A Milestone in Adulthood - The Costco Membership

We got Costco cards. We walked through the store utterly lost without our card carrying mothers. We feel so grown up now. We went to Costco all by ourselves. Sarah thinks it is a magical place since they have a huge bounce house slip and slide thing hanging from the ceiling. I think it's magical that we didn't' spend over $200 on food. I also felt grown up when they asked if I was a business owner and I said yes. John was pouting because he is a business owner, but I took charge and whipped out my UBI number and did a gold account through CutieFruity.

The gal tried to sell us on how great Costco is, like we didn't know that already. Why did she think we were there? She said how great of a deal the diapers and formula are. She looked at me crazy when I told her "we don't do either of those". She's looking at a baby in the car seat, just KNOWING we can't possibly let him go commando all the time.
"I cloth diaper and breastfeed".
"Really? I have never known anyone that has done that except my grandma, and she had to rinse diapers in the toilet."
"Well, I still rinse diapers off in the toilet, but I have a high powered sprayer to shoot the poo off of them, then I put them in the diaper pail and wash them every two days. I haven't bought diapers in months."
"Isn't that really inconvenient? Why do you do that?"
"Because I'm CHEAP! It takes some planning, but like I said, I haven't bought diapers in months. I have probably saved hundreds of dollars. I'm home all day, it's really not a big deal. Even when I'm out, I have a bag to put all the dirties in and I wash them when I get home"
"So, did you get an epidural?"
So...is getting an epidural a gauge on how crunchy I am? I guess I do sound like a tree hugger when I run down the list of things I do or don't do, but I don't feel weird for it. This was surprisingly my first encounter with cloth diaper proselytizing in person, and I guess it was kind of cool.
Now excuse me while I go snarf down the second half of that huge Costco muffin.

readthescriptures.com

I have to rave about one of my new favorite websites. I am a huge slacker when it comes to reading my scriptures. I rock at checking email and other peoples blogs, but scriptures, I have a huge minus in that department. I have been wishing for a long time that somebody could email me with my readings everyday. My friend Rich emailed me something from the site and I was very intrigued. So here's the deal. You go sign up, choose the writings you'd like to study, enter a date you'd like to have it done by (or not) and viola! You are going to get them read (I hope)! You can pick from any scriptures (including the KJV Bible), church mags, RS/PH manual for this year, my kids even get the scripture readers for kids online (they are like comic books).
So everyday I check my email and I have my reading assignment right there. My goal is to finish the old testament by this time next year. I can read it from my email or from the website. If I do it from the website, I can highlight scripture, add personal notes, and keep a private journal. When I'm done, I click "completed" and then it sends me the next assignment tomorrow. Right now I've been clicking "send next" so I can get it right away and breeze through the begats of 2nd Chronicles. The part that I LOVE is that when it has been a few days since I read my scriptures, I get an email that basically says "hey slacker, you need to read your scripture today!" I also love that I don't have to hold the book anymore. I did try to pull it out for further research yesterday (there's no footnotes online :( ) and the baby kept grabbing at the pages, and the fan was on and they were blowing around, and all the papers I have stuck in them were falling out of the book. bleh.
SOOOO...why don't you try it? It's free and it will do your soul some good!

Take Your Daughter to Work Day

John has been working as a truck driver for a hay farmer since last week. Today our 5 year old went along in the afternoon. This is what Daddy does for work:

"Okay, the loader was SO COOL. It has these pokey things on it that lift up the hay bales. The little one is blue and the big one is yellow. They can pick up a whole stack of hay and then it moves around and shakes the truck a lot. It's like a roller coaster. It goes on the back and daddy and me goes up front. He has these papers that go in the hay. He tells the farmer what his name is and where he got the hay and where he takes it to and how much hay he brought them. It's his homework. There is a bed in his truck. He wouldn't let me go to sleep because he needed me to keep him awake. It was really cool and it was really fun to go to work with dad."

I'm just wondering when payday is.

Sarah is a Rock Star

Yesterday while John and I napped (bad parenting, here, I guess) we put a movie on for the girls and gave them some snacks. All was well in the house when we woke to go to Easter Dinner at Grandma's. Half way there I looked into Sarah's eyes and saw that one pupil was dialated and one was very small. She had gotten into Katie's atropine drops! We were less than happy. Today she took her sunglasses to preschool so that if they went outside, the sun would not damage her eye.
Me:"did you wear your sunglasses during recess?"
S: "Yeah, they thought I was a rock star"
Me: "Oh, yeah? What do rock stars do?"
S: "Dance"
Me: "anything else rock stars do?"
S:"Help"
Me: "is that all?"
S: " and drive. and they do halloween. I'm gunna be a rockstar for halloween."

To Drill with Daddy

This info is all REALLY old, but indulge me

Future SeaBee (I love his navy diaper!)

Future Firefighter Future Safety Officer Future Medic

We went to drill last month (it took me a LONG time to upload pics). We drove through Spokane and kept driving two more hours to the border to look at a house in Northport. What a pretty place, right on Lake Roosevelt. We would love to live there and thought we'd found our dream house on the internet. We had been eyeing it for a long time and really needed some closure that it wasn't where we needed to be. The inside of the place needs some real work, but the land is amazing. We ended up with more questions for Heavenly Father about a move than we thought we could ever get answers for.

On Saturday the girls and I met up for breakfast at Old European with a friend from the baby forum on CraigsList that I frequent. It's a pretty tight knit group of moms and babies that have been together over a year. I was pretty nervous to meet someone I'd only met online, but babies are great ice breakers, and hers was a flirt. We ate Aebelskiver and man, were those yummy. I've been trying to figure out how to make them, but I think I need a special pan.

Afterwards, since daddy was still at drill, we went to the children's museum. As you can see from the pictures, the girls had a blast. Shawn was in the sling and I received a ton of compliments on it. We stayed there for a few hours until the girls were obviously tired. John came back to the hotel just in time for all of us to get a much needed nap. aaaahhh.

Sunday, Daddy was working again, and we girls went to church. Sarah was so excited to make new friends. "I'm gunna sit down and say 'Hi, I'm Sarah! What's your name little girl?' and then she'll say her name and she will be my friend". When she got back to the car, she repeated the actual conversation and it was very similar. Amazingly, she remembered most all the kids in her class and referred to them as her new friends.

We pretty much came home after that. We fasted and prayed a lot over the next week. The Lord didn't tell us all the answers to our questions about moving, but we did gain a testimony that He teaches line upon line. He'll tell us the next thing we need to do. If we are obedient to that, He'll let us know the next step. We know that our next baby step is to get our house ready to sell. Who knows, maybe this step will only make us happier in the meantime where we are, so that we can bear to be here if we have to. We don't know what is going on with the navy, or with the job situation, but we know that the Lord knows, and He is taking care of us.