March 2007 archive
Closing Choir Number
Was it just me, or did anyone else think that the closing choir number of the Priesthood session was phenomenal? During those unison, a capella parts I saw many mouths moving up on the screen, but only heard one voice. I was moved to tears. The talks earlier today about the power of good music were confirmed this evening. Were there any talks given before that closing song of the priesthood session? I don’t remember :-)
Posted by Bryan on March 31, 2007 | Filed under: Family News Religion | 2 comments
President Monson's Talk
During this Saturday afternoon session of General Conference, President Monson told a miraculous story about a talk he gave in the tabernacle in 1975. The story intrigued me, and using the Church website, I was able to find the talk.
The story about this talk was one of a little child’s prayer being answered. I was amazed and touched to read the 1975 talk and see that it too was about a little child’s prayer being answered. President Monson is a man of great faith who performs miracles in Jesus’ name. I love hearing him speak and tell these amazing stories.
Posted by Bryan on March 31, 2007 | Filed under: Family News Religion | 0 comments
Site Search
My good friend Nolan intimated that this beautiful website might still be lacking in one feature. Actually, he was right. This site is such a treasure trove of wonderful information, it was a terrible, awful shame to not have some way to unearth it all. Thanks to our good friends at Google, that tragedy has ended. Behold the new site search. You can even search for the term, “Nolan” and see how often he was mentioned :-)
Posted by Bryan on March 25, 2007 | Filed under: About This Site Family News | 0 comments
Mei Tai Madness
So I bought this over priced baby carrier called a mei tai (pronounced may-tie) and I love it. It is basically an ancient Chinese design that is little known in the US, but is way more comfy than the Baby Bjorn and frame back packs. It can be worn with baby on front, on back, or on the hip. And it can fit just about anyone- fat, or skinny, or short or tall.
My friend Vicky saw it and decided that we could make them ourselves and so she used mine for a pattern. She actually did make it and so I said to myself, “if she can do that, by golly so can I.” Melinda tried my mei tai on also and liked it and she thought, I could make one of these too. Her husband Benj saw it as a money making opportunity and they have already created a website for us to sell these from! Melinda even made these great labels to sew onto each mei tai we make… our brand name is now going to be Baby Tai.
So far Melinda has made several and I have made a few and I am going to teach some girls at church how to make them this week for an Enrichment Activity. My goal is to get people wearing them so that other potential customers can see these great carriers and get curious about them.
We went to the zoo on Saturday just for fun because it was actually a beautiful sunny day here in the rainy Northwest. Melinda and I made sure to wear our “Baby tais” and wow did we get a lot of looks. A lot of people rubber necked even just to see what the name brand was! Melinda had a label on hers, but mine didn’t yet… you can bet it does now! I can definitely see that sight seeing could be a business expense from now on! As long as we are wearing our babies, we are advertising. Does that mean that I could make my zoo membership a business expense and call it tax deductible from now on?
Check out Benj and Melinda’s hard work on our new website!
http://www.babytai.com
They did a great job! Hopefully we can become millionaires off of this and outsource the production to Mexico… Benj has a few connections there.
I just hope that I don’t get the demented notion in my head that I need to keep having babies so that I can continue to “advertise” for the next twenty years.
Posted by Ily on March 19, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 2 comments
Mousecapade
“What have you been doing this morning, Micah?”
“Oh, I was jus’ watchin’ the mouse.”
“The mouse?!?”
“Yeah, it ran under Reece’s bed, and under the dresser, and then over to the closet.”
Micah relayed this information to us early one morning as if it were the most mundane thing in the world. A mouse. Boring. When was breakfast? That was the big issue on his mind this morning. Micah has to have his cereal first thing in the morning. Apparently this morning he’d been waiting a while.
“Did he really see a mouse?!”
Ily did not want to believe this tale. I pondered carefully as the morning haze lifted. I definitely didn’t want to be believe it. Surely he’d have been much more excited if he’d seen an actual mouse running around Reece’s room. Yet, he was so matter of fact about it. Maybe he just didn’t know the gravity of the situation.
“Nah.” I reassured.
This was a couple of days before we left for Utah. We spent the time packing and getting ready, and trying not to think much of it. We told the story to Grandma and Grandpa while we were there, “Can you believe he told us he saw a mouse? As if it was nothing?” We asked, hoping to get confirmation that, oh yeah, three year-olds make up stories like that all the time.
“Well do you have a mouse?”
Hmm. It wasn’t the first day back from the trip, or the second that we noticed. I think it was Thursday before Ily called me at work to say she’d found droppings in our pantry. At first I refused to believe, which only enabled Ily to shut out the thought as well. I resorted to my idle comfort, researching the situation on the web. There was a matching picture of the very miniature black pellets that littered our cans of food. Warnings of their speedy reproduction, craftiness in hiding, and heedings of Hantavirus filled my glowing monitor. Clean with bleach, the CDA recommends. Pros and cons of traps, live traps, and poison filled my view. Oh, Internet, why must thou provide so much information?
And so, in sweat and tears (Ily’s) and strong odor of Clorox, we wiped every can, examined every bag, and purged our kitchen of any trace of the critter. Or critters? We even found the bag of chocolate chips on the third shelf up that was the favorite snack of our little nemesis. Nemesis? Oh yes, it was down to that.
We bought traps. Not live traps. The Internet says that mice are definitely not endangered. The mouse (mice?) proved adept at licking the peanut butter off of the trap without springing it the first night. I spread it thinly, over and under and all over the second night. The next morning, victory! But it was too early in the morning. I hadn’t even had breakfast yet. I couldn’t look at it, but Isaac and Micah sure could.
“Wow, we got it!” Isaac exclaimed, “It looks like it got cut in half!”
“It’s not cut in half.” Ugh.
I confess. I made Ily, who regularly heats up leftover dinner for breakfast while I get sick at at the smell, take care of it. The only sight or smell I can handle in the mornings is my cereal and milk. Ily said, “I can handle a dead mouse, it’s the live ones that I can’t deal with.”
We decided to leave out another trap, just in case the Internet was right and there were more. Over the next few days no more droppings appeared, but much peanut butter disappeared. It had to be something else, I reasoned. Ants, maybe, but there was no way a mouse could be that good at getting the bait without springing the trap. Then a few droppings showed up. And then Ily and Isaac saw it. They were cooking and it peeked its nose up through the hole in the gas burners of our stove top, and looked at them. I wasn’t there, but Ily later described the pandemonium that erupted. I even received a simple but pleading message at work, typed into google chat by Isaac, “kom hom we ned a mous trap.”
It took a few more nights, but we finally caught it. I switched from peanut butter to cheese. Less lickable, I figured, and it did the trick. We placed cotton balls with peppermint extract all over the pantry and around the stove. The Internet says that keeps them away. No more bait has disappeared, and we haven’t seen any more droppings. I explored our crawl space as best I could and couldn’t see any obvious entry points, but I couldn’t get all the way under the kitchen. I guess we’ll just have to keep a vigilant eye out from now on, our innocent mouse-free days never to return. One thing for sure, we definitely try not to think about whether they really did make it all way up to Reece’s room that morning.
Posted by Bryan on March 18, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 5 comments
Friends Page
It’s feast or famine here on the Murdock family blog. I guess you can tell how long it takes us to fully recover from a trip to Utah by how long we go without posting any news to the blog afterwards.
Well, Ily tagged me to tell about the mouse incident, but I’m just not ready to do that yet. Soon. This post is just to point out the new Friends page of the website. We are adding as many links as we can. You know, so we feel like we actually have friends so we can do a better job of staying in touch. If we are missing anyone please let us know. If you really don’t want to be on our web page, let us know. You can leave a comment or email bmurdock AT gmail.com.
Oh, and happy Pi Day!
Posted by Bryan on March 14, 2007 | Filed under: About This Site Family News | 2 comments
Prince of the Potty
Well, now that Micah is 3 years old I have noticed that he has shown some signs of readiness for using the potty. For a while there I was reading every picture book available in our library system to him about using the potty. He thought they were fun, but was smart enough to tell that I was trying to get him to like the idea of him using the potty. No desire to actually USE the potty was manifested by him. He even got bored with the potty books and refused to read them anymore… I think he was smart enough to realize I was trying to brainwash him into using the potty.
I guess I am finally desperate because I went back to the good ol’ “$75 and naked method.” That means Micah gets to be naked from the waist down (only when we are home and there are no guests around) and I get to pay $75 when he is finally potty trained to get my carpets cleaned. I guess with inflation I really should call it $300 and naked because there aren’t too many places that would clean my whole house full of carpet for just $75.
It did work though. Micah has used the potty! He peed in it yestereday and we did a celebratory dance for him and he even got to wear a “Prince of the Potty” crown that I made. We even serenaded him with his favorite song as an extra reward (the song is Popcorn Popping in case you are interested). Hopefully, this is the beginning of a very happy achievement in Micah’s life.
Posted by Ily on March 14, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 0 comments
Green bread, mice, and rotten milk. What a great combo.
Too much has happened since the last blog to really elaborate on everything so I will give a few highlights:
- We went to Utah last month and had a blast. It was quick, it snowed a bit, we went to the new Children’s museum there (it was awesome); we went to the dino museum at Thanksgiving point (fun time had by all); we saw Julie get teary-eyed describing how her new fiance’ proposed to her just a few days before and see her very pretty ring; we saw my uncle Erik who had been hospitalized a few weeks before and is doing very well now, my grandmother Anne-Marie was there with him from Oklahoma and a few of my cousins from far and wide so we got to spend time with them too for a mini-family reunion; we saw the Joseph Smith movie at the Legacy Theater at Temple Square and it was beautiful and made me count my blessings; we ate at Cafe Rio – YUMMY; we even saw the Purnell sisters in Boise and got to see how beautiful their kids are. It was great and action packed. And then we drove home.
- We got home to find out that our van had a toxic smell in the back from spilled milk at the beginning of our trip. I am amazed no one died from the toxic fumes, or got sick from the smell. I knew I should have brought my little mean green machine along! I almost did… but then decided to hope that no one would puke and stink up the van… and no one puked, but rotten milk is just as bad. After a few hours of scrubbing the van seats clean, my hands were cramped and worthless, but it smells better now. And finally after 3 weeks I can use my hands again without too much carpel tunnel pains. The next van WILL have leather seats.
- Shortly after we got home, we found evidence of mice in our home. I will let Bryan elaborate on the story. It was not too pleasant. But we survived. I will say that I can deal with a dead mouse much better than a live one.
- Reece has fully learned to crawl now. When we went to Utah and stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Coates, he wasn’t coordinated yet. He could scoot places and crawl in reverse, but his forward crawl was just not there yet. Within a day of returning home he got it all down and now he is a fast little guy. My baby is even learning to stand. I am so not ready for that yet! He needs to be my baby for a little while longer. Not my toddler. He isn’t even 9 months just yet. I don’t want him walking by 10 months!
- Did we mention Reece has 8 teeth now? And that he is eight months old? And that he is showing signs of getting more? I think he is developing too fast!
- a few months ago I bought this really expensive baby carrier called a mei tai (pronounced may tie) and it is the most comfortable baby carrier ever!!!!! Well, my friend Vicky said to me that I could have just made it myself and that we should use it for a pattern to make more. So we “reverse engineered” my mei tai to creat a pattern and it has worked out great. Vicky made one, and then I thought if she can do it, so can I and now me, Vicky, and even my sister-in-law Melinda are obsessed with making them. I now have made two and so have the others. Melinda even sold her first one she made- so good for her! Now we are entertaining ideas of starting a business to make and sell mei tais! I am teaching a workshop for Relief Society enrichment to teach other ladies in my ward how to make them on the 22nd of March. I guess when I get excited about something, I definitely go whole hog into it!
- Isaac lost his 3rd tooth last week. He looks so old with it missing! The only hard part about the tooth losing adventure is the whole tooth fairy charade. Oh. My. Gosh. Bryan got up twice to try to make the switch of tooth for Moolah. I got up 3 times to try to do it. Each time, Isaac woke up and cried because his tooth was missing and there was no coin in its’ place. Of course we hadn’t even gotten the tooth, it was just hiding under his sheets in different places each time. He even woke up without us going in. I must say, whoever thought of sticking your tooth under you pillow for the tooth fairy should be shot. Isaac who is normally our soundest sleeper turned into a fitful mess all because he wanted to catch the tooth fairy in action. Little did he know, but he did several times. It was a terrible sleep deprived night followed by a grumpy tired day. It think we will make a “tooth fairy box” that must be left in the bathroom for the switch to be made from now on. Maybe that will make our lives easier!
- Every year in honor of St. Patrick’s Day we make green food and do some silly little things to make it a fun holiday for the kids. Usually it is green milk, and green pancakes. I got started early this year and we actually made green bread just to try something new. I just added food coloring to my usual recipe. It turned out kinda eerie looking, but still tasted great. The boys had a hard time time trying to eat it. They were afraid of it I think. It just left more bread for the rest of us! And, oh, it tasted good!
I think that is about it for now. We have had a busy month!
Don’t forget to celebrate Pi Day on Wednesday (3.14). It is my favorite holiday! I am making apple pie in honor of the day!
Posted by Ily on March 12, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 0 comments
