Family Update

 Taylor is 4 months now. I can't decide what his temperment is or how to classify him. He is different than the other two were (or maybe I just can't remember). When he is awake, he is really content and happy for anyone to be holding him. When he is hungry/tired, he is a very frustrating baby. He just cat naps here and there, and occasionally he'll take a real nap. And he does not like to eat. I do remember when R and E were toddlers, it would be hard to nurse them if anything else was going on in the room because they were so distractable. Well Taylor is like that already! Even if we're in a room alone, it's off on, off on, off on. Which drives me crazy because my milk is on on, on on, on on. If you get my drift.  Anyway... Somehow he manages to gain weight at an amazing rate. He doubled his birthweight in 3 months, instead of the standard 6 months. He is way chunky, weighing now what Elisabeth (and myself) weighed at one year!

 

 Elisabeth is 3-1/2 and reading like a champ. We exposed her, sure. But she really taught herself. She also likes to scream. She plays great by herself but Rychen often tries to get her involved and they end up screaming at each other... we really wish they would just play on their own a lot of the times.

 

 Rychen is two months shy of 7. He can read a little bit better than Elisabeth. But his math abilities are well into third grade. Its intersting to see how the two kids have their individual strengths. He has only recently been doing spelling and is doing well, not because he is good with language but because he is good with memorization. So his guesses are terrible, but once he is taught how to spell something he won't forget. Rychen can read chapter books now but he still won't pick them up and read on his own. However he has read several books on audio, including the entire first book of Story of the World which is how he is learning Ancient world history. Rychen's good news lately is that he has nearly mastered all the songs in the Suzuki book 1 for piano and is now in book 2. Another exciting thing is that he can now eat oatmeal and eggs because we figured out he was only reacting to certain types. He is not allergic to oats after all, but the trace amounts of gluten from processing them. And eggs he can have naturally raised eggs.

 

 ME... I am doing a twice weekly swim class at YMCA and running the other days. I don't have any event plans yet but would like to do a few half marathons later in the year, and a sprint triathlon or two. But its just fun to get out and work my body. I am still working at home 3-5 hours a day.

 

 Rychen is swimming and running also; and just signed up for a Half-Ironman triathlon! That will be exciting. He is much busier at work now that a few more brokers have joined their office. But he still finds time to clean our house :) He is building our fence by himself. We just had our 8th anniversary and are still goin' strong!

Springtime at the Oregon State Capitol

On Easter Day we took a walk around the State Capitol and took some pictures of the nice flowers...

Popcorn Tree canopy

I love this picture because it looks like the daffodils are blossoming in the snow, but its the fallen blossoms from the tree above it!

Easter Restoration

I was praying earlier this week about what I could do to make our homeschool time more meaningful and I was impressed that we need to spend more time in religious studies; specifically, the topic of Church History came to mind. We have some manuals from D&C and church history that I have begun to study myself, and so I thought I could tailor these lessons for Rychen. We have read about the first vision and read various children's accounts/videos this week. It has been really nice for me to study on my own as well.

 

One part of the story really stands out to me now, which I have overlooked in the past:

 

"I soon found, however, that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion, and was the cause of persecution, which continued to increase; and though I was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and my circumstances in life such as to make a boy of no consequence in the world, yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me, and create bitter persecution..." (Joseph Smith History 1:22)

 

This verse is so cool. He is saying, "I was a poor, uneducated 14 year old boy! And yet the mighty theologians of the day were aroused in fear and suspicion, and resorted to reviling against me" ... and we know that persecution and physical attacks and arrests didn't stop until it all culminated in his murder, sealing his testimony with his martyrdom.

 

The question is we all need to ask is this: WHY WAS JOSEPH SMITH SUCH A THREAT? Why do churches TO THIS DAY continue to persecute his work and seek to destroy it?

 

When I was a teenager my mom told me something absolutely profound that will always stick with me: The very fact that the church receives so much negative attention and persecution only adds MORE witness to the truth of it. Why else would Satan stir people up in opposition? Why else would it be worth anyone's time? You don't see so much opposition against other matters; only controverisal matters were there are clear roles good and evil.

 

If the Mormon church is so vitally important to be one of the two (good or evil; God's work or Satan's), each and every person ought to find out for themselves. The implications are endless. If Joseph Smith was indeed a prophet; if he indeed saw God and followed God's instructions in resetoring Christ's own gospel from when He was alive; if the Book of Mormon is indeed scripture - Your life will be changed forever. You will come closer to God, have more joy, have more truth, and progress toward an eternal perfection. IF THIS IS TRUE, what time do you have to waste? Every person needs to find out. Study it out and pray about it.

 

I have done this and I know its God's work. Jesus Christ established a church; a way for salvation and also for eternal progression and happiness. When the apostles died, a great apostasy came and truths were lost. For 1800 years, man has relied upon scholarship and reasoning, establishing various chuches of man to figure out God and salvation. But salvation does not come through a theology degree; it can only come through Divine Authority from God himself. In 1830 the Great Apostasy came to an end when Jesus Christ, Peter, James and Jon, and many other prophets appeared in resurrected form to restore Christ's own church and Priesthood. I know this is true. It is wonderful and amazing!! I believe the incredible miracles in the Bible and I know that Prophets and Angelic ministers still work in the world today too, to bless our lives!

 

Happy Easter. What a beautiful time to reflect on RESTORATION. Easter is about restoration of Life. And because of that, we also have a restoration of TRUTH and AUTHORITY. I am so thankful to have the gospel in my life. It's a wonderful gift I wish to share with all my friends. Happy Easter!

 

(Read Joseph Smith's story here)

Unpleasant Odor!

Rychen is learning dictionary skills this week - alphabetical order and how to read each entry, and what we can learn from each entry. So this morning Elisabeth got to think of words for him to try to look up. We started with easy things like frog, toad, jump, snake. But pretty soon they got silly OF COURSE. They wanted to look up "Stink" which says something about giving off an unpleasant odor. So naturally Rychen just loved that description, and he's been going around all day saying "Unpleasant Odor!!"

A few pictures from visiting Gremliches

I took the kids on a trip to see my family. It was different this time - my parents moved to Kingman, Arizona and have a much less busy life, so we had a lot of time to hang out visiting and playing games. My sister Laura lives just a couple hours away, so she and her two girls came to see us also.

Here is Peter playing with Taylor.

Grandpa playing with Taylor. It looks like he is making monkey sounds. I had Taylor just hanging out in his carseat and my dad came up and started having a conversation with him. It was SO CUTE. I love that about my dad. :)

The 3 Grand-daughters. Millie and Elisabeth are 8 months apart. Becca is Laura's other daughter.

The bird marble toy, a favorite everytime we visit!

This picture didn't turn out well but I thought it was funny. We brought Rychen's to-do cards with us, and he had to do some schoolwork everyday. BUT we didn't bring school books with us, so everyday we just came up with something random! My mom took turns too. So on this day for science, she was teaching all the kids about static electricity, and did a few balloon tricks!

One day after we played Big Boggle and Rychen was working on some spelling words, I had a brilliant idea that we could hold our own spelling bee for the adults. (yes my family is so nerdy! We do brain teasers and calculus for fun family time!) so that evening we all did spelling words from the list of 100 commonly misspelled words. It was actually very funny. Andrew and I tied for first place, although we were hardly over 70%!!

the other memorable thing about this trip was playing Basketball in the church gym several times. With my family we made a good 2-on-2 game. Other than being small, Rychen P. can hold his own! And it was a lot of fun for me, I hardly ever get to play team sports.

The weather was crazy. At first it was really nice and I got in a few jogs in the sun. Then it got windy one day - and the next day SNOWY!! After a couple cold days, it was back to the 80's so we got some sunbathing in.

Moving in progress

Here are some random pictures I snapped of our new house. I did NOT clean anything up to take these pictures! So once its all clean and decorated I will post the finished product. But here is the "in progress" collection.

Our bed - new bedding we got from Santa that we are just now putting on :) We bought a Sleigh bed frame off Craigslist but then realized they didn't give us the hardware kit, so we are waiting for the screws to assemble it. Also I have been shopping for the perfect inexpensive wall art to match ... almost ready to make my selection ... later this week.


We got this small sectional FREE at a garage sale the other day!! There is a hole in the middle where their dog took out a bite. ha ha! Oh well, can't beat free. (Especially when I need my $$ for wall art. heehee) So this is the bonus room upstairs.

the sectional is facing this:

and this game shelf next to the sectional

Here is the SCHOOL ROOM
(I still need to find a couple boxes to finish upacking books)

The school room also have a big craft table and desk for my stamping stuff. (Wahooo my own space!)

Here is the kitchen. Something about it is not quite right. We need some decor...So this is the very rough cut version.

It's one big great room - the other side of the room is this family room. Again, very rough... I need something to bring all these colors together. Or maybe just get rid of that yellow in the kitchen... I am not sure.
The nook area - what a VIEW!! We have a big deck out there, and a grassy yard below.
This is the front door, opening up to a hallway and staircase.
On the left of the front door as you enter is the living room/dining area. We don't have any furniture in the living room yet, but here is our fantastic dining set we just got from a friend.
And now the moment you've all been waiting for...... Rychen P's messy room. Sadly enough folks, this IS actually the finished product here. We switched his twin bed out for this queen size mattress right on the floor. I am such a cool mom, I had the idea to just throw down a used mattress and let them jump on it. !! They have a "boxing" game they do.

These are BLAZER colors, with matching posters, etc. up on the walls.

The two kids bedrooms and bathroom are at the end of the L-shaped hallway. So I think this part is pretty cool, with the diagonal doorframes.

And finally, here is the master bath. It's a big open archway from the bedroom, so the same colors.

Now check out how cool this is... a special table in my office made out of FOOD STORAGE BOXES!! There are 20 boxes (120 #10 cans) hiding under here.
The treadmill is going to go in my office also. First we put it upstairs but it was too loud on the 2nd floor...and we were dumb enough to put it right over the nook chandelier... which made some nice ringly jingly sound effect when Rychen did his speedwork.

So there is your sneak peek!! We'll put up some better pictures next week when things are cleaner and perhaps better furnished! But we are excited for visitors. Come on by!

Spelling Words: two bird with one stone!

Rychen P. started spelling words last week. We have several spelling word lists for each grade level so we started at the beginning to see which level he's at. When I looked at the list, it occured to me that these are easy 3- and 4-letter words Elisabeth can read; so we all worked together. It is Elisabeth's job to read the word and use it in a sentence, and then Rychen writes or types out the word. Elisabeth is such a hoot!! The sentences she comes up with are so clever. She gets 95% of it all correct. We've done almost ten lists, and Rychen only missed a few words, which he then got correct the following day.

New house

I just had a friend confused about a comment in my last post and I realized I forgot to blog about our new house. I don't have good pictures yet because I want to decorate before I go public with that! But that would take a long time so we will take some pics when we get moved in. Anyhow its in the same neighborhood, twice as big for a lot less. Crazy how the market works like that, but its a great time to buy - especially since we found a foreclosure in good shape. Walked in with a fair amount of equity! Well Rychen spent a couple weeks beautifying the place (walls, carpet, some yard work, etc) with some help from ward members (THANK YOU!!) and we are here now trying to unpack and catch up on things. Crazy busy life!!

 

Now I am excited to go SHOPPING (...gradually...) and decorate! We have a few EMPTY rooms right now, so CRAIGSLIST is my new best friend. and Bed Bath & Beyond :-) It's a fun house with beautiful hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings, lots of natural daylight, a beautiful view of the West Salem countryside, and colorful walls! We had to tone down some of the color but I am keeping most of it, hence the fun in finding matching decor. Fun stuff!