Playing Dollhouse

So I am sorry to admit, that I am not usually one of those mothers who LOVE to play with their kids. I love reading to my children, I could read to them for hours, and sometimes I do, but playing...well I'm pretty lame at it. However, this is one of the MANY areas in which I will like to improve as a mother.
A few months back I found this pamphlet called "to the mothers in Zion" it was from a talk given back in the 80's by Pres. Ezra Taft Benson. He gave a number of suggestions on how to spend time with children. To summarize he said the following:
1. Be at the crossroads- aka when they leave and return from school, dates, when they bring friends home, etc.
2.Be a Real Friend-aka Listen to your children, really listen, and among other things PLAY WITH THEM!
3.Read to your children- This is probably the one in which I do best! ;)
4.Pray with your children
5.Have weekly Home Evenings
6.Be together at Mealtimes
7.Read Scriptures Daily
8.Do things as a Family
9.Teach your Children
10. Truly Love Your Children.

Anyway, I have tried, and many times failed, but stilled tried really hard to apply these principles in my life, and "Be a Real Friend" has been on my mind a lot. I tried to play with little M, since little T is still pretty young, and he is mostly satisfied with smiling, and chewing on things. Anyway, to get to the point, I find that as kids get a little older, this mandate of being a real friend gets easier....so for all you mothers who are not PLAYERS...wait, that came out wrong! I played Dollhouse today, for a while, I even lost track of time a little, and the best part, I REALLY TRULY enjoyed it. It was not something I was doing for the good of my kids, but because it was fun! and I guess I just wanted to share that good feeling with the rest of the world.
so good night to all you Players!

Terran

Maija with her brand new baby brother



On August 28th, at the very early hour of 4:20 am, we welcomed the newest member of our family, Terran. He is as his sister says "the cutest little Chunker!" I'm afraid my lack of announcing this great news earlier, is directly related to my lack of sleep. He is pretty awesome, and I can't believe how much I love this little guy!
Terran is also the newest model for his Daddy's photography, here are a couple of pictures of Terran that his Daddy took, I love my two little angels. Maija is doing well, and we are all slowly adjusting to our new growing family.

My sweet angel

If you need family pictures, you might like this.....

Wyatt is trying to get more practice and build his portrait portfolio… for a limited time he is taking clients for $60 portrait sessions (50% off his standard rate). See http://photos.digitalcave.ca/portrait-sessions.html for details and contact information. You can also see a sample of his portraits, and I know I'm bias, but he is pretty awesome!!!!

Mac Personal Finance Software/About.com Readers' Choice Awards

Wyatt's software Buddi has been nominated for a Mac Personal Finance Software reader's choice awards. He has worked very hard on this piece of software, it started as a way to keep track of our family's finances, and it became a project a few years in the making. I'm VERY proud of Wyatt, and not only his ingenuity, but his selfless work, this software can be downloaded for free, and used by anyone, it is cross platform, so it will work on just about any operating system (ie. Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc). So if you are reading this post, and have an extra 20 secs please vote for him here. You can vote daily until March 8, 2011.
Thanks again, and if Wyatt happens to read this....I love you, you are awesome, and I'm super proud of you.

What I've read lately....

So I started the year reading a really fun manuscript from a close friend that is trying to get her book published..I won't say more about the book, or friend...but I cannot wait until I see her book out, and then I will tell you all about it. I'm so impressed with this person, she is so smart, and funny, and she writes from what she knows, which makes her writing ever better, I love her, and her writing, I just can't say enough about how wonderful this person is, not only an enjoyable person to be around, but someone I truly admire.....so to my mystery book I give two thumbs up!!!



A Thousand Splendid Suns- I've tried reading this book in the past, for some reason the first time I just could not get into it. But this time, as I picked it up, I could not put it down. It is such a sad book, and with all the news reports about Afghanistan, it was interesting to read a real story, to bring the lives of the people in that country to a more personal level. For somme reason the sadness I felt while reading this book reminded me of The Book of Negroes by Laurence Hill, if you read that one, you might enjoy this book too.
It was for sure not an entertaining book, but it was a beautifully written, and well told story...so if any of you guys are looking for an intelligent book, give A Thousand Splendid Suns a chance.



Around the world in 80 days- This is one of my classics for the year, I wish I had read it in French, but I will try that later on. It was such a fun book to read, but not really the type of book I generally read, but it felt like I was sharing the adventure with the characters. It is an adventure, a love story, a book that teaches you a little bit about the world. Not a difficult read for a 'classic."



Everybody is Beautiful- This book actually make me laugh out loud. It is the story of a young mom as she moves to a new city, and learns to find a passion in life, while still giving her all to her young family. Mostly I enjoyed it, because it made me laugh.

Not sure what I will read next, this year, I want to read just for the pleasure of reading, and so far I'm loving it!

FHE and little M

For about a good year or so we have been getting together as a family, and having Family Home Evening, I'm very proud of this, and what made me think of this? Well tonight after FHE (we do it weekly...sometimes we miss Mondays ;) ), Maija said "can we do it again?!!" She LOVES family home evening, and I have the children's song book, and the new nursery manual to thank for that. Maija loves to sing, so as long as we have an opening song, and a closing song, she loves whatever we do. I'm sharing this, because for the longest time, we had no clue how to go about doing FHE with a little baby/toddler.
The nursery manual has REALLY simple lessons, that make gospel principles easy to teach, and you can download the coloring pages from the church's website, and print them to color during FHE. Maija is a Sunbeam now so tonight, we tried something new we read an article from the friend, and she really liked that.
The Church's songbook is pretty awesome, if you are like me, and don't know too many of the primary song, then you can go online, and listen to them, and learn them with your little ones.
By the way, by no means think that our FHEs are perfect, generally at least two out of three people are doing summersaults, and we are pretty much the most off key family EVER, but the fact that Maija loves that time, just makes me a little too happy for words...please if you guys have any FHE ideas that work for your family with little ones, please share them under comments, I will really like to try out new things
Peace out.

Happy 2011

So it is New Years Resolution time again....well there is a few things I will like to accomplish...I think I'm going to leave out the fitness goal out for a little bit of time...more on that later. But I think I will concentrate on mind, and spiritual fitness for now.
1. Read the Old Testament
2. Keep up with Sunday School lessons weekly (Read the New Testament)
4. Complete my Personal Progress goals.
3. Read 10 classics from the BBC list
4. Read the Book of Mormon..I know this doesn't seem like a lot, but I think I want to keep things VERY simple.

It is a heavy read oriented list, but I think this upcoming year will already bring many blessings, so I think I will keep it simple.

Good luck everyone with your New Years Resolutions!...and you, what are your goals for 2011???