Jacob-isms

We are watching one of Rachael's friends while her parents are out of town this weekend. Here is a Jacob quote (said out of the blue during dinner)...

"Kiley, you're dreamy. I want to kiss you."

Dreamy? Kissing? Where did I go wrong? And where did he get dreamy from?

He was playing battleship with my Dad a few weeks ago and after his turn he said to my Dad...

"Carry on, carry on!"

Weird. And funny.

It must be all my good parenting that makes him say such classy things.

Here is something I am trying to get used to my Junior High student saying. As he is eating breakfast at 6:30 am (I am getting a bottle ready for Matthew) he says:

"Oh, by the way, I need a three ring folder."

My heart jumps - "Oh, what for?"

"Reading. For an assignment."

Me - "You don't need it like now do you?"

"No," (I relax a moment too soon) "just by my reading class today."

Is it possible teachers tell kids they have to bring something extra to school last minute? Probably not, but that's how they are described to me. Those kids! Just wait until I have 4 asking for things last minute. I'll need a whole storage room of extra stuff that they might possibly spring on me that they need last minute. I'll be prepared for anything! :)

Addictions

We all have them right?

I have a daughter with a not so normal "nervous habit", "addiction", "tick", whatever you may call it. It is called Trichitillimania, and basically, it is a disorder where the person pulls their hair out. This can be hair on their head, arms, eyebrows, eyelashes, etc.

My daughter was diagnosed a few years ago and we went to counselor over a summer back then to help me and her learn coping techniques. Unfortunately, there aren't any counselors that specialize in Trich here in Utah, but the counselor did the best she could.

It is a disorder that will come and go for their lifetime. People who have it may not pull for months or years and then start again. Once they start, it is terribly hard to stop. I relate it to me trying to eat just one cookie, or one M&M, or reading one blog. :) And when she comes to me with tears in her eyes telling me she is pulling and just can't stop it rips my heart out because I know personally of the struggle and battle that can go on inside.

Well, she has been having problems again after 9 months of not pulling. She mainly pulls her eyelashes and eyebrows. There have been times where she has had no eyelashes and almost no eyebrows at all. She will pull them all out. Right now, her eyelashes are gone on the top lids, and nearly gone on the bottom lids. Her eyebrows are patchy. This is the first time she has had a problem during school. She begged me this morning to let her stay home and cried yesterday as she realized after a day of pulling at school that kids might notice and say something to her.

I can't tell you how worried I was that kids would tease her today. But she came home and said no one said anything to her. How I pray the kids will be nice. It's so hard to tell if 3rd graders will even notice. We are working on coping techniques and what to do when she starts to feel like pulling. We went inside the school yesterday and talked to her teacher to get her teacher involved which was really hard for my daughter because she is so embarrassed when it happens. But I can't be there when she is in school to help her when she feels the urge and my daughter needed someone she could talk to. Her teacher was very loving, nice, and supportive. I really appreciated it.

Now we pray for the eyelashes to grow back, and grow back fast. It is hard to see her big eyes without anything there. It will take at least a month before there will be noticeable lashes there and I just need her friends to keep being her friend and like her no matter what. The things we pray for for our kids. This is one of the things that makes parenting so hard. I hate seeing my kids go through stuff. I wish I could take it all away... (especially when I am the one who gave her the anxiety gene in the first place!) I realize kids- especially now- need to be strong for all that they will encounter in the future. It is just so difficult to watch. And as they get older, the harder it is. I can't imagine what it will be like in another 5 years. I don't think I'll ever get used to it or that it will get any easier. But things will be okay. I will trust that the Lord will not give my children challenges they cannot handle - and lets face it - we want our kids to be tough, right?

The forgotten anniversary

So, Ryan went to Roundtable last night and came home with a frosty and a card for me. How thoughtful! I read the card and said it was cute and then started eating my yummy frosty. He asked if I 'got' the card. I said I read it. I picked it up again and still didn't see anything special. He showed me the 'happy 15th anniversary' on the inside.

Now, not our wedding anniversary - just so you know. But the anniversary of our first date. He seems to remember it every year and I forget. But hey, that's kind of sweet. 15 years from our first date.

Our first date was a Heritage Halls Invitational (on campus single student housing) dance. He asked me a couple days before and I was really excited. I had been flirting for awhile, but was determined not to be the first one to ask him out. So, I waited and one of my roommates had to tell him he should ask me to the dance, but he did!

I wore this red dress - it wasn't very fancy. He made stroganoff at his apartment. We ate there and then headed over to the dance. We danced for awhile and then took a walk around campus and went home. It was a pretty nice evening. I remember standing over one of the bridges and looking up at the stars in the sky and the lights of Provo. We liked to walk up to the bell tower too and look at the view from there. It's kind of funny the perspective you have on life when looking down from up high. Man, the simplicity! I miss that.

We went home and parted our separate ways. I don't think there was even a hug. Funny. :)

This picture is of another dance a few months later...

I knew pretty early on in our relationship that Ryan was still trying to figure out what to do for a career. He told me his dad was in the air force and I KNEW I didn't want to live that kind of life - moving from one place to another and never really settling. The thought of moving to an unknown place every few years was pretty unnerving. I had gone to the same elementary school in South Jordan and moved in 8th grade to another house in Sandy where my parents still live. My little brothers have lived their whole life in the same house.

Anyway, I told Ryan I wouldn't ever marry anyone in the airforce to avoid that kind of life. When I told him, I could tell that that put him into some deep thought.

The funny thing is this... We got married in April 1995, moved to Maryland January 1999 (3 1/2 years later). We lived in Maryland for 2 years, moved in December of 2001. We lived at my parents house for about 15 months and moved to Logan in 2002. Ryan went to grad school there and we moved after 3 years to Tooele in May 2005. Now, we've been here for almost 4 years. Ryan is a finalist for a job in Rexburg. It occured to me that if we were to move again, that even though my great efforts to grow deep roots, we would once again be uprooting and starting over. Now, we knew when we bought this house that it would not be our forever house, but the longer we're here and the older the kids get, the harder it is to move.

Rachael asked me last week if she had any friends she had known since she was little. She said a couple of her friends had these best friends that they knew since they were babies and wished she had some friends like that. I wasn't sure what to say to that. Since then, I have thought that the perfect thing to say is that she has lots of friends in many different places. That is cool that she gets to know and live in so many different places.

Here are a few older pictures I dug up and scanned in for old times sake to look back at the different stages in our life.

The infamous Love statue. Ryan and I were engaged.

Newly married, I am pregnant with Brandon

Our BYU apartment

Kristin's blessing in Maryland

Ryan's graduation from USU

Two years ago here in Tooele

I wonder where and when our next adventure will be...

Free torture

That's what I call the most recent gum graft I had yesterday. It was a 'readjustment' of a previous graft so really, it hasn't been too bad. There was no charge since it was a readjustment, thus the free torture part. The pain and swelling has been less than the other two times and the pain has been controlled easily by my prescribed meds. I had to sit ice on my face for an hour or so last night and will have to do it again this afternoon after having some friends come over and make me laugh. (The good laugh was all worth it though!)

My biggest complaint is that I am HUNGRY. I was fed cold mashed potatoes last night by my sweet husband and some pudding and jello and the remainder of Cameron's day old yogurt that had been sitting out for about that long. I slurped the broth out of the rest of my families soup bowls (soup was courtesy of a great neighbor), and looked at the homemade bread and chocolate cookies longingly.

I hope Ryan will make up for the potatoes and bring me a shake today. I could use it! I have been swallowing blood now for over 24 hours and it has made my throat sore and I am so tired of the taste of it. Blech! I need the roof of my mouth to stop bleeding so I can just swallow normal spit and not worry that my clear plastic retainer has blood pooled in the front to gross people out everytime I open my mouth. Kind of looks like an evil halloween scene when I smile. How does Dracula do it?

And I apologize again and again to Julie Campbell for flinging spit on her when I took out the retainer. That was totally gross and although she said she is used to gross things at her house, nothing really compares to an adult neighbor's bloody spit flying from my mouth to her face. I owe her big time for that. Maybe a big dark chocolate cake? I am so so sorry!!!

My food storage tips.

So, our ward is doing a push on Food Storage this year.


I know, food storage - kind of an overwhelming huge project that most of us probably don't ever expect to have complete in our lifetime.

Why do we find it so overwhelming? I have NO idea! Gathering is cheap, easy, and convenient. Lets break this down and analyze it together.

1. Grains needed for our family (for a year) - a mere 2400 pounds. Legumes (which we just LOVE to eat - "beans beans the magical fruit" who doesn't love magic?) an additional 480 pounds.
Now people, is that too much for me to gather? Of course not! Not only can I gather, but I can STORE that much rice, wheat, and oats easily! Here's how...

• Create all your furniture out of food storage. After all, my guests won't mind sitting on a bucket instead of a chair. I mean, come on! Isn't it being a little too picky to complain that our table is actually a board balanced on top of 4 50 gallon buckets? If you want a counter height table, just stack the buckets double height - so that would be 8 per table instead.

• Who cares if our pillows and couch cushions are stuffed with rice and beans. I purposefully don't want to create a not so comfy environment because after all, we don't want people to think they can actually sit and stay for awhile. With wheat to grind, who has time for a social life anyway? Plus if a disaster happened and there were people over, we would be EXPECTED to share and we only have a 12 month supply for us. There is none to spare!
  

• To make things easier, lets just calculate for a moment how much 2400 pounds of grains are for us. Lets say we get everything in 50 pound buckets. (because the buckets will be doubling as chairs and tables and bed frames so it is convenient that way). That is only 48 buckets. Add another 10 for the legumes and that means each person must have 6 buckets in their room (there's 30), 9 in the living room, 9 in the family room, one in each bathroom (lets see that gets us up to 50), And the last 10 buckets can be used in the kitchen. See, look how easy!
  

2. Water requirements. We have been told we need at the bare minimum a 2 week water supply. FEMA advises a gallon per person per day MINIMUM. 8 times 14 - that's 112 gallons of water. We've decided that diversifying our water containers make it easier to store so much. We have one big blue 50 gallon container in the front yard, and then will either store 130, 418 water bottles or buy 35 boxes of water to store in each person's closet. Important things to note:

• You must recycle or empty out your big water storage once a year. Easy! Just store your barrel in the basement (not on concrete or they say your water will taste like concrete) and then when that yearly mark comes along, get a hand pump, and a couple pans. Pump water into the pans and have your kids take their pans upstairs, through the kitchen and carefully pour all the water in the garden and go back down for more. I figure if we get 1/2 gallon in each pan, that would only be 224 trips up stairs. If it takes 20 pumps to pump a half gallon of water, then that means you would only have to pump 4480 pumps.
  

• Make sure you dump lots of chlorine in your water container. Most people do this with bleach. And using lemon scented bleach will NOT create a fresh lemon tasting water. Mountain Spring scented bleach will NOT make your water taste like it came from a mountain spring. You want the basic plain bleach. If you want your water to taste like anything, you want it to taste like a swimming pool. Doesn't the smell of pool water just make you want to jump in and take a drink when you go swimming?

3. Now lets talk fruit and veggies. 12 months is no big deal. Here's what I suggest.

• During your next case lot sale, borrow your neighbor's suburban and trailer and just sit out by the trucking dock of your grocery store. As the truck backs in, just instruct the workers to load all the cans of food into your vehicle and trailer. If you do this every evening when the store receives its next shipment, you should get your requirement in no time.

• Don't forget to garden and can everything in your backyard. Dandelions make excellent stew. Don't bother washing your fruit and veggies before bottling them. You will be glad there is a bug here and there because it will give you extra protein.

4. Sugars - the best advice I can give:

• Get LOTS! And when you think you have enough, get more. Can you ever have enough sugar? I think not! How else are you going to get those beans to taste good?

• Become a bee keeper. That way you will have bees on hand and they will have fresh honey for you whenever you get a hankering...
  

5. Cleaning supplies, clothing, toiletries.

• Well, I hear toilet paper makes good blankets if you get the 'quilted' kind. That way you can make your kids blankets with it, stuffed with it instead of batting. And when the need comes, all the kid needs to do is rip a piece of blanket off or use a corner - whatever is convenient. You never have to wash the blanket either. Very handy indeed.

• You can also glue TP or paper towels together to make clothing. Again, the convenience is priceless. Plus it kills 2 birds with one stone. You don't have to do laundry so you can cut back on your laundry soap. Two great benefits! Your kids won't grow out of the clothing before it is used anyway. My experience is my kids wipe their noses and mouths on their sleeves regardless of what they are wearing. Might as well make it okay to do.
  

As you can see, gathering a years supply is not as overwhelming a task as it may seem. We can do it! If you set aside a meager $1200 dollars a month and follow my sound advice, you will have a house full of food storage items in no time at all! It may not have room for people or anything else, but you will have your food storage!


p.s. Some people think you have to actually use the food you are storing. This is impossible since if you are USING the food you'll never get your supply up. They call this rotating your food storage. Don't get caught up in their scam. Rotating it REALLY means, turning the can a quarter of a turn every couple decades. Stamp the date you last rotated it and you'll be just fine!

p.p.s. Make sure you have a gun so that if you forgot to store something, you can still get it from someone else.