An attitude of gratitude

E wanted to teach home evening really, really badly tonight. Dawn already had a lesson in mind that she wanted us to discuss (makes my job pretty easy). I helped E get the lesson ready, which would be about gratitude. Luke 17 has a classic story about gratitude. I told E she should just tell it in her own words. It started something like this.

"Once there were these ten leprechauns , I mean leapords..."

Thank you E for a good laugh.

Out of the mouth of babes.

K said family prayer this morning and insisted on saying it on her own, like any independent two-year-old would do. She did great for the first five seconds when she got stuck.

"Please bless....(to Dawn) what's Daddy's name?"

I felt blessed.

Halloween

H and I stayed at home to pass out candy while Nathan took the older kids out trick or treating. We now have a year supply of candy:)

Here is our cute little Duck.

Our little Fairy.

Our Butterfly. We made the wings out of hangers and nylons. I think they ended up being too heavy.

Our Handsome Cowboy!

What cute kids!

Pumpking Picking

The kids and I went and picked some pumpkins out . Nathan was home painting the house. It was a little chili outside which is why K has some funny faces.

E loved carving the pumkins. She chose a scary face for her pumpkin.

J chose to have Franensteins Monster on His.

This is what K did the whole time. She wouldn't touch the pumpkin. We did a cat face on hers.

For some reason I forgot to get pictures of the final product. Nathan has been on night float this week. It throws us off a little when he sleeps during the day and works at night.

Tarred and not quite feathered.

This week was a week of new experiences for me.

Thursday evening I got up on the scaffolding with a gallon of roofing asphalt (it's tar) and started to fix the small section of flat roof that has been neglected for years. Placing tar is a tricky endeavor. It shouldn't be too hot because it will melt and a make a mess of everything. If it's too cold, then you really can't spread it thin like you should. When I started, it was bordering on too cold. I had enough scaffolding to get my chest at roof level. I bought a brush with only a hole drilled for a handle and tried to find a stick that would fit. Oddly, they didn't drill the hole to fit a broomstick, or a paint brush extension (which I had), so I was improvising (with the leg of an old table, Dawn doesn't yet know). The sun was setting when I finally was getting underway (thank goodness they pushed daylight savings a little later, or I would have started in the dark.) It quickly became too cold to spread the tar thin. The thick tar kept pulling the brush off my makeshift handle. Out of frustration I finally just took the brush in my hand and started spreading it without a handle. A short time later when was finished my hands were completely covered in tar. At least it was cold. I asked Dawn for some feathers, but she wouldn't go for it. Too bad I was too tarry to take a picture and Dawn was busy with the kids, so no picture for you.

Our baking element on our oven burned out. We found a replacement part online and ordered it. The instructions for changing these mentioned that the element is really a wire with high resistance running 220 V through it and that it's not a good idea to touch (burn and electrical shock). The wire ends that the element plugs into also should be handled with care. With that warning I went to work. It was actually very simple. Unplug oven, unscrew baking element, disconnect wires, place new element, reattach screws, plug in oven. Wow, we could have paid someone a lot of money to do a simple thing.

The last new experience was fun. Dawn has the book "The Breadmaker's Apprentice" and we were making some Italian bread. They explain that bakers' ovens begin with some steam cycles and that you can modfiy your oven (with a brand new baking element) into a steaming oven. You get your oven to 500 dgrees, place a heavy duty pan to hold hot water and place your cooking stone on the rack. When the temperature is ready, you slide the dough onto your 500 degree stone, dump a cup of hot water into the steam pan, and then start spritzing the side of the oven with a water from a spray bottle. Use gloves so that you don't give yourself a steam burn and don't drop water on the tempered glass, or you'll probably break it. Easy. The bread turned out fantastic, probably the best homemade Italian bread we've ever made.

What new adventures await us this week? Hopefully not much, I'm on night float and don't like new experiences on night float.

What a Chunker

Yesterday Little H turned 9 weeks old. She also had her 2 month appointment. She is weighing in at 14 lbs and is 23 1/2 inches long (in the hospital they measured her at 23 inches, but at her one week appointment they shrunk her to 21 1/2 inches). She is my biggest so far. She is a little cutie and we love her.
H is smiling and starting to coo and have conversations with me. She also is a great sleeper at night. She will at least give me a 5-6 hour stretch every night. She is smothered with love by her siblings and is very much an important part of our family.

I almost got her to smile here. I'm working on it.

On Potty Training and Being a Woman

We are currently in the process of potty training this little princess. So far things are going great. She loves wearing underwear and does a pretty good job, with many reminders from me. We still have her in pullups at night. One night after her bath I had put a pullup on her then proceeded to help the other children. We said prayers and read scriptures. When I was putting her in bed I noticed a pullup right in front of her dresser. She had changed into underwear without telling me and was headed to bed happy with the situation. She can be awfully sneaky.
Another story about this little princess. Thursday morning she woke up when Nathan was still in the shower. She came into our room and asked if I would make her a cape out of her little blanket. A little history, until about 2 weeks ago anytime K had a cape she insisted that she was super man. I tried to get her to be super woman or super girl, but it was always super man. So Thursday morning she had the cape on and started to "fly" around our room. As soon as she heard the bathroom door open she took off flying down the hall and loudly announced to Nathan "Daddy I'm a WOMAN".