Happenings

We spent last week getting over colds. Lydia was probably the most miserable. She has been sick before when she was young but I think she was more aware of how awful she felt and made sure we all knew it. She spent her days walking around saying "hold me, hold me" and "Nose nose" or she just half moaned cried. It was so sad. Jared and Mark seem to be completely better and Lydia and I are almost there.
Since we were sick we spent more time at home last week. In attempt to have something fun to do I made a fort for Jared and Lydia They were really not impressed or interested. They played in it some but I think it was more because they felt sorry for me.  They were much more interested in watching My Little Pony. There is a little girl at preschool that Jared plays with a lot and she loves "Ponies" so for the past 3 weeks or so Jared has been talking a lot about ponies so I decided to show him some of the cartoons. He loved them. I really loved My Little Pony when I was a little girl. I have been feeling so remorseful that I didn't keep any of my toys (that I can think of) from my childhood. I had a lot of ponies. Just for fun I went online yesterday and looked up "toys from the 1980's" and recognized so many of the ponies and even remembered some of the names. They are a little different now but brought back so many memories. It seems like they came out in 1983 (I could be wrong) and I was born in 1982 so they were definitely a big part of my childhood. It was so fun to see pound puppies, cabbage patch kids, Rainbow Brite and She Rah. It made me laugh when I saw all the WWF wrestling guys.  I also loved playing with my brothers Ninja Turtles and Micro Machines.

Jared also succeeded in filling up his "charms" jar so we went out to ice cream.  He was pretty much all better by then with just a little cough. He was so excited about it. As we were eating Jared said when he said his prayers tonight he would give thanks that he got to go to the ice cream shop. Cute kid. He gets charms for doing his everyday jobs like making his bed and brushing his teeth, keeping his room clean and then for listening well and doing kind helpful things. We are trying to get him to understand when he does good things like listens right away or does things without being asked good things happen. It is working pretty well. He can choose what he gets to do after he fills his jar but it may just be going out to ice cream every time.

We have also read a lot of stories which is not anything new but happens even more when we are sick. Jared has this book of CARS stories that he loves and I read Mater's Mission (CARS 2 summarized) more times than I can count. We both have it almost memorized and it is not a short story. Lydia's current favorite is "Tar boy" (Tarzan).  For awhile she kept calling it "boy" (which is what she still calls Jared) and we struggled to figure out which story she meant.  Now we got it and read it A LOT!

Reading CARS 2 from THE book and Tar boy. 

Mark and I also had a fun quiet date night at home where we worked on the puzzle I got him during Valentines. I love puzzles. I remember doing them all the time when I was growing up. I just find them so enjoyable.  I think it's a good indicator of how much I love things to be in order. Taking all those pieces and figuring out where they go and having something go from so chaotic to a great picture is rewarding. Its not so much the figuring out where each piece goes but taking a disorganized mess and getting that outcome. This one is much harder than I thought it would be. Mark commented that his strength is more in geographical maps. (Speaking of geography, its been crazy to read about what is going on in Russia/Ukraine. I have never been but we have some good friends posted in Ukraine. They were in Egypt prior so their last two postings have been a little stressful. Russia has always fascinated me. I was very interested in the Cold War era when I was going to school and getting my history degree. So I am interested to see where this goes. End tangent)

Fortunately we are feeling much better and we are supposed to have pretty nice weather this week so that will be fun. Unfortunately Mark's car is not working. Maybe with everybody feeling better and the nice weather he will have some time to go try to figure out how to fix it. Were so glad his school is only a 4 minute drive away so sharing a car is not that hard.