Piu-Piu

It seems like my girls were born wearing a purse and playing with dolls. Tito, on the other hand is a different story. Although he can hang with the girls in playing house if he has to, he clearly favors anything that can be shot or ridden. I have been convinced that this was innate and in no way a learned behavior since he was born into a house of barbie dolls and frilly dress-ups. The other day Matt was asking me why Tito was saying "Piu-Piu" (Pee-oo Pee-oo). I thought it was obvious that was the sound of a shooting gun. Matt informed me that, in English, a gun says "bang bang" not "piu piu". That was a real blow to me because I honestly don't remember teaching Tito to shoot guns. I swear he started doing that on his own...but I'm the only one around here that was raised in Mexico so somehow, Imust have tought my son to shoot in Spanish.

Did I already mention that I spent Tuesday on the phone with poison control? Tito got into my prenatal vitamins while I was nursing Troy. Considering he no symptoms, aside from a few nasty diapers, I think he must have only eaten a few. Although at the time I had no idea how many he'd eaten.

Saturday was a Mother's day event at Ellie's pre-school. She was so cute and totally treated me like a Queen. Recently she's been extra-super polite to me--she asks me if she can help, gives me lots of hugs, etc. She also wanted to choose my outfit and made me wear one of her favorite necklaces which was way too small for me. Also notice the corsage on my arm.

It was great to see all of her art work and to see her interact with friends and teachers. She's a gem.

The circle of trust

I've had the hardest time figuring out the food storage thing. Over a year ago, I decided that I wanted to get serious about it and I ordered wheat. It's been one thing after another that has gone wrong...order was dropped, cannery closed for Summer, order dropped again, cannery decided to only sell wheat every 3 months, etc, etc. So we decided to do it on our own. We got the cans and wheat at the cannery and then bought a bunch of rice at Costco. It took a while to locate the stake canning machine but finally we got it. After all the hastle, I'm now realizing that most people here (who actually have food storage) have done it this way. Why did this turn out to be so complicated and shrouded in secrecy? It feels good to have finally broken into the circle of food storage.

The girls had a lot of fun too. At the cannery they helped me count labels and we talked about the process that the cannery goes through as well as the concept of rotating food. They enjoyed filling the cans but especially loved working the canner and labeling the boxes. They decorated some of the boxes and I feel like they are time-capsules in a sense.


I also ordered a wheat grinder and Bosch mixer this week and am looking forward to using more grains. Our grain intake has been limited to whole wheat waffles made in the vitamix and cracked wheat cereal.

The quiet observer

I've posted way too much tonight but I'm avoiding going to bed. I just wanted to post this picture because it summarizes Troy right now. He just sits there with his dimpled smile, watching everyone. At this point, he was watching the kids squirt eachother with a hose when it's still way too cold for that kind of thing. Troy's like the "greenie" on the mission that is to the point that he understands everything but just can't speak yet.

Digging up old ghosts

A friend from the ward called and asked me to help out at her daughter's school on Wednesday. They were doing a reenactment of Immigration at Ellis Island and were trying to help kids understand what it would have felt like to live through that experience. They had kids dress up like immigrants from that era and grouped them into families, gave them passports and fake identities and a few of us volunteers pretended to be immigration officers. We were told to only speak in our foreign language--the point was for the kids to feel the confusion that immigrants felt. We were supposed to ask questions, and pick who to let through and who to deport.

It really didn't matter what I asked or said to these kids because none of them could understand a lick of Bulgarian and probably had no idea such a country existed. I started out just asking what's your name, where are you from, etc. The kids had no clue what I was saying. Half way through, I caught myself saying to a group of six year olds-- "What do you think you are doing here, you slimy cult followers? What right do you think you have to come to our country and tell us how to live?" At that point I realized I was having a cathartic experience...remembering the harassment I experienced on my mission.

Bulgaria wouldn't give us Visas so every month we had to leave the country and come back in again. The closest border was Yugoslavia (Serbia) so the mission Pres would drive us to the border, let us out and we would have to walk out into "no man's land" which is a strip of land between the Bulgarian and Serbian borders. Then we'd turn around and show our passports to come back in. The guards there hated us and would harass us and sometimes tell us they wouldn't let us back in the country. They of course did but sometimes would make us just sit there trying to scare us.

Police would also bang on our apartment doors sometimes and ask us what we were doing there, Always inspected documents, etc. and basically tried to intimidate us. We used to joke that they were just trying to keep track of our birthdays because that's one of the questions they always ask among hundreds of others.

Right before I left, we got a new mission president and he was determined to stop the harassment. At the time, Bulgaria wanted to join the EU and of course religious harassment is not looked on favorably. Pres. Stephens asked the missionaries to report every single incidence of harassment and then he began to file claims. According to Pres. Stephens, Bulgaria became one of the top in the world in religious persecution that year because of all of the claims. The harassment stopped after that.

Anyways, it was an interesting re-living that this week.

"Day off"

The kids have a 4 day weekend and for them it's a day off but for me that means overtime. Sophie and Ellie always get really into their imagination games on days off so that means messes. I love to see them play that way but I must say that between having family and friends over last week and being out of town on the weekend, I'm really behind on laundry and house cleaning.

Matt took the kids to the gym for an hour on Friday and it gave me some time to catch up a little. The kids love going to the gym because they always do face painting. When they got home they were deep in character of butterfly and some kind of Spring fairy/princess and were doing Nacho-libre type dancing.



We are actually getting a pretty healthy crop of strawberries in our garden. It doesn't replace the cartons I'm buying weekly on sale, but Mathew does enjoy picking/eating them and I think he's finally grasping the concept of why we wait to pick them when they are red. He also enjoys finding the mutant strawberries like the "twins" in the picture.

Last night we dyed Easter eggs and, like every activity, it slowly evolved into bigger and bigger projects. We started dying eggs but then they were tie dying paper towels and then old T-shirts.

This morning Matt and I enjoyed listening to the excitement of finding Easter baskets and I couldn't help but think how quickly these darling years will pass. Even though Mathew ate way too much chocolate and that annoying plastic "grass" gets everywhere, this time will be over way too soon.

Tonight the kids wanted to have a slumber party and the girls insisted that Mathew join them. Matt and I walked in to see they had piled up almost every pillow and blanket in the house in their room and Mathew was sitting on top of his thrown daring us to try to move him. We knew it wouldn't actually work but we let them try it. Sophie fell asleep right away while Ellie and Mathew looked at books together for about an hour. After that, Mathew was acting up too much so we finally put him in his bed. Oh well, tomorrow they can sleep in.

More Safford

We had an Easter egg hunt in Safford. They have some really cool property so it was a lot of fun for the kids. We let the younger kids go out a few minutes early so they could get the easy eggs and here is a video of when the older kids were finally unleashed.




At one point Mathew hurt his foot and he was telling everyone that he was climbing a mountain and he stepped on a porcupine. We were all laughing until later that day he came in saying he found the porcupine and wanted to show it to me--one of the burs that are all over the place. The funny thing is that it really did look like a little porcupine.

Friends and family

Some old friends of ours, the Detmans, were in town last Thursday visiting from Utah. They have 5 darling kids and it was so fun to catch up with them!








The next day, we decided to go down to Safford and spend conference weekend with Matt's cousins. It's always a good time to travel because we are relieved of church callings. The kids were so happy to be with their cousins and, although I did have to chase Mathew down a little, and we had some melt downs, overall it was relaxing. They live in a rural area and the kids love just running around in the dirt and throwing rocks. Kristen (Matt's cousin's wife) made delicious strawberry shortcake and Wes made home-made smoked pulled pork...yum. There is something about seing that many kids together that is so darling. The boy cousins really tried to include Mathew which was nice of them since he kept on wrecking their games. Matt took the last picture with his phone...Mathew helping the boys play xbox.