Good deal...

So Ruby loves Narnia, as I've mentioned before. She cried when the series finished last week. She dreams about it and pretend plays in Narnia frequently.

A friend of mine recommended a 19-disc theatrical audio recording of the entire series to me. It only cost $20, so I bought it right away. This way, when we are done with "school" for the day, Ruby can put on her headphones and experience Narnia to her heart's delight.

Here's a description of the CD's.

"Gather your family around the "radio" and step into C.S. Lewis's world of marvelous creatures, miraculous events, and perilous war against evil powers. Recorded in London it features acclaimed actors David Suchet as Aslan and Paul Scofield as the storyteller. An additional cast of over 100 actors, original orchestral score, and high- quality digital sound bring these tales of courage, self-sacrifice, and friendship vividly to life. Ages 8 and up. 19-CD boxed set, 22 hours total."

You can buy them for that price here. This way, we can move on with other novels...like "The Secret Garden", which we have just started.

Another tip is that there are a ton of classics that can be read online for free. The entire text. I use www.amblesideonline.org for suggested, age appropriate reading material and then I search for free online books. I can just as easily read from my computer screen as a novel, and that way I don't have to buy the novels or borrow them (and pay for fines later). "The Secret Garden" is here. They have many other free texts like "Wuthering Heights", "Tom Sawyer", "Anne of Green Gables" (whole series) and "The Odyssey", to name a few.

Safer Baby...

It seems like there's no end to the ways you can try to raise a healthy baby. I weed through the information and some things make an impact and others I have to let go.

Here are a few things that are on my wish list for this baby.

Juvenile Solutions Baby Cubes

I want these because they are BPA free and have lids. I think I'd like one set for taking food on the go. I think I'll buy these right away because they are $3.00 cheaper than www.amazon.com at www.babystyle.com, and they are having a free shipping, 30% off coupon right now.

Green Sprouts Eco-friendly Silicone Freezer Tray

I'd like maybe two or three of these trays to store food in for eating at home. (That pic has a lot of white space around it. Sheesh.)

I am a fan of Sassy products. I have a garbage bag full of their teethers, rattles, spoons, etc. upstairs. However, I don't want baby chowing down on BPA ridden plastics, so I'm going to have to toss some things and update. The good news is, I want to simplify...I think a couple of the right toys should be plenty. Here's a list of BPA free Sassy brand products. I'm glad there are pictures, it will make it much easier to shop for!

BPA free pacifiers. I made the rookie mistake with Ruby of believing that she wasn't going to take a pacifier. I will never make that mistake again. I love pacifiers! I love not being the pacifier! This baby will have to like the BPA free options out there...and there are a bunch of them! Here's a list I found online.

Another interesting tidbit my midwife shared with me is regarding SIDS. If you are interested to know about a possibly reason and therefore answer or "cure", read this article. I looked up the mattress wrap and it's really affordable. For $32, you can buy one to fit your existing mattress here. I don't really need to put a lot of effort into deciding if this is the real cause of SIDS. I just want to spend the $32 and hope it's true. Doesn't hurt, right? (This additional info is useful, though I feel some of it might be a little overboard, and I'll take what I want and leave the rest. Still, to each her own...read and decide what works for you.)

Okay, enough for now. Time to go sleep on a toxic mattress of my own.

Memorable conversations...

Once upon a time, I thought that kids who were seven years old weren't really cute anymore. I just thought they were really big and probably too smart to say funny things. I'm so glad this isn't true!

Alice told me (thank you Alice, we need these lines of communication to remain open forever) that Ruby had a boyfriend. I didn't think much of it, but I was curious to know who it was. I asked her, "Ruby, do you have a boyfriend?"

"A pretend boyfriend."
"Oh, what's his name?"
"Brett, I like that name."
"Hmmmm. What's he doing right now?"
"He's sitting right here" she pats the empty seat to her left.

Chris entered the conversation, Ruby was sitting on his lap. "I feel like I'm going to throw up."

Today, I signed Ruby up for private horse riding/handling/caring lessons. She was/is so excited. So she told Alice, "I get to go horseback riding on Wednesday!" Alice said, "Where, Daddy's back?"

Awesome!

About the horse thing, she is totally in love with horses, but doesn't really have any first hand experience with them. She always asks if we can have a real horse, and that's an easy one..."NO!" So she said she wanted a horse she could ride for her birthday. She made reference to some monstrous horse thing they had at Costco that was really expensive and couldn't possibly be so interesting long-term to justify taking up space in my house and costing me more than $100 dollars. Chris and I got her a $10 horse on a stick that whinnies and makes galloping noises. She is SEVEN YEARS OLD, and no joke, she rides that thing around super happily. A lot. She loves it.

I also don't really know of anyone outside of my own family members who don't let their girls watch the popular teenager shows. This drives me crazy. So the other day, we had a bunch of friends to the hotel to swim, and one family that came is new at church. Ruby wound up swimming around a lot with their 9 year old daughter. After the evening, Ruby said, "Mom! I met a 9 year old who isn't allowed to watch Hannah Montana either!" HALLELUJAH one hundred times!!! Now Ruby can wait another two years and not think she's the only girl on the planet who has that rule...then she can wait two more years! Lol.

Thanks, Pam!

My sister-in-law is a talented photographer and she just sent a disc with all the awesome pics she took of the wedding. Here are a few faves of my kids...

Ruby will be old enough to choose to be baptized in a year! I bought the dress for the wedding thinking it can double as her baptism day dress. I wish I'd noticed that the wedding sash was all turned around. Still, I love her in this pic in front of the temple.

Mattie and Ruby are such affectionate friends and cousins. They always walk around holding hands and are just thrilled to be together. Ruby really admires her and I love her because she is young and sweet for her age, which is something I have such a hard time achieving with my "7 going on 18" child. Ruby is sweet as can be, but she wants to grow up so fast! I only wish that Mattie and Ruby could live closer together!

Ruby telling Alice a secret...

Must have been some secret!

Ringing in the New Year...

Okay. I know I haven't posted about Christmas yet, it was next in line, but I don't have any pics downloaded yet...so I need to find them and then I can post about Christmas!

New Year's Eve seems like a holiday that was only fun while I was single. For sure, once we had kids it became impossible to do much for the night because no one will babysit on New Year's Eve! This year, we invited our friends (yes, that's Sommer from my previous post) to come have a slumber party at our house so we could celebrate together.

Kesley, Eden, Alice, Wyatt and Ruby.

We ate good food, lit probably ten dozen sparklers with the kids and enjoyed visiting and playing games on the wii.

On New Year's Day, we ate more good food, the kids played and played and played and eventually, we went to the Auburn mall so the kids could ride the carousel. Ruby and Wyatt opted to go mini-golfing (yes, there's a mini-golf place in the mall...hardly any desirable retailers there anymore) and the other kids rode the carousel and played at the play area for a bit.

These two have been friends since they were less than one year old! They used to give each other sweet little kisses with not thought. Now they pose awkwardly without touching! Gotta love Ruby's sassy pose.

Sommertime...

Sommer is one of my very favorite people on the planet. She recently did something that reminded me why she holds this place in my heart. It was Christmas Eve Eve, about 11:00 PM, and I called her while sitting on the front stoop of my parents house. I was in a bind and needed to vent. After the venting, brainstorming ensued and we'd exhausted all angles, any possible solutions and it was time to get off the phone. She said, "I'm going to go try not to lose sleep over this, you do the same." I told her, "if you lose sleep over this, you are the best friend ever."

Keep in mind, this was a personal frustration that literally didn't affect her at all. I'm so lucky to have her as my friend! I put a picture here so that in case you run into her, you would know...she comes highly recommended!

That's her husband, Ben. He's a great guy, it's nice when people I love are married to great people!

P.S. I don't stress out too much if I can't sleep at 5 or 6 AM, but tonight I went to bed at 11:30 and felt like I'd been there all night by 1:30.

Body,

I think it's nice to prepare, but I'd be fine if babyhood shocked me with 2AM wake ups IN NINE WEEKS. I really don't need to lose sleep until then, okay? Also, keep the baby in there at least 40 weeks. No earlies!

Me.

8 years...

Chris and I celebrated our 8th anniversary. It's nice to reflect on eight years of marriage and feel like I've never been this happy. I really dig my husband. He's been so supportive and aware of me during this pregnancy, he's super dad and we have been just enjoying hanging out together in the evenings. Life has been slower paced and it's nice to play scrabble together like we did after school back in high school (even though now, we play on my cell phone). Fifteen years ago we were skipping school to build a rabbit cage for the bunny my parents didn't know my boyfriend bought me. We would eat breakfast at Denny's and Chris would order, "Moons Over my Hammy" because then, I was Rebecca Hamm. We would break up and make up all in 24 hours. Now he proclaims to our two beautiful children that baby Betsey is in timeout for making mommy's ribs hurt. He devises creative sleeping arrangements using a beanbag chair to help me sleep well. He makes me hug out the anger when things flare up between us. I just think he's pretty great and I feel really lucky that I married him! He's as fun now as he was when we were in high school, but the bond between us is, of course, unrecognizable.

We stayed the night at a hotel. Oh...in Puyallup...because our house was out of commission. Ha, ha. We didn't do much, we are always really pressed with the holidays and it's hard to fit in a real anniversary celebration, and having the house junk weighing on us didn't help. My folks had the girls for us, which was soooooo nice. I had a few hours on Friday before Chris got off work to meet up with some talented friends to discuss some of the plans I have for our new bathroom. Chris and I shopped for all the tile stuff, which was fun. Then we hung out with our good friends John and Mimi and played games at their house. I'm sure we had dinner beforehand just the two of us, but I really don't remember.

We slept in and had a groundhog's day, free, hotel breakfast together. Then we went to the house and worked away on projects. Chris was painting some cabinetry and I was wrapping presents, getting our out of town gifts packaged and sent, etc. It's amazing how essential your house is to being organized during the holidays! At least we had some time with out the girls at our house to do some basic things that needed to be done.

We met the girls in Kirkland at a Christmas party with our lifelong friends, the ones who saw us through the early stages and were still there when we got around to starting our "real" life together.

I love you, Chris!

A good day...but maybe a boring post...

Regardless of how different our lives are, we all have ups and downs with life! Having taken a large break from homeschooling in December, it was daunting to start back up again.

Monday was our first day back. Nothing special, just back to school on a really rainy, gray day. Tuesday we got to go see a full production of the musical, Peter Pan. It was wonderful, and Ruby enjoyed it.

Wednesday was a good day. We were at my mom's, who went to the play with us, and we planning to race home for Alice's piano class, but she had ear pain and didn't want to go. We wound up spending the day with my mom. Since we weren't prepared with lessons, I printed off a lapbook from homeschoolshare.com. I'd been wanting to do a project with "About Me" as the theme to compare to last year's, and here was a day to do it.


We worked away on the various parts of her lapbook until it was completed. I can't say it was that fun some of the time, because she wanted to do other things the whole time, but there were times she took personal interest, and we had fun brainstorming her favorite things, making a list of what she wants to do when she grows up, calendaring her weekly schedule, making a little address book with loved one's addresses in it, researching trivia about our home town, etc.


Alice starts with us, I usually print her one page or so. She lasts longer when we are home and it's just us, but my mom decided to make some "Oma Cookies" (oats, flax seeds, honey, cranberries and natural peanut butter...I'll post the recipe another time, they are good and healthy), so Alice got distracted by that project.

Eventually, Ruby and I were done, Alice finished her cookies and we had lunch. I took a nap and the girls watched TV. After that, the girls decided to run around on my mom's couches and Ruby knocked a shelf off the wall and broke something. She felt really bad, apologized to my mom and decided she wanted to decorate her patio table with a "centerpiece" of leaves (no flowers around) to apologize. She ran around the yard happily collecting random ferns and leaves and arranged them on the outdoor table really nicely.

It was a silly thing, my mom played up her excitement and Ruby announced that we'd have to eat dinner out there to enjoy her hard work. Ummmmmm...it's the dead of winter.

I got out a bunch of fabric and started cutting my quilt and sewing. The girls spent like an hour using the little cast off scraps to make jewelry. They were taking orders from my mom and I, but eventually we all had fabric rings, fabric necklaces and fabric bracelets. It was fun to just hang out with my mom and the girls in the kitchen, make some headway on my sewing project and get some pretty jewelry out of it.

We did bundle up to eat a dinner at the chilly, but beautiful table outside on the deck. Ruby was thrilled and very proud of her hard work.

I'm so grateful that my folks live close and that we have periods of time when our scheduled homeschool activities take a break and we can enjoy more days like this.

The funny thing is that the next day, Ruby talked to her advisory teacher who oversees our homeschool efforts and when the teacher asked, "what have you learned in school lately?", Ruby responded, "nothing." Awesome. That was followed by our annual standardized testing where she proved what we've been doing!

Resolutions...

Can't sleep. Went to bed a little after 11, and was bright eyed and bushy-tailed by 1:45. Gave it 20 minutes and gave up for a bit. In two months, this schedule will work for me, but it's a little too early to adjust now, right?

I don't really love new year resolutions, but I am a believer in self-improvement. I have lots of room to improve, so I decided to proclaim a few goal at the traditional time of year and make some changes.

1. No phone calls or computer use when the kids are awake until after lunch.

2. No more than one photoshoot per week.

3. Find more ways to say yes to my kids. That might sound weird, but someone passed along that little piece of wisdom recently and I've reflected on it and decided I need to try it. I think that often times, my kids have a request of me, and my answer is "yes", but is expressed like this, "not right now," "maybe after lunch," etc. Those answers unnecessarily give my kids a "no" answer, when I could say, "YES, let's do that after lunch!" I have recently spent some time around someone who loves to say "no" and it really made me think. I've decided that I can even just change many of my "no's" to "yesses". For example, I don't really need to ration my Altoids. My kids ask for them constantly, and I say "no" after one per car trip. I think I'll start tossing them the entire container and say, "have at it." I just don't like how I feel when with no real thought behind it, the answer is "no." I think my kids have many great ideas, and I need to be more willing to follow their lead, so that I can reserve my "no's" for the things that really matter. For example, "mom, can I wear makeup?" or "mom, can I go to bed without brushing my teeth?" Maybe I could even say, "Yes, you can wear makeup when you are twelve." See, this is going to take some practice.

4. Be less in charge. I don't like being in charge, but I think I always take charge because I think others won't or can't. Recently, this has landed me in a heap of frustration and rejection and I think I just need to butt out. I have enough responsibility managing my own little family, so I'm going to stick to that and leave the rest to whomever picks up the reigns.

5. Make money. As a new "business person," I am kind of a joke. People call me with their requests and I totally low ball myself and wind up working for free. I've been called on the carpet for this and decided to mend my ways. I did some research and read up on industry suggestions for how to determine how much you are actually making once you factor in time, travel, equipment, babysitters, etc. I followed that advice, and there were shoots that essentially cost me money! On average, I made less than $10 per hour! I don't have to work, and I didn't get into what I'm doing to make barely over minimum wage while losing time with my kiddos. So...I am going to reign in my bleeding heart, and when the acquaintance with a small budget wants a photoshoot, I can't give my time away! For those on a tight budget, there's always WalMart or Picture People! I have recently worked out a few deals where I've swapped time for time, and that works...I think. See...this is going to take some time to figure out as well. The good news is, I should have a website up soon that has prices published for all to see that reflect earnings that make the work worth my time. Service to others and charity is important, and I have always offered free senior portraits to foster youth who are graduating from high school, and I'd like to zero in on that cause!

6. Family meals. I'd love to have Chris home for lunch everyday. With homeshooling, the girls and I have pretty laid back afternoons, but our evenings get busy with church responsibilities and swimming for the kids. We lose Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings each week, and there's not really any way around that. I'd like to have family meals all together three times a week. These meals will likely be all three meals on Sunday. Just kidding.

Here's something I read that made me recommit to this. It is a quote by William J. Doherty, who is a LMFT and has been on Oprah, 20/20, etc. for his research on the over scheduled child. (the first part I left in because it's just something I am really enjoying about homeschooling, and it was validating and we all love that...the end gets to the meals):

"Children and teens are failing to benefit from social skills often developed in unstructured, unsupervised, unofficiated experiences with siblings or peers, "we used to call it 'going out to play,' " he said; where a child has to find someone to be with, convince them to play, negotiate what to play, teach others how to play, help enforce the rules and decide when to stop.

While studies have shown that extra-curricular activities have some positive impact on the academic, social and psychological development of a child, Dr. Doherty cited other studies that say an overload of such activities has a much greater negative impact.

He also cited national and multi-national studies that show family meal time is a strong predictor of academic and psychological adjustment in children and teens; better than time in school, sports or cultural arts and helping to decrease future involvement in alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, depression and eating disorders."

Wow. That last paragraph really gets me. Family meals are so important! I was raised having family meals, but it has been hard for Chris and I to see eye to eye on this, so I think a 3 meal goal is a great compromise. Now, getting in the habit will be the hard part!

Of course I have other more personal goals that I am always working on, and spiritual goals that are on the agenda too. I am looking forward to an improved ME in 2010. I think I'm going to make a sticker chart for myself so I can see my progress...

Fun in UT

This post is out of order, but in ten years when I am glad I did all this journaling, will I really care if I posted something from Thanksgiving after New Year?

So back to our trip to UT, previously mentioned in this post.

We had a very quick, non-holiday feeling airport experience, and uneventful flight and arrived in Salt Lake City on Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving. We were super lucky that our friends, the McMullin's let us borrow their truck, as Jeff was in India. We met up with Sage and Mike and Pam and Matt at our humble, downtown, "historic" rental house built in the late 1800s. We enjoyed a nice dinner all together at The Spaghetti Factory at Trolley Square.

On Thanksgiving, we had plans to eat at the buffet at Little America Hotel, so we didn't have any food prep to do (which would have been impossible with our limited kitchen supplies), so we went to Temple Square, and enjoyed the morning seeing the sights there. After that, everyone besides me, Sage and Beckett went to see the Great Salt Lake or the flats surrounding it (thanks Pam for taking some pictures), where Sam and Perry met up with them, as they had just arrived.

We met at Little America for a 3:30 Thanksgiving feast to beat all others. It was really something! The cost was somewhat daunting, but we needed to eat a real Thanksgiving dinner, and so we went and I'd say we thought it was worth it. There were options for everyone and the food was really, really yummy.

Thank you Chris, my twelve year old husband for making this picture such a nice representation of our dinner together!

I'd say, it was a very enjoyable, memorable, non-traditional holiday that was more fun than work and spent with very good company. I'd opt for a restaurant-cooked Thanksgiving dinner again, without hesitation.

The following day was our only non-holiday, non-wedding day together. Most of the kids have birthdays in the fall months, we decided to save the gifting budget for a fun outing all together. We went to the Museum of Ancient Life, or "The Dino Museum", and had a great time.

Pierce, Alice, Ruby and Mattie.

Porter and Mike.

We had a little cake for the cousins back at the house.

That night, we met our new sister-in-law, Heather's family for the first time and had dinner together. It was nice to meet her lovely parents, grandmother and siblings, and prepare for the big day to follow!

Saturday was the wedding day! I already posted about that, but here are a few candid shots of the day.

Mattie, Ruby, Alice, Pierce, Porter and Zoe! Just missing little Beckett.

Doug and Heather's reception was perfect. It was on the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, and had amazing views, yummy food and all the personal touches a reception should have. There were lovely musical numbers, fun childhood stories told, and Heather performed a hula dance, as she grew up in Hawaii.

After the reception, we went with thousands of others, to look at beautiful temple square all lit up with more Christmas lights that I've ever seen in my life. It was magical and beautiful and nice to enjoy that time as a family.

P.S. Alice found these glasses at a park on Friday morning and literally wore them the rest of the time.

By the time we woke up on Sunday morning, Pam and Matt's family had already left for the airport, and Sam and Perry followed close behind. It was sad saying goodbye, as the trip felt too short! We had some down time with Sage and Mike's family before we left the house and Sage and Mike headed back to Colorado. We headed to the McMullin's house for two nights to celebrate Ruby's 7th birthday the following day before heading home on Tuesday.

Ruby, Alice and "baby Beckett".

Oh. I can't sleep. I'm now 30 weeks pregnant and feel 35 weeks pregnant. My ribs don't take well to horizontal positions!