Avião

We've been up since the crack of dawn, and in aiports/on airplanes since 7am.


We is me, mom, Julia, and five children underthe age of 5 - including a five week old baby.


My kids are WAY overtired because, smart mom that I am, I put them down late last night. In my defense, Russ skyped us, and I did have to pack, and since we all three share a room I couldn't pack while they were sleeping.


Despite the lack of sleep and large number of small children, our travels haven't been TOO stressful. We all still like each other - that's a good thing, right?


The kids got a kick out of the moving walkways...


They liked to jump off at the end - like stunt men, I guess.


Then we had a race. KayLynn with her crazy long legs (for a 4 year old) was definitely the fastest. No wonder she likes racing so much!


While we ate lunch at the little Bar & Grill (where I had a crab Louie salad - which left much to be desired after being in Monterey for so long enjoying such fresh seafood) I looked up a playground in the airport (thank heavens for free wi-fi and iPhones!). So we mosied over there.

On the way, a nice airport man gave the kids little rubber airplanes.


The playground was a little dissapointing, but it was in a large, open, empty, mostly secluded area, so it's working for the time being.


It has definitely been an adventure so far, flying with so many kids, but thankfully we're still alive (if tired!) - but I shouldn't jinx our luck, since we have one more flight and a 45 minute car ride to go!

-- Post on the go

Food Safety

I wrote a little blurb over on my healthy living blog about food safety. Sparked by the yucky Capri Sun mold issue on Facebook. Yuck mold.

How Do I Breathe

I finally talked to my sweet heart today.

After three.stinking.days.

I have no idea how I made it through basic training without him.

Well, he made me promise to email him every day.

Having an iPhone will have never been so handy!

Riverfest 2010

The balloon glow on the north side of the river, seen from the south side of the river. That morning these balloons launched in Maumelle (fourth picture) and flew down the river, landing by the river. After dark, the pilots and teams do what is called a “glow” – they fire their balloons in sequence, so that the balloons light up like Christmas lights! It’s fun to watch, and was a nice way to end a great day at Riverfest.

At the International Village stage – the Kenyan Safari Acrobats. They did some cool jumping over fire stuff, too (see picture below). And please excuse the young lady to the right… she and her mom decided to stand in front of us pretty much the entire time. Try as I might, I couldn’t manage to get a good shot without getting their back sides in the picture. Finally I politely asked them to move, and five minutes later the show ended. *duh*

I See My Mother Kneeling

Tonight I was pondering the significance of prayer, and how I love to pray and pour out my soul to my Father in Heaven.

It isn’t enough, though, for me to pray and pour out my soul. I need to teach my children to pray. I often feel drawn to my knees in prayer, but it seems like I haven’t taught my children to have the same love of our Father in Heaven.

I need to gather my children with me in prayer more often, instead of simply praying by myself. It isn’t enough to pray myself. I have a sacred duty as a mother to teach my children about prayer and about the gospel.

In a book I read called Preparing Him for the Other Woman (see my scripture blog), the author suggests teaching your sons (and daughters) to talk to Heavenly Father when they are sad or hurt, and also teach them to share their joys and excitements with Heavenly Father.

Gathering my children with me in prayer seems like it should come naturally with the territory of motherhood. But for some reason I have not developed the habit of praying with my children – even though I have developed a pattern of prayer in my own life.

I think it will be really neat to watch the changes in my relationship with my children, and mine and their relationships with Heavenly Father, as we gather together often to pray. I’m not just talking about family prayer here. I’m talking about drawing my children near to teach them to talk to Heavenly Father. It should be an every-day, multiple-times-a-day occurrence.

How have you taught your children about prayer? Was it easy for you to get into the habit of praying with your children so that they will learn to have a pattern of prayer in their lives? Do you gather them to you in prayer?

Photo Display

Just because all three of the previous posts have no pictures – and that’s just sad. So here are a few of my favorite from Riverfest this year. We went Friday and Saturday (and Grandma and Grandpa took Vincente to the fireworks on Sunday night with his cousins!)

Patterns

The Pursuit of Excellence pamphlet, published by the Church, says members of the Church “should so closely pattern [their lives] to the sacred and enduring example of the Savior, Jesus Christ, that the basic principles of gospel living will be incorporated into [their lives] for eternity.”

I want to immerse myself in gospel learning. I often overlook study of a particular basic topic (like prayer, or prophets, etc) by a misguided impression that I know the “basics” and I should focus my study on more “complicated” or “deep” doctrines.

The thing is – the gospel is basically simple. In fact, it is very simple. There are really no “deep” doctrines. There are implications of basic principles – but if I think about the things that I’ve learned in the temple, or the things that I have learned simply by reading some other books by apostles of the Lord (such as Jesus the Christ) there is nothing “deep” or significantly different in that information than the basic principles of the gospel. There are perhaps broader, more far reaching applications of the basic gospel principles – but I believe that is something that I will learn with time and experience. And I will only learn it if I am immersing myself in basic gospel principles.

We learn line upon line, precept on precept – but that doesn’t mean that once we learn the first line we can forget that line when we move to the next one. I think that we need to be continually reinforcing the first line, the first precept. And each on that we add – needs to be reinforced.

That’s probably how I got so far off track. I was “checking off” gospel principles, instead of immersing myself in the principles. Gospel learning is not like climbing a ladder – we don’t climb up the rungs. “Prayer, got it. Next! Faith. Got it! Up we go… baptism, got it!” It’s more like cooking – we add more and more ingredients until we have the finished product (which we won’t have until we become perfect in Christ).

You don’t take ingredients out of a recipe. You are usually just adding more and more ingredients until you have them all.

So in our gospel learning, we should not check off our knowledge of a gospel principles. We should add it to our “gospel knowledge soup” and keep going!

Brigham Young University (my alma mater), one of the expected outcomes of an education at the university is that our time there will lead to “lifelong learning and service.”

So – here’s to lifelong learning!

Thankfully I haven’t forgotten everything I knew, so it will just be a matter of refreshing my memory. In fact, a lot of things are coming back already. I just need to keep working at it.

My Favorite Family That Isn’t Mine

How’s that for a title!

Okay, so here is a little post dedicated to my favorite family in the world that has no relation to me! Ha ha :) The Piersons! Seriously, if I could have third family (beyond my immediate family and my in-laws) it would be this family. I want to adopt the whole family!

Pretty much every one of the Piersons have touched my life at some point. Especially during my “formative” years.

They have been Young Women’s leaders, Sunday School teachers, swim teachers, seminary teachers, choir directors, stake Presidents, prom dates, YSA friends, yoga teachers, you name it. Seriously, I just can’t tell you how much I love this family. There are eight children, and of the eight, I can only name two that haven’t had some kind of profound influence on my life.

Today I was able to spend some time with a lot of them, and I got to chat with Sister Pierson (the matriarch of the whole clan) for a while. Her gentle Spirit and sensitivity to spiritual matters has always touched me. She was my seminary teacher for three years, and I think those three years are the most memorable of my entire high school career.

Lindsey, the oldest, is a sure friend, too. She was my YW President for several years, too. I baby sat her kids, held her new born babies, and learned a LOT from her. She may not know it, but I want to be just like her. Her example as a mother has been really influential for me.

The great thing about these people is that I am still learning from them. Their influence is so far reaching, and their spirits so strong that you can’t help but love them and want to be part of them!

Anyway, I just really had a great time today with their family. They have really been just amazing examples to me. How I love them so much.

That said… I miss my real family – Russ, and his sweetness. I can’t wait for him to be by my side again. I love the relationship we have, and I love that we love each other. I pray every day for strength to make it through this summer!

Good, Better, Best

I read this here:

Rebecca Renfroe, from Idaho, USA, used to blog and read others’ blogs almost daily. Her mind was always in “compose” mode—mentally writing a blog about what she did with her children instead of just doing things with them. She realized there had to be a balance.

She says, “The Spirit helped me to recognize that having a blog was not the problem—devoting too much of my time and energy to it was. I had literally been giving portions of my life away: trading away quality time with my children and my husband, trading away time for serious, in-depth study of the scriptures, and even trading away hours of sleep that affected my ability to serve others, to be sensitive to the Spirit, and to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”

Sister Renfroe learned not to let good things get in the way of better things, as Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles counseled: “Just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. … Of course it is good to view wholesome entertainment or to obtain interesting information. But not everything of that sort is worth the portion of our life we give to obtain it. Some things are better, and others are best.”1

I’ve been thinking about this type of thing lately. Especially the Dallin H. Oaks quote… once again, just for good measure:

“Just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. … Of course it is good to view wholesome entertainment or to obtain interesting information. But not everything of that sort is worth the portion of our life we give to obtain it. Some things are better, and others are best.”

What are some ways you want to give up “good” for “better,” and “better” for “BEST”?

Singing in the Rain

It rained on Thursday.

A delightful, warm summer shower.

And of course we went outside to enjoy it.

After several years in places that don’t know what “warm rain” is, we were grateful to enjoy playing in the rain. Vincente and Joseline thought it was the most fun they’d ever had! Joseline just couldn’t resist stomping in the puddles (hooray that she walks now!) and how could I deny her the pleasure and sensational party of playing in the rain in her clothes!

 

 

  Vincente loved the rain, too. That picture at the top is Vincente “being a bird” or maybe it was a dragon… either way, flying through the rain was much cooler than just dancing!

And then, of course, he wiped out running into the garage with his croc-clad feet. Just for future reference (as if I didn’t know this already! shame on me) garage floors are usually very smooth concrete… and when wet get very slippery. He got some love from Grandma so I could keep snapping pics of Joseline’s cuteness (and Vincente’s sadness).

 

 

(the biggest puddle they could find. Of course it was right next to an oak tree, so Joseline proceeded to munch on acorn tops. Yummy treat… yeeah) (washing off after the rain – my little bath babies!)     

The Summer 2010 List

I made a list a few years ago containing the things I wanted to do once I graduated. I’ve done a lot of them, actually, or made good progress on them (see the list here)

In keeping with my habit of making lists, I am going to make a list of goals for this summer. I figure I better have a list of goals, or I won’t get anything done.

• First and foremost – become more deeply converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ – understand the significance of belonging to the Church of Jesus Christy of Latter Day Saints – possessing a knowledge of the restored gospel.
• complete Baby’s 1st year Digital Scrapbooks for Vince and Joseline
• Learn Bach’s Partita No 3 and perform at a Suzuki recital in the fall
• train for a 20K (Arkansas 20K/10K September 18, 2010)
• Run a 5K in 25 minutes
• Learn Portuguese
• Consolidate my blogging

This isn’t too expansive of a list. I think I can handle these things this summer. It will be fun to have some goals I’m working toward, as well. So I don’t let the summer slip through my fingers.

Time tends to do that to me.

Memorial

I want to write something profound about the men and women who serve and have served our country, but nothing really comes to mind, and I probably wouldn’t do them justice, anyway.

I am grateful for all those who have fought for freedom, whether here on our land, or in other lands. My thoughts turn to them and my priceless freedom this Memorial Day, 2010.

Let freedom ring.

Oh, and Russ called and emailed

My sweetheart called last night! In the middle of the night, as usual. Stupid time difference. I think either we should all not do daylight savings time, or we all should do daylight savings time. None of this each-state-chooses-for-itself.

That’s just downright annoying.

Anyway, we only talked for about 20 minutes (he was using a friend’s phone – thanks Dan and Michelle!!) and mostly it was stressful and not a good conversation.

I’m the kind of person who tells Russ everything.

Really. No really, everything. I like to tell him about how I got bit by mosquitoes, how I am now my parents’ official cook, how I won 3rd place in the Dino Dash in my age division, how I had strep, but got over it. I think maybe there’s stuff he doesn’t really want to know, but he’s my hubby, so his job is to care about every detail of my life – even if it’s gross or stupid or ridiculous.

He does a really good job caring, by the way.

So I had written him a gazillion emails before the phone call. And then after the phone call I wrote him another gazillion emails.

And while he was up on fireguard, he wrote me back. Several really cute, really short, really perfect, really sweet emails that made my life.

So now I know he read my emails, he knows what’s going on in my head, and that’s what is important to me.

Now if only I could get in his head… mysterious Russ :)

Park Day

It’s kind of weird being a mom in the ward I grew up in.

Thankfully, Wednesday was playgroup for the Relief Society, so I took the kids. We’ve been going stir crazy in the house. What, with me moping around all day … every day (not to mention the heat). But I just had to get them out yesterday.

So we went to Lake Willestein park in Maumelle. It’s about a mile or so away from my parents house – we could have walked, except it is entirely too hot to walk anywhere in Arkansas. Not sure how I did it as a kid. More carefree back then, I guess.

  Joseline was looking particularly adorable yesterday (if I do say so myself). Any she loved those graham crackers! She was also walking a lot more. I think she’s started to realize that walking is much more fixe than crawling (fixe – cool in Portuguese, pronounced like “fish” but with more of a long e sound than a short i sound).

Vince had a great time with a lot of new playmates. See the flush in his cheeks? I think he rarely got flushed in Monterey. It seems like every time we move here, we get flushed. Even if we’re just getting in the car! I can’t believe how hot it is. This weekend is supposed to be a little cooler, thankfully. Highs in the upper 80s. How’s that for “cool”?

(but don’t you love how green it is! And all the tall trees! Arkansas puts Monterey to shame – as far as green-ness. Although the beach sure beats the pool. Hmm… now that I think of it, the pool water is warmer than the ocean in Monterey, so maybe the pool still beats the beach. At least the beach in Monterey)

A Cold in Strep’s Clothing (or my immune system is really, really good)

So it wasn’t strep after all. That or it went away on it’s own, thanks to my amazing immune system (or the fact that I was downing 100x the recommended dose of every immune boosting supplement known to man. Like seriously, I think I was taking 4000%DV Vitamin C 3x a day for the past two days. I probably peed most of it out, but if it had anything to do with the fact that I don’t have strep anymore, bring on the Vit C pee!!)

Strep A+

It has come back to haunt me, laughing in the face of antibiotics.

I'm fighting it off with 3000mg of vitamin C, orange juice, herbal infusions, glutathione accelerators, water, and lots of PRAYER. Too bad Russ isn't around to give me a blessing :( I could sure use one right now.

Oh yeah, and last night I couldn't sleep, so I called his voice mail to feel like I was "talking" to him... But he doesn't even have it set up with his voice, so instead I had to listen to the weird voice mail lady tell me that "########## is unavailable"

Then I just sat there listening to the silence on the voicemail like he was there sleeping next to me.

It helped a litte, but I still miss him, and this lack of communication is unacceptable. If we're going to pay $39/mo for Internet, he better be emailing me every.single.day.

Punk.


-- Post on the go

The New Do

Before my hair met Christopher:

(this photo was actually about a month and a half ago, so my hair was probably a good 1/2” to 1” longer than this – yes, my hair grows that fast)

After my hair met Christopher:

  (the tan is from the 5K + 1K I ran yesterday. I didn’t even realize I got so much sun. I’m just grateful the kiddos didn’t burn, because we totally forgot sunscreen! I can’t wait to see my skin at the end of the summer! Basically I’m going to be hott! ;)  )

So there it is. Becca with a short “do.” It’s bee, I dunno, 12-13 years since my hair was this short. I just don’t really care for the short do’s. It’s still just long enough to pull back into a pony, too! A very very short pony, but a pony, so pulling it back to run and workout won’t be a pain.

Bring on summer!

Chop Chop

Tomorrow I am getting my hair cut here

at noon.

 

Short.

Probably like this:

Or if I’m really feeling brave, like this:

I promise to post before and after pics.

Which do you like better? Short, or shorter?

Pajama Party

A little bit of what we do in the mornings when we wake up. Probably my favorite part of the day is our morning lounge-in-the-bed routine before we finally drag ourselves to the kitchen for breakfast.








-- Post on the go

Keeping Busy

We’ve got a full summer ahead of us! Which is great.

This Saturday is the Museum of Discovery’s Discovery Fest and DinoDash! (a 5K/1K to raise money for the museum). Then next week is Riverfest (Yay!) and the community pool opens! I just bought our pool pass/fitness club pass today. It was actually pretty cheap, since it’s just me – the kids are free at the pool. I’m also going to pay for the fitness classes. And I signed Vincente up for swim lessons!

So, we’ve got the DinoDash, Riverfest, then we’re doing a neighborhood yardsale on the 5th, then I’m going to go with my BFF to take bridal portraits (yay, Meg!) and then we go to UT for Christy’s wedding, then we come back for a few weeks, then we go to AZ for 4th of July festivities, then we come back, then Vince takes swim lessons, then Meg gets married at the end of July, then August, then September, then RUSS! Still got to figure out how to fill up August and September. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

In the mean time, my weekly activities will involve running (gotta get ready for the 20K in Sept!), going to the gym (yoga from my old seminary teacher, then I’m going to try out some other random fitness classes to find a few I like) then going to the pool ALL the time (we’re basically going to live at the pool). At some point I’m going to get my hair cut. And I’m going to learn Bach's Partita No 3 on the violin and play it at a recital in the fall before we leave. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the Children’s Theater! That’s going to be a good chunk of the first half of the summer, too.

And hopefully I’ll start tutoring again some next week. I just need to feel settled in. And having some contact from Russ would help. I’m starting to just treat it like Basic. Maybe he’ll call, maybe he won’t, and if he does, it’s only once a week. I’m sure he’s super busy. Plus, Russ is the kind of guy that doesn’t always call. Not because he’s no thinking of us. He’s just not a “calling on the phone” kind of guy. He’s praying for us and thinking of us constantly, I know. It’s just nice to get that phone call every now and then.

Well, I promised Vincente that I would take him shopping to buy goggles for his swim lessons. He’s pretty excited. Maybe we’ll go tomorrow.

I also have to go to Savers and see if I can find a rock and roll t-shirt to wear in the “Rock-n-Stroll” 5K next weekend at Riverfest. Since I don’t want to dress up like a rock star (can you see me looking like Bon Jovi? Wow)

I’ll try to remember to keep batteries in my camera so I can capture all our fun events over the next few months. And chronicle them here on my blog. And eventually try to use Photoshop and scrapbook a little 8-o

Ha – that’s what I’ll do in August and September – scrapbook! Play Catch up. Maybe get some books printed. Sweet.

Reason I Never Want to Be a Single Mom #1

Getting a three year old and a one year old ready for bed at the same time (while also trying to tidy up) is one of the most impossible tasks ever.

Thank goodness for Grandmas!

In a Far Away Land

Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a prince and a princess. The Prince had to leave the Princess for five and a half months, and the Princess missed him dearly. The loneliness birds had begun to lay stone eggs in her heart.

Every day she would fill with tasks and events, parties and engagements, hoping to fill the void left by the Prince’s absence. But to no avail. The Princess pined after her Prince.

Each night the Princess would resist sleep. It was hard to lay her head on her pillow without her Prince there next to her to sing her to sleep, as he often did.

How she longed for his sweet voice to sing her gently to sleep.

Photoshopped!

My very first photoshopped picture! The top shows the “before” and the bottom shows the “after.”

I darkened the silhouettes, then enlarged the backhoe in the background. I wanted to do more, but my bed is calling… no, SCREAMING my name.

Well, now that my compy is fast enough to actually run photoshop, I shall be having much more of this kind of fun! Just wait. It’s going to be awesome.

Memory

I just got my double pack of 1GB memory from the nice UPS man today! My computer’s memory has doubled – hoorah! And now I can run all my programs – including PHOTOSHOP! Look out, world, here comes the mama’s photoshoppyness. I am pretty much thrilled.

Too bad it’s too late to start playing around. I need to eat dinner, and then alas, tutor online. Since the AP Calculus exam was today I’m hoping that I won’t have a whole lot of tutoring to do. Not that I don’t love tutoring. It’s just that I don’t feel so wonderful today, so I would like to just take it easy all night.

I’m really excited to start playing with my photos. I’ll probably start taking more pictures of the kids once I learn how to really enhance them with Photoshop.

And I’ll probably start scrapbooking a lot more, and playing around with photography crafts.

Speaking of photography crafts – remember that family tree craft I was telling you about? I’m coming up with an idea that has to do with using photoshop.

I’ll let you know how/if it turns out.

Last Week of Sports – Next up, “My Family”

We finished our last week of our sports unit yesterday. We practiced counting and sorting balls, which Vince got a kick out of, and we have continued reading the sports books. Vincente has loved pointing out any balls he knows and saying their names.

I can’t wait to get him on a sports team this fall or in spring 2011. I think he’ll do great with soccer, and maybe T-ball. Only one sport at a time, though. I’m not really a fan of kids playing more than one sport each season. Seems like a little much to me. Especially for a little guy.

I was going to do plants for this week, but I want to have three weeks for the plant unit (and we’re moving to AR next week), so I think I will wait until we are in AR, and start the plant unit there.

Instead, we are going to do “My Family” as a unit. This will be great because right now we’re living with a lot of family, so will learn about uncles and aunt and brothers and sisters and grandmas and grandpas. We’ll talk about eternal families, and the temple. I think for our outing we’ll take a trip to the Provo temple. We may also visit a nursery. We’ll make a “Family Tree” craft – something fun and solid that Vincente can display in his room. I’ll have to come up with something cool, but I’ll be sure to take pictures when I do.

I’m also going to start giving each unit a group of letters and a number. We will learn the sounds each letter makes, and we will learn about counting to the numbers. The math concepts we are working on right now are number conservation – which means 5 golf balls are the same as 5 basketballs, even though the basketballs are bigger, the number of balls is the same, and classification – which is basically learning descriptions of things, and how to sort – like big/small, hard/soft, red, blue, green, square, triangle, etc.

We’re learning number conservation by counting groups of different size balls (this week, we’ll learn by counting family members – girls and boys, etc). We’re learning classification by talking about the different balls, and making patterns out of the balls (baseball, soccer ball, baseball, soccer ball, etc). This week we’ll make patterns out of pictures of our family members, and sort our family members by height.

I’m looking forward to this week!

What themes are you doing this week? Are you reading to your preschooler every day? (Don’t worry – I’m still working on that one! Some weeks we’re good… other weeks, not so much. Just do your best!)

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

For our preschool theme this week we checked out books about sports, counted balls, played soccer outside, and today we are at a baseball game. City league, not a big huge deal, but still fun! We're enjoyng the fresh spring air and the cool evening breeze. We missed our cooking day, but we had a BBQ on Saturday last week, and then again on Sunday, so we're kind of BBQ'd out. We may make some cracker jacks tomorrow, and we're learning the baseball game song at the game. So far I'm pretty impressed with how our first week of themed preschool has gone! I'm looking forward to next week.


What topic should we focus on next week? Music? Weather? Seasons? Writing? Something else?

-- Post on the go