What I Love and Don't Love

I don't love doing laundry, but I do love filling the drawers with clean folded clothes.  I love getting my boys dressed for the day or into pajamas for the night.  I love knowing they have enough clothing to keep them warm or cool or comfortable.

I don't love deciding what to make for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I do love being able to fill my boys bellies with good food.  Boys (actually everyone) are so much happier when their stomachs are full.

I don't love doing dishes or picking up the house, but I do love the feeling of peace and calmness that come with having a clean kitchen and house.

I don't love cleaning up the messes my boys make outside.  I do love watching them make a mess.  I love it when they come in filthy from playing so hard.  I love bringing them bubbles, chalk, balls, paper, nails and other things to play with or make things with outside.

I don't like disciplining my boys at all.  I do love those sweet moments when they tell me I am the best mom ever or that they love me.  Those words do melt my heart and give me hope to keep trying.

I don't love feeling "stuck" at home sometimes due to a napping baby.  I do love having a baby in the home.  I love it when he wakes up happy and smiles when I picked him up from the crib.

I don't love it when our friends move away (or we do).  I do love watching my boys make friends.  They truly come to love their friends so quickly.  They can forgive them and be happy for them.

I don't love feeling like I don't accomplish anything on my to-do list each day.  I do love spending time reading to my boys, playing with them, holding them, singing to them, watching them ride bikes, and spending time with them.

I don't love the extra pouch of fat on my belly that lingers from pregnancy at all.  I absolutely love being a mother to my three boys.  I have to remember that it is worth it.

-Miss T

Let them Bee

Dear Miss T,

I might have married a bee keeper!

This past weekend we had our debut exposure to bee keeping, and I think Mr. P may have found a new future hobby. His coworker has three beehives and invited him to come experience the honey harvest for one of the hives. From just the one hive they retrieved 5 gallons of honey!! And that came from 2 boxes of four that the bees build their honeycomb in (the bottom two remain filled with honey for the bees themselves to feed on come wintertime). I came along, and definitely wore a little bee smock as well (I have never yet been stung, and I don't wish to change that anytime soon), and learned some fascinating-nearly-unbelievable-sci-fi-like facts about bees. Did you know that...

-all worker bees are female!?!?

-the male bees stay in the hive, are called drones, and have the life purpose of mating with the queen bee?

-bees will travel up to 3 miles in their roaming?

-the honey is flavored like the plants that the bees have been collecting from? (For example they gave us some honey from their last summer's harvest that had a slight mint taste)

-a queen bee is made because the worker bees feed a larvae "royal jelly" which essentially allows her ovaries to develop so genetically she ends up being different from all the other female bees?

I haven't researched these facts, so I am just repeating what was shared with me, so if any of these facts are a little off, just know I am capturing the essence of the bee experience. 

Honey has some fabulous health benefits though, and the wax makes great lip balm. I guess in the future you may be related to bee keepers. :)

-KK

Sonic's Summer of Shakes

Dear Miss T,

As you know, we were introduced to Sonic's Summer of Shakes (1/2 price shakes after 8pm) and our summer has not been the same. Here was the scenario of last night:

We were laying in bed, considering going to sleep. Paul began a conversation with Baby Nelson.

"Kick once if your name should be 'so-and-so'" he said.  No response.

"Ok...Kick once if your name should be 'such-and-such'" he said. Again, no response.

He paused, and thought briefly, then asked this question: "Kick once if you would like a Sonic milkshake."

My body basically had a seizure, violently shaking the response. So, we went to Sonic. :D Got the hot fudge shake as usual. Large.

I know it was cheating, because the question was only for Nelson, but I might have helped her a little with that last question. Paul didn't seem to mind.

Hope you and Big D get to Sonic soon!
Love Kk

Room for Baby Nelson

Hey Miss T,

Since I am beginning to feel like there isn't much more room for Baby Nelson inside my tummy, we decided to put together a room for her in our house. We obsessively checked KSL for a week or two, and finally found someone selling their set of baby/toddler furniture that we thought would be good to have. Then yesterday after Mr. P and his Dad carried the heavy oak furniture up 3 flights of stairs (they are beasts! Would have made amazing pioneers, I tell you) we put everything together that we have for Baby Nelson so far. What do you think?

Crib and bench (and yes the bench opens up as a toy box!!). We just went with the bedding the lady was selling as well because it matched the quilt Miga made for Baby Nelson perfectly! (I spy with my little eye, our pepper plants growing by the window!)

An armoir for the little girl. With a whole gang of friends up top. :D Yes, that it my monkey collection. Mr. P didn't make me throw them away! So now, they get to be Baby Nelson's first friends.

I also filled up half her armoir with my book collection as a child.  Happens to include classic like: the 2nd part of the Little House on the Prairie series, Beverly Cleary books including of course Ramona and her series, as well as a book called Caddie Woodlawn, which I totally love the name Caddie but can't seem to sell it to Mr. P. He always thinks of golf when he hears that name, and that simply will not work to have him be thinking of golf every time he says his daughter's name.

A changing table and please note THE SWING! Yes this is what YOU gave to me (and Baby Nelson!) and I am so excited for the day when she will be big enough to swing in it. It isn't really hooked in right now...but we will get it screwed and anchored in somewhere someday soon. But for now it was just too exciting. We couldn't leave it out of our game of set-up.

The bedding...Miga's quilt will be in there with Baby Nelson eventually, but for now I thought it best to keep the adorable quilt on display. Hence why it is on that adorable toy bench!

A baby saucer thing! Mr. P was like a little kid putting it together. Just loving all the pieces and stopping to play with them a little as he assembled the thing. He is going to be so fun to be with when we are putting together kids' Christmas presents. :D

Anna, my old cabbage patch doll having a ride in the swing. :)

A larger view of the same stuff. :)

So there you have it. We have room for Baby Nelson!! Thanks so much for the swing. Can't wait to put her in it.

Love, Kk

The Gummy Bear Song

We were bored today with Big D gone hiking around Mt Hood.  Here is what we did with our time...

      

Thanks to satellite radio in the car, my boys love The Gummy Bear song.  Do yours?  It was their idea to get their gummy bear vitamins and make this video.   They love it.  

With interest in music videos so young.... what will they be doing when they are teenagers?

-Miss T

Cousins Meet the Baby

Hi KK,

While we were in Utah, Little Grizzly met his cousins in the Pickett family for the first time.  All 13 of them.  It was quite overwhelming for him at times, but he tossed out some happy smiles for them all. 


We played hard with the Picketts and tried to take a lot of pictures of all of the cousins together.

As I went through these pictures, I reflected about the first time I met most of my nieces and nephews.  It was in January 2005.  Big D took me on a date to babysit his nieces and nephews and for his family to meet me at the same time.  At that time there were 10 of them.  The oldest was 10 years old and the youngest was 4 months old.  We played games with them, listened to their jokes, and watch a movie together.  It was a great date, and Big D did a great job of showing off his future daddy skills.

Now I have young children that are the age of my nephews and nieces when I first met them. I just kept thinking how fast they grow up!  My kids will be big teenagers like them before I know it.  That part saddens me, but I also hope my kids will be as kind and fun as their cousins are.   All of them were so sweet to my boys.  My boys loved being with their cousins.

It is too bad it doesn't happen more often.  I offered for them to all move to Oregon!

-Miss T

Facebook for Dead People

Dear Miss T,

I simply must pass along this cool thing I learned on Sunday. I went to Paul’s dad’s family history class and logged on to family search for the first time in...well long enough to not recognize a thing. Have you seen it recently? Oh wow wow wow it is so cool! 

So last week Paul's dad Scott had gone over the photo feature with the class so when he reviewed it briefly today I was intrigued. To be completely honest, I didn’t learn everything he went over today because I was figuring out this cool thing with the photos as the family trees and all.

Paul has coined it “Facebook for dead people.”

Do you recognize our Grandma Cutler in that picture? I know it is not the best picture of Grandma Cutler, but it is all I had access to while at church using my iPad. Don't you think it is pretty incredible that I had one on my iPad at all? It came from having taken a picture of a picture with my iPhone a few weeks ago when I was going through old boxes. Fortunate timing I would say.

 At any rate, isn’t it awesome that we can just upload pictures of the relatives (have to be dead right now, but they anticipate opening it up to the living soon) that we love and have wonderful memories with? And then anyone else who is looking at their family history can see the "profiles" of sorts for their dead relatives. I think it is fabulous! I am just tickled about it, and want to find more pictures to add. If you have a favorite of Grandma, or Wally, you can send it to me and I will gladly add it. 

Love, Kk