The Spies Have Invaded!

Today the house looked unusually messy after a long day of school. (Okay, it looked as messy as it always does, but let's pretend it was unusually messy.) I've tried a million different things to get my kids motivated, but they don't seem to last very long. I thought today would be another great day to find a new motivation.

So, we started by whispering to each other. I had each child pick up one thing in the room but they had to do it while no one was watching and sneak it out of the room. This was pretty fun for awhile, but soon they were watching each other closely.

That's when I switched gears. Suddenly I would shout out things like, "Oh, look at that bird outside!" and motion to one of the kids to sneak something out of the room while the rest looked for the imaginary item outside. The rest of the kids, who knew someone was playing the "spy," played along and hammed it up. "What is it? Oh, I can't see it!" they would squeal as they watched the "spy" out of the corner of their eyes. Hysterical.

Then I got into the fun. It became a game of "The Spies Have Been Here." Every time I would turn my back or close my eyes or get a drink of water, the "spies" would remove a few other items from the room. Then I would mention something that needed to be put away and then look up at the ceiling or search for the imaginary spider in the corner or take a quick nap as one of the kids (or all) would sneak the item out of the room and put it away. Soon I had the kids moving furniture so I could vacuum, doing dishes and cleaning up garbage that normally they wouldn't touch.

My "spies" cleaned the room in record time, and with smiles on their faces. I threatened to put out "spycatchers" and told them to make sure the spies didn't take anything else and put it away, but that only fueled them to do more.

And now the room is spotless, the dishes are washing in the dishwasher, and the kids are happy and proud of their accomplishment....uh...I mean, proud of the spies' accomplishment.

The one drawback of this game? Once the spies stole the baby (Ammon removed her from her playpen and hid with her in the corner). At that point I had to be more specific about what the spies could and couldn't take and where the stolen items belonged. But in general, it was good that the spies invaded our house today.

And.....She's Off!

We still don't have the camera up and rolling, but I thought you all would be interested in knowing that Grace has figured out the crawl. Yes, she is putting hand before knee and getting into everything!

It was only two days ago that this happened. But, believe it or not, on the same day she mastered the crawl she also figured out how to stand up!

HELP!!!!!!


I was just getting the floors cleaned. Now I have to clean off the coffee tables, too?

Oy.

More Blog Changes

I know I said I wouldn't talk about writing here (boy, you guys are really missing out) but I thought I'd give you all a heads up. I've moved my writing blog to a different blogsite. So please take note of the address change.

Join me at elissadcruz.livejournal.com from now on.

See you there!

Canning Applesauce

I felt so domestic today!

A ward member had a bunch of extra apples that she offered to give me. She also offered to bring over her canning supplies and help me can applesauce. So yesterday we got started on cutting, cooking and squeezing applesauce. Then we bottled it.

She had a really neat contraption called a Victorio strainer. So we didn't have to peel or core the apples. We just shoved them in a pot and cooked them whole (well, we cut them in half to make sure they weren't wormy), then we put them in the strainer and turned the handle. Out came the applesauce into one bowl, and out came the seeds, peels and "apple turd" (that's what it reminded me of) into another bowl. Totally cool.

She also had some very ripe pears, so we thought we would try to make sauce out of that, too. I now know why you can't find pearsauce in the grocery store. Once I strained it, it really wasn't sauce but more like a thick, grainy juice. So in the end I added a few cups to two applesauce batches and made apple-pearsauce instead. Yummmmmm. It smelled GOOOOOOOOOD!

In the end we managed to can 16 quart bottles of applesauce and froze 5 quart-size bags of it as well. It took two days (we started at about 8 pm on Friday and stopped at about midnight, then the second round was from 7 am this morning until about 11am). My grandmother would be so proud! But I do need to catch up on some sleep now. I just can't function on the 6 hours of sleep I got. I know, people do it all the time, but I'm a 9-hour person if I can get away with it.

Anyway, I now have enough applesauce to keep us well-fed for quite awhile. Doesn't it just make your mouth water thinking about it?! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!

Gratitude

It seems that I can't keep the same blog template for too long or I go crazy. Actually, all that red and orange was making my eyes go buggy, so I found this black and white number and thought I would try it out. Nice, huh?!

Today I thought only briefly about how it was 9/11. I felt a little guilty that I didn't spend more time thinking about that day and how it changed life for everyone. The day deserves some quiet retrospection. Unfortunately for me, quiet retrospection is hard, if not impossible, to come by.

But I found a few moments to dwell on the suffering that happened that day in 2001. It's not a pretty thing to think about, which is probably why I didn't spend too much time dwelling on it. Let's face it, life is tough enough without spending all your time thinking about the worst aspects of it. I prefer to spend my time thinking about ways I can make life better for me and my family.

But as I thought about those who lost their lives that day, I was profoundly grateful that I had my family here with me now. I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to teach my children and share with them my love of learning, the love of my country, and my love of God. If nothing else, 9/11 is one more reminder to be grateful for what you have, because you never know when it will be gone.