Dance Class

Before we moved the girls were invited to join a dance class given by one of our neighbors. She used to do a lot of dancing and wanted to start teaching dance to the kids in the neighborhood so she invited a few of the girls over to her house once a week for a few months teaching them different dance techniques and then taught them a few dances. She had a dance recital for them so that the parents could see their hard work. She had made two costumes for each of the girls to wear for the recital. It was so much fun and the girls did such a great job. I was impressed with the dances that she taught them in such a short time and the recital was so formal it was wonderful. I am really sad that they won't be able to be in the next dance recital.

Under 100 days

I can't believe that our new little baby will be here in less than 100 days. Time is really going too fast. He gets bigger everyday. I think he will be about 30lb by the time he is born. My belly just sticks out there like I'm already 8 months. So far so good with the pregnancy though so I can't complain. I tell Megan that I have a baby in my tummy. She now believes there is a baby in her tummy as well. She grabbed her tummy one day and acted like she was in pain. I asked her what was wrong and she said "baby, kick". It was so funny. When I have her talk to the baby in my tummy she wants me to talk to the baby in her tummy too. I love it. We are still working on a name. It has been the hardest baby to name so far and is starting to cause some tension between us. I don't want to be rushed into a name and he just wants one asap. I have been praying that we will find the name that is meant for our only son but so far I haven't heard it. If you have suggestions we'll take them.

Lift A Teacher.org

My brother and my mother have started a new organization recently that I think is a wonderful idea. They started a non-profit organization called Lift A Teacher. He can tell it so much better than I can but I will try. They have made some excellent quality, heavy duty cards that kids can personalize and send to their teachers, coaches, school librarians, etc. to let them know how great they are, or to say thank you, or what ever they want. All the kids do is go to the web site LiftaTeacher.org and select a card they like and then personalize it. The organization will then print the high quality card and mail directly to the teacher for the students. This is a simple way to make sure their teacher knows how much your child appreciates them during teacher appreciation week, on their birthday, for the holidays, at the end of the year, or for what ever reason. You get the idea. The cards are only $2, and like I said they are really nice, quality cards so they will last for years. They even have it set up so that the school can register with the organization and earn money for every card that is sent to their school. It's a fund raiser similar to the "Boxtops", and "Campbell's soup label" fund raisers. The school gets extra cash with no overhead. It can earn the school money year round. There is also a place on the website that you can enter a teacher in a contest so they can win monthly prizes. They are able to send the cards to any school in the US so please, please, please pass the word to everyone you know, no matter where they live. Visit the website and look around. If you have any questions you can let me know. For those of you here in Utah, I have a set of the cards that I can show you if you'd like to see the high quality that they are.

I am only one person with my one little blog, but if all my blog friends told others about Lift A Teacher on their blogs and asked their blog friends to do the same we could really get the word out to so many people.

I know I'm prejudiced because this is my family, but I also think that what they are doing is so special and unique that I would promote it anyway. Sending a card to a teacher to let them know how great they are is an easy way to lift their spirits. It's also great for me because I am not crafty and I don't always have money or remember to get the teacher a gift from the store. This is an easy (and much cheaper) way for my kids to actually get the gift so that it really is personal and not something I did and had them put their name to.

Lift A Teacher is also on Facebook. If you are on Facebook I urge you to join their group and invite everyone you know to join their group too. They already have over 100 members from all over the country. It's really catching on. There was a company in Arizona that heard about what they are doing and thought it was such a wonderful idea that they are sending out their own people to schools to promote the cards. I am so proud of this organization and I would love to see it grow like wild fire.

Thank you so much for all your help.

Bugs

So when you build your house in the middle of a field you're gonna get bugs. It was really cool at first because we would see a ton of grasshoppers. I know that grasshoppers are not necessarily a good thing but what I liked about them was that they were different colors. Some were black, some light or dark brown, some a light green, and some (my favorites) were a bright vivid green. I have never seen so many different colors of grasshoppers. The other bugs I like that we get so many of are praying mantis bugs. Again they come in the same colors as the grasshoppers. If we're not careful the praying mantis come in the house when we open the door at night. I even had one hiss at me when I tried to put him back outside. Unfortunately we also get spiders, earwigs, big black stink bugs, and many hornets too. We had at least three hornet's nests on our house when we moved in. We decided to have a pest control service spray our property because we didn't want the influx of bad bugs from the field to make their new home inside ours and we especially wanted the hornet's nests gone. We see all kinds of bugs dead on the porch or driveway that were not able to make it in to the house. Unfortunately, my favorite praying mantis bugs seem to be the biggest victims of the poison. I wish there were some way to kill the hornets and spiders without killing the praying mantis too. I sure hope we made the right choice.

I'm Back : )

It has been so long since I have been able to blog. I can't believe how long it's been. It's so funny, when I didn't have the Internet I would see things happen or take pictures of things so that when I got the Internet back I would be able to blog about it. That's all I could think about was the blog. lol Well, I am having trouble getting pictures off both my phone and my now broken camera so I don't know when or if I will be able to post them. Plus because I didn't write the things I wanted to post about down I think I have forgotten most of them. Anyway, I guess I can just start from where I am and put the other posts in when I remember them.

We found out after we moved in that not only do we not get cable but we don't even get local channels. We have the digital converter box but because of our street's proximity to the mountains the signals for the local channels bounce away from us (they call it the black hole here) and we are not able to pick up anything but one Spanish channel. I knew it would be hard without cable but I didn't think we would be completely without TV. I didn't realize how much our lives revolved around it, even if it was on just for noise. We knew that we needed the Internet for reasons I think all of you can sympathize with so we hunkered down and found a solution that was still more than we were paying but not as much as we thought we'd have to. It comes through a satellite they placed on our house so we had no problems getting it in our new neighborhood. I am very happy to have it back. We did decide however that we could not afford satellite for our TV as well so we have resigned to the fact that we don't have TV anymore. I was actually relieved because I have been wanting to unplug the TV for so long but knew that CJ wouldn't let me, now he has no choice and the TV is gone. That doesn't mean that it stays off however. Because they are still getting used to the idea that they can't just plop in front of it whenever they want they still have the desire like an addiction to have it on and doing something so they either play DVDs a lot or play video games. I hope one day the withdrawl from the TV can be complete and we can focus more on the gospel and each other rather than what noise comes from that box. I look at this as a blessing and pray that it lasts. (I will admit that I do miss watching the news though. That is where I'm having my withdrawls.) Anyway, I will post more later, I just wanted to let you all know that we are back.