Jared's first official day in nursery

For months in advance, Mom took Jared in to nursery in hopes that he would have a better transition than his big sister. All this in hopes that tears would be minimal or nonexistent by the time the first official day of nursery arrived and Mom & Dad left Jared there all by himself (with the rest of the class). How it actually turned out: most of the regular nursery workers were out of town, so Mom & Dad were both in nursery the whole time filling in. Too bad Amanda wasn't there to join in the historic first day of nursery, since that would have made it a complete family event (since Curtis was already there). No, she was busy in primary portraying Laman & Lemuel during a singing time activity to learn the second verse of Nephi's Courage. Don't know yet whether she learned the song, but she's got plenty to say about tormenting Nephi . . .

Newark Strawberry Festival

On Saturday, we enjoyed a super special outing to the Newark Strawberry Festival. What made it so super special you ask? Was it the strawberries? The strawberry shortcake? What?! The answer is shown in the picture above: Dad got to come with us!

These two pictures below show a little (and I mean a little) of the redwood house that was on display at the festival. A house inside a tree trunk . . . that's a big tree . . .


Here we have All American Amanda making friends with some of the statues in Courthouse Square . . .

And here's Amanda checking out the animal display . . .


And here was Amanda's favorite thing of all . . . the Ferris wheel! (you can just barely see Dad's foot sticking out as he's riding the wheel with Amanda)
The festival was set up around Courthouse Square downtown, and it was just about the right size of setup for us with our little muffins. Especially since the main part of the square made a great place for our picnic lunch. There were a few animals on display, which the kids enjoyed seeing. There were several sales booths featuring everything from swap meet fare to fancy cookware. The best booth of all, in Dad's opinion, was the salsa booth, with all the free samples and variety, including strawberry and raspberry flavored salsas. Mom tried the raspberry and thought it tasted remarkably like tomato salsa with a hit of raspberry. One of the big things advertised at the festival was their famous strawberry shortcake. However, we opted to make our own when we got home, which was even more fun.

Bedtime book buddies

For now, Curtis sleeps in Mom & Dad's room at night, but there's a nice empty crib ready for him in the kids' room. So, Mom put Curtis in the crib while she was putting the other two to bed. When Mom went to take Curtis with her, Amanda begged Mom to let Curtis stay for awhile. Curtis seemed fairly content, so Mom agreed that he could stay until he got sad. Soon enough, he started crying awhile later, but when Mom went to get him, Amanda and Jared had pretty much forgotten him: They were sitting in their walk-in closet looking through their books. Amanda was looking through a book of hairstyles to give Mom suggestions for tomorrow (Manda had a braided bun today), and Jared was similarly engrossed in whichever book he'd chosen. Very cute scene, to say the least, and very heart-warming for their bookworm Mom.

Shopping with four kids and other musings

Mom loaded up the kids in the car today for a little run to the grocery store. When she got there, she procured an appropriate shopping cart and proceeded to load the kids into it. The end result: she walked into the store with a full shopping cart and used one of those nifty reusable shopping bags as her grocery cart. That plus the fashionable-but-uncomfortable shoes she was wearing did quite a lot to limit both the time and the money she spent at the store. Normally when Mom takes four kids out into the world, people who notice her comment on how busy she must be. Today, however, one random stranger made a useful comment. Instead of commenting to Mom, she complemented the kids on how well they were behaving. So, thank you, kind stranger, for using your comment time to give the kids positive reinforcement for their efforts and for reminding Mom to do the same.

On the drive home, Mom noticed the trees along Riverside, the road which, obviously, runs alongside a river. It's so beautifully lush and green here in general, but even more so there, or so it seems. Mom has been living in green for so long now that she sometimes takes it for granted. Jared is fascinated by dirt, but would it be as interesting to him if he, like Mom, had been raised around mainly dirt with practically no greenery? Amanda brought in some flowers to Mom today that Mom recognized as having been part of the flowers featured in her wedding bouquet, with one important difference: The wedding ones were fake, but Amanda's had were from an actual live plant. Living outside the desert has exposed Mom to all sorts of similar realizations, such as that squirrels and cardinals are real animals, not just mythical creatures in fictitious wildlife guides. Groundhogs and raccoons, too.

Memorial day breakfast

This morning our ward had a breakfast (cooked by the bishopric!) out in the country at a metro park. (Uncle Mike's family was in town for the breakfast last year, so they may remember the place.) As soon as Amanda heard about the breakfast however long ago it was announced, she made it a point to constantly remind us that it was coming. So, we all got loaded into the van this morning and headed out to breakfast. We had Mr. B with us, the little boy Mom babysits, so from the perspective of most of the ward members, we had two new kids with us, the new baby and the new toddler. Some people already knew Mr. B, though, and we could tell that he liked the whole thing better once he realized that he had some friends there besides us. Curtis spent the breakfast dozing (not unexpected), but Jared and Amanda had lots of fun at the playground.

Other happenings since the last posting:

Amanda's last day of preschool for the year was Friday. They had all sorts of activities, and her teachers sent her home with a grab bag of random goodies, a new story book, and a small scrapbook of some of her adventures during the year. Amanda loved going to preschool, but she also usually enjoys "little school," her name for the time Mom spends teaching her at home. Today at "little school," Amanda sounded out the word map all by herself, followed by similar words tap and sap. She subsequently read the first stand-alone book from our Hooked-on-Phonics set, and was very pleased with herself (and Mom was and is so proud of her!).

Jared's vocabulary continues to improve, and his cuteness remains constant, even when threatened by nasty scratches from big sister's hair clips (happened during church yesterday; not fun, to say the least). Mom went to nursery with Jared on Sunday, but as of Wednesday he will be old enough to officially be in nursery. He loves it, so hopefully he'll still love it this coming Sunday when Mom & Dad *gasp* try leaving him there by himself! Oh yes, Jared likes to talk on the phone now, too.

Curtis seems to have fully recovered from his eye affliction of last week, following several days of ointment treatment. Meanwhile, he's getting better at lifting his head up, he's getting bigger, and he's still wonderfully soft and snuggly. Best of all, he seems to have the day/night thing pretty well figured out (knock on wood), so Mom and Dad are feeling much better about the world in general, as he seems to be, too.

Dad continues to press forward in the academic world, and Mom is working on making similar academic progress. She's also gotten rather blog happy, although she's still trying to work on how to place pictures right where she wants them.

Random Muffin family trivia: All of the Muffins have birthdays that at least occasionally occur on holidays. We knew that the three earth Muffins did, but not until we saw the date for Memorial Day this year did we realize that our Angel Muffin does, too. Speaking of Angel Muffin, Mom is working on a special blog dedicated to happy thoughts in his memory, with a link to be posted on this blog after she works out some of the kinks with photo placement.