I really do have a clean bedroom

I have waited two weeks to post this picture of my clean bed!!! I knew it would be good motivation posting my messy bedroom picture---it worked like a charm. I worked hard to get it all clean and two weeks later it still is clean so maybe there is hope for me after all.

Halloween costumes

WE went to our ward Halloween party on October 24th and it was a lot of fun. Here are the kids in their costumes. Aaron's doesn't fit him very well-it's too small so he may have a different one on Halloween. Same with Ammon. I bought him this cute horse costume but it is 0-3 months and he is now in 3-6 month clothes!!! I didn't think he would grow so much. He is getting to be a chub now!! He is not a newborn now. He is so smiling and interactive now. Anyway, I will have more pictures of costumes in a couple of days. We have a fun Halloween planned tomorrow with school activities and trick or treating and a fun Halloween party at Grandma's. Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween!!!

Aidan lost another tooth!

Aidan has been losing teeth this month. This is the third one. Kael and Kalli didn't lose their teeth till they were six or seven (late bloomers) but Aidan just turned five in July and already is losing them! He is so excited when he retrieves money under his pillow in the morning from the tooth fairy. I told Kalli if she ruined the tooth fairy for him, she was in big trouble. She no longer gets visits from the tooth fairy---not because she's not losing teeth anymore because she is---but because the tooth fairy in the Wendt household kept forgetting to give her money!!! Then her last visit, Kalli caught her. The Wendt tooth fairy was so disappointed. OH, well. At least Santa still visits here. The rule in the Wendt household is if you don't believe than you don't get any gifts! So we have a lot of believers in this household!!! It's so good to be back blogging!

I'm almost back!!!

I miss blogging so much!! I have so much to write!! I'm at my friend Susan's house and she is so nice to let me use her computer!!! I feel so isolated from the world. My husband has been so busy and it has been hard to find time to work on it but I think this week he will have it running again. I have lots of pictures and lots of stories to catch up on!! I will just say that today I walked two miles plus with my sister Emma this morning, I had about four hours of sleep last night and my two year old woke up soaking wet and is driving me crazy today!! Life is good.

Flu Shots

This morning, Scott and I took all of our kids to the doctor where they were having a Flu Shot Clinic. They called our name and we had two nurses, three crying kids, one sleeping baby and one quiet teenager. Aaron is smart--he was digging his heels in before we even got into the room. He remembered his shots from his two year old checkup. Anyway, I am just glad that we got them all done! Scott and I are getting ours next week.
I hope I will be able to blog this next week. We have been having trouble with our computer. I think we have a virus!!! Hopefully Scott will be able to fix it up soon. I hate having computer troubles!!!

School Community Council Meeting

I have the privilege of being on Westmore's Community Council. It wasn't that hard to get elected since there was only two of us on the ballot last spring! In fact, we have been hoping that more will join us. Altogether we have eight members including the principal. Anyway, last year I attended all the meetings as a parent and not as a council member and I was hooked. I learn something every time I go. For those out-of-staters reading this let me explain what a community council is: Utah has designated some funds for education. It is the Trust Land Fund-the interest that the national park earns and it goes for education. Anyway, each school in the state of Utah, elementary, Jr. high, or high school has a community council and they decide what the school will do with the funds earned from the trustlands. Anyway, I'm sure I'm boring people but this is my BLOG; I can write what I want. Anyway, we meet once a month for an hour and this month we had a district board member JoDee Sundberg there. We split up in two groups and we discussed these two questions: 1) What do you value about your local public school and 2) What are the characteristics of a quality public school? Then JoDee wrote down our top answers and she will meet with other members of the board who did this exact same process at every community council meeting in the district and they will make sure that Alpine School District is meeting the needs of its patrons. Anyway, I just think it was so neat to be involved in this and I love learning different things about what is going on at Westmore. The first meeting in August we got to meet all the new teachers and I wouldn't have had that opportunity if I wouldn't have attended the meeting! It is just fun.
I need to note two things that I am well-pleased with myself: I cleaned off my bed today while the babies were napping and I will be able to sleep in my bed now!! And number two, I walked at least a mile at the Fitness center track today with my sister, Emma.

I need to clean my room!

Okay maybe I shouldn't have posted this picture of my bedroom but I need to vent! This is a picture of it a couple of weeks ago and today it is worse!! I get mad at my kids and am always on them to keep their bedrooms clean and look at mine!! What I need to do is clean it a little at a time when I have little snatches of time. The reality of the situation is when I go into it, I can hardly stand it and I turn around a go out of it! I would love to just have 6 hours of interrupted time to do a thorough cleaning-yeah right like that is going to happen!! But I can wish. I am so embarrassed that it looks this way that maybe that is enough motivation for me to just clean it so I can post the "clean picture" and so everyone won't think I'm a slob. My husband's side is not pictured and his side is pretty clean now. I have papers and pictures and "stuff" everywhere. I sleep on the loveseat because of the baby (likely excuse!) and because I can't get into bed because of the mess!!! Well, here is another challenge for me to clean my room. Now if I could just find time to dehydrate the fruit (my parents lent me their food dryer and I am making dried plums and apples!), clean the kitchen and livingroom, do the checkbook, go grocery shopping, help the kids with their homework, do the laundry, feed the baby........

Aidan's Field Trip

Aidan got to go on a field trip today at the fire station! He got to walk to school this morning with Kalli and I picked him up at noon. It is different to have him home this afternoon. Hopefully I will be able to spend some time with him. He is learning to read and he is just so anxious to do it that when we are sounding out words--he just guesses instead of sounding out the letters. It has been awhile since I have been at this stage with a child learning how to read and I know it will happen--it will just take time. Kalli was reading when she was four years old but we had our frustrations too. She struggled for awhile and then it clicked and she got it and she was just reading everything she could get her hands on. By the spring before she was to enter kindergarten (4 months away from being age 6--she missed the deadline because her birthday is Sept 8) I had her tested and she was reading at a third grade level. Anyway, I know that it will happen for Aidan too--he just needs to practice.

Have you ever done this before?

Last night, before Family Home Evening, I thought I would run a quick errand. I left at 6:30 and was done with my errand at 7 p.m. "Great!" I thought, "I'll just run home now and we will have FHE. Uh, oh. The doors in the van are all locked and oh, look-there are my keys sitting on the front seat. I went back into Copy Max and asked to use their phone. I don't have a cell phone. I called my sister. She didn't answer her phone so I left a message. I called my husband and told him I was going to call my parents and ask them to bring me his keys. He misunderstood and thought that I wanted him to call my sister. Sometimes we don't have the best communication skills. So I called my parents, he calls my sister. Luckily he only has one set of keys so my parents brought me his keys (thank you for rescuing me!) and my sister came over to get the keys and of course they weren't there so hubby told her thank you but mom and dad got them to me so she went home. After I came home, I called my sister to apologize for the mixup. It seems like she is always rescuing me from something!! I'm glad to know that she is there for me though. Fortunately, she lives really close so at least she didn't use up too much gas. Anyway, when I was waiting for my parents to bring the keys, I was trying not to be frustrated at myself for being stupid enough to lock the keys in the car! I was trying to be positive. The one thing I came up with was I had 30 minutes of quiet time with no kids demanding my time! The baby woke up when I was gone and was screaming when I came in the house. But all's well that ends well right?

Ammon is getting so big!

I love Ammon's big smiles! He is just growing so big and getting more and more aware and interactive. Last night, I actually got some sleep. He slept a lot better. In fact when I got up with him at 2 a.m., there was a good movie on (Lost in Space) Fox 13 and I wished that I could stay up and finish it. But I knew that if I did, I would pay for it in the morning so I went back to sleep. Anyway, he woke up every three hours instead of two and that was a lot more manageable. After an inspiring conference weekend, it is back to the routine of kids going to school and me home with the babies. I did go walking this morning at the fitness center between 1-2 miles. I am so proud of myself; I went four days last week walking at least one mile and I'm off to a good start this week!

Joy in the Journey

I was so touched by President Monson's talk this morning. He reminded me to have joy in the journey of life. To live in the here and now and not dwell on the past or future. I have so many blessings to be thankful for--most of all my family. I also enjoyed Elder Ballard's talk. He talked about the growth of the church. The part that really touched me was when he compared the challenges that we have today to the challenges of the pioneers. He said he wasn't saying that we had it harder--we just had different challenges!!! I can hardly wait for the conference messages to come out in the Ensign so I can reread them. They have inspired me to be a better person and to try and be a more positive person. This afternoon we will watch conference at my parent's house (Grandma and Grandpa's house!) and I always enjoy being with my family so much!

Conference

I just loved listening to General Conference today!!! My favorite talks were Elder Dallin H. Oaks about the Sabbath and about how we should act during Sacrament meeting. I can hardly wait to reread his talk. Also, Elder Jeffrey Holland's talk about how we are never alone and Heavenly Father's love for us. I was so touched by his talk. I got to enjoy the talks because Aaron was napping in the afternoon and the baby slept a lot so that was nice to be able to focus on what was being said. I am excited for Girls Night Out today. We have a tradition in my family every conference that the boys (my brothers, husband, and now son) go to the Priesthood Session with my Dad and we girls (my sister-in-laws, aunt, grandma, mom, sisters) party together. We eat pizza and watch movies and just have a good time being together. The men usually take a trip to Wendys after conference and get dinner. The fun part is hanging out with the family.

Family Togetherness

Tonight the entire family went to the park. This is something that we don't do often enough. Scott suggested it because he wanted us to spend family time together. It worked a little bit. For the first 45 minutes of our family togetherness, I was in the van in the backseat nursing the baby. But at least I was at the park. Then, when I was done, Ammon and I joined the rest. Aidan and Aaron had so much fun on the playground that when it was time to go home, there were tears. It was a fun outing though. I'm glad that we did it.
I am so excited for the LDS General Conference tomorrow. I always gain so much from listening to the prophets and apostles. I wish that I could listen to it on the radio and clean my room but I am guessing that I will be feeding the baby. Ah, well. The baby is more important than the mess in the room!!!

Love at Home

This morning was just one of those mornings that I either laugh or cry. Ammon kept me up most of the night. I shouldn't blame him totally; it was my fault too. I fed him at midnight and we both fell asleep. Then at 1 a.m. he woke up and I fed him on the other side and we both fell asleep again. So every hour he would wake up hungry because he only had half a feeding. So after midnight, 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m, 5 a.m., I finally was exhausted. I kept trying to stay awake but every hour it was got worse...I was just so tired. So I broke down and gave him a bottle of formula at 5 a.m. and he slept until 7 a.m. so that helped me get a little bit of sleep. So needless to say, I am a little tired today. I am very proud of myself that I got my dishes done. My kids have been trying to help get them done this week but Kael has just been slammed with homework (he has some tough classes this year!) and Kalli has had homework too. Anyway, there were big pots and pans that have been sitting on the counter all week and it felt good to get all the dishes done finally. While I was doing dishes though, Aaron decided he wanted to see what would happen if he tipped a box of cereal down and shake it out on the floor. Sigh. I didn't yell at him but he ran when I came towards him. I just swept it up and threw it in the garbage. I actually didn't have too bad of a morning. I read Aidan and Aaron some books and we didn't watch TV all morning like I sometimes fall in the trap of doing. Aidan is learning how to read which is exciting but I sometimes wonder if he will get it. He sounds out the letters and then says something else. Like f-u-n is not the word fat. I'm trying to be patient saying no, it's not a T you have to say the N sound. We will just keep working at it. I'm glad that I kept my temper today and didn't yell. The morning went so much better today with calm words even though it wasn't my best morning.

Kari's Cooking Corner

Well I have started a new blog with my favorite recipes on it if you would like to look at it. It is called karicookingcorner.blogspot.com. I have a link to it from my blog here. It is slowly but surely coming together. I wish I had more time to work on it but I keep reminding myself that the baby is more important! I am proud of myself this week: I have gone to the fitness center Monday and yesterday and walked a mile in the morning on the track. I put Aidan and Aaron in the daycare and Ammon goes in the stroller. It feels so good to exercise again!! I am determined to get that baby tummy of mine looking a whole lot better than it does now!