One Down...

I am THRILLED to report that on this day October 16, 2007, I Kristi Kubik, have completed my son's baby scrapbook! Yes! I have to admit, I am a little nervous about being able to duplicate a baby scrapbook for hopefully more children to come, but at least this is one down, hopefully a few more to go.:) Enjoy my last pages about Connor's first words, and the closed, completed book. Ahhh, victory.

When at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again

I am thrilled that we have had two very successful Family Home Evenings over the past 3 weeks. The first was on Noah and we used a toy Noah's Ark and children's book with the story to talk about it. The next week we talked about reverence using a book we have titled I'm Reverent When and Connor now folds him arms when we ask him to be "reverent". Yes! Success! Each successful FHE has finished with a treat which is happy for all three of us! This past Monday night was a complete bust however. Connor was not in the mood and demonstrated this to us by sliding himself from Byron's arms, from the couch and rolling around the floor saying "Nooooooooooo" as we were singing our opening song, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam". Apparently, Connor wasn't feeling it. So...we ended with a treat. We need to give our child consistency right?:) We'll try, try again next week!

It's Pumpkin Time!

Connor's been so thrilled with pumpkins this year. He calls them "balls" and points them out whenever he sees them. (We have three on our calendar for this month so it's a daily thing we do to point them out while we're eating dinner now).:) I couldn't help but buy two when we were shopping this past week. I bought a small pumpkin just for Connor. When he saw it he hugged it and said, "ball" in the most loving way and carried it with him the rest of the trip. It was totally worth the $2 to see his love and care towards his very first pumpkin. I love this time of year!

And the Winner Is...

Even though our apartment complex is old and showing it, I really appreciate the staff. They work really hard to make Booker Creek Townhouses a nice and happy place to live. Thank you staff!:) One of their recent efforts was a fall decorating contest. I received a flier on my door stating the parameters of the contest and decided since I already had my fall wreath up, might as well "register". (This consisted of going to the office and finding I was the first one to sign up. It was the last day to do so). After I registered, the competitive side of me reared its ugly head (I've been successful at beating it down for many, many years in order to live a more happy, conflict free life, but sometimes it gets the better of me). So the competitive Kristi started looking around at the other apartments. Shock! There was no fall beauty to be found anywhere! I've been sitting patiently waiting for my grand prize ever since. Three weeks later I found a note on my door saying I had received second place and to pick up my prize the next day. Since I had successfully recaged competitive Kristi, I was very pleased with my second place and happily received my prize at the office today. I am the proud recipient of an hour massage (gratuity not included). I've never had a massage before. Are they nice? Do they hurt? I was more hoping for some sort of restaurant gift certificate or maybe a month's free rent, but beggars can't be choosers right? I'll have to put my game face on next contest.

Cart Sneaking

It appears my days of children sneaking things into my cart at the store has officially begun. We were doing our routine "walk through" of the toys before racing through grocery shopping when Connor found a DVD that had all sorts of super heroes on it. He's been fascinated by pictures of super heroes lately so this DVD caught his eye. He looked it over and studied it and then came to the cart reached up on his tippy-toes and threw the DVD into the cart! I just wanted to burst out laughing. Seriously, is that hysterical to anyone else? I was pretty proud of him too that he had figured out what goes in the cart, comes home with us. I think I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on what goes through the check-out from now on though. I could become like that lady who sold the "snuck into the cart Pokeman cards" on Ebay for what, like $50? Maybe this isn't such a bad thing after all....

Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping for Connor and I is an event. We travel 20 min to Super Wal-Mart and we start out by playing with the elephant ride at the door. I put him in the cart for 3 seconds to get something I need, then let him walk around playing with toys, etc for another 15-20. I then begin the luring to the cart process where I try to get him in with some candy and then go to the baby section to find a duplicate of his own soft blankie in the car (remember we can't bring it into the store because I'm a germ freak). The blankie keeps him content until about the pasta isle where I whip out our second treat of the shopping trip. This keeps him happy until the produce section where I now begin talking about getting to see the elephant again and ultimately, this is where our shopping trip comes full circle. It's a great life for Connor isn't it? The other day, our neighbor brought over some things from her pantry that she no longer wanted. (To us, it was like striking gold! Green beans, pasta sides, yes!) She brought them over in two brown paper bags. Byron and I were finishing eating dinner and we heard Connor just talking and working away. When I came out from the kitchen I found that he had unloaded all the items, placed them in groupings on the stairs, and was choosing his products for purchase and placing them back in the empty bags. It cracked us up! Maybe he likes grocery shopping more than he lets on....

One of My Favorite Things...Cake!

krist

This past Saturday was a wonderful Women's Conference put on by the Durham Stake Relief Society. I was able to attend 3 hour long classes (all were great) one of which was cake decorating. Now, if you know me at all, you know I live for all things sweet, especially cake. I was so so so excited to learn a little bit more about decorating one. (I have visions of many award winning birthday cakes coming our way over the years, right.) There were about 20 of us in the class and the teacher had already baked cakes for all of us in various molds. I happened to stand in front of a football player so I had a great time making a Carolina Blue Tarheel. It was so much for to create and I decided we needed some help eating this cake! Our friends came over and their two boys and Connor loved the evening of cake and ice cream eating (um, was there a birthday we could have celebrated?) and playing. It's not often we get to eat cake for no good reason...let's do it again!