Sisters

I just love it when all my sisters come to town. They are all pretty great. I usually don't blog about it because there is just too much fun stuff to have time for it all. So instead of acting like this wonderful time didn't happen, here is the readers digest version.

Swimming 

Uncle Matt holding our Towels

Lila getting mad that I was trying to help her bowl- "Stay back!"

Ammon cutting off the arms of the Lamanites

Family Pictures (sorry I don't have any real ones yet)

"Father's Night" coordinated by Jasmine since everyone was leaving right before Father's Day

Lila looks happy. She probably just won a fight for Grandma's attention

Temple Square Visitors Center

A shot of the temple during Lila's first real temple trip

The kids getting to touch the temple

Lila's first choo choo train ride

Grocery shopping at the Children's Museum

All the kids posing for a picture, except Lila who wouldn't stop pushing her stroller

Kickball with children as an interesting new challenge added to the game.

Gold Star

A few weeks ago I realized that no one was picking their kids up from nursery in a timely manner. Well, some people probably were. But Lila tended to be the last one there... I decided I needed to clean up my act. I should not be leaving her there even if it takes me forever to clean up stuff after church. So I started getting her as soon as church was over. She soon found out that there are sticker pads in a drawer in the primary room. It didn't take long for her to develop a routine where she came in and headed to the drawer as soon as I wasn't looking. She would put in her coloring page from nursery, pull out the stickers, and go to town. She usually gets about 15 stickers on her before I notice. (Except that now I keep an eagle eye out for her). Two Sunday's ago she had a bunch of star stickers. And she stuck a gold one right on her forehead. I guess she is really proud of her accomplishment.

My gold-star child

Tender Mercy, Anyone?

About two weeks ago we had a bunch of Todd's family over for his brother Kyle's birthday. We had some yummy rotisserie chicken from Costco. While we were shopping for it, we stopped by the aisle where they were selling toilets. I know it sounds not that exciting, but Todd and I have watched these toilets go in and out of stock over at least a year and a half. We wanted one when we remodeled our upstairs bathroom, but when we went to buy it they weren't selling it anymore. We had to settle for a less-cool one at Home Depot for about the same price. So anyway, Todd has been talking a lot lately about finally tackling our downstairs bathroom. I had been doing a pretty good job at resisting until I saw the tile next to the toilets. It was beautiful! So I finally gave in and we went back the next week to pick up our new toilet and tile.

Back to the chicken. As we were getting some more chicken out for the table halfway through the meal, I slid the old plastic package from the first chicken onto the stove. Of course that wouldn't be story worthy if the burner hadn't been HOT. The plastic instantly melted in several places.

I was distraught! But, thanks to my new homemaker/mommy status, I took some time the next day to look online for some tips on how to get it off. There were several of course, but the one I felt like I was seeing the most was a razor blade and some WD40. I thought I would try it, but didn't really want to buy a whole bottle just for that, so I just shelved the idea for the time being.

The next Monday Lila and I went swimming at my mom's. After Lila's long bath with a little too much bubble bath in the jetted tub, I decided I should probably clean out the bathtub in return for the millions of favors my mom constantly does for me. Including letting me swim in her pool and bathe my daughter in her bathtub. Well, I don't really know where my mom keeps all her cleaning tools, so it took a while to find what I was looking for. And during my hunt, lo and behold I found some WD40! So I took another favor from Mom.

It worked pretty well on my stove. In fact, I finally finished cleaning off the ever present ring of blackness that I had spent several weeks at different times scrubbing like crazy with some baking soda. The slick stuff took the rest off with a few swipes of the blade. I was very pleased. And of course did not remember to give the WD40 back right away.

On Saturday we started preparing our tile for the bathroom. We had lucked out up to this point with minimal damage caused by the demo, a laminate floor that extended all the way under the vanity (thus making tiling MUCH easier), and only a very, very minimal occasional drip coming from the pipes the sink hooks up to- easily controlled with a hand towel.

Just getting the tile cut is taking forever because we are too cheap to buy or rent a tile saw and just take our tiles to the store and have the workers cut them for us. Like most projects, we have taken several more trips than we originally anticipated we would. This afternoon when we got home, Todd noticed the little leak seemed a little more, and tried to tighten the shut off valve a little more. You can probably guess that he only made it worse. So we made several calls and frantically looked in closets and behind vent cover thingies trying to find our main water shut off. Yes, we realize that we should have known where that was already since we have lived here for over two years.

When our goose chase finally ended we found the valve only to discover it was stuck. Completely, utterly stuck. And it is scary to put a lot of pressure on the spot where water comes into your house. We didn't really want a flood that insurance refused to pay for because we hadn't done proper "maintenance" on the pipe. (I sometimes wonder if our insurance would pay for anything....)

We again turned to the internet. We saw that several people recommended loosening the nut a bit and turning the handle the opposite direction. Our nut turned and started leaking but still no luck with the handle. Then we sprayed some of that WD40 on to see if it would loosen things up. Still tight. No movement whatsoever.

By now it was 7:00 pm. Time to pay plumbers after-hours premiums. We called the city safety line and they said the city people could come turn off the water to our house but it would cost us. So then I called a plumber that advertised 24/7 service with no extra fees for nights and weekends. I am pretty sure the secretary takes her phone home with her because she answered "hello" after about six rings and I could hear a bunch of people in the background. I was very confused and asked if I was calling a pluming service. She said yes. I told her we needed someone to come help us, and she told us to call back tomorrow. Not so 24/7.

I called another one. This time I was actually connected with the on-call plumber. He told me to get some specific type of pliers and turn the handle. He said I could twist pretty hard without being afraid of breaking it. If I still wanted him to come over or it didn't work, then I could call him back and he would come.

So I went downstairs, spread the pliers (hoping I had the right kind), and got ready to put my weight into it. Instead the handle turned easily as if it was never even stuck.

As we waited to see if the water would stop (and learned that it doesn't stop immediately), I couldn't believe we had figured it out. We attributed the miracle to a little WD40 sprayed on at least a half hour before.

Then as we watched the trickle turn to a slow drip and eventually stop, I suddenly became very, very grateful for a little bit of melted plastic on my stove.

Our main water shut off

See my friend WD40 in the corner

Just in case you didn't catch it, this post is implying that we are all children of a Heavenly Father who loves us and really takes care of us. His tender mercies are truly all around us. And he certainly knows our needs individually.

Name that Face!

I don't know if that is the official name of our game, but Lila is pretty good at it. We surf through blogs and facebook pictures and she identifies any family members she sees. It is fun because she knows so many of the faces. But in different contexts she sometimes gets confused. Occasionally she even hesitates on a picture of me! But I think it's funny because she has some tendencies.

 If she doesn't know who the person is, but they are a Faber, she usually guesses Brayden. Jasmine and Taylor get that the most. She always recognizes Brayden and gets him right, but I guess she thinks everyone else looks like him too.

 If she doesn't recognize an Itri girl she guesses Stephanie. And she just thinks all her Itri uncles are daddy. I guess they do all look pretty much alike.

She is very impressive when identifying the babies. She rarely misses baby Declan, baby Tanner, or baby Jacob.

And she always shrieks excitedly whenever she identifies grandma or grandpa (either Faber's or Itri's). They don't seem to be in as many pictures so I guess she gets excited when she sees them. And for some reason she always recognizes them right off the batt. Yay for families!

Daddy, Uncle Matt, Uncle Darren, Uncle Will, Uncle Taylor, Grandpa

Lila, Mommy, Grandma Lila (I am really excited she recognizes Grandma Lila now)

Kylee, Adam, Ellie, Lila, Mikayla, Reese, Jason, Liam, Brayden

Aunt Lauren, Grandpa, Aunt Shelly

Uncle Rob, Aunt Stephanie

Aunt Danica, Baby Declan

Aunt Danica, Uncle Darren

Baby Samuel (she doesn't recognize him yet. Give her a break he's only 3 days old!)

Uncle Matt

Uncle Rob, Grandpa, Uncle Dan

Aunt Kelsey, Grandma Itri

Aunt Danica, Aunt Jasmine, Aunt Jessica, Aunt Lauren, Aunt Shelly, Aunt Anna,  Mommy, Aunt Kenzie

Seth, Crystal, Baby Jacob, Jensen, Reagan, Lila

Aunt Lisa, Mommy, Grandma, Aunt Kelsey, Aunt Stephanie

Uncle Brian, Grandma, Grandpa

Mikayla, Lila, Kylie, Brayden

Ellie, Aunt Jessica, Reese

Aunt Jasmine, Kenzie, Anna, Lauren, Uncle Darren, Aunt Shelly and Jessica, Mommy

Reagan, Jensen

Baby Tanner

Aunt Kelsey, Uncle Dan

Uncle Taylor, Aunt Jasmine

Aunt Kelsey, Uncle Dan, Uncle Scott, Seth, Aunt Lisa, Baby Jacob, Crystal

Baby Jacob, Aunt Lisa

Adam, Ellie

Slowing Down

This last week I have tried to be very careful with my time. I am aware that basically everyone in the world is crazy busy. I have felt myself running and running for most of my life. There are so many things I want to do and accomplish. Probably the most important one is to be a good mother. But I want to be a good mom in so many ways. I not only want to love and teach and treasure my children, I want to keep a nice, clean home for them that they can feel the spirit in. I want to do things that will given them an example to follow. I want to be educated so I have a leg to stand on when I stress their schoolwork. I want to take time for myself so that I can be my best for them. I want to have friends and do things away from everyday life so that I can continually be refreshed and reminded of what a wonderful life I truly have. This last week I decided to make better use of my time. One of the important aspects of that is that I decided not to fill every moment of it. I wanted to be careful to not overload myself and lose sight of important things. So I kept my house reasonably clean but didn't stress about every detail being perfect. I took Lila out to do fun things but didn't schedule an outing every day. I decided not to watch any TV. I went to bed early. I worked on my homework in small bits and kept up on assignments rather than scrunching everything into the end right before it was due. I was available to help out when others needed it and respond to promptings of the spirit. Now, I really only started this on Monday or Tuesday. Keeping it up long-term will be a completely different matter. But I ran across this Mormon Message today that made me hope that I am on the right track.

My life has been far from perfect. I have been whiny and mean and short-tempered and sad. I haven't allowed myself to be fully happy with all of my blessings. I am hoping that by making this effort I will be able to become a more grateful, happy, good person. And I am so glad that I have the gospel in my life to help me do it. I know that I can utilize the atonement in my life to heal my sadness and cleanse my sins. I know that I have divine potential. It's time for me to start trying to live up to it.

The Monster Created a Woman

In case you are wondering, we solved our monster problem. How did we do it?

Yes. People always told me my kids would grow up fast. But this is a little too much. My baby girl is sleeping on a twin sized bed. Since this bed isn't in the room she associates with the monster, she sleeps in it. She stays in it (most of the time). Up until now I have maintained that I would keep Lila in a crib as long as I possibly could. I never thought that it would be a monster that chased her out of it at the young age of 2 years, 4 months, and 13 days old. 

And that's not all.

This picture was taken in November when we first put Lila on the potty. It was just an introduction, not a full-fledged potty training attempt. But over the next few months we encouraged it and let her try it every once in a while. Most mornings I would ask her if she wanted to wear panties instead of her diaper. One day she said yes. And that's when it started! I think that was in March. On Sunday Lila told me she needed to go poo poo, then proceeded to do so. I now consider her potty trained. She rarely has accidents, sleeps through most of her naps without wetting the bed, and can tell me when she needs to pee and poo.

This is Lila right now. She undressed herself, and got herself dressed for bed. Granted, she isn't very good at it. Most mornings she tries to dress herself and either ends up with a dress on backwards or screaming for help when she gets stuck. But tonight she did it all on her own.

She also has an extensive vocabulary, often speaks in full sentences, remembers people's names, helps me clean up, and frequently pops up with information I had no idea she had any clue about (once when she was excited she started saying "yee-haw!" and galloping around. I don't' ever say yee-haw).

I am flabbergasted by my little angel. My mom told me recently that if I ever have a boy I will wonder what is wrong with him. Of course, boys tend to take a little longer to learn things like speech and going potty, but my little girl is an all-star.

Oh, and please if you disagree and think she is just on a normal track for development, don't burst my proud bubble. I like being proud of my little girl.

We Created A Monster Out of Lila's First Monster

Early this morning Lila woke up yelling for me. "Mommy! Mommy! Come get me!" It took me a second to wake up and get in there, and I picked her up and cuddled her for a few minutes. Usually when she wakes up in the middle of the night I can get her to go back to sleep in her crib. But for some reason this morning she was insistent despite my seemingly lengthy effort to persuade her otherwise. She finally won by asking for daddy. When I brought her into our room she stuck her head right on my pillow and pulled up the covers. Didn't even look to see if daddy was there. But she was pretty good most of the night (as opposed to her usual tossing and turning and turning herself sideways to kick one of us in the head). When we were all awake in bed she asked me to go close her door. She was pretty insistent, so I got up and closed it. I didn't think too much of it because she likes doors to be closed and she asked me to close my door too.

A few minutes later at breakfast she said something about biting her. I don't know if it was that she was afraid something was going to bite her or that something didn't bite her or what. If I had ignored it we probably would have been fine. But instead we probed. "Who was trying to bite you?" "Was it a monster?" "Is the monster in your room?" She started talking about how it tried to bite her pull up, but her jammies protected it. We talked about it for a minute or two. Then lila asked if mommy would protect her. And later said that we would save her. So for the rest of breakfast we talked about how when we were done we would go get the monster our of her room.

When we were ready I picked up Lila to protect her, and we went in with daddy so he could eat the monster. Of course she was freaked. We kept asking where the monster was hiding. "Is it under the bed? Is it in your closet?" And she would always reply no. Then Todd did a brilliant show of eating the monster, and we hoped all was well.

Not so! After Lila goes pee pee in the morning she usually rushes in to pick out her panties for the day. Not today. Today she needed mommy to come with her. And even then she couldn't do anything unless I was holding her. I had Todd come and take some pictures of our stalemate. Lila naked under her blanket on my lap, while I try to convince her that it is safe to get her panties out of her dresser. Even though daddy ate the monster, she is still scared. I just should have ignored that comment about biting.

Family Pics

We tried getting some family pictures for my side of the family. That Includes my parents, 7 siblings, 3 spouses, one cardboard cutout of an absent spouse, and 8 grandkids. Surprisingly, some of the pictures turned out pretty well. Although I must say, this one may be the best of all the pictures taken. Thank you to Taylor for snapping a few candid shots.

Florida

We took a very nice vacation at the beginning of May. A nice little ending to our semester and a start for summer. First we spent a few days at Jessica's house! It was wonderful. Lila loved having her cousins around and it is always fun when I get to see any of my sisters. The only bad part was the hole in our air mattress. Todd and I spend two nights waking up every few hours to pump up our bed again. Then Jessica called a friend and borrowed theirs instead- unfortunately it wasn't much better. But we got to relax, visit, play, and had a great time!

Todd being a good uncle and daddy

Lila found a new love of power tools

We visited a gym and let Lila and Adam play

No fear!

Se can usually climb up, but is too scared to come down

Got stuck. Literally for five minutes she didn't budge.

Then Adam came to her rescue. Took her hand and brought her up the rest of the way

Thank you so much Jessica and Matt for hosting us for a few days! It was so good to see you guys and play with Adam and Ellie. It was especially nice to prepare Lila for the next phase of our trip... leaving her behind while Todd and I went on a 7 day caribbean cruise! It was a bit sad to leave our beautiful baby, but it was so nice to relax for a bit. If you guys are all lucky, I'll get around to posting about that wonderful week as well. For now, just know Jessica wins an award for being an amazing sister!

All Done Work

Lila has been saying this to me for months. When she sees me put on my scrubs she stops whatever she is doing and says "no mommy work" over and over. Then when I tell her I have to go to work, she says "all done mommy work." Sometimes she even goes so far as to say that daddy should go to work instead. I have been tired and busy with work and school and church so have not gotten to see much of her. Especially this last semester I felt like even when I was with her I couldn't pay attention to her because I was doing homework or exhausted or making phone calls or something. Last summer staying home the whole time I felt like I had really found my calling in being a stay-at-home mom. When I went back to work in August I thought that I might choose to quit outright rather than stay on in a very part time capacity (i.e. 12 hours a week). But I still wasn't sure, after all I have worked hard to become a nurse and do have seniority in my job.

Then it took Todd a lot longer to find a job than we had hoped. A LOT longer. I thought I might be able to quit before Lila's second birthday. But that didn't happen. So I kept moving along. The endless wait made me more and more sure that I was simply done. I didn't want to be working at all anymore. I was just biding my time until Todd had something to keep us financially steady. I even considered quitting and just hoping he would find work soon.

When Todd came home from a job interview that lasted 5 hours because he was already starting a bit of orientation, I went straight to my managers office to put in my 2-weeks notice. If I had posted this at that time I would have been exhilarated, relieved, and overjoyed with the situation. I was even lucky with my schedule to only have to work a bit over 1 week instead of 2 because of the way my shifts fell in the week (I put in my notice on a Wednesday, and in two weeks I was scheduled Thursday and Friday so they fell outside the timeline). I ended up working 4 1/2 shifts since I put in my notice. The first three were wonderful. I was so happy. I decided not to tell anyone that I had quit. I just wanted to be there and enjoy my last few days without hooplah. Then I worked only a half shift because I was sick, and of course being sick is never fun so that wasn't the best night.

And last night was, well, my last night. It started out sad because one of my best friends at work was oriented to be a charge nurse, and I really wanted to train her. But the guy who was scheduled to charge told me he wouldn't let me charge for him. That really bummed me out. I will probably never work anywhere enough to be able to charge again, or at least for a long time. And I forfeited charging on Wednesday when I was sick. So I feel like I really missed out on my last opportunity. Plus it would have been really fun to spend my last night with my good friend, and I love orienting. Then the night was super crazy. I sat down for about 10 minutes for my lunch in the 13 hours I was there. And still didn't get everything done! The night flew by and I didn't really get to spend any time with the people there that I love and will miss.

And another thing happened too. I am still happy, but I have also become sad. I worked really hard to get where I am. I guess this is a bad thing but I think there are a few people at work who think I am full of myself. And it is because I am a really good nurse and I know it. I really care about patients, I stay calm in an emergency, I use my resources to make sure I'm providing the best care, I have good time management skills, I take time to teach and don't leave out anything important. I help everyone around me and love to be the one people come to with questions. I of course am not perfect, still make lots of mistakes (but not big ones), and as a girl am affected by emotions/hormones. But I have never been as good at anything else in my life. It feels really good to go somewhere and be good at something. It feels good to be appreciated. It is nice to feel accomplished. And of course I have a lot of good friends there, some of which I may never see again.

Before, I sacrificed being a mommy full time to support my family. But during that time I built a career. And now I am sacrificing my career for my beautiful Lila. Worth it, I know. But still a sacrifice. It feels strange. Unfortunately I never took pictures at work. Now I wish I had some. I wish I had taken a picture of my locker. Of the great people I worked with. Of myself in my awesome scrub dress. Of the big hole under the counter in the break room from where we broke the mini refrigerator, having to call poison control to make sure we weren't all going to breath CFC or freon or whatever is inside the cooling system. Or the WOW board with everyone's picture and all the nice things patients have written about us. It just seems weird to let it all go.

But I think in a few weeks, when Lila and I are happy as can be, and have a nice routine and so much more fun, I will remember again why I made this decision. She is my whole world. And I would do anything for her. Even this.

**Addendum Added June 2: The first words out of Lila's mouth this morning were "A Mommy all done workin!"

And it Came to Pass

Lila is not very good at listening when we read scriptures as a family. In fact, in order to keep her still for just a moment when we start she gets chocolate when we read scriptures every day. Usually a Hershey's Kiss. It takes her a moment to open the wrapper, then two moments to eat the chocolate, then she is off the walls again. We usually read the scriptures from the ipad, so sometimes I have wondered if she really recognized what scriptures were.

We keep a mini copy of the Book of Mormon in her diaper bag as one of the things for her to play with. Last week we pulled it out, sat down, opened it up and started saying"it came a pass, it came a pass, it came a pass, it came a pass." Todd and I were just about ready to die of pride. She is so cute. It is nice to know that she listens at least a little.