Once upon a time…

there was a faucet in a sink in the kitchen in the home of a blogger.  It was used constantly by all in the home, and as it was used, it began to break. It wibbled and wobbled and leaked and squeaked, and one day the blogger declared it was time to replace it.

(The water squelching out from in between the linolium tiles in their kitchen may have had something to do with it.  Who would have thought that a leaky faucet could do something like that?!)

RESOLVED

Whereas she spends a large portion of every day in the same room as said faucet,
 and whereas she uses it constantly,
 and whereas the whole kitchen is getting totally made over
  when the house gets paid off,

Therefore she is justified in purchasing something she finds
a) asthetically pleasing,
b) functional,
c) of sufficient quality & style to last until and beyond the kitchen remodel.

Thus let it be written, thus let it be done.

So the entire family made a pilgrimage to Lowe’s where a new faucet was purchased.  And then the blogger, upon taking it home, decided it was not the right faucet after all.

The next Saturday Mr. Incredible took it back, in pursuit of the “right faucet,” while the blogger took the kids elsewhere (to give him time to install it, of course.)

Surprise!

She came home to find not one, not two, but seven faucets waiting for her on the kitchen table.  Mr. Incredible didn’t want to pick the wrong one.  Isn’t he sweet?

It took the blogger a long, long time to pick which one she wanted.  In fact, the decision still hasn’t been made.  But this morning she had an interesting thought.

“It’s Sunday,” thought she, “and John probably shouldn’t install this faucet on the Sabbath.  (We try not to work on Sunday, you know.) 
“If I put it in myself,” the blogger reasoned, “It would be service, since I know he’s planning on doing it as soon as he can.  Service is okay for Sunday. :) I can’t wait to see the surprise on his face when he sees what I did for him!”

Then when Mr. Incredible was home with the blogger later that day, he said, “If you let me know which one of these faucets you want, I can put it in for you.”

The blogger’s eyebrows raised inquisitively.

“It would be work if you did it,” he continued, “but if I do it, it’d be service since I’m doing it for you.”

“Talk about funny!” thought the blogger, “This will make a great post!”

And they all lived happily ever after.  The end.

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So what would you say if I told you I went to a posh little boutique and fell in love with these hats?  And then went and bought them for Christmas?

(And what would you guess they cost me?)

But seriously – how could you not just melt over these?  The yarn was so soft, the colors just perfect…

 So yeah, I went a little crazy.

But wasn’t it so worth it?!

 

Okay, you should know me better than to think I’d splurge at an artsie little store for ANYTHING unless it was 95% off – even these yummy hats.  Matter of principle.

No, I didn’t find them at a “posh little boutique.”  I doubt such adorable hats *could* be found in the perfect sizes, styles, and in coordinating colors.   And if they could, I’m certain I wouldn’t afford them.  These wonderful little works of art were crochetted with love by my dear, darling mother.  Isn’t she amazing?!

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So these are basically all the photos I have from the Smith-side family gathering on Friday.  I’m the most camera-happy of all the family over there, and their not-as-picture-crazy-ness rubs off on me when I’m there.  It is what it is, and it’s always a great time when we get together.  There just isn’t always proof later.

The super-cute little Santa up there is Twin#2 – well over 6lbs now at a month old and doing great.  They both are.  And their parents are surviving, even without much sleep. 

AND!

That charming turquoise polyester suit with matching slippers is –GUESS WHAT!– John’s blessing outfit!  (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)  My mother in law found it just in time.  Freedom fit it then, but it probably doesn’t fit now that it’s been a  few days.  Can’t tell you how tickled pink I am about that 30 year old outfit.  I was hoping to snatch a photo of John, Freedom, *and* his mommy – but said grandma was holding Twin#1 during my window of opportunity.  Rough life, having so many sweet little grandbabies to hold.

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Sorry about the fuzziness, Pearletta.  We might stage and retake this to give you the credit your beautiful long hair deserves.

And yes, C’s nighty turned out just a tad bit too big.  Like, it could fit me.  Whoops.  Looks like I’ve got her covered next Christmas as well!  By then D’s should fit E, and E’s should fit F… All I’ll have to do is find more blue snowflake fleece to make D another, and we’ll have matching homemade jammies next year too!  Sweet!

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Ho ho ho.

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Doesn’t that post title just make you grin inside?  These are indeed happy days for the residents here in Smithtopia.  We’ve had all four children healthy and well for two weeks now! (…although that statement may be invalid as of this evening… here’s hoping it was just something Eagle ate and not something contageous.  Eww.  Nothing like a stomach bug for Christmas, eh?  All the other nursery kids will LOVE us for it.) 

I’ve had some pictures needing posting with their stories attached.  Took me a while to get to it, but I thought I’d take a few minutes to catalog them here now they’ve made the arduous journey from camera to computer.  Forgive me, I’m not inserting the pictures into the text like a good blogger should.  You’ll have to click on them to get a better view yourself – and I just saved myself a half-hour of playing with this stupid thing.  It’s astounding anybody visits my humble site with the lack of visual appeal.

Someday I really will fix that boring banner up there.  Really, I will.

YOUNG LOVE

Did I mention that Cinderella came home from church one day talking about her “boyfriend?”  Yes, she still has this little crush on a little boy in her Sunday School class.  No, I am not really okay with it… But I remind myself that I fell in love with a kid named Derrick in Kindergarten.  I even fought over who got to sit next to him in the storytime circle and got myself in trouble.  Me!  In trouble!  First and last time.

Anyway, she wrote him a Christmas card all on her own as we were getting into the holiday season.  Very sweet, except that she was using a card someone had written to the Bishop.  Whoops.  That’s okay, though.  She was quite happy to do it all over again with a real Christmas card.  Go ahead and click on these to see the details of her artwork.  It appears she is quite smitten.  She gave me the interpretation thereof when she was finished.  The arrows are so he’ll know to look at the picture of her.  Cute.

(Should I tell her I found out that Mr.C has lots of “girlfriends” at school, too?  Quandary.)

The following really should be its own post, but I don’t know how to get the sleeping kid pictures out of this gallery.  So…. oh well.  Here it is.

SLEEPING LIKE A BABY 

Oh, how I love our bedtime routine!!!!!!!!!!  Now if I could just get myself into one, we’d be set.  I promised the secret of how I get to Freedom to sleep through the night, so here it is.

When C was ~9mo’s old and a nightmare to put to bed, my friend recommended a book called Babywise.

I hated it.  Passionately.  Never have I wanted to throw a book through a window, before or since, but that one… Mm.  Still a fantasy of mine. 

Why?  I was a severely sleep-deprived new mother with no clue as to how to get my baby to sleep well for naps or at night.  It was all a hodge-podge of whatever-she-seemed-to-want.   Bleh.  And here was this book – supposedly the solution to all my problems – and all it did for the first 60 pages was talk about how wonderful their plan is, how smart they are, and how glorious a well-rested baby can be.

AHHHHHH!  Get to the point!  Preferably using small words and short sentences!  Please!

So here is my summary of their brilliant and effective plan.

Ready?

Sleep – Eat  – Play.  Repeat.  (Note: DO NOT feed baby to sleep.)

There ya go.  I just saved you 150 pages.  Or something like that.  (It’s been 5 years, y’know.)  You’re welcome!

At any rate, you try to get your newborn into that pattern as soon as you can (although a newborn is going to do quite a lot of sleeping).  During the day you try to keep them up to play after they eat – At night you let them go right back to sleep if they will.  When you get a baby to go to sleep w/ a not-full tummy, it means they have less likelihood they’ll wake up prematurely with tummy pain or diaper needs.  (Translation: Longer naps!  Longer naps!  Yay!!!!)

Somewhere between 9-12weeks old they start skipping their night-time meals and eventually go for a nice solid 8 hours.

It’s beautiful.

And thus far it’s worked for the three babies on which I’ve subscribed to this plan.  Yes, they get sick and throw off their groove.  Yes, teething can be disruptive.  But usually they snap right back into their healthy sleep habits.

Disclaimer:  My three boys (even as babies) were *all* significantly less “spirited” (read: colic-y, persistent, and extroverted) than their big sister.  Who knows how this would have panned out if I had tried it on her.

And ironically, Freedom is now done with his later-ish nap.  He’s experimenting with different kinds of cries and it’s kind of cute, actually.  I shall stop writing now, of course.  This post is already too long as it is, though.  Goodness!  What are you doing still reading?!  Don’t you have better things to do?

Just kidding.  I love that you’re here, that you read all my ramblingness, and that you are thinking how much you’d love to leave a comment.  You’re wonderful and I love you!  Merry Christmas!

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In love with who? My husband, of course. But also his job. Mm-hm. I love what he does, even if he’s bored with it.

Have you seen the new websites our church has put together? Seriously, folks, it’s awesome stuff. Awesome, wonderful, SOOOO much better than the old stuff with which you may be more familiar.  My talented and intelligent sweetheart is involved with creating this stuff somehow. (Not content, though.  If you have problems with content, he’s not the guy to hound.)  John tells me, but I immediately forget how to relay what exactly it is he does with computers because I don’t understand much of how it works.  IT something or other.  One of these days I’ll get it down.

Anyway…

Their Christmas site, for one, I love.  (Christmas?  They have an entire site just about Christmas?  Yes they do.)  Can you believe this has been up ALL MONTH and I just now found out about it.  Sheesh.

Their new site for youth. 

Fabulous, even if it is still getting the wrinkles smoothed out..  I wish I was 12 again.  Well, okay, I don’t.  I (think) I’m a much better person now, and I love my life too much right now to trade places with anyone – even myself… But still.  Check it out.  What?!  You can’t go there?  Okay.  Sorry, folks.  False alarm.  I got to see it -lucky me-when John was logged in to work.  Silly me.  I thought the “labs” version was available to everyone.  But it’s not.  Boo… Good news, though.  It’ll be public in just over a week.  Whew! 

The jesuschrist.lds.org site.  Very nice. 

Just for the record, I can.not. wait for lds.org to get its facelift too! (!!!!!!!!!)

PS:  Not that you *have* to, becase of course that’s up to you — But if you have input for John as to how these sites could be better, feel free to leave some feedback here.  He’d love to hear it.  And if you have input along the lines of “Dude!  This is supercalafragalistic!  You so totally ROCK!”  That’d be nice for him to hear too.  He thinks my opinion is a bit biased.  Which it is. 

PPS:  To members of my stake – You can go to http://labs.lds.org, sign in, and get a peek at that facelift I was talking about. 

Their new ward directory is a huge improvement, and the Conference stuff is great. 

I love how you can highlight things in the talks, make notes right there, tag different topics… Welcome -finally- to the present, lds.org!

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