My Bearded Man Returns!

I know I haven't posted for almost 2 weeks but I've been a little busy, okay? The bad thing about having a husband that helps out around the house and with the kids so much is that when he leaves for a long period of time, my life spins slightly out of control. That is what has happened since I last posted.

Adam left on Father's Day to go to Washington D.C. for 11 days where he had training and a briefing for his upcoming deployment. The day before that, my whole family had been together for my sister's wedding that I wasn't able to make it to, which was pretty depressing. Then an hour and a half after Adam left, I had a church meeting that I had to be at so I had to get someone to watch my kids. Then I had church, where I gave a talk while someone had to watch my kids (I love our ward- and my friend Jana who saved the day that day). That was just the first 5 hours after he left. There were 264 more hours after that, but don't worry- I won't go into too much detail. Just know that I had a bit of a melt down that weekend. The rest of the 11 days went okay. I was exhausted and the amount of sleep I was getting (Bridger has been waking up between 4:30 and 5:30- yeah I don't know who he thinks he is) left something to be desired. Sleep to be exact. My kids were so good, though, and we had a lot of fun together.

Here are some conversations Brody and I had while Adam was gone that made me happy:

Me: I love you, Brody.
Brody: What's yuv?
Me: Love is when you really like someone and you want to be with them and give them lots of hugs and kisses and play with them all the time.
Brody (after a long pause): I yuv Hayden..and I yuv evybody. (Hayden is his best little buddy.)

Me: Brody, you need to eat your dinner. (This is the phrase I use more than any other.)
Brody: If I eat all my dinner, I will be strong (arms are up showing muscles), just like Grandpa!

Brody: Mommy, yook at the moon! Half of it is all gone. The dragon ate half of it.
Me: The dragon ate half of it? That is silly.
Brody: Dragons yike to eat the moon but I don't yike it. It's too yucky.

Brody: Daddy is at work for a yong yong time.
Me: Yes, he won't be home for 5 more days.
Brody: How about 2 more minutes?
Me: Nope- you have to wait 5 more days, then daddy will come home.
Brody: How about 14 more minutes?

Some of the things we did to keep ourselves busy were:

Sticker parties.

Trips to the creek to feed the ducks bread, although the ducks didn't want any of it- but the fish did!

Read books together

Played in the pool and sandbox in the backyard (sometimes a mixture of both, which turned into a mud party)

Went to the park (Brody had an accident so he had to wear my gym shorts home- they were just a little big.

Played the "water game" (filling up tupperware with different colors of water and then mixing different colors together).

The boys got haircuts.

Pushed each other around in laundry baskets.

Played with our friends.

Adam got home on Thursday and we were so excited to see him! He is growing out his hair and his beard for his deployment so he was pretty hairy when he got home. There's nothing like giving a welcome home kiss and getting sharp needles stabbed into your face! We are so glad to have him home for a month before he has to leave us again for another FOUR MONTHS!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to my Dad and to Adam, who are both great dads. I love you!

Our Three Month Food Storage

A few months ago I posted something about my desire to start building our food storage. I wanted us to have a year's supply and had a list of things to get every week so that in a year, it would be done. I was talking to someone in our ward who happens to be a food storage guru about it. She gave me some really good ideas on how to build up a three-month supply of food before I go for the whole year. Some people have asked me why I am doing this. I got this quote off of one of our church websites called providentliving.org:

"Our Heavenly Father created this beautiful earth, with all its abundance, for our benefit and use. His purpose is to provide for our needs as we walk in faith and obedience. He has lovingly commanded us to “prepare every needful thing” (see D&C 109:8) so that, should adversity come, we can care for ourselves and our neighbors and support bishops as they care for others.

"We encourage members world-wide to prepare for adversity in life by having a basic supply of food and water and some money in savings."

I have always known that this was important, but for some reason didn't put it very high on my priority list. The nice lady in our ward inspired me to get going. I made a menu for a full week's worth of food, including meals, snacks, drinks and any other items. I then made a grocery list based on those foods and multiplied it by 12 to get 12 weeks, or about 3 months. We have just been getting a few extra things every week at the grocery store and have made 2 or 3 trips to Sam's Club to get some of the bigger items. Adam built a shelf for us to put in our front room closet to store all the food so it didn't get weird in the heat of our garage. We are saving all of our juice containers (we go through a lot of juice), cleaning them out and filling them with clean water so that we have at least some water in case our water supply ever gets contaminated.
Today we just about finished our 3 month supply. I am pretty excited about it (even though I know Eliza is rolling her eyes or gagging right about now). It brings me a little bit more peace knowing that if anything ever happens, be it Adam losing his job or gasoline prices going to $8/gallon so we can't afford groceries, we will be able to take care of our family for a while.

The Provident Living website has a lot of good tips about establishing and maintaining food and water storage so if you are interested, it's a good place to start.
In other news this week, we have all been sick. Sick sick sick. Brody was sick for a few days, then Bridger woke up and threw up/dry heaved a few times then Brody was sick again. On Monday morning, they both just lay on the couch and watched cartoons looking pathetically sick, Bridger on a blanket to avoid any further upholstery stains. When they started to get better, I got sick with a sore throat/stuffy head. Now they feel fine- I just have to wipe their noses all day long, and I am still stuffy and my throat is scratchy. Adam is leaving on Sunday for an 11-day deployment briefing in Washington D.C. or Maryland or somewhere so I am really hoping we are all healthy and well by then.

Since Adam is leaving on Father's Day morning, we celebrated Father's Day yesterday. Adam went and picked out some new clothes for his Father's Day gift since he will be wearing civilian clothes to work instead of his uniform while preparing for his deployment and he doesn't have much besides jeans and t-shirts. My mom had given us a gift certificate to Honey-Baked Ham so we got an 8 pound brown sugar-cured ham and had it for dinner. I made homemade crescent rolls and corn on the cob, too. It was so good- the rolls melted in our mouths and I'm pretty sure the ham was the best thing I have ever eaten. Adam had a potluck at work last night so he took half the ham and shared it. Then we had it for lunch today and dinner again tonight and we still have some left. Thanks again for the ham, Mom.

My FUN long post about my FUN trip with my FUN sisters to FUN New York!

This last weekend I got to go to New York with my two sisters- Eliza and Audrey- while Adam stayed home and took care of the chil'ren. I had been looking forward to the trip for weeks and was so excited when Saturday came and I got to travel without kids! I got to New York before my sisters so I just sat around, read my new book by Stephenie Meyers and waited. I was so excited to get Audrey's phone call saying she had landed so I ran to her and we giggled like little girls to be together again. Eliza came in about 30 minutes later and we waited for what seemed like a day and a half to get her luggage and we were off! We got Metro Cards that gave us unlimited rides on subways and city buses for our whole trip for $25, which turned out to be the best $25 we ever spent considering we had to take twice as many subway rides as anyone who knew what they were doing would. We got on the bus to get to the subway station and on the bus I realized it was my very first time being on a public transportation bus. I rode the bus to school for 4 months in 7th grade and a few times for field trips but I had never been on a city bus. Is that unusual? It wasn't that cool. It was crowded and smelly, but I would come to find out that it wasn't THAT smelly once I got to smell the subways and the people walking past me who smelled like sewer and B.O. After finding the subway station, getting on the subway, finding out we had been going the wrong direction for 15 minutes (thanks to all the really nice people who helped us to see our error), turning around and getting off at the right stop, we walked a few blocks to our hotel lugging all of our suitcases with us. We checked in, went up to the fourth floor, turned a few corners, and saw our door. Here is a picture of it. I wish I had a picture of the inside. It is almost as small as this corner- it was a closet!

We were all pretty starving so we went out to find a place to eat. Audrey was recovering from strep throat so she wasn't feeling great and we had to find a place that didn't have a long wait. We found a diner and were happily seated and looking at our menu within minutes. While we waited for our food, the mediocre waitress brought us some little individual plates and what you see in this picture (plus two more pickles that we ate before taking the picture). We were pretty sure it was coleslaw under the pickles and beets on the other plate but didn't want to try it so I guess we'll never know. What happened to chips and salsa? Who wants weird red stuff and pickle-topped cabbage- seriously? Oh well, my hamburger was okay even though they didn't have yellow mustard for me to put on it.
We were so tired that night so we just went back to the hotel and watched the movie Juno- I laughed my face off. Very funny and entertaining. Then we went to sleep. I woke up at 6 in the morning. I'm not sure whether it was because my body was used to waking up at 6 because that's when my boys wake up or because I had a sister who was snoring louder than I thought it was possible to snore but either way, I was awake but patiently waited while my stomach was eating itself until 10 when the other girls woke up .It was Sunday so obviously we planned out how to get to church. We got off the subway and had to walk 2 miles more than we thought we would only to get to church with a sign on the door saying "Closed for Renovation". It kindly directed us to another building where church was meeting and even gave us an extra 30 minutes to get there, so we took a taxi (the sign said it would cost about $8.50). The sign didn't know there was a Jewish parade going on or that the taxi cab driver was going to drive around NYC for 30 minutes so $25 and three sweaty girls later, we arrived at church 45 minutes late for church. It was a singles ward, which was just slightly awkward for me but it was church and I was grateful to be able to be there.

After church we went to get some lunch and ate it at a park nearby. It was cheaper to each get our own medium pizza than to get 1 large one to share so that's what we did. I ate almost my whole pizza and Eliza and Audrey barely touched theirs. They thought I was a fat pig. Then we walked down 5th Avenue, passed the Jewish parade and got to the cool shops just as they were closing. That night we all got our hair done. I got mine chopped by the oh so talented Eliza Parry- and she dyed out all of my gray hairs- hallelujah.

Monday was our big touristy day. We went and saw ground zero, or at least the wall that surrounds it and all the construction going on around it. We went to Canal Street and each got some knock-off purses and sunglasses and watches and such. We went to Time Square and the American Museum of Natural History, where I learned that I have no appreciation for history or artifacts or anything boring like that. I was thrilled when Eliza and Audrey seconded my opinion and we hurried through it, took some fun pictures on the way and left, our feet swollen and our calves sore. Audrey had shin splints too. Poor sick girl.

The last day we were there we went to Rockefeller Plaza. I went to the "Top of the Rock" or the top of Rockefeller Center after paying an arm and a leg to do so. Eliza and Audrey didn't want to pay so I went alone. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The view was AMAZING! The city looked so quiet and peaceful from up there- like there weren't millions of smelly loud and obnoxious people walking around down below the buildings. I met up with them after my tour and we went to the NBC store where I got to meet Matt Lauer. He didn't talk much but I think he was happy to meet me. I got Adam a shirt with "Dunder Mifflin" written on it with characters from "The Office" on the back.

I had such a great time on our trip. My sisters are the best- even when we are tired and sore and get crabby with each other- they are the funniest girls I know and I loved being with them. I hope we can do this every year.

I was glad to get home and see my 3 boys. Brody and Bridger both got sick while I was gone and Adam was a trooper taking care of them on very little sleep. He was so nice to let me leave him alone for a weekend so I could get some girl time in. When Brody woke up in the morning and said, "You're home??? I missed you yesterday". It was really sweet.