I'm a Keeper

Today I had lunch with some girlfriends from our old married student ward. How I love them and miss them! It was so great to be together; talking, laughing, and eating yummy food. They are the kind of people that I only see once or twice a year, but I still consider them among my dearest friends.
It made me realize something about myself. In the world of friendships, I am a Keeper. I am not much of a Maker (one who goes out and finds lots of friends wherever she may be), nor am I much of a Loser (one who has deep friendships that have faded away with the passage of time). I am a Keeper. If you're my friend, we're probably going to be friends for a long time, because I place a high value on those relationships. Whether or not we talk on the phone, check each other's blogs, or comment on Facebook statuses (?), we are still friends. We will still be friends the next time we see each other, when after a quick hug we launch into conversation that is so profoundly meaningless and easy that it quenches my soul.
This was illustrated to me a few weeks ago when one of my dear friends was in town. She lives way out in Wisconsin of all places, so we hardly ever see each other. We hardly ever email or text or anything. But when we were together for the day, it was awesome! We talked non-stop and without any lingering awkwardness. What a great friend.
My "best" friends (excluding my dear husband) are two girls that have known me since junior high. We go WAAAAAY back. Embarassingly far back. And though we have grown and changed in the years that have passed, we are still BFFs. We're different now than what we were back in high school; our priorities have changed and we have matured. But we have a deep bond that connects us and always will.
Another example is my roommates from college. Oh, the memories of living with 5 other girls! We used to have a peice of paper in our pantry where we would write down all our "stupid" quotes (like when we personally would say or do something idiotic or embarrassing). One year for Christmas one of them typed all those up in a scapbook for each of us. It's a treasure. Anyway, I don't see the roomies much... but we do have a tradition of getting together for St. Patrick's Day and Halloween. Now instead of talking about classes and dates, we talk about babies and work. We are still part of each other, even though distance and life's busy-ness keeps us apart most of the time.
Probably, if you are reading my blog, you are one who is Kept by me. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for laughing, listening, understanding. Thank you for teaching me about life and helping me through difficult times. I don't express it often enough, but I love you. I think I'll Keep you.

For Tink

Tink, I saw your comment, but I don't know your email address, so I'm responding here. Hope it's helpful.

At the beginning of the school year we assigned monthly themes and weekly letters. The themes are based off a book my mother in law gave me called "Teach Me Mommy." It was written in 1982. Anyway, the themes are still applicable-- we have done bodies, senses, fall, Harvest, Thanksgiving, etc.

There are also some really great websites I have found that I use when it's time to plan my lessons. Here are some:http://www.everythingpreschool.com/, http://preschoolwithconnorandmommy.blogspot.com/, http://www.letteroftheweek.com/preschool_age_3.html, http://www.dltk-kids.com/

I have a great book called "The Preschooler's Busy Book" by Trish Kuffner. It just has TONS of fun activity ideas to do with your kid and has helped me with preschool, getting through boring days, and planning birthday parties. She pretty much uses stuff you already have around the house too, which is nice on the budget. I love it!

I think that if you sit down and come up with a calendar of what you are hoping to do (like our monthly themes/letters), it makes it so much easier to focus your efforts for doing stuff with your kids. And I know my kids are so much happier when they've got some structure to their day. If only I was organized enough to do it more often....

January Preschool

I feel like this has been a crazy month because I am teaching Kate's preschool. It has been a lot of fun, if a bit time consuming. Here are some of the fun things we've done:

Decorating jellyfish for the letter J:

We had a jellyfish dance party once everyone finished their creations. And, of course we had to sing the Jellyfish song (Oakcrest memories). The kids think it's hilarious.

Our trip to the post office. One of the themes of the month is Community Helpers, so we took a field trip to the post office (we were with another preschool, so it looks like there's tons of kids).

Mailing letters we wrote to ourselves!

When we were finished, we came back here and played a game where each kid was a mailman and had to deliver match the "mail" (shape) to its' mailbox (same shape). They loved it and wanted to play again and again. Kids are really entertained by simple things, and even though it took a little prep on my part to create all these shapes, I'm glad I did. I've got them for future use, and I know the kids like it. Plus it teaches something. Bonus!

Our new addition

We've become dog people. Or, as one of T's co-workers put it, we are the traditional All-American family: 3 kids, a dog, and a minivan.

Meet our puppy, Daisy. We brought her home on Christmas Eve and the kids were shocked. They treated her just like a little dolly for a few days-- reading her stories, cuddling her on their laps, wrapping her in a blanket and singing her songs.
Since then she's doubled in size and become significantly more wild. But we love her still.

She's actually a pretty good dog. We haven't had too many struggles with potty training. She is super cute and makes us laugh a lot. All in all, we're glad to be dog people.

The dog rides in between Anna and Kate in the van. So cute!

Because I Know You Care

Trav was surprisingly inspired by the Birthday Party Ideas I found for him. We decided to go with the Pub Crawl, but since we don't actually drink, we made it an Appetizer Crawl instead.

We started with the Jack Daniels Sampler at TGIFridays. Anyone who has not had the Jack Daniels sauce is missing out. Yum-o!

Then we went to Chili's for their Choose 3 Sampler, and these were the three we got: Southwestern Eggrolls, Buffalo Chicken Wings, and 2 Big Bites. I'm never a big buffalo chicken girl, but T loves it. I traded him my share of the wings for his share of the eggrolls. Perfect!

We finished up with Tracy's Peanut Butter Cup at Leatherby's. I never liked the peanut butter/chocolate combo till I met Travis, but now we agree that it's the best. We were stuffed, so we took some home for the girls who gobbled it up right away.

It was a really fun way to spend an evening. It might seem a little odd to go from restaurant to restaurant and never even order a full meal, but we got to try lots of different things and every thing was tasty! We'll be eating salad for the next week to make up for it. :)

Happy Birthday to My One True Love!

Travis is undoubtedly the best thing that ever happened to me. He is such a great husband and father. He is my very best friend, my confidante, my late-night snack buddy.

He inspires me to be better than I am, from being more charitable to getting out of bed earlier. He is such a hard worker and never gives up on something just because it's difficult (which I tend to do).

He sings in the shower almost every morning. He makes fried eggs, even though he doesn't like them, just to make me happy. He takes the darn puppy for a walk every morning before work to get some of her energy out.

He gets up with the kids in the middle of the night, and is the first one to wake up in the morning.

He takes his calling very seriously and is highly committed to the Gospel. His testimony and his desire to become more Christlike inspire me.

He is gentle and kind, funny and witty. He sometimes dances like Michael Jackson.

He loves to travel; it's pretty much the only thing he wants to spend money on.

He picks the girls up and swings them around the room, sometimes he does it to me too. He is the most unselfish person I have ever known. I love this guy!

I'm an Idiot

So lately I've been feeling a little underappreciated in the world of blogland. Just thinking how I only ever get one or maybe two comments. Maybe nobody's reading, maybe I should give it up.
Then today I noticed something on my dashboard of Blogger. It said "81 comments need to be moderated." I've seen it before but never clicked it. Holy cow! There you all are! Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting. Made my day.
I'm not really sure why this happened. I get some comments sent to my email, but I guess that 81 of them didn't make it. Whatever. I'm glad to know that the comments are there. I'll try to check them more often, and to respond.
I really appreciated all the advice about how to best decorate my home. I went with Erin's advice about doing the front room first because it sets the tone for what people think of your house. I did this mostly because it made sense and it was the only one I saw before today. But, I just shopped my house and decorated the front room. I've got some other projects going for other rooms, but nothing doing on the master bath/bedroom. We'll see how it pans out.

Birthday Party Ideas

T's birthday is coming up in a couple weeks. It's the big 3-0 so I'm thinking we should do something a little out of the ordinary. The trouble is, he HATES surprises. I threw a surprise party for him a few years ago and it was basically his worst nightmare come true. He also HATES to be the center of attention, which is difficult when it's his birthday we're celebrating.
So, as I do whenever I have a question for the universe, I googled 30th birthday party ideas. Here are some favorites, let me know which you think T would like best:

1. Rent a bus and do a pub crawl. Of course, you have to have drinks on the bus in case anyone gets thirsty as you travel from bar to bar.

2. Host a poker night. Don't forget the keg.

3. Host a Halloween themed party, with skeletons around to remind him of how OLD he is becoming. (seriously, am I the only one who doesn't think 30 is old?)

4. Rent a bus and do a tour of his life thus far. (there must be some connection between turning 30 and needing to rent a bus)

5. Have a James Bond themed party. Tuxedos and all.

6. Take him and our dearest friends on a cruise.

7. Go camping. In the snow, yeah, he'll love that.

8. Have a co-ed sleepover. Okay, really, this is the worst idea ever. The problems abound: what to do with our kids, our friends' kids, where is everyone going to sleep, and most importantly, I do NOT want a bunch of people seeing what I look like
first thing in the morning!

I think we'll just go out to dinner.

Musical Appreciation

In case one day I forget...
I am the mother of three beautiful, funny, smart, entertaining daughters.

Something we have been excited about at our house lately is (are?) musicals. As in, theatrical productions where much of the story is carried on by singing. My dear friend Kris used to tell me "Life is a Musical." A guy I once dated used to say that musicals, and people who liked musicals, should be terminated. (see how I made the right choice by not marrying him?)

Whatever your opinion on musicals is, what I am trying to say is that we like them here at our house. We like to dance and sing and be silly. We like to hear stories and songs. And really, none of us have a lick of musical ability. But that is what's great about musicals. Lots of enthusiasm makes up for being offkey (at least for me it does.)

A moment I will always treasure happened a few weeks ago. The girls and I were tired from a long day of shopping. We were leaving Target (after Kate had spilled hot chocolate all over the white towels I was buying), and it was a blizzard outside. We were not the doing well, but as we trudged through the snow on the way to the car I heard Anna start to sing "The sun'll come out tomorrow..." With a smile at the irony, I began to sing along.

That's what's great about musicals.