Why Avery Loves Thursday

Thursday is Avery day. Warren and Abigail go off to school, leaving her as the "only child." Besides putzing around the house together, doing makeup, moving laundry, eating snacks, reading books and going to the museum, there is another reason to love Thursday. It is "STINKY-MAN" Day. In our part of Mesa, Thursday is the day that both the recycling trash and green waste get picked up. And since our street has funky routes, we get to see the Stinky-Man at least 6 times! I know--how much more excitement can one 2 year old handle? She runs to the window, runs outside and climbs on furniture to get a better view of him, all the while calling out, "Stinky-Man!" I love it.

On a related note, did you know your recycling can help buy $25,000 of materials for our Mesa Library? Read about it here. To learn what can and can't be recycled here in Mesa--and there have been recent changes that are more inclusive--check here.

Train Up a Child

We usually read stories before naps every day. Today Abigail beat me there, and when I came in, I found her reading scriptures to her doll.
(I did not include a picture, but yesterday she also showed me how she breastfeeds her doll. )

I Wish I'd Kept Warren Home Today

This is what hangs on Warren's bedroom wall. He made it himself the day after the election, and it was completely his own idea. I wish I'd kept him home from school today to watch the inauguration. I had it on all day as I made tortillas, mixed pancake mix, made lunch, exercised at the YMCA, cleaned up, worked on the computer. I think it is more TV than I watched all of last year combined, if you don't count the conventions and the debates, of course. Our kids watched those too. Their favorite was the Democratic National Convention, and it really was entertaining. Warren and Abigail had flags out waiving, and Warren later drew a picture, complete with loads of confetti. My favorite part of the inauguration this morning was the musical quartet that included Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman playing a John Williams arrangement of "Simple Gifts." It was gorgeous. You can watch it here. I loved watching how joyful Yo Yo looked as he played. I was glad Abigail got to see it.
I think it is important to note here that neither Andy nor I is a democrat or voted for President Obama, but we do respect the office of president immensely. We are so grateful that our nation repeatedly has a peaceful transfer of power. I hope our children always feel the same. Last night--Civil Rights Day--we had a Family Home Evening about treating everyone with civility, ending with the song, "Kindness Begins With Me." I am grateful to live in a nation that still believes this, even if we don't always live it, and I wish our new President, President Obama, and his family the best.

Pizza Perfection and Other Happy Times

Thursday night we made home-made pizza--a favorite for me, and for my kids. I make the dough, then assemble all these little bowls of toppings. Then I invite each kid in one at a time and they "decorate" their pizza. Avery went first; she put some cheese on, ate a handful of cheese, put some more on, ate some more--you get the picture. Then she methodically placed little ham slices in about a 3 inch area. She added some sausage and mushrooms and then she was done. Abigail got pretty adventurous, and chose pesto sauce rather than red tomato sauce. After the cheese she added ham, tomatoes, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and some sausage. Wow. Then Warren came in. He put red sauce, ham and cheese. No surprises here. The combos you see above are mine: on the left is pesto with mozzarella, roasted garlic slices, mushrooms and tomato. It was divine. On the left is red sauce, mozzarella, mushroom, sausage, onion and artichoke hearts. Yum. If you want to join us next time, let me know! I'll make the dough and then we can both bring toppings!

Friday night was a Blake Family Cousins Party at Cheryl's. All of Andy's cousins--like age 35 to newborn--gather and talk, eat, play Rock Band, watch sports etc. This time we were also joined by an 18 foot high inflatable slide and a cotton candy machine. It was so fun and I love how it keeps us all together and involved in each other's lives. Here is Avery, inspired by her dad playing Rock Band. I took 2 pictures: the first she was seated and playing, then she saw the camera and stood up for this one.

"Mom, can I be this for Halloween?" asked Abigail on Saturday. "I'm a bunny. And I will go up to people's houses and say 'bunny trick or treat' and get candy! And I will carry this bag." And that pretty much says it all. (I said "yes," by the way.)

Upgraded

Think of this as a commercial break from the saga of getting home from Paris. It makes me tired and ill just thinking and writing about it, so here is the recent news from our home. (I know this is long, but you can skip to the end if you just want to know why there are small crafting pictures with my name underneath them now!)
At Christmas, Warren got a "new to him" bike. Well, that meant an upgrade for all the kids in our family. Abigail got W's old little bike--not for Christmas, just after--with the training wheels back on. I felt so handy putting them on myself. And Avery got the tricycle to ride. These videos show each child on their new set of wheels. Avery's is my favorite, because even though she can reach the pedals, and can pedal, she still foots it, a la Fred Flinstone.
The other upgrade in our family is...we bought a TV! Some brief (okay, not so brief) Andy and Bekah Jennings' family history on TVs. For over the first year of our married life, we didn't even own a TV. We watched the occasional DVD on our computer. My family gave us an old biggish tube TV since they were upgrading. We still didn't ever watch anything on it, but for the bit of time that Andy had an X-box, he did play that on it. It stayed in our office on the floor. Then my family had a small TV/VCR combo they were looking to pass off to someone, so we inherited that (thanks, Brent!) After a while, Gordon gave us a DVD player that we hooked up to it. This TV was small enough it fit comfortably, with room to spare, on a night stand. After too may marbles and sandwiches jammed into it, the VCR stopped working, but it was okay. Then one day Andy's boss where he used to work asked us if we wanted his old TV. We had been to his house recently for a party and I pictured the TV I thought he was describing. It was in better condition than either of ours, and respectable-looking enough to put in the family room. We agreed and Andy went to go get it. Well, he came home with a TV that was about as tall as I am (I am 5'2"), and much wider. It was one of those old-school big-screen TVs encased in a wooden box with a big speaker across the bottom. It was hideous. I couldn't believe it--how did we go from not wanting a TV to having 3 undesirables, one being the literal "elephant in the room"? And to top it all off, in the drive from Queen Creek to Mesa, something had jostled the TV so it didn't work anymore. Now we just had a huge TV to dump on our hands. After several awkward weeks in our family room, we moved it to the back porch, along side the black TV from my family we were no longer using. Then one week we rented one of those HUGE dumpsters from the city so we could do some major work on our oleander hedge. We decided we would dump the monster TV in that. So I wheeled it out there, and some guy drives by and sees me and asks if he can have it. I explained it didn't work, but that didn't bother him. He came back with a car that it didn't fit in and took all my extra TVs off my hands--lucky for him, my neighbor offered the services of her minivan. At this point, Andy and I can't remember what TV we were using--the white one or yet another hand-me-down from my family. We really never watch TV, except at General Conference, and even that we watch on the internet. Our kids watched Sigining Time and the occasional Baby Einstein DVD, but that was pretty much it. Then my father in law wanted to upgrade his flat screen tube TV to a flat screen LCD HDTV. So he offered us his "old" one--it was only about a year old. It was pretty big, but I thought we could put it in the fireplace to store the back end. Seriously. We never use our fireplace, and it sits on a digaonal wall, so it has lots of depth. Well, it is a gas fireplace and we kept getting bad vibes about not capping the gas and so we never did it. So the TV just went on a cute 3 drawer dresser I use to store extra kitchen linens in. It was so out of proportion. It looked horrible. Still, it worked--well, if you had these headphones rigged up with a metal twist-tie for an antenna. (We have really bad reception at our house.) Every time I looked at it, I hated how big it was. It took up so much precious space.
So, fast forward about 2 years to this Christmas. With the gift money from several generous parents and grandparents, we decided to buy our first TV. In six and a half years of married life, we have never purchased a TV or a DVD player. We wanted something we could wall-mount so we could use the current wasted space more efficiently. Plus, we needed to do something about our TV not having a digital receiver, since Feb. 17 is rapidly approaching. So we looked online and off, and finally found a 22" flat screen LCD HDTV DVD combo--no DVD player to store--at Best Buy for a great price. Christmas money, plus tax. Last week, we bought it, and a $30 wall mount. I haven't decided where to mount it yet, so it currently sits in the same space the old one did, but it looks so much better. I can't wait to use that whole wall alcove for something else. Right now it holds the TV and boxes of my craft supplies.
Which brings me to one more upgrade--the reason for the boxes in the corner. (Sorry this is so long!) Today I got to bypass the 20+ person line at the Mesa PO and went right up to the business counter to ship my package. I felt like I had a golden ticket. I decided then and there to come out of the craft closet and admit that I have a business, aka a hobby that I make money off of. About 2 months ago, I started selling banners/garlands on Etsy.com, a site where people can sell their handmade goods. There are toys, jewelry, crafts, decor, clothing, accessories, paintings...it really is awesome. Anyway, I love doing artsy-crafty things, but figured I couldn't do that oustide of family craft day because it would take too much time from my family. Well, I have found the opposite. I use my time better, I get my other work done faster because I'm excited to get to my "business" work, and I have great conversations with my kids the few times they have been awake when I'm working on something, like the afternoon I spent talking to Warren as I cut a 40x30 piece of chipboard into 4x4 squares with an exacto knife. We just talked, and since I wasn't expecting to "teach" him anything, like when we clean together, there was no stress. Just my mindless task occupying my hands, and Warren occupying my heart and mind. I love designing and I'm getting a lot of great feedback, which is fun. I was so nervous to start--I worried I'd mess up on shipping or get bad feedback or no one would like what I made or that I just wasn't competent enough to do this--that I talked myself out of it several times. But then my brother-in-law McKane encouraged me one day--he is the CEO of Scrapbook.com--and suddenly I felt like I could do it. He had seen my work before when I used to design ecuts for scrapbook.com, so I felt like his opinion really was valuable. So I did it. And here is a link to my shop: bekahjennings.etsy.com
You can see what I'm currently selling, and if you click on the "32 sales" link under the "other items" title, you can see what I've already sold, since some of them I don't sell anymore. I hope you enjoy looking.