Surprise Snow Day

Still catching up, so this is from January 21, 2010

I know it wouldn't be a surprise for most people to get snow in January. But here in Ridgecrest, CA, it's a surprise to get snow EVER. It was a Thursday, which meant piano lesson day. Last year I started teaching Natalee and Haylee piano lessons. I am also teaching their good friends Katie and Grace Cannon. Ronelle and I have a sweet deal where Ronelle watches Mackenzie and Kelsey for me while I do piano lessons. And then I teach Katie and Grace at the same time. Since it was piano lesson day, I dropped Mackenzie and Kelsey off with Ronelle and then picked the other girls up from school. We were almost home when we realized it wasn't raining anymore, it was snowing! Of course they had to get out of the car and play in the snow right away. Piano lessons were postponed for about 30 minutes while they played. As you can see, it didn't stick, but here we've got to take what we can get!

Grace, Haylee, Natalee, and Katie

Project Linus Blanket Day

Since I'm playing catch up for 2010, this post is about something that we did a few months ago.

February 20, 2010

Purely out of the goodness of our hearts (and for a free ticket to Disneyland thanks to the Give a Day, Get a Day Disney program), we signed up to go to Blanket Day to make blankets for Project Linus. Project Linus is a charity that gives blankets to children in hospitals to help make their hospital stay more bearable for them. There isn't a Project Linus in Ridgecrest, so we ended up driving to Bakersfield for the day. You had to be 6 years or older to participate, so Mackenzie and Kelsey had plans to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Moffitt. The night before we left, Kelsey had a horrible cough which then turned into a yucky cold. So she ended up getting to come with us after all, just to hang out, not to make blankets. The Saturday we went to Bakersfield, Amy was in labor at the hospital and my mom had plans to go to Idaho in a couple of days to help her. A cold is a pretty rotten new baby gift so we didn't want my mom to bring one with her.

We also got to bring Katie Hall with us. Katie is Spencer and Megan Hall's daughter and she is right between Natalee and Haylee in age. Her family did a different service that she wasn't quite old enough to do. So she came with us instead. We had a lot of fun but the girls worked really hard too. Our good friends, the Cannons, also signed up for the same service so we made our blankets next to each other, which added to the fun.

We decided to make no-sew fleece blankets. All we had to do was put two pieces of fleece together, fringe the edges, then tie them together. We learned quickly that cutting was not a strength for our young little helpers. Especially since we only had 1 pair of really good cutting scissors. So we finally worked out a system where Daren and I would cut the fleece, then we would take it to the girls who would tie while we started cutting the next blanket. They did a fantastic job and really earned their tickets to Disneyland.

After we turned our blankets in, we called Tim and found out that he and Amy had a beautiful new baby girl named Juliet.

The girls hard at work tying

Daren hard at work cutting

Kelsey entertained herself with the fleece clippings

Katie, Haylee, and Natalee

Haylee with her finished blanket

Natalee with her finished blanket

Daren's finished blanket-with a little helper Kelsey

Happy Birthday Baby Juliet!

Bittersweet Rescue

Rosey's Mugshot

Yes, I have a little bit of an evil side. I wasn't incredibly disappointed when our cat Rosey disappeared last week. She's actually Natalee's cat. I did feel a little sorry for the way her life had ended since I was convinced she was eaten by a coyote. I also felt bad for the sadness I knew Natalee would feel when she realized that she hadn't seen Rosey for several days. But Rosey just isn't a very friendly cat. She will tolerate a little bit of petting. But after a few minutes will try to bite us to let us know she wants us to back off. She doesn't come when we call her, unless maybe she's hungry and she hears us shaking her food dish. If we try to hold her for more than a few minutes she starts scratching wildly. So you can see why I wasn't too choked up about her disappearance.
Last night, Daren and I decided that we would take the girls to the pound and pick out a couple of kittens. The pound is having a sale on cats right now and we really liked how the cats always kept the mice down (and hopefully kept the snakes away). So this afternoon we told the girls our plan. We were getting ready to go, and Natalee and I decided to look at the pound's website to see pictures of the kittens currently there. Suddenly, one of the pictures caught my attention. I clicked on it to make it bigger just to be sure, and sure enough, IT WAS ROSEY! Natalee was ecstatic. I couldn't believe she had somehow been put in the pound. The pound doesn't service our area so someone had to have brought her in. It turned out that she had been caught in some one's cat trap just one street over. Out here, that's not too close, and there is only desert between our house and that street. I had no idea she ever wandered that far into the desert. Well, needless to say, we went to pick up Rosey instead of picking out new kittens.
I think the pound workers were pretty happy to get rid of her. They didn't even keep her in the main cat room because she scratched everybody who got near her. She was in the 'sick room.' She was so ornery to us when we picked her up that they asked, "Are you sure that's your cat?" Unfortunately, yes, we have a cat who hates us! Well, we didn't dare take a kitten home. Natalee thought Rosey needed a friend. I thought Rosey might scratch her new little friend to shreds. And I think after this experience, Rosey hates us more than ever. She probably blames her whole horrible week on us.

Mackenzie Moment

Mackenzie is such a joy to have as a daughter. She is so smart and sweet, and she really comes up with some good ones! I really wish I had kept a book of all the hilarious things Mackenzie says. And she has a fantastic memory. She will bring things up that really surprise us sometimes. I have a few to share but thought I'd start with this one:
I am expecting our first baby boy this July. Thankfully, the girls have decided that they are excited to have a baby brother. It took a little while to get them there. They thought all girls would be the perfect family. We have told them some different names that we like, and they have decided that they really want us to name him Nathan. There is a good chance that that is the name we will choose. But there are a few others that we still talk about. Mackenzie doesn't even refer to the baby as "the baby" anymore. She always calls him Nathan. One day we were driving in the car somewhere and I said something about the baby but I decided to try out one of the other names we've talked about...so I called him Robby. A few moments of silence passed, then Mackenzie asked, "Why did you say that Mom?" I answered, "Well, Robby is another name we like and we might name him that." Her response: "Well, I HATE that name." Another minute or two of silence. Mackenzie very calmly says, "Mom, we should just name him Nathan, then nobody (i.e. HER) will hate his name." Now how can I ignore that logic?

Family History = Blogging!

I never planned to do a blog. Although I enjoy reading my sibling's blogs, I always felt like it was way to much effort for something that was just going to appear online. If I was going to spend the time journaling and uploading photos, it was going to be effort spent on a digital scrapbook. I have been coveting digital scrapbooks for some time now. And I was SO close to doing it. I wanted to do a digital scrapbook for our moms and grandmas for Mother's Day. Due to the expense of digital scrapbooking, I ended up choosing Walgreens.com and I have to say that my first attempt turned out very cute. Soon after that, my mom, Grandma Poetschlag, and I were asked to speak about family history and journaling at the ward's monthly Relief Society meeting (not called Enrichment anymore). Since I am so bad at keeping a journal or doing any sort of scrapbooking, I decided I'd better put some research into this. I thought about blogs and I remembered Megan Hall mentioning something about a blog book. I asked her about it, went over and borrowed them, and immediately decided that blog books are the way to go. They are awesome! Well, I guess if I want to make blog books, I'm going to have to have a blog. I'm a little behind for 2010 and will have to do some catching up. And of course I have almost 10 years of catching up to do. I'm so sorry that I've missed recording so many of our family's experiences. Hopefully looking at pictures will help bring back some memories. So today, May 13, 2010, I begin to keep the Darren Hardy family history blog!