Thanksgiving Point

On the 14th, we drove through the lights at Thanksgiving Point. We learned that next year we will avoid Monday night at all costs because we waited in line for 45 minutes before we even got into the little show! It seems that everyone in Utah County had the same idea about how to spend FHE that night.

It was actually a little chilly! After we got through the lights, Scott suggested that we take a look at the live reindeer they had penned up by the gift shops. Those of use who were not so well-equipped in winter gear were really happy to take a quick look at the reindeer ("Oh, yes, there they are.") then get inside and take pictures. :)

The perfect pumpkin

When it comes to picking out our Halloween pumpkins, we have a little bit of a tradition going. For most of the past five years, we have driven out to the Red Barn in Santaquin, gone on a hayride out to their pumpkin patch, helped the little kids pick out pumpkins, then waited and waited and waited and waited some more :) for the older kids to find just the right one. This year it even started to get dark on us while we were waiting for them to find the perfect pumpkins! I'm just glad we made it out of there - the apple cider doughnuts at the gift shop were calling my name. :)

Garrett enjoys his food

Something I have never quite understood is why little people think playing in their food is so much fun. :) You can talk all you want about learning about the world they live in by experimenting with different textures, etc, but I still think it is gross. As long as we can keep Garrett at the table or counter, I don't mind too much, and I guess when he plays with his food it makes for funny pictures. We had some chips and salsa a few Saturdays ago, and Garrett sure enjoyed learning about the world of salsa!

Recent Scouting awards

Ethan earned his Wolf and Justin earned his Arrow of Light at our last Pack Meeting! They both just smiled the whole night. It makes the teeth-pulling I have to do to help them pass off requirements pretty much worth it. :)

Our Cubmaster is so great. She has worked hard to make fun traditions for the boys so that they really look forward to earning their big ranks. The Bobcats dig through bobcat brains (cooked spaghetti) to find a bobcat eyeball (marble), the Wolves rub painted noses with their parents, and she has come up with a more serious, special evening for when boys earn their Arrow of Light award. Her enthusiasm makes me want to do my calling better!

Deep thoughts by Emilie :)

I have been thinking a lot lately about relationships. I am probably a little naïve and don’t get out socially a lot, but I have been so impressed with this neighborhood since we have lived here. Out of all the places we have lived, this is the place where I have heard the least amount of gossip and backbiting. I hope that part of it might be me. I think I have learned a few things over the past few years. I have learned that it feels really, really good to think the best of others. I remember a conversation I had a few years ago where I was worried about what some people might possibly be thinking or saying about me. The person I was talking to gave me some great advice: just go into that situation imagining the best. Assume that they are saying and thinking nice things.

There is power in thinking the best of others. None of us always function at 100%, so I would hope that as I forgive and accept others’ actions, others would also give me the benefit of the doubt. I have heard a friend say a few times that a person was doing their best. That phrase is liberating. If we assume that others are giving the best effort that they can give, then we don’t harbor negative feelings and we learn to love people the way that God loves us. Wow! With all my weaknesses, I am so grateful for Heavenly Father and Christ’s unconditional love for me. I owe it to them to love others in that very same way. That is why I am here. Yes, I needed a physical body, but really, I am here to learn to love others.

There were a couple of times over the summer where I listened to some neighborhood gossip. I didn’t bring it on, but I was so frustrated that I hadn’t defended the person being talked about. I came home and decided that I needed to come up with something to say when that situation arises again. I am so grateful to realize that I want to feel at peace about others. We have such a merciful Father who helps us recognize things we need to work on. There are times when I need to vent about a frustration I have with someone, but it seems like there is a way you can do that without it being gossip. Maybe I only vent to one trusted person, and maybe I recognize that even though I am frustrated, the only person I can change is myself? Anyway, something to think about.

School musings (some sub-standard titles today - sorry!)

School started a little over three weeks ago. It finally feels like we are getting into a routine, and it is nice to have some one-on-one time with Adam and Garrett. I have had some mixed feelings about sending the kids back to school though. I enjoy having them around during the day. I like knowing who they are associating with, and I like knowing what they are doing and saying. You send them off to school and all of a sudden you have no idea what they are doing 6 ½ hours of the day! They are pretty cute though to answer my questions about who they play with at recess, what they like about their teachers, which specialist they visited during the day (computers, art, music, library, etc.).

A big huge positive about the school year is the kids’ teachers. When we went to register the kids in July, I was so excited to see that all of them had received the teachers I requested! In our six years here at Canyon, this is the first time that has happened. A friend of mine suggested that when I write down the reason for the request, I really take some time and come up with some good reasons, so I did, and then we also have a new principal this year and he seems to want parents to be happy. So, the happy thing is that I can enjoy the kids while they are home, and I know that they all have kind, nurturing teachers to hang out with during the day! Hooray!

It isn’t my first instinct to request teachers. Part of me asks myself what makes our kids so much more important than everyone else’s kids. But guess what! When I haven’t requested teachers for the kids, I feel like I have been burned because everyone else requests the experienced, kind teachers. One of the kids has had a first year teacher who had absolutely no control over the classroom, and the next year he had an intern who was so grumpy with them. Anyway, I will never again leave their elementary school teachers to chance.

I have heard my neighbor say a couple of times that it is nice if the kids learn something during the year, but she just wants a teacher who will be kind to her children. I agree. I would much rather have my kids in an environment where they felt accepted and loved than have them in an environment where they were learning their times tables but felt unappreciated and picked on.

Salt Lake outing

Here are some pictures of a Saturday in July that we spent up in Salt Lake. We visited Temple Square, went through the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house, and got to meet our new niece, Morgyn! Morgyn is Scott's youngest sister's newest baby, and she was very cute!

I have enjoyed so much the opportunity to go to the Draper and Oquirrh Mountain temple open houses. It makes me so happy to give the kids the chance to be within those holy walls, and it is exciting to help them feel the importance of going to the temple. I love having little children around, but it is so satisfying to have Justin and Ethan growing up into such good boys. They seem genuinely excited when we talk about how soon they would be able to go to the temple to do baptisms. What a blessing the temples are to parents! It gives us something to help our kids aim for. I am just so grateful for the gospel and the added perspective it gives me in my own life. Being in the temple, in particular, always helps me remember what is eternally important. Little worldly concerns just kind of float away . . . :)

Carac - ouch!

Talk about red! I am smiling because I finished the Carac treatment the dermatologist told me to do. Because of the basal cell carcinoma I had removed from the side of my nose back in April, he prescribed this Carac cream for me to put on my face for 28 days in order to get rid of pre-cancerous cells - which he saw when he did the biopsy of the tissue samples he removed back in April. Wow – it has been unnerving. Scott did this same treatment back in March and was so stoic about it, that I had no idea how uncomfortable it was. I stopped doing the medicine three days ago, and my face is still beet red, the skin under my eyes, over my lip, and next to my eyelids is dry and tawt, and I still have skin sloughing off. Very disturbing. I thought I was done with random bleeding spots, but just this morning awakened to a bloody scab under my eye again. Scott’s face was back to normal and even looked better just three or four days after he had finished doing the cream. I am guessing that my skin was more damaged, or just more sensitive, and that my face will always be red. Just kidding. I know I will heal someday. I wish the process would just hurry up a little bit so that people will stop asking me what is wrong with my face!

Let me introduce you to my Timex:

It is not just any watch. It is a Timex Ironman watch. It probably swims, bikes, and runs all by itself :). Although I do not know all of its capabilities, I do know that it has a great little timer. When the kids go to a friend's house to play, I set the timer, put the watch on their wrist, tell them to take good care of my favorite possession, and to come home when the timer beeps. I use it when I bake because our oven timer beeps for five seconds then stops, allowing me to forget about the thing inside the oven. (That should be a requirement for all oven timers to beep until someone actually opens the oven door, don't you think?)

My Ironman also helps me to clean. I set my timer for five minutes, concentrate on one room, and just straighten, dust, or clean as fast as I can. :) I find this method is especially effective when the house is a MESS on Monday morning. Just this very Monday, the task of cleaning the house seemed overwhelming, but when I set my timer and started in on our master bathroom, cleaning the house became a game! Wow. An hour after I started, the upstairs looked grand. I have to admit though that the kitchen takes longer than five minutes. Unloading the dishwasher, loading the dishwasher, straightening and cleaning the table, and straightening and cleaning the countertops get their own five-minutes.

I thought it was such an original and creative idea, but when I mentioned it to a friend the other day, she asked me if I had gotten the idea from the fly lady (I have never looked at her website, but friends have told me that she has ideas for cleaning efficiently), and then when I told Angela and Alison about my cleaning game the other day, Alison smiled and said that she does the same thing. Hmmm. I wonder if I got the idea from her?

Anyway, I love my watch. The timing possibilities are endless . . .

2006 - Done!

I had a goal to finish up the 2006 scrapbooks this week, so as soon as Scott and I got the kids in bed last night, I headed to my scrapbooking table and finished up October for everyone. It was around midnight, and I actually felt pretty tired, but I couldn't stop! November and December were small enough that I just finished it all up and got in bed at 2:30 this morning. :) I used my last Hermafix tabs on my last page, ran out of sheet protectors and had to scrounge 6 from various places around the house, and my paper collection is feeling pretty sorry, but I am done with the blessed year! What a great feeling! On to 2007!

An answered prayer

I am the type of person who likes to have one, maybe two, responsibilities during the day, then I like to plan my agenda and get my own projects done. Last week was not one of those weeks! We were finishing up the spring soccer season, Lindsey and Ethan are starting into their T-ball/baseball seasons, Ethan is starting track, and then we had all the normal piano lessons, pack meeting, Young Women's, and Scott's bishopric-helping.

Well, Thursday morning came along. I had a list of errands that I wanted to get done in the morning before Lindsey got home from Kindergarten. By the time I had Adam, Garrett and myself ready, we ran out the door - I could already tell the time was going be really close! We hurried to the post office, jetted over to the credit union, and then raced through Macey's to get some groceries. I wasn't sure if we would have time, but I realized that Justin had left for the Hershey Track Meet that morning without a drink, so we bought him a cold Gatorade at Macey's and just tried to hurry, hurry through the store so that we could take it to him. (I thought I might feel bad if he keeled over from heat exhaustion at the high school track. :) )

The three of us left Macey's with just twenty minutes before Lindsey would be home. As we neared the high school, I saw cars and people everywhere! I think every fourth grader in the Spanish Fork area was there, along with a lot of their parents. In my head I was giving up much hope of being able to find him in the five minutes we had to look for him, but I pulled into the church parking lot north of the school's large property anyway, grabbed the stroller out of the trunk, and plopped Garrett inside and Adam up on top! It was already 11:00 and knowing that I could not find Justin on my own, I said a prayer asking Heavenly Father to help us find him before 11:04. I wanted Justin to be hydrated and know that I loved him, and I also wanted to be home before Lindsey. (I have found from experience that children are a little grumpy when their parents are late. :) )

As we walked briskly over to the track, I kept my eyes open for kids from Justin's elementary. We passed a hundred or so kids doing the long jump, but I recognized some moms and knew they were from a different elementary. We reached the track where there were even more fourth graders milling around, but I saw a father in our ward helping with a race. Just as I thought I might ask him if he had seen Justin, I looked over the racers he was supervising on the track only to see my cute little Justin mosying along with a friend towards me. Victory! I was so happy to see him, and I don't think I will ever forget the happy, surprised look he gave me! I gave him his Gatorade, patted his cheeks which had never been cuter, wished him good luck, then headed back to the van. I looked down at my watch just to see how we were doing on time, and almost started to cry when I saw that it was 11:04.

It was just such a little thing, but I am so grateful for the help that Heavenly Father gave Justin, Lindsey, and me. Justin got his drink and knew that I was thinking about him, and Lindsey got to come home to a house that was unlocked. :) Maybe even more important than those things though, is that when Lindsey, Justin and Ethan got home from school that day I got to tell them that story. I got to tell them that Heavenly Father loves us and answers our prayers.

A facial update. :)

I am feeling better about my face now. Thanks for the advice and concern, everyone. :) Also, after the nurse took out my stitches today, she loaded us up with all sorts of SPF 70 sunscreen. I didn't know they even made it that powerful! We have been working really hard at keeping wide-brimmed hats on the kids outside, and are being more conscientious about sunscreen with them too. As we were in the office today I noticed a poster with a cute, cute girl who was wearing a darling sailor's hat. She was so sporty and cute it made me think that I need one too. :)

A really long journey through the last couple of days - sorry! :)

About a year ago, Alison saw something on my face that she thought looked like skin cancer. She suggested at the time that I see a dermatologist, so a few months later, I asked our pediatrician neighbor for a recommendation, then it took two or three months to actually get into this doctor. When Dr. Bezzant saw the spot on my face, he immediately said, “BCC” which stands for basal cell carcinoma (a type of skin cancer that is treatable if they catch it early because they can just remove the cancerous cells), and then shaved it off so they could do a biopsy. It didn’t surprise me too much when his office called and told me that the biopsy results did indeed show that it was a BCC. We scheduled a time two months later for him to remove the growth.

It took him about ten seconds to take the biopsy, so I wasn’t prepared for what the surgery entailed. When Scott, AND Adam, AND Garrett, and I got to the office Monday morning, I asked how long they thought it would take, and was surprised to hear “we have one hour scheduled”. What? We would not have brought so many children without attention spans along if we had known that it would take so long! My nervousness level jumped! I was a little nervous already because the spot was in a visible place on the side of my nose. I was worried about scarring from the procedure, but knew that it was more important to just get the thing off of me. Even knowing that, I was more taken aback when the doctor started drawing on my face with a marker to show me exactly where he was going to cut. Eeek! He was really going to cut into me, and in a bigger way than I had imagined!

Hoping to calm myself a little, I said a prayer, and then just tried to suck it up. :) That helped me feel better – I visited with Dr. Bezzant during the surgery and then while he was filling out a prescription for an antibiotic and Oxycodone (What? I am going to need Oxycodone?), I asked him to take a look at a funny growth that I have on my knee. He gave me a shot in the knee, took a sample for biopsy, then I asked him what he thought it could be. Once again, I was caught a little off guard when he said he thought it could be either a wart, psoriasis, or squamous cell carcinoma. What?!

As he finished his paperwork, I was just sitting silently on the operating chair – thinking about a lifetime of worrying about all of the crazy things that could go wrong with my body, wondering if he really knew that he had gotten all of the cancer out, and hoping that my scar wouldn’t overwhelm my face. He asked me a couple of times if I was okay – did I look like I was in pain or in shock? I told him that I was fine - just feeling sober.

Anyway, this has been an interesting ride. I felt emotional Monday and yesterday because the scar is just over inch long, and it goes from under my eyeball on a slant down to the middle of my nose. I feel an affinity to Frankenstein. The stitches are in until next Monday, so it looks kind of scary with the black thread going through the scar, and I have a puffy, colorful eye. Luckily, I am supposed to keep a topical antiobiotic on it, along with a band-aid, so most of the yucky stuff is hidden. My vanity is still suffering some though. Sigh. I hope it isn’t too visible when all is said and done, but things could definitely be worse. I don’t have stomach cancer or congenital heart disease. How is that for putting things into perspective in a quick way?

I feel better today. As it turns out, there are still some pre-cancerous cells there, so after the scar heals, Dr. Bezzant wants me to apply some cream to the area for a period of time, and the thing on my knee is just a plantar wart. Praise be! It sounds a little silly – I will admit, even to me – but I feel like this has been a brush with mortality. I know that I am fine, but we are just not indomitable, are we? Sigh.

(By the way, I didn’t need the Oxycodone. It hurt, but not anything like a c-section!) :)

Self-frosting Zucchini Cake

Here is one of the new recipes I have tried lately. I got it from our former ward's cookbook, from a nice lady named Kim. :) It is basically a chocolate cake, but the zucchini in it makes it moist, and I thought the topping was tasty too. You sprinkle chocolate chips, brown sugar, and nuts (if you want) on top instead of frosting. We liked it -

Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups finely grated zucchini
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
4 1/2 Tbs. cocoa
1 tsp. salt
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder

3/4 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup nuts
3/4 cup brown sugar

Directions:
Combine first 6 ingredients. In a separate bowl combine dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients to cremed mixture. Place in 9 X 13 baking dish. Combine chocolate chips, brown sugar, and nuts, sprinkle on top of the cake. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes.


Yummy!

Happy Birthday, Adam!

We have had some fun celebrating Adam's birthday the past couple of days. For our family activity last night, we let him choose what he wanted to do, and he decided that going to Chuck 'E' Cheese sounded like fun. Justin and Ethan each flew solo most of the time we were there - concentrating on the big ticket givers. They sure gobbled up a lot of tokens! Adam and Lindsey hung out together the whole time - getting their pictures taken, and riding the rides together too. Scott, Garrett, and I talked budget at a table where we could watch the rest of the kids. In all honesty, Garrett wasn't much of a contributor to the conversation :), but did enjoy eating the Skittles that Justin gave Adam for his birthday. It was pretty fun.

Adam has been counting down the days until his birthday for weeks now, and was so excited that today was finally the day! I thought I was going to get out of giving him a friend party because he hadn't brought it up, but no such luck. He just doesn't know how the system works yet. He wondered today when his friends were going to come over for his party. Oops.

I thought this picture was cute. When Scott got home from work, we pulled Adam's presents onto the table, and I asked him to get close to them so that I could get a good picture. This GQ pose was what he came up with. :) He sure is a funny boy. I love his smile and his cute, round cheeks. My favorite thing to do with him is snuggle up and read books on the couch. Happy Birthday, Adam!