Easter

This is our last major holiday away from family. We are getting excited for all our future family filled holidays. We had a very relaxing day with church in the morning and then an English style roast beef dinner in the afternoon. The kids ran around and played with each other and Eric and I just sat back and soaked it in. It was nice to have a quiet Easter at home to reflect on the gift my Savior gave to me with His Resurrection.

Relaxation

One thing I really enjoy and find very relaxing is working with glass beads. My favorite thing to make with them are ornamental bookmarks.

For Easter I wanted to make something nice for Eric and the older kids and since they all enjoy reading I thought a bookmark would be good.

Hide and Seek

We had been searching for Jacob all over the house, we looked under beds, in closets, and in most of the other rooms in the house just to find him playing under the sink in our master bathroom. He was so happy playing with the package of toilet paper and the box that holds our hair trimmers. He thought this new place to play was the greatest! We of course have learned to tie off many of the lower cupboards to keep him away from all the dangerous cleaning supplies.

The latest place we found him was all nestled in the bottom bookshelf in our front room. He was having a great time just laying there resting. When he caught us watching him he had to show us, over and over again, how he could get in and out of this tiny spot. :)

Say What!?

We took this picture in the Florida Keys.

I enjoy the occasional drive-thru hamburger, french fries, soda, and milk shake. But drive-thru liquor?

Lawn Care Southern Florida Style

I woke up this morning to the buzzing sound of my lawn being trimmed. One might think that is a strange way to put it, your lawn being trimmed? But here in Southern Florida that is exactly what they do, they don't mow your lawn, they trim it with a weed-eater.

Everyone here hires out their lawn care needs to these little lawn care companies who come to your home with their weed-eaters and leaf blowers in tow. It really is amazing to watch these men speed through my property, grass flying in every direction as they perfectly trim my lawn using their weed-eaters then with their leaf blowers they remove all the trimmings off my fence, car, house, driveway etc. and quickly speed off to the next house.

Jacob's First Sign :)

We started teaching Jacob a few ASL signs to help him communicate with us until he can speak. Yesterday he came to me a little fussy, I went to pick him up and he was doing the sign for milk--with both hands--so I asked him if he wanted milk and I did the the sign back. He started giggling and repeated the sign. He did it again for Jennifer this morning, it is so exciting! The kids and I are all energized to teach him even more signs so he can communicate with us. It is amazing how keen their little minds are. I am sure this will help lessen the out-bursts of frustration he sometimes has. YAHOO, happy day!!! :)

Jacob's 1st Birthday

Jacob turned one last week and he really wasn’t sure what to think about the whole birthday thing. He preferred throwing the presents that resembled balls (he loves balls) or just holding the brightly wrapped ones. The older kids worked hard to try to teach him how to rip open the gifts they had bought for him but Jacob was content watching while they opened his gifts and then he played with them. We are learning Jacob is pretty cautious with new things.


When we sang happy birthday, Jacob just looked at us like “what are you people doing” and when it was time for the chocolate cake he wasn’t too sure about putting his fingers in it. He was fine with the white frosting but the chocolate cake took some warming up to, he makes me laugh.
Jacob did have fun once all the birthday formalities were over. His favorite part of the day was just playing with his brothers and sisters.

You can see more video of Jacob's birthday on our family web site. http://adayearly.googlepages.com/earleymovies

mm, mm, good

I finally did it, I made homemade bread! I really feel great about finally getting over my fear of making bread and the best part is it was easy and my family loved it.

When I first got married I tried to make bread but it never worked out it always came out more like a rock than fluffy bread. With some help and lots of practice I learned how to make rolls. After a few years of being married, Eric was so happy when I finally learned how to make the rolls he had as a young boy. After basking in the praise of finally making something tender and yummy I didn’t want to even experiment with making bread again so for over a decade our family has enjoyed homemade rolls but never bread.

Eric and I have been talking about cutting our budget and stretching our money. One of the things we decided to cut was bread. It really is amazing how much bread five kids eat. So, I turned to my favorite internet cooking site http://www.allrecipes.com/ to find an EASY bread recipe. It took me a while to get up the nerve to experiment but I found the perfect recipe, Amish white bread.

I am so excited because it really is easy to make. I think there are 4 ingredients and I used my kitchen aid mixer so I didn’t have to get tired while kneading. The only problem is by the end of the night there were only two pieces left. :) Pretty good stuff!!!

A light at the end of the tunnel :)

I am starting to do a big happy dance because our four year law school adventure is coming to a close. We are so excited for Eric to graduate on May 18th with an L.L.M. in Real Estate Law. It is amazing how fast the last four years have gone and how much has happened while we were away. This really has been a great experience, we have met wonderful people and done things that we never would have been able to do if we wouldn't have taken the the leap faith.

With that being said, it is going to be great to get back into 'real life' (meaning life not as students) and have Eric doing something he really has a passion for.

Real life here we come!

Wow, Jacob is Walking!

I really didn't think Jacob would start walking this early. All the other kids, except for Jennifer, started walking at 14 months. Jennifer walked at 9 months, it was so cute seeing her walk because she was so tiny.

Jacob had taken a step here and there but no real walking. Then the other day he stood up --on his own-- and walked to Jennifer. Wow, we were all shocked and excited. We all applauded him like crazy, He thought that was so great so he kept walking back and forth and all over the room. :) Eric was at school so he missed it. :( But Jacob was so happy to show his dad he could walk as soon as he got home.

I am sad and happy. Sad because his baby time is fading fast and happy because he is growing and progressing. It is so fun to see him learn new things. It is also exciting to watch him pass through the new phases of his life. I never get tired of seeing the first crawl, word, and step. :)

My Kids Make Me Laugh.

We were sitting at the kitchen table for dinner one night and Eric started talking about how one of his associates at school had been talking his ear off. Rachel sits right by her dad at dinner and Rachel's eyes get real big as she stared at her dads face so I asked her what was wrong and she said, “ dad you shouldn’t let people talk your ear off because you need them to hear,” Hee, hee, hee.

Here's another one;

Eric and I were talking the other day about feeling a little baby hungry and Rachel had over heard us and blurted out very adamantly, “mom and dad that is so rude we don’t eat babies,” hee, hee, hee. Jennifer had said a similar thing when she was Rachel’s age.

My kids keep me in stitches!!! :)

Peek-A-Boo

We have french doors that seperate the living area from the bedrooms and Joseph and Jacob love to play peek-a-boo there. Joseph will get Jacob laughing so hard . . . it is really funny!!! :)

Our Anniversary :)

Eric and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary last week. The past four years we haven't done much because of Eric's hefty school schedule but this years my oldest daughter, Jennifer, decided that all needed to change.

She secretively planned our anniversary for us. She had been asking me for quite a while what places in Florida I would like to see. I had mentioned how great it would be to go visit the Florida Keys so she actively found all sorts of attractions. About a week before our anniversary she reminded us how imortant it was for us to do something special; she then showed us all the research she had done on the Florida Keys, it was quite impressive and looked like a lot of fun. We were lucky enough to have one free day, on our anniversary, when Eric had no classes so we decided to take her up on her offer and go visit the Keys for the day.

For lunch we ate at a restraunt that used to be a sea turtle cannery, check out what we found on the menu, it's always fun to try new foods.

After lunch we bought tickets to go on a glass bottom boat to see Florida's protected coral reefs and the brightly colored fish who inhabit them. When we were out at sea we were able to watch the sun set, that really was amazing. Later that night we tried some other Key West cuisine; fresh, locally made, Key Lime Pie, y-u-m-m-y, and then we had Mahi Mahi which is dolphin fish, (it's not the cute flipper dolphin you think of) that was Eric's and my favorite dish, the crispsy fried alligator we had earlier in the day tasted too much like cat fish to me.

When we got home (after midnight) Jennifer had made us a happy anniversary cake, that we all enjoyed, and all the kids had helped create a banner for us. We really had a great time and we felt so loved to see all the effort the kids went through to make sure we would have a special anniversary.

President Hinckley

Since the passing of the beloved LDS Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley, I have been reflecting about how he changed my life for good.

I remember a video clip I saw years ago with President Hinckley surrounded by children as he sang “I am a Mormon Boy.” He loved his faith, children, and the family. In many of his conference talks, he encouraged the Saints to strengthen their family ties by talking softer, being kinder, and spending quality time with their families.

His witty humor and wise advise encouraged me to be a softer, kinder, mother and wife, and to always “Do the very best I can—Gordon B. Hinckley”

Teens Cutting Hair?

There are times when all I can do is sit back and laugh, this is definitely one of these times. Eric came into the front room with cape and buzzers in hand to say he needed a haircut and wanted Jennifer and Adam to do it. Wide eyed, I sat back and observed the reaction. Jennifer immediately ran to the other room, to get away from her fathers bazaar request while Adam reluctantly took the buzzers from his dad's hand and turned them on. With Buzzers on Adam shaved his dads hair, giggling almost the whole time. Jennifer finally decided this was too funny to pass up so she joined the fun teasing her dad about all the mistakes they "could" make. I am still not sure why Eric wanted them to cut his hair, he hasn't let me cut his hair in almost 10 years, but it sure added some great comic relief to our day.

Can't Stop Laughing

Remember John Edwards $400 hair cut?

Brotherly Love

Adam absolutely loves his little brother.

Learning From the Little Ones

Rachel needed some new casual dresses to play around the house in, her old ones were getting very worn. I have tried to find cute, modest, casual dresses in the stores but could never find ones she liked, so I finally decided I would attempt to make a couple dresses for her myself, I have never sown using a pattern before but it did say EASY in big black letters on the package. So, with pattern in one hand and Rachel in the other we braved the holiday traffic and made our way to the fabric store to take on this new project.
Rachel loved seeing all the people and had to say hi to everyone we saw, a few people were even kind enough to say hi back. We wondered around the store gathering all our supplies for about an hour then grabbed our number and stood in line waiting for our turn. When our number was called we put our fabric on the counter and I told the lady how much fabric I needed. She measured and started cutting when Rachel began talking to the woman, "Hi my name is Rachel, I like your scissors". She just giggled a little and told her she could have some just like it when she got older. Rachel of course liked that idea. After a couple minutes of silence Rachel leaned up on the counter, looked at the women and said with her big toothy smile, "you know, you are really doing a great job with that". The woman stood up a little taller, smiled real big, and said, "thank you I haven't heard that in a long time".
I just stood back and watched this woman's face light up with this sincere, simple complement. It really made me think how I need to say thank you more often for the simple things people do for me. What would the world be like if more people gave sincere compliments on the little things that are done in life? Wow, wouldn't that be a great place to live. I can see why the Savior tells us to be like the little children, humble and sincere. I learn so many important lessons from raising my children, their pure hearts are such a blessing to me. :)

Christmas

Christmas is my other favorite holiday. We don't spend much time on the big Santa thing, we still do presents but we work as a family to concentrate on the Saviors birth and serving others. We started the months out making service chains. Our whole family made their own paper count down to Christmas chain. On each chain we all wrote down a secret act of service we would do for a member of the family. It really changed the mood of our house because everyday 6 people were doing nice things for each other, it was great. Around the middle of the month we made our own Christmas tree, the kids had a great time doing that. On Christmas Eve, after the little kids were asleep, Jennifer and Adam helped put together Rachel and Joseph's presents and on Christmas morning everyone woke up around 9:00 a.m.. Eric and I made our traditional Pumpkin Pancakes with Apple syrup and we all ate and talked. After breakfast we all sat down and opened presents, it was very relaxing morning.
In the evening we had the missionariess and a newly baptised family over for dinner, we had a great time laughing and enjoying each others company. Here are a couple pictures of our friends. The missionary posing with his hand on his chin is Elder Jenkins and the other is Elder Stanger. Our Friend sitting by Jennifer is Luz Calone and let me tell you she kept us in stitches all evening, she is a hoot. Luz also has a 9-year-old daughter but she was in the other room with Rachel. We love them all and were so thankful for friends to spend the holidays with. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. :)

What can you make with old telephone and jewelery wire?

Our Christmas tree didn't make it to Florida. Our moving van was stuffed to the brim so Eric kinda, gave it away. We planned on buying a live tree for Christmas but then we saw the prices of trees and all we could afford was a Charley Brown tree and the kids really didn't like that. So, I thought we would make a tree, I figured it would be a very good bonding family activity. So Eric got some old telephone wire and I grabbed my jewelry wire. We molded the telephone wire into a spiral shape and used the jewelery wire for support along the sides of the loops. We thought it would be a quick project but it was a lot more difficult than we thought it would be. It took us two days to get our tree to kind of hang right but the kids were now really excited about the idea of making a tree so we kept plugging along. We figured it didn't need to look perfect they just wanted something that resembled a Christmas tree so Eric ran to the store and grabbed some green garland and lights so we could wire it to our tree. We were so happy when we finished and hung it up. The kids love it because they worked so hard to create it. It also is very nice because when we take it down it will collapse and fit into a pizza box :) that's Eric's favorite part.