Wife Like Me

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Today, April 30th, is 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins!  Really!  See their web page here if you don’t believe me.  To honor the nation’s firefighters, selected Baskin Robbins stores sell small ice cream scoops for 31 cents tonight from 5pm to 10pm, and they donate $100,000 to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.   Isn’t that lovely?  I’m thinking since they have a no-sugar-added chocolate chocolate chip flavor that just fits into my 30-grams-of-carbs evening snack, we might be on our way over there tonight.

Tags: 31 cents, baskin robbins, cheap, deals, Food, ice cream, treats

Primary’s May Theme is…

Heavenly Father planned for me to come to a family. I can strengthen my family now. “The family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children” (“Proclamation,” paragraph 1).

…and I’m in charge of Sharing Time next week.  Next week’s lesson in the Outline goes like this:

1. Families in the scriptures teach me how I can strengthen my family (1 Nephi 8; 16; Mosiah 27; Primary 3,lesson 39).

Divide the children into three groups and give each group a picture, a Primary song, and scripture references.

• a. GAK 102; “Follow the Prophet,” third verse (CS, 110–11); Moses 8:18–20; Genesis 6:9–14, 22; 8:20.
• b. GAK 301; “Nephi’s Courage,” third verse (CS, 120–21); 1 Nephi 3:1–7.
• c. Picture 1-69 or 4-53; “Dare to Do Right” (CS, 158); Ether 1:38–43; 6:2–12.

Write the basic events of each story on the board as each group displays the picture, sings the song, and tells the story. (For example: surrounded by wickedness, gathered together, followed God’s plan, showed gratitude to the Lord.) Ask, “What did these families do to strengthen each other?” Ask the children to write or draw three ways they can strengthen their families.

The Friend for May hasn’t come out yet, but it will eventually be here.

We’re starting on a Jr/Sr Primary schedule next month, so I can do a lesson for little ones and another for older kids.

Junior Primary Sharing Time:

My three-year-old son loves to do treasure hunts, so I’m guessing that the kids in my Jr. Primary will enjoy one too.  I’d like to use pictures from different scripture stories as clues, then have a box with stickers in it for everyone at the end.

Tell the kids that we’re going to do a treasure hunt, and that we’re going to get clues about how to find the treasure from families in the scriptures.  I’ll have one class start with a clue (picture) that has a clue about where in the room the next clue is on a post-it on the back–I’ll find a way to relate the clue to the story somehow when I write it.  They can either tell the story on the picture or have their teacher tell the story while one of the kids in the class holds up the picture for everyone to see.  We’ll decide as a group how the families in the pictures show us how to strengthen our families.  Then they can read the clue to the group and go try to find the next one.  When they find it, they hand it to the next class and the system repeats until the treasure is found.  In order to retrieve their sticker, each child (some with the help of their teacher) says something they can do to strengthen their family, then we can sing “We are a happy family” (CS 198).

Senior Primary Sharing Time:

We’ll do what the Outline suggests, above.

Tags: Family, junior primary, Kids, Primary, religion, scripture families, senior primary, sharing time, strengthening family

I took the kids to see a local pediatrician this morning.  It took me a long time to choose one and make an appointment, partly because I kept hoping I’d get someone to recommend a good one to me who takes our insurance.  People have recommended a couple of good ones, but they don’t take our insurance.  Finally, I just picked a practice based on proximity to our apartment, then (of the four in the office) chose the pediatrician who was male because Degen seems to be less shy around men.  Great way to choose, no?  But, we won’t have this insurance many more months because Colin’s not going to keep teaching at this school next year, and I wanted to make sure we had the kids’ physical status checked and get shots updated.

Speaking of shots, I’m going to say something rather controversial.  My mother didn’t have my three youngest siblings vaccinated back in the early 90s, I guess because she questioned whether all the ingredients in the immunizations were safe.  When I had kids, I called her to get her advice on shots and she said that since she’d gone to medical school and seen more research and information about the newer vaccines she’d decided that they’re safe and she’d have the kids immunized now if she had time.  However, she said that she thinks it’s somewhat unnescessary to immunize babies unless they’re going to be in daycare or another high-risk place for getting diseases.  She suggested that, since I’d be staying home with them and their access to infected people would be extremely limited, I might want to wait a year or so before having them get their shots so that their little immune systems would be more developed when they deal with the onslaught.  So, that’s what Colin and I decided to do.

We started Degen’s schedule of shots at a year and Maggie got her first shots today (18 months) and they’ve both been exceptionally healthy.  When our new doctor here questioned me about why these were Maggie’s first shots, I explained the above to him, and he (understandably) told me that he disagreed with my decision and told me that “there’s a web site of women like you telling their stories of how they regret their decision to not immunize their children.”  The obligatory guilt trip over after I smiled sympathetically, he mentioned in a rather surprised tone that my kids are really actually very healthy.  He took a look in their ears and down their throats, told me they’re growing well, asked me if they fight a lot (they don’t), and handed me some informational paperwork on potty training.  Then he sent in the nurse to do the shots.

At our old doctor’s office in Utah (American Fork Clinic, Dr. Hoggard), they had a great nursing staff.  When they did a big set of shots (two or more at a time), they would send in two nurses and administer two shots simultaneously, efficiently and effectively.  It was awesome.  The nurse at my new doctor’s office did a great job today, but she was only one person, and Maggie got four sticks in succession in her chubby little legs.  I prefer the other system.  Maggie didn’t scream until the third shot, but then she made it known that she was not interested in putting up with us any more.  All the shots finished, she screamed and cried for about three more minutes and then I gave her a sucker that the doctor had handed me for her on his way out and she quickly became cheerful again.  The one odd thing about the process was that the nurse explained the normal sysmptoms and when to worry or not about her shots as she gave the shots.  I heard nothing.  I was busy trying to calm Maggie down to hear her over Maggie’s screams.  Luckily, she gave me some paperwork explaining everything (I hope!) she’d just said.  Of course, I was so distraught about my injured baby that I forgot to take the paperwork with me and didn’t realize it until I’d gotten both kids buckled happily into their car seats and had to undo my heroic work and go back into the office and ask another nurse to go searching for the papers.  And no, I didn’t know which room number we’d been in.  And then we repeated the walk-to-the-car and buckle-up processes.

Degen is really into chivalry, to my delight and chagrin.  He likes to hold doors open for people as they enter or leave, and it’s very cute and a habit I want to encourage.  The downside comes when I’m trying to corral both him and his sister into or out of a building and he wants to stay and hold the door open for the next 10 people while I try to figure out why he refuses to obey my command to “come!”  That happened to us today BOTH times we left the doctor’s office on the way to the car.  An ancient gentleman who was going into the office was confused about why Degen wanted to hold the door open for him–hopefully he wasn’t insulted.

Tags: babies, chivalry, doctor, habits, Immunization, insurance, Kids, medicine, Nurse, pediatrician, shots, Vaccine

This morning I went to our Stake Relief Society Home Family and Personal Enrichment meeting.  What a mouthful!  But I had a great time.  I walked over there to get a big chunk of my exercise for the day in (in heels, too!). Thank you to everyone who participated in setting everything up to make it such a worthwhile time for us attendees!

The meeting started off in the chapel with three talks from women who spend five minutes speaking on the topic “How I feel the love of the Lord in my life.”  Then we split into mini-classes.  We could choose two of six classes: Women’s Health, Building Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, Strengthening Marriage, Kitchen Tips, Personal Revelation, and a service project making turbans for those fighting cancer.  I chose to go to the Women’s Health and Faith classes–all of them looked interesting, so I decided by picking the two taught by women who serve in Primary with me.  Both classes were informative and faith-promoting.  The health class was taught by an RN and we discussed everything from the Word of Wisdom to osteoporosis to menopause to how much sleep we should get.  She was going to talk about “serving in callings with chronic health problems,” but I guess we didn’t have enough time.  In the Faith class we talked a lot about prayer and Elder Bednar’s recent General Conference talk on faith.

After the mini-classes, we met up in the chapel again to hear talks from two sisters (wives of the stake presidency) on Sustaining the Priesthood.  Then we got to go into the cultural hall for a very yummy lunch prepared by a man in our stake who is a professional chef.  He and some other men in the stake served us chicken (caesar?) wraps, potato salad, and fruit salad (actually mostly marshmallows).  Women in the stake had brought desserts to share and we had a HUGE spread of a variety of desserts.  I skipped the fruit salad so I would have enough in my carb budget for a bit or two of cheesecake and brownie.  It was heavenly after nearly a month of very limited sweets to have good bite of dense chocolate and another of cheesecake….mmmm…graham cracker crust…

Tags: enrichment, faith, HFPE meeting, Relief Society, stake enrichment, Women's Health, Word of Wisdom

It’s been a crazy week.  I won’t go into all the details, but suffice it to say that we’ve felt more motivated than ever to look for a new job for Colin.  He was up late the last couple of nights filling out applications, and has plans to do the same tonight.  Today I filled out nine job applications for him in one of the many industries he loves–localization.  One of the many things Colin enjoys is localization product management–that’s where he’s in charge of a team that translates and culturally adjusts marketing and technical materials for a product or products.  Most of the job postings I saw were in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, or Boston.  Interesting combination of places.  Anyway, I’m all applicationed-out.

This week I also worked on doing taxes.  Yes, I know I mentioned that I already did our 2007 taxes.  But we got a letter from the IRS saying that because we hadn’t done our taxes in 2005 or 2006 (we figured we didn’t make enough money to owe them, and were too emotionally drained by the idea of filing at the time that we just skipped the exercise), they wouldn’t send us our 2007 return.  Yuck.  So, I filled out our tax docs for 2006 and 2005 this week.  Turns out they owe us THOUSANDS of dollars.  Yay!  Now I’ve got to get them in the mail.  I think I may be over my tax-phobia.  Maybe.

We did our little pre-school thing this week and Degen keeps asking to do more, which tells me I’m on the right track.  We talked about things we do to keep our bodies strong and healthy, played baloon volleyball, and ran through a mini-obstacle course in the living room, kitchen, and dining room.  My favorite long-term result of this is that when he protests the idea of going to bed, I remind him that we have to sleep in order to be healthy and strong.  He grins and says “I’m strong!”  Then he (usually) goes right to sleep.

Maggie and I, and maybe Colin, have colds.  Degen seems to be avoiding the yuckiness so far.  Runny nose, sore throat, sleepy, grumpy…you name a symptom, we’ve probably got it.  I got my 64 oz bottle of water ready, took a gulp, and Maggie wanted some.  Maggie insisted on holding it herself, and when she took a gulp I noticed that her nose was running into my water bottle! Gross!!  That bottle is going into the dishwasher.  Amen.

Even with all the stress and craziness of the week, I’ve managed to keep up with my excersizing and other goals, so I’m pleased about that.  Thanks for the help from the family this week with everything.  Love ya!

Tags: applications, bodies, colds, healthy, IRS, jobs, Kids, preschool, strong, taxes

Degen is really interested in colors and numbers right now.  If I say “What’s that, Degen?” he answers with what the color of the object is.  Right now he’s especially interested in eye color.  Most days he tells me several times the eye color of each person in our family.  Yesterday he convinced the missionaries to let him stare into their eyes long enough to determine their eye color.  Funny…one of the missionaries didn’t know his own eye color, and the other one had “hazel” eyes, which isn’t a color at all.  I have hazel eyes, too, but I told Degen they’re green because they’ve been looking greener lately and it’s easier for him to understand.

Maggie loves to dance right now.  For her, dancing means either running in place or turning in circles until she’s dizzy.  She dances any time she hears anything she thinks is music, whether it’s a drum beat, classical music, rap, or kids’ music.  It’s so cute!

Tags: Color, dancing, Degen, Eye color, Kids, maggie

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Last night we didn’t do my Repentance lesson for FHE because I’d forgotten that we’d invited the missionaries over to teach the lesson!  They came over to teach us a lesson on the Preach My Gospel book that they use to help them learn to be better missionaries.  I’ve been trying to read through it a bit at a time for a couple of months, and discovered there’s a lot of helpful stuff in there for me, too, and not just as a “member missionary.”  There’s stuff on setting goals, time management, and basic gospel doctrine.  I’ve found that it’s really helpful when I’m preparing for a Primary sharing time–I like to check my facts about the basic doctrine in it sometimes just to make sure I don’t accidentally veer off into a “Bethany opinion” tangent with the kids.

Anyway, the kids really enjoyed having the missionaries over since they got to climb all over them and look at the pictures in their books.  We sang “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” as the opening and closing songs at Degen’s request, with a “The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock” and several “Popcorn Popping” songs sprinkled into the lesson.  The missionaries gave us a tour of the book and helped us practice with a role-play giving a pass-along card to a friend or stranger.  We had a great time and it was good to get to know our missionaries a little better.

So, if you’re out of Family Home Evening ideas or just need a change, call the missionaries in your ward and invite them to come give a lesson in your home.  They’re probably supposed to visit and teach members anyway and may not have gotten to you yet (or are too shy/busy to ask you).

Tags: Add new tag, Family Home Evening, FHE, missionary, preach my gospel, Primary, religion, sharing time, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Maggie has started taking her diaper off again… I have to put her in outfits that keep her hands from those diaper tabs or I find her running around with nothing on and a little puddle somewhere in the house.  It’s cute and a little funny, but messy.  And Degen has started to follow his little sister’s example.  Double puddles!

Maggie loves to color, or “lolor” as she says it, and I need to hide all my ball-point pens because she keeps writing on herself.  Just now, I gave her a pen and paper and said “Only on paper, Maggie.”  She grinned, colored on the paper, stuck her leg out from under her dress, looked at me with an impish smile, and started drawing on knee.  Cute?  Yes.  But how do I get her to stop!  And how do I keep from grinning back at her?

Tags: diapers, Kids, maggie, pens, potty training, writing

Last week the Ponytail Challenge was to smell good, and I do!  It’s challenging for me to find yummy-smelling things that don’t make my eyes itchy and my nose stuffy (allergies, I think), and it’s tough to smell good when you change diapers several times a day, but it’s been a really fun challenge for that reason.

In the last year, my mom and sister-in-law both got me salt/sugar scrubs for the shower that smell great and don’t trigger my weird perfume reaction and I’ve used them at least once (sometimes more) a day for the last seven days.  There’s something about a whiff of chocolate or coconut from my own arm that makes me smile and feel like an attractive person instead of a cleaning machine.  Besides, with my carbohydrate-limited diet right now, smelling something sweet is often enough to curb my cravings.  Thank you ladies, for very thoughtful gifts!

Tags: Add new tag, Perfume, ponytail challenge, scrub, smell, sugar scrub

Three weeks into practicing my healthy living goals, and I’ve lost 10 pounds!  I didn’t make any weight loss goals because the number on the scale isn’t something I could control, but what a nice side-effect!  My clothes fit a little more loosely, I’ve been happier, and I have more energy than before.  Perhaps more than anything, I’ve had the motivation to work hard on something I felt was worthwhile.  Yesterday was day 21… I have a few more days of actually doing all the things on my list to get 21 days in a row, but for some of them I’ve hit what “they” say is the habit-forming mark.

It’s really helped a lot to have Colin supporting me.  He’s watched the kids while I’ve gone to the gym, stayed up late helping me finish picking up the house, gone to the store to buy me food when I’m too grumpy, and encouraged me to go ahead and do things when I wanted to just give up and go to sleep.  There were a few times this weekend when I certainly would have given up if it hadn’t been for him.  Thank you for being such a great husband, Colin!

Now that I have a taste of success, I’m going to keep it up.  I’ve hit 15 days in a row of all my health goals, and halfway to my 30-day mark I’m getting excited about getting my 30-day reward of going shopping for new clothes.  Woo-hoo!

Now I don’t know if it was a lack of faith in myself to actually accomplish my goals or what, but I didn’t really think through how I was going to PAY for these rewards.  Hmmmm…you’d think I would have done that.  We definitely don’t have an extra $50 in our budget every month for clothes, not to mention all the other rewards I “promised” myself.  On Saturday I scrounged through the house collecting stray coins to buy myself the flowers I’d earned.  I may have to rethink this if I’m actually going to achieve these goals. Maybe there are some really good, really inexpensive rewards out there.  Or maybe I can get sponsors.  I guess I could get a job, but we’re already sacrificing a lot so that I won’t have to do that and my little goals don’t seem to merit a change in our family priorities.  Earning money to pay for rewards I’ve earned doesn’t seem like much of a reward, especially when any money “should” go to bills.  Maybe the stickers alone are enough.  But doing things to get a reward I ultimately don’t get is a sure path to discouragement.  Any suggestions?

Tags: accomplishments, goals, rewards