We're Back, and LIfe's Changing

Well, we returned last night from a fabulous Spring Break vacation. Last Friday, my brother Andy and his family drove down from Wisconsin to our place. We then drove on Saturday to Henry Horton State Park in Tennessee. We stayed there in cabins for Sat. and Sun. nights. On Easter Sunday we were able to attend Church at the small branch in Shelbyville, TN. We shared a ham dinner in the cabin and later that afternoon even got to have an Easter egg hunt with the kids. We got up bright and early Monday morning to complete our trek to Cape San Blas, Florida. We drove all day, with a stop in Panama City for Alesha and I to buy our groceries for the week while the Dads played with the kids at a park. We arrived at out lovely beach house, right on the beach. Cape San Blas is a 20 mile long peninsula that juts out into the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida panhandle. Monday and Tuesday were a little chilly (highs in the 60s), but the rest of the week warmed up nicely. Tuesday morning Rick, Dallin, Dailie, Andy, Spencer and Clark all went fishing on a chartered boat. I guess they didn't have a very successful trip, not near what is usual and custonary, but Dailie did catch a shark!!!! We ate it for dinner that night, along with some other fresh seafood Andy, Rick and Dallin picked up in a local market. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we hung out on the beach. We built a HUGE sandcastle. It was far enought back from the water's edge that it survived each night, so we added to it each day. We found shells and dug for crabs and spent some time at the State Park at the tip of the peninsula. I'll be posting pictures very soon. I just wanted to get the info out there first. Saturday we drove all the way home so that we could be back for the new bishop to be called in our ward : ). Guess who it is? Rick was sustained today as the Bishop of the Peoria Ward. That's how our life will be changing. It's 5:20 and Rick is still not home. Sunday's will be different around here, as well as other days as well. I know that blessings will come to our family as Rick serves the Lord in this capacity. There will be challenges I'm sure, but I know that this is where the Lord wants us to be, and where he needs us to serve.

Go Away Germs

Well, it finally hit us. We have managed to stay healthy throughout the winter, and frankly I was feeling a little smug about it. It finally hit us, starting with Audri and Daniel last week. Rick was very sick over the weekend, and just went back to work today, missing two days. Eliza has yet to go to school this week (though I think she'll go back tomorrow for one day before Spring Break starts), and Dallin didn't feel so well last night. Dallin woke up and thought he'd need to stay home, but I ended up taking him in around 9:30. I have to admit that I don't fell 100%, but I'm hoping to get by with mild symptoms only. That's all mom's are allowed anyway, right?

Our Smurf

Apparently we put Daniel to bed on Friday night with a blue marker. He was coloring with it before he went to bed. Needless to say, we failed to get it from him (nor was it a good idea to begin with), and he woke up looking like a Smurf. This picture doesn't even fully capture it, but you get the idea, anyway...

Chili Cook off

Friday night, our ward had a Chili cook off and talent show. Our family ended up contributing 3 pots of chili and two talent acts. Rick and I each made chili to take. Rick created a new recipe based on a meal he enjoyed in Mexico, called chiliquiles. I took my white bean chicken chili. Dallin was also an integral part in the Deacon's Quorum's chili. Actually, he and the counselor over Deacon's made it together. Also, Dailie played a piano piece and Dallin played In Dreams from Lord of the Rings on his violin for the talent portion of the evening. Well, we brought home two awards for the chili!!! Rick's chili was awarded the Hottest Chili Award, and the Deacon's Quorum chili was awarded the favorite, because it was gone first. It was a great night, and we ovbiously had fun with the cooking!!!!

More on Locks of Love

Here's a little more info on the charity I donated my hair to, straight off their website:

Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. We meet a unique need for children by using donated hair to create the highest quality hair prosthetics. Most of the children helped by Locks of Love have lost their hair due to a medical condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure. The prostheses we provide help to restore their self-esteem and their confidence, enabling them to face the world and their peers.

When Audri was 4, she also donated her hair to Locks of Love. At the time, her Uncle Kevin had lost his hair due to chemotherapy. We visited Kevin, and Audri saw him without his hair. She understood that there were children out there who could benefit from her hair. I just thought it would be something productive to do with my hair, since I'm often indecisive about what to do with it (grow it out, cut it short, etc.).

Locks of Love

So, I've been growing my hair out for some time to donate to Locks of Love. Last night was the night. I wanted to get it done before we left for Spring Break, and I had just enough to cut 10 inches off. Here are some before and after pictures!!!

Before, front view : )

Before, from the back. The ends were getting way too wispy!!!

After- the new me!! It's short!

It's an A-line cut- pretty short in the back, but I like it!!!

Musings on Motherhood

I have decided that motherhood (and perhaps life in general) is a delicate balance of structure and flexibility. It seems that both are needed. Just when you have everything planned, something throws you for a loop. For example, Audri and Daniel are sick today. If I was too stuck on my plan for the day, this could really throw a wrinkle in things, and I think in my earlier stages of motherhood, I might have let it. Not that I am "so experienced", nor do I have all the answers, but I think I have learned that you make a plan, and then you expect changes. I think I'm pondering on this because I have seen the need for both in the last couple of days. On Monday, I signed Audri up for violin lessons. Later in the day I took Dallin, Dailie and Eliza to piano lessons. I began to think about our musical commitments in this family, both monetarily and time, and decided something needed to change. Now, heaven forbid we quit something (those of you who know me know that's difficult for me to do : )), instead I decided if we were going to be committed to this many instruments, we needed to get more serious about practicing. Previously I had asked that practicing happen, and it was mediocre at best. So, I became the Practice Nazi!!! I've make little index cards for each day of the week with the available practice time broken down into half hour slots. Each child is asked to sign up for a half hour slot for each instrument. This includes the piano, trumpet, and violin for Dallin, the cello and piano for Dailie, the violin for Audri (she starts after Spring Break), and the piano for Eliza. Then, I post each day's card on the refrigerator, so I know what instrument I should be hearing at all times!!! We'll see how this works....So, that was my motherhood structure at work, and today is the motherhood flexibility at work. Anyway, I was thinking about it, and thought I'd just write a post about it.

Another day's topic on motherhood- why didn't I ever fathom the time and energy it would take to feed all these people?!? I'm talking largely of the effort to keep food in the home. I feel like I'm always at the grocery store. When I come back, the fridge and pantry are packed full. How can it cycle back around so frequently? If you've stuck with this post this long, you must be a mother too. Either that or you are one awesome person who has sympathy for those of us in this "profession".

Pictures from Nauvoo and Birthday

The Sarah Granger Kimball home, where the idea for the Relief Society originated.
The family at the Scovil bakery, holding up our gingerbread cookies.
Audri blowing out her nine candles!!

Nauvoo and Birthday

Saturday morning, Dallin and I got up at 4 AM to go on a Youth Temple Trip to Nauvoo. A few hours later, Rick left with the rest of the kids and met up with us. The kids stayed at the Nauvoo Stake Center with some other kids in our ward, while Rick and I attended a Ward Temple session. Afterwards we did a little touring in Nauvoo. We visited the Sarah Granger Kimball home, the Temple stone quarry and the Scovil Bakery (a must stop in Nauvoo when you're with kids, since they hand out cookies). Right now there seems to be some difficulties getting the pictures on, so maybe I'll post them later. We were trying to decide whether or not to go into the Sarah Granger Kimball home, and I said, "Let's go. There's probably two Grandmas in there that would love to see you kids." We went in, and when we asked Daniel who the Sister missionary giving the tour was, he said, "Grandma!". Of course she loved that. On the way home we stopped at a Chinese resaurant for dinner and got home in time to move our clocks forward and go to bed. Sunday Rick went to Pontiac for a High Council visit. We he got home we had Audri's birthday dinner. Later, in between Dallin and Rick's Home Teaching visits, we had cake and ice cream, and Audri opened her presents. It was a busy, but fun weekend. Today, the house is quiet again. At least for a few more minutes until the kids start returning from school.

Audri's Golden Birthday Party

Sunday, Audri turns 9 on the 9th, her Golden birthday, so tonight she had her Golden Birthday Party. We decorated the Dining Room with Gold decorations. As the girls arrived they did a craft, then we played some games, including a treasure hunt where they "followed the rainbow" to the pot of gold (the goodie bags).
The evening included dinner for the 8 3rd grade girls in attendance (Eliza's at the table as well). The gourmet meal consisted of mini corn dogs, potato chips, strawberries and veggies with dip (the veggies were mostly to make me feel better). Don't be fooled by those little bodies, they had no problem downing the food!!!
Audri opted for brownie sundaes instead of a cake, which was just fine by me!!! So, I wrote in the brownies with white chocolate and stuck the candles in them as well. It's hard to believe Audri is 9 (ok, she will be on Sunday)!!!!!
Thought I'd take the chance to tell you about the new birthday tradition in our house. A little before Dailie's birthday, Rick and I went on a date (a nice thing to do now and then). I got to plan the evening, so we got gyros for dinner and then went to Fired Up, a "paint your own pottery" studio in Peoria Heights. We decided to paint a Celebration Plate and mug (the mug is large enough to be used as a soup bowl). We plan to use them for multiple occasions, including birthdays. It was decided that the plate should be used for the entire week of someone's birthday. Dailie was the first to get to use them. We think it will be a fun tradition, another way of celebrating a member of the family on their birthday. By the way, I painted the plate and Rick painted the mug. We'll have to post a picture of the mug eventually.

Honorable Mention at the Economics Poster Contest

In Social Studies Dailie designed a poster for the Bradley University Regional Economiic Poster Contest. Of the roughly 250 entrants, Dailie was chosen as one of the 24 finalists. There were 12 winners, and 12 Honorable Mention. She was given an Honorable Mention. All 24 will go on to a State contest. Yesterday she got to go to a reception for all the winners at Bradley University. In this picture she's standing in front of the display showing the Honorable Mention posters.

Dailie's poster was on Specialization. She did a very cute drawing of four states showing their specialization. Hopefullly you can see it in this picture.

A DI Prop, Parcheesi pieces and a 2 year old...

What do you get when you mix a prop for a Destination Imagination skit, pieces to a Parcheesi game and 2 year old Daniel? Family problem solving time. Here's the story:

This is the DI prop, a cleverly designed support for a very heavy backdrop. The PVC pipe that you can see is about 7 feet tall, and indeed has a hole near the bottom for inserting a pole into. The pipe is stuck in cement in the bucket. Now, so this would not be too heavy (it has to be carried into the performing area by the team), Dallin mixed lava rock with the cement. This worked well, except that the cement did not bond to the lava rock (an important piece of info for later).

These are the Parcheesi pieces. Daniel got the game out just before dinner and was playing with it. Seems somewhat harmless, doesn't it. However, after dinner as we were cleaning up the game, we only saw one piece. We asked Daniel where the others were, and he walked right over to the prop (shown above) and pointed to the hole!!! We asked him to get them out and he said "Little boys can't do that." After trying to "dump" the pieces out (which merely resulted in a lot of cement pieces falling on the floor), we were able to remove the PVC pipe from the cement (it hadn't bonded either), leaving a 2 inch diameter hole.

Daniel's hand was the only one that could reach into the hole, so we spent the next 20 minutes "coaching" Daniel on retrieving the pieces. He did a pretty good job, although we ran into a few more difficulties. When we got down to the last few pieces, there were some lava rock that had fallen in the way. Daniel was able to pull some of them out, but at one point, he had a hold of a rock that was too big to pull out. Remember the monkey with the apple in a jar? Anyway, we were able to successfully retrieve all of the pieces and once again have a complete Parcheesi game. Stayed tuned for the next exciting adventure....

Seussical

This is Dailie. I am in the Washington school play. It's called Seussical, which is a combination of Seuss stories. I am a who. The performance is on May 20th.

The Jeffs Enter the World of Blogging

Ok, the time has come for our family to enter the world of blogging. Be patient with me. We'll see how this goes....