The Good Ole Days

I’ve been scanning in all of my old pictures that once upon a time I was going to scrapbook. I have since become a fan of blogging and digital scrapbooking, so I decided to scan in all of the old pictures so I can scrapbook them on my computer. That is going to take forever (not to mention the fact that I have to figure out how to scan in my already completed 12x12 paper scrapbook pages… I want to include them in my digital scrapbook).

Anyway, as I was going through, I decided to post a few pictures on my blog that I thought were way cool.

So here goes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Senior Pictures – taken by Araly Bowen

  

The group of Seniors at Arkansas All State Orchestra – outside the Belle Arti, a fancy Italian place our conductor always takes the seniors.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Arkansas Governor’s School 2003

Me and my daddy at a father-daughter dance back in my girl scouts days!

Senior banquet with Jannae

I can’t wait to get started scrapbooking again! I love blogging, too, but blogging is more wordy that my scrapbook will be. I think of a scrapbook as a good balance between a photo album and a journal. Blogging is more of a journal with pictures. Scrapbooking is more of a photo album with words. :)

Camera-less No More

I'm still trying to win an auction on eBay. I was winning, then someone outbid me, and now I'm going to go take a shower and come try to outbid him in the last seconds of the auction. We'll see how it works.

On another note - I was looking at how many blog posts I've had in the past few months and I realized that in 2 days I have almost posted half as many posts as I posted in the last 2 months! See what being camera-less will do to a person's soul?

Well, right now I've got a loaner camera that is working until I can win a stupid eBay auction. Have I mentioned how much I hate waiting?

Reblooming a Poinsettia

I got this poinsettia from a Christmas party in 2007 and decided to try my hand at reblooming a poinsettia. I didn't do so hot last year because I was gone a lot traveling in the fall. Well, my mother in law took pretty good care of it and it did grow some little red bracts. They were kind of dinky looking, but it was good for our first try!

Anyway, then we moved, and it survived, but looked kind of damaged. Then Vince ripped a bunch of the brances and leaves off back in January/February after we had moved. I wish I had a picture of what it looked like back then. Poor little plant.

So I've been taking very good care of it recently, and it is very full and bushy. I'm hoping that I will be able to rebloom it this year. I'm fully prepared to do what it takes, and living in California we have pretty much just the right conditions. It needs lots of sunlight, and we're getting lots of sunlight.

It's really not that hard to keep a poinsettia alive. You just treat it like any other houseplant. And contrary to popular belief, poinsettias are most definitely not poisonous. The white milky substance that comes out when the leaves are broken off will cause an allergic reaction in people who are allergic to latex.

After I rebloom my poinsettia this year, I'll start posting a "how-to" guide for reblooming your poinsettia, based on what I have done. There are a lot of good websites, as well. Just google "reblooming a poinsettia" or something similar.

Hopefully I'll be posting pictures of my rebloomed poinsettia in a few months!

Sweet Joseline

A few videos of my gorgeous girl.

She is figuring out the hands and knees part of crawling. She's been pushing herself around backward for a while, but only in the past few days has she finally gotten up on her hands and knees.

And learning to sit up! This is really nice, because it's a relief not to have to hold her up so much all the time. She's pretty stable on her own. Well... mostly stable. She sits up better if she has something in front of her to play with.

How Does Your Garden Grow

Very very slowly... okay, it's been less than a week... I'm just super impatient.

Here are some shots of what we've been doing around the house lately. The big boxes in the ground are our garden.

The backyard looks a little torn up, and I was going to finish fixing it this week, but things got busy, and I felt like taking a break from yardwork (since we worked outside Friday, Saturday, Monday, AND Tuesday. I just want to be CLEAN for one day!).

Over the labor day weekend we planted a garden, dug up the entire flower bed on the front walk, and hauled wood chips from the backyard to landscape the front yard. It looks a lot better. And the grass is getting really thick and green. Maybe in a month or so I'll get brave and try to kill some of the crab grass in hopes that "real" grass will grow. I'd just rather have crab grass than no grass...

The backyard still needs work, and I've been watering it hoping that a lawn will grow. We also plan on fencing it soon. We decided just to use lattice board and some 2x4s, since we'll only be here 8 more months, we don't want to spend a lot of money putting up a fence. We don't have any dogs or anything, just a little Vince, so it should be sturdy enough. Then when we leave we'll just take the lattice with us and use it at our new house, wherever that may be!

I'll post more pictures of the backyard once it starts looking pretty (probably around December).

Camera Happy

My AMAZING visiting teacher (and new-found friend) heard about my hunt for a new camera, and offered to lend us one of her cameras while we shop around. So... PICTURES!!! I love love love love taking pictures of my babies. Unfortunately, by the time the camera had charged up, the babies were all sleeping. So here are pictures of my sweet sweet children sleeping.

This is an upper body shot of Vince because when I got in there to take his picture, he had already wet the bed. Figured I probably shouldn't take a pictures of that. He's still working on nap-time dryness. He does pretty well as long as he hasn't had a lot to drink just before nap and he goes potty. Unfortunately for him (and me, since I'll be doing a load of laundry...) he drank to water bottles full and then fell asleep in the car on our way home from running errands. Oh well...

My sweet baby Joss sleeping in her new crib. We got the crib and mattress for $50 at the Post-Wide Yardsale back in August. She loves it and sleeps REALLY well in it. We have been blessed with wonderful children who put themselves to sleep and stay put in their beds. I'll have to post a picture of the crib. It is really a nice crib.

Another shot of sweet baby Joss. She is so beautiful. And she loves her shoosha. We actually had to buy new shooshas because I lost both of her old ones in one week. So along with the new shooshas, we bought the little keeper things. No more lost shooshas!

When I said they were all asleep I lied. Here is Joss just before I fed her and put her down for her nap. She was actually really ornery and kept fussing, but the camera has a green light that comes on every time you hold down the shutter button to focus the shot. Every time the green light came on she would stop fussing and look at the camera.

I promise to post more pictures of the babies soon. I have soo missed taking pictures of them! The next few days will probably yield LOTS of pictures, especially since our RS is playing volleyball tonight and I plan on taking pictures. Then this weekend in the ward campout and another BYU game... so even MORE pictures!! Hooray!

the prophet said to plant a garden

and so we did! We planted our very first garden today! It was a LOT of work, but we’re done, and now we’re just waiting for the little plants to grow. Most of them are supposed to start sprouting in 1-2 weeks, but I’m sooo anxious! I’m like a little kid at Christmas.

I was going to take pictures of all the events – going to the dump to find bookcases and compost, digging and filling and planting. But then I remembered that our stupid little camera is out of batteries, and I don’t have any more AAA’s. Some day we will have picture-taking abilities again. *sigh*

We planted tomatoes, four colors of bell peppers (green, red, orange, and yellow!!), cherry tomatoes, beans, peas, sugar snap peas, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, green onions, onions, carrots, and chives, basil, and cilantro (pretty much the only fresh herbs we ever use).

Everything was planted from seed, so we’re hoping to have our first harvest here in 2-3 months (that’s what the backs of all the packets say).

We also weed-whacked our entire backyard (the landscaping folks don’t do backyards). It looks pretty good. Now that it’s short-ish, I’m going to just mow it once every two weeks or so. I’m also going to start watering so hopefully, in a few months we’ll have a nice green lawn in the backyard (and hopefully before then, we’ll have a nice fence to border our lush green grass!)

It makes our little dump of a house feel a little more like home. These places are so depressing, if I don’t do SOMETHING with the yard, etc I would be really ready to leave. Now I’m cool with staying here as long as needed. Besides – I do really like the year-round growing season.

Speaking of which – folks may be wondering why on earth I am plating a garden in SEPTEMBER. Yes, that is because you can pretty much plant at any time all year round. We’ve actually just begun the “summer” months here, so my plants will have plenty of sunshine.

snowflakes

No, it’s not snowing in August here. In fact, I don’t think it ever snows here, so titles about snow will probably not mean anything unless we visit UT (which we may for Thanksgiving, but don’t anyone get their hopes up!!)

We just got a letter stating that Russ has been found “not guilty” for a traffic ticket he got back in March. Which means we’re getting back the $200 bail from the ticket that we had to pay – hooray!

So I guess it’s really money that we had spent anyway, so in reality we’re not getting any NEW money, but since we figured that we had already spent the money, this is like extra cash! Hooray! So I’m pretty sure we’re going to buy a camera with some of it. Not a super nice DSLR, probably just a little point and shoot like the one we had.

 

And I’m getting my wisdom teeth out on Friday morning… wish me luck!

Army Ball - June 13, 2009

This was our first night out after Joseline was born. We went to the Army Ball. It was fabulous. Mostly it was just really fun to dress up. The food was great, too! I have to admit, I think Russ’ hair is a little short in this picture. He looks better with a little more hair, but we just cut his hair that night, so it hadn’t had a chance to grow in a little more. We splurged and bought pictures. Just the 5x7 and some wallets. It sure was fun!

I borrowed the dress from a friend since I was missing the top to the only modest formal I own 8-o

The Powers watched our kids! Hooray! Joseline did well, but apparently didn't want to take her bottle. The little stinker! She eventually took one of their bottles, so she didn't starve. But she is a little stinker.

We have agreed that we should do things like this more often.

Getting Stronger

Here is a quick update of Joseline. She’s getting SO big. And we are SO busy, so keeping the blog updated has been a bit of a trial. Even now I’m not supposed to be blogging, I’m only on the computer to get a FHE lesson ready 8-o

Anyway, here are some pics:

She rolls over from her back to her belly pretty consistently, but doesn’t really know how to go back the other way. She’s starting to push herself up more on her hands when she’s on her belly, kind of doing a little cobra asana. She loves to see what’s going on and will wiggle around to get a better view. And she loves to grab things and put them in her mouth.

She also laughs and laughs and laughs at us. She loves Vince and “flirts” with him when they are in their car seats. On the way home from Church yesterday, Vince was just cracking up at her because she was burying her face in the side of her car seat and peeking out at him, grinning like a doll! She is so adorable, and has made our lives crazy! In the best way possible, of course.

it’s been a while

Probably because nothing much exciting has been going on here. We’re plugging away, we’ll have our Baby Emergency Fund fully funded as soon as our paycheck hits our account on Friday. When our second paycheck comes this week, we’ll be able to pay cash for my oral surgery. And we’re selling a bunch of stuff at the Post-Wide Yardsale on Saturday. So that should knock out almost half of our smallest debt. Then that will be completely gone by September. Add to that the 2 people who have looked at our car! And if we get THAT sold this week, we’ll pay off about $2000 with one big bang (after using $2-3k for a “new” car), and then we’ll have $300 extra a month to throw at those stupid debts!

I can taste the freedom… it’s coming! I can feel it in my bones!!!

Shoot ‘Em Up – Our Vaccine Dilemma

When I was pregnant with Vincente, I did a lot of research on vaccines, deciding whether or not to vaccinate. I grew up in a family of non-vaccinators, and I believe that my parents had good reasons for not vaccinating. So I decided to learn what I could about all this vaccination nonsense. After a while I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really want to vaccinate Vince for a while. I just wanted to hold off. I talked to some other friends about this and read a few books, and decided that was really the best plan for our family.

Well, now he’s 2, and we’ve got another needs-to-be-vaccinated child, and some of our life plans have changed (i.e. when Vince will start school – we previously wanted to homeschool, but our situation has changed a little, and we think I may be teaching full time, so Vince will probably go to pre-school and kindergarten). So now we want him to have many of the necessary vaccinations before school starts.

But then that raised the question of Joseline being vaccinated. With big brother bringing home all sorts of germs and nastiness from school, we feel like she should have some protection, as well.

But she’s SO little!

Back to the drawing board I went. I have spent several hours in the past week pouring over both sides of the vaccination argument, and reading a LOT from many different doctors – many of whom are middle-of-the-road as far as vaccines are concerned.

I came away from my vaccine-information-hunt with three conclusions:

1.) Vaccines are MUCH safer now than they were when I was vaccine-able age

2.) My children need to be vaccinated – for their own safety, and for the safety of those they interact with

3.) There has got to be a better fit of vaccination schedule for my family than the CDC’s one-size-fits-all schedule.

I found three very good “schedules” for vaccinations (not counting the CDC’s one-size-fits-all schedule), and merged the three along with some other advice into the

Rowley Family Immunization Schedule:

General Info

- only mercury-free vaccines, and aluminum free (where possible)

- check titers for antibodies before administering 2nd + doses

- our children are exclusively breastfed for 6 months, and breastfeed for at least 12 months

- preferred brand for Hib vaccine: HibTITER

-Vaccines-

Hib at 4, 8, 12 mos (check titers at 7 and 11 mos)

DTaP at 6, 10, 15 mos (check titers at 7 and 11 mos)

Rubella at 17 mos, 4 yrs (check titers previous to 4 yr booster)

Polio 2 years

Varicella at 5yrs (check titers)

MMR starting at 12 yrs (check titers)

This is only what works best for our family, based on our family’s lifestyle and personal beliefs about our health and the way our bodies work. I don’t want to convince anyone that our vaccination schedule is the best, just that it is the best for our family – and that you DO have options with how to vaccinate your children.

Basically I would stress two things:

1.) If you don’t want to put in a lot of research to come up with your OWN PERSONALIZED vaccination schedule, then use the CDC’s schedule, or Dr Sears’ schedule

2.) If you are at all uncomfortable with the CDC’s schedule, MAKE YOUR OWN (but PLEASE do the research!)

References:

Dr Robert Sears’ Alternative Immunization Schedule

Dr Stephanie Cave’s Alternative Immunization Schedule

Dr Donald Miller, Jr.’s Alternative Immunization Schedule

Hooray for Blessings!

The Lord will bless us when we try to do the right thing. I’ve always known that, and I am feeling it much more lately.

To bring you up to speed, Russ and I have made a pledge never to buy anything or do anything that requires money without FIRST planning it and budgeting for it. If we can’t pay cash, we don’t do it. SO…

We have received about a $170 a month blessing just today, which is AWESOME. Here’s why – by mid-August, we’ll have our $1000 baby emergency fund; by Sept 15 I will be able to fully pay for (in CASH) my wisdom teeth surgery. Starting in October, we’ll be able to put an average of $400/mo. EXTRA toward our debts.

That means that we will definitely be out of debt by the time we leave Monterey.

On top of that, next week I am going to go to the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District office to apply to be a substitute or temporary teacher in the fall. Hopefully (after childcare costs) we’ll be able to put another $1000 or so toward our debts each month, depending on how much I work.

Even if we can’t sell our car (which we’re trying to do) we’ll be able to make this debt snowball thing start rolling. And once it starts rolling, there will be no stopping us!

bedtime stories

  Papai has a unit test on Friday, so yesterday I told him to lock himself in his office and only come out for family prayer – I would get the kids ready for bed, and then after family prayer I would put them to bed. Well, as soon as he tried to go back in his office the kids attacked! Read us a story! Hold us! Love on us! We miss you! So, Russ, being the great Papai he is, took a few minutes out of his studying and held his babies and read them a book. I wish my old camera worked, because I wanted to take a video of Vincente laughing and laughing when Russ was playing with them. It was so perfect. It’s times like these that remind me of what a great little family I have. I love these bedtime moments. They are always so sweet and tender and so relaxed.

 

sunny day

Ah, the sun, the sand, the shore, the waves crashing on the beach, a perfect ending to a perfect weekend. We spent the day on the beach in Santa Cruz with the Wildes. It was fabulous. We didn’t even really do much. Just bummed around on the beach. I like bumming on the beach better than bumming at home – you’re bumming around either place,  but at least when you go out to the beach you feel like you’ve done something that day.

Mostly, Russ and Dan went out on the boogie boards, and Michelle and I sat near or in the tent with the babies, while Vince jumped around in the sand, explored the rocks, ate bananas and sandwiches, and made friends with some other little kids on the beach.

 

The babies were pooped after a while. Okay, well, Ethan mostly slept the whole time. Joseline was awake for the most part, but she was bored with Ethan (since he was just sleeping) and kept squawking at me, begging me to take her out to see the ocean. When I did, she would just stare at the waves crashing on the shore. It was really just a peaceful day. No rush to do anything. Just … living. That pretty much describes our weekend! (oh yes, that and potty training Vince – which has been WAY wonderful)

I got some pretty great shots – even with my dinky camera. It actually works really well out in the sun. Indoors is where it has problems.

On the way home we stopped at “Top-a-Lot Yogurt” in Santa Cruz. It was a self-serve frozen yogurt place. Think DIY Coldstone. You grabbed a cup, filled it with your choice of 6 different flavors of frozen yogurt, and then topped with any of dozens of toppings from candy pieces to fruit to sauces. Then they weigh your treat and you pay 39 cents per ounce of goodness. I think our total (including Vince’s chocolate ice cream topped with marshmallows) was something like $11. And Russ got a HUGE bowl of ice cream with just about every topping that had anything to do with peanut butter (pb cups, Butterfinger pieces, peanut butter syrupy stuff, chocolate syrup, etc). I should have taken pictures of the place. There are way too many things to think about these days now that we’re taking a two year old to the potty all the time.

This evening, some new friends from Delta Co. came over to hang out. It was a lot of fun. They have a daughter just about Vince’s age, and they are both potty training, and they both had accidents tonight. It was adorable. Okay, well, it was fun having friends over. The kids were exhausted, but they played pretty well together, considering. Joseline went to bed almost as soon as we got home. She was worn out from the beach, even though all she did was hang out in the tent with sleeping Ethan! I’m super ready for bed, but I’m waiting for Russ to finish some Chinese homework.

All in all, I am very satisfied with this weekend. I told Russ that I am neither anxious for him to go back to work tomorrow (like I usually am after the weekend – geez, just go back to work already! You’re messing up our routine!), nor sad to see him go back to work. It’s like the weekend was perfect, and I am completely content for life to just continue as normal! I think that is the sign of a perfect weekend.

Potty Training Part II – Days 2 & 3

Saturday – potty training went well in the morning. He didn’t have any accidents. Then we went to the beach. Russ tried to get him to go in the port-a-john, but to no avail. Then Vince spent most of the rest of the day in the ocean, or sopping wet on the beach, so we kind of let go for a while. I think he held it in, mostly. Vincente fell asleep on the drive home from the beach, so we just put him in bed in his undies and crossed our fingers.

Miracle of miracles, he didn’t pee in his bed! He woke up dry, so I told him to get on the potty as soon as he got out of bed. He threw a fit, though, and finally he asked me to hold him, but he peed his pants just as I was lifting him up. It would have been the best day of potty training had he not peed his pants.

Sunday – our first attempt going out while potty training. We tried to get Vincente to pee before Sacrament meeting, to no avail. Finally, he did pee halfway through Sacrament meeting and then again (a LOT of pee) halfway through the second hour (I hung out in his nursery class to make sure he would go potty, since he’s still not asking to go – although one of the times during Sacrament meeting, he told Papai that is was “potty time” – he didn’t actually pee, though). Anyway, after the second hour, he was getting really tired, and still hadn’t peed again, so we decided to just come home. He fell asleep on the way home, and we just put him in bed in his undies. Hopefully when he wakes up he will be in a better mood and go to the potty. I’m thinking we’ll probably just put him on the potty, whether he wants to go or not. He only had one accident today, before Church, and it was a pooping accident (I was trying to take a nap… so luckily I wasn’t the one who got to clean it up). I’m hoping now that he will poop on the potty – we’ll see.

*as you can see, our camera captures motion very well… as in, it captures THE motion… not “in” motion… but you can get an idea of how excited Vincente was to be wearing “quecas”! I can tell that he loves to wear undies. Last night he even refused to put on a Pull-Up at night! Of course, a few minutes after he had laid down, he wet the bed. After that, he didn’t refuse. But I think it’s great that he wants to wear undies! Now he just has to get used to this potty thing! Oh yes, and the picture of Vince in his camo shirt is from a few months ago when he asked to sit on the potty, but never went pee*

*UPDATE (7/6/09)– Vincente did in fact go poop on the potty on Sunday night! He went when I was at church for a teacher training meeting. I am sooo happy that he pooped on the potty. It’s like that was the big hurdle to overcome on our way to being completely potty trained! He is really good at holding his pee until he needs to go, and if he starts peeing a little, he realizes it and stops and runs to tell us he needs to pee on the potty! Our little man growing up so fast.

can’t resist

My little 3.1 MP camera actually produced a few good pictures today! (It’s hit and miss with that one!) The good pictures, coupled with a bit of touch-up using Picasa, and I have a few really adorable portraits of my little baby girl. I love her SO much. I don’t know what life would be like without her. She already has her own little personality.

Joseline is very chill – very mild tempered. She never gets really mad, unless she’s really hungry and I have delayed feeding her for too long, or if Vincente gets a little rough and smashes her leg with a toy truck, or knees her in the head while he’s jumping around on the bed. She certainly has a “mad” cry, and she uses it mostly in those situations.

Otherwise, she just hangs out. She’s perfectly content just to lay on the floor and do nothing. Even if we leave the room. Eventually she’ll start squawking. I say squawk because it’s not really a cry. It’s like she’s yelling “Hey, where’d everybody go!? Don’t forget about me, now!” Then we come into the room and as soon as she sees us she just beams at us the most adorable smile in the world. It melts my heart every time she smiles at me. She loves people, and shows it by melting their hearts with her smile!

She’s also quite the talker. Especially when Russ and I are sitting around talking, she joins in the conversation, yelling at us, cooing, squawking, etc.

We sure love having her as part of our family. It’s amazing how different your children can be from one another.

 

Potty Training Part II – Day 1 continued

Alas, we are almost finished with day one of potty training. Unfortunately, Vincente didn’t have a bowel movement today yet – which means he will probably have one before he falls asleep. Which means that he will need to stay up until he has a BM (unless he passes out before that).

As I type this, he is sitting on the potty. Unfortunately, he’s using potty-training as an excuse to keep getting out of bed (even though he’s in a Pull Up). We’ll see what happens.

If he would actually have a BM during the day, then I wouldn’t be letting him get out of bed 100 times a night.

Perhaps we will have to start implementing the 2-times out a night rule (thanks, Trisha!) but probably not until he starts self-initiating pottying.

As it is, today was a lot less crazy than I thought it would be. And way more successful!

Three cheers for potty training! :D

Potty Training – Part II – Day 1

Okay, so we took a rather long hiatus with the potty training business, due to me getting a wicked sinus infection, then having a baby,then getting mastitis, then getting something else, etc etc.

We’re back at it! And lucky us, we started just about where we left off!

Yesterday we told Vincente “Tomorrow, you get to start wearing underwear! No more diapers for you!” Which was actually perfect timing, because I used his last diaper last night when I changed him for bed.

This morning after breakfast, Vincente donned his “cuecas” – underwear. We started right away sitting on the potty, and we went straight to the big boy potty with his little ducky potty seat. We had him sit on the potty for about half an hour with no pee. During and after the first experience with the potty, he drank two 10oz sippy cups of water and juice.

Up until nap time, he only had two accidents. He’s to the point where he will pee in the potty every time we make him sit on it. He’s still not “asking” to go potty, or going to the toilet by himself, but at least he’s peeing on the potty.

We’re just going to be more vigilant about making sure he sits on the potty probably every half hour until he starts answering “Yes” to the “Do you need to go potty?” question. Right now his answer is always “No.” Or rather, “Nope.”

Tomorrow we’re going to a beach party. It will be our first real going-out-after-potty-trained experience. I’m going to bring plenty of extra clothes, but there is a bathroom nearby, so hopefully we’ll be able to make it to the potty often enough for him to figure it out. Wish us luck!