Children summary September 2009

Julianna surprised me today. Josh got a DVD recently of the newer Willie Wonka movie, and the end teaches one of the Oompa Loompa dances. All of the kids have been having fun watching and learning the dance, but we haven't watched it for some time. I came into the living room this evening whistling that song, and when Julianna heard it, she started doing the dance! The actual dance! She is not even two years old yet!!! I was shocked and awed (as they say in this decade of the war against terror). I laughed so hard - I wish I had a video camera to catch it. She dances and moves a lot when she hears music, but this was choreography, people! I guess I'll be enrolling her in dance lessons when she is older. She is so cute!

Nathan is turning four tomorrow - Julian made him a cake tonight, but no one wanted to wait to eat a piece, so we put candles in it, let him blow it out, and ate half of the cake. He wants a "spiderman" cake for his party, which is funny because he's never seen a spiderman movie or had a spiderman toy. He does have a spiderman Leapfrog storybook, so that must be where he gets it. Books apparently influence children. Spidey, here we come . . .

Luke taught himself to read before he went to kindergarten, but they brought home their first "word chunk slider" this week. He was laughing because his teacher told the class that their parents' eyes would "pop right out of their head" when the students surprised their parents with their newfound reading skills. But Luke said "Your eyes popped out of your head a long time ago." True dat!! He'll read something and I say "who taught you that?" He says "No one, that's just what it says." He picked out a book at the library this week called "I want to be a doctor" because he "wants to be a doctor." He's said that for several years, and he's only five! If that's what he chooses, I think he'll be a great one - very good, tender bedside manner. He loves to snuggle and give kisses and hugs. A little too much for Julianna's taste, but everyone else loves it.

Joshua seems to be doing well in school. He gets his homework done, loves to read, and still is very creative with his "stations" at home. He has customer service, a post office, road signs, a lake outside in the garden, etc. He's always creating new things like that. We love the creativity, but I'm not sure how I feel about all the stuff he leaves around "set up" throughout the house. :)

This week we brought in a truckload (42,000 lbs) of pasta for a group order for our home storage friends. Joshua LOVES his job of directing all the traffic. It was a great motivator for him to get his homework done early in the week so he would be able to spend Thursday afternoon with us. He greeted the cars and told them where to go, how to park, and explained the process to them. We had over 200 people come and it was VERY busy at the beginning. Several people told me later that he would periodically come to their car in line and apologize for the wait and explain that it wouldn't be long once they were able to get through to park their cars, etc., being very professional. He is so cute - that is the perfect job for his personality. And he is old enough that he was actually a really big help during the sale process. He made things go more smoothly for everyone. It's weird to think that our children are old enough to be positively impacting society already! :)

We're Officially Married!

Well, I guess it's official! Julian and I are truly married. After almost 10 years since our marriage in the Portland Temple, I received an official copy of our marriage certificate in the mail. I know that doesn't sound significant to most people, but there is a funny story behind it.

We did what every LDS couple does - we got a marriage license, scheduled a time to get married and sealed in the temple, turned in our paperwork to the temple office, and sailed off into the sunset. The temple gave us a pretty sealing certificate that lacked our marriage license number. Since it was before 9/11, that certificate was sufficient to change my social security card and driver's license 2 yrs later (that is another story about why I finally officially changed my name).

About 5 yrs later, my brother went to the county records office to get his marriage license, and I asked him to pick up mine as well. Everyone was very surprised to hear that the records office said they had no record of our marriage! We were "livin' in sin!" No wonder living together was so much fun!! Julian says I love "danger". We joked a lot about it, but didn't worry enough about it to do anything about it. We knew it must be a clerical error, we knew we got married and sealed in the temple, and we both figured we would eventually do something about it.

That "eventually" came now. We are going to Mexico for our 10 year anniversary, and when we went to get our passports renewed, we learned that the only way I could get the passport in my married name (which was a "must" because my driver's license is in that name) was to turn in an official copy of our marriage license. Ugh! Luckily, a few calls to a few offices in Oregon, and they were able to find our marriage license. I got it in the mail this week, hopefully with enough time to get our passports before our trip. Funny thing is, now living together doesn't seem as much fun now that it's "official." :)