I may have a problem.

I was so excited with idea of getting rid of baby things now that I feel certain that our family has reached its proper size. And for the most part I've been great at just getting rid of things when Ella no longer needs them. It's made especially easy when I have people that I know and care about that I can pass the stuff on to. However, I have come to realize that I may have attachment issues when it comes to baby clothes. In particular clothes that all 4 of my girls have worn. There are so many memories attached to each piece of clothing, memories for each of the girls. Memories that I may or may not be afraid will disappear if I don't have those clothes to remind me of them. And so every time I go through clothes that Ella has out grown, it takes forever. I have to talk myself into putting them into a give away box. And then there are some, that I just can't part with. The biggest culprit are things that I have created. I once posted about my obsession with fabric. It seems as though that obsession extends to the things that I create from that fabric. These things that I have made for my baby girls, I just can't put in a box to give away, they are far to precious. I might be OK if I gave them to a family member and then they always stayed in the family so that I could see my lovely nieces wearing clothes that I have created...but I'm not even sure that I am ready for that. I have this tote, it.s a fairly large tote, that I have designated as my baby keep sake box. I told myself that once it was full, I'd just have to give the rest away. Do you know how many dresses and things I have created over the past 11 years? Neither do I, but I know it's more than a few. The box is full, and Ella isn't yet one. I'm going to have to get another one...maybe just a temporary one, until the day comes that I can part with some of my obsessions.

A New Year Adventure

For New Years Daniel and I decided to do something different, something adventurous, something spontaneous. All we needed was someone to watch our kids. My sister was just crazy enough to say yes, even though she would also be watching my brothers four kids in addition to her own five. So at my sisters house for three days were 2 adults (my sis and her husband),  3 teenagers (ages; 17, 15, 13) and then eleven kids under the age of twelve(ages; 11,9,9,8,7,6,6,5,3,2,<1). I mention this only to illustrate that my sister is the real Super Woman. I shall also mention, that Ella cut two molars while staying with my sister....and she doesn't cut teeth gracefully.

Meanwhile, Daniel and I headed down to Greatfalls to catch a 10am flight on Dec 30th to Phoenix. When we arrived we were informed that our flight was canceled because the pilot had called in sick and was not rescheduled until 3:45pm on the following day. This was not going to work for us, as we were planning on going to the Coyotes VS Oilers hockey game on New Years Eve and coming back home on the afternoon of New Years Day. Lucky for us, there was a flight out of Missoula that night. All we needed to do was rent a car and drive across Montana two and a half hours to catch that flight. So instead of spending the afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona we spent an entire day in Montana.

Beautiful as it is, I have spent most of my life enjoying adventures in this part of the country and would have really rather been enjoying an adventure in a place I had never yet been. We did arrive in Phoenix late that night, on our way to the hotel, we took a detour and drove past the Mesa, Arizona Temple. I was looking forward to visiting it the following day.

A Courthouse Christmas

Every year I try to do something different for our Christmas Advent. This year we decided to do a random Act of  Christmas Kindness for each day of advent. I got the idea from TSJ Photography blog. However, I just realised that this post is just going to have to wait until Christmas Day. I would hate to spoil the fun for anybody that might be a recipient of our Random Acts of Christmas Kindness.  We live in a pretty tiny town and word spreads quickly. So although I am typing some of this post on a blizzardy December 2nd, it will just have to sit in Draft form until Christmas Day.

Here is a list of some of the Random Acts of Christmas Kindness that we did this year

Tape candy canes to random post office boxes and to ATM machines. We did this when ever it was too cold to do anything else.
Shovel somebodies sidewalk (we did this today, a very blizzardy day...twice...for the same neighbours, not sure if they will even notice a difference in the morning)

 Dec 5 -  Oh my Kymberly is so sweet. I've been pinned to the chair in the living room by two sick kids today. Both Ella and James have been sick and needing mom to hold them. Kathryn and Tansley had a church activity to go to this evening so all that was left was Kymberly and she was concerned about what we were going to do for our random act of kindness. I suggested that maybe we would just have to do double the next day. But she said that she could go out and shovel somebodies sidewalk. I told her it was kind of dark and cold, but that did not deter her. She got all bundled up and went out to shovel the neighbours sidewalk. She wasn't gone long, but she said that she had gone across the street and worked on the sidewalk. I told her she was awesome and that she had done a good job. It wasn't much, but it was what my darling 6 year old could offer, and that is good enough. Brings tears to a momma's eyes.

Kathryn dropped off a set of paper plates, cups, napkins and plastic cutlery with a note that said "Our Christmas wish to you is less dishes to do!" to the librarian one day after school. We dropped off the same gift to one of the post office ladies after she had commented to me that she was getting tired of the craziness of the Christmas rush.
Leave a treat on doorsteps around town we did this one many times, it was probably the kids favorite.
We went to Legacy Lodge where my Grandma Paxman is living and read Christmas stories to her. We had planned to invite others to come join us, but there wasn't anyone else around in the dining area to invite.
We left wrapping paper and Tape on vehicles with a note that read "You've been shopping since November, Barely sleeping, hardly stopping. Now it's late, you're in a scrape out of paper out of tape. Hope this wrap helps save the day! Have a Happy Holiday!"
On Christmas Eve we handed out roses at the Wal-mart in Lethbridge to random folks as we finished off a little bit of Christmas shopping.

We had so much fun with this Christmas Advent. It will be something we do again.

For Christmas Eve we went into Lethbridge to hang out with our Court Family. The Boys played street hockey complete with the singing of the National Anthem

We then ate lots of food and opened a few presents.

Each family had made a video to present. This was our video attempt,

 Complete chaos. Joseph refused to cooperate and the Angel became a little cranky. Other than that it went perfectly.

 Christmas day was spent at home. The kids slept in until 8am. It's funny. Every other day of the year I have kids waking up early, but with out fail, every Christmas they sleep in. I love them.

We opened gifts and then enjoyed our traditional Christmas breakfast of pancakes, bacon, sausages, eggs, eggnog, chocolate milk, orange juice, fruit and whip cream. The rest of the day was spent lazying about enjoying our new treasures. Oh, yes and a crazy google hangout call with all of my family including my baby brother serving a mission in Florida and my parents serving a mission in Ireland. Our computer is slow and stupid, so it was all kind of choppy on our end, but we were able to get the gist of it. Happy Day, we ordered a new computer for our Family Christmas gift!!  All in all, a perfect Christmas.

So What's the Plan?

This morning after the kids headed to school I read this letter from my missionary father

On Saturday, mom went to a ward Relief Society party so I had a couple of hours to spend by myself. I went to a store that was near where the party was and looked around. When we were decorating the Rosetta building, we found a ceramic nativity set that had a wise man with his head broken off. So I saw some Super glue and thought I should buy some to fix it some time. I was going to go to another shopping centre nearby and spend the rest of the time but as I started to drive, I had the thought that I should drive over to Rosetta and fix the wise man. So even though it would take me quite aways away, I thought that it would be worth it to have the complete nativity set. So off I went. I got to Rosetta and searched everywhere, but could not find the wise man who had lost his head. I was quite disgusted. I could not imagine why it was not around somewhere. I had driven out of my way to get here and now could not even do what I came to do. Since I still had some time to spend, I decided I would do some indexing while I was there. So I went to log onto the computer. But there was not any internet access!!! What?? Things were definitely not going my way. I tried to troubleshoot but could find nothing wrong except there was no internet access. So I decided to reboot the router. Turned it off,
waited 10 seconds, turned it back on. Watched the internet icon. After the computer got through all the start up process, there was still no access. I was quite put out. I decided to go to the kitchen and get something to eat. But before I ate anything, I thought that I had better go back and turn off the computer, since we are not supposed to leave them running. I went back and lo and behold there was now internet access. It had taken almost 5 minutes for it to redo whatever it had to redo. Well just then the phone rang and it was mom saying that she was done and that I could come and pick her up. So, I thought to myself, this has been one totally wasted hour+. I did not get any shopping done, did not get the wise man fixed and did not do any indexing and now I have a 15 minute drive to get back to pick up mom. Why oh why did I come over here?????
Fast forward to this morning. We were to take two sisters to the ferry to go to Scotland to the mission home prior to returning to their homes after 18 months of valiant service. One was Sister Morgan, who was here in Belfast when we arrived. She had spent 9 months of her mission here. The other was Sister Hanson who had been her companion here at some time and had also spent 9 months here. They were Sister Training Leaders here in Ireland and had been given permission to come back to Belfast to attend the Holywood Road Ward on Sunday before heading to Scotland. We also had an appointment for servicing our car. The sisters had to be at the ferry before 10 and our appointment was for 10:30, so we figured we could do it. So we showed up to pick up the sisters at 9:15. They had just returned from Rosetta where they had gone to print their ferry tickets. But ... They reported that the internet was down and they were unable to print their tickets nd they were quite dejected since they had no other place to print the tickets. I asked if they had rebooted the router and Sister Morgan said she had but it had not helped. I asked if she had waited 4 or 5 minutes and she said no. I then told her of my experience on Saturday and we drove back to Rosetta. Sure enough, there was internet access.
I now knew why I had gone to Rosetta Saturday. Not to fix the wise man and not to do indexing, but so that I would know that we just needed to wait for the internet to have access. A SMALL thing? Yes. But so important to the sisters. So when I am tempted to ask WHY???, I will try to be more patient and wait for the hand of the Lord to be revealed. By the way, the wise man was in mom’s purse!!! She had put it there so we could fix it. And we did. I know who is in control. We just need to be patient and rely on His all knowing plan.

This is what I had in my mind as I headed out the door at 9:30am to go to Lethbridge to do some grocery shopping that I had been trying to do since LAST Monday. One thing after another had kept me from making the trip to Lethbridge. First, two crazy days of snow that shut everything down. And then came the days of sick kids. So today, with Daniel home for the day I decided that I would go to Lethbridge ALONE in Daniel's car to do the needed shopping. It was windy and the snow was blowing across the highway, but not so bad as to cause much of a problem. I never could get the car to go much over 100km/hr but I wasn't too worried about it in the wind and blowing snow. I did start to be concerned when the care started to slow down to the point that it wasn't going faster than 50km/hr. I pulled over and sent a text to Daniel telling him what was going on. I was a little more than half way to Lethrbidge, pulled over on a service road waiting for my hubby to come and rescue me. As I sat there, the visibility got worse and worse.  Mean while Daniel was at home bundling up the two kids so he could come rescue me.

As I sat waiting for Daniel to arrive, I began to wonder, Why? Why had I felt like today was the day to go shopping? in Daniel's car? Alone? We could have all gone together in the van and got some other errands taken care of? After all, we were all going to end up in Lethbridge now anyways. I started to think about my dad's letter that I had read that morning, and wondered "So what's the Plan? What does Heavenly Father have in mind for us in this little adventure? What's the purpose in all of this? So far, I don't have an answer. Daniel was able to drive his car slowly the rest of the way into Lethrbridge. So even if he had been headed to work tomorrow, he would still have made to work....late yes, and even with his car in the shop, he would have been able to use the Bert and Mac's truck to get back home so he wouldn't have been stranded in Lethbridge...so as of yet, I'm not quite sure why, maybe that will come once we know what is wrong with the car, or maybe it will be one of those things when you just never know what the "Plan" was.

Whatever it is, I was grateful that I had read my dad's letter before I had ventured out. Because of my dad's words I was able to endure the adventure with patience and sit and ponder on Heavenly Father's plan for me. Thanks Dad, for your help today!

Let the 3 year old take care of dinner

So I am standing in the kitchen this evening and I say to myself "What should we do for supper?" James comes around the corner and stands beside me and says "Hmmm? Have supper for supper!" I laugh, and thanked him for the insight. He then goes to the fridge and opens it up and stands there looking in it. Then he pulls out some cheese, and then the pickles, and the cold water, and the pop, and margarine, and a cucumber, and the cheese whiz, and some left over home made chicken noodle soup. I laughed and said "Alright James, lets make some supper with this."

 So here is supper. We heated up the chicken noodle soup. We made cheese and pickle sandwiches, melty cheese sandwiches, sliced up the cucumbers and set out the pickles. And James, well he wanted a peanut butter and jam sandwich.

Good job James! Supper was delicious!

How'd he know?

James just came to me with the box of Halloween chocolate that I had hidden under my bed. He says to me "Is this what you were looking for?" as he hands me the box. "No, Were YOU looking for it?" he answers enthusiastically "Yep! It was under yours bed!" Hmm...well, I hadn't actually been looking for it(since I knew where it was) but now that I think about it, maybe I would like a piece or two. So we shared some chocolate. Good thing that boy can read my mind. However, now I need to find a new hiding place.

Missionary Daughters

Earlier this week Kathryn asked me if we had a Book of Mormon that she could give to her friend. I told her that we did and where she could find it. I then witnessed her write a little note explaining about the book and her testimony. She took the book to school to give to her friend. After school I asked her how it went she was thrilled she told me that she had offered to read it with her if she ever wanted to. A day later, Tansley asks if she could give a Book of Mormon to her friend too. I told her of course she could. She too wrote a note and put it in a gift bag and took it to school to give to her friend. When she came home she was all smiles and told me about how at recess they sat and read some of it together. Today Tansley told me that again today at recess that they read scriptures together. Tansley and another friend from church had brought their scriptures another friend had also brought her bible from her church.So the four of them sat over by the garbage bins away from everyone else because it was more peaceful and thy could talk with out interruption. They even made up some games about following Jesus Christ, something to do with the hop scotch, even numbers were good and odd numbers were bad, and then you had to tell something you could do to stay on the right path. So totally clever. She was just beaming as she was telling me all about her missionary experiences. She told me that she had read a little bit of her friends bible but that she liked the King James version better because it felt more peaceful the way it was written in the "fancy" language. She hopes to invite her friend to church.
I know that her friend attends the River of Life Church. I have to admire my daughter and her boldness. As an adult, I would be far more cautious of "offending" somebody of another faith. In fact I am quiet certain that I wouldn't likely even bring up the subject of religion. I think I must learn something from my own children. In the mean time I am praying that her friends parents won't take offense to the gift, the things my daughter is trying to teach her friend at recess, or the invitation to church. I am praying that their hearts and minds will be open. That there will be no damage done to their friendship. Mostly that only good will come from my daughters efforts. I'm so proud of her for wanting to share what she holds dear.