Thank you, phone thief

I just want to thank whoever now has my cell phone because they pushed me into the 21st century against my will, but I'm actually enjoying it.  I had a flip phone which I loved.  It was red and stylish and didn't look like a the old-school oval flip phones. It was a flip phone with bling.  It looked really cool and I loved it.  But it was a flip phone at heart.  No internet, no apps, no touch screen.  And I liked it that way.  I reveled in my cheap cell phone bills and used my laptop when I needed internet and I was happy.  Until two weeks ago when my phone mysteriously disappeared.  I put it in my bag when I went to the gym, never used it while at the gym, came home and found that it was no longer in my bag.  I called it and called it and called it, while walking around the house, and in the garage, and while crawling around in the car.  No sound could be heard.  Then on about the 10th call, it went straight to voicemail.  A fully charged phone.  Explain that.  So, I assume someone stole it/found it and decided they needed it more than I did, but the constant ringing was getting on their nerves.  Repeated trips to the lost and found at the gym yielded nothing but comments like "A flip phone?  Old school, huh?"  Alas.  Time for a new phone and time to bite the bullet and upgrade.  So I joined the world of the iphone users and I am having a lot fun.

It took me about 5 minutes to compose my first 3 line text message using that darn touch screen, but I'm getting faster.  And I love that I can dictate my text messages!  And do you know you can watch movies on this thing!?  Amazing. :)  I had the guy at the Sprint store cracking up with my naivete.  I walked in there sooo clueless.  It's not that I'm dumb, it's just that tech is completely uninteresting to me.  I simply haven't ever had a use for it and I've been too busy raising kids and running a household and dealing with church stuff to worry about the latest phone.

Salesman:  (handing me the iphone 5c) Go ahead and check it out.
Me: (staring at it skeptically): What do I do with it?
Salesman: Well, what do you want to do?
Me:  I make calls with my phone.  How do I do that with this one?
Salesman: (clearly trying very hard not to laugh) Ok. If you want to make a call you do this...(proceeds to show me how to open contacts and select a name.
Me: Once I've found the name of the person, then how do I call them?
Salesman: (winning the award for patience with the tech idiot) You press the phone icon and it calls them.
Me: Ok.  Looks good.  I'll take this one.
Salesman: Would you like to see what else it can do?
Me: Ok. Sure. What else can it do?

Thus began a whirlwind tutorial on the iphone and it was pretty fun, I have to admit.  I can see the appeal.  I definitely liked the iphone more than the android model he showed me because the iphone seemed so much more intuitive, (read: easier to use without taking the time to read a user manual).  What floored me was when I'd show it to my friends and even inside the case I bought for it, all I had to do was hold it up and people would say, "Oh, you got the 5c!"  What?  How can you tell that just by looking at it??  Amazing people.  Two weeks ago I couldn't have even told you it was an iphone.

So, long story short, thank you phone thief, but now could you help me reenter my 200 contact phone numbers?  Because, of course, they don't carry over from my old stone-age phone.  To my friends: if I don't call you for a while, it's not that I don't care, it's that I've lost your number.

My Toothless Wonder

My sweet Benjamin lost both his front teeth this week.  They have been loose for two months, but he's really hesitant to wiggle loose teeth too much for fear that it'll hurt, so they've taken their time coming out.  On Saturday evening I couldn't wait anymore and I asked to see his wiggly teeth.  I grabbed one and yanked.  Before he knew it, it was out and he was so happy.  Then tonight (Wednesday) I noticed the other one hanging by a corner and I did the same thing.  He was so excited to have them both out (and to be getting even more money).  I still remember the day I lost my front teeth and insisted on calling my grandma in the United States (I was in Berlin at the time) to tell her the good news.  I remember taking pictures and feeling so grown up.  I think Benjamin did too. So amazing how big he's getting.

Snow Fun!

The new year brought snow and LOTS of it.  It was so much fun.  We went sledding and made snow forts and snow slides and had snow ball fights and when we were tired, we laid down and buried each other in it or made snow angels.

This is how Benjamin prepares for a snowball fight.  I tried to tell him, "It's a snow BALL fight, not a snow BOULDER fight."  Luckily his aim is terrible.

This is the kids buried in the snow.  This was after the first snow, so there wasn't a lot yet, but enough to have fun in.  You can't see it in the picture, but Benjamin is buried in the middle.  He wanted to see what it would be like to be completely covered.  The others weren't so daring.

This was the beginning of one of our snow forts.  We ended up finishing up the sides and back and had a pretty awesome igloo, if I do say so myself.  We also built a second one a few feet away facing it so we could have the two sides of the snowball fight.  However, we made the mistake of inviting two little football player neighbor boys over to join the fight and they had both forts destroyed in about 30 seconds with no remorse.  Benjamin was seething.  I wasn't happy to see 2+ hours of work wasted, but I just hope it snows again soon so we can build them back up.

Then it got really, really cold and we simply enjoyed it from the window. Well....at first I thought, how bad could it be?  What's "wind chill" anyway?  Just some guy's idea of how "cold it feels?"  Bah.  Bunch of wimps.  That doesn't bother me.  Off we go grocery shopping!  By the time we got the groceries from the store to the car, my younger two were crying.  Literally, big sobs and screams, "It's cold!"  I tried to quickly get the groceries loaded in the car, but my gloves were too bulky to do it right and without them, my hands became stiff and numb in seconds so loading became even harder!  It was a nightmare.  -30 degrees is no joke.  Pull out the food storage if you have to, but no trips to Costco in those temperatures!   So we headed home and that's the last time we emerged for 4 days.

Christian found a cozy spot inside the linen closet.

It was really fun inside too.  School was cancelled so we got nearly an extra week of Christmas vacation and we enjoyed it as much as we could as hermits.  Crafts, board games, movies, pretend play etc.  We did venture out once to blow bubbles and watch them freeze, but that didn't last long. They even cancelled church so we had a little "devotional" on Sunday.  The kids and I pretended we were in the Little House on the Praire book - The Long Winter - when they are in the middle of the long winter the Indian predicted and they're forced to stay inside their house nearly all winter. Pa gets lost outside just a few feet from home but the snow is so thick he can't see the house.  They nearly all starve if it weren't for Almanzo and his daring trek to get wheat from a settler far away.  Sorry, enough plot line ramblings.  We just really enjoyed that series. :)

We're on J this week, so we made simple little jelly fish.

And of course, no day goes by in our house without someone pretending to be a cat.  Additionally, Christian is going through a girl clothes phase.  Every day he puts on Bella's dresses and says he's "getting fancied-up."  He will change clothes all day long, wearing 4-5 dresses/day.  I insist he wear boy clothes in public, but I don't fight the battle at home.  This day he was wearing a black and white dress so he became "Mumbo's sister."  "I'm black and white like Mumbo!  I'm his sister!"  I hope he outgrows the phase soon, but for now, it's kind of fun to see her out-grown dresses get a second life. :)

This past Sunday we finally had church again and it was Christian's first time in primary as a Sunbeam.  Up until now he's been in the nursery class, but he's finally a "big boy" and allowed to go to primary with his siblings.  He was so immensely proud. And it was so fun as Primary president to look out and see all my kids together in primary with me. I got a picture of him in his new Sunday outfit looking so handsome, but the kids played with my camera and erased it (or so I guess, because the picture is no where to be found and they've been playing with the camera these last couple days).  So sad.  I'll have to take another and pretend it was taken on the big day. ;)   As a substitute, I'll put in this picture.  Benjamin was playing photographer and wanted everyone to put on jeans and blue shirts and take a picture together.  Bella refused to wear a blue shirt, however, so she compromised with the jeans.  No picture, of the many taken, has them all looking at the camera at the same time, but I thought these two were cute.  Especially the one where Bella looks adoringly at her big brother. I really do have the cutest kids.  They're really growing up.