Pickle Problems

I've recently been consuming A LOT of pickles thanks to my recent weight loss efforts (22 pounds down!), and Bronwyn, Mirren and Lochlan are always eager for me to share. After finishing off this BIG bottle of pickles just this week in large part to the 2 older hoodlums, I caught Mirren with a fork in the pickle jar. Doing just as you see, sticking her fork in and just licking all that pickle goodness off. Ha ha ha!!!! I definitely think we better start buying bigger jars of pickles!

Loch-er Walks

 This past Monday, Lochlan decided that he was just going to start walking. By 8:30 am, he had already taken 6 straight steps and by the time Reed came home from work at 6:30, he was up to 18 steps in a row. He is unstoppable and still walks as much as he possibly can, but when speed is needed, he drops to his knees and goes full steam ahead. He started clapping a few weeks back and it's so fun in the car! When I start clapping along to music, I see him start clapping in my rearview mirror. Ha ha!! He's such a fun boy. He always has a smile for whoever gets him out of his crib in the morning and after naps. I took down our front room fan this week to replace it with a light and as I brought him into the front room for his first time seeing it, he automatically looked up at the ceiling! Ha!! He totally noticed it right away! He sure surprises me with some of the things about him. He LOVES to laugh. He loves to be played with when he is in a playful mood. We just love him and love the part he plays in our family dynamic.

Mirren-isms

Mirren has recently been surprising me by coming and saying to me "I love you Mommy!" in her sweet little happy voice. I am eating it up!!  A few days ago, she was looking through our books and said, "I see Jesus!" to which I said "You do?!?  That's nice! Jesus loves you!" and she said to me "And Jesus loves you too Mommy!".  It was so so sweet and felt like a little message from Heavenly Father straight to me via my sweet little Mirren. She has such a sweet and tender spirit.

Also, when she is feeling stubborn, Mirren says, "I don't want _____  aaanymore, Mommy."  *Sigh* This girl is an independent stubborn little cuss, which is probably good in some instances and just hard in others.

All My Bags Are Packed

 Bronwyn and Mirren have been playing the most interesting things this week. It has usually involved a bag filled with a cell phone, some books, and any other thing they deem worthy to be in their little purses. Also a hit: babies and bottles. They are still learning to play together well because Bronwyn REALLY wants to boss Mirren around and little Miss Mirren is still struggling to use her words instead of screaming, crying, hitting, kicking, etc to make her point. Miraculously the past 2-3 days have been so much better! Mostly because Bronwyn has been busy doing other things away from Mirren and Mirren is independently playing her own games. She has been coming up to me and telling me what she needs, and she seriously has such nice manners with lots of pleases and thank you's. I keep hugging her and thanking her for being so nice and using her words and telling her how proud I am of her. She seems to like that. :)  Ha ha!! She can be such a sweetheart when she's not having to dig her heels in and do what her big sisters tell her to do.

Shine on, Harvest Moon.

                      We had a harvest moon the other night, so I went outside to see if I could capture a shot of it.
This picture doesn't do any justice for how beautiful the moon was that night, but it's a nice memory and I love the shot of the barn behind our house with it.

Linzy's Wedding

 An unfortunately blurry picture. Laura, Lochlan and Reed were looking so cute all together. Laura and Lochlan have the same shade of red. I should get a picture with Laura, Alyson and Lochlan. They could be hair triplets.

                         Linzy and Tanner. Aw!! Young love. :) It was beautifully decorated!!

                                                       Lochlan making a break for it.

                                             Lochlan's 2nd cousin. It was their first time meeting.
                           It will be fun to see these handsome young men interact as they grow older!

      Mirren in our motel room, where lots and lots of Disney channel was watched (when we were there).

                                                        View of the falls from our balcony.

Proof that Aftyn and Bronwyn did come, were dressed cute, and that they too enjoyed the Disney channel.                                                                    Ha ha!!

                                                                   Cousin Carter.

Torturing Myself By Writing A Post

Today, just because I was feeling lazy, I volunteered for the 4th time in this same house, to have a Kirby vacuum salesman come and shampoo some part of my carpet. Here are my reasons why I will never do this again and why you shouldn't either:
           1.  They're going to try to get their foot in the door. From the opening of your front door to the closing, the person pitching the idea of "just having someone come and do a quick shampoo of your carpets, even that little section from the front door to the kitchen" is going to tell you whatever you want to hear, knowing that you won't be seeing them again and they can promise whatever because they won't have to fulfill them.
            2. It's never as easy as someone showing up to shampoo your carpets. They will torture you by a) putting little paper discs into their vacuum to show you JUST HOW HORRIBLE your current vacuum is, that it's depositing dirt into your carpet, etc etc and b)showing you ALL the attachments and how they work. There are about 9 now. Maybe.
           3. They will brow beat you and guilt you into feeling like OF COURSE you should buy their vacuum,  are you stupid that you can't SEE how great it is?? Lots of leading questions, lots of comparisons to your current useless vacuum. There are usually SEVERAL phone calls made to their "supervisor" who enters them into a "contest" and who has to hear about how much like you the vacuum and what attachment impresses you the most. He will also make at least 2 offers of how to sell the vacuum to you today at a special price. Right. (Why is it the supervisor is always a man? That seems kind of sexist.)
          4. When you finally get through all of this and tell the person who has spent a considerable amount of time vacuuming your carpet to prepare it for shampooing that they are not getting the sale from you, you sort of feel like you somehow lied to them. No matter how much you clearly stated you only wanted your carpet cleaned, you still come off feeling like a complete rake. How dare you allow a salesman in so they can give you their pitch only to turn them down and they so nicely cleaned this section of your floor! For free?!?!  Sheesh!! At this point, you just want to push them out the door and go rent yourself a rug doctor, but it's too late, you're in this for the long haul. The verbal silence is killing you as they silently finish shampooing, cleaning up their equipment, cleaning up the many many paper discs of dirt that they pulled from your dirty carpet, and put all the vacuum pieces back in the box that was supposed to be staying at YOUR house while you hand your financial freedom away to them for upwards of $3500. You feel like you should apologize, but all you can do is thank them for cleaning your floor. And then they are gone.
          5. After 2+ hours (I've had them take up to nearly 4), you've just wasted a whole bunch of your valuable time feeling guilty, feeling cheap, and feeling like a prisoner in your own home, tied to this person who has to show you so many things about this piece of equipment when you were only promised that they would shampoo your carpet. It's at this point I feel betrayed. And stupid. But hey, I have clean carpet. :)