Favorite Quote #1

"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice."  -John Cassis

Alex Playing School

I got a little video of Alex.  Everyday after he gets home from school he heads to his room and plays school.  I can't remember a day when he doesn't!

Kindergarten Checkup

Today we took Karsten to get his Kindergarten Checkup at the pediatric clinic at Walter Reed.  Thankfully, Karsten has no medical history, so it was a pretty quick appointment.  Unfortunately for Karsten, we had some shots to get.  He was pretty good about it.  He cried a tiny bit, but was over it pretty quick.  Karsten weighs 41.5 pounds and is 41 inches tall.  He's only in the 12th percentile for height.  Not sure whose genes he's got or if he'll have a growth spurt later on in life. His sight is great and his hearing is great.  The nurse was so patient with him as he wanted to see if he could keep reading the eye chart as it got smaller and smaller.

Ok, this is something I need to add to my list of funny stories about the kids, but I'd thought I'd share it here first.  A few weeks ago I told the kids the story of Samson and Delilah from the Bible, you know the story about Samson's strength and then he finally gives in and tells Delilah where his strength comes from and she betrays him and cuts off his hair?  Well, yesterday I was telling Karsten that he needed a haircut.  He turns to me and says, "I don't want my hair cut, I want to be strong."  I knew what he was talking about and thought it was cute but had to ask him anyway what he was talking about.  He says, "You know, that story you told us?"  He's such a funny guy!

Sardines

Tonight for our activity for Family Home Evening, we played sardines.  For those of you would don't know how to play sardines, basically it is the opposite of Hide-and-Seek.  In sardines, one person hides, and then everyone goes and finds them.  When you find them you hide with them!  You don't want to be the last one left wandering the dark house!  Oh, did I mention that you are suppose to turn all the lights in the house off as well?  So fun!  My family knows all about this game!  I think Sandra and Dennis taught us how to play Sardines.  Anyways, Dane is so funny to play with.  He walks into a room and asks, is anyone in here?  Then he leaves.  Like anyone is going to tell him they're hiding in there?  When I was "it", Kate found me first and everyone was wandering around looking for a while.  I could hear Dane and Karsten coming and they finally came into the room we were hiding in and then Dane says real loud, "I found them, wait, no I didn't", realizing he wasn't suppose to tell everyone else where we were at. We were trying so hard not to laugh!  Luckily, a few of the others hadn't heard him, so we weren't given away.  And then when it was Dane's turn to hide, Todd decided to trick everyone because the kids wouldn't stop following him, so Todd hid in the shower and all the kids started hiding there with him and I joined them and then we were like, "where's Dane?" and Todd just started laughing at us.  It was fun.

Alex

 Every other Sunday Todd only stays for Sacrament meeting because he has worked the night before and has to work Sunday night as well.  So today after church, the kids had to stay with mom during choir practice.  Now for the Alex part.  Alex, Alex, Alex.  Sometimes you just have to shake your head and let him do what he's doing.  One of Alex's favorite things to do is organize the hymn books in the pews.  A Spanish ward meets after our ward, so we also have Spanish hymn books.  Each book holder gets one Spanish hymnal and two English hymnals, and of course the Spanish hymnal must sit in between the two English.  Alex usually just straightens the books in each row while mom's in choir practice.  Well, today he decides to take every single hymnal out of their holders, and pile them up on the back bench.  I have no idea why.  By the time all the books have been removed, choir is over.  But Alex hasn't finished his organizing yet!  So we sit and wait for him to put all the hymn books back.  He doesn't want any help because it has to be just so.  Well, it was already after 1 p.m. and I knew he was hungry.  So when 1:30 was rolling around, we got him convinced that it was ok for Kate and Emily to help, but only if they placed the hymn books correctly.  Those OCD tendencies he has are so funny.  He is sweating bullets and I know he's starving, but he's got to get the hymn books placed just right.  I see this as a great calling for him in the future.  He even wanted to bring one of the hymn books home that had fallen out of it's cover so he could fix it!  Patience, we are definatley learning patience.

How Todd and I Met

My sister, Tonnia, just celebrated her 10th Anniversay with her dashing husband, Andrew.  I loved her post about how she risked life and limb in a snow storm to drive up to Canada to see him, blind date mind you!  Tonnia is a great story teller!  Not that she exaggerates, but she tells things so well.  You should hear the stories about her dreams!  She could fill books, or be a writer for some comedy!  And the even funnier part of a lot of it is is that it could only happen that way for Tonnia!  So after reading her story of how she and her husband met, I want to write about how Todd and I met too!  The way she tells stories makes you feel like you don't have to do anything extravagant or expensive, you just have to have fun!  Tonnia and I have lots of fun, even though we are over 2000 miles apart!

Ok, I won't embarrass Todd too much.  I know Todd probably gets more embarrassed by the crazy things I do than the crazy things he does, wait, does he do anything crazy?  Hahaha!

I knew Todd was coming to Alamogordo before he even knew who I was.  Our Bishop, Bishop Mertz, mentioned to me and a friend that a young man was coming to manage a new store in the mall.  Being the stalwart non-judgmental Latter-day saints that we were, we came to the conclusion that anyone who worked for a company long enough to obtain the managerial position in a store at such a young age, could not have served a mission and therefore we probably wouldn't have any interest in him.  I first saw Todd drive up in his white Nissan Sentra.  Crazy as it sounds, I remember thinking that I could be driving his car.  But we didn't have any interest in each other at first.  Ok, I don't know about him, but I should say I didn't.  We both were seeing other people and so I suppose our eyes were only half opened at the time.  Todd was made the Young Single Adult Rep for our ward and kind of spear headed the great group that was to form.  There was a lot of activities planned and it wasn't your typical "meet market".  We were just a bunch of young singles who had a good time hanging out together.  That was pretty much how the whole summer went.  By Labor Day I knew it was time to call it quits with the guy I was seeing and coincidently Todd was single as well.  Because Todd was pretty much the only person with his own place (yes, we loved his roommates as well!), everyone in our Young Singles group hung out there most of the time.  Did I mention he only lived a block away from my parents house?  Anyways, I got to know him a little better by hanging out with everyone.  I remember one night after playing volleyball or something we were doing at the church, that Todd asked me to go to Smith's with him to buy a cake mix, I think.  I was so excited but at the same time I was bummed because I had torn one of my contact lenses and was wearing my glasses that night!  Oh the things we thought were important back then!  Dating was such a stress!  I'm glad I'm married now!  I hated how you weren't quite sure if someone liked you or not and the awkwardness of it all.  A week or so later, it was pretty obvious to everyone else that Todd and I were "a couple".  One of the funnest parts of it all was all the time we spent talking and finding out how much we really had in common.  We never really had a formal "date".  Pretty much everything we did was free.  We watched movies, talked, and I remember going hiking.  See, Todd, I did like hiking (it's so different now that we have kids but I will enjoy it again sometime!).  One night Todd took me to the parking lot of the church and taught me how to drive his car, his car was not an automatic!  Yes, I got my license in a very small town where you only have to make right turns and park the car to pass the driving portion. They don't care if all you know how to drive is an automatic. Miss those small towns at times.  When we decided to get married, there was no formalities and huge planning to make it just right.  We just knew!  It was brought during a conversation one time, and then later I remember asking Todd if he wanted to get married.  It was the right thing to do and it was time to make it official!  So, time wise, we started dating in October sometime and were engaged by November with plans to be married in February.  Boy, three months of engagement was forever!   I hope Kate enjoyed reading this as well as she likes to read while mom is typing!  Yes, Kate, that's how your dad and I met.  One of the funnest times of our lives.  But we still continue to have fun!

Karsten at the piano again

So this is how quick Karsten picks up tunes by ear and plays them on the piano.  I have not taught him this song.  He was playing around on the piano this afternoon and picked it out all by ear.  And pretty quick too!  I'd say within a matter of 10 minutes he had this song down.  You can tell he makes a few mistakes, but if he practiced it another 10, he'd probably have it perfect!  Enjoy Grandpa!  We'll get him to play us some more as time goes by!