Hi Again

Lorien's b-day Party

Julia's b-day at Chevy's

Jammies I made for the Girls

Lorien's b-day at Stolps

Sledding in Utah

Strawberry Transplant

So as most of you know, I am pregnant. I'm due August 2nd. Hoping to have it July 30th, though. I think I updated this back in November? So since then Julia has visited twice. She came for Thanksgiving and made us such wonderful things! We made cakes for Julia and frosted them with three different colors, bread, cookies, and pizza. It was really good! We also got to go shopping for new clothes for her. We found out we are a "type 2" from the dressing your truth thing from Utah. You can look it up online. It's interesting. The colors she was told to pick out were grayed of any color. So a pink with a little grey in it or any other color with grey would be fine for her. So it was true. We picked out lots of shirts for her to try on and she loved almost every single one! Thank goodness dad was paying for it! She is super happy with all the new clothes she has, though. She's been going out on lots of dates:)
Jimmy is still working at Costco. He makes enough money to supply my addiction, CRAFTS! Anyhoo, he has also been coaching wrestling at Analy High School with his brother (head coach) and dad (assistant coach). He loves it, but it renders him useless. He's way super incredibly tired. I personally can't wait until wrestling season is over! But I know he loves it. Oh well. This was the first year Jimmy took the initiative to do taxes. Normally Jan 15th I buy the program get all the forms we need and get it sent in by Jan 31st. Not this year. I was content sitting in my corner sewing. Jimmy got all the forms ready, took us out to get the program, installed it, started entering info, then let me finish. (He had to wipe a bottom:) But it's good to know we'll have some "extra" money to work on house projects with. I'm sure Jimmy's not excited about the house projects, but I'm learning how to do everything so he won't have to do it alone.
I have been sewing dresses for the girls the past few weeks. I discovered that I like to make my own pattern. It also helps that I got fabric from Brenda, so I don't have to worry too much about ruining it since it was free! Sad to say, but true. I think some of my best work is with free fabric. Anyway, I'm in the midst of making some cute bright pink plaid fabric with huge flowers on them. I'll post pics maybe. I have pics of the other dresses, but I found out, re-discovered that my mom's machine, which I'm borrowing from Julia, has embroidery on it!!!!!! So I'm going to embroider something on the front. I've also been working really hard to use food storage items to feed our family. Potato spuds, rice, oats, wheat, beans. I found a great blog crockpot365 I think. Anyway, I'm going to try those recipes, but for a lot of them I need ham hocks. I don't know where to buy just the bone. Isn't a hock just the bone? And ham is expensive, I can't go and just buy ham for our family to eat just to get the bone out of it! I'll figure it out one day I suppose. Anyway, I make pancakes every day with flour that I grind myself. They are super good. Then I try to make other things like pizza crust and doughnuts and rolls and stuff. Pork is pretty cheap when you buy a lot of it so I've been making a lot of pulled pork. In the backyard realm of my life I've been trying to get it ready for our garden. So there's wood edging the back of the yard, so I weeded and broke up the dirt, mixed topsoil and compost into a part of it and transported strawberries into it. Then Jimmy worked on getting part of the cactus out of the backyard. I sprayed the peach trees for curl after Bro Loe helped me prune them. We've got three trees! Two are babies and the other one is a couple years older than that. I'm hoping for some good fruit this year. I loved how the kids could just eat the fuit right off the tree last year. Then my friends kid came over to help me weed the north side of the yard to get it ready for another planter box. Now we just need a lot of dirt. So the plants I plan on planting are: pumpkin, cucumber, cantaloupe, watermelon, kiwi, corn, beans, chives, basil, sunflowers, peppers, tomato, carrots, broccoli, artichokes, lemon balm, thype, sage, garlic, marjoram, oreano, fennel, yarrow, rosemary and lavender. I hope I can keep up with is all especially in July and August! And that's all for my projects, on to Lorien....
I am still teaching piano. I have about 7 students, that's including Lorien. We've been off and on for the past two years and right now is one of out on times. She is doing well, but gets frustrated if it's not instantly easy. If I tell her she got a note wrong she freaks out. Even if she knows the note it should be. I think keeping it a part of the schedule will help. Constantly doing it gets her mind wrapped around the concept of having to do it whether she wants to or not. So we wake up, have breakfast, brush teeth, read scriptures (Lorien reads the BoM and I read the Old Testament), then morning prayer, piano lessons (Vanessa normally says she gets lessons too), then school work. She's allowed to do whatever subject she wants to first. Today she is continuing her play. She made a set out of card stock and play-doh, and then she thinks about what is going  on and writes a story about it. So far she has, "My Play. Once upon a Play-Doh time there were play-Doh PePPole. Thay were woching TV." Pretty good, right? Her spelling is horrible, but her teacher wants her to spell on her own right now. She asks me how to spell things and I tell her, but every once in a while I tell her to just spell it on her own. She's got a math book, science, reading comprehension, writing book, and we are supposed to pick a famous person in history to study, but we haven't picked one for this month yet. She is also reading Socks by Beverly Cleary to me. After she reads six hours we turn in a reading record and get tickets for Six Flags. Lorien did it last year and it was way fun. I can't wait to go again! She is up to 4 hours and 15 min. I think she's liking the book.
Vanessa is a very strong willed child and wants to do everything herself. She wants to wear short sleeve shirts and skirts when it's frosty outside and takes her sweater off as soon as she's allowed to. She likes pretty shirts and doesn't think the shirts I pick out for her are pretty. She likes to do schoolwork with Lorien and play with play-doh. She is pretending all the time. I hope she like to write when she grows up, she's got a great imagination! She is finally in a big girl bed. Lorien is on the top bunk and Vanessa is on the bottom. Later this year I'll try to get Christy in the toddler bed.
On to Christy. She says her name! I think. She tries to wrestle with the girls and daddy. She "talks" to us all the time. She started sucking a pacifier for reals, which is sad, but it comforts her. She gives the best hugs. She is just a sweet girl.
I think that's it. I'll post pics.