Nathan Fell in the Mud.
The weather here has been pretty nice lately. The kids enjoy playing outdoors. Especially Noah and Nathan. Noah and Nathan have a little ‘fort’ that they hang out at. (There’s a pile of logs about 50 yards from the house) Nathan was playing out there, and then came in and told me that he fell in the creek. Holy cow. What a mess.
Noah and Nathan got their shoes stuck in the mud too. It is not fun to clean, but at least they seem to enjoy themselves.


Mypyramid.gov
So in Webelos for the fitness activity badge we have to track the food that we eat. The hand book recommended that we go to mypyramid.gov. I have gone to the site and I have been on it every day for the last 2 weeks. I enter in my food intake, and I enter in my exercise, and then it calculates how many calories I spent. It is so fun I think I’ll turn anorexic. Na, I like M&Ms, Ding Dongs, Twinkies, Cookies, Wendy’s, and Ice Cream too much.

Jocie being a Doula
Jocie is helping people (usually girls) have babies lately. She helped someone have a baby the middle of December. She will probably help someone else have a baby on 12/31. In order to be a certified Doula, you need to go through the training classes and then attend and write up about 6 births. Jocie has attended the training and will have attended 2 births. Jocie would be happy to attend 6 births before our baby is born.

Name for the Baby
We haven’t picked out a name for the baby yet.
(Jocie- And when we do, we won’t tell you!)
Katie says: Baby
Nathan says: Belle or Nathan
Sarah says: Marsha or Beebor/Luke/Ham/Bill
Mark says: Sally or Rock
Noah says: Esther or Nephi
I wanted Diamond or Stone, but Jocie has turned down both of them

Sarah's Clever Quip at Conference

A boy in Mark’s Primary class was sitting in front of our family at Stake Conference. He was sitting with his dad that hasn’t come to church very much, so I am sure John wanted to leave a good impression on him. This boy turned around and said, a little incredulously to Mark “This is boring, isn’t it?!” (are we really all sitting here for this?!). Mark looked sheepishly at John, “Ah, yeah…” John said something to the effect that it WAS possible for it not to be boring. Sarah piped in so helpfully “Yeah, he (John) was just asleep and having an interesting dream- that’s why he thinks its not boring!”

Life WOULD be boring without these kids!

Hurricane er I mean Tropical Storm Hanna

I thought I should give you all an update of Tropical Storm Hanna in case any of you are concerned about our well-being.
The storm reached Wake Forest around 7AM on Saturday 9/6, but I should start with the timeline a little sooner than that in order to give you the full effect

Friday 2 PM It starts to sprinkle. Everyone at work talks about ‘the hurricane’ and how important it is for them to be home in order to get ready for it. Suddenly everyone at work was interested in the weather conditions and more particularly how they need to get home instead of staying at work.

Friday 3:30PM Everyone at work has gone home, except for me and my manager. We have a meeting at 4PM. There are no winds and it isn’t sprinkling anymore.

Friday 6PM Just before I get home from work it starts raining.

Saturday 5AM I wake up and think to myself, ‘I really need to run my 10 miles today. I wonder if the storm has passed over so I can get out and exercise.' I check the weather and the radar map is showing that it is going to hit Wake Forest in about 3 hours. I look outside and it is raining with a little bit of wind. I decide that I will only be out for 1.5 hours, so I should be fine and I go out and run.

Saturday 5:30AM to 7AM A few gusts of winds I would judge about 20 to 30 miles and hour, with frequent rain patches. I thought in my head about 5 times that this might have been a bad idea for me to be exercising in this weather.

8AM Everyone in the house is still sleeping. I think the dark weather tends to make people sleep more hours.

9AM My home teacher calls to make sure we’re fine. By mistake calls my mom’s (who is in AZ) house instead.

10AM It starts to rain more, and Mark and Sarah are fighting.

12PM (now) It is still raining.

So my overall opinion of tropical storm Hanna is this – it is wet.

I went out to take this picture in my bare feet, when I walked on the grass it felt almost like walking on a sponge there was so much water in the soil.

Changing Katie’s Diaper

Yesterday morning Kate got into my cologne and was spraying it. So I took it from her and we sprayed each other for a while with the cologne. Then she was poopy so I had to change her diaper. This made the room smell of perfume and poop mixed.

Mowing the Lawn and Going to bed

Mow the Lawn

A week ago, when the Landlord came to visit us, he looked at the yard and then asked if our lawn mower was broken. We have a big yard, with parts of the yard mainly taken over by moss, rocks, and pine needles. But the other parts of the yard need to get mowed. So I mowed them all this morning. When I finished mowing, Jocie and the kids came out to greet me, and in this picture Nathan was explaining to Kate, “You pull this string, then vroom.”

Bedtime
Bedtime rituals are supposed to happen this way
8:00 – family prayer
8:05 – Do your bedtime chores (brush, bathroom, drink of water, etc)
8:15 – Get a story read to you
8:30 – talk quietly and read
9:30 – no more talking and go to bed

This is how it really happens
8:00 – gather people for family prayer
8:04 – try to find Sarah and convince her to come in for prayer
8:07 – tell Nathan not to throw the tennis ball in the house and to fold his arms
8:10 – Do your bedtime chores and tell them to hurry really fast
8:20 – tell them to hurry up because they don’t have much time left doing the bedtime chores
8:30 – Dad takes each child through their own bedtime procedure so they can hurry up and get it done
8:45 – Mom reads them a story
9:05 – Mom instructs them the importance of staying on your spot
9:06 – Nathan gets off his spot
9:08 – Noah and Mark are talking quietly about really fun things to do
9:10 – Nathan gets off his spot because a) he is afraid of monsters b) Noah and Mark are getting him excited c) he wants to take some beef jerky
9:18 – Noah and Mark have transformed their beds into a landing pad and are jumping off the top bunk
9:22 – Mark comes in to ask his last question. His last question is a) can I have some dessert right now b) Can I read you a Garfield Comic c) can I give you a hug
9:29 – Sarah right now is either a) entertaining Katie in the crib b) laying down on the floor between her room and the hallway reading a book c) laughing w/ Noah and Mark d) fighting with Mark e) fighting with mom
9:15 to 9:45 – Dad is either a)rolling his eyes b) reading to mom c) is sad that there’s no time left to do something fun
9:15 to 10:15 – mom is either a) telling the children the importance of staying on their spot b) doing the dishes c) talking to dad about the children d) give up the hopes of doing something fun because the kids did not go to sleep earlier
10:15 – the kids are making small noises while dad is trying to go to sleep

Mark's New Chickens

Grandpa Mark has many chickens. He has given Marky two roosters. When grandpa gave him the roosters, he was more interested in showing grandpa a picture he drew. However, the first thing Mark did when he woke up the next day, was go to the back porch to the cage where the roosters were at. I told him that the he got to name them. He wanted to name one exploding head, but I told him that it had to be another name. So he came up with Fat stuffed body and Big tall man. Noah suggested to Mark that he name them Bobby and Tommy, and Mark thought that those were good names, so now we call them Tommy and Bobby. Pictures soon to come as soon as we find the cord to the camera

Smithsonian - Museum of Natural History

Sarah really enjoyed looking at the jewerly
Mark enjoyed looking at the gems, diamonds and minerals
Nathan like looking at the Dinosaurs
Katie liked flirting with a teenage girl during one of our breaks.
Katie likes pushing her stroller. Nathan was constantly staying back, and we had to keep on prodding him to come with us. On one of our proddings, Katie, ran to Nathan and pushed him to our group, all the while scolding him to stay with our group.

Smithsonian - Air and Space Museum

The first Smithsonian we went to was the Air and Space Museum. We got there by taking the subway. It was fun going on the subway. We took the Subway up the yellow line and had to switch to the blue line at L'Enfant plaza. Within two minutes of being there, we got to see a dog poop in side the station. I'm sure it will be a memorable experience for everyone. Luckily, no one stepped in it, although a few kids were close.
We got to see the wright brothers airplane. We got to see the one that flew for the first time, and we got to see the one that they flew from NY to CA. We got to see Amelia Earhart's plane. We got to see many space ships.
There was a hands-on area where the kids got to put a ball on top of a blower and have it levitate there. There were many other stations as well. All of the kids liked it, and Noah especially liked it.
We knew it was time to go when Mark said he wanted to see something else besides airplanes and spaceships.

Trip to the Jefferson Memorial

In my attempt to drive to the Lincoln Memorial, we ended up at the Jefferson Memorial. We got to climb up stairs. There were signs that told the visitors to be quiet. We had a fun time trying to keep our children quiet. Nathan really liked climbing down the big stairs in the back. The granite steps in the front are normal-sized, but the steps in the back are a little under a yard high. So did Noah and Mark. I liked the big stairs too. Jocie did not like Nathan running away after she told him to come back. The building was big and beautiful. We went around 9PM at night, and I was scared that we might get mugged, but there were many people there, and I felt fairly safe the whole time.

Trip to Mount Vernon

We decided to take a trip to Washington DC. It took 3hr and 58 min to get there, and it took a little over 5 hours to get back because 1) we left in rush hour traffic 2) I had no idea how to get into the HOV lane. The first day we stopped at Mt. Vernon. It was fun to see George Washington's house. There was a distillery (did you know that G. Washington had a strong whiskey business?) and a Gristmill that we didn't have time to visit. When we visited George Washington's Mansion house, Nathan and Katie where everywhere and I had to duck out of the tour early because both of them were bored and getting into things.
Katie's favorite part about Mt Vernon was the rocks on the ground that she got to pick up and put on the bench. Katie also chased a bee for a while.
Nathan's favorite part was that he saw a lizard in the paint cellar of one of the houses. He was disappointed when we told him not to go over the ropes to try and catch it. He also saw a spider during the film.
Sarah's favorite part about Mt Vernon was when she (and the rest of her siblings) got to go into the kids room and play with dollies and try on clothes of that era.
Mark's favorite part was getting into the mansion of George Washington and getting to go up the stairs and see George Washington's bed. But the attic was closed, so he didnt get to go into the attic.
Noah's favorite part was the large movie theater at the beginning, and getting to go into the cellar during the tour.
Jocie's favorite part was going into the museum and learning about him, which I enjoyed also. Other favorite highlight was sitting in G. Washington's orchard, listening wistfully about how he experimented with various seeds and wrote down everything that he planted, and glanced over to see water dripping down Nathan's leg and hear the pronouncement, "I peed my pants and there's poop in my diaper!" (We forgot to take off Nathan's pull up [that is usually dry each morning] from the morning and he had wet through his outfit about 1/2 way into the tour. We took off his sweat pants and his pull up and put a diaper on him. So we had an almost 4 year old in diapers with us on our trip.)
My favorite part was not pushing the stroller up a steep hill with the hot sun hitting me. My favorite part was not worrying about the kids getting lost or breaking something. I really liked the view that the back yard of the mansion had. You could see the Potomac, and there were green hills with sparse big trees. (In this part of the country, mentioning sparse trees is equal to saying many trees in Arizona.) I liked the feeling of knowing that I might be stepping where George Washington stepped. I liked seeing his tomb, and I enjoyed the air-conditioned building.
We would like to go back again sometime.
As we were driving away, we asked the kids if they enjoyed seeing where George Washington lived. Nathan piped up "He didn't live there....he was dead there."