Mother's Day

This years Mother's Day was great.  It helps when you try not to have expectations.  Jeremy made me a yummy breakfast in the morning, complete with fresh squeezed orange juice!  He then made two chocolate cakes that were delicious that we took over to my parents for dinner. He is a great chef!  It was nice to have my kids be happy and to be happy myself.  I'm so thankful for Jeremy for taking good care of me and my sweet kids.  They are so great, most of the time... :) I love being a mom and I hope that I will continue to get better at it everyday!  I've always wanted to be a mom! I just hope and pray that I don't ruin my kids.  I want to build them up, love them, and show them that love!

A new addition

I've been meaning to post these pictures awhile ago with our new trampoline.  After the boys kept taking the cushions off our couch and jumping on them, stacking them up the stairs to bounce down the stairs and hopefully not bash their heads into the banister or the now bare couch (our living room is small), I thought, hmmm, I better look around for some kind of trampoline for these boys.  After doing a little research and having limited space and funds, I found this 6.5 foot trampoline on craigslist here in town!  It was great!  Only a foot and a half off the ground, too.  We measured it out, made the phone call and went over on a Tuesday night to get it.  It was from a family with five, going on six kids, not LDS, can you believe it?  They had a little boy with some sensory issues and I have to say I felt pretty bad buying his trampoline from them.  They were about to move into a bigger house, but smaller yard and didn't have room for it.  So now we have this great trampoline in our little backyard!  The kids love it.  If they have time before school, they jump, after school, they jump, in their PJs, they jump.  It's great!

Almost summer!!

A friend of ours gave us this surfboard awhile back, and since Memorial Day was coming up, we decided to finally fix it and use it on Memorial Day!  It was a fun project for Jerm and I to do together.  I love working on things with him and learning new things together.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to use it on Memorial Day since the beach we ended up going to didn't allow surfing.  Ah well.  Now it's ready to go for when school gets out!

 Scotty helping sand down some of the extra resin.  He was very helpful!

 Our little chickens, Chloe and Daisy, are about one month old now.  It's amazing how quickly they loose all of their soft downy feather for their adult ones.

 The end of the board had a big split in it, so we filled it with resin, clamped it down and when that dried, put fiber glass around it and more resin.  Boy, did our garage stink!

 Beautiful Atalie before her dance recital.  She did wonderful and even got to do a back bend in it!

 Beautiful Cozette! She loves to dance as well.  I love that they have been able to do this together.

Such good girls! I love them both so much and don't know what I would do without them! They are such great helpers to me.  They help with their brothers, too and love playing with younger kids.  Thank you girls, for being so terrific!
Wyatt danced Hip hop last night, too, but in the rush of getting him there on time, I didn't get a picture of him! He did awesome and loves to dance!

George the Caterpillar

A couple of weeks ago, we were helping weed at my parents house and Hans and Wyatt found this cool looking black caterpillar, with yellow and white stripes on it.  Wyatt and I decided we wanted to bring it home for a pet and watch it metomorphosize.    We have not been disappointed.  George had a really yummy diet of milkweed and some other plant that he was eating when we found him.  He started to hang upside down for a day and then the next thing we knew, literally within an hour, he was in his cocoon!  It was May 9 in the afternoon.  In the first picture, his cocoon is bright green and his skin is all bunched up at the top.  We've had caterpillars before, but this one was different.  He was bright green for about one and a half weeks, then this morning, it turned black.  When Wyatt, Scotty and I were leaving for swimming lessons, we looked in there, and there was George! Out in his full beautiful glory!!  We don't have a butterfly pavilion and the bug catcher he was in was not tall enough or wide enough to let him stretch his wings.  After looking around the kitchen for something, we decided my Pampered Chef juice mixer/pitcher thing would have to do.  I opened up the bug catcher and let him walk on my hand, to put him gently in his new home!! This is such a cool thing to do as a family! I highly recommend it to anyone.    We'll keep him in there for a couple of days and then let him go outside.  WE LOVE BUTTERFLYS!!!!

Our Ward Spotlighted us!

Our ward is taking turns every week to spotlight two families.  Ours hasn't "run" in the program yet, but will soon.  This is what I wrote in response to some questions they asked us.   Enjoy!

Jeremy’s : favorite outdoor activity would be to ride his dirt bike on some beautiful, mountainous trail, dodging bushes, creeks and big rocks.  His favorite dessert is ice cream, most flavors.  When he grows up, he wants to be a professional dirt bike racer!

Ditte: loves to garden, read, exercise in most forms, especially swimming, surfing, running or dancing.  Her favorite sound is that of her children laughing and giggling with their daddy.  If she had half an hour to herself, she would read a good book in a sunny spot.

Cozette (11): would rather ride her bike then walk, she loves any songs she can dance to.  She often gets mistaken for her cousin at school and she wants to be a doctor when she grows up.  Her favorite meal is macaroni and cheese (yes, the box kind…)

Atalie (9): loves to jump on our trampoline and doing back bends.  Her favorite meal is her mom’s homemade pizza.  She loves animals, but was a little afraid of our chickens at first.  She can’t stand vacuuming her room.  She loves to read late into the night.

Wyatt(6 ½ ):  loves riding his dirt bike and he wants to be a professional racer like his daddy His favorite meal is spaghetti and he loves ice cream.  He loves to do head stands in our living room and break dancing, and jumping on his bed.  His favorite heroes are Ulimate Spiderman and Captain Moroni.

Scotty (3 ½):  loves helping his mommy in the kitchen with anything, especially eating cookie dough.  He loves to read books and jump on our trampoline.  When he gets bigger, he wants to go on a roller coaster at Disneyland.  His favorite food is pizza and chicken!

An almost 100 year old man...

Tuesday, May 8, was my grandfather, or Bedstefar's birthday.  He turned 98!  Wyatt and the other kids are excited for him to be so old and hope that he lives to be 100!  He is an amazing man.  Our family has the privilege of feeding both my grandparents, my Bedstemor is 94, every Saturday night.  We are a noisy bunch, I know they love to have the kids over and give them treats and stuff.  We all went up there on Tuesday night to wish him a happy birthday.  It was so nice to be with them despite the fact that their little house is about 98 degrees all the time, they forget a lot of things, you have to repeat yourself several times per conversation because they either didn't hear what you said or they forgot you already said it.  I usually have to ask them a number of times to "say that one more time.  You said it in Danish.."  And then my Bedstemor will tell me I need to learn Danish!  They truly are wonderful examples of living a righteous life.  Just last year, my Bedstefar was driving and would drive them to church every Sunday!  Thankfully neither of them have licenses anymore, so the roads are a little safer....
  Some other interesting facts about my grandparents are: when they were a young married couple with I think two small girls, they hid guns and other things for the underground during World War two.  They immigrated to the United States in 1951 after joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints so that they could be sealed together as a family in one of God's temples.  There were no temples in Europe at the time.  They packed up their four kids, two steamer trunks and fifty dollars and away they came.  My grandfather, who has been on the seas since he was 14, got sea sick, that's how rough the water was.  He even held my dad for most of the trip across the Atlantic since he could barely walk on land by himself.
  I could go on and on about them, but I'll have to do it in segments.  A couple of weeks ago, my Bedstemor fell and broke her hip.  My aunt Gayle called my sister and I up to help her pick her up off the ground after she fell.  As soon as we moved her, I knew her hip was broken by the way she was moaning and grabbing at her hip.  As I left, I cried, thinking that that was it for my Bedstemor.  Statistics are not good for old people who have broken hips.  They usually don't recover well and are bed ridden.  Well, I'm happy to say that she is trying her best to get better and is even at home with her sweetheart.  He missed her so much while she was in the hospital and would forget so many more things without her being there.  It is so sweet to her him tell her how beautiful she is looking when I would take her to get her hair done every other week.  Another wonderful privilege I've had.  I'm so grateful I get the chance to see them on a regular basis and learn how to better myself through their giving example.

Coming home

March 24, 2012

It's actually the 25th, but I had more time on the plane to journal then last night when we were trying to go to bed at a normal time. We got all packed up and had to move our clocks ahead an hour since it was the Italian day light savings. Thankfully we were talking to another couple at the restaurant we had dinner in and they told us to make sure we changed or clocks. Jeremy and I couldn't believe that we hadn't he'd anything about that! We were so thankful to heavenly father for that tender mercy! We could ve missed our plane and our taxi to get there!

We spent another day wandering another part of Rome. We enjoyed walking over to the Spanish steps, but learned the hard way that anything within the few blocks vicinity is pretty expensive. Jerm was looking for gelato and a bathroom. We stopped in a place tha looked nice, but not anything super fancy. He was looking at the gelato and I saw some yummy looking chocolate stuff, so I order something while e went to the bathroom. The guy behind the counter insisted we sit. My dessert was three big cream puffs covered in this fudgey yummieness! We ask for the bill and almos fall out of yor chairs: €23 for two things! We couldn't believe! Usually we pay around €2 for a cone! We jus had to laugh at ourselves. It took several blocks to walk off the yucky feeling in our stomach about it, but oh well! They did have a menu outside that listed the prices but we didn't see it until afterward.

We found the spanish steps with hoards of people on them, but it was pretty fun in all the madness. Happy people milling around jus like we were, enjoying the crowd and the scenery. Its about 120 some odd steps to the top where there is a beautiful church that we peeked into where some kind of service was going on. On the right of the steps was the house where the poet John Keats lived until he died of tuberculosis. He was good friends with Percy Shelley, another English poet who died the year after Keats by drowning off the coas of Italy. So now the house is a little museum with some stuff of theirs. They are both buried in the cemeteray in Rome somewhere.

To the left of the church and down a bit, there is a huge (200 acre) park called Villa Borghese. The country villa that is attached this huge park belonged to a very wealth family, the owner being related to the pope at the time, and it says a big art collection with some of Rafael's work, three famous sculptures of Bernini's and also the artist Caravaggio has some work there as well. This place only let's in about 200 at a time, so we needed reservations which we had only gotten the day before for five o'clock. Since we had a bit of time to kill before our reservations, we decided to rent a surrey bike for two! We jumped on and started peddling, quickly realizing that it had a little electric motor on it! It was so helpful up the hills that were all through out the gardens. These gardens aren't nessecarliy ones that have beautiful flowers everywhere, but trees, hedges, sculptures, paths all over the place, a "lake" in the middle, grass with little wild daisies scattered about. It was very green and pretty with many of the trees bright green with their new leaves.

The map we had was not very helpful, so we just kind of threw it to the wind, laughing like maniacs as we were driving crazy up and down the hills. It is a good place to running, too, and I was really missing my normal runs as I watched all these other pele running around!

We took our bike back and went to find lunch off the piazza popplo, another big square in Rome with two twin churches and a huge Egyptian obelisk and fountain in the middle of end square. We've been noticing at all of the public squares, there have been a lot of carabinieri, a form of Italian police, standing around with their big vans and just watching the happenings. Ater our lunch we did see a group of people with some amps and big posters that they were trying to hang on the walls. We couldn't tell what was written on it, but we had heard about some protests that had been going on in Rome about their trains before we got there. We didn't hang around long enough to see the end result, but it was pretty interesting.

We walked back to the museum, we had already been there just to use the bathroom, got or tickets and read a little about what we were going to see. Jeremy and I are kind of lit weights when it comes to looking at art and things. I'm sorry to say that we aren't the type to spend hours pondering some sculpture or painting. We enjoyed it and did enjoy the sheer genius and many hours of work out in. It is truly amazing to see thin leaves carved out of marble that you can see light through. We saw Bernini's amazing sculpture of the young David as he's about to throw the rock in his sling at Goliath. Another one, the Rape of somebody... we could see the pressure of the man hand on the thigh of the woman. And the ceiling paintings looked 3-d they way the used the light and shading. Truly amazing. Needless to say and thank goodness the museum was small, we were done in about 45 mins. We rested outside for about ten minutes and decided to make a in of it to the other side so we could see the sunset over Rome. Oh yeah, and after lunch, it started raining! It stopped by the time we went into the museum, but while we were waiting it out under a tree, I put my scarf on my head to keep a little dryer,and people kept looking at me. I thought, what are they looking at? Jeremy then informed me that maybe they thought I looked like a gypsy! We had a good laugh about that. The gypsy thing is pretty sad. We came across a lot of them, some maimed, some begging, some trying to sell us stuff. At nights, there would be a few trying to sell these light up discs that they would shoot really high into the air. Our kids would have loved them! Some would sell roses, some had these gooey pig slime ball things that could be thrown down. They would splat and make this really funny squeaky sound as they would re inflate. Junk toys tha every kid would love until they broke ten minutes later. Some would go around the Trevino fountain with camera asking if we needed hell taking a picture. We got asked about four times last night. One guy even said free of charge! I should have let him but I said no thank you.

We really enjoyed our nightly walks after dinner. At dinner, we went all out and got more yummy artichokes, Jeremy had a filet that was soooo rare, dad and Erik would have been proud. Jeremy loved it! iPad the typical roman dish of ravioli that had some kind of yummy Gorgonzola and zucchini flower sauce. Sooooo good! We talked to a couple of the couples around us. One was from denver and the other one was a middle aged couple currenlty living in Belgium, the husband Jim has an america passport, but his half german. I noticed him and his wife talking and sometimes it sounded like danish and then I overheard them talking to the waitress, who was from Albania, about languages. Mia, the woman was from Denmark! She was born just south of Aalborg in a town I think called Luca? She lived there until she was thirteen and then her family moved to Germany. They were very nice and gave us some good traveling advice for the future. They also told s about another awesom gelato place, since all gelato is not created equally! Then, thankfully they told s about da light savings!

After we left, we found the amazing gelato. Jeremy and I went all out with three scoops plus real whipped cream! I had ciacollata fondente (dark chocolate), raspberry, and nutella, which I think was really nutella maybe mixed with a little cream! It was amazing! Jeremy had caramel (yum), ciacollata fondente and pistachio. Good combinations for sure. Then we made our rounds, first over to the Trevi, passing through more piazzas and lots of table filled streets with people eating dinner. After the trevi, we heard a man singing opera in the street to some diners, so we stopped to listen. Then on to the pantheon. This building is truly amazing! It is so huge! W just kelt looking at it and not belileveing that it was real! I then started making upmy own roman version of goodnight moon! Goodnight Trevi Fountain, goodnight pantheon. Good night Piazza Navona, goodnight coloseum!

And now we are on a ten hour flight, and then four or five hour flight back real life! Sigh....not of sadness or grudging, but more of what a great time we had. Squaring our shoulders, ready for whats next.