Sanderson Fun

okay-so i left church feeling rather beat up. we have had numerous talks about sacrament meeting. first from Elder Oaks in conference, then from the stake presidency, then from our ward and then today we had a relief society lesson on Elder Oaks talk. well i have loved hearing what all the speakers had to say and think it is very important since it should be our most important meeting. but our relief society lesson turned to how noisy our sacraments are and quite a few of the older sisters kept talking about how they never brought toys or activities or food for their kids-and even some of the younger sisters kind of said the same thing and i was getting grouchy with all the talk about everybodys "perfect" kids in sacrament-because mine aren't! and i was starting to feel like maybe i wasn't invited anymore. well i seriously was kind of grumpy by the time i was heading home and then that night as we were reading the scriptures a scripture totally popped out at me from 1 Nephi 16:2 "...wherefore, the guilty taketh the truth to be hard, for it cutteth them to the very center." i thought back to my bad feelings and realized i needed to be humbled-i sometimes have a hard time being told i am not doing things the right way or even that i could do them better. so we will be having a family home evening to try to work on our sacrament behavior!

every month for pre-school koy learns a little nursery rhyme...this month was: jack sprat could eat no fat his wife could eat no lean. but koy goes around singing: pat pat could eat no pat his wife couldn't eat pat too! we all think it's too funny:]

so the other day we are driving and brooke says, "mom-turn it to 105.5 the hawk" and i said "where did you hear that?" she said, "it always says that on the bus!" this is one of those moments that made me realize how quickly my kids are growing and how they are being influenced by the world...i mean she used to only ask to listen to things like "the wheels on the bus" or "snuggle puppy"!

this was my stack of movies to put away after hunting season-that's one thing i kinda like when kent is gone i can stay up and watch my movies and get some stuff done because i don't like going to bed without kent so i stay awake as long as i can...my favorite movie "emma"-i probably watched it 4 times.

kelsi put a scrapbook page in the fair for 4-h...it was super cute-and she won an outstanding ribbon which we thought was pretty cool, but when we picked up her page we found out that she also won some money, $10. well kelsi was pretty excited especially since this was her first check:) we went to the bank to cash it and kelsi signed the back and all...on the way home kelsi said,"that was fun-do you think when i babysit for you, you could write me checks now?"

at the beginningof november we were made into a new stake: henrys fork stake- we had some more good reminders of not letting our busy schedules keep us from the most important things, mainly the gospel-teaching our children and sharing it with others. i loved Elder Hammonds (he's my very nice dentist) talk about when he lived in Alaska and would watch the cariboo or deer migrate and the wolves would wait on the sides ready to pick on a weaker one on the fringe and he likened it to us and our own testimonies:are they strong enough to be in the middle of the pack or our we living the gospel on the fringe, where satan has more power over us...and he told the story of the girl in his class who was having a hard time taking out her second pair of earrings ( a question that had come up with kelsi earlier this year) anyways the girl attached her second pair of earrings to her test paper and wrote to Elder Hammond that she wouldn't be one of those whose testimonies was on the fringe.

we also had our presidential election this month-our first black president was elected, President Obama-this election was talked about alot and even my kids were into it, so when they learned that who i had voted for didn't get elected they were a little worried but i told them even though my opinions differ from President Obamas on some issues, i assured them that he was still a very good and inspiring man and we should always pray for all of our leaders.

For scouts we visited the museum and got to learn about indian heritage from Wesley, Two Eagles-i had to include this picture for kaden because it is his favorite now because this was when he still had his Harry Potter hair and if you look closely at the stick he is holding...it looks very magical- LUMOS!
and according to kaden you can't prove that magic doesn't exsist!
this is the only picture of koy's birthday-there is a reason, he got what i think was a clogged tear duct so his eye swelled up like quazimoto...plus it was a little (lot) busy with 10 little boys at our house but it was a happy birthday!
this is koy when he is about 5 months old-i thought i would write just a little about what i remember when he was born: kent had left to salt lake for a trade show for trendwest, i was feeding the dogs and running back into the house and my water broke-i of course am crying when i come into the house, yes that fast...i'm terrified of having babies. well kelsi asked me what the matter was and i said i just don't feel well. i went into the bathroom to think things over...in no time all the kids are outside the door because they know i never lock the bathroom and something must be wrong. i came out and called kent, he started his trip home and i prayed that this would be my longest delivery (that sounds crazy). i called diane to watch the kids and she appeared (seriously) in seconds,it seemed and she brought todd to watch the kids and she said she would go to the hospital with me-i was very happy to not be alone but also nervous, because i am not very brave and a big baby! when we got to the hospital i was not even dialated and the nurses wanted me to walk around and get my labor more started and i said my husband is not even here and once i start it goes fast-they still looked at me funny, even after i've had 3 kids? anyways i held off on the epidural for as long as i could and after i got one i did start progressing fast and they called my midwife, helene-i was a little nervous and i'm sure diane (what a lifesaver) was too and kent came right when i was to start pushing. my epidural was wearing off and they said the anesthialogist wasn't coming back around for another hour...so i panicked-i told helene that i couldn't do this and she assured me i could- i also remember telling her over and over he was stuck. but he did come out, i pushed for about 15 minutes-my whole labor was about 7 hours (my longest). i can remember the nurse said "wow, he has such a big cry!" little did we know we would hear that big cry lots...koy was a hard baby, a very hard baby! i read this quote in a magazine and cut it out: some of us don't get "easy " kids. we get the challenging ones. a little more is asked of us. no doubt someone upstairs believes we're up to the task. i have since realized that Heavenly Father knew just who to send me, i have often questioned why koy was so challenging for me and it just didn't seem fair...but about 2 years later i received an answer to my prayers, i needed to learn to ask for help-plain and simple, but not for me-i have a hard time asking others for help and i wouldn't have asked for help unless koy was so overwhelming for me. i had already been given kelsi to learn this lesson-failed! i had already been given brooke to learn this lesson-failed! then koy-i passed...i had to ask for help from alot of people: sometimes friends, sometimes family, sometimes my kids, sometimes kent, but mostly my Heavenly Father and he did help me! i love koy and have the efforts to prove it:)
we had a fun little girls retreat up at my friend tammie's cabin-it was lots of fun and very relaxing. kent is always so good at letting me have my breaks, i had bought the movie "kung fu panda" for the kids to watch while i was gone and this was the game they invented when i came home...
i love these kind of games!
we visited the nursing home and delivered some special turkeys-we were informed that we can't do this anymore without training. we will miss our older friends.
thanksgiving was pretty quiet at our house-well i take that back our house is never pretty quiet...we had yummy food-the best fried turkey ever, thanks to kent. i even hit the after thanksgiving day sales...it wasn't even that bad and that is from a non-shopper. then that night we put up our christmas tree-i love christmas!

for family home evening we have been going through the - for the strength of youth booklet - kents mom gave us a neat little study guide to go with it and since kelsi is going into young womens soon we thought this would be good, so we were talking on the section about friends and we started discussing a quote by President Joseph Smith:
"It mattereth not whether the principle is popular or unpopular, I will always maintain a true principle, even if I stand alone in it."
and one of my kids said but really we never stand alone, my primary teacher says that our Heavenly Father and Jesus are always with us. i am so glad that my children have such good teachers- and even though i'm sure they wonder if anyone is ever listening, especially my kids:) they are! two teaching moments that i can remember most is when i was in primary and our singing leader was trying to tell us of the importance of singing and i can remember her saying that when we sing we are showing our heavenly father how much we love him and he gave us our voices so he wants to hear everyone...now i always sing no matter how i sound, and i know it's not great. and i can remember a lesson in mutual about how our future children are watching us at this moment and that they are rooting us on: for me alot of decisions that i had i would really think- would i want my kids to see me do this and i just really didn't want to ever disappoint them!

so for a few days when i would be driving in my car i thought i could hear voices- i would tell the kids "ssshhh, did you hear that?" or i would turn down the radio and see if i could hear anything, i even rolled down the window once because i thought it might be someone outside yelling. well the other day kaden and i were driving and he said, "mom i think i heard a voice." and i said "me too! i keep hearing it." well he started looking in the jocky box and there was an unopened mcdonalds toy that must of got turned on and occasionally when we would stop or go over a bump- it would talk. so hip hip hooray...i'm not going crazy!

koy wanted a coi fish, so instead of the 28 cent fish at wal-mart we had to get like the $3.00 fish-koy's fishes never last long...i think it's all the shaking the bag gets on the way home:) so of course it died in a couple of days, well the next family home evening we were talking about how we can all be in heaven with the ones we love and kelsi, my animal lover asked if we get to see our pets that had died and i said that i thought so and koy piped up, "yeah, i get to see my coi fish." and we all kind of laughed and then he said, "is the toilet hooked to heaven?"