St Patrick's Day 2009

So Dallan, Mom is off doing some choir tour with Garrett and that means she will not be forwarding your letter to me this week until after she gets back. So since I am writing this on Tuesday, Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I know you will probably miss it until next Monday when you have P-day again. First af all I need to lay a guilt trip on most of my siblings for their lack of note or letter writing to you. If they have written and not also sent their greeting my way I will forgive them but admonish them to keep me in on the loop. I am beginning to feel as if my kids are the only ones who make catastrophes happen and I need other stories from my siblings to know that my kids are somewhat normal and that Heavens gate is not already shut on the lot of us.
On the subject of my dear little children I need to throw in some disclaimers about Hunters recent mess making behavior. Now the amount of times he has dumped out baby formula seem off the charts. I should be putting the stuff away way up high right. -Well I am. Most of the messes are from the little can of formula that is in the diaper bag which is not always diligently placed up high. It must also be noted that I have taken away Hunters Bottle. He has no interest in a sippy cup he would rather drink out a regular cup which he does quite well but in the mean time the boy is not getting all of his calories from the moo juice so he is HUNGRY! I give him snacks all day long and cook good meals at meal times but he is a grazer and never tanks up so he is always looking for something else to eat. If you look back at the log of his messes they are all food related with the exception of the bucket of mud. I do need to tell you about the strawberry mess this week. I had bought some strawberries and put them in the fridge. Then we all went to bed and Jon and I stayed up and watched a movie. Well hunter stayed up as well and got into the strawberries as well as the wipes and a can of formula (I know he did it again) Well as I was cleaning up the mess in the middle of the night I thought that Hunter must have eaten at least 5 berries though I could only find evidence that he had eaten 2 Well the next morning my kids wake up and come and ask me why they each had a strawberry on their pillow. Hence the 3 missing berries. Hunter was either A) Sharing with his brothers and sister. Or B) trying to plant evidence to cover up his crime. I don’t think he is a criminal master mind yet but you can never be too sure.
William has learned this week how to go from being on his belly to a sitting upright position. No forward motion yet unless you count nose dives when he is trying to get back down on his belly from the sitting position. He has also cut a second tooth to go along with the one he cut when we were in Hawaii. He is very fond of eating baby foods and I think wishes I would find more time to sit down and shovel the goo into his endearing smile.
Stiles and Marcus have been constantly at each others throats for the past two weeks. Stiles is quick to tease and Marcus is quick to throw a screaming tantrum to get Stiles in trouble. Jon and I have come to the decision that they could use their own rooms for a few months and have plans to move Stiles to the room in the basement next week. Hopefully we will have less fights over who is and isn’t doing what and who’s fault it might really be can be determined more easily. Maybe we should just let them duke it out but a breather from each other might be just the thing.
Erica is trying her hand at hand writing. Yesterday she sat down with the calculator and wrote all of the numbers and then we counted them out and is often writing some sort of symbol and bringing it to me and asking what letter it is she wrote. She is actually getting pretty good. Her E are still backward but I can see the rest of the letters in her name starting to evolve.
Marcus is plugging away at his reading. The last few nights we have been turning him a little bit lose with reading scriptures and his ability to sound things out is really good. He is still stuck with the word “the” but that word is so stupid in our language because there is no way in the world that you can sound it out. I amazes me that anybody can learn this language. It is truly messed up!
Jon went snowmobiling with the scouts this last weekend. It was a trip they had planned when he was still with the youth and a few of the boys hunted him down and demanded to know if he was coming with them. Well they didn’t have to twist him arm too hard. He had fun and the other leaders said that the boys really enjoyed that Jon was there because “He is like the rest of the boys”
We had the pine wood derby this week in our ward. We were nervous not having done one before (you realize we are all girls) But it went off with out a hitch and one of our less active but getting ready to be baptized families was there with their boy and their boy took 2nd over all and the whole family seemed to be at ease and everybody there made sure to introduce themselves and make them feel welcome and then they came to church on Sunday and sat in the middle row towards the front instead of hiding out in the back. I can understand now a little bit better why Scouts is Part of the church. Before this it was always kind of a mystery to me. But now I think I get it!
Yesterday we went out to the hot tub for FHE and since the daylight saving time thing has happened it was quite light and warm outside when we ventured out. And as we were sitting there a robin came and landed on our light pole and I pointed it out to the kids and let them know that since we have seen a robin spring is on it’s way. The kids were so excited with this declaration you would have thought that I had said that “we took a vote and Christmas will now be held twice a year!” they have been asking when spring will come daily for quite a while now. We told them that it will still be cold and that we still might get snowed on but that the snow won’t say longer than a couple of hours and we will be able to start working in the yard soon. They were very dishearten with the idea that it could snow again. Little fickle children!
I love you tons and we pray for you always. The church is true. Work hard and the work will be easy

Love Monica
PS Beware the ides of March oh wait, I said that last week!