another conference post

We've been having fun conference-prep FHEs recently and I wanted to share what we've done. I printed up these Apostle Cards from Sugardoodle and we've talked about a few apostles at a time to try to get to know them and remember their names before General Conference this weekend. We also showed the kids this video, which they LOVED.

Then, tonight I put together a little matching game I made using this image from the May 2010 Ensign:


I just edited out the names, then printed out this page and used the pictures to make two sets of cards.
When we play tomorrow, the person who finds a match will get a point, and get an opportunity to earn an extra point if they know the name of the person they matched. We'll see how it goes! We had a trial run tonight and Cat did pretty well, until Jack started pulling the pictures off of the card stock, then Eliza found one of the pictures on the floor and had her way with it until you couldn't even see the photo on it anymore. I guess I'll have to laminate them before FHE tomorrow! (And print out a replacement of the one Eliza found.)

All of this prep probably sounds nuts to some folks, but I don't regret it at all. Today Cat actually said, "I LOVE General Conference!" which totally made my day. She could very well change her mind after the first 3 minutes of the Saturday morning session, but at least we'll go into it with a good attitude.

Survivor Skills: Foraging

It's funny how when baby #3 arrived, I think I understood that I would be in survival mode much more frequently. But I have been surprised at how often Cat and Jack have had to be in survival mode too.


Case in point: a few weeks ago I was occupied feeding a certain adorable 6-month old some very delicious peas for breakfast. (Yes, breakfast. I know.) Jack was hungry too, but I knew it would be better for me to get the baby taken care of and then focus on Jack, so I continued feeding Eliza. Next thing I knew, Jack was eating breakfast: a chocolate chip cookie he grabbed off of the counter. And a minute later, he had a cucumber in one hand (also off of the counter) and another cookie in the other. A pretty well-balanced meal, if you ask me!

Last year, I decided Cat needed to learn how to make her own lunch. I knew it would be a learning process for both of us, but I started off with this checklist, which has been on our refrigerator door ever since:
It's worked pretty well. Last year, I frequently helped Cat put her lunch together in the mornings, hurriedly. This year she's done pretty well with making her lunches after school for the following day. Sometimes I help her, sometimes I don't. And on the days when I don't help her, sometimes I check what she packed, and sometimes I don't. The other day I looked in her lunch box and noticed that she didn't exactly follow the checklist. Her lunch consisted of a peanut butter sandwich, a pack of crackers & cheese, 6 Ritz crackers, 2 pieces of sliced cheese, and juice box. Hmm. It might be time for another discussion about what it means to eat balanced meals. And maybe I need to re-stock our supply of ready-to-go fruits & veggies...

Good Siblings Are: Affectionate

They just love to hold, kiss, and squeeze her.
(Sometimes the squeezing gets to be a bit much. Lotsa love!)

Jack frequently says, "hol-joo, Liza," and Eliza and I oblige when we can. But I have to be careful, because sometimes all the notice I get is a quiet "all done" before he starts to take her off of his lap.

Cat enjoys holding Eliza on her lap as well, but it's a little sad now that E's out of the lay-quietly-and-contentedly phase, and in the squirm-like-a-worm phase. Makes it harder for C & J.

The Review

A couple of you said you'd like to hear about my experience with Blurb, so here goes. If you're not interested, stop reading now. :-) If you are, I hope you find this helpful!

I don't know if it's a good thing or not that I waited a couple of weeks after I finished my Blurb book to write a review. The pain and agony of the hours and hours I spent re-formatting has lessened somewhat. So, this will probably be a little nicer than it would have been had I written it right away.

Front Cover

Let me just say that I am thankful that I was working against a deadline, or else I might never have finished this. I taught at RS class about journaling last week and I was determined to have this book with me to show everyone, since I consider blogging another form of journaling. But despite the exorbitant amount of time it took, I am SO GLAD I did it.

Sample Page

Okay, here goes.

There is an instructional video on the entire process of making your book. From how to have Blurb "slurp" the contents of your blog into its formatting software, called BookSmart, to choosing a theme and editing layouts. The video makes it look really easy. It wasn't exactly. The cool things about the slurping are that you choose which posts you want to slurp (making it easy to only use 2009 posts for my book) and it gives you options about whether you want to include comments people have left you, and whether you want to include the URLs for links in your posts as footnotes. Also, I thought it was cool to have the software on my computer so that I didn't have to be online or signed into anything while I worked on it.

"Quotable Cat" Pages

That said, BookSmart did a horrible job of formatting my posts when it slurped them. (Can you tell I like using that word?) The original formatting it used had my book at 280+ pages, putting each picture on its own page. Whoa. And Blurb suggests that you use an 8x10 portrait book when converting a blog into a book, since blogs are vertical in nature. That did NOT work for my blog, since the majority of my pictures are horizontal, and when I started working on it in portrait I felt like I wasn't able to show off my pictures as much as I wanted to. But you can't change the orientation of the book once you begin, so I had to start over and make a landscape book.

"Jack's Favorite Things" Pages

The pre-set layouts BookSmart offers weren't very useful for me, so I ended up making a bunch of my own layouts. That was surprisingly easy to do, once I got the hang of it. But it was a pain that, for some reason, BookSmart had all of the text of all of my posts linked together, so when I tried to re-format one page with all of the text from a single post, it wouldn't let me because the text was connected to everything else, on other pages. That meant that any time I wanted to change something that involved a text box with text already in it, I had to copy and paste it instead of just choosing a different layout.

misc. pictures of C & J, with captions

It worked out in my favor that the pricing of the books are in 40-page increments. I wanted to maximize my page allowance, so once I realized that I had 11 extra pages to use, since I was paying for them anyway, I had a lot of fun finding content for those pages. I was able to include my sidebars and a few bonus items.

misc. pictures of C and/or J with one or both parents, with captions

I used 2 pages for Cat's quotes, 2 pages for Jack's sidebar, and 4 pages for random pictures and captions that weren't included in any blog posts. Then I wrote an epilogue. I love it. It was a great space for me to write about why I started the blog and the purpose it served throughout the year. I think it makes the whole book much more personal. I also included our 2009 Christmas card collage and a simple picture of our hands for the last page.

Epilogue and 2009 Christmas card pics

The other thing that eased the pain of the hours and hours I spent on this project was that I only paid for shipping! On a whim I decided to Google "Blurb coupon code" and after sifting through the pages that popped up, I found a coupon code for a free Blurb book, up to a $54 value. Score! Mine should have been $44.95.

last page

All in all, I am thrilled with the final product. The pages look just like they did on the computer and the printing quality is very good. But the best thing was when it arrived in the mail and all Cat wanted to do was sit on the couch and have me read it to her. I also loved showing it off to the RS ladies last week, and family members as I've seen them. I even had someone say to me, "Why didn't you order one for me?" Of course, the other cool thing about having it in digital format is that it would only take a few minutes to order another copy. (After looking for another coupon code, that is.)

Back Cover - thank you to those of you who helped me decide which quote to use!

Final verdict: I will use Blurb again.

It took a while to figure out, but now that I understand the program, and I've seen the finished product, I feel good about doing it all over. I'm sure it will still take a long time, because anything that's worthwhile takes a long time. But it should be easier the next time. And if I get really motivated, I can always start my 2010 book now, and work on it continuously until the year is over. Of course, that's a big "if."

She's Been Busy

1. Writing and Illustrating


Cat was really into drawing and coloring in the weeks before school started. (I think mostly because I recently added a dresser I made-over to our dining room and dedicated an entire drawer to her coloring supplies.) Anyway, she drew a few pictures of some aliens and told me this whole story about them. So I suggested she draw some more pictures and I would write down the story and we could make a poster or a book or something. I used an 8x8 scrapbook I picked up at Target on clearance forever ago and typed the story up by page as she directed. Here is the story. My favorite part is the ending when vegetarians come down from space. Where does she come up with this stuff?

SPACE

One day, an alien princess rode into town on a Thursday.

And then, two people came, and they saw the pretty alien and they put the alien in her own house.

Then, the first morning when she woke up, the alien princess saw the blue beautiful sky, and then she saw the sun, and she saw a beautiful rose in her garden, and dirt below it, and petals of leaves falling down. The butterflies were squatting around and playing catch around the rose. And one or two butterflies landed on her pinky. And she brought them in, in her house, and then

She baked cookies for her and her little friends.

And then she drew a picture.

And then her sisters came over, and they said, “We want a cookie, too.” And then they said, “The rest of our sisters are coming too.”

And they were right; the two other sisters came. One of the sisters were confused. The other was dirty.

And then the other sisters came. Two were muddy again. The other one was not muddy.

And then a huge enormous storm came and they all had to stay inside.

And the storm stayed for two hundred and ninety-nine weeks. And then a whole family came inside. And they said, “Our little baby blew away. We were all strong, but our baby wasn’t.”

And then vegetarians came down from space and then one of the vegetarians had an alien baby and the mama alien wanted the baby alien ‘cause she lost her baby and that was her baby. And the other vegetarian from space had a person baby, and that was the person’s baby.

THE END.

2. Decorating

In celebration of our bathroom re-do, Cat felt that some wall decoration was in order. I thought some extra color and original art would be nice for a while, since our halls are still bare from when we painted them back in, umm... January. It was also fun to use the banner paper Pops gave us. I don't know why she wanted me to write those words on the banner instead of something about the bathroom, but it's not up to me. I just do what I'm told.


This picture really doesn't do the decorating job justice, though. She also put pictures up on the wall in our living room, our bedroom door, and Cat's bedroom door. She goes all out.


3. Starting Kindergarten


Cat was very ready to go back to school and after her open-house the night before she was complaining that she wasn't in school already. As in on the ride home at 7pm. She was embarrassed last year that I insisted on taking a picture of her at the school, so this year I let her choose if she wanted a picture at the school or at home. She chose at home. So here she is outside of our front door. I was honored that she chose to wear a dress I made (read: refashioned) for her. Atta girl!


I saw on howdoesshe.com the idea to make a cookie cake for your child after the first day of school and thought it was a fun and simple tradition to start. You know I love a good tradition! Unfortunately, Ben didn't get home until late the night of Cat's first day of school, so we enjoyed her treat as a family on the second day of school. No worries, though. It was still fun and still very yummy!

4. Reading Good Books

I am so excited about this one. It took a friend of mine to talk some sense into me when I told her about the dumb books I'd been reading with Cat. DUH. I should be reading good books. Of course. Why didn't I think of that? So now my favorite part of the day is getting to lay down with her and read a few pages of a good book that is well-written and interesting. I created a new Goodreads bookshelf for the books we've been reading and added a little widget to my sidebar because I'm so excited about it. She doesn't understand everything about the books yet, but she is enjoying it as much as I am. (I am always disappointed when I'm out late at a meeting or something and I come home and find out that Ben read one of our books with Cat. Then I try to get him to tell me what I missed and it really isn't the same.)

5. Getting a Boyfriend

In the car on the way home from school, week #2.
"Sutton is my boyfriend."
"What?"
"Sutton is my boyfriend"
"Huh?"
"Sutton is my BOYFRIEND!"
"Oh. Um. Okay. I think you might be a little young to have a boyfriend."
"No I'm not! I love him! And we're going to get married and we're going to have babies."
"Oh. Why is he your boyfriend?"
"Because I cheered for him and he said if a girl cheered for him that made her his girlfriend."

Okay. That made me feel a little better. And, thank goodness, she hasn't mentioned him since. Easy come, easy go.

These dress-up clothes didn't come from Target.

In May, my Mom went to China with her parents and sister and brought back some awesome souvenirs. We love these little outfits! Everything is fantastic, but I admit that Jack's hat with the braid attached in the back is my favorite. As you can see below, Jack thought it looked good on Eliza. He kept putting it on her over and over again. Also, I have never told them about rickshaws, but when they jumped on the bike & trike while I was taking the pictures, I couldn't help but think that it might be time. It never hurts to have a back-up career. They would probably love it.


My Mom has been disappointed that I didn't take pictures of the kids earlier and put them on the blog. My way-more-on-top-of-things cousins, Stacie and Stephanie, whose kids received fun Chinese clothes from my aunt, were very prompt in their postings. I came up with some really good excuses, though. Wanna hear?

1. The clothes are so beautiful that I didn't want the kids to play in them too much and get them dirty or torn.
2. I want to save them for Halloween. (Maybe.) Mulan theme, anyone?
3. My camera doesn't take great pictures indoors. (Perhaps the photographer might share some of the blame I suppose.) I wanted to do the clothes justice.
4. It's HOT outside. As in, ALL THE TIME. Still.
5. I have a few things going on.

Nevertheless, I overcame all of my good excuses and took the pictures. It only took me a month to put the post up on the blog, after taking the pictures. Sheesh.

Thanks for the fun clothes, Mom!

Quick Trip to the Mountains

**Long Post Alert**

Last month we made a quick trip up to Blue Ridge, GA to hang out with family in celebration of my Dad's 60th Birthday. We had a blast, especially for such a short amount of time!

Saturday morning we went tubing on the Toccoa river. We were nervous about taking Jack tubing since he really doesn't like getting in the water. But his tube had a bottom in it, and he just sat in there the entire time. He had no problem. We wondered how it would go with Eliza, too, since I just had her in the Baby Bjorn. But she did fine too. Surprisingly, it was Cat who was scared and antsy during the tubing trip. She fell out of her tube right after she got in the river, and didn't really trust the tube after that. She was pretty clingy, but still managed to have fun. None of us thought to get a waterproof camera before the trip, so the only picture we have of anyone on a tube is of Dad and Kelly, since they were the last ones to get back to the parking area.

Cat cheesed it up with Will & Colin...

One of TWO family pictures we took this weekend.
As in, we are ALL in the pictures. Hell might have frozen over too.

Jack checked out the river to make sure it met his approval.

It sure was fun! Can you tell?

Back at the cabin, Eliza enjoyed playing with Pops.
(Sorry for the blurry picture--but I love both of their expressions!)

And we decided to take a big family picture.

Front row: Colin, Drew, Megan, Andy, Susannah, Me, Eliza, and Cat
Back row: Noah, Will, Kyle, Kelly, Dad, Riley, Ben II, Jack, and Ben I


Then we took some pictures of just the adults.
Jack entertained himself. By climbing, of course.

I requested a picture of just us kids with Dad.

Here I am with my Dad my 3 "original" siblings.

When Dad and Kelly got married, they adopted two awesome kids
from Kazakhstan, Riley and Kyle. They are so fun and we love being around them!
So, here is Dad with all of his kids. We were prompted to depict our rank in seniority.

Andy was giving me a hard time, so I might have threatened
to stick some fingers in his ear, or nose, or both...

And he might have threatened to throw me off the mountain.

Then, since we were on such a roll with the family picture thing,
I decided to try my luck at another photo of our little clan.
This didn't quite go as planned...

That night we hung out in the cabin.
The kids colored on their new banner art paper from Pops & Kelly.

And watched some movies.
Riley was SO sweet to hang out with Cat & Drew in the basement!

The rest of us played the Wii, with Outdoor Challenge
taking up most of our time.
Here's Dad. Stomping moles?

Will & Kyle worked together on the mine cart racing.

Andy was good enough to take care of Eliza for a while on Sunday morning while we packed and got ready to leave. I just love these pictures! Eliza did a good job with him. She made him smile, she tasted his finger and tested his mouth, and she taught him how to play Animal Scramble. Move closer, okay, Uncle Andy?
California is too far.

By the time we got on the road,

Cat & Jack were all tuckered out from a busy weekend.

It was a wonderful little vacation -
it doesn't get much better than fun and family.
Happy 6-0, Dad!

6 months old!

Eliza turned 6 months old a couple weeks ago... I'm only a little late... I guess it's fitting considering I'm late with everything else in my life as well. :-)


She started crawling a little more, but as of the big 6-month mark, she still didn't realize the potential she had to get herself around. I kept waiting for that day when I would put her down somewhere and come back to find her somewhere else. It's coming!

During our trip to N. Georgia, we discovered that Eliza prefers not to be in the car for long stretches of time. She screamed for about half of the 6-hour drive. (Yep, our fine state is that big.)

And, she definitely loves to pull hair, or skin...


I know I've been saying this for 6 months now... but where has the time gone??? It's incredible that her first year is halfway over. I feel like I'm too busy to really enjoy her, but I'm doing my darndest. Happy Half-Birthday, E!