Playing Catch-up

It has been forever since I last blogged.  And I'm not very good at keeping family and friends up to date on all the happenings around here.  I will begin with Dane's birthday, which was before Emily's birthday, but for some reason I posted about Emily's birthday and not Dane's.

Dane got a pretty cool remote control helicopter  It's pretty tiny, but he's gotten pretty good at getting it to fly steady.

Alrighty, so I already posted on Emily's birthday, so we are going to skip to Kate's.  The morning of Kate's birthday, we took her and Alex to the temple to do baptisms for the dead.  Even more special, Grandma and Grandpa Stailey were able to come with us!

Then that evening we had cake and ice cream with the family. 

Grandma and Grandpa Stailey got Kate a couple of books, which she read in about four days time.  Kate is a huge reader.  We have at least 200 hundred books in our house and she has read them all.  We check out books from the library almost every week.  We are always picking up books at the thrift shop as well.  

A rare photo of Alex.  He doesn't like his picture taken.  You have to take it when he is least expecting.

This is usually what happens when you take a picture of Alex.  He makes that all too characteristic smile of his and turns his head away.  That is why this one is fuzzy!

Teeth are still broken.

Uncle Bret and Aunt Tammy and baby Jackson drove up on Kate's birthday to be here for Dane's baptism.  We were happy to have them come!

Me holding Jackson and Seth.  

Saturday was Dane's BIG day!  He was getting baptized!  

Dad and the baptism boy!

Uncle Bret being silly while waiting for the baptism to start. (Aunt Tammy and baby Jackson)  Disclaimer:  I have no control of my children when they have a camera in hand!  

Our family and friends who came to help us celebrate!

(Bob Stanford, Bret, Tammy, Jackson, me, Todd, Seth, G-ma Stailey, G-pa Stailey, Silvia Stanford,

Josie Thomas, Dane, Kate, Nadia Emily, Karsten

Sabrina, Dalton, Kady)

One more thing I wanted to post:

BEFORE

AFTER

Got his teeth fixed!  Unfortunately, in one week he will have a root canal done on the right one.  The left tooth is looking ok.  We'll just keep an eye on it.

Ok, funny story I just remembered, but I don't want to forget!  After Dane's baptism, Karsten got left at the church by mistake.  He had taken his shoes off in the gym, and when it was time to go, he went to the gym to put his shoes on.  The rest of us headed out to our cars to head home.  Because we all came in three different vehicles, I suppose no one thought about making sure everyone was accounted for!  

We had been home about 45 minutes when a police car drove up our driveway and out jumps Karsten!  I was so scared when I realized we'd forgotten Karsten!  Apparently, he had taken so long putting his shoes on, that everyone at the baptism had left.  Karsten went outside the chapel, saw there were no vehicles in the parking lot, so tried to get back in the church.  Unfortunately, it was all locked up.  So he crossed a six lane road to head home!  He knew how to get home, we don't live that far from the church, maybe a three minute drive.  He said he had waited for the road to clear before crossing.  Apparently by the time he got all the way across, someone had spotted him and stopped and asked him if he was lost.  He said yes, and the driver called the police to help.  Karsten couldn't remember his address (until he got home and I reminded him that is was 621 and he finished the address for me!  I had him repeat our address several times in the past, but did he realize that was the address of his home?  I don't know, maybe he was just too nervous and forgot.)  He told the police officer that he could show her the way, and he did!  Scary, scary!  Thank goodness there are still kind and caring people that Heavenly Father has sent to watch over our children!

Karsten's on a roll!

So this morning I announce to the children that it's time for hair cuts.  Karsten asks me why he has to get his hair cut.  I tell him his hair is getting too long and needs to be cut.  Then he replies, "I've got to have short hair because I have a short head."  I guess that's good logic, right? :)  Then as we are cutting his hair he informs me that he's got a hair ache.  I didn't know this was possible.  Afterwards he heads up stairs to shower.  When he's done he comes to me and says, "I took a shower, want to smell me?"  I tell him he smells good.  Then he says, "I washed everywhere, even my bum bum!"  Hope this brings a smile to your Saturday morning!

What is the Purpose of Life Here on Earth?

Have you ever asked yourself that question?  What is your purpose here on earth?  Why am I here?  What am I suppose to be doing?  And if you already know, do you ask yourself that question enough?

For those who visit my blog who are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I want to tell you that there is a reason why we are here.  When people start to talk religion, many people are turned off and believe that they don't need a church to go to, or that they don't believe in God, or that they are happy with their own religion.  I want you to know that there is a real purpose and meaning as to why we even exist here on this earth.  I want you to know.  I share this with you so you can know too.

We lived in Heaven before we came to this earth.  We lived as spirits, and we have a Heavenly Father who created us.  We looked like our Father, only we did not have bodies of flesh and bone as he did.  We wanted to be like him.  Our Father in Heaven loves us, so much in fact, that he wants all his spirit children to have what he has and to become like him.  He prepared a way for us to become like Him.  He would allow all his spirit children who wanted to come to earth, to receive a physical body like His.  While on earth, we would be tested and tried to see if we would use or physical bodies properly and be able to obey all the commandments he would give us.  We would be allowed to choose what to do with all we have.  If we choose wisely, we would be able to enjoy all the blessings and glory that our Heavenly Father enjoys.

Lucifer, commonly referred to as Satan, and a third of all of Heavenly Father's spirit children (can you imagine how many billions of spirits that would be!) did not like the idea that they could possibly not have the opportunity to be like God because of their actions and choices on earth.  They did not want to risk it.  Satan wanted a way that would force everyone to be good so we could all return to live with our Heavenly Father.  But what sense does that make?  What would you learn?  How can you prove that you would use your body correctly or that you would be obedient?  Satan and his followers were sent out of our Heavenly Father's presence and chose not to come to this earth to receive a body.

Heavenly Father is very wise and loving.  He knew it would be hard to live on earth, we would make mistakes, we would give in to temptations, and because of unbelief and the apostasy of the past our circumstances may never even give us the opportunity to have Heavenly Father's knowledge in our lives.  Jesus Christ was chosen to come to earth and suffer and die for us, so that every single one of us, if we choose to, can return to live with our Heavenly Father again.  We will all live again after we die, this was a free gift that Jesus Christ gave to everyone by allowing himself to be crucified and then being resurrected three days later.  Whether we will receive all of Heavenly Father's glory and to have the rights and abilities he has, is totally up to us.  We can choose that.  For those of us who have the knowledge of the gospel in our lives, we can repent (or tell our Father in Heaven we are sorry) and continually work at being a better person.  We are not perfect, but we are trying.  This is were the word Atonement comes in.  Because we are not perfect, we sin, and no one with sin can be in the presence of God.  Jesus Christ suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane by taking upon him ALL the sins (and I meaning everything!) of the world.  He took on the pain and punishment of everything, so that when we came to earth and inevitably would sin, we could repent of our sins and Jesus Christ would take the punishment upon his shoulders, and then we would be worthy to be in our Heavenly Father's presence again.  Well, what about all those people who didn't have the opportunity to have the gospel taught to them?  Always remember this:  Heavenly Father loves every single one of his children.  He knows each one of us individually and wants each one of us to return to Him.  If we don't have the opportunity in this life to understand or hear His plan, He will give that opportunity to us after we die.  We will have the opportunity to be taught the gospel after we die, and have the opportunity to accept it or reject it then.

Having this knowledge of the reason why we are here on earth, this purpose of life, is the reason why we live and believe the things we do.  This is why we believe in living chaste lives. This is why we don't smoke or drink.  This is why we go to church every Sunday.  This is why we read our scriptures.  This is why we try to do our best.  We aren't perfect, we all are making mistakes, but we keep trying.

Please visit www.mormon.org if you are curious or have more questions.  Please feel free to leave a question in my comment box as well.  I hope you will come to understand your purpose in life too!

Emily turns the big 1-0!

Emily has entered the realm of being a double digit number.  No longer will she be a single digit.  For the rest of her life she now will have two numbers, unless she really lives a long time and is blessed to have triple digits!  Emily doesn't care for cake, so she loves to have donuts instead.  Now that Emily is 10, she gets to have her own military ID card!  Woohoo!  Not that we've ever needed to use the kids' cards because we don't live on or even near a base, but you got to have one!  So we should probably take care of that real soon.

Emily loves ferrets right now.  She wishes she could own a ferret.  She has done a lot of research on them, and unfortunately (fortunately for us) they are banned in our little town.  She is hoping daddy gets stationed somewhere where it is legal to own one.  As far as I know they are legal in San Antonio, but that doesn't mean you"re going to get one Emily!  Thankfully, she is content with a stuffed ferret.

Are You Prepared?

On January 26th, we had a snow storm pass through that left us with about 8 inches of snow.  The snow was extremely wet and heavy and caused power outages all over the city due to falling branches.  Here in our front yard, you can see one of our front trees had three branches come down.  A further out you can see the tree in the middle of the cul-de-sac had a branch come down.  And beyond that you can see another neighbors tree with branches down.  We even had a neighbor who had a couple of large branches fall on top of his house, but luckily they did no damage.  We lost power that night at about 9 p.m.  It did not come back on until Friday night for only two hours.  Then on Saturday evening we had power for about six hours.  Finally, on Sunday morning we had power restored for good.  It wasn't easy, but we made it through!  The first night wasn't so bad because for some reason, I knew the power was going to go out, so I cranked up the heater and just let it run.  I guess you know you are going to lose power when the lights start flickering and you see branches falling everywhere.  It would probably have been easier to deal with if you didn't have to do anything, you could just snuggle up in bed and read a book or have a good excuse to sleep.  But kids still need to eat and dishes still need to be washed.  Luckily we have a gas range and gas water heater so we could cook and have hot water.  Washing dishes by hand wasn't all that great, but it did keep you a little warmer!  We even fed the missionaries without power!  We made Navajo Tacos by candle and lantern light.  The hardest part was when the sun went down, and because it's winter, the sun goes down early.  It's too hard to do things by candle light or lantern light, except read.  So any chores that needed to get done needed to be done before the sun set.  I sound like a pioneer or something!  The kids spent a good part of each day playing outside in the snow.  It was no warmer inside than out.  We finally broke down and built a fire on Saturday morning.  We don't know when the chimney was inspected last, so we were a bit leary, but Todd shined the flashlight up the chimney, didn't notice anything clogging it up, and decided to go ahead and build a fire just this one time.  It was nice to have a fire going.  And thanks to many years of experience in building fires at Girls' Camp, I kept that succor roarin'!  It warmed up part of the room a little, you kept nice and warm right near the fire.  When the power came back on on Saturday, I started to do laundry.  I didn't know it was going to go off again later that night!  Thankfully all the Sunday clothes were washed.  Nothing go ironed, but they didn't look too bad.  And I think that Sunday was the only Sunday I have gone to church without washing my hair.  I took a shower but because we had no electricity I couldn't use a blow dryer so I didn't want my hair to get wet.  It didn't look too bad and we didn't really smell like smoke, right? hahahahaha  The frumpy, smoke smellin' family comes to church on Sunday!  It was definatley an experience.  I never even thought about breaking into the 72-hour kits.  Todd said he thought about it once, but since we had gas and could cook, saw no need of getting them out.  The things we learned were number one priority was heat or some way of keep warm.  Second priority was light.  Our third priority was food, but this wasn't a big deal at the time, but in another situation it could be.  We have also concluded that the basement is the warmest part of the house in the winter when the power goes out because it is insulated by the earth.  This is were we will sleep next time when and if the power goes out.  And most importantly, the children have learned that they can entertain themselves without the use of electronic devices, a very painful lesson I'm sure they'd say!

Update on Seth

So, I guess I should post something about Seth. It's been 14 weeks since Seth had his CI surgery. And it has been what, about 10 weeks since activation? So, when he was activated, it's like the beginning of hearing. So, his listening age is about 10 weeks. I am happy to report that Seth is doing better than expected in speech and listening. In fact, our auditory/verbal therapist says he is doing so well, that instead of seeing her twice a week we only need to see her once a week. Our therapist is really good and demanding, she wouldn't cut back his therapy unless she really thought he was doing well. Not only is this wonderful for Seth, it's wonderful for me too, I don't have to drive to Virginia twice a week anymore! Hooray! Stress level cut back a lot! Some things that Seth says are: Tartan (Karsten), Aya (Alex), Dane, Emanee (Emily), and Day (Kate). The K sound comes from the back of the throat which is harder to make than the sounds from the front of the mouth like "buh" and "mmmm". So Seth doesn't quite say the "ck" sound, but considering he's only a ten week old in speech and listening, I'd say I've got a little genius on my hands! Alright, he's already had a little hearing in the left ear, but he has progressed A TON since activation. We are trying to get him to spontaneously say two word phrases. He will repeat a phrase after it being modeled for him, most of it is just the intonation. Apple, open, all done, more, dad, mom, mmm for milk, up, jump, baby, doggy, bubbles, ball, down, and night-night are some of the other words he says pretty clearly. W is a hard sound too, it comes out as the y sound, but if we practice, he can get the w sound out. So when he says yah-yah he means water. He sings Twinkle-Twinkle pretty well, as well as Itsy=bitsy spider. We have some other songs that go with the therapy we do that he will sing. I love when we sing, "Blink, blink, blink, your eyes, blink your eyes together, blink, blink, blink your eyes, blink your eyes together." He really blinks his eyes! And he is trying so hard to do it, that you can't help but laugh. I will have to get that one recorded. That would be fun to watch. Ok, so anyways, that's life. Lots of running around to doctors and therapy. I have a neighbor who is just entering the life of having a special needs child and all the medical and therapy that's involved. She is just entering this new world, and I guess I've been here so long, I can't even imagine what life would be without all the craziness.

Kate and Her Violin

On December 27th, Kate played with a group of young violinists at the Washington D.C. LDS Temple Visitor Center.  She was very excited to be a part of it.


Here is a couple of videos of her playing.  These are only a few of the pieces they performed.