Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

I want some baby kittens. And a star wars guitar. And I want my own video game thing.... Nintendo.

From,
The Babe


Dear The Babe,

I'm sorry but if you had read Section 5A Appendix C of Santa's fine print you would have seen that Santa does not give perishable items, live animals or anything considered toxic. Also, Santa is morally apposed to guitars and Star Wars. It has to do with his Amish upbringing. And last but not least, according to Santa's list, you already own your own video game thing..... Nintendo.

So we regret to inform you that you will have to settle for the presents Santa's Elves already made for you a dumb 100+ piece marble run including 20 marbles and neato spinning pieces that your father can help you put together.

Love,
Santa's Helper

PS Santa does not take returns either.

Big Decisions

I hate making big decisions. I hate making decisions in general. But especially life altering ones. I always wonder what if I had chosen the other. Or what if I chose the wrong one.

I hate even deciding what's for dinner much less making real grown-up decisions. I think it's because decisions I make now affect my children. When it was just Russ and I, sure they affected us but not so much others.

Last year at this time we were making big decisions also! What is it with Christmas?

Pray for us that we will make the right decision.

Etsy Shop

So yesterday I got bored and decided to open an etsy shop. I'm thoroughly impressed! It was very easy to use, had lots of features and cost like $.20 per item to list (plus a 3.5% fee when, I mean if, it sells). I'm still trying to figure everything out. But it's fun! Here's the link to my site:

http://ihemstitch.etsy.com

ME! It's all about ME! Isn't it?

A big statement when I was growing up that my parents said to me often was, "Kendra, the world doesn't revolve around you." So in my selfish thinking today, why doesn't the world revolve around me? I mean isn't my life the most important? Doesn't everyone else realize that my kids are the cutest and my day to day tasks the most urgent?

Would it really be perfect if the world did revolve around you?

Like wouldn't it be nice if all the stop lights revolved around you? And there was never a stop sign that required you to stop, they were all magically in the other direction. Wouldn't it be great if everyone conformed to your thinking? If the person you voted for won every time. Your team won all their games in sports. And everything went exactly as you want it to.

I guess thinking on the flip side of things. What if everyone always agreed with you? And because the world revolved around you, everyone started dressing like you and talking like you. If you gained/lost 5 pounds, everyone would want to as well. Perhaps it would feel like everyone was watching your every move to see what you're going to do next. (this sounds scary in it's similarities to how we treat celebrities now days)

Apparently, I have struggled with selfishness since I was very little. In my selfishness lately, I have been so concerned with what is going on in MY life that I forgot there is a whole big world out there with people who have day to day lives as well. And they all have the cutest kids in the world too. It intrigues me to think that everyone I know has their own little world that they live in and I know very little about it. I think this is how writers have a profession.

After all this thinking, I've decided to be a little less selfish. It's a good thing that I have a husband who is so kind because he keeps on track most of the time. Since we're coming to the holidays everyone naturally thinks I am going to take cookies to all my neighbors. But I don't think that is the way for me to accomplish my goal (although it is definitely a good thing). I think perhaps I should really focus on paying attention to others on a day to day basis maybe minute by minute. I will start with my children and my family first. Then branch out to friends/strangers. Nothing big but it's just the little things that count. And my hope is that I can be a better person (not that I will help others lol).

Giveaway Site

I found this great site! It's called Giveaway Blog! You leave a comment on the post typically telling what you favorite product is from the featured company and you're entered to win an at least $20 prize! How cool is that??

http://blog.craftroad.com

Ok it's really my site but that's ok.....go check it out anyway!

Love Letters

The other week in Relief Society the lesson was out of the Joseph Smith manual. Basically, the only material given was some letters that Joseph had written to Emma. Before the lesson, I had seen a book at Deseret Book where I'm assuming they published a bunch of "love letters" that Joseph had written Emma. In discussing these with my Auntie, she said that she was sort of against reading them because they were so personal. I, in turn, thought that it would be sweet to read about someone's love for their significant other. Neither of us read them.

This made me think about my relationship with the hubby. I kept a journal the entire time we were dating and that has always been precious to me. I'm not sure why I wrote because I didn't continuously write during the year before or the year after. It is special to me and every so often I take it out and read it to remind myself why I fell in love.

Then the hubby showed me that he also kept a journal! I think I knew that he had but I hadn't ever really read it or thought too much about it. This week I read it. And let me just say I married the best one, too bad ya'll missed out.

There is nothing in them that is inappropriate or too private. If you really know Russ, then it's so sweet to read about his concern for me, his true inexperience in dating and genuine sweetness. My love letters are all superficial and immature. But his are so insightful and thoughtful. So if he ever becomes the prophet, you have our permission to publish his love letters after we're dead and make a killing off them. (not mine)

And just to tease you, I wanted to share one little quote from them (hang on it's a tear jerker),

"I am going to marry an awesome girl. I don't know how I got to be so blessed. The Lord sure does love me. She is just plain awesome. I hope that I can be worthy of her as my wife." (Russ)

Pictures

Ok, so my re-commitment hasn't been great. I'll admit it. But Leticia said all she wanted was some cute pictures of my kids and stuff. So here you go.

This is the Babe's First Soccer Game. It's also probably one of the only times that he kicked the ball. Notice: he's left footed...lol. Today is his last game. That tells you how old this picture is.

I am the assistant coach for his soccer team! Isn't that funny?? Here is a picture of me ref-ing the game! HAHA! We just scored a goal!

This is what the Little Lady's Hair looks like in the morning! No, isn't she cute though??

This is the first day of his second year of Preschool. That's confusing huh? Isn't he so handsome?? He's going to be a heart breaker!

This is the Little Lady's new outfit from Grandma for her birthday! (which was the beginning of September....this picture is old too)

This is us playing Nintendo 64. Ya, remember that old video game system that you can't get games for anymore?? We have one of those. But when my mom took this picture she said, "The family that plays together, stays together!"

Losing His Edge

The hubby told me this story last night. It is so funny that I had to post it on here.

The Babe was supposed to be sleeping but he continued to get out of bed for one thing or another. The hubby was sick of it so he finally said,

"If you get out a bed one more time, I'm going to spank you."

The Babe looked at him and started laughing (in a cute non-smart-alecky way) and said, "Daddy, your spanks don't hurt at all."

The hubby's lost all his edge. He no longer has any leverage. I think it's funny because he only half-hardedly spanks him anyway. I could probably count on one hand how many time he has spanked him. But it's funny that the Babe thinks that way. LOL.

Food Storage

So lately I've been on this food storage kick. It's really stretching our budget too. It's hard to buy all your regular food and $100 in food storage. But all in all this has been a good thing.

At an Enrichment, this lady spoke about food storage and mentioned her website. I looked it up and I think it's super cool. She goes through the sales ads each week and tells you what is a bad deal, ok deal and great deal. Then you know what to buy at a good price that week.

She also has this super cool chart that you can download to help you know how much food storage to buy. It suggests buying real things that I would use like BBQ sauce and boxed cereal! And it tells you how much of each your buy (per person or per family of 4-6).

Here is her site: http://www.myfoodstoragedeals.com/index.cfm

Anyway so I'm a little obsessed but that's ok. It's good to be passionate about things right?! I made the hubby clean out our mud room and give me some space to store things in there. I organized to all into groups. Then I got lazy and haven't touched it since.

So here's my new goal. I'm going to cook every night for 28 days straight. They say that you form habits by doing something 28 days in a row. So if I cook for 28 days in a row then it will be a habit and we'll eat better. Right? We'll see how it goes. I'll post progress on here (if I have time).

Re-Committed

After taking a good solid year off blogging, I think I'm ready to start up again! A lot of ladies in my ward blog so that is motivating! Also, I find that I take more pictures of my kids when I am writing in a blog because I think about it.

Anyway, yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview Sister Ann Dibb for the Utah Baby Guide Magazine that I write for. Sister Dibb is a Counselor in the General Young Women's Presidency and more importantly she is President Monson's Daughter. I am writing an article giving tribute to Sister Frances Monson! Sister Monson was unavailable to do the interview so we interviewed her daughter! It was such a neat experience! I was so impressed by the sweet kind way she spoke about her mom. I would only hope my children would speak about me in that kind manner when I am super old. If you ask them about me right now, they would probably tell you I am mean and I never let them watch cartoons.

My sweet Sister-In-Law went with me to the interview. She has a degree in journalism. It was so nice to have her there with me. She made up for my shortcomings.

But it basically took all day so I am behind. I missed my Monday which is usually one of the biggest days of my week. Better get back to work.

Child Endangerment

I bet you weren't expecting to hear from when it's so close to my boutique. By the way, I'm expecting you all to attend, even you Matticia. lol.

The other day I ran to Wal-Mart to go to the bank. As I was getting out of my car, I notice a small child (probably a year or 18 months old) strapped in a car screaming in the car next to me. I thought hmmm that's weird and looked for the mother. No mother was in there.... I didn't know what to do so another lady was getting her kids out of her car close by so I mentioned it to her to see what she suggested. She watched the kids while I went inside and got a Wal-Mart employee. When I returned, the Wal-Mart employee went and got management.

While they did that, the other lady called 911. She was adamant that this mother should be caught and not allowed to get away with something that is illegal. I was on the fence. While I understood that leaving your children strapped into your car is illegal, I also felt for the mother who thought this was so innocent. I was also petrified that the mother would come out at any second and we'd have a huge ordeal on our hands. The 911 operator said to call her back immediately if the woman came out and that were to not allow her to leave. How was I going to do that?

Luckily, that didn't happen. The police many showed up. At this point, I would say we'd been standing there 10-15 minutes. I left when the policeman showed up again not wanting a confrontation. I ran into the bank and was literally done in 2 minutes. I was parked right next to her and I knew she would see me. Nothing happened but she was out there yelling at the police. She said something like I was only gone for a second. The policeman pointed out that her cart was half full. She said but it was only a few minutes. He said it only takes 1 minute.

After thinking about this a while, I'm still torn. I realize that it only takes a minute for someone to steal your kids or for something horrible to happen. I also think it was so innocent. She left her 3 kids in the car. The oldest could have been 5 or 6. At what age is the child old enough? The law says 6 I think. Then I read this story today. http://www.insideedition.com/news.aspx?storyID=1607

I don't know the outcome of the lady I turned in but do you really think they took her to jail?? I hope not. My cousin said in Mesa that it is called child abandonment if you leave you kids in the car and they take them away and put you in jail. I understand that because it's hot there and kids die all the time from parents leaving them in the car. It sure made me think and that's a really good thing.

Hannah Montana!!!!

As you all know, Miley Cyrus is coming to Stadium of Fire this year for the 4th of July. I heard on t.v. that tickets were going on sell Friday at 5pm. So I thought I'd try to get tickets so I could resell them. The newspaper said they sold out their online tickets in 10 minutes! Only 300 people of the 1000 who got wristbands to stand in line got tickets.

I was lucky! I got 8 tickets! It's a sold out event! I've never bought tickets before. I've never even been to a concert before. So I've been watching ebay and ksl.com to see how many other people were trying to sell their tickets. I've finally taken the plunge and I'm selling 4 of the 8. Here's a link to the ebay post:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320238215732

Go check it out and let me know what you think. And by the way, NO we will not be attending the Stadium of Fire. No way I'm going to that stadium with all those screaming tween girls!

Little Bee Craft Boutique

Look at our coooooool billboard! It's on I-15 and 1400 North in Orem, Utah!
And come to the Boutique!

Pain

I have this problem.

A few Saturdays ago, we went for a walk as a family. It was a beautiful day so the Little Lady was on the tricycle with the hubby pushing her while the Babe was in the stroller while I pushed him. We got a little carried away racing and there was a crash. The Little Lady's foot got stuck in the peddles of the tricycle and the hubby/Little Lady went crashing to the ground. There was some blood involved but I'll spare you the gory details. Now to my point. As soon as I saw that the hubby and the Little Lady were hurt, I felt sick. Like literally sick to my stomach. I felt pain that the ones I love were in pain. My heart hurt. Now that sounds very melodramatic but I really didn't understand this.

Then I took my kids to the doctor this week. They both had to get shots. The Babe is 4 now and has to be a big boy to show his little sister how easy it is. He sat there just shaking because it hurt so much and never cried. It hurt my heart so much! The Little Lady cried and wailed but that didn't hurt my heart as much as seeing my little boy just shake because he was hurting.

Then I went to dinner and was sitting waiting for the hubby to run an errand and I watched 2 teenage boys. They were playing this game with a quarter where you tried to keep it spinning on a table. Each took a turn and whoever knocked it off the table or made it stop spinning lost. When they lost, the winner took the quarter and flicked it into the knuckles of the loser....causing him pain. I could see the pain on one of the boys face. This made my heart hurt. But then I realized that these stupid boys were inflicting pain on themselves. I don't understand that.

But I do understand that teenagers are their own breed. And the Babe will someday make stupid choices and pain will result from them. Even though I told him not to. And this made my heart hurt.

I realize that the Little Lady is going to come home heartbroken over a boy. This will probably last all of 3 hours. But that will make my heart hurt.

I truly didn't understand that my mother felt pain in her heart when I was in pain. I guess this is all part of being a mother. I do not understand how mothers who have children who are very sick, or hurt badly in car accident deal with this heart pain I felt this week. They must be stronger mothers than I am. Or perhaps they have strength from God.

I'm the Cool Mom!!!!

Today the Babe wanted to go outside to play. I told him he had to stay in the backyard because the Little Lady wanted to go out. He said he wanted to play with (insert friend's name here.....we'll call him George). I told him he could run go get George but they had to come play in our backyard. So they came back a few minutes later but George wouldn't come in our backyard. I went out to see what the problem was and found that it was quite cold. So I grabbed the Little Lady to take her in and George said that his mom wouldn't let him leave their yard either. So I said ok, go play at his house no biggie. Well as George and the Babe were leaving, George says to the Babe, "Wow, you're mom's cool! A lot cooler than MY mom."

Yes! At last, I've achieved the ultimate goal of being the COOL mom. Too bad yesterday I was the worst mom in world when I wouldn't let him go out to play because he lied to me.

Busniess Deals

Today was a great day for my business ventures. I bought another Hemstitching Machine and I got a screaming deal on it! So I think I am going to turn around and sell it for a profit. I am super excited about it! We went out to dinner to celebrate. We ate Chinese and this was my fortune:

This was the hubby's fortune:

Knuffle Bunny

We got this book from the library that describes the Little Lady to a T. It's called Knuffle Bunny. This little girl goes to the laundromat with her dad. She leaves her special "Knuffle Bunny" there. On the way home, she realizes and starts saying, "Aggle Flaggle Klabble," over and over again. The dad says, "yep, we're going home." Then she starts wailing and goes, "boneless," which is the limp arms/legs syndrome. Then when they get home, the mom says,"Where Knuffle Bunny?" So the dad runs back to the laundromat and they find him. And the little girls says her first words, "Knuffle Bunny!!"

This is so like the Little Lady. She will run over and just start jabbering like I know what she is saying. And she'll repeat her jabber over and over again because she obviously wants something. It's hard because she's trying to communicate but she's just not quite forming real words yet.

Things are Fine

This is a picture the Babe drew at preschool today! How fun, huh? I can actually tell what it is....can you?

Things are going well with us. Today the hubby had a genius idea. He wanted to open a grocery store that sells already blessed food. This of course would be so you wouldn't have to bless the food at every meal. Genius huh? Would you shop there? Just doing some market research. lol.