Can you sing that song...

Can you sing the song about the opossum in snow?
Do you mean, "blossom of snow may you bloom and grow?" 
Edelweiss?  Yes! mystery solved. 

63" Plasma Screen TV

Paul works with a guy (Dr. Whitworth) who moved into a new house that had a home theater system.  He no longer needed his huge TV's so, guess what?  Paul bought his 63" plasma screen TV for $375!  We installed it last night.  As soon as I realized I was going to be the one helping put it on the wall, my mind began racing with visions of me dropping this thing.  3 years ago Dr. W bought it for $6000!  It weighs over 300 lbs so I was nervous.  It was quite the feat for us to heft it up over shoulder height.  My legs were shaking for a whole hour after the adrenaline wash of that install.  It's a sweet screen and we feel pretty spoiled!

It pays to be older. :)

Last night on a cool, crisp autumn night, we were driving home from a Relief Society meeting where we learned to can apple pie filling and make caramel apples. I drove the kids along the river front and then up to the point of the island hoping they might fall asleep on the way home.  The boys started asking to hear some spooky Halloween stories.  I told a spooky one that turned funny which disappointed Joren, who begged for a scarier one.  I turned down a dirt road in a wooded hiking area.  When we were "deep" in the forest, I pretended the car stalled and opened the window.  I pretended to see glowing eyes and to hear howling and ghosts.  Joren loved it, but Eirik got freaked out and started to cry.  It was not the nicest thing I've ever done, but it sure was funny!  We are really enjoying the Halloween season this year.

"what is alive in you?"

Paul had a patient this week who had seen 3 or 4 dermatologists before and had suffered from acute red scaly plaque and fissures on both hands and arms and feet for over 6 years.  He is part of the cement worker's guild and works with cement every day.  Because of his extremely painful condition he was considering going on disability because continuing to work was becoming excruciating.  He decided to ask one more doctor.  Fortunately, it was Paul because he was smart enough to put together the facts that leather gloves and cement both contain potassium dichromate.  The leather gloves and boots he was wearing to protect him from the cement was actually exacerbating the allergic condition he had developed to the cement.  Paul prescribed new canvas gloves and arm protection along with a different boots and several medications.  After one week, his skin was completely cleared up.  He brought his wife and kids in with him for his follow up visit to thank Paul.   This big, tough tattooed guy cried and gave Paul a big hug along with a plate of enchiladas as a thank you. Paul said that things like this happen every day. 
At a luncheon this week one of his superiors asked them all to answer the question, "what is alive in you?"  He said that being able to help people every day is incredibly fulfilling and studying for boards, while stressful, it is no longer working to pass a test, but each thing he studies is linked with a real person and the possibility to actually help people with the knowledge is very real which keeps him going and keeps him excited.
Watch for more of his success stories.  I have to pry them out of him, but I sure love hearing them.

First stitches

"I'm ALWAYS careful mom!"
Joren's famous last words before he cut himself bad enough to need his first stitches.  Just two, but TRAUMATIC for a 3 year old.  Kind of cool that his dad is a total rock star and can give him stitches at home.
Taking the stitches out was almost as traumatic.  I hate to hold my kids down for things, but it pretty much came to that and in the end Joren said, "you were right mom, it didn't hurt at all."  Since Joren is ALWAYS right, that admission was a pretty big deal.  (notice his "custom" hair cut bangs.) 

Teig 14 months

Teig is into everything!  If he is not drinking with a big gulp straw out of the toilet he is climbing in the cabinet behind the trash can or making a break out the front door and into the street.  He puts everything in his mouth and is a total scavenger.  He is always looking for something to eat.  I saw his make a funny face one day and then watched him spit out a living scarab beetle.  I'm on vigilant alert at all times. He makes the sound of a fish and cow and horse and duck and he growls.  He can do the baby sign for drink, although he puts his finger up his nose instead of his thumb at his mouth to indicate drink.  It cracks me up!  He does the sign for diaper change and more and can tell us what he wants pretty well pretty much all the time.  He is great at exploring.  He loves to be outside and loves to get dirty.  He is not in the least bit intimidated by Tor.  He plays by him all the time even though Tor would smother him if he sat on him.  His favorite things are balls, hands down.  He always has a stick or a ball in his hand.  He initiates games of catch with everyone willing.  He giggles when people throw and catch successfully.  His favorite is still baseball.  On Friday we ate a potluck dinner at the church with friends and Teig played with all the other kids and balls in the gym.  Today at church Teig went straight to the doors of the gym and pried his little fingers in the doors until I opened it for him.  He happily entered the big dark gym in search of a ball and was fine with me leaving him there as long as he had his ball.  Teig loves to eat.  His favorite foods are grapes and strawberries.  He is independent/ not a snuggler, very smart, loves to blow kisses and give me kisses on the cheek when I ask and he sings when I lay him down at night to tell me he wants me to sing him a song.  He loves his song I sing to him ("Teig, Teig, Teig, Teigalicious..") which ends in a kiss.  He sings "Da Da DA Da Da ..(kiss!)"  It's so cute!

artist in the cellar

It was 9:00 and the kids were asleep so I let the artist out of the cellar for a few minutes.  She came up with two brilliant sketches and started looking for some scrap.  Then baby 1 woke up and then baby 2 came out of his room and snuck downstairs and out the front door to watch a spider eat a bug in his web and then baby one started screaming like a howler monkey and so mama shoved the artist back in the cellar and slammed the door pinching her fingers in the process.  It hurt really bad and the mom was sad because the artist is not allowed to come out.  She knows better.  So she put on a stronger lock and then started a movie to distract herself, then went to bed.  The end.

Migration day

Today I decided to pull Joren out of preschool.  I was a bit hesitant to put him in in the first place considering his behavior issues.  After the first few weeks it became apparent that his bad behaviors at home were definitely following him into the classroom and they were becoming a major disruption.  I guess I was hoping he would surprise me.  I went to bed thinking I was taking him to preschool this morning and when I woke up I decided we were done.  I prayed the other day that the Lord would help me see how to stop pushing my kids, rushing them and snapping at them so much.  I want to slow down and enjoy this time with my kids and this morning it hit me that preschool was too much.  I have loved my days with him at home.  I thought preschool would be so good for him and that being with the other kids would help his social skills, but I think he is just not ready and I realized that the one on one time I have the time to give him now is more important than anything else.  Yesterday we hit bad behaviors hard.  I always show my disapproval one way or the other, but yesterday I blotted out all other things (except Teig of course) and we spent the day in time out and in discussion and love.  Today we only had a few time outs and much improved behavior.  I feel a great weight lifted off of me too.  I feel like I was forcing us into a hard schedule when we can really stay home all winter and enjoy the year.  What a great time it is going to be.  Joren is so different when Eirik is not around and I feel like I am finally getting a chance to get to know him.  He still loves to fill bags with water. He also loves to paint rocks.  He picks up rocks everywhere we go so he can paint them.  He uses the hot melt glue gun to glue beads and googly eyes on them.  He also has the best eyes in the world for finding bugs and creatures.  He is so observant.  He can spot them anywhere and he loves to catch them.  He found a toad the other day and we played with it for hours. I asked him to set him loose in the pond.  Of course he did not want to and wanted to keep him in the terrarium.  I let him keep him but after a few days I told him the toad needed to be set loose so he could get some food and live.  A little while later Joren said, "mom, don't look in that drawer."   Guess what I found in that drawer!  He had put his toad in a ziplock bag and back in the ziplock bag box back in the drawer for safe keeping!  Ahh...  Well, he assured me after that that the toad had been let loose in the pond.  Today the boys found a different toad in the backyard.  Joren ran in the house in great excitement and told Eirik to wait outside.  Then he dove under our ottoman in the living room and extracted his, somehow still living toad from under a cup he had placed upside down there.  That means that for at least a day and a half that toad lived in my living room under a cup and I did not notice!  Imagine my surprise if I had found him!  They were thrilled to have two toads to play with and compare.  Joren even let his toad loose in the pond and somehow recaptured it a bit later.  I was most impressed that Eirik actually held the toad today.  He usually instructs Joren when and where and what to do with all the living creatures they find together; to which Joren always willingly obliges.  What a cute team.
After lunch I made big ice cream sundaes for the two of us and we went out and ate them on the lawn.  We noticed a bunch of birds of prey circling above our house.  As we watched them, we discovered that more and more were joining them.  We counted 50 hawks, or whatever they were, joining up and then flying very high and straight west.  As we watched, one group after another, all huge, congregated and flew west.  I counted over 150 birds flying away.  Why west? I don't know, but it was magnificent and we daydreamed about flying that high and layed happily in the sun smelling the grass and enjoying the last bit of summer.  I taught him to nibble on the white ends of grass and he showed me how he can split grass and make it curl.  He snuggled in my lap and we played thumb war in the sun over and over again.    I took Joren on a bike ride to the river today where he found a rusty old fish hook and tried to fish.  We watched tiny fish being eaten by 3" fish and we had a great time talking to each other.  We went home and got Teig, Eirik came home.  We made cookies and played outside.  Eirik was in great spirits.  Everyone was feeling so good that after dinner we went to the river again. The weather was perfect.  We got to see people turning on their Halloween decorations and smell the chill in the air and see the changing colors.  Eirik ran the whole way there.  He was so happy and enthusiastic.  They had a great time throwing rocks at the river.  Teig even had to get his feet in the water.  We loved watching the sun go down over the river and then riding back in the dark. (Eirik ran the whole way!)  We howled like coyotes and pretended they were chasing us.  Everyone had fun.  After tucking everyone in bed I laid down by Joren.  We talked about the day.  We have this great book called Sharks vs. Trains.  One one page the shark and train are playing Extreme Squirrel Zombie Motorcross videogame.  Joren asked me in all sincerity if we could get a cord and plug in Extreme Squirrel Zombie Motorcross to our Wii so we could play it.  When I told him that that would not work, he was extremely disappointed.  I assured him that we would play lots of fun games tomorrow and he said, "this is the best part of my day, snuggling and hugging and kissing you."  He said, "is that a yittle bit weird vat I just kissed you.  I fink it is.  Kissing is kind a gross, but you wike it right?  I wove you mom."