Extra Eyebrows

Today Zoë had an open peanut butter and honey sandwich, which means she gets half a slice of bread with honey and half a slice of bread with peanut butter. She likes it open so she can have the full experience of honey-on-bread and peanut-butter-on-bread one at a time, rather than the traditional melding of flavours that is the abomination known as a sandwich.

She ended up giving herself a little peanut butter mustache while she was eating and when she showed it to me she said proudly, "Look, Mom! I have an extra eyebrow on my face, just like men do!"

And now I can't stop imagining going up to some random men and complimenting them on their "extra eyebrow" (or, perhaps "lip eyebrow"), just to see how they respond.

Karen's Cookie Kegger (November 17)

I've put off going through the pictures from Karen's funeral for two solid months now. There's no reason for it, in particular, other than that life keeps marching on. I didn't do it right away and so it go swept under the rug (along with the billion other things I haven't documented in my life). It's not particularly painful to go back and look at the pictures because although it was a hard day it was a good day. I just haven't looked through them until now.

But I had to pull them up yesterday so that I could find this picture of my mom (and me (and Alexander and Kathi and Sister Starr)) with my mom's cousin Burt:

A visit to the fire station

Our neighbourhood preschool took a trip to the fire station this morning. The first truck we got to visit was a 1937 American LaFrance Fire Truck, the second engine Spanish Fork acquired (it's engine #2). The kids weren't allowed to climb on it, but they were allowed to walk around it. It still comes out to participate in parades sometimes (though it looks like it might need some work before hitting the streets again—something was leaking all over the floor).

Alexander at 15 months

This sweet little baby of mine continues to insist upon getting older, so I guess he's fifteen months old now. He's still at the age where he's changing a lot from month to month, so I will do another update on him.

At fifteen months, Alexander...

• is finally experimenting with walking, though he still doesn't love it and will refuse to take any steps if he's not in the right mood. He is definitely, and by far, my latest and most reluctant walker. 
• still loves to climb. He likes to hang out on top of his little slide'n'climb structure, which has been a sanity-saver this winter. He can also climb onto the benches for our table, which means that he can also climb onto the table whenever he wants. 

Here he is doing a bit of climbing:

Ben the Builder

Benjamin has been very interested in constructing things lately. He loves going over to Aunt Linda and Uncle Trevor's house to play in their garage with tools. They had him working on some project or another recently (it's a secret, however, so I don't know what it is). Linda suggested that we take him to one of the building days at Home Depot, but they're all the way in Provo at 9:00 in the morning on Saturdays and, well, we're too tired for something like that. Instead Andrew took Benjamin to Lowe's and let him choose a little kit to build.

Then that kit sat and sat and sat and sat and sat. Past Thanksgiving, past Christmas, into the New Year.

I finally helped Benjamin put it together on Friday (the kids didn't have school). He enjoyed figuring out the instructions and hammering all the nails into place. 

This little light of mine...

Today was Rachel's first official day in the Young Women program (since last week we only had Sunday School). She had asked for a new dress for Christmas and had even looked at a few online, which she showed me to give me an idea of what she was looking for, so I ordered one and when it finally came in (this week, so we totally missed Christmas) Rachel loved it immediately. And then she held it up to herself and revealed that it was not going to be a dress for her. It was going to be a dress for me.

It was way too big for her!

So we went online together and picked out another dress, which came in a much more timely manner (Friday). This time it fit her perfectly. 

So that is what she wore to church today and she looked beautiful (even if her toes were being pinched by her shoes because I can't keep up with how fast her feet are growing (those shoes were purchased in August and are already too small)):

Rocking, Rocking it out, and Painting

The other day Benjamin and Zoë called me in to take a picture of them rocking their babies. I happily obliged because not every moment of every day is this cute. Benjamin was holding Alexander and Zoë was holding the newly christened Baby Carrie. 

Ramblings

Last night Zoë conducted Family Home Evening and she selected herself to choose the opening song.

"Welcome to Family Night, everybody," she said cheerfully. "Mommy will say the prayer and I will choose the song—ABCDEFG!"

"It needs to be a church song," Andrew reminded her.

Zoë narrowed her eyes at him and snarled, "A.B.C.D.E.F.G."

So we sang the alphabet song because...what option did we have?

Then she had us sing I Am a Child of God, which is a church song. Then she asked us to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (which she calls, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, How I Wonder What You Are because she's not very good at song titles yet) but we told her we'd pray first and then would sing Twinkle, Twinkle and then that would be it for singing time.

The first snowman of 2019

It's finally warmed up enough that going outside isn't miserably cold so the kids and I went out this morning to a rapidly thawing world where we got absolutely soaked. The snow was perfectly packable, though, so we were able to make a few good snowmen. 

Here's Zoë pushing a big snowball. It was hard work but she did it all by herself:

A two-hour Sunday...

This morning I woke up and remembered that Benjamin was supposed to give a talk in primary today. Luckily we woke up with time to spare since the kids woke up well before my alarm went off and we didn't have to be to church until 10:30 (yay!), so I assigned Benjamin the task of writing three sentences about how he can be responsible for his own learning (since that was today's topic). 

He and Zoë sat at the table writing and colouring, respectively...though not respectfully. They were elbowing each other and touching each other's papers and driving each other crazy. 

It took twenty minutes (which was fine because I was nursing the baby and didn't want the other two in my hair anyway) but Benjamin finally came up to me with his three sentences and we sat down at the computer to flush out his talk.

His three sentences were:

1) Read The Book of Mormon every day.

2) We bulev that we can teach are own lernings. 

3) We love Come Follow Me. 

Clearly we had a bit of work to do. So we were talking about things and expanding his ideas when there was a crash and a clatter and...where was the baby?

In the bathtub.