Sweet Talker

I head down stairs to get some sewing done. When I get to the bottom of the stairs I can hear talking coming from the girls room. What the heck? Those kids went to bed more than an hour ago. I glance at the clock, it's 10pm for crying out loud. My first reaction is to bust into their room and tell them to GO TO SLEEP, but then I stop and listen.

Kymberly is sobbing. " I just keep hearing the scary Halloween song. It just keeps popping into my head and I get scared!" It is hard to make out exactly what she is saying. Kathryn calmly and sweetly repeats back what Kymberly has said to make sure she understands and Kymberly confirms that she heard correctly. Kathryn then says "Oh sweetheart, just pray to Heavenly Father and ask him to help you stop thinking of the scary song and then sing some primary songs in your head to help you calm down. That's what I do when I have scary thoughts." There is a little more chatter and then I hear Kymberly offer up a simple prayer asking Heavenly Father to help so that the scary Halloween song wont pop into her head and she wont have any bad dreams. Then Kathryn helps her think of some primary songs to sing in her head to help her fall asleep. And that's the last thing that I hear from them. With in minutes I can tell that Kymberly has fallen asleep peacefully.

I knew it. I did. My girls can show incredible patience and love towards one another. It only seems that they increasingly irritate each other. They do in fact love each other and can indeed be kind. Does a momma's heart good to witness such things, both the kindness shown and the complete faith in the power of prayer.

Random

I made a quick trip to the grocery store to just pick up some icing sugar for my daughter so she could make some icing for her sugar cookies. I pulled up and saw a young man, dressed in black, with kinda scruffy hair and smoking a cigarette standing in front of the liquor store. He wore black jeans that were much to long for his already long legs and I noticed that he had unusually large feet, or so they looked. I have never seen him before, but I quickly passed judgement as to his character. I stepped out of my van and headed toward the grocery store with my back to him. I hear him call out "Excuse me ma'am". I turn around wondering what he possibly could need. He asks if I am headed in to the grocery store. I tell him that I am. He tells me that he isn't allowed in the grocery store and before he is even finished talking I am thinking that he is going to ask me to buy him some cigarettes to which my answer would be a stern NO. He continues, "I was wondering if you could buy me a bouquet of flowers?" I am taken back. "I'll give you the money" he says quickly. I smile and tell him of course I can, and ask what he's looking for. He hands me $11 in change and says to just pick out something a young mom would like. So I go in, and grab my icing sugar and the biggest and prettiest bouquet of flowers I can spot regardless of price. I bring them out to him, and when he sees me his face lights up like I wouldn't have expected from my original take on the kid. I hand him the flowers and ask if they'll do. He says "Thank you, you are a life saver!" and then he steps in and gives me a quick light hug and adds "May good Karma rain down on you" as he turns and walks away. I drove home happier than I had been when I arrived and hoped that the spirits of the young mom who would be the recipient of the flowers, would be brightened.

Just now I checked my email and there was a youtube update suggesting that I watch this little video.

Yeah, there's definitely something to this kindness thing...

Autumn treasures

Last night, after singing lullabies, I laid beside my boy to cuddle him. I asked him what he wanted to do the next day. He told me he wanted to find ladybugs. So I suggested that maybe we should go for a walk. He enthusiastically agreed. This morning, before we had even got the girls off to school he was asking if we could go for our walk. I suggested that we do it a later when it had warmed up a bit. He asked again while Ella was napping. I told him we would go as soon as Ella woke up. So when she woke up, even though it was almost lunch time, we headed out on our walk. The kind of walk with out a destination in mind.

 I pushed Ella in the stroller, James rode on his bike. I let him tell me which way to go. We stopped and looked in piles of leaves for ladybugs. At first we didn't have any luck. I was worried that maybe our ladybug hunt might be a bust because it has certainly got cooler the past few days or so. But we just kept moving on, looking for whatever cool treasures we might find on this beautiful autumn afternoon. James picked up a few rocks, and some colourful leaves.

 And then as we were walking along through grass covered in leaves, suddenly James spotted a ladybug...a tiny little baby lady bug on a leaf.

He picked it up and we put it in our lady bug jar. That was the first of many many more ladybugs we collected. He even spotted a little spider in the dirt, but we thought he might not be a friendly addition to the lady bug jar.

Can you spot the spider? I promise it's there.

An hour and a half later we eventually made our way back home (with a little coaxing, I was getting hungry). It was such a wonderful way to spend our afternoon. I love walking through the crunchy leaves, it may just be one of my favourite parts of fall. Apparently James has the same love, he would go out of his way to ride his bike through a pile of leaves.This may or may not have had a influence on the direction he would choose to go.

Check out all our fun autumn treasures! We found three different kinds of pine cones, a little feather, some purple "seeds" on a bush, a couple of "cool" sticks, a little yellow flower, leaves in a assortment of size, shape and colour, and a plethora of ladybugs, oh yes, and some rocks. All in all, a success I think.

This one gives a little better view of all of our ladybugs

Baby Spoiler

I was told today that I have a fussy baby because I hold her too much. I have a number of things to say to that.

1. I don't have a fussy baby. She is actually a really good baby. However, she does like to be entertained. Unlike most of my other babies who were amazing at keeping themselves entertained, and at times were even happier when left alone, my darling Ella loves to have someone sit and play with her.She loves her excersaucer...if somebody will play with the toys with her.
2. How dare my 7 month old want me to play with her? Silly baby, don't you know mom has better things to do, like clean the kitchen? Lucky for you baby girl, mom would rather sit and play with you than clean the kitchen any day of the week.
3. If holding my baby is the worst thing I do as her mother, so be it. She won't be my baby for long, just like the four before her. And she's my last, so yes indeed, I'll hold you all day long if I can, but I know that won't happen because you are already trying to get out of my arms and down on the floor where you can move...or at least try to.
4. Can you blame me for wanting to hold and snuggle this precious little babe? Look at her! Everywhere we go men, women and children want to hold her. I just happen to be lucky enough to be able to hold her whenever I want for as long as I want or as long as she needs.

He wasn't done yet

Remember how I thought my prayers had been answered about my desire for peaches? Turns out Heavenly Father wasn't quite done yet.

After telling the story to a friend of how immediatly my prayer had been answered, I joked that maybe I hadn't been specific enough in my prayer, as I was paying fifty cents more per pound than what I usually do most years. But regardless I was incredibly happy to be getting peaches at all and so very grateful that my Heavenly Father was mindful of my and my needs/wants.

The peaches were to be delivered last week, but there was a hold up because the order was too large and couldn't all fit on the truck, so they decided to hold back the peaches. Today I received this email:

The OHenry peaches were not good this year, so Cross-Border Trading has searched for a different peach to replace the OHenry's. They try to find the best fruit available to bring in and after much discussion have found a peach to bring - I don't know the variety but it is "bigger and better" than the OHenry's this year. It will still be$28/case however the cases are 26 pounds (not 20 pounds) making the peaches $1.08/lb.

So now suddenly I have nearly an additional 20lbs for the same price. Bringing up the total amount of peaches that have been made available to me to almost 100lbs (which for the record, is the same amount that I try to put up each year) and for only about $20 more than what I usually spend.

Now there are some that would say that it is all just a nice set of coincidences, and how nice that it all worked out in my favour. But I know, without any shadow of doubt, that it wasn't a coincidence. My Heavenly Father heard my fervent pleading prayer for peaches. And though it was just peaches, and yes we could have all survived the year without having the luxury of home canned peaches, it was something that was important to me and my Heavenly Father is a caring and loving God and he saw fit to answer his childs prayer and make available "some" peaches...or in fact the exact amount of peaches needed/wanted.

I know my Heavenly Father loves me because he made sure I had peaches to put up for the year. Guess what? I know he loves you too. What do you need? Have you asked your Heavenly Father yet?

The Mad Cycle

So this morning there is all kinds of commotion and yelling coming from the basement. Daughter #1 comes stomping up the stairs and starts unloading the dishwasher, angrily tossing dishes in their assigned places. I ask her "What's wrong?". She yells back at me "Why don't you ask Tansley?" and continues slamming doors and tossing dishes. Later after Daughter #1 has left for school with Daughter #3, Daughter #2 comes up stairs all scowly and not yet dressed for school. I ask her "What was going on down there this morning?" to which she responds in an angry voice "I don't know. All I know is that Kathryn was mad". "So why was Kathryn mad?" I inquire. "I DON'T KNOW!" she yells back. In an effort to figure out the cause of all the crankiness I venture to ask "So why are you mad?". "Because Kathryn was mad.""OK, let me get this straight. Kathryn is mad but tells me to ask you why she is mad. I ask you, but you don't know, but you are mad because Kathryn is mad."

Of course, I should have figured that all out on my own, it's all so logical. Daughter #1 is mad because Daughter #2 is mad at Daughter #1 being mad at Daughter #2. Makes perfect sense.

Our Unplanned Trip to Waterton

The plan for the holiday Monday was that Daniel was going to Waterton to climb Mt Vimy with friends and the kids and I were going to stay home and can the 88 pounds of pears that were just right for canning.That was the plan, until I discovered that the wasp problem that Daniel had been trying to fix under our bay window had decided to make it's way INTO my house. Oh, I haven't told you about that yet? Yeah, we discovered that there was a wasp nest under our bay window, but not out in the open, up inside the guts of the house. There was a very small opening under the window between the plywood and the cement foundation that they were coming in and out of.  Daniel sprayed, twice. Monday morning I saw a wasp flying around the window so I went to kill it and discovered about 20 more in the window! Where the heck were they coming from! I looked down, and saw three more come out of the heat vent! They kids all went down stairs while I attempted to solve the problem. That didn't last long as they soon discovered a few wasps downstairs too. So they went out side. I got some plastic grocery bags and folded them up and duct taped them over the heat vents in the living room by the bay window and over the one downstairs that was directly below the bay window. I then proceeded to kill the ones trapped behind the curtains in the bay window and then vacuumed up their dead carcasses. I decided that canning pears may not be the best thing to do as I wasn't in the mood to deal with wasps and scared crying children. So we made a quick decision to go have an adventure in Waterton since we hadn't been there at all this summer...how lame is that? We packed up a quick picnic lunch in the cooler, gathered up swimming suits and towels and made sure all the kids had good walking shoes and off we went.

 It was a beautiful day in Waterton with not a breath of wind. It was a quite hazy so the sun was never shining directly on us but it was still very warm. We first headed down to the Lake and ate our picnic lunch.

 The kids changed into swimsuits and played in the water. That was all fun and games until it tried to rain on us, so we decided to take a walk in town so I could show the kids where I worked the summer before I married their father.

 While we were walking the rain stopped so we then headed to the park for more fun and games.

 I wanted to take the kids up bears hump. Kathryn and Tansley were all for it, having been up once before. Kymberly was nervous. I showed her which mountain we were going to climb, that it was just a little one, but that didn't help. She was scared and didn't want to go. I told her it would be fun. When we got to the trailhead she exclaimed in delight, "Oh, there is a path to follow!". Apparently she had had something completely different in mind when in came to "Climbing a mountain". In our haste to leave home, I hadn't thought to grab backpacks. I had grabbed water bottles, just nothing to carry them in. And thankfully the snugly was still in the van from a previous trip to somewhere. Kathryn, my clever child, used a hair elastic to close the bottom of her hoodie and then tied the sleeves together to create a bag she could carry over her shoulder. It was just the right size to put the water bottles and cookies. It took us an hour to reach the top. After the first little bit I didn't think I would make it to the top with an extra 20lbs strapped to me, but once I got my blood pumping, I felt good and ready to conquer the world...OK, maybe just Bears Hump. James "Gave up" at least a dozen times. But we bribed him with cookies and the chance to see chipmunks up close. After much coaxing, we finally made it to the top. But to our dismay, not a chipmunk to be seen. Good thing James was just thrilled to be on top of a mountain and to have some cookies. It was beautiful on top, without even the slightest breeze. I can only remember one other time that I have been up on bears hump and there hasn't been any wind at all, and that was the summer I worked in Waterton.

Going down took us half an hour. James didn't want to go back down the mountain. But Kathryn was great and keeping him going. She was really patient with him. Kymberly and Tanlsey went up ahead of us a bit, but I told them to stick together and to be nice and loud. They started singing songs like "there's a hole in my bucket", "My dog Lima likes to roam", "Father Abraham" and any other silly song. It made the time go by quicker, and even James started singing his own silly made up songs. There was no chance of a bear encounter with my crew around.When we got to the bottom dad was waiting around the corner and jumped out and roared at Kymberly and Tansley. James was so excited to tell dad that he had climbed a mountain! Ella was all tuckered out from her climb, she fell asleep in the snugly.

We passed a number of people on the trail, and just about each one made some kind of comment about me being a brave mom. Kathryn, looks at me and says "mom, everyone keeps saying that too you." Yep, I'm either brave or crazy...I leaning towards crazy. But I wouldn't change it. We had a fun day. It was a much more fun and exciting way to spend the holiday Monday than staying home and canning pears, by a long shot.