It also took a while to reset my mind from packing and moving to staying. Still telling Tom occasionally that we're not looking for a new house in Colorado anymore, and he doesn't need to help his "father" find a new job, either. Now we're just readjusting to a normal life of staying here, planting a garden, and trying to catch up on months of neglected work.
Oh, and then there's work. Right after we changed our minds and agreed to stay, Natoma had a sudden urgent period of mandatory overtime to get orders completed. So Shad had two weeks in a row of near 60 hours. That almost killed me. I really, truly couldn't stand the kids anymore. Last week was a nice, normal 40 hour week that ended on Thursday and we got to go to Geneva, NE on Friday. We spent the night with Shad's parents, before going to Omaha for a youth temple trip on Saturday to do baptisms for the dead.
I should have mentioned before this that when Shad had all his overtime, I suddenly got bit with the family history bug and had to do it. It consumed me for about a week and we had to eat out or have sandwiches a lot because I'd lose myself and then suddenly realize it was 5 pm and I had no dinner plans. But I probably found about 30 names, 15 of which we were able to take to the temple. After the temple, Shad and I went to the Glendale Cemetery, just 3 miles east of Louisville, NE, just south of Omaha. That is where a large portion of the Hennings family (German ancestors down my paternal grandfather's side) are buried. So we went to do a bit of family history tourism and take pictures of headstones. The wind was fierce, but we came out with some 50 photos. I also noticed names on the headstones that are now starting to show up in census records as having married some of my relatives, so I've got a lot more work to go still to piece everyone together and find out who I'm related to. Then we'll probably visit the cemetery again on another Omaha trip.
I've decided to start socializing my Tom and Katie with animals. Tom's never been a big fan, which I attribute to my parents' dog Amie jealously barking anytime my dad held Tom as a baby. Tom has come a long way in his relationship with animals, but I still want him to feel comfortable with them and even enjoy them, rather than avoid them. What really inspired all of this was one afternoon sitting out on the porch swing with Dancy, a huge flock of turkey vultures glided overhead. They came just a couple at a time, but we saw about 40 of them. She screamed and flapped her arms with delight. Absolutely loved them! We've got a couple different friends in town who have farm animals, so I made arrangements to go visit the animals. We went to Martha's one day and saw her kittens, rabbit, turkeys, chicks, chickens, turtle, and the trees in her backyard where the vultures roost. Dancy happily touched all the animals, but Tom and Katie politely declined. A couple days later we went to Jennifer's house to see her dog, cat, rabbits, chickens and gerbils. She also has a horse, but the horse wasn't around for socializing. I told Tom and Katie I'd give them each a piece of candy for each animal they touched. Suddenly they were willing to pet everyone. We ended up going out to Pizza Hut for the lunch buffet instead. We needed lunch and were out of almost everything at home, so it worked out.
Easter happened. The Wednesday before Easter, I had put the kids to bed and was cleaning up the kitchen when the doorbell rang at 9 pm. Somebody left 3 Easter baskets on the doorstep. Since the kids were just freshly put in bed and not asleep yet, I let them have the fun of seeing the surprise baskets. The Saturday before Easter there was an Easter egg hunt at the courthouse at 2. In the afternoon. Possibly the most inconvenient time anyone could choose. After a bit of a frustrating morning (this was one of the Saturdays Shad was working), I put the kids down for naps at one and still decided to get them up at 1:45 for the hunt. Stupid. We got there right ON TIME instead of a few minutes early, and their age group was already going. Which pretty much means that it was done. They section off the grass around the courthouse into 4 quadrants and label them for age groups. The eggs are really just thrown out on the lawn (even for the older kids) and so it's a free for all once they let the kids across the line. They went one quadrant at a time, and the whole thing was done in 15 minutes. And then everyone just left. Nobody even stuck around for socializing. Just grab the candy and run home. Definitely not something I want to instill in my kids, and nothing we'll participate in in the future. We did see some friends we used to play with at the library who moved to Wichita, and they stayed to visit. But we came home and I put Katie and Dancy back down for naps, and let Tom have quite time upstairs until Shad came home. We had the missionaries over for dinner Sunday, died eggs Monday morning, and then had egg hunts Monday night for Family Home Evening.
My cousin Michael got married on April 25. He and his wife Clara stopped at our house late that Monday night as a hotel stop on their way from Cincinnati to Provo, UT. I couldn't stay up any longer, so I didn't see them that night, but got to visit with them in the morning. Katie and Tommy were coloring with crayons when Clara came down and they thought it was so cool that she sat right down at their table and colored with them. We enjoyed breakfast together, then Michael played "Let It Go" on the piano with Clara singing. Tom and Katie thought it was pretty cool, even though they declined singing along. I had Michael drive me to Natoma to pick up my van, while Clara played with the kids. They built a cake with the bricks. Shad's been driving to work this week instead of biking because of the 30 mile winds.
Dancy has had an explosion of development in the past month. She started sitting herself up, pulling up on furniture, climbing up one step onto our stair landing (and down), climbing up the stairs (full flights!), walking when we hold her hands, talking more, signing "more" and understanding "all done" and "bed," waving and saying "hi." She's starting to refuse bottles. Guess she's just getting to grown up for that:) She's trying to crawl on her knees; Tom and Katie get really excited when they see her, and exclaim, "Mom! Mom, she's doing it! Oh. She's on her belly again." Dancy just loves her dada and lights up any time we mention his name. She smiles, flaps her arms and says his name, "Dada! Dada! Dada! Dada!" She is an extremely social girl who loves to go out to see people and play with kids her age and size, but she also still likes to flirt and play shy by smiling and hiding in my chest when people talk to her.
Katie is fully potty trained, a fact that Tommy takes great pride in because he was instrumental in helping train her, though she's been reverting a little bit last week. She had an accident every day last week, and it's been frustrating. Tommy is a big boy and goes overnight now! So proud of him.
I am 20 weeks pregnant and enjoy feeling baby movement.
And now for 2.5 months of pictures. Don't worry, there aren't that many. I was sick half that time, remember?
Katie is the only one in her class for nursery (ages 18 months to 3 years) at church. So she has formed a special bond with her teacher, Jocelyn. Often, as soon as Katie sees Jocelyn, she grabs her bag and runs to sit with Jocelyn. Katie tells me all the time that, "Jocelyn is my best friend!" or "Jocelyn is my girl friend!" They play beauty parlor, since it's just the two of them.
Katie is always delighted to show off her hairdos and give a twirl.
This is from a Sunday in March when they first started it. I've since stopped fixing Katie's hair before we go to church, and her church bag also now contains a comb with hair ties and clips.
She's also wearing a new dress, which she loves.
Tom still practices his photography skills, whenever I allow him to use my camera. The following pictures of toys are from him.
How could I have forgotten this? This was a grumpy day for me. I was cranky and snapping at the kids for every little thing, so I took a time out in the basement to cool off. When I came upstairs, I saw the beginnings of this yarn escapade. They found a full skeen of golden rod yarn that Shad had left out from a project. I saw them run a couple laps across the living room with it and thought to myself, "I can either get upset and yell at them, or I can ignore it and choose to be happy. I'll just let this one go." And so they ran 5-6 laps around the dining room and living room.
Tom proudly showing off his yarn.
Katie showing off yarn too. She dresses herself.
Easiest way to undo this mess was to cut in one place. I then spent the evening untangling and winding yarn balls. It was surprisingly calming and therapeutic.
Dancy is so proud of herself getting on the stairs!
One night having graham crackers for snack, Tom exclaimed, "Mom! What look at my graham cracker! What state is it?" I looked over and could very clearly see the state of Idaho.
I had him place it on his map (he knows 90% of the states west of the Mississippi, and about a third east of the Mississippi).
Katie copied at made Idaho too, but ate it right as I took her picture.
Tom thinks he's so funny to eat Idaho.
Visit with Michael and Clara. Katie didn't want to be in the picture, but she is happy to see it now. "There's Michael! And there's Clara!" Tom was our photographer.
This was hilarious, but she moved before I got the camera. When I came in to get Dancy from naptime, I couldn't find Katie. But the kids' laundry basket was on her bed, stuffed with her blankets. Upon closer inspection, I saw a foot in there, too. But then she climbed out when I came back with the camera, and was sad when I asked her to climb back in. She thought I was telling her to continue napping.
We had a weekend in Colorado (which I'll write about later) and got a cute cousins picture with Ryan.
I bought a new sippy cup (kids just beat those up) so Dancy is very happy to be big now and proud of herself for figuring it out.
We've also been enjoying lunch picnics on the porch in the warm weather.
Tom and Katie eat in their house.
We had some play time with Elder Hammond and Elder Thompson on Monday after finally having coordinating schedules to have dinner together. Elder Hammond pushed Katie in the tree swing, while Elder Thompson through a ball on the roof and helped Tommy coordinate getting hit by the ball as it fell off. It was a fun game!
And in case you missed it, we're pretty excited for a third girl. Guess we'll have to keep up our rate of baby production so that Tommy gets a brother soon...
And two videos:
Green Eggs and Ham
How Fish Become Food
