This morning, Nathan went with Hannah to her Music Memory contest. He is the team coach. The 5th graders all over town have been learning a new song each month as part of their music classes. When Hannah comes home I will have to have her post the names of the songs. The only one I can remember is Fanfare For the Common Man by Copeland?.

Anywho, the kids have been listening to the songs and learning about them. Today the Black Hills Symphony will be playing selections from each piece and the kids will try to remember each title and composer. The Symphony may be tricky and play it in a different key or a different octave. It has been fun to listen as Hannah recognizes a song then rattles off the info.

The rest of us got bundled up and helped in the City Wide Clean Up project. All through the middle of Rapid City runs a little river. Could it be the Rapid River? I don't know. These really cool bike paths run all along the river. The paths are always busy with joggers, bikers, rollerbladers, dog walkers, kids on scooters, and even some cross country skiers (in winter). The path goes under streets and over little streams. I think it is my favorite thing about this town. We have only been on little parts of the path, so it was fun to explore a new section as we picked up garbage this morning.

Our cub scouts signed up to clean a section of the trail, and invited the Primaries in the three wards that meet in our building to come help. That is my kind of Primary Activity! Someone else made the flyers. No decorating. No party games. No planning. And a great chance to really do some service. As it was advertised as a family activity and parents were asked to stay and help, we were not stuck "babysitting" and waiting for parents to come pick up their kids. Yippee!

But the weather turned cold, and the forecast even called for a little snow or sleet. The Cub Scoutmaster called me last night to see if we should reschedule the clean up. Our Primary teachers had already called their kids, so we decided to go ahead and do it.

I parked our truck at the end of our section, then pulled the kids in the wagon down the path, over the bridge, under the railroad, under Main Street - all the way to McDonalds. Whew. While we running down a hill I was afraid the wagon was going to run me down.

We had a good turnout, and I think everyone had fun. Sydney was not happy about going. But when her friend Lindsey got there, Sydney decided that picking up garbage could be fun. They ran along the little dirt paths to the river finding lots of beer cans and paper. John enjoyed pulling the wagon and dropping sticks off the edge of the bridge. Emily was cold. Her little nose turned red. We were at the back of the pack, so we mainly picked up cigarettes. Yuck. Doughnuts and hot chocolate made it all worth it!

The fun is not over yet: soccer is next, then a trip to Sam's Club....

For our date this weekend we watched to movie Return To Me. It is so cute. And a little weird. No serious making out - it might pass the dad test. There are some funny old men in it, so dad might even like it. What have you been watching lately? There are a few coming out on video that I want to see - National Treasure, Because of Winn Dixie, ???

Do you rent movies every weekend? I think we used to rent movies every weekend, or a lot of weekends, but we got out of the habit in Abilene. The library had lots and lots of new movies, and then I got mad at the base movie lady one time, so I couldn't go back there.

Want to hear that story? I just remembered it. Movies were due in by noon. One day I took my movie into the store at about 12:05pm. I took it inside (with all the kids in tow) instead of dropping it into the box, because I wanted to know if I would have to pay a late fee. As I turned it in I asked about the late fee. When she said that I would be charged for another day, I said that I would like to keep the movie and watch it again, since I was paying for it again. She said that it was too late. I said (gosh I hope my voice wasn't shaky) that if I had to pay for another day, then I wanted to have the movie, please. When she said, it was too late, I said that I would like to speak to the manager. It's not like this was a huge movie store, it was a little convenience store with soda, cigarettes, and a teeny movie section. She said that the manager wasn't there, blah blah blah. I think I must have been pregnant and grouchy, I hope I have some kind of good excuse for my rudeness. So I said in as nice a voice as I could manage: "Thank you for your help. Sorry for the trouble. Have a nice day." and I left, 'cuz really I'm a chicken and I wouldn't know what to say to a manager. I walked out to the van, and buckled in the kids. When I turned around, the lady was right behind me. She again told me that I had already given her the movie and that she could not give it back. I said - that's fine. I'm fine. Later I found out that my friend was getting out of her car as I was talking to the lady and heard the conversation. Base living stinks. I'm sure she thought I was crazy. Shortly after this I had to take a stand at the checkout counter of the BX in order to get the half-off-the-clearance-price, price on a game. I am so mean. Watch out check-out people.

We are not members of a movie rental place, and mooching off of our neighbors is making me feel guilty. I am trying to decide if I want to join Blockbuster or one of those online rental places. Going into a movie rental place with all the kids makes me sweat, but would I remember to mail off a movie and order a new one? We are not really a movie buying family, but we have bought more in the last year then in the whole rest of our marriage. Odd.

When I opened up blogger I thought I had nothing to write about. HA!

4 years old

Happy Birthday Miss Em

Thinking About Sharing Time

I have Primary Sharing Time in May. I have spent the day thinking about it and trying to decide how I will work in all the topics for the month, along with Mother's Day. I would like to have the kids do something for their mothers, but what?

This weekend is Stake Conference, and I realized this morning that there is nothing on our bulletin board. We are having Primary training tomorrow, and I want our Primary room to look nice. So we headed down to the church and made our bulletin board look kind of like a grove of trees. The theme for May is Jesus Christ Restored His Church in the Latter Days. I will be able to add things to the board as we discuss the restoration of the gospel. It looks nice (if I do say so myself.)

Here is one interesting little fact that I found today: The King James Version of the Bible took 50 scholars 7 years to translate into English, translating at the rate of one page per day. Joseph Smith, on the other hand, translated the Book of Mormon at the rate of 10 pages per day, completing the task in 85 days! I would be happy to just read the book in that amount of time.

Primary is so cool.

Humanitarian Project

Tomorrow night for Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment meeting we are putting together baby kits for the Humanitarian Project. It is such a fun idea. I have knit two pairs of baby booties to donate, and I am going to sew two little layette gowns. We will be sewing recieving blankets that night, and we will also put together the packets. Each Newborn Kit includes

1 double receiving blanket (see receiving blanket guidelines)

4 cloth diapers (do not include disposable diapers)

4 diaper safety pins

1 pair booties or baby socks

2 regular-size bars of soap (Ivory or other non-allergenic brand)

1 newborn layette gown (please, no footed sleepers; see layette gown guidelines)

Doesn't that sound like fun?

Mopping

Mopping?

We have had a variety of flooring in the homes we have lived in. My favorite was the tile and carpeting in Pensacola. The tile was just the color of the sand and it always looked so clean and nice. It was a lot to sweep, but it only needed to be spot-mopped when sticky.

I did not like the wood flooring in Texas. I know it was great because it had lasted so many years, but I hated the feel of the grit on my bare feet. I also never wanted to sit on the ground to play with the kids. I'm sure a few rugs would have solved that problem. It was very easy to clean with the dust mop - just a few minutes to sweep through the whole house, then shake the dust outside. It also only needed water on the mop to clean it.

Now we have carpet and cheapy linoleum. Having carpet is like having extra furniture. We spend a lot of time on the carpet - watching a movie, laying down train tracks, bronco rides, etc. I like carpet. I do not mind the linoleum, but I do not know how to keep it clean and shiny. It gets really grimy and seems to also keep a build-up of dirt/grease even after mopping. I was using Mop and Glow, and that would make it shiny, but it definitely left a film. I don't know what to use - Pinesol? Mr. Clean? just water? Maybe it is my mopping technique that needs work. I just swish around a large string mop - maybe I need to get on my hands and knees and really scrub.

How do you keep your floors clean?

Spring Soccer

Woo Hoo, Sydney!



Go Hannah!


The first Saturday of soccer took us all over town. Sydney practices at the field right by our house, but her games are about 5 miles away. Hannah practices at a field about 2 miles away, but her games are right by our house. It will be great to just let Hannah walk on over to the park when they both play at the same time. It is a good thing we can walk, because soccer mom's are crazy drivers - we already saw one accident out there.

I seem to have inherited the yelling gene. I find myself yelling things like "Let's go sports fans" and "Sacrifice your body for the ball." Just kidding, Dad. I don't actually yell your famous sloguns, I have a few of my own - "Get the ball" "Help her out" "WOOHOO." It's a good thing Nathan is a yeller, too. He's too busy to notice me making a fool of myself. So far the kids are still willing to sit near us at games, but it won't be long 'til Hannah starts to cringe when I pull out the blow-horn.

John's loves our train set - the wooden one that you can put together all kinds of ways. He really likes to push his "cars" on the tracks, and he carries a train engine with him all over the place. Emily does not love playing trains with John. Emily is the track builder, and though John doesn't mean to, he often knocks over the bridges and makes Emily cry.

I 've been trying to get John to call the train a "train" or a "choo-choo train" but he calls them "cars". Then, as I was reading his favorite book "Freight Train" I noticed that the first pages of the book tell you the names of the different parts of the train - "hopper car" "cattle car" "box car" etc. They really are called cars! He is so smart!

Anyway, one of the engines has a battery (well, 3 of them have batteries, but only one battery is still going...and going...and going) I saw John carrying two engines this morning. Then I heard John yelling and Sam the dog ran past me. I though Sam took John's train, so I ran after Sam. I could hear that little engine chugging away. I found the train all tangled up in Sam-the-dog's long hair. Poor doggy. I had to cut the train off of him. That thing is dangerous. Good thing it wasn't Emily's hair.

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Jump John

John is trying to jump. Getting both feet off the ground is hard work. Even harder is capturing a picture of those feet off the ground with a digital camera. Sydney was our champion jumper. She would jump off of anything and usually land on her feet. John is still pretty dangerous. He thinks he can jump off the bottom step, but...