I am alive

 

Since my last post I have:

1. Had a baby! Nellie was born April 9th.

2. Painted the master bathroom ( technically Michael did but I picked the color,)

3. Planted a garden and ate food from my garden.

4. Started exercising three mornings a week at the new Provo Rec center.

5. Got a flat tire and had some friendly firemen fix it for me.

G. Rowed a boat on Payson Lakes.

5 1/2. Made a delicious chocolate, nutella, strawberry cake for Father’s Day.

Q. Went camping at Payson Lakes.

6. Went to Yellowstone with the Crevistons.

7. Went camping at Warm River Campground in Idaho with the Thompsons.

8. Fell in a river and bashed up my leg.

9. Read a bunch of books and went to a few book clubs.

10. Visited most of the parks in Provo with my kids.

11. Found the perfect healthy muffin recipe. Whole wheat chocolate zuchinni.

12. Had my first pedicure ever. I think I will do it again.

13. Got to have my good friend Kristin, who I hadn’t seen in four years, stay at my house for a night.

14. Worked on a secret sewing project with Darcy and helped her learn how to sew.

15. Taken 5 kids to 7 peaks.

16. Gotten several really annoying swollen taste bugs.

17. Bought a Maya baby sling and decided I like it much better than the Moby baby wrap.

18. Used up all my homemade laundry soap. I need to make some more before I can do laundry again.

19. This morning a pulled weeds in the flower bed in front of my house.

And now we are back up to date. I feel like I am getting back in my groove after having Nellie so I may post more often. Here are a few pictures of the last few months.

My kitchen

I am finally getting around to posting before and after pictures of my kitchen. Back in August my carpenter brother-in-law Chris started redoing our kitchen. I think we finished everything in September. We did, new cabinet doors, crown molding, he repainted everything and put on new hinges. He also added a new shelf. He replaced the counter tops and helped us put up a tile back splash. A few weeks after we finished it the kitchen let fell off the ceiling, probably in protest of being left out of the remodel so we replaced it too.  Last week Michael finally got around to putting the sealer on the grout. With out further ado, the before pictures.

The people who fixed up our house before we bought did the paint bomb approach to everything they painted. They painted over hinges, spiders or what ever was in the way. The kitchen was the worst. It had some really big drips they just let dry that way.

The countertops were very blue and had a nice bare burned spot you can see at the end by the phone.

They also didn’t use paint that was meant for kitchens, so the cupboards got dirty fast and didn’t wipe clean very easily. I thought about sanding everything down, painting and replacing hardware myself. I’m glad I didn’t. It would have been a lot of work and not turned out nearly as nice as Chris did it. Here are the after pictures.

After saying I was going to make curtains for several months I finally gave in and bought some. It was hard to find some that matched. You can see the extra shelves Chris added at the end of the counter. It is nice to have a spot for a pencil basket and a few decorations.

Here is a close up of the tile back splash and counter tops. I love how they match so well. I almost didn’t use the smaller mosaic tiles because they were more expensive. I am glad I did because it turned out so good.

Here is the backsplash behind our stove. Michael and Chris did the backsplash on a Saturday while Emily was working and I watched the kids.

A closer view of the cabinets. Chris did a dry brush finish, which I love. It is a little more rustic looking, which I know not everyone likes, but I think it looks great here. The crown molding finishes everything off nicely and makes it look a bit fancier.

It is a little embarrassing to admit how long it took me to remember to take after pictures when my kitchen was actually clean enough for me to be willing to show pictures of it to other people. So that’s my new kitchen. Sometimes I I just sit at my dining room table and admire how nice it looks now. Updating the kitchen has been on my list since we moved in but has always been delayed by things like a new roof or water heater. It was fun to work on a project that was just to make something prettier not to fix a serious problem.

Our spring projects are going to be redoing the kitchen floor and putting shelving in all the kids closets, hopefully before there is another newborn in the house. We will see if that happens. I’m so glad I have a handy carpenter brother-in-law. Thanks Chris for my new kitchen!

Crazy January

January is shaping up to be even busier than December was. I am blaming in on all my boys having a birthday this month. Yesterday was the last birthday so I thought it would calm down but it doesn’t seem like it will. Tonight I have a meeting for the family history committee , Wednesday Michael has to spend the evening at the Church, Thursday I am hosting a book club, Friday some good friends are coming over for a game night and Saturday we are taking the kids to a monster truck show. I also have something going on in the day everyday this week that either requires me to babysit someone's kids or someone to babysit my kids.

All the things that are keeping me busy are good things, but it sure wears me out. I always feel a little guilty when I go to bed an hour before Michael and he gets up an hour before me. Remembering that he sits at a desk 8 a hours a day instead of chasing kids around helps ease the guilt a little bit. Theoretically things should calm down in February after Stephen gets baptized.

I had a few ideas about some things I could blog about on my blog, all of which I forgot as soon as I sat down to write. So I guess this is it for now.

For your entertainment

 

Michael found our engagement pictures on a CD  last night. They made me laugh. Check out Michael’s smile and his awesome glasses.  I look about 15 years old in these pictures, which I suppose isn’t that far off from the truth. Michael is wearing his church shirt because at the time we were engaged he had about 7 shirts which consisted of faded polo shirts that were too big, a BYU computer science shirt and his white button up church shirt.

Another great thing about our engagement pictures? They were taken at a rest stop in Malad Idaho. Michael and I were not a very demanding couple. Didn’t we look happy?

Nine years later, I have lost the bangs, and Michael has some new glasses. And I think we still look pretty happy.

Talents

I would love to have a beautiful voice. But I don’t. I have a small range and I have a very hard time singing a part if it isn’t the melody. I would not be able to sing a C if someone asked me to. I might be able to if they played the note first for me. No one has ever suggested that I join the choir.

Last night I went to a relief society activity that had a program about the women in the life of Jesus. There were some beautiful musical numbers. I think music has the ability to touch peoples hearts faster than any other medium. I know jealousy is not a good think but I have always been envious of people with beautiful voices.

I don’t really have any performable talents. I don’t sing or play a musical instrument well. I can’t dance or act or tell funny jokes. I am not a great artist. I can think of things to write about but it rarely comes out how I would like. My philosophy with photography is to take a bunch of pictures and hope one turns out nice. I don’t excel at any sports. I know that not everyone has obvious talents but sometimes I think it would be nice to have one. I think it would be nice to be able to perform a beautiful piece of music, or take credit for a beautiful piece of art.

Having an obvious talents makes it easier to define people. That’s Sally, she is a great cook and has a beautiful voice. Joe writes amazing poetry and is great at soccer. It is harder to say who you are when you don’t have something like that. I am Katie-Beth and I am ok at a lot of things but not really excellent at anything.

I am a happy person. And I know that I am good at a lot of things. But sometimes it takes a lot of effort, to remind myself that the less visible talents are just as important and valuable even if they are not as recognizable.  I am really good at budgeting. I can read aloud well and read very fast. I can look at a picture of something crafty and figure out how to make it. I can take care of four kids and help them become good people. I am good at research and know how to look up things on microfilm. I can wrap a baby up in a blanket nice and snug so they look like a little baby burrito. I can pick up things with my toes. I am a good friend. I can make yummy food for a family of picky eaters. I can brush things off easily and rarely get mad.

These are good talents to have. I can use them to help other people and they make my life more enjoyable. If I take the time to think about it I would have to say that these talents are probably more useful and bring me more joy than a more obvious talent like having a beautiful voice or being able to do a back flip would.  Knowing this it is still hard not to be a little jealous when I see peoples other peoples talents.

I may not be able to sing but I play battleship amazingly well.

This picture doesn’t really have to do with the post but I like how it turned out.

Clutter

I feel like my house is getting to that point where I either need to get rid of a bunch of stuff or go crazy. It seems like every room has an excess of stuff it, especially the kids rooms. And thinking about adding more stuff to our house through all the birthdays and Christmas we have coming up makes me feel like undertaking a serious purge of unnecessary things.

Figuring out what is unnecessary is the tricky part though. Which unfinished projects have a realistic chance of being finished? How many pie pans do you keep around when you only make pie a few times a year but when you do it is usually 3 for 4 at once? How many tubs of kid clothes do you keep when you still have kids growing in to them but you are running out room store any more? Which books do you get rid of when you can’t fit anymore on your shelf?

I know compared to a lot of houses I have been in my house really isn’t very cluttery, but for some reason the clutter I do have has really been bugging me.

Another challenge to clutter is finding the time to get rid of it. If you try to de-clutter a kids room while the kid is around suddenly all the things they never play with become their favorite toy. And for ever closet that is cleaned out there is a mess that has to be cleaned up and a few bags of stuff that need to me gotten rid of.

But I don’t think there are many things I enjoy more that looking at a freshly decluttered room or closet. So I am going to try and go through my house in the next few weeks and get rid of a bunch of stuff. Wish me luck!

Grandpa Thompson

Michael’s grandfather passed away this week and it has been making me think about how our lives affect those around us.

It is easy to see how some people’s lives affect and influence those around them. A great teacher can positively influence the lives of hundreds of children. Inspire them to believe in themselves and do more with their lives than they thought they could. The choices made by the leaders of our country have an affect that spreads to millions of people. People like Martin Luther King and William Tyndale did amazing things with their lives and truly made the world a better place.

But most people won’t have the opportunity to be a president, lead a civil rights movement or teach hundreds of children. The sphere of people that we have an impact may seem much smaller. It may seem like what we do does not matter as much as a more “important” persons actions might. This idea is wrong.

The grandpa Thompson that I knew was a quiet person. He was always there at family gatherings. He didn’t say much unprompted, but if you sat down beside him he was happy to talk. Grandpa didn’t have good vision but he won card games amazingly often. He liked to hold his new great-grandchildren for a few minutes and admire them. Grandpa and Grandma Thompson raised five children in a two bedroom home. The same home he lived in until he passed away. Grandpa worked at Hill Air force base for 37 years. He was a good father and husband and a good person. I never heard him say an unkind thing about another person.

You might think that a quiet person who lived within the same ten mile radius his whole life might not have had a big impact on the world. It would be easy to assume that his sphere of influence was somewhat limited. But I don’t think this is true. I can see Grandpa’s reserved personality in Michael. Michael would much rather sit back and observe a conversation than have to think of something to contribute to it. I can see Grandpa’s smile in my brother-in-law who also shares his name.

Grandpa and Grandma Thompson raised five good children who have grown up to raise families of there own. He had 20 grandchildren and 24 grandchildren. I’m sure they all have a little bit of Grandpa Thompson in them. He taught his children to love and serve others, values which they passed on to there children. Those children and grandchildren have gone on to be positive influences for countless other people. Like a pebble thrown in a pond.

I don’t think it is possible to measure the impact that a single person has had on the world. But I do know that Grandpa Thompson left a positive one. When those he has left behind think of him it will be with love and desire to leave this world better than we found it. Who could want have any other impact on the world than that?

Four generations: Ray Thompson, Michael Thompson, Ron Thompson and Stephen Thompson (the baby)