Dear Family and Friends,

This week I have felt very home-maker like. We bought a box of peaches and two boxes of apples and have been busy making peach jam, and canning peaches and applesauce. I have decided it really isn't cost effective versus buying cans at the store but they sure taste better. To top it off after reading an article about the silliness of Mormon wives thinking they need to make home made bread, making bread started sounding really good to me. So after attending an enrichment meeting a few weeks ago on how to make bread I broke out their recipes and have made bread twice this week. The recipe only makes 2 loaves of 1/2 wheat 1/2 white bread and they disappear in a day or two. We had bread and jam for breakfast this morning and it tasted great.

To really bring on the homemaker feel this week I have been tackling Lauri's laundry. Robyn and I went over and loaded the truck full of all her clothes, emptying out her closet, trunks etc. Robyn was "helping me" by either sweeping up the fine covering of dead bugs all over the floor (thanks to Jason's foggers last week) or screaming that she found a survivor and beating it with a broom yelling "smash the buggy". I need to make a clean space for her to play over there while we work! So our garage was full of clothes for the week as I sorted, DI'd and ran loads of laundry and ironing. It turned into a bigger task than I had anticipated but I am pretty much done now. Tonight Jason's family and Lauri are coming over for dinner and then when we drive Lauri home we can move all her clothes over.

We took Lauri to a doctor's appointment this week and were able to visit. All of our kids tagged along which made for a longer afternoon. Lauri's leg decided halfway through to no longer work and came to the sad realization that for going places she needs a wheelchair now. I know how hard a transition that is for her. But she seems much stronger and healthier and has positive things to say about her new home.


Robyn has become enchanted with Allison’s clothes. She came down last night wearing 7 pairs of Allison’s underwear over her diaper and pajama bottoms. I was laughing hard and sent her to Jeremy who learned over to see how many she was wearing and by so doing stuck his hand in a big poopy diaper that she had smeared over each pair of underwear in her efforts to clean herself up and hide the dirty underwear! This is on the same day where she cut her hair (she has “layers” now), decided to clean up Rocky with a bunch of hand soap and Taylor’s toothbrush, threw up on the freshly washed towels and the day after she decided to decorate all of the play kitchen and play dishwear with a sharpie. Did I mention that she is 2?

This week I attended parent teacher conferences for the three older kids. Taylor they are starting to get a better handle on. They are working on facilitating him being able to make choices and understand that he can express himself more. They have been working with chocolate milk versus water. No matter if they put the chocolate milk in his favorite cup or in his non-favorite cup, if they put it on the right or left, he will always choose the chocolate milk. Sometimes he takes a sip of the water but as soon as he realizes what it is, he will put it down and pick up the other cup. I thought it was very cool. Taylor had his VNS adjusted on Friday. His seizures have gone down to 2 a day but they are more severe, often grand mals. So hopefully this will help.

Allison's teacher kept me waiting for 30 min because of some long winded parents in front of me. As I came in she apologized profusely and said she felt embarassed because all she could say was that Allison was wonderful, aces everything and does great. She said Allison started off as very shy and quiet but now tells her jokes and kids around with her and just makes her laugh. She had Allison give herself a report card and Allison thought she was doing great at everything, which she is. Under what her favorite part of school Allison wrote that it was making new friends. Her teacher recommended the American girl books for her so we thought we would try those for a christmas present.

Spencer's teacher said Spencer is definitely not one of her trouble kids (BIG improvement over last year). Said that he will get upset periodically but if he just steps outside for a minute he calms himself down and comes back and is fine. She said that she doesn't need to lecture him or talk to him, he knows what he is doing wrong and just needs a moment to get a handle on it. Academically he was having problems with some homework, not knowing to turn some things in and in math just forgetting to turn in math homework the next day that he finished in class the day before. So...he is making up a lot of homework right now to bring his grades up. And we know now to stay on top of things more. It was a combination of teacher not telling, us not knowing and Spencer not following through. Spencer's big fieldtrip this week was to tour the water plant (sewer) and the weather station.

Spencer learns quite a bit at school these days though. I was telling Jeremy while we were all in the car about a new piano song Spencer is working on saying it sounds like the snake charmer song. I hummed it to him and Jeremy goes oh I always called that one the strip tease song. Spencer pipes up in the back seat that he knew the words to that song and started singing, “There’s a place in France, where the naked ladies dance. There’s a hole in the wall where you can see it all”. We busted up laughing as we’re trying to tell him what a terrible song that is. He says he learned it from the 5th graders – always an easy target to blame.

Kids all went to the dentist on Monday. (On Friday Spencer informed me after business hours that his retainer had broken so we will be going back again this Monday). No one had cavities - a first in a long time. Everyone had spots without enamel so everyone is now on medicated toothpaste to help. Robyn acted like such a big girl hoping up on the chair for her x-rays, (when they said she needed to put on a princess cape, she corrected them that it was a cinderella cape) opening her mouth to get cleaned and examined. She was very proud of herself. Spencer had a mold taken for his upper retainer and goes back in a few weeks to have two teeth pulled and to get his upper retainer to wear. He chose a BYU design like Taylor. Taylor is going to go back in 6 months or so and be sedated to have his teeth cleaned and a new retainer put in. Taylor is loosing and getting teeth constantly right now. All those baby teeth are finally falling out. (He is looking very grown up lately. He is developing acne so I need to start getting him clearsil)

Friday Jeremy and I had a date. There was a new bakery/cafe that I thought had just opened by us. We showed up to see signs that they were opening on Monday but it looked like they were open. So we walked up to find out that they were having a mock opening for one hour and we could order whatever we liked and it was free. So we tried everything that looked good and had a great time! Then we went to see the play Aida at a community theater. I had never seen it or heard the music and was quite impressed with it. It was a theater in the round and we were on the front row. We were really in the play as if you crossed your legs you could hit one of the actors. They had a bunch of humor added to the play - the guards were dressed and posed like matrix actors, a hairdresser was a very effeminate male - made us laugh.

There is something about conference that makes kids push buttons on us easily. I don't know if it was the rain outside for 2 days forcing everyone in close proximity or trying to hear conference over kids but we were grateful for the diversions yesterday of friends and family. Kayla and Bryn came over during the break during Garion's football game to play. And then during priesthood my friend Allison came over with her kids to eat dinner and visit. Made it a great day.

Love to you all and hope you are enjoying conference weekend.

Heather