Husband Tag

Husband Tag (Kell)

I got tagged by my sister, so here is a little information about my hubby.

1- Where did you meet? We met in college. I heard about hubby before I met him. The first day I moved into a new apartment for summer, my new roommates and I all sat on the floor in one of the back bedrooms and shared all the juicy details on our latest crushes. One of my roommates had liked hubby for a very long time, and so the first time I met him (at FHE), although I thought he was incredibly good looking, I knew he was completely off limits (We even elected my roommate to be MOM and hubby to be DAD of our group). Two weeks later, another roommate moved in and she had also had a crush on hubby for a long time. Thankfully, the one I actually cared about moved out halfway through the summer, and the other roommate moved on to many other guys. We got to know each other, and the rest is history.

2- How long did you date before you got married? 10 months.

3- How long have you been married? 12 years.

4- What does he do that surprises you? I guess it doesn't surprise me anymore, but my husband is brilliant!! I'm not just saying that because I am biased, he has the IQ score to prove it. He is such a goofball. Most of his brainpower goes into making clever jokes, or coming up with new and unusual words to songs. He never thought he was all that smart, and he was even put into resource classes when he was younger. I don't think he even knew how brilliant he was. He is so goofy (see above picture) and adorable it comes as a shock to most people. I definitely got the whole package.

5- What is your favorite feature of his? I love his hair. Everyone loves his hair. It is gorgeous and curly. Everywhere we go, people comment on it. His co-workers have told me that they hold daily discussions about it. He, of course, is very embarrassed by it.

6- What is your favorite quality of his? I love that he is such a great father. He is definitely the favorite parent. He often will just stop whatever he is doing and tell me what fantastic kids we have. He is fun, and loving and our home is always a happier place when he is home. His mom raised one of the kindest most compassionate families I have ever met.

7- Does he have a nickname for you? He calls me babe. I love it! It makes me feel special.

8- What is his favorite color? When you ask him this question, he struggles to come up with one. Often it will change. I think his favorite color most of the time is Orange. He grew up in the desert, and he loves the browns, rusts, and oranges of the desert. I personally hate orange. I was trying to be kind, an find an orange that I could live with to paint the bedroom. I have not been able to do it. Our bedroom is still unpainted.

9- What is his favorite food? I really don't know. He likes almost everything, but he is also picky about things. He will eat whatever I put in front of him, but he rarely really loves it. He has worked in restaurants, and is a fantastic cook. I know he appreciates eating whatever he doesn't have to cook (He is definitely the cook here) but I think he likes experimenting to get just the flavor he likes. Whenever we go to a restaurant, he almost always orders something he has never tried before. I always order the same thing, and he always makes fun of me.

10- What is his favorite sport? I don't know. We had a volleyball court at our apartment when we were dating, and we had a lot of fun playing. He will watch football, but it definitely isn't an obsession. He is left handed, so many sports didn't come as easily for him. We had a ton of fun watching the Arizona Diamondbacks win the world series a few years ago, and we have also followed the Utah Jazz.

11- When and where was your first kiss? End of August 1995. My sister was visiting me, and Jayson and I had been flirting all night. I told my sister to go take a walk so we could make out in the apartment. She still hasn't forgiven me. (Sorry Mimi!)

12- What is your favorite thing to do as a couple? This is so lame, but we love to watch TV and movies together. We have a couple of series that we follow. Hubby was gone for a week, and I tried to watch The Office and it just wasn't as funny without him. We have a Netflix account, and we go through movies pretty quickly. We definitely get our moneys worth.

13- Do you have any children? Yep, we have 4.

14- Does he have a hidden talent? He can create amazing new witty lyrics to any song. It always rhymes, and will make you laugh almost every time. At the end of my first pregnancy, I was huge, two weeks overdue, and annoyed by everything. He was always coming up with new songs, and I was always wishing he would stop. My mom came out to help us, and she kept pointing out how funny his songs were. Once I stopped being annoyed, I was pretty amazed. He also has an amazing voice!

15- How old is he? 35, almost 36

16- Who said I love you first? I think he did, he thinks I did. When we first started dating, I wasn't expecting it to last very long. Hubby was kind of known for going through a lot of women quickly. I tried to keep it really casual, and I would often ask myself if I loved him, and I would always answer that I didn't. One day, I realized that I couldn't say I didn't love him anymore. I couldn't necessarily say that I did, but I couldn't say that I didn't. I told him, and he counts that as me saying it first. He actually said the words, "I love you," first.

17- What is his favorite type of music? According to his iTunes, it is Alternative, Pop, and Rock. Of course they classify U2, Erasure, and Depeche Mode as Rock.

18- What do you admire most about him? His ability to love unconditionally.

19- Do you think he will read this? Eventually. He rarely reads my blog.

I tag Nicole.

Birthday Outfit

Makenzie's Birthday was yesterday, and so she wore her "most beautifullest" outfit. Usually I let her wear whatever she wants when we stay home, and she often comes up with an outfit like the one above. Yesterday, we went out in public. She loves pink, and stripes, and hearts, and balloons, and checks, and so why shouldn't she wear all of them together. It is also the best way to maximize the pink factor.

I am not sure if I should start quelling her fashion sense, or if I should just rejoice that she is with us all day, and so her individuality won't be humiliated out of her by her peers. I know I need to break the news to her somehow. I don't think a prospective employer would take her seriously in this.

My Creative Husband

Here is another blog I started just after Halloween. Time to get it published. :)

My husband comes from a very artistic family. His whole house was decorated with his mom's and dad's paintings. When they found a picture that one of the kids painted that they liked, they put a frame on it, and put it on the walls. Hubby tells stories of his mom creating the ice planet, Hoth (only the Star Wars geeks will know what I am talking about) from a very large piece of styrofoam. It was a main feature in their house until it eventually disintigrated. They played on it with their Star Wars toys until there was nothing but a huge mess left. My husband's twin brother created his own cake topper for his wedding. He has twin brothers whose entire apartment is filled with toys and models. They are all very creative.

When we first moved into our home, we had some lovely mauve and gold wallpaper. When we ripped it down, it left a good layer of paper stuck to the walls. Hubby grabbed the box of crayons, and let the kids go to town. It was a lot of fun. (I do have to say, I worried that my kids would still be coloring when the paper finally came down. For the most part, it hasn't been a problem.)

I love how they all have their coats on.

Poor Allen has no fat on his body. He is always freezing!

One outlet for my husbands creativity is Halloween pumpkins. There have been many years when the stress of the holidays takes over, and I unwisely suggest we skip the pumpkins. Yea, Right! I have learned to love pumpkin carving, and I try to plan a little more wisely so he can have his creativity, and I can have less stress.

My kids have complete faith in my husbands pumpkin carving abilities. Last year, they saw a Charizard pumpkin that they just had to have. (For those of you who don't know, Charizard is a pokemon.) Hubby was up very late the night before Halloween to make their dreams come true.

This year, hubby told us to get online and get some templates for him to carve when he got home. My kids, once again having perfect faith in my husband, found a Thomas the Tank engine template for him. He made this one with power tools. I think we still probably have pumpkin guts on our ceiling. I think he is amazing. Unfortunately, the "glowing pumpkin" pictures turned out too dark.

Little Morgan could not stop giggling the whole night. He was so excited about his Thomas pumpkin!

Here is another amazing pumpkin my hubby carved. My little Star Wars fans were in seventh heaven.

And a couple of my creations. I really don't have an artistic bone in my body. I was pretty pleased with my pumpkins.

Big huge thanks to my sister-in-law and my nieces and nephews for growing our pumpkins. We had many shapely gourds to carve this year. :)

Math Curriculum

I have been wanting to write about my math curriculum for a very long time, but life has been busy. When I first started homeschooling one of the first things someone told me was that I would end up buying materials that would not work for my family. She told me to just get used to the idea, because it was going to happen. We don't have a lot of money, and most of the time curriculum materials are not cheap. I became very paranoid that I would end up spending large amounts of money on worthless materials, and so I did not buy anything. I started reading all kinds of books about cheap ways to homeschool, and going back through all my college books (I was an Elementary Education major) and decided to just figure out everything on my own. It worked for some subjects, but I found I did much better with someone else telling me what to do.

We started our Math curriculum by buying the big workbooks from Wal-mart, and going through them. I found out that my kids hate sitting and doing workbooks, and that having a curriculum that has a focus on workbooks was not the answer for us. I tried getting a Scope and Sequence from a math curriculum and just following that, and Math was still very boring. I tried looking at the Disk the district gives you showing you all the objectives for the year and teaching that way, and the objectives were so obscure it turned out to be really pointless. Finally I stumbled on a curriculum on a message board. It is online, and it is free. The big pull for me was that I could try it out, and see if it worked for our family before committing tons of money. The mentality behind the curriculum took a while to get used to, but I really love it now.

Here is Makenzie playing the String Game with Attribute Blocks.

This is Allen playing the same game with numbers.

The curriculum is called the Comprehensive School Mathematics Program. It is also called Cemrel Math. I grew up believeing the motto "You get what you pay for," but in the case of this curriculum, it just isn't true. This is truly an amazing curriculum. My favorite things about it, is that it is fun, and it is hard!! My kids math skills have improved a ton, and they don't even realize it. They are having fun reading and making up stories, and solving spy puzzles, and at the same time they are learning about geometry, probability, all the math basics, string theory, and probably a ton of other things that all just seem like playing to them. My first grader has been exposed to multiplication, and negative numbers. My second grader is beginning to learn more about decimals, and my fifth grader is learning about binary, base 3, base 4 etc systems. I had a telemarketer call me trying to sell me her several hundred dollar math curriculum, and as she read through her list of all the different things her "state of the art" curriculum was covering (in her pompous voice, confident that she would blow me away with all they were offering) I told her I already had a curriculm that covered everything she was selling, and it was free!!

This is Allen working with the Minicomputer, it is a type of abacus that does a great job of visually introducing many concepts. The name minicomputer also sounds a lot cooler than "abacus."

My kids were not math whizzes when I pulled them out of school. My fourth grader did not even know his multiplication tables. His math class was working on long division, and he was still counting everything out on his fingers. He was so lost. Here a year and a half later, he smokes me on many problems. My third grader is a very "out of the box" thinker, and this curriculum gives him a chance to be creative in math. I have also learned that he is brilliant when it comes to math, but he needs to be able to look at things in a different way. My little first grader is really good at math, and she looks forward to learning about all the "fun things" her older brothers are learning. She was so excited to learn about "Eli the Elephant" (the curriculms story for negative numbers) because she had been hearing her brothers talk about it.

My favorite things about this curriculum is that fact that it is free, that it is fun, and there isn't a ton of writing involved. Most of our lessons are done at the kitchen table with our math manipulatives, and our whiteboard. Most of the lesson involves us interacting with each other for the entire lesson. Many of the lessons have worksheets with them, but they are fun. Often the kids are solving a puzzle, or being detectives as they finish their worksheets. Most of the manipulatives are printable things from the website, and many concepts are presented as a game. (My favorite is the String game. They also have the number line game, and minicomputer golf)

This is one of the string pictures we made with Michael's lesson. The curriculum uses string pictures quite often. I think they are great teaching tools.

There are a few challenges that come with this curriculum. You need to print out quite a bit of stuff. I print out all the teachers manuals, and workbooks. (You really need a color printer for many of the materials) The lessons are also time consuming for the teacher (me). My first graders lessons take between 15 minutes and a half an hour to teach, My third grader is about a half an hour to 45 min, and sometimes my 5th graders lessons will take about an hour to teach. This definitely isn't a curriculum where you give your child the book, and they do all the work on their own. The kids do have a workbook day each week, where the lesson with the teacher is about 5 minutes and the rest of the time is spent doing a workbook. The workbooks are the main assessment tool. There are no tests. There are some minor pieces of the curriculum missing (posters and things) but I haven't had a tough time creating them on the computer. The curriculum was created for a classroom setting, but it hasn't been difficult to adapt it for homeschooling. The way that they approach math is also very different. Starting the curriculum in any grade below the 5th grade seemed to work okay, but when I tried to start my son at the 5th grade level, the language and skills were too advanced, so we had to start at the 4th grade level. The curriculum also only goes through the 6th grade. I have been looking at different curriculum options for my son, and I think we will be able to jump to a different program.

In spite of the challenges, I love this curriculum. If I had to pay for it, I would, but I don't have to. I love teaching math. I get to teach it everyday. I am pretty lucky. :)

I started this blog over a month ago, and kept waiting to get it perfected so I could post it. I think it it time to give up on perfection, and let go of the guilt, and just post it!

Links
Here are a couple of links that have helped us with our Math curriculum- And best of all, most of them are free.

CSMP Site- This is the site for the curriculum

Learningthings.com- One of my favorite Math Manipulatives sites. They seem to have things at a better price than anywhere else. Many of the "Education" stores in the area get their items from Learning Things, and the jack up the prices.

internet4classrooms.com- This website is one of my favorite. It is so packed with stuff. It has a breakdown of each of the grade levels, each objective the students should learn, and then a plethora of websites to teach the objective. I love the games they have to practice math skills.

Timez Attack- (Free Download) One of my favorite Multiplication Games. I love the graphics, and the little alien guy is so cute. It is not a super difficult game, but my video gamers will play it for hours because it is so well made. It teaches multiplication facts 2-12. The full version of the game is $40, and I have heard it is awesome, but we have only played the free download, and we are very happy with it.

6 quirks blog

I was "tagged" by my sister to write down 6 of my quirks. This is actually my new revised version. I realized that my first one was a little more revealing than I am comfortable with. :)

1- I hate going to sleep at night. I get so little kid free time in my day, when it is night time, and I am finally doing something I want to do, I have a tough time being responsible enough to get my butt in bed and go to sleep. On the other hand, I love taking naps.

2- I chew on my lip, or make funny faces when I am concentrating. My hubby thinks it is cute, so we have lots of videos of me making these weird faces while I am concentrating on art projects or playing the piano. The ladies in Relief Society have commented on the faces I pull when I am playing the piano.

3- I love to dance. I have a tough time holding still when I am around a song with a good beat. Whenever I can, I have the radio going, and I love to shake it when I am cleaning (especially doing the dishes.) With homeschooling, it seems like whenever I have a free second to clean, the kids are usually working on something, and they need it quiet so my radio time has been cut way down. :( I hate to dance in front of anyone other than my kids though.

4- I can't clean with my hair down. It drives me crazy unless I tie it back. I always get up in the morning, and take tons of time getting ready and doing my hair, and by the time hubby gets home, it is always pulled back into a ponytail or bun.

5- When I get sick of being called mom, I make my kids call me Telulah. It used to really bug them, but now all I have to say is, "I'm getting sick of being mom," and without skipping a beat they will all start calling me Telulah. Sometimes I let them know that Telulah isn't working for me, and so we all work together to come up with a new name for me.

6- One of my favorite stress relieving techniques is to scream at the top of my lungs. I struggle with gettting too stressed out, so when I can feel that I am starting to loose it a bit, I will scream as loud and as long as I can until I am out of breath. (I only do this in front of my kids in the safety of my own home. I don't think my hubby has even seen me do this.) My kids will usually look up from whatever they are doing, but it doesn't even startle them. Sometimes they will laugh at me, or join in and we all feel a whole lot better when we are done.

I tag my hubby and kids to answer this quirks string. (I guess hubby will have to start a blog to answer this. Oh this will be fun! :)

Tough Day

I had a miscarriage in June, and these last few weeks have been tough. I have tried not to talk about it too much to people lately because I am worried that everyone is sick of hearing me talk about it. I feel like it is all I think about some days.


When I got pregnant, I felt like things were not okay. We waited for a very long time to tell anyone. I had two miscarriages about 10 years ago, so I am always a little apprehensive to tell people. I feel like I am jinxing my pregnancy. My kids still talk about the babies I lost before they were even born. I was worried that if my miscarriages affected them that long ago, they would have a tough time dealing with me losing a baby.


With this pregnancy, at each appointment it always took the doctor a long time to find the heartbeat, and there were several doctor's appointments where they couldn't find the heart beat with the Doppler, so they took me in to find it with the ultrasound. At every single doctor's appointment, I always thought that I had lost the baby, and then they would finally find the heartbeat and I would feel so relieved. It seemed like everyone was announcing pregnancies and everyone was due right around the time I was due. It was always tough to hear everyone joyfully announcing their happy news, while I was trying to keep mine a secret. I have always been horrible at keeping secrets. Finally I passed my first trimester and we finally decided to tell everyone. We knew that this would be our last baby, and so we wanted it to be a big deal. We bought big brother/big sister shirts for all of our kids and we gave them to them so they could help us announce the pregnancy. We had a big family barbecue where we announced the news to everyone.




I have had problems with my previous pregnancies, and I often get put on bed rest because of pre-term labor. I started having contractions at 3 months with this pregnancy, and so I decided to lay down for the rest of the pregnancy. I was worried about how it would affect my family, but I was willing to inconvenience everyone to get this baby here safely. My daughter would come in every night to look through our baby name book to find a name for our baby. She was so excited. She was convinced that Heavenly Father would finally send her a sister. We tried really hard to prepare her for the fact that it might be a boy. She said that she would be okay with that, but she really wanted a sister.




Here is the dog eared copy of baby names book. When I lost the baby, it was the hardest thing for me to pack up. Makenzie suggested several people we could pass the book off to. The names in this book are truly horrible, but her favorite thing to do was look through this book.


My husband took work off to come to the doctor with me for the ultrasound at 20 weeks. We decided to take the three oldest kids in, and they were all so excited. The night before the ultrasound was like the night before Christmas. Everyone was so excited, and no one could sleep. When we got to the doctor, there were some problems with scheduling, and after having us wait for over a half an hour, they asked us if we could come in the next day. We told them no, that we had gone through great lengths to get everyone there that day, and so the doctor took us on his lunch break. As soon as the doctor saw the baby, he knew there was a problem. He let us know that they baby had died. He left, and we explained what had happened to the kids. They bawled for a few minutes, and then they haven't really talked about it since.



I had to go into the hospital and deliver the baby. Originally they had planned to put me in a room a little way off from the mom's having their babies, but the room that was available ended up being right in the middle of the maternity ward. They started me on pitocin, and hooked me up to the monitors. They told me that I could have an epidural if I didn't want to feel anything. I wanted to feel the pain. It was the only connection I would ever have to the baby. As I was laboring we could hear the cries of the newborn babies in all the rooms around us. I was very happy for those moms. I thought a lot about the lives that those babies would have. After a few hours the baby was delivered. It was a little girl. We were able to hold her, but I didn't feel any connection to her. She didn't look much like a baby. The cord had been wrapped too tightly around her, and she wasn't able to get the nourishment she needed.




There was a support group at the hospital that made these hand and feel molds for me. They made some actual molds of the hands and feet, but they said that they just fell apart. They said that they had never made molds on a baby so small before. One of the ladies that is in charge of the group has lost 4 babies, two of those babies she has carried to full term. She didn't have any living children. It definitely made me grateful for the 4 healthy kids I have.


The first month or two after the miscarriage was really tough. People were very sweet and thoughtful. I got to a point where I wasn't crying all the time, and I had more control of my emotions. I still thought about the baby all the time. I have no answers about how this baby fits into our eternal family. I have a lot of questions about this little girls spirit, and I kind of feel like I am stuck in my grieving process because I don't have those answers. I don't feel like I will get the answers in this lifetime.


A week after I miscarried, a woman in our ward had a grandson born at 21 weeks. I have listened intently to any information about this baby. It was exactly the age my baby would have been, and born just one week after my miscarriage. It was able to live, and is now home and doing well. This last month many of the women who were due around the same time I was have been announcing the births of their babies. There was one woman at church today. She is the daughter in law of a friend. She is due very close to when I was due. She was large, pregnant, and I believe she was in labor today. It was a tough day. My due date is a week from Tuesday. I'm having a tough time.
This was how I told my husband I was pregnant.
This is a hat was crocheted by one of my husband's co-workers for our baby. The hand and feet pins are from the support group at the hospital. I think they are pro life pins. They are the size of a 10 week fetus. I keep this hat in a drawer that I open several times a day, and it is always special to take a moment to think about my daughter.


Sorry this has turned out to be so long. This blog is more for me than for anyone else. I really needed to get this out.

I can't wait for this week to be over!!

Obviously, the big push to blog everyday, and homeschool didn't turn out very well. There will be no cute pictures today. I am trying to homeschool and potty train my 3 (turning 4 at the end of the month) year old. It is not working out. This is why I put of potty training him so long. I laughed at my sister when every blog for a few weeks was about potty training her daughter. I am no longer laughing. I forgot how all consuming potty training is. I know that soon this will be just an unpleasant memory, and I will probably have some great stories to swap with other moms, but right now I am just done!!