My Eyes Aren't Itchy Anymore!

This is me.

This is me in contacts.

(dramatic pause)

Any difference?

I know I don't look any different with contacts in as opposed to out (which, of course, is the whole point of contacts), but I feel so much better! (Actually, the first picture is a little blurry, and the second is clearer, so just pretend that the photos represent my vision clarity as well.)

Normally I have horrible Spring and Summer allergies that no eye drop can touch, and I suffer through them the entire summer, but for the last two days while my contacts have been in, my eyes don't itch or feel grainy at all. But once I take them out at night, the itching starts right up. I think I'll be wearing contacts a lot this summer.

Last night I was able to successfully remove them by myself, but I haven't yet put them in by myself. I have these "little, squinty eyes," as Brian says, "which must mean that [I'm] suspicious." It makes it really hard to put contacts in. Luckily, I can pull my optometrist out of bed each morning and ask him to put them in for me until I can do it myself.

Edited to Add: I went in to Family Eye Care yesterday and Ellie patiently taught me to put contacts in by myself! Yea!

Meet George

George is Alyssa's catepiller she's raising as part of her Butterfly class. She is beyond excited! She's been begging to have a pet of her own for the past year and a half, and I am so glad that she thinks this counts. She was able to bring George home yesterday after school, and she has been taking good care of him ever since. George likes to eat the food paste stuff he's living on, and sometimes he sleeps. That's about all he does. Alyssa loves him just the same.

Edited to Add: George is now called George-alina. She has grown twice her original size, and she is molting. It scared us half to death until Alyssa told us, "Oh, I remember now! We have to wait and soon she'll start molting!"

Churches

We're changing our phone number. We just set up our new phone account last week, and we're already ready to change our number. The first wrong call happened when we were out, so I came home to a message for Sister Jessica from a nice lady saying she decided that she would like to go to church that Sunday. I called her back to let her know she had called the wrong number so she didn't think that Sister Jessica ditched her, and if it hadn't been General Conference that weekend, I would have gone ahead and invited her to church with us.

The next calls came from a 1-800-number, which at first I ignored, because I figured it was telemarketers. They called a lot. The same number called us around four or five times a day, and I would just ignore it. Brian finally answered when he was home, and when he told the man he had reached the wrong number, the man said, in an angry voice, "Oh, I've got the right number," and hung up on him. Brian then looked up the number online and found that it was a creditor from Wells Fargo who had been trying to track some people down for a while. No wonder he called so often.

We've gotten a couple of calls to the parents of a girl who has skipped classes at Pasco High. It's just a recording, so I hope they're not getting in trouble for not getting the calls.

The majority of the calls, though, have come from people looking for Sister Jessica or Pastor James, and they all expect us to be a church, so they don't give me any preliminary background when they call, and it completely catches me off guard. Last week a man called and said he had come up to Washington from Sacramento for a job interview. Well, he didn't get the job, and now he needed money to purchase a plane ticket back to Sacramento to be with his wife and family. (I seriously didn't figure out that he was calling a church until this morning. I thought he was just dialing random numbers, hoping to get some money.)

Today, right when Alyssa and I were finishing up her Phoncis test, the phone rang, and I thought it might be Brian, so I said, "Good job, Alyssa! Five minute break!" and ran to our bedroom to answer the phone. It wasn't Brian.

"Yeah," the man said, "I'm wondering if anyone in your church does mechanical work?" I thought for a moment, and said the second thing that popped into my head. The first, which, of course, I didn't say, was: Why are these crazy people calling us? and the second, which I did, was: "You know, we just moved into this house a couple of weeks ago, and we haven't really gotten to know anyone at church that well. We really don't know anybody. I don't know any mechanics."

And then it hit me. DUH! He thinks we're a church. He must think I'm Sister Jessica. I hope he didn't think I was Pastor James. So then I had to explain that we were indeed not a church, and I think I confused him more than he confused me, because he kept saying "We're just looking for a mechanic...We're having problems..." while I apologized and said good-bye.

So we're changing our number.

And speaking of churches, we went to our new ward on Sunday. You would think that having church at 12:30 would make us be on time, but I happened to shut the car door on Marcus' fingers as we were getting ready to leave, and then we had to put ice on it, but he didn't like the ice pack, so Brian pulled a water bottle out of the fridge and had him hold it on the way to church. He drank some of the water, too.

While we were driving to church, I told the kids how important it was to make a good first impression, and that they needed to be good for their teachers. "Alyssa," Brian said, when I was finished, "she's talking to you." (She's been talking back and being quite rude to me the past few weeks, but actually the last three days have been wonderful!) Then Brian started to lecture Alyssa on not talking back and respecting her teachers, and Ethan said, "Look, Alyssa!" as we were passing the soccer fields with fifty gazillion soccer games going on.

"Hold on, Ethan," Brian said, "Wait until I'm done talking to Alyssa. Now you got in trouble this morning for talking rude..." and three minutes later, as we were nearing church, Brian finally said to Ethan, "Now what did you have to say?"

Ethan hesitated for about two seconds, then said, with full enthusiasm, "Alyssa yook out yours window!" It's too bad the soccer fields were long gone by then. We did have a good talk about them, though.

Church was wonderful. Sister Hall (Emily's mom) is a nursery leader, and it would be hard to think of a better person to teach and love Marcus and all the other little kids in there. (There was a boy who fell asleep under the table during singing time, and one of the ladies told me that it was "his table" and he fell asleep there every week. No wonder - church is right during nap time!)

Sister Beck sat beside me in Relief Society, and she was my very first tent mom at Girls Camp. It was fun catching up with her.

As I was taking Alyssa to Primary, a little blonde girl whisked by, grabbing Alyssa on the way. I found out from her mom that Kinzie is the girl Alyssa has been playing with in a yard across the street, and we actually had her over to play today, and then we all walked to the park together. That was a lot of fun! Kinzie is Alyssa's age, and she has a brother a little older than Ethan, and another brother a little older than Marcus. It's perfect! And I really enjoyed visiting with their mom while the kids played.

On Monday a sister who lives in the cul-de-sac over stopped by and invited me to a girls-lunch-out on Tuesday, which was great, and I got to know a few of the sisters in the ward, including the Bishop's wife. She gave us permission to not answer his calls, so I guess we won't have to worry about getting callings for a while. We'll just tell him we thought his number was a creditor from Wells Fargo.

Pie For Breakfast

We had Brian's parents and his aunt and his grandpa over for dinner last night, and yesterday afternoon I asked the kids if we should make cupcakes for dessert. Alyssa asked for something lemony instead, so I looked up some lemon meringue pies on Allrecipes, and found the best lemon meringue pie ever! It is delicious. (By the way, I love cooking in my new kitchen. I love the counter space, and I love that it's open to the family room so I'm not cut off from the kids when I'm cooking.) The pie was so delicious that I'm having the last bit of it for breakfast this morning. (And by "the last bit" I mean two of the three small slices that were left from last night, and when Alyssa asked to have the third slice, I seriously considered saying, "No" to her so I could eat it myself.)

Brian's aunt also brought a beautiful pink Azalea for our new house. She said they usually have problems growing in this area, but to ask Grandma Orton about it, because she successfully has some in her yard. (Our first plant!)

Lemon Meringue Pie III

Ingredients

• 1 (9 inch) pie crust, baked
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1/3 cup water
• 4 eggs, separated
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup white sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Combine 1 1/2 cups sugar, salt, and 1 1/2 cups water in a heavy saucepan. Place over high heat and bring to a boil. In a small bowl, mix cornstarch and 1/3 cup water to make a smooth paste. Gradually whisk into boiling sugar mixture. Boil mixture until thick and clear, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together egg yolks and lemon juice. Gradually whisk egg yolk mixture into hot sugar mixture. Return pan to heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in grated lemon rind and butter or margarine. Place mixture in refrigerator and cool until just lukewarm.
4. In a large glass or metal bowl, combine egg whites and salt. Whip until foamy. Gradually add 1/2 cup sugar while continuing to whip. Beat until whites form stiff peaks. Stir about 3/4 cup of meringue into lukewarm filling. Spoon filling into baked pastry shell. Cover pie with remaining meringue.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes, until meringue is slightly brown. Cool on a rack at for at least 1 hour before cutting.

Ketchup

• It took a few days longer than expected, but we finally got keys to our house and moved in. The Realtor told us that we should be able to get the keys when we signed the papers, but things got a little messed up and some of the companies we were working with for the title put things behind a few days. I spent an entire day saying to anyone who would listen, "If the email they sent us says that the signing is complete, why the heck do we not have our keys yet?!?" I was very impatient, and the minute we got the call to pick up the keys, I stuffed the kids in the car and headed over to pick them up. Then I drove immediately to our new house and started painting the kids room. The boys room is done in Charm Blue, because, obviously, they're charming, and Alyssa's room is done in Purple Slush. Brian calls it Purple Flurp, from Jimmy Neutron. It is quite purple. I've put purple curtains in her room, too, and I think we're going to take them back and switch to white. It really is quite purple in there.
• We got the keys on Wednesday afternoon and frantically painted and moved in until Friday morning. Back in January, Brian signed up for a Continuing Education conference in Seattle for the 27th and 28th of March, and at the time, we thought it would be a great idea for me to go with him. But as things were going, with only two days to move, we didn't think it would be a good idea for both of us to take the weekend off, and up until Friday morning we didn't think that even Brian would be going. We had already set up babysitting for the kids, though, and I completely blew out my knee while moving furniture and wasn't doing very well because of that, so we ended up taking the weekend off anyway.
  
• So just after lunch, we called my mom and Tallia to make sure they were still okay with watching the kids, and Brian and I took off to Seattle. I slept and watched T.V. at the hotel while Brian went to his classes. When he called me during one of his breaks, I answered the phone by saying, "This is the best week of my adult life!" We went out to dinner with Mark and Becky, since we didn't get to see much of them at their wedding. We were right about Becky: she is just as nice as she seemed to be! We loved being able to go out with them and get to know them better.
• We finished getting all of our stuff out of the old house, and spent an entire day cleaning. My poor nails are destroyed from all the cleaning and scrubbing. I'm not entirely picky about my nails, too. My idea of a manicure is just making sure they're clean and shaped nice, and putting on a coat of clear nail polish, so you know that they're destroyed when someone like me says they're destroyed.
• Last week was Spring Break at MCP, so we took the week off at home as well. Alyssa made friends with the kids across the street, who were also on Spring Break, and I organized the new house. It's amazing how fast and easy it is to move in when there's enough space to put everything. When Brian and Nathan (brother-in-law) and Michael (brother) were moving things in, they put all the furniture on the right rooms, which made it so easy to put the beds together so we could sleep well. Mike and Nathan even carried a filing cabinet up the stairs that took two guys carrying each drawer and then the cabinet to get it out of the old house. When they made it to the top of the stairs, almost dead from exhaustion, I said, "Wow, you guys are awesome!" I was really impressed.
• The Easter Bunny came on Saturday. Marcus went downstairs before coming to our bedroom (which he never does) and came back up the stairs with a Cadbury egg in one hand, saying, "Zandy! Zandy!" Apparently he had attacked Alyssa's basket and eaten half of a Cadbury Caramel egg before coming upstairs to tell us of his find.
• We didn't dye Easter eggs until Saturday night, when Brian was at the Priesthood session of General Conference. The kids loved it! Then they ate about 15 eggs between them. At first Marcus wouldn't let me help peel his eggs, and he ended up eating and choking on some shell. It didn't stop him from having fun, though, and soon he let me peel his eggs for him.
• Conference was wonderful, like always. I liked the theme about love that seemed to run through all of the sessions. God's love, love in our families, Jesus' love for us - I loved that. Conference was tough this year, because the kids are still young enough to not sit still, but they're getting old enough to be decently noisy. I spent the entire weekend saying, "Sshh!! I'm trying to listen." Alyssa sat through a couple sessions, though, which surprised me. She did great!
• We had my family over Sunday afternoon. Brian and I were talking afterward about how crowded it was to have anyone over at our old house and how it was so wonderful to have the room to enjoy having people over.
  
• We're back to school today. It's a new Trimester at MCP, so Alyssa starts her new classes on Thursday. She's taking a butterfly class, Hands on History (which she is thrilled about. She loves History!), and she's still in P.E. it Mr. Jolly, and all of the kids love Mr. Jolly. Right now Alyssa is finishing up with Math. It's wonderful to have a school room! The kids are away from the toys and the food in the kitchen, and Alyssa is doing a fabulous job of trying to stay focused.
• I love our new house!
  

Not Yet, But Almost There

We didn't close on Friday, which meant that we weren't able to use the lovely weekend for the move, but it did give me an extra couple of days to paint Ethan's bed (which I didn't do) and whine and complain to Brian about not being able to move yet (which I did do).

As long as the title gets here, we should be signing papers tomorrow and moving in on Tuesday. It's going to be a crazy week! There are so many wonderful things happening right now. Life is fabulous. I am happy.

Have I Lost My Self Control Or Just Regained My Sanity?

Last week a nurse came to my home to draw my blood and test my urine and write down my height and weight. Why? Brian and I are applying for life insurance. I know, we're officially grown up now. We're buying a house and getting life insurance. Officially adults.

So all of these tests were no big deal. The kids were concerned that I would be getting my blood drawn, but when it came time for it, they were busy watching the Green Anaconda song on You Tube, along with other various anaconda videos they kept clicking on, so they really didn't mind all that much. I'm used to peeing in a cup from being pregnant, so, yeah...no big deal. Height: 5' 5''. I knew that. Weight. Well, I might have acted all nonchalant about the numbers showing up on the scale, but the minute the nurse was out the door, I exclaimed, "Are you serious?!?"

Let's back up a little bit to last year when Marcus was still nursing all the time. I wasn't sleeping well. I was constantly tired. But I was skinny! Nursing does great things for my weight. I usually lose my baby fat pretty slowly for the first six months, but then once I reach that point, the pounds just fall off. If you factor that in with the fact that I was painting and cleaning when we moved back to the Tri-Cities and walking Alyssa to and from school, I lost the baby fat from Marcus' pregnancy pretty fast. And it just kept coming off.

I'll be honest with you and say that I don't judge people for their weight. That is just not something I really take notice of when I meet someone. But here's where the real honestly comes in: I loved being skinny. It was wonderful to fit into clothes I hadn't worn in years. It was wonderful to feel sexy when Brian came to visit, even with the loose post-pregnancy skin and my c-section scar bump that I hear will never go away. And it was wonderful to just feel cute, even on my frumpy days.

The down side to all of this is that I could eat anything I wanted and as much as I wanted while I was nursing, and the minute Marcus was weened, the pounds started to pile back on. I ordered a special dress online for Brian's graduation a couple of months before Brian's graduation, and when it came in the mail I considered sending it back and getting a smaller size. I'm glad I didn't, though, because it fit perfectly when graduation time came around. Then, a couple months later, it was a bit snug.

Do you see where this is going? I wasn't happy with gaining this weight, so I started exercising and "watching what I ate" in July, and I've been doing reasonably well with both of those since then. So I was surprised that it was that bad when I stood on the scale last week. And when the nurse left and I finished my exclamations, I resolved to really, really do something about it.

It was the day after my birthday, and Brian had called earlier that day to say he ordered a red velvet cake (so yummy!) to have our parents over on Friday, so I decided that the diet would start on Monday. (Well, originally it was supposed to be Sunday, but my brother's birthday party was then planned for Sunday, and we celebrated a late Chinese New Years at the same time. You don't want to be on a diet for Chinese New Year at my parents house. Yum!)

I spent the week researching and planning. I decided to do the Atkins diet, since I've had family members have success with it in the past. (Please don't leave comments saying whether or not you like Atkins. I don't want to argue either way. Right now it's the concept of a diet that's in question, not THE diet.) Anyway.

So Monday I started limiting my diet to meats and vegetables. No more bread. No more cake, or cookies, or milk. Oh, no milk! I love milk! This is me being honest again: I don't eat goodies as much as I say that I do. I think I bake more than I eat, and talk about baking more than I actually bake. So actually, I don't miss the sweets, especially since I just had a birthday weekend and got myself all caked-out. I do miss baking for my kids, though, or really the thought of baking for my kids. It's only been two days.

I realized today when I was making pistachio pudding and putting them in white chocolate shells that have been living in our freezer for a while that I was making something fun for my family to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and that I wouldn't be sharing that fun with them. That's no fun! Not sharing the fun is no fun! I realized that I would rather be a little overweight and enjoying life than be skinny and not allowed to eat anything.

So the plan is to make my own rules. We already do a pretty good job of eating healthy. We get our fruits and veggies, eat at home a lot more than we eat out, drink lots and lots of water. I've been doing a great job of getting up in the morning to exercise, and really no matter how big I am, as long as I'm exercising regularly I feel good. Both physically and about myself. I think I just need to be a little more aware of what I'm eating and how much of it I'm eating, and I'm going to come up with some rules on that to follow.

So there it is - diet canceled, or altered. Brian actually just walked in. Here's the conversation:

Carrie: Hey, I'm just finishing up a post. I'll be done in a minute.

Brian: About your diet?

Carrie: How did you know?

Brian: I know you.

(Brian then walked back out of the house and came back in carrying a box of boxes of Girl Scout cookies.)

Brian: I don't know why, but Bruce bought 60 boxes of Girl Scout cookies today....Are you going to alter your diet to include thin mints?....If they say, "thin" they must work!

I'm so glad I am now allowing myself to drink milk, because we have a lot of cookies to eat.

Waddle-ee-Hoo-Hoo!

Did you catch that excitement? I don't even know what I said, I'm so excited. We just got a call from USAA, and they've moved our closing date from the 22nd of March to the 19th of March. We're moving into our own house THIS weekend! Yea!

And here's a couple of random pictures we took in January, since everyone keeps asking for pictures:

My "Surprise" Birthday Party

We've put off school for a bit this morning so I can finish my lesson for Achievement Days this afternoon. My mom and Alyssa (especially Alyssa) think I should take the day off, because it's my birthday, but I've got a week or two marked as vacation for our upcoming move, and I don't want to get too behind. We'll start school in a few minutes, and we'll just take it easy today. It's History and Science day anyway, so it should be pretty fun.

So while I was working on my lesson, the kids kept hollering, "Don't look!" as they brought up play houses and pillows and blankets from the basement. Then Alyssa yelled, "Look when I say three! One, two three!" and they all yelled, "Surprise!" when I turned from the computer.


They had set up a birthday party for me, complete with stuffed animal guests and presents wrapped in blankets. All the presents came from around the house. I got Whack-a-Mole with one hammer, an embroidery hoop, my favorite pair of shoes, a flash light, a toy dirt devil vacuum, and a piece of wood Alyssa once painted.


The kids had me sit on all of the pillows in the play house to open my presents. It was so fun to see how happy they were to give me my presents!

Aaaarrggg!

Yesterday we received a letter in the mail from Seattle. (Guess who was in Seattle with us over the weekend who might have sent it.) It said that it was from Captain Blackbeard Pegleg Hook and that we had one of his buried treasures in our garden. We had to finish our school work before we went out to dig, so we called Grandma and Grandpa Jacks to come over and help us find the buried treasure.Alyssa was so excited! She told all of our neighbors, and she almost had the neighbor boys, Michael and Martin, believing that there could possibly be millions of dollars in our backyard. Bu the time we had our school work finished, and Grandma and Grandpa over, Brian was on his way home from work, so we waited for him to get here, and then the treasure hunt began!

Brian counted off the paces and we lifted a carpet to find a bamboo X laying in the dirt.
We've always had this mysterious layer of white dirt about two feet down, and the directions said that once we hit that we would know we were close. So the kids started digging...

..and digging...

...and digging...

until they finally hit a layer of white dirt.

Brian started helping at that point, and pretty soon he was scraping the top of the treasure. It took him a while to get to the point that we could pull it out, because the kids were helping him, and for every shovel he scooped out, they would knock almost the same amount of dirt back into the hole!

When we pulled the treasure out we discovered that it was full of gold and silver chocolate nuggets, and twenty dollar bill paper with "Good for one ice cream at McDonalds with a grandparent" printed on the back. No one got greedy, and we split the chocolate with the whole group. Some of the gold nuggets had toffee and almond bits in them, so I figure they're worth the most. But it's been only one day since we found the treasure, and we've already eaten all of the chocolate. We still have all those fake twenty dollar bills, though, so we're rich!

Thanks Captain Blackbeard Pegleg Hook!

Seattle Pictures

Aquarium

Pizza!

Chuck E Cheese's

On the ferry

The fish shop at Pike Place Market

At the bottom of the Space Needle

At the top

It's sad to say that this is the best picture I got of Mark and Becky all night.

Oh, We Had So Much Fun!

Caution: This is not proof read. I'm up way past my bedtime, but I want to remember our great trip. Pictures coming soon.

So we headed to Seattle for the weekend for Brian's cousin's wedding, and we had a blast! Brian negotiated home loans and homeowners insurance with USAA on the way up, while I drove and Alyssa became carsick and threw up - eight minutes away from our destination! She was a trooper, though. She started feeling sick halfway through the trip, with a couple of hours to go, and she was able to keep things under control until then.

We met up with the Sumsions (Will, Nelsa, Marley, Evie, Sydney, and Grant) at the Red Robin in Silverdale, then after a lovely dinner with surprisingly well-behaved kids, we went to Will and Nelsa's house, where the kids watched a movie until bedtime and the parents played Cranium's Playoff and watched funny video clips online.

On Friday we walked the shops in Poulsbo and had the best doughnuts in the entire world. I'm not exaggerating - they were that good! Nelsa had a fabulous day planned, and I was so impressed with all the places we went. When they said, "You have to try the best doughnuts," they really turned out to be the best doughnuts." When they said, "...the best pizza," it really was the best pizza. (Plus, the pizza restaurant had basement that we ate in, so it was like having our own private restaurant.) We went to a free aquarium, where the kids were able to touch things in the wave pool, and we saw a baby whale skeleton, and Grant threw a sea shell at one of the tanks because he was trying to feed the fish. (It scared the living daylights out of everyone that heard the crash, but it was so funny.) We went to a free underwater museum that had torpedoes and information about submarines and such, and Will explained a lot of the concepts and gadgets to us, which was so cool. And then we went to Chuck E Cheese's to let the kids run around for a while.

It was a great day! The kids were pretty well-behaved and they got along really well. Evie and Marley are just a few months older than Alyssa and Sydney is about a year younger, so Alyssa just ate up all the attention she got for being the novelty friend. Everyone wanted to sit by her or be her buddy while we were walking around, just like Alyssa likes it to be. She loves those girls, and she was so excited to see them and was so sad when we had to leave.

After Chuck E Cheese's we took a ferry down to Seattle. Ethan loved it and stayed up top with Brian almost the whole time. I wanted to stay up top, but Alyssa was whiny from leaving her friends, and Marcus was cold, so after a while we headed inside and then to the car.

We then checked into our hotel, and even though it was late, we knew the kids needed to eat dinner, otherwise we'd be hearing, "But we didn't even eat dinner!" when it came time to put them to bed. So we went to Azteca, one of the closest restaurants to the hotel, around 8:30. Alyssa kept falling asleep in her chair, Ethan was too tired to eat anything, and Marcus ate everything he could get his hands on. The minute we got back to our hotel room, we all crashed and immediately fell asleep.

We met Brian's parents, Linda and Ron, and Scott and Alexia for the continental breakfast the next morning, and then took off to Pike Place Market. It was so fun to wander around the shops and end up at the place where they throw the fish all about. There was a huge row of flower booths that all had huge bouquets of flowers for just five or ten dollars. They even had beautiful dried arrangements for way cheap, but Brian and I decided that we wouldn't be able to get one home without it being destroyed. If I lived in the area, I would definitely go there once a week or so and get fresh flowers - the tulips were gorgeous! Oh, Alyssa made friends with the "pot lady" (a lady who made and sold pots) and then she found a daffodil on the ground, which the flower shop owner said she could keep, and from that point on she was determined to make it back to the pot lady, "to talk to her," and when she found her, Alyssa gave her the daffodil to put in one of her pots.

After Pike Place Market we went to the Space Needle and actually got to go up to the top. I've never done that before! I was hoping to at least walk around the bottom and check things out, but we went up the elevator, and the kids loved it. Ethan loved it the most. It was his favorite part of the trip, he said. While we were driving around Seattle, Brian and I kept saying, "Look, there's the Space Needle!" and the kids would be, "Oh, nice, big deal," but after they visited it, every five minutes while we were driving around we would hear Alyssa or Ethan say, "Look it's the Space Needle," or "Look! It's uh Hace Yeedle," respectively.

We wore ourselves out again, so after a quick stop at McDonalds for lunch (and some Greek gyros for the adults from a neighboring place) we went back to the hotel where I fell asleep while Brian watched the Olympics and the kids ran around the room. Brian even cleaned up a diaper emergency while I was sleeping - yea!

So after watching the ending to "Independence Day" we got ready and headed to the wedding. Marcus made machine gun noises during the ceremony, and when I stood up with him in the back, he really wanted to eat the cupcake wedding cake, which I wouldn't let him, of course, so he wasn't too pleased with me. The wedding was beautiful. Becky looked gorgeous, and she pumped her arm when they kissed and kept doing little happy dances throughout the evening. She seemed like a very happy person, or maybe she was just happy she was getting married. Probably both.

We were all exhausted. Alyssa kept drifting off during dinner, and Ethan fell asleep during the toasts, so we took off just after Mark and Becky had their first dance. Even though the kids were tired, Alyssa and Ethan really wanted to swim. Marcus fell asleep on the way to the hotel, so Brian stayed with him while I took the other two down to the pool. We swam for about twenty minutes, then fell asleep the second our heads hit our pillows.

We left for home the next morning after breakfast and enjoyed a quiet Sunday afternoon together. Then Brian's parents came over after the kids went to bed so we could try all the fancy cheeses Brian and his dad splurged on at Pike Place Market. It was a fabulous weekend!

Some Random Little Bits And Pieces

• My hair is curly again. I missed the curls, and my pixie cut was growing out to the point of funniness, so I went for a perm last night. I love it.
• We're headed to Seattle tomorrow for Brian's cousin's wedding. We're excited to meet Rebecca and see everyone else in the family. While we're there, we'll be livin' it up with the Sumsions for a day. Yea!
• The kids are having bread and jam for breakfast, and Alyssa is singing, "Jam, jam, jam. Jamma, jamma, jam," while she's spreading it on her slice.
• We got the house! Brian and I signed the acceptance papers for the bank's counter offer on Saturday. We'll be closing on the 22 of March. I've got a OneNote file full of decorating ideas for each room, and a Word file listing the "plan" of our moving schedule. In less than a month we'll have a dish washer, a garage, and a driveway!
• Yesterday I took the kids with me to Achievement Days, and Hope was giving the lesson. She was talking about the 12th Article of Faith, and Ethan was sitting on my lap, and when she asked the girls the question, "Now, what do we do if we think a law is stupid?" Ethan turned to me and gasped, "Hupid is a bad word!" He's such a good boy.
• Marcus' new phrase is "All right." If I tell him something, he says, "Awe vibe!" And speaking of Marcus, he just got his butter privileges revoked, because he stuck Alyssa's pill bottle in the butter tub. Maybe blogging during breakfast isn't such a good idea.
• I'm reading "Alice in Wonderland" to Alyssa in preparation for the movie coming out next month. We're not taking the kids to it, because it actually looks scary, but I've requested that Brian take me for my birthday when he's asked what I want, and I'd like to officially read the book before seeing it. I'm also making notes on ideas to decorate our new school room, and I've decided the Alice in Wonderland theme is prefect for a school room. It encourages stretching your mind and using your imagination, it has quotes on the Earth that would be great to put by a world map, and it's just fun.

Gotta go. We're getting a late start to the morning, and we've got a lot to do today.

Now Why Are We Teaching Her How To Read?

Alyssa learned her letter sounds in the same way any respectable three year old would: Leap Frog's Letter Factory movie. My sister recommended it to me, because it was a fun and easy way for little kids to learn their letters. As Alyssa got older and started going to school, she improved and expanded on her letter knowledge, but she has always been cautious and shy in the reading department. I know. Alyssa - cautious?!? Shy?!?

Last summer we read through "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons," because that is what my mom taught me to read with, and it's a great source. Alyssa was quick to catch on to the letter sound concepts, but she was reluctant to read when it came to sentences, and then stories. We discovered, though, that once she was familiar with the book, she wasn't as hesitant, and this also became the case when it came to her Phonics lessons this year. Once she learned that reading the Phonics books wasn't as scary and intimidating as she thought, she stopped fighting when it came time to read them. But if I offered any other book to read, even if it was 100 times easier than her Phonics books, she absolutely refused.

Last month we noticed that Alyssa was more willing to read with Brian's mom than she was with me, so we "hired" her as our Reading Specilist. (Grandma's get paid with love, or maybe ice cream. We'll be thinking about that one.) Anyway, this was the most brilliant thing I've done for Alyssa's reading skills. Spending special time with Grandma every day, without the boys, made Alyssa look forward to reading time, instead of dread it. Alyssa's confidence in her reading skills improved dramatically, and now she's reading books to us without fighting, and she's actually enjoying herself! Her favorites right now are Frog and Toad and the Fancy Nancy series, and we're thrilled.

Now, in our lessons each day, I sometimes sneak in a little bit of extra work. If a math lesson is super easy, I might combine it with the next lesson and put it in the same folder, turning it into one lesson. I did that last night while putting together Alyssa's binder, and didn't think anything of it. But come this morning, Alyssa sat down and pulled out her first Math lesson and said, "Mom, this paper says 'Lesson 4' and these papers say 'Lesson 5' and I'm only supposed to do one lesson, so I don't think I should do this paper." My little girl is a reader. I'm so proud of her!

Nine Years Ago

Nine years ago today I woke up as Carrie Lewis in a hotel room in Provo Utah. I did my hair and make up with my maid of honor (Kimmy) beside me, and had a doughnut continental breakfast with my family. I don't really remember how much I ate. I think I actually had a yogurt in an attempt to be healthy so I wouldn't plump up and look fat in my wedding dress.

Nine years ago today I sat in the lobby of the Salt Lake City Temple getting teased by the elderly temple workers about the groom not showing up, because Brian was a little late in arriving.

Nine years ago today I shared the bridal room with another girl about my age, who was scared out of her mind and kept asking me, "Aren't you nervous?" I just kept shaking my head, because I knew exactly what I was doing, and I remember not feeling nervous at all.

Nine years ago today I sat on a couch in the Celestial Room with that sweet girl and talked for a few minutes while we waited for our fiancees to join us. When they entered the room they were accompanied by a cute little lady, who was advising them on how to be gentlemen by helping us stand and sit in our wedding dresses and letting us go through the doorway into the sealing room first.

Nine years ago today I knelt with Brian and listened to a beautiful sermon about love and marriage, and didn't understand about a fifth of it, since the officiator learned Brian had served his mission in Germany and then proceeded to give Brian a personal sermon in German. Brian still hasn't told me what was said, although sometimes when we have a friendly disagreement he'll say, "Remember that German part?"

Nine years ago today I kissed my brand new husband for the first time as "husband and wife", and he totally backed out of the kiss we had practiced and left me hanging there for a second. Everyone got a good chuckle out of that.

Nine years ago today I shared a Hawaiian luncheon with my family, my new family, and my friends. I twirled with my little niece, who is twelve now, and listened to how many rolls Brooke had eaten.

Nine years ago today I was whisked away in a washed and vacuumed car (Brian's best men Jeremy and Don had taken it in their tuxes to a self service car wash while we were still visiting with everyone over lunch) to the Anniversary Inn in Logan Utah for our long weekend honeymoon. And I went to bed that night as Carrie Jacks.

Blah...

Just having a bit of a blah afternoon. Going to make some cookies to liven things up. I'll let you know how they turn out.*

THE BUTLER'S CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

(found through blog surfing about homeschooling at http://anewchelseamorning.blogspot.com)

1 stick butter, softened but not melted
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
2 tablespoons (yes, tablespoons) vanilla
3 1/4 cups flour (a full cup more than the recipe on the package calls for)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 12-ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375*

Mix thoroughly butter, shortening, sugars, eggs and vanilla with a wooden spoon. Stir in remaining ingredients.

The batter will be stiff, and it should be. Just to make sure it is flavorful, you should try some of the dough. But not too much!

Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet (preferably a shiny sheet which gives better results).

Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown. Cool slightly before removing to a wire rack.

Yield: about 5 dozen normal sized cookies or 3 1/2 dozen ginormous cookies.


*Scratch that! We only have half a stick of butter, and I'm not going to replace it with margarine. I don't want to judge a new recipe when I'm not using the right ingredients. Ethan and I are now making cake truffles, which I heard about from my little sister, Kim. (She likes to be called Kim or Kimberly now, but we all know her real name is Kimmy.) The recipe she gave me was this: make a cake and crumble it up, mix the crumbles with frosting and roll into balls, stick the balls in the fridge for a while, then dip them in chocolate. We have a white cake in the oven, and we're going to mix it with strawberry frosting. Once again, I'll let you know how they turn out. (And can't you tell that my mood is already improving? Baking a cake will do that.)

Edited to Add - the cake truffles didn't turn out too great. I think I used too much frosting, plus I think the chocolate cake, chocolate frosting combination Kim told me about would have been better than white and strawberry. I made the cookies the next day with margarine spread, because I couldn't wait until I went to the store for butter, and they turned out great. Not the best dough for snitching, but once they cooked up, they were fabulous!

I Don't Do Teeth

For the past week or so Alyssa had a tooth that was just slightly loose. She started wiggling it and fiddling with it, which was fine, but then she started pushing and twisting it more than it was ready to go. We kept telling her that the tooth would get wigglier on its own as the new tooth came through, but she kept on pushing. Yesterday morning she showed me a blood splattered napkin and told me that before she went to bed the previous night, she pushed really hard on her tooth. And then she showed me how she pushed really hard on her tooth. It made me cringe just watching her. In fact, it's making me cringe right now just writing about it. Of course it started bleeding, and she couldn't leave it alone after that.

Halfway through our second math lesson (Yesterday was a Plan A day. Yea!) She sprung up from her chair, yelling, "My toof, my toof, it's thtuck!" To which I replied things like, "Of course it's stuck. Leave it alone. It will come out on its own. It's not ready yet..." And then she showed me this:


She had pushed her tooth completely backward, then wedged it back into the hole it came from. I couldn't move it. I couldn't even wiggle it back to where it was supposed to be. It was absolutely, positively stuck.

Now, I'm a mom. I've done all sorts of yucky things in the last seven years. I've changed millions of poopy diapers. I've cleaned up all sorts of throw up messes. Just this morning Ethan coughed so hard that he threw up his Coco Roos into his cereal bowl. I was out of the room when it happened and when I came back to his, "Mom, look at my cereal!" calls, I honestly wondered where he had found chocolate pudding. I cleaned it up. No big deal. Messes don't bother me much, but I don't - do - teeth. They just weird me out. Cringe.

So while Alyssa hopped around the living room, yelling, "It hurths! My toof!" I tried calling Brian's dad to see if he could come help out, but no one answered their house phone or cell phones. Then I went ahead and called Brian at the office, which I hardly ever do. We don't have dental insurance. The doctors at our practice usually find a dentist to switch free services with, but we haven't found one yet. (We have been taking the kids to the dentist for their check ups. Don't worry about that.) I was calling Brian to see if I should just take her in somewhere when his dad called back. He said he would come take a look at it, and while we waited I had Alyssa lay down on her bed while I took some floss and started sawing at the skin her tooth was hanging on to. It took about ten minutes, and finally the tooth was free. Cringe.

And, of course, the tooth fairy forgot to leave a quarter last night, but luckily she didn't feel the tooth when she checked, so I just told her, "You stay downstairs with the boys while I go check," and came back downstairs claiming the quarter had fallen under the bed. I love having gullible children.

Carrie, In A Nutshell

NaDell tagged me. Here I go.

Your cell phone? It's lilac. I love having the chance to call people when I'm out and about, but other than that I'm not a cell phone person. I don't text or use the internet on it or anything.

*Your hair? Short and straight. Just before Christmas I got a pixie cut. I love it.

*Your mother? is fabulous.

*Your father? had a birthday yesterday. Happy birthday, Dad!

*Your favorite food? Cake. I like a lot of other foods almost as much as cake, but cake always comes out on top.

*Your dream last night? Ethan coming into our room with his pillow and wanting to sleep with us. Oh wait, that was real.

*Your favorite drink? Water. Really, I love water, but I also love root beer and freckled lemonade.

*Your dream/goal? To have my whole family in the temple together someday.

*What room are you in? Living room

*Your hobby? sewing

*Your fear? My biggest fear, I think, would be losing Brian or one of my children.

*Where do you see yourself in 6 years? Doing just about what we're doing right now, but all of us older.

*Where were you last night? At Achievement Days for church, then at Brian's parent's to pick up the kids, then at home. I finished the book Pride and Prejudice last night.

*Something that you aren't? Male

*Muffins? Blueberry. You can't beat hot blueberry muffins.

*Wish list item? A house

*Where did you grow up? Pasco, Washington

*Last thing you did? Gave Alyssa instructions for her math worksheet

*What are you wearing? Plaid skirt, turquoise sweater, no shoes or socks

*Your tv? is off right now, thank goodness.

*Your pets? Callie is somewhere in the house, probably either sleeping on someone's pillow or licking the walls. They both happen frequently.

*Friends? I have them.

*Your life? is good.

*Your mood? I'm actually in quite a good mood today.

*Missing someone? Everyone in my family in the Tri-Cities is hoping that my brother will be able to find a job up here when he graduates in May. We all miss him and Erin and the kids.

*Vehicle? 1997 Honda Odyssey.

*Something you aren't wearing? Shoes

*Your favorite store? Target

*Your favorite color? I think it's green right now.

*When was the last time you laughed? Just a minute ago. Alyssa's math work is extremely easy today after a couple weeks of new material, so we had a good laugh about that. She's been learning about money and clocks, but today she's counting the sides and corners of shapes. Easy peasy.

*The last time you cried? Two Sundays ago during a melt down before church

*Your best friend? I'd have to say Brian, but my mom and sisters come in a very close second.

*One place you go to over and over again? Disneyland, hopefully

*Facebook? Yes, though I don't post updates and stuff. Mostly I just spy on everyone else's updates and put up pictures from family gatherings.

*Favorite place to eat? Red Robin

I tag Kim W, Kim-the-sister since she hasn't blogged in forever, both Heathers, Jamie, and Wendi.

A Little Change

Why do changes always cost money? Brian would probably answer that question by saying, "Only when you're in charge of them, Dear," but, really, he hardly ever calls me "dear."

The first change to steal from our pocket book is Marcus' bedding. In preparing for our *possible* upcoming move, I decided that Marcus was old enough to sleep in a twin sized bed in our new house. My mom offered for us to use the headboards that my sister and I used when we were little, which we already have one of, and we talked about painting them dark blue to match Ethan's bedding, and the bedding I planned on getting for Marcus. I bought Marcus' bedding, the first bit of money spent on this change, and made two pictures to match both of the boys beds.This part acutally cost nothing, since I used two picture frames that the previous tenants left in the basement, some card stock, and some wall stickers I bought for Ethan forever ago and never used. I must point out that I realize that no one would park their cars that close to a rocket launch, but I didn't have a big enough picture frame to make it more realistic. I love how they turned out. I love what you can make with just a little bit of paper.

During the process of buying bedding and making pictures, we moved Alyssa out of the bedroom that all three kids shared. She was tired of Marcus climbing out of his crib and wreaking havoc before falling asleep at night, so she finally got a room of her own, and she loves it. After moving Alyssa out of the boys' room, we discovered that with her gone, Marcus started going to Ethan's bed to play. Now, Marcus is a bulldozer, and Ethan doesn't quite know how to fight back when Marcus wants to jump all over him, so we spent a few nights listening to Ethan shriek in terror between our visits to put Marcus back in his crib, and we were soon discussing ways to keep Marcus from attempting to kill his older brother before falling asleep at night. Brian found the solution while searching for something completely unrelated, and we were soon spending more money. A little extra money, too, because I went ahead a paid for overnight shipping, which I've never done before, but I felt it was necessary to keep our four year old alive.


The crib tent came yesterday, and I set it up immediately. We actually ordered the car sheet and blanket along with it, because up until now Marcus' crib sheet has been Ethan's flat sheet wrapped around his mattress. Marcus loved it while we were setting it up, and he loved it while he was testing it out, but once it came time for bedtime, and I laid him down and zipped it up, he didn't love it anymore. He cried for about five to ten minutes, then fell asleep, which is better than me rocking him to sleep and having him wake up all night, because that's what he does when I rock him to sleep. And it was better than either Brian or I laying down beside his crib for an hour saying, "Marcus, lay down," over and over again. I really think it's a good solution. Brian has also been worried about Marcus falling and getting hurt while climbing in and out of his crib, so it solves that problem, too. We'll just hang on to the rocket idea for another year or so until he's old enough to firmly grasp the meaning of "Stay in bed!"

Two nights ago, Ethan and Marcus actually stayed up looking at books for a while, and they both fell asleep by the door. So they've gone from this:

To this:

(They're supposed to be pretending to sleep.)

The second change we've had in the last couple of days is to our kitchen cupboards. When Brian and I first got married, we saved our margarine tubs from Costco to use as our containers for baking ingredients. People sometimes open our cupboard and say, "Wow! You eat a lot of butter!" But they don't understand that it took us a couple of years to stockpile our collection.

So these are what we've been using for most of our marriage. They work great. I've been using them for years, and I haven't once complained, but you have to admit that they're not exactly very pretty. I went to a thrift store with my mom today while Alyssa was at school, and I found a great collection of dishes to turn our flour and sugar containers from the Sharpeed yellowness you see above to this:
Isn't that so much prettier? They had a smaller salt container, but it didn't have a lid. The flour dish is actually a little bigger than our margarine tubs, and the sugar is about the same size. I bought a couple of other dishes as well.

I'm excited to start using the special plate. I think the kids will love it! They had a ton of other dishes from the same collection, and I was tempted to buy more, but we don't have that much change.

Our Revisited Schedule, And Much, Much More

I think I've already done quite a few posts about our various schedules and what-not, and I'm about to bore you with, yet, another one. I think the most important thing I've learned about homeschooling this year is that you have to keep mixing things up. Schedule and routines are important - even essential - but they only last for so long. What works one week will completely bomb the next, so when it stops working, you reevaluate, and start again. And then when that stops working...you get the picture.

Right now we're doing two lessons each of Math, Phonics, and Language Arts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and on Tuesdays, when Alyssa has her morning acting class at MCP, we do three lessons each of History and Science afterward. Thursdays are the days Alyssa spends all day long at MCP, so she (usually) does a lesson of Language Arts when she comes home in the afternoon. And every day we do our "Dailies," which consist of Alyssa doing a practice Math worksheet, a writing assignment (mostly to work on penmanship and sentence structure), and reading a couple of books with Brian's mom, who is currently our Reading Specialist.

So that's the basics of our schedule. We have two plans that we're starting to use on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Our Plan A is: Math, Phonics, Math, Phonics, Language Arts, with a five minute break in between each lesson. Each lesson usually lasts about thirty minutes, depending on how willing to work Alyssa is, and when she is willing to work, things go very smoothly. We go through the lessons and worksheets together, then she dances during her breaks. When she's not willing to work, she fake cries and feels sorry for herself until she starts crying for real, and it gets to the point where I want to throw my hands in the air and say, "Do whatever you want to do," but I know that we need to get through those lessons. Plus, if I give her a break, it will only teach her that whining and crying will get her what she wants.

Plan B was invented last week at one of those hand-throwing moments. I decided that when Alyssa was having one of those days where she just didn't want to cooperate, we would switch to Math, Phonics, Language Arts (both lessons), then have the rest of the morning off, then lunch, reading with Grandma, and then start back in again with our second lessons of Math and Phonics. Today was one of those days, and when we were spending a long, emotional time on our first Math lesson, I just made a mental switch to Plan B, and it made me feel less stressed, and it gave Alyssa time after the first half to regroup and have fun with Grandma, so she could get right back in things. It worked great!

Plus, we've been using a checklist for the last month in order to make sure we're doing every thing we're supposed to do each day. It started out small, with a little section for each family member all on one page, and it's expanded to being one page per family member. I worried that having a checklist for every little thing (prayer, brushing teeth, cleaning up after breakfast, etc) would be over-doing things a bit, but it's made my days a lot smoother. Both because the kids are excited to check things off their lists, and because I don't have to think, "It's Monday, what do I have to do today?" I can just look at my list and know that I need to make our meal plan and grocery list, because tomorrow is shopping day, and when I'm done, I can check it off my list. When we have enough points, we're all going to Chuck e Cheese's, and we're (basically the kids) are excited.

And to make the post longer, I'll go ahead and tell you about something I've been wanting to write about, but haven't found the right moment to do it in. This just might be the right moment. Be sure and tell me if it's not. Are we good? Okay.

Kay, raise your hand if you know Alyssa. Go ahead and put it down. Now raise your hand again if you know that Alyssa is an extremely busy, energetic little girl. Most likely, if you raised your hand to the first question, you immediately raised it again to the next question. Alyssa is busy. Busy, busy, busy. And she's been busy since day one. Brian and I have spent tons of time as Alyssa's been growing up worrying about this busy-ness, and wondering just how bad does it have to get to seek help. We watched her be busy in Nursery. No big deal. We watched her be busy in Sunbeams. I was terrified to send her to Sunbeams. She was busy in Sunbeams, but it wasn't as big of a deal as I thought it would be. We watched her be busy in ballet, and basically get kicked out of class. (Although in truth, I took her out after the teacher told me that Alyssa was devious and trying to manipulate me and I should just go get some coffee during her class instead of staying to watch. Honestly, I think all the other kids must have been messed up to sit still in a circle for a full ten minutes during roll call. What three-year old wants to spend ten minutes of a forty minute dance class sitting still when they're wearing a cute leotard and tu-tu?!?) We watched her be busy in kindergarten, then first grade, then kindergarten again. And finally, I watched her - up close - be busy in our living room and be barely able to contain the movement in her legs to sit still for a lesson.

Last year a very kind woman in our ward helped us with some exercises we could do with Alyssa. She did her thesis on these exercises that help ADHD kids be able to control their bodies, and she did a course of lessons for her granddaughter and Alyssa. They helped. They honestly helped, but not enough, I guess, and we didn't have the extra half-hour each day of quiet without the boys to be able to do them enough to be effective.

So this year, we finally decided to seek help from our pediatrician. We fought this decision for a long, long time, and the last thing I wanted to do was medicate, but it finally got to the point when it was getting out of our control. I called and made the initial appointment on a very rough day between Alyssa and I, and I'm glad that it took a few days to see the doctor and that we needed to get her blood work and other tests done, because it made me really think about whether or not I was putting her through all of that for me or for her.

We got every thing figured out with the doctor just before Christmas, so she's been on Staterra for just over a month. The doctor explained that there were basically two types of medication to try: the Ritalin type (I can't remember the official names) is one where if you imagine someone's energy being in a jar, with a normal person's energy level "here", and Alyssa's up "here," and the medications will push Alyssa's energy levels to completely fill and overflow the jar to kind of wear her down and slow her down. I didn't like that option very much, and he agreed. Staterra is the type of medication that just stops the neurotransmitters in her brain that make her busy.

So far it's working great. It's so much better than I ever thought it would be. I was afraid that if she was on medication that she would lose her personality, but she is still very much Alyssa. And she still is very much a busy little girl. She still might be busier than your average child. I don't mind that at all. The medication seems to slow her down just enough for her to stop and think about things, and to be more in control of her body, instead of her body controlling her.

I've been on the look-out for the side effects this last month, but so far that's going well, too. One of the possible side effects is depression and suicidal thoughts, and she's honestly been less wheepy and emotional while she's been on the medication than she was before or during a week break from the medication when we were trying to get things approved by our insurance. The other thing is that the doctor said it might make it harder for her to fall asleep at night, especially if she took her pill too late in the morning, but she's been falling asleep better than ever. It's wonderful.

I hope this explains all the thoughts that have been running around my head for the past month. Yet it doesn't even touch on the discussions Alyssa's had with the counselor she's been talking to in order to "treat the patient, not just the problem" where, for instance, in response to the counselor asking me how Brian's and my relationship is, and me saying, "Just fine," Alyssa says, "...and when they're alone, and Daddy stretches her out, and she starts screaming for us to come help her, Ethan and I run in and pull Daddy's hands away so we can save her." Of course, Alyssa failed to mention that Brian likes to tickle and wrestle before saying this and permanently burning those words into my brain, where they will remain forever and ever.