For the Love!...(all in an hour)

I know that there have been several posts dedicated to Jack and his talent for destruction. I honestly stand all amazed at the trappings of his mind. Is there another child out there to match him? I would bet money that he is truly ONE of a kind. The past few days have been filled with horrible parent moments, and I have to say that I failed the test over 75% of the time. My hand hurt from spankings, and my conscience was pricked from all the yelling and shouting I did. Jack and I have had this constant battle since he turned 18 months. I can honestly say that I LOVE him, and his personality. I love his sense of humor, his crazy curiosity, and his ability to figure things out.... he is the comic relief we need everyday! However... I don't love his constant need (and for him it does seem to be a need) to destroy, take apart and ruin all things around him. Last week (just for fun mind you) he torn every key off of our laptop. Shawn and I spent 2 hours putting each one back on. Yesterday I woke up with resolve, yet again, to handle Jack with patience. I have broken up my household cleaning chores to do them on different days, so I don't leave Jack and Lyv unsupervised for an extended period of time. I was doing my usual Thursday chore of cleaning the big floor, and this is what Jack decided to do: I was mad, but handled it without yelling or spanking (pat myself on the back) started to clean that up, and looked over to see Jack dancing around in my dust piles from sweeping. This added to my frustration and I did give Jack a quick spank and told him to go to his room and play with TOYS!! I finally got the bean bag mess cleaned up, went to get the kids' shoes on for storytime and found them in the room with this creative play: All in 1 hour! For the love! I love this boy and wouldn't trade him for anything, but I need to remind myself of this quite a bit, and ask his forgiveness for the many, MANY times that I fail the patience test with him. But after all that mess, he wore himself out and gave me the gift of time: 2 hours of that I was actually able to not worry about what he was destroying or getting into.

I wanna Rock......

You can't tell me that you don't just love Sam's annoyed look in this picture. I have a feeling that this is going to be showing up regularly in family photos from now on! How embarrassing for him to have us for parents:) Janice Joplin's Porsche

And to round out the Thanksgiving extravaganza we headed to Cleveland to the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame. Shawn has been itching to visit this and it was loaded with music memorabilia galore! From Elvis outfits to Janice Joplin's scarves; Michael Jackson's Thriller mask and jacket to Curt Kobaine's death certificate - it has a little bit of everything there. They had a great Beatles collection, and were featuring Women of Rock - so Lady Gaga, Shakira, Madonna, Aretha Franklin, etc. were all featured. The only downside was that you can't take pictures in the actual "museum" part, so we don't have any cool shots of any of this cool stuff. Shawn sat and worshipped on the ground of Steven Tyler's scarfed microphone stand and costume he wore for "Pink". I had to drag him away! It was here we said farwell to the Tolboe's and hopefully it won't be nearly as long until we get together again!

Kirtland, Ohio - Thanksgiving Weekend

Kirtland, Ohio was about 30 minutes from Erie so we took advantage of being so close to the church history sites. I have to say the Newel K. Whitney store is one of my favorite places. There is so much history that took place in the early part of the restoration of the church there. It has such a great spirit present there, and the majority of the building is original!The front doors are the original front doors of the store, and the ones that the Prophet Joseph Smith would have walked through the day he arrived in Kirtland.On the steps of the Kirtland Temple. The temple isn't owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is owned by the Community of Christ a break off church formed after Brigham Young became prophet and headed west to Utah. They have maintained the building along with our church, and give tours of this beautiful building. It is the first temple built in church history.


Kirtland was great - and we ate at a killa' Mexican restaurant that night, so it was great.

Tolboe's for Thanksgiving

Lyv and Claire

This year for Thanksgiving we meet up with our friends from medical school the Tolboe's! We became great friends in Iowa and have kept in touch since, trying to find a way to reconnect. They live in Michigan so we found a place that was halfway - Erie, PA. We stayed at an indoor waterpark called Splash Lagoon, and partied all day. It was the perfect, relaxing vacation. The kids all had a great time each day. Sam and Brooklyn went off on their own and rode all of the slides. It was really strange to not be watching over him constantly, but he had a blast and came home alive! Jack and Lyv loved the kids' pool. Jack was constantly on the slide there, and Lyv managed a few rides down with the help of Shawn or me. Jack and Landon

They also had a wave pool, which everyone loved with the exception of Jack. After getting knocked over by the waves a few times decided he'd had enough. Lyv stayed in it with Shawn for a long time, not seeming to mind.

Shawn and Christian had a blast cuddling on a double tube down the Cyclone ride, which is like a giant toilet bowl. They couldn't resist going faster together than they could alone! I just wish I had some photage of them in action. It was great, there was no slaving over the stove, lots of movies, laughter and catching up with friends.

The Princess and the Frog

Our weather here has been unseasonably warm this month. With the exception of some rainy days, it has been ideal. Jack and Lyv love being outside, rain or shine. Here they are Lyv in her pink ensemble and Jack in his froggy boots splashing in the puddles waiting for Sam to come home.

I've been trying to try more things with Lyv's hair and I managed to squeeze some piggy tails the other day. Lyv just seems to be so big lately. It makes me sad to see that she's really no longer a baby anymore. She is sure cute though!

Connected... finally

The Saturday before Halloween (Oct. 29th) we had a huge snow fall. The snow was so wet that it just turned to slush, and as it continued to fall, it grew heavier and heavier. The kids and I went out to shovel and build a snowman. This was the scene prior to the most horrifying sound in the world..... My happy little heifer! Lyv had had it with the snow. The boys and Frosty the one eyed pirate snowman

And then a rumbling snapping roar... seriously that is the best way to describe it. I was walking up the step to help Lyv and I saw the tree limb come falling down. I yelled for the boys to come inside, because I was sure that the entire tree was coming down. I was scared to death - a live power and cable line were down. I couldn't get a hold of Shawn who was in surgery and the electric company was being bombarded by calls from others who had outages. In the words of Jack, "I just freaked out!" Here's the result.

We were SOOOOO blessed to not have had more damage, and most importantly the kids had decided to play on the other side of the house. We always play by the trampoline and slide, the yard is bigger there, and for whatever reason we went to the opposite side of the yard, and I'm forever grateful for that prompting that saved us from more serious problems. We are also so greatly blessed to have had great friends, the Thun's, who took us in for two nights and two days until our power was restored!!! Thank you Josh and Sam, we are so glad to have you here.

Even with power outages, Halloween must go on. We had planned to have a Halloween dinner at our house, but moved the location to the Weston's instead. We all made spooky food to eat and let the kids play since we had a boat load of candy from our trunk or treating!

Our internet was out for an additional week and a half, and I feel like I was so out of it. It is amazing how much I rely upon the internet for bills, news, communication, and entertainment. I did get a lot of projects done that I wouldn't have otherwise, so that is good, but I'm glad to be connected again. I vowed that I would move home to Idaho if the power went out again, yet here I am! I guess I love Shawn more than Idaho, but we are seriously looking into buying a generator. Talking with our neighbors have made me realize that that is just how people here deal with outages, and that we should bite the bullet and join them.

Monticello

Sam didn't have school on Veteran's day so we packed it up and headed south to Virgina to see my two BYU roomies Emily and Bekah in Charolettesville. We stopped in Hershey, PA on our way down and toured the factory there. We may or may not have come away with a bag full of delectable goodies! We stayed with Emily and Eric and Bekah and her new beau came over. It was great to see both of them.On Saturday we toured Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson. It was a beautiful day and the kids loved being outside more than anything. The house was great, and something I always wanted to see. I loved the library - all of those old books. However, my camera battery had died and I was able to get a few snaps of the visit by rubbing the battery on my jeans! T.J.'s inventiveness inspired it....On our way home on Sunday we stopped in Kensington, MD and walked around the Washington, D.C. temple grounds. This is one of my favorite temples. It is just beautiful! The week before (Nov. 5th) Sam had his last Soccer game! Complete with hair cut, he went out on a bang. He played goalie for the first time, and felt like a champ after getting his medal! Great job Sammy boy.