Update

I was able to see Jared a little more this week. He's been crazy busy lately. I think his school load is getting much lighter. We went to Cherry Hill with Jason and Minjee (my bro and his wife who live in So. Ogden) on Friday. It was fun. We took the twins down the big water slides and they were a little scared but not too bad. Becca on the other hand loved it and was pulling us up the sidewalk to go again. We also let her go down the river rapids ride by herself in a tube. She loved that one too and went on it probably 7 times. She didn't even care when her tube flipped and she went underwater. The lifeguard was right there pulling her out. She had gone down with Jason and Minjee and Jason wasn't holding on to her tube or her hand. Jared and I were up on the viewing area and we were watching helplessly. I have to say she is one tough little girl. She gave us a huge scare on Thursday. Jared had come home from class and I had been painting the toy room all day long. (the toy room is a whole other story) Becca was acting really needy and clingy saying she was too scared to do anything by herself (basically just her way of getting attention) probably because I'd been painting for hours and she didn't get the attention she used to getting. Anyway I had just put the twins to bed and I left Becca with Jared while I went to the movie store. Right as I'm getting my movies Jared calls my cell phone and asks if I have Becca with me. I assured him I didn't and he hung up. When I was almost home he called again saying in a panic that he couldn't find her and that he'd looked everywhere. I came home and he was just frantic. We kept looking and calling out for her but there was no sign of her. I started thinking that she had tried to follow me to the movie store because right as I was leaving she had gotten this look in her eyes that said 'Mommy I want to go too! Don't leave me!' So at that point I was feeling pretty rotten. We checked down the street and had most of the members of the church on our street out looking for her. Then the elders quorum pres and the bishop showed up too. We decided after about a half hour of looking to call the police thinking she had been taken. They said to have a picture of her so they could ID her. It was so scary. I felt so sick trying to find a picture for them. When the police got there I had one search the house and one stayed outside and took info from me. We called Scott and Tayia (Jared's cousin and his wife who live down the street) and Jason and Minjee and asked them to help search. Just then the cop came out of the house and said he'd found her. She was shoved up under our bed sound asleep with only part of her arm sticking out. He said it looked like a doll's arm and had to reach down to touch it to realize it was real. I hugged her so tightly and took her outside to show her all the people walking up and down the street looking for her. She thought it was funny, but sobered up pretty quickly when I explained that I thought someone had taken her away from mommy and that we were really scared. That was a really strange day. Earlier our mirror in the bathroom fell and shattered all over the floor. We had removed it to paint and then Jared just propped it back up and never actually fastened it to the wall. Then Thursday morning when no one was even near it the whole thing fell and shattered. I was like 'Talk about bad luck' Then that night when we were turning on the light in the bathroom there was a funny spark of electricity and the entire thing stopped working. It was such a strange day. I've learned to appreciate Becca so much more ever since we thought we had lost her forever. Jared and I keep thanking Heavenly Father in our prayers that she is safe and sound. She is such a beautiful sweet girl. Tomorrow she is having her first day of swimming lessons. She is so excited. We have been spending a lot of time in the back yard running through the sprinklers or swimming in the little pool. The twins love it too. We have to watch them every second of the day or they will go crazy. The day Becca got lost and I was painting I decided to take a break from painting and I shut down the door but left the paint cans open. Well in the meantime the twins woke up and I brought them downstairs to play. I started organizing some of our unpacked stuff in the storage room and went into the room I was painting. Well I forgot to shut the door and I went outside to check the mail and then upstairs to sort it. In the meantime Ethan discovered that there was a big container of something that looked just like melted chocolate to him. (I have this really great high gloss chocolate brown paint I've been using as an accent color) Well Ethan decided that chocolate looked really yummy and he was gonna have a taste of that. When I came down I saw brown paint dripping down his chin and shirt and the paintbrush in the can dipped way in and brown paint splashed on the floor. They weren't even in the room anymore instead they were in the storage room tearing books off the bookshelf. I'll spare you the details of the rest because if you're anything like Jared you are probably getting a headache just thinking about the scenario. The shortened version is that I got most of it cleaned up thanks to the lovely new steam cleaner that we had just bought earlier last week due to some flooding in our toy room. We had discovered that the water faucet in the front yard has a big problem: it waters the room inside the house directly behind the faucet instead of pouring onto the grass in front of it. I didn't notice this except for really low water pressure in other parts of the house until 10 minutes after we'd turned it on. I was sitting in the family room telling Jared about my day when I heard what sounded like a cup of water being poured into more water. I jumped up to see what it was (I thought the twins were playing in the toilet) and I walked into a room filled with an inch of water. After hearing this story a friend joked that we could turn the toy room into the indoor swimming pool. The room was full of toys scattered all over the floor so Elmo and the barbies got to go outside for that night and the next day to dry out. Also I got to wash a load of baby clothes because the water seeped into the next room where I stored all our baby clothes and the boxes on the bottom got soaked through. So we cleared all the toys out of there and Jared went to the store for a steam cleaner. That thing is awesome. It sucked all the water right up and then when it was starting to stink a few days later I was able to shampoo the carpet and dry it out with a fan. That was when I decided that it was time to paint in there. All the toys were gone and I had an empty room. I went with a really bright cheerful aqua color that reminded me of the ocean in Hawaii. Well when I had it all painted and proudly showed it to Jared he was recoiling in horror saying it was hidious and way too bright. I was starting to agree with him. So I went back to Lowes and picked up the same color as the twins room (a lovely green) because I knew he already loved that color and repainted it. While I was painting I decided to turn it into an office and make one of the other three storage rooms the new toy room. That will force me to go through all the extra stuff that is totally unorganized and create more useable space. Have I mentioned that we have way too much stuff? If we are filling three bedrooms with just stuff we don't use on a daily basis that is way too much. The trouble is I don't really know what to do with all of it. I keep going through it and sorting out stuff but its still crazy. We have tons of books, stuff for hobbys like sewing and scrapbooking, camping gear, rock climbing gear, military gear we have to keep in case Jared gets called up, snorkling gear, tools, food storage. I can't justify getting rid of any of it so I'm just glad that I have a large enough house to keep all of it stored out of the way. We have been having a much better time with Becca lately. She is much better behaved and obeys most of the time. She FINALLY will clean up after herself as well. We came up with an idea that works very well with her. We tell her that if she doesn't clean up her toys that its no big deal, we will just clean them for her and when we clean them they will all go in the 'trash' We have a stash of toys 'in the trash' in one of our storage rooms. Becca has seen them so I think she knows that we aren't really throwing them away but she also knows she doesn't get to play with them anymore. So when she gives us her excuse of being too tired to clean we just casually say 'Ok no problem, just let me know when you are done cleaning and I'll take over cleaning with the trash bag' She immediately jumps up and is like 'NOOOOOO!' and starts cleaning. Sometimes I can get her to clean a huge room that is totally trashed with toys and other junk just by threatening to get the trash bag. She has started earning money too by helping to empty or fill the dishwasher or picking up her room. She has a little pink wallet and she's been saving up to go to the grocery store to buy candy with her own money. We read her a little book about tithing too. I'm not sure she entirely gets the concept but we're still working with her. The twins are totally into books now and their comprehension (sp?) is growing. Their favorite books are the ones with bright colors and pictures of everyday objects or the touch and feel books. Every time they look at the books they can point to something new. They don't name the pictures but they can point them out. Today they sat through all of sacrament until the last 10 min. Mostly that was because they were looking at books and eating snacks the whole time. There were these really cute blonde twin girls sitting in front of us that were about 7 or 8. One of them colored a picture and gave it to Ammon. I was like ooh Ammon got a picture from a cute blonde older girl twin. It'll be fun to tease him about when he's older. Ammon and Ethan go to nursery without crying now. Except for last week when I volunteered because they were short on leaders. Bad idea! They were so clingy and whiny the whole time and the leaders said they are always really quiet and happy.