Three ring Circus

I never really enjoyed dressing up for Halloween, still don't, but I do enjoy dressing up my kids. Hopefully they enjoy it as much as I do!

Dash the clown.
(I love the shoes, I think they go perfectly with this costume.)

The sweetest lion you ever saw.

Often mistaken for Indiana Jones, but with the ring o' fire it should have been obvious he was a lion tamer!

JCrew

I am lamenting the fact that my brother doesn't work at J Crew anymore. I was just on their website and even the sale section is too pricey for my budget.

(Can you believe that I still remember my login password?)

We have been busy and I have pictures to prove it.

We lost Dashiell and Nels found him in the dryer.

We started the zucchini harvest. This is one of the smaller zucchini we have picked so far. I don't know what we are going to do with all of the zucchini 6 plants are going to produce this summer.

We had house guests, and yes, that is an air mattress in the middle of the living room and we all for some reason chose to congregate there despite the relatively empty family room right around the corner.

We played at the beach.

Nels doesn't care so much about the sand and water as he does the train at the beach.

We had Family Home Evening. This is Dashiell conducting the music.

We have had lots of good food. It is so much fun to cook for guests. Since everyone has been gone we have had macaroni and cheese, hotdogs, and chicken nuggets.
We visited the discovery science center.

Nels on a bed of nails.

Dashiell doing a dinosaur bone puzzle. I love how hard he is working at it.

We hung out with Grandpa and Grandma Buhrley and lots of cousins.
We watched the fireworks.
We blessed our little baby Liesel.
Look at the beautiful hand smocked dress my friend made for me. I love it.

This is just 21 of the of the nearly 700 pictures we just added to our hard drive.

Yogurt

Have you ever had "Hopping Flower" yogurt? Nels absolutely loves hopping flower yogurt with a little bit of granola and a banana cut up and mixed in. Today he tried "Sunmaid" yogurt for the first time and really liked that too.

I love the names of objects we have adopted in our house because of what the kids have decided they were. Sorry, you won't find any vanilla or lemon yogurt at our house, only hoping flower and sun maid yogurt.

Cell Phones

I went to a Youth Conference a couple weekends ago with our Stake Youth and heard a speaker talk about Cell Phones and how texting has become the new way to communicate. The speaker quoted news articles about teens who had difficulty communicating face to face with others. With the luxury to think and pause before you type out your responses in a text or im, the ability to think on your feet is not being developed. Youth of the Z and I generations are choosing to text rather then talk to each other, even when they are sitting right next to each other. I did a search for "texting taking away ability to communicate" and read a couple interesting, allbeit not totally reliable research sources and saw this statistic that the Youth Conference speaker also had shared with us. I thought it was interesting.

In June 2001, cell phone users sent 30 million text messages in the U.S. A year later, that number had jumped to nearly 1 billion.

The Youth Conference speaker also asked the youth to learn to be respectful of others when they are texting. He said many people think that texting is the new smoking. Texting at dinner and during meetings just isn't appropriate. There is a lady I see at the park periodically and she is frequently texting to other people. Sometimes I feel like telling her to come enjoy our company and 'talk' to her other friends at a different, maybe more appropriate time.

I don't have a cell phone. (Not because I wouldn't like one, but because I am enjoying not having the $50 monthly bill associated with one.) I don't really even think I would know how to text if someone handed me a cell phone and asked me to text a message to another phone. I fear what it will be like when I have teens. My friend was telling me how she never hears the voices of the boys that call her daughter. They call her daughter directly on her cell phone, and probably wouldn't call at all if she didn't have one. You know, when we were kids and our parents answered the phone, they at least got to hear the boy ask to speak to us. I feel like there is something important about hearing the boys, or girls, voice at least. I can't exactly express why, but I think it is important to hear their voices.

What do you think about texting and cell phones?

A few recent photos

I hope they are the best of friends

Liesel has slept at least 6 hours straight for the past two nights. She is only 7 weeks, so I don't count on it happening again tonight, but I will gladly enjoy it if it does. In the meantime, I will congratulate my sister on her new baby girl, Norah Elizabeth Biornstad, born this morning around 9 am. It is fun that both Dash and Koll are around the same age and Now Liesel and Norah are close in age. Congratulations to their growing family.

Once a week

I have a friend who sometimes forces herself to blog at least once a week. I think I will start trying to do that.

Liesel is really great. I think I was expecting the recovery I had with Dashiell and it has been just the opposite. She will even just sit there for several hours and smile and doze in and out of sleep. I love having her around.

My new calling at church is keeping me busy. I was called to teach the 16-18 year old girls and am loving it. I actually haven't even taught a lesson yet, so next week will be my debut. I feel sorry for these girls. They intimidate me, and I feel pretty secure in who I am. I am glad I am done with that teenage/high school thing.

Michael took Nels and Dashiell on the ward Fathers and Sons camp out last night. It is amazing how tired Michael was with one, albeit rather active, night with his boys. (They were down on the beach and the train ran throughout the night.) It is also amazing how refreshed I feel after one night without my boys.

Tonight was the adult session of Stake Conference. They provide babysitting for the kids so that we can enjoy the speakers. It traditionally has been my favorite meeting of our Stake Conferences. I always enjoy the speakers chosen for the Saturday Night Session. The last two conferences however, I have started to wonder why I even go. Dashiell just doesn't like the nursery and either Michael or I, or both, end up out in the hall with him the entire time. I guess you just have to hope that you absorb bits and pieces of the evening. I think I did.

My mom and I did the flowers for stake Conference. They were very impressive and I rather liked them. Maybe I will take a picture tomorrow and post it for all to see.

Is this post random enough?

How about this, Nels and Dashiell are both in their own beds tonight. This is a great thing. Liesel is asleep and pretty content I believe. I think I am going to go and join Michael in bed and start my night dreaming of a good nights rest.

Until next week...

Happy Birthday to Liesel

Liesel Buhrley
Born April 22
8:13 am
7 pounds 4 ounces
20 inches
10 days past her due date, but right on time

She obviously wanted her own birthday because she passed her dads birthday on the 16th of April. (Check out the view from our room at the hospital.)
And her brother Nels' on the 18th of April, and her uncles on the 20th of April and thankfully didn't wait until Dashiell's on the 30th of April.
We are all home and well.

Busy reading

I haven't been posting much lately, but I have been enjoying my reading. In the last month I have read more than I did in the last 6 months and I have really enjoyed all of the books. I thought I would share them. (I also think I should keep a record of the books that I read since I can't remember from one year to the next.) I have been reading a lot because I have been enjoying it but I also wanted to get ahead with some of my Book Club books read before Roadshow starts (tomorrow) and I don't have time for any more reading.

Enders Game by Orson Scott Card

Wow, what a surprise. I picked it up at the library and just about died when I saw the space ships racing across the skies. That and the fact that Card is an LDS author made me almost put it back on the shelf, but it was a book club book so I took it home with me and so enjoyed this book. Well written, intriguing story, quick pace. Just a good read.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory

Just a little trashy for me. Not as bad as a grocery store romance (not that I have ever read a grocery store romance), but the nature of the story calls for a little trash and Gregory served it up. I did think it was an interesting read. I really enjoy historical fiction except I am afraid I take too much of it for fact. The whole idea of royalty and glamor is gone for me. The story around Henry VIII has become a little more real and he as become quite the villain in my history book. What a mean, foolish and quite disagreeable person.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Another well written book. More of just a story. There are no surprises, just a narrative of a little girl, Francie Nolan, growing up the daughter of Irish immigrant parents in pre WWI Brooklyn.

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

I think it could have been finished in half as many pages, but I still enjoyed the story. It kind of bothered me that the author used the full name of the characters all the time. Asher Lev said... Yudel Krinsky's store... Jacob Kahn... I was also hoping for a bit of insight into Jewish culture (is it alright to use fiction to help me develop my understanding of cultures, events, ideas?) and I was a little flabbergasted that this particular group of highly educated people didn't have a whole lot of control over their own lives. This group of Hasidic Orthodox Jews rely so much on what the Rebbe dictates that even very personal decisions are left to him, and he seems such an impersonal character. For example the Rebbe decides that Asher Lev should study art even though he has only talked to the boy a couple times. He also decides that Asher Lev needs to study Russian and French so when Asher Lev gets his class schedule and it includes these courses, he questions his adviser until the adviser explains that the Rebbe wanted Asher Lev to take these courses. Is this really the kind of relationship the had/have?

I just started The Birth House by Ami McKay

I will have to see how this book fares although it isn't calling me to read it over blogging after the first three chapters, but my bed is. I have a busy day with RoadShow tryouts and casting tomorrow. I hope things go well.