Is It Naptime Yet

Eden often likes to play games with Lilah. She’ll count and go find Lilah for hide and seek and even though Lilah will continuously say she’s not playing, Eden will continue to count and go find her sister in the exact same spot. It breaks my heart a little but Eden doesn’t seem to be disappointed by the situation. She laughs as she counts and gives me a big smile once she finds Lilah.

This morning the girls had chased each other or raced to the room. Eden continued to chase Lilah and eventually I heard “Eden I’m not playing, stop chasing me.” So Eden did. In fact I think she’d been in the bathroom brushing her hair for at least a minute before Lilah realized she was in fact not being chased. As Lilah realized that Eden was not interested in chasing her but was in fact interested in brushing her hair her attitude changed.
After a short time I heard, “Eden come chase me.” and Eden apparently was not in the mood because she just came and stood between me and the mirror and said no.
Eden had had enough rejection.
Eventually Eden did go play with Lilah and they had a grand ole time running around chasing each other.
I realized that Lilah was mastering the art of flirting without the flirting, so I guess it was the technique of flirting.
No I don’t want you now that you want me. Wait, you don’t want me, I want you.
Maybe it’s just familiar to us. As long as we’re doing the rejection it’s fine, but once a person willfully leaves we lose the power that we wanted.

A little while back Jon made me change my side mirrors.
At first I was skeptical, but now I’ve adjusted and have found that my blind spot is now zero.
I love to drive on the freeway and watch as people pass me, not that I drive slow, I just don’t drive 80mph on the freeway like others, well sometimes I do.

Dearest Eden,

You’re two today. I can’t believe how you’ve grown! You’re much more independent than your sister was at this age and you definitely let us know when you’re unhappy, though it’s usually due to Lilah doing something you don’t approve of. You and her usually get along well, but when you aren’t getting along, you are not getting along. You’re a very kind sister and if I ask you give something to Lilah or to share you usually quickly obey.
You’re a very loving daughter. You often come up and give me random hugs and you’ll lay your sweet head on my lap when I’m at the computer, it might be because you want attention that you do the latter, but you’re kinda a mommas girl. You love hugging Daddy when he comes home and you often get to him before I do.
You’re very polite and will say bless you when you hear someone sneeze, even a stranger. You love hair. You often annoy your sister by wanting to play with her hair. You’re beginning to be a picky eater, but you take after your father in certain taste. You love graham crackers and milk after you eat your cereal, and so does he, you also enjoy brown rice, though you like it better with potpies, you’ll eat it with just butter and salt like your father. You also love cheese and especially cottage cheese. You ask for it right after you finish your graham crackers and milk.
You can be stubborn about cleaning up though, you love making a mess but don’t always love picking up.
You’re an early riser. I am often woken up by the sound of your voice saying “Mommy I’m awake, mommy I’m awake.”
You love washing your hands and brushing your teeth and you’re always so proud to tell us that you did it. “I did it!” is a phrase you use when you accomplish something.
You, like Lilah, love books and love being read too, and you enjoy coloring a lot lately.
You are a very sweet girl with a wonderful smile that is always on your face. You’re a bit of a cheese in front of the camera at times and you often don’t sit still long enough for a picture. You love to see the pictures that have been taken. You love being chased and playing games.
You are a very fun daughter and I am very happy to be your mother.
Happy Birthday little one.

Love,
Mommy

Our house has a lot of static electricity at certain times of the year, Fall and Spring. I would often shock the computer when I went to turn it on. Well a while back I guess I gave it quite a shock because it wouldn’t turn on. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it turned on like a charm. Ever since that day it has become increasingly harder to turn on. We finally decided to just keep it on 24/7 because sitting on the floor unplugging and plugging it back in for 15 minutes wasn’t worth it. Since that time we’ve had a couple instances where we’ve had to turn it off or there was a power outage. It took Jon at least half an hour to turn it on the last time and it took me all morning today. I would sit and try to turn it on for about 30 minutes and then give up since I had to do dishes, laundry and feed my girls breakfast.
Each time I pushed the button it was like gambling. “Please turn on baby, please give me what I want.” It even teased me to the point where it gave the monitor power and beeped as though it would start but it just shut down after that. I was very frustrated. I work on it a little after lunch today and it finally came on. Now I just hope we have very few storms because I am not turning this sucker off. My thumb started to hurt from griping the plug.
We’re not sure what’s wrong with it. Howard had some gadget that told us if it was the power supply and we hoped it was something that simple. Turns out it wasn’t. They think it might be the motherboard. She must have gotten ornery from all my shocks and now likes to make us suffer.
All I know is the computer is a pain in the butt to turn on if it gets turned off. I turned it off due to lighting storms last night, but I’m almost willing to take a bet that we won’t be hit by lightening as long as I don’t have to go through this morning again, because I have a feeling the next time it may take all day to turn it on, or may not turn on ever again.
We’re afraid it would be expensive to fix or that we’d just have to buy a new computer. Not that we spent a lot on this one. We had windows 98 so we just loaded that up, in which the software is the bulk of any new computer. I think we spent $400 and it’s lasted about 3 years. I guess you get what you pay for. I just don’t want to lose my connection to the outside world for more than a few days. Please continue to live computer please live!!

The video is dark on my screen so I know it might be very dark on other’s computers. I’m not sure if I’m even able to edit that.

Anyways this was taken on December 6, 2005, so Lilah was about 2 1/2. I just love seeing and hearing her in the video. Oh how I love home videos, I think my girls are soo cute. 😉 Of course our videos are all taken on our digital camera which doesn’t give the best quality of picture, but you get the gist.

If your able to see it clearly you’ll probably notice that her hair is a complete mess and has three braids. I think was just being silly with her hair and she had already slept in it, but she’s still cute. I think this is my favorite video of her so that’s why I wanted to post it.

I just discovered Google video. They allow you to upload your video but you can choose the option to not have it as part of the search engine.

Here’s Eden kinda singing the ABC’s with Lilah’s and my help. Lilah sings the first verse of I’m a Child of God with become instead of “all that I must do” and then you see Eden give a surprised ending, but she recovered quickly I promise.

Come again. I’m also going to load of video from a couple years ago of Lilah singing “Tomorrow, Tomorrow”. It’s dang cute, but right now it’s 1:14 am and I’m tired.

Jon’s new thing is to drink green tea. Now green tea is not technically against the word of wisdom so he’s still not breaking any rules, not that he cares, but I kinda do mostly for the sake of the girls and setting examples. I forget where, and maybe it’s a wise tale and hopefully Jon will give me some links to back me up since I’m just too lazy to look for them, but it has been said that in countries where tea is apart of their cultural that the church has said it’s okay to drink green and white tea, they just don’t advertise that too much here in the U.S. Green and white tea have less caffeine and I’ve even been told by a highly creditable source that the caffeine make up is completely different in black than green tea. Green tea also has health benefits, that’s one of the reasons Jon’s drinking it.

Anyways, I’ve tasted some of the tea’s Jon’s gotten and they just taste like not flavored enough water. I’m just not use to the subtleties. He also doesn’t add any sugar or sweetener’s so I think that makes them even more bland.
Well, while I was looking for his tea the other day at Smith’s I came across this Chai tea Latte mix. I have a friend who drinks Starbuck’s chai tea. Now they use a powder, I believe, but chai tea is made from regular black tea, so technically we shouldn’t drink regular chai tea because it is just spiced black tea, powder or not. Anyways the Chai tea latte mix that I found also comes in a green chai tea latte mix, in which I bought some and tried it. I found it delicious and on further search found out that it’s made by the same people who make Stephen’s hot cocoa, the best hot cocoa in America, I’ve never tried any others.
So I am recommending this Pacific Chai Green Chai Tea Latte mix. It mostly taste like spiced milk, but it is tasty. I’ve only tried it hot, but I think I’ll try it iced next time.

I have 26 blogs that I’m tracking on bloglines.
I have 3 that I have to track myself.
I don’t want to know how many Jon tracks. It’s crazy.

I would put them all on my sidebar, but I feel that some people prefer to keep theirs private and some I just lurk so I don’t want them knowing I read.  Mu-ha-ha.
How many blogs do you read?

Last night at a small Relief Society function the idea that Family Home Evening should only be on Monday nights and the support of any activities that occur on Monday night are in essence bad was shortly discussed. The feeling I came away with from the discussion was if you don’t hold family home evening on Monday nights and you support functions that are on that night your bad. Like you can’t hold family home evening on any other night of the week?
The Church has delegated Monday night Family Home Evening night (FHE), so as a consensus you don’t bother other church leaders on this night. Meetings can be held on any other night of the week and often you can find that a meeting or activity is being held on other nights of the week. As a church leader you have numerous meeting to attend and as a member you have numerous activities to attend, all of which will have certain church leaders there. So Monday is the one day sanctioned by the Church for FHE because you may have to do other things all the other days of the week.  I think it’s an extreme to say that you can never do any other activity on Monday.  Some extreme members might even say doing other things on Monday night would be similar to breaking the Sabbath like having a sports function on Sunday or a party.
The problem presented was a change in a school practice that is regularly held on Tuesday night to Monday night.  The mother was upset that there were 7 LDS members our of 9 on this board and 6 out of the 7 LDS member voted it was OK to hold the practice on Mondays, which they were changing so they could get more help from other experts in this field and better the children in the activity. (I know it’s vague, but I’m wanting to keep it vague.) The idea was how could these good upstanding LDS parents allow an activity to take place on FHE night, and what are they not doing that they’re OK with putting the practise first rather than the family. It was also mentioned that the instructor himself was LDS, so why would he want to change it in the first place? I was being timid and not wanting to start a debate, but really do we have to do FHE on Monday? Can’t we say okay we have no school or other activities on Thursday night, this is the night we’ll do FHE and  if something comes up that’s important we’ll skip it or discuss changing it for that week or all go as a family for the activity. I once had an institute leader give the example  of his daughter needing to put up posters for school on a Monday night and they all went as a family to help since it was FHE.
I find it funny that people judge others by the fact that they’re okay with having something on Monday so they must not do FHE. This change was for the better of the kids. I went to school on Monday nights for some of my college classes and we held FHE on Wednesday,  was I bad for wanting to better myself at something just because I did it on a Monday night?
I find it to be an extreme thought that you can only do something on one certain night a week because that’s when it’s been instructed and supported by the Church.  I think that somewhat overshadows the fact that we need to be gathering as a family at least one night a week, the night doesn’t really matter.
Do we have to sacrifice bettering ourselves for coming closer as a family? In which FHE might not really work, even though every leader will support it, but if you have a wayward teenager FHE may do nothing to help the family come closer. Might our children in the end become negative and hold a grudge if they’re not allowed to pursue their dream because it was held on a Monday night? (Yes, it’s FHE so it should be the family night and the argument of being able to do things on Sunday for fear of a grudge might be substituted, but what I’m talking about is a night that you have with your family that does not deal with Sabbath day worship but as bonding as a family and having spiritual lessons)
What if we decide to have FHE instead of having them go to weekly church functions. Are we  bad parents then?

We don’t hold FHE regularly. I’m in charge of it now and since we’re together almost every night and I’m with the girls all day long I find it a daunting task and I’m never quite sure what to do to interest the girls. We have been pretty regular in the past, but it’s hard. We try to delegate a night that is FHE and we usually end up watching a movie and having something special as a treat. With  having the Gospel Art Kit I’ll pull out pictures and try to tell a gospel story sometimes. We just haven’t done this lately. So maybe this comes from my guilt of neglecting FHE, but really I think sometimes we miss the mark if we’re focused to much on the little things rather than the big picture.
My kids are young and not involved yet in things for the church like activity days (for the 8- 11 year old girls) or mutual (once you’re in Young woman’s- 12-18), and they don’t have any outside hobbies just yet, besides dance, but that’s once a week when it’s occurring, so maybe as I get older our week might fill up and we may have things every night, and then the weekends are hard because of date night and our girls wanting to go out with friends. Maybe it could then be an afternoon, say Saturday afternoon you spend time with family, it is after all only two hours or so one night a week.
I guess I’m trying to balance the busy world with family life, but in the end I don’t want my kids to be in five different activities or sports and I hope that my callings in church don’t require me to be out 3-5 nights a week every week because of meetings and serving others. I know the goal of FHE is to have time together as a family to look at gospel teachings, but does God care if I hold it a different night than Monday? I personally don’t think so.
I think I might hold FHE on Tuesday’s just for fun, so whatever you do don’t call on Tuesday nights. 😉

Now I post this because my point of view as changed and I now see the importance of trying to keep my friends information private because this is what I now want. So if you ever think of me as someone who might like something get the card to the consultant and and I can tell you myself and not waste that consultant’s and my time. Now I’m not upset at anyone for referring me but I just realized that it’s easier if you don’t. 🙂
So I’ve only recently heard of a company called “The Living Scripture”. I was at a relief society function and one women there said how she got locked into the whole set and would be paying $4,000 for everything. I thought wow, a commitment of $4,000 in DVD’s, crazy, even if they are scripture related. I just realized Jon’s parents have a lot of the living scripture videos and I have seen some. I think they can be useful to teach little children but ultimately it should be from the scriptures and Church related publications, I think. Like the Gospel Art kit or Book of Mormon Stories, both which I have and neither do I use often, which just means I’m a slacker. (I’ll link to these church items when they site is running.) Anyways.
Yesterday I had just picked up the mail and I noticed a young man park across the street. I was watching him because he was in an unfamiliar car. I got back in the house and through my peep hole I noticed he had a duffel bag. I wondered who he was staying with. I saw how he crossed the street and was approaching my door. I wondered if he had the wrong address because I was pretty sure I hadn’t signed up for any exchange program.
He rang the bell and I opened. He called me Sister Blake, which I found odd because he was not familiar looking to me. He said he was talking to people in the ward about this product and he asked if he could come in and tell me some info and show a video. I declined and he said for just listening I get a free video. I said I wasn’t interested and he tried to get in by saying he gets paid for just doing a demonstration and he mentioned the free video again as he held three different ones in his hand. I declined and he said how he didn’t know many people and was wondering if I could give him referrals to people in the ward. I sheepishly mentioned one family who lives down the street from us. He asked for more but not many live in my neighborhood and I didn’t want to go pull out a ward roster, that would be out of line. He went on his way and I became a little upset by the situation.
Here are the things that mostly upset me:
1. He called me by Sister Blake and was a sales man. I like using the “Sister” title for church relations, so to call me “Sister” and want to sell me something made me a little upset.
2. He didn’t call first, he just stopped by. Had he called he could have saved his and my time. Also by stopping by I know that people are more likely to get inside and once inside the “foot in the door syndrome” takes place and a person is more likely to buy something. I felt a little guilty that he wasted gas coming to my house, but honestly he should have called first so the guilt I had is gone.
3. He wanted names specifically of those I go to church with so in a way he is able to bypass the whole rule about not using the ward roster for solicitation because it’s always “referrals” to other members of the ward.

I also know from reading this blog, though it appears to be highly biased against living scripture, that they do strange 2 year contracts, kinda like Columbia house, but for a much higher price of $2,000 per subscription and X numbers of videos.
That’s just not what we need.
At one point while I was turning him down I almost pointed to the new car in the drive way and said. “See that car, we just bought it and now our income is much tighter and I don’t need to spend $4,000 on videos.” But he was nice and not so persistent that I felt the need to act like a crazy lady to get him to leave.

Another referral experience I had with a Mary Kay Rep. I had a friend, lets call her Stacey, just start doing Mary Kay, she no longer likes the company, so I don’t feel bad divulging this info, plus it’s no sign that this always happen within Mary Kay, just to me.
Well I went to Stacey’s first party as a new Mary Kay Rep and bought one lipstick because it was way too much money to spend on makeup for me. While we were hanging around eating cake Stacey’s Rep asked if she could call me tomorrow and do a three way with Stacey and just talk about how she did. I thought yeah I can do that and said yes. Well this Rep called and tried to persuade me to join the Mary Kay team. Ya know, list the benifits of half off makeup and having your own hours and possibly earning enough to have them give you the use of a second car for free. Nothing was ever brought up about my friend’s experience or how she did at her first party. I found it strange because this had been my first Mary Kay party ever and I know that was asked while there and no where on my slip of paper did I show any sign of interest for joining Mary Kay. I declined several times throughout the phone conversation and the Rep asked if I would do a “pink pillow” and sleep on it. I said that I would think about it, but just to get her off my back. My friend was so embarrassed. She had no idea that her Rep would try to recruit me. She knew that she was trying to get higher up in the totem pole, but she felt so bad that the Rep called me under false pretense.

So here’s my new thing. I’m never going to give referrals when I’m asked unless I have already spoken to someone and I know they’re interested in the product. Instead I’ll ask for a card and say I’ll talk to my friends and if they’re interested they’ll contact you.

I know a lot of people who do the whole sales thing. I understand you make money off of referrals and if a person is looking into a product and you make contact with them before they just contact a rep, then you get the money and not just some random rep. That’s great, but what I’ve decided is I don’t enjoy turning someone down because I was referred by a friend. If I’m looking to buy a certain product I’ll ask around and see if I know someone who sells X product or if they know someone. If they do great, if not fine.
I already have a hard time going to stores and buying things I don’t need by just seeing them on a shelf. I don’t need a person telling me I need something and persuading me to spend money. I do that well enough on my own.