A few pictures

Ok, so I finally got the kids pictures taken together and here are a few of them. I also have Logan's 5 year pictures and the kids Christmas pictures. I just wanted to put a few up tonight. I'll add more as the week goes.

Finally....

Ok, so I missed the whole month of December. In my defense, it was a very busy month. All of the actual events were fun, but it was so much work preparing for each one. I've set a goal of making Christmas a more peaceful time next year. I want to be able to enjoy the Christmas season, instead of being filled with stress. I'm thinking no actual presents, just gifts of time and service. I don't want to be busy making a bunch of homemade gifts either, I just want to spend time with my family and friends and let them know how much I love them. That can't be such a difficult thing, can it?

Of course now that it's the very end of Christmas vacation, Logan and Steve are both sick. Logan seems to be on the mend, but Steve appears only to have made it from sleeping in bed all day to sleeping on the purple couch all evening. So instead of having a nice quiet house tomorrow with only Rowen and I, it may be the whole family hanging out all day. I guess it's a small price to pay for all the extra snuggle time I get with Logan when he isn't feeling well.

Rowen went to "big primary" today. I can't believe she's a Sunbeam. And what a different Sunbeam she is than Logan was. I watched Rowen from the doorway for about 15 minutes, and she was so good. She sat quietly in her chair with her arms folded. She just kept shushing Gabe. Logan still has a hard time sitting in his chair for all of Joint Exercises in Primary. And Rowen came home with the spotlight bag today. I'm more excited than she is. And what a sweetheart. I was asking her what she wanted to bring in her spotlight bag in the car on the way home. She of course said her Littlest Pet Shop and her ponies. And then she stopped. So I asked her what else. And she said she was thinking about all the people that she likes best and she started listing all of our friends and family. She said Cayden and Kenzie and Bailey and Ayden and Mommy and Logan and Daddy and Gramma and Grampa. I really hope Rowen gets to be a big sister someday. She would be so good at it.

We went and saw Despereaux on Friday. We also saw Bolt on Tuesday, but it wasn't anything great, so no real need to do any writing about it. But Despereaux I loved. It had such grownup themes, but all the kids loved it. It was about love and loss, courage and bravery, forgiveness and hope. I shall have to see it again when it comes out on DVD, especially because Rowen had to go to the bathroom twice during the movie. And of course, always at an crucial moment. But the characters were well-developed and you could see how hurt and loneliness can drive someone to be unkind and selfish and how one act of forgiveness can bring out the best in not only the one forgiven, but in the person who forgave them. It showed how great acts are never accomplished by one person alone, but by people willing to stand together and try their hardest. It was a beautiful little story. I shall have to get the book from the library and read it with Logan.

I've been reading some great literature lately. At the end of November I read Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. Thinking about it more than a month later still pulls at my heart strings. Jude (from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy) has some stiff competition for character dearest to my heart by Ralph Marvell. He was kind and good, intelligent and honest, gentle and hardworking. He wanted a life full of beauty and adventure and love and instead he ended up with a wife who was not only selfish, but was empty and vain, who had no redeeming quality at all. Her only goal in life was to be rich and beautiful and to be part of the most elite social circles. And she spent her whole life using and abusing every single person who came in contact with her. She didn't want to be rich so that she could travel to beautiful places or own amazing works of art to admire. She only wanted to be rich in order to be talked about and to be written up in the society pages. That was her only goal in life. Ralph gave her everything he had and when it wasn't enough for her, she walked away and left him without a backward glance. She ends the novel on her fourth marriage and already showing signs of disappointment in it. I previously thought that Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair was the most self-centered ruthless anti-heroine ever written, but at least she did have intelligence and she did have some genuine caring and moments of generosity to her friends. Undine Spragg has nothing. She has to be the most shallow character ever created. It still just seems so unfair.

I've been reading the short novels of Henry James this last month. They aren't so much as novels as character studies. They don't have great plots or even amazing characters. But the writing is fantastic. I really liked Washington Square, even more than I thought I would. His turn of phrase is incomparable. The stories are about such average people leading average lives, but his writing is captivating all the same.

Ok, I'd best get back to my kids now. But at least I got my first post of the year done.

~Jenn

I'm so lame...

Ok, so I had a pretty frustrating day at church today. Logan was not behaving at all during sacrament. And then we had a really uplifting lesson about sacrament meeting in Relief Society. I felt horrible for spending the entire sacrament meeting feeling angry at Logan. And I know I can set a better example, too, cause there are some Sundays where I just am too fidgety to sit still, and so I pull out a notepad and write. And after RS, I just wanted to hug Logan and tell him how much I love him, and the first thing he does when he sees me after primary is run up to me and punch me. And when I try to hug him, he blows a raspberry in my face. So of course, that blew my whole good mood, and I just felt frustrated.

Anyway, then I came to write a post about who knows what, cause I'm bored, and I never noticed that anybody had left comments on any of my posts before, and it turns out people have and of course it's not really a big deal, but I just wanted to say that I love my friends. And I miss all my friends that I don't get to see. I'm lousy at emailing and even calling, but I have things around the house and toys and clothes that my kids have that remind me of different people and I guess I just wanted to say thanks for making me smile today, cause I needed it.

And I really do hope this week is less hectic than the last few weeks has been, cause every week I think the next week will be better, and it never is. This next week should be more fun at least. I get a Moms Night Out, the Logan and Steve have a couple of days off, we're going to the Wild Animal Park with the Wilsons and my brothers are coming into town. Now I just have to get started on all the pumpkin for pumpkin pies.

I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving. I'm glad at least this holiday hasn't been overwhelmed with commercialism. I guess that's all focused on the day after Thanksgiving. Well, here's to a day when we just get to spend some quiet hours with family and having a good time.

~Jenn

Pictures of Rowen

So, I finally took the kids back to JCPenney to get their pictures taken. I took Rowen in October, and so I have her pictures back. I took Logan back this week, so I'll add his pictures when I get them. I also took the kids pictures together, so I'll add those as well later. I might add a bunch of pictures, so for any of you who get sick of looking at Rowen (which is not me), sorry.









I hope the pictures aren't blurry (I won't know until after I post) because I've never posted the low quality pictures that I download from their portrait sessions. If they are blurry, I suppose I could scan the pictures that I bought and then upload those, but that sounds like a bunch of work, so it most likely will not happen.

~Jenn

Knock Knock Jokes

Ok, so we have a bed time ritual with the kids. We have family prayer, then hugs and kisses, then the kids get into bed. Then Steve and I each take a turn sitting on each child's bed and they get to talk to us for a few minutes. Well, at least that's how it started. What it quickly turned into is that Steve asks them what their favorite part of the day is, and I get told two knock knock jokes by each child. And they usually involve chicken, faces, fruit snacks, oranges in orange trees and apples in apple trees and monkeys. It's been going on for months now. So now I'm going to post some of the kids knock knock jokes. And Rowen usually tells her jokes in some sort of weird voice. Lately it's in a voice that's deep like a robot, in a kind of whisper and she separates each syllable. It's quite the voice for a little girl to be using.

My favorite joke so far has been one that I heard for nearly a month straight, twice every night (yes, Rowen would just repeat the same joke twice).

Knock Knock -- Who's there? -- Why did the chicken cross the road? -- I don't know. -- Because he was hungry about oranges in the orange tree and apples in the apple tree, that's why he crossed the road to get to the other side.

And when she talked about the oranges and apples, she motioned to the left for the oranges and to the right for the apples. And it never varied. But she said it in a cute little girl voice and she said it verbatim every time. It was really cute. That was pretty much the joke for the entire month of October. I'm sure it's something only a mother could love, but I really did.

~Jenn

Terrible Threes

Well, I think Rowen has gone insane. Ever since Friday, she has been whiny and throwing fits all day long over everything. She won't eat a single meal, not even pizza. All she wants to eat are snack foods or treats. And she wants me to carry her. Right now I'm typing one-handed because she's sitting on my lap and she doesn't want the keyboard too close to her. It's getting really annoying. She won't eat breakfast, and i gave up trying to make her eat healthy cereals weeks ago. I can't get her to eat Lucky Charms or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I've offered her Madagascar yogurt (which I got a really good price on). But she says she will only eat fruit snacks or a treat like chocolate or ice cream. Right this second she is burying her head in my chest because I won't let her play Playhouse Disney on the computer. And when I kiss the top of her head, she hits/wipes off the kisses. She's really become impossible the last few days. And yet when she's actually not upset, she's an angel. She hugs me all the time and tells me she loves me and that she's so happy. I think she's bipolar already. Just kidding, sort of.

~Jenn

Minor Detail

Ok, so I know this only matters to me, but on my movie and book lists, I've been deleting entries every time I add a new one so that there are only 5 on each list. But then today when I was updating, I renoticed (and yes, I know that's not a word, it's just that it's the most accurate description of what actually happened) that I can just set my list to only show a specific amount of entries. And now I'm so sad that I've been deleting all my entries for the last few months. It would have been nice to be able to go back and see all the movies and books I've listed and see what I thought of them at the time. And now I can't. Well, I can from now on, but I've read a lot of books the last 2-3 months and seen some really good movies (and a couple not so good). And now I can't remember all the books I've read the last couple of months.

See, so it's not a big deal, but it still stung a little when I realized what I've missed.

And speaking of books, I really liked the last book I read, Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson. It's the final book in a fantasy trilogy, called the Mistborn trilogy, but it's not a typical "fantasy" series. It's about trying to prevent the end of the world (of course) by a young orphaned girl (of course) and a group of companions (of course), but it really is so much more. It's about right vs. wrong, integrity, politics, religion, love and trust. And the magic system of the world is absolutely unique and interesting. There are no dragons, elves or dwarves. It's got adventure, thrills, love (although writing a convincing, intense, feel-your-heart-beating-outside-your-chest love story will never be Brandon's forte), sacrifice and struggle. It really is a single story told in three parts, and the third part alone is worth the price of all three books. If anyone is interested in reading it, let me know, and I could loan out my books. Now if I could only find my first book. I think it might be time to pack away another box of books (someday I will have a library with floor to ceiling bookshelves, even if it's after the kids have grown up and moved out and I convert their room).

Gotta get the boy to school now, so I'll write more later.

~Jenn