We had a quiet (and surprisingly enjoyable) Christmas here. Our first time not going to see family for Christmas. It was a new experience. This was also my first time cooking Christmas dinner myself. We had four of missionaries over to enjoy it with us as they didn't have any dinner appointments that day. Sad day to be away from your family and no food either. So, I invited them. It was entertaining! LOL

We had friends over to play games on New Year's Eve, but everyone went home by 8:30pm (tired kids). We got to bed early on New Year's for once. It was a good thing though because the next day (the first of Jan.) my niece, Elise, in Spokane was baptized. We drove up there after lunch and attended the baptism, had dinner with my brother's family and other relatives that showed up, then drove home that night. Lily will be turning 8 this year so I'm trying to get her psyched about her own baptism.

I had an ultrasound on the fifth. It looks to be a girl. Ken is still crossing his fingers for a boy, but isn't optimistic. We have been tossing names back and forth in preparation (Amaryllis, Rose, etc). Know any pretty flower names that would work on humans too?

We played games with three other couples on the 7th. We played How To Host A Murder. All eight of us play a different suspect and try to figure out 'Who dun' it?'. It was fun! Life has slowed back down now that the holidays are over. Ken is working on an awning for the land owner of the trailer park we live in. He poured cement last week because it didn't snow for once! We've had a lot of snow this winter. Today we got rain though. I love the sound of rain against the roof. It lulls me to sleep. So peaceful!

One of my New Year resolutions is to read a new book each month. That way I will have expanded my mind by 12 different books by 2012. New ideas and points of view. I'm starting with a book my mother gave me two years ago that just sat on my bookshelf gathering dust till now. It is called Putting On The Armor Of God by Steven A. Cramer. My mom liked it so much that she bought a copy for each of her kids. I don't know who (if any) have read it, but I'm finally getting to it.

For past years resolutions I have picked an author and read all their works. After a few years of doing that, I got tired of spending a whole year with one author's point of view. So I stopped doing that resolution for two years. Now I'm doing 12 different books. I haven't picked them before hand or anything. It will be just what I feel like reading that month, that I will pick up. I was going to read the first volume of "History Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of L.D.S." for January, but I'm having issues finding a copy (our church building library closed too soon last Sunday to see if they have a copy I can check out). But I became curious about reading that book because last year I read the D&C/Pearl of Great Price, and this year I'm rereading the BOM. In the seven pages before first Nephi starts I read some interesting history and had a couple of questions about this person or that witness etc. Ken couldn't remember details, and I being the history lover that I am would like to answer my own questions. We'll see if my enthusiasm makes it till February though. I'm running our of Jan. too quickly to start that book this late in the month.

Today is Lily's helper day at school (she's in second grade). For the helper day she gets to pass back papers, be line leader, and share a treasured object (like show and tell). Each kid gets to have one helper day each month, so its a big deal to them. Lily was frantic yesterday trying to decide what she was going to take today. She decided on a pink fairy doll that plays music when you wind her up. Holly and Ken brought the girls one each when they came last August to visit. Dalia's is blue. Did Grandma Cook send those or are they from Holly? I don't remember.

Dalia has grown again. She is still the shortest in her class and matches the kids in build and height that are one year younger than herself, but she is learning to read and etc. like the rest of her kindergarten class. My kids are so average! LOL

Potty Training Success

Over the last 4.5 years, we have attempted many times to potty train our youngest, Dalia, with no success.

Yesterday morning I was getting Dalia dressed for the day and refused to put a diaper on her (I wanted her to CHOOSE to wear panties). She threw a fit of course. After whining, crying, and bargaining she realized I wasn't going to budge. She didn't want to wander around with a bare bottom under her dress, so she picked a pair of Care Bear panties.

Every time she used the toilet I gave her a potty treat of her choice (Fruit-by-the-foot, Toy Story fruit snacks, or a chunk off of our homemade gingerbread house). I also made a deal with her that if she could keep her panties clean for the whole day, I would give her a bowl of ice cream before bed. I am proud to announce that she had no accidents yesterday, and used the toilet 4 times. She chose to eat Neapolitan before bed.

Unsure whether or not she would be able to keep from wetting her bed, I asked her if she wanted to wear a diaper to bed. Her response: "No, diapers are ugly; panties are pretty." She got up this morning and informed me that she needed to use the toilet again. Clean panties and bed. Hooray!!! Day two of the potty training is off to a roaring success!

Kitchen Remodel

So we started demo of our cabinets. We had a leak in the kitchen from the dishwasher. the cabinets were mostly particle board and MDF, both of which don't do well with high amounts of water. You can see the holes I cut in the base of the cabinets. The floor was also particle board so it swelled up and has to be replaced as well, both the vinyl and carpet has to be torn up.




















We decided as long as everything is torn up we would texture the walls and paint before everything went back in. Rosalie is not enjoying having no kitchen.










Lily loves to have her picture taken. The living room is cramed with everything.







































We found some rot by the front door as well and that had to be torn up and replaced.

Lilly lost a tooth

Lily lost her first tooth on the 12th of January. She lost the other front bottom tooth a week later, we did not get a picture of that. She was very excited to put her tooth under her pillow so the tooth fairy could have it and leave her money.

Update

So it has been awhile since we have posted anything. Lily is loving school, this week was parent teacher confrences and the kindergartners had the week of school she was very sad not to be going to school. I have been called as scout master and am realy enjoying this calling. We had a court of honor a few weeks ago it went well. It was a little unorganized and we started late but for the first one it was not bad. Rosalie also has a new calling she was called last week to be the bear den leader in cub scouts. She is not quite as excited about this as I am but she is getting use to the idea. she was pretty nervous at first. Work is going well, I have a new job title, not really any change they are just trying to change things to work better for the customers, my new title is Finish Carpenter Project Cordinator. I have impressed my boss with my finish work skills to the point that I will be the Project Cordinator, project cordinator is like a project manager except there are not enough people under neath me to realy be a manager and not enough people hire than me for me to just be a carpenter, for all finish projects. Those who new me in High School might find that funny considering that I liked framing because you did not have to be exact, our tollerances were about 1/4" and you did not have to wory to much about appearance if you smacked the framing with your hammer and left a big dent it did not matter. With finish carpentry it is a very different story. our tollerances are 1/16-1/32 depending on wether or not it is paint grade or stain grade. Most of the houses around here go with stain grade wich requires tighter tollerances. Last weekend I was taking the young men rock climbing. I was a little bit late leaving the house so as I left in a hurry and saw a rabit I chased after the rabit, It had been eating rosalies plants. Well as I leapt of the porch I landed on my ankle wrong heard a loud pop and went flying across the yard. I ended up about 15 feet from where I twisted my ankle. I lay there for a while screaming in pain then silently cusing at myself, I finaly decided to call Rosalie because i could not get myself to stand up on my own. I had been laying there about 5 minutes when she came out and helped me get up. I could not put much weight on it but as I stood up and started to hoble around the pain subsided. I ended up leaving anyways to take the boys rock climbing all though I was not able to do anything but watch. When I got home and took my shoe and sock off my ankle had swollen to about the size of a soft ball(double it's normal size) and was all black and blue. I know most of my family has had pretty serious ankle injuries, exspecialy stacie, but this was the first time I have had one that has swollen up so much, had that much bruising, and hurt that much. I can honestly say that this hurt worse then when I shot a nail through my finger. Any way a week later and it is still sore and I am still iceing it when I get home from work but it is getting better each day.

News, stuff, events, and Christmas...

So, life is as stressed as ever with finishing Christmas projects. We're making a lot of stuff this year. Also, presents might be a little late in coming as they are taking a little longer to finish than expected, and the number of them is larger than past years.

We were enjoying beautiful, balmy, spring-type weather in the 50-60 degree range when we got hit with a big snow storm this last weekend. Now we are lucky to get above 20 degrees each day. Night time temperatures are in the single digits and with the wind chill (and there is a SEVERE wind chill and lots of wind), temps drop to the negatives. [sigh] And I was enjoying the shoveling-free, 50 degree December so much. Well, at least it finally looks and feels like Christmas.

Dalia is starting to show interest in the toilet. I actually got her to use it before her bath last week. And she is teaching her dollies how to use the toilet (imaginary toilet). We are (at last) gearing up to potty train Dalia. We had a failed attempt earlier this fall that was...well...a disaster. Majorly! Five pairs of panties for the washer in two hours.

Lily loves school, her teacher, her friends, singing nursery rhymes (with words of her own choosing), and playing on the computer. Yes, they have computer lab every week for an hour in kindergarten. Useful. I've been letting Lily and Dalia play the kids computer games that Holly gave us on the computer too. Dalia is good with a mouse. Really good. Better than Lily. Anyway, Lily is getting really good at sharing all the time with Dalia, though Dalia isn't yet. They are good friends and bitter rivals at the same time. At least they aren't enemies. [Sigh again]

I am looking at getting a part-time job after Christmas for the graveyard shift. Ken is working hard. His right arm/shoulder is still bothering him quite a bit. At least his blood pressure is down so he doesn't have to take medicine for it anymore.

We are spending Christmas with my family in Richland (we'll be all together for the first time since my sister Wendy's wedding in 2000). Good times ahead. Looking forward to Christmas. The girls are chomping at the bit for it. Ah, Christmas. Gotta love it!

Rosalie

Things Ken forgot to add...

So on Halloween we Trick-or-Treated my sister's neighborhood with great success. The girls got 3 to 5 pieces of candy per house because most T-or-T'ers go the the apartment complexes and not the house neighborhoods. They made quite the haul. So before Halloween I had put up decorations; one of which was a smiling ghost with rosy cheeks. The girls thought that it was so cute and started calling it 'the ghost light' (from Disney-Pixar movie "Cars' " short film "Mater and the Ghost Light"). Later when I asked them what they wanted to be this year for Halloween they both chime in "the Ghost Light!" I finally figured out that they wanted to be ghosts and not blue glowing lights. So I cut up a white sheet, cut eye holes, cut smiles out of some black cloth; and glued the smiles, black satin bows, and the white button teeth onto the costume. The girls were thrilled with their costumes. (Note to parents: Make the eye holes bigger than they need to be!) While we were out trick-or-treating we came to a house that had a jack o' lantern on the doorstep. However, this particular pumpkin was vomiting pumpkin seeds and gunk onto the porch. These are the girl's comments:

Lily (grossed out face): Ooh, he's sick!
Dalia (serious and motherly): Mommy, he needs to take some medicine.

Later that evening as we were walking along Lily (who is wearing a coat under her ghost costume even though the temperature was balmy compared to Utah Halloweens) starts commenting that her eyes were cold. Ken and I exchanged glances and repeated it back to her as a question to confirm this bizarre statement. Sure enough she claimed her eye balls were cold thou the rest of her was perfectly toasty. Hmmm.

So Saturday is come and gone and Christmas is up. Well mostly up. The outdoor lights and the window lights aren't up, but most of the decorations, the tree, and ornaments are all up and looking festive and we have begun our Christmas shopping. We also had the missionaries for dinner tonight. We had waffles and eggs with cheese, red bell peppers, and sausage. Breakfast for dinner. I asked, and we are the only ones to ever feed these two missionaries breakfast for dinner. They loved it! I don't think they get omelets and waffles very often. Probably don't have time to make it in the mornings. Ken and I are both teaching lessons in church tomorrow. Him the deacons quorum, me the gospel essentials class.

All hail the Holiday season!

Rosalie