makes things for the house, is motivated to work on projects all on his own, I don't have to nag him, he loves everything I make for dinner and eats it in 1sts, 2nds and even 3rds, he cares for our safety, he calls me from work on his break or lunch just to see how I am doing, he worries. Not every woman in the world can say that she has a husband even half his caliber. What a blessing I have. Makes me never want to get frustrated at him again :) So, to all those good men out there, my husband being one of them, I thank you!!

Yippee!

I just ordered the All American 921 pressure cooker/canner from Amazon! Plus, a store here had a promo going when you buy gift cards you get a coupon to spend in their store, so I bought Amazon gift cards and with the coupon bought 4 boxes of wide mouth canning lids!! I can't wait to recieve it and cook something in it!!
Too bad we aren't having turkey for thanksgiving this year, I could have tried a turkey in it!!

A Question?

I have been saving up to buy a pressure cooker/canner and was wondering if anyone knew someone who owns an american made canner? They don't have the gasket seal, the lid clamps down with some wing nuts. Unless I hear some major horror stories, I think I am going to buy it. I feel better buying american made and spending some good money to help people keep their jobs here.

Life in our woods is good. It is colder, but not so cold the kids can't go outside and play on the swingset my sister-in-law handed down to us. (I can't wait until next summer and we don't HAVE to go to the park everyday to play on swings and slides and teeter totters, I love going to the park, but it is nice not to have to pack up and go!)

Grant has been very busy working on a few little projects. Any major project has been put on hold until the weather is better, i.e. painting because we can't open the windows! And busy is the right word for him. We wake up Saturday morning and I have to convince him come lunch time to come and eat! This last weekend we raked up all the leaves in our back yard, then yesterday had a huge windstorm and yep, we get to do it all over again :) And Grant roto-tilled another patch of our lawn for us to plant a garden in come next spring. I am SO excited for that because the patch will have awesome sunlight, unlike the old parts we used this year where the plants were dwarf because they never got sun! Can you tell where the patch is? It is more than twice as wide as it used to be!!

I have been re-vamping our budget and working on getting all my canning supplies next year for free. We have a couple stores who give you money for shopping there. You have to rack up so many points but then they give you a coupon, mainly Albertsons, and I already was able to buy two boxes of rings and lids! I know, some of you are reading this thinking, "She must have better things to do with her time than worry about canning lids?" Well, no, this is what I love doing. I get so excited to can, except when I have to sink $30 in one day to buy new lids, then I get cranky. Getting them for free makes me HAPPY! So if you know of any deals on canning lids, let me know :)

And one last thing, my sister-in-law enters the MTC tomorrow for 3 weeks before heading off to the Marshall Islands. I think many of you understand how SUPER EXCITED I am for her!! I just can't wait to start getting those emails all about teaching the gospel and all of her wonderful (and not so wonderful) and funny experiences! Oh the joy!

Stages

Thaddeus is of the age where he doesn't just toddle around behind Grace doing whatever the rest of us are doing. He is gaining a personality all his own, his own opinions, desires and everything. At first I was so annoyed with his tantrums and then I thought it so funny because about 2 years ago we were doing the same things with Grace. And once I realized that, it was a lot easier to deal with his tantrums, I deal with them the same way I dealt with Grace. Either I ignore him, or he gets taken to his room to cry. History really does teach us things!!! ps. the picture is just because I haven't posted a family pic in a long time. And no, I don't wear contacts, we had to take out glasses off because they were glaring!

Hair Cuts

I cut the boys' hair today. Thaddeus almost cried while I was buzzing Grant's hair. When it was his turn he was very reluctant until I showed him the scissors. Then while cutting his hair he kept saying, "Don't cut my nose, okay?" Then Grant informed him that he should be worrying about his ears so he started saying, "Don't cut my ears, okay?" The kid thought I was going to cut him all over I guess. I don't know where he learned to fear me and scissors together? Maybe his therapist in 20 years can figure it out :)

Grace's Primary Program

This is a post for the grandparents. Grace participated in her first Primary Program today. She was so excited and she did so well! She was one of the few children who said her part all by herself, and she didn't even get nervous. After she said her part I looked at Grant and said, "It is amazing how much joy you can get out of your 4 year old saying a part in a primary program!!" And it is. Just goes to show what people are missing whochoose to not have children. :) Have a great Sunday! And, just like she says, I know we are blessed when we follow the prophet, what a great thought.

Grant the amazing!

Grant ran a 1/2 marathon yesterday, 13.1 miles. He trained for this same race last fall but he got sent away for work the exact weekend of the race so he never competed. So, this year he trained AGAIN and competed! He finished in 1:37:26. He finished 16th overall, 2nd in his age group and 12th for the men. Not too bad for an amateur!! He works hard and has a lot of determination. He is awesome!!

I forgot my camera but luckily there were some friends from the ward there who recognized him and snapped these pictures for us. He was running so fast that the 2nd picture is blurry! His average pace for the race was 7:26 miles! The first place guy had an average of 5 1/2 minute miles!! He was flying! (I couldn't run 1 mile that fast let alone 13!!)

A Conversation with Thaddeus

Yesterday during Sacrament Meeting I had the following conversation with my son. Me whispering, "I love you", no response, again, "I love you", no response, then I whispered, "I love choo choos." a whispered reply, "me too." He was playing with his hot wheels train at the time. I guess I know exactly where his heart is!!

Phonological Awareness

Grace and I signed up for an early literacy class through our local library and it is so cool! It runs 6 weeks and we just had the first one. Did you know that it is important to sing to your children and have them sing with you? Of course you did, but did you know why? Well, it is so they can hear different parts of words. All those syllables that kindergartners spend clapping up a storm over, and our children learn it from singing!! Have you ever noticed that songs are broken up with the syllables of words for each note? You don't ever sing, "Hi-ck-o-ry" You sing it in syllables, "Hick-or-y". Plus, the library woman said that children who had memorized 4-8 mother goose rhymes by kindergarten did the best in learning to read and the "accelerated" learning continued on after that as well. So, play rhyming games, sing songs and read lots of mother goose rhymes and Dr. Seuss and any other book that rhymes! (the coolest part is that we got a book for free, "Llama, Llama, red Pajama" cute, if you haven't read it, you should!)

The Marshall Islands!!

My sister-in-law just got her mission call to the Marshall Islands. The family did a little poll to guess before she received it and my brother-in-law guessed Tahiti, only because they speak french there. The rest of us were so far away it isn't even funny!! Wow, I remember serving on Terceira, Azores and I told her how wonderful islands are. I think if I could move anywhere in the world I would pick a small island. Not like Hawaii, a few of their islands have skyscrapers and look to be very big cities. No, I'd pick Terceira or one like it, life seems so much slower and the craziness of life seems to seep into the water instead of into your life!!
CONGRATS KAMILLE!!

A-R-A-C-K spells.....

doll, snack, surprise, and anything else Grace might want. I know everyone does it. You are talking to your spouse and you spell something you don't want the kids to hear. Grace has picked up on this, except she doesn't know how to spell. She will come to me and say, "Can we have a A-R-A-C-K?" And wait for an answer, like I know exactly what she meant!!! :)

Rhyme Time

Grace has recently learned to rhyme. I can tell you this has to be one of my favorite things! She comes up to us so excited and says, "Mom, dad and tad rhyme!!" and she really is SO excited.
Thaddeus is learning to count. It is so cute and I blame it on the age. He has it in his head that 2 is 3 and everytime you give him 2 things he says 3, and he will ask for 3 and mean 2. Anyway, this is how he counts, "two, three, two, three" or, "three, two, three".
I guess Grace will be our english wiz and TD our math wiz :)

Surprise, Surprise!

We have this beautiful tree in the backyard that sprouted beautiful tiny blossoms about April, before we moved in, and I thought for sure it was a blossoming cherry tree. Then came some bite size, cherry-size fruit and I figured this was the non-edible fruit of many blossoming cherry trees. Well, they continued changing colors from red, to deep red, and now they are purple. We were outside yesterday with a friend discussing the fruit and I mentioned that Grant had been tasting them as they matured to see if they would be good so we grabbed one down, a purple one and come to find out, we have a blossoming PLUM tree!! The fruit is edible, although bite size, literally. I don't know if I'll do anything with it this year but next year I think I will make jelly. They are too small to make jam but my mom said if you boil them down you can make jelly with the juice. So, come on over and get some plums!! Ha!

Other news, I would like to encourage you all to try indexing. I just started a week or so ago and it is so cool and easy. Go here to sign up and download the program. We can't go to the temple very often and I don't have enough free time to sit down and dig into geneology so this is my contribution. You download pictures of legal documents with names and dates etc. like marriage licences, draft cards, census reports etc. Then you type in the information you read so it can be searched. Pretty cool eh?! The program is all set up and you type the information in the correct box, done. I even did a Puerto Rico Census from 1930, all in Spanish. Pretty fun trying to figure out which name was the first, and which was the last(s)!! The site has all sorts of information and you can even test drive it before actually jumping in with both feet. You can do it for 1 minute a day or 24 hours a day! Contact your local Family History Center for more information!

Life Lessons

I have a friend here who has two female cats. One of them gave birth to some kittens about 3 months ago and the other one just 1 week ago. I find a very interesting parallel with the way these cats mothered, and the way the world works sometimes.


The first cat we assume was just too young to have kittens. She had never seen any mother cat before and only did the bare minimum for her kittens. She wouldn't nurse them or keep them warm. In her weird sense of needing to protect them she would put them in the rocky flower beds or in the middle of the lawn and leave them there. At one point my friend took the kittens and gave the cat only visitation rights. These kittens, after being bottle fed by my friend every 2-3 hours, even at night, only lived about 6 weeks.

Now, on the other hand, this latest mother lays with her kittens to keep them warm, she nurses them, she keeps them in a box and is very loving and does everything for them she should. My friend just ignores them to give them their privacy and those kittens, at one week, are already as big as the first set were at 5 weeks.


I know this isn't a perfect parallel, many abandoned kittens survive, many cats abandon their kittens for good reason etc etc. But, The world thinks we can just send children out to be taken care of. I do not believe that and know many others as well who don't believe that. We are the BEST teachers, care takers, loves for our children. (under normal circumstances of course) No child will do better in day care all day or with a nanny than they would have with their mother, who loves them best!! That is the plan Heavenly Father has so it must be the best one (again, under normal circumstances). No matter how imperfect I may think I mother, or how many mistakes I make in trying to do the best for them, they will never get the best except from me! And the same goes for all you other hard working mothers out there!!

Plus, I won't even go into the benefits of breastfeeding. :)

Here is a picture of the first kittens at 16 days;

CRAZY!

I had to post one more picture from our family reunion. These are the grand kids with glow sticks. They had so much fun with them!

In other news. Nursery is sorta crazy! Today this little girl bit one of the older boys. Where you may ask? On the side of his head, by his eye. I should ask his mother if I can take a picture! Wow, that is all I can say. And, ask for some fun ideas. Today we played with balloons, I have about 2 more ideas before I run out. I hate when they just pull out all the toys to just spread them all over the place. I am trying to mix it up a bit. So, nothing messy, but if you have any ideas, please impart!!

Family Reunion 2011

We Wrigley's don't do anything too exciting, but it was fun. Here is all of us on top of the conference center (or most of us anyway). We had a tour, fun!


The church history museum has a children's section. If you haven't been there lately, go! They have these skirts you tie on and the boys get vests and they have 2 screens with dancers to teach you a dance! And a bunch of other stuff we never got to because TD stayed here 1/2 the time!

Isn't the reflection pool for playing?

This is my favorite. We took family pics at the Logan temple and this is my parents just talking, they didn't even know I took it. They are so cute!!

This is what these 3 boys did most of the time, all weekend, in the basement mostly with a cool car track that sends the cars flying around curves. TD was in Heaven!

It was fun overall. We all got sunburnt at the water park, roasted marshmallows visited temple square, played with glow sticks, shot off fireworks, the kind that are illegal in Idaho!

Grace

The other day while Thaddeus was napping Grace and I played pretend. She wanted to be a princess. She came to me with a doll stuffed up her shirt and told me she was going to have a baby, well, I figured this was as good a time as any to start on the morality talks. I told her she had to get married first. "Okay, let's get married" I hope it doesn't count that I am her mother and a girl, we'll work on that lesson later.

So, we go the the closet, the 'temple' and get married. She proceeds to place the doll under her shirt and tell me she's going to have a baby now :) We have the baby and then we have to take her to the doctor so we drive to the fireplace and she has a conversation something like this with the 'doctor' (herself). "Well, she's really sick" "Yeah, she's really sick and will have to stay her for 5 years" "Okay, we'll go home and come back and bring her breakfast and get her" :) Wouldn't that be weird to leave your kid in the doctor's office for 5 years!!







This picture is of Thaddeus trying to dress himself. I told Grace to go get dressed and he took it upon himself to get a shirt and pull it up his hips :) He came to me while I was brushing my teeth and I almost busted up, spraying toothpaste foam everywhere!! He wouldn't let me get him dressed either, he kept saying "drest" and pointing to his shirt/pants!!

The Temple

Grant and I live 2+ hours away from the Spokane Temple. It takes almost 5 hours of travel time, 2 hours in a session and then an extra 1/2 hour to get lunch/dinner. We thankfully have found some friends who trade babysitting with us so we can go every other month. Well, we had the priviledge of attending a session yesterday and it was wonderful! I read Ensign articles about people going to the temple and getting answers to their questions, some of them as if it was written on one of the walls in the Celestial room! But, I have yet to receive one answer there to any of my questions. The only thing I receive is this calm feeling that no matter what happens in our life, which a lot has, everything will be okay. I think that answer is ever so perfect for me. If I got a specific answer I'd probably be too stubborn to actually do it, I know, sorta an oxy-moron. The thing that means the most to me is that comfort. Again and again that seems to be how our Heavenly Father speaks to me, it is going to be okay. And, it will be.

The Kitchen Update

Here it is, Before and the afters. We have a little bit of finish work, the ceiling needs painted, we need to replace some bead board on the far wall and some other minor details but, here it is for the most part. The second coat made it look a lot better, darker, less blood red. We had a guy friend come over to help Grant with something when we had just part of the first coat on and he said, "What did you do, kill someone and use him to paint?" Yeah, it did look like that. FYI, never ever paint red over a white wall, it'll take 5 coats! Use a grey primer first- Thank you Home Depot paint guy!!

Kitchen Update

This is the Before, to remind you how wonderful it looked before we started changing things :)

Now this is that same counter (to the right of the sink) We ended up with a different counter top than I previously posted but that is the red. I would show a picture of the whole kitchen but I haven't painted the whole thing, just around the counter top and under the cupboards. Plus, we still have to finish the cabinets and counter top for the other side, hopefully this week. But, it is so much better than before and the red is a little crazy, but I am getting used to it. Let me know what you think.

Some pictures of our mess while we try and finish the kitchen, it has been this way for 2 weeks and will continue this way for who knows how long :)

And, Daddy's little helper! :) He helped me too, with 2 screw drivers getting off a nut under the sink :) We even taught him "philips" and "flat head" :)

Recycling

I am a fan of recycling, not necessarily because it will save our planet or stop the overcrowding of landfills or save marine life or fowl everywhere or because I can't stand to have more trees cut down than should be. Those and many more are great reasons to recycle, but, my favorite reason is because I only have to pay for a 32 gallon trash cart instead of a 94 gallon! And, we don't even fill us the 32 gallon in a week, I need to look into a smaller one maybe, save even more money!

New Ward, New Callings

We have 1 o'clock church now so this is the Sunday morning ritual, get the kids all ready for church, Dad reads in his most boring voice and they all fall asleep! I am really grateful we bought a house because now we are stuck in a ward, no more moving and having to make new friends every year! My goal used to be to stay in a ward long enough to change callings, we did that in Boise, now my new goal is to stay long enough that I speak more than that first time get-to-know-you talk. So, as for our new callings, I'll let you guess. Here are some hints: We are together and we don't teach every Sunday. I'll tell you at the end of the post, you really have to guess!

These are our new living room curtains! Everything we own is brown so I decided to keep it that way and just add some color in my accessories, pillows, pictures etc. Grant loves brown.

Grant's family came up 2 weekend's ago to help us with the house, they moved these kitchen cupboards, I hope you can tell the difference from before and after. Above is before, fridge in the middle of a beautiful wall ready for cabinets, below is the after, scooched to one side ready for a beautiful new counter-top (maybe next month)

We are going to paint the top half of the walls Behr color California Poppy and hopefully, it's not set in stone, put in some make shift cupboards with a counter top from Home Depot: Jeweled Corral. I love owning my own home!

Okay, I got called as nursery leader and Grant as my assistant. There are already 2 other sisters in there with 15 active children, hence the 4 leaders. Anyway, we went in there on Sunday and let me tell you that nursery is the best calling ever! We played for the 1st hour, had music time, snack time, lesson time and activity time and then played for the last 10 minutes. The lessons are like 2 minutes long and as long as you have some pictures and talk all excited the ones who are going to pay attention do and that is the hardest part. At first I was bummed, felt like I was being exiled but then I remembered that I still have all my friends from 1st ward so I don't really need to make that many friends in this ward too quickly and what a better place to be exiled to, snacks and play time!!! (plus, for the first time in a while, Grant and I get to spend more than sacrament meeting together!)

Thaddeus

Thaddeus got a haircut last night. I didn't video it because it took us both to do it. I used the clippers for the first time and he cried and cried and yelled, "Owww, Owww" in this slow very painful voice. It made me glad we didn't have neighbors on any walls, they'd have thought we were torturing him! So, the videos are cute ones of him and pay attention to the hair, the first is before, the second is after. I'll post a before picture as well since the video is from behind.

Thaddeus facts:

1. He can't 'talk' yet but has about 20 words or more and is starting to say sentences. Like in the video he says "me me more" (Please more) or yesterday he asked "me me more apple" Most are words the layman wouldn't understand, just his parents and Grace.

2. He loves peaches and beans and rice.

3. He is very independent lately and won't even let you sit him in his car seat. He has to crawl in and out of the van on his own!

4. He hits Grace a lot. We're working on it.

5. His dad is his favorite person, hands down.

6. He loves nursery as long as he has a car in each hand and he will spend all his free time on the opposite end of the room as everyone else with his cars. When we moved we changed wards and he now has one friend. Another boy who also needs one car in each hand. They like each other because they both have all the cars they can hold so there isn't any stealing!

7. He has a car in each hand even when he isn't in nursery. We've had to put our feet down though with him having them at the dinner table. Too many cars 4 wheeling in his food!

8. He plays pretend with Grace. He gets tired of it more quickly than she does but I have seen him even pretending by himself.

9. He is very quiet in public. Public being defined as anywhere there is someone in addition to his family. My friend's husband watches the kids sometimes so we can go walking and one morning he told his wife (after watching Thaddeus) that he didn't make one noise the whole time he was there, not a jabber or a cry.

10. His new favorite word is "What" and if you say "Thaddeus" he says "What" you say "I love you" he says, "Aaawwh" (Grant started saying that to Grace when she could first talk and he still does, and Thaddeus can play along as well)

Pictures of the House!

This is the front of the house. Obviously :) We have dug out dandelions by the hundreds, literally and under the left bedroom window is a flower bed that we pulled all the grass out of. There are some really pretty tulips all over the front, gone now of course. The two small trees are dogwood trees. Go here to see what they should look like, they are gorgeous! Anyway, they both need some TLC as only one bloomed this year and only a few flowers instead of the whole tree like they should.

This is the backyard. No one has been in this house for over a year so the next project for when we come into a lot of money :) is to re sod the back yard. If we don't come into a lot of money, we will just seed it. Here is where we tore out most of the dandelions. It was a dandelion garden really! I should have taken before pictures for you!

The kids playing in the sprinkler. We would really love to put a hot tub over that brown patch :)

This is our bedroom. We painted it a pale sea/mint green. We had brown carpet we pulled out and there are wood floors in our bedroom. We have done so much to this house. We always dreamed of buying a fixer-upper but boy am I tired! We have spent the last 3 weekends painting. Every Saturday and a little on Friday. We dug out all the dandelions and other various weeds. We need to finish painting the basement so it doesn't smell like smoke. We've torn up 2 carpets and all the hardware underneath. We Scrubbed the house top to bottom before we even moved in. Grant cleaned out the gutters, gross! The leaves were beginning to compost inside the drains on the side of the house! Grant has fixed plumbing and electrical. We have weeded all the flower beds and garden spots, roto-tilled them and cleaned out the rocks from them and planted a garden. The list goes on but Grant mentioned yesterday, "Now that we are done painting (the bedrooms anyway, we still have to paint the living/dining rooms but not until later) we can actually spend our weekends doing regular house chores." Yep, our house is fairly un-kempt because we spend all our time on these projects. Our house smells better upstairs though and for that my sinuses are grateful!! We haven't even hung pictures on the walls yet :) But, all these projects have been very fun and Grant and I have learned a lot about eachother through the process. Projects are good for marriage I've decided :) It is just amazing how much time owning your own home takes!!!!!! (Someone should have warned me :))

More Pictures

This is the kids room. We painted it a light baby blue, calming, so they'll fall asleep faster! There used to be an icky brown carpet and we pulled it up to reveal this beautiful wood. I don't advocate pulling out carpet, you have to get all the staples out and the carpet tack all around the room, I ruined my hammer doing it!!

The Dining room. It was already pink and maroon. If Grant was a little richer, we would have already painted it as this is his least favorite room!

The Living room. We want to paint it a neutral but it isn't a priority right now. The bedrooms smelled like someone had smoked a lot in them so they were a priority. Ps. Kilz smells worse than anything!!

Kitchen. One long rectangle with no countertops on the other side of the kitchen, just two cupboards suspended in the air :) That is our next project. Grant's dad is coming soon and he is going to help Grant move some outlets and we are going to move the cupboards and the fridge and then find some cheap/free cabinets and a countertop to make due until we can redo the whole thing.

This is the opposite wall. You can barely see the cupboards around the fridge at the top. For now I just have some food storage buckets and brooms etc in the space where the fridge will eventually be.

More Pictures

Storage Room/Whatever we dont' know what to do with room :) (this is the 3rd bedroom downstairs without an egress window)

Laundry room downstairs. We are still in the process of fixing some plumbing!

Our huge basement room. One long rectangle. The kids run and run and run!

Our shop. Nice eh? If only we had actual things like tools or atv's or something to fill it up :)