Displaying Kids' Art

We've got some real artists around here. Typically, their masterpieces have been tucked into their "special things" folders/binders. But some of their masterpieces just beg to be displayed.

So a few months ago, we went to the dollar store, found some simple wood frames (that actually matched the wood moldings in our house very nicely - yeah!) and adorned our kitchen and back stairs with beautiful framed art.

The kids were so proud and pleased. I think their artwork really is lovely looks extra nice in a simple frame. We plan to change out what's in the frames when the kids have something new they're especially excited about. 

Top to bottom in the photo below: Eliza's oil pastel landscape, Eliza's green collage (she saw these clippings from a craft project she was working on spread across the table and liked how the scraps looked so she carefully glued them all to paper), Oliver's swirly colorful designs that he worked so hard on

Top to bottom in the photo below:
Eliza's intricate collage, Eliza's hands, Eliza's depiction of peace on earth

Photo below: twins' artwork from school - I love how they came up with very different takes on the same art project.

I'm trying to get the big boys to contribute to our gallery but they just aren't interested right now. Oh well. I'll take what I can get!

Big Backyard Project - Part II

My back aches but our back yard is mostly done now!

After this long process, we were down to just a few more steps to getting our backyard done.

Over the past couple weeks, Jared and our neighbor have worked diligently to install sprinklers. This morning we leveled and raked for hours (that's why my back aches - hours of raking up rocks and digging around to get a large area level will do that to you!). Then we spent the afternoon installing sod (which went quite quickly since several kind relatives and friends pitched in to help).

Seeing that lovely green move across our formerly weed-infested and trashy-looking yard was extremely gratifying!

Even little kids helped - scooping up and getting rid of all the rocks we raked out of the dirt was an important job.

With everyone pitching in, the sod went down quickly - such a satisfying project with such immediate results!

And here's the mostly-finished product! (For now anyway, we'll be adding a couple fruit trees scattered about in the middle of the yard and some boulders plus a variety of different long grasses to make the hill an even more interesting place to play. Plus there will be lots more plants around the edges in the current dirt areas and and expanded vegetable garden on the left. But for now, we're really pleased and this back yard has come a LONG way!)

Here are the awesome guys who did the lion's share of the work - what an accomplishment! (see the really happy kids in the background?)

The kids have visions of sledding down the hill in the winter and building a climbing wall on the steep back side of the hill. We're going to put in some balance beams and other fun things in the back area as well. It's so fun to take all these ideas the kids have had (like wanting a trampoline and digging tunnels through the original dirt hill) and combine them with ideas from Pinterest and happenstance (like that the hill had to be there because the dirt from the trampoline hole had to go somewhere...) to create a backyard everyone is really excited about!

Map Table

There are tons of big fat projects that need to be done on this old house. I keep trying to get bids on different things as we've saved up to get a few things taken care of (getting all the trim repainted, getting the yucky old paint off the pretty old bricks, getting the decks refinished, getting the old crumbing sandstone fixed up, getting backsplash tile up in the kitchen, finishing the re-mortaring that needs to happen to the rocks in the basement, getting a rickety chimney solidified...). But these crazy contractors come out here, look at everything, then never bring me a bid! So the home-improvement front (other than the backyard that we're doing ourselves) has been a bit bleak.

But I have been able to get a few small and very satisfying things done in the past few months.

Our new map table is one of those things.

I've been wanting to do two things for ages - make our dinged up old homework table into something better and find a place where we could put a map of the word with stars on all the places anyone in our family has visited. I was excited when I came up with the idea of putting a map on the table to cover up its imperfections and top that with a piece of glass to keep the map nice and make a better surface on the table.

It took me a while to get around to this idea. But one day this summer, that table was really bugging me and I saw a school supply store while I was driving, had a few extra minutes, and figured I'd go in and see if they had any maps that might work. They had a great map that looked about the right size if I trimmed off the corners a bit. I bought it for $12. Then I came home and called this glass place I see on the way to and from the kids' school and ordered a piece of round glass to top the map and table (it was more expensive than I'd have thought, but way cheaper than a new table or a nicely framed map for the wall!).

Then one week later, I picked up the glass and the kids and I had fun marking stars on the map (lots of stars across the US thanks to our recent road trip!). Then we trimmed the map and positioned the glass on top.

Voila!

I love that the kids get to think about the larger world a bit and remember fun family trips as they do their homework and I love that the table looks so much better and is now really easy to clean.

Big Backyard Project - Part I

Weekend before last, we FINALLY got some major projects we've been talking about and planning for moved along in a big way. We've been dreaming up exciting stuff for our backyard with our neighbors (we share a nice big area on the back of our two lots). We put in a little garden area last year but for the most part, the back area has been a pretty darn ugly place where the kids had fun building forts out of random leftover wood back there and climbing the one good tree back there. Last summer, they got into digging a hole together out there with their neighborhood friends. The idea came up to dig a hole big enough to put in an in-ground trampoline and that idea spurred daily teamwork on digging for quite a while. But by the end of the summer, their hole in that rock-hard ground wasn't very big and we tabled the trampoline idea for a while.

Then when we had to replace our water main this past April (read about that fiasco here), we had a guy here with a mini-backhoe and realized we could get that trampoline hole dug for a decent price. So we went for it.

(The twins loved watching the whole thing from the tree - and you can see one of the kids' many varieties of "clubhouses" they built out there over the past three years.)

It would have been much more expensive to have the guy take the dirt away so we had him pile it up in an area where there was an old foundation from an old house and where nothing would grow w/o a lot more dirt on top. It turned out to be a LOT of dirt. And that dirt hill became beloved by all the kids in the neighborhood. They molded it into a hard-packed mini-mountain and played on top of it for hours and hours, running their bikes down it, sledding down it, and even making a tunnel through it with a couple day's work. One little girl came around the corner, saw the dirt hill and said, "WOW! You have a DIRT HILL! You have the most awesome backyard ever!"

So to most adult eyes, our backyard was a serious eyesore.

But to children, it was quite a wonderland.

Then this past summer, horrible puncture vines really took over, producing thousands upon thousands of really mean burrs that went right through the kids' flip flops to send them crying into the house and went through bike tires, basketballs, everything. Those darn burrs made the backyard way less fun. And along with our neighbors, we started to get to a place with everything else going on in our lives where we could actually think about the back yard and make plans and begin to carry them out.

We decided to dig up all the horrible weeds for once and for all, make the dirt hill even better, embed a tube through it since the tunnel the kids had dug was such a hit, plant grass on it, get the trampoline hole finished, get sprinklers in, get sod, improve our garden area, put in some fruit trees and bushes, create some fun non-grass areas where the kids could keep building and re-building little clubhouses and balance beams and the like with some safer building materials we'd round up (the splintery rusty-nail-infested wood they'd been using - luckily with no casualties so far - just had to go).

I researched trampolines forever (I just have to explore every aspect of every purchase - I now know WAY more than anyone really needs to know about trampolines - especially rectangular ones as I found they are much safer and longer-lasting if you have older kids and/or anticipate there will be more than one person on the trampoline at the same time). I finally found a trampoline that seemed to have all the qualifications at at a somewhat OK price (they are EXPENSIVE for the serious ones with the lifetime frame warranty and if you're going to put the thing in the ground, you'd better get a good one that'll be lasting a long long time!). I got it ordered. Then almost 2 weeks later, I got a notice saying it was out of stock. Back to researching! Darn! I finally found another one and got that ordered. This one came quickly and seemed great. The kids started to get so excited!

But then we had all these projects that hinged on other projects and most of them hinged on renting a small tractor which relied on us being able to borrow a big truck from someone so we could bring the tractor to our house. Jared decided to grab the bull by the horns. He researched renting a tractor and learned tons about sod and found a great deal on sod we could roll out ourselves. He showed up after work on Thursday with a beautiful tube he found (it had been damaged slightly so it was in the recycle area at a construction place nearby). The squeals of delight as he pulled in the driveway with that thing hanging out of his car were priceless!

The kids had SO much fun playing in the tube with all their neighborhood friends on Thursday night. They'd all get in there and Jared would gently roll it around. Here's Jared with the tube (and the beloved dirt hill and not-so-beloved weeds in the background):

But when Silas somehow stuck his finger under the tube right when another kid rocked it from the inside, Silas got his finger squashed and his fingernail didn't like that one bit. It detached. It was PAINFUL. Poor boy!  He was so brave about having that sad little fingernail removed (it was only attached by a tiny thread and everything we read online said it had to go). And he's been totally fine ever since (and really good about keeping it clean). He was sort of excited to start school with his unique finger to show off (and we taught him not to hold up just that finger to show people - it's his middle finger!).

(skip these next pictures if you're squimish! there are more gross photos but I'll spare you those...)

Here's the fingernail just hanging on by a thread:

here's the finger w/o the fingernail:

After that casualty, we decided this was the weekend to get that tube safely buried, get rid of the puncture vine and burrs and get that trampoline in, once and for all. We didn't have a truck to haul the tractor but Jared got the rental people to bring it to us and spent all day on that thing while our neighbors worked hard to build a retaining wall to hold back the dirt in the trampoline hole so we could install the trampoline.

It was a long day of serious clouds of dust. I helped shape the hill with a shovel and get compost distributed around the yard (our poor dirt needs some help before we can lay down the sod). Our kids and the neighborhood kids picked big rocks and a fair amount of garbage out of the dirt after it was churned up by the tractor plus helped with other odd jobs (and loved sitting on the tractor and pretending to drive it when it got a rest from time to time).

Everyone pitched in to clean up trash and big rocks (and someday our back fence will be completely covered with creative graffiti by the kids- they started a month ago but then we ran out of paint...)

First Jared moved the dirt hill back so we could put the tube under it:


Then he plowed all the sticker weeds underneath lots of good dirt:

We placed the tube in the right spot:

Then Jared covered it with dirt:

While our neighbor worked hard on the retaining fence thing inside the trampoline hole:

The a huge rain storm moved in during a key moment as we worked against the clock (the tractor had to be returned!) and Jared and our neighbor worked right on through.

Then the first week of school was busy, busy, busy so we just left the project for a while. Finally this weekend, we had time to actually install the trampoline in it's waiting hole.

Here's Isaac testing out the trampoline to see if it needed to be adjusted a bit before putting on the pads.It was just right!

The kids and all their neighborhood friends have been on that trampoline just about every minute since! We gave all the kids a little orientation about the trampoline rules (only 2 at a time on the tramp, no shoes or socks on it, no neighbor friends on the tramp w/o first asking permission from us or our neighbors, etc.). And in the past couple days, the kids have learned all sorts of new tricks plus had 100's of "bum wars" plus had a great time just bouncing around. They're definitely sleeping well!

We're getting so much closer to a really fun and safe backyard! Now we've got to trench for sprinkler lines, put in the sprinklers and lay sod plus plant some fruit trees and bushes and maybe make a fun climbing area with old logs on the back side of the dirt/tube hill. So there's still work to go but it's so exciting to see things really taking shape.

Hopefully before too terribly long, you'll see a "big backyard project - part II" post. That'll mean we'll have grass back there and things will be much more "done." But what I've posted about here has been a huge huge bunch of work already so it deserves its own post!

The truth about my life right now

I've shared a lot of happy times on this blog here lately because there really have been a lot of happy times. After a lot of REALLY hard things this past year (many of which didn't make this blog because they're pretty personal to me or others involved), it's been great to have so much good stuff to blog about.

Bear Lake was a huge highlight of the year, as always. Jared has a new job that he's really enjoying and that is so good for him and for all of us on many levels. Power of Moms is humming along nicely even though the number of hours I've devoted to it lately have been quite reduced. We have kids who are blessed with good health and we have so many great relatives we love to be with. We love our old house and our neighborhood and community (yesterday the Tour of Utah bike race inspired a fun day of booths and super fun free kids' activities like bounce houses and rock climbing walls plus a community bike race with the mayor that we all loved then there was an international festival with dancers and food from all over the world yesterday evening - just a few blocks down the street - love that). So yes, life is good and we have so very many reasons to feel blessed and be happy.

But even in the midst of good times and good situations, there's plenty of hard stuff and I while I don't like to dwell on the hard parts of my life on this blog (since I often dwell too much on the hard stuff in my mind), I do want to record the stuff I'm struggling with (that isn't super personal) here alongside the good stuff.

While I'm so grateful for kids who are at relatively easy ages and who are generally pretty easy to work with, they aren't little angels all the time. They know just how to push my buttons and a couple of them are going through stages that just about drive me crazy quite a bit lately. As far as non-personal stuff I can share, here are a few things that are hard about my great kids. Often, they whine and drag their feet when it's time to stop doing something super fun that I've allowed them to indulge in for several hours (like when I said it was time to go home after 4 hours at the Tour of Utah Kids' Zone yesterday and it was HOT and I had terrible cramps...). And it's quite annoying when they complain about something I worked hard to make for dinner or some activity I worked hard to plan for them and that I thought would be super fun. When they think I'm the meanest mom in the world for asking them to take a break from their fun to do their reading or writing or a simple 10-minute job around the house, that's pretty frustrating. And getting kids to bed when they always want one more thing and I'm just so tired gets pretty old. There are times every single day (often many times a day) when my patience gets very thin and I'm not the mom I mean to be.

The house is always needing attention. The kids are always needing attention. The fridge is always being emptied. The laundry is always piling up. Emails are always coming in. Power of Moms programs are always needing tweaking and new project possibilities are always coming up. Few things are ever really "done" around here and that's harder some days than others. I'm trying to accept that moving processes along is a worthy thing and that "done" is overrated. But I crave that "done" feeling.

I'm always trying to do too many things in too little time and I'm always hurrying but seldom am I on time for anything. My view of what is realistic to accomplish in an hour or in a day would probably make most people laugh. One of my big resolutions this year is to have more margin in my life and to be on time or even early for things (I've had this resolution for several years running but this year I'm SERIOUS about it - and the last few years, circumstances were really not very good for allowing margins, now that I look back).

I'm critical and impatient too often. My expectations are often too high. I dive into lots of things without really praying and thinking them through first - then stress myself out completely when I realize I have to back out or slow down on something I said I'd do (I HATE being flaky). I set myself and my kids up for failure too often. And I have major breakdowns sometimes and things just look very black.

But you know what? I keep trying and I keep making course corrections. I tell my kids and husband how much I love them every day and I'm getting better at setting aside my work and really focusing on them when they need me (learning to accomplish things while still allowing and even welcoming interruptions is my ongoing challenge).  I make a list of top priorities for the next day most evenings (more about that HERE) and that helps keep me somewhat balanced in a manageable way. And I plan out my week most Sundays, cutting things out that need to be cut out and gearing up for the times and days that will be tight and difficult.

So life IS good. But life is still hard. But hard and good generally go hand in hand. That's just how it is.

Sundays

Gratitude Day Six
Today I'm extra grateful for Sundays.  I have no idea how I'd live without them.

We go to church on Sunday mornings and there's always something in a lesson or a talk that speaks to something that's on my mind (if I pray and search for a message, I always find one). Occasionally, it's a big message. But usually, it's just a little reminder of something or a thought that pops up later in the week based on something I heard on Sunday. I love hearing the good discussion in Relief Society from such a diverse group of good-hearted women. I love our Sunday School teachers well-thought-out lessons on the New Testament - her crisp British accent makes the lessons all the more enjoyable. I love sitting in Sacrament meeting with my kids snuggled up around me and my husband's arm around me. I love that I can actually listen in church now that my kids are old enough to behave pretty decently most of the time and that I don't need to bring coloring books and quiet toys to church for them anymore. I love that the kids know (after years of reminders) to pull out the hymn books and find the right page and sing along. We still have days when the kids regress and church is frustrating. But mostly, it seems like we've "paid our dues" and church is pleasant and good.

On Sunday afternoons, we relax together. Jared interviews each kid individually. I read stories from the Friend magazine with them. We write letters to relatives. We sometimes take naps. If it's a pretty day, we go for a walk around the neighborhood (no scooters or bikes allowed, just walking and talking and enjoying nature). I usually do a blog post or two. The kids play games together. We often make cookies (or Isaac or Eliza make cookies - they've become our primary cookie-makers around here). We always have a nice dinner together - I go for something quite easy but also really yummy. Sometimes we have friends or relatives over for dinner. At the dinner table, we all share what we learned in church. On Fast Sundays (like today), we have a family testimony meeting before eating - each person gets a chance to stand up and express their thoughts about the gospel and about each other and really say whatever comes to mind. When the kids are tucked in bed, Jared and I each take some individual time to make our lists and goals for the week then we get together and look at our calendars and talk about what we each need to do that week and how we can help each other. It just takes a few minutes and we're pretty good about doing it regularly - we've found that when we DON'T do this, the week just doesn't go so well.


I used to have quite a few meetings on Sundays and Jared has early morning Sunday meetings these days. I'm so grateful that we're all able to be home on Sunday afternoons now.


We try to make Sunday a day full of special things that are mostly reserved for Sundays - not a day full of "don't's." And for the most part, it works. Sure there are crazy Sundays when the peace and planning and togetherness we hope for just doesn't pan out. But in general, Sunday gives us such a great chance to recharge our batteries and have some solid family time. 

Eliza just wandered in and I asked her what she likes about Sunday. Her response (no editing from me), "I like how on Sundays we don't have school or basketball games and we can just relax and stay home. I think it's fun to have interviews with Daddy. I like how it's usually so calm on Sundays and we don't have to be rushed. And I like to go to church on Sunday because it's fun to learn about Jesus and stuff and see my friends."

I just called Oliver to see what he likes about Sunday (again, unedited). "I do not like interviews because they are boring and it wastes some of my time when I want to play but I do like to go to church and I like to hang out at home." (good to know interviews aren't the favorite...)

Now I'm curious. Let's see what Silas says. "I like how after church we get to have a nice time doing stuff like reading the Friend - aren't you going to read to us now?' Guess I better get on that.

What are you grateful for about Sundays?

Good Neighbors and a Great Halloween

Gratitude Day Four: I know I've said this before but today I'm super thankful for our neighborhood.

I just went through the photos I took on Halloween and started the process of setting up this year's Children for Children concert (It'll be the 5th Annual Concert!). We had a really fun neighborhood parade and dinner on Halloween before trick-or-treating and we've got this great couple down the street who are converting a beautiful old church into a community center that they said we could use for our Children for Children concert this year. Doing these two things made me so extra thankful for the wonderful people in this neighborhood - people from all over the country, people with different beliefs and lifestyles, people with kids and without, people with all sorts of interests and talents. But what brings everyone together is a belief in community and neighborliness and a love of diversity.

Eliza and I went down to the city council meeting a couple nights ago to support our neighbors in their efforts to convert the old unused church into a community center. I loved seeing so many neighbors get up and speak in support of this project and loved seeing the excitement and loyalty expressed. Permission was granted for the new use of the church and now we'll have a great community center where the strength of our neighborhood can be built-upon.  Here's the little video that was put together about the church - easy to picture our Children for Children concert happening there and making it the biggest and best concert yet!

Here are a few shots of our neighborhood Halloween parade and dinner.

Playing Duck Duck Goose

Playing Red Rover

Enjoying black bean soup (a.k.a. "witch's brew")

And here are our kids, ready to trick-or-treat around the block:

It was the perfect Halloween - super nice weather, lots of fun activities, and just enough candy to make it fun but not leave us with sugar highs for weeks.

One Year Later...

I just found this post from just over a year ago - it's the post from when we first visited this house with our realtor:  http://looslifamily.blogspot.com/2010/09/house-hunt-in-ogden.html

A flood of memories of that first visit came back as I looked at the photos and read the words of the post. I knew this was our house - but I didn't want to fully admit it at the time - in case I was wrong.

And now, here we are a year later feeling a sense of belonging and "rightness" that we've never fully felt in a home or a place before.

It's sort of funny to think about how this neighborhood felt like suck a wild card when we first visited this house.  We now see it as by far the best, most fun and most cohesive neighborhood we've ever been part of.  We've loved getting to know the wonderful people who were here when we got here plus several other great families have moved in. It's a wonderful eclectic mix of people here.  I love diversity.

The kids play outside every day with neighbors - they work on the fort they're building in the backyard or ride their scooters and bikes up and down the sidewalks shaded by big beautiful trees - looks like something out of a movie.

 

 

Our backyard has become a gathering place for a bunch of kids who love our basketball hoop and make-shift weedy soccer field in the backyard (there's a new crop of kids this fall - but most of these same kids are still around).

Liza and her friend Olivia call out to each other from their 3rd floor bedrooms at night - separated by just a few feet.

Liza and Olivia's bedroom windows face each other across the driveway

We walk down to the Farmer's Market most every Saturday mornings and get tasty samples and fresh bread and wonderful produce (and Ashton been taking his guitar and collecting some pretty good tips - money tips plus nice people who take the time to give him guitar-playing tips and even take the time to teach him some new chords and play duets with him for a bit).

We walk a block to the library a couple times a week and enjoy all the great books and games there.

Every month, we visit a new, beautiful art exhibit at the art center in this old mansion nearby.

This is a very good place.  This is where we're meant to be.

P.S. As luck would have it, I just saw an old post I wrote about the meaning of home that's been re-posted today on the main page at Power of Moms.  Interesting timing that I should be finishing this post about how this really feels like home now and then come across this post from a year or so ago about the feeling of home we had in St George and the feeling of home in the house where I grew up - check it out if you want:
http://powerofmoms.com/2011/10/the-meaning-of-home/

Pleasant Ordinary Days

So Jared came home for the weekend and stayed through yesterday morning.  The rain stalled potato harvest so as work ground to a halt at the farm, he was able to be here with us for a few days.  Absence does make the heart grow fonder.

Over the weekend, it rained and rained and we enjoyed working on projects around the house and just being together. Isaac, Eliza and I painted some shelves and had some good talks while doing that. Jared and Ashton scoured and sealed the grout in a bathroom that needed some help. The twins and I went shopping for new shoes and had a great lunch together (they were due for a mommy date).  I swear, kids' shoes are so poorly made lately!  The kids can barely get a couple months out of their shoes - and the more expensive shoes seem just as bad as the basic Target and Payless ones.  When we were in France when Ashton was a toddler, I bought him some little shoes at a children's shop with a great sale going on.  I debated whether to get a second pair but decided against it. You know how you you regret certain decisions for a long long time?  When I saw those lovely little shoes make it through ALL of our children, I sure wished I'd bought a whole lot more!

Sorry, I'm tired - I'm totally digressing.

It was wonderful to have Jared here to coach Ashton and Isaac's last flag football game on Monday. He was sad to have to miss a couple of their games last week.  Jared's been a great coach and the team has come a long, long way. I, on the other hand, still can't figure out the rules - but maybe that's partially because I've got Oliver and Silas jumping all over me and asking me things for a good part of each game. My parents came up to watch the last game and the kids were in heaven to have a couple of their favorite people in the whole world with them for a few hours.

Before the game, my mom and I had a wonderful lunch together - even though we live just an hour from each other now, we're still going separate ways the vast majority of the time and I cherish time with my great mother.  While we lunched, the twins were overjoyed to go with my dad to visit sweet Grandma Great in Logan and ended up being part of a radio show that my dad sort of forgot about and had to do over the phone on the way back to Ogden.  He had them sing a song for the whole radio audience. I'm not sure what it had to do with the radio show topic but I'm sure it was very cute.  When my dad used to bring me with him to give speeches when I was a little girl, he'd always have me come up and sing something.  I guess some things never change.

Again, I digress.

Here's one last tidbit:
Oliver and Silas had their first "Itty Bitty Jazz" basketball practice last night.  They were so serious about it - and so excited. I had to go teach scouts so Ashton stayed with them and reported that they listened to the coach and did everything "perfectly." All three boys were so excited to tell me all about everything after the game - and the twins insisted on wearing their new jerseys to bed (Ashton took cute photos but I can't figure out how to get them off his phone and onto this blog).  Ashton pulled out his old jersey from last year's basketball season and Oliver and Ashton did a little happy dance together when they realized their jerseys both had the number 24 on them.

Anyway, this is a snippet from Oliver's prayer tonight:
"Please help us so that we can play really really well at our game on Saturday and that we can not use both hands at the same time when we dribble the ball.  Please help us to win and if we don't win, please help me not to get all sad and cry a lot about it like I sometimes do because I know I'm supposed to be a good sport and all that stuff - but you know how it really is so sad when I lose.  But help me to be nice about it."

I wish I had that prayer (and a lot of Oliver's prayers) recorded.  Oliver really does have an issue with losing.  But I didn't know it was something he thought about and was working on.  Nice when your kids recognize and want to work on their own issues!

And one totally final tidbit:
As I tucked Silas in, he gave me the compliment of a lifetime.  "Mommy, I love you so so much.  I think I even love you more than Hobbs." (Hobbs is our neighbor's dog.)

Around the Neighborhood

I've fallen in love with this neighborhood.

I love that it's eclectic.  I love that it's real.  I love that there's so much to do and see within walking or biking distance.

I love that there's so much diversity in people and architecture.  As we walk or bike around the neighborhood, we see all sorts of stuff:

• a beautifully restored Victorian next to a forlorn house of faded glory divided into several apartments
• a multi-generational family sitting out on their porch with great Spanish music blaring and wonderful smells coming from their kitchen while a young couple paints the house they are renovating next door
• a lovely New England-style Baptist church across the street from a simple store-front style Pentacostal church
• a pretty young mom gently urging her toddler along on his tricycle while a frazzled mom across the street yells some choice words at her own nonchalant toddler who's trying to get the gate in the rusty chain-link fence open
• a fancy brand-new Spanish market offering everything from fresh pigs' feet to fresh cactus down the street from a shabby market with bars on the windows that sells a very random assortment of products
• a guy covered from head to toe with tatoos complimenting the twins' great scootering skills as we pass each other on the sidewalk
• the old Weber College main building with its stately pillars next to an empty lot that's usually occupied by a "free spay and neuter" van with pictures of cats and dogs all over it
• a cute yuppie-style family with a stroller and a couple kids on bikes heading into the library where a man and woman with all manner of bags strapped to their bikes and grungy clothes hang out on the front steps
• a family with five ragamuffin kids in cut-off shorts and old t-shirts on hand-me-down bikes heading off on an exciting mountain bike ride on the trails that start a mile or so up the hill, or skateboarding/scootering to the library down the block for story time, or wandering up to the new Spanish market to pick up some milk and pick some wildflowers in the empty lot on the way home, or walking a few blocks downtown to get 50 cent samples of delicious bread at Great Harvest or go to a minor league baseball game or watch a free concert at the amphitheater.  Oh wait, that's us.

Here's a collage of the houses we see when we walk around the block.

And here's a collage of the churches within two blocks of our house (if we go out 3 blocks, there are way more).

I love diversity.  I love the conversation-starters afforded by a simple walk around the block.  I love the chance to show our kids a good slice of the world right in our neighborhood.  I always dreamed of showing my kids the world, but for now, it's nice to have bits of the world come to us.

P.S.  Today's the last day to vote in the Power of Moms "Best Blog for Deliberate Mothers" Contest.  Please take a moment to check out the great finalist blogs and vote for your three favorites!

limbo land

Jared's gone - for a while.  He's starting a new job and sadly, it's not a local job.  A promising company in Ogden wants him as their new Chief Technical Officer and the job is a great fit for him.  So he'll be up there for a couple weeks, getting going on new projects and learning more about what this job will entail on the day-to-day.  We're planning on some combination of telecommuting and working on site in Ogden for the first few months.  But there's a good possibility we may need to relocate at some point.  Hmmmm.....

Jared's been our fabulous webmaster for Power of Moms for the past several months and his help was invaluable as we redesigned the website and launched several new programs.  He's really enjoyed learning cool new stuff about programming (he's got quite a bit of tech geek in him) and has been able to do complicated things that our little Power of Moms organization couldn't possibly have afforded to hire out at the going rate.  The kids and I have been so spoiled having him work from home the majority of the time since Christmas.

But Jared has always been poised and ready to jump into a new challenge once the right one emerged.  And this job looks like a great fit for him. 

But it's in Ogden.

I love Saint George.  I love the red rock.  I love the kids' school and the fact that they're learning so much Spanish.  I love our friends.  I love our house.  I love the beautiful swimming pool here in our development.  I love the open space behind our house where the kids play.  I love the proximity to Zion and so many super-close, super-beautiful hikes and bike rides.  I like being settled and being involved and feeling like we're really part of the community here.  I like church here (even though they just asked me to be in the presidency of the children's organization at church and that threw me for a loop when I had so much else already going on - but I'm loving it).  I love having mild winters and being able to go outside every single day.  I even love the heat (I get chilly when the temperature drops below 85...).

I know very little about Ogden.  I went there one time to do a training when I was working for the Corporation for National Service - maybe 12 years ago.  They had a great little children's museum on the main street of town where I did the training.  The downtown was very run down.  I've driven past Ogden 100's of times on the way to the farm to see the Looslis or Logan to see my grandma.  I grew up in Salt Lake which is only an hour south of Odgen, but somehow I never really heard much or learned much about Ogden.  I know I don't like snow and cold and I'm pretty darn sure that's an issue in Ogden.

I need to learn more about Ogden so it's not such a big fat scary unknown.  But I've been crazy-busy and I almost don't want to get into researching Ogden.  That might make it seem more like a real possibility.  And I'm sort of in denial.

I know that the most important thing is that we be together as a family and that we can be happy anywhere.  We've always said we love it here but that if the right opportunity took us elsewhere for a while, we'd be fine with that.  I guess in my mind, I was thinking that the "right opportunity elsewhere" might involve a move somewhere exciting - to another part of the world or across the country.  I'm always up for a new adventure!  But somehow Ogden never entered my thoughts when I thought of places I'd love to live in or experience some day.

So this is all sinking in and maybe it's a false alarm but I'm looking at this place and appreciating it all the more as I think about possibly leaving here one day...

The Table

I like neatness.  I like things to be simple and clean.  I like a dining room table that's always ready for family dining without having to be cleared off first.  But this is what I have:

And you know what?  I'm OK with it.  When my table looks like this (which is most of the time), it means that the kids are doing creative, useful things and that they want to do those things near me while I'm in the kitchen or my office off the kitchen.  They don't want to be downstairs where there's a nice table set up for just these sorts of projects.  They want to be by me so they can show me things and ask me things.  And it's precious to be needed and to be part of their little world - even if it means a few extra minutes to clear off the table before dinner.

For a really great post about clean homes, check out this post from a blog listed on the Power of Moms "Best of the Blogs." 

Home

Ahhhhh...  How nice it is to be home!  We missed our Krawnchie Boo.  Our house looks so big and quiet and clean (after sharing a house with 30 other people for a month).  Our own beds feel so wonderful.

The twins had a great doctor appointment in SLC for their "toe-walking" and we feel good about the prognosis - do some "serial casting" and try to lengthen their Achilles tendons by putting on a new cast each week that stretches their tendons just a little more each time.  Then if that doesn't work, do a simple surgery.  They're so darn cute on their tip toes all the time - but it won't be so cute when they get older and they're still walking like ballerinas.  The doctors and nurses at Primary Children's Hospital were so cute with the boys.  I so appreciate it when people are so kind to my kids!

There are like a million things I need to do to catch up (a huge pile of mail, lots of voicemail to respond to, lots of new Joy Schools to help as they get started for the new school year, two new Power of Moms Retreats to finalize...) plus the kids start school next Wednesday so there's school uniform shopping and helping with Back to School Night and all that to do.

But this year, I'm going to be more balanced.  I WILL put more strict boundaries around the time that I spend on this computer and I'm going to enjoy my own motherhood more fully.  I really feel that I'm a much better mother as I think about and teach about how other's can find more purpose, joy and progress in motherhood - but sometimes I rob my own self and my own family when I get going on a consuming project.  I don't even see it happening until the stress really piles up.  I'm going to implement April's Mind Organization for Moms program more completely and do my own Bloom Game more regularly to keep stress at bay and keep myself more balanced in my accomplishments.  And I'm saying this here because it'll make me feel more accountable.  We're always more accountable when we share our goals with others!

So, in keeping with my resolutions, I just took a break and learned all about how they make CD's and DVD's (Oliver asked about this yesterday and I promised we'd look it up today) using this great You Tube clip.  Now Ashton's helping the other kids make a little movie that they'll burn onto a DVD so they can all learn more about how DVDs are made.  I love that they love to learn so much - and I want to be part of it.

Happy Birthday Krawnchie Boo!

Krawnchie Boo is our house. The twins came up with this lovely name a couple years ago and somehow it stuck. Today was Krawnchie Boo's birthday and the kids came up with this for our celebration: clean the house ("Krawnchie Boo hates to be dirty"), make and eat cookies, have a dance party where we dance through every room in the house and top it all off with our favorite dinner (green chili chicken enchiladas) and a game night. It rained all day and we all loved just staying here and celebrating this wonderful house that we get to call home.

On February 6th 4 years ago, we moved into this house. The twins had just turned 1, Eliza was 3, Isaac was 4 and Ashton had just turned 6. The month leading up to moving into the house was sheer craziness with 4 preschoolers (two of them wild babies), one 1/2 day kindergartner, a hard deadline for getting out of our rental house and into our new house that really wasn't finished at all. A couple weeks before our move-in date, I remember telling one of the subcontractors that we were moving in on February 6th to hurry him along and he looked at me in credulously and said, "This here house ain't gonna be ready." I told him ready or not, we'd be moving in. What else could we do?

Jo and Aja helped out a ton and my Mom and Dad came down for a few days to help us push through the craziness. The twins spent quite a few hours fussing and whining in their pack-and-play set up on the front walkway and we tried to engage the other kids in somewhat helpful little jobs to keep them out of trouble while Jared and I painted and urged contractors along and dealt with one problem after another (the wrong baseboards were sent, several doors were wrong, we had to fire one set of painters and bribe a new set...). Plus we had to pack up the rental house. I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Jared developed some sort of odd pain that felt like appendicitis and we spent the one evening that my parents had the kids so we could work like crazy on the house in the ER instead. We never found out quite what the pain was but he literally could barely move - might have been a kidney stone that broke up, might have been acute stress... I look back and have no idea how we managed to stumble through.

But somehow we did actually move in here on the target date of February 6th. One of the missing doors was the front door so we lived here for a week or so with just a piece of plastic for a front door and the first two weeks of living here involved living with a mess of contractors and projects. Plus we had the silly idea of showing our house during the Parade of Homes so that we could maybe get some homebuilding and interior design clients so we worked like crazy to make our house not only liveable but "showable" (the home show was mid February). As I write this, I realize we took on way more stress than we should have - but somehow at the time, this seemed like a good idea. So along with installing baseboards, finishing some painting, and the huge job of unpacking (not to mention taking care of 5 kids), we were hanging pictures, putting together crates of furniture we got wholesale through some connections and shopping for lots of odds and ends we needed to stage the house. In the end, even though the home show didn't result in many clients, it was very nice to have a deadline and push through so much stuff so that we could get on the business of living our lives again - and be able to do it in such a lovely and mostly-finished house.

October 2005

February 2006 (2 weeks after moving in we got the landscaping in)

Spring 2007 (I love all the flowers in the spring!)
February 6, 2010

Krawnchie Boo was a great house when we moved in. But four years later, Krawnchie Boo is so much more than a house - it's a beloved home. We've celebrated Christmases, Easters, Halloweens and tons of birthdays here. We've read 100's of books together and had over 200 Family Home Evenings and almost as many family movie nights, dance parties and game nights. We've cooked and eaten thousands of meals and made countless batches of cookies. We've hosted lots of little get-togethers and some great parties (our favorites: adult Halloween parties each year and our Children for Children concerts each Christmas). We've had literally hundreds of house guests. We've prayed and cried and celebrated and fought and laughed so much here. We've worked through big decisions and dealt with hard problems and had so much fun together within these walls. I've taught Joy School to 4 different Joy School groups here and hosted summer classes for the kids and their friends. We've cleaned every Saturday and we've gotten to know every nook and crannie. We've done piles of homework and piles and piles of laundry here. Jared and I have made a couple websites right here and sent them out to the world. We've seen our kids go from little babies to fun people who we love to hang out with.

We thought we'd build this house as a spec house - make it really nice so it would make us some money when we sold it after living in it for a couple years to avoid capital gains taxes. But we fell in love with this place - and since the house values went down, we're quite happily stuck here.

The once-pristine walls that we painted so carefully are now banged up, the cork flooring we had to drive to Vegas to pick up due to a shipping problem is now faded and worn, the furniture is a dinged up, the pricey maple doors and woodwork that we agonized over now has plenty of dents. But Krawnchie Boo doesn't really mind - so much living and loving is bound to leave its marks. And can a house really be a home without a few scars?

This afternoon, after doing a ton of cleaning and photographing the house so we could always remember how it looked at this point in our lives, we were celebrating with a smoothie when Krawnchie Boo talked to us. It was pretty darn cool. Through the speaker system built into the house, Ashton had this "text to speech" program he found on the computer say "Krawnchie Boo here, thank you for cleaning me. Can you please sing me Happy Birthday now?" The kids got these incredulous looks on their faces then broke into huge grins. We all sang happy birthday. Then the house said "thank you so much. I love you guys!" I was pretty impressed with Ashton for coming up with this! After that, Oliver and Silas kept everyone on their toes by saying things like "hey, don't make a mess! Krawnchie Boo hates messes!" or "We need to talk nice because Krawnchie Boo hates loudness and meanness." I guess having a house that talks and probably has feelings can be a good thing for your kids' behavior!

Everyone got a candle in their cookie and ice cream to blow out on behalf of Krawnchie Boo.

Here are everyone's favorite things about this house: (skip this if you want - I just recorded it for posterity- might be boring to anyone but us. I was sort of surprised by some people's favorite things.)

• Eliza -I love that our house can talk to us. And on regular days I love that whenever I'm in bed, I feel so safe. I like that there are lots of windows so we can see the beautiful view and I can draw it. I like that I have such pretty pictures on the wall in my room and all the colors look really nice together.
  
• Oliver - I love that I have tractor pictures and a drawer for all my special stuff in my room. I like that our roof keeps the rain from dropping on our heads in here. I like that we have a couch for reading books. I'm so glad our house has every food we want.
• Isaac - I love that we have a movie theater. I like that we can fit lots of stuff in our house and we have lots of cupboards for everything. I like that you can see the red rock mountains out the window and the wash. I like that we have a downstairs and I get to sleep down there.
• Ashton - I love the view and that we can play in the wash all the time. I like that we're really close to a bunch of hikes. The movie theater is awesome. I like that my room is really big and I have a huge closet and a cupboard for all my inventing stuff.
• Silas - I love that our house can really talk to us and I love that our house has computers in it and I have tractors and transformers to play with in my room and I have a picture of me and my cousins on a snowmobile in my room.
  
• Me - I love the mudroom where all the kids backpacks and shoes can be stashed away. I love the big kitchen and huge pantry that makes cooking so pleasant. I love all the paint colors and how they reflect all the colors of nature outside our windows. I love all the built-in storage. I love the speaker system that makes it so we can have music all the time (and love Pandora for the great mixes of music it makes for us). I love the way I can see the sun hit the red mountains from my bed each morning. I love the basement where the kids can be noisy and messy without driving me crazy and I love that we can have an adult party upstairs and a kid party downstairs at the same time. There are plenty of things I don't love and would have done differently if I had it to do over again - but there's a whole lot right about this house.
• Jared - He's not here right now but I think he'd say he loves his workbench and tools in the garage, the fact that he never has to mow the lawn (landscaping upkeep in included with our HOA fees), and the movie room (his baby when we built the house). I hope he's pretty darn proud of all the baseboards and casing because he did all that himself - serious big job. And I hope he's pretty pleased with the over all house since he was the general contractor on the house and oversaw every little thing that had to happen to get this house built - plus he worked alongside a lot of the subcontractors. Jared really built this house. I came up with the ideas and Jared made them into reality.