Primary Program

Today was the primary program in our ward, and most especially, Jenna's first primary program! How is that possible?! If Robby's birthday was a month or two earlier, it might have been his last primary program, but luckily for him he'll get one more year! He'll end up being the last one in his class to graduate from primary, so he'll get one last hoorah in the program which is good since he missed this year's with a 101.5 fever. To document the day, we took pictures after church of our primary goers, and I filmed Jenna saying her part right before bed.

And here she is reciting her part for you. She did a great job in the program.

And here is the sick boy. Actually, he wasn't too disappointed to miss the program. He was slated to give a talk which he wasn't too thrilled about. I made sure to arrange with the Primary President to have him get another chance at a talk next year. :)

Comedy of Errors

Our family was a comedy of errors yesterday morning. Here's how it went.

Sharon

7:30am - S wakes up suddenly after realizing that the alarm was turned off, and we should have gotten up 30 minutes earlier.

7:32am - Robby asks Sharon if she have any meetings today, and she suddenly remembers she's supposed to be at Ward Council this morning. The meeting starts at 7:30am.

7:45am - S is ready and walking out the door. S has Robby's keys and she's going to drive his car because he needs the car seats to get the kids to church. Sharon's keys have the key fob that can undo the alarm on my car so he needs it.

7:46am - There is a thick layer of frost over the whole car. Sharon's grumbling because she's late and she needs to clean the windows off. S sits in the car to turn it on so the heat can help melt the frost, but when S sticks the key in the ignition it bends, or rather twists, so it won't fit in the ignition anymore.

7:48am - More grumbling as S runs back in to get her keys because they have a key to Robby's car.

7:49am - With both keys in her hand, S unlocks her car with the key fob to undo the alarm (or so she thought) and then relock it with his keys. S then runs back in the house to drop his keys off.

8:00am - After scraping the frost of the car (while grumbling) and driving to church, S sheepishly arrives in the middle of Ward Council (of course they are talking about the youth when S arrives - Sharon's the YW Pres.).

8:30am - Ward Council ends, but S can't go home to help Robby get the kids ready for church because she's supposed to practice a song with the YW for the YW's sacrament program today.

9:00am - Church starts... no sign of Robby and the kids.

9:17am - Sacrament passing is over, and still no sign of Robby. So S steps out as the YW sacrament program is starting (S was not speaking) to use the hall phone to call home and see if they are still there. They are, and he is getting their shoes on. He says he will explain later.

9:45-10:10am - S sits in the meeting wondering when Robby and the kids will get here while doing her best to pay attention to the YW sacrament program. S can't leave to call them because it would look bad for the YW President to leave in the middle of the YW sacrament program.

10:12am - The meeting's over, so S borrows someone's cell because hers was dead to call Robby and see where he is. He's still home...

to be continued...



Robby

7:30am - Gets up with Sharon, and inadvertantly reminds her of her Ward Council meeting.

7:33am - Realizing he is going to have to get the family ready for church by himself and everyone is getting a late start, R goes to wake the kids and gets Little Robby to feed the girls while he goes to take a shave and take a shower.

8:02am - R realizes he has no clean white shirts. Picks one out and throws it into washer (after removing the load that never made it into the dryer).

8:21am - Getting girls dressed. Olivia reaches into her crib and pulls the lid off her sippy cup. This postpones dressing routine to get towel to soak up water that's on mattress, in trundle drawer, and in carpet.

8:33am - R back to dressing. Tights for Jenna, but can't find any for O. Poor girl--bare legs with an outdoor temperature of 35 degrees.

8:34am - R realizing he will not have time to run over with the kids to his office on campus to get the laptop Sharon needs to show some video clips for her YW lesson.

8:50am - R trying his best to comb J's hair. It's a tangled mess. Resorts to washing and conditioning her hair in the sink. Does his best to make a decent looking ponytail. Manages to avoid getting her dress wet.

9:03am - R pulls shirt out of the dryer. It is still a little damp, but he puts it on anyway. And finishes getting dressed

9:17am - Sharon calls to check on the family after the passing of the sacrament. R is putting on the girls shoes and about to walk out the door.

9:20am - R has ushered all the kids out the door and goes to stick the key in the ignition only to be greeted with the blaring of the car alarm. He tries to get the alarm to stop by locking and unlocking the car with his key and trying to start the car to no avail. (He has no key fob to undo the alarm because Sharon has it at church).

9:21am - R sends the kids back inside since it's freezing outside. Car alarm is going off and doesn't seem like it is going to stop. Finally it stops.

9:22am - R finally retreats to the house to wait for rescue, and the car alarm starts going off spontaneously again.

9:24am - After going on and off several times, the car alarm finally stops for good.

9:26am - R decides to let the kids watch "Mountain of the Lord" while they wait for Sharon (AKA - Mom) to come to the rescue.

10:12am - Sharon calls and finds her family stranded at the house. She leaves church to go rescue them.

10:17am - Sharon realizes that we still need to print Little Robby's talk that he gave earlier in the year because he has been asked to give it during the Primary Program, and they are having a practice today.

10:19am - Sharon arrives home and runs inside to print LR's talk while R gets the kids in the car.

10:23am - S can't find where LR saved his talk and tries searching various keywords to get it to come up.

10:35am - With R helping, we still can't find the talk, so S goes ahead and leaves for church with the kids.

10:44am - Finally R leaves for church after giving up on retrieving talk. Apparently LR didn't save it! LR will have to wing it today for the practice and write a new one for the PP next week.

10:45am - S is trying to figure out what to do because she planned her lesson in YW around several video clips she downloaded from the church website. She had been planning on using R's laptop, but because of everything he couldn't get it from his office at school. She remembers that one of the brothers in the ward often has his laptop.

10:49am - She finds him in the clerks office and he agrees to let her borrow it.

11:05am - S finally runs over start to YW a little late because it took a little while to get the laptop set up.

11:15am - YW opening exercises finish and she and the Laurels are about to break for class when the bishop walks in and says he is going to sit in on the lesson today.

11:18am - S sits down to teach and is a bit flustered after all the events of the morning. She is a little embarrassed to have the bishop there today of all days. She apologizes to the bishop if her lesson isn't stellar.

12:00pm - Class is over and S is relieved that the bishop came because he had lots of good insights to share throughout the lesson and things turned out great in the end.


Phew! Luckily the rest of our day was uneventful!

If you made it to the end of this post, pat yourself on the back!
(I'll try to take a few pictures before I post again.)

So what's new...

So what's new for us... well, my eardrum ruptured Friday night. Let's just say, I now have a greater appreciation of the pain our children face when they have ear infections. Apparently, I had an ear infection, but was unaware of it until about 9pm Friday when I started feeling a great amount of pressure in my ear. Within an hour the pressure built up enough that my eardrum burst. Yes, I was just about screaming right before the pop. Afterward, I was very grateful that the pain subsided. Now I can't hear anything with my right ear except everything in my head (i.e. swallowing, chewing, jaw bone joint moving, oh, and a constant ringing in my ear). Saturday morning, I had a trip to the doctor where I was told that it was a large rupture, and I might need surgery to repair it. I won't tell you what the surgery entails because after reading about it, I hope the doctor is wrong and my eardrum heals on its own. In the meantime, talk into my left ear, otherwise I might have to ask you to repeat yourself.

Jenna wisdom...

Jenna says, "Guess what! When I eat my broccoli my hair gets bigger and bigger and goes to the ground!"

So I guess that's what we've been missing all along, feeding Olivia more broccoli!

What she will do for ice cream!

Jenna's taking soccer this season for the first time. She's on a team of cute little 4 yr-olds who run around in clumps chasing the ball from one end of the field to the other. The games are played 3-on-3, so there aren't a ton of kids on the field at one time. The first few games, Jenna wasn't very motivated to get after the ball (who would really, when the girls all crowd around it and kick each other in attempt to advance the ball?) Well, Robby, being the nice dad that he is, wanted to motivate her to get out there and go after the ball, so he promised ice cream for a goal. Guess what... It worked!

Here's our little scorer! She managed (very much to my surprise) to get control of the ball at midfield and take it all the way down the field uncontested to score a goal! I must admit that the other parents must have thought I had lost it when I started whooping and hollering. You would have thought Jenna had scored the winning goal at the state championship. Hey, I was proud of my baby! (You would have been too, if you had seen how she went from pansy-picker to one determined little soccer player.) Of course, right after she scored she turned toward me and exclaimed, "I get ice cream!" Unfortunately, dad missed it because he had to be at school that morning!

And here is Jenna's biggest fan!

And of course the celebratory ice cream!

Methinks a long winter cometh...

...especially after seeing Sharon and Roo take in much of Jenna's first soccer game...

...from the car.

The temperature: 60 degrees with a north wind of 10 mph.

If last year is indicative, we still have 90 degrees (!!) to drop.

Better break out the parkas.

Berry Blast!

The kids and I visited a local berry patch while Sharon was in NYC with family recently. They have many seasonal crops, but this time of year it's mainly blueberries.

Robby was our champion berry picker.

The kids consumed so much in picking (you pay by the pound)...

...that I made sure to leave a big tip.

A delicious outing.