Happy Thanksgiving

We were surprised to find that most of the Mormons in Iowa are not natives to Iowa. A large percentage of our ward doesn't have family near by which kind of makes us all orphans. John and I have enjoyed making new friends and have discovered that people who are not related to us can tolerate us for a whole evening. We ate Thanksgiving with the Hamilton's, they have 3 boys and when we got together it was the normal noisy zoo you would find at any family gathering. We really enjoyed the food and the company. Thanks Hamilton's! We hope everyone at home had a happy Thanksgiving too.

Mommy's trash is McKenna's treasure.

I know that all you parents out there can sympathize with my plight. Every school day McKenna brings home 2 or 3 half colored pages from school with every intention of finishing them and saving them FOREVER. I learned a long time ago most of these treasures would have to be snuck in the garbage and only a chosen few would make into the "special box". The picture above is one of the papers McKenna brought home partially finished, left on the floor and snuck into the garbage. It was put in the garbage on Friday and when Monday came around McKenna started looking for her turkey picture. McKenna is often looking for pages so I didn't pay much attention. I had no idea what she was looking for but figured it was probably long gone and offered to print her another turkey to color off the computer. This is when my ears finally went out of auto pilot and I actually listened to what she was telling me. The turkey was for a coloring contest her class was having, it was then that I remembered throwing away her turkey picture...my mind raced for a minute and to my relief I had thrown it in the downstairs garbage that doesn't go out everyday so I went to the garbage knowing that when she realized where I was going and where her turkey picture was she would be furious and she was. It was wrinkled with a little bit of sauce on it and smelled of garbage. I pulled it out, smoothed it, washed it and guiltily handed it to McKenna. She was not happy and whined and complained for the next half an hour while she attempted to color it. I knew the only way I could make it up to her was to color that sad piece of garbage with her so we sat and colored for about an hour then McKenna sat and diligently finished coloring the rest herself. It took about 3 hours. When McKenna finally finished the picture she held it up excitedly and said, "look mom, its done and it doesn't even smell like garbage anymore." Ya know how some random things end up being your favorite memories, I have a feeling that coloring that piece of garbage with McKenna is going to end up being one of mine.

Thanksgiving Feast

Today I volunteered at McKenna's school for their Thanksgiving feast. Before and after the feast the kids sang a little thankful song they had learned for the feast. So, in keeping with the spirit of Thanksgiving here are some of the things I am thankful for today. I am thankful for friends that are willing to watch my little kids so I can volunteer in McKenna's class and build some memories with her.

I am thankful for a good teacher that nurtures, cares for, teaches and appreciates my little McKenna.

I am thankful for McKenna, what a wonderful, beautiful, sweet daughter she is, we just had parent teacher conference and I never hear anything but good about my sweet girl.

It only takes a half an inch of snow...

It only takes a half an inch of snow for John to bundle up the kids and send them outside. Everyone seems happy about it besides Brock...you can almost hear whats going on in that little head of his...why did I get the pink snow pants?

It only takes a half an inch of snow for a great snow ball fight.

It only takes a half an inch of snow to make a snow angel.

It only takes one pair of pink snow pants to ruin a perfectly good half an inch of snow.

A little bling never hurt anyone.

Brock's favorite toys have always been cars and balls, needless to say with two older sisters his favorite toys have not always been readily available, so Brock dug through the toy box and emerged with his first car...a big pink Barbi car...he didn't seem to mind, it had four wheels and he could push it around. As you can see the assaults to his manhood don't end there, last night Karina relentlessly followed him around putting this tiara and earings (their really bracelets) on him, Brock resisted as long as he could but Karina eventually won, Bock finally stopped running and let her accessorize to her hearts content. This brought me back to the good old days when me and Emily would do the same thing to Tyler and Andy, only they where forced to wear dresses, drink out of pretend bottles and get gently rocked to sleep in our baby doll cradle.

Winter Quarters

John and I finally made it to the temple this weekend. It was a long time coming. We are in the Winter Quarters district which is very historical, sadly I didn't get a picture of the temple but here we are outside the visitors center.

Daddy Time Good/Mommy Time Bad

While I was in the temple John took the kids to a kids museum to play...as you can see they had a lot of fun, they ran and played and explored to their hearts content. While John was in the temple I took the kids to see Madagascar 2, it was right after lunch, during nap time. We spent the first few minutes of the movie in the bathroom while Karina patiently sat on the pot for ten minutes and we not so patiently waited for her. When we finally sat down Brock started fussing and arching his back I tried everything I could to keep that kid happy but it was all in vain...it was a long movie, by the end of it I had given up on trying to keep the kids civil and let them run up and down the stairs and threw the ailes. Next time I get the kids pre-nap time.

building a hunt

I have a confession...we skipped stake conference and spent the day playing with our kids. I'm not entirely sure stake conference was made for families with multiple toddlers. We tried to only do activities that were Sunday appropriate and resist the temptation to sit in front of the TV the whole day so we built a "hunt" (that's what McKenna called it) and played in it all morning, ate lunch, took a great nap, had Family Home Evening, ate dinner and watched The Sound of Music. It was a great day.

Finding joy in the journey

"Let us relish life as we live it, find joy in the journey, and share our love with friends and family."
this incident occurred 5 minutes after cleaning the mirror.

This is what Brock does if we do not immediately get him down when he is done eating.Weekly pile of laundy that can sometimes bring on a case of the Monday's for me, sinse Monday is laundry day.

I'm sure you are familiar with President Monson's talk in General Conference this session "Finding Joy in the Journey" I just want to share a few of my favorite quotes from his talk

"If you are still in the process of raising children, be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled will disappear all too soon and that you will-to your surprise-miss them profoundly."
"In the 1960's, during the Vietnam War, Church member Jay Hess, an airman, was shot down over north Vietnam, For two years his family had no idea whether he was dead or alive, his captors in Hanoi eventually allowed him to write home but limited his message to less than 25 words. What would you and I say to our families if we were in the same situation-not having seen them for over two year and not knowing if we would ever see them again?...Hess wrote-"These things are important: temple marriage, mission, college, Press on, set goals, write history, take pictures twice a year."
I think everyone listening to that talk paused and composed a letter in their mind of what they would say. This is what I would say: John, McKenna, Karina, Brock, you are my joy! Be grateful-pray, listen-be obedient-live happy. Personal strength comes from Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, Scriptures.

I'm interested in your 25 words, if you want to share them: Doni, Emily, Lindsay, Kristi, or anyone who is interested.

us too.

My sister-in-law Alisha posted on her blog that they were going private. They had watched a story on the news about identity theft related to blogging. As soon as I read it I knew it would torment me until we went private too. So here we go, in an effort to keep my children's identities safe we are going private. Please leave my your e-mail address in a comment and I will invite you onto my blog, if you can't leave a comment just e-mail me at jrstray77@gmail.com or John at jrstray@hotmail.com

making dates

McKenna, for the last few weeks has been begging me to come and eat school lunch with her so we finally set a date, packed our little lunches and enjoyed 5 star cafeteria dining.

John and I don't go on dates very often so I was really excited to tell him that I arranged babysitters for that night so we could go to dinner. We went to a nice Chinese restaurant and enjoyed a dinner where we didn't have to coax our kids to eat, get drinks or remind McKenna to talk less and eat more. Dating when your married with kids is a little different than dating with no kids. After dinner, instead of going to a movie we came home to put the kids to bed and watch a video we rented 3 days earlier but could never manage the time to finish watching. I put Brock to bed and John put the girls to bed. Brock fell asleep in probably 15 minutes so I went downstairs to wait for my date to return, I waited until 10:30 and finally gave up, there was no mystery as to where he was, getting Karina to sleep often takes about 45 minutes and by that time John is usually sawing logs right next to her. There should be some rules for dating when your married like when your wife makes the effort to get a sitter and take you on a date don't fall asleep with the kids at 8:00 P.M. and stand your wife up. I anyone else has any rules they would like to add please leave a comment.

This is me being excited Emily is blogging now!

Emily, this hideous picture is dedicated to you. I took this picture right after crying my eyes out from looking at your blog. It felt like all my homesickness for you just came spilling out. Its hard to watch your life going on without me there, at least now I will get to see what your up to instead of just hearing about it. I miss you my "bosom buddy".

Sunday was awesome. We went to church and Karina and Brock actually weren't too bad through sacrament meeting, usually I feel like crying by the end of the first hour. We came home and took a great nap. I woke up and looked out the window the sun was just about to set and it was warm outside so I woke everyone up to take a walk while it was still light outside. We have these great trails behind our house and I knew they would be fun to see this time of year. So far I have enjoyed every season in Iowa, I haven't experienced a winter yet but I have lived in Bear Lake Idaho, Rexburg Idaho, Cache Valley Utah, and Alaska...lets just say its going to take a lot to scare me off.