dead mouse = hunger strike

Aaron went on a self imposed 24 hour hunger strike today. I had success with the mouse trap and the world is now short one mouse. Aaron was in the kitchen when Tim discovered the tripped trap, and he was VERY sad about the whole thing, crying and carrying on about how cute the mouse was and this was just so horrible and blah blah blah... then he went on a hunger strike, saying it just wasn't fair for him to be able to enjoy eating food when the mouse had to be dead.

I sympathized for a few minutes - yes, the mouse was cute, in a mouse sort of way - but NOT IN MY HOUSE, eating my food, and contaminating my food storage! I tried to explain that to Aaron, but his response was simply that he'd rather let the mouse eat ALL the food storage than kill it.

I finally told him that if he wants to spend HIS money to buy the humane traps, then I would use them instead and I would just make sure I drove the mouse far enough away that I could be certain it wouldn't ever come back. So far, no new evidence of more mice, but experience tells me that where there is one mouse, there are usually more, so I'm going to stay vigilant for a bit longer to make sure there's no more lurking around. I'll just make sure Aaron is at school before I check the traps...

EEEWWWWW!!!!!!

The cold weather has apparently sent the mice looking for warmer places to settle down for the winter. Aaron told me the other night that he thought he saw something mouse-like running in the kitchen, but I thought it was his imagination... UNTIL this morning when I found EVIDENCE of the little bugger(s) in my pantry.

HEAR YE HEAR YE MICE - you are NOT welcome in my home!

I went down to the grocery store tonight and bought an arsenal of mice killing weapons. Hoping for quick resolve of the problem! I worked WAY to hard gather my food storage this past year to have the little critters nibbling away at and contaminating all my food! GROSS!!!!

And just so you don't give me a hard time about my methods - like my son Aaron is... I tried the humane way once, catching the mice in a live trap, then hiking up the hill and releasing it. I swear that little mouse beat me back to the house every time. I caught a mouse everyday, until once when I set it free, Jasmine happened to see it and kill it. Never caught another one after that, nor did we find evidence of any more mice, so I figured I must have been catching the same mouse over and over. Not playing that game again...

Sunday Gratitude

OH MY HECK! blogger is being really dumb. for those of you with google reader (or another automatic feed) - I apologize if you keep getting blank posts. I promise I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary. It's just that every time I hit enter - it publishes the post. Go figure!

Anyway - back to gratitude.

This is a bit difficult for me tonight, because I've been in a horrible rotten no good very bad mood for the past couple days. (I think it's just hormonal... please please please let it just be hormonal!!! I will DIE if this is a permanent state of mind and part of my personality!) My poor hubby and kids!

Today I am grateful for

* a screaming great deal I got on a Christmas gift that Aaron is going to LOVE! It was a good deal to start with, then Tim talked them down $10 more dollars. WAHOO!!! (don't ask... you have to wait until Christmas)

* a good deal on a Christmas gift that Bryan will love!

* for good friends who were driving up to Layton and took the extra time and effort to pick up the said gift for Bryan. (I found it on KSL.com and really wanted it, but not enough to DRIVE to Layton... THANKS Aaron and Holly)

* for kids that make me smile. Today in the middle of sacrament meeting, someones baby (or maybe it was a toddler, I wasn't really looking) started making a wailing sound. Bryan, in his ever so "soft" PLAYGROUND VOICE announced to Holly, "that sounds like a fire truck." Apparently it carried far enough that it was brought up again in YW's - one of the girls commenting about how funny it was...

* good books. Just finished "Goose Girl" by Shannon Hale and I really enjoyed it. I liked the first book of hers that I read a few years ago, "Princess Academy." I think I may want to buy them - I know Katrina will LOVE them in not too many more years.

* BED. It is still pretty early, (for me at least) and I think I'm going to sign off here and get to bed before 10.

Be-lated Halloween

Around the 1st of October, Tim hauled out the Halloween stuff and decorated the house. In the course of that - out came the costume box and and everyone had fun trying on different costumes, trying to decide what they wanted to be. Here are a few of the "maybes."



And now we come to Halloween night. The FINAL winners are: Bryan as Simba, Katrina as a witch, Aaron as a bat, and Caleb as bat baby...



(obviously having some trouble with the sun coming in through the windows - lets try outside...



"oh yeah mom - this is SO much better - now we are all BLIND!"




and this last picture was added after the fact, since when Aaron saw the post he said, "but Mom, where is the picture where I am jumping in the air? So - HERE is the one with him jumping in the air. Kinda hard to tell, I know, but trust me, he is.



What adorable children I have!

government health care...

A friend sent me this today and I liked. I believe that changes need to be made in our health system. I do NOT believe, however, that a government run health system is the answer. not even CLOSE!!!!!

Here's the email (with a few minor alterations) -

To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature,

* The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775 You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.

* Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.

* Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.

* War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.

* Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.

* Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.

* The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.

You have FAILED in every one of these "government services" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars and you want us to believe that you can be trusted with our HEALTH??? NO THANK YOU!

Fun at the Dr's

Today I got to spend 4 hours and who know how much money to be told, "hmm, we don't know. take him home and keep an eye on him. If he gets worse, bring him back in."

so, with that little teaser, here's the story.

About 10:30 this morning Bryan swallowed a little rubber ball thing. Came off of a toy where there is a plastic man with stick balls for each hand and foot. You throw it against the wall, it sticks then walks itself down the wall, slinky style. Apparently the toy had broken, Byran found one of the little ball things - and swallowed it! Right after swallowing it he was hacking, coughing, and wheezing something fierce. Then he seemed okay again and I figured it had passed on down tot he stomach and would make it's way through - if you know what I mean. I called the dr's office and the nurse confirmed that I should just keep an eye on him and she gave me a list of things to watch for.

At about 2:30 he started complaining again that his throat hurt and he was wheezing again. He was coughing and wheezing - he sounded like he had croup. I called the Dr's again and at 3:00 I was on my way to the dr. They confirmed that he sounded like he had an obstruction - so they sent us to the hospital to get a barium swallow test to see how large the thing was and where it was stuck, etc...

The Barium Swallow test reveled NO blockage. Interesting, since he was still wheezing and complaining of pain. The called the Dr and told him the results. Then the Doc ordered a couple chest x-rays to see if it maybe he breathed it in rather than swallowing it. more waiting while they had the tests read. Nothing there either.

So - despite the fact that Bryan is wheezing like he has croup and he fusses about every 30 - 60 minutes of pain, we are home, an we are assuming that everything is fine. The doc prescribed a steroid to take down any inflammation that would be causing the wheezy croupy sound. His best theory right now is that Bryan was already coming down with croup - or something like unto it - and it just "happened" to decided to magically show symptoms after the sticky ball swallowing incident. (he had a slight temp of 100*)

The bummer for me - besides wondering if there is some sticky foreign object lodged somewhere in my son causing trouble - was that we had family plans tonight that we ended up having to cancel. Oh well. That's life.

thankful to be done... until next year

Today was the annual Primary Sacrament meeting program. (my 4th as chorister) As usual, the practices (we only had 2 this year) were chaotic and crazy, yet it pulled together in the end and it was a great program. A few little glitches along the way... like the announcements and sacrament taking longer than usual, and me sitting there starting to panic ... planning where to start cutting out music... I told the pianist we were to going take every song up a few notches in the tempo department, and to look at me before each song, so I could signal to him how many verses we would be doing. (playing it by ear as I gauged the clock) It went well. In case you are wondering, (and I know you must be) here are the "stats" from the program. 73 children were there and did their parts. (79 possible, so it was a pretty good turnout) I would guess that 80% of them had their parts memorized. We sang 10 songs in the program, plus senior primary did 3 more songs as prelude music. In total, they sang 27 verses of music. They did an AWESOME job! I felt bad that I had to cut off verses of several of the songs right there at the last minute, (I took out 5) but I guess that's just the way the chips fell this year.

You should have heard them sing "How Firm a Foundation." We did verses 1,2,3, & 7 and man oh man - they sang with POWER! It was so great! It was so great to hear them building up the "I'll never no never, I'll NEVER no NEVER, I'll NEVER NO NEVER NO NEVER FORSAKE!!!"

For the closing hymn, the children sang Families Can Be Together Forever, with the congregation joining in on each chorus. It was really amazing. (lots of blubbering mom's - plus a few teary eyed dads - out there in the congregation during that song)

Another fun thing we did this year was that the bishop asked us to have two 11 year old children, one boy and one girl, lead the music for sacrament meeting. Keiffer D. led the opening hymn, and Allie S. led the sacrament hymn. They certainly weren't perfect and polished conductors, but I was pleased with how they did, and I was actually surprised at the impact having them lead seemed to have on people. I had lots of people comment to me about how special it was to see them up there leading the hymns. They were both pretty nervous. I was proud of them!

All in all it was a good day. I am super tired - it was long a rather difficult weekend, and I am ready to go to bed!

As a little side note, as part of the prelude music, I had Aaron sing with 3 other kids the new song for next year's program. It is titled "I Know That My Savior Loves Me." and I just love it. Aaron loves to sing and I think he is really quite good, but he gets super shy and nervous, so I asked a couple other kids to sing with him rather than putting him on the spot alone. It's too bad he gets so shy, because he stayed as far away from the mic as he could, yet he really has a beautiful, clear voice, and I would have like to be able to hear him better. Oh well. I was proud of him for having a desire to do it and for learning it so well.

Speaking of side notes and singing - Caleb is standing here next to me while I type, and he's singing away. Apparently they must have sung "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" in nursery today. It's ADORABLE! - I keep trying to be done, but I have to share - Caleb just switched songs. Now he's singing "I love to see the temple," but instead of the words, he's singing "ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma..." continue on, all the way to the end - singing ma (aka mom) to the tune. I just love this boy! Although right now I'd probably love him just a tad more if he were ASLEEP!

OK - enough of this - I've got to get to sleep. 5am comes awfully early in the morning!

Choose you this day...

Anne Bradshaw had this on her blog this morning. I almost skipped by it - then stopped and decided to take the time to watch it. (3 whole minutes of my day) I'm so glad I did. It was a message that I needed to hear. (now I just need to figure out how to post it on here...) Okay. I give up. I don't know how to post something from youtube onto my blog... and it isn't worth the time it would take for me to keep trying to figure it out! You'll just have to go to the link yourself. Sorry.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cw8I8eukaI


Now I am choosing to get up and get to work!



WAHOO!!! thanks Sandra - I knew it had to be something simple that I just couldn't see. Now it is here on my blog and you don't have to use the link...

Just point me to my bed!!!

Man am I worn out! Today was as crazy as I expected. We had our first practice for our primary sacrament meeting program - which is next week. My pianist was home sick, so I had a new person playing for me - who was sight reading 3 of the songs (the ones not in the primary song book) The kids were either totally hyped up with the Halloween sugar coursing through their veins, or else they were in a post-sugar/up too late stupor. It was really CRAZY! One more week. Then I can go back to playing, singing, relaxing and just plan having fun with the kids - without the added program stress - for another year.

I want to post our Halloween pics, but they are still on the camera - and I have a video of Caleb that I am DYING to post, but IT is also still on the camera; so you will just have to wait in eager anticipation for those - and settle for a shortened gratitude list

1 - I am thankful that it is bedtime.

2 - I am thankful that Tim was so patient tonight and took over all kid and house related duties for way too many hours while I went to choir practice, then ran around doing primary stuff and visiting teaching stuff.

3 - I am thankful that it is bedtime!

4 - I am thankful that it is not my week to drive carpool.

5 - I am thankful that it is bedtime - RIGHT NOW!!!! (g'night!)

(PS - I am NOT grateful that now I have to wait a whole year for the next FarWorld book to come out. I just bought and read Land Keep - (the second book in the series by J. Scott Savage, you may recall from these posts how we first got into the series) and I almost wish I had waited to get into the series until ALL of the books were out. I just hate waiting!!!)