Mackenzie's Achievement Day Goal

Ever since Mackenzie has turned 8, she has been able to participate in Achievement Days. Achievement Days is an activity program in our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where she learns skills that strengthen her spirituality, lets her serve others, and develop her talents. You don't have to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to go to these activities just in case there is someone out there who reads my blog who is interested in having their 8-11 year old girl participate. Anyways, it is a fun experience for Mackenzie to associate with her peers and learn new things at the same time.

The program has you set goals to achieve within a year, two per section. Mackenzie has been able to finish her physical fitness goal of learning a sport or activity and participating in it for at least one month. That was her basketball season.  Another one that she has just finished is to make an item from wood, metal, fabric, or other material, or draw, paint, or sculpt a piece of art and then display it for others to see. Mackenzie loves to draw and she is pretty amazing at it if you ask me. I hang her pictures up all the time. She also just finished this fabric apron (scene in the picture below). She started it in her last achievement day activity and then finished in this last activity. She sewed little felt flowers onto her apron. She was so excited and proud of what she accomplished.

The goal that she finished today for her "Serving Others" section was plan, prepare, and serve a nutritious meal. She said that she wanted to make grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, grape juice, and grapes.  I guided her through the whole process but she mainly did everything. Normally I like to just cook on my own but it was really fun to help her learn how to cook and teach her cooking safety at the same time.

Right here she is buttering the bread.

 Then she carefully assembled the sandwiches on the griddle, with a crowd watching her every move.

 I taught her how to flip the sandwiches and also how to just check if the bread was lightly browned or not. She would check and say, they need a little bit more time. Seconds later, she would check them again, only to proclaim that they still needed more time. I loved watching her focus so hard to make us dinner. (This is the first time that I think I haven't burned at least one sandwich when making grilled cheese. Duh, I should have Kenzie cook them more often!)

It is a great program that has built Kenzie's confidence and I hope that she takes in all the things that she is taught.

Worst Feeling

Something happened today that I hope never happens again. I was driving in the van after running some errands with Jordyn sitting in the middle seat. I pulled into my driveway. I left Jordyn in her car seat while I ran some bags into the house. I left the door open so that it wouldn't be too hot for her while she waited. I put the bags away and ran upstairs to check on the other kids who where home. All seemed well. I went outside and the van door was closed. Odd...I thought, since I thought I had left it open. I opened up the door and Jordyn was not there.

Immediately I staredt screaming her name. I began running around panicking. Someone saw her sitting there and stopped their car and stole her. They pulled right in and snatched her, driving off with her. I'm crying and fiddling around looking for my phone to call 911 when I look up and see that Jordyn is in the back seat of the van. Pure relief! Happiness! Joy! Gratitude! My baby was safe. She had climbed out of her seat on her own, which she has never done before,  and was playing in the back on the ground where I couldn't see her. I grabbed her and held her tight. Telling her that I loved her. I put her back in her car seat, making sure to draw up the buckle nice and tight so that she couldn't climb out again. The whole drive to the store was a prayer to my Heavenly Father thanking him for keeping Jordyn safe and telling Him of all the things that I am greatful for. I thought I had lost my baby and yet she was safe. It is weird that the first thing that I thought of when I thought that I had lost her and who knew if we would be able to find her was that we are an eternal family and I would get to have her back someday. I am so glad that that someday was today!

Renovation Realities

Well this spring break was not spent relaxing on the warm California beaches but rather was spent doing grueling grunt work in order to make our house feel brand new. That's right, we renovated! This house was built in the 1770's and when we bought it, it still had the original carpet through out it. Three years we saved until we could pull up the shaggy green, blue, gold, orange and brown carpet. Every time my little baby's started learning how to crawl, I would cringe at what nastiness they might be crawling over. No offence to the previous owners, you could be the cleanest people but after 40 years, there's no way you can say this carpet was clean.  It was hard and stressful with nights spent working till 2 o'clock in the morning and then getting up at sunrise to do it all over again, but in the end, the result is pure cleanliness and heaven! (Pictures soon to come of the results. This post is full of the destruction.)

The blue room with weird orange sponge padding. 

Jared's brother, Dusty, came and helped a ton. He was chisling out our foe brick linoleum by our garage door in preparation for prettier wood flooring.

This is the annoying doorway and pillar in the middle of our family room.  It completely breaks up the room and makes it look smaller that it is.

Here is the beam taken down to just the post holding up the weight baring beam and Jared undoing the baseboard heater so we can finish pulling up the grossest of all the carpets in our house.

Here is Jared and James Evans, one of the greatest and kindest guys we will ever know, building the fake wall so that we can pull down the beam with out collapsing our house on us.

We had to get a bunch of guys to come help us carry the beam because it weighed over 400 lbs. Jared said he would have taken it down himself, done a few curls, and perhaps a squat or two but then thought it would be good to let some guys from the ward have an opportunity to serve. I was so scared our house would fall on us but James assured me that the fake wall would do it's job.

Thanks to James and Mike Corbett, Kevin, Josh, and Zack Leal, Fred Bunce, Royce Murdoch, Byron and Dusty Heath, and especially again to James Evans and his wonderful wife, Emily, for letting us have him all week long!

 The guys hamming it up for the camera on how heavy the beam was. I think it is funny that Josh, the third guy in, is showing off his guns for the camera.

We bought a glue lam beam to put in place that would suspend across the entire family room but when we got it, it's dimensions were 5 1/8th by 13 inches by 18 feet.  Jared quickly realized that with a 7 foot ceiling, that means he would hit his face square in the middle of the beam whenever he ventured downstairs. Not wanting to live in a hobbit house and have to visit the emergency room multiple times a year, we nixed that idea. Instead we bought four more feet of and I-beam and had our friend, Kent Gardner, weld it onto the existing I-beam that was already in our home.

Most of the time we had the kids locked up in the upstairs level. (Before you call social services, they had the whole level to play on. They weren't literally locked up, just told to stay upstairs and not to come downstairs at all. For their safety!!) However, we did let them come down and so some cheap child labor where they pulled up chunks of glue down padding.

 After they worked on the glue down padding, our good friend, Shawn, took and scraper and worked his tale off getting the rest of the big chunks off. It was a nasty job but Shawn prevailed in the end!

So many people helped us finish the jobs in our house before the carpet installers came and for that we are in your debt. Thank you thank you!

We just have to finish up some trim work and then you can see the final results. Stay tuned!

Rocket Launching

When I was a little girl, my dad would take us kids to the High School and we would launch rockets. There was a large grassy field where we would set up our rockets. I had a florescent pink rocket that I would launch up. It was always fun to shoot up the rocket and then run through the field trying to catch the rocket as it slowly floated down from the attached parachute. It was a blast.

Well, my dad is continuing the tradition with the grand kids. This past weekend we traveled down to Utah and met up with my Dad and Mom at my brother Jamie's house. The have a large playground behind their house and we were able to set up our rockets there.

(My dad made his own launcher. Previous to my parents traveling down to Utah, they spent a week at our house. My dad would set up his stuff at the kitchen table. He would be shredding wires and cauterizing wires together and assembling a black box. Jared joked that he appeared to be making a bomb. He would just chuckle. I told him if he suddenly has "play dough" that says C-4 on it, he has to take his stuff outside.)

Dad setting up the launcher. You have to factor in wind and the type of fuel. After using a small black and yellow practice rocket, that we never found, we were ready for the really launches. 

My mom and me waiting for blast off time.

My dad painted the shark jaws on one of his many rockets. He and my brother, Jamie, were figuring out a few logistics.

 Eli and I got to control the "Little Black Box" a few times.

 All of us watching the launches from a safe distance.

 I love that my dad is carrying on the tradition of rocket launches. I loved it and still do and hope that my kids enjoyed themselves too.