This is about as crafty as I get.

I made some magnets like these a few months ago for my ward's super crafty Saturday Enrichment thingy. Craft-challenged people like me do not usually enjoy those activities, but these magnets are easy to make and inexpensive. I already had the Mod Podge and the hot glue gun. The paper, magnets, and clear stones only cost me about $6.00. Melanie and I made about 18 magnets with our supplies. It was fun and relaxing to sit down with her today and make magnets.


These are the magnets Melanie made. She had fun and did them all by herself, except for the hot glue. I'm too much of a control freak to let her do that.




I made some for Carter and Riley, too. They had this really cute monster paper at the craft store and the boys now have their very own magnets to hang their things on the fridge. I'm not a great photographer so I had trouble getting a good shot of the little monsters (the kind on the magnets, not my little monsters).

I really like making my own because I like to be able to stick six or seven sheets of paper with the magnet. Most store-bought magnets can't handle that. But when I make my own I can use the big magnets and they are heavy duty. So heavy duty that when Carter was playing with his today he tried pulling them apart and ripped one of the magnets off.

Big Surprise? Not Really.

Did the last post tip you off? What is an Elementary Education major doing posting poetry on her blog? Well, first of all, that girl is no longer an Elementary Education major, and second, she likes English and poetry, so of course she's going to post stuff like that on her blog!

That crazy girl went through mental torture the past few weeks. She just couldn't figure out what she wanted to do with her life, but that's because she was fighting against what she knew she should be doing (English) and what she went to school for in the first place - to enjoy what she was doing (English)! She kept getting overwhelmed thinking about being the breadwinner while her husband goes to graduate school when she's done with college. She thought that teaching was the way for her to secure some finances in her family's life.

But she does not want to teach! She doesn't want to fill her life with teaching, because she's afraid that the constant busyness of teaching will take her away from the most important thing in her life - her family. She doesn't want to become consumed with other people's children. She wants to focus on her own. There is no passion in her for teaching.

She loves creative writing. During Spring Semester that girl went with her class to the Braithwaite Art Gallery during their Zion Exhibit. There were beautiful pictures capturing the majesty and strength of Zion National Park, but there was also poetry about Zion - about heritage and nature, about wisdom and youth - written by some of the Intermediate Poetry students. Their poetry enveloped her and she dreamed of having her words on those walls one day.

She wants to keep that dream. She doesn't know if she'll ever get published, but that's not why she's going to school in the first place. She's going because she loves learning for herself. She loves the challenge school brings to her plate, and she loves meeting those challenges and raising the bar for herself.

At the beginning of Spring semester, my friend Julie M. (I have to specify because there are two Julies), mentioned she thought I should post some of my creative writing. I really wasn't sure if I was confident enough in my writing to do so, but I figured why not.

This poem was one of the hardest for me to write and become engaged with. The triggering subject was not the best for me and so I had to get, well, creative. As you read and comment, please remember I'm a novice and before this semester I had not written anything in YEARS!

Buena Vista

My bare arms and legs
stick and squeak
against the blue-and-white-striped
vinyl beach chair.

The noon-day sun
presses heavily
upon my feverish skin
as I lay here
with my eyes closed.
A sun bath.
Instead of like water
underneath me
the heats sits on top of me.

A breeze swirls
my strawberry hair
for a moment
pushing aside
the weight of the fiery sun
in the lazy afternoon.

Small waves
lap at the beach
each orchestrating
the red and brown sand
into a new arrangement.

Desert heat
wind in motion
rhythm of the waves.
A compass to my world.

My Big Water.

What Happens at Our House When the Missionaries Come to Dinner

We had the missionaries over for dinner Friday night. They were very nice, albeit shy, Elders. We ended up feeding them our version of Carl's Jr.'s guacamole burger. They cleaned their plates, but I don't know if that's because the food was good or because they were missionaries. :)

Anyway, the rest of the fun happened after I left. I had a baby shower that night and so I had to skip out when they were still here. When I got home from the shower that night Ben had some great stories for me.

Our friendly little guy, Carter, was chatting with Elder Funbanana. No, of course his name wasn't really Elder Funbanana, but his last name was Polynesian, and I couldn't pronounce it, let alone spell it.

"How old are you," asked Carter of Elder Funbanana.

"I'm 19," Elder Funbanana replied.

"Do you think you'd like to go on a mission when you're 19," Ben questioned Carter.

"Yeah, I think I would," said Carter. They continued to talk while the boys played in and out of the conversation. Later on Carter came back in the kitchen and exclaimed to the Elders, "Well, at least you're not gone for two years!"

"Actually," replied Elder Funbanana, "we are gone for two years."

At this point Carter walked up to Ben, and with tear-filled, milk-chocolate brown eyes and a very sad face he said, "I think I've changed my mind."

Seeing Carter's teary face Ben swallowed a chuckle and said, "Don't worry about it now. You don't need to stress."

"I'm OK," Carter said, wiping his face. "My eyes are just sweating."

After Carter left the room, Elder Funbanana said, "Apparently, I'm not doing a very good job as a missionary if I've only been out for four months and I've already convinced somebody NOT to go on a mission."

I tell you, I don't know what I would do without Carter and Riley and Melanie and their comic relief.

Carter wasn't the only one up to antics last night. Riley had his own little play going on. He was so tired yesterday when they were here. He wasn't doing his usual get-all-hyped-up-when-I'm-tired routine. He was more on the everything-makes-me-cry path. He would start crying about anything and then would look at the missionaries and say, "They keep staring at me!" start crying even harder, and then duck his head under the table. He'd stop for a few seconds, peek up over the table, then proclaim, "They're still starting at me!" start crying again, and duck back under the table.

At least we gave them some good stories for laughs when they report on their missions when they get home, right?

Posted Grades and Patio Cleaning

Well, my grades are posted, which gives a final feeling to the semester. Ahhhh.... it feels nice to really be done with this semester. I am so looking forward to summer break and spending leisure time with my family. We're planning on getting a swim pass for the summer, so it should be fun. Even though it will make it hard to meet my goal of not letting my kids get sunburned!

I sprayed down my patio today. It was so dirty from all the construction they have been doing around us for the past year. They've finally finished landscaping the complexes next to us and so hopefully the dirt will be down to a minimum now. Hopefully. The kids had fun getting their feet wet. Melanie was the smart one and went inside before too long, but the boys stayed out and I ended up soaking them by "making it rain." They thought that was great.

I didn't sit down much today - on the go with shopping and such. It will be nice to sit and get LOST. Hopefully I won't fall asleep while I'm watching!

Last Day of School! Last Day of School!

You know, like on Finding Nemo. Except I'm excited because it's the last day of school, not the first. Come August, I'll be excited because it'll be the first day of school again, and I'm always excited for the first day of school.

Was that me, or was that a mouthful?

I'm lucky enough to only have two finals this semester. One is math and the other one is really not a final. It's just a 25-point quiz for my education class. I love that teacher. His philosophy is that teachers give too much homework - both in grade school and higher education. Bless him.

My goals for the summer? Take a nap every day. I'm not kidding about that. Don't let my kids get sunburned. Does it count that Riley already got sunburned at Grandma Jeanne's today? Oh, well. I can't win them all!

School, nothing, and Riley

A certain friend, (cough, Tearese, cough) teased me because I kept changing my background even though I hadn't written anything new in a while. School has been really crazy, and I feel like I've been tutoring people in math - that in and of itself is scary. I only have one week left of school and then finals, and then SUMMER. That is, if mother nature decides to figure that out.

Anyway, I've been so busy I haven't been able to keep up to date, and I felt like I didn't have anything to say for a while. But of course, Riley will give me something to write about.

A few months ago I noticed one of his eyes doing something weird. It was like it couldn't follow where it was supposed to go. My sister-in-law noticed it too, and I figured it was time for an appointment with the eye doctor.

I took him yesterday, and of course, it's some rare thing. He actually has two weird things going on with his eyes. He has overacting inferior oblique. Basically his inferior oblique muscles that control his eye are too powerful and he can't fight it all the time, so one eye gives way while the other one stays focused. I thought it was just his left eye that went unfocused, but the doctor showed me and it's actually both eyes. It's mainly cosmetic. It won't hinder him developmentally. They will see us again in four months to see if the condition is any worse. They eventually can do a surgery for it, but it's not 100 percent correctable. The doctor said it's really uncommon. He maybe sees two to three kids a year with this.

The other thing the doctor found was that Riley has retinal coloboma. Basically there was something going on while his eyes were forming in utero and that affected his retina. It's like there is a gap in his retina. They took a picture of his eye at the office - it was the coolest thing to see. Anyway, he's sure it's not a tumor on his retina (like retinal blastoma) but he wants to get a second opinion. We go in again in May when a retinal specialist will be in the doctor's office to check it out.

Ben and I both googled these conditions to find out more. There is mostly just medical jargon on the overacting inferior oblique, but the coloboma had some interesting material. Coloboma is connected to a syndrome called CHARGE that is to believed to be caused by a disruption of fetal growth during the first three months of pregnancy and affecting many different organ systems undergoing development at that time. I had some issues with my pregnancy around 16 weeks, and discovered I had a subchorionic hemorrhage. There can also be urogenital abnormalities associated with CHARGE, like undescended testicles. Remember Riley's inguinal hernias? Not as dramatic as undescended testicles, but they both kind of take the same path.

The doctor also asked if Riley has always had such a prominent forehead, like mine. It's a good thing I don't get offended easily! That got me thinking that this is all connected, because it took nearly three years for his fontanel to completely close. There is still a tiny little soft spot on his head now!

I don't know if he has CHARGE, or what the route would be if he did. He's a little smarty pants and everything else with him is developing well. It's just interesting to see all the relations with this stuff.

Riley has always been the one to do things his way. Melanie and Carter were angel babies, and Riley is balancing them out with all his mischief!