Is It Naptime Yet

As described in Eden’s dance class post, today was the day to bring family to the girl’s dance class and my parents were there for support.

Two off things happened this morning. First I only brought one of Lilah’s dance shoes, so she performed barefoot, with tights that showed the dirt on the floor. Second our battery started to die and died about 10 seconds before Lilah’s song was over, but we got the majority of it. (I should remember to charge the battery before important events. It also died the night of my brothers reception.)

Since our battery was dying we didn’t video all of the warm-ups, which is what Jon did for Eden’s class.

So we just have one video.

For your viewing pleasure Here’s Lilah and her class performing Here comes Susie Snowflake and one of the warm-ups they do in class.

Today was a day to invite family to the girl’s dance class. My parents showed up, but my MIL was unable to make it due to the wet weather.

I have two video’s from Eden’s class. Both are very characteristic of how dance class goes every week for Eden, though the second one where the class performs the song is a little less characteristic in that she’s usually standing there, not sitting on the ground. It just happens she never got up from the ground exercises.

One of these things is not like the other. Part I

One of these things is not like the other. Part II

I will say it broke my heart to see her just sit there during the whole performance. I’m not sure if she’s painfully shy or painfully stubborn, but the one thing I do know is she is not searching for the spotlight like her sister.

With Sam’s break we’re going to try gymnastics again, which only Lilah has had a chance to do. Eden seems enthusiastic, but then again she was enthusiastic every week before we went to dance.

Also, I kept her in dance because she did like it and want to go each week and she’s never said she wanted to stop, even though she only regularly participated 60-75% of the time.

On Saturday I remembered Lilah needed to give a talk on Sunday. I don’t have the exact slip with what the theme was anymore but it went something like: I love Jesus Christ and the restored Gospel, or I’m thankful for Jesus Christ and the restored Gospel, or Jesus Christ and the restored Gospel makes me happy.

I really didn’t know what to do with it, so I had her write it by asking  a few simple questions.

Me: Why do you love Jesus?

L: I love Jesus because he was resurrected and Mary put the clothes on him.

Interpretation for talk: I love Jesus because he was resurrected and can resurrect me after I die.

Me: How does the Gospel make you happy?

L: The Gospel makes me happy because I love Jesus and the Gospel.

No talk interpretation needed.

Mommy added the last sentence because Lilah was giving interesting answers.

Because of the restored Gospel I can be with my family forever.

So the talk totaled three lines. I love Jesus because he was resurrected and can resurrect me after I die. The Gospel makes me happy because I love Jesus and the Gospel. Because of the restored Gospel I can be with my family forever.

I typed it up Sunday morning, went over it once with her while we sat in the foyer during sacrament meeting, because we were late and there wasn’t room in the Chapel.

Jon went with her to watch and I asked a leader to help her read the talk, but she apparently had to sit with another child and I had to teach a class, so Lilah was on her own since I could not be there, though I would have mostly stood back and watched anyways.

She read all of it and needed help with only one word, restored, which I expected after our one time run through.  The counselor that was in charge Lilah for her talk said she had done so well and must have been practising it all week, but in reality it just helps to have a child who can read and recognize words in context. (I’m sure if I pointed out resurrected she would have a hard time reading it, but in context, no problem. )

I’m really proud that she was able to give the talk on her own with only a little help. Had we been practising it all week I’m sure she not only would have remembered that one word, but would have had the talk memorized since she’s so smart and I think sometimes it’s my own flakiness/ business that holds her back.

So my very giving friend Anna generously hooked us up with two tall dressers. They are all wood, none of that particle board stuff, and very nice, plus they match the girl’s beds in that light wood way, though not exactly.  We like to be eclectic, which is what happens when you don’t buy bedroom sets.

Why would someone give us hundreds of dollars of furniture, because I’m sure each one is worth over $100 dollars, and deliver it to our door, and help Jonathan put it in our living room till we figured out where to put them in our rooms?

Well, she got them for free and it was so generous of her to give them to us for free also. ( Anna didn’t even let me give her gas money, though I am taking her out to eat next month as a show of gratitude.)

Anna works in the legal building for a home builder and whenever the furniture in the model homes becomes 3 years old, they have to get rid of it.
The way this particular builder gets rid of the used and damaged furniture is through letting employees chose furniture, up to five tickets worth and the two dressers were three total, and then they sell whatever is left to the public.

Anna told me about it when we were out to lunch on Wednesday and that Friday she would be able to claim furniture for herself and I mentioned, mostly jokingly, that we needed a tall dresser for the girl’s bedroom. Eden’s dresser was breaking, and I wanted to replace it with a tall dresser so I could fit both of the girls clothes in it and hopefully get rid of the changing table, which holds the girls shoes and Lilah’s clothes.

Anna took  me seriously and offered to be on the lookout for a tall dresser if they did not have the large item she was looking for and not only did she get us one tall dresser, but two, but that was because the referee in the whole furniture give away earmarked both of them for her, and she gave us both of them since she did not need a dresser and eventually I figure the girls will each need their own dresser and  we thought they matched, why split the two up? It turns out they are not the same dresser, which we figured out once we unwrapped them, just similar and one is definitely a slightly higher quality but, both are very nice.

It really has lifted a small weight off my shoulders.

Eden’s dresser has been breaking for a while but, it still worked. I knew I wanted to replace it with a tall dresser and I didn’t want to get a cheap dresser, I wanted a nice one, but those costs money and furniture is not something we readily spend large amounts on.

With getting this new dresser Jon has agreed to move, or get rid of, the changing table and I’m really looking forward to getting it out of the girls room.  We may need it when we have another child, but it’s old, it wasn’t the most expensive changing table, and it was free and I just feel that it’s a luxury not a necessity with a baby. The car seat I will store, it’s a necessity, a changing table is nice, but it’s a luxury and I feel we need that space for other things.  I hope to now have a designated area for school things, where as there are a few school things here and there and other things the girls do here and there, but  there isn’t a designated spot due to a lack of space in our house. Since the dresser brings things upwards, we’ll have more space.

Making sure whatever shelves or storage units we buy are tall is a big thing now since we’ve covered virtually every horizontal space we can find, now we need to work up and use our vertical space more efficiently. I may be able to use the drawers in the changing table for school stuff, but like I said, I want to work our storage area upwards and the changing table keeps things more horizontal. I really want a cupboard similar, or like, what we have in our dining area for food storage for our home school stuff. That way I can put things I don’t want the girls to get on a top shelf and things they can use on the lower ones.

Anna, I really am grateful for the dressers and your generosity. I know it wasn’t a big thing for you, it’s just part of your perks, but they really are going to be a big service to us. ( I now have my own dresser once more and will probably store some sewing stuff. Jon just replied that he now saw my ulterior motive in taking both of them. 😉 )

Thanks again.

This year the truffle gods were looking down at me and laughing.

I don’t know if it’s because I declined help from my very busy friend Beth and her daughters, or because it was humid, or maybe it was my children that were driving me nuts, but things just did not want to go right for me.

I started melting my truffle mixtures on Tuesday morning. I melted the white and then began melting the milk chocolate, to make the mint milk chocolate center. This was my first mishap, which I was able to save. I think I slightly burned the truffle mixture by heating it up too quickly, but it didn’t get too burned and I was able to whipped it to smoothness and it tasted just fine.

My next batch was not so lucky.

It got burned, and as it cooled it separated. It’s still sitting in my fridge because I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s still edible, just not usable for truffles. I’m so glad I only wasted $2 worth of chocolate, rather than $5, had I not bought it on sale.

So I let my truffles set and after lunch I started to roll them and then I began dipping them after they had their freezer time. The white truffles came out wonderfully, they usually do, but the milk chocolate mint I was having problems left and right. The chocolate was cracking, and then I’d get a few good ones and the the chocolate coating starting looking weird. I call it pudding, because it reminds me of that. It was not fun.

I remade a a fourth truffle mixture a little bit before I went to a church activity. Going made me stay up till 1 am, but I would need to wait for the mixture to cool and harden in the fridge anyways and I needed to get out of the house. My children were extra bothersome this day, and I’m sure it’s because I was frustrated at all the bumps in my truffle making road.

We got the girls to bed after I came home and I still had problems with the chocolate coating looking like pudding at times, but there was less stress since the girls were in bed and I was almost at the end, even if people got pudding truffles.

I bagged them and got them ready for Jon, only he didn’t take them to work this Wednesday, he took them on Friday.

I also made chocolate covered popcorn, both were hits.

I was able to have enough nice looking truffles for his work colleagues, but now I have a lot of funny looking truffles. I’m not sure who I want to give them too, because there are way too many for my little family.

Here are some photos of the truffles, including the ‘pudding’ ones.

The white, pretty, Christmas ones.

Pudding looking truffles.

The new way I decorated some.

Saturday the 6th, was our ward’s Christmas dinner and program. Eden had a really hard time at practice that morning so that night I wasn’t too surprised when she just stood there while all the other kids were ‘dashing’, which you’ll kinda be able to see in the video, but our seats were on the wrong side of the stage since the seats on the correct side were all taken and the quality isn’t too good, but you’ll get the just of the cuteness.

Here’s a short video of the girls singing Jingle Bells.

The girls sat on Santa’s lap and they printed the photo’s out right there. Since we don’t do the Santa Claus thing, I’m not going to go out of my way to get a picture with a really nice Santa, and I’m just happy they were both so willing to take the picture.

It’s a pretty washed out picture. I tried to make it less bright, but that only gave them spotty skin.

I asked my sister Andrea how the whole getting digital pictures from Costco works and she told me how the whole thing works. With telling me she informed me that I can organize and upload them from the comfort of my own home.

We also talked about the great pricing on photo greeting cards and what not.

Well, as I finally logged on and starting looking I realized that I can make a calender for a mere $9.99. Of course is just 8×10 and not fancy, but I can make a fancy 17 x whatever that is laminated and fancy for $17.99.

Well, I’m not going to go fancy, but I think Dara and Jason would like a calendar of our family photos. It might sound narcissistic, but they love our little family and this way they get lots of pictures, rather than just one. So now I just have to figure out what photo’s I want on the calendar and I’ll ignore the groceries that need to get put away and eventually read my lesson for Sunday.

I’ve been a little preoccupied. I made truffles this week and have been mostly ignoring my children all morning. We’re down to 6 pieces of bread. Luckily we only need 5 for our lunch.

I need to go grocery shopping, as told by our bread situation.

I’ll post pictures of my worst truffle making experience later.

As of right now I’m gonna shower and have lunch with Anna and then bake cookies at my mom’s house for Anna. She’s unprepared for her kids class tonight and I’m exploiting her for food and a reason to leave my house. Never mind I need to do dishes. I’m breaking out of this place!

Well even though the semester is not technically over till the end of this week, Jon received his grade for his independent studies class he took this semester.

He got an A on his paper which means he received an A for the course!

Really I’m just so happy to have the semester over. It was hard to give him study time when I wanted to have my own time  at times. ( How many times can I say time or times in a sentence?)

We’re going to have a lunch date next week and Eden’s old nursery leader is going to watch the girls. I ran into her at the bank last week and she made the comment that she hadn’t watched the girls all year and would love to. (She watched them last year when we went for a celebratory lunch date after the end of the semester.) Since we’re no longer in the same ward I felt like I would have just been using her if I asked her to babysit, but apparently she wants me to use her and her daughter and watch my kids. Who am I to say no?

So next week we celebrate the conclusion of a good semester.

Ever since Halloween and having candy everyday, and yes they have a piece everyday and since they’re happy with one piece a day I just keep letting them eat one piece a day, Lilah and Eden share candy everyday and they make me share too.

Now not only do they share but there is a level of expectancy to share. Like when I eat a tootsie roll I have to give each of them a bite and they in return will give me a piece or two of their candy. If Lilah has a sucker she gives everyone a lick and expects them to then share with her.

All this sharing is a bit out of control.

I love that they’re sharing, I just don’t love the expectancy to share. Sometimes I want my Kit Kat to myself and sometimes I don’t want a lick of a sucker, or perhaps I don’t want to share my own sucker, which I’m sure grosses some people out.

If I didn’t have a headache as I write this I might now compare the mandatory sharing to some socialist or other economy that has mandatory “sharing” but atlas I’m tired so this sentence is all you get.

Besides sharing candy it’s spread into our real meals. Now mind you I’m not a short order cook, so what one gets we all get, except maybe Jon who makes his own food for lunch because he eats differently than us.

So while were all eating the exact same thing, Lilah will  offer some of her sandwich or fruit to Eden and then Eden will do the same. Or Lilah will want to have a sip of Eden’s juice box or hot chocolate which is exactly the same as her own drink.

Now it’s driving me nuts.

Am I strange to not like all this sharing going on all the time? Of course some days there is more sharing, other days less, but without fail their is a sharing of candy.

I just find it funny and maybe a little annoying. Like I said before,  sometimes a girl just wants to eat her candy in peace, or sandwich in some cases.