We Miss You

I first met Diane Pugmire 15 years ago when I took a "Math for Elementary Teachers" class at Weber State University. She was a wonderful teacher. I have never been a math fan, but I truly enjoyed that class. Diane was funny and beautiful and strong. She always greeted me by my first name when we saw each other on campus and several times told me I was going to be a wonderful teacher. When Chancho and I moved to our home here almost 8 years ago, I was thrilled to find out that Diane lived nearby. I would often see her out walking or at church. She was in the Stake Relief Society Presidency. Whenever she came to one of my lessons, she would give thoughtful comments and after wards would always come up to me and say kind things. I don't know of anybody who didn't love and admire Diane. She will be sorely missed. Please pray for her family. They are strong but miss her terribly.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

About Finn

I can't remember if I've ever posted about how much I love my baby or not, so I thought I should do a little post about him. :) He's had a few rough things this week. First, he got thrush AGAIN. The purple you see is not ink from a pen, as one individual at the store asked me. Rather, it is gentian violet. It works well but is messy! I think Finn has had thrush at least a dozen times. Oh, and speaking of people at the store...an old man stuck his dirty old finger in Finn's mouth. Yep. Finn was sticking out his tongue and the man thought it was so cute he came right over and pushed it in with his finger. I didn't even say anything, I just made a whimpering sound. What else could I do? Another sad thing that happened to Finn this week is the same thing that happens several times every week. He likes to do this "leg-slam" thing. The first time he did it about a month ago, Chancho and I were in bed and thought somebody was banging on the door or something. Finn lifts both legs up high above his head and then just slams them down onto his mattress as hard as he can. Its the funniest (and loudest) thing. He does it over and over again and gets himself turned around and...often...when his legs come slamming down one of them gets caught in between the rails of his bed. I can never let him cry himself to sleep or back to sleep at night because I'm always afraid his leg has gotten caught again. It is often wedged in there really tight and is painful and red when I carefully lift it back out. We were talking about it at dinner and the kids came up with a few suggestions of how we could avoid this problem. First, Deedle suggested we line his crib with plastic. Then when we gently shot down that idea, Loumy brightened up and suggested we use sheets of metal. Hm...do any of you have any other less deadly suggestions? After one of these episodes, Finn will often need a little snuggle time watching sports with dad.

Finn hardly slept on Thursday or Friday night. I didn't know what the problem was. Saturday he started running a fever and I was cursing the dirty-old-man-finger from Walmart. But then I noticed that he would cry when he tried to lie his head down on my chest. I tugged gently on his earlobe and he screamed. Yep. Uncle John took a look for us and sure enough, bad infections in both ears! So, the little man has had a rough week. Poor baby. I think I may have said that a few too many times. Tonight Deedle came up to him in a soft voice and sweetly said, "oh, my little baby! you are so so so poor!"

And now I have a question for you. A few days ago Chancho found an old picture of me being held by my older brother, Aaron. He was amazed at it. He said that Finn looks exactly like me. He said several times the resemblance was "uncanny", which I think is a little overboard because, after all, I am his biological mother. But then the very next day my nephew Adam said, "Finn looks EXACTLY like Chancho. I mean EXACTLY. Its weird!" And that, is not uncanny or weird, either, because Chancho happens to be his biological father. But the vote seems split on who he looks like. Either Finn looks exactly as I did as a baby or exactly as Chancho does as an adult, apparently. So, what do you all think?

SIX YEARS OLD!

It is birthday season around our house. Deedle turned six yesterday. She made it easy on me. She wanted to go out to eat for dinner, so I didn't have to cook. We went to Chuck-a-rama (her choice). For her cake, I just had to bake a mix and she wanted to decorate it herself, which she really enjoyed doing.Her favorite gifts were her "Baby Alive" doll, a hula hoop, and gum ball machine. Here are a few pics from the "friend party" she had on Friday. It was a Halloween/Birthday party so the kids all dressed up.Her birthday turned out to be a happy day. I was very glad about that because she has been going through a bit of a difficult time. She has a lot of frustration and anger issues and I am not sure how to help her. I am praying a lot and am going to try a few things that I hope will help. I just want her to be happy. She has always been rather feisty and my little spit-fire. She is hilarious and makes us laugh. I love to hold her and snuggle her to my heart. But recently she has become more and more unhappy. She is angry and fighting and having a difficult time controlling her emotions for a large % of the day. I am hoping that it is just a phase and that along with some other things we are trying, she will be happy and enjoy her childhood. Here's wishing you a wonderful year, sweet heart! I love you fiercely!

FIVE YEARS OLD!

Loumy turned five on Friday. Because Chancho had to go out-of-town for the weekend, we had a family celebration on Wednesday. We let him choose anywhere to eat. He chose Mcdonalds because he had seen on TV that they had Bakugan things in the kids meals. I don't even know what Bakugan is, but apparently he does. It was followed by presents and a cake that I actually made myself. Can you tell what it is? Hopefully you can detect the light sabre. The brown and red thing is a little cake of Obi Wan and Anakin Skywalker fighting by the lava. It was nothing professional but Loumy was delighted.

I tried to pull off a "friends" party on Friday. Deedle's birthday is tomorrow and they both were so badly wanting to have a "friends" party this year, so I decided to brave it and let them each invite four kids. It stressed me out really bad and I will never again plan to do something like that with out another adult or at least an older-than-seven-year-old-child to help me. Actually, String Cheese was a great help as I called about frantically trying to find somebody to come save me while little kids screamed around the house and Finn screamed in fright in my arms. Luckily after about 45 minutes my niece Jasmine showed up and took care of Finn so I could tie scarves on kids to play "stick the stem on the pumpkin" and the likes. In the end it turned out good, I think. Everybody seemed happy when the party ended.

The next day Loumy scored seven goals in his soccer game. His team won 8-1. It is great that he is so athletic and naturally gifted. Its a little tricky, too, because even he seems to feel a little bad that none of the other kids have many scoring opportunities. I want him to be a good sport and not a ball-hog but at the same time, you can't constantly tell him to hang back because how does that help him develop his talents? Anyway, when it was his turn to sit out he came to snuggle under a blanket on my lap and I whispered, "You are amazing! Did you know you scored seven goals?" He nodded and said calmly, "Well, I think its because I'm five now." Loumy also came up to me this morning and said, "Mom, listen..." and he proceeded to count to 30. I swear only last week he still got confused after 13. This turning five business is major!

Loumy, I love you so much. You are such a light and a joy! The other day you came up to me and said, "Mom, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"
Me: "Um, how about the good news?"
Loumy: pause..."well......actually....I only have bad news."
I started laughing so hard that I don't even remember what the bad news was. I love you, Buddy! Happy Birthday!

A Family Needed

As most of you know, two of my passions are adoption and Haiti. I have been so blessed with my adoption experience. Regrettably things don't always turn out so well. I read about a situation where a family is needing to find another family for their son. It is truly heartbreaking. The mother saw that I had read her post and that I was concerned about the situation and she asked if I would post a picture of her little boy on my blog and also put a link to her blog in hopes of giving a greater chance for this little boy to find a family. Also, I know that Corey would be grateful if any of you would consider putting a similar post on your blog with the same hope that somehow, some way, the right person's heart will be touched. This beautiful boy is only 8 years old. Surely there is hope for him yet.

Watch This and Be Grateful

Nienie was on Oprah yesterday. If you don't know about Stephanie and Christian Nielson, you should really get to know their story. Stephanie is one of my heroes. Sometimes people are put into a position where they don't feel like they are a hero at all, but because of their attitude and the choices they make in their lives, they become a hero to others. While I was serving a mission for my church in Texas, one of the apostles, Elder Richard G. Scott came and spoke to us. He said that we should all have heroes in our lives that we can place along our path as we work towards being like our Savior. Stephanie is definitely one of those people that I want to be more like and I'm sure that as I learn from her example and try to be like her, I will grow closer to our Savior.

I wanted to embed this video but couldn't so ya'll should really click here and see her:

What Are You Thinking About?

I love to see what my kids draw (and now write). I feel like I get a little glimpse into their minds. String Cheese has been very excited about Halloween and has been drawing lots of pictures as an outlet. Here is a spooky scene which includes not only your typical haunted house with scary signs, spiders, and bats, but also one-eyed ghosts, and "a dead girl" on some sort of tree. Hm...
String Cheese wrote these sentences in class and they are all quite telling.
This note was delivered to me after String Cheese lost tooth number 7 the other night.

And this note was delivered to me in a fit of rage. Apparently writing isn't her forte when she's angry. I'd become a bit cross with her for not obeying me regarding staying in bed, so she wrote me this:
Luckily SC has not decided to move out yet.

Now Deedle isn't quite so forthcoming always with her drawings. Sometimes they only make me wonder more about what is in her angry, little mind. Here is a picture of "a very mean, French chef."Deedle will draw at any time and, depending on her mood, will put in tons of effort or will just go quickly to get out what she wants to get out and it may include a lot of scribbled circles. But when she really wants to, she has some pretty great talent. She really likes those learn-to-draw books. Recently I've found some websites where I can print out more step-by-step drawing instructions. Last week she drew this one of Frankenstein. Nice, huh?
Loumy is rarely a mystery. He wears his heart on his sleeve and is either thinking about Star Wars or...well...something else PLUS Star Wars. Loumy joined String Cheese for some Halloween artwork the other day and first he drew a ghost but then he kept going and this is what he ended up with: "General Grievous, Luke, and the ghost is Count Duku." Today was General Conference for our church. Tonight when I went in to give Loumy his lullaby he handed me this drawing and said, "Here Mom, I made this for you. It is me and Thomas S. Monson with light sabres." I think those two together could really kick some you-kn0w-what.