Boogers on the Wall

My two oldest boys looking through my parent’s house after it was burned by a fire.

Sometimes it’s still hard for me to believe that my parent’s house burned down. They’ve settled into a new place now and have begun to rebuild their lives.

It’s been seven months since the flames ripped through their home destroying much of their belongings.

I went into their new garage recently to walk by the boxes of stuff that was rescued from the place. I found my box of childhood pictures. The photos were untouched by smoke and fire but sadly many of them still got ruined.

The water used to put out the blazes seeped into the plastic tub filled with photos, sealing many of them together into a giant wad. If you know me, you know I love pictures. I worked for a long time separating several of them, then had to put them aside for a while.

For me it’s just pictures. For my parents it has been much, much more.

This past Sunday my 9-year-old was asked to speak at our church about how he helped serve his grandma after her house fire. It was tragic for my boys to watch someone they love go through something so hard.

I’d like to share with you the talk that he wrote himself. It has been a reminder to me that we can make a difference even when things seem dark – even when it seems like there is nothing we can do to make this world a better place.

Because there is always something we can do. My kids have been great examples of how to be there for someone in need.

This spring we got the opportunity to help someone I never expected and in a way I never expected.

 In May my grandma’s house had a three-alarm fire. We arrived at about 6:30 p.m. We were among the first of the family to arrive.

 We sat there and watched as the flames tore at the house and blackened it by the second.

 There wasn’t any way that I could save her house but I could serve her in another way.

 I could comfort her. I hugged her, held her hand, and cried with her. Over the next few weeks a lot happened. My grandparents needed a lot of love.

 We had some stuff from the house that we had borrowed such as clocks, movies, knives, somehow we had one of their spoons and a lot of other junk from their drawers. That we would give back as presents.

 We visited them. Ate dinner with them. We did not know what exactly would help. We couldn’t take away their trial, but we knew we loved them and wanted to serve them.

 I would like to close by saying one of my favorite scriptures.

Mosiah Chapter 2 vs. 17

And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.

I don’t know how much my service helped my grandma but I know I felt close to my Heavenly Father.

Hate grocery shopping? Then I may have found your new favorite free online tool: Walmart Grocery.

I hate grocery shopping. I have lamented about it a couple of times on my blog.

From nearly running over my own kids when they dangle from the side of the kiddie car carts, to watching my 3-year-old hit every single elderly person who shares the same aisle as us to running to get all the food our family – between scouts, baseball practice, PTA meetings and nap time – it’s never easy. It’s never convenient. And it’s never over. Inevitably I’ll get home and realize I forgot one, maybe two and sometimes even three or four things on our list.

So when I got an email last week for $20 off at Walmart Grocery, I was sold. It was payday anyway and I needed to go shopping.

I made my list like I normally do. I planned on how many dinner meals we’d need in the next two weeks, made of list of food for those meals, wrote down the things we needed to restock our food storage and then added the usual staples – milk, toilet paper, diapers, etc.

Then I logged onto www.walmart.grocery.com

I plugged in my area code to see what stores offer the free pick-up service near me and then logged into my Walmart account.

Then I began my virtual shopping trip.

At first I used the blue drop-down menu and searched for items by category. But that was time consuming and tedious. So I started using the search tool bar at the top of the webpage. I’d enter the name of an item from my grocery list, select what size, brand or type I wanted, then add it to my cart.

It was magical.

I loved that I didn’t have to walk back and forth from aisle to aisle looking for the right brand, size or quantity of something. I love that I didn’t have to drag my kids along while wandering aimlessly for the one thing on my list I can never find.

I am a bargain shopper who claims that the same food resides in the Great Value boxes as it does the name brand ones so I love that I could choose value brands when shopping.

I love that I could see a running total of my trip (I never can seem to keep a tab in my mind while wandering through the store in person.)

I love that the service is free. Yes, FREE.

Anyone who has a participating store nearby can use the website to shop for their groceries. Once you submit and pay for your order you select a date and time when you want to pick it up. Then a Walmart employee will do all the legwork for you. They wander through the store finding all the things on your list. What if something is sold out? They substitute for a bigger version at the smaller cost.

About 15 minutes before I was to arrive at my pick-up store I called the pick-up number and told them I was on my way. Then I called again when I got there.

Less than a minute later an employee walked out pulling a cart loaded up with my groceries.

I felt like royalty.

She helped me load my goods into my car and I was on my way.

This is going to change my life.

I’m not saying I’m never going to go into Walmart or any other grocery store again – heaven knows I end up picking up extra things a few times a week sometimes. But for the big, pay-day I-need-enough-food-for-my-family-of-6-for-2-weeks trips I am going to use this service.

I’ve tried something similar with Sam’s Club. But it’s not nearly as convenient. If you order online and choose to pick up your stuff in the store, you still have to go inside, log in and head to a check out stand before you can get out of there. And they never have the ground turkey I like available for in-store pick-up.

Tired, crazy, stressed out moms are not the only ones I can see benefiting from the new Walmart Grocery program. This would be a huge help to anyone who is short on time or who may need help getting around a store.

There are a couple of drawbacks to Walmart Grocery. One is there is no way to price match. That’s something that I have done for years. I won’t be able to scour other ads and have Walmart match other stores’ extremely low prices.

Second, there’s no way to use coupons – for now at least. Another thing I have done for years.

But when it comes to convenience and timesaving versus a few dollars I could save with coupons, I’m going to go with the former. I can always head to Smith’s or Fresh Market with my coupons for one or two things if it’s a killer deal. (Or send my husband. Ha!)

When I was a little girl my mom used to drive an extra 10 minutes to shop at a store that would load all her groceries in the car for her when her shopping trip was done. I never understood that until now.

This is even better.

I’ll never forget my overnight stay in the hospital the night Luca died. I opted to move to a different hospital floor to avoid other mothers and babies. It was late when we got moved and I had been up for nearly 24 hours.

I was exhausted but sleep didn’t come easily. My mind wouldn’t, couldn’t shut off. Fears, regrets, sorrow and despair engulfed me. If I drifted off the nightmares quickly woke me up.

At one point I woke with a start having just relived his lifeless birth.

I sat in my hospital bed and sobbed. It was dark, I was alone and I let his death sink in.

Then I promised myself I was NEVER going to let this happen again.

The next morning my doctor came to check on me and I asked him a dozen questions about what actually happened to our baby boy and what the odds were of it happening again.

He reassured me that knots in umbilical cords are rare, and knots that result in infant demise are even more rare.

But that was little comfort to a mother who it just happened to.

Gradually my heart softened and after several months I was willing to risk it all again. Willing to try to have another child. That’s when the long road to our rainbow baby began.

It took us a year to get pregnant and it was a scary, stressful time. I knew that at any moment I could feel this baby stop moving. I knew that there was no guarantee that this child would be born alive. And I knew what it would feel like if I had to deliver this baby stillborn and then bury it.

Yet I took a risk. And I thank heavens every day that it paid off.

I faced one of my darkest trials and I lived. And so did my beautiful rainbow baby.

I have spent the past few weeks playing with my two youngest babies. I have helped my T-Rex boy hatch from a cardboard box egg. I have cuddled stuffed snowmen with my baby girl.

I have snuggled to them on our beanbag and read them Christmas stories. I have chased them around our house while they growled and panted like dogs.

I spend most of all of my time caring for and playing with these two amazing humans.

And I keep asking myself what my life would be like without them.

What if I truly had given up? What if I had kept my promise to myself and NEVER delivered another baby?

I have been extremely blessed with two beautifully happy babies since I made myself that pact.

One is now three years old. I swear he was born laughing. He loves to smile. He loves people and I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t love him. He often plays with my hair and strokes my cheeks. His dark brown eyes melt my heart and I can’t imagine my life without him.

Then there’s my second baby after my loss. She is now one year old. She has been the best baby I have ever seen – ever. She loves to rub her nose against mine and squint her eyes when giving me kisses. She almost never cries. I have never wanted to hold anything more in my entire life than I have wanted to hold her. She was meant to be placed into my arms. And yet I nearly missed the chance to wrap them around her.

I nearly gave up.

The darkness and despair that I felt that night almost won.

I am so glad it didn’t.

We started having our own Thanksgiving dinner when we were first married – back when we could only afford a turkey loaf.

The Sunday or Monday before Thanksgiving we hold a mini feast around our own table. We sit down and talk about what we are thankful for.

Each year we make a bare, leafless, paper tree. As we talk about what we are thankful for we write on small paper leaves then glue them onto the tree.

Usually it’s hard to think of things at first. We feel awkward and the ideas are slow coming. But the more we start listing off items the more the gratitude builds and we end up running out of leaves before we’ve written all the things we would like to include.

Most years the tree ends up looking like a bush it’s so full.

I love to see what my boys think of. I’d like to share some of my favorite leaves written as they appeared on this year’s tree.

– Health

– Unsealed Alien Files

– Warm coat

– No Yankee fans

– One more year of David Ortiz

– Military – Armed Forces

– A TV! – I can’t live without it

– Christmas

– No sience today

– Baseball

– Being Alive

– Fishing

– Fishing line

– Worms

– Tackle

– Bait

– The Ponds

– Hooks

– Studio C

– Lobster Bisque

– Grandparents and great grandparents

– Job

– Music

– A body

– Dino Trux

– Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos, all the itos

– A Family

-Heavenly Father and Jesus

– Pictures

– My Babies

My kids have early out days from school all this week. Which normally would stress me right out. It’s not that I don’t love being with my children, but my boys have always been busy, busy.

I have to be at the top of my A-game to keep up with them. Because of this I have grown to cherish naptime. It allows me a couple of hours to catch up and sometimes even read a few pages in my novel for book club.

Obviously my oldest two no longer take naps. Which means I don’t get any afternoon alone time when they have early out. So I end up staying up really late trying to keep up on housework and any miscellaneous projects on my to-do list.

Normally this makes me grumpy. This week I decided not to let it.

When Monday afternoon rolled around and my two oldest boys came flying in the door I was ready for them.

And that’s when we started working on the wagon.

My oldest has been obsessed with making things for months. He’ll go outside with scrap pieces of wood and hammer for hours with his friends. He has created many things including a tipsy chair and an open-sided boat.

So I wasn’t surprised when he wanted to build something.

We have spent hours this week in the garage working on building him a fishing wagon.

We have carefully picked out wood – out of the scrap pile of old fence pieces that he begged off of the neighbor.

We have measured and drawn lines with permanent marker.

I have cut old fence pieces with a scroll saw – something I never thought I would be able to do.

We have split some of the old wood several times. We have bent up a bunch of aluminum nails. We screwed one wagon side on only to watch it fall off moments later.

We were going to give up when our teenager neighbor came by and helped us hold the sides together while we tried hammering it one … more … time.

Our woodcutting isn’t precise and our angles are crooked. We haven’t used any blueprints and we didn’t search for ideas on Pinterest. This has been a true amateur, build-your-own-idea-yourself kind of project.

And it has been great.

I don’t know if the wagon is going to pan out. We still have to figure out how to hook the sides on and who knows where we are going to get wheels for the bottom. It might fall apart the second we push it out from the garage.

Yet even if all the nails pop out and the wagon crumbles to splinters and we never get to use it to carry our poles, all will not be lost. I have spent time with my boys building something. We have laughed. We have grumbled. We have worked together.

We have made something greater than a wagon. We have made memories – memories that wouldn’t have been made unless my boys had early out this week.

I know nothing about the sport of wrestling. But my oldest two boys fight and wrestle all the time so I figured they’d enjoy it. So I signed them up for a wrestling clinic at the local high school.

It brings a smile to my face when I think about watching them at the clinic.

You should see them summersault across the wrestling mats during warm-ups. They haphazardly tuck and roll in zigzag lines all over the place.

And I can’t even begin to describe their push-ups. My seven-year-old could not stick his rear in the air any higher when he’s doing them. Sometimes he’ll get done and tell the wrestling coach that he did one extra.

You should have seen their faces when the coach asked them to do cartwheels.

Then they had to do the monster walk. Watching them glide across the floor without touching the ground with their hands the first couple times was hilarious.

They have learned a few moves and stances. I love watching them practice on other kids in the clinic. They don’t really know what they are doing but they give it their all despite being awkward and clumsy.

But it’s not just my boys who have struggled.

There are a few kids who know a lot about the sport but generally speaking, all of the kids are just starting to learn. That’s why it’s a clinic. I’m glad it’s a safe, confidence-building place for them to try it out.

We definitely aren’t a wrestling family. So they don’t know any rules, stances, moves, point values – nothing.

But they are diving right in and giving it all they have.

Tuesday night they learned the half Nelson something or other and I nearly got the giggles when they kept trying it. They’d twist their wrestling partner half around and try to pin them down.

Keep in mind my boys are lightweights.

Last night they learned how to fall down into some stance over their opponent. That was great.

At the end of each session they get to play a couple of games. My boys’ favorites have been Sharks and Minnows and Steal the Flag.

They get to run around with their shirts off trying to attack one another and steal each other’s flags aka shirts.

Last night after the clinic my 8-year-old stepped outside into the cold night air and shouted, “I feel so alive!”

I think they are thoroughly enjoying wrestling – and the fact that they get to run around with their shirts off for a little while.

Here’s to learning more and feeling more alive.

There are nine days until Halloween. Which means my kids can still change their costume requests about 900 more times.

I’m hoping they won’t, but betting they will.

This past week we had a major switch. My three-year-old decided he no longer wanted to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. He wants to be Jack Skellington.

Major difference.

I was banking on the T-Rex. He’s wanted to be one for half his life. He used to run around our house in just his underpants because, “A T-Rex doesn’t have clothes, Mom.”

He’s grown his fingernail claws extra long and cried real tears when I clipped them. He’s perfected his roar. He’s asked me a million times if I think he’s going to be a T-Rex when he grows up.

But thanks to Netflix and his recent binge watching of The Nightmare Before Christmas he is now claiming that he is really Jack the Pumpkin King.

So last week when we talked about him wearing his dinosaur costume that grandma bought him this spring (she gave it to him as a bribe for potty training) he informed me that he’s not going to be a T-Rex. He’s going to be Jack.

Oh really…

I love making costumes for my kids but this was a little last minute for me.

Then I saw how he started showing people how he is the real Jack. He folds his arms around his chest and rises up out of the ground like Jack. He waves his arms and screams like Jack. I’ve even caught him with a skeleton book at the piano claiming to play the “Jack Song.”

There’s no stopping him. He is Jack.

It reminds me of the year his older brother wanted to be a bat for Halloween. I sewed him an awesome bat costume. Then he changed his mind and wanted to be Hook.

He wore that Hook costume (and a drawn-on mustache) for nearly a year straight. I thought we’d never leave Neverland. It was adorable. It was crazy. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

I’ll never forget the look I got from other customers at the store when I took Hook grocery shopping. I have a feeling I’m going to get similar looks taking Jack around.

So call me crazy, I got my little boy a second costume. Well, made it. He even helped.

We painted a black shirt and pants based on this blog post. It was tedious but simple. Then I sewed a bat-tie bowtie and hooked it on with Velcro.

But no Jack is complete without his dog. We made Zero on Wednesday. We used a pattern from this blog and some fabric scraps from the basement.

My three-year-old stuffed his head and helped position his nose. Then he proclaimed, “Oh I LOVE him.”

We are nearly done with the final Nightmare Before Christmas piece – a Sally costume for little sister. (Which I patterned after this post. Her wig I made after reading this post.) If all goes as planned then Jack, Sally and Zero will be the Clemens family Nightmare trio.

This whole costume project started off as a stress but ended up being great. I’m just glad that Jack and Sally both have uneven lines and raggedy stitching. That made my rushed, amateur crafting skills perfect for the job.

Seeing my baby boy with his costume on, his dog under his wing and a Jack-style smile stretching from ear to ear made it all worth it.

He really is Jack.

Let’s hope he stays that way for nine more days.

To the women who keep telling me that the time raising my kids will fly by – you need to stop.

I know that you mean well. You’ve been there. Your kids are raised and you have seen firsthand how fast they grow.

I don’t blame you for saying these things to me. I am sure I will say them to young moms once my kids are raised. But the thing is, you aren’t telling me anything that I don’t already know.

When you tell me to savor each moment, to let them be little and to enjoy each stage, know that I already am.

My tiny baby princess girl turns one next week and I’m kind of freaking out. How can nine sickly, painful, anxious months in the womb last so long but the 12 months following can flash by in the blink of an eye?

It’s not fair, it’s unexplainable and yet it’s happening.

She’s my baby and she’ll be one whether I like it or not – whether I’ve savored each stage or not.

But thank heavens I have.

I have cuddled her close and held her more than I should have – which may explain why she’s a week from turning one and just barely starting to crawl.

I have kissed her cheeks at least 50 times a day.

I have held her for hours at a time while she’s napped and I have caught up on my latest book club book. I have lied next to her on my bed while we both have rested.

I have taken a picture of her every single day of her life.

I have painted her cute baby toenails and polished her fingernails. I have combed her beautiful blonde hair and styled it in as many baby pig tail/pony tail designs I can think of – yesterday was her first baby braid!

She has by far been treated like a baby for the longest out of all my kids.

She stayed sleeping next to my bed in a bassinet until she was at least eight months. I still nurse her every three hours (mainly because she won’t eat real food all that well yet). And although she’s five days from turning one, she shows no sign of trying to stand let alone walk.

I’m grateful for her willingness to oblige me. For not trying to rush out of her baby stage either. We have a mutual understanding – I won’t rush her and she won’t race away from being my baby.

But it’s happening. And neither of us can avoid it. I’m afraid if I blink five times she’ll be married with a baby of her own. It’s coming and I can’t stop it.

Even though I have filled this year with cuddles, story times and late night snuggle feedings, it’s still flown by. Even though I have thoroughly enjoyed having my pink little baby bundle, the time has still betrayed me.

Don’t get me wrong, I want her to grow and develop and I can’t wait to see what type of woman she becomes.

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to cry next week when we put her first birthday cake in front of her and try to get her to smash into it. I’ll probably cheer, laugh and then cry. Because I know that means that my baby is not going to be a baby much longer.

And when she’s no longer a baby I’ll be the one telling people to enjoy the time they have with their little ones. Because, like I said earlier, I thank heavens that I did.

Sometimes I’m the mean, grumpy mom who won’t ever buy my boys ANYTHING. Like at the restaurant when they want to buy a soda; or at the State Fair when they want to ride all the rides; or at the local amusement park when they want some ice cream.

I tell them we don’t need it and we’re saving our money for other things.

But there is one thing that I will buy for them freely – books.

I’m a sucker for buying my kids things to read. I don’t love taking them to the book fair but I do love filling out scholastic book orders and taking them to the library.

I ran to Wal-Mart earlier this week to get my oldest the latest book in his favorite series – Michael Vey. He has a hard time finding things he loves so if he’ll read it, I’ll buy it! (We have a very extensive shark book collection because that’s all he would read when he was first starting out.)

I wrapped his new book in a red ribbon and wrote a “Happy Reading” note to go with it.

I think I was more excited for him to get it than he was. It brought back memories of working the Friday night shift as a young reporter when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out. I convinced my editors to let me cover a giant Harry Potter party in Salt Lake City. It was magical. Quidditch, butter beer, mystical creatures, you name it. It was there and I got to be a part of it.

It also reminded me of the time I waited in line at midnight to get my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Then there was the time recently when I waited for hours with my two oldest boys to get autographs from Richard Paul Evans and Brandon Mull.

Just this week my 7-year-old got a typed letter from one of his favorite authors Mary Pope Osborne. He wrote her about a year ago and finally heard back. He proudly read what she wrote while grinning from ear to ear.

He was so happy.

And that’s what I want. I want my kids to be happy – happily reading.

From bright colored shapes and letters in baby board books to thick chapter books like Percy Jackson, I love seeing each of my kids delight in reading.

That’s why I’ll whip out my wallet to buy them a book. Every. Single. Time. It’s worth every penny.