Quote from Nels

"I think there are so many people in the world that birthday parties start every three minutes or less."

Orange County Fair

Be My Valentine!

I don't like much about valentines day, but I do love making valentines. I have memories of making valentines with my siblings when I was a kid. They were always the same, Hearts cut out with a piece of gum taped on and they said "Please 'chews' me for your valentine." These are the valentines Nels and I made for his class this year.

California trees are confused...

... so are my children.

I have always thought it was fun to drive around town in December and see the red and gold leaves falling off the trees. And even more fun when the trees bloom in January. Here it is the middle of Winter for some, but here in California, I guess we just didn't get the message.

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.