BOO

I enjoyed having a superhero, ladybug, pumpking, and Clark Kent in my house for Halloween. I can't believe we went this year without a princess costume. That should tell you the spell or rather the power of persuasion I have on my girls. I made Sydney's super hero costume. I'm definitely a beginner at sewing (as if I needed to explain that...you'll see in the picture). Luckily she doesn't care of my sewing abilities and loved the cape and mask I made her. We did the typical Halloween activities: read halloween stories, halloween crafts involving pumpkins and ghosts, decorating our house, carving pumpkins, making pumpkin bread, the ward's halloween carnival, and trunk or treating. I was the Publishing Clearing House person handing out checks to the winners. After the ward party, Jeff and I went to a friend's party. The kids got loads of candy and now I have to regulate on the consumption of it all. Fiona won
Mickey and Minnie Mouse scored a million
Our friends, the Pete's won
Love this picture of Jeff and Levi

"These are a few of my favorite things"

I finally saw an Oprah that I wanted to watch on our TIVO. As you can tell by the title of my post the show was about The Sound of Music. As many others, I loved that musical, watched it many times (that and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), and wished I could be in a musical too. I still would love to be in a musical--I love to sing and dance; the only problem is that I'm neither a singer nor a dancer. I have scored well on Karaoke Revolution and took several ballroom dance classes at BYU, but unfortunately those did not transform me into a musical diva. I'm excited to watch the movie again, this time with my family. After all, my family ARE my favorite things. Also looking forward to Thanksgiving and thinking more about my favorite and thankful things. Some of my other favorite things other than my family are:

-extended family
-watching the Olympics
-clean sheets
-christmas lights and fireworks
-when my kids are playing well together
-when Jeff has Monday off
-having my mom visit
-general conference
-friends
-warm clothes from the dyer
-smell of food cooking in the oven
-my bed
-BoM
-Jeff's cologne
-peanut butter M&Ms
-buying a new item of clothing
-a good deal
-packing for a vacation
-looking at stars
-finding money in a pocket
-fresh air
-getting a package in the mail
-waterskiing

MY FAVORITE THINGS

Birthday project

The last few weeks I've been making this birthday board: sawing, sanding, painting, glueing, and creating. This is the end product. The board celebrates the birthday child the week before their birthday. I was thinking that once they start school (9am-4pm in AK) we can only celebrate their birthday for several hours after school and then their special day is done. That's no fun. I thought this would be a good way to stretch it out a bit and make them feel much love from us. It's not like they are getting spoiled with gifts. The names change out; Sydney's name is on the back of Jordyn's, Levi has his own. The numbers count down 6,5,4,3,2,1 and those are easy to change out too. I had to clarify because my mom thought I made one for each child....NO WAY. It took tons of time just to make the one. The number of times I drove to Michaels and Walmart alone was ridiculous. Here's the idea: They get to pick dinner for the whole week, and then on the bottom I wrote things to do once every day (i.e. watching their 1 yr. video, looking at pictures, telling stories of them when they were little, taking them out for a special treat, decorating, etc. You get it). I'm satisfied with the result and glad to get my dining room table back. If you're thinking I'm creative...I'm not. I totally copied the idea from Super Mommy.

Marlboro

I bet you never thought you would see a cigarette brand as title of one of my blog posts. This morning on the way to the gym I was at a red light. At the gas station they were advertising that you could get a $1.00 off 72's Marlboro (whatever that means...I'm guessing a big carton?) I kinda laughed at the thought of a smoker saving a whoppin' dollar. I understand that smoking can be an addiction, but do smokers really care about saving money since they're wasting (I mean spending) $8.38 for the cost of a pack of cigs? That's how much a pack costs in Anchorage. I know because Jeff pushes Chantix- a smoking cessation aid to help people quit smoking. I've heard my fair share of smoking, nicotine, and costs. Jeff knows not to inform me of the science aspect of how the pill works as he knows it will go over my head. My point....."TOO MUCH SMOKE WILL LEAVE YOU BROKE."
Some other slogans I like:
1. Smoking? You must be joking...

2.If you can’t stop smoking, cancer will.

3. Put it out before it puts you out.

4. Breathe healthily, live happily.

5. Trash the Ash.

6. Smoke away your worries, not your lungs.

7. Tar the roads, not your lungs.

Milestones

Levi learned to sit up by himself. He's crawling all over the place too. I'm a little paranoid that he'll stick one of the girls little toys in his mouth so we have to be very careful with those things.
Jordyn started riding a bike with training wheels. She has learned her alphabet. She can tell me the sounds of about 50% of the letters with 100% accuracy. She knows all her colors, some shapes, and counts to 10. I should probably start working on writing: drawing a line, circle, tracing etc. She likes me to read to hear and loves to open and book and look at it herself. She loves giving compliments to people. At the doctor's office today, she must have given 10 compliments to about 5 different people. I love that about her.
Sydney has started to sound out words. She read the words Prayer, song, lesson, treat (on our FHE board). After that random episode of reading, we started working on the typical 3 letter words: cat, dad, top, pot, etc. Today I taught her to add and subtract using Spicy Cheese-Its. Last sunday she had her primary program. Sydney's part was reciting the 3rd article of faith. She did great. She has also memorized the first two. She's loving preschool. I think I love it as much as she does. We love her teachers (Ms. Christine and Ms. Chris). They do a wonderful job! All three kids got flu shots today. Levi and Sydney did good. Miss J, on the other hand, was a bit dramatic about it all. Seriously, she has some mad acting skills. She must get it from Jeff.

Bedtime Stories

A few weeks ago Sydney asked for one of her usual bedtime stories--a story that involves mean midgets. Excuse me, little people. Actually, I'm not sure what the politically correct term is anymore, it seems to change over time. Well I'm sick of those stories. Me and Jeff have a hard time making up such random and mindless stories night after night. So we changed our story habits and started telling her and Jordyn stories from the Bible and Book of Mormon. I must admit there have been a few times when I had to brush up on the story because I couldn't remember all the details (let's be honest, I didn't know ANY details). This time at night has been so much better for all of us. I feel better that I'm teaching from the scriptures and that we're all learning. After words I tell them the gospel principle from the story and I tell them an example of how we've lived that principle. As I have recalled the gospel principle to the girls that we've lived by, it has surprised me that we follow the gospel principles on a daily basis and we are doing our best to follow Christ. The other night was very rewarding for me to hear Sydney request the story about Nephi getting the brass plates instead of mean midgets.
PS I know it's a little strange to have a 4 yr old to ask a story for mean midgets instead of princesses, butterflies, and rainbows, but that's our little Skittles and we love her personality.

Letter Cc

Last night I could not sleep for the life of me and it was all because of the letter Cc. I will also manage to prove that one does not need to be "smart" to be a nerd. I also need to remind you that I have a bachelor's in Linguistics....that explains a little, although not much because I can't recall much about my theoretical syntax, historical linguistics, or semantic classes.
Yesterday Sydney came home from preschool announcing that this week will be spent learning the letter Cc. I started thinking about it. The more I was thinking about it, the more I realized how little the "C" is in our language. The hard C makes a /k/ sound (cake, cup, music....)and the soft C makes an /s/ sound (cylinder, centipede, century...). Even with a blend it has a /k/ sound (clock, christmas, cry..) with the exception of "Ch" (church, chaste, munch...) So what I'm saying is that besides Ch words, the C doesn't have it's own sound, thus only making our language that much more difficult for second language learners, or young learners such as Sydney who spells cat "kat." In addition, I found a new pet peeve... words that have a ck in it like suck, luck, clock, knock,etc. What is the point of a c and k put together? It's kinda like a double negative. We already know the k makes a /k/ sound putting a c in front of it only states the obvious and is unnecessary to me. When I was teaching my dad always told me, "Keep it simple, stupid." I know it sounds horrible like he was calling me stupid, but he wasn't; he was he was saying, "you don't need to make things complicated." I feel the same with our language. There are so many more examples of how complicated our language is, I just chose this particular one. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else. All I know is that it was keeping me up last night and I was wondering where it all originated from too. Yes, diving into phonetics and historical linguistics; my professors would be so proud. I think if I get a PHd in Linguistics I just thought of my dissertation to write upon. NERD ALERT.

Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer

You will never believe what just happened at our house...at least that is the state Sydney and Jordyn are still in. Rudolf the red-nose reindeer himself just ding-dong ditched our house and left us a gift at our front door. All I could see was his red nose of course and his bum as he went running away. I called out to Syd and Miss J to see but they just missed it. I did yell out a big "thank you" so Rudolf could know just how grateful we were for his gift.
It's so funny I've been wanting personalized stockings for 5 years now and everyone has a special different stocking too. Sydney's an angel, Jordyn's a Santa, Levi's a train, mine is a snowman, and Jeff's a reindeer. Wow! We must have been pretty good this past year, I hope our good behavior can stay intact the rest of the year. If you're reading this Rudolf....thanks again you're the best!