Quick Update (or, Excuses on Why I've Not Been Blogging. Take Your Pick.)

Things have been busy around here.  We celebrated Camille's birthday and then Kendra's birthday.  And since she didn't get one last year (Camille's birth and all), I figured we owed it to Kendra to let her have a party this time around, so we did that, too.  Then it was the Blue & Gold dinner for the cub scouts.  I got word that I would be released at the beginning of the month, but with the caveat that I keep working at it until after this banquet, so this had a sort of closure for me and it was a huge relief to finally have it done and checked off the list.  And then coming up this Sunday is Kendra's baptism!

For her baptism, I've got my parents and two sisters (plus one husband and three children) all flying in.  I'm beyond excited to see everyone again, but this also means cleaning my house.  And the more I look around, the more I keep discovering smudges all over my walls which leaves an inner monologue running through my mind:  How have we managed to damage this poor house so much in so little time????  Why are my kids so filthy???  How have I not taught them better than this???

So right now I'm in cleaning mode.  Next week, I'll get back to blogging mode.  I might even post pictures from some of these events!

Wish me joy and cleanliness with it all!


Oh-- and here's one picture I can't resist sharing right now:

Now that she no longer naps during church, the drive home is too soothing to resist

Tradition!

(Obviously, the title of this blog post is being sung loudly because it's from Fiddler on the Roof.  I didn't really need to explain that to you, did I?)


We place a huge emphasis on having happy family traditions in our church.  I think that's great, and I love stuff like that, but I think-- like so many things-- it's much easier to talk about than to actually accomplish.  How do you decide to start a tradition?  Where do you get the idea for one?  What if you try it and it sucks?  What if you like it, but then the next time around, you've just had a baby and you're too darn exhausted to stick with the tradition?

Stuff like this happens all the time, I think.

And, worst yet, often times I hear about other family's traditions and I think-- Man, that's so cool!  Why aren't we doing something amazing like that???  And then I worry about whether or not I'm allowed to copy other people's cool ideas.  (I guess it must be okay, or else we wouldn't have Pinterest, right?)  Usually that inner debate takes over until I forget what the cool thing was that I wanted to try.

So we don't have a lot of traditions here in the Smith household, but we do try.

At Christmas time, we've been trying something I saw on Mel's Kitchen Cafe: at the beginning of the month, she would wrap all their Christmas books up and put them under the tree, and then the kids would select one to unwrap each night and that would be their bedtime reading.  So it was an advent calendar with books!  I love that idea.  We've done it the last couple years, but with mixed results.  Like I said, I LOVE the idea, but it turns out that we're very busy all during the month of December.  For several of those nights, Craig is out Christmas shopping with one kid, leaving me to manage bedtime for everyone else on my own.  Guess what I forget to do every single time???  Or if we're out late for any of the many Christmas activities and rushing to get the kids to bed the second we get home?  Yeah, all that fun extra stuff goes out the window.  Ah, well.  We still try.

Another thing I'm trying out is an idea that I saw on facebook that I really liked (Yes!  I found a good idea!  On facebook!!!).  This was for large families and promised a way to make sure that each kid got some one-on-one time with Mom and Dad, something that I feel we struggle with.  The idea is that each month, on the day of their birth, that child gets to stay up late with Mom and Dad and do what they want (well, for us, anything that doesn't involve a screen/electronics): read a book, play a game, have a dance party, just hang out and talk.  The other kids can read in bed, but it's that kid's special evening.  We did it last month and the kids LOVED it.  I set reminders on my phone to go off every month so we don't forget.  Here's hoping we can keep this one going!

And finally, perhaps the only tradition that is totally original to us, and that is probably my kids' favorite thing: our Valentine's Day feast!  It's not nearly as cool as it sounds: basically, we light candles on the table and make whatever the kids want (EVERYTHING they want) for dinner.  Right now, this means frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, macaroni & cheese, and French toast.  So, yeah-- nothing you'd create a Pinterest page for.  But the kids LOVE it.  They get just as excited about this and anything we do.  So that makes it really fun for Craig and me, too.

It all started two years ago, when Craig and my plans to go out for a Valentine's dinner got canceled because of a snow storm.  That wouldn't have been a big deal, except I didn't really have any dinner  back-up dinner plan.  So we dug around in the freezer, found all our (highly processed) staples that kids love and made them all.  (I think maybe we didn't have enough of any one thing so we just did a little of everything?  Or maybe we just took everyone's suggestions, rather than picking one kid's favorite?  I don't even know any more...)  Anyway, the kids thought it was the best thing ever.  And insisted we do it again the next year, and the next.

And thus a tradition was born!

Happy Valentine's!

Please tell me-- what traditions do you have that you love?  What things have you tried that totally failed/didn't go how you wanted them to?  I want to hear all about it!

Pictures from the Party

I posted all about the Relief Society Christmas party held at my house.  I just have to share the pictures they took of everyone on the stairs so you can believe me when I say that we had a pretty good turn-out!

I'm near the top in a green shirt.  I'm glad I have such a nice ward here!

A History of My Interactions with Bugs

Like any normal person, I am not overly fond of bugs.  Growing up in the woods in Washington state, we never had much of a bug problem in our house, unless you count spiders (which, for the purposes of our discussion, totally count as "bugs").  We had high ceilings and rafters, so those were favorite places for spiders to lurk.  No amount of dusting ever guaranteed that you wouldn't find one more cobweb somewhere else.  And any time you left your clothing in a heap on the floor, you wanted to check them carefully when you finally got around to picking them up.  Especially in the winter time, it was not unlikely that a quick shake would yield some frantic scuttling away of a local arachnid.  Ewwww....  (Note that this never deterred us from leaving our clothes on the floor!)

But honestly, that was about it.  I don't remember EVER finding an ant in my house.  Pause for a moment and consider just how awesome that is.

When I lived in Africa, I had to put up with a lot of bugs.  Mosquitoes, as you would expect, in Tanzania.  And a lot of ants.  Of varying sizes.  There was also the time when we figured out that the strange rattling we would sometimes hear at night was caused by scorpions sleeping under our tent, probably trying to use our body heat to keep warm.  Delightful.  And there were termite mounds everywhere.

I hated the bugs in Africa, but I was also able to sort of detach from it all a little bit.  Bugs were part of Africa, and loving Africa meant putting up with bugs.

But as soon as I was back in the U.S., bugs were not to be tolerated any more.  This is AMERICA, for crying out loud!  First world countries destroy bugs!!!  Finding an ant in Utah used to enrage me.

And then I moved to Virginia.

Our move here was a full on, life changing experience.  I went from being a busy graduate student where I knew lots of people and had lots of friends, to being a stay-at-home mom to a newborn where I knew no one.  And Craig had a full time job and was gone all day, and was so stressed out by his first year of teaching that he would usually come home and just stare, zombie-like, in front of him.  It was not a fun or easy year for either of us.  And add to that my first experience with the occasional house centipede or silverfish, and I was sort of a wreck over the bugs.  (Reading this paragraph over again, I'm shocked that I didn't have postpartum depression.  This sounds like a recipe for it.)  (Also, I thought about inserting a few pictures in here, but then I remembered that I like you, so I won't.)

I once spoke with my Relief Society president, Betsy, about the bugs.  She was the one who identified what a house centipede even was, since I didn't know and didn't have internet to try and look them up.  Her description of them-- she called their legs "feathery"-- made them sound not as horrifying as they are.  Betsy has been a middle school science teacher her whole career, so she isn't squeamish.  In fact, when she had a hysterectomy, she asked the doctor if she could keep her uterus.  About as not squeamish as you can get.  (The doctor refused, but did take a picture of it for her, which delighted Betsy!  That doctor was my favorite ob-gyn ever...)

Anyway, about the bugs, Betsy simply said, "Well, you just have to become a predator in your home."  Something about that resonated with me.  This was MY home and I was going to PROTECT it.  I WOULD keep it safe from the evil, vile silverfish.  House centipedes, beware!  Alanna is on the hunt!!!

That got me through the first few years, including once when a silverfish was hanging around on the ceiling above Bentley's crib and I couldn't decide which was worse: leaving a creepy disgusting bug near my baby, or spraying pesticides right over his crib.  (I honestly don't remember what I finally decided...)

When we bought our first house, we went through a few different bug problems.  First it was box elder bugs.  Then we had the occasional cave crickets, until we replaced the carpet (???).  And then there was one truly horrific summer where we had a cockroach infestation in our kitchen.  We tried numerous things ourselves to get rid of them, but when we began finding them upstairs, I finally convinced Craig to hire an exterminator, who got rid of them very fast.  That was probably the best investment ever in my sanity.  I still shudder when I remember being afraid to ever go to the kitchen in the middle of the night, and declining to ever bring food to anyone (because who would want food from my kitchen?).  I would even wash every dish before using it to make dinner, and then again after we were done eating.  I was so paranoid of the cockroaches.  Ugh, it was awful.


So where I'm going with all this, is that our current bug problem is that we keep getting-- wait for it-- ladybugs!  Not tons of them-- maybe a couple a day?  Mostly in Ryder's room and my bathroom.


And I'm having a really hard time worrying about them too much. 

I know how much worse it could be.