Is It Naptime Yet

So, I need to post pictures, but I thought I’d blog real quick on two things, since I’m not posting any pictures tonight anyways.

First, the girls had their first sleepover. As in we left them with someone not related! Though, I think Lilah being left with my parents while I had Eden was the last time we left a child overnight without one of us there, so this was major.

Lilah and Eden slept over at Britta’s house for New Years Eve. It was perfect because I stayed and hung out with Sam and our girls that night and was able to tuck them into bed before I left. Since Jon was sick and Sam’s husband goes to bed early it seemed perfect for us to have a girls night for New Years Eve.

We had Chinese food, root beer floats, and other not so healthy snacks. We made party hats and the girls played games. Eden fell asleep at 11:40 pm or so and Lilah and Britta made it till midnight. So Lilah was my New Years kissee (kisser? kiss?).

It wasn’t too hard leaving them there since I got to spend so much time with them before I left, I trust Sam completely and I was super tired, but I still think it’s a fun milestone.

Second, Eden is taking dance once more and this time I’m not taking her.

Sam teaches an afternoon dance class, so I signed Eden up for it since she showed interest in it after getting a new Sigg bottle with a ballet dancer on it. I watch Matilda for just a little bit before Matt is able to get home, so Sam just takes Eden with her to class. When Matt comes to get Matilda he leaves Britta to play with Lilah and then we switch kids again once Sam brings Eden home.

I really feel that I’m a safety net for Eden. She seems to be much more shy and reserved when I’m around so I thought with me not being there she might actually participate, and apparently I was correct. Today was just the first class, but she did wonderfully and fully participated.

I’m one of Eden’s biggest cheer leaders, but for some reason I’m also her biggest hindrance. It’s hard knowing I have a somewhat negative affect on Eden. I really want to be there taking pictures and supporting her, but I think I need to support her from afar for a little time. Once she settles in I might go watch, but I want her to really be confident so she doesn’t feel she needs to act shy or be reserved just because I’m around and she thinks that’s how she needs to act when I’m there. It’s difficult because I want to be there so badly, but I know me not watching her is for the better.

I’m needing to let go a little more than before and even though it’s fun, I also hate that they’re growing so fast.

My friend Anna recently did a posts on Christmas memories and I made a little comment because she asked us to comment on our favorite Christmas memories. Here’s my comment:

My favorite has always been sneaking out to see the tree at night after Santa had come and eating one or two treats from my stocking. I loved sitting and looking at the lit tree with all the lights out.

I may actually not put the child’s gate up this year and maybe my girls will enjoy this too, though in some ways they are so good it might take a year or two.

So this year I’m going to relinquish some power and not put up the child’s gate. Jon doesn’t like them sneaking and poking around, so he’s thinking of maybe putting up a curtain, so they can peak out the curtain, but hopefully not go past it. This is a tradition his family has and as a child he never actually went past the curtain, just peeked. I find this somewhat amazing, but I think my girls would take after him since they do have a tendency to really respect what we ask them to do.

Taking Anna’s lead I want to share some of my favorite Christmas memories.:

Staying up late waiting for Santa to come.

Exchanging gifts with my siblings.

My dad driving us around to go look at Christmas lights so Mom could wrap presents. I think of my Dad whenever we look at lights with my girls. Their enthusiasm reminds me of my own.

Picking out Christmas tree’s with my dad each year. I always went with him and got the last say. I don’t know if he taught me well or just made it feel like I picked the perfect one each year. Every once-in-a-while another sister got to come along, which I didn’t like too much, but I still got the last say.

Making decorated sugar cookies for my friends.

Our Christmas Tree Angel. My parents have the perfect angel for their tree, just simple, not extravagant with big wings. I wish I could find one just like it.

Our house on Base decorated with lights and a manger scene.

Silent Night, and not knowing if my sister’s catholic boyfriend knew the song. I can  be a bit air-heady at times.

The one Christmas I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night and had gotten a new bike.

Turning out all the lights and watching the Christmas tree glimmer with it’s lights on.

One year my dad set up the camera to record for 2 or so seconds every 10 or so seconds and we watched as we peeked in the presents and our bodies appeared at different places in the room.

Wrapping presents that my dad bought my mom.

5 years or so of plain red and green wrapping paper my dad had gotten somewhere. We wrapped the new computer in it the first year and it lasted f.o.r.e.v.e.r. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was still some hanging around or if my mom just tossed it.

My dad being able to return things, but us having to keep things we didn’t like unless they didn’t fit or were broken.

Peeking around for where the Christmas gifts were hid.

Unwrapping gifts once in a while and re-wrapping them.

Learning mom’s secret code on how to tell what gift belonged to who since it had no name tag. Lets just say each of our names start with different letters and D was for Dad, since our names both start with L.

What are some of your favorite Christmas memories?

My friend Anna just posted the Lily Munster Costume we worked on. She designed and made the dress and I made the cape. I had a pattern to work by but I had to make modifications and design the hood from scratch.

She does regular sewing as in: cosutmes, bridal, and clothing. Though she has also made drapes and is certified in alterations.

1. Breezy days.
2. Days full of family time.
3. Morning kisses.
4. Kids who are easy to entertain.
5. Thoughtful and nice mail people.

Other thoughts:
Eden the other day was having trouble pulling up her pants and underwear so I was saying her bum was telling me to spank it, or in this case, also kick it gently once the pants were on. Being the literalist she is, she told me her bum doesn’t talk, it poops.

There are a ton of 6 years olds in the co-op with Lilah. Today one was sharing the lunch table with her and she asked if Lilah would be her friend and then she also said Lilah looked really smart. It’s really interesting watching how kids interact.

On Sunday while I was trying to watch conference our converter box did not want to pick up the channel it was on. So I sat on the couch and tried to listen  from my computer while Lilah talked to me about what I was doing, crocheting, and she chatted about other things and I had to keep reminding her I was listening to conference, even if it was on the computer and not the TV.

Then later in the day my friend called to see if she could come use my sewing machine to put a couple button holes in something, since hers does not sew button holes and my machine, really my mom’s machine but don’t remind her, does.

In the end we decided I’d come over and watch conference there and our girls could play. I know I should make my kids watch conference, but  they only like to listen to the choir sing and then they decide to just bother me and my friend and I have the same philosophy and letting our kids be around but they can still do their own thing as conference is on, until they’re eight.

So supposedly her house wasn’t very clean, but from what I could see it was a lot cleaner than mine and since I’m watching her baby today and tomorrow so she can go make wonderful all natural, and they smell good too, lotions for a craft fair, I feel like I really need to get cleaning. She used my bathroom not too long ago because it’s cleaner than the rec center she works at, and I’m ashamed to say that I think the rec center’s bathroom might have been cleaner, but mostly because grass from the girl’s dead grass heads is everywhere and our bar of soap has left a film and I only go in there to wash their hands and I avoid cleaning bathrooms at all costs.

So I’m cleaning today because it’s the right thing to do and I know I’ll be happier and feel less guilty if people have to use my bathroom.

Also if you’d like to buy some all natural lotions that my friend Sam makes and she has great scents like coconut mango, strawberry, vanilla, or orange, leave a comment and I can privately give you her info to buy some. She doesn’t have a website yet but hopefully we can get her hooked up in the future. It’s $6 for an 8 oz bottle.

My morning consisted of trying to stay awake during General Conference. I mostly stayed awake, but at times I was mostly sleeping. The girls had fun calling my name whenever they saw my eyes closed, then I’d get grumpy at them and tell them to settle down. I think I’m turning into my father.

In between conference we cleaned out the candy in our cabinet. Really condensed it since they were able to fit all the candy into these two coconuts containers that we had from Eden’s birthday party. At least it’s condensed and in a smaller area and not a big gallon ice cream bucket and several bags and other containers. I think once we start getting Halloween candy all the other candy will be thrown out. Maybe that’s how I should do it routinely since some of the candy they put in those coconuts was from Valentine’s day. Ewe.

I also did the dishes before the next session of conference started and to keep me awake for the second meeting I was crocheting a dish rag. I just learned how to crochet on Wednesday, so I thought I better practice before I forgot what I was doing, though I could ask Jon for help since he knows how to crochet. I took out what I started twice and I think I’m doing much more uniform stitches now on my third try. Crocheting did keep me awake for the second session of conference today, but my converter box kept losing it’s signal and I only got parts of the talks and songs. Each time it went off Lilah and Eden would say very loudly “Signal, hey signal!” because they were convinced that’s why the signal returned. It was kinda fun, but also kinda annoying. Well see how tomorrow goes.

After conference I went to work outside. The girls have been playing nearly every day with our neighbors or just outside by themselves, and they’ve asked on more than one occasion if they could go in our backyard. Our back yard isn’t too much of a mess, but it’s getting the neighbor girls there through the side yard that the dilemma lied. Our bushes hadn’t been trimmed  and they blocked the pathway along with all the pine needles and trash that liked to be blown around back there. So I took time to clean our driveway, trim back the bushes and clean the side yard. It was hard work, and I know my legs are going to be sore from all the squatting I did, but at least it’s passable and now I just need to sweep the back yard and make it slightly more presentable so they and their friends can be back there and I won’t have to worry about what they’re getting into. The neighbor girls have  talent for getting into things back there or making things dangerous. Like the time they took the giant, hard, dead, stock to our giant sunflower and were using it as a sword, or something equally scary to this momma since it was giant, and hard, and slightly pointy at the end.

Today I’ve also been dreaming of visiting some of our National Parks. PBS did a 6 day, 2 hours each day, special this week and it really makes me want to visit all these awesome parks. I never went to any growing up, but I really want to take my children and experience the beautiful scenery with them. My first goal is for us to visit the Tetons, Yellowstone and then onto Glacier National park. I think it would be so fun, we just have to budget and hope we can correspond our trip to my friends Anna’s yearly trip out to Glacier so we can stay with her and her husband at his parents cabin out there.  (And on the way to Yellowstone we’d probably travel through Utah so we could visit a certain niece.)

We need to go to many other parks out here in the West since so many are so close to us.

There are just so many beautiful places to visit and so little time.

What did you do or dream about today?

Here are the pictures to go with my detailed posted of what we did in Pine Valley.

Saturday, September 5, 2009.

Getting ready to feed the Koi.

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Watching Gary so they can pick blackberries.

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Lilah showing off a blackberry and Britta trying to put it back in the bowl.

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The pond.

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This is the first picture of many of the girls on the swings.

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Eden swinging an singing by herself later in the day.

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Closeup.

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They were on the swings a lot.

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Silly Eden.

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Sunday, September 6, 2009.

The girls outside the church. It’s really hard to take a nice picture of three girls when they’re being silly.

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Eden was the most cooperative.

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The girls were pushing the four-wheeler.

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The view from Gary’s nephew’s cabin.

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Hanging out by the pond.

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pretty peaches

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wild turkeys

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Monday, September 7, 2009

crate on a pulley

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The girls liked “helping” to pull one another up in the crate.

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Pretty flowers that were in the yard.

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Britta twisting Eden up in the swing. Eden was the only one who enjoyed this because Lilah got hurt at one point and Britta was just too scared.

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There she goes!

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And she’s done, and so our are my pictures of the girls on the swings.

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The redneck trampoline, AKA an old box spring. It was fun to jump on it. Sam tried it out and then made me.

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They had fun jumping on it.

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Eden in the pup tent.

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Britta and Lilah in the pup tent.

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All the girls.

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Lilah being silly.

This concludes the picture portion of our Pine Valley trip. I just wish I had one taken with Sam, or had been fast enough to catch her jumping on the redneck trampoline.

So the girls and I went to Pine Valley this weekend with Sam, her daughters Britta (5), Matilda (6 months), and her in-laws. Jon was on call this weekend in case they needed something at UNLV, and Sam’s husband wasn’t able to make it either. It was so much fun and I would go all the time if they allowed me and my family to be there.

1. Grandpa Gary, Sam’s FIL, did so many fun things with the girls and just included mine like they were his own. We did call him Grandpa Gary the whole weekend.

2. Grandma Jackie, Sam’s MIL, was also so nice to my daughters and made us feel like family.

3. Sam for inviting us along, even if it was slightly selfish so Britta would have some playmates and wouldn’t need Sam to entertain her the whole weekend. 😉

4. I’m thankful that I was able to let go and tell my girls to get dirty and have fun. They stayed outside 90% of the time, except to eat and to sleep.

5. The beautiful outdoors that Heavenly Father created. I just wish Sam had thought to invite us sooner in the summer so we could have gone more, of course only if we were invited. I’m hoping to go next year with Sam if she invites us again.

Just for fun 6. Talking with friends till late in the night. I think if the husbands go with us they’ll have to sleep in tents outside so Sam and I can talk. It’s so funny how Sam and I never run out of things to talk about.

So, I just realized I hadn’t written a post about the details of how my weekend away went. I guess I’ve been pretty preoccupied by homeschooling and using Linux this week.

We wanted the trip to have a lot more woman on it, but since it was the weekend right before school a few mom’s decided to stay home with their soon to enter kindergarten children and one had to cancel because her husband got asked to go on a Scout trip and she felt he needed to go. So it was my dear friend Sam and her dear friend Julie who went and they both brought their nursing children. So we had three mom’s and two young children.

Just a funny note: I have never spoken to Julie that much, but my mother made her wedding cake, I had an English class with her husband in college and she and Andrea were friends back in the day. She’s also visit taught my sister Carolyn, and she now lives in my parent’s ward and receives sewing lessons from my mom on a weekly basis. So even though Julie and I had only seen each other at Britta’s birthday parties, we know of one another and she knows my family. Oh, she also lived in the ward we’re currently in, but moved during the housing boom a few years ago.

Friday afternoon Sam and I dropped our girls off at her in-laws house. I needed a sitter for about 3 hours that afternoon since Jon couldn’t take any time off and Sam asked them if they’d be willing to take my two rambunctious girls with her crazy daughter. (Ha, all of our children are pretty mellow for other people so this is such an exaggeration.) They said yes and in one afternoon they were bombarded with 3 times the normal number of young girls they’re use to. Jackie, Sam’s mother-in-law, said that none of the girls spoke to them and just played until they came out to tell her they were hungry. She then fed them some biscuits and chicken nuggets and Jon arrived some time soon after.

We left a little later than normal due to nursing kids and me waiting outside the wrong house to drop my kids off at, but we all eventually piled into Julie’s van and got on the road to Pine Valley.

Riding in one car was so nice. I was in the back because Sam gets car sick, but both of the kids were pretty good for most of the time. We did have one throw up and one cry for the last 30 minutes of the drive, but eh, that’s all in the day of a mother.

We got to the cabin and settled in. We had Navajo tacos for dinner. Sam had brought bread dough to make the scones and I brought the rest of the ingredients. We had homemade guacamole and I made the taco meat a little more delicious by adding a can of pork and beans. (I had it at an activity and it just added a sweetness to it that was so good.)

We ate till we were far too full and  then relaxed and just sat and talked some more since that’s all we did for the drive too.

It was so nice to be with other woman and to talk like woman and not have to worry about little ears and little hands, though Dallin, Julie’s son, was walking around but he was pretty low key in the getting into things area.

Julie, who knows so many of my the women in my family, got a kick out of hearing and watching me talk. Since many of us Harvey girls have similar traits in how we carry ourselves and talk she said how she could see my mom’s, Andrea’s, and Carolyn’s mannerism in me.

We had strawberries and banana’s dipped in chocolate for a desert and then continued to talk till about 2 am.

Really our weekend consisted of food and talking the whole time.

Sam made some delicious chocolate ginger pancakes for breakfast and we enjoyed our food outside on the deck. It was a beautiful day and we sat outside for most of the time we were there.

Julie made quesadilla‘s with pico de gallo for lunch, which we also ate outside.

As we sat on the porch we watched the hummingbirds feed off the feeder. We also saw them dueling and I got scared a couple times because they came dueling towards my head. Sam got a kick out of me being afraid of the hummingbirds but I didn’t want those beaks coming towards me. I’m sure at a high speed they can hurt you pretty badly.

As afternoon approached so did some rain. Julie had been wandering around the yard and found the blackberry bushes which were in season. So despite the fact that I already had done my hair and make-up and do not enjoy playing in the rain I ran quickly and gathered just a small amount for my girls to enjoy, which they loved.

We then packed up the van and made a delicious stop at Chuck ‘A Rama, my favorite buffet in St. George, though it gets pricey at dinnertime.  After that we were all so full and tired that it was quiet in the car for about 5 minutes before we started talking again.

We got back into town around 9:00 pm and I was able to kiss my girls hello before I sent them off to bed and then stayed up till 1 am talking to Jon and checking e-mails and blogs.

It was so beautiful that I’m going there again, but this time with Sam and her daughters and me and mine. Britta and my girls and good friends and we think they’re at the perfect age to begin creating fun sleepover memories and enjoy time at the cabin together.

I’m so excited.

Earlier last week my friend Beth asked if I could make chocolate covered strawberries for her daughter’s wedding which was Saturday. I had told her I’d never made them, but she had faith that I could if I said yes since I’ve made truffles. I told her I’d talk with Jon because I didn’t want to burden him or interrupt his plans since this would be our first Saturday where for most of the day we would be home in three weeks. At first he said he wasn’t comfortable with it, since he had a long list of things to do, so I told Beth I couldn’t. Then that night as I talked to Jon I guess he heard the excitement in my voice as I talked about the bride and groom berries that I had envisioned making for them before he had said he wasn’t comfortable with it. So he said that he thought I probably could make the chocolate covered strawberries for them. So I called Beth and asked if she had asked anyone else to make strawberries. She said no because she felt that I was the one person who would pay attention to the little details in such a way that only Lacey does. I was very flattered by the comment, especially since I do these things as a hobby and not professionally.

I did a little more research and made a sample plate just so they could decide if they really wanted me to make strawberries for the wedding since it was to be my first time working with berries. I thought they turned out alright, but I was working off of a very professional picture that was perfection, so I considered my amateur attempt so under par. They loved the berries I made for them. Since I made bride and groom berries without them asking Beth later told me that Kate had wanted bride and groom, but they had forgotten about them until right before they asked me and she didn’t want to ask me to make them since it was a favor, so when I brought over bride and groom berries it was just what Kate had wanted and they all loved them.

I think the faith and compliments that Beth gave me allowed me to see how cute the berries were that I had made. I was only looking at the imperfections and how amateurish they looked to me, but they loved them and appreciated my hard work. I do pay attention to detail, though I don’t profess to be good at all the little details. I try and over all it works out well.

So Saturday, after spending too much time at the temple after the wedding, I came home and started working on strawberries. It took me around 8 hours to produce the 80-90 bride and groom berries and around 100 of the regular decorated berries. I had to choose only the nicest berries, then rinse and dry them individually. Then the hard work of dipping and decorating began.

The girls were on their own for most of the day and I got the berries to the reception just half an hour before it started only because Jon helped me get half the strawberries in their paper holders and box. He was a good sport, even if I was “The crazy strawberry lady.” 😉

It was lots of fun making them and it was great to hear how much the guest loved them, but the only people I wanted to please was my good friend, her daughter the bride, and the groom.

I am pretty pleased with them myself, but I’m more pleased that they made them happy.

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I took these pictures towards the end to the night. The tuxedo ones went rather quickly.