The Rice Box

Finally, the infamous rice-box!  Yesterday Jason, Mia, and I made a rice box.  It was a lot of fun and a lot of mess! :)  Why is it the most fun things are usually the messiest?  But it kept them occupied for, I bet, a couple of hours.  I was able to get dishes done anyway.  Mia was playing really nice until she started throwing rice everywhere.  But she loves coloring too, so that was a good distraction. :)  Too bad it didn't last as long as the rice-box. 

Music Square

Something new that we are adding to our schedule is teaching music lessons at the Music Square here in Oskaloosa.  Both of us are really excited for this, but Hannah may be a little more excited because it provides her an opportunity to be doing something with music more often.  Josh will be teaching drums and Hannah will be teaching voice lessons and maybe an occasional trombone.  These are the pictures of us that will be printed in the business section of the Oskaloosa Herald. Are we seriously grown-up? When did that happen? 

Out on the Trail

Here are some pictures of Jason and Mia on the bike trail near our house.  This was a beautiful November day!  I did not plan for them both to be in red shirts in jeans.....honest.  But don't they look good? :)

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

 A couple of minutes ago Josh woke up and said, "I had a dream that Matt and Jessie were fat." My reply was,  "I had a dream that we were at a concert or some important ceremony and as part of the ceremony they were going to honor people who had brain tumors or things like that.  A person up front was supposed to give a rose to some one in the audience they knew had a condition.  Some how I got a rose and was led with the group to a back room by a short greasy man with a moustache wearing a plaid tweed suit coat.  The room where he had taken us was acombo of a lockeroom that was old white concrete that was stained.  The man proceeded to go to the bathroom with a smirk on his face.  I realized as he was flushing the toilet that where we were was going to become a drain and wash all of us away.  I hurried to find a high place to go and found some stairs going up to a platform area up high.  I called to all the other girls and got everyone up safe just as the water rushed by.  The man who had flushed the toilet was hanging off the side of the platform by just his fingers.  I started to step on them so he couldn't climb up, but then in my mind I saw that he was going to grab my leg throwing me off balance.  So then I tried laying down and lifting his fingers up so he had to let go.  But then I saw that he was going to grab my hair and smash my face down.  Then I went back to the part of the dream before I went into the room and tried not to go into the room, but they wouldn't let me not go.  And I was trying to kiss Jason and Mia goodbye because I knew what was going to happen if I went back there and I didn't want to die."

Laughing Josh said, "This is the difference between men and women, you are well on your way to using your 50,000 words for the day."  What a great way to start the day: Laughing.

The Voice of God

After I read some books to Jason and said goodnight, I walked backed to the living room, picked up the laptop, and sat in the rocking chair to do some time on the internet. In the background the Christian radio station is broadcasting a preacher talking. As I sat down I said, half under my breath, half to Josh, "Some music would be nice". Right as I finished the "ssss" sound from nice, the radio went completely silent. After a couple seconds a dj voice came on and said, "Well, I don't really know what happened, but I guess that was the end of that broadcast and we will get you back to music after this break."
Josh and I just looked at each other and laughed. I guess God knew just what we needed. :)

T.P.

Over the weekend Josh and I had the pleasure of taking some senior pictures.  At first we were planning on taking them on Friday, but the weather wasn't cooperating.  Sunday turned out to be a great day even though it was pretty cold.   Tyler was pretty tough and stuck it out, which was awesome!  Thanks Tyler!

Our Weekend Away

This past weekend we visited Josh's family.  It was quite the weekend.  Josh had Parent/Teacher conferences until 8p.m. Thursday night.  We took off after he got home and probably didn't leave until 10:00 p.m.  Beverly, our across the street neighbor, thought there was an emergency.  The next morning Josh drove to Mankato to work, while Jason, Mia, and I stayed at his parents house hanging out.  We were going to do some senior pictures of a sister's boyfriend and we tried some, but the weather wasn't working with us.  Saturday we drove to Orange City, Iowa, the home of Northwestern College to drop another sister off and see her dorm room.  This room was ranked 3rd in the dorm room decoration contest.  They did an awesome job!  We met some old Taylor family friends, the Galloways, for lunch and my favorite part a good old game of basketball followed by a game of indoor soccer and swimming at the pool.  What a day!  

Sunday was a little better and we took more pictures of the boyfriend, which was really fun!  Maybe I'll post one just as a teaser. :)

Of course, I didn't take a single picture of any of this (except the senior pictures of the boyfriend :)).  It's embarrassing! I guess I'm still a beginner blogger.  And I will definitely be sure to take pictures of everything else from now on.  :)

That's God?

Last week Josh and I helped with a Spanish scavenger hunt put on by Pekin's Spanish club/classes.  Josh walked around with a group of students whose assignment was to take pictures of the items squeezing about 40 items into 25 pictures.  While we were doing this Jason and Mia got to go play at a friends house.  

Our friends said that they watched VeggieTales and when VeggieTales was over there was a commentary by the creators.  Jason after watching the men talking on the T.V for a little bit asked, "Who is that?"

Our friends replied, "That's who created Bob and Larry."

Amazed Jason said, "That's God???"

Inspiration

Tomorrow could possibly be one of the single most important elections in our nations history.  Sometimes, especially with all of the polls, one can feel like there is no hope for conservative ideas and values.  But there are more conservative people out there than we know.  One of my favorite photographers who have really inspired me are Jim and Lara Hicks-Davis.  They own Davis photography and they started a non-profit thirst relief program that brings drinking water to places where good water is hard to find.  They are also Christians.  On their blog was some great food for thought, so if you have a minute, check out their blog at www.davisphotographer.blogspot.com.  You can also read about them and what they do on their website - www.davisphotographer.com.  Enjoy!

**Since the address does not link to the website, if you scroll down a little farther the links are in my PLACES TO GO list. :)

Juice

My children can make the worst sound.  I cannot stand this sound.  Thankfully I am not alone.  I now have heard other mothers talking about "the whine" too.  It is the single most annoying, obnoxious sound to any mother's ears.  Mia who will be 2 in February has discovered this noise.  She has not been really saying too many words.  Jason talks a lot and she must figure that she doesn't have to.  I figured that she was holding out on me and here is my proof.  One morning at breakfast, she was making "the most annoying sound in the world" whine.  Nothing seemed to be the right thing and the noise continued.  I finally said to her, "Mia, what do you want?"

"Juice."

Toddler Fun

So I have begun the wonderous adventure of potty training with Mia.  She likes to sit on the potty and hates having her diaper put on, so I thought okay, let's do this.  Then we ran out of diapers and the question always pops into my head, "Do I get more diapers or just try doing training pants?"  Well, this time I thought, she's been doing really good during the mornings at staying dry and I thought, 'If you're going to do it, just do it.  Don't just do it half way.'  So I got more training pants, no diapers.  The first day she stayed dry during her nap!  I was so excited!!  Then bedtime came and I was nervous.  I was completely prepared for everything to be wet in the morning.  In the morning when she got up, we went potty right away, she was dry!! I could not believe it!  

'This is very encouraging', I thought.  Then everything started to go wrong.  She was just wetting all the time.  And she pooped.  (I lift my hat to all the mothers who have potty trained children, or used cloth diapers, I just have to say.)  When I start getting a whiff, my stomach just drops.  And I was just about to take her.  I knew she went after lunch and I'm just waiting for the right moment, because I don't want to take her too soon, but if I miss it..........and I missed it.  It wasn't too bad, thankfully.  I thought to myself, 'I can do this.'  We had a few more wets, I was putting plastic pants on her by then because we were getting down to the last couple pairs of pants.  She pooped again.  This time,  oh...my.  Thankfully the plastic pants were on.  We had made a run to the library and she just reeked.  When I came home, wow!   You can guess where we went right after that.........Wal-mart..............for diapers.

The problem is that now she doesn't seem to want to go potty at all.  I probably ruined it by doing so much all at once.  She refuses to sit on the potty and of course wants to have a diaper on instead.  I am kind of laying off for a couple days, but I am a touch worried that she is not going to be as cooperative now.

Pumpkin Carving - The Beginning

Our pumpkin carving history started in 2004.  We were expecting "J-bird" or "Little Joey" and Josh being the excited father-to-be (using an ultrasound picture for a reference) carved the likeness of our baby into a pumpkin.  

• 2005 - Josh did a likeness of Jason with his front two teeth.  Jason would have been 9 months old.
  
• 2006 - For our mini trip this year Josh and I went to Washington D.C. to visit Josh's high school friend Nathan and his wife Lindsey.  So as a tribute to that the pumpkin this year was of Washington D.C. (pic shown)
• 2007 - We had the privilege of being youth leaders at our church last year and so pumpkin carving was done with the youth group.

We'll see what Josh comes up with next year!