Girls will be Girls

I love having a girl. It is fun to play dress up and get fancy. To watch her cuddle her little brother and try to help and comfort him when he gets hurt. To watch her get excited about baby dolls, princesses, dancing and playing in her kitchen. I love watching her learn to do her hair and seeing the fun (although admittedly somewhat strange) ways she does it. I love that she loves to help. It is fun to teach her to bake and cook and to see what types of foods she learns to love in the process (eggplant anyone!)

With all there is to love, unfortunately, there is the girlfriend factor. Perhaps some of you all remember the silly games and things girls do to each as "friends". Already she has come home from school telling me she isn't sure she wants to be friends with this girl or that one because they are "mean" and hurt her feelings. Of course with a little prodding it is easy to see that it is just a case of "girls will be girls", obviously she is just as much at fault as the other girls are. Wish me luck, I think I am in for a long 15+ years with our little drama queen!

Breakfast anyone?

This morning I got up to get Jared his warm milk. I left the room for a second and came back only to find him pulling the box of cookies off the shelf. He had been lucky enough to get one of these last night after dinner, so he knew exactly what he was going to be getting if he got the box open. I decided I needed to get some pictures of this little mischievous guy.

I told him that we weren't have cookies for breakfast and this was his response. I guess he didn't really believe me. Plus I was telling him all this as I was snapping pictures of him. He just loves hamming it up for the camera. He is definitely our little charmer.

I guess he got the cookie after all!

Tag I'm It...

Okay, thanks Alli! I always hate these things because I can never think of anything to say. When you are perfect you don't have any secrets or quirks to post!!! Anyway, here goes with my 6 quirks...

1. I am very particular about my vegetable chopping. I once asked Steve to help me with dinner by chopping up an onion. However, he does it in a more haphazard sort of way. So a few nights later we were making chicken pot pies to give away and he asked if he could help by chopping onions and I told him I would do it. He could tell I said it in a weird way and he asked why. So, I had to tell him that he didn't cut them all uniform and I wanted them to look good in the dish (as if you can even see the onions in the chicken pot pie)!

2. I haven't had a hamburger in I don't know how long. It has been atleast a year probably closer to 3 or 4 maybe more. Ask me what the best veggie burgers are, and I definitely have an opinion and a bunch you could try, but we just don't like hamburgers around our house!

3. I don't know how to boil an egg. Okay, so I know the general rules, put the egg in the boiling water and cook until done. But we never eat them, so I have no idea how long you would cook them. Elizabeth asked for cooked eggs the other day and I had to look it up! I can make you a great falafel (and pretty much out of my head), but ask me to boil an egg and I am clueless.

4. I drink soymilk. My brother in law thinks we are a little (or perhaps a lot) on the weird side around our house. We don't have lots of meat and we eat all sorts of soy products. I even like tofu!

5. I have little to no willpower when it comes to eating treats! I love cookies and I can eat a whole batch if left unwatched in a room by myself with them. It is a dangerous situation to put me and cookies together. Steve and I once ate an entire bundt cake in 2 days by ourselves (this was when we were first married and had no kids even!) This phenomenon is not easily seen since I seem to be good at resisting when I have someone watching me! (Melissa, this is why I throw away perfectly good cookies, cupcakes, brownies, etc - otherwise I would be the size of a barn!)

6. I love chickpeas. These little tasty beans make up some of my favorite foods hummus and falafel. Plus they are great roasted with tamari sauce or even baked in some BBQ sauce. And they are great for you too! You should try some tonight!

Okay, I am suppose to tag 6 people but I just don't know if I can do that so here are a few (no pressure, just do it if you want :)) - Melissa, Sarah, and Michelle.

Very Thoughtful!

As I was lazing about in bed this morning trying to convince myself to get up, I was listening to Elizabeth get ready for school. She was packing her snack. The past few days she has taken some fruit leathers as part of her snack, and she told me that since she wasn't sure what flavor she would want when it was snack time, she had to take a bunch. Well, one day at snack time she shared all her fruit leathers with the kids sitting at her table, plus she took time to notice and remember what flavor the kids picked. Now on to this morning. I heard her in the kitchen talking quietly to herself while searching through the fruit leathers saying, "Jack likes cherry, Julia likes grape, Ben likes strawberry." I didn't ask her before she left, but I assumed from overhearing her talking that she pack a fruit leather for each of her table mates. What a sweetheart!

Along with that, her friend Ally has been sick the past two days. I told Elizabeth that maybe we could take Ally a surprise today after school if she wasn't feeling better. So, just in case Ally was feeling better, Elizabeth pack two treats/snacks (a sucker & some animal crackers) for her friend to pick from so her friend would know Elizabeth felt bad that she had been sick. Kudos for the thoughtfulness little one!

Catching up

Well, I have finally had some time to catch up on the happenings around our house over the past few weeks. We got our internet installed last week, and I am beginning to get the hang of our new schedule - I think! So, the next 8 or so entries are all about the things that have happened since we moved in.

We are loving our new neighborhood and our new house. And even though we are realizing how much work a new house can be, we are enjoying the opportunities and settling feeling it has given us, knowing we could stay here forever and be perfectly content.

I hope you enjoy the following stories and anecdotes about life in our new home.

The Tooth Fairy Returns

Elizabeth lost her second tooth just over a week ago on Friday September 12th. She was really hesitant to let me pull it out, but the dentist had told her she need to do it because the other tooth was already coming up and it didn't have any where to go. She finally let me help her get it out after I put some orabase numbing gel on it. She was excited that she was the one that pulled it completely out though, because I didn't quite get it with the floss.

With her tooth that night she left a note for the tooth fairy asking her what she did with all those teeth she collected. The tooth fairy, who incidentally is not very creative, left a note saying she kept them in a very large pillow case under her own pillow. Along with her reply, the tooth fairy left her token golden dollar coin which Elizabeth was very excited about.

Congratulations Elizabeth on loosing your second tooth!

Funny Happenings Around the Kettle's House

Here are just a few of the funny bloopers and blunders that have happened since we have moved in.

The Case of the Overflowing Dishwasher
Coming from a home with no dishwasher, we were grateful to finally have one. We didn't bring any dishwasher soap with us, but I have an environmentally friendly laundry soap that I use that I read oodles of comments from people mentioning that they used it in their dishwasher and it worked great. They said they used 1 tablespoon. So, the first night in our house I had the dishwasher loaded with some dishes we had unpacked and thought I would give it a whirl. After about 30 minutes of the dishwasher going, I happened to walk into the kitchen and saw it spewing forth a plethora of bubbles and water. Apparently that soap wasn't going to work in our dishwasher, oops!

Raindrops are coming through my door
The day we moved in turned a little ugly around 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning, and the rain steadily increased over the next few hours. As my mom and I were unpacking boxes of food and dishes we were collecting the boxes of stuff I wasn't sure about in our mudroom. After the rain had been going for a while my mom took a box in and noticed a small pond of water by the door. It was closed and had been for quite some time. We started getting concerned that perhaps Steve's first order of business might have to be fixing or replacing the door, when we realized the storm door had not been closed during this time. We closed the storm door, mopped up the pond of water and prayed. Luckily no more torrents of water swept into the mudroom. Good thing too, because Steve had plenty of projects on his list already!

London Ladders Crashing Down
Since we moved in Steve has been steadily working away at a room in attic. He spent the first week after we moved in up there and traipsed through the renters house multiple times a day. He felt a bit awkward doing this and when he discovered he couldn't finish it all that week, he decided to just enter through the roof window via a ladder. This past Saturday night we had attended an Elders Quorum social at our neighbor's house. The wind really started picking up and so we moved the party inside. Not until we got home and saw Steve's extension ladder crashed into the side of the fence with a healthy chunk missing did we even consider what the outside commotion would mean for us. Oops, I guess that adds one more thing to Steve's list, fixing the fence!

Bare Bum = Poopy Floors
This morning I was changing Jared's diaper just before we headed out the door to take Elizabeth to the bus stop. I was trying to hurry and had already removed the pee wet diaper he was wearing when I realized that box of diapers I had just bought were with Dad at the train station. Oops! I spent a minute or two scrambling around looking for a spare diaper. I finally found one and hurried in to grab Jared and stick the diaper on him so we could go, when I noticed a little poo on the ground. I thought perhaps he had just started going so I thought I might be able to catch it. However, after a visual scan of the room I noticed a nice pile of poop right on the floor. Thank goodness for hardwood, that is all I can say!