Bad Bad Blogger

I can't believe I've been such a slack blogger the past week.  I have no good reason either.  I'm not sick, I'm not out of town, I haven't really even been watching the Olympics all that much.  I pretty much have prescribed myself to bedrest for the next 2 1/2 months.  The only comfortable postion right now is laying down on my side.  It helps relieve back pain, pelvic pressure, and lung compression.  It also is a lot more comfortable laying on my bed watching TV with my children next to me instead of on the couch with my children on top of me.  Anyway, just wanted to let you all know I'm fine.  Just lazy.

The other day as my kids and I were folding laundry at the end of the day, Bradley proposed that we play a game he read about in a Highlights magazine.  The goal is to name at least 10 body parts that only have three letters.  It's more difficult than it sounds.  I shamefully taught my kids two bad words in the process to try to get to #9 and #10 more quickly.  I warned them though that they were not appropriate words to say around their friends or at church or ever. But tonight at family scripture study we read:

Mosiah 12:5
"Yea, and I will cause that they shall have burdens lashed upon their backs; and they shall be driven before like a dumb ass."

So I guess it's ok to say one of the words in church in the correct context.  And if you are wondering what the other word is, it starts with a T and infants love them.

Can you name 10 appropriate body parts with only three letters?

Three Year Olds

He was so excited to find his lost aquamarine cup behind the couch, so he dumped the milk from the Cars cup into it and didn't mind a bit standing in a puddle of milk while he drank it from a straw more than twice the depth of the cup.  It was totally to be expected because I mopped the floors last night.

God's Love

A while ago my husband told the kids that all things beautiful in the world are God's way of telling us he loves us.  Saturday evening as we walked through the Walmart parking lot, Sarah said, "Mommy, those sparkles in the street are God telling us he loves us." 

I've never thought about it before, but I suppose God can tell us he loves us, even through the asphalt.

I testify that God does indeed love each and everyone of us.  I can feel it.  I can feel it even without looking at the street.

Breaking My Vow

I'm usually opposed (and so is my husband) to the stereotypical "My Husband is so Awesome" post.  At one point I vowed to never post one, but I am breaking that vow today.

So here it is:

My husband is awesome.
(Sorry, babe, I had to do it because you are, and this is technically my journal and I want my posterity to know they had a very cool Great Great Great Great Grandfather.  You know, family history stuff.)

One of his New Year's resolutions was to be a better husband.  Not that he wasn't awesome before, but there is always room for improved awesomeness.  There is definitely opportunity for me to be a better wife such as maybe planning ahead for dinner more than one day a week.  Anyway, he's been faithfully keeping his resolution.  It only takes small and simple things to make me happy.  Wiping down the kitchen table and sweeping the kitchen floor for me at 9PM every night makes me VERY happy.  I know that sounds lame, but it amazes me how such small and simple things can make such a huge difference.  And those are just a couple of the simple things he's done in the past 7 weeks.

I told him the other night that righteousness is HOT!!

I can't believe I just blogged about my husband's awesomeness, but he deserves it every now and then.  :) Even after nearly 10 years of marriage and almost 7 children later, I'm still in love with him.  I even love him if he doesn't sweep the floor or makes me watch The Bachelor in solitude. 

I'll be back tomorrow for more about me and my life of pregnancy complaints, potty training, and maybe even a picture of one or more of my ragamuffin children.

Now here is a picture that Emily drew.  She asked me, "Do you think this is a picture of a butt, or someone kneeling?"  You decide.

3 More Months

Per request, here is a picture of my belly.  The little guy decided to finally make my uterus pop forward and relieve me of some back pain.  Six months down and three to go.  Notice the hair cut too.  I got it cut today.  It's been 8 months and long overdue.  I feel like a new woman.  Off to the doctor tomorrow for a glucose tolerance test and RhoGam shot.  I can't wait to drink my fruit punch in the morning!  I'm surprised one of the kids hasn't drank (or is it drunk?) it during this past month that's it's been in the refrigerator.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Winter Wonderland

Today we woke up to a winter wonderland. Since my husband and I knew it probably wouldn't last long, we woke the kids up at 7AM and told them to get dressed because it was time to play. Sarah and Emily were eager to go outside. Bradley and Wendy tried to opt to stay inside and enjoy the view in the warmth. Jason was sound asleep and we forced him to finally wake up. Rachel just always goes along for the ride with whatever we do.

We went outside at 7:15AM. The kids stomped around in the slushy snow, complained that they wanted gloves, and complained about their feet being too cold. But since we knew this is a once in a decade opportunity for them to experience snow in their very own yard, we were good parents and forced to them to play anyway.

I think they did have a good time despite the cold and ill-prepared wardrobes.

They made a snowman.  Now that I've looked more closely at the picture, I can't tell what they used for a mouth.  It looks like a dog turd, but I'm pretty sure that it's not.  I'll have to ask them later.

Jason wasn't too happy about his canvas sneakers getting soaked by the snow, so he sat down and cried about it.

Emily

Bradley

Sarah

Wendy

Jason

Rachel

Daddy took a bite.

The novelty wore off after about 45 minutes and they settled themselves snuggled with blankets on the couch and watched Spongebob.

Then they drank hot chocolate.

The snow is gone now.  It was a fun day!

Snow?!

It looks like Heat Miser and Snow Miser came to a compromise to have snow in South Town just in time for Valentine's Day weekend.  I just hope it's still here by morning so I can get a picture and so the kids can see it.  It just started at bedtime and Wendy exclaimed, "This is the best night EVER!"  She also told me earlier today, when I told her it might snow, that she was going to ask Santa for ice skates for the whole family!  I definitely don't think the snow will stick until next Christmas, but it is quite a novelty for the evening.  Yay for snow!

Blog Transition

Ok, so the formatting on my blog looks funky right now on Internet Exploerer. I don't know why. I'm pretty sure it has to do with IE and not anything I did. I am hoping to give my blog a redesign in the next couple of months. I was informed that Blogger will no longer support FTP users, which includes me. FTP users are those that host their blog on their own server, which I do. And if that makes me sound all technically advanced and smart, don't let me fool you. It's only because my husband, by profession, is a web developer. He set this blog up for me about 5 years ago which was before Blogger allowed you to use your own domain name. If you wanted your own domain name, you had to host it yourself. Since we already had a hosting plan we were paying for, we just added melindabeth to the list. A couple years later Blogger came up with the custom domain option where you can have your own domain name, but the blog portion is hosted at blogspot. Anyway, since I'm an FTPer and host my own site, I will have to go through this whole wizard thingy later this month and get it switched over. I'm hoping that it's not troublesome. I'm sure my husband would/will help me, but I hate to bother him with it. So during the transition, I'm going to try to get a new design because I'm getting bored with mine. We'll see how it goes....


In other news....

Before the kids go to bed every night, they write in their journals. Sarah draws pictures because she's not fluent in writing yet. Tonight she drew a guy and a girl dancing under a disco ball. I thought that was cool.

Oh, also, today celebrates the day my husband and I got engaged 10 years ago.  Yay!

Oh, and today the kids were dancing.  Wendy turned the music off and Rachel stopped and froze in her position.  She thought they were playing freeze dance.  It cracked me up.

Dreaded Oatmeal

Today my kids decided to make a mess while my back was turned.  It made me mad.  I told them that I was going to feed them oatmeal for lunch if they didn't get it cleaned in 10 minutes. They failed.  They got oatmeal.  There was wailing and gnashing of teeth among Bradley and Sarah.  They chose to continue cleaning while hungry and get something better to eat once the cleaning was finished.  I don't think they ate their preferred lunch until about 3:00PM. I think I've found a good strategy.

Monday

Buddies.

My tomato seedlings under the grow lights. The peppers haven't sprouted yet.

Sunday

Bradley put a package of flour tortillas on the hot stovetop. If only he had centered it a little more. Thankfully with a little Goo Gone and a little elbow grease, it came off pretty easily.

Sarah's new dress that we gave her for her birthday. I bought it at the same time I got Emily's Christmas dress at Sears.com. I just couldn't resist it.

(Sarah is not very good at fake smiling.)

Her little sister is learning the art of fake smiling too. I held the camera up to her and she said, "CHEESE!"

Stuffed

Today my husband took the oldest three kids to church for a service project. It was an organized activity mostly involving yard work around the building. Afterward the ward celebrated with a pig roast and lots of food. Since tomorrow is Fast Sunday, my husband thought he should stuff himself silly. I don't know why he thinks he needs to do that because we all know we are more starving the day after Thanksgiving than any other normal morning. Anyway, my husband can't pass up good free food.

When he came home he complained of being too stuffed to do anything. He always likes to drink lots of water before a fast, but there just wasn't any space in his stomach to do so, so he had to delay beginning his fast. He went upstairs to do some work on his computer while leaving me downstairs with the kids watching Wow Wow Wubzi. After about 20 minutes I went upstairs to talk to him and he was in our bedroom laying on the bed reading a book. He saw my look of surprise and he quickly explained how uncomfortable he was and that he could hardly sit in his chair because his belly was so full.

My response?

"Now sit there feeling like that for three months!"

He quickly realized the silliness of his relatively temporary complaint and I think gained some true empathy for his pregnant wife. That made me happy and I was very forgiving of his complaint.

I've just recently reached the stage of the shortness of breath while in the sitting position. Rachel loves to sit on my lap and I've made her quite unhappy several times by not letting her. I feel like I'm suffocating when she's on my lap. I can see the local news headline:

"Pregnant mother of six suffocates to death from 2 year old sitting on lap."

How sad would that be?

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Every morning I try to make a little progress upstairs before going downstairs for breakfast. This usually means we don't eat breakfast until 10AM, but I'm totally fine with that because none of us are anxious to hang out downstairs where the temperature is about 67 degrees in the morning.

This weekend in the bedrooms and office organization process, most of the excess junk and trash made it's way into the hallway. I've been slowly throwing things out, putting them in their places, and tidying up. This morning I decided to take care of the 8 six gallon buckets of food that were in the hallway. (And to all concerned family and friends, I did not lift them, but kind of rolled them into the closet.) I did lift a couple, but they didn't weigh any more than my 34 pound son that I pretty much carry up to bed every night.

Anyway, I was so proud of myself and satisfied that I accomplished something already that morning. I knew I was going to pay a price for it later in the day with some posterior pelvic pain, but I thought it would be worth it. I was soon to be proven wrong. At about noon my husband called me and asked me to do a favor for him on his computer. Now keep in mind that the food closet is the closet in the office that has my husband's computer. So since mother and children are like magnets, my children followed me to my husband's room. Bradley, Sarah, Wendy, and Jason were using the closet as their "clubhouse" and I let them go in there to hang out while I completed my assigned task. I assumed that there wasn't any danger in a closet of several buckets and was safer than around all the computer equipment. Well, I assumed wrong. I forgot to foresee that the wire shelving would be a temptation for small children. They must have been playing monkeys or something. I soon heard a huge CRASH, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, followed by some whimpers and crying. The 6 foot long wire shelving had torn out of the dry wall causing 2 kids to be buried by 23 #10 cans. We were fortunate that no major injuries occured, except for a minor goose egg on Sarah's head. She was reluctant to admit that she was one of the monkeys hanging on the shelf. She felt really bad. And unfortunately for my blog it wasn't a moment I felt like taking a picture of at the time. I wasn't angry at my kids because I understand that they couldn't predict that drywall isn't strong enough to hold all that weight. I was just angry at the situation. Bradley told me that he couldn't stop shaking when it happened because it scared him so much. Wendy told me that she thinks spiders are going to come out of the holes in the drywall.

So, all my progress was in vain because now I have 23 #10 cans and 6 large peanut butter jars in my hallway until I figure out a way to fix this shelf. ***SIGH*** I guess I can use it as a lesson on physics and the properties of drywall for school.

I look forward to a day when I can take two steps forward and only one step back.

At least this little boy helped me to put away the 4 boxes of Great Value saltines I bought at the grocery store on Saturday. Go Jason!

Going Heirloom

For the past couple of years I have been wanting to grow some heirloom vegetable plants. An heirloom plant is basically a plant that you can collect the seeds to grow more plants in subsequent years. Most plants and seeds purchased at local nurseries or home improvement stores are hybrids which means that they are genetically altered to grow fruit that is high in quality and disease resistant and good for mass production. However, the seeds from hybrid plants are unreliable and if collected and sown will not likely produce a similar product the following year. Don't ask me why this is. I'm not a botanist, just a gardener. Anyway, I just thought it would be cool to have heirloom seeds so that 1) we can save money each year by not having to buy pepper and tomato plants, and 2) to take us one step closer in being self-sufficient in the whole gardening thing.

This year I finally remembered to order my seeds early so I could start some bell pepper and tomato seedlings indoors. I think I found a good supplier at http://www.territorialseed.com/. They have a good catalog you can order for free too, if you are interested in seeing what they have to offer. (I was up until about 2AM last night browsing through it.)

Bell peppers and tomatoes need to be started indoors 6-8 weeks before the last frost date. They are not good plants to be directly sown in the ground in the Spring because they have a long growing period. So last night I started my peppers and tomatoes. I am hoping really hard that this will work. As soon as they sprout I am going to put them under some florescent lighting for about 16-18 hours per day. I haven't had the best of luck starting seeds indoors in past years. Natural sunlight seems to make the seedlings very leggy and weak. I am determined to do it right this time. I even gave my precious seeds a nice heating pad to warm their bottoms because they germinate best at temps of 70-85 degrees. I even put a thermometer in the soil to monitor their temp. So now the hoping begins. I also told my kids tonight that they are welcome to pray for Mommy's seeds.

Here is my setup:

I put the Jiffy Seed Starter Greenhouse in my husband's office because it is the warmest room in the house with several computers running. The heating pad is still necessary though. Unfortunately the heating pad has an automatic shut-off so I have to run up there several times a day to turn it back on if I want the soil temp to be just right. (I'm too cheap to invest in a real seed starting heating pad.) I also have an aluminum cake pan and lid with some more green peppers. As of now I have a hopeful 30 tomato plants and 44 green peppers. We aren't going to plant them all. There will be some lucky neighbors and friends if my experiment is a success.

But this whole seed starting thing leads me to wonder if the early pioneers ever ate tomatoes and peppers? Starting seeds indoors is kind difficult even in this modern world. I'm not sure that the pioneers would've had sufficient light and heat inside their cabins to get high quality seedlings. If anyone has the answer to this I would greatly appreciate the insight. From what I read online, tomatoes and peppers don't seem to be mentioned as part of a pioneer diet. It seems they stuck to corn, potatoes, beans, squash, and greens. I suppose that also means that the pioneers didn't eat BLT's. How sad. Maybe they were satisfied with just BL's.

** A Post for Women **

As I've mentioned before, pregnancy is not my favorite thing. I'm in my sixth month and the relaxin horomone is kicking in and making my pelvis feel like jelly. It causes pain and discomfort, mostly at the end of the day.

I will say and admit that one of the benefits of pregnancy is the pregnancy boobs. I don't recall ever enjoying my boobs so much. I don't know if it is a boy baby thing, the supplemental progesterone I took the first 12 weeks, or if it's just where all my extra fat is going right now, but it's fun to be able to fill out my bra. The other day Rachel was sitting on my lap facing me. I was wearing a V-neck shirt and she could see my cleavage. Normally "cleavage" is not a vocabulary word I use when describing my physical appearance. She pointed to the crevice and looked at me with confusion. Then she said, "Butt." My two year old daughter thinks I'm growing a butt on my chest. Unfortuately, my second butt will probably be gone by the end of the summer. But hopefully my primary butt will be back to a more normal size. For now, I'm going to enjoy all my butts and feed them well....

A belly picture will be coming soon....(for you, Lori.)

Happy Birthday, Sarah!

I was going to keep with the rainbow theme this year, but I forgot to buy regular M&M's this weekend. I didn't think Skittles would go too well with the chocolate frosting, so I used some Christmas green ones and stenciled a "6" with chocolate sprinkles.

She loved the pretty ballerina dress that my parents sent.

Jason was jealous of Rachel's head injury and he thought he needed one too. He fell backwards and banged his head on the kids' table. He recovered quickly. When he gets older and goes bald, he will have a nice scar to show.

Sarah had a great birthday!!