Some About Caleb

Caleb has been great fun to be with lately. I think he's fully over the "threatening threes" and a full-fleged member of the "fabulous fours". He has lots of ideas and lots to talk about. One day he followed me around the house insisting that I needed to buy him a cell phone. I hate to admit that I was kind of tuning him out and focusing on what I was trying to get done. Finally I realized what he was telling me so I asked what in the world he needed a cell phone for. He answered that he needed one so that he could take pictures, of course.

Some of you know that Caleb has not always been the most adept at using words to express his emotions. But I was tickled the other day when, instead of getting angry, Caleb just put down the lego he was trying to build and declared "It's not coopicating!"

Last night we were talking about rhyming words and playing with my old stuffed Humpty Dumpty. Caleb's favorite creation (he had himself in giggles for a long time) was "Humpty Dumpty fell off a log, Humpty Dumpty sat on a frog." Poor frog.

Something Beautiful for Thursday

I could comment on the beautiful snow that fell today, but I must admit that I'm not fully appreciating the white stuff because we've had an abundance of it lately. My Book of Mormon class this morning was beautiful for several reasons: Mitchell happily went to the nursery with Caleb so I had both hands to take notes with, and most of my brain to pay attention with; the lesson was so well-prepared; I think I'm beginning to glimpse some insight into the Isaiah chapters. But the beauty that made the greatest impression today was soup. By the time my class was over, I could tell a cold was setting up residence behind my face, and once I'd been home for 1/2 hour, I had a bad case of the chills and wanted nothing more than to sleep. Guy took his lunch break to feed Caleb and Mitchell, and he brought me a big bowl of steaming soup (I was laying on the couch). That was a beautiful thing. While I'm still not feeling great, I've felt much better since that bowl of soup. I could be a commercial for Progresso, but I'm afraid it was as much the server of the soup that did me good as the ingredients from the can.

Mitchell the Mimic

January 2008 Mitchell has begun copying much of what he sees going on around him. Some of my favorite examples are how he "folds" his arms during prayer, and thinks he now has to lay down on someone's bed whenever he wants to read a book. Marcus has gotten into the habit of sitting on the floor heating vent in the dining area to stay warm while he eats his breakfast. He even gets out a placemat so he won't make a mess. The other day, Mitchell got a placemat out of the drawer, carefully spread it out and then sat on the vent. I do think his expression afterward seemed to question, "So, what's so great about this?" Finally, Mitchell has been very persistent in helping with the dishes. Whenever he notices someone working near the sink, he drags over one of the chairs (even going so far as to move the kitchen rug so he can push the chair all the way to the sink), climbs up and spends a long time putting dishes in the water, taking them out again, and even trying to wash some of them. So, what are the odds of this clean enthusiasm lasting another 5 years?

The Monkey M's

January 2008 Mitchell has been developing his climbing skills so we've begun calling him Monkey Mitchell at times. The original Monkey was Marcus as a toddler (whose most famous monkey-moment came when I found him on top of the fridge in pursuit of the fruit-snacks).

One night recently we were discussing our two Monkey M boys and Marcus commented, "Mitchell is more Mitchell than monkey, but I think I'm more monkey than Marcus."

A Story of Determination and Frustration

. . . but with a happy ending (mostly). This day, Mitchell was playing with his car and managed to roll it under the table. When he tried to go after it, he found that, by the smallest of margins, he just didn't fit (it's that big brain he's growing). This was an incredible blow to his plans, and he spent several minutes (punctuated with tears and shouts) trying different angles and approaches in an attempt to squeeze his head under. He was not about to be distracted or convinced to take another route, so I finally had to just pick him up and remove him from the situation (the only other option was to lift the table, but since I'm not the Incredible Hulk. . .)

Photographic Proof of the Arrival of the Inevitable

I think that most of you knew I was called to be the Cubmaster for our 3-wards-combined pack back in November. We all knew something like this would come eventually. In fact, I remember sitting in pack mtg when I was pregnant with Mitchell, looking at the cubmaster and the thought came to me, "I'm going to have that job after her." I quickly pushed the thought from my mind, and hadn't remembered it until I was asked to take over in November. It actually hasn't been that bad. In fact, most of the month there isn't a great deal to do. But then the week of Pack Meeting is a royal pain. They are working on getting me an assistant. It would be really nice if that could happen before the blue and gold banquet in 2 weeks (Silent whimper). Oh, then there's the Pinewood Derby in April which I'm really not looking forward to, but other than that, it isn't that bad, right? . . . Right?

Digital Scrapbooking pt. 3

Digital Scrapbooking pt. 2

Digital Scrapbooking

So, many of you know how my mind works, so the following story will not surprise you a great deal. The middle of January, I found out about a deal from a site called Winkflash, where you could buy a photobook with up to 100 pages in it for a flat rate of $20 +shipping. I made one of these books for my Mom's 70th birthday celebration and based on the prices I found at that time, this deal was REALLY good. I thought it might be a great way to get some scrapbooking done (from the years AFTER we bought our digital camera), but when I looked at their site, they had a 30 character maximum per caption. Since brevity is not one of my strengths, I called Kendra because I knew she'd had some experience with digital scrapbooking and she told me what she knew and pointed me to some websites where I could download free digital scrapbooking papers and elements (through the course of this project I found a ton more free stuff). Luckily we already had a program that I knew (sort-of) how to use where I could put the elements together and then save the page as an image. Then in the Winkflash site, I put the image in using their "full-page bleed" option. The real kicker with this whole thing was that the deal only ran until January 29th at 10pm my time. In about 10 days (during which I also had book group and pack meeting to pull off) I managed to pull-together 96 pages (well, Kendra was generous enough to do 2 of them of Shanda's wedding since I didn't have any good pictures), and create a family scrapbook for 2005. It was a pretty intense time, we ate a lot of frozen pizza, I pulled a lot of late nights (thank you to Kerali for keeping me awake on one of them), some pages I like better than others, and I have since gone back and found several small mistakes/typos that I made during the marathon, but I have NEVER in my history of scrapbooking been able to crank out that much material in that amount of time. I am so sold on digital scrapbooking as opposed to using scissors and glue. Well, I suppose I do have to hold my adulation until the book actually arrives (I got an email today saying it was shipped). But I'm watching some of the various publishing websites for other deals, and hoping to get more of my digital pictures into books. Now I'm really wishing we'd bought a digital camera much sooner (like 1997!).

At any rate, these posts are a sampling of some of my more-favorite pages. If you want to see them larger, just click on the image.

An Update (or Why I Haven't Posted in a While)

First off, I need to credit Kendra for my new header and background (which, for some odd reason, I have actually never seen because my browser has issues. . .). If you've been to Kendra's blog (bnkhalterman.blogspot.com), you've seen that she's experimenting with digital design, and has done headers for a lot of us.

So, a few weeks ago, I was feeling inspired by my friend Zina's blog (http://myimaginaryblog.wordpress.com/) --her fun way of writing, her humor, and insights or observations that I feel like I can relate to--and I'd thought that I'd like to incorporate more of those elements into my blog. I even thought I'd like to be on the lookout for something "beautiful" each day that I could share (if I wanted to). Then I got myself into a big scrapbooking (digital! I'll post about it later) project, which finished up just in time to do a final scramble to help Sheridan and Marcus finish their science projects (which we accomplished late last night). So, while I've tried to see beauty in things around me each day, I've not managed to document it much in these last couple of weeks. I have been a little better about noting and writing down the funny things the boys are doing. My scrapbooking project actually proved to me how much this blog has been my main documentation of life (mine and the boys) for the last year, so I will hopefully begin making it a little more detailed, and including more of the things that I find that make our lives rich. This will likely make it more wordy than some of you are inclined to appreciate, but I won't be at all offended if you skim or skip posts alltogether. In fact, I won't even know. . .

(By the way, to follow up on my last post--the devastating finger injury--I am truly impressed with the ability of the human body to heal itself. It's been about 3 weeks since my chopping accident, and, while I can tell that my finger is still a little flat on one side, and I still don't have full feeling on that side, no one else would ever know I was once missing a piece of it. It's pretty darn amazing. I am still a little squeamish using my chef's knife and I chop much more slowly these days. Unfortunately, I am back to fixing dinner for my family--most nights.)